nonvenomous | Inbox

"Would you mind if I had a look?"

A question posed quietly from the foot of Richard's infirmary bed. Derrica is hovering there, hands coming to rest on the footboard. He can tell her to go, certainly. There is no pressing danger. Richard has some healing ability of his own, and there are other healers in attendance who will have kept an eye on him.

But still. Derrica wants to offer.

In the aftermath of an evangelist attack on the kitchens one day and skeleton hell the next, Dick Dickerson has the look of a man who would very much like to switch off the game and go outside for a walk. He’s ill-rested, drawn, and exposed in a kept setting he prefers to inhabit as the keeper, with pants and a shirt and maybe a handsome vest.

So he breathes in long and slow under her scrutiny and he says:

“Please.”

He’s between applications of salve, burns scabbed at his elbow over the sheets, stitches in his cheek ready to come out. Superficial. The round clay tab of a small talisman sits at his sternum on a leather cord.

Beneath the blanket, his right leg doesn’t look ready to take his weight without cracking and oozing: a work in progress, better than it was. A crutch might be enough to see him back to his own quarters, provided he doesn’t miss a step.

"I can't fix it all," she says softly, hopefully an unneeded reminder. She'd like it if she could knit him back together with the press of her hands, but she isn't quite that strong.

Derrica chooses not to comment on the state of him. Yes, he looks a fright. But he was nearly incinerated. Who wouldn't look something of a mess afterwards?

"I can take the stitches out myself," she continues. "Would you mind if I took the blanket down?"

There are other questions she might ask. How he is feeling, and not just whether or not the burns pain him or the bandages are not well-secured. He had been alone in that room before she had arrived, with Marcus on her heels. That could not have been easy.

The dissociative absence to his pause is enough to indicate that he does know, or that he does mind. Both. But he stirs to wind and flip the blanket aside himself with the arm that’s in better shape, baring out chicken legs (one very well done) and the short rumple of his braies.

The effort puts him out of breath, any semblance of eye contact broken, his dignity set adrift.

Easy to guess he’s spent the better part of his time unsupervised wringing spellwork out of himself like an old rag.

There are old scars layered in under the new: the wicked arc a scimitar once carved up his side, punctures and slashes and the slender track of a sharp blade up the back of his forearm, still fresh enough to shine an angry pink. The burns too have retreated around their edges, deeper charring scabbed over dark behind his calf, above his knee.

When he returns to himself, it's to watch her hands.

A flicker of apology crosses her face, but she doesn't voice it. Instead, she spends a moment briskly examining the damage. Old scars. It isn't a surprise. If Loxley had scars, and he traveled with Richard, they'd surely have gotten into all the same scrapes.

She is very, very careful where she sets her hands down over the damaged skin. The touch is very light, her palms cool. Derrica draws in a deep, deep breath.

The shadows bend down closer as cool green light washes forth from her palms. It comes like a chill, as if the flow of energy should leave a bristle of frost in its wake. But it eases the burns. Derrica's palms move as she works, directing all that green light down along the ragged scarring.

Her hands lift when she's finished, bracing herself on the bed rather than prolonging physical contact. Richard hasn't offered any objection, but she has a sense he would rather vanish back under the blankets now that the work is done.

Distrust locks him back against his pillow under her touch -- even with care taken, his bracing intake of breath is sharper and the lines around his mouth are grim.

He’s fretting for nothing.

The healing starts and held tension ebbs, let off by degrees once he’s certain the shock to raw nerves is likely to be minimal. The pull of light and shadow underhand is of interest to him. It gives him something to focus on that isn’t the chill in the air, the vulnerability of exposure, the sight of his own tortured flesh.

He’d been curious about Fitcher’s burns.

He covers his own with greater care than he revealed them once Derrica has drawn back, avoiding any flop or friction. Also wasting no time. She’s correct in assuming he’d rather be covered.

“Thank you.”

"You're welcome."

And that could be the end of this interaction, of course. Derrica could simply straighten and walk away, and that would be that.

Instead—

"Can I sit?" she asks, tentative over the query. Understanding that she's toeing up along the edge of Richard's patience, perhaps. "Only for a moment."

Derrica is soft and kind and has big brown eyes; he can feel them on him without looking up from the flecks of serum dried stiff into his sheets.

Her prowess at the quintain aside, it is easy to see why Loxley is fond of her.

There’s a thread of obligation there.

Never mind the deal they made when they were last alone.

So he nods, no resentment to his acceptance. He’s laid up in this bed like a greasy piece of twine, in various states of unravelling end to end. All unkempt and with nowhere to go.

At that nod, she takes up a perch on the edge of his bed. Derrica is careful with her encroachment. Even with the many repairs that have been visited upon Richard between the scorched stone floor he'd been peeled from and now, she knows that jostling him would be unappreciated. Too much of him is still injured

"I know you're still hurt," Derrica tells him. "But I wanted to know if you're alright. After what happened."

After almost dying, she is delicately not saying.

A question in which she hopes alright registers beyond just the physical. Is Richard okay?

