callmeemily | Can I pay you tomorrow for recovery today? (Dated Monday, 9:45AM) TW: Mentions of Violence/Torture

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Can I pay you tomorrow for recovery today? (Dated Monday, 9:45AM) TW: Mentions of Violence/Torture

Trigger Warning: This thread contains mentions and descriptions of violence and torture. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to tweet @thestarsplay for clarification. Thanks!

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In the end, she'd handled it herself.

Raleigh didn't have family, didn't have an emergency contact. She'd watched Levi be loaded onto the gurney, and she limped to follow him - but one of the EMTs sat her down and took one look at her, and she was on one as well. She's got no phone - and she doesn't know anyone's phone numbers off the back of her hand, so she goes alone.

Concussion, hairline fractures in her left wrist (her fault) and right cheekbone (not her fault), bruised ribs - bruises all over really, and the 7 inch long cut along the bottom of her foot, from her heel to her toes -- had stitches.

Which meant she had crutches.

She knew she had to be at the hospital to get the stitches, but what she didn't know - or didn't expect, really, was that they were expecting to keep her. They were expecting to keep her, and she couldn't do it. She couldn't, not and keep thinking of Les' words. Of Joseph's, of her own. She'd been through it, after she'd fallen into the basement of that rotted old house. Two days, she'd been down there, and half the people who visited her informed her that They didn't even know she was gone.

Raleigh can't live through that again.

That's why she checks herself out once it's all done, the stitches and the lectures and the questions. That's why she heads back into town - the clicking of the crutches something that's entirely old hat to her, given her leg - and she's thinking about tomorrow. About working, and she draws herself up short before she sits heavily on one of the little tables outside the coffeeshop, nevermind that she hasn't bought anything, that she looks like a wreck and that she's wearing scrubs for pants and a cheap flipflop on her good foot because the exceedingly nice nurse realised that they had to cut her jeans off of her, and she had no shoes - her hoodie had blood on the sleeve and the hem, oddly brown now, but she hasn't realised it.

She sits, and she can't help it as she starts to cry, her free hand still holding the crutches so they don't clatter onto the ground.

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"It's okay," he promises, reaching out to take her hand so he can gently lay the bottle in her palm. Under other circumstances, he might be nervous, but it feels very similar to that day in the library when he'd had to show Spencer what he could do or risk him being injured. He's not nervous, he's not worried what she might think, he only wants to help.

"What I do... I focus on healing and protection. I'm very good at it. It will help." And he can't do much. He's not very good at emotional support, he knows he's often too gruff with people when they need him to be gentle and the only person he's found himself able to be truly gentle with is Spencer. But he's trying and this is one thing he knows he can give her.

"Not very many people know," he adds a moment later, closing her handle around the bottle, holding it very gently in his. "Please don't tell anyone."

She stares at him, her brows furrowing together as she wraps her fingers around the bottle. "You'd give this to me?" She says it softly, and then looks down at the bottle, and nods, biting her lips together. "Thank you, Joel." She doesn't know if it will work - so many things don't make sense anymore, but that he'd even try... it means a lot.

Her eyes flick up to his when he says for her to please not tell anyone, and the words just sort of come from nowhere. "Who would I tell?" She looks away then, and takes a deep breath. "I promise. I promise, I won't tell a soul. Thank you, Joel." And she won't - she won't tell anybody.

"Do I just... drink it?" She looks even more lost, even though she's thankful that she's not sitting alone, at least. At least she's got someone, for now.

Jason tenses when she mentions Wulfric. "He...you were with him? He's okay??" He hadn't heard any news from Levi, but if the detective busted up a big murder/sacrificial plot, his first priority probably wasn't 'Update that Guy Jason on His Homeless Friend.'

He rubs her back, letting her cry it out. "I'm sorry any of that happened to you. No one deserves that."

He doesn't ask because he doesn't trust her, but simply because so many people in Siren Cove are open about such things and unless he asks, there's no reason for her to assume he wants it to be kept secret. Now and then he wonders if it's worth it and although he and Lou have begun to mend their broken bridges, he still remembers her initial reaction and that still concerns him a little. He worries that others might feel the same and they might not be so forgiving in the long run.

"You just drink it," he says with a nod, keeping his arm around her. "It shouldn't taste like anything, shouldn't smell like anything." He can make potions with specific tastes and he does now and then, but they don't keep as long and he'd wanted to leave this one for Spencer to use whenever he might need it. He wanted something to be there for Spencer if he needed it, if he couldn't be there himself. "And it should work fairly quickly. Within minutes."

