ways_infirmary | (no subject)

Current Mood: hungry

(no subject)

For the first time in a fortnight Rabastan's feeling good. He's finally on the mend, and, if his appetite is anything to go by, he's almost completely healed.

Right now he's polishing off the carb-counter's special—his third helping in the last half-hour—and has the look on his face that says he'd like some more. But there doesn't appear to be any more, and the rats who are serving him aren't about to take his order for a fourth helping.

That means, if he wants food, he's going to have to get it himself.

And Rabastan can be quite impatient sometimes, and when the mood strikes him, he'll Gryffindorishly run off to take care of whatever it is he feels is too pressing to wait for.

A strange habit for a Slytherin, but what can you do?

At any rate, he's heading up to the main bar, wobbling slightly and dressed in standard patient's garb, complete with those slippers they give you for your feet.

He's still hungry. Maybe there's something upstairs he can help himself to...?

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"I owe you my help," Asar-Suti said, "as this happened to you because you were taking my Strahan to safety. Whatever I can do for you, I will."

He's craning his neck now, peering over the Seker's shoulders. Dammit why is everyone he meets taller than he is?

Rabastan pales again. Merlin he did not want to be reminded of the ... incident ... and here was Asar-Suti, giving Rabastan a salt bath for his wounds.

—Eyes flash yellow for a moment—

"I think there's a place to talk in private," he says, resigned. "And you can tell me what help you wish to give me."

Doubtlessly, poor Rabastan was in a truly bad way. Asar-Suti realised he had to take himself down a notch or two, being as gentle as possible to him.

"Before I can give you help," he said, walking back towards the infirmary with Rabastan, "I need to know which help you need. 'Here is my help, whether you need it or not' is a very arrogant and unhelpful attitude."

Helped along by the fact that the tarot cards were unsuccessful in talking to him about what Asar-Suti and Strahan had said behind his back. You just can't hold much of a quality conversation when the one you're talking to is somewhat comatose.

Doesn't stop some people though.

He looks about for a private room, and someone [conveniently placed of course] points in the direction of just such a room.

"I need a lot of help. The question is one of 'what sort of help can you offer me?'" He opens the door so they both can go inside. "If it's turning back the clock I'm afraid no one can do that. Even time turners can't go back two weeks in time."

Asar-Suti sighed, and looked up at Rabastan as he sat. Rarely did he find a human slighter and smaller than this his skinny, geeky, big-nosed orginal shape he'd had as a magician's apprentice, before delusions of grandeur took him, so he ended up a self-apotheosised god.

"I can offer you practical help, magical help, the help of a friend of mine who knows much about potions, the help fond from books, and the experience of a shape-shifter from a world of shape-shifter," Asar-Suti enumerated.

Rabastan just doesn't look like much of a Death Eater does he? Not when you compare him to Rodolphus, who's built like an ox and is about as smart too.

The narrative might be joking about the intelligence of Rabastan Lestrange's older brother—he's the one who orchestrated all this after all.

"And to what end would you do all this for me?" he asks, seating himself down and trying to ignore the pulse-like sound in his ears. "Are you trying to offer me a chance to become an Animagus so I can cope with this new life better?"

Rabastan doesn't think it's possible to shift outside the moon cycle for a werewolf; he's drawing the only conclusion he can.

"Some way to shift your shape when you wish, and not just when you're forced to," Asar-Suti said, at once more vague and more precise.

A shy young rat stuck its head inside the door.

"An opportunity to become an Animagus then," he says, thinking that this is what the Seker's getting at. "I'm not sure if werewolves even can be Animagi—"

That rat looks oddly tasty all of a sudden...

The rat clung to the door jamb an squealed with sudden fright. 'Not eating the waitrats' could only be enforced once one had be eaten, could it?

"There are more ways of shifting shape than just becoming an animagus," Asar-Suti said. "And the rat is here to take your orders - what did you want when I happened on you and turned you around?"

Technically, yes. Unless you plan to deliver a warning. Or whatever is needed to bring Rabastan back into a more human frame of mind, because the wolf is starting to take over Rabastan's psyche.

"I've already experienced one way of shifting shape," he says darkly. "I don't want to experience it again. It hurt like hell, and I know pain."

He sighs at the trembling rat.

"Meat. Lots of it. I—I'm no vegetarian by anyone's definition but I certainly find myself wanting more of it than I used to."

"You will experience it again in any case," Asar-Suti said, mercilessly. "Better take the chance to control it so it might be less painful and dangerous in the future. Bring him a plate of mixed barbecues with fresh salad, Oonagh," he added to the rat, "and you can bring Thady and its big skewer when you serve it, if you feel safer."

