2019-07-06 - Stress Fractures

Yesterday, there was a wreck on the edge of Addington Park, right near the hospital, police, and fire services. Car wrecks don't always make headlines, but this one has nice flames shooting out of a black SUV in capture where it's mashed head-first wrap around the thick truck of a tree. There were a lot of jogging, driving, or power walking bystanders to account for the violence and shock of the explosive incident right in the main drag of town. And naturally the police and fire/EMT hero moments are captured in a clip where a certain brunette figure is removed with rush and care unconscious from a smoking vehicle not moments before it combustively blows into fire. The driver is listed as Lilith Rose Winslow, 29 and while it doesn't note her condition with that unclear during evacuation, it notes her transport to the Memorial Hospital.

It's the late morning after that. Luckily, Lilith doesn't have a paper because it might have just made her succumb to hiding under a rock for the rest of her days. Surely she'll find out eventually, but she has other concerns, including the fact that she's sharing a room with her father Hank, who was hospitalized prior after a terrible incapacitating beating. A nurse thought it'd be NICE to put them together while Lilith was passed out. Nothing about it is nice. Outside the door to the room, it's audible how un-nice sharing is.

Woman sounding frayed: "... fine! Take the ice chips!"

Man Sounding Whiny and Morphine High: "... hey--ayyy--you, young lady, need to work on your temper."

Lilith is literally throwing ice piece by piece at Hank laid out when the door opens, mid-frustration fit. And she. Looks. Awful. At least the idea that she might be about to kill her father shows she's got plenty of spunk left somewhere in there.

And in the door? Alexander. He has a small paper tray with two large coffees from the nearby chain coffee store (how did he get those by the nurses - it's not like he's trying to hide them, really), and pauses just inside the threshold to look at what the two are getting up to. "Miss Winslow." A thoughtful pause as he peers at Hank. "Mr. Winslow. Is now a bad time?" It's directed mostly at Lilith with her ice. "Do you like coffee? I didn't ask. I should have asked."

"That! That is a polite fellow! Missster Winslow. See, Lilypad, you should let your friends be a good influence." Hank is all into sounding official even though he looks like a hospital gowned scamp high on drugs with bandages all over and two casts, etc. And yes, he has the nerve to lecture her after contributing jackshit useful to her upbringing in his drunk little trailer... which she is currently finding just fascinating according to the look she sends his way. She stops throwing ice, though. Alexander is here now and honestly, it's hurting her arm because everything is shades of hurt when she moves. And it looks like it.

Lilith isn't broken and incapacitated from standing like Hank, it seems, because she carefully shifts up with straightening. But there's bruising and cuts on her everywhere, a lump gash that might have been concussive over her brow, split lip and who knows what can't be seen. It's like the wreck spit her out with the kind of misery all over to ensure she bends and suffers without the breaks. That and her eyes are hollow with sheer drain.

Nevertheless, she looks a little surprised and pleased to see Alexander because oh man, she's about to take out Hank, it was a coup de gras on terrible when they stuck her in with him. Company is GREAT, embarrassing circumstances and awful appearance aside, "Alexander. Hey. I... would love coffee." A pause, a glance at Hank, "Please no, it's fine, he'll pass back out at some point." It sounds like please-don't-leave-me-with-him-alone in begging reprieve from the tone of her voice, "How'd you know?"

Permission given, Alexander comes more fully into the room. He seems largely unmoved by the praise from Hank, or the obvious tension between father and daughter. He does watch it, though, taking it in with flat, dark interest. But hey, he brought coffee! One of which gets given to Lilith. After a moment, he looks down at the second in the tray, then turns and places it on Hank's bedside table. "My treat, Mr. Winslow." Hopefully neither of them are on medication that has violent reactions with caffeine and various other things.

Alexander turns back to Lilith, and moves to stand by her bedside. "You look like shit," he says, bluntly. "I heard your car caught on fire? And crashed."

With how busy Byron's been due to all sorts of tragic and/or inconvenient incidents that had cropped up one after the other in recent weeks, he's at least kept in touch with Lilith since last Saturday. He knows that Hank is in the hospital. He'd visited the guy at least once. What he didn't expect to learn is that Lilith also ended up there and not just during visiting hours. His phone went off randomly, the only number given was a hospital extension, which was odd. At first, he'd assumed it was Hank for whatever reason, so didn't give it much further thought.

And then the morning paper arrives and this is when he learns the possible truth of the call. He's had to juggle calls to the police departments, dealing with questions from tenants among many other things, on top of the various entrepreneurial related business that used to take up most of his day. Now this!

When he barges into the room, dressed fully in business attire, he has some fancy bouquets. It's kinda sad when patients in the hospital don't have people bringing them flowers. Even if he never brought Hank any flowers. There's even a bright colored balloon that's wrapped around his wrist that says in bold letters: GET WELL SOON. And a stuffed Siberian husky pup from some random toy store in town. The balloon and toy, at least, seem pretty childish and he's more than likely doing it to get a rise out of Lilith, despite not knowing her condition. If she is unconscious... once she comes to, she'll see all of it!

