Dr. Herbert West

₊˚⊹ ㅤa collection of character analysis/headcanon questions to learn more about your character and your partners'! writing/headcanon prompts requested by anonymous. feel free to edit these as you see fit.

No, we aren’t.

Rebecca feels herself relax, both from relief and a hint of disappointment. Surely, to understand what’s going on with her, extremes must be taken. The pain might be worth it if she’s allowed to cross over.

But, in truth, she likes this new guy – he’s not a stone wall, for one – seems to hold more empathy than Dr.West. It’s amazing they even work together, but in a sense, she also notes they may compliment each other, set up boundaries for one another because alone, they would be far more thorough.

I know you don't remember much, but do you know how you got to the mall in the first place? She looks down, digging into her thoughts, her memories. She remembers the attic she was in, hints of lights in the shadows passing by quickly next – a car? She’d been taken there. “I think... He drove mm-me to it. I wasn’t... I don’t think I was dead by the time I got to the mm-mall, but I was close.” She hugs herself, visibly shivering, goose flesh rising on her arms – nails dig into the skin – she remembers pain, then the absence of it as her body went into shock. She remembers the oyster cracked sound her limbs made as they were being pulled apart, chopped and amputated. “Blood loss”, she hums like a dream, “I think it was blood loss that did it...” She swallows, her entire body rigid and her jaw tight enough to hurt her teeth.

“You probably won’t believe mm-me when I say this, but that mm-mall? It doesn’t stay in one place. Sometimes it lets mm-me out, like nn-now, and it’s nuh-hever in the same place. It’s the longest I’ve been away from it.” She worries it will call her back and she’ll vanish without answers, without a resolution. “It’s like it’s alive – and it’s keeping me ‘alive’”, she thinks aloud, making the dents around the word with her fingers. It’s keeping me alive.

The way she spoke - as if the entire thing had been some sort of dream - aggravated him. He needed to know facts, and getting information from this woman was like pulling teeth. It would be much more efficient if he simply took some blood and ran the tests. Perhaps he could do that while Dan dealt with the qualitative angle. Unfortunately, he knew his partner was correct. They needed to understand the situation as much as possible before moving on with the lab work.

Herbert couldn't help but be a bit proud of Dan for his line of thinking. Despite insisting he was a doctor first and foremost, he really did make quite the effective scientist.

"Blood loss? From what exactly? What happened before you were in the car? You really don't know anything about the man who attacked you? That could be an important connection."

Maybe he didn't mean to sound this way, but Herbert sure did appear to be annoyed by the woman. That's not exactly out of the ordinary, Dan thought, trying hard not to roll his eyes. He hates most women.

But drilling the girl wasn't going to get them anywhere. Herbert wouldn't be able to tell (nor would he care to) but Dan could see that she was extremely uncomfortable with the conversation.

"We do believe you." Dan stepped up, whacking Herbert with the back of his hand as he passed. The two exchanged annoyed glances, and Dan hoped his came off as a warning. "If the connection is to the building, then it would make sense that you were tied to it. Maybe you were brought there because you had to...pass...in the actual building for it to work. For the immortality to take hold, I mean."

"No one." Herbert frowned. At least Sedona was understanding that part. "It's not about the people. I'm not engaging in some sort of vigilante justice here."

Having his intentions be misunderstood had always been a sensitive area. So many times he'd been in trouble for just needing to make people understand what he was doing. Over the years, he learned that some people simply never would. Not because they were incapable, but because they refused to.

With a very pleased smile, Rat claps his new business partner on the shoulder. He guides Herbert gently down the hall, the poor guy does look a little fragile.