Oonagh the rat scampered off.

"I know that," he says, hand against his forehead. "I know I will. Merlin knows my life's been defined by things I don't want but ended up having anyways. This is just one more of those things I never wanted to deal with."

He sighs.

"The only way to control it is through the wolfsbane potion, and that's expensive to acquire."

He looks up.

"Are you offering to make it for me? For a fee?"

"At the very least," Asar-Suti said, "I'd offer you wolfsbane potion of Gil's making, and for free. I owe you, as I said."

"That covers the involuntary shifting of shape," Rabastan shrewdly observes. "But you also said something about voluntary shifting, and the only way one can do that is by becoming an Animagus, and yet you say that's not necessary."

He was confused and more than just a little hungry.

Nothing made sense any more.

Three young rats entered the room - Oonagh had brought her friends.

Thady was the one bringing a big skewer; Phelim helpfully pushed the little cart, and Ooonagh served Rabastan the meat. And there were lots of it. Accompanied by greens.

"There are other ways of shape-shifting in other worlds, other magical traditions," Asar-Stui explained, watching the rats.

He knows one tradition, thanks to Strahan, who told him about the Cheysuli and their lir. Animals that granted the one they were bonded to to shapechange into a shape similar to their lir's.

"Yes, I know. Strahan spoke of one, but I doubt I could take a lir. I don't have 'the proper blood'."

Oh joy! dinner is served!

But why did it come with a Caesar salad— Oh. It's chicken Caesar.

Very good.

"You don't have to turn Cheysuli either, in order to shift shape; others have done it to my directions successfully," Asar-Suti said.

The rats retreated, Thady brandishing the skewer leaving last.

He attacks the salad first, if only to get the rabbit food out of the way.

You'd think he's just discovered food the way he's going at it.

"Cheysuli isn't what I want to be," he says over a crouton. "I mean, voluntarily dying if my lir died? No thank you sir."

Swallowing, he resumes speaking.

"But what other methods are there?"

"I could help you shift, and bing up both your shapes in a crystal that you could use to trigger shifting in either direction," he said. "I've even done that one for people that were completely muggle. A sentient machine, even, that needed access to human shape as, while the bar is big enough for the occasional car, the plane was a bit huge, stayed outside, and wasn't really happy."

Sounded like those ice shards Námo had given him a while back. Come to think of it he still had them.

Merlin I wonder what it would be like to be something other than some wolf. Maybe an eagle. I would like to be an eagle.

"How would you do it?" he asks, having set down the drumstick he was polishing clean. He does so reluctantly, even though all that's left is the bone.

"My change is linked to the moon—it's what decides what form I'm going to have on certain days of the month."

"Your wolf shape is part of you now," Asar-Suti said, "even if you don't show it at the moment; so I'd push you into it and then record the change in a crystal. I might ask Strahan to help, if you don't mind."

More to involve Strahan, really, than to make things more complicated. But Strahan was the link between the two of them, he should be there. So that would be all they had in common.

And not Gil, and Gil's world. Even though Gil wholeheartedly approved of helping Rabastan.

He pales again. Asar-Suti would induce a change?

Oh Merlin he doesn't like the sound of that!

Nor does he like the thought of the wolf being a part of him. No. He sees it as something that inhabits his body like a parasite and will from time to time take over mind or body; sometimes both. He's not the wolf and the wolf isn't him.

"Strahan knows how to make these crystals? Are they the lifestones he told me about?"

Still in the dark, he's inclined to allow Strahan to work on him.

"If he knows how then I don't see why not."

"He does," Asar-Suti said. "Not quite as deeply as I do, but then, I am the god here, so. And yes, he would be helpful, still."

Getting Rabastan tp accept the wolf as an integral part of himself was exactly part of the reason for this exercise.

Rabastan's attention turns back to his plate, but he's not eating with the gusto he showed earlier.

Clearly he's weighing the situation in his mind. He wants control over his body, but he doesn't want to be a wolf. He wants to be a were-anything-else, but as he said, his life is marked by things he didn't want but got anyways.

It looks like he's going to have to accept his new order, regardless of what he thinks.

"Have you told him of your plans?" he asks, starting on a nice, half-inch thick steak. "Does he know?"

"Oh, I have," Asar-Suti said, watching him eat. Clearly, that skinny fellow was hungry like the wolf. It would help him to aknowledge the wolf in himself instead of having it pop up unexpected.

"We have discussed it all together; after all, you're Strahan's friend, originally. And you were bitten because you had taken him to safety to a world that had ghosts."