Interlude 2-1:
Rubble Maker hated hospitals. The smell was atrocious. That chemical, disheartening smell that you shouldn’t be able to get used to, but somehow, after a few days, you don’t even notice it. Sitting in the same bed for days was atrocious, almost unthinkable for someone as active as him. Yet, the doctors had insisted, the extent of his injury requiring an extended period of immobilization which, given his history of checking out AMA and then gallivanting around with a serious injury, had earned him an extended stay in a hospital bed while he recovered.
The best thing he could say for his situation was that he wasn’t alone. His mom visited whenever she could, obviously. His uncle swung by every couple of days. The boys, of course, were here either one at a time or all together every afternoon. The doctor had told him he’d needed to stay immobilized for a couple of weeks, not just to heal the tendon, but the surrounding tissue. Which he hadn’t done a great job of doing on his own. Once he’d had some time to heal up, they’d analyze the leg again, and see if it was truly beyond surgery. The large chunk missing out of the back of his foot was a good indicator, but truth be told, he wasn’t familiar with medicine or biology at all. Except where to hit people.
He felt bad for that nurse that had thrown up when they’d taken the brace off. Cleaning the wound had hurt like a bitch, too. For now, though, he was left alone in his bed with his leg elevated, in a splint, as he flipped through mind numbing channel after channel of cable television. Rubble hated TV. Sure, there were some shows he liked, but he much preferred sitting in a theater with a good movie, instead of waiting for a random episode of a show he liked to air at some predetermined time. God, he missed Netflix.
Of course he wasn’t in bed all day: he had physical therapy. They made him get up and walk around a little every day, just to keep his blood flowing. They checked his pain levels, which had gotten somehow worse after the house, no doubt a result of then clearing out more of the damaged tissue and leaving a bunch of raw nerves and muscle exposed. They’d patched that, of course, but it was still some of the most annoying pain he’d ever been in.
At least they let him wear some normal clothes while he was here. As much as he didn’t mind wearing the robe, he would much rather avoid the inevitable conversation when one of the nurses who didn’t know him saw his scars. His doctor was well aware of his history, as did some of the nurses. The hospital had treated a number of ‘abnormal’ injuries in the last couple of years, much to the chagrin of the administrator and the insurance companies. There were a few nurses, of course, that had never had to treat those patients, and weren’t familiar with Rubble and his friends’ work in the ‘field’.
He’d had to talk more than one nurse out of calling social services.
At the moment, he was deciding between a talk show comprised entirely of a female panel, and yet another episode of Law and Order. On the one hand, he didn’t have much interest in the world outside of his hometown, and on the other, he didn’t need a reminder that some people could be even more monstrous than some of the things they fought. Of course, all of his other options were somehow worse.
His eyes rolled over to the small stack of books his friends had brought him: the old copy of Dorian Grey he’d never finished; a rather heartfelt, if misguided, gift of ‘How to Deal With Possession’ from Twilight; a somewhat interesting reference on Muay Thai that he’d thumbed through, from Indigo; some joke gifts from the boys; and a book from Raven Inkwell he hadn’t touched.
“You’d think they’d have like, On Demand or something,” Trouble mused, leaning on a transparent elbow.
Rubble started, giving his dad an unamused glare. “Really, we’ve gotta put like, a beel on you or something. You’re worse than Spooks.”
“Who? Oh, right, the Bones kid. Scrawny li’l guy, ain’t he?” his father mused, shifting in mid-air to sit a few inches above the edge of the bed. “What was that kid who recognized me again?”
“That would be Treble,” Rubble explained.
“Treble, huh? What was with the suit? His dad some kind of bigwig?”
Rubble choked a laugh. “Hardly. I mean, he’s got money, I guess. Not Inkwell money, but some. Of course, his parents are too busy fighting over it for it to go anywhere. I think that’s the only actual suit he has?
“And he wore it to a haunted house?” Trouble said indignantly.