However, hearing voices talking from within the room that he was directed to, it seems like she was already awake. "Christ, Lilith. What happened? Are you alright?" He'd say more along the lines of 'I saw the accident pictures, it looked really bad' and such, but he keeps those comments to himself.

Hank shows zero interest in the coffee despite the kindness of the gesture. Instead, he blearily eyes it and asks for three nips and a lamb's shake to make it palatable (whatever personal booze lingo that is) and unless Alexander carries a flask on him, he's not drinking it. Then he agrees with the assessment made in blunt, "Hoooo, doesn't she look like shit?" She, for her part, just drinks her coffee and sighs with a little slump of her shoulders, admitting to Alexander, "Yeah. That happened. Different order, though. Blew right after they got me out, I think. I..."

Then there's Byron. And as the other two have pointed out (she hasn't braved the mirror past a glance during bathroom trips) she looks like shit so this is nice-- she's been trying to play mum's word on details of her luck since she's seen him last from afar while he's been busy. But this one is impossible to hide. So she pops on defenses with guilt reflex, "... I was going to leave a message after I got a nurse to find your number. But it felt like a terrible message to leave."

She looks a little charmed about the collection he's brought in on principle at first, much like the lovely coffee brought by Alexander, but then it really sinks in -what- he's brought. Flowers to a plant killer, a kiddo toy, and a balloon? Oh that last one. "Byron. Is that a -balloon-?" She's just making sure he's being that tacky.

Alexander doesn't take his coffee back, just shakes his head to Hank. No flask on Alexander, it seems. Then his attention turns back to Lilith. And Byron, who enters with all the goodies. "Thorne," he says, with an inclination of his head towards the other man. The gifts are considered with a frown. He also moves back and around, so that Byron can get close to Lilith. He takes up a position farther away, where he can watch the door, his arms crossed and expression thoughtful. "What happened, Miss Winslow?"

Alexander's presence doesn't go unnoticed. Byron just didn't feel like addressing the man just yet, since he's not the one seated in the hospital bed. Thorne is all too preoccupied with trying to gauge how badly the wreck had a toll on Lilith just as she questions the fact that he'd brought a balloon. There's a flash of Thorne smile on his features, "It's your balloon now. I didn't have the time for them to find or create that one said 'Get Well Soon, Lilith' but I at least got one with a lot of glitter and a unicorn." He'll even point to the cartoon unicorn.

It's Hank who he speaks to next, "Hey, Hank. Looking good. For what it's worth." He has other questions regarding Hank, but decides not to ask them just yet.

"Clayton." There. Alexander gets a greeting to go with his Thorne. Byron steps forward to tie the red colored balloon string to the edge of Lilith's bed, just letting it sort of float around up there, before leaning forward to set the stuffed puppo in her lap. The flowers are then placed onto the nightstand and this leaves his hands free to cross over his chest. "I would have come as soon as I'd heard." With Alexander asking questions of his own, he'll let Lilith respond to that first, because he's just as curious.

"I'll stop the occasional flirting, jesus, you've made your point." Lilith has just had too much, too much since Saturday to really sugarcoat much or have some semblance of filter and for whatever reason, she doesn't find it real funny that she's got cutesy kiddo gifts from Byron, especially in lieu of certain other matters inside she's just not going to touch and bottle up instead. Right now, it seems, people are getting what they get with her. Honestly, they should just be thankful they aren't witnessing a nervous breakdown. It's not just that she's injured. She looks absolutely railed through from the inside too with stress fatigue and something haunted in the shadowed eyes.

But the flowers are nice and so is the gesture. After that bitterly resigned comment, she makes a noise in her throat, puts her arms out and tries to reach with bid for admiring them close and smelling of them with appreciation, "C'mere, let me kill those."

Then she explains, but not before Hank rolls over and tells Byron with grunt that's kind of like greeting, "... we tried to teach her manners, didn't we?" Yeah. He's still taking credit for her upbringing even though Byron was probably roundabout ensuring she was fed nine times out of ten for a good ten years, give or take.

It starts pretty uncomplicated. She explains there was a dog, how she was tired, how her phone went off with a bad text, how she swerved to avoid twice after a car got in the way and how she lost the battle with a tree and passed out. Easy, right? But they were uncanny wreck photos, considering where it happened, the speed limits, the aftermath, the angle head on, and so on. Byron might be making a connection and is definitely making one as she goes on, eyes shifting largely in part to Alexander when she sums all that up with, "I'm cursed from touching something, I think. I'm marked. I've had thirty-seven terrible things happen in five days and those are just the things I can count. This is one of those things." A pause, "That goes away eventually, right?" She's looking a little speculatively at Alexander like he knows the answers to weird things like this without details, because hell, he might have seen a thing or two or three.

Alexander's eyebrows go up at the tone Lilith directs to Byron. He studies the two of them in silence, gradually refocusing on Lilith as she explains the situation. Sort of. "You...touched something. What did you touch, Miss Winslow?" He reaches up to rub at his neck. "Nothing skeletal, I hope." Another sidelong look at Byron, and a frown. Then past him, towards Hank. "And your father?"

