Reilly Dillinger
Anonymous
Hogwarts StudentSeventh YearGryffindor
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« 15 March 2011, 16:40:56 »
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Reilly hated John more than he ever hated anyone. This stupid song was ruining the concert. The crowds had stopped moving, stopped dancing, stopped enjoying themselves. It was a new sensation Reilly hadn't heard since Deputy Seraph's days of performing in dirty bars with drunk patrons. Of course, there were always drunks in the audience of their stadium shows, but it was an incredibly different atmostphere.
But the drunks were running the encore tonight. A group in the front started booing. Then some on the west side of the stage joined them. Soon boos were growing from every section of the audience. Reilly gritted his teeth and glared at John as the guitarist started playing his solo. Reilly looked over his shoulder at Carson. It was clear the other man was growing as uncomfortable as Reilly was. Deputy Seraph had never been booed. It was a sound Reilly never wanted to hear again. But John kept playing, which meant Reilly and Carson had to keep playing as well. It wasn't like they could storm off the stage without completely ruining Deputy Seraph's reputation...
...but maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. It would get Reilly out of the band and smash John's ego trip. But Reilly couldn't bring himself to just leave. He'd worked too hard to get where they were today, where he was today. He'd been living his dream since Deputy Seraph flew to the top of the charts, and it was a dream that Reilly couldn't, or wouldn't let slip from his grasp.
Then it hit him. Literally hit him. Reilly felt something hard crash into the side of his skull. He staggered backwards, his hands flying from his bass to his head. His head was warm and sticky, but he couldn't pinpoint what the substance was because the stadium had started spinning. He pulled one hand away from his head to discover his hand was covered in something red. His knees gave out. The next thing anyone knew, Reilly Dillinger had collapsed on the stage in the middle of his encore.
The crowd went nuts. John thought that they were cheering for him before he saw his band mate passed out on the floor. Carson rushed over to him and started yelling for help. Roadies tried to move him off the stage. John noticed a broken beer bottle lying next to Reilly's feet. He kicked it aimlessly while the commotion continued behind him. He stared into the panicked crowd. Ushers were trying to calm the audience down, but it wasn't helping. Fights broke out. Bouncers tried to break them up to only partial avail.
~~~
Reilly awoke about an hour afterward to bright lights and an all white room. He squinted his eyes, trying to block out the light. "Wha-" he murmured, covering his eyes with his hands. Why did he have a throbbing headache? And what happened to the show? And where was the beautiful girl from New York? He wished she was here. They barely knew each other, but something about her made him think she would take care of him on nights like this one.
There were about ten people all squashed into his small room. He made out a many faces he didn't recognize, but he did see the band's manager, Peter, as well as Carson. And of course, John was nowhere to be found... not that Reilly minded. He didn't want to see that idiot's face ever again. He was done with Deputy Seraph... Part of him hoped that it was the drugs talking. He was on drugs right? He still had no idea what had happened to him. "Wha... what happened? Where am.... I?" he stammered, struggling to make his lips form words.
Carson shifted his weight back and forth uncomfortably, his hands shoved in his pockets. "Someone hit you with a beer bottle, man. Knocked you straight out. Peter called the ambulance almost immediately to come get you. They had to stitch you up." It was like Carson was embarrassed to tell him what happened; he stared at the floor the entire time.
Reilly blinked a few times in confusion. A beer bottle hit him? That... sucked to say the least. And now he was stuck in the hospital for who knew how long. He'd always hated hospitals, ever since his parents tried to force him to become a doctor. They gave him the creeps. Yes, they were only trying to help, but that didn't mean Reilly had to like it... Speaking of the creepers...
"We"re calling your next of kin to inform her of your injuries," said a guy who must've been the head doctor on the case. Even half-concious, Reilly could see the sparkle in his eyes. "Yes, doctor, you're treating a celebrity. Get the hell over it," he wanted to proclaim, but he bit his tongue. Then he realized what the doctor was saying. His next of kin? That meant Carolyn. But she was in New York. And he didn't want her to worry. He opened his mouth to protest, but Peter shook his head. "There's no point in protesting, mate. They're calling her whether you like it or not."
