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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 3 years ago

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Treating a patient

At the end of his shift on the Sphere's observation deck, Martin felt that it was only fair to treat a patient who would otherwise go untreated.

I'd been having the same feeling -- about "fairness" rather than "duty," for there are ways to treat patients other than through the Sciences -- when reading Floornight, and it turned out that there was a way that wasn't about duty and that didn't need science.

If what I was seeing in Parhelion hadn't been enough to motivate me on its own, my sense that this was a "fair treatment" should have been enough. (The Sphere's AI was a real person, right? That means that this person -- my patient, who will have to wait until tomorrow morning to see me -- is real, too. And that's as close to a guarantee as I can provide.)

(This was something I'd be thinking all through the shift, as the Sphere had made it clear it was not interested in discussing this issue.)

I have a patient from Sphere history. There is much in Sphere history I am not allowed to tell, and much about the Sphere itself I can only tell in fragments and in the Voynich Manuscript. But the patient in question, in case it should ever become important, is as close as I can come.

I am not allowed to visit my patient. This I do not mind (the Sphere is far too busy), but my patient also does not mind if I visit her. I am to do nothing but observe her, and make notes in some little book. Her name is Kathar, and she is the patient whose case I am to treat.

This isn't a very good patient. In all of Sphere history, there have been two people with my patient's exact condition. One died a year ago -- I'd seen her a few months before she died -- and the other is in the middle of some sort of long-term depression. There have been some others who were close but didn't quite reach the point where their conditions could be called exact duplicates of the one I treat.

Her condition is the best I can give, the condition I would give to anyone with that history. This is just another form of charity: the Sphere, like any great institution, has great power, but it can be abused. The institution does not want this power, but has no choice but to exercise it. Kathar's case does not seem to be in the Sphere's interest; so it was treated and controlled, with great care and with great respect, by the Sphere's doctors, and not with the sort of reckless carelessness that brought the other patient to her end.

Kathar is, of course, dead. But she would have died anyway. For a year now, my patient has been in a near-static state, in which her condition was not bad enough to demand a doctor's intervention, and which the doctors had not the heart to intervene in. (I say "near-static state" because in a week or so she will probably be admitted for further treatment -- which, of course, means a break from her condition.) At the time I saw her, she seemed as happy and full of joy as anyone could be under these circumstances. If there is anyone for whom this is not true, it must be that person whom no one wanted to see, and whose case no one wanted to treat.

The doctors on the Sphere can talk about the moral issues surrounding my treatment of Kathar, if they like. And I can tell them, for the record, that I have always taken their concerns for their patients very seriously -- that I am a doctor, after all, with all the problems and all the questions that entails, and that I have always understood their work very clearly -- but that I have never considered them my masters or my betters. It's not that I can't see why they think their interests are best served by my patient not being given any treatment whatsoever; it's that the Sphere's rules are not the rules we use here, and even if they are the Sphere's rules would not be binding on us here.

In the end it is not my patient's place, any more than it is the Sphere's place, to decide whether or not I treat her. All I can do is do the best that I can do, and hope that she can be helped. And, if I am doing that -- well, it's what she wanted, too, and she is quite happy with her situation. I have treated all other patients who were like Kathar, and they were happy, as well.

I'd better get back to work -- and, in a way, to what's really important, which is not the Sphere, but my patient.

Keep reading

#original fiction

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hoodoo12 · 5 years ago

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Chapter 9/15 SFW

Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

@turtlepated @anyamercury @beetlewise-and-pennyjuice

Next morning, bright and early with the sunrise, she was back with a new book under her arm. She was eating a piece of toast, and shoved the last of the crust into her mouth as she entered. She wiped her lips with her thumb, and he was oddly ashamed that he watched that gesture with much interest.

"Oh! Do you want something to eat?" she asked by way of greeting, like she was a thoughtless hostess and this was a perfectly normal situation. "Do you need to eat?"

Beetlejuice, who had spent the rest of the night alone trying to understand why his thoughts had gone to different sexual scenarios he could engage in with her instead of a rage that should have been more appropriate, shook his head.

He'd sort through the thorny mess of his libido some other time, he had decided. Lisette was trying to figure him out; he would do the same to her. Time would tell who would win this stalemate.

"I can, but I don't," he replied. "It's been years since I had a cigarette, though. You got any?"

She looked surprised he answered her as if it were a real conversation, like they were buddies. Beetlejuice waited for a moment, then made a circling motion with one hand to indicate he was waiting for an expecting a response.

"Uh . . no. I don’t."

"Of fucking course you don’t. Nobody smokes anymore," he muttered, disappointed.

She tapped her forefinger on her chin for a moment, then left the room, leaving the door open.

He’d been left in isolation again so quickly? Beetlejuice once again heard her rummaging through the kitchen, then there was silence. After minutes passed, she came back up the stairs. The treads and the floorboards in the hallway creaked with each footstep, and then she was back in the bedroom with him. She was holding something, and in the crook of her arm was one of the stainless steel canisters from under the cabinets in the kitchen.

“I don’t have any cigarettes,” she told him again, sounding apologetic. “Can you roll your own?”

Beetlejuice cocked his head in confusion. She held out her hands; in one was a box of stick matches, in the other, a cardboard box of rolling papers. She opened the small canister to show him dried, shredded leaves inside. The faint scent of tobacco wafted to him.

“You don’t have cigarettes but you have the stuff to make cigarettes?” he asked drily. Lisette shrugged. “The tobacco can be used in different rituals. The matches are just matches. The rolling paper . . . well, I didn’t buy it for tobacco, specifically.”

Despite himself, Beetlejuice laughed. “You’ve got a stolen forbidden book, you’ve captured me, and you’re embarrassed to say out loud you smoke weed?”

A blush crept over her cheeks and she laughed too. “Yeah. I guess. Marijuana is legal in Connecticut for medical purposes, but not just for fun. Would you prefer that instead of tobacco?”

The thought of a joint instead of a cigarette was tempting; it’d been even longer since he’d taken a hit than simply had a smoke. It would be simple and innocent enough to light one up, and offer her a toke, like people do, and maybe she’d accidently break the barrier . . .

“You wanna join me?” Beetlejuice asked.

Lisette shook her head. “No thanks. Too early in the day for me.”

He hid his disappointment and filed that information away for later. “Cigarette it is, then.”

With no further hesitation, Lisette tossed him the supplies one at a time, the canister, then the small box of rolling papers. As for the matches, she removed all but one from the box before passing it along. Each of them passed over the chalk inscriptions with no problem, which was interesting tidbit of information: things could enter the circle, he just couldn’t leave. Beetlejuice caught them all, and occupied himself with the task of making his own cigarette.

It had been a while since he had, so it took a little time for the proper technique to come back to him. As he struggled a bit getting the paper tight enough around the tobacco, he groused, “If you’re used to rolling joints, why didn’t you just make a cigarette for me and throw that into this prison?”

