Powerless

The rhythmic chirping of the heart monitor in the next room stirred Nemo's from his peaceful slumber. He awoke slowly, deeply confused - yet familiar with the experience of rejoining the land of the living in an entirely different setting than that which he'd last found himself. He turned his head, groaning as his stiff neck creaked as a result of the movement, and he began to examine in great detail his surroundings.

"Aladdin..." he groaned with a roll of his eyes. "You sentimental man," he added as an afterthought as he recalled with vivid clarity the previous evening. He scrubbed mercilessly at his eyes in an attempt to wipe the sleep from them, for it continued to cloud his vision. He had slept for far longer than he had intended - had he at all intended to sleep in the first place.

Cue: Jake Collins & A Healer x1

After what happened fifteen hours prior he wasn't sure how he should feel. He was glad that he had kept Nemo from throwing himself off the roof of the Ministry building, but it saddened him to see the man that way he was now, on the hospital bed in St. Mungos. It was sad, really, as much as he thought about it, it was all sad in the end. This had all started with his attempt to take his life away, so it didn't matter if he felt happy for saving the man from that fate, because it was sad that he did it in the first place and he knew he would try to do it again.

He rubbed his eyes quickly, before looking toward an awakening Nemo and he sighed in relief. He smiled sadly as Nemo began to speak and he looked down at the floor in front of him. "I couldn't let you do it." he said in response. Everything that had happened was so vivid in his mind, he could even still feel the rain on him as he tried to keep the man before him from throwing himself off. He frowned slightly, not really wanting to remember Nemo's form on the roof after he had knocked him out. He had looked pretty much dead, as he had wanted to be. But better that he looked that way rather than have it be for real.

ooc: i'm going on the assumption that khaat and nemo's current thread might continue a bit

So this was what Omara looked like when all the extra energy wore off. The other side of the proverbial coin. She repressed a need to go in and lash out at him in rage. Who the heck did he think he was? Did he honestly think that he was the only one that wanted to go home? Did he think he had the corner market on some awareness of that "something more" that always seemed just out of reach in this lifetime?

She was reading his chart in the nurses station a bit down the hall from his room. Her father had come upstairs to try a potion on a patient who had been a willing volunteer for anything he might come up with to get rid of that nasty green itch. Her father had the file he needed in his hands and then she felt his eyes on her.

"You want me to take him for you?" her father asked.

"No," she said in quiet anger.

"Reel it in, Girl," he told her. She looked at him. He knew. Well, of course he did. It was old ground, and it basically gave him a home field advantage into understanding the workings of her mind. He laid his hand on her shoulder. "It does no good here, and you know it." She nodded. She sighed heavily. It wasn't necessarily bad for him to want to escape all of this. What she did disagree with was his trying to do it. He was an auror. He was supposed to have something worth fighting for in his life. She closed the chart and laid it aside. And when she did she laid aside her emotions with it in exchange for the clinical professionalism that approaching Omara required. She blocked herself away from herself. "Professional distancing" at its best.

"Better," her father saw the shift in attitude."Now," he said. "Don't let your guard down." She nodded. She got up and went in. Mortimer had a friend in the room with him. Someone she didn't know. She went over to her patient and laid her hand on his forehead to check him. "Hello, Mortimer," she said quietly and calmly she worked.

OOC: Of course. =) Go wild.

“Not that: of course you couldn’t let me jump,” Nemo addressed Collins after he’d made his presence in the room known. He gestured nonchalantly with his hand, as though sweeping the idea that Collins could have allowed him to commit suicide from the realm of possibility. “Everyone always feels so responsible for keeping me alive,” he groaned once more, making it quite evident that the circumstances of which he spoke had begun to bore him. “But bringing me here? Somebody loves me,” Nemo added with a teasing smirk as his eyes met with those of his companion’s for the first occasion since their time spent atop the Ministry building.

