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i'm the motherfucking ungrateful

Who: SEVTEL
What: Martel fucked himself up with magic. Severus gets to fix it.
Where: ~the apothecary basement.
When: AHAHA A REALLY LONG TIME AGO
Notes: SO BACKDATED, SORRY
Warnings: ~~Comic book~~ WIZARD SCIENCE, some mild eye gore.

He has no clear idea what to expect, or what sort of fool has managed to get himself in this situation, but a job's a job, so he's learned; Severus knows that he could easily employ far more mercencary methods to acrue wealth, but he prefers this. Tedious as it might be, he's remained hidden for longer than he anticipated. (It nags at him, the paranoia - he knows it's closing in.)

It's not his borrowed laboratory, and it's certainly not the dungeons, but it'll do; the apothecary's basement was filthy and wretched before, but he's transformed it. Brick stands smoothed, illuminated by uncanny floating orbs, lined by meticulous, thick-packed shelves. Desk, work table... examination cot.

He's not a fucking healer.

But he waits as one, regardless; this is work for a man with an eye between science and spirit. He can provide two.

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Conscious but not what you might call coherent, some instinctive part of him wants to fight against the ebbing of the pain; pain means he's alive, and that slow dulling has meant death or weakness or even servitude in the past. Perhaps he's not so eager to die again as he thinks.

He breathes through it.

It isn't - like the metaphor they all use - stitching, but the work is equally delicate and precise; mending non-corporeal matter, energy. It's not something that Severus learned to do at Hogwarts, or even during his time with the Death Eaters. His ability to see the core of all things magical is innate, and like so many pioneers of his craft, he is largely self-taught.

Perhaps there's a world out there, pristine and alien, in which it does him any good.

Hours tick by. Customers come and go over their heads. The sun sinks, casting shadows long and tall. Blood, finally, stills over Severus' face, and it dries tacky to his skin. When he heaves an exhale, there's finally something substantial under his hands.

Barely verbal, slipping through the silence like a thief: "Still alive in there?"

Edited 2011-10-31 07:25 (UTC)

"Inasmuch as I ever am," Martel returns, his deep voice hoarse and weary; far be it from him to pass up an opportunity to reflect on his own mortality.

Uncharacteristically: "Good enough."

Finally, Severus moves. He pulls himself slowly to his feet, knees cracking - he really is too young for that, but hours and hours and brick. The first thing he does is set his wand aside (it's hot to the touch and hasn't helped the burns he's obtained, but not even brushes with fae magic is enough to get close to damaging it) and pull out a salve for his hands. It's not that he's prioritizing his own discomfort while there's still work to be done, but if he flinches from fatigue or pain, the results could be very bad. Best to attend to it while there's a minute to breathe.

A crackle of something being lit, and Severus comes back over holding something knotted and producing a dark, nearly purple-colored smoke. He speaks quietly to himself in a dead language, and then suspends the smoldering bundle in mid-air over Martel. Only when that's done does he go about wiping the dried blood from his face, though his left eye is still swimming with red.

"Do you want the non-magical painkillers?" Speak now or forever hold your peace.

"No." It's not pride (...it's not entirely pride), but he's aware that Elenes are scarce in these parts and that the variations between worlds can be deceptively minor until medicines designed for a people come out of a specific development become involved- he's a knight (or he was) and he trusts magic a good deal more than he trusts science.

(If Severus had met an Elene physician, he'd understand why.)

"No, I'll manage."

Having just rifled through his head like maniac moments prior, Severus would not have offered if he thought aspirin would turn Martel into a blueberry; thus he assumes it is indeed entirely pride. But it's not as if Martel's suffering means anything to him, thus: suit yourself.

He holds the compress against his eye for a moment longer, catching his breath, before he hauls a chair over to sit on at the knight's bedside, versus torturing himself kneeling again.

"It's mostly secure," he informs him, and draws figures in the air with his wand over Martel's chest, rhythmic. "You won't be safe until it's cleaned up properly, but you'll not topple yourself into oblivion, anyway."

A lifelong mistrust of physicians outside of the absolute necessity is what it is.

"Comforting," he says, thinly, watching the figures with almost reflexive focus; he commits everything to memory, for all the good it may do him, because he can't really help himself. He's prone to noticing things, this one, else he probably wouldn't have lasted as long as he did.

They're to keep Martel from falling apart physically. Handy.

Once that's done and Severus is certain his vision won't abandon him thanks to the blood vessel in his eye, he gets right back to work. This time it's easier - still painful, still difficult, but it's not the battle that it was to close the rift. This is clearing away the remnants of old magic and scar tissue, lingering fae influence and Martel's own innate power that's just circling, purposeless, having been ill-aimed by the injury. It's slow going, but less laborious for the both of them, and Severus is methodical and precise about his work.

Sweat has beaded on his skin and plasters his shirt to his scarred chest, his breathing shallow but steady now that they're past the hard part- he's not going to pass out, at least, there's that. (His pride is very nearly its own entity, but it's not baseless.) As Severus works he's alert but silent, thus proving that even his ability to be a smartass recognizes 'a time and a place'. Commentary is the last thing this needs, especially his.

Severus works until dawn.

When he's done, he's exhausted - but surely the least tired man in the room. He takes a breath and sits back, pushing his hair back from his face and reaching up to remove the once-burning charm, now extinguished.

He passes his hand over Martel's eyes.