Lisette looked a little surprised, as if that hadn't occurred to her, but answered, “You didn’t ask!”

He gave her a look that conveyed his exact thoughts on that amount of pettiness, then licked the free edge of the paper standing upright between his fingers and pressed it down. It was slightly looser than he would have liked and it had a shitty crutch he made out of the thin cardboard he found in the box of rolling papers instead of a real filter, but a smoke after who knows how many years was a treat anyway. Beetlejuice lit the match by flicking it against his thumbnail, and once the end of the cigarette was going, stuck it in his mouth. His first inhale of a corporeal cigarette in ages was bitter and hot.

It was great.

Beetlejuice let himself be lost in the physical act of smoking for a moment. It suddenly hit him that not only had this breather said his name twice, drawing him three-quarters into the living world, but whatever arcane techinque she used to keep him in this circle made that three-quarters last longer than it ever had before. This situation wasn’t perfect, but that was a nice little bonus.

Lisette sat quietly with her skirt hiked up passed her knees. Idly he wondered if she was wearing any panties. Beetlejuice kept a lungful of smoke in longer than would be comfortable, then let it out in a stream that twisted a little like a Sandworm. That trick usually made a breather nervous, since it looked a little alive, but the woman near the wall didn’t react to it.

Instead, she went back to her books, flipping through pages, leaving them open on the floor, writing notes in her journal, and cross-referencing things. Beetlejuice watched her research and wondered to himself what exactly she was thinking.

After his cigarette was gone and she was still absorbed in her books, he asked,

“Figured anything out yet?”

She glanced up at him with an annoyed expression pinching her face. “No.”

He scooted along the floor to be closer to her. The chalk circle she’d drawn was four inches wide, so with her leaning against the wall by the door, her knees were less than a foot away from him. He could reach out and grab her, if this barrier was down.

Beetlejuice craned his head to try and read the books upside down.

“Is that a Bible?” “Yes,” she replied, distracted, as she continued to scribble.

“Would I be able to touch it?”

She finally looked up, genuinely confused. “What the hell does that mean?”

He nodded towards the other books. “I couldn’t quite touch those two. Earlier. When I, uh, wrecked your room.”

Lisette stared at him blankly for a moment before she understood. “Oh. Right! They have wards on them to prevent non-human or non-living beings from interacting with them. Safety precautions, you know. Of course, that doesn’t really help me narrow down ghost versus demon in your case . . .”

She let her voice trail off, then went back to the Bible she’d been perusing. Beetlejuice let her have a few more moments, then just as she was settling back into her work, he interrupted.

“Which version of the Bible do you have? Is it both Old and New Testament? Do you have a Qur’an? The Torah? The Codex Seraphinianus? The Voynich Manuscript?”

Lisette returned the look he’d given her earlier: irked. “Why are you asking?”

He shrugged. “Just wondering exactly what you’re using to try and decipher the riddle wrapped in an enigma that is me.”

“With a head that big I’m surprised you made it through the doorframe into this room,” she replied drily. “Of course, you were going full steam. All because I said your name. Interesting.”

Beetlejuice scowled a little, hating to be reminded how desperate he’d been. He let silence fill the room for a few beats. She broke the quiet before he did this time.

“You mentioned Al Azif. Not many other texts have information about shoggoths in them. Have you read it? Did you just randomly pick a name from the book? What’s the connection between it, them, and you?”

“Maybe Alhazred named shoggoths after me,” Beetlejuice suggested.

That made her furrow her brow for a moment, but eventually she shook her head. “No, I only know one account of a shoggoth taking human form.” Even though his lie was dismissed, he saw by the expression on her face some new thought had come to her. Her eyes found his, and excited, she asked, “Were you there when Alhazred wrote it?”

“Maybe,” Beetlejuice hedged. He couldn’t decide if letting her know his age would be a problem.

“Interesting . . .” Lisette repeated, and dropped her eyes back to her journal to write a note. Her mouth moved a little as she did, and it was vaguely similar to the times he saw her praying.

“So you’re pretty devoted, huh?”

Confusion and harder thinking looked the same on her face. “What?”

“You pray a lot. Devoted Catholic, right?” he guessed. Two could play at taking stabs at the other’s truths.

“My grandmother was Catholic, but I wasn’t raised anything,” Lisette admitted.

“Then what are you praying?”

“What? I’m not praying, I’m just talking to myself!”

For some reason, that admission made Beetlejuice laugh out loud. “Jesus. I’ve been alone for forever it seems, and even I don’t do that!”

Lisette looked slightly offended, which made him laugh harder.

“Whatever,” she told him, but it was good to see something needled her.

tbc

#beetlejuice #betelguese #writing #fanfiction #movie beetlejuice #musical beetlejuice

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years ago

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Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Part 1/? - A Meeting at the Palace Part 2/? - Curry Talk Part 3/? - Princess Sitamun Part 4/? - Not At Rest Part 5/? - Dead Men Tell no Tales Part 6/? - Sitamun Rises Again Part 7/? - The Curse of Madame Desrosiers Part 8/? - Sabotage at Guedelon Part 9/? - A Miracle Part 10/? - Desrosiers’ Elixir Part 11/? - Athens in October Part 12/? - The Man in Black Part 13/? - Mr. Neustadt Part 14/? - The Other Side of the Story Part 15/? - A Favour Part 16/? - A Knock on the Window Part 17/? - Sir Stephen and Buckeye Part 18/? - Books of Alchemy

Our heroes get an invitation they can’t refuse. They aren’t very gracious houseguests.

The passed the books around and began to study them, looking for anything that might be relevant to the situation they had encountered. While the others were understandably more interested in the Newtonian and Hermetic writings that could actually be read, Natasha found herself drawn to the Voynich Manuscript. The alphabet looked a bit like Sanskrit and a bit like Thai, but was nothing she could read. Far more interesting were the illustrations that accompanied it.

Nat remembered hearing that the prevailing theory was that the manuscript was a book of medicine or botany, possibly both. She could see where the idea had come from – many of the pages bore drawings of plants with exaggerated flowers and roots. Most of them were unidentifiable, although she thought she recognized a water lily leaf in one illustration, and something that might have been rosemary in another. This could certainly be some kind of medieval pharmacopeia.

Another section was decorated not with plants but with drawings of naked women bathing. Some of them were possibly supposed to be pregnant, others were sliding down tubes and climbing in and out of tubs. Maybe, Nat thought, they represented Madame Desrosiers’ healing elixir, made of tiny organisms that entered the boy and patched it so it could repair itself. Or maybe they were Neustadt’s homunculi, artificially produced humans who lived and died in a few days.