Byron truly expected Lilith to take this little joke far better than she actually does. And yet, he'll continue to wear that smile for a while longer, even if there's just this hint of something more within his dark eyes that observe her. He even makes further light of it, moving to take a seat somewhere on her bed, though leaving her enough space for herself, "Woah. None of what I said conveyed any of that but uh... It's been a rough week." For both of them apparently!

He's had a few issues of his own, but Lilith was the one that wrecked her car not hi-- While he focused much of his attention to the various things that Winslow was going through since Saturday, it didn't occur to him that he's come across quite a bit of misfortune himself. Though nothing that can even compare.

That's when the smile starts to fade, his expression finally matching that look within his eyes. "Nothing skeletal." He'll affirm to Alexander. Obviously, Byron knows what's going on, since he answers! He even ignores Hank, his focus settling on Lilith, "I don't know, Lil. When did Carver get it back to you? Things just keep escalating."

Lilith might not care what she tells Alexander at this point. She seems a little oddly comfortable with his presence in regards to this matter considering Byron has probably never seen them talking together. She may be open with Byron to uncanny degrees, but at this point, he's also seen the way she's kind of different around others that don't have the monopoly involved in being her very support system and life for a good chunk of formative years. There's generally more dry and casual arm's length in the name of internal caution and she's not particularly divulging until she's sure she wants to be that way. Especially when it comes to admitting how not-okay she is.

Hank's in the room, though. Her eyes slide that way as she tugs in the flowers to smell after a cautious tick of making sure they don't die with her touch on general principle, then she looks at Alexander while considering visibly how to explain. She steals another glance at Byron and automatically makes more room for him on the bed with tiny shift, but he did mention the 'it' and 'Carver' so he must not be too paranoid about details around Alexander either for his own reasons.

Wetting her split lip, she looks back at Alexander mostly while trying to explain, "Something marked with..." She recalls with pause, "Scarabs? Came through, I get weird things time to time, but... this one had a power over me. I had to touch it. I was the only one that made direct contact. And since then..." She's taps her wrist and finger as if silently indicating jewelry, trying real hard not to say she was around something valuable while Hank is over there. He might pop up if she uses the words for jewelry.

She considers Byron's question with a look his way, lowering the bouquet some, "The next day. But he's been managing fine, I haven't been around it. He's even been sober while sleeping over and hanging around. I don't really know what he does with it when he's not around. But Byron. Look at me. Just... really, really look at me." She glances at Alexander too, like he might be able to see that she's not just injured but drained in some way. He has less comparison, but he's seen her so very thinking and talkative and lively enough, aside from drunk, maybe he sees it too, "It's not like it's emitting some aura, it doesn't matter where I am. It's like it... rubbed off."

Lilith tacks on more quietly, "Or it ate part of me. I don't... know."

Alexander picks up what Lilith is putting down, apparently. He nods, briefly, to let her know, and moves up to approach, taking the opposite side of the bed as Byron. He doesn't sit down, though, clearly not at all that comfortable with the woman as her friend is. But he lowers his voice and agrees, "You don't look well." He looks down at his feet, then up at her. "May I try something? I can't guarantee it'll work, but I'd like to try and read you. Mind and body. See if I can notice anything. Unless one of those has already been done?" A glance towards Byron, then, a lifted brow. "And the item? Has it been kept near Miss Winslow? If it's...drawing from her, that may be dangerous."

Careful eyes watch Alexander when he asks Lilith if he can read her. Byron looks as if he might start to say something, just like before, but refrains. While this issue isn't not his problem. It's all of theirs, but mostly Lilith. He won't speak up for the woman this time, allowing her to offer Clayton a response.

"I tried to keep it away from her and when that failed, I tried to give it away to someone who I thought would know what to do with it." There's this pause, lips pursed into a thin line,"Right now, I can't tell whether I was wrong to do so or not." Dark eyes to Lilith now, he continues, "As she said, she doesn't have /it/. But if Carver's staying over at your place and it's in his possession? I just think it needs to be sent far away from you. Or anyone." He then adds, "Either way, we were thinking of trying to read up on it. Cursed things. See if there's a way to break it off."

Byron gets a quiet sigh that sounds like she's stuck between a rock and a hard place in regards to that jewelry and where it goes. Before Lilith leans with wince to put the flowers on the bedside table, she looks as if she's considering Alexander's offer when he comes close. She has no ungodly clue what he's going to get out of her from the inside, connected to not just her body, but her mind because wow, that's intimate. She's never wittingly signed up for it. She takes a quick glance at Byron because of this, like she wants him to be the one to pick her apart so intimately, but then she realizes what he might get as bounce back extraneous vulnerable details so... Alexander it is. Plus he sounds like he might know what he's looking for.

After drawing in slow breath, she moves her head in a weighted nod of acceptance. Then she sits awkwardly because she doesn't know what comes next.

"That's a good idea," Alexander says to Byron, with a nod. "Cursed items." A pause. "There are more things under Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of even in my philosophy, it seems. But it sounds like it is a made thing. It must have been made somewhere, by someone. Records likely exist, even if they're considered fairy tales or fantasies. Look for a maker's mark?" He rubs at his face, fingers scrubbing under his eyes, when Lilith nods.

