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 Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2010 2:44 pm
He wasn't a medic. There were a lot of things he was used to doing, but patching up the wounded wasn't one of them: in fact, he consulted a wadded-up white paper in the kit a couple times before he attended to the wound Beryl had left on her side. But then he did so carefully, binding the dressing several times around her waist before tying it off. When he was done he put his arm around her shoulders.
"If there was a way," he said slowly, "for me to put -- some things back the way they were --" He took a deep breath. "Baby girl, what if you could be a princess again?"
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:10 am
It had been a stunning, heart-stopping feeling when Beryl had plunged a clawed hand into her chest, fingers wrapping around her star seed. Blanche couldn't, at the time, consider that anything in her life could ever feel that way and had resolved to never get close enough to anyone again. Amazingly, Wiseman had achieved the exact same shutdown of all bodily function with nothing more than a simple question. The implications were staggering, what did he mean by it? The stabbing in her upper chest and diaphragm suddenly grew unbearable, and the pink-haired young woman realized that she wasn't breathing, loosing the air in a ragged exhalation. It took two tries to find the words she wanted, thoughts a jumble.
"What do you mean? Do you mean....go home?" The implication to that was dizzying. How would they manage that? It involved time travel, intervening with an enemy that not even Sailor Moon and her crystal could destroy, could Wiseman do that? Did she want him to do that? It seemed so entirely impossible that she couldn't even remotely consider that as a possibility and her head dropped lightly to his shoulder so that it could reel.
"No, I cannot go home. Puu would tell me if I can go home." Puu was missing, Puu was silent. Where was she, the mysterious guardian of time? Was she dead as well in this barren time and place? It seemed likely, but without a way to get to the gate and check, Small Lady would never know. Thinking again, wondering what could possibly make her a princess, Blanche finally lifted her head and tried to smile. There was one option, and that was that she would be the princess of this world, like all of those junior senshi thought she was.
Looking down into her lap, grateful for the arm around her, fingers knotted. "I would...not mind. I can be a princess for you, if you want that." Vivid red eyes looked up into luminescent blue, and she smiled again. "Just you and me now, I can be the princess. Like Dimande was prince?" Hopefully not in the same way, Dimande had been a fool and died a fool's death. Chibiusa did not consider herself such, though many would rush in to tell her that she was indeed being a monumental fool for the charming wizard. But in her own childish way she loved him, and for love, the young princess would do anything asked of her.
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:11 pm
Wiseman finished dressing her wound and knotted the bandage at her opposite hip. It was a clumsy knot, not exactly a Boy Scout knot, but he wasn't exactly a Boy Scout, now was he? ("Boy Scouts" were familiar from the TV now, and they had similar things in Japan.) When he was done he sat up fully and squeezed her hand again. He had another swab in his uninjured hand, which he was using to dab at the bloody scratch on his other hand. The rest he hadn't attended to, though, so the dark fabric of his uniform had gotten darker around the rents -- in places the paler color of his skin was visible through. The room was dark, though.
"He was stupid. He was cruel. He didn't know anything," he said, and if the irony of him saying this was apparent to him he didn't let on. "You can be that kind of princess if you want, baby, though unlike him you are the rightful heir to the Earth Kingdom. But --"
He stood up and, without preamble, gathered her up in his arms, one arm under her knees and one under her back. The darkness covered any grimaces of pain he might've made. "I could send you back to them again," he said. "I can't do it now and I need you to help me. But I can do it. Right now, though," he walked into the bedroom, deposited her on his bed and then walked into his bathroom, "I need you to stay awake until I'm done getting cleaned up, and then we're both going to the hospital, okay? Yell if you start feeling bad."
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:10 pm
Blanche had been thinking that he was half correct. She was the rightful heir to two kingdoms, and was not even remotely the kind of girl to settle. If she was going to be a princess, she would be the princess of both realms. Granted, no one lived on the moon in this time, had not lived on the moon since the end of the Silver Millennium. But that could be changed rapidly, with just a little bit of the power that would exist between the two of them if that was a reality.
But then she was lifted unceremoniously up into Wiseman's arms, and every single thought slid out of her head to remain down on the creaking pullout bed. They did this in movies, even in the silly cartoon ones with their incredibly lame princesses did this sort of thing happen. Chibiusa'd been lifted many times by her father, but always as a small child, and held to one side like parents held their children since time immemorial. Never like this. At that moment she was full of every single one of her almost-fifteen years, all blessedly naive in the ways of boys and girls so that when she was set on top of Ray's bed, stars glimmered in her eyes like whole constellations.
The idea of being sent home, however, actually sobered her and caused a lengthy silence. She felt bad, certainly, but nothing that he could fix, and the young woman needed the time to think. Go home? Without Wiseman? But what would happen when she left? Smaller oven pizzas and microwave dinners, most likely. But how would that work? That future had died with Usagi and Mamoru, she couldn't be born from any other pair, she wouldn't be Chibiusa then. And the princess wasn't willing to lose herself simply to have an altered image of Crystal Tokyo. Time would, eventually, tell what was possible and what was impossible. Until then, she would simply bide her time and assume that this time and place were now her home. False hopes never did anyone any good.