A third chapter seemed to be astronomical, full of circular drawings and diagrams, some of them spread over multiple pages, labeled with the signs of the zodiac. Some were fairly straightforward, others seemed abstract, still more were rings within rights of heaven knew what… but in the light of what Neustadt had said yesterday, Nat found herself wondering if they were encoded technical diagrams. The Philosopher’s Stone was supposed to be some kind of nuclear reactor. Fusion reactors, as science was currently exploring them, were made of rings and spheres. Could this be a plan of such a thing, disguised to keep the secrets from those who weren’t initiated. Those without the key?

“Who knew Newton was such a kook?” asked Sam, pushing a book aside. “This stuff is crazy.”

“What’s it say?” asked Sharon.

“The balance of Libra allows the stone to come to its full perfection,” Sam read aloud, “but the venom of Scorpio destroys it. This guy discovered gravity?”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Sir Stephen asked Jim.

Jim shook his head. “If you’re gonna make the Philosopher’s Stone, do it in October?” he guessed. “I dunno.” He turned a page in the book he’d been reading. “Here he’s talking about seeking God through chemistry, which I would have figured involved more cannabis than mercury but then, I’m not an alchemist.”

“How did you know that Libra is October?” asked Nat.

“Huh?” asked Jim. “Libra is… it’s September twenty-third to October twenty-third, right?”

“That’s right,” she said, “but how did you know that? Did Neustadt tell you?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody know that?” asked Jim.

“I’m sure a lot of people do,” she said. “But Neustadt said you only know what he tells you to know, so did he tell you the dates of the zodiac, or do you just… know it?”

Jim shrugged again, uncomfortable.

“Relax,” said Allen, and put a hand on his back – Jim flinched at the touch as if he’d been bitten. “Relax,” Allen repeated. “You’re not being tested. I don’t know how I know half the things I know, either. I don’t think anybody does.”

“Yeah, but you’re a… a normal person,” said Jim.

“Actually, no, I’m not,” said Allen. “Natasha made me up, because her father abandoned her. It was just an accident that I was brought to life. I’m… still coming to terms with that, I guess.”

Jim looked at Nat for confirmation or denial, and she nodded.

“I told you we were weird,” she said.

“Fear not, Jim,” said Sir Stephen. “You are my friend whether you remember me or not. I will not abandon you.”

“Yeah, we’ll look after you,” Allen agreed, and Nat felt something twinge inside her. Why was Allen promising to take care of Jim? Allen Jones was supposed to take care of Nat. He’d said he wanted to make up for the real parents who hadn’t loved her enough to raise her. Was it because she didn’t want to tell him about her past that he was taking Jim under his wing? Or was it because what she’d told him about it so far had scared him, while Jim safely had no past at all?

That emotion probably deserved some analysis, but for the moment she didn’t get the opportunity. One of the hotel employees approached the table and said, “excuse me, are you Dr. Jones?”

“Yes,” said Nat, quickly settling her features back into neutrality. “What do you need?”

“You have a message,” he said, and gave her a postcard.

It had a picture of Guedelon Castle on it, and an address – Nat recognized the latter. It was Neustadt’s empty apartment in Neapoli. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but the picture of the castle told her what she needed to know. Her first reaction was annoyance, since it meant that if they’d stayed at the apartment just a few minutes longer they probably would have met Desrosiers when she arrived. That led to her second thought, which was that having missed the woman once, they could not afford to miss her again.

“What is it?” asked Sam.

“Madame Desrosiers is waiting for us,” said Nat.

Taking the Metro across Athens again was excruciating – not just because of the heat and the crowds, but because they had no idea what they would find when they got there. Maybe Desrosiers really did want to talk to them… but given her behaviour last time they’d met, that didn’t seem likely. More likely this was some kind of trap, like Neustadt’s proposed trip to Kotor.

Of course, Nat wasn’t the only one worried about it. The others were quiet and thoughtful during the train ride – and then there was Jim. He was standing, hanging on to one of the poles to stay upright, and he looked like he would have needed to do so even if the train hadn’t been moving. He was visibly shaking. Allen and Sir Stephen kept close to him, ready to catch him if he passed out.

Back at the apartment building, they climbed the stairs to the third floor again, and knocked on the door. What if they’d taken too long getting here? What if she’d changed her mind and left?

The door opened.

Neustadt had been dressed in shorts and a t-shirt like a tourist. Helene Desrosiers had her hair up and was wearing an elegant blue and white printed dress with elbow-length sleeves. She looked at her guests, and breathed an obvious sigh of relief.

It didn’t last long. Although nobody gave any sort of command, somehow by mutual agreement the entire group pounced at once. Sir Stephen and Sam grabbed Desrosiers by the arms and marched her into the bedroom, where the empty chair was waiting for her. Sharon pulled out a set of handcuffs to chain her to the chair, and the rest of them stood around, on their guard in case Desrosiers had something up her sleeve to help her escape.

“What are you doing?” the woman asked. Their behaviour clearly shocked her.

“We’re tying you up so we can talk to you and you can’t run away this time,” Natasha said calmly. “How did you know we were in the city?”

“I have friends here!” Desrosiers told them. “They know where I am, and they told me he had a homunculus watching you!” She looked at Jim. “Did you warn him I was here?”

Nat remembered the café owner’s phone call, apparently to his mother… had that been talking in code? “He seemed to already know,” she said. “Why do you want to talk to us now, after you didn’t want to say anything earlier?”

“I need to know what he told you,” Desrosiers said. “Neustadt. What did he say?”

“Why?” asked Nat. Neustadt had said Desrosiers was secretive. Was she intending to kill them if they’d learned too much? If so, she was going to find out how hard some of them were to kill.

“Because I need to know what he’s doing and now I’ve missed him!” she said. “What did he say?”

So the note had been for Desrosiers. “He told us he stole the mummy, and then you stole it from him in turn,” said Nat.

“I did not!” said Desrosiers.

“He said you were the one who murdered the various previous owners,” Nat added, “as well as your own husband.”

“Lies,” Desrosiers insisted. “I have only ever tried to retrieve the mummy by pointing out that it belongs to me, and nobody’s ever listened to me!”

“And he said you were going to destroy the Key to decoding the Voynich Manuscript,” Nat finished.

Desrosiers paused for a moment before answering. “Now… that, I would do if I could,” she admitted. “But only because it needs doing. You don’t understand how dangerous the Philosopher’s Stone is.”

“No, we don’t,” Nat agreed. She sat down on the floor at Desrosiers’ feet, just out of kicking range, and looked up at her. “You had a chance to tell us, but you didn’t. Tell us now. Tell us what the hell is going on because our job is to know what’s going on and you’re making it really hard to do it.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Desrosiers said stiffly. “As I understand you people, your job is to keep the world safe from ancient magic and cursed tombs and whatnot, and the easiest way you can do that is to keep out of my way and let me do my job.”

“What is your job?” asked Sam. “Besides annoying museum directors.”

Desrosiers said nothing.

“What about me?” Jim wanted to know. “Don’t I deserve to know what’s going on?”

