Shelby awoke with a start. A quick, panicked survey of her surroundings showed that she was no longer in the ambulance, but instead in a hospital room. At some point on the ride she must have passed out.

She glanced down at herself, spying a few tubes of clear liquid hooked up to her, as well as the sticky pads attached to various beeping machines. Confused, but slowly becoming more aware, she shifted the thin white blanket covering her lower half and spotted her most grievous injury. It was patched up, swathed in clean while bandages. She couldn't feel the pain from it anymore, nor from any of her other cuts and scrapes. 

... In fact, she seemed to suddenly be lacking a few of the cuts she knew she'd received from her impromptu hug with that glass display case. Had someone of the paramedic team been a healer of some sort? Would that mean they would have been able to take care of saph too?

...Saph!

After anxiously glancing around for a moment she managed to find the remote to her bed, which also happened to have a page button on it. She waited in silence for someone to show up, all the while growing more agitated by the beeping of the surrounding equipment.

---

One stressful hour later she was limping down a hallway toward the room that supposedly contained Saph. A lot of time had been consumed attempting to convince her night nurse that she was recovered enough to visit Saph and check on his condition. It took even more precious time for the nurse to finally humor her, check on her injuries to prove his point, and then realize that some of them were mysteriously missing. It was only a stroke of luck that allowed her to escape her room un-monitored when her nurse was suddenly called away with an emergency for a different patient. 

Shelby wasted no time bee-lining it as fast as she could out of that room. It didn't take her long to find the room he was in, based off of the information her nurse had given her in an attempt to calm her down. But, as she approached, she found that there were two officers posted on either side of his door. She cringed, not knowing if they would let her past just because he was dating the Xman. Officials tended to be pretty strict about visitation unless you were blood related or married.... Still, she had to try.

"...uh... Excuse me, is this the room Saph is in?" She limped on over, sweating slightly from exertion, but they seemed to be ignoring her. Just... staring straight ahead. She followed their line of sight, found nothing of interest, and tried again. "...Hello?"  Nothing. Not even a blink. She was already lifting a hand to jab at one of them with a finger when she noticed that the door to Saph's room was cracked open. Swallowing a sudden lump in her throat, she reached out to throw the door open and step in. 

What greeted her inside was not what she had been expecting. A woman was seated beside his bed with her back to the door. She turned at the sudden movement, and Shelby openly stared at the mass of what appeared to be snakes that danced around her face. 

Also... green. She was green. 

Startled blue eyes locked with wide orange eyes, and before Shelby could make a peep she was out for the second time that night.

Startled, the Greek stared at the other woman who had suddenly frozen in the doorway.

Well... that hadn't been expected.

Wearily, the Greek set about shutting the line that linked her to Saph, and temporarily removing it. She stood and headed for the girl, gently tipping Shelby into her arms so she could move her to one of the empty chairs in the room.

Once that was done, she moved back to the door and gently shut it, before reclaiming her seat and hooking herself back up. She had a sterile line attached to one of her wrists, and the other end attached to a vein in the crook of Saph's vulnerable side. The direct link between them allowed her blood to mix with his... which, considering her mutation, was helping with the quick progression of his healing. She only had a little bit longer to go before she could clean back up and head back out. He wouldn't need to know about her visit.

She glanced over at the comatose woman across the room from her.

Or, well, that had been the original idea at least. Looks like that had changed a bit. With a careful smile, she looked back toward where Saph lay.

He was surrounded by the feeling of movement. His eyes were shut. Or maybe they were gone? Yes. Gone. They had been burned away in the fire. His hand lurched up to grab the handle of a bar that lay above and to the side of his bed, which he used to help him pull himself up. He stared straight, but felt for a familiar heartbeat. 'Bailiff?' He spoke, His voice made no sound, but he heard it.

Suddenly he was surrounded by chaos. He was standing in a great arena, metal and roaring crowds along the periphery of his sixth sense. He felt for that familiar heart beat, and relaxed as he felt it off to the side. A sinking sense of deja' vu swept over him, drowned in dread as the felt that heart beat stop.

He was holding a hand in his own. A familiar hand. It's owner, silent and still. He placed that hand against his bare chest.

His eyes slowly opened. The room was bright. Where was he? His wife was here. He smiled at her for a moment, and then looked confused. She wasn't his wife anymore... Why was she here? He looked over to Shelby, who was, to him, very obviously knocked out via Gorgon eyes.

Why was he here? He'd been shot. Three times, point blank... He tried to remember the face of who shot him... Nothing. Why had be been shot?

He tried to speak. Nope. Something was stopping him. Oh Jesus, he was on assisted breathing, wasn't he? How long had he been out?! He forced himself to be calm as his eyes slowly traveled down to look at what his ex wife was doing. He saw it, but he couldn't even fathom why... Maybe that was the drugs showing him something that wasn't there.

