Conundrum

Part 17

theSingingDragon

Danh stared at the grease stained box sitting on the hospital room's table. He wasn't hungry. He wasn't full. He was contemplating the tradeoffs of taking another bite of the "burger" Chien had brought with him. After all this time Danh thought he'd built up an endurance to American fast food, but this creation was an outlier to that theory. Maybe if he ate more he'd wind up in a food coma - he could sleep like everyone else, he could stop thinking....

Sighing, Danh picked up Chien's backpack and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil. The pencil had Batman symbols covering it, making the one, pink flower sticker pop out under the room's one remaining lamp. Danh looked at Chien, leaning on Binh's shoulder as they both slept in the chairs. A small smile broke through in the poorly lit room. Danh positioned himself closer to the lamp that was still on and began writing everything he remembered about today's cases, and anything that seemed possibly related. The pencil hovered over the paper when it neared the end. The pencil tapped against it, probably leaving a small scatter plot of barely visible dots.

"So that's where I get that from."

Danh turned to see Chien watching him, his head still resting on his mother's shoulder.

"Get what?"

Chien pointed to the pencil in Danh's hand, and then rocked his own hand back and forth. "The uh, the tapping. It really annoys Ms. Stone.... Well, okay, most things I do annoy her, it's kinda hard not to."

Danh smiled and turned back to the pencil. "I didn't realize I gave you such a distracting habit."

"Eh, it's fine. It's not like it distracts me." Standing up, Chien came over and leaned against Danh on the side that didn't have a cast. "You working on the cases?"

"You are aware they're confidential, right?"

"It ain't like I'm gonna spill it."

"It isn't like you're going to spill it."

"Uh huh, that's what I said, ain't it?" There was a slight twitch in the corner of Chien's mouth, at which point Danh conceded defeat in winning the grammar war. "... You believe her?"

Danh looked at his son. "Who?"

"Ronan. The girl with the curse. I mean... it's not like it's, you know... impossible."

Both pairs of eyes avoided the crib only a couple feet away from them, the monitor lighting up the part of the room the lamp couldn't reach. Pulling Chien in with his arm so that he was sitting on his lap, Danh ruffled the boy's hair then rested his head on top of Chien's.

"I know."

Had the small chest not shivered slightly in Danh's arms he might have been fooled by Chien's level voice. "'Cause I was thinking, who'd want to curse her? And it's not like a bad curse or anything, so it's not man - manev, it's not being mean. Unless the person just wanted her to get caught, I mean, that could be it too. But it's something you'd think she wouldn't mind, 'cause she's already been doing solitaire for a while so she'd already be getting better at it. So it just seems more like a gift, you know? I don't know, that's just my theory. Oh!"

Chien sat up a little. "And the, the metal girl. Not metal - uh, well, metal and water and stuff. She isn't, I don't know, natural I guess, 'cause that's all experiments. Smith. So it stands to reason that Ronan isn't lying about not being natural either. What do you think?"

Two bright eyes looked up at their father expectedly. Sighing, Danh rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe...."

The boy slouched a little, then returned to the notes. Danh turned his attention to them as well, but it kept drifting.