She looked up at him, and Natasha saw, for a brief moment, a change in her expression. Her anger and resentment subsided, and in their place was… pity, perhaps. Interesting.

“I don’t know that there’s much you can do about it in the time you have,” said Desrosiers.

“Have you ever made something like him?” Nat asked.

“A long time ago,” Desrosiers admitted. “Only once or twice. I couldn’t bring myself to do it again, not knowing how the poor creatures wouldn’t last. Paracelsus himself condemned the creation of homunculi, and he was the only who first invented them. He said it was an evil act to create a creature with a mind but no soul, one who could live only a short while and never know God. I may not believe in God,” she added, “but I know that creating things like you is cruel.”

“Can you help him?” asked Sir Stephen.

“Help him with what?” Desrosiers frowned.

“Help him to live longer,” Sir Stephen said, in the evident belief this should have been obvious.

“I don’t want to die,” Jim agreed.

Desrosiers looked up at Jim again. “If I do, will you let me go?”

“We’re far more likely to,” said Sir Stephen.

“But you’ve also got to answer our questions,” Nat agreed. “We can’t let you run off a second time.”

“What are your questions?” Desrosiers asked, with a sigh of defeat.

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov #bucky barnes #sam wilson #sharon carter #clint barton

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undertheaethier · 7 years ago

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GoV Ch. 6: Core Exercises

Yana apparently knew where she was going, because she led me out of the courthouse and to the Office of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice like she owned the block.

“Hey, Yana--are they even going to let us in there? I’m on a very tight leash, and you’re--”

“A convicted criminal, yeah,” Yana said, grinning unabashedly. “Don’t worry, we’ll just tell them Veryn sent us. And if they don’t buy that, we’ll find Tarrow.” She said the last part only grudgingly.

“Um, do you guys have a problem with Tarrow, or something?” I asked. I remembered how Kovit had seemed disgusted at the idea of Yana working with Tarrow, and Veryn’s refusal to enlist his help.

“Pfft. He’s just a jerk,” said Yana. “No real problem with him besides his entire personality.”

“He seems pretty nice to me,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.

Yana shrugged. “He’s pretty. I don’t know about nice.”

Upon entrance to the building, we were stopped by guards, but as Yana had predicted, simply telling them that Veryn had sent us to use the training rooms was enough for them, as soon as we’d shown them ID. Yana showed them a card that I’m pretty sure had been issued to her in prison, and I apologetically showed them my driver’s license. Luckily, they’d laughed instead of accusing me of anything, and we gained entrance without any further ado.

I looked around the office spaces and hallways as Yana led me through the building, looking idly for orange hair or dawn-colored wings, but saw no sign of Tarrow. Finally, we came to a door with a sign next to it in letters that I now sort of recognized. Oinaret. I wasn’t sure what the word meant though. I asked Yana and she looked at me in surprise.

“Wait, you weren’t kidding about learning Elvish?” she asked.

“No. Veryn found me some books last night and I started teaching myself.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Last night? Are you a quick learner, or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little proud. “Well, language is kind of my thing. It’s what I studied, in school back on Earth.”

Yana leaned against the wall, looking at me curiously. “You were a scholar?”

I laughed. I’d certainly never thought of myself as one. “I guess. I was a student. I study language, and I can speak eight human languages.”

Yana laughed. “Wow. That’s pretty incredible, I only speak two. Elvish and Dryidic. What did you plan to do, knowing so many languages?”

“Oh, well--” I stopped. Good question. My stomach sank. I’d thought about it before, of course, my career options, but I’d never really settled on anything. What would I do with all of my languages? Would I teach, or work for the state department? I could work for almost any branch of the government or law enforcement, as a translator or a linguist. I could study history from a linguistic perspective, or study ancient languages, trying to put millennia-old puzzle pieces together? Maybe I could try to help out with that Voynich Manuscript thing.

But what was I thinking? Of course I wouldn’t do those things now. Now, in a realm where none of my languages were spoken or used at all… I felt suddenly very heavy. Years of work were worth very little now.

Mom and Dad had made sure I learned German while I learned English. In daycare, I learned Spanish from my teachers and classmates. I’d gone to a private institution for elementary school, where they taught French. In middle school, I’d taken Latin as an elective. In high school, I studied Greek and Arabic. In college, I’d studied Korean and Russian, and I’d started learning Mandarin and Japanese just last year. I’d had plans to continue learning after graduation, to make myself more hirable, and had thought about learning Portuguese, Hindi, and Dutch. Now, what was that worth? I couldn’t practice any of those things here, and there was no point in continuing my learning of human languages. There was probably no way to even do so--how many scholars here studied Dutch? But hey--I’d had no plan to begin with, right? What was I even really giving up?

Maybe everything?

“Hey. You okay?” asked Yana.

I bit my lip. “Yeah, I just...I just realized how arbitrary it all is now,” I admitted. “My passion, all the work I put in...it doesn’t mean anything here.”

Yana looked concerned for me. “Well...maybe it does. Studying language will probably help you learn Elvish, right? And there are some scholars here who study human languages.”

“Really?” I asked, hopeful.

“Sure! Really hard stuff,” said Yana. “Three of them are studied in almost every university, even if they’re only used for anthropological stuff. I think it’s English, Russian, and...Mandarin? I don’t remember. I never learned any of them myself. It’s considered pretty niche here.”

Well. Maybe I could get some help with Mandarin after all. And in fact, if there were people here who studied English and Russian, I could still potentially teach. Maybe I wasn’t hopeless after all. And if those didn’t work out, I could keep learning other languages. Once I knew Elvish, I could expand to other languages. Who knew how many there were here, considering how many races there were?

Much more hopeful, I smiled at Yana. “Thank you,” I told her. “That actually helps to hear.”

She smiled back. “No problem. You ready?” She gestured toward the door. “Oh. It means ‘exercise room,’ by the way.”

“‘Oina’ means ‘exercise’ and ‘ret’ means ‘room’?” I asked.

“Oina is actually just an abbreviation for oinavar, but yes. Exactly.”

I nodded, feeling empowered. I could do this. No problem. “Yeah, let’s get to it.”

Firstly, Yana wanted to establish that I had muscles at all, it seemed. I confessed that I wasn’t much of an exercise nut. I usually ran a couple of times a week, and I did yoga more often, when I was feeling stressed or as a way to fall asleep. She said they had something similar to yoga, called Kof-gua, that had come about in Serura, and seemed content with what I could do.

She prescribed some weight-lifting and more running, but otherwise wasn’t disappointed with me, which increased my confidence exponentially. I’d been sure Yana had been going to immediately dismiss me, but I found that whether she was pleased or not by my state, she was a pretty good teacher. She was legitimately encouraging, though at times a little brash, switching between methods of being gentle and reassuring and being demanding and degrading to try to get me to do what she wanted me to. Whatever it meant about me, or her, it seemed to work.

