For a long time, Tarin sat in that chair by Lee’s bed and watched her. He figured this had been kind of what it was like when he’d been in the coma…only not. Tarin knew that Lee was going to wake up…but he didn’t know if she was still going to be in the grips of the seemingly intense hallucinations she’d been having when the doctor finally sedated her. If she wasn’t, they could go from there, get her whatever help she needed to work it out. If she was still seeing all the blood…Tarin didn’t want to think about that possibility.

At some point, he leaned his head on the side of the bed, just to rest his head for a few moments because his neck was aching so badly from sitting, but he fell asleep. Lee’s sleep was the dreamless sleep that sedatives often induced, but Tarin’s wasn’t. Every little tidbit of information seemed to be playing itself over and over in Tarin’s mind, the memories that went along with them making his few hours of sleep restless.

Then he heard Lee’s voice. Immediately, Tarin’s head snapped up from where it had been resting on the side of the bed and his eyes fastened themselves onto her face. She was trying to sit up, trying to move her arms, which were still secured to the bed by the soft cuffs the doctor had brought the night before.

“Shhh…Lee, it’s fine….don’t try to move too much. We’re in the infirmary, at the labs.” She wasn’t saying anything that suggested that she still thought she was covered in blood, but she wasn’t saying anything to suggest otherwise either.

Reaching out, Tarin ran a hand through her hair, slowly and gently, “How are you feeling?” he said slowly and carefully, “Don’t worry about your arms…the Doctor was worried you’d rub them more in your sleep.”

Lee heard Tarin's voice and turned her head. The room was still very bright, and her eyes were still rather unfocused, but she could still see him sitting beside the bed, could still see the vibrant colour of his hair.

It actually almost hurt to try looking at Tarin at that moment. The room just seemed too bright, and it was taking too much effort to attempt, and fail, to focus her eyes. So Lee just let them slide closed.

Only to snap them right back open a moment later as tears filled them. She'd just seen the body of the girl she'd taken to Slate, laying in a pool of blood.

"Why won't it all just go away?" Lee asked in a whisper, wanting to close her eyes but worried about what else she would see. The brief flashes when she blinked were bad enough. "I keep seeing things, memories, when I close my eyes. Why won't they just leave me alone?"

Lee let out a shaky breath as she looked at Tarin. This would be so much easier to deal with if she could just close her eyes. And if she could curl up. But her arms were tied or something because the doctor had been worried about her rubbing them.

Lee frowned. "Did I get hurt?" She asked, her voice still that whisper. Tarin was close enough to hear it. "What's wrong with my arms?"

Lee was disoriented, but Tarin figured that much was to be expected after the sedatives and the night she’d had. Her eyes looked bleary and tired, though, and Tarin wanted to tell her to go back to sleep. It looked like that might be exactly what was going to happen, but then Lee’s eyes snapped open, wide and nearly panicked. Tarin’s heart jumped into his throat, and he braced himself for her to start jabbering about the blood.

Lee spoke, and Tarin squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that maybe he was having a bad dream. The words sunk in though, and they weren’t as bad as they could have been. Lee was seeing things when she closed her eyes, but they seemed to be flashbacks rather than hallucinations. Lee was still so disturbed though, and she kept trying to move her arms. They were still in the restraints. Tarin looked around the infirmary, but the doctor was nowhere to be seen, so he settled back into his chair.

“I don’t know why they won’t go away Lee. That’s why we’re here. I didn’t know what else to do.” Tarin said softly, trying again to see if Lee was lucid again. “Hopefully the doctor can figure out what’s going on with you.”

Lee asked what was wrong with her arms and Tarin actually breathed a sigh of relief. It was a strange thing to be relieved about, but Lee not remembering the hallucinations was better than her still being in their grip. She wanted to know what had happened, though, and Tarin didn’t know what to say. Part of him wanted to hide the truth, because he was scared that the memory would somehow cause Lee to think she was covered in blood again. The other part couldn’t lie to her though.

“You had some trouble last night…and you rubbed them raw. You wouldn’t stop…and you were still pretty amped up from everything early in the night. You were hurting yourself and this was the only way we could be sure you’d stop.”

That was the best she was going to get, Tarin frowned and reached out again, running a hand slowly through Lee’s hair, “Do you need anything, do you want some water or anything? Or do you want me to find the doctor so you can talk to him?”

Tarin didn't know why she kept seeing these things, why they wouldn't go away. But, he said, that's why they were there, so the doctor could hopefully figure it out and help make them go away.

Then Lee heard Tarin sigh when she asked about her arms, and she turned her head, trying to focus her eyes on him. It was still hard, still almost hurt to focus, but at least Tarin was only slightly blurry now. Did he look relieved? No, that couldn't be it, Lee thought as she let her eyes lose focus again. It had to just be because she wasn't seeing properly.