“More like he wore it to the richest, largest estate in the county. That just happened to have ghosts in it. Although he does seem to wear it whenever he goes somewhere spiritually unpleasant. Kind of like armor. Fighting ghosts and the like is all about mental strength. I guess he gets his from dressing the part,” RM rambled. He’d never really thought about it before. He’d asked, of course, but DT always had some kind of flippant answer.
His dad shrugged. “Well, he’s still alive, so it must work on some level.”
“That’s what he says,” Rubble chuckled. They shared a laugh for a second, then the room got quiet again. Rubble eyed the back of his dad’s head, the old man watching the tv with passing disinterest. “You thought about going to see her yet? Not that the connection’s strong enough?”
Trouble didn’t turn around. “No. I mean, I have, but I’m not… I can’t. You know what it was like when I died. I think seeing me again, amidst all of this, would kill her. Hell, it might kill me, and look where I am,” he added, gesturing at his translucent form. He was silent for a moment. “I want to, you know. Of course I do. I would love a chance to give her a real goodbye. But not… now. Not like this. I mean, I’m not getting any better, naturally, but… I spent so much time just waiting for a chance to connect with you, trying to get strong enough to see you. I’m so tired.”
Rubble rolled his eyes. “And?”
“..excuse me?”
“I said, ‘And?’ Weren’t you the one who told me ‘being tired isn’t a reason, it’s an excuse’? I mean, you were the one who spent a good six hours in the middle of the night digging a trench cause the lake behind our house flooded and you didn’t want the water to reach my nursery. Or how about the time you fixed the window on the third story of our old house just because you were hanging by your ankle off the roof after you slipped, and wanted something to do while they came up and got you?” Rubble scoffed. “You always said if I’m not broken or bleeding-”
“-or DEAD,” his father interrupted, with a pointed look.
“Not stopping you now, is it?” Rubble said sternly. “Look, I’m not saying you need to fuck off right now and go give her a big ol’ ghost hug. Just stop making excuses. Figure out what needs figuring out, and get off your floaty ass.”
Trouble looked at his son for a long time. “If I weren’t incorporeal I’d smack you sideways.”
“And if I wasn’t laid up in a hospital bed I’d drag you home by your ears.”
Another, brief moment of silence, broken swiftly by both of them breaking down into raucous laughter. A nurse in the hall glanced sideways into the room, decided she saw something she’d rather not, and moved on. Trouble noticed. “You’d think with all the ghosts around here they’d get used to one sitting around shootin’ the shit with his son.”
Rubble raised a wary eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘all the’?”
His dad sighed. “Kid, I swear it took you dying just to see one ghost. God knows what we’d have to do to you to see the rest of them. I mean, yeah, I’m a special case. Having a tie to a living soul gives me more strength than normal, makes me more… here. But there are hundreds of us in this city alone. You’d be surprised how few of us actually move on in one direction or another. Some of us hang out because we have to; unfinished business and all that. Some just hang around because we can. Because the alternative is worse. Others are just bitter old farts who want to stick it to the living one last time. Then there are special cases like your friend Eventide. Poor souls held here against their will for some reason or another. Nice kid, that Tide. Got a mouth on her, though.”
“You say that like you had words with her,” Rubble noticed.
“Well, duh. How do you think I finally figured out how to get a hold of you? If she hadn’t pointed me in the right direction when we first got to the house, you’d probably still be floating around the house. Or not. That Spooks kid got a set of lungs on him. He might have pulled your soul into your body out of spite,” Trouble chuckled.
“Probably,” Rubble agreed, and they shared another, shorter laugh.
Then the door slid open, and a familiar bespectacled girl poked her head in. “Oh! Um… hello, Mr., um...” Twilight started.
“Trouble. Please, come in. I’ll leave you to talk. Gotta recharge,” he aded to his son with a wink, and disappeared before Rubble could protest.
The bedridden kid just sighed and rolled his eyes as Twilight entered the room with a chuckle. “He, um… seems like a nice guy,” Twilight said. “Seemed? I don’t really know how tenses with dead people work.”
“Generally, if they can talk back, it’s present tense,” Rubble explained. “So what’s up?”
