Face the Blood: Kevin & Laurie log (Backdated)

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Laurie brings Kevin some food, and tries to offer comfort. It doesn't work out so well.



I lie awake and pray
that you'll be strong tomorrow
and we'll see another day
and we will praise it
and love the light that brings
a smile across your face


- 'Hold on' Sarah Mclachlan

Laurie placed the plate in front of Kevin, a mug of hot coffee following as she sat down across from him on the uncomfortable cafeteria seats that passed for decor here at Sarajevo hospital. She couldn't speak to the quality of the burger, and she definitely couldn't speak to the quality of the coffee but she didn't think Kevin had eaten anything since he'd heard Yvette was in trouble. Laurie thought perhaps that Yvette would want her to take care of him, and it was better to do this then simply wait in Yvette's room and go gradually crazy due to her own helplessness.

"You should eat," she noted, as he didn't seem to notice that she was there.

"Not hungry." Kevin was drawing. He wasn't sure what he was drawing, just that his hands had to keep moving or he'd start thinking again. Thinking led to worrying. Worrying led to crazy. He vaguely remembered growling at someone at some point after Yvette had gotten hurt. He got the feeling it was someone trying to drag him away from her with words that he didn't need to see her like that. He did need to see her like that, though. He needed to see her because he needed there to be a memory of her alive, even if hurt, before there was a memory of her in a coffin. Maybe he was jumping the gun, but if Yvette was hurt how were they supposed to help her? How were they going to get past her mutation with scalpels? He swallowed hard and focused on the shadows he was shading in. They took up a fair bit of the sketch pad's page already. Swirling darkness.

"You should eat anyway," Laurie noted, watching his continued work on what looked to her to be mostly a black scrawl. "You won't do anyone any good if you let yourself get sick."

"Ah won't get sick." The words were distracted, tone fuzzy. He was barely paying attention, honestly, and if asked who was trying to feed him Kevin wouldn't have had an answer for them without looking up to check. He should have known, really, how many people would be playing the maternal worry card? Then again, he hadn't spoken to Laurie since months before he'd gone to Fallbrook anyway.

"What are you doing?" Laurie asked, although the evidence was obvious to anyone with eyes to look. It was to keep him talking that she asked, to find a way in past the defensiveness. She needed to make sure people were okay, for Yvette's sake. 'And for my own' she thought softly.

There were two ways to answer that question, literally or honestly. Normally which answer he gave would depend upon who Kevin was giving that answer to. Today it just depended on which got to his lips first. It happened to be the honest one. "Distractin' myself."

"Is it working?" Laurie asked, a brief smile flitting across her lips before they turned downwards again, unable to hold onto any expression for longer then a moment. She felt numb right now, and welcomed the state. There would be time enough to fall apart later when they knew anything for sure.

Kevin shrugged. "Kinda yeah, kinda no. Ah can focus on what I'm doin', so yeah, but then I can zone out and so not then."

"What do you think about when it doesn't?"

She wondered why she asked, she and Kevin had certainly not talked in quite some time, and he'd asked her to leave him alone quite clearly once upon a time. But he was someone she'd found who was willing to talk, at least for the moment. Her own distraction, a way to think of something else for just a moment.

His hand stopped in its motions and his body followed as Kevin stilled completely for several long moments. At first he said nothing, trying to banish the thoughts and the vivid mental images from his mind. When it refused to work he answered her in a near whisper. "'Vette's funeral. And how it'll happen before she ever gets to have someone fall in love with her."

"There's still things to try," Laurie murmured, mind shying away from the possibility of Yvette's death. "We haven't done all we can yet."

"You know someone who does miracles?" His eyes flicked up and met Laurie's for a second, just long enough for him to register who he was talking to and then they were back on the stilled point of his pen.

"I've seen a few hopeless situations turn, yes." Laurie said, a stubborn set to her jaw now. "I'm pretty sure you have too."

"This is hopeless with an extra -less tacked on." He hadn't been much for the doom cloud toting in a while, but apparently being out of practice didn't mean Kevin had lost his knack for it.

"You'll excuse me if I have a little more faith in Dr. Grey-Summers then you seem to," Laurie noted, anger creeping into her tone. Why did people insist on being so blasted pessimistic about all this?

"You'll excuse me if I don't wanna get my hopes up only to find out she's not able to fix everything all the time," Kevin returned in a mirror of Laurie's tone.

"Do you never get tired of being such a gloomy little grizzly guts?" Laurie asked, grateful in some strange way for someone to snap at.

Kevin was unmoved by her tone or her words. Mostly he wondered what a grizzly guts was. "You never get tired of being endlessly optimistic? You tow your line, Ah'll tow mine."

"Least mine doesn't have an anchor on the end of it," Laurie noted, pulling the coffee she'd put in front of him toward herself. She was the only one around here she couldn't give a quick shot of adrenalin to in a pinch, thus she deserved the coffee. She hadn't wanted to even think about trying what passed for tea in this place.

"Ah like my anchor," Kevin muttered. "Keeps me grounded and Ah never get lost."