There were definitely drugs. Holy hell, were there drugs. He was doing everything he could to see straight. His hand started to stray toward his pager.

Movement caught her eye and she paused on the page of the magazine she was scrolling through. It would appear that Saph was stirring, or having a reaction to a dream. She highly doubted he was waking up... but, then again he seemed to make a habit out of catching her off guard. When his hand started it's shaky trek toward the pager she decided to intervene.

"There is no need for that." She spoke quietly, her voice only loud enough to be heard over the noise from the equipment within the room. "I am only healing you, and nearly done at that." She turned a page of her magazine, before ultimately deciding to close it and look up towards the only window in the room. "Besides, I can stop you if you attempt to page the nurses in here. I cannot leave until I've made sure you can breath on your own again."

Gently she set the magazine on a small table behind her, before she reach for the stethoscope around her neck.

"I'm sure you have many questions... and trust me, I wasn't exactly sure if this was the best time to reappear all of the sudden." She stood from her chair, checking the needle in her arm for a moment before she turned her attention back to him.

"... But you were in a very bad way." She kept her eyes carefully away from his face, instead checking for visual signs of his wounds bleeding through his bandages. "You've been shot three times in the chest. Punctured lung, fluid in the chest cavity. There is a stint on that side draining it, and the tube currently irritating your throat is what enabled you to breath while you were out."

She was satisfied with very minimal pink on the bandages. He was healed enough that the wounds were only leaking now, instead of freely bleeding. "I would expect soon that a nurse will be by to check on you within the hour, and that you may very well be healed enough for them to remove that awful tube."

She smiled, something she typically did with other patients to reassure them, and turned her attention back to the needle in her arm. "Do not worry about this," She started, as she set about shutting off the flow on his end. "I have discovered that I have the rather unique ability to heal wounds with my own plasma. I do not know when or how this happened, but it's very useful. A transfusion like this will help speed up your recovery from within, versus treatments solely from the outside. I expect that this should cut your visit short. Hopefully a few days before you can be cleared to leave, vs a month or more."

She felt like she was jabbering to herself, seeing as the poor man didn't very well have a way to reply to her. Not with that tube in his throat anyway. She carefully unhooked him from the transfusion needle, then herself, before disposing of the items and heading to the sink to wash up.

"She is very caring, I can see." The Greek glanced at Shelby with a sad smile. "Considering the types of injuries she had, she shouldn't have attempted to walk so soon."

Wiping her hands on a few paper towels, which very quickly turned hard as stone, she grabbed a fresh pair of latex gloves and headed back to the side of his bed.

"I... am happy that you found someone better for you, Saphirus."

She wanted to reach out for one of his hands. To touch him, make a connection again.... but she withheld the urge.

"May I check your breathing before I leave? I want to check and see how much fluid is lingering around your injured lung." She was already popping the earbuds for the stethoscope into her ears, while simply waiting for a nod or a shake of the head.

@#$%...This was weird. Like... More than a little bit. Weird as @#$%.

When did... What was... was she? She what now? This was a hallucination. He was seeing things. That, or Aston Kutcher was hiding somewhere nearby.

Since when was Andrea a nurse? What the @#$% was she talking about? Seriously. What the @#$%?!

Andrea motioned to Shelby, and said something nice about her. He stared at her for a moment, and then looked back to Andrea.

She asked him something. He waved a hand absently, and then closed his eyes tightly as the world started to slip away again. Within seconds he was out again.

Visions of a frightful world came to him in his sleep once more. That distant dream of the end of the world.

She could tell he was drifting off again. There was a certain look that overcame the face when patients reluctantly returned to slumber. Slacking of the muscles in the jaw and around the brows. The Greek smile sadly, letting him drift off as she leaned over him to check on his condition.

... It hadn't been so long ago that she'd had certain memories resurface. Things she'd been blissfully unaware of for many years, and now they were drifting back to her like lazy summer daydreams.

Standing from her stoop, she stared at his face for one long, quiet moment. Then, with a gentle squeeze of his hand she turned and left the room as quietly as she had come.

---

A bit later the guards outside started to stir. There was momentary panic as they set about figuring out what had happened. It was obvious to the trained professionals that someone else had been in the room, other than the still sleeping Shelby in the corner... but, they could find no evidence of i'll will towards the sleeping Xman.

A day later, after Shelby had been relocated back to her own room and Saph had been visited by both his nurse and primary doctor, things were starting to improve. Earlier that day he had been cleared to have the breathing tube removed, much like Andrea had said. They had also noted quite a speedy recovering on the worst of his wounds. His doctor was confused, if please. They lowered the amount of pain meds he was on, upped his fluids a little, and changed his bandages. As night fell and the building lapsed into silence, the day staff left for home while the night nurses took over. With Saph no longer being on life support, his classification was changed and the time between nurse rounds was expanded....

