multiversallogs | (no subject)

In the kitchen of the strange, new house in Sobek Croix - new, which is to say, unfamiliar, as it is quite an old structure - a glass drops to the floor and shatters. It isn't out of fear or shock, however; Severus has more decorum than that. Rather, it's due to the involuntary flex of his fingers against the feeling of his Mark activating. It's unexpected under normal conditions (particularly since his own death), but the way it feels now is nothing short of unpleasant.

Unnatural, if such a thing can be called unnatural.

His right hand claps over his left forearm as though he can both stop the sensation and hide it from view, and for a brief moment his confusion is evident in his expression. It gives way to anger, and then, finally, nothing. Neutrality.

The sound of the shattering glass made Martha turn on her heel to see what had happened to Severus, and she'd opened her mouth to say something. A quick teasing comment, perhaps something about not holding his drink but the sparkle in her eyes died before the words could pass her lips. His expression, watching the shock play out in it, made her worry and it showed on her face.

The hand on his arm left the reason for what had happened easy to identify, and Martha quickly moved over to his side, touching the hand that was clasped over it.

"He doesn't know you're here, even if he is. Maybe he isn't...." She was trying to be hopeful, but she was aware of the fact that if Voldemort was here, and he was from after his death, the amount of danger in their lives had just risen exponentially.

One emphatic finger shot up, warning her. It wasn't a controlling gesture or even one made in anger, for that matter, but rather due to something close to panic. She was echoing his thoughts, making irrational fears seem more real just by giving them voice. "Not - another - word."

He swallowed hard, trying to decide what he should do. What would he have done, years and years ago? He would have waited for Dumbledore, obviously. And had the old man not been present, he would have gone. But everything was different now. Voldemort might well know he was a traitor and spy, and Severus had far more to lose these days. Things he wasn't quite willing to part with after coming so close to losing them once, already.

And there still remained the question of why it had felt so different. He should contact someone - but who? Who could he ask? Xenophilius would know nothing of the Dark Mark, and the Lestranges...well, that was completely out of the question.

To give himself time to think, he drew his wand and, with a practiced wave, tidied the mess on the floor.

"It wasn't the same," he said finally, hoping she understood without requiring an in-depth description of how it should feel. "Something's happened. If it was, indeed, the Dark Lord, then something has gone very wrong."

Edited 2011-11-15 17:02 (UTC)

Her brows shot up towards her hairline, because she'd expected loads of things, but she hadn't expected him to shush her like that. For a moment she didn't know what to do other than be quiet, and Martha watched him. Of all the times for this to happen, of all the places, it needed to be now when things felt so weird and possibly shaky. No death toll, no escape and the two of them were still making an effort to adjust to that sudden, random memory loss.

There was, of course, the worry that the activation of his mark had some unintended side effects. Could it be reversed? Could they be expecting an invasion of this weird and new house? Martha didn't want to think like that, but she too, was already slipping into a heightened state of alert, her body ready to fight or to flee in case something stepped forward out of the shadows towards them.

With his wand in hand, Martha calmed a bit, detaching from the fear that was cold in the pit of her stomach. It was the same place of calm that she called on when she was being a doctor, and the same place of calm that she'd used as a companion: saving people is more important than the fear. Saving him, protecting him, that was more important than the fact that Voldemort might be waiting.

When he spoke, she nodded. "Could it have been someone else? If Bellatrix is here and mad then..." Leaving the statement open, Martha was wondering if it might have been wishful thinking on behalf of the mad woman. She hoped it was.

"No," he replied after a moment of consideration. The glass he'd dropped gathered itself together under his wand, forming into shape once more as the cracks vanished. "It is the same, regardless of who has done the summoning. This -"

Severus didn't have the words to describe it. It had simply felt wrong. There had been an inherent wrongness. It had hurt.

"I don't know what this could mean." He set the glass on the counter, the action slow and deliberate. "But I believe we would do well to be on our guard. There is no one I can contact to address the situation."

Even that, however, gave him pause. Narcissa had defied the Dark Lord - twice. Perhaps - just perhaps - she could be useful. Perhaps, if he kept his identities separate, she needn't ever know about Martha, and he could keep an ear to the ground...

"I have an idea."

"More on our guard, you mean," Martha spoke the words with a sigh, and she leaned back against the counter, forcing some of the rigidity to leave the lines of her muscles. She wasn't disagreeing with him, not by any means, she just was a bit more concerned about their safety than she already had been.

"Could it have been someone who was trying to remove it? I mean like trying to curse it off or whatever." Though if it were the Lestranges, she couldn't imagine either of them making the attempt, not with how mad she'd heard that they were.