She tries to calm down, and she nods when he offers, because... because she didn't know where else to go, because he's right. He's right, and it's sitting all wrong with her, but he's right, and she needs help. She was trying to do this by herself, but that's not the right choice. That's not the right thing to do.

Besides, she doesn't even know how well it would work. If she needed help - she knows already from before, everything's going to hurt more as time goes on. "If you're sure it's okay," she says with a nod. "Then... please. Yes, please." She nods once, and she hesitates. "Can... I tell you about what happened later? Why- Why I lied, I just- I can't... I can't right now, I'm sorry."

She nodded. "He's okay. He's- He was taped to a chair, I was h-handcuffed to a bed. But he's okay." She nods to herself, and she takes a deep, deep breath, nodding slightly when he says no one deserves what she's been through. "I know. I know I didn't deserve it. I know. And I'll be okay, I promise. I just- I guess I got a little overwhelmed, you know?"

She takes a deep breath, her brows furrowed together. "But yeah, Wulfric's okay, and Levi will be okay - I think he's still in the hospital, and Corrine had Les, so I think- I think everybody's- I mean, they're dead, the guys who did it, so." She's babbling a little, and she forces herself to stop, shifting so her forehead is against his jaw as she forces herself to just breathe.

Finally, once she's gotten ahold of herself, she pulls back enough to look at him. "Do you know him?"

She nods, and her brows furrow as she looks down at it, and she peels off the wax sealing it closed before she opens it, and she doesn't even look at him because he's said it's for her, and she's going to trust him, and she just... drinks it.

It's weird, that it literally takes like nothing. It was like wet air, and she pulls in a breath, carefully closing the empty bottle. "I thought of both of you. And Jason." She paused. "And some other people, but I'm so glad I met you, and I didn't- I didn't want to just..." She doesn't say the word die, because she can't, and she sniffs once, rubbing away the few tears that have slipped free with her fingers. "It was horrible, and all I could think - they found me. Did I ever tell you how I got here?"

And then- then she actually interrupts him the moment he starts to answer her question. "It's- It's working." She sounds stunned, the way she says it.

The pain - all of it, the pain from her foot and the bruises and the headache from the concussion - that's all fading, but what's more - what's so much more is that... well. She actually turns slightly to look up at him, and he's never seen her look like this - honestly, it's not likely he's ever seen someone look like this, so moved and almost overwhelmed. "My leg doesn't hurt." She breathes the words like she's in complete disbelief, because she is. She didn't even know what it felt like, anymore; she's been in constant, chronic pain for eight years, and for it to actually go away...

It was almost euphoric, and she was stunned - and didn't even know what to do with herself.

Edited 2014-06-25 03:05 (UTC)

"You don't have to tell me at all if you don't want to," he says. He wants to know, of course he does, but he doesn't want to make her feel like she's obligated. If it takes her an hour, a day, a week, if she decides she doesn't want to bring it up ever again, he'll understand. It had taken him over two years to tell anyone other than the police what had happened the day of his mother and brother's deaths and he thinks he'd made the right choice with Emily. Raleigh.

"Come on," he says, holding out a hand. "I'm going to call us a cab and then I'll... I don't know. I'll make you some soup. Bake you a cake. Whatever you want, whatever you need."

He fumbles to grab his phone with his casted hand and rattles off their location to the taxi company before turning his focus back on her. "You're welcome to stay in my place for as long as you'd like." The house has been empty aside from him for so long and the only people who have even been in there lately have been Joel and Raleigh. Well, no, that's a lie. Mark has been in his house, has violated his space and made the safest room he's ever been in a place where ghosts of bad memories wait; but it's getting better. It's only been a little over a week but things are getting better.

He hesitates before brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear and offering a crooked smile. "A wise person I know told me recently that people deserve good things. That it's worth the effort. I'm going to make that effort for you now, like you did for me. Okay?"

"I want to. I trust you, I just- I can't. I can't, because-" She says it even though he's reassured her she doesn't have to say anything. "- because then it's my fault. This stuff that happened, it's my fault and I can't think about it, right now." She says it faintly, and she looks up at him with misery in her eyes.

She's thankful when he calls the cab and for the hand up - it takes her a minute, to get herself up and on the crutches and that's when he can actually see how bad her foot is; the man who did this to her was a monster, there's no getting around it.