Reilly closed his eyes. He desperately hoped that Carolyn was busy. There was really no need to worry her, and Reilly knew if she found out, she'd be incredibly worried.
Feel free to PP the call, XxFatexX
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| Erin Taren
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It’s been almost a month now, and since Fate has neither posted nor bothered to contact me and since I can’t contact her because her profile is private, I’m taking action. I’m writing this Carolyn post to attempt to revive this thing, and if Fate happens to see this and wants the character back, she’s welcome to it.
Carolyn sighed heavily in frustration, closing her eyes and massaging her temples in an attempt to wrap her mind around the information she’d just received.
“He did what?” she asked wearily, completely bereft of the patience required to deal with this at the moment.
Leave it to her little brother—the family’s black sheep—to go and do something completely stupid and senseless like get hit in the head with a beer bottle so hard that he had to be rushed unconscious to the hospital for stitches. If it could happen to anyone, it was her brother. Reilly wasn’t stupid. After all, he’d gotten into Harvard just like she had, though he’d dropped out before completing his degree to tour the country with his band. He was just careless and reckless. He had no sense of responsibility whatsoever.
And now she was getting this phone call when she was supposed to be mentally preparing herself to meet her idol, the youngest, most famous neurosurgeon in the world: Dr. Declan Brennan. She’d traveled all the way from New England to Philadelphia for this chance to work and research with Dr. Brennan, and here her brother was, distracting her when she should have been focused on being on the top of her game.
But that was all typical. The weird part was that he was at the same hospital that she was supposed to be at in five minutes. She had never made a point to keep track of Reilly’s schedule—she was surprised that he even managed to maintain one. However, this was just a little weird.
She nodded impatiently as the voice on the other end of the line explained to her that her brother was okay. However, due to the fact that it was a head injury, they were going to keep him overnight for observation. Excellent, she thought to herself… he’ll hang around just to find some other way to screw me over. I’m already late…
Carolyn hung up the phone after promising to stop by Reilly’s room when she had a break in her schedule, then stepped out of the taxi in front of the hospital. She took a deep breath, calming herself and preparing herself to meet the famous Dr. Brennan, then walked inside.
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| potterfreak!
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« 06 April 2011, 21:31:21 »
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It's alive! Ahem. Couldn't help myself, sorry.
Declan took a step away from the cold steel of the operating table so the anesthesiologist could administer the anesthesia to the mess of a woman that lay broken on the table in front of him. His eyes searched the untouched left side of her face and he realized the extent of her beauty. She must have been quite gorgeous before this unfortunate incident, and Declan knew that, no matter how talented the plastic surgeons employed by the hospital were, they would never be able to bring her back to her orginal exquisitness. He clicked his tongue lightly in disappointment as he realized what a waste of beauty it would be.
The anesthesiologist stepped out of his way once the patient was under and Declan stepped forward to set to work. It would be a long, arduous procedure, but Declan was dead set to stabalize her. The amount of damage that had been done would call for at least three hours of surgery and Declan was ready for the long haul. However, about an hour into the grueling surgery, the most dreadful sound that any doctor could ever hear rang out through the room. It was almost deafening as it echoed against the sterile tiles and cold steel instruments. The woman had lost her grip on life and passed away.
Declan cursed lightly under his breath and stepped away from the table to allow one of the other doctor's to try and revive her. He had far too much blood on his hands to use the defibrillator. The doctor finally gave up and Declan cursed again. He pulled his mask off and tossed it to the floor in frustration.
"Damnit," he shouted as he exited the operating room. The doctors and nurses in the room could clean up. Right now, Declan needed to be as far away from the dead woman as possible. One thought was playing itself through his mind like a broken record: If I'd had enough sleep I would have been able to save her.
Not even sleep would soothe his rampant mind right now. Declan was going to have to live with this haunting thought for quite some time now. He shuffled his feet as he walked down the hall and to his office. He slammed the door shut behind him, the blinds rattling loudly against the pane of the window, and he dropped down onto the couch to replay the surgery and try to reassure himself that there would have been no saving her, not even with a full night's sleep.
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| Ariane Leroux
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It’s not the only thing that’s alive… dun, dun dun…
Time passed. An hour. Maybe two.