Honestly, Alexander doesn't look like he's enjoying the thought of this any more than anyone else in the room. But he offers Lilith a smile. "Miss Winslow, I won't try to pry, but I can't...promise I won't feel something you don't want me to. I'll search your mind first. Then, if I can, your body. Thorne, do you have a pen?" He flicks a glance to Byron, then he looks back to Lilith. His hand comes up and he touches his temple, rubbing lightly there as he focuses on her.

"Now, I'd ask, how does one curse an item? And then follow up with: Is magic even real?" Byron starts to say, not looking at all pleased that he's saying any of this. "And that's with knowledge of this dream world involved and the darkness. But you're probably right. There very well could be items with odd properties existing in our world that didn't come from the dreaming. Hell, there could be multiple dimensions like the dreaming that we don't know about." He shrugs his shoulders, not at all sated by any of this. "With Bella being all Indiana Jones.. I was wondering if she'd have any knowledge on such things. Failing that, there's always the library."

When the maker's mark is mentioned, "Okay, here's the thing. It will try to get you to touch it and seeing what happened to Lily, nothing good come from touching it. The box that it's kept in, however? I didn't take a good look."

When Lilith relents to have her very being scanned, Byron falls quiet, head turned to look across the way at Hank, but he's watching Alexander from out of the corner of his eyes.

Maybe he should have started with her body. It looks the most broken and drained at the moment, but what's inside Lilith is all beat up and broken in a different way and LOUD. She's really fighting here in this little bed to contain all her feelings about what the past five days has wrought, all that collective fear and frustration, her bids to grip fast to sanity as long as she can. He gets the circumstances related to this and other things, besides. Maybe he gets too much. Because when Alexander goes to wade inside her mind and emotions and the flashprint images are lighting sparks. something subtle inside her makes it easier. She's not like him and Byron, but she's got some notch of mental openness and receptiveness that she's probably not aware of.

He feels her wanting to reach out and touch Byron and he knows she won't because she feels betrayed, because he hid something, because she feels like she made an idiot of herself, because she's guilty about the way she's starting to hide things from him again after being too open, like weird defensive mechanism compensation. He knows the text she saw before she wrecked scared her badly. He knows she's wrought pain on others over and over, but that part's kind of confusing without digging because she doesn't seem like she'd hurt people.

Eventually he finds it, though-- the way it felt when the purple gem in the box needed her to touch it and she knew, she knew everything would end if she didn't. He feels the seduction of it, how helpless she was, how many chances she never had against something deciding to call to her in that way. He knows it felt like seduction and desperation and anticipation before as he sees her scaling Byron. Then it feels like sex when she touches it. No. Lovemaking. It's physical and not physical. He knows Lilith has never really had that kind of loving intimacy during sex. It shakes with warmth and she could give everything away to feel like that. Then that was gone. And when it was gone...

Does he really want to keep going? When it was gone she was hollow to her bones in a way that manifests physically.

Alexander has, if he's honest, seen - and felt - worse. A shiver passes through him as he goes deeper and faster than perhaps he anticipated, but aside from shifting his stance to one that almost seems to be bracing himself, he doesn't pull away, mentally or physically. It's not murderous rage, or suicidal despair, or the kind of obsession that squirms inside your bones and turns you into a pale mockery of yourself.

He's seen worse.

And he tries not to do more than lightly skim over the swirl of emotions and memories inside of Lilith, his mental touch like a delicate breeze, cool and strong, as it winds its way through her. He pauses when he reaches the feelings bound up in the touch of the gem. He makes a thoughtful noise. His eyes open. "Nothing of use related to the item," he murmurs. Then, since Byron did not share a pen with him, he turns his palm over and starts sketching out some sort of pattern on it, muttering to himself. Unlike the mental touch, this feels ritualized, and far more difficult for him. When he has the focus fixed firmly in his mind, he braces himself, and reaches out to touch her hand. It's only the faintest brush of skin on skin before he hisses and backs away. A sharp shake of his head. "You're...you're strong there, Miss Winslow, and I'm not. I can't get in to assess you physically. Perhaps someone with more skill could."

Byron's eyes remain on Alexander for a long, silent moment, before they flicker to look on Lilith, sitting there all patient like. Though, there are times where he's tried to read his friends in the past, he doesn't do it often. Only when something tickles his curiosity or if he's having a difficult time gauging how the other is feeling.

He doesn't know what Alexander is doing first, though is surprised to know that the man has other abilities in him. It's this second thing, the touch that practically makes Alexander recoil that he has to wonder, initially, what did he see in her mind! That's when he realizes that no, this was something else.

"If we need to do this, we can try to call on Geoff." He'll assume that Geoff's healing touch is the power that they need for this project. "Can't say that I've seen him lately though."