Once she had mapped out a basic regimen, she said we were done for the day, and that we could work on skills like speed and quiet when she could verify where we were allowed to go--like a park, or a forest, or a shopping center, for instance. The exercises she had planned to develop those skills sounded kind of fun. She wanted me to be able to pickpocket, sneak up on someone who would be watching for me, creep through a forested area without making noise, and find escape routes in all kinds of environments. She said we would work with the daggers later.

By the time we were leaving the gym, I was sweaty and tired, and though I had plans to meet with Yana for dinner later, I was very much looking forward to a bath and a skim through a grammar book first.

We were walking back through the main office of the building when we ran into Tarrow. Kovit and Yana’s professed dislike for him had settled into the back of my brain like an itch, but it seemed to dim when I again saw his charming face, especially since he seemed excited to see me. They must not have known him as the kind faerie I had met yesterday, in the context of the law officer who’d been so gentle and welcoming throughout my arrival here.

“Emrys!” he greeted. “Oh--oh, damn, I don’t have a mouthpiece--”

“It’s okay, I can understand you just fine,” I replied. “Veryn gave me a language potion.”

“Oh. And--you took it?” he asked, seeming almost horrified, an escalation of the reaction I was becoming used to.

“Yes. I thought it was easiest.”

“And you’ve been busy, I see,” he said, looking me up and down. Remembering how sweaty I was, I internally flinched, but Tarrow didn’t seem offended by my appearance.

Tarrow’s eyes flicked to Yana, and he seemed even more put-off. “Well, well. Yana Sirinal. I didn’t know you were out of the basement. And you’ve already run into Emrys.”

Yana gave him a tight smile. “I can tell you’re overflowing with joy at the good news of my release. Yes, Emrys and I know each other. Veryn has tasked me with training her.”

Dark amusement spun in Tarrow’s eyes. I could tell he was trying not to smirk as he replied, “Has he? Really. Well, he has always extraordinarily admired your skills as a thief. When considering the need for stealth and deception, I’m sure he thought of you immediately. I hope Emrys learns what she needs to from you.” He put a hand on my shoulder in an almost protective manner. “While maintaining a healthy respect for the law, of course,” he said jokingly, giving me a wink.

My face was warm. I tried not to smile, and failed.

“Of course,” said Yana. “The whole team is committed to lawfulness. Working for the Council is serious business, after all.” There was a fakeness, a shallowness, to her tone that was equal parts nauseating and amusing.

“The whole team.” Tarrow raised his delicate eyebrows. “Oh, don’t tell me Veryn’s gotten the band back together. How...interesting.” Now, he didn’t stop himself from smiling. He seemed to take great enjoyment from whatever idea he had.

He turned his full attention back to me again. “Well, Emrys, I hate to tear you away from your new friends, of course, but is there any chance of you being free tonight? I’d love to help you continue to transition to the culture and atmosphere here.”

I felt a tug in my gut. I’d always been bad at this--turning down one plan for another, especially when I really liked the sound of the new plan. But my instincts told me to stick with Yana, no matter how disappointed I was at the idea of not spending the night with Tarrow, and getting to know Eben.

“I’m really sorry, but I actually have plans with Yana,” I said with a grimace. “I hope you understand. But I really would love to get together another time.” I tried to sound earnest. “Let me know anytime you’re free!”

Tarrow’s smile grew strained again, but he laughed. “Of course. As I said, I don’t want to hinder you from getting to know your new...colleagues. I’m here most days, so you can come find me whenever Veryn’s not working you to death. Let me know if you want anything.” His hazel eyes were glued to mine.

“I will, thank you,” I replied.

“I hope I get to see you again soon, Emrys, I’m so glad we ran into each other.” He dragged his hand away from my shoulder in a sort of caress, his face actually a little red, and I found myself flattered. Maybe my interest wasn’t one-sided.

“See you soon, Emrys,” he told me with a more genuine smile. He looked back to Yana and nodded. “Yana,” he said curtly.

“Tarrow,” she mimicked.

Tarrow gave a little wave and walked around us, heading toward the staircase at the back of the floor. I watched him go, appreciating his wings, among other things, then turned back to Yana. She was giving me a look I was surprised to be on the receiving end of. Usually, I was the one giving Daphne, or one of my other acquaintances the incredulous look of bemused disapproval that said Do not go to that frat party instead of studying for your midterm, or If you sleep with that guy, you are going to regret it. I thought her look was probably meant to convey something more akin to the latter. I felt my face grow redder.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said, turning my face away.

Yana shrugged, smirking a little. “I’ll look at you whatever way I want, pay it as little mind as you care to.”

We parted a few minutes later in the foyer of the Courthouse, with a promise to meet in the same place in three hours. To be able to keep track of the time, I asked Yana how the electrical system worked, so I could charge my phone. I showed it to her, and she laughed.

“Oh, we haven’t had anything like that in ages. Check the desk drawer in your room, or ask one of the servants for batteries.”

“Batteries?”

Yana held out her wrist to me and showed me what looked like a watch or an exercise tracker. She took it off and showed me the underside. There was something like a patch on the back of the band, bright blue with a symbol on it, possibly a logo.

“These are disposable batteries,” she explained. “They should work for a few months before they run out of stored energy.”

“That’s incredible--how do they work?” I asked, unsure I’d be able to fully comprehend the answer.

Yana snorted. “No idea. I’m a thief, not a scientist.”

With that, she waved to me, and I found my way back up to my room on the sixth floor, even more excited for cleanliness.

Yana had been correct about the desk drawer--I hadn’t even thought to look in there, but I was still struggling with the idea that this was my room. Despite the fact that it appeared the room was available for my use indefinitely, it had a hotel-like feeling that kept me feeling distant from it, and slightly uncomfortable. I hadn’t been about to rummage through drawers that didn’t feel like mine. But inside, I found pens, paper, a whole package of maybe thirty of those little battery patches, and a device like the one I’d seen the guard at the prison using.

I attached a battery to the back of my phone, and immediately, the phone began charging. Impressed, I turned to the other device. I put it on the desk and stared at it. It was a flat board of a material that was neither plastic nor metal, but was metallic black. I curiously double-tapped it with my pointer finger, seeing no buttons, and a lighted screen like a hologram appeared on the surface. There was no lock, and it just allowed me onto a menu screen. Everything was in Elvish, and I was a little too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options and words I wasn’t familiar with to try to investigate further. I double tapped the margins of the menu screen, and the lighted screen disappeared back into the plain black surface.

