a little sincerity is a dangerous thing; a great deal of it is absolutely fatal

[amourpropre]

Who: Lucius Malfoy (Sr) and "Vanessza Bernát"
What: A second appointment.
Where: Syriac Well.
When: Newdie afternoon.

He Apparates silently out front her apartment building, likely startling anyone who happens to be crowding the sidewalk - but that is also one of the small, pettier pleasures of living in Baedal. Good to remember when home sickness, or something like it and perhaps with more dignity, draws its bow across his nerves like the world's tiniest violin. It's coming down with sleet, a little bit London about its damp Christmas weather and urban angles, and he allows a glance around before leaving it behind. He carries specks of the quick-melting ice water on his coat, one that is the approximate same colour as the grey streets he leaves behind, his clothing plainly Muggle in cut and sensibilities for all that long, scraggling tendrils of platinum-grey hair and affected addition of a cane is less so.

But there are all kinds, out here.

The end of that length of elm is used to knock against "Vanessza's" door when he arrives at it, drawing up his posture as if he has to remember to do so, a small twitch at his mouth at the twinge to his arm at the movement. A glance down at shoes, reflexive if belated, to see that they are suitably clean, for all the good it would do him.

Comments

[asklepios]

Benevenuta answers the door in that slightly half-done state of presentation that suggests she's going somewhere after this is sorted; she hasn't changed out of sweatpants and the tank top she wore underneath at work yet, because she's not putting anything nice on before she undoes someone's stitches, but her hair is up and she's done the basics of her face. Time management is key when 'free time' is not something you're allowing yourself much of.

"Come in," she says, stepping to one side with a fleeting, pleasant smile. "I won't make you sit in the bathroom, this time." Or shower, even if she'd really like to take a pair of scissors and a bottle of conditioner to the state of his hair.

[amourpropre]

"You've fortified the rest of the apartment, have you."

His tone of voice is dry as a bone, for all that his brand of sarcasm doesn't translate all that well when he otherwise demonstrates no other sign of humour. He steps inside, negotiating his coat off his shoulders with the care of someone used to doing so while lugging a cane around constantly, and a little less certainty with still healing injury.

[asklepios]

"Something like that." She directs him down the hall to the second bedroom, recently reorganized to function in just this way; the stripped down makeshift doctor's exam room is slightly at odds with the rest of her living space, but needs must and she can make a few concessions in style. "I'll wash my hands-- you can take your shirt off and wait for me in there, I won't be a moment."

[amourpropre]

He carries his coat with him, for the purposes of its contents, laying it carefully folded once onto the end of the bed inside the bare room. Only a sound of agreement at her instructions, a glance after her exeunt before he sets about undoing his shirt, black cotton tugged out of waistband and flopped over his coat.

Lucius spends the rest of his time to himself absently picking his fingertips over the staples of thread needled into his arm, back to the door. Besides the injury freshly tended to, he is relatively scarless, save for the obvious ex-tattoo and other traces of ink.

[asklepios]

True to her word, she's only a minute or so before returning to the spare room with a pair of gloves that she's in the process of snapping on. "Ideally," she says, bringing a high rolling stool over to the side of the bed where he evidently ought to be sitting, "this will be much less painful than putting them in." Despite the sterile forceps and surgical scissors that she's already laid out, yes.

"I'm going to take a look at your injury, make sure we're ready, and then I'll clean it before we get started."

[amourpropre]

A relief to a small lingering anxiety that Lucius didn't even realise he had until it releases at her reassurance, shifting a glance from the silver tools to where he ought to be perched. He sits before he can be told, then, and healing wound at his arm supports his assertion the other day that nothing's gone terribly wrong with it.

As if to make up for the neglect he'd paid his arm that day he contacted her, he has since been attentive to the efforts of healing it. There is, however, a colourful string of bruises patching beneath his ribs on the opposite side. A sense of time progression and medical knowledge says that nothing is broken and bleeding beneath it, at least.

He falls into silent discomfort, which will only lapse when said silence becomes even more so.

[asklepios]

Though she thins her mouth at his bruising, she didn't ask where this came from and she doesn't ask about those either, cleaning away dried blood and other remnants before she sets to the familiar tug and pull of removing the sutures themselves. It's fiddly work but nothing she isn't well used to doing and while it mightn't be an entirely pleasant experience, she avoids making it painful.

The adhesive strips she applies when she's done aren't the sort she's used to working with - a Baedal medical brand using quite different products to achieve more or less the same thing - but close enough that she's comfortable and standard issue at the Glory Shada. "All right," she says, as she's doing it, "you're going to leave these on for five days, then soak them off in warm water. Don't peel them, don't pick at them, keep the area clean and dry-- you need to be careful with it for the next month, while you're still healing. A vitamin E cream isn't a bad idea once the wound is totally closed."

She thinks about recommending a sunblock, considers Lucius, and is forced to bite the inside of her cheek against the mental image of him wandering anywhere in jeans and a tank top.

"If it feels like it's getting infected - redness, swelling, if you get a fever, if the pain is getting worse - or if it reopens, call me. You have my number."

[amourpropre]

Dragging attention away from the strips laid on healing skin, as well as fighting the urge to touch over the edges of them once her own fingers lift, Lucius otherwise doesn't wait to be told to get dressed. He remains seated as she speaks, tugging the shirt closer and shaking out accumulated creases in lazy, discreet movements before it's slowly dragged back on.

He can study them later, anyway. There is a strange and fundamental philosophy behind the way the non-magical go about things, he is beginning to find, which reminds him further--

Coat, then, is tugged over as well, but not to put on just yet. His hand sinks into a pocket, searching.

"One hopes not all social calls involve the requirement of injury, although I presume you are intended somewhere after this," he says, with regard to her own neatness, the makeup and hair.

[asklepios]

"An interesting night out sometimes ends in emergency, but rarely begins there," she says, a little dryly, as she rolls the gloves off her hands and discards them (as well as the sutures) in the medical waste bin. "But I have arrived in time to be invited to the half-dozen year end parties my colleagues are throwing." Some of them involve specific festivals, some don't; it's just that time of year in general and as reserved as she can be, she rarely turns down an invitation.

[amourpropre]

There's a papery crinkle within satin lined pockets before the envelope emerges, a usual sort of vessel for monetary exchange, but more unusually, a thick glass vial, stoppered with cork, and it's difficult to say at first glance if the glass is that shade of deep purple, or if the fluid inside it is this shade.

"Thrilling. Then I shan't take up too much of your evening."

Because even in wizarding Britain, being sarcastic about work dos is normal enough that it's still a habit, for all that he doesn't have the right to any since arrest and subsequent terrorism. "For your interest," he says, offering the latter object, and setting down the envelope. "And a donation. I made a guess at the going rate."

[asklepios]

Her social calendar for the rest of this month is an even mix between the archetypal work do and a number of invitations she received by dint of being new in town, a bit quiet, and obviously needing to be thrust onto the scene by well-meaning new acquaintances. She'll probably enjoy most of it, but there's a certain wry awareness at the half-reproachful look she gives him for that.

(Apparently one doesn't much stand on ceremony with someone after bullying him into one's shower and rose-scented bath products.)

Regardless, more interested in the stoppered vial than the envelope she does take a cursory look at her payment, assuring him, "I'm sure that it's sufficient," as she turns the vial into the light for a better look at whether or not that's the liquid or the glass. "What is this particularly?"

[amourpropre]

There's a fingernail-sliver amount of space free enough inside the vial to tell that it is in fact thickly purple, the contents. Wry-reproach accepted with a raise of an eyebrow, Lucius' attention is back on his sleeves, fussing the cuffs closed as she examines the gifted sample. "A potion, for cleaning wounds. I take it you aren't used to more magical remedies, prior to Baedal."

In the same way he isn't used to those of raw materials and chemicals doing what God intended, prior to Baedal, as opposed to whatever perversion magic makes of them when put into a cauldron and stirred with a wand.

[asklepios]

"Ah," she says, pleased; magic might not be something she can replicate, but at least she'd like to be able to learn about how to recognize and work with it when necessary. "No, I studied medicine in Paris--" Germany, but who's counting, "--and it's strictly scientific. I'm playing catch up at the Glory Shada, I have a colleague whose sister-in-law is lending me texts from the university--"

She waves it off a moment later; he isn't interested in her obsessive study of her field.

[amourpropre]

'Interested' might be the wrong word, if not for the reasons she is handwaving. It is generally difficult for Lucius, these days, to take over-consideration for the actions and intricacies of others.

But the subject matter itself and motivation to divest books of their knowledge is not uninteresting. Still, he doesn't prompt her to continue, but nor does he end the exchange. "You'll have deduced via circumstance that I am not as adept as, it seems, I should be with healing magics," Lucius says, taking up cane again, balancing it against the ground rather than where it lay beside his perch on the bed. "But I can put together brews related to it, when I've the patience."

Which is not always, granted. And also usually when he isn't dizzy from blood loss. "If you feel inclined to use it, don't be alarmed if it starts to smoke on contact. But I thought you would, at least, appreciate it as a fascination."

[asklepios]

"I'll never turn away resources in this city." Baedal is a little more of a crapshoot that way, after all; she can't rely on having what she needs anywhere near as much as she'd like to, and in some ways it's a timely reminder how comfortable she's got in the modern world as time's progressed. Things she relies on now that she'd never had before. "What does the smoking indicate?"

[amourpropre]

"That it's working."

Welcome to magic.

Lucius stands, then, pulling his coat on as he does so with a flap of heavy wool, ever cautious in movement not just of healing injury but now the delicate attachments she pasted over them. "And that it will hurt, but no worse than the elixir you used, nor the injury itself. But it is also infallible."

[asklepios]

Benevenuta's expression is politely disbelieving at the notion of anything being infallible, and she observes very mildly, "Provided it's made and used correctly, I assume."

But it goes in the cabinet with a brief label that she'll expand later when she has more time, and-- "I will show you out?"

[amourpropre]

"I assure you it is and was."

Never mind that he probably had to start again a few times before coming up with a solution he felt comfortable using on himself, considering the ingredients that go into it; it's been a while, admittedly, but in the spirit if getting his hands dirty lately. As for the second thing, Lucius gives a nod, and moves to fall into step.