fandom_clinic | FTEC -- August 17 -- Sunday.

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FTEC -- August 17 -- Sunday.

Well, she was no longer a bird. That was a good thing, Adah supposed, if it weren't for the fact that it was all terribly disorientating, this switching between different bodies with different balance points, not to mention the change in height and having to reacquaint herself with the possession of opposable thumbs, which, really, she'd never realized how much she'd taken them for granted.

But she was still mad, still irritated, since the only thing she was able to do to let the Eel know she was incredibly annoyed with him was peck at him.

And, in the long run, that was a whole week wasted on being a bird when she should have been using it to get the most out of being here before she had to leave.

Soon. Too soon, way too damn soon, which was why she made sure to come into the clinic that afternoon. Her classes started at Emory next week, so this might actually be her last shift. Her stomach clenched with both nervousness and excitement; she felt a little sick, but she wasn't sure if that had to do with the fact that it seemed to rush in quicker than the current of flooding waters after the rainy season or if it was just that she'd eaten way too many grubs last week.

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"I learned that I'm stupid," he said, shrugging. "And that most people think I am. And that ways I try to do things are wrong."

He didn't know...why he'd snapped a little but it'd been a long week.

"It isn't so much that you're stupid, Lee," Adah informed him a little tersely. "It's that you're smart, I know you are, but you do stupid things. And this isn't about whatever happened; I don't care about what it was or why you did it. It's about the fact that you did it knowing full well that you told me you'd be careful. I don't care whether or not it was something that had to be done. All I care about is the fact that you told me one thing and did another and you don't even seem to realize how much it could...how much it did..."

She stopped, closing her eyes against another swell of emotion. She wasn't going to say it; she wouldn't let herself.

So much progress, all for nothing. The faintest of voices in her head told her to just get over it, but she couldn't. Not when he stood there, acting like he hadn't done anything wrong, like she was being condensending for calling him stupid.

Maybe she was being stupid, too. It could have been worse, she understood that. But trust was trust. A fragile, delicate thing that was took way too much effort to build for how easy it was to destroy.

"How much did it do?" Lee asked. "What are you saying?"

A sharp intake of breath, and Adah closed her eyes again. She shifted where she sat, slightly, her spine aching from being rigid with the effort of keeping herself calm, the inspiration for all her little pecks and flaps culminating under her skin and into her fingertips. "Did anything we talked about cross your mind even once when you threw yourself out there, into whatever it was that left you in the clinic? Or did you just do it, completely set on your own selfish decision that, clearly, you are the only one effected by this?"

She started to feel it again, the cover of anger starting to slip under the real root of it. Her stomach started twisting again with that sick worry, even if she knew that this time he was fine. But now she wasn't sure if she would be.

"Of course it did," he said, rubbing his face. "Wanna know what I did? Someone who's had a problem with me for the longest time found me on the beach. It wasn't a decision I planned. It was something that happened spontaneously. I was trying in the last desperate way I knew of to try and make her feel better. Somehow."

The urge to mimic the Eel's gesture and rub her own face in frustration was strong, but she fought it down, picturing instead all the circles and circles and circles they were drawing as she stared at him, wondering if she was getting this right, wondering if she really hadn't said that she didn't care to know what happened as many times as she thought she did, and wondering if this her was the her that she was thinking it might be. It was a small island, after all, and the power of deduction was a strong one.

And if her assumption was correct, Adah would feel the harsh swing right back into being angry enough to tear something apart.

"And," she said slowly, "the last desperate way to make her somehow feel better landed you in the clinic."

"Yeah." He nodded. "It did. It wasn't the best decision I've ever made. It wasn't something I made because I wanted to upset you. It really, really wasn't. It was a spur of the moment thing that I thought might help something."

"I would say that I know you wouldn't do it to upset me because I knew you had some sense of self-preservation," Adah muttered, "but now I'm not so sure..."

"I didn't do it to upset you," he said. "I had reasons for what I did. No one wants to hear them and that's fine. I've gotten lectured a few times for it. I got punished. I don't think there was a lesson to be learned but I'm not planning on doing something like that again."

Adah felt another twisting in her stomach, wondering if the other person involved received any sort of retribution for the sick fact that she was deriving satisfaction from someone else's harm.

No, she realized. Not just anyone's harm. His. She thought of Leah and her burning of ants in a poor attempt to cheer Ruth May up. The only difference here was that Adah didn't love any of the ants. It made all the difference in the world, even if it was a selfish distinction. She didn't care, though. If he could be selfish, so could she.

And it made it even worse if it really was who she was thinking it was.

She quelled all of that with a deep breath that made her feel dizzy, and she closed her eyes.

"...Good."

"I didn't come here to upset you," he said quietly. "I knew this would come up, it needed to get out and I'm sorry if I have. I can go."

"I was upset whether or not you came in," Adah reminded him, just as quietly, and then shook her head slightly. If it really was River, well, she, like Adah, would be leaving on a separate path, one diverging far, far from hers. She didn't understand it, though; when had things gotten like this? She was sure that, at one point, she had to have seen River as something much more than this.

"But now I know a little more about the whys, and...I guess now I know that it did at least cross your mind that I'd be upset, and...I'm glad we talked about it, too."

There was a slight pause.

"I still don't regret a single peck."

"I didn't think you would," he said and laughed. "Not after the radio on Friday night. Thanks for the first name reveal, by the way. I didn't expect that."

"I don't regret that, either," Adah insisted firmly, leveling a gaze at him. "I know you couldn't do anything about me learning that way, but I was already irritated about the situation I was in and then to stumble across that. I was upset. You deserved it."

"You know how much I hate that name," he said, shaking his head. "I know you were upset. And still are. I'm not trying to make things better just with words. Leland is just...a terrible word and it should be burned from existence."

"Consider it incentive, then," Adah told him, lifting brows and chin both. "Every time you do something stupid, I use it in some form to some body. And, if it's exceptionally stupid, I mention it to my mother, because from that day forth, that's all she'd ever call you."

She was mostly joking.

"Don't tell your mother," he said, almost fearful. "I don't need random letters showing up just so she can call me Leland. You can't hate me that much."

That last sentence was...somewhat a joke and maybe a test.

"And you can't be stupid enough," Adah told him, "to get me that upset, even if you tried. I think the fact that I'm even still talking to you right now is a good sign that you've earned yourself a little bit more wiggle room than most people," and, by most people, she meant anyone else in the world, really, except perhaps her mother, "so you should be fine. I wouldn't test it, though, if I were you."

"I don't want you to be upset with me this week," he said. "It's not going to be fun and it's going to make...what's going to happen a lot harder on us both. If you want to be upset with me though, I can't stop you. But it's going to make things hard."

"I know." It was barely a whisper, as Adah sat back in her chair a little and looked at the Eel with apologetic eyes. "I don't want to be upset with you, either."

"Then, what can I do?" Lee asked. "Should I stay away? Take away the reminders? I can."

The thought of it just made a deep frown crease Adah's forehead, her eyes stinging a little as they dolefully regarded him. "The last thing I'd want this week," she muttered, "is to have you stay away."

"Okay." He took a breath. "Suggestions?"

"Something along the lines of never leaving your alcove until I have to leave sounds about right," Adah admitted, wryly, after a moment of deciding whether to be honest or to be apathetic. She went with honest.

"I have to go to classes," he said in amusement. "And it'd be kind of boring and dull for me to just be there. I'd run out of things to do."

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