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*
New York hums along in spite of the chaos in the Park, the hellstorms in the Kitchen, the vampires, the demons, and the politics. The lobby of Albert Chambers bustles all day long, serves as a hangout for tenants and friends who never quite make it up to their apartments, opting instead to chatter and smoke by the doors, inside and out. The haze of smoke isn't all tobacco, either, and it's layered with patchouli and nag champa. Music of various types floats down from open windows and someone out front is strumming a guitar — not badly, either, for once.
It's a gorgeous day out but Sinjin doesn't seem at all impressed. He's wearing sunglasses to cut the glare of that irritatingly bright sun and he doesn't take them off when he limps into the lobby of his apartment building. Still too damn bright. He's got a bag from the pharmacy down the street in hand — he looks like he's had a run-in with a shredder, which isn't far from the truth.
*
In the thick of the excitement Albert Chambers enjoys by day, an insouciant redhead under a wide-brimmed hat sits on a chair at the most precarious of angles. Somehow she avoids collapsing while resting on its topmost rung, along the back, while it tilts on two legs towards the wall. The babble of conversation runs between another awe-inspiring performance of moving folk music the previous night, the fact the President isn't doing nearly enough to help students, and the hubbub around this social event and that riot and the idea maybe Central Park ought to be firebombed or treated with some kind of chemical to shut down the Hellmouth. Predictably that outcome is about as popular as milk among vegans, and the blustering man in mile wide flare pants huffs.
"It's not any of you have better solutions."
"There's always that weirdo on Bleecker Street," murmurs a blonde getting a massage to her neck, craning around to look at the redhead. "Isn't that where that doctor friend of yours lives?"
Scarlett looks altogether too alive, brighter by half, her rude good health completely unfair for those who suffer the bad weather or violence. "I'm sure the doctor is better informed than us on the ailments and treatments of that particular condition." She raises her hand in greeting towards Sinjin, then cuts off the awful pants 'friend' before he can make a disparaging remark. "How are you doing?"
*
"Ready to firebomb Central Park myself is how I'm doing," Sinjin says, with great annoyance. His accent — mostly Australia mangled by years of speaking Korean and Vietnamese — is particularly strong when he's frustrated or hung over. With an effort, he gets out a cigarette and lights it without using his left arm more than he has to.
"Ran into some of our mutual friends again," he says to Scarlett. "Got the worst of it before I got the better of them."
*
"I rather maintain the value of the park as a greenspace, although this prolonged effect is most certainly unpleasant," agrees the redhead, swinging her feet down. She angles forward and the chair hands with a suspiciously light thump, pinned down further when she drops into the seat and steps down, getting to her feet. "Here, let me help carry that. These wretches and harridans can pursue their nuclear strategy against New York on their own." An affectionate grin thrown over her shoulder to the chorus of grumbles and good-natured grins allows her to escape, and she slips closer. "Oh dear. You look like you've seen the worst of it, though I like to imagine they suffer a bit more for their folly. I am sorry to see you're uncomfortable, though."
*
"Stake through the chest is too quick, but at least it's done with." Sinjin relinquishes the pharmacy supplies — more bandages and gauze, and none too soon as he's bleeding through the ones at his throat. "The leader had a pack of dogs she was summoning in and out," he explains, on the way up to the second floor.
Second floor — not that Sinjin considers going out the window when he's picking a place to stay, naturally. Just two flights of stairs but it's slow going in his condition.
"I was already banged up from… from falling in a hole." Sinjin holds his cigarette between his lips as he digs in a pocket for his keys. "Christ, that sounds stupid. It was stupid. Don't ask."
*
The glance at the leading brings a mildly alarmed look to the redhead's expression, though the hat helps conceal the concern from the general measures. "Falling in a hole. Then a stake. I apparently live the dullest of lives. Remind me to hover around you to keep you from going to your death," she dryly murmurs, pushback against folly giving a little complexity to the conversation. She carries the bag without a second thought, and it clearly doesn't inhibit her in the least.
Riser by riser, they ascend the stairs. Once around the first bend, the downward glance to her associates leaves Scarlett speaking in a softer tone. "Do you want a lift to your place? Or at least somewhere you can see to everything else. I apologize, I'm awful when it comes to more than field medicine." Her regret coils around, and she exhales a soft breath. "At least you are keeping busy."
