Absit Omen RPG

I may not be around... but I'm around for this

I'm not currently active here, but throw my lot in cos I love y'all regardless.

Is this where I determine that I’m in deep sh-- trouble?

That was a united thought. Arcturus had, apart from his impromptu trip to Malaysia a while back, kept his head down in a bid to maintain a low profile in front of his superiors. It was out of a  self-imposed principle from pride, pride that he needed no supervision to be competent and accomplish his work. Thus any sort of attention from the higher-ups was always, for him, expected to be some sort of reprimand for something.

Aware that he had stood there just a little too long, he silently slipped into the seat, suddenly very still and uncertain of what was next while gently pushing away the silhouette that accompanied the darker voice in his head to some inconspicuous corner of his mind. Am I in trouble? The unspoken words hung in the air above his head like Christmas tinsel strung up until now.

He couldn’t help but be overly aware of how different Marrowbone was towards patients as opposed to his own bedside manner. Wondering if you had room for improvement? It’s really not my style though, the voice supplied reasonably.

It barely lasted longer than three minutes. Arm out, blood out, arm in. Fingers deftly split the blood between separate little bowls, then added drops of different reagents between them all. It would be a brief, if fascinating, show to most patients, who sensed the gravity of the work despite not knowing what was being done or why. He secretly appreciated the attention.

The results swiftly showed themselves. “Plant-based. Not animal.” He was actually surprised he was right. Arcturus turned his gaze upon the bemused patient glancing between the colours of the solutions and him. “Whatever entered your blood seems to be, uh… irritants. That said, it certainly shouldn’t last this long with the appropriate treatment.” Which he was certain that Healer Marrowbone had already applied.

“This is certainly a case for my floor, but I’m not familiar with anything like this.” Arcturus set the bloodwork case away sans the equipment still holding the test results. “It might take a few days, Mr Bonsey, for any of us to find an answer let alone identify the plant. For all we know, an animal could have been involved indirectly with the plant concerned.”

He looked at Marrowbone. “What do you think we should prescribe this man in the meantime? I’d recommend the usual, but do you think there’s any additional remedies Creature Injuries might add? The wound is very… animal-like, at least in appearance.

“You can hear it.”
He paused, shook his head. “Of course. Of course you can.”

“Is there something you might wish to tell me, Healer?”

His mind went entirely blank. Where did one start with this sort of thing? It was also not something a person would pour out immediately, boss or not, even if he trusted and respected her opinion.

“I can’t say for certain,” he began, thinking back of when all this started, “but after I-- the dementors, memories have been slowly coming back to me. Things that I might have forgotten for a reason.” It was a suspicion, nothing more, but he felt it prudent to mention. “I haven’t been able to manage them-- the emotions I get when I have to deal with them. I just can’t really talk about it, it’s… difficult, nerve-wracking, uncomfortably so.”

Because you don’t want people to see how vulnerable I am when it’s that bad. You’re afraid of people for reasons you don’t know and can’t figure out why. It’s a confusing time when you have to figure out where the feelings are coming from, and you don’t want to be a burden to others when you have no answers to give. Ultimately you feel that you should take on the fight head-on because it’s your problem to bear alone and everyone else has their own lives to see to.

Bitter bile boiled and buckled in his gut. But he forced it to stay down, averting his gaze from his superior. He knew she’d hear - was that the right word? - the thoughts resulting from the internal reflecting as he had sought for answers for the past half-year. Along with it the apprehension in anticipation of the response. It was irrational and he hated that.

Is it really good news if it’s news of being shunted off to a different department? Or is it just news? He found himself musing quietly as he approached. The oven mitts made him suppress a wan smile; he had to admire the sheer simplicity of the solution.

