I want to be a sleeping cat.

[evilbeej]

-Vesper-
She's gotta be six feet tall. More than that at the moment; her hair's not helping make her any shorter. Vesper's obscenely long black hair is piled on her head in a sleekly complicated braid-thing, pinned up and stuck through with what looks like a fancy knitting needle and a mechanical pencil. Apparently she lost one. The deep blue and brilliant green locks she religiously keeps dyed sweep back from her temples into the architecture her hair has become, and a few recalcitrant wisps stray down the back of her neck. This is neat because the rarely-seen tattoo at the nape of her neck is now visible: a combination chaostar/Mod target. Her green eyes are outlined rather dramatically, behind silver wire-rim glasses, in kohl; the lip gloss she's wearing is a dark wine color - it and the eyeliner are both in sharp contrast to the basementlike paleness of her skin.
The young woman's wearing a cropped black tank top with 'ADAM ANT' (D and N backwards, naturally) printed on it in red, fitting flatteringly tightly around health-conscious but not necessarily athletic curves; o! shocking, her belly and the piercing she's got there, as well as a good lot of her lower back and the Stratocaster-playing Kokopelli tattoo *there*, they're exposed; she's unabashedly wearing a pair of vintage embroidered bellbottoms and rather blocky-looking girly sneakers. Vans, they say on the sides. Her arms are burn-scarred from fingertips up past her elbows.

-Jerry-
Jerry is a middle-aged man just coming off the peak of his top physical shape; a little bit of belly shows where there was only muscle a few years ago. Regardless, he's still got a lot of strength under a bit of flab. His arms are well defined through the thin slate blue sweater he usually wears (if you can see it under the black leather jacket), and although his scuffed jeans hide his legs, it can be assumed that they're in similar shape.
Despite his muscle, Jerry has an incredibly gentle looking face, prone more to wide-eyed awe than anger. Short but unkempt brown hair is often slicked back either with sweat, water, or gel, depending on the situation. Blue eyes sit in a rough, but handsome face, complete with a fairly regular sort of mouth and nose. He's pretty average, really, and unless he's making a scene, you wouldn't look twice if you passed him on the street. Unfortunately, he's often making a scene.
He walks stiffly and often winces, as though he's trying to function around an injury that's causing him pain.

---

It's been a long, trying day... or a short one, depending on your point of view. Jerry has been conscious for relatively little of it, which is probably for the best. He's been left alone with the exception of a brief (and possibly less productive than imagined) discussion with Tracey. Although she managed to convince him that no one is actively trying to hurt him, he remains certain that the only reason he isn't in restraints or locked up is because there are safeguards to keep an eye on him that he can't see. So, when they brought him his lunch... suffice it to say that the woman who took the tray didn't notice the missing butter knife. Now, his room is dark, the lights are off, and Jerry has memorized the roster of nurses that look in on him every hour or so, give or take five minutes. He's got plenty of time to do what he needs to. Or so he thinks.

For the last twenty minutes, a painfully determined Jerry has been hunched with the dull knife in the furthest, darkest corner of the room, still wearing his hospital gown. And he's searching desperately for the homing device that he's utterly convinced is somewhere under his skin. Yes. With the knife.

There's mixed singing and humming coming up the corridor outside - someone who can't remember all the words, apparently. A somewhat familiar voice, doing her best (which isn't actually all that bad) to reproduce 'Pulling Mussels from the Shell' by Squeeze. She's got the chorus down pat. Approaching, approaching, not passing. Knocking. "...you wish you had a motorboat to cruise around the harbor bar..."

Holy jumping Jesus on a pogo stick. There wasn't supposed to be anyone coming for-- for... Jerry checks his internal clock, which confirms that this is too soon for a nurse to poke her head in. And the nurses never knocked! He stands quickly and puts his arms behind his back, pressing back against the wall. He's too startled to tell whoever it is to go away, so he just stands there, hoping they don't turn on the light. Because they'll be a rather nasty sight if they do.

There are small cuts here and there along the shin of his bare legs. Although they aren't visible right now, there are similar incisions on his inner arms, hips, biceps. There's a tiny bit of blood dribbling down both sides of his neck from behind his ears. He's probably worked his scalp over, too. The freshest, a half-inch long cut near his right knee, is bleeding steadily down his leg, winding odd paths through the hair. Jerry flinches. "Uh... hi."

It's lucky that Vesper's courtesy only extends to the formalities - or possibly not so lucky, because goddamn but Jerry needs a shrink. And she doesn't immediately turn on the lights upon opening the door, because she's a computer monkey. Turning on the lights in an occupied room that has the lights off is a crime punishable by enforced caffeine deprivation. But the light from the hallway is enough to let her see dark trickles, and dark trickles are enough to spook her into turning on the lights. "Trou de cul de viarge!" she practically squeaks, flipping the switch, eyes wide. "Jerry! Who /did/ that to you! Are you okay? My *God*!" Three quick steps forward, scarred hand out, and then she hesitates, spotting the 'I'm not here' body language.

