Marcus, even after the conversation with Bastian, felt like he was walking in a dream. Staring at his desk for some time now, he observed the pages of paperwork blankly, a hollow look in his eyes. Something was Missing from him, and he was not yet recovered.
Missie, uncharacteristically, did not burst bounding into Marcus's office. She didn't leap or throw herself at him. She didn't pelt him with a thousand questions. Instead, she stepped in quietly, carefully. Miss Sabine was bringing water, so she set the flowers on a little side table, and approached him from the side, rather than directly. "Mister Marcus?" she asked softly.
Speaking startled him. He heard so little of it now -- which, to anyone else, might have been considered a normal amount -- but his world had been occupied by nothing but a voice since the age of five. His eyes widened and his chin jerked up until he found the girl there approaching. "Oh -- Miss Helston.." He sounded far-off. Lost.
And it just broke her heart. Her hesitation fled, and she leaned down to throw her arms around his chest, resting her cheek on his shoulder and hugging him tight. "I'm so sorry you're sad, Mister Marcus. I've been so worried about you."
The hug shocked him more than anything he had felt in his life. His muscles froze up and he exhaled a yelp of a noise, wide hazel eyes setting sharp on the woman. Mindlessly, he corrected himself. "Mrs. al-Amat," he hissed quietly. And again, "Missie." He eased slowly, his muscles uncoiling to slowly, cautiously, touch her shoulders. Everything in his mind was moving so much more slowly.
She lifted her head and pressed a twin of the kiss bestowed upon Bastian to Marcus's cheek, soft and cool. "I brought you some pretty flowers," she leaned back to look at him with the critically assessing gaze of a kindergartener. "See?" She pointed to the jumble of garden gleanings littering his console table. "Miss Sabine is gonna put them in some water." Through all of this, she is unabashedly watching him for signs of illness or unhappiness. Gauging his reactions.
Missie was nothing except a series of small electric shocks to his system. It wasn't bad, but the shock of feeling disturbed him in its unfamiliarity. "So you did," he eventually said, his long fingers uncurling against the desk as his eyes settled on the flowers. "--Thank you, Missie." He paused, his lips pursing as if he was unsure what to say. And he wasn't sure any more, not without a voice whispering in his ear.
She pushed some papers on the corner of his desk toward the center, careful to keep them relatively intact in their piles, and took their place, sitting with her legs dangling. "Didn't anyone ever hug you, before?" she asked, not unkindly.
The papers were something he didn't recall, which bothered him; he reflected on it for an extra moment before replying with a frown. "Once," he murmured, "I think." Sophie had once, before she left. Dead or possessed, he was never sure.
"Gus probably scared them, even if they didn't know he was there." She poked and prodded the knick-knacks on his desk, playing with a heavy glass paperweight before sitting it carefully back in its place, looking at a fancy clock with a quirk of her mouth, studying her own freckled cheek in a silver box shiny as a mirror. "People will want to hug you now," she added with a carefully optimistic smile. "And you'll want to hug them back."
"I'm not sure they will." He balanced her unending optimism with his cynicism, which had -- in fact -- grown larger during all this. "Are you all right?" He was unsure why his compassion suddenly crawled out of whatever horrible grave he buried it in, but he looked up at the girl as he flexed his fingers against the desk again. Unsure of himself.
Her smile grew when he asked her that, warming her entire countenance, and she used his memo cube and fancy pen to doodle with as she answered. "I'm doing real good. And tons of people are going to want to hug you, once they get a chance to know you."
He didn't stop her. He wondered, briefly, if this is what it would have been like if Sophie had been allowed to live properly. He asked himself, but had no answer, so he answered the girl instead. "I don't know why," Marcus answered honestly. He could be nothing but honest now.
"That's because you had Gus so loud in your ears that you couldn't hear your own voice before. Now, you get to find out what things you like. And you get to think your own things." Excitement lit eyes the color of tortoiseshell as she looked up at him. "I can't wait to find out all about you!" she added with a winsome grin.
"Gus." He frowned and shivered. "I do not think he is gone." He didn't believe it. It was a joke. A two-hundred year old joke. When Missie continued, he looked up at her again and stared incredulously, suspiciously.
She flicked her eyes up and over him. "He's not there." Matter-of-factly. "But everything will be all right. You'll see." She reached over and patted his hand. "And I'll come visit you every day. Maybe we can even go for walks. I like to walk in the market and look at the people."
"Every day?" Briefly, he was horrified. "All right." He was further horrified when he realized he had agreed. He stared at his hand long after her own had left it, terribly confused with his mind and whatever the hell it was doing.
His face made her giggle. "Uh-huh!" She pasted little sticky notes with drawings of chickens on the clear spaces on his desk. Her doodle masterpieces. "We'll have so much fun!"
He looked at the growing amount of chickens on his desk with a vague sense of panic, but was unable to do anything but stare helplessly.
"Do you know how to sing?" Cue the quizzical cant of her head.
"Wh--" Sing? "No."
"I'll teach you, then. I've been learning all sorts of new songs." The last chicken planted on the desk, she set the paper and fountain pen back on their pretty stand. "But right now, I gotta go!" Hopping from the desk into a two-footed landing, she threw her arms up victoriously like she'd just finished a bar routine. Then, with a grin, she leaned in and gave him another impulsive hug and a peck to his cheek.
The last chicken stared back at him and Marcus was nothing short of shell-shocked. Chickens-- The hug was met with equal surprisee, as if he was under the constant effect of novicaine. Some small part of him wished Bastian had let him remain in the coma.
"You'll feel better, Mister Marcus. I promise." Another squeeze, and she was bounding for the door. "See you tomorrow!"
"I love you, Mister Marcus!" Her cheerful voice carried from the hallway as she ran past an astonished Miss Sabine.
Miss Sabine, carrying a vase and water for Marcus's new flowers. She would doubtlessly admire his new chickens as well.