“Alive or not, I’m getting the f-ck out of here,” Nemo sighed with an exaggerated expression of relief at his mention of freeing himself from the stuffy confines of St. Mungo’s psychiatric ward. He began to wriggle out of the sheets that tightly bound him to his bed, only to find that his right wrist had been cuffed to the bed’s rail. He’d parted his lips as a result of his surprise, and had prepared to let loose a flurry of curse words when Khaat stepped past the threshold. An arrival to which Nemo promptly respond with a shout that accentuated his offense to the extent of making it sound comical, “You cuffed me to the bed!? What is this, porn?!”

His head then snapped in Collins’ direction once more, a look of realization upon Nemo’s face, “And you shot me!” He collapsed on his back in the bed that he had been assigned once more, looking defeated as the sound of the enchanted chain clanked against the metal of the bed noisily.

Khaat looked at the magical bindings. "Hm," she sighed. "Not my work, I'm afraid. I just now caught up with you." She wasn't going to necessarily tell him that she knew her husband's work at first glance. Brian's binding spell usually had a telltale slight blue shimmer to it. She didn't know why. Her's didn't have that. Her's tended to be white. This was not her work.

"If he shot you, Mort, my guess is that you probably deserved it right at that moment," she shrugged. "And if you really were intent on some sort of 'homecoming,' then I might have shot you myself if I'd been there. Its not your turn to go home yet." She looked back at the visitor. "Nice work, by the way." Then she redirected herself to Mort.

"You don't get it yet, do you?" she looked at him. She understood that heartache that homesickness could cause. She understood it all too well. That heartache had damned near killed her once upon a time. And the last thing he needed, no matter how might have thought he wanted it right now, was someone to feel sorry for him. "Life is not optional. You're here for a mission. A purpose. You don't get a homecoming until you've completed whatever you're here to do. Until that time, you just get more pain-in-the-butt people like me, like it or not."

Whether Mort knew it or not, Khaat had amazing potential to stand with him through this, and, if he allowed her to, she was able to be his friend. Perhaps. But she refused to rsvp to his pity party. The problem was that as much as it didn't look like she gave a rat's behind, she cared. She cared very much. Perhaps too much.

"Well I had too!" Jake exclaimed. "You weren't leaving me much of a choice. That's the only way I had of keeping you alive." he sighed softly. His eyes focused on his cuffed hand and he couldn't help but smile. At least he knew he wasn't going anywhere for a while, not until he was uncuffed, which he actually hoped wasn't for a while. That sounded mean, he knew that, but it was better to have him here than trying to kill himself elsewhere. He nodded in Khaat's direction when she addressed him and his gaze fell to the floor shortly aftetwards.

Jake wasn't sure if Nemo would ever understand that killing himself wasn't the right way to escape. There would always be hard times, where killing yourself seemed like the only thing you can do, but it was never the answer. He brought up his gaze as she spoke and found himself nodding at her words. He understood what she was saying, it was something that was very true. Something that he believed everyone needed to know because then they wouldn't give up on life as easily as some people did.

“My purpose last night was to die!” Nemo corrected Khaat, growing increasingly frustrated. Nemo did not frequently respond with such impatiens under any circumstances, but his every nerve had been set alight by the knowledge that he was still alive, for not a word had been uttered from the likes of his foresight, despite the truth that such attempts had returned to him his sight on all previous occasions.

“Oh, shut up Barbie. There is no need for hypocrisy,” he interrupted her curtly, before making another futile attempt to stack his arms stubbornly across his torso – only to be prevented from doing so by the enchantment by which he’d been bound. His lips contorted immediately into a childish pout; an expression which he was entirely unaware had splayed itself across his face.

He was silent for the briefest of moments, before speaking up once more, almost hesitantly, “Why… am I cuffed to the bed?” He inquired, refusing to meet the eyes of the tag team by whom he unrealistically had begun to believe he may very well be trapped, cuffed to the bed forevermore.

