Absit Omen RPG
Role-Play Boards => St. Mungo's => London => First Floor: Creature-Induced Injuries => Topic started by: Athena Marrowbone on May 01, 2019, 08:38:19 AM
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30 December 2011
8pm
St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
First Floor: Creature-Induced Injuries
The Healer-in-Charge of the floor, Athena Marrowbone, was at the front desk of the floor. It was, and she was a bit, a bulwark against wanderings in and out of an 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here' sort of place. In fact, someone had placed a placard saying as much and Athena had to have it removed. Well, moved behind the desk. There was always hope if Athena had her way, as much as she appreciated the gallows humor. Beyond this desk were wards for those who'd been harmed by Dementors, victims of werewolf attack, and vampire bites. They'd seen Runespoor poisonings, they'd seen dragon burns, and Kneazel scratches.
They also had, over the last several months, harbored a few special guests. A top-secret patient who we shan't even mention in exposition[1] and his keepers, including the Head of the Department of Mysteries Yavin Morgenthau.
And whom should she see rolling by, but that devil himself. She whistled at him, and my Morgana, that sweater. His loud fashion always amused her, especially in juxtaposition to their grim business. She was less finely decorated, in her Healers' robes with the sleeves rolled up. Her short blonde hair, as always, was carefully wild and her eyeliner on pointy point. The lights were dimmed at this hour, torches directed to flicker to embers but a lamp, under the tall desk lit her face from below.
"Yavin Morgenthau, happy New Year. You look smashing."
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He had visited the Dementor war after seeing Lawrence, largely as a favour to one of his Unspeakables who was currently admitted after a bad incident with the Dementor in nine's dungeons. The man would be just fine but probably not in time to ring in the new year with bubbly and kisses. Well. He had the whole of 2012 to catch up on those two things so Yavin didn't linger long and left the ward at a leisurely pace.
Christmas had come and gone but his festive wardrobe (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e7/82/fc/e782fcd123baf4fdef8ddebc1d01c09a.jpg) persisted. It made him something of a visible target - maybe he shouldn't have been so surprised when he heard the whistle.
"Yavin Morgenthau, happy New Year. You look smashing."
The wizard turned about distractedly, spotting the witch behind the desk and recognising her as the Head Healer of the floor. At over six foot she was one of few women who could almost match him in height - give her a pair of heels and she would more than match him, in fact. She was a lovely woman, in contrast to the hospital's general leader. He smiled as he approached the desk, hands in pockets.
"Thank you! And, um, happy, aha, happy new year Healer Marrowbone." Yavin appreciated an upbeat approach in hospitals, having spent a good deal of his life as a healer. "Have you, hm, have you received any spectacular injuries to greet the new Gregorian calendar?"
That was the one bright spot about Creatures. Every now and then you could come across a good yarn.
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Yavin knew how to charm her - Athena could make even Healers squeamish with her cases, although it wasn't so much the details of the peril but they gleeful way Athena related to them.
"So kind of ye t'ask, happens we did!" The healer leaned back in her chair and set a long leg on the low part of the desk. She'd have knocked any of the other Healers or mediwix in the head for it, but eh, perk of the job.
"Vampire bite, if you can believe it. Old codger fought back and made a real mess of it, although well lucky for him. He was dressed up in his own blood like he'd been swimming so it took us ages to find his holes. Turns out he had a dozen. Put water in him and he'd be like fountain, spurting all over." Athena didn't add the concerned eyebrows or the polite-company euphemisms. She told it all like she'd seen a cat riding a dog riding a sheep down the street followed by a phalanx of bobbies. She didn't even add that he'd be alright.
She laughed, "and the rest of us! We looked the lot of us like a gang of muggle surgeons, elbows deep in half his blood. Lady MacBeth never had it so good. Eh, third bite this month, but awards for the mess. Only the new nurse booted, but she made it to the sink. All you can ask for, really."
Athena wrinkled her nose. "Might be happier on the papercut wing, if I'm honest."
"And what about ye, sweetheart? What's the latest mystery?" She gave his mind a little nudge, just a wink really, just to check his mood. She had a favor to ask but had to test the theory.
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The third bite of the month, she said, and he knew that she was counting Virgil's bite as either the first or second. Probably the first - it had been early in December when Yavin came in with the two kids in tow, though their case involved significantly less panic and violence than the incident Athena was now describing. It was straightforward if anything.
He leaned slightly against the desk, arms crossed over it while he listened.
"Sounds, hm, sounds like our vampire problems aren't at an end yet." Yavin smiled, curious about the vampire attack that left a man riddled with holes. "Lucky for him he had so, ah experienced a Healer."