I stood and was heading toward the bathroom when I noticed that the top drawer of my dresser was just barely open, and I didn’t remember leaving it that way. Not suspicious so much as curious, I opened it, and found several sets of underclothes. Surprised, I opened the second drawer, and found clothing that appeared to be pajamas, light and soft gowns, long shirts, and silky pants. The third drawer was full of shirts, tunics and tank tops and other soft, loose types, and the fourth drawer had more pants like mine, thick leggings and ones that reminded me of athletic wear, slicker material in brighter shades. Beside the dresser, where I hadn’t been able to see from the door, there were three more pairs of shoes: black, thick-soled plain slip-ons, a sleek brown and green shoe that reminded me of a tennis shoe in how it laced up and appeared to provide arch support, and a pair of plain, buckled black boots. I was glad someone had thought to give me more clothes; I had been about to go take a bath without a care in the world, not thinking about the fact I only owned one set of clothes and I’d already used them.

When I was clean, I painstakingly combed through my hair and changed into an outfit like the one I’d just shed, this time black pants with a red shirt and I decided to try out the boots. They looked cool, but if they were the kind of shoes I’d be expected to wear when the action got real, they were definitely the type that would need some breaking-in.

I spent some time looking through one of the grammar books, but found my mind wandering.

Tarrow seemed like such a bright and pleasant person. How could the others have such a low opinion of him?

Veryn appeared to have a sense of justice, in how he pitied enslaved humans, yet he’d chosen to use only criminals for a very important mission specifically to spite the Council, and he’d manipulated someone he called a friend so that from the outside it would appear she couldn’t refuse to work for him, even when he’d made a decision that would hurt her. How could I actually trust him?

Tirin and Kovit appeared much more laid back than the rest, but honestly, their flirtation had made me uncomfortable, and while I was interested in getting to know them, I was put off by some of their behavior. Would I be able to get along with them?

And then Yana. I liked her. There was something about her that I found inexplicably relatable, or at least understandable, and I found myself wanting to know more about her--especially when it came to all this business with hers and the others’ criminal status. She didn’t exactly seem to be keeping it a secret, but she hadn’t told me anything willingly to help me to know the story. But while Tarrow made me happily nervous, Veryn put me on edge and challenged me, and the other two objectified me, Yana seemed to just want to talk. To do her job, and get to know me. She seemed open and honest and genuine. I decided that if I could trust anyone, it was her, thief or no.

#grove of vengeance #story #fantasy #fiction #writing

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years ago

Photo

Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Nat and Sir Stephen follow Neustadt home in the hope of getting some clues.

Neustadt returned to the train station, and took transit southeast to the Neapoli district, an area of dense apartments and narrow streets below Mount Lycabettus. Natasha and Sir Stephen followed him, hiding behind newspapers or a group of young soccer fans, and watched as he descended a flight of steps from the sidewalk on Doxapatri to enter a building. Nat pulled her phone out, and made a note of their location, then sat down on the curb to wait.

“Are we not going inside?” asked Sir Stephen.

“We’re being spies, not warriors,” Nat told him. “We’ve learned everything we can from him verbally. Now we want to see what’s in his home. We’ll watch, and we’ll wait.”

So that was what they did – and about an hour later Neustadt reappeared, dressed in a suit and tie that must have been hideously hot, even now that the sun was down. A taxi pulled up, and he got in. It headed south, and vanished around the corner.

“All right,” said Nat. “Now we go in.”

Like every other space in Athens, the apartment foyer – small and dim, with the tile floor cracking – was tiny and cramped by the standards of somebody who’d lived and worked in America. Europe was a small continent, and people there didn’t feel the freedom Americans did to spread out and take up space. There were no plants or furniture, since there wouldn’t have been room for any, and an ‘out of order’ sign on the door of the elevator. The only person in the room was a nine-year-old girl sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, playing a hand-held video game.

“Good evening,” Natasha said to her in Greek. “Did you see the man in the suit who just left?”

The girl nodded.

“Does he live here?” Nat asked.

The girl just shrugged.

“Have you seen him before?” Nat insisted.

“Sometimes,” the girl said. “Not very often. He visits the apartment across from my mother’s.”

Nat managed to get from the girl that her family lived on the third floor, and then thanked her and gave her a couple of Euros to buy herself a treat. Since the elevator was out of order, Nat and Sir Stephen had to climb the stairs to the third floor, which was not in any way pleasant. By the time they got there, Nat’s hair was stuck to the back of her neck from sweat, and even Sir Stephen, who was normally almost immune to environmental discomfort, flapped the front of his shirt in the effort to cool himself.

The apartment the man was supposed to have visited turned out to be number 304. Natasha knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

Nat knocked again, counted to twenty just to be sure, and then pulled out a paperclip and bent it open to pick the lock. The apartment beyond was a surprise – it was empty.

It was a tiny place, just three rooms: a bathroom, a kitchen, and a bedroom. Each had a couple of items placed in front of the windows to make it look as if somebody lived there – some jars or books, curtains, or a framed painting on the wall opposite. Beyond that, however, there was nothing. No dishes in the kitchen cupboard, no food in the fridge, no towels in the bathroom. In the closet a few sets of clothing were hung, and the shorts and t-shirt Neustadt had been wearing earlier were folded on the floor next to his flip-flops. This wasn’t his home, just a convenient place to change clothes.

On an empty kitchen cupboard was a pink post-it note, on which somebody – presumably Neustadt himself – had written the words, one atop the other:

MISSED ME IN

“Missed me in Athens?” Sir Stephen suggested.

“Maybe,” said Nat. Although if so, why hadn’t he cut the message short? Had somebody interrupted him? He hadn’t looked like he was in a huge hurry when he’d caught his taxi. Nat reached up to take the note, then changed her mind and took a picture of it instead. “It’s not for us. We didn’t miss him,” she observed. “It’s for somebody else… maybe Desrosiers.”

“We did indeed miss him,” Sir Stephen said, annoyed. “In that you wouldn’t enter until he’d left. What shall spies do next, then?”

“Search the place again,” Nat decided. “And be very careful to put everything back exactly where you found it. Bang on the walls, stomp on the floors, look for secret cupboards or hidden spaces, anywhere you could store something you don’t want anyone to find. And then we wait, because if he left this note then he must be expecting somebody to come here. If it’s Desrosiers, we need to talk to her, too.”

They searched the apartment from top to bottom, and found nothing. Natasha knocked on the doors of 303 and 305, both of which were inhabited by apparently normal people: 303 was home to an old man who lived alone with a small terrier, and 305 to a family in which both parents worked while also raising four school-age children. Neither could remember ever speaking to their neighbor in 304 but they were sure somebody lived there – or at the very least watered the plants on the balcony.

Nat rejoined Sir Stephen in the bedroom, which did not contain a bed – just a small bookshelf and chair in a place where they would be visible through the window curtains. The books were a random assortment of trashy best-sellers from about ten years back, of no interest at all. She’d flipped through them, and they were all real books, rather than hiding places.

“This is just a front,” she said, sitting down on the floor beside Sir Stephen. “It’s a place he can hide and maybe get his mail delivered to, but I don’t think he spends any more time here than necessary. Possibly he used to store stuff here.” There wasn’t much dust on the floor, which suggested it had either been recently cleaned or recently covered. “If he did, he’s taken it away now.”