It's really all that Lilith does all that while. She sits, incredibly still. She starts to watch Alexander after another glance at Byron like just seeing him sitting right there nearby is working a bravery tact on her. But she can't keep watching him, she's too vulnerable and aware and she drops her lashes over her shadowed eyes to wait instead without viewing. Any other day, any other circumstance, letting most anyone inside so intimately would be a HARD pass because she has dirty laundry, sheer intimate nature aside.

When he reaches to touch her, though, she opens her eyes using his words as prompt, just in time to see him reel and explain. Then she makes a little 'oh' noise. Awkward. What -did- he see if there's nothing of use? Then she looks at her hands and splays one on a blanketed leg, "I want to leave. I don't want to stay here." Hank is snoring, thanks morphine, "I can't be here while things go wrong around me. I don't know what comes next. This is a -hospital- and I am -so- unsteady as a whole right now, what if I accidentally hurt someone or make them sicker?" Alexander reminding her how goddamn strong she is at the core to make or break things like whole people isn't pleasant with Bad Things stuck to her.

"The hollowness...a healer, a gifted healer, might be able to determine what exactly happened with it. Or find away to fill it, if only temporarily while the matter is being investigated." This to Byron, thoughtfully. Alexander looks at Lilith, takes a breath - and if she allows, reaches out to try and gently pat her hand. No powers, just a brief, comforting touch. "That depends on the nature of your...curse. May I ask? Does it involve you /doing/ things, or things /happening/ to you? For example - do you trip, or does an object fall on you because someone knocks it down, or something like that?" A glance at both of them. "If it's the latter, I would recommend relocation somewhere safer. There are a lot of mistakes that can happen in a hospital which could prove fatal. If the former, you should stay here, and try not to, ah, move. If nothing else, you're exhausted and in turmoil. Even without a curse, you'd be in danger of accidentally causing yourself harm. You need a minder if you're going to go home."

When his eyes meet with Lilith, Byron offers up a small smile of reassurance, sensing that bit of nervousness surrounding her. If he only knew. But he wasn't the one who did the read.

"A gifted healer now?" Byron asks with a quirk of a brow to Alexander. "Now, I don't know if Geoff is a gifted healer, but he can heal people." He tries to think, knowing of at least one other who had witnessed play healer when it was necessary. "We'll find someone."

At all of this discussion of bad luck, he finally decides to bring up, "While I doubt that what I've experienced has anything to do with what Lilith's experienced. Or the cursed item. It's an entertaining coincidence that both of our cars broke down within a week's time. I didn't find mine wrapped around a tree." Thank god, it's expensive! "But it just stopped working as I was passing by Downtown after that explosion. You're lucky that you don't own a car, Clayton. It seems like a bad time for vehicles in Gray Harbor."

At Lilith's insistence that she get out of this place, Byron reaches out, placing a hand on her arm as if to still her. "Are you sure? I mean," he looks around the room, his gaze darting out the door for any sort of nurse, "Have you been cleared already? Because if not, then you're not going anywhere."

"Both. I've had pipes blow. I've had my hot water go out midshower. I've fallen down and up the loft stairs. I've had bank fraud, credit card fraud, a car wreck where I almost killed a dog and hit another car. It was backed into before that. I've hit my head I don't know how many times, I've had a bag stolen, I've dropped things cooking, I've burnt myself." Then Lilith realizes that Alexander is willingly reaching to touch her hand without task and that makes her lips twitch a little bit. She's picked up that he's not big on touch outside of utility. She looks up and gives him a bit of a smile that's absolutely genuine through all the small and miserable and battering. She's been doing this coping thing without the simple things like touch or comfort for days. But then he goes mentioning a 'minder' and her brows knit down some.

The need to get out comes over whatever weird wiggle of pride flare that was, though. Instead of arguing or addressing that, Lilith takes a breath as if to go on because there's more than thirty-seven of these kinds of things, but she doesn't get much further. The brunette widens her eyes suddenly. Something just made her go oh-shit inside. She looks at Byron's hand on her arm and there's very thick pause before she turns her head to look at the door, "No breaks. Concussive observation period should be up soon, if not already."

"That is one of the reasons why I walk," Alexander tells Byron with a roll of his shoulders. "Cars are too expensive to be getting lost with. Assuming it didn't try to kill me at some point. It probably would." It's not even angry or bitter, just resigned. He smiles back at Lilith, although doesn't hide his wince at the list of misfortunes. "Thorne, that's not good. She could receive the wrong medication or wrong combination of medication and treatment, her medical chart could have something she's allergic to accidentally added, hospital-acquired infections," a wave of his hand to indicate 'on and on'.

"Is there anyone you can trust, Miss Winslow, to be with you? One of the only ways I know to not get lost is to get someone who isn't /aware/ to stay up and watch over you. The lost places protect themselves. Maybe this does, too. Maybe if someone is there to watch over you, it won't happen as often." He sighs. "It's a hypothesis, at least."