"You're cuffed to the bed for three reasons. First, you're not in the psych ward--by my choice. Second, I don't want you trying to off yourself again. And third, its protocol for those people who try to hurt themselves or others if they're not admitted to the psych unit," she said. Then she glared hard at him. "And if you think I was being hypocritical, then you really do not know me whatsoever." She had expected him to be ticky. That was typical. "I don't know if you're accustomed to driving people away with your temper, but it doesn't work on me. You might be able to burn through other friends, but if you're ditching me, you really do have to work a lot harder than that."

She laid her hand on her forehead. She was sorely tempted too cast a "happy" spell on him just because she could but she figured he was probably already onto her and might not appreciate it. "Much as you might not like it, you do appear to be in one relative piece," she told him. "So I guess you're stuck here in my accomodations until I decide otherwise. That's alright by me. I rather like having your smiling face to brighten my day."

An exasperated sigh tore its way free from Nemo’s chest, which had begun to burn with his increasing temperature. “Well, at least I’m not in the psych ward, right? Besides, I would much rather be held hostage,” he growled, having accentuated his accusation to ensure that it had not gone unheard. Perhaps they would awake from their stupor at his words, thus coming to the realization that he did not require saving – or rather, that he did not appreciate having been saved. However, his hopes were beginning to appear utterly futile as he returned his gaze to Khaat’s face, and was met with a cold professionalism with which he was entirely unfamiliar.

He violently jerked his arm away from the bed rail – only to hiss when the flesh of his wrist was introduced to the cuff’s electrifying bite. Try as he might to keep his frustration from boiling to the surface, Nemo was infuriated by her suggestion: that he may have been inaccurate in his reading of the woman, or that he may be incapable of doing so again. ‘Twas foolish, to jump to such conclusions with no more evidence in hand than a single sentence, but Nemo hadn’t grown to be a particularly logical man. Another jerk of his arm against the rail; his underlying, violent nature was revealing itself. “Oh?” he gritted out, “How’s Remus, Barbie? Tell him I said ‘Hello’ won’t you?”

An uncharacteristic bark of laughter – a response that had been forced, no doubt – resounded throughout the small hospital room, shortly following Khaat’s mention of his ‘smiling face’. “I’d be a hell of a lot more cheerful if you would let” – pause – “me” – pause “go.” He was glaring, and appeared quite unlike the man whose antics many had grown accustomed.

Remus? He dared to bring that little slice out of what he'd read in her? What else did he know? Bah. He could have it all. If he had Remus and the fact that she did now sometimes see him in her dreams when life was at its worst, then he had most of what she wanted to keep to herself anyway. She felt herself becoming defensive. Protective. And she had learned from Barker how to show less and less the more that she felt encroached upon.

She became as stonefaced and cold as she knew her own father could be when he was pressed. Now she suddenly understood her father's tactic in a way she hadn't before. The sensation of it reminded her of the sound the Hogwarts castle gate made when Dumbledore had, on rare occasion, shut it. That soul shaking deep foreboding clang that rang out throughout not just the castle but throughout the grounds as well. She felt like that was the sound a part of her had just made. Bang. Closed.

He was angry and she knew it. He was looking to strike back, and he had. She had hoped she was perhaps going to develop a friend, but he was already using pieces of her heart that she had not surrendered to him and using it as a weapon against her to hurt her. And it had hurt. That was not a friend. It quickly put her in check.

"If you prefer a purely professional relationship," she said icily, "I can do that. Let me put this then, in purely professional terms. You'd might as well get used to my interferance and to being here as long as it takes. If you prefer a room in the psych ward, then I will be happy to comply. It doesn't matter what I think or feel on a personal level. The bottom line is that as a healer I am bound by a few certain ethical codes. And that does call for the preservation of life. So, as I see it I can offer you two choices. This room, or the psych ward. And that's about all the choice you get for now."

Oh, and that reminded her. She was obligated now to notify Marcus Dakota. Nemo Omara was surely not showing signs that he was capable of making the life and death calls that an auror needed to make if he could not control even whether or not he harmed himself. A medical leave was surely in order.