Log [Alison, Haroun] One step foward, two steps back...

[x-dazzler.livejournal.com]

Monday evening. Alison drops by to talk to Haroun, about the problems he's having with his implant and what Madelyn spoke to her about the previous day. It's the start of a roller-coaster ride and it's not about to end soon...



Haroun sighed as he sank into one of the more overstuffed chairs in the Mansion - the treacherous Medstaff had replaced his perfectly acceptable chairs with these soft monstrosities. But, he had to admit, they helped his back relax a little. Which was a good thing, especially as he was entering into the rehab portion of his medical treatment. Alison had said she wanted to talk to him, so he set a kettle on for tea while he waited. He glanced over at his stack of books-to-be-read, but resolved to leave them until he really needed the distraction.

She'd managed to not waffle in the least on the way to his room, though that might have had something to do with the news she'd received and then the announcement about Hank and the numbness that still lingered as a result. Still, Alison knew Haroun was waiting for her, so the knock was more courtesy than anything else - she opened the door almost the instant afterwards, peeking inside to try and catch sight of him.

Haroun smiled at Alison as she knocked and then poked her head in. "Come in. You'll forgive me if I don't get up - I'm feeling rather sore right now, and I just sat down." he said by way of an explanation. "I think I can guess what's on your mind. Want to close the door and come sit down?"

She just nodded, offering him a small smile in return before stepping inside, closing the door carefully behind her. The new - and far more comfortable - chairs were noted and though Alison's lips quirked a little in reaction, the smile faded quickly. She did tug a chair a bit closer to him though, curling up on it with a small sigh. "Those are nice." But that was diverting the subject. "Madelyn spoke to me," she said, by way of confirmation of his guess.

"I had thought she might." he said with a sigh. "She talked to me too. Apparently I have some kind of a hormone problem." he said. "I don't feel any different most of the time. It's just something I have to deal with."

Alison looked down for a moment, curling up on the chair a bit more - reflex, from trying not to just changes places and curl up on his lap to offer comfort, since that wasn't exactly the best move to do, taking the most recent developments into consideration. "She said they weren't sure if it as normal or not, but that the implant was doing... something, yeah." 'Can't handle a relationship.' There was no way Alison was repeating that to him. Ever. "I'd noticed some things, lately. I just didn't think-" She paused, and shook her head a bit.

"Like what?" he said, trying to contain the irrational spike of anger that her half-statement generated in him. "I usually get irritated when some mind-fucked asshole nearly crushes me like a discarded can." he said irritably. "Moreso when I get boned on the post-op for stuff I should have been doing but wasn't."

"I made my share of mistakes during the mission, Haroun." She was, after all, ultimately responsible for letting him go for the heli, no matter how obvious it should have been to her of all people how bad an idea that was. "And by small things... like just now." Alison took a slow breath - she would have to learn to be dead calm, in the coming days and weeks. And possibly months. Since they didn't know how long it would be or even if there was a way to fix the implant. Her throat tightened at that and she bit her lip. "Quicker to get upset over small things. And faster to react on others, as well." It was a reference to the shopping trip, really, though she could have been blunter about it.

Haroun snorted. "You have got to be shitting me." he said angrily. He opened his mouth to continue in that vein, but the kettle whistled cheerfully, and busying himself preparing the tea gave him time to recover his composure and his stability. "I'm sorry, but I just don't see it. I am the way I have always been since I burned." he said. "Besides, it's not like it's exactly a bad thing. Reaction time is up, strength is up - I'm putting on muscle mass like you wouldn't believe! - and endurance is nearly at an all-time high."

"You get angry faster. You're more irritable over things that didn't bother you so much before." She spoke quietly through the sounds of tea being prepared, watching him, noting the changes that he'd mentioned now - she hadn't noticed it during the day to day, but looking back... "You lose control a lot faster. And I'd be glad to blame my allure on that but it's more than that - the added testosterone accounts for some of it." She chewed on her lower lip more, not moving at all other than to sink a bit deeper in the chair. "The added hormones also account for all the things you listed."

"I get angry faster because people are determined to be so much more stupid then they have to be." he retorted. "You sure this isn't just about your ego?" he asked her cruelly.

"You say things to me you'd never have said before," she murmured, finally looking down, at least able to remove most of the sting from the comment by telling herself it was the excess of hormones that even the filterings wouldn't clear out.

Haroun sighed, and then nodded. "You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry." he said, offering her a cup of tea as a plea for forgiveness. "I can handle it. This is far from the first time I've been like this." he pointed out.

