Sepúlveda
They don't have an in-depth conversation in between the goblin's scampering off into the night and the medical examiner escorting the ecology student back to her apartment.
By the time the encounter is over the both of them have met the business-end of the thing's needle-sharp claws and are drenched in their own blood for their troubles. It isn't enough to seriously cripple Sepúlveda but he is not all that impressed with either the quickness with which things spiraled out of control nor the fact that he isn't entirely sure what the hell just happened.
He kept a hand on Margot's elbow to steer her back to the car and asked her where he was taking her once they were back in the vehicle with both the doors shut and locked.
One last glance at the two young men waiting for a bus that may or may not come and then he drove her back to her apartment.
---
He carried a small wooden box upstairs with them. Not until they're inside the studio apartment with the door chain-locked and a light on does Sepúlveda utter the first substantial sentence he has seen fit to utter since before he left her in the sedan.
His right arm hurts like a son of a bitch. It's a good thing he's left-handed. Her reluctant mentor stands at the counter and begins to prep test tubes and liquids out of the portable chemistry set.
"I told you to stay in the car," he says without much energy.
Margot
There was a hollow quality to the girl after the encounter with the goblin. She took the direction of the good doctor by way of a hand on her elbow and went back to the car. Strapped herself into the passenger seat with the seatbelt and sat there, dully holding her hand up over her gashed open cheek. She didn't have much to say beyond a numb direction here or there to turn (or providing an address for the GPS were that the case).
The apartment that he takes her to is a studio in a stout brick building, a single room with a bathroom off the kitchenette and a bed hidden behind a paper divider. Almost as soon as they were in through the door she went into the bathroom to try to clean up.
It was only once the bathroom door opened again that she'd find the doc prepping and have to meet his discussion. She was supposed to stay in the car. When she'd emerged from the bathroom to stand in the kitchenette she looked a little startled by his statement. She'd put a large gauze bandage over her face while in the bathroom so she wouldn't need to keep a hand over it any longer and did her best to wash the blood from her throat and chest as well. Her hair was pushed back with a cloth headband, and she was dressed in what must have been night clothes left over from the earlier morning -- a large band T-shirt and a pair of flannel sleep pants.
Her arms were behind her, hands probably linked behind her back, and for the moment she stood in the bathroom doorway without going much further ahead. Glimpsed his tool kit curiously but dropped her gaze with the scolding all the same.
"I know. I just... I felt guilty, and I didn't want to get left there after you'd been stabbed and thought maybe I could help."
Sepúlveda
"You thought you could help."
After he gets whatever it is he's preparing set up Sepúlveda shrugs out of his red-drenched lab coat and considers where it is he's going to stash it while he gets himself put back together. His skin the earth tone that it is it's easy for Margot to see that he has lost blood and the blush of health with it. Ashen now.
If he did not seek medical attention he was injured enough that he would continue to lose blood and then grow sick from infection or loss of limb function and would eventually go into shock and die. It would take days. He does not intend to let himself degrade just to prove a point.
"Do you know what was wrong with those two guys who spooked you?"
The liquid in the test tube has turned an unappetizing green color. With his right hand he picks it up and swirls it around. He's looking at what he's doing and not at his student.
[life 2: HEAL YOURSELF FOOL. base diff 6 (vulgar without witnesses), -3 from practiced rote/individualized instrument/taking time. it won't go off until the next round.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )
Margot
Margot shook her head slowly to answer his question. No, she didn't know what was wrong with them. She was still looking downward instead of directly at her mentor. Maybe embarassed by the entire situation, but more likely than not she was probably just still in shock from the whole thing.
When she did finally step out of the bathroom's doorway she was slow to do so, and came to stand where the professor was set up at the counter in front of her. Her hands were still behind her back, and he could tell this was deliberate now. Perhaps only with a momentary glance, or perhaps not at all for he was focused on fixing his shoulder before it tried to take his life. It wouldn't matter, because he'd be pretty aware of why this was happening in the next moment. Her hands moved from behind her back and the heavy thud of metal on the countertop announced the arrival of another wielder of death in the room: a gun.
