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Oct. 22nd, 2005 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
platedlizardOk, working on my next chapter for Remodeling Lives. I've got the doctor's visit done, but am not 100% satisfied with it. C&C is much appreciated. I feel like I should do the other half of the chapter on the Nagira/Doujima plotline, maybe add something about Miho for symmetry, but can't be arsed right now. Enjoy!
He was always watching her, it seemed. He watched her from her first day in Japan, even before he knew she was a Hunter. That one moment, frozen in time, as they passed each other at Harry’s was branded into his mind. He watched her during the Hunts, first out of suspicion of her motives, then later out of respect and admiration.
And later still, when he knew it was only a matter of time before he received the order to Hunt her down, he watched her with growing dread and fear. Dread at the thought of killing another partner, for while he never respected Kate it still seemed dirty to kill her. It was backstabbing at the lowest level possible, a betrayal of the deepest principles of teamwork. He still did it, and didn’t regret pulling the trigger.
He’d sent the gun that killed Kate back to the Factory.
Robin, though. Robin was different. She was smart, but so was Kate. She was bright and young, and still uncorrupted by the nature of their work. He’d seen no evidence that she was out of control, as long as she wore glasses. He couldn’t kill her if there wasn’t a good reason. So he watched her then, dug into her past like a terrier, and left clues for her and his brother to find. And watched them while they followed the clues.
And now he watched Robin as they sat in the waiting room. Watched her as he had learned to do long before they’d met, secretly, covertly, like a great hunting cat locating prey. When she thought someone was looking Robin tried to make herself look healthy, and perhaps, to the casual eye, she did. But Amon was watching, and he saw that her face was a little too pale and pinched, her hands trembled oh-so-slightly as she held her magazine, and her eyes were a bit too glazed for boredom. He was glad he had managed to drag her to the doctor’s office.
He sighed, and then winched as pain from his shoulder spiked through him. Perhaps it was a good thing that she making him have the wound examined. It didn’t look too much like a bullet wound, fortunately, as there was no deep puncture. Perhaps that was all to the good.
She’d been reading the magazine for over ten minutes, and still hadn’t turned a page.
The nurse entered and called their names. It was a risk, using their real first names, but not that much of one. The records of a small medical clinic half-way across the world from Japan wouldn’t be of interest to SOLOMON, but inappropriately responding to a fake name might raise a few flags among the staff. It was bad enough he was a twenty five year old man in the company of a teenaged girl.
Amon watched as the nurse weighed her, noting the look of disapproval on the nurse wore. The woman, named, according to her nametag, Laurie, gestured them to a nearby door, asked Robin some questions, which Amon had to translate as she her English was nowhere near as good as her Japanese. Then she took her temperature and blood pressure, and left, murmuring that the doctor would be with them in a few minutes.
They sat in silence, and Amon sat on a stool and read a magazine while Robin sat on the exam table and continued to ignore him. He couldn’t tell if she was still angry with him, and frankly he didn’t care.
Unbelievably, Amon saw that she was praying; head bent, eyes closed, lips moving silently. Such simple faith… he remembered a time that he prayed like that, a time before the buried curse in his mother’s blood awoke to monstrous ruin. He looked away.
The door opened, and the doctor walked into the uncomfortable silence. “Hello, Robin,” he said to Robin with a smile, “I’m Dr. Hames. I understand that you aren’t feeling well?”
Already it had been a long day, Dr. Beuler called in sick and Dr. Rhodes was on maternity-leave, which meant that he was the only pediatrician on duty. There had been three colicky babies, and two ear infections, not counting the kids who were coming in for their school-required vaccinations, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Fortunately he could fob the shots off on the nurses once he had done their examinations. Bob Hames made a mental note to bring in a box of Krespy Kremes for the nurses, they certainly deserved it. And now this.
“Something’s weird about these two,” Laurie had said when she gave him the girl’s folder. “It’s not right, that man being with that girl, she can’t speak English, and I think she might be anorexic or starved.” Laurie, he knew, had a nose for these things, although anyone could be wrong. Still, the idea that he might be looking at another child-abuse case caused his stress-level to ratchet up a couple notches. At least the last abused child he had seen had been recently removed from his home by the state, and had been examined before sent into foster care.
He really hoped that Laurie was wrong.
Bob gritted his teeth into a smile and pushed the door open. The girl was sitting on the table, her knees drawn up to her chin, and Bob felt a strange jolt of recognition. He’d never seen her before, he knew, he’d never heard of her, but on some subconscious level he knew her. Déjà vu. He blinked, and put that aside. It was ridiculous, he didn’t know her.
“Hello, Robin. I understand you aren’t feeling well?” he said, and extended his hand.
As their hands touched that internal tug turned into an electric shock, and Robin jerked back, eyes wide, and said something in a language that sounded like it was Japanese and the man, Amon, jumped to his feet.