*
"I'll be okay, I'm just slow. Half of it's the hangover. I actually," and Sinjin admits to the next part with the air of a man confessing to a deep character flaw, "went to the hospital. They didn't let me out for a whole day. It's almost as though I've been taking these things too lightly. I'd have stitched myself up but I wasn't going to have much luck with one hand. You really need two for sutures."
Sinjin lets them both into his apartment. It's pleasantly cluttered, decorated with what are obviously imports from the East, and it smells of tea and cigarettes. A writer evidently lives here, given the papers on most surfaces and the typewriter on the rest.
"You're welcome to come with me any time," he offers. "I'd feel better reporting on your exploits than my own. Maybe you can help me pick a pen name. I can't be writing as Allerdyce if I'm also going to be setting fire to vampires in Macy's."
*
The faint smile follows, not lingering long upon the bohemian's fair countenance, the harmony of shadows lending a dash of rose and contour exaggerated above and beyond her animated expression. "How have you maintained a hangover atop the time in the hospital? I suppose the drugs are that potent, unless you walked out the door and took out a bottle of vodka at the earliest opportunity. I wouldn't blame you though there are better means to console yourself with, and to banish the memories of what passed. I can make you a hell of a cup of tea, if that pleases you."
Anyone else in the world might tramp through an apartment carelessly but she steps outside her white boots, leaving those glorious glossy things neatly beside one another. Her feet are in stockings, and the nearest thing anyone has from being preyed upon by the soul-thief, if they should engage in a game of French footsies. Forget Russian roulette; that's inevitably more dangerous, toes curling to one's sole. Regardless, she takes in the Eastern flair with a broadening smile. "Oh, you have a remarkable aesthetic. It feels absolutely snug and homely."
That no doubt constitutes a warm endorsement from Scarlett; then she flashes another blithe grin. "I… you set fire to a vampire in Macy's. That story about Macy's was you? Oh stars and ice, Allerdyce, I knew I liked you for a reason. Let's aim for our revolution and go arm in arm to trouble, I suppose."
*
"Went straight from the hospital to Harry's," Sinjin admits. "Can you drop the bag there? I'll get to it in a minute." He points at his coffee table, an impressive piece of furniture with a brass top carved with strange creatures, squatting between a large leather sofa and two leather recliners.
"And make yourself at home. I'm supposed to quit drinking," he adds, as he fills a copper kettle at the sink of his little kitchen. "Or at least not get drunk off my ass every time something happens. But, yeah. That was me in Macy's. Ashing a bunch of vampires there, brawling with some kind of hellhound, and then staking the scary blonde lady through the back kind of added up and I decided — once I wasn't going to bleed to death — that the booze would do the trick at least once more. Still don't like burning anything that feels even a little human. You'd have had a blast. Fine jewelry and chaos all in one place."
*
Scarlett gently places the bag down where indicated, bending neatly to arrange it just so according to some innate understanding of feng shui many women seem to innately possess. Tugging on the handles, she leaves it looking rather perky and happy, then retreats some steps into the apartment. "At home would mean I start practicing yoga, which is scarcely polite or appropriate in a mini-dress. Though your point is made." Nothing like a tiny bit of ribbing in good fun, even as she winks and moves through the room, light-footed and mindful of any random pens that might have strayed out from the writer's corralled existence.
"Drinking is rather the art of the author, isn't it? Along with smoking and lurking in dark, subterranean bars where you congregate to swap stories and curse your editorial pit, right?" She has little compunction about landing upon one of the recliners, perching as prettily as Jackie O for a portrait, knees together and legs swept aside. "Hellhound? The last time I encountered… Mm." Mental note made, she redirects her thoughts. "I know someone who might have insights on them, though too many kinds of nasty beast seem to return from the dead, just when you think they would leave it be. Tell me more about a scary blonde lady? What on earth is the story behind that? I wish I could share anything more interesting, but for the most part, I've been trying to put together a paper and keep the world from boiling apart at the seams. More work to be done."
*
"Wasn't just me there, mind you." Sinjin gets out the teapot, in spite of the wince when he reaches for it. "Green thing, green lady.." He rummages in his memory. "Kid with sigils on his skin. Pretty boy — pretty eyes at least — missing most of his face. Nothing there but a weird fire. Interesting. Don't envy any of them. All of them the types to be first against the wall when the jackboots come."
