multiversallogs | When you do not like to fight, change the rules.

Entry tags:

When you do not like to fight, change the rules.

Who: Amberdrake and Ilde
What: Ilde's been referred to Amberdrake for therapy, this is a first session.
Where: The old dojo in Howl Barrow
When: Present
Notes: Kestra'chern do kestra'chern things.
Warnings: Talk of suicide, mental illness, etc. It's a therapy session, yo.

Amberdrake rather misses having an assistant. He finishes straightening up one of the twin work-rooms from his last client, who wanted a hot stone and hammer massage and a debate, and takes a moment to re-center himself and relax.

Then he heads for the hallway, and beyond it the walkway, and beyond that, the red gate. He's still wiping faintly lavender-scented massage oil off his hands with a cloth while he waits, humming faintly to himself.

It's hard work, but it's good to be doing his own thing again! He can stop being a glorified spa-worker and get back to being a kestra'chern, and all the things that entails.

Like actually getting to talk to my clients. Even if he has to do it all without an assistant! But I managed fine on my own before Gesten stomped into my life, I can manage again.

Indeed. So here he waits, giving his shoulders an experimental roll as he wipes his hands off. He's in his full kestra'chern garb, complete with the little bells in his hair.

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When Ilde arrives, numerous things are clear - that she's still emotionally young, that she's a little vain, that under the glamour she's wearing she probably isn't human, that she doesn't view pregnancy as a good enough reason to stop wearing high heels - but most obvious is that she desperately doesn't want to be there. So it must mean something, she's reasoning to herself, that she is. That she's made herself come anyway. There isn't anyone to push her into this, just her own two feet, one foot in front of the other, keep going. Make a decision, follow it home.

She wishes she were at home; she wishes she knew more conclusively what she means when she thinks that. Where she means. Not here, anyway, although- it's not like any of the waiting rooms she sat in beside Prisca, kicking her feet while a doctor spoke quietly with her father and her uncle in the next room. It feels different. She hasn't decided what that means, yet, or how she feels about it, but it makes it easier to walk the rest of the way in.

So there's that.

And there's Drake, waiting somewhere between here and there on the walkway. He's not leaving new clients to find their way to the proper rooms on their own!

"You must be Ilde," he says by way of greeting, with a pleasant smile, "I am Amberdrake. I'm glad you decided to come."

The opacity of the illusion between Ilde and the rest of the world fluctuates and changes according to a number of different factors, but as a general rule- the safer she feels, the less well-hidden her reality. The less safe, the more concrete the barrier. Her restlessness here shows in small ways, the colour of her nail polish inconsistent while she moves no more than absolutely necessary, wide-eyed.

After a moment, long enough of a pause to be considered rude but not deliberately so- “Ilde Decima. My- doctor. Said that I should try this out.” And that, too, is one of her come-and-go tics; the jagged edges of her conversation, the way she doesn't always manage to quite line it up with the other person's other half. The way she sometimes just doesn't bother trying, retreating into watchful stillness and staccato communication.

Amberdrake once talked Konzen Douji, a Buddhist God known for his eternity of stillness and staleness and detachment from reality, into trying something drastically new. He doesn't so much as bat an eye at Ilde's behavior, although it's undoubtedly all carefully noted.

"Ah, well, 'this' would be 'me'," he offers another smile, gesturing vaguely at himself with the cloth he'd been wiping his hands off on, "no one else works here, although I live here with one other person. Would you like to come in and have some tea?"

Somewhere in the vicinity of the building behind him, a windchime sounds off in a breeze. The building itself looks like it was taken straight out of late 1800s Japan, although it was actually built here in Baedal. It's nearly that old, even so.

It's certainly not a sterile brick and metal and glass construction.

She ruthlessly smothers the impulse to say no and nods, instead - as much as some of that fixed gaze is some genuinely unsettled part of her, it becomes evident relatively quickly that the rest of it is necessity. She watches his mouth for the shape of the words, giving no indication that the kinds of fleeting distractions ambient sound can provide register with her at all.

(Above the water is a world of white noise, and it takes a hell of a sound to cut through that and get her attention. The slits she has in lieu of ears were designed to best function underwater, and the deafness she experiences above it is a more potent reverse of the muffling effect humans find in her territory.)