“Healer Marrowbone is quite right. I’m from Potions and Plant Poisoning. That is, however, not to say that someone fancied adding an extra to your drink.” Every time he told patients which floor he worked on and why it was relevant to them, the first response he got was frequently indignant variations of “I drank nuthin!” or “Am sure no one put what poison in my tea”. It wasn’t always, but it was often enough that he’d learned to expect it. “Rather, there’s a probability that you accidentally assaulted a species of magical vegetation on your way home and your predicament is a result of its retaliation.”

He smiled, or at least it was a smile he could pretend had feeling in it. Someone taking a closer look would see the cracks. Arcturus patted the small case that hung at his hip, the visible tool of his research on bloodwork. “If it’s alright with you, I would like to take a sample of your blood to determine if this is true, before we can proceed with further treatment. I’d hate to give you the wrong diagnosis and treatment only to have you return here with nothing to show for it.”

“Hangover?” Arcturus’s lips curled upwards in a wry smile, if only for a moment. “Why, Third’s the best place for a cure on that matter if I’m any judge.” He checked himself; the crackingly dry wit his other self dispensed sometimes might be a little too cutting even for the hospital floor.

He picked up the remnants of his half-eaten meal and made as if to rise. “So you don’t mind if I come to prod the patient a little? The photo’s all very good, but I’d like to see the case for myself. Could do with a stroll anyway, Potions has been a tad stifling of late.” You mean your head.

Arcturus gestured to his morsel. “Will just drop this in my office, then I’ll head down with you. Perhaps on the way my memory will get jogged enough to determine the closest approximation of a solution.”

It’s been a long month.

I do not need to write my lamentations. I berate myself enough in my head enough.

There is nothing. I feel nothing.

The water doesn’t move. It’s heavy. A thousand pounds of sin.

Thank you so immensely much to Niobe for this gift:


and a version without the green bar here.

I love it so much, first thing I said on seeing this was "Oh my god!" out loud! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Have always loved your art, I will now carefully keep this away to look at it when I'm having a bad day.

Did she just call us Shrubbery Squad? “You really did just call us Shrubbery Squad, didn’t you?” Arcturus was definitely amused even if he wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t wrong, and knowing Marrowbone it was all meant in jest. “It’s a lot easier to say than Potions and Plant Poisoning, I’ll give you that.”

He turned his gaze towards the table thoughtfully. “If the hair grows back, then it’s a toxin or spell damage, but it’s unlikely there’s a raging vigilante against drunks - they’d be stretched thin in this country. We’d have to test his blood for the type of toxin, but it won’t tell us exactly what malevolent vegetation was involved. That would take a much longer time to figure, which would leave our poor patient beleaguered by a phantom feline for a while.”

The healer stared at the table. “Cat plant,” he said abruptly. He looked up, frowning. “A plant that’s like a cat? In the realm of possibilities anything could exist, right? But possibilities or not, we have to give the man something to alleviate these symptoms while we search for an answer.” He glanced at the file again. “Are the symptoms still ongoing? The itchiness, fever, fatigue, headache. Very flu-like.”

He laughed at Marrowbone’s remark, though the amusement faded as quickly as it had appeared. It was a hilarious thought to entertain nevertheless. A feline poltergeist making it personal. He could believe that.

“If it were indeed a ghost, we’d be the wrong people to see.” He chuckled despite the flat tone. While Marrowbone oft looked at the light-hearted side of things when given a tough case to chew on, Arcturus sought to find an answer first. Not that this made them any less able to get along; he could partake in the occasional joke every so often. Healers were no stranger to a little comedy when their work was stressful enough.

As a healer, you do have your priorities. As a person? Nah. The voice in his head always had perfect timing on dampening his spirits.

“So no cat, or some other clawed creature that decided to take a chunk out of his leg? Can we be certain of that?” Arcturus would readily admit that magical creatures was not his strong suit. He’d needed help from his old friend Lyra to go from ‘passable but unacceptable’ to ‘grudgingly decently competent’ in the subject for his OWLs, and hence why he’d dropped it like a hot potato right after. About the only animal he was competent with was Rustle, honestly.