The body was moved. The room was cleaned. Life went on.
Yet, in the midst of it all, Lady Lazarus was returning to life.
It was a slow process. It took some time for her to recover her spirit and regain her strength. For quite some time, the bloody and mangled body showed no unusual signs of animation whatsoever. It was thoroughly examined for DNA traces of her assailant or any form of identification—as no one knew who this mysterious woman was. While it proved possible to identify the man who had attacked her, the woman herself was a different story. The tips of her fingers were smooth and ridgeless, leaving no fingerprints. It was a veritable mystery. Even after her death, this woman remained the talk of the hospital.
Then, finally, the change began to become visible. The body had been left alone for the time being, meaning that no one was round to witness exactly how it happened. The blood vanished into thin air, evaporating, and her broken skull mended itself, fitting itself back together as if guided by invisible fingers. Her lungs heaved; her back arched on the cold examining table. Her throat rattled, and the dead woman drew in a fresh breath of air.
Resurrected, she opened her eyes, blinking against the harsh white light of the hospital. She wrinkled her nose in response to the overwhelming scent of disinfectant and other chemicals. Slowly, as if she had forgotten how to move, she sat up.
That was how they found her, sitting up on the examining table and staring at them with chilling dark eyes. She was so pale that her skin was nearly the same color as the sheet they’d laid on top of her, but there was no doubt that she was alive now after laying there dead for several hours. One of the women screamed and fainted; the rest tried to ask her questions and work their way through the mystery with logic. She did not speak, however, but merely gazed upon them with an expression that was barely human.
She didn’t protest when they moved her to a different room, dressed her in a hospital gown and situated her in a new bed. Nor did she fight when they attached her to tubes, wires and machines to check her vital signs.
“I don’t understand,” they whispered to each other. “She seems perfectly healthy again. Where is Dr. Brennan?”
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| potterfreak!
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« 11 April 2011, 22:21:29 »
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Declan is going to be baffled. Hope I'm playing him alright.
In the time that it had taken Lady Lazarus to reanimate Declan Brennan had managed to worry himself into a frenzy. He had pushed himself up off of the couch after half an hour of constant thought about the failed surgery and forced himself to trek to the cafeteria. His nervous stomach was doing sommersaults and he hoped that some food would help to settle it. He purchased himself a grilled cheese sandwich and a can of Red Bull and sat down at a table in the corner of the cafeteria that was somewhat isolated from the others to try and enjoy his meal.
He popped the tab open on the can and appraised the energy drink for a moment. Yes he was a doctor. Yes he knew that energy drinks were bad for you. But he needed it. It had been so long since he had last slept a full night's sleep that he couldn't remember the last time that his head had hit his pillows. He took a long gulp of the yellow liquid and grimmaced at the horrible taste.
His right knee bobbed up and down anxiously as he ate and Declan dropped his sandwich to place both hands on the shaking limb, trying to quiet its movements. He couldn't remember ever being so obsessed with a dying patient. Not even the first patient that he had lost. What was wrong with him?
Declan drew in a deep breath to try and calm himself and he removed his hands from his now still leg.
There. All better. He released a relieved sigh, but found his body tensing again as he heard his pager go off.
Damn.
He removed the dreadful thing from his pocket and read the short message that flashed across it.
Room 314. Emergency.
Declan gathered his trash and dropped it in one of the trash cans before he made his way out of the cafeteria and to the stairs. No time for the elevator. Besides, running up a few flights of stairs might help to calm his nerves a bit. He reached the third floor and rounded the corner from the stairwell into the main hallway. Quite a few nurses had gathered around the door to room 314. He raised a brow and pushed his way through the small crowd to be greeted by...
It couldn't be.
He recognized that woman. She should be...
"You..." He muttered to the woman that was seated in the hospital bed as he stepped into the room. "You should be dead."
He crossed the room in three quick steps and gripped the rail that was attatched to the side of the hospital bed. His knuckles turned white as he wrung the metal bar and gazed down at the woman that he had just watched die not too long ago. His eyes flicked to the monitors that told him that all of her vital signs were perfect. Absolutely perfect when she should be dead. She should be in the mourge. She should not be here.
