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 Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:22 pm
Leevi wasn't good with words. Correction: he was good with writing words, even quite large ones like 'synergistically' and 'theoretically'. What he wasn't so good at was putting his theories into actual words as could be understood by other people. As theories went, this one was a pretty big one. Predicting personalities of killers based on the crime scene! It was so simple when you really thought about it! Given the social nature of people, perhaps it would even be possible to put out a short notice with a description. Someone was bound to recognize it.
It all made perfect sense in Leevi's mind. It even worked on paper, but when he tried to explain it to people they tended to bark things like, 'What?' and 'Oh yeah? What if the killer does ____?' without ever realizing that changing the scene changed the killer and Leevi tended to get horribly flustered and...
Well, that was why he was standing at Jessan's door that evening. She, at least, was easy to talk to. Plus, as a mindhealer, she'd almost certainly understand the theory and, more importantly, what it meant. An entirely new tool in solving crimes...
Awkwardly balancing the tea tray between his hand and his chest, Leevi knocked on Jessan's door. "Jessan? It's Leevi," he said, rather pointlessly. She wouldn't have scheduled any appointments at this time, as she'd already agreed to meet him. Still, it always helped to be polite. "And I brought tea."
Tea also helped, he found. Practically everyone was willing to open the door for tea.
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Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:46 pm
Jessan tried to keep herself together until the end of the day when she could retreat to her room, with it's sheets she brought from home and bookshelves, the pillows. Leevi requested a meeting that night so, no matter what she wanted, Jessan stayed. Leevi did not often ask for her to meet up for things at this point in the day and he was a nice enough young man. She liked him.
She also hurt and wanted her peach dressing gown and matching fur lined slippers. The recently fetched pillows had to satisfy, one for each chair, and she had her head in her hands to keep from dozing. Leevi and his knock came as a welcome jolt to the system, the Mindhealers head jerking up. "Just a minute, Leevi. I'll be right there."
It took a moment for her to get to the door, hesitating before she pulled it open. Having been on shift for ten candlemarks before the meeting and having seen her last patient one candlemark ago, she had unlaced the back of her top and removed the flattener in order to not have passed out when that last patient wandered off. The Mindhealer was still covered from neck to wrist to toe but the top portion of her figure had noticeably changed from what it had been earlier in the day. Still, she smiled as if nothing had changed and opened the door wider, offering out her hands.
"Come on in, Leevi. May I help with anything?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 12:08 pm
Woah there. There was... uhh... rather more Jessan than Leevi was used to seeing. Not that Leevi generally stared at women or anything! Well, not more than most men. It was just that minds were more interesting and Leevi really wasn't used to the whole grow-a-boob thing. Was the room warm? It seemed warmer than it ought to have been. Or maybe it was the tea. Had to be the tea, right?
"I hope so," he said, getting back to the whole conversation thing, because you couldn't just stand outside of a lady's door and stare at her knockers all evening. Besides, the lure of research was far more tempting than anything else. "I brought tea and theories!" He lifted up the tray so the steam rose
How could anyone resist a siren call like that? It had taken Leevi only a little while to learn of Jessan's tea preferences. If he was going to interrupt her evening, it better be for something good, especially if she disagreed with his theories.
Frowning thoughtfully, he tried to come up with a good way to sort of... ease into his theories. Probably best to wait until Jessan had at least one cup of tea.
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:06 pm
Her unwavering smile remained so while Leevi recovered from getting his eyeful, Jessan's eyes on his face and the door in her hand; had it been anyone else in her doorway, the door would have likely been closed in their face already even though she knew being in the prison unbound was not quite the correct choice. She chalked her lack of irritation to being tired and the man in question offering her tea. Jessan stepped further into the room, keeping the door open with the push of her foot.
"It smells delicious." She waved him in and shut the door behind him once the other Mindhealer came into her workroom. Jessan hid a quiet yawn behind her hand and bustled to her little table, pushing papers aside for him to put down the items in his hands. "I'm quite fond of theories, especially those of other mindhealers. Well. Perhaps not F'reud. He always had rather... interesting ideas about life stages and appendages."
She waved her hand to dismiss he thought. Leevi had her attention, and the room, and he'd brought her some tea. As much as anyone else, he was tolerable and, as far as she could see, fairly clever. "I was rather surprised when you asked to see me, though. This is a pleasant change, usually I'm planning on what to put in their file."
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:21 pm
Ugh, F'reud. Leevi just shook his head. “Well, in all fairness, the man was so full of crackdust that, whenever he sneezed, everyone else in the room got a buzz. Mindhealing was still in its seminal stages at the time. Anything with enough big words in it became a viable theory.” Even some of F'reud's more bizarre theories managed to get past the other mindhealers. People were pretty much just trying to learn from each other. It could have worked, Leevi supposed, but the student and the teacher needed to be the right sort of person.
He put down the tray and busied himself with preparing the tea. Ancient, cracked and brown, the teapot seemed like the least likely utensil for such a delicate tea as the jasmine that whiffed through the room. Leevi held his breath a little as he poured the tea, reminding himself not to touch the lid too much. It was temperamental at best, but he'd gotten used to the teapot's funny little ways through the years. There was a definite hook in Jessan's statement about how unusual it was of Leevi to request a meeting and he immediately bit on it.
“You're open to new theories,” he offered. “And this is really very new. I think I can identify a perpetrator of a crime just by looking at the psychological clues he leaves behind at a crime scene.” He didn't waste any time before dropping that vocal bomb.
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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 6:06 pm
"He wasn't sure how to handle his own intense feelings for other men, or so I've heard. Not to be a gossip of course." Gossip? Jessan? Never. She winked at him anyway, a small smile curling at her lips. She met the man once or twice and found herself fairly unimpressed. His theories all involved being naked and hands and mouths and all sorts of nasty things.
The tea pot enchanted her. Jessan leaned over to watch him pour, eyes bright. This late into the day and with company definitely not a patient, she let her hair down a bit, so to speak. "That looks absolutely lovely. Have you had it for a long while? I wish I could do that." She sighed, leaned back to settle again in her chair with fingers curled around one another. "I keep breaking them. It's quite a bother."
Once she had her cup of tea, hands wrapped around the warmth comfortably, Jessan let him talk. She sipped and nodded quietly, watching him from over the rim of her tea. The mindhealer blinked ater a moment, her eyebrows arching. Slowly, she lowered the cup tot he table, studying him.
"How do you mean, Leevi? It sounds promising but... I'm afraid I'm not exactly sure the sort of examples you're thinking of."
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Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:27 pm
“Yeah. Weird thing to find in a dragonrider. I've often thought that his life would've turned out much better if he'd been raised in a Weyr instead of a Hold.” Of course, Leevi thought that about most people. Weyrs were just simply better than Holds. He may or may not have been just a wee bit biased but, like most biases, he didn't see it that way. “Personally? I always thought he and K'nsey would have made an adorable couple. You know, if it hadn't been for the whole crackdust thing.” Which had been quite a thing, really. It usually was.
“Yeah, it's been in the family for a long time.” Sort of? Not the family that Leevi considered to be his but, biologically speaking, he had to acknowledge on occasion. “It's just an old thing that I've never bothered to get replaced. You know how it is when you're just starting out as a mindhealer. Strapped for marks and never any time to go shopping.” Yeah, one of these days he'd get a new one. He wrapped his fingers around his own cup of tea and took a deep sip as he waited for Jessan's reaction to the theories.
Yeah.
Some day.