“Kuso!”
“W-What?” The men stared at each other. “What did she say?” Bob asked finally.
The girl said something longer this time, and he thought he caught the words ‘seed’ and ‘witch’ which were definitely not Japanese. The man shot something back at her, and they had a rapid-fire exchange of words that the girl apparently won. Bewildered, Bob looked back and forth between the two, noting the girl’s look of determination, and the man’s look of defeat and disapproval
Witch… That did bring back memories…
“You’re… like us.” Bob snapped his attention back to his patient. “You… have the Craft.”
“What do you mean?” Oh, but those stories about Dad were just stories, weren’t they? Lies told to vilify the man who had abandoned mother and son?
The girl shook her head in frustration, and said something to the man again. Amon sighed. “She says you have The Craft, Witch powers, they’re dormant in you, sleeping, but they are there.”
At Bob’s head-shake of bewildered denial the girl gave a sound of exasperation, and cupped her hands, staring down into them.
Flame blossomed, and she cradled it in her bare hands like a flower. A voice said, “I can’t do anything like that,” and Bob realized that it was his own.
“No,” the girl replied, and Bob could see the reflection of the flames dancing in her green, green eyes. “You are…a SEED. The power, it lies asleep in you…but…it’s still…” She groped for the correct word.
“There?”
She nodded, and closed her hands, snuffing the flame out. The girl wavered suddenly, and instantly the man was by her side, supporting her and laying her down on the table on her side. The doctor in Bob, who had been patiently waiting for him to get a clue and start doing his actual job took over. He took her pulse, which was now far too fast, and her skin was blazing. Her temperature was still high, although not high enough to warrant hospitalization. Yet. Her lungs, when he pushed aside her shirt and pressed the stethoscope to her thin chest, sounded clear, but she was emaciated, the skin seeming to suck in between her ribs.
“How long has she been like this?” he asked the man.
“About three days.”
Bob looked at the man sharply. There was simply no way that anyone could lose that much weight in three days—that he knew. “What happened?”
Amon hesitated, and Bob had the impression that the man was heavily editing what came out next. “We were trapped. She used her powers to free us. I think—I think she burned out, hurt herself trying too much.” Bob waited for him to elaborate, but that seemed to be all he was willing to say. The doctor found himself grinding his teeth in frustration.
“I need more then that before I can help her. All I know about the Craft are some family stories about people I never met.”
“This…is the first time this…happened.” The girl said as she lay on her side, eyes closed.
“To you? Or to anyone?”
“To me. I’ve been…tired, afterwards, but never for more then…shortly.” She shook her head, “Moments?”
“I think you mean minutes.”
“Yes.” She drew herself up and swung her legs over the side of the table, the paper covering the cushion crinkling under her.
“It got worse after you used your powers, just now.” Automatically Bob put his pen to the paper to make a note, and then stopped himself. If this was real, and not some bizarre dream, the last thing he, or they, needed to do was to write anything down concerning her powers. Either he would be disciplined for making things up about a patient, or there would be unwanted attention for them.
“Yes.” If anything, the girl looked embarrassed.
“So,” he said, moving on to something that he could do something about, “what are your symptoms?”
This time the man answered. “As you see, exhaustion, fever, sudden weight-loss,” his glanced at the girl, his expression unreadable, “Nausea.”
She pouted slightly, but said nothing.
Bob sighed, and glanced at his watch. Unfortunately they were only allotted about fifteen minutes per patient, and his work day was already full. “I’m going to give you a prescription for the nausea and a stronger fever-reducer. I’m also going to send you down to the lab for a blood test to make sure something else isn’t going on. If her temperature doesn’t go down by tomorrow bring her back in and we’ll start looking at other treatments, if it goes up take her straight to the ER.” He glanced at his watch again, “And Robin? Don’t do that…that thing with the fire again. At least not until you are fully recovered.”
“Amon. Your shoulder.” The girl said suddenly, interrupting the doctor before he could leave.
“What?” But the man was already pulling his shirt off, revealing a bandage on his right shoulder. Bob sighed, biting back the usual response he had when one patient turned into two in the same appointment. Usually that was caused by an over-anxious mother who had ‘forgotten’ that she needed to tell the receptionist that she needed a double appointment.
The wound was, indeed, a few days old, and there was massive bruising around it, but it didn’t seem terribly deep or infected. Bob didn’t bother asking what had caused it, at this point he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He sighed again, and wrote the man a prescription for antibiotics just to be sure, and allowed him to cover it up again.
He handed them the prescriptions for the blood test and drugs, and got the hell out of there before something else could come up. Suddenly sticking needles in crying babies didn’t seem so bad.
And tried not to think of his father.