Arcturus looked up at Marrowbone. “What’s your expert opinion on this? There is definitely some sort of toxin in his leg, possibly in his bloodstream, but without the source it might take a bit longer to create an antidote. Venom from creatures are quite significantly different from plant toxins. I could suggest an Antidote to Common Poisons.” He angled his head slightly towards her. “Unless you’ve already tried it?”

“I was looking for you, Hollingbury.”

He couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows, somewhat alarmed that the answer had been the latter. Arcturus preferred keeping his head down to avoid any attention drawn to him, which was not hard to achieve in the hospital - there was always much to do and that he could do well. This was very much news to him.

Ah hell. Evidently the voice in his head shared the same desire to have the answer be the former. Despite the constant infighting there were still some things that they - he - shared in agreement.

“What may I help you with?” Then his tired smile faded in the slow but inevitable revelation that she’d just heard what the voice in his head said. Could it be? Another one? An image of the eccentric man he had met atop St Mungo’s - Morgenthau, that was his name - flashed past. But the inner voice remained deeply sceptical despite, he personally felt, all evidence to the contrary.

The healer glanced towards the patient to check that they were not abruptly joining the conversation as well. He wasn’t quite certain on how to deal with this. On one hand, she’d repeated what the voice had said. On the other hand--

Paranoia. Anxiety. Despite not doing anything wrong, it’s always something I dread when she wants to see me... You know, if you act as if she hadn’t heard your thoughts, you might just end up burning another bridge. But hey, what do you know, that’s all I seem to be capable of these days.

If she heard all of that he’d definitely know for sure, for he could not bring himself to speak the answer. Dread in the pit of his stomach swelled a little more, rising to weigh his chest like a leaden weight.

Arcturus took the file from her, eyebrow raised in query but not in alarm. Marrowbone was one of the Healers who truly got excited about strange and oddball cases whenever they came her way, and he could respect passion when he saw it even if he didn’t always agree with it.

His eyes skimmed the notes, inner voice silent as he directed his focus towards the neat handwriting. Fur growing, claw marks, itchiness and swelling until it felt as if a cat was clinging on--

Wait. What?

Marrowbone’s expression told him she saw his double-take. He re-focused on the notes, frowning.

“‘Sensation of cat clinging to leg?’” The words were written plain as day, but he read them out loud to make sure. “‘Fur matches patient’s hair colour, pinpricks of pain much like a cat’s claws still sunk into the skin. Patient symptoms are fatigue, headache, slight fever’.” The healer set the file down and pursed his lips a little, clearly bewildered. “I assume there isn’t an actual invisible feline attached to this patient’s leg, then.”

He read through it again, then angled his eyes upwards at the Healer-in-Charge. “Was the patient attacked by a cat - or something like it - before this? It does seem like a creature wound at first glance, with the deep cat scratches.”

Whoever had written the notes had been kind enough to attach a photograph. Arcturus examined it closely, trying to check for signs of something recognisable of this specimen of one heavily-used hairy right leg.

As soon as he heard those words, he knew that was the end of that. It was a shock, a massive one that he would not recover from for several months ahead. Oh, he would be pretending, going about his job and life and treatment, but it would lurk in the back of his head forever until a dark night presented itself as an opportunity to hound his every move.

But that was not the worst part. The worst was seeing Cepheus hurt. In that briefest yet heaviest of moments, it was like receiving a kick to the heart.

Just leave. Just go. Stop making his life worse.

He did not remember how he got from one room to the other so quickly, nor taking out his wand, but his coat drifted into his hand as he stood by the coat hooks. He remained with his back to the rest of the flat, but something small, something… tired, spoke up for him.

“I… I’m sorry.” There was something else he thought to say, but for once he stopped before he said it. Even the thought of saying it twisted his insides. No. It would not do. “Forgive me,” was what he uttered instead.

Then he was off into the night, no other words said. Possibly Cepheus would never want to hear from him again. It would kill him inside if it were true, but for now distance. Distance was good. It meant not hurting Cepheus again.