Multitasking (open)

[Morgan Paige]

“Know? What? What did I know?” Morgan really wasn’t playing dumb. It was too hard to think straight now that everything was said and done. Their trainer had convinced Morgan that Lani would benefit immensely from her help, though their trainer didn’t seem to want to elaborate. Morgan had a bad habit of blindly trusting those in authority. They had more life experience than her. And maybe this hadn’t been perfect, but it had worked, and maybe the ends justified the means. After all, their trainer couldn’t have known that Morgan would’ve seen such a terrible future for the boy. Or maybe she was simply naive to think so positively all the time.

“I’ll try to remember your name, we’ll see.” That was going to be hard, considering how she kept phasing in and out of reality. Lani, it was an interesting name at least. Maybe she would remember it, though her memory was generally terrible. He apologized and by the sounds of it, he was feeling guilty over the whole thing. Maybe next time he would listen. “It’s okay, really.” And it was. And it would be. They probably wouldn’t even ever see each other again, that’s just how life worked.

But apparently Lani was stubborn too. Morgan felt herself being jostled around before being placed onto a stretcher as gently as possible. She found it hard to move, and it was almost as if she felt like she was swimming on land. Lights, they were everywhere, and her mind threatened to send her into nothing once more, until the trainers began moving out of the gym with Lani trailing behind. At least it gave her time to think about the question.

“You’ll see.” It was all Morgan managed to say before slipping off into a pain free nothing.

--

Morgan vaguely remembered the ambulance ride to the hospital, a stream of different noises coming from different machines, and voices. But now she was in a small room and would be released from the hospital any moment now, she just didn’t know it. They just wanted her to rest and make sure all of her vitals were normal before letting her go. Her eyes fluttered open as she struggled to remember where she was, and why. And one name came to mind as she glanced around the room.

[Lani Hunter]

Lani narrowed his eyes at the little girl, there was no way she didn’t know where this was headed. She was the one who was encouraging him to stop doing what he was doing, surely she had to have known he would refuse, and surely she would know he would have done this. Which was why she knew it would end like this. And it was that that infuriated him. It was for the same reason that he didn’t like telepaths, Dr. Neville only barely because he had proven himself time and time again. The fact of the matter is that Lani didn’t like not knowing. It killed him to be the last one to come into information and he liked it even less when he was the only one who didn’t know how it would all end. It messed with his planning and his predictions.

Lani forced a smile and it unfortunately came out more as a wince. “I’ll remind you.” He said. Any other time Lani might have run, but he was trying to be a better person. Take responsibility and all that jazz. He wasn’t used to the concept of honesty and responsibility but he was working on it. This was a step. He had done this and he couldn’t run from this, it was his fault that she was laid out on her back, half conscious. He bit his lip and shook his head. No this wasn’t okay. This wasn’t okay at all. He raised a brow at her and was glad he’d determined to follow her. He hated it when people were mysterious. Which was honestly a very hypocritical thing of him. Lani liked being mysterious. He liked being unknown, he didn’t like it when other people were mysterious. He especially hated it when people said ‘you’ll see’.

Lani would like to say that he refused help and made it to the hospital with her, on his own with his own feet. But that would be a lie. A lie he would tell her and anyone else who asked. When they took her back to a room, Lani fretted and protested, it felt like when they were taking his sister back to surgery and he couldn’t go with her. The doctors finally explained that they just wanted to check him out before they let him go. So he sat there being examined and didn’t learn anything he didn’t already know. The doctors were alarmed by how much he had bled and when Lani tried to reassure them that this wasn’t anything new they were more alarmed. As much as the doctors wanted to run more tests, Lani protested, he just wanted medicine and sleep. When they finally let him go he was high on pain killers and he flopped into the chair in the room of the girl. Morgan, the doctor said her name was.

His mind was moving slow. And he thought about calling Odion and telling him what happened, but then decided against it. The time turner would only worry, unnecessarily, and Lani really didn’t want to talk about this. Not yet. Maybe after his meds wore off. He had his pickets full of pills and he was partially horrified and partially excited about the magnitude of pain killers he had in his possession now. He watched his feet, his mind wandering. What was he going to do now? Had he really crossed some threshold? What would Odion say when he told him? Would he be disappointed? Lani wondered if Odion would even understand why reaching this level of his power was so upsetting. His eyes drifted closed and he didn’t realize he had actually fallen asleep, until his head tipped back, giving him the terrifying sensation of falling.

He jumped and looked around the room, the pain in his head, making him regret the action. Oh, he hurt. He hurt a lot. It was going to be a horrible bus ride back home. Did he have anything planned tonight? He didn’t remember. He should cancel if he did. He just wanted to go home and crawl in his bed and never leave. He blinked at the girl and it took him a while to realize that her eyes were open. Wincing as he moved, he shifted in the chair (taking his feet off of her bed). “Welcome back, Morgan,” he said softly, “How do you feel?”