Oh, god, um. How do I explain this... Jerry looks down as though seeing himself through someone else's eyes, and imediately raises his hands. The knife clatters to the floor and he flinches again. Oops. Well... that answers the question of who did it. "Uh..." he says, hedging, "It's, uh, not what it looks like..." No, no. It isn't. ....Is it? "I just.... I was looking for..." Jerry coughs, and rubs his forearm nervously, watching Vesper out of the corner of his eye. There's recognition there, and he suddenly wildly changes the topic. Let's talk about something else! There's nothing wrong here! "They took your j-jacket. To clean it. I, ah... Um. Thank you."

Bright green eyes still wide behind silver wire spectacles, Vesper's just standing there, looking at the knife on the floor. Then she remembers she's still holding her hands out, and looks like she doesn't quite know what to do with them for a second. Eventually she ends up folding them loosely, distractedly looking at Jerry again. "No problem. I didn't want you catching your death, you were already soaked. Jacket good, but I came by to see how you were doing..." There's a pause; her shoulders are slightly hunched, she looks sort of turned-in. But really worried. "Heh, ah. This place that bad, then?"

He has the grace to look embarrassed. "Ahh... no, no," he says, shaking his head stiffly and looking worried. "No, they've... actually been p-pretty nice, considering..." Jerry's eyes dart around the room, only settling on Vesper briefly every few seconds. He reaches up and wipes a bit of blood off his neck and ends up making a worse mess... and when he clumsily wipes his hand off on the front of his hospital gown, he resembles nothing so much as a young boy who's been caught playing in a mud puddle. He swallows. "I really... I really did have a reason." I can't tell you, though, in case you're one of them.

Well, here's where that whole frankness thing comes in again. Vesper reaches one hand up to scratch her nose, looking dubious. "And since you were all, 'This isn't what it looks like', you're telling me the reason wasn't studied self-mutilation or an astonishingly sloppy suicide attempt?" She's still standing uncertainly in the same place, giving off the impression of being a very young girl who just happens to be better than six feet tall at the moment.

Jerry blinks. "Suicide?" He looks down at the knife. "With a butter knife? No. No, no... not mutilation, either. Just because I'm a New Yorker doesn't mean I'm... into that s-sort of thing." Ha ha! Look, humour! ...Almost. Jerry shifts uncomfortably. Well, it looks like the gig is up anyway, considering Vesper can report this as easily whether or not he explains himself to her. And this is an awkward situation. He coughs, then lets his arms drop to his side. His voice lowers. "There... they've put a-- a homing device somewhere under my skin." He eyes her. "The most common places are behind the ears, in the forearms, and at the base of the neck..." He gestures, pointing the locations out. "But there've been documented cases of hip insertions. ...I checked my... ah... legs, just to be sure. I haven't found it." Jerry's brow furrows. "Yet."

The girl blinks. There's a half-grin on her face for a moment at the New York crack, and then her eyes widen again and she frowns. "Do you have any metal plates or artificial joints or a pacemaker or anything? Because - well, the last one, right, I don't know if an electromagnet would fuck it up. The other two, it would just make you go 'aaah!' because you'd think that's where the homing device was even if you already knew you had that stuff. Because there's a much easier way to check for a subcutaneous homing device than digging around with a blunt knife. And if there /is/ one and it's /not/ got a metal casing, or whatever, than an electromagnet would at least fuck it up spectacularly. And still no sticking yourself with a *blunt knife*. Because ow." As she speaks, she looks at the floor between the two of them, preoccupied, one arm still across her stomach and the other making vague illustrative gestures; at the last, she looks up again, eyes serious and vivid. It's impossible to tell whether or not she believes him.

"I didn't have one," Jerry says miserably. And he couldn't ask for one, because he didn't want to tell anyone what he was doing, but now he has, and she's right. And then Jerry pauses, because for once-- for once in recent and not-so-recent memory-- he's told someone something like this and didn't get a "...What are you, some kind of lunatic? Get away from me!" response. He stares at her openly. He didn't detect any mockery in her tone. Nothing but... seriousness. Which can only mean one of two things: Jerry's found a kindred spirit... or Jerry's found his arch enemy. He goes very, very quiet and watches her from across the room, his eyes betraying inner conflict. He's desperate for someone to be able to share his fears with. He's desperate for that person to be Alice, but she isn't here-- possibly will never be here-- and he's alone, and frightened. Eventually, Jerry clears his throat. "...It was 'ow'," he comfirms softly. Please don't dissect me while I sleep tonight.