Athena's mind brushed against his, a cheeky and well-meaning approach. He relented to the approach, allowing her to sense that he was of a fairly good disposition this evening. There were troubling revelations occurring in his sphere of influence but nothing that altered his frame of mind. And he was grateful that she hadn't tattled on Virgil or Nemo to Miranda.
"Our latest mystery is one of, aha, one of yours." Yav gestured at their surroundings, meaning the hospital at large. "Wizards and witches coming in with, um, that is, without a spot of magic on them. Strangest thing."
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"Strangest thing," Athena agreed. The Healers-in-Charge were in a tug-of-war about where to put the patients coming in with fevers and the total inability to perform any kind of magic. With the absence of any bite, nicks, scratches or reports of walking through ghosts, or being harassed by hags or boggarts or any other beastly thing, they'd all been diverted away from Athena's hungry eyes. If someone wasn't bleeding blood or oozing a soul through their ears, wasn't her department. She tsk-tsked.
"And it's catchy, too. Figured that out." She brushed her hands together like she was dusting off doxy powder. She changed her posture in the chair and looked at him slyly.
"How would you like to run a experiment? Off the record, little risk to participants. Just you and me, right here on this desk?"
She leaned forward and rested her chin on her fist. In her life, Athena had come to be a capable Legilimens with her primary focus on state of mind and emotions. She was open about about it, she'd gotten more than a few pointers from Miranda Storm who was quite the dagger. And with this skill, she got just about everything she needed. That is, until recently. A series of small isolated incidents had her realizing that an open window catches wasps as well as moths.
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"Aha, very forward of you!" Yavin laughed, perfectly charmed. "I take it you've, hm, you've thought about this."
He peered at her in his usual way - his method of looking into minds was not incisive as Miranda's, whose approach resembled a surgeon's. Yav was more of a nimble thief. The kind who can break into your house and get out without leaving behind a footprint - and he was always methodical, taking only what he needed and maintaining the discipline to look at nothing else.
Some of his field believed in static analogies but he liked to think that every person had their own dynamic.
"So you've, um, you know how to pick locks -" his mouth twitched into a sardonic smile, "- but not, that is, not how to lock your own doors and windows? Something happened to, ah, to trigger that awareness?"
Not unlike the Head Healer then. Yavin personally prioritised Occlumency before Legilimency. To him, it was a way of organising your mindscape that benefitted more than just an approach to mind magic. You were able to manage yourself better when you learned to throw up walls or lock doors.
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Athena ought to have guessed Yavin would start without her. She clicked her tongue and shook her head.
"Wow, didn't feel a thing, did I?" Yavin had read her intention like a West End playbill and not even a tickle in the amygdala. How often did he do that, she wondered. But such was a world peopled with mind-readers, Seers, and billywig sniffers, not to mention vampires, and theatre-goers.
"You're very good," she said although she knew he didn't need an evaluation from the likes of her, a bloody bonesaw. "But yes," she admitted with a smile, utterly unashamed.
She narrowed her eyes and tapped her fingers on her chin. "Maybe there's a proper word for this phenomenon, right, but say I have both hands and my wand playing cats' cradle with some tangled intestines and I need to make sure his mate's not thinking of assaulting my nurses so I have a read of his mind and ... - "
Athena made a motion like a damn breaking. "And suddenly I've not only got this kid's bloody life story, but now I'm holding back blubbering about my poor pet goat Cecil who we had to leave behind during the war, bless his little bleating soul."
She held up a finger. "Or - ! This tweaker who has stuck his own arm into a cockatrice pen starts fumbling around in my head for where I keep the key to the Good potions. The list goes on."
Athena didn't seem at all upset. In fact, as usual, she was in bright spirits. All of what she told was a Day In The Life, but when something could be made better, you'd be a fool not to try and seduce Yavin Morgenthau into some free Occlumency lessons.
"Call it professional development."
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Yavin's eyebrows climbed, complicatedly, closer to his hairline as he listened to the various ways in which mental vulnerabilities had interfered with the grimy business of healing creature injuries. It was stressful, of course it was, trying to contain another person's thoughts as well as your own in a state of panic. Feeling more emotions than anyone should at the same time.
"Your, aha, your motivations are valid," he nodded, conceding to Athena's point. "You can't leave the fort -" that felt like an appropriate metaphor for the healer, "- unmanned when you've gone to another."
As it was, he already had a pupil. Two - if Virgil still counted. Yavin didn't have the time to spare to take on another student but he could see there was a great need for the skill under these circumstances. A thought occurred to him, pulling at his lips.
"I can't, ah, personally take you on. My protégé, however..." he gestured conversationally, meeting Athena's gaze over the counter, "if you don't, that is, don't mind learning from a kid, he's pretty handy. Tight as a ship. I was, um, was just thinking of allotting him different responsibilities."