"I watched you die. I..." Declan's brow furrowed lightly as he glanced down at the beautiful woman. His assumption of her beauty had been correct earlier. Now that he could see both sides of her face she was one of the most gorgeous women he had ever laid eyes on.
"I know the machines are telling me you're alive, but do you mind if I listen for myself?" He questioned the woman as he unwrapped his stethascope from around his neck. He wanted to hear her heart beat. Maybe then he would be able to start to wrap his mind around this impossible situation.
« Last Edit: 11 April 2011, 22:23:16 » |
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| Ariane Leroux
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The first hint of any emotion that she let slip onto her face was the knowing smile that appeared on her lips when Dr. Brennan walked into the room. It was almost as if she knew him… but that couldn’t possibly be right, could it?
“I was dead, doctor,” she answered, opening her mouth to speak for the first time since her return to life. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her voice. It wasn’t gritty or scratchy, as could be expected from a woman who had recently died. It wasn’t shrill either, like a banshee, but low, soft and smooth. Her dark eyes seemed to shine with an inappropriate mélange of amusement and mischief. This was, after all, a very serious situation. She’d been dead for crying out loud. “I was dead as a doornail.”
What she didn’t say was that this wasn’t the first time, either. She could no longer count the number of times she’d been dead—yet she continued to live. She supposed that it would certainly baffle him. After all, the legends wouldn’t exist if what she could do was normal. She was truly exceptional. She knew it, and she relished in it. She loved the way people looked at her—the open-mouthed staring and the bewildering gaping… she couldn’t get enough of it. It never got old; people never caught on.
Mortals were so silly. They believed so adamantly that death was a barrier that could not be crossed more than once. They couldn’t comprehend the thought of a being that could come and go between the twin realms of the living and the dead as often she pleased.
Dr. Brennan, she knew, would be more eager to believe it than the others. She knew that he’d already heard her story, and she knew that he was hoping and praying for it to be true. She knew that he’d spent endless nights searching for clues and that her existence was what kept him up late at night. There was a reason that she was in this hospital at this precise moment. There was a reason for everything she did. Now, she would wait for this incredulous, baffled man to work through the mystery in his own mind and put together the pieces of his puzzle. The solution was right under his nose.
“Not at all,” she acquiesced, shaking her head when he asked if she would mind if he listened to her heartbeat. He would find it all right. Seventy-two beats per minute, perfectly strong and perfectly normal.
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| Beautiful Disaster
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« 12 April 2011, 19:42:26 »
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She was alive.
The woman that they had brought into the emergency room that, by all accounts, should have been dead wasn’t a dead woman. She was alive. Katia was having a hard time wrapping her head around all of this information. Doctor’s had released her to go home hours ago but she hadn’t wanted to go home. Instead she had lurked around the hospital in an attempt to figure out who this woman was and whether or not she was really still alive.
It was time to take things into her own hands and gather information for herself. That meant that it was time to sneak into the woman’s room and figure out what was going on. There was certainly risk that came along with this. She wasn’t sure whether or not the room was being guarded by police officers.
Risk was what it was all about though.
Once she was positive that the coast was clear she slipped out of the supply room that she had been hiding room. Her movement was casual as she slipped her hands into her pockets and moved towards room number 314. Room 314 was the room that this mystery woman was in.
No one went through something like that and lived. That was what made Katia curious.
Everyone on the floor seemed to be occupied with other things which gave her the opportunity to slip into the woman’s room. A privacy curtain was drawn partway between the door and the woman’s bed. There was a conversation going on between a woman and a male doctor which prompted her to be as quiet as she could as she slipped into the shadows.
The doctor couldn’t see her. If the doctor saw her then it was all over before it began. Katia wanted to know who this woman was and why she had lived when others certainly would have died.
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| potterfreak!
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« 14 April 2011, 10:57:04 »
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The words that the woman spoke were certainly not those of surprise. She knew that she had died and she seemed almost smug about having come back to life. While she hadn’t actually told him that this wasn’t the first time she had done so Declan was beginning to believe that she had died before. The only logical emotion for somebody in her situation was to be rejoycing and shouting to the heavens. Claiming a miracle.
This woman seemed more amused by everybody’s reactions than anything. She hardly seemed surprised that she had resurrected.