Silence is an answer. He’s aware, but this one is short-lived and hemmed up in thought, weighing and turning over the truth.

“It doesn’t matter.”

She knows this, surely -- charity tested in a level look aside. Let’s not deceive ourselves.

“I miss my cat.”

Sympathy pinches her brow.

"It does matter," she persists, softly enough for it to pass without being argued.

But she cannot bring back his cat, and she cannot do more for him without exhausting herself, so.

"Would it help to curse his name?"

Bony and raw in his blanket, Dick Dickerson studies Derrica’s sympathy at a remove. It’s too low energy to evoke contempt or even cynicism -- the distant interest of a surgically shaved cat curled up in a dog’s bed, unapologetically troublesome. Surely he’s earned the right.

“That seems unkind.”

Brother Gideon's actions were selfless; he died for his cause.

“May I tell you something in confidence?”

The rejoinder is halfway formed. Richard can perhaps parse it in her expression, the stubborn prickling of her brow: He tried to kill you.

But rebuttal is stalled by the introduction of a question. It's unexpected. Derrica doesn't expect to be the top choice for Richard's confidences.

Her answering "Yes," is tentative, as if expecting Richard to change his mind.

Yes, naturally.

“When I attempted to communicate my suspicions about Brother Gideon to Rutyer he was reluctant to meet with me in my quarters.”

This is likely to make her unhappy, he suspects -- something a little sharper in the way eye contact narrows in aside.

This does shift her expression. The pinch of her brow deepens into a frown.

"Why?"

Why was Rutyer reluctant?

Why tell her this at all?

“He was concerned for his safety.”

Obviously. Crow’s feet etch in stark where the crook of half a smile might fit, could he be bothered to force it.

The first, amused flicker of a smile gives way to a more contemplative frown.

"I see."

There's some humor in it, but when set against the bigger picture, all the other instances in which Byerly Rutyer had expressed himself in regards to Rifters and mages—

"Does he know about you?"

Not the rift shard. The rest. The other things Richard is capable of that Derrica knows only parts and pieces of.

“I’m marked as a mage on the list of Rifters maintained by the Research Division.”

Isaac saw to that for him. Or perhaps the Provost. He’d like to think it wasn’t Wysteria. Regardless, distaste carves close along the bones of his face, hard in his nose through a glance down the blanket to his feet.

“Not that it was a secret closely kept.”

"I'm sorry."

And she is, as complicated a thing as it might be.

But the worse thing is surely what has been demonstrated: anyone, including someone like Byerly Rutyer, could skim that list and pluck out a private thing, just like that.

"And I'm sorry that he knows."

Derrica doesn't put her hand on his knee over the blankets. But she does bump her knuckles up against his calf as she rearranges position, adjusts how she is leaning her weight. It's a very small thing, easily ignored.

“Why should you be, he leads a division.”

It only makes sense he should have some level of awareness. Dick’s eyeline shifts from the foot of his cot to the nudge of knuckles at his leg, and inevitably from there back to Derrica.

“The caliber of cowardice it suggests is frankly quite impressive, never mind the open insult to my service.”

He could go on like this, probably, but doesn’t, whatever else pent up and released in a short sigh.

“I’d initially considered Riftwatch a reprieve.”

"He is a coward. It's what guides him in his dealings with us."

One of the few things to recommend Byerly Rutyer: his willingness to admit his own shortcomings in that arena.

Though admitting it doesn't shift the harm that cowardice causes. Derrica's gaze has also dropped to her fingers tucked against Richard's leg, and she shakes her head.

"Is it only the Ambassador, or is there something else that concerns you?"

He’s quiet again, the rasp of his breath mingling with the rustle of his bedding when he stretches against it.

It’s a question that doesn’t bear answering, really, an impulse towards dry honesty -- the list of things that don’t concern him would be substantially shorter -- lifted up and let off in a huff of salt, the ghost of a scoff.

“I’m just tired,” he tells her. Tired and unhappy.

“I'll be alright.”

Edited (infinite italics) 2021-12-18 08:44 (UTC)

Derrica recognizes the sentiment. I'll be alright standing in for so many things that cannot be easily solved.

But that's the trouble: the understanding that what is troubling Richard cannot be solved by Derrica, as much as she might like to.

"You can tell me, if it helps," is the best offer she can make. Someone to listen. Someone who will likely agree. Her fingers nudge very gently against the bend of his knee, underscoring the silent offer.

A slight shake of his head will have to stand in for more specific discouragement.

He follows it with an even look in aside, half apology in earnest, half a probe through her feelings on being turned down for a vent session. A conversation about the totality Dick Dickerson’s troubles isn’t in the cards.

However:

“You asked me previously where my magic comes from.”

"I did."

There's no disappointment. The offer is made. It's Richard's choice what to be done with it. If there's no comfort in speaking of his troubles, then she doesn't intend to press.

Maybe he will remember the offer sometime later. Maybe not.

Regardless, she turns in towards him, bringing up one leg to rest carefully on the edge of the bed. Settling in, if he intends to speak of it now.

backdated skin rp.

is for me??

all for u

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

one more time

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject