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 Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 8:44 pm
She didn't yelp. She didn't howl, or complain, or hiss her breath out painfully between her teeth. She just stood there, grimacing, looking like she could somehow bite her teeth through each other. Charlie ran the antiseptic wipes down her arm till they were red through and through, flipped them over, and went the rest of the way. It had to be agony, but still she only stood there.
"You're not like us," he told her, one of the few things she didn't seem to know. "You have -- memories. You have whatever your mission is, your group to work with." He wound the gauze around her right arm, over and over. "Is that too tight? The things you know . . . could be really useful. We're almost getting killed all the time."
And that was without attempting to single-handedly execute the Negaverse's leader -- but he didn't add that.
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Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:22 pm
At we're almost getting killed all the time she pursed her lips even more and stared rather stonily at the wall in front of her. Or maybe it was at his tying the bandage. It was hard to tell. She didn't answer on the subject of the bandage, too preoccupied with the rest of what he was saying -- this didn't really seem to change about Miriam Jacobs, Cavalier or not. She was thinking about the rest of what he'd said.
"I don't have the rest of my group," said Miriam, eyes flickering up to meet Charlie's. It still hadn't really fully occurred to her that she was standing around at her workplace in her lacy white brassiere while a boy her age tended to her wounds, or what Linda would think of all of this if she happened to walk in at this moment. "They might be here, but I haven't found them yet. And I won't be fighting for a while." Here's to hoping. "Unless I have to. Information's the best I can do you."
She was being as brief as she was because she was dizzy with pain, she realized. At least the blood loss was staunched. "Anything you can ask from a Cavalier of Earth," she said, level, "you can ask me."
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Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 10:17 pm
He shook his head, wrapping the second ace bandage over the gauze on her left arm, binding it with the little silver butterfly clasps. "Anything I can ask you, I can ask you on Thursday when you're feeling better. This is helpful, but you need to rest." He paused, but was unable to contain it: "I still think you're a fool for not going to the Emergency Room." It was not in Charlie Boyle to be able to contain his criticism.
He bent to pick her clothes up off the ground, and held them out for her. "Get your things on and I'll walk you back to Crystal, or your bus stop. We'll talk later," he said again. "You really don't look good."
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Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 1:34 pm
"I don't need walking," Miriam groused as she flexed both arms experimentally. At the moment she looked like someone who ought to be in traction after a car crash, save for the incongruous butterfly clasps. She was more concerned with her flexibility: she'd been right, she really wouldn't be fighting for a few days. (I think you mean a few weeks, said her displeased inner Nephrite. Unlike the real thing, she silenced him easily.) "That's to say, I'll be walking back to Crystal. If you'd like to walk back with me," she tried to stretch out her left arm and was rewarded with a variety of stings, "that's your own decision."
Her head really did hurt. She was fairly sick to her stomach too, come to think of it. Mind over matter, she told herself and picked up her shirt to slip it on gingerly over her bandaged arms. Her mind was cooperative. Her matter still refused to yield.
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Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 4:55 pm
"Yes, well, that's a stupid thing to say," he informed her. "But blood loss and stubbornness are two of many reasons to say stupid things. And I guess you could say I'm familiar with one of those, myself."
While she was edging her shirt back on, he locked the cash drawer in the safe. He pulled out the manila envelope with her reimbursement in it and set it atop his own coat. Charlie held out Miriam's battered old jacket for her to stick her arms through the sleeves. "Good news -- you get your seventy-five dollars back. It turns out that was Linda's mistake. Of course, you may need it for a new school uniform if Clorox won't wash the blood out. Or for an emergency room copay, if you would listen to sense."
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Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 12:41 pm
Miriam ignored the parts she didn't feel like dealing with, a tried-and-tested philosophy that had served her true all her life. This left Good news -- you get your seventy-five dollars back. "Do I?" It was already stinging her pride enough to have to accept a third party's bandaging: accepting help putting on her coat was near agony. To salvage her remaining dignity, she glared. (It occurred to her, distantly, that Charlie might interpret this differently. However, he just rolled his eyes and shook his head and muttered something as he pulled her coat on and started buttoning her up with all the matter-of-fact implacability of her mother's mother.) So she just stood there, looking like she'd just swallowed a lemon, while Charlie helped her.
"Don't worry," he felt the need to add, quirking his mouth. "The rest of your homeroom won't find out."
Miriam glared. Charlie raised his eyebrows and, before she could protest, topped her off with her knit hat like a dollop of whipped cream.
True to his word, he walked her to Crystal, though she kept her hands stuffed in her pockets and her head as inflexibly set straight forward as a Christmas nutcracker. He didn't make conversation. Neither of them were really given to idle conversation. Awkwardly, she sort of wished that Charlie had been.
When they reached the outskirts of the forbidding snow-covered buildings Miriam abruptly turned an about-face on the sidewalk. She was Captain Kunzite, she reminded herself, of the Cavaliers; this was no time to be pouting like a spoiled schoolgirl. What a ridiculous habit she had learned in her time without her memory. Sailor Thuban had been of assistance to her. Had trusted her word when he didn't need to. The only honorable thing was --
"Thank you, Charlie," she grated out, sounding a bit like Lieutenant Commander Data. "You didn't need to help me. I'm in your debt."
That wasn't really what she'd been going for.
There was a semi-long silence. But Charlie just raised his eyebrows again and said, in a voice that miiight've been awkward too, "Well, you did save my job," and then, a few moments later: "Try not to die."
She nodded, curtly, and then trundled around in the snow so she wouldn't have to awkwardly watch him walk off; she heard him do the same; and then they went their separate ways.
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