"No shit, Sherlock," mutters Vesper, reaching up to rub her temples. "A homing - okay, I don't know why they would, but what the fuck, yeh? I'm still pretty new in this town and I never know what's going on anyway." Thinking out loud. "I can bring in an electromagnet if you want me to, or you can wait until you heal up from the battering you took before you got here and from the - gah, I can't believe you cut yourself looking for it *here*. If here's the place that worries the shit out of you, eh? If there's a homing device under your skin, then presumably, right, they'd notice you took it out and put it back? It only makes sense, then, to wait until you've left to look for it, I think. But I can bring in the EM anyway, because then you can at least *know*. Except, possibly, if it's not in a metal casing and the field fucks it up, then they'd know that too. But you *can leave*. There's a free clinic downtown that's not affiliated with this place, and if you're gonna be worrying about this place then that place is good to know about. I mean, I was - when I came in today, I was going to tell you that whenever you feel up to it, I can bring you to the library. That means you can /leave/, if she was agreeing that you could go research what she was telling you..." Wow she can run off at the mouth. And throughout this speech, she was curling a loose lock of hair around her finger - little worried motions.

Jerry doesn't seem bothered by her ranting. In fact, he seems to brighten up for some reason. Either the amount of serious thought she's given to this impresses him, or he just feels the need to explain himself. "No, no... no, you see, that's the thing, I know, I can leave, they say "you can leave" and you say "you can leave", and there's only a few logical explanations for that! Either they're so... powerful that they know they could grab me back so they don't need to show outward force-- I mean, initially the whole 'no restraints' thing through me, I'll admit, but the only other explanation is that they don't /care/ if I leave because they have the means of finding me again anyway. And while I'm here, it wouldn't be activated-- they're so vehement about me not leaving that it only makes sense that the thing has some sort of risk involved when its activated, and they don't want to worry about contamination if they don't have to, so if I stay here, they don't need to do anything with it but as soon as I leave someone flips the switch and beep beep beep they come right after!" Jerry stops for breath. He's highly animated now, taking a few steps forward and gesturing expressively. "I mean-- I mean, what if the mechanism is a radioactive isotope for long-duration low frequency tracking? Or some other toxic substance? Mercuric mechanism? Some sort of... pulse wave? Doesn't make sense to risk a reaction unless it's absolutely necessary. So all I have to do is find it, remove it, and then leave right away." He eyes her. "I wouldn't stick-- I wouldn't stay here and let them put another one in me." ...Wow. Yeah. The paranoia runs deep in this one.

"Okay. Okay. Yeah but Jerry, listen, other people leave. Kurt, the guy I mentioned the other day? He lived here for a while. He obviously doesn't /now/. And, look, other people come here from other dimensions and they don't all wind up here, they couldn't possibly. And they don't go after them or anything. I did some reading up last night, and this place seems as kosher as I'd heard it was initially. And the people who were after you where you come from can't *get* you here, and no one knows you here before yesterday, and we were all just random. That one girl, the one with the boat, she didn't even know you were a *guy* from what I could tell, just stuff on the ground, until you moved and everything, so why would they be so interested? People come in here with incredibly weird powers, some people blow up, some people teleport, some people can fly - metahumans, you know? And they're not after *them*, here they help people set up legal identities. 'Cause you don't *have* one here yet. There aren't any records on you here at *all*. I mean--" This is where Vesper pauses, and she looks a little freaked out. Starts to take a step back, but then doesn't - narrowly manages to avoid worrying her hands, rubbing at the scars. "--unless you're faking being a portal guy. But I don't think you are."

Jerry pauses. Either he didn't think of any of these things or he's so far outside of his version of normalcy that the rules he's trying to apply here just aren't cutting it. His eyes widen throughout her speech, and then narrow as she finishes, as though he doesn't understand... and then he does. He blinks. "You think /I'm/ not who I sa--that I'm the..." He throws one arm up and lets it slap back to his side, a half-grin on his face. "Hah! I can't-- I can't believe it." He shakes his head, then looks back at her, still grinning. Yeah. He likes this one. She's got her wits about her. This one won't let any sneaky government people take her for a ride. Even Alice wasn't this acc--... Jerry's smile abruptly disappears, and he looks very tired for a moment. "Look, maybe I'm crazy. I've been... part of a lot of crazy things. Stuff that you wouldn't believe if I could tell you. It makes you look at the world funny, all the time, and now this... this is supposed to be a whole new world, and its sending everything in here..." He reaches up and taps on his temple with a forefinger, "All haywire. But if here is where you say here is then I'm not from... here."

This one's way too sympathetic/empathetic without actually having the power and thus the means to deal with it, is the problem. Vesper just watches him, eyes slightly more wide than normal, carefully taking in his changes in expression. Not quite wary, just - observant. Now that it's been called to her attention, anyway. "Here is definitely where I say here is. Here -- nnh, well, not Beacon Harbor. Montreal. Is where I'm from. But this universe. So what's wrong, what is it, you think maybe you're a little bit allergic to this place? That's sending it haywire? Or just the - like that, it, I mean." She starts snapping her fingers idly, looking for the words; looks down at the floor again with a studied preoccupation. "Your paradigm shifted without a clutch?"