Now for the tea, and there's a king's ransom worth of it in his cupboards. This is his real vice, there's no alcohol in the house for good reason. "The blonde, she had a throne set up for her. Weird. Regal. Beautiful, I guess, objectively. If you're into women. She tried some flattery or something on me, but you can imagine how far that got her."
*
Sparks flash where her fingertips catch the sunlight, shattering on the irregular glittering finish imposed there. A smooth sweep of her hand and she laughs, "Were I not so terrible, I should think you sound rather smitten about the young man without a face. Although interesting upon that front, one shaped out of fire? I suppose stone was getting all the attention." It says something she can muse on this without growing concerned; Scarlett is, if nothing else, a product of her particular curse. "When the jack boots fall…" Her mouth pinches in the middle. "Nothing could impel me into motion faster than this, I suppose. It speaks to the need we have in keeping a profile, somehow, moving. And where even to begin with that?"
Tea is a shared vice between them; she possesses more than Boston Harbour in 1775. Pity, all things considered, the fine drink is not the favourite one of the nation. "A blonde had a throne in Macy's. Doesn't she know Santa Claus comes in another two months, and we are a republic besides? Naturally everyone of late I meet seems to have a crown. I am this close to going out and declaring a duchy just to feel remotely adequate."
*
"I'm more the court jester," Sinjin admits. "A bard, at best, though my poetry has never been as good as my prose. If you get yourself a court, I'll come juggle fire for you. As for the boy without a face — well, he's pretty enough but I know better than to speculate unless someone is being obvious. I like my head on my shoulders and my teeth in my mouth." He snorts softly at that, goes back to warming the teapot.
"It was a fight," he says, almost as though he's just thinking about it for the first time. "Got in there, first thing I did was kill some child-thing. Vampire. Thought I could save the kid she had in her hands, but that came too late. Between the dogs and the vampires — if we hadn't been there, it would have been a shitstorm. Though I'm sure they'll find a way to blame it on us instead."
Sinjin pauses, shakes his head. "Us. Comes easier every time, saying it. Not a familiar feeling for me."
*
"I make the equation of the skald on the other side, myself. It would seem that we need a harp between us, instead of coming up with yet more words. I'm sure no one requires my babbling filling their ears." A musing smile drawn out of the abyss finds her where she kicks back almost gracefully, leaning at a narrow angle upon the recliner rather than being so gauche and unforgivable as snuggling into its oversized embrace.
"I suppose it deserves to be said that one's preferences do not in the least bother me, though of course we have the anti-Wildes and their kangaroo court of public opinion. Mixing my metaphors, of course, but they cause me no little dismay from time to time, getting their words in. So it's clear. Be yourself, as much as you would, and that includes burning down all those threats that would stand between you and sanctuary. Vampires, though, so many vampires."
Her eyes shut a moment. "Let me guess, Vlad Tepes will come dancing out with a handful of his native soil, and can be expected to be chased by Nosferatu? It may be wise for us to bring out the pitchforks and torches just in time for the harvest, you know? Deliciously troublesome."
*
"I am comfortable with being temperamental," Sinjin says with a laugh, using one of the older, more subtle terms for his preference. "Less so with being a mutant. I suppose one suggests a familial connection more than the other. Mutants, it seems, are more of a kind, a fraternity, than homosexuals — we seem to simply fall where we may and die or take root depending on the soil. I found the streets of Sydney more hospitable than you'd think — and the same in New York. Being the other, though…fraught with obligation and connection."
Sinjin fills the teapot and prepares the tea tray. "I have avoided obligation and connection as much as possible, but yes, the vampire have proven troublesome on that front. The woman, she felt like one of their leaders but she died more easily than I expected. We're coming on a the witching hours here in this country, aren't we? If All Hallow's Eve is more than superstition, do you think they'll get worse before they get better? Do you know anyone who would know about them? My connections are all mundane."