The cup clinked against the wood as he put it right back down so he had his hands free. Being a rather emotive person, he tended to use hand signals. A lot. It would be a minor miracle if he got out of the meeting without breaking something. “It's like... ok, so imagine that we have a victim. Let's make her pretty typical: female, early twenties, stabbed in the face at one in the morning. Right there, we've got plenty of psychological clues to work off of. The stabbing in the face is clearly an attempt to destroy her identity, so we can deduce that the killer knew the victim. Possibly intimately. One am death time means that the killer doesn't have a steady job or works nights. Killing a woman is a heterosexual act most of the time. See what I mean? I've given a very basic case, but can already create a sort of... of... invisible man who may have committed the crime. It's a sort of outline on the type of person the Guard can look for when they try to solve it. And I think I can do that a lot with a lot of crimes.”
By the end of the explanation, the young mindhealer was clearly into his subject. There ought to have been a law against smiling so much while talking about death, but he was just so pleased with himself for coming up with the theory. He didn't simply talk with his hands; he talked with his whole body, his hands gesticulating through the air and, once, narrowly missing the teacup.
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 3:14 pm
Jessan smiled into her cup. She saw less in Hold morals then others did but, granted, she'd been raised in a rather rough part of it. Sexual boundaries on the whole she thought of as puzzling; if all parties involved were consenting adults, then what did it matter on gender or sex or how many? Her own exploits were limited to Less Then Significant and absolutely no ones business but her own. "The crackdust thing tends to be quite the issue. There's the whole issue of being high and addictive." How pesky, how very pesky. Dust still came in handy if needed but other than that she found it anything but fabulous. "No one has done studies on the personality of his dragon, so perhaps it was something the creature instilled in him. Dragons don't have human morals and it doesn't go just one way."
The Mindhealer paused and set her cup down, lips pursed into a brief flash of scolding. "My apologies. That sounded somewhat mean, didn't it? i meant it as they are just as capable as we are of making their own decisions about things. They aren't simple cookie cutter personalities of their riders." Unless, of course, they followed canon. Luckily for all involved, it did not exist.
Leevi jumped into his tales, his explaination. Jessan didn't tend to talk with her hands, lacking the skills of those truly brimming with feelings about things. She reached out with one hand to gently pull his tea away from impulsive smacking distance of him, just in case a hand flailed out too far or he decided to pound a fist against the table. He had an interesting theory, she would give him that much.
"Not to mention women are usually less likely to commit violent crimes. They typically stick to poisons or things that look accidental," She murmured. "The ones I've spoken with anyway. There are always a few exceptions of course, but on the whole... I like your idea, Leevi. It has potential. It'd need some wiggle room, though, nothing with the human mind is set but, oh dear, but you know that already. I'm sorry. It sounds very interesting. Have you pulled up any case files to look at? I'm sure I can find some."
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 8:21 pm
“Now that I think of it... no one's ever done any research on dragon mindhealing,” Leevi mused thoughtfully. And it was an important area of study, when you really thought about it. He didn't believe that a dragon was half of a rider's mind and soul or anything; a human on their own wasn't any less of a person just because they didn't have a dragon. But there was still no discounting the relevance a dragon had in their rider's life. How did a dragon's mind work anyway? Did the limited memory span change anything?
“No, no. You bring up a good point. A door can be used both ways and all that. Both of my parents were dragonriders and my dad always got stroppy when his Green was ready to Rise. I know it's a bit of a stereotype, pointing that out. But just because it's a stereotype doesn't mean it's not true.” Everything had an effect. Sometimes the things were small, like a fly landing against something sticky and wriggling on the line. Sometimes the effects were a lot bigger and the trembling web attracted the spider.
In this case, Jessan's innocent idea of investigating a dragon's mind sent Leevi's thoughts reeling down another avenue of investigation. Dragon mindhealing, wow. It was so simple! But the thought was shelved, regretfully, on the basis that it wasn't something he could easily investigate. Plus, he had his own plate full of... well... everything else.
“A few files, yeah. And my interviews. This technique really only works with crimes that are unique, for lack of a better word. If someone is just stabbed in a basic mugging, I don't think I could tell anyone anything useful about it. And the choice of victim is important too. I don't have a word for it yet, the study of a victim of a crime, but it's important.” Right! Right, examples.
“The only problem is with these examples is that I already know the answer. I don't think I can prove my theory unless there's a blind study done.”