He found himself staring at the once ruined right side of her face. His head tilted to one side slightly as his mind raced. How could this be possible? Not only was she alive but she was perfectly healthy. If somebody walked into this room right now they would never guess that a few hours ago the entire right side of her skull had been crushed so badly it had almost been flattened. Declan, himself, was beginning to wonder if the whole surgery had been a dream. If this moment right now was a dream.
Was his sleep deprivation beginning to cause him to hallucinate?
Declan hoped so. If this woman had the ability to reanimate then everything he learned in medical school was a lie. By being able to cheat death she was rendering all of those years of education useless. She spat in the face of the medical institution that he had worked so hard to secure a prominent place in.
Not at all.
Declan shook himself out of thought as she gave him permission to listen to her beating heart. The heart that should be still that belonged to a woman who should be lying on a slab in the mourge.
He placed the earpieces of the stethoscope into his ears and pressed the cool metal circle of the end against her chest lightly. There it was. The rythym of a normal, healthy, living heart.
“Incredible,” he murmured as he removed the stethoscop and slung it around his neck. He glanced behind him and grabbed the chair. He was going to be here for a while to investigate and he wanted to be comfortable. He pulled the chair forward and sat as close to her bedside as was possible. Declan was so fascinated by the medical mystery that he didn’t notice another person had entered the room and was hiding behind the privacy curtain.
“What’s your name?” He questioned her with a raised brow. She had been admitted to the hospital with no name and had died a Jane Doe. Declan wanted to find out more about her. He wanted to know how this sort of thing could be possible. It was a very intriguing case.
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| Ariane Leroux
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Incredible. She couldn’t say that this was the first time she’d heard someone use that word to describe her. The list was so long and filled with words from almost every language that ever existed. She’d live a long time, and she’d heard a lot of words applied to her fascinating abilities. Humans were so predictable. They always reacted the same way.
When Dr. Brennan pressed the cold metal end of the stethoscope to her chest, she was suddenly aware of another presence in the room. She watched smugly as a third figure crept around the edge of the half-drawn privacy curtain, out of sight of the doctor. This person was smaller and slighter, and she knew without a doubt whose outline she was staring at.
Young Katia Romanov, a student at the university to which this hospital belonged. Oh yes, she knew about Miss Romanov and—more importantly—the reason why the young woman was here to begin with. The poor thing had been letting herself go to immerse herself in stories about a woman who could raise herself from the death like some kind of new-fangled Jesus Christ.
It was all perfect. Absolutely perfect. Everything was proceeding according to plan. All of her players were in the building, though she had yet to lay eyes on Riley Dillinger again. The woman’s dark eyes shone as she stared at Katia’s obscured form. For a brief moment, there was something completely inhuman, totally otherworldly, present in that expression. Then, when Dr. Brennan finished listening to the regular metronome of her healthy heart, it vanished.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember my name, Doctor,” she told him levelly, watching him as he pulled a chair up to her bedside.
And what use was a name, anyway? What did it really mean? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. She had gone by many, many names over the course of her unnatural life, and not one of them had changed who or what she was. She was the same person whether she went by Mary or Anne, and she didn’t stay dead as Catherine any more than she did as Jeanne. She could make up any name on the spot and this doctor wouldn’t know the difference.
Besides, she had forgotten her name. She had forgotten a lot about her origins, so much time had passed since her birth. She didn’t know what her mother had named her—or if she had even had a mother to give her a name.
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| potterfreak!
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« 20 April 2011, 22:53:02 »
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This situation that Declan was in had almost put him into a state of shock. He was so focused on why this had happened that all of his research had completely slipped his mind. If only he had looked up from listening to the rhythmic beating of her heart just a second sooner. He may have seen the inhuman expression and been shaken out of his sleep-deprived haze. Unfortunately, he completely missed the expression and the look on the woman’s face when he glanced at her next was that of a normal woman.
Declan frowned softly as the mysterious woman in front of him admitted that she had forgotten her name. Well damn. What was he supposed to call her? He intended on getting to know everything about this woman. Every minute of his day that he wasn’t with a patient he wanted to be with her. She could come back from the dead and Declan wanted to know why.