“Well, actually, I just got done with school. The boys said they wouldn’t be able to come by today, for one reason or another. I think Dusty actually got a job with your uncle’s construction company. Something about a newly opened position?” she asked with half a smirk.
“Oh, thank GOD,” Rubble groaned. “That kid has needed some real fuckin’ work in his life for ages. What about Spooks?”
“He and Treble are cleaning out your… clubhouse. They said they had a surprise for when you got out,” Twilight elaborated.
He sat up in his seat, as much as he could. “Well, that explains them coming here in shifts.” When he still wasn’t comfortable, he fiddled with the remote and adjusted the bed to sit up for him. It lifted slowly with a wrrrrrr. “So you popped by all by yourself, huh?”
“Actually...” Twilight started. There was a brief commotion in the hall. “Oh for, come IN, you guys!”
The door slid the rest of the way open, and a gaggle of girls strolled in. Not the girls he was expecting, though: it seemed Twilight had brought her Shadowbolt friends for a visit. Most notably Indigo Zap, who was finally out of her sling. “Hey loser,” Zap joked. Still stuck in bed.
“Hey sissy. Still crying in corners?” Rubble jabbed back. They traded smirks, and she came around the bed to give him a hug. She kissed his cheek, and stood up. “Thanks for coming by,” he added, more serious. When’d you get your arm back?”
Indigo sat on the edge of the bed. “Earlier today. I’d have come by myself, but the girls insisted they get a chance to see me to celebrate. So I figured I’d drag them all here.”
Rubble eyed the new group. He knew Twilight, of course, and was slowly getting more familiar with the rest. “I can’t believe you hooked up with a guy you met in a haunted freakin’ house,” Sunny Flare said. She cocked a hip and gave the two a snarky grin.
Indigo shrugged. “Hey, when a guy punches a ghost for you, it sends a message.”
“Ok, first off, I punched that ghost for me. I judo flipped him for you,” Rubble elaborated.
Lemon Zest had taken up one of the only chairs in the room, sitting in it sideways. “Man, you shoulda brought me! I’d have been all over that shit!”
“Oh sure,” Sour Sweet groaned. “And the ceiling of blood, the flaming kid’s skulls, the dancing corpses, and the giant soul-trapping ghost? All over them too?”
Sugarcoat, who had since commandeered the remote and made a valiant attempt to find something not garbage on TV, spoke up. “Actually, she’d probably try to do all those things. I’m rather content to be left out of it, thank you. Also, if you two start making out again, I’m going to choke you both with your IV.”
“Please don’t,” Trouble said quickly, popping into existence right above the windowsill. Lemon Zest shrieked and fell out of the chair. “It took quite a lot of energy to put his soul back into his body the first time.”
Sugarcoat and Sour Sweet smirked at Zest, who climbed up sheepishly from the floor. “All over it sure looks a lot like all over the floor,” Sweet chided.
“Oh, shut up,” Lemon growled. “And you! Why you gotta do that every time we swing by?”
“Because it’s funny,” father and son said together.
Twilight sighed and hung her head. “Jesus, there really are two of you.”
The boys chuckled as Rubble shooed his dad away. “It’s already crowded enough in here. Besides, you said something about taking a nap, old man.”
Trouble flipped him off. “I don’t take up space, I’m a ghost, you ass. But yes, ok, I get it. I’ll just fuck off til that crotchety old nurse comes back to take your BP. She’s fun to mess with,” he added with a wink to the girls, and disappeared again.
Sugarcoat considered Rubble for a moment. “You let your dad flip you off?”
“Dude, he literally dragged me back to life. He can flip me off all he wants. Also, you try and stop him,” Rubble sighed.
Indigo scooted farther onto the bed, and laid down on top of the blankets. She wasn’t exactly the cuddly type, but she was a little territorial. Also, the chairs sucked. “So when do you get to go home?”
“Why?” Sunny asked coyly. “Can’t wait to get him in the sack, or something?”
“Nah,” Zap drawled, waving a hand dismissively. “I’m saving that for when we-”
“I really don’t want to know,” Sugarcoat groaned.