(no subject)

[argyle_princess]

Hannah thinks that Brennan is right about most things, and Hannah knows she's right about needing to eat and sleep and so on.

So Hannah eats. All right, Hannah mostly pushes soup around the bowl with her spoon, but she eats at least a third of it, and in her defense, it is a very large bowl.

She drinks all the juice.

She brushes her teeth, showers, works the tangles out of her hair, puts on mint green flannel pajamas provided by Bar, hangs her clothes in the bathroom so the wrinkles would fall out.

Small things that add up to living, right?

It would be nice to sleep, because sleeping is one way to stop thinking, and one that doesn't later involve having to join a twelve step program. Hannah is just not especially optimistic about it happening any time soon.

But she curls up on her side, arms and legs drawn in tight, blanket pulled up to nose, facing the chair Brennan is sitting in. There's some conversation about nothing in particular, but Hannah's replies get slower and shorter and less distinct, and (if she were awake to notice) she'd be surprised how quickly she falls asleep.

She stays very still for a long time, but eventually, (and gradually) she relaxes, uncurls.

She might be dreaming.

She also might now be drifting in that place between sleeping and waking, not quite dreaming but also not quite picking her thoughts.

Whatever it is, those thoughts are tumbled and jumbled and they don't quite fit together, like pieces of different puzzles dumped out onto the floor.

And then she sits bolt upright, gasping.

Whatever she was before, she's awake now.

Comments

[dr_temperance]

And, true to her word, Brennan is right there.

She had managed to doze off for a while herself, sitting up in the chair. When she had asked Bar for supplies necessary for the care and feeding of an exhausted and distressed teenager, she had also requested a book for herself so that she would have something to occupy her mind other than worry while Hannah slept.

It had turned out to be Alternate Realities for Dummies: Explaining Magic to the Hopelessly Rational. It had read like the diary of an unhinged theoretical physicist and hadn't held her attention at all. And it gets kicked, unnoticed, under the bed as Brennan gets up.

"Hannah? It's okay. You're fine."

[argyle_princess]

Hannah stares for a moment, in utter confusion, no idea where she is or why.

And then it all comes back, the pieces fitting themselves together into one very large and ugly picture.

She shakes her head. "No, I'm really not fine," she says. "Objectively, you know. I think this might be as far from fine as I've ever been."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan is unsure what to say.

Platitudes are useless, and she's not very good at delivering them anyway.

She sits down on the edge of the bed.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

The explanation Hannah had given her out by the lake had been direct, but not terribly informative.

[argyle_princess]

"Sort of," says Hannah. "I . . . I don't really know. I mean, I do, but there was a whole lot of information and not a lot of time to take it in, and some rather gaping holes and . . .

". . . and Henry is in hell. Literally. Or, rather, he's in a place that is 'as close to hell as anything I care to consider.'"

She's clearly quoting someone on that last.

[dr_temperance]

All right. A starting point has been established.

"And who told you this?"

Brennan's views on hell are roughly the same as her views on Santa Claus--namely that there's no such thing. But since discovering Milliways she's had to learn to contend with the idea of a multitude of worlds beyond her own.

[argyle_princess]

"Commodore Lyon," she says.

Then adds, helpfully, "He's, um, you know, this guy who's majorly old and from around Henry's time. I think. I met him once before. Liked him better that time. He wasn't all . . . " she trails off, looking for the word, then spits out " . . . English."

[dr_temperance]

Given that Henry himself is English, Brennan imagines that Hannah's derisiveness is meant more for this Commodore Lyon himself than for his nationality.

"And is that all he told you? That Henry is in hell or something close to it?"

Actually, Brennan is certain that Hannah would never have settled for information that vague. Especially where Henry is concerned. The question is merely to keep drawing out the relevant facts, leaving the question of Commodore Lyon's Englishness aside for the time being.

[argyle_princess]

The word Hannah uses most of the time for Henry is British. There's a difference. At least as far as Hannah is concerned.

"He wasn't real forthcoming with the details. I don't know how much just actually didn't know and how much he just didn't bother to tell me. He didn't want to speculate, he said, but . . . I don't know, I think he kinda knows more than he told me.

"Henry was on the Pearl--the ship that was out in the lake, with Captain Sparrow. I'm sure there was very good reason, but I don't know it. And the, um . . . damn it, what was the name? I don't remember."

She shrugs.

"Anyway, this other ship somehow showed and pulled them, Pearl and all, into Davy Jones's Locker, because Davy Jones has some sort of 'unfinished business' with Captain Sparrow. Henry was the . . . Henry was the collatoral damage. There's always some, right?

"So now Commodore Lyon and some people whose names I've also forgotten are doing something to try to get them back, which I don't have any details about, either, and which has a 'certain unlikelihood of success,' apparently.

"Anyway, that's what I know."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan is trying to process all of this. It's not going well.

"Hannah, I'm....I'm sorry."

Her brain is still attempting to sort this cascade of information into something that makes sense.

