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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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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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