*
Scarlett listens in the manner of a seasoned student, head tipped to catch every last syllable spoken and a good number not. She gains what she might through the nuances of body language, taking away whatever she can possibly read while Sinjin speaks, and the teapot taunts her in its proximity. "Sydney. Imagine, the far side of the world, and that stellar harbour. I've seen photographs of it. One day perhaps I shall get to walk its streets, though not at the long flight or cruise required to be there." Is there a hint of longing? Let there not be, although she drifts a finger in front of her, as though banishing opium smoke as they occupy a den of iniquity, instead of an apartment. "Mutants are a difficult matter. A woman I know, a geneticist, went looking for evidence of whether it's something spontaneously encountered in a portion of the human population or something that goes back to an Eve sort, the first mutant or whatever have you. Alas. I wish it were possible to say conclusively one way or the other, but I suspect there are metahumans caused a wide number of different sources instead of just one. On the other hand, we're all of a kind of kin, falling to the same general part of the family tree. So too do a number of us probably fear that branch being axed."
Honesty may be the best of policies, but little resolves the sting of its existence.
"Halloween, Samhain, All Hallow's Eve. Yes, it's something here, and all the children dressing up seems plenty threatening or opportune, as it goes. I fear that we ought to anticipate trouble, even if it's just from jesters who think taking advantage of the holiday ambiance might be amusing."
*
"Should I worry about you?" Sinjin has to be tactical about it, but he manages to get the tea tray over to the coffee table. He's one to talk about worry, in his condition, but he seems to be taking that in stride. "I don't mean to be paternal about that, or to pry. It's just that…" He straightens and gestures to himself. He did nearly have his throat torn out the other day. "I don't know how much you can take. Physically, otherwise? And I feel responsible, which is also incredibly disturbing." He makes a face at her. "This isn't my skillset. I've survived alone since I hit the streets seven years ago."
*
Rogue twines her fingers around the hem of her minidress, the opaque leggings securing any possible slip of sartorial standards, and a ghost of a smile evaporates away from her face. "None of my talents appear outwardly, for the most part. I should be grateful for that, else I might have a difficult time explaining the proverbial sword hanging over my head," she explains, not so much a diversion as gathering up her thoughts. The skimming braids are studded by chrysanthemums, a lattice of fox-red plaits adorned by deep wine blossoms bursting star-like under her tilted hat. "I can conclusively say even the undead would have a difficult time keeping me down. It wouldn't be impossible, even improbable given enough of them. I do not like contemplating the notion of a horde overwhelming me, but I'm fairly durable." Her tongue moistening her lips, she goes quiet for a few moments before continuing. "Responsible for me you might feel, though more like it goes the other way. I worry about anyone in close proximity to me, not the least because whatever trouble follows me about could in turn fall upon them. I may be physically durable, mentally? Spiritually? I feel guilt the same as you do. I haven't had a thousand years to adjust to the notion that things get hurt and die."
*
"It's more convenient to have trouble find me than it is to chase it down. Chasing it is what got me consigned to a private hell in the first place." Sinjin fixes her tea according to her specifications and serves her before acquiring his own — milk and sugar in quantity, this time, because it's comforting — and sagging down onto the couch. From there, he observes her across the listing stacks of newspapers and library books and the tea tray.
"Don't worry about me. You will if you will but you shouldn't. There's worse things to happen than going out in a blaze of glory some time in the near future." That would solve a lot of problems for him. "I'd rather stick around to help out, which is just…new. I always see you with your little cluster of admirers." He gestures toward the door, the lobby, and beyond. "Down there, in the garden, on the street. You're hard to miss. But you're alone in the middle. A little bit out of synch — there and not there. I saw you handle that vampire well enough, not a mark on you, but that's just half of the equation. Thus the question."
*
"A private hell. You make it sound as though you hardly wax poetical, but entrapped in the actual corner of the underworld reserved for the sinners and unfortunate souls of a dark benediction." The poetry does not conceal what is there, a proof for danger. She will, however, take tea with cream and sugar, barring any honey about. Flowers in her hair, any wonder she might prefer to sweeten things so? Nonetheless, the offering is accepted gladly, a murmur of thanks chasing Sinjin back to his sofa. Her posture hasn't altered much in the meantime, painting sinuous lines in the vestiges of grace.