"But there is the possibility that they can get them out?"

[argyle_princess]

'Certain unlikelihood of success,'" she repeats slowly.

[dr_temperance]

"Hannah."

Firm voice is back. Brennan does not want a repeat of numb and dead.

"I think," she adds slowly, and a bit more softly, "that maybe you should go home."

[argyle_princess]

"Oh? And tell people what? That I got some bad news while I was in the bathroom before precal? That's why I'm crying? Just go about my day like all's right with the world?"

That would be sarcasm.

[dr_temperance]

Sarcasm. And other things that often fly right over Brennan's head.

"No. I would say go to the nurse's office, tell them that you're sick, and go home."

Even after a few hours of sleep, Hannah isn't going to have any trouble convincing someone that she's not well.

[argyle_princess]

Hannah shakes her head.

"What do I tell Mom? Or Dad?

"God, Brennan, I don't know what to do. Right now I'm having trouble remembering to breathe."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan doesn't really know what to say---and when she doesn't know what to say, she generally winds up saying something that makes things worse.

So she just pulls Hannah into a very tight hug.

[argyle_princess]

Hugs are good. They don't fix the problem, but they don't make it worse, either.

"What am I supposed to do?"

[dr_temperance]

Brennan can remember asking herself that question when she was not quite Hannah's age. And under circumstances that, at their core, were not entirely dissimilar.

She draws back so that she can look Hannah in the eye.

"We," she says, "are going to check in regularly with this Commodore Lyon in case there is any new information. We will offer assistance if there is anything we can do to help, though given that this seems to involve magic, we should be prepared for the possibility that we won't be able to."

"And in the meantime we are going to go about our lives, as difficult as that may sound. But we can't just stay here indefinitely hoping to hear something. It won't do anything to help the situation, and in the end it's not healthy."

She hopes that Hannah doesn't think her unfeeling. Because that's not even remotely the case. But it's the only advice she knows to offer.

"It's hard, I know, when there are no answers. But until we have more data, and data that we can act on, it's all we can do."

[argyle_princess]

The smile is very small and not remotely genuine.

"You make it sound easy.

"Commodore Lyon asked me what I thought Henry would want me to do."

[dr_temperance]

"It's not."

Brennan shakes her head almost imperceptibly. "Carrying on with no answers is never easy. But it is necessary."

Her eyebrows draw together slightly.

"It was unfair of him to ask you that. Logically, Henry would want you to be safe and happy. Anyone could figure that out. But it's counterproductive to use emotional manipulation to try to get you to force yourself into that frame of mind."

Plus, it's a cop out answer, which is something Brennan has never had any patience with.

[argyle_princess]

"I'm not sure logic has anything to do with it," Hannah says. "I mean, I know that's the answer you're supposed to give. Carry on, live life, be happy, climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, whatever. But I don't know that it's actually the answer."

She can't figure the answer out. And that somehow bothers her more than almost everything else.

[dr_temperance]

"I suppose it's impossible to definitively say what any one person would want of another."

"And this is the sort of situation where objectivity is extraordinarily difficult."

If not impossible. At least, not this quickly.

[argyle_princess]

The fact that Temperance Brennan finds objectivity about something difficult is, actually, pretty terrifying.

"If it was me, if our places were reversed . . . I think I would want it to hurt. Isn't that an awful thing to say? Maybe I don't even mean it. I don't know. But I think that, at least for a little while, I would want it to hurt so much that he wouldn't be sure he could stand it. To be something that he didn't actually if there was a way to get over or around or through.

"Which I guess makes me a horrible person. But there it is."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan can understand that. She's not sure she can explain it very well, but she can understand it.

"It's only when something or someone means a great deal to us that it hurts when it's lost."

She makes an attempt at a smile.

"At the genetic level we're social creatures. We require emotional attachments, even though logic tells us that those attachments will all inevitably end someday, one way or another. But we form them anyway. It's one of the things that makes us human."

[argyle_princess]

"And it's all just anthropology."

Hannah doesn't smile.

"You're right, though. I can't just stay here. If nothing else, it'll probably be easier to be some place he wouldn't be, anyway."

[dr_temperance]

To Brennan, there's no such thing as 'just' anthropology. It's more than an academic science. It's something that is constantly playing out between people all over their world.

The world where Hannah needs to be right now.

She nods. "I think you're right."

[argyle_princess]

"I can call you, right? If I need to? It's just . . . it's not like I can tell people what happened, you know?"

[dr_temperance]

"Anytime you need to. You have my numbers."

"And you know I'm used to keeping odd hours, so don't worry about the time."

[argyle_princess]

"OK," says Hannah.

"I think I'm gonna run," she says. "Then I'll worry about looking presentable enough to go back."

It's not that she thinks running will help much, it's just that she knows not running really won't help.

[dr_temperance]

Brennan nods.

"And then I do think you should call off sick when you get back. Go home and rest some more. And I'll call you this evening to check in."