He was always watching her, it seemed. He watched her from her first day in Japan, even before he knew she was a Hunter. That one moment, frozen in time, as they passed each other at Harry’s was branded into his mind. He watched her during the Hunts, first out of suspicion of her motives, then later out of respect and admiration.
And later still, when he knew it was only a matter of time before he received the order to Hunt her down, he watched her with growing dread and fear. Dread at the thought of killing another partner, for while he never respected Kate it still seemed dirty to kill her. It was backstabbing at the lowest level possible, a betrayal of the deepest principles of teamwork. He still did it, and didn’t regret pulling the trigger.
He’d sent the gun that killed Kate back to the Factory.
Robin, though. Robin was different. She was smart, but so was Kate. She was bright and young, and still uncorrupted by the nature of their work. He’d seen no evidence that she was out of control, as long as she wore glasses. He couldn’t kill her if there wasn’t a good reason. So he watched her then, dug into her past like a terrier, and left clues for her and his brother to find. And watched them while they followed the clues.
And now he watched Robin as they sat in the waiting room. Watched her as he had learned to do long before they’d met, secretly, covertly, like a great hunting cat locating prey. When she thought someone was looking Robin tried to make herself look healthy, and perhaps, to the casual eye, she did. But Amon was watching, and he saw that her face was a little too pale and pinched, her hands trembled oh-so-slightly as she held her magazine, and her eyes were a bit too glazed for boredom. He was glad he had managed to drag her to the doctor’s office.
He sighed, and then winched as pain from his shoulder spiked through him. Perhaps it was a good thing that she making him have the wound examined. It didn’t look too much like a bullet wound, fortunately, as there was no deep puncture. Perhaps that was all to the good.
She’d been reading the magazine for over ten minutes, and still hadn’t turned a page.
The nurse entered and called their names. It was a risk, using their real first names, but not that much of one. The records of a small medical clinic half-way across the world from Japan wouldn’t be of interest to SOLOMON, but inappropriately responding to a fake name might raise a few flags among the staff. It was bad enough he was a twenty five year old man in the company of a teenaged girl.
Amon watched as the nurse weighed her, noting the look of disapproval on the nurse wore. The woman, named, according to her nametag, Laurie, gestured them to a nearby door, asked Robin some questions, which Amon had to translate as she her English was nowhere near as good as her Japanese. Then she took her temperature and blood pressure, and left, murmuring that the doctor would be with them in a few minutes.
They sat in silence, and Amon sat on a stool and read a magazine while Robin sat on the exam table and continued to ignore him. He couldn’t tell if she was still angry with him, and frankly he didn’t care.
Unbelievably, Amon saw that she was praying; head bent, eyes closed, lips moving silently. Such simple faith… he remembered a time that he prayed like that, a time before the buried curse in his mother’s blood awoke to monstrous ruin. He looked away.
The door opened, and the doctor walked into the uncomfortable silence. “Hello, Robin,” he said to Robin with a smile, “I’m Dr. Hames. I understand that you aren’t feeling well?”
Already it had been a long day, Dr. Beuler called in sick and Dr. Rhodes was on maternity-leave, which meant that he was the only pediatrician on duty. There had been three colicky babies, and two ear infections, not counting the kids who were coming in for their school-required vaccinations, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Fortunately he could fob the shots off on the nurses once he had done their examinations. Bob Hames made a mental note to bring in a box of Krespy Kremes for the nurses, they certainly deserved it. And now this.
“Something’s weird about these two,” Laurie had said when she gave him the girl’s folder. “It’s not right, that man being with that girl, she can’t speak English, and I think she might be anorexic or starved.” Laurie, he knew, had a nose for these things, although anyone could be wrong. Still, the idea that he might be looking at another child-abuse case caused his stress-level to ratchet up a couple notches. At least the last abused child he had seen had been recently removed from his home by the state, and had been examined before sent into foster care.
He really hoped that Laurie was wrong.
Bob gritted his teeth into a smile and pushed the door open. The girl was sitting on the table, her knees drawn up to her chin, and Bob felt a strange jolt of recognition. He’d never seen her before, he knew, he’d never heard of her, but on some subconscious level he knew her. Déjà vu. He blinked, and put that aside. It was ridiculous, he didn’t know her.
“Hello, Robin. I understand you aren’t feeling well?” he said, and extended his hand.
As their hands touched that internal tug turned into an electric shock, and Robin jerked back, eyes wide, and said something in a language that sounded like it was Japanese and the man, Amon, jumped to his feet.
“Kuso!”
“W-What?” The men stared at each other. “What did she say?” Bob asked finally.
The girl said something longer this time, and he thought he caught the words ‘seed’ and ‘witch’ which were definitely not Japanese. The man shot something back at her, and they had a rapid-fire exchange of words that the girl apparently won. Bewildered, Bob looked back and forth between the two, noting the girl’s look of determination, and the man’s look of defeat and disapproval
Witch… That did bring back memories…
“You’re… like us.” Bob snapped his attention back to his patient. “You… have the Craft.”