Remembering that he'd had an idea, Martha reached over and touched his side, and then she wrapped her hand around his non-dominant hand, for his support just as much as for hers. "What's your idea?"

He ignored her question, not because he was dismissing it, but because he had no answer for her. What would happen if someone attempted to remove it? Quite possibly - death? Pain? Would it affect all of them? Had it affected all of them? Yet another reason to contact someone who would know.

"I could seek out Narcissa Malfoy. If she is from before the end of it all, she won't know what I am. If she's from after, she will owe me a great debt. I could establish which, bargain for her silence regarding my presence here, and keep apprised of the situation through her." A beat, and he added, "If the war is over for her, I need not hide your existence from her. Or my own as Jack."

Martha knew that everything had depended on Narcissa Malfoy being strong enough to lie to Voldemort in order to make him think that Harry was dead. She knew that in the end, for her it hadn't been about him, or his agenda; it had been about finding her son. But that still didn't mean that she trusted the woman as far as she could throw her.

Their options, however, were limited, and if someone knew something, there was every possibility that it actually would be her. He was right on this, and the prospect of not having to be hidden was an appealing one. Still, Martha didn't know if costs made it worth it.

Considering, Martha spoke. "I don't know, about this, Sev. I mean, I know why it would work, but if she's not from the end, if she's from... hell, before you made the unbreakable vow with her, she may ask you to do those things again. And you would, because you'd be worried about my safety." Wanting him to see the parallels that she had drawn for himself, she left it there for the moment.

She had a point; the problem, however, was that it wasn't a very good point. Not to him. He would do anything for her safety, and it was a truth which was unaffected by his decision for or against contacting Narcissa Malfoy. Pulling his hand away from hers, he passed it over his eyes and turned away, trying to think clearly.

He wouldn't rush out and find the other woman. Not yet. There were too many variables to consider. However, he couldn't simply carry on without some knowledge of what was happening amongst his old colleagues. It was affecting him. Who knew how it could affect him in the future? Worse, there was no one he could send in his place. Not Claire, not Martha, not Xenophilius. The Mark wasn't common knowledge, and one outsider poking around with that information would get them killed.

"I can see no other alternative," he replied. "None save waiting. And we can wait, Martha, and allow events to unfold. If it's what you prefer, we will."

It was a very good point to her. Acting like that, having to do everything that he needed to do when it came to protecting Harry in Lily's memory had been him doing things for the right reasons. She didn't want him to do those things in her name. He'd told her not very long ago, that she was his redemption, and that she was his reason for wanting to be a better man.

The last thing she wanted was for him to undo his redemption, and to become a worse man for her.

When he gave her the choice of waiting, Martha watched him for a moment. She knew him very well indeed and she knew that not knowing, and not having the information would drive him mental. Clearly they needed to think of a third way to go about doing this. With her finger on her lip, Martha looked deep in thought for a moment. Was there a way to only be Severus for a moment? To not engage in everything that she might request? To not put himself into danger?

"Are you feeling any lingering effects from whatever that was?" Slipping a bit into doctor mode, because if it was effecting his health then it shortened their options considerably, Martha reached over and touch his cheek, trying to see if he had a fever.

How she wished she'd a scanner.

He was strongly tempted to jerk away irritably, but it was clear she needed to do this to come to a decision. She was going to base her choice on whether there was a lingering aftereffect; if he wasn't suffering or ill, then waiting might be an acceptable option, after all.

But how long could they continue before something else happened, and he was left not knowing and unable to seek information because of his reluctance to interact with those from his past? Escape was always an option, but how long until they managed it? Months? Years? Could he continue to lead the life of Jack Jones, undiscovered, for the rest of his life?

"No," he admitted finally, sighing the word. He wasn't in pain. He didn't feel sick. In the time it took to have their discussion, the sensation had become nothing more than a memory. "Nothing at all."

When it took him so long to say, Martha knew that if there was waiting involved, then he wasn't going to handle it very well at all. Again Martha mentally chastened the Admiral for not getting both of them out of here, for not returning them home. Bernard owed her, damn it. Two inmates should have meant two deals, and two ways for them to get home rather than being here, playing Jack Jones and dealing with all of this uncertainty.

Someone had loads of explaining to do.

Sighing, Martha removed her hand, and then she pressed it to her own face, a face palm that she'd picked up from him. Waiting indefinitely wasn't a good thing. And it would only continue to drive a wedge between them.

"Can you contact her without letting her know about everything else? Without getting involved?" Without being a death eater?

Despite her hatred of when he lied, and all of that, Martha did understand how subterfuge could be important, but she didn't want that to be his life either.