Listening to Alexander prattle on about the various ways that being in this hospital could endanger Lilith's life, Byron can't really argue against any of it. With his hand still on Lilith's arm, in his attempt to keep her settled back in her bed, he's watching her with these hardened eyes. It's that intense look that he sometimes gets when he's thinking and he's weighing out the pros and cons. Not liking what he's about to say, but he seems satisfied after Lilith informs him that there's nothing majorly wrong with her and that there's no machines needed to keep her alive, Byron relents, "You're probably right. We need to get Lilith to a safe and secure place. That done, we should also be looking up how to undo this curse." The hand eventually drops and he whips out his phone. "I'd offer my guest room, but I'm at the top floor of my building. The last thing we want her to do is to accidentally fall off the penthouse terrace."

He starts typing out a message, "There's always Tobin's..?" His eyes lift to peer out at her now. That was the place that the kids in the neighborhood felt safe in.

"The cop. The one that strong-manned me out for EMTs before the car blew... he's not from here. I feel like he might not be aware, despite being clued in enough to accept that this place is strange sometimes. He asked me out, kind of. I could make some excuse about feeling unsafe... get checked on a lot, or..." Lilith mentions this to Alexander when he talks about someone who isn't aware being a sort of maybe-counter-preventative, then slants a glance toward Byron and all that hard, intense thinking. She still hasn't went for him with touch or lean or hug of relief or soak up of comfort and familiar where she can get it. Maybe she thinks she's contagious. Or she's too bruised. Or other things. But it's kind of strange at such an extent when she's so out of sorts. Usually that makes him a damn magnet.

Her eyes are slanting right back away when Byron is giving the reasons for his place though. "Tobin's... I feel like I'll taint it, somehow. But it's.." She sighs, "I should just..." She's probably about to say 'go home' but with another glance at the door that's paranoid, she stops. She might have more than one reason for wanting out of the hospital where someone might be so easily directed to her room with records of her admit, "Yeah. Maybe for a bit, anyway. And we'll look in the ways we can figure out to look."

"Feeling safe might help. I don't know what this item did to you, but traditional methods of sympathetic magic which include a mythology of 'curses' usually involve ritual and pomp designed to make the target FEEL cursed - and then the target usually does more than half the work themselves, mired in fear, anxiety, and self-destruction." Alexander says it like he's reading off of a mental book somewhere. There's a nod to Byron, clearly approving of the choice of Tobin. And another to Lilith, approving of the choice to agree. With that, he says, "I should go. If I can help further, let me know."

He starts to step back and turn away, before he hesitates. He pivots back to the bed, and leans down to whisper something into her ear if she lets him. Then he straightens, and leaves. No goodbyes, as usual.

There's this quirk of a brow on hearing that a random cop asked Lilith out after he'd taken her crumpled form from out of an exploding vehicle. "He asked you out? Here in the hospital?" There's this small grin on Byron's lips, his posture straightening as he sends his latest text, "How professional. But could definitely come in hand." He then informs the group, "I asked Isabella if she knew anything about cursed items. That's the great thing about having an archeologist as a friend."

He then watches this silent exchange between Alexander and Lilith before Alexander does what he does best. Departs.

As curious as he is, Byron won't ask. He was often that way, in the hopes of not looking nosy. "If you don't want to... taint Tobin's place." A pause, "You don't have it on you." The ring, "It's one of the safest places we know." Yet, it did nothing to save Mrs. G. On further thought, he then says, "I'll take you back to my place. Keep the door to the terrace locked." He then has to admit, "That said, it seems like neither of us have a car, so wherever we decide to go, I'll call a cab."

"No. I'm not going to your place. And you know exactly why. Because it's not about the terrace. This is just... stupid. I'm going home. I don't need a babysitter." Lilith doesn't look grinny or blushy or amused prior to telling Byron that, her jaw a bit set and twitching after Alexander's quiet parting words. Whatever he whispered, he may not have meant to upset, but he did, especially with that decisive bit from Byron chasing the tail end, "I'll call Harper and Geoff tomorrow." Then she flips the covers back from her legs and reaches with hissing lean for the phone to try and jab extension for the nurse, "I've lived through the past few days and I'll live through the next few days and I'll handle whatever or whoever wants to show up."

When Lilith refuses his offer for her to stay with him, Byron just blinks before asking, "Why? Aside from the fact that the elevator could break down, that is?" Even when he asks this, he has other reasons on why the Apartments would not be the best idea, so he doesn't push it too hard.

When he sees her reaching for the phone, he hands it to her, so that she doesn't need to strain herself unnecessarily. "If you want to go home, I'll stay the night to help watch over you. I don't know about this Minder business, but you have friends who are willing to help." That's when he looks at her sharply, his brow furrowed deeply. "Lilith. Let us help you. We might not know how, but we'll do all we can to try." He has more to say. More he'd like to say, but now may not be a good time to remind her of that.

"Just stop that. Seriously, Byron? I give you the most shameful piece of where I've been the past ten years and you can't even work it into natural conversation that you've had a girlfriend all this time. Oh, and how you -do- let me go on." Her leg is wrapped at the thigh. Her ankle is wrapped at the other side. She still looks awful, but there's color there now through that fatigue, that oh-so-familiar old temper flush once her eventual fuse goes. if Byron wanted to bring in things to get a rise out of her, well. Turns out he doesn't need props.