He offers her a place to stay, and she hesitates because she's so moved by it. By him. She doesn't realise now that he means longer than today - but she's grateful that she'll have a place to be, that she won't be alone. She's terrified of going to the boarding house tonight, because she still thinks she'll have to do it. She's terrified because she'll be alone in the dark, because something could happen, and she knows how bad she was after the basement.

She looks up at him when he brushes back her hair, and she shift-hobbles closer to him, half-hugging him even with the crutches. "You're a good person," she says softly, before she scoots herself back a little. "I appreciate this." All of it - that she's got a friend like him.

In a town like this, Joel thinks someone should have offered her something a long time ago, that he shouldn't be the first one trying to help her in such a way, but at the same time, there's something so innocent in her expression when she looks up at him that he can't help but selfishly feel a little glad it's him to have done it. And it's so little work. The bottle he's given her is something he can make in less than ten minutes, one of those things he can brew quickly and easily, mostly without thought at this point and he'll make her a hundred more if it really helps that much.

He should have offered sooner, he thinks, but it's been so hard to trust anyone with this information. He hopes she'll forgive him for that.

"Good," he says, his voice softly, his arm still around her. "It should last several hours and I can make you more. It won't... I can't just heal you. I'm not that powerful, but it can move the process along." And he's been doing research, too, trying to find ways he might be able to help her with her leg longterm. It's not clear yet, the power it takes to do something like that seems greater than what he has, but he has to try.

"That's...Jesus Chris, I'm glad that guy's dead," he almost fumes. It was bad enough the guy kidnapped people, but to hear what he did to them made Jason angry. "Hey, you got every right to get overwhelmed. That was a waking nightmare. You'll be okay but on your own time."

He smoothes her hair, nodding. "I do. He's my friend, one of the homeless men that went missing right before my weekend fishing job. He and another guy Edbyrd. I told Levi about them. Ed didn't..." he looks down more because he can't believe it himself. "He didn't make it."

Maybe she just didn't know the right people, or it was too awkward - but no one had offered. No one but Spencer even knew why she was in pain, why it hurt so much - and why this... why it'd scared her, maybe. There's gratitude in her gaze; Raleigh's looking at him like he's a hero, or a magic-worker in the colloquial sense. "Nothing hurts," she said again, and she exhales and it's almost palpable, the way her shoulders relax for the first time he's known her, and she looks.... somehow, she seems even younger. More free.

Raleigh curls up against him without even thinking; it's a comfort thing, it's because her anxiety's gone, the pain's gone, and she feels almost high at the prospect of being without pain for a while. "I never would have expected you to just heal me, you know that, right? I mean, I didn't even expect this." She needs someone, that much is clear, and she's got her head on his shoulder as she finally relaxes.

"Can people do that?" She asks it after a second, quiet and tired, but she's got to ask. She's got to know. "Heal.... things." She's asking because of her leg. She doesn't want to say, but she's asking because of her leg. "The surgeons did what they could but it's- I mean... I manage. I manage pretty well, it's a miracle I didn't lose it. Did... uh. Did Spencer tell you?" She's a little bit selfconcious, but it's nowhere near what it was before, because she was (to put it nicely) one step away from high.

"So am I," she said softly, and she's thankful he's here, that she's gotten it out, and she can just.... be with him.

They're in that weird limbo where they've been on one full date, two half-dates and made out against the pier, and she's not really the sort of girl who labels things - but after she's gone through this before, sort of, she's grateful she's not alone. That he looked for her, yeah, but that even now he was taking the time to be there.

"It'll be okay. I just have to remember I'm not there, and- I don't... deal well, with small, dark spaces where I know I can't get out, and I'm by myself." Huffing out a sort of laugh, she swallows thickly. "So, you know, that'll be interesting."

Sighing as he smoothes her hair, and she can feel the roughness of his hands and it feels more real. Wulfric's his friend. It makes more sense, now - how he knew, why he asked. Her brows furrow for a moment when he mentioned someone named Edbyrd, because the name made no sense, but then- "I'm sorry." She breathes the words, her brows furrowed together. "I'm sorry. He's- They were horrible men." They'd been so close to dying. It seemed now like it was a sort of obvious thing, how close. She'd been handcuffed and Joseph just went to go get the special knives or whatever, when Levi came in. If he hadn't....

She would have just vanished. "I think Wulfric might be at the hospital," she says lowly. "I know Levi is. Maybe.. .I wanted to go visit him, I don't know if you'd- I mean." She bites her lip, and sighs. "If you'd want company. I don't know if he knows about your friend."

"I don't know," he answers honestly and he's a little surprised when she curls up against him, but he doesn't move, doesn't shift uncomfortably, though his first instinct is to do so. He's really not uncomfortable, which is strange enough given how rarely he lets himself get physically close to people, but he knows his developing relationships with Spencer has helped change him in a lot of ways and this is only one. For so long the only person he's touched or hugged besides his family had been Cosette and recently that's changed a lot.

"My mother is pretty powerful and even she can't do that," he says, his voice thoughtful. It's a distraction tactic more than anything, a way to get her to think of something else, but he'll talk about it all day if it helps. "But I've also kept myself very separate from other witches. I don't... there's a community here and I stay away from it. I suppose it's not impossible for someone to be powerful enough to be able to heal you..." He'll look into it more, he'll find if there's a way, he's made that decision already.

At her question, he shakes his head. "No," he says. "He didn't tell me. I know I've never asked, I just... I know it's not always easy to talk about things, but if you want to tell me, you can."

There's a certain bonelessness that sleeping children get - it wears off when they turn five or six, when they start carrying around tension and waking easier, but that's how Raleigh feels now. That if she fell sleep in this moment, she could be picked up and moved and she'd sleep like the goddamned dead, excuse the term.

When he says his mother was powerful, but even she couldn't do it, Raleigh assumes it can't be done. Just... other witches or not, she never really thought about it as a possibility anyway. "It's okay, Joel. I've been like this a long time. It's not like it's going to kill me, right?" She smiles a little, and sighs as she relaxes even more. "It's okay. You're not like... one of those horrible women who just look at me and make like a tsk noise and tell me it's such a shame because I'm pretty." She wrinkles her nose, and then she pauses.

"When I was fourteen, I fell through an the rotting door to an abandoned basement. Fell fifteen feet, got a grade II compound fracture of the tibia." She paused. "No one knew where I was, and they didn't find me for two days." It's the short version, but it's what's important.

He doesn't know what she's talking about but he can't imagine that any of what's causing her so much distress is truly her fault. Running away, changing her name, making up a whole new life--to Spencer, that sounds like self-preservation. It sounds like a way to survive. Whatever had happened, she may blame herself, which he can very much relate to, but that doesn't make her guilty of anything. Her eyes are full of pain when she looks up and he has to work to keep from flinching, wondering if he's ever looked like that. He's haunted, that's a truth he can't deny, but he's had help; and if he can help Raleigh get that look out of her eyes, he'll do whatever he can.

He tries not to let his gaze linger on her foot, though he still isn't sure whether it's worse to see people struggle to avoid asking him about his bruises and injured hand altogether or to be direct about it. Curiosity is inevitable and both of them are well aware of that for more reasons than just their most recent traumas.

"I try to be," he answers, letting her get closer even though he stiffens just a bit. "Besides, it's truly the least I can do after you let me unload so much on you last week. Not that I'm keeping score, I--" He shakes his head, frustrated that he can't seem to find the right words to explain himself. He knows she would never say he owes her anything, and he doesn't feel like he does because as far as he's been learning, a true friendship doesn't work that way; but he wants to do right by her because she's done the same for him and perhaps that's not it's supposed to work either but it's where he's at right now.

"I've got fresh bedding," he says, signaling the cab he sees nearing them. "Do you like ice cream? I don't have any right now but Joel, he bought me my favorite, it's coffee-flavored. If you don't like coffee-flavored, that's all right, I can get you whatever flavor you like. Oh, there's a TV that I'm pretty sure still works in one of the empty rooms, if you want to use that one. When J-- When I'm alone in the house, it's easier to fall asleep with the background noise."

He's rambling but he's afraid that if he stops, he'll have to acknowledge the fact that the second reason he wants to go so out of his way for Raleigh is because he couldn't be there to stop whatever had happened to her in the first place. If he can make it up to her now, even if she doesn't realize that's what he's doing, maybe he'll be able to rest a bit easier tonight.

He's about the comment on the idea of someone telling her it's a shame she's been injured because she's pretty, as if the injury somehow negates that fact or as if being pretty is supposed to make her this untouchable character instead of a human being, but it isn't the time. She doesn't need to hear him ranting about the horrible ways people try to throw young women into boxes based on their appearance, as if it's the only thing of value they have to offer. More than anything, she probably knows it already, she doesn't need some nearly-thirty bookstore owner going off about it.

And then she's telling him what happened to her and all his other thoughts disappear anyway. He listens, his lips parted, then shakes his head as if somehow he can deny that such a thing happened to her. It's awful, thinking of her alone in the dark for two days.