"I can make no promises to you to that end," he said softly. "I believe if any of them would keep at least my presence a secret, it would be her. I would be obliged to lie to her regarding my reasons, of course, for wishing to avoid the others. Mind you, it would hardly be surprising that I did not wish to interact with the Lestranges, but there may be others. Whatever the case, I would not be so foolish as to tell her about you, or my alias, unless I knew for certain that I could trust her."

Narcissa Malfoy owed him, after all, one Unbreakable Vow. He took her hand away from her forehead and clasped it in both of his, trying not to consider what he had lost - Mozenrath, first and foremost now - and wondering if things between them would ever again be as they were on the Barge.

"If - if - I do this, we must agree to it. There can be no doubt that it is the best course of action, that this will be the way to survive here. But you must also be aware of the risks, whatever we choose. If there is more to what happened tonight than mere mischance and I am discovered without some forewarning, there is no coming back." No Death Toll. Game over.

Martha hadn't realized, until this moment, until this circumstance, just how much she'd come to depend upon the death toll. Oh, not in the way that one would expect--she'd fought hard to save someone each time she'd been called too, and she'd never wanted to reset someone. Death had never come to be cheap for her, but by the same token, having watched him die, Martha had come to accept it as a net that would be there to catch them should they fall to accident or misfortune or to someone's slick hands. There wasn't that here, and if the Admiral wasn't honoring deals, then there was no way that she could just make a new deal to bring him back.

It scared her to death, and perhaps for the first time, she'd begun to understand why he'd been so perpetually frightened of losing her like that.

"Forewarned is forearmed," Martha admitted, and then she nodded a bit. "Sev, if I lost you..." She started to speak, and then she moved to her toes and kissed him as if that could some how chase the thought of that away.

"You won't," he replied in as dismissive a tone as he could muster. Better to have it seem like an incredibly remote possibility, unworthy of consideration, than to reassure her adamantly about it. Better, in that he didn't have to think about it, or the fact that this was the closest he had come to lying to her since before they were married. This wasn't the Barge, and she could very well lose him.

There was, too, a note of genuine dismissal about it. 'If I lost you' seemed like something only he would consider about her. She was young and would move on. His mind helpfully supplied the rest: 'If I lost you, I would be extremely unhappy for a socially acceptable amount of time, and then find someone new.'

"Tell me what you wish to do."

She didn't like that tone of dismissal at all, and it made her frown and her brow knit together. Martha needed to bite her lip in order from fighting with him on it, because that wasn't the point, and she was trying to avoid fighting with him. At the moment, she was reminded of the time when Sirius had come aboard. They'd just barely gotten past that before all of this started again.

And if he told her what he was actually thinking, then it would definitely be a huge fight. She would be completely devastated if she'd lost him in anyway. Just being those two weeks without the memories and missing him without knowing it had been bad enough.

Taking a deep breath, Martha didn't know what to say for a moment. "I want what's going to be safest for you in the long run. If they discover you're here, or if Lovegood decides to sell you out for something, then you should know who and what you're dealing with. We should know. It doesn't mean I like it, but I think you're right about Narcissa."

With a searching look, he studied her with a clenched jaw. He didn't want to return to that life, and he certainly didn't want to drag her into it with him. But then again, he didn't want to be here at all. All of that given the consideration it was due, it was entirely beside the point. This wasn't about what he wanted, but about what needed to be done to protect her.

"I'll wait three or four days before contacting her to give the appearance that I've been making inquiries after this incident - attempting to find whoever may have activated it, you understand. You'll have time to change your mind."

Plans within plans. His mind was already on his next move - contacting the few people he knew and asking them to pass along the rumour that he was looking for Narcissa. It wouldn't do to have her think that he had been hiding from her. No, his best option was to suggest he had only just arrived, had been unaware that there were others until the Mark burned.

Edited 2011-11-15 20:15 (UTC)

"There may be other ways to find things out as well. I mean, from what it sounds like Hellsing has all sorts of magical expertise, and perhaps they know what's going on so you don't even need to get involved with it." But she didn't know how likely it was to be. Martha Jones had a bit of clout when it'd come to UNIT and Torchwood, and she'd gotten a bit use to not having to ask people for things like clearance, especially after two years of running her own infirmary. But it was an option for another answer, even if it didn't solve all of the questions.

"I know that it doesn't stop Lovegood from selling you out, but if you can go with something that you're not so indebted to them it may help a bit." For a moment, Martha was reminded of the year that wasn't and how things were misdirection.

Taking a deep breath, Martha just sighed and wrapped her arms around him, holding onto him very tightly for a moment. "I hope she's from after and knows."