More to the point, his gun. He'd recognize it as such.
Margot pressed her lips together into a thin regretful line and gathered up the discarded lab coat to hang it up on a set of coat hooks that were on the wall behind the door. As though she were taking a guest's coat and not hanging up a mad scientist's crimson-stained labcoat instead.
"I didn't try any... work. I thought they were strung out was all, at first. But then they started acting weirder than normal and..." Her arms crossed tightly over her chest. "I got scared." Then she added after a cringing glance at the doc's ashen-skinned shoulder and how bright red the meat visible was in contrast.
"I didn't think any of this would happen. I'm really sorry you got cut up."
Sepúlveda
For a moment he considers reacting to the fact that not only did she not heed him when he told her to stay in the car but she rummaged around enough to find the hand cannon he kept in a hard case underneath the backseat. She can see him weighing whether it's worth the effort it would take to lecture her as to why she shouldn't have done any of the things she did tonight.
Then he decides he's standing in her crappy studio apartment with his arm just about lopped off at the shoulder looking like shit and clearly not all that impressed with her and he'll hold off on lecturing her until later.
"What'd I tell you about telling me you're sorry?"
He considers the composition of the chemicals inside the test tube before lifting it to her in a sarcastic salute and downing the contents. With any luck it will heal his arm and not kill him. He's too tapped to will it into working the way he wants it to.
[extension. he only needs one more success to totally heal himself.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Margot
"I remember what you told me," she said. "I just wanted to apologize anyways."
Margot shrugged her shoulders a little bit, then stood quietly and watched the good doctor's work. She hovered in the entryway space, twisting the hem of her night shirt and plucking a loose seam threat with her short fingernails.
Outside of 'sorry', Margot didn't know what else to say, so she said nothing. The Doc probably wanted to pinch between his eyes and scold her once he was able to focus enough to do so.
Sepúlveda
[int + medicine: how bad is your face, idiot? using his Bright Specialty for this, hoping to leverage successes for decreased difficulty on a healing roll.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2
Sepúlveda
[lol WRONG BUTTON REROLLING.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Sepúlveda
[life 3/prime 2: prepping a thing for margot's dumb face. base diff 6, -3 bc medicine roll. needs three successes total. don't fuck this up doc.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 3 )
Sepúlveda
Luck has nothing to do with the fact that the liquid he consumes heals and does not kill him. It's a combination of skill and Science and the fact that this is not the first time in his life he has had to heal himself or someone else after something has drawn blood.
He braces himself on the counter with his functional hand as the serum does its job. Strange sensation to feel one's muscles and tendons and skin knit itself together but the sensation of everything hanging on in spite of injury and gravity's combined insistence was strange to begin with. A different breed of strangeness. A shudder wracks him when the pain abates. His color comes back with a quickness. His scrub top is still torn and stained with gore but he's not worried about his laundry right this moment.
When he looks up again Sepúlveda sighs and rakes his spectacles from his face. Fixes her with a scrutinizing look in spite of their absence. Takes in the wound on her face and neck and sets his mouth in a straight unhappy line before testing the strength and sensation in his fingers and commencing to Work again.
"They were infected," he says as he mixes a paste this time instead of a liquid. "With a fungus the little guy was hoping to harvest from them. They'll be fine. I shouldn't have antagonized him, but that's how we roll where I'm from. You don't whip out a knife unless you're gonna use it, know what I'm saying?"
Whatever he's doing feels different than when he was just affecting his own Life Pattern. The paste in the little petri dish is a strange purple color and the question was rhetorical. He beckons her with a quick flick of his wrist and a "C'mere."
Then he asks, "You know what kind of gun that is?"
Margot
Though she said little, Margot's eyes were bright with interest while she watched him Work. She was a bright pupil, a real smart girl (in spite of the dumb situations she found herself in). He saw it when she was taking notes in the strip club, and saw it now while she carefully studied everything he was putting together and how the chemical changes occurred.