Eventually, she says, “What are you?”

In Baedal, this is sometimes considered a rude question, and she only occasionally asks it - partly because she was taught to be polite, and partly because Ilde has always held the belief that the only thing you learn from asking questions is how someone chooses to answer them. That isn't always pointless, though; she wonders how he'll interpret it, here. There are plenty of ways.

"Human, Healer, kestra'chern," he leaves out his other titles, because they have no meaning here. What is a King without his people? Nothing worth noting. Amberdrake doesn't seem to be bothered by the question, but then, it's always been incredibly hard to ruffle his feathers. To the point of frustration for others, sometimes.

He's noticed that she's staring at his mouth, and makes a note to make sure she can see him when he speaks. But for the moment, he extends a hand -- a gamble, certainly, but no worse than the one he'd made with Severus in their last meeting.

"Let's go in, then. Do you have a preference for type of tea? I have quite the selection."

She shakes his hand briefly - the contact doesn't seem to concern her, and although she's likely capable of extending the illusion to sensation as well as sight, it's apparent that she hasn't tried. Her skin is markedly cooler than his, as if she's just now emerged from frigid water, and besides that it's unusually smooth, not quite scaled, more like living mother of pearl. What she notes most of all in his short list is 'human', suppressing whatever response it did or did not garner from her.

(A brief sense of withdrawal is palpable, all the same.)

“I usually drink Chateau Blanc,” she says, taking the time while she's talking and he's not to briefly scan the area around her, moving to let him lead her inside. “I can't have, um, teas with a lot of caffeine in them.”

"That's fruit tea, right? I think I have something similar," Drake muses aloud before turning away to lead the way inside, since he'll have no problem hearing her response, if any.

The inside of the dojo is rather plain, with paneled wooden walls and sliding doors, and smooth wooden flooring. He leads the way to the right, since dead ahead is the courtyard, and opens the door to one of the work-rooms ahead of her. The one that doesn't still have massage implements out; the ones in this room are tucked away in their usual spots when not in use.

She bypasses the sofa and chairs and toes some of the cushions into a pile that she can sit on, so at least her stiffness doesn't extend to not being willing to find her own most comfortable position. Then again, of course, everyone has their own little ways of demonstrating their defiance to the world, conscious or unconscious. Claiming space is, perhaps, one of hers, even if getting up again is going to be- fun.

“It is. A white tea. Grapes and apples and mandarins and things.” Arranging herself, she adds, “It's nice cool, too.” It's very easy to talk about things that feel meaningless.

The couches and chairs are an addition that Drake's original work-tent didn't have. A concession to his more 'modern' (or perhaps less nomadic?) clients. He's more used to the arrangement of cushions on the floor, himself, and that's why they're here!

And the carpet in the room is rather soft, too. It was chosen for this very reason.

Drake fusses with tea on the side table and then brings it all over once it's put together (he already had the water hot, of course). The kestra'chern nudges a stray cushion with a practiced bump of his heel, before folding gracefully down onto it with his hands full of tea things. Infuser, a few cups, and little jars of various oddments that people sometimes put into their tea.

He sets it all down between them, like this is just an every-day thing for him. Which... it is. And has been for nearly thirty years!

"Well, I'll be sure to have some of it on-hand, should you visit again," Amberdrake says pleasantly, once he's where she can easily see him speaking again. "Do you prefer it hot or cold?"

This tea, while not that specific kind, is also fruity and caffeine-free. It smells of oranges and lemongrass.

“Cold.” She prefers most things that way, although in warm weather people don't look at her oddly for wearing lighter clothes like they do in winter. The only times her eyes move away from him are whenever she's talking, and then she looks at everything else - for as still as she is, her eyes are not.

The first thing she looks for are exit routes.

“I don't like black teas very much. But I eat differently than I used to.” Not pregnancy-related, that diet shift, although there is that as well.

And Amberdrake has very carefully not positioned himself between her and the door, which is the only visible way out of the room. If it had windows before, they've been boarded up, and the hanging canvas hides it all.

"I see," he goes about pouring tea for them both, also uncovering the little pots of sugar and honey and such in case she wants any of that. He, apparently, takes his plain. "Why did you ask what I am, earlier?"

