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[inflictwounds]

Hieke
UN: Hieke

STATUS: School Nurse, Professor Of Healing

ACCOLADES: Keeps everyone alive. Usually.

BIO: Always ready and willing to help in an emergency! Please don’t break yourselves too badly.

© TESSISAMESS

Comments

[inflictwounds]

[He's not expecting this. Truly, he's expecting Angela to never speak to him again. That would be the easier thing to do.

He presses his lips together, looking up at her from his desk.]

Dr. Ziegler.

[It's easier when you have a title, he supposes. Less familiarity.]

[caduceusoncall]

[Sometimes the easier thing to do is also the worst. Because they can't keep doing this. Not forever.]

I am sorry.

[She shifts uncomfortably. It's hard to own up to your own mistakes, even or perhaps especially as an adult.]

I acted unprofessionally, for one, but much worse than that, I acted on an unfair bias. I had no right to...

[She clears her throat instead of continuing that sentence. This is, in some ways, more than an apology. Because despite her best efforts she's not just talking to Hieke right now. She's talking to a whole slew of thoughts and feelings she's ignored for years.]

[inflictwounds]

[He's...extra not expecting that. Out of everything he expected out of this conversation, an apology wasn't one of them.

But he...doesn't believe it. Not completely. Why would she apologize to him? What does she have to gain out of this? It's not like she could possibly care about his feelings.

But he doesn't voice any of that, instead slowly nodding his head.]

I don't know that I would call that unfair.

[caduceusoncall]

No, it was.

["It isn't." she thinks, in the back of her mind. But no, it is unfair, and she will explain why. To herself or to him is debatable. As per usual with her apologies, the words come out as professional and the sentences wind on past their welcome. It's the only way for her to do it without collapsing in on herself out of shame.]

You were not responsible. To dismiss you and all of the good you have done in your lifetime as one and the same with the parties responsible for their deaths is unfair at best. Cruel, at worst.

[Swallowing her pride tastes remarkably like bitter bile in her throat. Funny, that.]

I attributed to you all the suffering inflicted upon me that day and days thereafter. For that, I am sorry. I will not pretend the fear in me is gone. It will take time for me to process that. But I can't in good faith go on passing by you in silence, knowing that I did something immature and foolish, and knowing that you had to carry the weight of my words because of it.

[inflictwounds]

[He's quiet for a long, long moment. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what he wants, either.

Well, that's a lie. He knows what he wants. He wants for her to have never seen what she saw. He wants to have never seen what he saw. He just wants things to go back to the way they were before.

But that's impossible. So he nods, slowly, before letting out a sigh.]

Apology accepted.

[caduceusoncall]

[She looks relieved, and exhausted, at Hieke's words. Her voice is weak when she replies.]

Thank you. [A heavy sigh.] Though you would have been well within your rights to decline it.

[inflictwounds]

[He shrugs his shoulders.]

Maybe. [A beat.] But I don't see the point in holding on to the past.

[caduceusoncall]

[Angela winces. There's a lot she could say, if she interprets this as a barb. And at first she does, but after a long moment of thinking it over, she walks past him towards her desk.]

Perhaps that is the value in you that I failed to see.

[She sits down, straightening a stack of papers and beginning her shift without another word.]

[inflictwounds]

[He doesn't intend it to be a barb - he's spent so much of his life thinking about the past and feeling remorse for it. He's tired of that. He wants to turn his eyes forward, and focus on what he can do.]

Maybe.

[But he'll leave it at that.]