Beckoned forward, she came to stand before the small man who all the same had several inches of height on her (it was good to have short friends, they made you feel tall). Having a pretty good idea of what the paste was for, she had her head canted and hair tucked behind her ear to give a clear view and workspace.
Whatever thoughts she had about harvesting fungus from people were kept to herself, but her hazel-colored eyes hopped back to the gun when he tested her knowledge of it. Her head twitched a little, like she wanted to shake her head no but thought better of it since he was going to be working on her face.
"I learned to shoot, but didn't study up on the models."
Sepúlveda
"So you know the difference between a twenty-two cal and a forty-five?"
Up close like this and he divested of his coat she can see her mentor has a modest sort of strength in that wiry frame of his. He's only a few inches taller than she is and he carries himself as he is. A small creature who can take care of himself. It may be all bravado given Margot saw him just about get his ass handed to him tonight but if she gets the impression he isn't used to having to worry about another person's well-being in situations like that she wouldn't be wrong.
He sighs before he can get too wound up about the fact that she took his fucking revolver out of its case and carried it across the street in the waistband of her fucking jeans and begins to smear the paste along the red line painted into her flesh.
The second it touches her skin she feels a chill tingling and then the dissolution of pain. He's taking his time. If he wanted to he could slap the paste on and walk away but he's being careful after so much casting on the fly earlier.
"My wife," he says, "was Verbena. A witch, like I suspect you are." A flat look aimed at her eyes before Sepúlveda returns his attention to her healing wound and the paste applied to it. "She learned how to shot too, but she was shit at it until she learned how to affect probability. Yeah? And how to enchant the bullets so they would do enough damage to make up for the fact she was a shit shot. I mean an absolute shit shot. Deep down, she never wanted to kill anyone, just stop 'em long enough so she could get away, come at the situation from a different angle. Self-defense, you know? I carry that thing around because I don't care. I'll kill a motherfucker if he's messing with my people. Whether you wanna be or not, you're my people until we find somebody else to keep you out of trouble while you're sorting out your head from your ass. You understand?"
Margot
"It's the caliber of bullet." Margot spoke carefully, face turned up and to the side while her mentor carefully applied the paste to the deep cuts in her face and jaw. She flinched at first touch, then made a small hissing sound when she sucked breath through her teeth as the cooling, almost menthol-y sensation tingled into her cheek. "A twenty-two is smaller than a forty-five?" The question mark suggested that she was checking to make sure she had her information the right way around.
Soon, though, he was explaining about his wife, and how she was a witch with a shit shot that used magic to increase the effectiveness of a gun in her own hands. Though she understood the hints dropped there (prep yourself and use your magic to make the strike better to defend yourself), she was dwelling a little bit more on the word was in that statement. She tried to glance at his wedding band finger again, she was certain she'd seen a ring there before.
"I understand." Though she was wondering about his history she was still paying attention to what Sepulveda was telling her. She ran her tongue on the inside of her teeth and was quiet for a moment before speaking again.
"I think my Avatar would want me to kill people." It was spoken softly, like a secret she'd been grappling and trying to find morality in. Like she had no idea what to do with that realization.
Sepúlveda
With the hissing sound Sepúlveda puts his other hand on the other side of her face like to anchor her. She hasn't been doing a very good job holding still thus far and he wants to fuck this up even less than he wanted to fuck up his own arm. His fingers are freezing.
To the matter of the caliber of bullet Margot receives an affirmative grunt in response. That isn't the part of the lecture he'd care to focus on right now. They can discuss weapons and how and when to use them when they aren't both covered in blood.
His history isn't the part of the lecture he'd care to focus on either. The kids have received very little of it. His curriculum vitae and credentials don't count for shit because he is not anticipating indoctrinating them into the Society of Ether. They are both intelligent but there's more to it than that.