After the month Virgil had had, Yavin was hoping the boy was going to slow down and dabble in something less likely to traumatise him.
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Athena didn't hide being put out as Yavin began to turn her down, but the moment shifted into something unexpected and a bit strange.
"Sorry, a literal child," she looked at him sideways, beyond skeptical. "There are not a few reasons I'm a bachelor, Yavin dear, and one of them very much is that I'm no mother."
Of course she was an excellent Healer with the little ones. She could turn it on splendidly, and Yavin knew that.[1] She managed to do mother, quirky auntie, and steady nurse all at once in the face of some horrible ordeal. Perhaps that was where he got the mistaken notion she'd take tutoring from, who, a spotty adolescent? Oh, god, was it one of his kids? Did he have kids?
"How can I convince you?" She was missing something, maybe in his American sense of humor. She didn't want to go to Miranda with this; she'd already used up what professional currency she had with her.
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"How can I convince you?"
Persistence, it seemed, was a virtue common to most Healers. Yavin scratched his scruffy chin thoughtfully as he deliberated over the question. He did like Athena. But he was also stretched thin, or at least as thin as he liked to be. You didn't get to be this old without knowing where your limits were; taking on Mysteries had been more than he expected, though he didn't like to admit it.
"You can meet the kid." Yavin decided to stick to his initial suggestion. "You've, hm, you've technically already met him. Virgil? Won't need mothering, aha, or at least not where mind magic is concerned," he tapped the sides of his forehead emphatically.
To him, it was an ideal arrangement. Marrowbone would receive the tutelage she needed and Virgil would be kept out of trouble for a while - and who else better than a Healer, anyway? Healers (Miranda excepted) were good about consent and boundaries, and that would be good for the Unspeakable-in-Training.
Yavin smiled at Athena encouragingly. "I promise, if you can learn to keep Virgil out, you'll, ah, you'll have no problem with patients in your head."
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Virgil. That Virgil, the young wizard who'd appeared one night with a vampire bite, special delivery from Yavin.[1] Athena'd never had a follow up with him, so she assumed things turned out alright. That was the way it was a lot of the times for healers: patch'em up and let'm on with their lives. It was a relief at least, Virgil apparently up for escapades. Routine for Athena, life event for Virgil.
Athena's smile was a bit gentler now. She sat back and considered the offer. Yavin was really trying to sell it. She didn't know Yavin well enough to know if the recommendation was for her benefit, Virgil, or Yavin himself. He was an odd chap, wasn't he. He hadn't offered an explanation as to why he couldn't be her tutor so Athena didn't have a tack to try and batter down his resolve so he'd just merry well train her.
"Can't say I like the optics, but alright then. I'll keep an open mind."
Taking instruction from even a sweet lad young twenty years her junior, younger than even her newest Healer trainees, eh, she'd prefer a peer. Then again, she'd prefer getting this Occlumency thing sorted out than not. It would be an experience, however it turned out.
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"Can't say I like the optics, but alright then. I'll keep an open mind."
He laughed, shaking his head. "Not, ahah, not literally I hope." Yavin was relieved that she didn't insist any further - explaining his motivations would have been lengthy, and more backstory than needed to make sense of future interactions. Besides, it would be a neat experiment - a part of him hoped it might push Virgil to spend less time at the theatre and more time pursuing scholarly interests.
"I'll let him, hm, let him know." Yavin reached a hand over, prepared to seal the deal with an age old handshake. "If you do, that is, do find him wanting, just shoot me an owl. I'd appreciate it if you didn't..." his smile hid a smidgen of sheepishness, "I mean, if you didn't speak openly about Virgil's legilimency."
The wizard held a finger to his lips. Not my secret to tell, he spoke into Athena's mind.
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Athena stood again and clasped Yavin's hand with the strength of a witch who set bones by hand.
When she released him, she sat back down in her spinny chair and snatched deftly at her next task, the previous shifts's reports. A show of satisfaction at their agreement, that it needed no more haggling. Que será, será, and all that. At Yavin's request for secrecy, Athena winked conspiratorially. She'd already kept a secret or two for Virgil, and, oh, scores and scores of others. Confidentiality was part and parcel of her occupation. Shouldn't be a problem.
It was always a little funny to have a voice in her head, as clear and tidy as Yavin's, but she didn't mind. Oh what a magical world they occupied.
"Send me the boy!" she said with the posh put-on of a high-lady who needed a buggy and a flourish. "Tut-tut. "
Of course, they'd be making arrangements by owl or some-such. Didn't mean she ought to avoid the spot of drama that such a conspiracy wanted.
"Who ever said Yavin Morgenthau wasn't a mensch."