"I have every right to worry about you. You upset some little blonde vampire queen, or one with aspirations of being a queen, and if my instincts run true she wasn't so easily dispatched as you think. No doubt some profound arrogance lies there, the sort bred with immortality, and it will take boxing her up and crating her off her native soil to really dispatch her. Probably sacred bullets from an enchanted Colt, something a shaman whipped up, and the blessings of a nun, a rabbi, and the last virgin in Poughkeepsie." Her fingers lightly flick and she raises the cup to her lips, regardless of the heat imparted from the liquid. It can be boiling and she doesn't much protest; must be easy when skin is hard to burn. "Always alone in the middle. How kindly you phrase that, bard. Strike a melody for perpetuity in me, and perhaps I shall tell you a story, even some parts true."
She inclines her head. "Sometimes things with heavy gravity clear a space around themselves, like it or not. Everything can rotate in a grand dance, that star is in line with all the other stars of a constellation, bound together and headed in the same direction through the electric whirl of a galaxy. But it will stand alone because it must, and anything that gets too close ends up either repelled or falling into the light. And then, puff, gone." She flicks her fingers lightly, illustrating the evaporation of some unfortunate chaff. "It goes somewhat like that, in less fanciful terms. Though with the vampires, I loathe fighting. Truly I do, but this seems unlikely to be resolved by words, and that's where the trouble comes. I hate hurting things."
*
"As do I. Ironically enough, given what the world thinks of us. As I said to someone the other night — if I enjoy it, I hope someone puts me down. Can you imagine, if I enjoyed it?" Sinjin's mouth twists and he drinks his tea as though he's trying to wash the taste of something out of his mouth. "I suppose you had a look at it, a fraction of it. I've killed before, in quantity and out of necessity, and I still feel it. It's why I drink, why I'd do more if I hadn't watched heroin steal my father from us — for all that he didn't care much me, he was my father. I'm not going out that way, though I wish I could."
Sinjin shifts with a grimace of pain, snags a half-hidden prescription bottle from under a newspaper. "You're right about the vampire. It was too easy for all that power. You learn to smell it on a person, their power. Or read it in the way they walk and talk. She had history, deep history, and I don't buy that I killed her with a single blow. Even if I liked myself more, I wouldn't believe it. You think she'll come after me?" He's half-curious, half-hopeful about it.
*
"A look at the creature that hissed its way to death, answering a master I can neither know or see or name? Oh yes. Seen enough to know in the same situation I would have done it again, with greater speed had I the opportunity. It isn't alive, not in a way that you or I are, and my hesitation could have killed us." The grim facts are flung down one by one, a wordless intonation humming behind the very sound there. "Drinking to erase the scourge of death is no peace come to any of us, though I wish it were. Unfortunately for some of us there can be no escape through that. Downing the bottle would give me little but a case of the gripes." A thin-lipped rictus arches along her lips, the bone white sickle of a vixenish reaper; it could be worse, if she's the washer at the ford, the doom crow.
"Let me take a look at your bandages, if you need. At least I might be able to see whether you need to wash them out, though past that, I rely on what's written in your first aid manual or the phone book." Because they have that helpfully printed in some places. "I think she might come out of pique and spite. Thwarted women often do. She would be mad not to pursue you to prove you hadn't defeated her."
*
"It's all stitches under the bandages. In the triple digits, the doctors told me. But I could use some help changing the gauze." Sinjin makes a face at that, pointing at the bag from the pharmacy. Needing help is not a thing he enjoys. "You'd think I could avoid women better, being me." That gets a snort of annoyance. "She's welcome to return, though I might go invest in a couple stakes. The wood seemed to do the trick. Her dogs were something else. Don't know if they'd give you pause. Semi-corporeal at times. I wonder, if you are nearly invulnerable to the material, if the incorporeal would hurt you."
*
ROLL: Rogue +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 75
*
"Would I had any capacity to heal you, but the doctor I trust the most probably wouldn't…" She pauses for a moment, the tea in her hands chattering upon its saucer. Slim fingers shiver slightly, and she closes her eyes for a moment, as though to press away the threat of dropping hot liquid into her lap. Better for everyone that way, really. "Stakes really do the trick, then? For breaking a vampire's body or making them go inert? Are the stories true then?" The crooked smile indents a dimple to the corner of her cheek, and then she arises to go rummage through the bag for the gauze and supplies she needs.
For someone who said she doesn't have a clue, looks like she damn well has one. Odd.
"The dogs would be troublesome if I couldn't get a handhold on them. If I could, then it would cease to be an issue."