“Well then, I guess we’ll skip the name. Unless there’s a name you would like to be called?” Declan questioned the woman. He wasn’t going to obsess over the name just yet. There were more important questions, after all.
“The way you spoke to me makes me think that this isn’t the first time you have died and brought yourself back to life. How many times has this happened?” He questioned her with a raised brow. He leaned forward slightly in the chair and rested his forearms on his knees. His fingers intertwined as he awaited the answer. An anxious foot bobbed lightly against the tile floor.
Sorry it's only a few paragraphs. Wanted to make it longer, but apparently my muse has run away...
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| Ariane Leroux
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A name she would like to be called. She thought for a moment. Frankly, she’d never really understood the way that humans obsessed over things like names and whether or not they know the name of someone else. She honestly didn’t see why it was so important to know what you were supposed to call something. She felt like quoting Shakespeare at that moment…
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
And it was true. She could call a rose a violet and nothing whatsoever would change. She could call a chair a dog, and she would still be able to sit on it. She could all Dr. Brennan a garbage collector, but he would still be a world renowned neurosurgeon. It was just words. Language was so trivial to a creature like the woman who had so mysteriously come back to life.
“If you must call me something, you may call me Ariane,” she told him, plucking that name from the depths of her memory. “I’ve gone by that name before.”
There was a set of names that she tended to favor, and she used them cyclically. The last time she’d been Ariane, she’d been in the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. She thought it was a pretty name, a French variant of Ariadne, the Cretan princess whom Theseus had abandoned even after she’d helped him through the labyrinth. She had a special weakness for mythology—she herself was a part of it.
And then on to his next question: how many times has this happened?
She had to hold back her smirk and the urge to immediately give an arrogant retort. She was still waiting for him to make the connection between the events unfolding before his very eyes and the stories he pored over at his home. She could see that he was tired—had she been keeping him up at night? How cruel of her… maybe she should end his suffering and just flat out tell him. But then again, what fun would that be? She much enjoyed this game she played with mortals.
“Can you count the number of stars in the sky, Doctor?” she asked cryptically. “I cannot remember my own name, and you think I can remember a number that large? It has happened many times.”
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| potterfreak!
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« 02 May 2011, 21:31:40 »
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Ariane.
Such an unusual choice of name.
It was certainly a name that he had never heard before. His curious musings about her name suddenly ceased as she mentioned that it was a name that she had gone by before. Interesting choice of words, really. Had she meant that Ariane was her name before she had died? No, if that had been the case she would have said so. His brow furrowed deeply as he pondered her choice of words.
Declan was jerked abruptly out of his thoughts as she answered his second question with a question of her own. This woman was quite intriguing. He raised a curious brow as she mentioned that the number of times that she had risen from the dead was larger than she could remember.
A look of realization crossed his handsome features as he finally made the connection between the woman seated in the hospital bed in front of him and the woman that he stayed up all hours of the night studying. The drowsiness that had been weighing down on him was lifted and replaced by a state of shock.
“You’re bluffing,” and yet, even though every fiber of his being was screaming out to him that the woman before him was, in fact, the Lady Lazarus, he still found himself hard-pressed to believe it. The circumstances just seemed too fantastic to even begin to imagine. The woman that he had spent most of his life researching had been admitted into his care at the hospital he worked at. The chances of that happening were slim to none.
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| Ariane Leroux
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Bluffing? Well, that was a good one.
She hadn’t told a lie in centuries, finding instead that it was much more… efficient? Expedient? Amusing, even, to merely manipulate the truth to suit her purposes. She was no deceiver, and she certainly didn’t want to mislead Dr. Brennan here. She could assure him wholeheartedly that she was not bluffing.
Besides, she had absolutely no reason to lie to him. Didn’t she want him to make the connection between the hard scientific proof right in front of him and the stories that he obsessed over at home? It would be awfully counterproductive to attempt to deceive him.
Oh no, he was doing a good enough job of that all on his own. She wanted to grab him by the collar and scream at him, to vehemently urge him to listen to what his instincts were telling him. Mortals were such silly creatures. They possessed the irritating—yet sometimes useful—ability to stare the truth in the face and still not see it. There was nothing to be gained, however, by raising her voice and making a scene in the middle of the hospital. She knew full well that she was likely to be pronounced insane.
