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Maebe lit up like a light when he played along with her, and she waved her hands in glee. "Examine! Examine! I must examine every inch of you to know exactly where all the problems are. It's - "

But wait, she wasn't properly dressed for her role yet. She fished the headband she'd stolen gotten and slung it over her head, adjusting it until it sat right. Then she put on the other Hunter coat she'd found and carried in from the fight, in order to look even more like a human doctor.

"It's my job, sir," She said in a deep voice. "I'm very serious about it. Let's get you on a bed, stat."

It was the kind of question she'd wished Bjorn would have asked her a million times over their time together, but she also knew he didn't mean it that way. She still bit her tongue in a cheeky grin, because there was always the hope that one day, he would.

"Mine. I mean, my doctor's office. Obviously! This way!" She turned around, grabbed both of his hands in hers, and led him behind her as if she was pulling a cart. In this way, she led him all the way to her quarters, and let his hands go so she could open the room up.

She felt like she was vibrating. There was too much nervous energy inside her, threatening to burst. She worried she might make a bad turn, if she didn't calm down. Go too far, scare him off.

But she never did well listening to her own fear.

"On the bed, chop chop!"

She really couldn't be held responsible for herself, if he was going to say things like that. She looked at him, and then at the door, and then back at him, before taking a deep breath. He was just joking, Maebe. Remember that. Remember your place. Bjorn is your most trusted friend, your closest companion. He means the absolute world to you. More than some silly feeling fluttering inside you, certainly.

Her voices of reason were so quiet. So hard to hear. One might even wonder if they were ever really speaking at all.

She hopped over to the bed and gave it a quick look from underneath - his weight was already stretching it, but could a little more hurt? She sat down on the edge, and then climbed up to sit on his stomach, side straddle. Some doctor she was.

"No, that's fine." She told him, her voice a very quiet whisper. She leaned down to press her hands against his chest, and pat is fondly. "I'll be happy to do that for you, sir. Just lie still."

Her finger traced down the middle of his chest, just grazing it with a dangerous nail, but never leaving more than the faintest pink trail at the gentle touch. For a moment, Maebe's expression turned shy; she met his eyes, and tried to control the slow smile that threatened to stretch her features without her permission. But she couldn't help herself. She was so happy. So, so happy-

It felt like waking up from a nightmare, snapping back into existence and trying to grasp some sense of reality. But when her eyes managed to focus on what she was looking at, reality did not seem like a likely possibility. In fact, she'd been in similar situations before. Situations where, despite how real the man felt underneath her hands, reality had no place here.

She slid off of him, without realizing how effortlessly she'd been perched. Unused to being so lightweight, she fell off of the bed entirely and crawled unelegantly away. Gone were the clever skittering movements of a well versed horsemen.

She sat on the ground, splayed like she couldn't decide where to put her legs, and glared up at the horseman. He looked just like Dawson. That didn't necessarily mean it was Dawson, but she wasn't prepared to rule it all out.

"All right.." She growled, her expression twisting with a frown as she took in her surroundings. "Feels too real to be a bad trip. Survey says; we're in another one of those god damned ******** eyes returned to meet the horseman in front of her. Damn, he looked good like this. Stop it Maebe, now wasn't the time. "Okay, big guy. You who I think you are, or am I just being punished by God right now?"

First one, then the other eyebrow slowly rose as Dawson took stock of his very firm body. She shouldn't be looking, but hell, when in Rome.

Her eyes flickered quickly up to meet his when he spoke, and then lazily fluttered with sarcastic impatience. "Cute. I think I'm fine. Physically, at least. Mentally? We're never going to be fine, so really, I can't even say this is the worst I've been."

But as she took stock of her body, fingering the bandages with restless fingers, she slid one of them all the way in and felt - nothing. Maybe she wasn't as physically fine as she thought. Should she be more alarmed that she was nothing but bandages? Probably.

"So, what do you suppose it is, this time." She asked him, as she stood up and stretched out her legs. She could feel it. The nothingness inside. "Barrier gone wrong? Horsemen invaded and took over our minds? Or good old fashioned 'ancients ******** with us to get their kicks' as usual?"

"Dorothy." She racked her brain for any mention of the name in the Deus archives or old missions, but it was difficult to keep track. There was an Alice, once, wasn't there? Was this just a big Disney LSD trip?

"She was all, memory retrieval blah blah blah, but she sounded robotic. So I'm going to guess this is a technical issue. Some internet virus got into our brains and convinced us we were - I mean are - this."

She stood up and moved, instinctively, to curl herself under Dawson's large, dark skinned arm. "Yeah. We need to go investigate. Yeah."

She knew they had to. She also knew that she was getting real tired of people messing with her brain. It was messy enough in there, already.

"I don't need a break." She argued with no actual fight in her voice, her head nuzzling into the crook of Dawson's neck. "I need two seconds of something even remotely resembling normal in my life. Just once. And this isn't it."

She reached out and grabbed one of his hands, turning it around until it was palm up facing her. Her fingers ran down the lines of the palm as if she was reading them. "I know exactly what Edith would say. You signed your life away to us for something greater, young lady. I know I did. I ******** know I did. But I'm starting to wonder if that old life of mine really was worse than this or not. 'Cause this, this is getting ridiculous."