Why yes, he can shift topics that fast!

The abrupt lack of segue doesn't give her pause - rather than having learned to be at ease, it seems more like it'd have never occurred to her not to be. It's a habit she has herself, and it's probably as much nature (fey) as it is a product of any damage she's incurred over the years. She says, “Because I wanted to know,” as she puts a little honey into her cup. Then, “I wanted to see which question you would answer.”

Both true, albeit not necessarily the whole of the thing. It's a small concession of effort on her part to have not left her answer at 'I wanted to know'.

"Ah," he smiles at that, "and was it the human part of the answer or the Healer part that bothered you?" Since he doubts it was the kestra'chern part... it seems that no one in Baedal speaks Kaled'a'in, save for the few words he's taught Sanzo over the years. (And 'speaks' is a stretch, with that accent of his!)

Amberdrake is quite familiar with asking things just to see how a person will react. Almost everything he does has multiple purposes in the very same manner, even when he's 'off-duty' -- if there is such a thing as off-duty, for him.

The way she hesitates is in part because she has to make a decision; because she'd skated so quickly over her own reaction, it isn't fully clear to her and she doesn't want to provoke it again just to examine it. He isn't a doctor as she knows them; it hadn't only been doctors involved in what went on the Prometheus facility. But healer is not a word she associates with pain - maybe because she doesn't have enough experience with healing to know it can be very, profoundly painful.

Eventually, she says, “Human.”

"I see," is that a little relief he feels? Why yes, it is. Because he's learned just how weird some people are about magic-users in this place, and how arbitrarily they decide how much is too much. Healer could mean someone who simply knows some herbs and how to set bones, but...

It doesn't on his world. And it doesn't on many others, besides.

"You are concerned that I may be of some threat, or be less helpful, then? That perhaps I am bigoted against non-humans?" Naturally, the question is neutral enough, maybe even understanding. He's been learning more of this place as time goes on, and even on his world, problems spring up between the races.

Even among humans, those who are perceived as different...

Well, it's something he has quite a lot of experience with.

Her shrug is a little awkward- “Probably.” It's nothing so coherent as actually giving thought to any of those worries; it's an instinctive mistrust, a moment of pause that she can choose to push past or let pull her away. In the singular, it isn't impossible to shift beyond - sometimes. Other times that mistrust lingers, and how she feels about that is something that varies, from day to day.

Magic, though, that isn't something she worries about. Not when she's innately made of it; when she uses it constantly both consciously and unconsciously, throughout every part of her life.

"You have no reason to believe me, of course," Amberdrake holds his tea in both his hands, turning the cup this way and that way without looking down at it, letting the warmth seep into his fingers. She may like the cold, but he doesn't! "But I am from a world with five sentient races. Although there is little other proof, there are people at Madrasati and Thames who can at least vouch for my knowledge of several non-human anatomies."

Which isn't something you can just make up on the fly upon hitting a new world!

"While there are tensions between the races of my world, it tends to be the exception and not the rule, where I am from. I have been Healer and therapist to everyone who has need of either. But there is no way to prove any of it, other than through time, should you allow me the chance to."

In her world, there are many different intelligent species - but humans are the only one everyone knows about. She thinks it and chooses not to say it, to make at least this much effort not to spend all of her time here doing her level best to pick apart everything he says. Maybe if she doesn't say it out loud, she won't have to untangle why it's her first instinct.

“I already have doctors. For anatomy.” Her head tilts, slightly, like she's about to ask something - which she doesn't, cutting her gaze away at the last moment. “My father didn't like therapy.”

(She hasn't seen him since she was sixteen, but he looms large in her life, even now. He always will.)

"It's a natural distrust, regardless," Amberdrake says more on that topic, "and perfectly understandable."

That he can empathize with it on more than an intellectual level, that he once internally flinched at the sight of paler skin, he does not say. The War and all of Ma'ar's atrocities committed against the Kaled'a'in and their non-human allies haunts his every living moment, it need not haunt his every conversation as well.

"Did you like your father?" he asks instead, because it isn't a given.