She accepted the cup gravely, and took a careful sip despite the heat. "This much, though?" She looked into her cup, but focused on him again moments afterwards. You're like this because of me. How in the world was she supposed to tell him that.

Haroun hrmmed. "Just about, yeah." he said. "After - after the Massacre." he said with difficulty. "I went a little mad."

A small nod answered that, and Alison made those small settling in motions that said she wasn't going anywhere for quite some time, cradling the tea close to herself. He'd never spoken in much detail of that to her yet, so she simply waited, ready to listen.

"I went back home - damned near tore the place apart." he said quietly. "Then, I decided that somebody had to pay for the death of my friends. Someone had to be responsible. And since I couldn't find the men who did it, I took it out on the clerics."

Don't push him, Madelyn had said. Damn it, just getting up to hold his hand wasn't pushing, was it? Alison carefully rose to her feet and set the tea cup on the small counter, and reached out, threading her fingers through his slowly.

Haroun looked at his hand in hers and squeezed her hand before disentangling his hand from hers. "I finally went on the hajj to ask God to help me accept what had happened, to kneel before Him and accept His judgment." he said. "It helped me a lot, removed some of the guilt."

Alison wondered how much it had to do with surviving them and how much  it had to do with not finding the people who had killed his friends to begin with. She just hugged herself though, after spending a short moment not being sure what to do with her hands. The contact had been short. Oh so short. "And then you came here, for the first time..."

Haroun nodded. "I needed repairs." he said. "Here was the only place to get them. Then I let the Great Exploding Brit get under my skin, and then I completely lost my mind and challenged Sarah. Few people can annoy me as much as she can. I have little love for the likes of her."

"Teenagers are... teenagers." Alison shook her head a bit at that, having come to that conclusion not long after quitting the counselor position. As for Sarah... she merely shrugged at that. "I remember breaking that one apart, yeah." Her fingers tightened a bit, and she grasped onto the fabric of the loose wool sweater she was wearing, to keep them there. "Why did you come back again?"

"I got PNGed." he said simply. "And besides my home in Morocco, this was the only place I had to go. I thought about finding the Jew's people, maybe explaining to them what sort of a man he was, but that would involve going to Israel and that is a bad idea for a Muslim." he said. "So here I am, daring far more than I have ever done before. And now it seems that I am a broken toy, a failed prototype." he said bitterly.

The things she had seen in his medical file, the hours of video and the pages upon pages of medical note unfurled in her mind, and Alison just tilted her head at that, an odd light in her eyes. "You haven't come this far to give up now." She took a slow breath and let it out again, slowly. "I have no intention of giving up. On you, or on us. There'll be a solution to this."

"I didn't say anything about giving up." he snapped back at her. "I may be a broken wing, but I am still human." he said, far more confidently than he actually felt. "A way will be found. Or else you will just have to accept me for who and what I am. Failed prototype and all."

I love you. The words lodged themselves in her throat and Alison looked down for a brief moment, hating her inability to just say three small words. And looked up only a few seconds later, before he took that gesture badly. "I'm staying right here. However this turns out, I'm not going away." There had to be a solution, somehow. Because ending up being a medical hazard to him wasn't going to give them much of a chance, she knew.

Haroun cocked his head and smiled a crooked smile at her. "That's good to know." he said with a grin. He then sipped at his tea and sighed in sheer pleasure. "I'm almost out of tea." he said. "Remind me to talk to the restaurant people, see if they can order me a few pounds of the stuff to tide me over."

"I can always sneak it onto your task list in the database." Reclaiming her own tea wasn't a hardship really, though Alison settled for holding onto it for a bit longer, keeping her hands busy and warming them at the same time, trying to drag her thoughts away from her own cowardice. "I'm pretty much hooked on it myself, now." Which he might have guessed, considering how many times she'd been the one to request that the Moroccan tea be made to start with.

Haroun grinned. "Good. Then you can buy the next batch." he said with a grin. "Because I'm not sure which one of us would be the most put out by running out." he laughed.

She joined him in the laughter, though it was a quieter sound - she loved the way he laughed and the warmth in his voice when he spoke like that, and listening to it was enough to ensure she remain just at touch quieter. "It would be a terrible thing." Alison nodded firmly at that, the corner of her lips still turning upward even as she sipped from her tea.

"Downright tragic." he said with a smirk. "So - I guess that since people seem to think that I have a problem means that I can't ask you out on another date?" he said quietly.

"I've been told I have to be very careful about pushing you." She bit her lip at that, though her gaze didn't waver from his. "I'm thinking going to the movies or just finding a nice quiet place to eat out or watching movies or other very date like things isn't pushing, so to say." Trotting out in short skirts to taunt him was, though. She'd have to take a good look at her wardrobe, on the next day. There were things she wasn’t going to wear for a while in there.

