fandom_clinic | FTEC, Saturday morning

...

Door

Door's sound asleep through morning and the early afternoon - so sound that at first glance she might look worrisome, but it's easy enough to tell that she's breathing, just sleeping very deeply.

Sometime during the afternoon, Bridge comes by to see if the new girl is doing okay in the clinic.

"Evil dinosaurs," she mutters quietly in her sleep, then a second later sits bolt upright, looking around the room, eyes wide and clear. "Where am I?"

"The clinic, here in Fandom," Bridge answers. "Um. Hi." He wiggles the fingers of one hand in a little wave.

Door frowns, foregoing her darting appraisal of the room for a moment to look at him instead. She repeats the gesture slowly -- it could, after all, be a formal ritual of greeting that she might need to know for survival purposes. "Fandom? What barony is that? Whose fiefdom?"

"Well, Mr. Braca is the mayor?" Bridge offers hesitantly. "But I think Sheriff Tex kind of runs things, for the most part."

"Mayor? I'm... not on the Underside." She was about to say London Above, but the boy's accent combines with the feeling that she traveled much farther than she ever had before with that last door she opened, to make her think... not.

Door looks at her surroundings again and registers the machinery, the whiteness, the unfamiliar smell of antiseptic. Everything's... clean, cleaner even than it was inside her home before it became...not, anymore. "This is a hospital!" she adds with alarm.

"Sort of," Bridge says. "I mean, Fandom's too small for a proper hospital really so we have the clinic, but the people who work here are really very nice," Bridge explains. "My friend Alanna is working here right now, actually."

Door scrambles out of bed, noting that she's lost everything but her trousers and bodice, somewhere. "I can't stay here; it's not safe." Not that the staff there ever notice people like her, but such places are open, undefended, easy pickings for creatures like those that are chasing her.

Her arm twinges lightly at her as she backs into a corner, the better to watch for threats, and she notices with a spark of oddness that it's been cleanly bandaged.

"Technically, it's one of the safest places in town." Bridge says. "No violence allowed." He sticks a hand out towards her. "My name is Bridge, by the way."

"Like the Floating Market," she says, trying to put that into terms she can comprehend. She steps forward after a second's hesitation to take his hand, that gesture familiar enough at least. "I'm Door."

Her arm aches at her again, and she puts together what must have happened while she slept. "The bandage - they saw me, here." Then, though she knows it's stupid, she adds, "You see me."

"It's good to meet you," Bridge says with a friendly smile as he shakes her hand. Her second comment makes him blink, though. "Are we not supposed to?" he asks, tilting his head at her.

"You usually don't," she explains. Except not really, because the less he's drawn into her mess, the less danger he's in, as far as Door can see. "How did I get here?" she asks instead, because that, she needs to know.

"I don't know about everyone else?" Bridge shrugs, "but seeing stuff that other people can't is what I do. And as for how you got here? You fell out of one of the doors in room 613 of the dorms up at the school."

"I...remember that. Sort of." Not that it was a school, which she wouldn't have recognized even if she'd been awake, having never been in one, but... up against a wall with Croup and Vandemar over her shoulder, and then...not. Falling down, people bending over her. Someone wrapping her arm, though not in this bandage. "You brought me here?"

"Yeah," Bridge nods. "Well, not me by myself. Me and a bunch of other people. And a pony."

"A...bunch..." Door trails off, then shakes her head, moving towards the doorway. "I should leave, before you're all in danger."

"Danger?" Bridge frowns. "From who? Is someone after you?"

Door nods. "They've been chasing me for days."

Bridge thinks about this. He knows that Door's not the *first* person to show up in Fandom on the run, and random mystical attacks aside, the school is one of the safest places he knows.

"We should go back to the school," he suggests. "And you should talk to Principal Washburn."

As Good Ideas go, if this is one, it's not jumping up and down and shouting it s status as such in Door's face, but admittedly she may not be in much of a condition to judge right now.

"Are you sure this person will even see me?" she asks, and Bridge could be forgiven for assuming she meant that in the conventional sense.

Bridge nods. "Of course she will. She's a big believer in the 'my door is always open' kind of thing, from what I've seen."

Door smiles in spite of...pretty much everything. "Not really a problem for me if it weren't. Just if I walk through it, will she notice I'm there."

She realizes as she asks that she's already decided she needs to know the answer. Why, she's not sure, but her instincts haven't steered her wrong so far - except for the once, but beyond the brick wall was here, so opinions are still out on that one.

Bridge smiles back, remembering the way she'd arrived. "You've got a point. And honestly? I'm pretty sure she would. Fandom is... different. You can't live here without learning to acknowledge the things- or the people-" he raises an eyebrow at her, "that you might not elsewhere."

There's a bit of a pang at that, one Door can't let herself dwell on, though she does say, "That's what home is like. Not that everything you see there is good, mind you."

She looks down at her clothing, wondering where the rest of it went and whether it's worth caring. Her bandaged arm's been washed, but the rest of her... "Give me a moment to clean up?" There's a sink against the wall, artificially bright pink soap in a pump bottle on the side of it.

"Take all the time you need, dude," Bridge nods.

Door cleans herself up as best she can, which isn't all that well, but at least she manages to get the dirt and blood off her face and hands.

She dries those on a paper towel, then walks over to where Bridge is waiting by the doorway. "Thank you," she says, and some impulse drives her to punctuate that with a kiss on the cheek. She goes with it; her instincts, after all, haven't been wrong yet.

Bridge blushes a little at the cheek-kissing. He hadn't exactly been expecting that, after all. "You're welcome," he replies, and then gestures towards the hallway. "Shall we go, then?"

She follows him, looking carefully around at everything and everyone they pass.

FTEC, Saturday morning

Front Desk

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