The woman puts one shaking hand through her hair in raking sweep out of her face while her other hand takes the phone to gesture at him, "You see me just enough woman to let me act like a fool because it feels good on your ego. And you know, I might have that coming. I'll let you get away with a lot of things. I'll even let you get away with believing we were just kids and that what I did doesn't still bite you. It should. It eats me. You don't get to pick and choose the times you see me as a woman and all the other times you look at me as a child. So if you're coming home with me, don't you dare call me kiddo."

Lilith is set off. But she's not pushing him away. She can't. And she's too tired to hold all that comes with that outburst and deflates afterwards, "Grant might be coming. It's part of why I wrecked."

"It's not what you think." Byron states flatly when Lilith brings up his girlfriend. "Not entirely anyway. We hadn't seen each other in months. At some point we're on. At some point we're off." He's talking about Vivian, "That's the kind of relationship we have. And I didn't know I had to bring that up with you. I've been in several relationships in the past if you must know that too." He's keeping his voice low, so as not to draw too much attention from Hank or anyone else. "And what do you mean by let you go on?"

Then she brings up the time that she'd left, something which was on his mind as well. There's this sobering look that he gives her, his eyes lifting to peer out at her. "I never said that what you did didn't hurt. It was a shock to see you here again. Brought back a lot of memories. Good and bad." He moves to rise, standing beside her bed now, feeling this bit of restlessness on his part. "Of course, it still hurt. That was something that we'd never get back. But you had your reasons. And like I said, though I don't think I would've done the same in your shoes, I'm a selfish asshole, as you already know, and I would've done things differently. That doesn't mean you were wrong, however."

There's that Byron faint smile that creeps upon his lips, "Some things never change." He's talking about himself, "I always felt this need to pretend that everything was fine. That everything was alright. Even after you'd left. I'm sure Tobin knew, but I tried not to let on too much."

Extending an arm out to drape one of her arms across his shoulder, to help Lilith stand, the overly serious tone slowly fading from his tone, "I... think I understand where you're coming from. I just can't help but look on you and see /that/ girl. But after everything that you've been through," And what he'd witnessed through the cord she'd given, "you deserve to be treated like an adult. My apologies."

With them being this close, she can feel the muscles in his body clench at the very mention of Grant. "I was going to ask about that, when you mentioned your phone. If he's coming, then we'll be ready for him." Along with anything else that this ring tries to throw at them. "Let's get you home. We can talk there."

"It's not that you have... it felt like I didn't even know you right when I realized what slipped, even though you still knew how to hold me. That you were giving me exactly what you -wanted- me to see, to suit. Because that's what you do. You separate. I felt way over here. And your actual life? It was way over there. Due feeling, I suppose." Lilith really doesn't want to go into the span of time, the times she flirted in text conversations, the cuddles, the naked, all the things that are so easy to read one way when you're lacking a whole lot of context. Especially when the adult versions of themselves are colored in her own eyes by the way they were a little piece of everything to each other, once, kids or not. They didn't have safe homes or money comforts. They didn't have love and nurture. They soaked that up where they could grab it from Tobin's mother. Lilith had no structure or constancy, she had so much neglect from such a tiny age, and he had so much violence and ambivalence.

"No. I was stupid." Reasons. Reasons can kiss her fucking ass at this point. Lilith had reasons for touching the gem too. She was so young and she killed all the roads that led somewhere good with fire. Lilith didn't know she'd be paying for it for so many years of her life.

Sighing, she remembers she's holding the phone and just leaves it to drop with aid rising. She was heated there before, but wasn't quite making loud, words more of a serious hiss. Something in his touch rouses her despite anything she feels or thinks or harbors. Some things just are. So she complies, "He might be trying to screw with me and bad luck said it would be at that moment. He might be about to show up and see me. Hell, he might be trying to pay off Felix, which would just -figure- about now." A pause, the blue of her shadowed eyes finally settling on Byron's own dark ones, admitting with softness, "I'm glad the flowers haven't died yet."

All that stress and temper and somehow those blooms are fine even without roots. She doesn't know it, but deep down, those plants were always going to be fine. They were Byron's flowers. She has wilted the things he gave to her enough in this life, "Take me anywhere but here."

Lilith used to ask that a lot.

"We've both changed. We've grown up." Byron will say words that he's spoken before. "But we've been molded by our experienced, our relationships from our past. And sometimes the past is difficult to let go of. I used to think that what we've all been through? Everything? All the setbacks and frustrations. All of it made us stronger in the end." By now, he's easing Lilith up, allowing her to lean against him so that she doesn't have to put too much weight on her bandaged legs. "Now that I think back on it. I was wrong. Or... maybe it does make us stronger, in a sense, but it leaves us scarred and broken as well."

A couple of days ago, Byron's phone was exploding with calls regarding the attack at the Apartments. So far, his phone has been quiet. What two days can do.

Reaching to scoop up the flowers, he wasn't leaving them for Hank, and the stuffed dog, it's the latter that he pushes into Lilith to home, "You wanted a pet. I got you a dog. It's a start." He'll leave the balloon for the nurses to deal with. "If you'd asked me that tomorrow after I'd picked my car up from the shop, I'd take you to the boardwalk. The beach. That's where we used to go." He remembers.