"You okay?" It occurred to the drowsy princess that Wiseman had been in the bathroom for quite some time. She hadn't seen the extent of his injuries, or even if they were anything more than shallow cuts. If he'd been hurt enough to require serious attention, there would not have been time to tend to her, would there? Raising her voice in such a way caused a coughing fit, and as the pain seized her lungs, Blanche was already edging towards the bed to peer towards the bathroom. "Say yes, please. You do not just say those things and go die!" Those were silly movie prince things, and Wiseman was not at all a silly movie prince.
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:05 pm
"All good over here! Don't you worry about that!" Nonetheless, he was in the bathroom for a good long time. Some of the time he had the faucet running. For a short amount of time he had the shower running too. Most of the time she could content herself with the sound of him moving, at least; that meant he hadn't passed out on the floor.
When he opened the door he was Ray again and he was dressed in slacks, a clean slate-grey button-down, his horn-rimmed glasses and no sign of his injuries except for a white bandage wrapped several times around his injured hand. His smile was a little half-hearted; he gave her a weary nod and said, "All right, let's rock and roll, kiddo," and picked her up again with a wince. He carried her out the door to the bedroom. His car keys flew off the shoe stand and into his hand; the front door opened itself and he took her outside. After a brief check for witnesses the door closed and locked itself also.
They made it down to the carpark without incident, though he was silent. He deposited her carefully in the passenger's seat of the Miata, shut it, then went around to the driver's.
"I'm taking you to the emergency room," he said as he started the car and pulled the stick shift into reverse. "That's where very hurt people go in the hospital. When we get there, though," light reflected off his glasses in the rearview mirror, "you don't speak a word of English, am I right?"
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 7:05 pm
Maybe she should break her leg one day. Then he would be forced to carry her around the house. Perhaps though, Ray might become suspicious when her leg was perpetually broken and might just start floating her through the apartment. That was also not awful, but horribly inconvenient. Horribly so. Blanche allowed herself a light and dreamy sigh in the silence of the sporty little car before she was joined by the once again clean-cut English teacher. Really, it looked like nothing more had happened than he might have cut himself while cooking - if Ray cooked.
Thankfully, nobody really knew that.
Drowsing lightly in the car in response to his statement, the young woman simply smiled and murmured something in her native language to the effect of that she didn't actually speak English very well at all. But of course he knew that. "They maybe will use words very big for me. I would not know anyway. I can play dumb, do not worry. I am very sleepy, I will not talk much." Hands reached up and tucked the terrycloth in around her neck and chest closer, careful to not touch the bruise growing over her heart. Almost as an afterthought, Blanche pulled the locket from around her neck and the golden band of her fake marriage from her finger and dropped them into the cupholder of the Miata. Too many questions would result if they tried to inspect her belongings, so it was better if she had none at all.
It was obvious that she wasn't to speak English, to confuse whatever story it was the magician was about to weave around them both. But still, the young woman couldn't help but feel afraid. Her physical maturity did not match her actual age, and latently she worried that this might be apparent. "Do you think they will know I am not what I look?" Fingers reached up to rub over her forehead, where beneath the glamor her sigil resided. It was strange, sometimes, hiding in a civilian skin. It always felt wrong.
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 7:28 pm
At the next stoplight Ray reached over and picked the wedding band out of the cupholder, dropping it into her hand again. "Keep that one. That'll lessen the questions." There were few cars on the road at this time of night in this part of town. "If you're married and not to me, honey, they're a bit more likely to believe I'm a benevolent friend dropping you off," he said, "and not the man that did this to you. Never mind it makes no sense. Doctors are a little conservative, on a subconscious level. The words I'm saying don't mean anything to you, do they? I'm sorry. Just stay awake."
He lived in the suburbs, far enough from Meadowview that he had to drive there but not too far from a subway line. Meadowview had a subway line next to it too, he explained. Unfortunately, it didn't connect with his. They were driving downtown, which was where a hospital had to be: there were more cars on the highway than the surface roads, definitely, but it was still late enough for the traffic to be minimal. Lights passed them by.
It was quiet in the car for a little while. The city lights weren't too bright. It would be easy to go to sleep to.
"1996," he said out of nowhere. "You awake, Blanche?"
She was; he smiled at her, briefly, before he turned his attention back to the road. "This car is a 1996 Miata. I got her used in 2002, when I was graduating college. That was eight years ago, sweetie. She weren't in too good of condition, when I got her -- which is good, because I was in a lot of debt," he clicked his turn signal on, "that means I owed college a lot of money for letting me go there. But this baby," he patted the steering wheel, "she don't look too bad now, do she? I take good care of her. I had to change out a bunch of things when I got her. But -- hey, here we are, huh?"
His voice sounded a little different in the quiet of the car, when he was talking to the steering wheel. But a moment later he reached over and squeezed her hand and said, "Almost there, pumpkin."
He talked about his car a little more before they pulled up in the parking lot of Destiny City Memorial Hospital. It was an odd night. She didn't understand most of what he had to say about it. But the end result was -- she was awake, when he parked and came around to lift her out of the car, and then the lights of DC Memorial swallowed them up.
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