"Rest."

It's only almost a spell.

Exhaustion feels as if it's seeped into his bones and though he feels twice his age, the pain is dulled to a healing ache. Even a former Pandion (are they ever really former-? perhaps not- but he knows what Vanion would say on that) is smart enough not to protest the quite correct notion of rest and it's all he can do just to acknowledge that word before he lets himself slip finally and gratefully out of consciousness, dropping like a stone.

Left to his own devices, it'll be hours before he stirs.

Severus does not sleep.

He checks to make sure that Martel is indeed asleep and not dead, or in a coma, and then he goes and drinks a rejuvenation potion which puts him right back where he needs to be. He still feels raw somewhere in his core, but it's more of a curiosity than anything; he's only done this sort of work in small parts, before. Knowing that he can do this - really do it, sustain it, hold it in his hands and bend it to how he wills it - is exhilarating.

He cleans up, he sorts himself, he rolls his sleeves down and puts is coat back on. When Martel wakes, he'll find a tray with bread and water and a glass of something blue and translucent near him; the potion is set at the forefront, a clear indication of in what order those should go down in. Severus himself sits at his desk, reading.

The potion is first, then, when he wakes and after waking when he actually moves (these two things not being so immediately close together). The bread and water follow in short order; not rushed but not savoured, eaten like rations. (Lordly soldier that he is- Martel's fine tastes are educated but in some ways a put on.) He feels burned clean, wakeful now after a solid sleep, and the first thing he intends to do when he gets home is to take a very long, very hot bath.

He's briefly glad to have already made the arrangements for payment; he might've been willing to cough up his firstborn for this.

(Fine tastes would do him no good, here; anything more complex will make him sick for some time. The human body can get a bit delicate when its core has been mucked with.)

Severus remains quiet at his desk until Martel's gone through everything waiting for him.

"How do you feel?"

"Rather as if I've run a gauntlet through troll country," Martel says, managing to inject a hint of dryness into it despite the roughness of his voice and evident weariness.

"Faeries," he corrects, sounding irritable in a way that is directed at every faery, ever, for being such ridiculous and over-powered finicky twats incapable of meshing harmlessly with other magics.

The expression that crosses Martel's face may or may not stir a memory; Severus has seen it before, elsewhere. "This experience has done naught but reinforce to me that they're a damned bloody nuisance."

In fairness, it's also reinforced to his superiors at Hellsing what a clever and useful person he is to have around and may or may not have ensured that Demirovna may remember in the future she owes him one, but given the headache he's presently suffering, he'll care about that later.

Yes, well that's.

Interesting.

The expression that crosses Severus' face is not familiar, but it is a little bit like he is momentarily looking at Martel like he's a science project - even moreso than before when he was - that is about to combust.

And then it passes. (Now the other girl just needs to show up, doesn't she? Gods and fuck. He hopes Sara doesn't. She deserved to get out.)

"Quite." He closes his book. "Your subordinate hadn't mentioned fae magic in the consultation." Or he might have had, you know, safety goggles. (No.)

Edited 2011-11-04 07:27 (UTC)

"She wasn't aware of the specifics." Martel may have been drunk when he agreed to this; he is not admitting that in a month of Sundays, especially not after that bewildering look. "One of the agents at Hellsing is a vampire with a fae power tied into her psyche- she required a binding to ensure her own personality remains dominant." Her desire to maintain access to it had made it delicate work, but his is not to reason why other people are bizarrely content to absorb foreign consciousness.

He's quietly quite proud of that, given he'd had to devise a spell of his own making that he'd only have one chance to get right; all things considered, metaphorically busting the stitches of an existing injury isn't the worst thing that could've happened to him. (It could've been even less terrible if the existing injury hadn't been what it was, though.)

Severus raises his eyebrows at the description - in particular, at 'vampire with a fae power tied to her psyche' - he looks a bit like Martel had actually described some kind of grotesque murder, or casually remarked about his dog going on the rug. How fantastically perverse and troublesome.

(And sort of interesting.)

"If you try that again," he begins, "Perhaps ask after a spotter."

"Noted." He doesn't foresee the same circumstances coming up, mind, and he's steadfastly not thinking of similar work done with his former fellows. Best not to.

Martel massages his temple, absently, sweat-tangled hair one of the first things he intends to thoroughly wash when he's home. (Vain as a peacock.) "Experimental sorcery on an experimental method is always going to have its drawbacks." Especially when there's no opportunity to test it.

He doesn't say 'Quite' again, but he thinks it, and gives Martel a wry, peevish sort of look. Yes, obviously that's true, that's what they just did, except Severus is fine and not somehow exploded on the astral plane. Well done indeed.

"I'll need to see you again in a week to follow up. It went well; I don't foresee anything, being careful never harmed anything."

And it's on his reputation if Martel spontaneously disintegrates. Unacceptable.

In Martel's defense, he isn't an overpowered faerie monstrosity. He's- well, he's not saying anything on the subject, but if he were: he'd just be saying. (He's been described as many things, occasionally monstrous, but he does at least have 'not a faerie' going for him.)

"I'm dead already," he remarks, faintly amused. "It seems a touch late in the day, if not outright wasteful."

That's mostly a joke.

"Well you shan't get a refund if you fall to pieces, so you ought to take the offer."

He tips his hand. "I will concede I haven't got any more inclined to waste money in my old age."

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