Author's Note: This kind of fits along the storyline of Vargas, except not. Maybe it's like an alternate ending or something. I have no idea. This happened after I read the entire contents of I'm Going to Kill You in one night, and was listening to the Weakerthans, and... yeah. I highly reccomend listening to the song "Hospital Vespers" by the Weakerthans while you read this. I hope this is okay and everything...

Hospital Vespers
by Dachan

Doctors play your dosage like a card trick
Scrabbled down the hallways yelling "Yahtzee"

Room 421, Johnny had called ahead to find out which hospital room Edgar had been finally settled in before he went to visit. For once, he hadn't been the one to hurt Edgar; it was his own cells' rebellion that had brought him to the brink of death, and the medicines and treatments the doctors kept changing that left Edgar weak and bedridden. It wasn't right, Johnny thought, not right at all. Edgar deserved to die by his hand, he out of all the people Johnny had ever killed deserved his death to be hastened by the homicidal maniac, and yet....

He couldn't do it. He simply could not kill Edgar. He could feel the perfect moment coming, he could taste the readiness in the air, but it wasn't time yet.

Walking past the nurse's station and sliding between two on-duty doctors arguing at each other, Johnny made it into Edgar's room unnoticed.

I brought books on Harper in the Arctic
Something called "The Politics of Lonely"

He'd gone through Edgar's books again this week, finding ones with blank pages at the back and filling them with spiky and barely coherent words. There were three books this time, with seven blank pages between them, and their spines were worn and barely legible: two were on Arctic exploration, and one was called "The Politics of Lonely." He'd already brought the ones Edgar had asked for earlier; three or four books a week, nine weeks now without any sign that he'd be going home, thirty one books in a box by his bed. Johnny put them on the bedside table before retreating to the chair in the corner of the room; waiting for Edgar to wake up.

Sometimes it took a while. Sometimes Edgar woke up nearly immediately. He was never awake when Johnny arrived, though.

A toothbrush and Quick Pick with a plus
You tried not to roll your sunken eyes

The flicker of Edgar's eyelids warned Johnny that he was coming to, and he stopped counting the beeps of the heart monitor-- eight hundred and thirty-seven-- to focus on the shallow rise and fall of the sick man's chest. Johnny hugged his knees to his chest and simply watched.

"Johnny?" One pale, bony hand searched the table. Once he found his glasses and put them on, Edgar lifted his head from the pillow and met Johnny's gaze calmly. "Hi."

"Hi." Edgar's smile was wan but unfeigned. They stayed where they were; Edgar sprawled out on the bed, Johnny tightly coiled into himself on the chair, but the smile gave Nny the impression that Edgar had twined hands with him. "How... how do you feel?"

"Me? I'm fine." The simple, completely untrue assertation was punctuated by a hacking cough. "Can't get any privacy in this place. It's annoying..." He pointed at the camera mounted in one corner of the ceiling and rolled his eyes in disgust. "I can't feel at ease with that thing pointed at me. I'd cover it up, but..."

And said "Hey can you help me? I can't reach it"
Pointed to the camera in the ceiling

"Hey, could you help me? I can't reach it..." Trailing off the sentance awkwardly, Edgar's hand reached out unconsciously in Nny's direction. The psycho stood up suddenly and leaned over the sick man's bed, fingertips not quite touching the pale, dry skin of Edgar's hand.

"Yeah. Give me a second." It took less than that for the lanky murderer to climb up on the chair and cover the camera's lens with the palm of one hand.

I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn't see
Turned to find you out of bed and kneeling

Johnny stared in amazement as Edgar knelt beside his hospital bed and folded his hands in front of him. "I... envy your conviction," he murmured again, not expecting the sick man to hear the whisper.

"I have nothing to fear," Edgar whispered back before bending his head over his hands. The last time they had shared those words, Johnny had held Edgar's life in one bony hand and finally released it. This time, his life was in God's hands-- and God was proving less merciful than Johnny, a fact which Edgar found heartbreakingly ironic.

Before the nurses came, took you away
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray

"Our Father, who art in heaven," Edgar began softly, speaking more to his hands than anything else. Johnny kept the camera covered with one hand; the other hung limp at his side as he watched the skinny, bespectacled man begging for mercy and forgiveness from his sins, which seemed to include falling in love with a man and feeling guiltless over a murder he had encouraged to happen...

"...amen." Pressing his forehead into the mattress, fingers clawing into the bleach-white sheet, Edgar just breathed for a moment. He turned his head, resting one cheek on his hands, and smiled up at Johnny again. "Thank you..."

"Don't mention it." Johnny let his hand fall, hopped lightly down to stand beside the sick man rising to shaky legs. "You have another treatment today, right?"

"Yeah, at 2:30. What time is it?" Cautiously, Edgar leaned on Johnny's arm, using his support in getting back on the bed. One glance at the wall clock answered that question: it was almost ten past two. "Damn..."

"...hey." Edgar glanced back at his companion and found his mouth suddenly trapped in a kiss. Johnny held his lips to Edgar's only a brief moment, but instead of moving back, simply trailed the kiss from his mouth across his cheek to his ear. "When you get back, today... when you're sleeping again, after the treatment... I'll kill you then."

Edgar smiled again. "Thank you." Johnny had promised this every afternoon before the nurses came for him. He always woke up again, weak, but alive, with Johnny watching him like a rare bug pinned under glass. He tilted his head and kissed Johnny again, then settled down against the hospital pillow, holding the new memory of the kiss under his tongue like a treasure.

"Mr. Vargas?" A young, dark-haired nurse peeked around the door frame. "I'm sorry, but it's time for your treatment now. Could you say goodbye to your guest?"

"I'll go for now. But I'll be back, Edgar. When you get back, I'll be waiting for you." Edgar took Johnny's hand in both his own, and weakly squeezed it, smiling. Johnny brushed Edgar's hair away from his face with his free hand.

"Okay. I'll see you then." One more squeeze, one more smile, and Johnny left; taking the stairs to avoid people in elevators. Edgar watched him walk down the hall until the wall eclipsed his view, and only then did he allow the nurse to add the anasthetic to his IV line. Slipping out of consciousness, one last thought lingered on the calm surface of Edgar's mind.

Maybe this time I won't wake up.. maybe this time, he'll let me go.