ways_infirmary | (no subject)

Goldilocks sleeps through the complicated surgery on her friend and long into the next day. When she awakens, the privacy screen is still up around Rachel's bed, and besides the Prince's soft harmonies, there is nothing audible from that station for most of the day, not even a flicker of a mental touch. Goldy doesn't attempt anything to disturb that—privacy is privacy, after all.

She's clean now and the pain isn't too bad. It's there, under the wealth of bandages, definitely making itself known through stiffness, aches and throbbing, but not in any debilitating way. The creeped-out feeling of having had microscopic machines roaming around her body causes as much discomfort as her injuries, to be fair. There are occasional violent shudders when she considers the prospect that maybe Hank didn't get them all? Not that she's the squeamish type, but such bodily invasiveness is hard to deal with.

Once properly roused, she spends a good fifteen minutes readjusting the pillows so she can sit up in relative comfort. She spends some time trying to tune out the eery chittering noises that drift over from another screened-off bed. She eats a little, and she reads a little, and she wonders about Mel. The rest of the time she spends trying to control her loathing of being cooped up here in the med lab, with its overly shiny decor, its monotonously beeping machines and its nauseating smell of sterility. She hates the pervading sense of infirmity and helplessness. It's not as if she is incapacitated, and she has to fight quite hard to suppress the urge to fuck 'doctor's orders' and go to her room instead.

However, if she has to stay, the standard issue hospital gown has got to go. And soon!

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She disregards their differences on classes of females and gives his scars her full wide-eyed attention. She's not shocked, nor sickened. Instead, her face wavers through something between compassion and morbid fascination.

"Ouch. It looks like someone already came close," is her simple take on it. "Still, I'd take ninety percent over one hundred."

She should have seen him before his relationship with the front door got rid of the ones that Ramon inflicted,

"A time or two, yes."

He says quietly,

"I do not know. It would be easier to die, I think, but the world is not mine to leave."

It isn't. Death refused to take him.

"You have Milliways though," she suggests. "At least you can get away."

"Doesn't this place and its people ease the burden a little?"

A second alternative presents itself.

"...or are you Bound?"

"I am not Bound."

He really wishes he was, and he smiles down at Rachel again before answering the first part of Goldie's questions,

"Did I not have Milliways, I would have been forsworn. There is no way I would be sane enough to stay alive."

"Mmm," she muses soberly. "It is also a haven of sorts for me, though I am stuck here."

"For my sins, I left Earth as a fugitive in the eyes of my people. I made my way as a small-time assassin among the humans once I'd been outlawed, and I have no real desire to return to that way of life or threat of execution."

"You should speak with my caith'd'ein."

He says without any irony,

"He is a terrorist."

That's another thing caith'd'ein do.

Eyebrow, and then a pout of her bottom lip.

"Does he live here?"

"Not quite. He and Random have a home elsewhere. They cook as well as I do, you may see them quite often."

The pout does not move him. Arithon is immune.

This is because Bianca is stunning, beautiful, and all his. The years of training may add to it, but mostly its B.

The pout was more a musing one. For all her promiscuity, she is not one to interfere in relationships at all.

"Ramon Salazar?" she says with mild incredulity. The name Random is not familiar, but the living situation tied with the profession is.

"Sanluin, now."

He says distracted by another restless movement of Rachel,

"But born as Ramon."

She looks bemused. "I've met him. And I heard that he tortured you. Now he is your court assassin and bodyguard?"

"He did. He is."

And then he laughs, and the laugh manages to be carefree and bright without being mocking at all,

"We have a very complicated relationship, an roth i'an."

Goldy pulls her head back with an uneasy smile.

"Clearly."

She drowns her bewilderment in a very necessary gulp of water. And moving on...

"Did you meet your wife here?"

Goldie is not the only person confused by Arithon and Ramon. In a (probably doomed) attempt to help he says,

"We spent six weeks not being sure which we were. I think he can still curse in Paravian."

Then he nods,

"I did. She had books..."

Biblophile love.

Ignoring the slightly mind-boggling connection between Prince and terrorist, the smile turns softer now.

"I like to read as well; fiction and non-."

"You are not familiar with my story though," she assumes. "I feel I ought to remedy that, especially as we have a little time to kill."

"I would be pleased."

He would, too.

And will probably turn it into a song.

He does that.

"Alright then," Goldy says happily.

She gets comfortable and wets her palate again.

"Now, fairy tales are supposed to start with 'once upon a time', but since I have a point of reference, mine does not."

"So, back in my original world, when I was eight years old..." and the story is told. The real story, with its derivations from popular folklore, including such things as the Ma and Pa's double bed.

And she doesn't stop there. She just continues with her life story—the interesting bits anyway. Naturally, the tale of the Adversary is interwoven, and she details a little about the exile. Her recent crimes are not missed out, and are solemn and far from happy ending.

It won't be a pretty song.

The true ones generally aren't.

Eventually, though, it will be a song. He's listening too hard for it not to be.