He was funny looking in his sleep. It was a side of him she wasn't used to seeing, and honestly she didn't care for it much. When the hell was he gonna wake up? Did she need to throw something at him?

With a trade mark scowl present on her lips, Megan sat perched on the end of his hospital bed, with a metal bar digging painfully into her rear. She glanced over at the entrance to the room, where her children were happily gluing the door shut. Who needed locks when you had natures equivalent of duct tape? With a snort she turned her eyes back to Saph, while boredly resting her chin against the back of one hand.

Why was she here even? Especially at this hour of the night?

Well, the answer to that question had everything to do with who it had been who shot the hero and his little girlfriend. Roach.

"Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty." She'd grown tired of waiting. She nudged him with one boot.

There was another, very minuscule reason she was here.... Aside from her homicidal Ex-roomate having gone off the deep end, there was a small part of her that wanted to make sure he was okay.

Like Saph himself, that dream from years ago lingered with her. Sometimes she'd have flashbacks to when she'd died. How it had felt to have Roach tear into her chest and stop her beating heart.

She shivered slightly, watching Saph with narrow, calculating blue eyes.

He wished he could say he was having a good dream. He was in the arena. He could see. His skin was free of scars. Everyone around him was screaming, pointing, and jeering. He could see none of their faces. All of the crowd member's features were grey and blurred.

Elke hung from the ceiling of the caged arena, Andrea stood before him, as she was when he'd last seen her, dressed as a nurse. A clear tube ran from her to him.

He felt that horrendous feeling... That heart stopping. He looked across the arena. He saw her falling.

Why was he seeing this? Why was this important? Why had he had dreams like this one so many times?

Sleeping there, he muttered "Baliff..." Quietly, and then felt a jerking motion as the body hit the ground.

His eyes opened slowly, and landed on a boot. Slowly, they moved up to the boot's wearer.

"#$5^... Who's next... ghost of Christmas past?" His voice was ragged, his throat sore. Prolly cause of that @#$%in tube. A wave of fuzziness washed over him... The pain killers... They weren't the as intense as they were before, but he definitely still felt them... "What are you doing here?"

"Bailiff..."

An eyebrow arched up and her hand dropped from her chin. Apparently she wasn't the only one still stuck in the past.

When he started to come around, she cocked a smirk in his direction and propped her chin back up with her hand, elbow resting on one knee.

"Felt like it." She responded lazily back, watching with amusement as he struggled against the drugs in his system. It was funny mostly because things like that didn't affect her at all anymore.

... though, that was also a double edged sword. "Also, Roach. There's that."

She glanced around the room momentarily, from the window she'd come in through to the monitor still hooked up to him. "I'm the last person who needs to tell you how badly he needs to be taken out."

She gripped her fingers together loosely, fiddling with the fabric of her gloves. "I was hoping to find you in a better mindset than this. I doubt all of this is going to stick while you're hopped up on drugs."

She frowned, but continued. "I've been watching Roach for a while now... for at least two years. He's succumbing to some kind of animalistic base. More violent, less calculating. His obsession with your current fling is proof enough of that."

She let that sit for a bit. He most likely already knew of what she said, or at least had a hunch. "He's been purchasing artwork from her for the last few months. Under different guises and from different accounts... but it's all going to him." She let that bit of information sink in for a moment.

"He's aware that I'm watching him as well, so i'm not currently in a secure enough position to try and take him down a few pegs. He's got a lot of connections scattered around throughout the city, and outside the state."

Great. Still a smart ass. No surprises. He had to admit, it was more comforting than Andrea showing up and talking up a storm. It was nice to know that some people never changed. She went on, talking about Roach.

That was who shot him. The face was clear now, as where it hadn't been before... How could he forget that? A mother couldn't even love that face. He felt something coming on... She was about to talk a lot, wasn't she? Something about this room sure made people talk a lot. Least now he could respond.

"I'm the last person who needs to tell you how badly he needs to be taken out."

"Amen."

"I've been watching Roach for a while now... for at least two years. He's succumbing to some kind of animalistic base. More violent, less calculating. His obsession with your current fling is proof enough of that."

"More than a fling, but..."

"He's been purchasing artwork from her for the last few months. Under different guises and from different accounts... but it's all going to him."

"Well, that's creepy."

"He's aware that I'm watching him as well, so i'm not currently in a secure enough position to try and take him down a few pegs. He's got a lot of connections scattered around throughout the city, and outside the state."