Haroun sighed. "So no more card games?" he asked. "That's just a damned shame. But yeah, we should go out to dinner sometime."

No more teasing, no more casual touches, no more kissing until the need to breathe was entirely forgotten... Alison stopped the list there, not wanting to go further. The word 'sometime' alone was one she decide on the spot she hated. "We should do something on a regular basis. Just go out and get lost in the city or go to the movies, or the restaurant. Or a play," she grinned a bit, "or a concert. Just out."

"Sounds good to me." he said agreeably. "Figure out where you want to go next, and then let me know. Your choice for the first time." He paused for a moment to take a drink of tea, and then spoke again. "Concerts, eh? Your style of music or mine?"

Alison wasn't sure the stuff he listened to was part of what would keep him calm, at that. Should she ask Madelyn about it, she wondered - or was it only her that was making things too much for him and nothing else, really? "Why don't we try music neither of us know? Find something new? I can go over the concert list and see what sounds interesting." Her lips quirked. "We can be adventurous and stuff."

Haroun shrugged. "It's your call." he reiterated. "But I reserve the right to be cranky if it sucks. But hey, I'll take any chance I can get to get you into your new dress." he said with a leering grin. "I like that dress."

"If it sucks, I may be cranky too." She winked at him, leaning on the side of the counter. The leering made her smile a bit and she gave him an amused look - hiding the sinking feeling at the thought that wearing that dress would very much count as 'pushing Haroun too hard' really. "But we can agree to make it a widely varying kind of thing each time and I've never seen a show of Stomp before." She blinked. That was a good idea and they'd both like it, probably.

"Stomp? What's that?" he asked. "Never heard of it. Doesn't matter, really. Set it up, I'll go with you." he said simply. "And that's all there is to it."

"I'll check if they're on tour and see what I can do." She smiled - Haroun would like Stomp, she was fairly sure of that. And the fact that she normally would have known the show schedules by heart before and now had to look them up instead... she shook that off - small things like that had been happening more and more. She'd simply make sure to get up to date when checking about the show. "It's... energetic."

"Tell you what. I'll handle the scheduling if you put in for tickets. Just give me access to your calendar and I'll make all the arrangements." he said with a grin. "It'd be the least I could do."

"That would be great, actually." Alison grinned a bit, feeling oddly relieved at the though. I'll send you the link for the show schedule and let you handle it from there." She nodded decisively at that. "And if it's not Stomp, I'll just find something else, that's all." Sampling the tea revealed it had gone a bit lukewarm, but Alison didn't mind, instead flashing Haroun a quick grin. She could do this. Somehow. Not even knowing if his implant could be fixed - or worse, if it was normal - was going to gnaw at her until they had more answers, but... that was how things were. She couldn't do a thing to help, just as she couldn't help with Hank. And in Haroun's case, she could only make things worse if she wasn't careful.

Haroun grinned back at her, the grin that he knew she loved well. "And then, after the show, who knows? Be a good chance to get in a little private time, just the two of us?" he said with a wink. "Maybe this time the building won't burn down."

The impulse to answer 'yes', fervently so at that, was beaten down - and though Alison smiled slightly in response at that, despite her bleak thoughts, she shook her head slowly. She itched to reach out and trace the smile before it dissapeared, but held back. "That's one of the things Madelyn told me to be careful of, with your implant behaving the way it is." Not broken or malfunctioning. They didn't know that for a fact yet.

Haroun's good humor collapsed at that. "Right." he said, suddenly brisk and businesslike. '"Anything else you need from me?" he asked her.

"I... guess not," she answered faintly, setting down the now cold teacup, fingertips lingering on it for a moment while she looked at it, feeling oddly defeated all of a sudden. Beating down the urge to apologize for what she'd had to tell him, she simply focused on him once more, hand moving from the cup to rest on the  counter. "I'll see you later." The realization that this probably meant there would be no more sneaking into his room to sleep with him at night hit, at that moment. Hard.

"All right then. If that will be all, then I think you should go." He said, trying to hold onto his calm. "I wouldn't want to get all worked up, treated like some piece of delicate porcelain." he added viciously.

"Not porcelain." Alison took a deep breath - staying calm until she at least left the room was good. "And I'm not liking it at all, but if the medlab says I have to be careful with that side of things, I can't not listen. Regardless of what I want." Her voice tightened over the words and she just nodded at his request, feeling drained of energy as she took a step away, heading towards the door.

"Right." Haroun said, opening the door for her to pass through. "Regardless of what you want."