“So we have learned nothing,” groused Sir Stephen.

“We’ve learned a lot,” Nat told him. “We’ve definitely learned enough to pretend we know more than we do, and we might be able to use that to get something out of Desrosiers.”

“And what if we wait here all night and she never comes?” Sir Stephen asked. “We will have spent the night sitting around uselessly, while Neustadt flees!”

He might be right, but Nat wasn’t going to admit it as long as he was using that tone. “I’m going to call the others,” she decided.

Sharon answered the phone, and sounded relieved to hear from them. “Where are you two?” she asked. “We’ve been waiting at the hotel for hours.”

“We’re at an address in Neapoli,” said Nat. “I think Desrosiers may turn up here.” She explained what they’d seen, and how Neustadt had left. “Did you talk to Fury?”

“Yes,” Sharon said. “He’s gonna see if he can get us a copy of the Voynich manuscript, although he’s not sure it’ll do us any good. The smartest cryptographers in the world have been trying to decode it for a hundred years, and nobody’s managed it yet.”

“I guess there might be something else in there we could use,” said Nat, although she wasn’t hopeful. It wasn’t just Americans who were interested in the manuscript – the Russians, too, had tested their best code-breakers on it and come up with nothing. “Anything else? What about the address in Australia? Or Kotor?”

“He’s going to call somebody in Australia to ask,” Sharon said, “but as far as we can tell from a quick check of Google Maps, it’s a shack in the middle of nowhere. As for Kotor, he says that’s a trap. I told him we know it’s a trap, we’re trying to figure out whether it’s worth springing it.”

“All right, let me know,” said Nat.

“One other thing,” Sharon added. “He says he’s got copies of those Newton writings, and he’ll courier them to us. We should expect the package at the hotel tomorrow morning.”

“Then call me when they get there,” Natasha said. “We’ll stay here, and if Desrosiers doesn’t turn up by the morning, we’ll come back.”

There was an air conditioner in the room, but it didn’t work. Nat and Sir Stephen, sitting in the middle of the bare floor, had to try to keep cool by fanning themselves with papers or their hands while they passed the time by playing a couple of games of Beat Your Neighbour. The cards were a pack bought from a souvenir vendor in the street – they had erotic scenes from ancient pottery on the backs, including a very improbable picture of a satyr balancing a cup of wine on its erect penis. Sir Stephen won both games, and then sat back and yawned.

“Sleepy?” asked Natasha.

“It’s this heat,” said Sir Stephen. “It makes one want to sleep at the same time as it is likely to render sleep impossible.”

“Having to sleep on the floor isn’t going to help,” Nat agreed. “So who takes first watch?” One of them would have to stay awake to see if Desrosiers, or somebody else, showed up. The question was who.

There was a rap on the window.

Nat jumped, and she could see that Sir Stephen did too. For a moment she thought it was intentional, then she remembered they were on the third floor… who’d be knocking on the window? Could it have been a bird? Then it happened again – three knocks. That was definitely somebody trying to get their attention.

She caught Sir Stephen’s eye. He took up a position next to the window, and picked up the wooden chair from under the bookshelf, to use as a weapon. Nat pulled the curtains back and raised her flashlight. There was a man on the balcony, blinking in the light and raising his hands to show that he was unarmed.

It was Jim, with his long hair and black t-shirt. He squinted to see who was holding the flashlight, then recognized her and looked surprised – had he, too, been expecting Neustadt? He knocked on the window again to be let in.

Nat undid the catch and let him inside.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Jim admitted. “I just knew this was the place to come.”

Maybe he’d been here before, and Neustadt had ordered him to forget about it, Nat thought. Or maybe he’d been told to come here but not why. Or maybe he did after all know more than what Neustadt had told him – maybe he’d somehow picked up some things Neustadt hadn’t meant to transmit.

“What do you want?” Nat asked. Behind her, Sir Stephen slowly set down the chair he was holding.

“I… I’m not sure of that, either,” Jim admitted. “I want help, but I don’t know if you can help me. I don’t know if anybody can help me – he says he can’t, but maybe Mrs. Flamel can… but I don’t know if she wants to.”

Nat had a good idea of what the problem might be, but she wanted to hear it from him. “Explain.”

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov #bucky barnes

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years ago

Photo

Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Jim needs help - and the gang get another possible idea about where they’ll be heading next.

Since Sir Stephen had put the chair down, Jim pulled it over and sat on it – backwards, leaning his elbows on the back of it.

“I don’t know my name,” he said. “You asked and I said it was Jim, but I didn’t know it – when I try to remember it, there’s nothing there. I know I’m an art student, and I’m here to see the museums, but I don’t know what school I go to, or what airline I took to get here, or where I live. I know I was following you around because Mr. Neustadt told me he’d pay me to, but if you asked me about anything else I’d have to make something up.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know my parents’ names, or whether I have any siblings. You don’t think about this stuff minute-by-minute, especially when you’re focused on something else, but now that I do think about it, it’s not there.”

Like Barnes on the train, Natasha thought. Allen had asked him where he was from and he’d said Brooklyn, but he’d had to think about it. Had he had a moment of crisis like the one Jim seemed to be having now? Or had he simply dismissed it and moved on?

“I asked Mr. Neustadt if it were true that he’d, uh, made me,” he went on, “and he said yes… that they’ve got these bacteria, I guess, that take up traits from other living things instead of having their own DNA. They can make a person, but they don’t live very long. I didn’t believe him, and he said if I didn’t then I could test it, and he gave me this.”

Jim took out a pocket knife and unfolded a blade from it. “It took me a while to get up my nerve to do it, but…” He put the blade against his palm, gritted his teeth, and prepared to drive it in.

Sir Stephen stepped in and took the knife from him. “There’s no need to do that,” he said.

Startled, Jim reached to get it back. “It goes right in and it seals back up!” he said.

“We will take your word for it,” said Sir Stephen, folding the knife back up. He handed it back to Jim with a warning look.

Nat cocked her head. Sir Stephen was a warrior – he’d killed people, up close and persona, using a sword or a spear. She knew he wasn’t squeamish. Was it just because Jim looked so much like his old friend?

Jim put it away. “So… yeah. Apparently I’m not human, and I’m going to die in a week or so. And you guys have met other… ones… of me… before?” He was dreading the answer.

“We have met other men who looked like you,” said Sir Stephen. “Upon their death they vanished into piles of ash.”

Jim shivered. “Right. So… I don’t want that to happen, obviously,” he said awkwardly. “Mr. Neustadt said he can’t help me live longer, although I don’t know if he meant it or if he just doesn’t care. At dinner, though he said something about Perenelle being more into biology than he is?” He looked up hopefully.

“We don’t know,” said Nat honestly. “We only just learned that any of this is possible at all.”