He waited for her to say more. There was nothing. That was it for now. He looked at her a moment, and then blinked.

"So... What? You tell me where he is and I go take him out? What can we do, here?" He shifted in his bed, and then grunted in discomfort. Yup, still messed up. Andrea's magic was working, though... The doctors were baffled.

She smirked, but it was empty of its usual gusto. "No use in that. He's most certainly already uprooted and moved somewhere else." She shifted slightly, trying to make her perch a little more comfortable. All it did was make the bed groan in annoyance.

"The tricky thing about this situation is that it's changing as I speak. We are currently in a game of chess that's reached a stalemate; neither side can really progress from where we are currently at." She knit her fingers back together and fixed her gaze directly on him.

"A piece must be willing to move forward to progress the game, even if it means that pieces is ultimately lost to the other side."

Saph stared at her for a moment. His eyes slowly formed into a squint as she talked about their game.

"Holy shit... You're @#$%in loving this, ain't you? You're really into this." He shook his head. "May be the drugs talkin, but you sound like you're having the time of your life."

He almost reached his left hand up to scratch his head, but remembered he was still hooked in to an IV... great... He tried to itch with his right hand, but it always did a crap job at it. It was always to light... Another thought popped into his head.

"You doing this... You're making a pretty big enemy, here, and you don't even know where he is... So... Why? Why you here, talking to me about it? Do you have a plan, or you just looking to die?"

He zoned out a little bit, and looked over to the wall... vision was a little blurry. He was seeing things a bit, to... Something skittering on the wall. Meh. He looked back to her.

"How can I help you... Hell, how can you help me, here?"

Megan squinted right back at him, before sighing and running a hand down up her face. "...ugh, I forgot how goddamn thick you can be sometimes."

She stood and stretched, before easing herself off his bed. Never mind that he was partially right, and that there may have been a small part of her really enjoying the whole ordeal. That wasn't important here.

"He was already my enemy. This is just the final nail in the coffin." She had't been looking at him while she spoke. Instead she'd been staring off to the right with unfocused eyes.

"I will find him again. I've got the upper hand on surveillance. And... as for a plan... well." She shifted slightly and crossed her arms. "I plan on taking out his contacts first. He's got weapons dealers he works with, networks of people willing to provide for him either because they respect him, or because they're scared sh!tless of him. Pull the wings off the fly and there's nowhere for him to run."

A moment later a jumping spider the size of her hand landed on her shoulder from above with a squirming roach impaled on it's fangs. She spared it a single glance before continuing on, while her spider settled down to eat.

"It should be very obvious how you can help me, and how I can help you. We've done this before."

"...ugh, I forgot how goddamn thick you can be sometimes."

He smirked a bit, and shook his head.

"You're so good at making friends."

"He was already my enemy. This is just the final nail in the coffin."

That made the wounded hero tilt his head a bit. Of all of the crazy stuff that this monster had done, shooting him was the straw that broke the camel's back?

"Huh... You care. That's... Surprising." He gave a bit of a loose nod. "Not bat, but Surprising."

She detailed her plan, and he listened silently. When she was done, he reached back to his dial, and adjusted the back up so that he was facing her better.

"Okay... I can help with that... But you gotta know... I ain't that guy anymore. I don't do what stuff. It won't be like then. It can't."

She barely withheld rolling her eyes at him. "Don't over think things, stupid. I did't mean we're gonna take a trip back down memory lane here. I meant you are going to need to provide what i'm lacking in. Whether that means you get all of your little hero friends together and plan some kind of attack, or if you try and take this on solo is up to you." She headed for the window she'd come in though, stopping before the bench seat to look back at him.

"There is no right or wrong way to do this. It just needs to be done. Get it?" Megan spared another look at his door, which would still be more or less sealed shut. His current nurse was finishing up with his current patient, and would be on his way to check in with Saph soon. She couldn't stay long.

Turning her back on him she moved to open the window back up, then started to peel off her gloves. "I will contact you again once you are released. Expect an email... I will keep you updated on whatever information I find, and in turn I expect that you will use that information to take out key players in Roaches circle."

The few spiders within the room scrambled to her, heading out through the window first while she finished up. "I will also be keeping an eye on you, and the girl. If I feel like either of you are in immediate danger expect a call."

She paused, one boot on the bench and one hand on the window. "Oh, and if you don't hear from me within a few days, assume i'm dead." It was pretty much a game of cat and mouse now... she would be spending her time striking where she could from the shadows, while avoiding the giant bug at all costs.

Megan hurried on out, latching onto the windowsill with bare hands as she maneuvered herself over the ledge. She paused again, for the last time, just outside and glanced back in at him. "... I'm glad you are okay."

Then she reached up and shut the window from the outside, before maneuvering her way down the side of the building.