“What do you mean?” Oh, but those stories about Dad were just stories, weren’t they? Lies told to vilify the man who had abandoned mother and son?
The girl shook her head in frustration, and said something to the man again. Amon sighed. “She says you have The Craft, Witch powers, they’re dormant in you, sleeping, but they are there.”
At Bob’s head-shake of bewildered denial the girl gave a sound of exasperation, and cupped her hands, staring down into them.
Flame blossomed, and she cradled it in her bare hands like a flower. A voice said, “I can’t do anything like that,” and Bob realized that it was his own.
“No,” the girl replied, and Bob could see the reflection of the flames dancing in her green, green eyes. “You are…a SEED. The power, it lies asleep in you…but…it’s still…” She groped for the correct word.
“There?”
She nodded, and closed her hands, snuffing the flame out. The girl wavered suddenly, and instantly the man was by her side, supporting her and laying her down on the table on her side. The doctor in Bob, who had been patiently waiting for him to get a clue and start doing his actual job took over. He took her pulse, which was now far too fast, and her skin was blazing. Her temperature was still high, although not high enough to warrant hospitalization. Yet. Her lungs, when he pushed aside her shirt and pressed the stethoscope to her thin chest, sounded clear, but she was emaciated, the skin seeming to suck in between her ribs.
“How long has she been like this?” he asked the man.
“About three days.”
Bob looked at the man sharply. There was simply no way that anyone could lose that much weight in three days—that he knew. “What happened?”
Amon hesitated, and Bob had the impression that the man was heavily editing what came out next. “We were trapped. She used her powers to free us. I think—I think she burned out, hurt herself trying too much.” Bob waited for him to elaborate, but that seemed to be all he was willing to say. The doctor found himself grinding his teeth in frustration.
“I need more then that before I can help her. All I know about the Craft are some family stories about people I never met.”
“This…is the first time this…happened.” The girl said as she lay on her side, eyes closed.
“To you? Or to anyone?”
“To me. I’ve been…tired, afterwards, but never for more then…shortly.” She shook her head, “Moments?”
“I think you mean minutes.”
“Yes.” She drew herself up and swung her legs over the side of the table, the paper covering the cushion crinkling under her.
“It got worse after you used your powers, just now.” Automatically Bob put his pen to the paper to make a note, and then stopped himself. If this was real, and not some bizarre dream, the last thing he, or they, needed to do was to write anything down concerning her powers. Either he would be disciplined for making things up about a patient, or there would be unwanted attention for them.
“Yes.” If anything, the girl looked embarrassed.
“So,” he said, moving on to something that he could do something about, “what are your symptoms?”
This time the man answered. “As you see, exhaustion, fever, sudden weight-loss,” his glanced at the girl, his expression unreadable, “Nausea.”
She pouted slightly, but said nothing.
Bob sighed, and glanced at his watch. Unfortunately they were only allotted about fifteen minutes per patient, and his work day was already full. “I’m going to give you a prescription for the nausea and a stronger fever-reducer. I’m also going to send you down to the lab for a blood test to make sure something else isn’t going on. If her temperature doesn’t go down by tomorrow bring her back in and we’ll start looking at other treatments, if it goes up take her straight to the ER.” He glanced at his watch again, “And Robin? Don’t do that…that thing with the fire again. At least not until you are fully recovered.”
“Amon. Your shoulder.” The girl said suddenly, interrupting the doctor before he could leave.
“What?” But the man was already pulling his shirt off, revealing a bandage on his right shoulder. Bob sighed, biting back the usual response he had when one patient turned into two in the same appointment. Usually that was caused by an over-anxious mother who had ‘forgotten’ that she needed to tell the receptionist that she needed a double appointment.
The wound was, indeed, a few days old, and there was massive bruising around it, but it didn’t seem terribly deep or infected. Bob didn’t bother asking what had caused it, at this point he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He sighed again, and wrote the man a prescription for antibiotics just to be sure, and allowed him to cover it up again.
He handed them the prescriptions for the blood test and drugs, and got the hell out of there before something else could come up. Suddenly sticking needles in crying babies didn’t seem so bad.
And tried not to think of his father.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 04:04 am (UTC)I love the imagery of Robin and the doctor touching, and then her suddenly saying something to Amon in Japanese. it's very vivid.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 05:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 05:16 am (UTC)You've really made me curious as to what's actually wrong with her, good job!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 05:46 am (UTC)I think I'm finally going to explain what's wrong with her in this chapter (hint, it's the reason that Karasuma is still in the hospital). I'm trying not to be coy, but I don't really want to explain it until I finished this chapter.