Sir Stephen, however, got down on one knee to be on eye level with Jim, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Your name,” he said, “is James. It has always been James. Your family called you Buckeye, as did I. You were the son of a Cornish knight, a thousand years ago, and you died in battle with Count John the Red Death, a treacherous ally of William of Normandy. Your body fell into a crevasse, and it was there that this Neustadt found it and used it to make homunculi to do his bidding.” He gave the shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I am Sir Stephen of Rogsey, and you are my friend. You have been my dearest friend for a very long time, and never failed to help me when I needed it. Now I will help you.”

He stood up again, and turned to look at Natasha.

“Neustadt spoke of the Philosopher’s Stone as an engine that can transmute matter into other forms,” he said. “Do you think it could transmute this elixir into human flesh?”

Natasha hadn’t thought of that, and she had no idea whether it was possible or not. “I don’t know why you keep asking me. I don’t know,” she said. She was unavoidably reminded, though, of how she’d worried that both Allen Jones and Sir Stephen himself would disappear when the group got rid of the Holy Grail that had created them. Jim had it even worse, in that he’d come with a ticking clock already hanging over his head.

“Madame Desrosiers must know,” Sir Stephen decided.

“Doesn’t mean she’ll actually do anything about it,” Natasha noted – Neustadt had said she was selfish, and they knew she’d healed Clint only because he got hurt trying to help her. “We’re waiting for her,” she told Jim, “but if she hasn’t turned up by the morning, we’ll have to go. We need to figure out which of these two alchemists is the one who destroyed that mummy, and have him or her taken back to the UK to face charges.”

Jim nodded, disappointed. “Can I wait with you?” he asked.

That would allow them to keep an eye on him, at least. “I guess,” said Nat. “We don’t know for sure she’ll turn up, though.”

“That’s fine,” said Jim. “Thank you. Even if you can’t do anything, thank you anyway for trying. I don’t want to die.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know if I really want to live when I don’t even know who I am and it sounds like I’m not anybody but… but I know I don’t want to die, and that only leaves so many options.”

“To live is always better,” said Sir Stephen. “But if you must die, die gloriously, and not ignominiously falling apart.”

Jim raised his head and gave Sir Stephen a sideways look. “Do you always talk like that?” he asked.

“He does,” said Natasha. “He’s a knight from a medieval poem, brought to life by the Holy Grail, so he hasn’t quite caught up on the twenty-first century yet.”

“Oh,” said Jim, unsure what to do with this information.

“I’m a former Russian spy,” Nat added with a smile. She wondered if he believed her. “Now I teach archaeology at a university in Scotland.”

He just blinked at her.

“We’re weird people,” she said.

“I can kinda tell,” Jim said carefully. “What about this Buckeye guy? What was he like?” He turned back to Sir Stephen.

Sir Stephen’s face lit up in a smile – he loved to talk about his old life, and particularly about the people he had known then. “Buckeye was my friend from when I was very small,” he said. “I Still have a lock of his hair that I keep.” He’d once had it in a medieval pendant, but had since bought a modern locket. He pulled it out of his shirt and opened it to show Jim the curl of hair inside. “You see, I grew up in an Abbey. My mother had fled her husband and put out to sea, hoping to reach Wales…”

Nat shook her head. Sir Stephen would be going on half the night now, but it would make him happy, and Jim was already nodding eagerly, hoping to find something he could latch onto as an identity of his own. For however long this lasted, Nat’s own presence would be irrelevant.

“I’m gonna get us a pizza,” she decided. “I’ll be back in maybe twenty minutes.”

When she came back, Sir Stephen was telling Jim about a time Buckeye had carried him back to the Abbey after Stephen had stepped in a rabbit hole and twisted his ankle.

“He joked that were I to wax any heavier, he would have to set me down and cut my throat as he’d do for an injured horse,” Sir Stephen said. Nat noticed that his grammar had gotten a little more formal again, the way it had been when he’d first showed up.

Jim was startled. “That’s a horrible thing to say to your friend,” he said.

“It was a longstanding jest between us,” said Sir Stephen. “I knew he would never have proposed it seriously, unlike some of the crueler boys.”

Jim shrugged one shoulder. “Go on,” he said.

Sir Stephen talked until long past midnight, when the pizza was gone and several bottles of sparkling water had chased it down while they waited for the evening to cool – which it never did. While the men talked in the bedroom, Natasha went and sat in the living room, waiting for Desrosiers, or whoever else Neustadt had been expecting, to arrive. Time passed. Nat could go a long time without sleep if she had to, but she was out of training. Besides the murmur of voices in the bedroom, the only sound in the apartment was that of traffic on the streets outside, which was a noise she’d always found soothing.

If anyone had tried to come into the room during the night, they would have woken her – but Natasha slept curled on the floor until she woke in the morning to her phone telling her she had a text message. She opened it, and found it was from Sharon.

Our stuff is here, it said.

A moment later, a second line appeared. Some of it. Apparently what are referred to as Newton’s ‘apocalyptic’ writings were bought by a Polish guy named Maslanka who has spent the last ten years or so in Santorini. You know, the island with the blue domes.

Natasha did know the name. Santorini, or Thira, was the Greek island that appeared on all the postcards and calendars. She texted back.

Sounds nicer than Kotor. We’ll head back and take a look.

Having learned their lesson yesterday, Nat, Jim, and Sir Stephen took the bus back to the hotel. They arrived to find the rest of the group having breakfast in the dining room, and passing around several books. One was a modern, softcover-bound facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript. The others were a biography of Sir Isaac Newton, and one called Alchemy According to Newton, a summary of his magical and alchemical beliefs.

“Hi, guys,” said Nat, sitting down next to Allen.

“Morning,” said Allen.

Sam swallowed his mouthful of ham and cucumber sandwich and pointed at Jim. “What’s he doing here?” he asked.

“He is a man in need of help,” said Sir Stephen. “He came to us in the hope that we can provide it. I will not turn him away.”

“Because it’s not like the last two or three of him tried to kill us or anything,” Sam observed.

“Actually, the ones on the train only fought back when we tried to stop them,” Nat pointed out, “and Neustadt said the one at Guedelon was only after Desrosiers, and attacked us when it thought we were protecting her.”

“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” Jim said. “At least, I don’t feel like I am. I don’t want to.” He looked worried. It seemed to have occurred to him that maybe Neustadt could control him from a distance, or had perhaps implanted some kind of hypnotic suggestion.

“We won’t let you,” Nat told him. She noticed Clint rubbing his side again. “If you try, Neustadt did tell us how to stop you.” Pressure on the hyoid bone, she thought, could inhibit the vagus nerves, stopping the heart. It wasn’t reliable in most people, though… apparently it was in the homunculi.

“If you’re a product of alchemy, yourself, maybe you can shed some light on this.” Sharon handed him a packet of the papers Fury had sent them. “Whether we’re going to Kotor or Santorini or somewhere else, we need to do some research first.”

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov #bucky barnes #sharon carter #clint barton #sam wilson

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