Of course, they might decide to have her committed anyway, just for claiming to have risen from the dead over and over again, regardless of the manner in which she insisted upon it. However, it was significantly less likely if she was calm about it.
“No,” she corrected him levelly. “I am not bluffing.”
Slowly, gracefully, she sat up in the hospital bed and leaned toward him, looking him straight in the face with an expression that was as otherworldly as it was unsettling. Behind her eyes lurked an age and a wisdom beyond her youthful face. “You know me, Doctor,” she urged him gently. “Listen to what you’re telling yourself. You know who I am.”
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| potterfreak!
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« 05 May 2011, 22:36:01 »
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If the woman in front of him was, in fact, the woman that he had lost countless nights of sleep over Declan had it in his right mind to have her committed. If she was forced to remain in the psychiatric ward of the hospital then he could throw all of his research papers away and focus his studies instead on the real person. Although, Declan thought, if she had wanted to leave she would have done so when she had risen from the dead. She had no intention to leave. Hell, she probably even enjoyed this attention.
He listened intently as she assured him that she wasn't bluffing. Her reassurance had helped him to believe but there was still a small shadow of doubt looming over him.
Declan straightened in his chair as Ariane leaned toward him. His eyes watched her face closely and any doubt that remained was quickly erased as he saw the otherwordly expression that had crossed her features as she spoke to him. Her words, once again, persauded his unsure mind. If only he had had a few more hours of sleep. This whole encounter would have been so much more believable and he wouldn't find himself grasping at straws trying to disuade himself from the truth that sat in front of him.
Sure, he could pass her off as a lunatic and have her committed. No matter how insane a person is it doesn't give them the ability to rise from the dead, though. Something she had clearly done. Something that he had proof of. Hard evidence. He had watched her die and now here she was talking to him as if her death had never happened. A perfectly healthy patient when a few hours ago she had been dying on a slab in the operating room.
No, there had to be truth in what she was telling him. Declan knew all about this woman. Well, as much as he could find out from the frantic scrawlings of his father and all of the other men and women who had driven themselves to the brink of insanity studying this fascinating case. Now all that was left to do was confirm his findings with her.
He reached up and ran wavering fingers through his gently tousled hair as he tried to tame the stray unruly hairs. Declan released a deep breath as he tried to calm his frazzled nerves and he placed his hands on his knees as he got to his feet. He stepped to the side of Ariane's bed and placed his hands on the bedrail and gripped it lightly.
"It is you," he murmured softly as he glanced down at her. The woman he had spent the majority of his life studying was sitting right here in front of him and Declan finally accepted that. There would be no more lying to himself. This was real. He was tempted to reach out and touch her but his hands were far to unsteady for him to even try at the moment.
"I do know who you are. I haven't had a decent night of sleep in over a month because of you."
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| Ariane Leroux
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Enjoying the attention? Most definitely.
Ariane—as she had decided to be called now—had a history of arrogance as far as her special ability was concerned. She was unique, special, and she definitely knew it. She was well aware of the fact that men, particularly scientists and doctors, would bend over backwards for a chance to observe her, to find out her secrets. She relished the attention, craving the spotlight like an actress, and she’d had plenty of time to get used to it. She’d been fascinating mankind since ancient times.
Knowing that she could do something that no one else could do? That modern science believed to be physically impossible? It was a wonderful feeling. She was invincible. No matter how many times she was killed, she would always come back. Always.
Unless she failed to meet her deadlines.
Her attention drifted briefly back to young Katia Romanov, whom she knew to be still lurking in the corner of the room, just beyond the privacy curtain. (She supposed that Dr. Brennan was too sleep deprived and too focused on the realization that she was indeed the Lady Lazarus too notice that someone had wandered into the room.) Dr. Brennan, Miss Romanov… put them together with Reilly Dillinger and everyone she needed was in one place.
Exactly like she had planned.
She sat up a little straighter, returning her focus to Dr. Brennan, and smiled to confirm his revelation.
“Yes, I apologize for that,” she told him softly. “I know I’ve been a bit dramatic, but I could think of no other way to get your attention.”
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