"Jesus, Emily," he says, because he's not sure what else he can say.

"Bone infection," she says after she pauses for just a moment, but then--

"About that." She says it like she's just talking about the weather, because she's tired, because she's tired and the thing she drank - it's relaxing and she's not in pain and it's just made everything better. She's got that sort of drunken-stream-of-consciousness thing going, where you sort of talk and talk and then it ends up just being what it is. "I know I didn't tell you why I was here. I didn't grow up here or anything. There were these guys who were following me back in college and I didn't know why, right? And my dad gave me this phone number and was like... You call them if something happens and I didn't know what else to do."

She sighs. "So I call, and then this guy comes in his pickup truck and he's all acting like it's super important that I go with him and he brought me up here from Boston, and he took my phone away, and said I shouldn't tell anyone who I am, and so my name's not Emily. You should know. Because... because, they found me, and- and so that's already happened, right?" That's how she looks at it. This happened because whoever was looking for her found her, and that's why she'd gotten taken. Why she was here now. "Jason knows, and Aoife knew me from home, but that's it. Emily's my mom's name."

He stiffens but doesn't pull away, so she keeps it short, and she has to wonder - not for the first time, but she wonders how he actually feels about her. If... this is some weird sort of thing, where it's not actually a thing he wants; that they're friends because she's shoe-horned herself into his life a little bit, and if she actually makes him uncomfortable.

She can't think about it, though. Not right now. "It's okay," she says after he just sort of goes forward and backtracks, and she looks so tired when he says not that I'm keeping score and of course what she thinks is that he is, somehow. He's keeping track of the things she did, and trying to make it even or something, when she just did what she thought was right.

... Then again, she thought she was doing what was right when she went into that alley. Her brows furrow when he talks about bedding, when he just sort of babbles about his house and she doesn't quite get if he's inviting her over for the afternoon or asking her to actually stay. "Spencer." She waits until they're in the cab because she needs the time to figure out what, exactly, she wants to say to hopefully get him to calm down a little bit. "Seriously, it's okay. I appreciate you making space for me, and you don't... have to do anything, okay? It'll be good just to sit somewhere and not have to worry about people staring, and- and I can just... I'll figure out tonight." She looks so damned tired, and she looks down - and realises there's blood on her hoodie, and she just makes this miserable sound, before she just closes her hand around the spot, making it so she can't see it as she looks at her hands in her lap.

"You're not there. And you won't be there again," he reassures. "And hey, if you ever need a breather, just come visit Alfredo. He missed you."

Jason winces a bit because he sees the face she makes at the name Edbyrd. "It's Edward, but he likes-liked birds. He wouldn't answer to Ed or Edward, just...Edbyrd." It seems a bit dumb now--this is at least the second time he's had to explain the man's name and he feels silly every time. But he'd call the man what he wanted to be called even in death, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.

"I'll have to visit him later. I should let his friends know he's been found. They'll want to see him." It would be difficult to tell Wulfric about Edbyrd, since the man seemed to be the unofficial leader of their little homeless community and looked at everyone like family. "He needs to see his family. I'm sure he'd like to see you as well."

He's about to say something back, his mouth hangs open for a second before he snaps it back shut as he avoids her gaze and taps his foot on the floor of the cab. He gives his address and it's really not far but with the shape Raleigh is in, it's far easier this way. He stares out the window in silence, unsure of what he should be doing because he doesn't want to overwhelm her but he can't really figure out the middle ground between keeping to himself and asking her if she needs anything every few minutes. He doesn't know how Joel has been doing it, taking care of Spencer and himself the past week, and Spencer wonders if maybe he's just not cut out for this sort of thing.

He doesn't speak again until they reach the house and he thanks the driver when he pays the fare and offers a generous tip. He leaves the cab in a hurry, rushing around the vehicle so he can open the door for Raleigh and helping her out the best he can. He hesitates before settling his good hand on the small of her back as he guides her to the front door.

He fishes his keys out of his pocket, fumbling a bit because of the cast on his other hand, but manages to get it into the lock and lets Raleigh cross the threshold first. Now that they're here, he isn't even sure what he should do. Whatever Raleigh wants, of course, but he stands dumbly in the hallway after shutting the door behind him and shoving his hand in his pocket as he rocks on his heels.