"It does. It really does. You don't get one without the other, I think. Better than being blissful idiots." Lilith dryly quips to Byron with that last bit after listening to him, then goes to dress with aid out of the gown and into the poor state of denim cut offs and black and white floral tank stained with blood spots and tears and cuts. Better than nothing. She twitches a smile as he grabs the flowers when she's finished hobbling around to do that with aid, leaning heavily on him prior to that despite the things she said and the touch distance before. Then she can't help it, she downright huffs out a laugh at the dog bit and decides by the very spark that briefly lights her eyes when she looks at it that it's coming too, kidgift or no.

"When we figure out how to have an actual normal day, we'll go." Lilith decides, picking up a card from the table to consider, "So. In the event something's waiting for us... it's better to get a ride from a cop, right? He probably won't charge me or say no."

With the flowers pressed against him by an arm at his side, Byron is fishing into his pocket for his phone in order to call a cab when Lilith offers up an alternative. "...a ride from a cop? I mean, I can understand a police escort, but even I thought Isabella's suggestion that we have you placed under protective custody was a bit extreme." His eyes that were looking on her now lift to face forward, "Then I remembered that it's not just the curse or the accidents, that there's someone searching for the damn thing." Then there was Grant, but he won't bring that up. "You know, only you can get away with pulling something like this because you're a pretty girl. But it still feels like an awkward situation if you ask me." And he's ridden in cop cars before as a kid. Maybe that's where the hesitance comes from. He, however, won't stop her.

When Lilith gets on the phone, Byron might understand more of what she's thinking when she proposes calling a cop for a ride from the hospital, noting, "Aw. That's the first time you've called me pretty as an adult. I was starting to wonder if I aged funny." She knows better. She's ribbing. And hell, maybe she was wondering irrationally.

The phone picks up at the other end.

"Hi, this is Lilith Winslow. Michael?"

The other end of the line picks up relatively promptly, "Hello," a pause, "Oh, hey there Lilith, how are you feeling? Feeling better?"

"Not really. Very unsurprising. But I'm being discharged. I don't have a car. My visitor took a car here. And we could call a cab, but listen..." Lillith pauses and looks at Byron like this is paining her to admit to someone in the right capability, or hell, anyone, "I had a somewhat threatening text before the crash. And I don't know what's at my shop or loft waiting for us. And I'd like to know how restraining orders work. Are you terribly busy?"

Byron just expected Lilith to try and bum a ride from a cop, but when she brings up this restraining order for a threat, there's no quirk of his brow. He doesn't say anything and merely stands by, listening.

On the other end of the phone, the sound of dishes can be heard rattling around. "Well, if you need help getting a restraining order going, I can definitely help you with that, I'm going on duty in an hour and we can sit down and square that away tout suite. Are you asking for a ride to the station?" Michael asks, seeing as she'd mentioned the business of not having a car sort of intermixed with the rest of it.

This is Lilith taking no chances because Byron might find her calling a cop to handle any damn situation just a little bit weird. Also a restraining order? How adult. Probably more likely to piss a certain entitled someone off, but she really is curious, "Actually, I want to go home, I live in an apartment above the pawn shop. I don't want to file yet. I'd like to get a feel for how they work first to know if it's the right thing to do. And given the timing of the text and how everything else is going wrong..." Lilith shifts the phone after a sigh into it, "I want to feel safe when I get home."

Look. Byron knows Lilith can rip a man apart and she knows the things he can do too, but that doesn't mean that they want a dead body to deal with either if they're threatened and the way things -are- right now?

Byron can't help but blink when she takes this route. That's when he says in this stage whisper voice, "Let him take you to the station first. Ask questions about the procedure, what to expect. /Then/ from there, let him know that you need a ride home." It's not like he's done this before, himself!

"A restraining order is always the smart thing to do with people in the situation you're describing, Lilith. Don't wait for them to escalate. That you feel like you need me to check out your place means you're feeling threatened, and that's enough," Mike is explaining, the sound of dishes still audible in the background. She hadn't said she needed a ride, despite that he'd asked, so he doesn't press the issue again.

Lilith considers Byron's advice with a screw of her little battered face, because c'mon, this isn't Los Angeles, it's a short ride and a security check for everyone's peace of mind. Okay, she also doesn't want to sit in an office or desk chair. Or fill out forms. And she can't tell if Michael is being obtuse. Suddenly, though, she laughs into the phone, "I'm bad at asking for help. It hurts like everything else on me." A pause, "I'm starting over. Michael. Can you give me and my visiting company a ride to my shop and have a look inside the apartment with us? On the way, I'd like to discuss how restraining orders work."

"I see. Sure, where are you now?" Michael asks.

Lilith exhales a tiny noise of gratitude, "The hospital. I've dressed. All I have to do is sign discharge and come down to the lobby to wait."

"I'll be there in five minutes, red car," Michael mentions and then waits a moment for her to say anything else she needs to say before he says goodbye and hangs up in a polite manner.