When Tarin did start explaining, although Lee had a slight feeling he might be leaving something out, she still couldn't stop the shock from appearing on her face. She'd rubbed her arms raw? She hadn't stopped, and they were worried about her continuing to rub them in her sleep?

Another memory popped into her mind then, not as gruesome as the others that were invading her thoughts, but still disturbing; she was standing alone in their bedroom, forcefully rubbing at her body with a towel until her skin was read, and yet she kept going...

Lee turned her head back to look at Tarin, forcing her eyes to focus as much as she could. "What's wrong with me?" Lee asked, worry and fear mingling a little with hopelessness in her voice.

Tarin was reaching out at that point, running a hand through her hair, and Lee's eyes almost slipped closed. She forced them open at the last moment, though, not wanting to see what the next image waiting for her would be.

"Water," Lee murmured after just feeling Tarin's hand running through her hair for a few moments. "Some water would be very good. And I want to lay on my side, so I'd need to see the doctor to get these off, right?"

It wasn’t enough to say that Tarin hated to see Lee like this. The way her eyes were slightly dilated eyes and the way they kept slipping shut only to open again made him cringe, this was too much. Lee’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then she spoke and Tarin frowned at her. Was it a good thing that she didn’t remember the hallucinations, or a bad thing?

“What’s the last thing you really remember?” he said, avoiding an answer to Lee’s question for the time being. The bigger question was something he wanted to avoid too. If Tarin had to guess, he’d have said that Lee’d had a breakdown of some sort. Telling a woman who just came out of heavy sedation she’d had a nervous breakdown didn’t seem like a great idea though. “I’m not sure what’s wrong Lee, but we’re getting it figured out.”

Lee wasn’t relaxing at all now, keeping her eyes open at what seemed like almost all costs. Were the flashbacks she was having that bad? Tarin had heard of soldiers coming home from war and having similar experiences, it sounded almost like classic post traumatic stress syndrome. Tarin cringed again internally, had the last couple of years with him been bad enough to cause Lee to have a condition that was common after people participated in the worst kinds of war?

Lee wanted water, and that was something Tarin could manage, the little glass was sitting on the bedside table with a straw in it and he grabbed it and held it for Lee to drink, then pressed the call button on the little remote attached to the bed.

The doctor really was prompt, but then again there weren’t many, or really any other patients as far as Tarin could tell. Up to the bed he walked and Tarin actually took the time to look at him close enough to notice things. There hadn’t been the time, or patience the night before.

The Doc was young’ish, probably mid thirties at the latest and he looked like one of those people who could be in a hospital drama. It didn’t make Tarin doubt his credentials, but mostly because he knew that Slate would never have someone in his employ who was less than qualified. The man smiled at Lee, though, and the harshest of his initial judgments faded.

“Hello Mrs. Brooks.” He said, moving to gently grab Lee’s wrist so he could check her pulse rate, then giving her the clinical once over that doctors seemed to have down to such a science. “I’m Dr. Cooper, how are you feeling today? You had quite the rough night.” He turned to Tarin and he immediately spoke.
“She seems better this morning, though she can’t remember last night at all.” He said, slowly and carefully while trying to read the Doctor’s expression, which was carefully blank. “Oh, and she’d like to be rid of the cuffs….”

What was the last thing she remembered? Huh, that was a good question. To this point, Lee hadn't really worried all that much about what she had remembered since there were a number of memories that just kept popping into her mind of their own accord.

"We were at that fight..." Lee said slowly, trying to not have the image of that hurt girl come to mind again as she tried to piece together what all had come after that. "We finally got home, were both covered in blood...I'm guessing I beelined to the shower."

Lee did have a vague memory of being in the shower, watching the red water swirling as it went down the drain. And she had seen a memory of herself rubbing a towel over her skin. But she didn't have any good, solid, sure memories after getting home.

The fact that she couldn't actually remember, combined with how Tarin said he didn't know what was wrong with her was making her worry, and a line had formed between her eyebrows.

But Tarin was grabbing a nearby glass of water, which had a straw in in, and holding it out for her. Lifting her head, Lee took a long drink; the water was not cold by any means, it had been sitting there for a while Lee was sure, but at that moment it tasted delicious.

As she was drinking, Lee had a thought, and she turned to Tarin when she pulled her lips away from the straw. "How long have we been here?" She asked. "We did clean up, right? The blood is going to make the apartment reek if we didn't..."

By that time, a doctor had appeared at her bedside, and was feeling her wrist, checking her pulse. And asking how she was feeling. "Like crap," Lee replied. "I'm sore from laying on my back all night, my eyes don't want to focus without a lot of concentration, and I keep seeing things I don't want to when I close my eyes."