"You're welcome to anything here, of course," he says. He nods toward a closed door a few feet away and gives her a crooked smile that's a little sad, a little bitter. "That's my library, I haven't-- There's all sorts of books in there, if you want to pick any out. I meant what I said, by the way, you can stay as long as you'd like. If you need something from your place, I'd be happy to get it for you."

It's a lot of information all at once and Joel isn't even entirely sure he follows, but the one thing he hears clearly is that Emily's name isn't Emily and he has to pause for a moment to allow himself to digest it. There are people who might be angry, he thinks, people who would feel betrayed or lied to, and Joel doesn't feel any of those things. If she's kept her name from him and if it's had something to do with people following her, then she obviously has had a good reason. If she's been afraid, if she's been hiding, he can't blame her for keeping her name from people.

He's surprised, briefly, that she knows Aoife and the only person he knows named Jason is the witch he'd run into outside the Tavern the night of the witches meeting. He wonders if she means the same man, but figures now isn't the time to get into her personal connections.

"So what should I call you?" he asks finally.

"I missed him, too." She smiles, her mouth lifting at the corner as she sighs, exhausted and emotionally wrung out. She'd oddly wondered about the dog - even though certainly somebody else would have stopped in to see him while Jason was out on the boat - somebody like Bonnie or Iris, probably.

She thought about Jason, too. The way he always moved from town to town, and if he'd stay long. She wondered, not that she'd say so, if he would have missed her. That answer - it's obviously yes, and she knows it now but when she'd been trapped it'd seemed so far away. So far from everything she could ever reach or see again.

"That's good, then. Maybe- Maybe there's something we can do for him, with the birds. A memorial in the park, maybe?" She's sorry, obviously, that he'd died. That Joseph had managed to get someone, that they couldn't stop him. "When I stopped by before I discharged myself, he was sleeping - but... I'd like to go back." She paused. "He... insisted, that if we had to choose one of us, it should be him. He was going to-" Die, is the word she skipped. "For me. He was going to do that for me, and he doesn't even know me." She shook her head slightly. "He's a good man."

The fact that he doesn't say anything the whole time they're in the car - her heart sinks down somewhere around her stomach, and just keeps staring down at her hands. Being alone is her worst nightmare; being trapped by herself and knowing she's going to die, oddly enough, is something that's happened more than once and she knows it's the worst feeling in the world.

People doing things out of sheer obligation, that's definitely up there on the list, though. Kind people who know your family, classmates, the people who looked for you when you fell into that basement-- that's what she's seen and lived with, and it's disheartening. If they'd been walking, Raleigh would have decided to go back to the boarding house after all - say that she's tired, thank him, make her excuses - but they're in a car and there's nowhere she can go and so both of them sit in silence.

The walk - not far, but far enough - is too much right now for her to leave from his house. She knows it; if there's one thing she's experienced with, it's her limits when she's injured, and while she breaks those limits regularly she's still aware of them.

"Thank you," is the first thing she says when he says she's welcome to anything. "I appreciate it, seriously." She needs to not be alone, she needs to sit down, and she's trying to just seem like the last two days haven't been a horrible nightmare. She draws up short, though, when he says that she can just... stay. It doesn't sit the same with obligation, unless he doesn't mean stay, stay, but he's offering things from her room, and it doesn't make sense.

"I... sorry, you just mean the afternoon, right?" She has to ask, because- because. They can pass it off as her being a little out of it since she's got pain medication in her hoodie, since she's taken it even though it's not doing a lot. She's still on her crutches, looking up at him like she's not even quite sure what to do with herself, but she's just... confused. Completely confused about this whole thing.

It's a lot of information - it was like she'd turned on the spigot that was her brain, that filtered all the information from her brain through her mouth and it was a bit of a mess the way it'd all come rushing out. She's so tired - so incredibly tired, and finally when he pauses and she can actually get her mind squared away.... that seems to be what works best.

"Raleigh," she says quietly, and she doesn't get the sense of relief that she had when she'd told Jason. She doesn't get the I can stop lying rush, she's just exhausted and glad that she doesn't have to try and keep who she's told straight anymore. For her, there was no reason to hide any longer.

"We're friends, right?" That comes out of the blue, a little bit after he asked what her name actually was. "He said... he said some things," she said quietly, not realising she hasn't told him what happened; he would have no idea who he is, or that she'd actually just gotten out of the hospital or any of it. "And I just- We're friends?" Because she needs to hear that from somebody, maybe.

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Can I pay you tomorrow for recovery today? (Dated Monday, 9:45AM) TW: Mentions of Violence/Torture

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