*
Sinjin makes note of the reaction, without comment. Instead, with some effort, he unbuttons and sheds the black shirt he wears. Underneath, he's pale, lean, and freckled across his shoulders and down his chest. The hound tore into his throat, clawed nearly to the bone at his shoulders, and then bite through the muscle on his left forearm. He's a mess; going to the hospital was the right choice, even if it hurt his pride.
It's not his first set of injuries. There are scars, some layered, signs of a hard life and recent trauma. On closer inspection, as he peels off the old gauze, his fingernails and fingertips were once damaged and are healing awkwardly. He's been burned with cigarettes almost at random, as though it amused someone to do it when they grew bored, likewise there are thin scars from knives. His back, when he leans forward to take another drink of his tea, is marked with fairly new crossed scars from more than one caning.
There's a good reason he's sanguine about being injured. Everything is relative.
"Stakes do work," Sinjin says, nodding. "And fire, though it seemed a little less effective on her. Took some of her minions down to dust in a heartbeat. The dogs, I still don't know how they went in and out like that. Real and not real. There's got to be a pattern to it."
*
Rogue has reconnected.
*
The reaction is what it is; a blip in reality, nothing odd, history as time sweeps on. She gathers the necessary components to mend the poor fellow given a thrashing of a lifetime by a pipsqueak vampire princess, one who probably has desires to live in a winter kingdom and bathe in the blood of her subjects. Is her last name Bathory? Someone ought to check. She sighs, and then returns. "I could have dealt with the shirt. Do you have medical gloves? If not I'll want to use mine, though I can jot upstairs and fetch some." Latex gloves for the medical industry are literally just coming into fashion but cloth ones will work just fine, or great rubbery gauntlets for attacking dish monsters.
Her tongue clicks against her teeth, briefly instructive of her mood. "Glory, you really did get worse than you got until you spindled that woman on a stake. Your poor throat." No comment upon the rest, rude as it would be. However, there is something rather critical and detached in her approach, running on autopilot. Part of her is drifting at a reserve, Scarlett who is not Scarlett. It takes a very gifted mind to notice what she does, in truth. Instead, she brings out a variety of gauze and other supplies, an adhesive tape, including a devious bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a little iodine wipe. Great, right?
"Stakes and fire. Holy symbols? Holy water?"
*
"Gloves in the bag." Sinjin shrugs off matter of his injuries, then actually considers how it looks from the outside. "I could have been more cautious. I'm not made for head-on combat. I was angry. And, as for the attacks…you know, I'm guessing the holy symbols would do it. Holy water. The rest of the myths are true, why not that part? I was raised Catholic, I probably still have a rosary somewhere, not that praying ever did me any good. Worth a try. The lady didn't introduce herself, sadly. Just told me I was pretty."
Sinjin takes a moment to run things over in his mind, trying to remember what he heard when the woman was talking to Jono. "She spent more time talking to the boy with the eyes. I shoved a cigarette in her face for her troubles. And she just healed right up. She said something about a war, just before I dusted her. He might know more."
*
The gloves are snatched up gladly, slid over long fingers, pulled secure to the wrists. Scarlett is a master of donning and doffing those rapidly, and she glances askance. "None of us truly are, I think. Even the finest fighter I know takes wounds, bleeds, and suffers. Albeit what makes him suffer probably would destroy us all. That said, you might start carrying holy water with you. Ask the priest down at St. Patrick's to bless it for you. Do you know the church? Cathedral in Manhattan, full of potency I am sure. You might try; it might help." Her lips press together and she closes her eyes, trying to pull towards bits of knowledge.
"A war." The sigh follows. "Exactly what we needed, another battle. It might have something to do with the hole in the park, do you think?" Her fingers peel away the gauze and she dampens a lint pad with the peroxide, then dabs at the bloody scabs around the sutures with a practiced level of pressure.
*
"I don't think it could be anything else. At the least, the park has created a kind of vacuum of goodness that allows all kinds of bullshit and evil to creep in. I'll try St. Patrick's. I'm a terrible Catholic but…I used to be one." Sinjin submits to being taken care of with an air of resignation. "I'll try and track that guy down, ask him what she said. He put me in a cab before he took off — and he got involved in the first place — so he's not completely disinterested in helping. The last thing we need is a war of any kind here."