She remembered everything right up until she’d gotten in the shower. Tarin nodded his head slowly and tried to puzzle out exactly what that meant. On one hand, the fact that she didn’t remember what had happened meant that Lee wasn’t still in the grips of whatever had affected her. On the other hand, blackouts accompanied by strangely neurotic episodes were not a good thing, no matter how you tried to swing it. Things were better this morning, though, and Lee seemed to be putting it together that something bad had happened. The worry line was there, between her brows. “That’s about right, up until the point where you got into the shower. From there, things got a little dicey. Details aren’t important now, we’ll talk about it later.”

Tarin tensed almost involuntarily when Lee mentioned the blood, but she was talking about the real thing this time. The blood on their clothes. Lee was being practical, that had to be a good thing, right? She was asking more questions, Tarin was feeling more and more optimistic. She asked how long they’d been there and Tarin looked around for a clock, but he didn’t need it, the doctor walked up just in time to answer, after he’d done his preliminary checking. Lee pointed out how she felt and Tarin frowned, he hated her being like this.

“You’ve been here about nine hours right now, and it’s normal to feel that way after having the dosage of sedatives you were given. The effects should be wearing off soon…as for the soreness, I think we’ll be good if we take these off.” He said and went about releasing Lee from the restraints. Once that was done, he sat in the edge of her bed and looked at her.

“As far as the things you’re seeing every time you close your eyes. We’re going to have to run some tests, and there’s a couple of people I’m going to need you to talk to in order to figure that part out.”

They'd been there for nine hours. Had she been cuffed like this that whole time, Lee wondered. Had she been knocked out with those sedatives the doctor had mentioned that whole time?

But at least he was untying her, and once her hands were free, Lee rubbed at her wrists, more to just wipe the sweat off than because it had hurt. Except, now it did. Frowning, Lee stopped rubbing and lifted her arms so she could look at her wrists. They were red, just like the whole rest of her arms, and in places there were even little pin prick sized scabs where a drop of blood had escaped through the raw skin.

Letting her arms fall back to the bed, Lee turned to look at Tarin with a worried expression even as the doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. "I did this?" Lee asked in a whisper. If what Tarin had said about her rubbing her arms had been right...But why wouldn't she have stopped? It had to have hurt, just rubbing her wrists now, gently, had hurt.

But the doctor was talking, saying he'd have to run tests, and that she'd have to talk to people so they could try and figure out what was wrong with her.

Tests. Lee's eyes slipped closed as she realized she was going to have to go through that again. She hadn't liked doctors running test after test on her when she was teenager, she highly doubted it would be any better now.

A couple seconds later, Lee's eyes popped back open, though. Again, she'd seen Tarin, laying in blood and dirt. But this image was from the Camps, when he'd been there to break her out. After they'd been merged.

"When do we start?" Lee asked, her voice almost defeated. She was sure that she'd hate the tests that the doctor would come up with, but they were still preferable to what she kept seeing each and every time she closed her eyes.

Lee was studying her arms now, an almost curious look on her face as she seemed to realize just how raw they were. At least she was in a condition where she was able to do that. At this point, Tarin was counting that as a blessing, and letting her try to sort things out. She looked up at him though and asked if she’d done that to herself and Tarin could only nod his head at first. “You did…with the towel…then your hands. I tried to get you to stop, but beyond physically holding on to your hands, nothing worked.”

Tarin sighed, and looked away for a moment, “I panicked a little bit…that’s why we’re here.”

The doctor was recommending tests, and Tarin nodded his head slowly in agreement when he mentioned that there would be talking involved. Nothing like this had ever happened before, so there was nothing to suggest that this was physiological. If Tarin had to think, he didn’t have to do it very hard to decide that there was something distinctly psychological going on. This was not a way he wanted to think about his wife, though, so he let the doctor handle that.

Lee didn’t look happy though, not happy at all with the idea that she was going to go through tests. It stirred a vague memory of something she’d told Tarin and he frowned. Lee had been in and out of hospitals for ages when her mutation had first manifested, they’d poked and prodded, and done all sorts of things and never found anything wrong physiologically. Maybe it was time for him to speak up.

“Why don’t we do the talking first.” He suggested softly, looking steadily at the doctor. “I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary to go through all the physical testing. We were both in perfect health when we got home last night.” That much was true, everyone had stopped for a chat with Slate after the brawl…and by chat, Tarin meant that everyone had gotten their torn flesh mended, their broken bones…unbroken…and whatever else it was that the blue eyed teenager could help.