“Yes.” It's almost flat - defensive, abruptly, but not of herself. Her instinct is to defend her father; as if she knows there are reasons why she, particularly, might not. As if those reasons come quickly to mind, more quickly than she might like them to. A moment later she's quiet, again, consciously leveling herself out - at least outwardly. Then, “I lived with him, before.”

Before Prometheus; she remembers, still, the last thing she heard him say. The voicemail she'd listened to a few times after landing in Boston. He'd promised she could come straight home if she didn't like it, that he wouldn't be angry with her if he had to buy another ticket, that he'd just do it and it would be all right. He had wanted, she knows, for her to hate it. He hadn't been willing to forbid her from going, but he'd wanted so badly for her to hate it and change her mind and never go again. Sometimes she wishes she'd called him as soon as she listened to it the first time; sometimes she feels guilty for wishing it.

Before what?

That would be the most obvious question, but Amberdrake doesn't pursue these things in the most obvious ways.

"And did he tell you why he didn't like therapy?" he asks next, using past tense since she herself has been. He nurses his tea when not speaking, enjoying being able to drink something that doesn't taste like it could melt a spoon, for once... or willowbark, which tastes like chewing aspirin.

“We never talked about it.” Ilde knows that he didn't because she watched, she listened. She knows that he never attended an appointment that he wasn't absolutely obligated to show up for; she remembers that when they left the hospital, the tension hadn't left him until they were safely in their own home again, until days later when he felt sure he was staying. She hadn't been supposed to go with Septimus to collect him, but she'd thrown herself down in front of the parked car and sobbed, ugly and violent tears, until he'd set her in the passenger seat beside him.

Uncharacteristic behaviour, for her; she'd learned quite young that she could make Septimus Beauchamp do anything she asked, and she'd so rarely taken advantage of it that she thinks he probably still (if he's alive) hasn't realized she knew. She misses them both, suddenly and fiercely, and- makes herself uncurl her fingers before her nails can press in, reaches for her teacup.

Then, “After he tried to kill himself, we went away for a while.”

(She talks around herself.)

There's a lot going on there that Drake doesn't know about; a lot of context that's completely missing... nothing he isn't used to, really.

"Most will admit to the need for a Healer of the body," Amberdrake addresses this, instead, "because the wound is visible, the pain is registered very intensely in the here and now. But very few, in my experience, will easily acknowledge that the heart has its own wounds."

He is very serious, almost solemn. "Fewer still will acknowledge that they are just as grave as wounds to the body. If he had experiences with therapy, they obviously weren't good ones, but it sounds as though he could have used a good therapist."

Drake has talked many, many people down from suicide in the past. He'd been a therapist in a War; survivor's guilt, sheer grief, trauma... and a dozen other issues are dialed up during active warfare. Thus, he doesn't even blink at the mention of someone trying to kill himself. It's a normal part of life.

Instead, he just remains calm and serene, as usual. The proverbial candle in a storm that simply refuses to go out.

“Maybe.” Yes; Emery's alcohol problem is, itself, a symptom of the illness he's been trying to medicate with it for longer than Ilde has been alive. If he'd ever been willing- but he was never very cooperative in his dealings with psychiatric care. The bare minimum to ensure that he could leave and that no one would take his daughter from him, no more and no less.

She didn't see as much as she thinks she did; she saw much more than he thought she could.

“I lived with him.” She's said that, already. “In Italy. Before that, Paris. With my mother. I'd been living with him for a few months when he tried it. I was with them near the hospital between terms. I stayed at home during the school months with my nanny.” The kind of timeframe she's describing indicates, even without any other detail, the severity of the situation. “We came home and didn't talk about it any more. I think,” very deliberately, “that when I was taken, he might have thought I'd done something to myself, too.”

She knows that there'd have been reasons to dismiss it, but she also suspects his mind might go there first, before he knew those reasons. It wouldn't have been so hard to believe. It isn't, as she sits here, slowly and carefully unfolding her story. She's told it before much quicker than this - sharply, brutally honest, using her own truth as a weapon. It's easy to do when she doesn't have to feel anything about it, when she doesn't tell anyone how she feels about it. She can describe the cell, and the wreckage she emerged into, and picking up the knife for the first time. She can describe it factually without changing her expression- she knows better, at least, than to try to do that here.

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