*
"According to the Mother Church, you never cease to be one. You turn into an apostate, potentially, or lapsed, but baptism is a promise at birth that cannot be broken short of excommunication," the young woman murmurs. Her touch is light, beset by the odd shake, but she knows her way around this sort of work. Gauze is pulled forth, wrapped around the wounded flesh to replace the previous bloodied one she sets aside. The impersonal touch must be rather curious in someone so near, though Scarlett continues through her tasks. She smells of neroli and the chrysanthemums laced through her hair, traces of citrus carried on an autumnal whisper. This is her hour, her season. "Perhaps we can talk to that fellow. No danger, of course. Something intended to assure he is safe; that no maledictions fall upon him."
*
"I don't know what he is, but I don't think he needs to be afraid of us. Whatever's inside him…that it doesn't eat him alive means he's pretty strong." Strong. Pretty. Both. That line of thinking brings Sinjin back to the church. He tips his head, shakes his hair out of the way to let Scarlett at one shoulder. "The church doesn't have much use for my kind. But, if I have a use for it, maybe we can come to a compromise."
*
"I don't imagine so if he took you to obtain transportation. Hold still, this part might be uncomfortable." Scarlett presses her finger down to assure the adhesive tape sticks atop the gauze, even in that means the neat origami arrangement along Sinjin's shoulder threatens to cling to wounded flesh. She tries to limit that effect, moving as quickly as she dares, even slipping aside the locks that stray too close. "Now let's see if that will hold."
Her own handiwork apparently meets muster, or better than she has reason to suspect.
"I hate to think the church bars you, though she has become an old, frightened woman in her dotage. Change comes hard to an institution around since the Roman Empire, and an unchallenged power for many centuries of that," she murmurs. "Pity. Their mission could resonate powerfully with the dispossessed and the fearful, the outcast and the uncertain. A message of love and acceptance drew the masses in the first place, not just the sacred elite, and kept them through those early trials. Imagine if they could engage the same fellowship and community today."
*
"You're a better nurse than you give yourself credit for. Thank you." Sinjin gives her a smile. "I don't think the church will kick me out openly but they might prefer that I not take communion. I haven't been to confession since I was fourteen. That's nearly ten years of sins built up. Either way, they won't be happy to see me. If I get a lead on any of this, do you want me to come get you?" The prescription bottle is still sitting, untouched, beside his tea. Sinjin exhales sharply, then picks it up to take one of the little yellow pills inside.
*
"I hardly constitute a good nurse. Though as the cousin to health, it seems only fit I know something of what to do. I will try my very best to keep everything together." She glances to the bloodied gauze and then replies, "I would burn this, if I were you. Call me suspicious should you like, but the less biologically contaminated material in your possession, the better. Others can use this to track you or determine your genetics, possibly, which you never want to happen. I've heard stories about such things, that some people can use blood and tissues to… terrible effect, for lack of a better term. No need to let a questionable program be the end of your independence."
Then she tips her head forward, and rubs her fingers into her brows after stripping the gloves off. "Listen to me. Utterly terrible to think such a way, but there we go. I will, however, give you all the backup you can ask for. No doubt at this rate we're going to need to get some practice in."
*
"I'll come get you, then." Sinjin gathers up the waste, then pulls the last spark from his earlier cigarette slowly going cold in the ashtray. Fire licks around everything in his hands, without smoke, and then wraps it up, binding it tighter and tighter until everything flares white. Seconds later, there's nothing but a little ash in his unmarked palms. A thin wisp of white smoke coils upward, then fades to nothing.
"Not that I'll be doing much for the next few days." Sinjin dusts his hands off into the ashtray. "Sleeping. Not drinking. And sleeping some more. Weird luxury, that. But you're upstairs, right?"
*
"Very good." Scarlett rises to her feet, and then she takes the tea service over into the kitchen with reverence suitable to a woman who clearly takes great care for other people's belongings, especially the tools of diplomacy. "I live up the way, of course. Last floor, look for the moon marked on the wall. It shows up in shadow better than light, naturally. I can give you a place to crash observed if you need it. I understand what it can be to sleep uneasy."
*
"I think I'll be fine for now." Sinjin shakes the little bottle of pills for emphasis. "Got myself a therapist and everything — there's a sign of desperation for you. But I might take you up on it some time anyway. You come down if you need anything. I should start locking the door, but…spent so many years without one, I never do. Don't like being closed in. Thanks for your help, Scarlett."