Jerry pauses for a moment, then slowly starts to move-- slowly-- towards the bed. He's a little light headed and all these little flesh wounds /sting/ something awful. When he reaches the bed he leans against it, facing Vesper, and nods slowly. "I... guess that's one way of putting it. I was there..." he furrows his brow, trying to remember. "There was a fight. People got hurt. I got hurt. And then something happened and I wasn't there any more. I don't know what to make of this and... uh... this meta-human stuff, it's new. I don't understand it. I don't want to try." He ducks his head and leans harder against the bed, rubbing his nose. There's a long pause, and then he looks directly at her and says "I would rather bear the ills I know than fly to others than I know not of." ...Who'da thunk it? Jerry likes Shakespeare. Sighing, he sits on the edge of the bed and begins to fiddle with the blanket. "Um," he says after a moment, back to his bumbling self, "Uh.... that offer? The library and the electromagnet? Did you-- did you mean it?"

"...yeah," says Vesper after a pause, startled; she looks up as she says it, suddenly focusing on Jerry. "I meant it. Thing of it is - first off, you look exhausted. Again, still, I don't know which. Secondly, you're bleeding again, and *someone* - likely, you know, a nurse, someone dedicated to caregiving - is gonna see that and think you were trying to suicide. And then regardless of how crazy you are or aren't, you're gonna get, I don't know, maybe you'll get committed or maybe just they'll start watching you or start watching you closer, *if* they already are. I dunno. I think we should /both/ abuse the library. And the net. And I'll ask my researchy-girl about it, too." There's a long pause, wherein she holds her hands up, thinking a lot faster than she can talk - finally the girl just sort of sighs, straightening a little. "What do /you/ want to do?"

"I want to go home," Jerry says immediately, although he grimaces as he says it. "I know, I know, I can't, you can't do that, that's not what you meant," he says preemptively, waving a hand to halt an objection. "I don't know. I... they... I didn't expect to be around long enough for Them..." there's something about his inflection that capitalizes that word, "...to see me like this." The man glances at his arms and legs unhappily, and then tugs the blanket over them. He looks around the room, and his eyes fall on the new clothing that Tracey pointed out earlier. Apparently the laundry staff still haven't managed to get the blood out of Vesper's jacket, and Jerry's outfit was apparently more easily replaced than mended. "If I put on my clothes... uh... they won't notice. I'll clean up." He's right. The sweater will cover his forearms, the jeans his legs. The wounds behind his ears will be hidden, and anything he poked open above his hairline is virtually invisible. "I'll... sleep. Sleep here tonight. Eat something. Then tomorrow I'll go." He looks at the girl for confirmation or dissent. Okay?

"Okay. What time, then? I'm thinking I should probably pick you up, eh? I've got a spare helmet you can use, but you've got to promise not to panic and choke me. I drive a Lambretta. And I'll bring the electromag in, because it would be just my luck that you're *completely* right instead of partially right or not right at all, and you dying because I was an idiot would be really embarrassing, not to mention depressing as all fuck." The girl idly scratches at the back of one hand, glancing over the room like she didn't when she initially got in. And oh, Vesper's going to go to the laundry and get her jacket back even if they haven't got the blood out, because it's the only one she has and she doesn't particularly feel like buying another one if she's *gonna* get the first one back. Her hands drop, thumbs hooking in her pockets. "And then we'll go to the library, and I'll show you how to get to the lab and to my office, which are the two places I'd be, because I'm going to have to do /some/ work tomorrow. That all good?"

Well, despite all the odds, Jerry seems to have found an ally-- one that he wants badly to trust-- one that isn't dismissing his concerns as psychosis or something worse. At least, not right off the bat. This is more than Jerry was expecting and perhaps more than he deserves, but his expression is calmer now that there's a Plan to execute, and someplace to go that isn't... where he is right now. "I won't," he promises. He used to be (still is?) a cab driver. Speeds don't bother him. But she'd better believe he'll be watching for anyone who decides to get on their tail and track them. His eyes half close and he leans back in the bed. "And... yeah. It sounds good. It sounds wonderful." His brow furrows slightly and Jerry offers an uncertain smile. "Uh.. Vesper?" Aww. He remembered her name. "... T-thanks. For, you know. Thanks."

"Laisse faire," replies Vesper quietly, waving a hand dismissively. "I'd clean up before sleeping, but - sleep well. See you tomorrow, Jerry." Oh the reading she will do tonight. And the emailing of her pet ghost-in-the-machine. Glance over her shoulder, worried, and then the faintly ridiculous girl heads out, closing the door behind her.