With her wound both covered in paste and healed Sepúlveda gives his work an appraising glance before setting aside the petri dish and looking around for a cloth. There's a small one in his chemistry set. Despite the fact he looks away to grab it she has his attention. His eyes betray nothing when he looks back at her. Looks her in the eye again as if to acknowledge receipt of the confessionary nature of the statement and then he anchors her face again as he begins to wipe away the paste.
Aside from traces of purple-gone-gray paste no sign of the injury persists. Not even a scar.
"I think you'll find it hard to progress if you ignore what your Avatar wants, but I also think you'll find there are ways to follow the path you're on without violating your own... eh... call it ethics. Code of honor. What have you." Work finished he tosses down the soiled cloth and returns his glasses to his face. "I will... try to teach you the Verbena paradigm so you can live your life as nonviolent as you feel you need to. They deal in blood, though, and it sounds like that's what your Avatar wants. If not other people's, then your own. You're gonna have to make peace with that."
Margot
His fingers were freezing, but with her face held with both hands now her natural inclination to jerk away from the touch wasn't fulfilled. At least after the initial reaction she was still, though. With a furrowed brow and one closed eye she considered the sensation of her cheek knitting together and waited to see what the doctor would have to say to her confession.
When he met her eyes, he'd find them wide (as usual) and concerned. Conflicted. Seeking guidance.
(Regretting signing up yet, Doc?)
When he wiped the paste away and let go of her face Margot reached up immediately to touch her fingers to her cheek, not quite so much astounded by the smooth skin beneath them but rather trying to figure out the steps behind what made it happen. She wouldn't understand it entirely, not yet, but perhaps one day if she didn't get herself killed first.
To what he had to contribute in regards to life as a Verbena with an Avatar who lusted for blood, Margot looked worried.
"I can give my own. The blood doesn't bother me anymore." She did at least sound sincere about that. Funny, how she was worked up over potential meth-heads but not over blood. "I just... I don't know, I've never thought of myself as violent necessarily. I can't figure why She would want...." She was going to say 'me', but didn't like how self-pitying it would sound out loud. Didn't want to be made fun of for it, mostly.
With a small shake of her head, she broke her gaze away from her mentor's and searched the small apartment space for something to distract herself with, something to break the tension a little.
"I suppose She'll appear again when She gets sick of me not understanding what She wants."
Sepúlveda
"That is how Seekings tend to work yeah."
Mild sarcasm. They have been over Seekings and the Avatar before. He has been amenable to answering questions about Essence and their role in daily life via email. That is something they'll have to get into in more detail later.
That and the history of the factions. What each tradition leaves. How it is that the Verbena have existed for so long in spite of the world's attempts to wipe them out. Why it is he believes Ned is a fucking Cultist of Ecstasy and the two of them are going to give him an ulcer if he spends too much time contemplating what it is they do when they're alone.
"I did some reading. Andraste, yeah? The war goddess invoked by Boudica? Maybe you should get a rabbit. The story goes that Boudica used to release a, ah, hare from her dress, as a method of divination. The way the hare ran was the way the army was supposed to go."
He is beginning to pack up his things. She has had quite the adventure tonight and Sepúlveda is not the touchy-feely sort of mentor. Feelings aren't his thing and neither are hugs. It's moments like this when he actually misses Eloise and doesn't just tamp down thoughts of her. Eloise would have known what to do with this girl. He has an idea but he doesn't have a protocol yet.
"Would you like for me to make you something to help you sleep, before I go?"
That's as close as she's going to get to him asking her if she's alright.
Margot
The Good Doctor's suggestion of buying a rabbit seemed to strike a chord with Margot. It must be fun for him, as a teacher, to see the little epiphanies these kids kept having. She looked almost owl-like when she was all full of thought like that.
"Yeah, I remember reading that too."
She was considering this still while he packed up, and was only drawn back to earth by his way of asking if she'd be okay. Margot blinked a few a few times to clear the wonder from her eyes, then smiled faint and weak and shook her head.
"Nah. I'm a college student, I already have melatonin."
It was only when he was at the door when she'd bid farewell by adding: "Thanks. For the lot of it."
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