Tarin looked around the infirmary again, after he’d spoken and noticed the small sports bag he’d packed in his hurry to get out of the apartment. Up into his lap he hauled it, then onto Lee’s bed.

“I packed some stuff on our way out last night…just some odds and ends and some clothes that were in the laundry room if you want them.”

Tarin nodded, that Lee saw. But as he started talking, confirming that she had been the one to do this to her arms, her eyes dropped. Her arms were just so red, though. How had she managed to keep rubbing them, how had she possibly kept rubbing them unless Tarin had actually been holding on to her hands? And the scabs...they were small, but there were so many of them, scattered over the entire length of both of her arms.

What could have ever possessed her to have done this to herself?

Lee had resolved herself to whatever testing the doctor had been able to come up with so far, and what else he would be able to come up with. But then Tarin spoke, suggesting that they try the talking first, that he didn't think they needed to go through all of that.

At which point Lee turned her head to look at Tarin again. Thankfully, it seemed to be getting easier to focus her eyes, at least. "I can do the tests if it'll help," Lee told him in a soft voice. And, while she really didn't want to have to, if they could help make the images go away, she'd deal with it.

But Tarin was already pulling a bag up onto his lap, and then lifting it the rest of the way onto the edge of her bed. A bed which was getting rather crowded, what with the doctor still sitting on the other edge.

"Clothes?" Lee questioned, glancing at her arms again. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to cover her arms up so she didn't have to see them, or whether she should let them breathe. "What did you grab?"

It was then that Lee realized if she was going to take a look at what Tarin had brought, she was going to have to sit up, at least slightly. So, carefully and slowly, she pushed herself up a bit, propping herself up on one elbow so it was a bit easier to stay there. With her other hand, she reached out and started digging through the bag. A tank top, or a light sweater, those were the options she was giving herself. And that's what Lee was looking for until her hand found something she wasn't at all expecting.

A frown crossed her face, though this time in confusion, as she looked up at Tarin and pulled the item out of the bag. "What in the world did you think I'd need my straightening iron for?" She asked, a slightly amused smile starting to creep across her lips after a few moments.

Tarin shook his head when Lee pointed out that she’d be willing to go through the tests if they thought it would help. “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.” Tarin said, “I don’t think there’s any reason to put you through all of that until we’ve counted out everything else.”

The doctor seemed cool with that idea, so Tarin turned his attention to Lee and the bag of stuff that Lee was digging through. It made Tarin smile, it was such a normal Lee reaction, and he found himself almost getting emotional again as he looked at her. The doctor noticed and rose from his position on the edge of Lee’s bed, “I’ll go see about getting things set up with a couple of doctors. They’ll all be sensitive to your unique positions in our organization as well.”

Tarin nodded, “Thanks.” He said, then watched as the Doctor walked away, shaking his head slightly before turning his attention back to Lee, who was still digging around in the bag. “I don’t know what I brought, honestly, I couldn’t hardly think at the time. I just grabbed a bunch of….” stuff. The end of the statement went unspoken as Lee pulled out an electric looking thingy that she used on her hair sometimes. Ah, yeah, a straightener. Lee seemed amused, and when she smiled, Tarin had to leap up a little bit and hug her tightly for a moment before sitting back down.

“I just grabbed a bunch of your stuff out of the bathroom…I didn’t know it was silly…” he said, looking sheepish.

So, it was looking like she was going to be getting out of the testing the doctor had mentioned. The more she thought about it, the more Lee realized that she wouldn't really much like any of what the doctor had planned for her, but the images of her memories that came up when she closed her eyes was enough to tell her she was going to need to tough it out and deal with whatever the doctor had in store.

And then the doctor was leaving to go set things up. Well, she had asked how soon they could get started, hadn't she? It was good the man was leaving; if she was going to end up possibly changing shirts, whether to cover her arms more or to let them breath better (she still hadn't decided), she didn't exactly want the doctor there.

Yeah, it was quite obvious that Tarin hadn't really known what he'd been tossing in the bag. For one, her straightening iron would not be getting used while she was here at all.

Before she could say anything, Tarin was up, out of his chair and hugging her. Lee jumped in surprise, not at all expecting that kind of reaction from him, and the movement caused her elbow to move. Which meant that they both fell back against the bed as Tarin hugged her.

But despite how Tarin had hugged her, how she'd kind of fallen back down against the bed, Lee hadn't had a chance to return it properly before he was sitting back in his chair. Sitting there and looking at her with a sheepish expression. "It's ok, hon," Lee said softly as she started to prop herself up again, then stopped. "Does the bed adjust, cause that'd be a lot easier."

Then Lee had another thought as she felt her stomach grumble. "And do you think that doctor's going to let me eat real food, or am I going to be stuck with hospital crap?"