The door to Room 412 of the pulmonary wing in O'Shay hospital slide opened with a soft whirling to admit a young man. Reaching up, he brushed a lock of rain plastered light blonde-brown hair out of his grey- blue eyes before taking in the room. The dreary rain outside and curtains across the window left little light to illuminate the room, as the occupants seem to disdain using either of the lamps in the room. What light there was, was enough to illuminate the form lying back in the hospital bed, mechanically prop up in sitting position. Brown hair cropped extremely short, skin pale underneath the dark tan of being outside for days on end, a lean hollowing cast to the oval face, ... his eyes maybe have been closed in sleep and the oxygen mask obscured the nose and mouth but he was still recognizable to the young man standing in the doorway. Even if it had been five years seen they had last seen each other.

The young man's throat constricted painfully at the sight of all the wires sneaking from under the white sheet covering his friend's form to the machines on the left of the bed. He wasn't sure but they looked like monitoring equipment. The IV was dripping into the prominent veins in his friend's formerly muscular left arm, a warm brown against the bright white sheets.

Outside the sun slipped out from behind the clouds, chasing back the shadows for a moment. The sudden flash of reflected light caught his attention, bringing it around to the other occupant of the room.

Leaning forward in their chair, this person had still positioned themselves so the hospital bed's shadow obscured their face, enough so the young man could not make out facial features. Clothed in military grade camouflage and sitting perfectly still, the young man had to concentrate to separate them from the shadows. Sitting with their right leg crossed, ankle resting on their left knee, left arm atop the leg, they almost radiated an aura of fierce protectiveness. A small, quick movement brought his attention to the hand resting top the arm. And pointing a gun at him.

"Aithne?" a whisper, half in hope, half fear.

Standing and holstering the gun in one smooth motion, the figure moved forward into the weak light filtering through the curtains. Standing with a fighter's easy grace, Aithne was no longer the tall, thin young woman he remembered. Still five foot ten inches, she had filled out her frame with muscle, loosing the lanky appearance for a lean muscular appearance. The deep tan conflicted with his memories of her almost alabaster white skin while her hair, swept back in an extremely severe bun, was a deeper auburn than the young man remembered. The greatest shock though was, by far, the change in her eyes. Her face had thinned a bit over the previous five years, making the eyes a more prominent feature of her face. He remembered them as a warm green with a ring of brown around the pupil that had always reminded him of a summer day under the trees in an old growth forest. Now though the brown seemed to have thinned, almost disappearing, while the green had become paler and sharper, looking almost like ice. Before, he had almost always been able to read her emotions, usually in the eyes. Now it felt like staring at a blank page in a book. There was just nothing there to read.

"Aithne?" he repeated with a half step forward, stopping as she backed up. Swallowing the lump rising in his throat, he tried to push back the hurt blossoming at her movement.

"How is he?"

Her face never moved, maintaining her carved ice statue impression, but the eyes... the eyes flared with pain as the ice cracked for a moment.

Wanting nothing more than to hold her, to let her know that he was here for her, the young man move forward again, arms coming slowly up from his sides.

Taking on that blank page look again, her eyes wiped themselves of pain as she pressed the muzzle of her gun against the young man's chest, arm almost extended fully. He'd never even seen her hands move.