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 9:22 pm
"I imagine it must be difficult to be a dragon mindhealer if dragons don't usually talk to more than a handful of humans in their lifetime. It takes trust for us to get humans to talk to us, let alone gigantic telepathic creatures such as dragons." She shook her head, eyes falling back towards the tea. The corners of her mouth kicked up into her trademark smile, if somewhat tired around the edges and crinkle of her eyes. "There's a difference between a rider becoming somewhat - stroppy? I think you said? Somewhat stroppy during the shift in their dragons seasonal patterns and dismissing all concerns or temperments of said rider because of the rider. I've had more than a few greenrider clients and... Well. I'm sure you know that being overlooked because 'they must be proddy' is a bit of a hot button for some riders."
That said, Jessan knew she would be the sort to slice a throat if it gave her a go at a Gold. If Brakiheth and Kaelyandra didn't stay up guarding the clutch, the glittering pale blue egg may not have been around there for too much longer.
She wanted power, to be one of the few to hold others in their palm and make them dance.
Until then, she kept to Mindhealing. It came close enough to having someones life in her hand to keep her contented. Not only that but it meant fixing poor shattered souls. As much as she loved herself, Jessan needed to be needed. She had to help, to tape little hearts to her so she would have a little cloud of followers. There were few such as Leevi; she didn't want him broken or needing her help, she simply found him amusing and better company than most others.
She sipped her tea and kept her thoughts to herself. But when case studies cropped up, the Mindhealer stood with a cheerful smile, cup on the table. "Well, if you need a case study you've not yet picked over, I keep a few of the more interesting here at the prison on hand. Call it what you want but it's never bad to know about a few of the more... Ah. Enthusiastic." She had her little table, her paperwork, her folders. It took Jessan only a few minutes to pull one in particular out, flipping it open to pull a few pages from the binding. She tucked it away, name down, and put the papers before him. "There are some other details in the paperwork but they give away the persons gender, name, that sort of thing. Perhaps not truly blind but considering this is on the fly, I am chalking it to fitting."
The pages crinkled when she set them down, well worn and slightly smudged around some of the faded words. It's more than a few turns old, ink grayed and the paper staring to yellow. The spindly words detailed several years of murders, of eleven bodies of 'Dust dealers of various ages and genders found disembowled with their palms cut out to the bone and heads located in the townHolds well. Other bodies were found around the hold; men in their late teens, all slim and rather pretty, well fed and groomed, strangled to death with signs of previous Dust use but otherwise uninjured. All of it had been committed by a single prisoner.
Jessan took the liberty of pouring herself some more tea. She sipped it again.
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 10:45 pm
“Don't I know it,” Leevi agreed wearily. It was nearly impossible to get some of the prisoners to speak to him. Mindhealing was all for their own benefit, but they refused to acknowledge it and tended to just spend the hour in a sullen sulk. Either that or telling Leevi exactly what they would do to him if they had the chance. Leevi never took that chance but tended to end the sessions quickly. “OH, of course not!” he said quickly, backpedaling furiously to erase the idea that he was passing off Greenrider woes as merely being 'proddy'. “It was just, you know. An example. Not the best example, since it's only a temporary personality shift.”
Maybe if a mindhealer had a dragon, they could try mindhealing dragons. Plus get some valuable insight to the draconic mind, of course. “Are you going to the Touching?” he asked curiously, his mind hopping about like a hopper on crackdust. He always found it easy to hold several conversations at once. Plus, it was important to make small talk when you were about to spend a decent amount of time studying the horrible handiwork of some killer.
Leevi accepted the file with a small bit of trepidation. His entire theory rested on his ability to... well... prove his theory. And not just to anyone, but to Jessan in particular. A fellow professional mindhealer, who would know if he got anything wrong. It was a big moment in Leevi's young life. “Oh! That's... very interesting,” he said, looking over the words. He glanced up briefly. “You're sure that this is all the work of the same killer? That's very interesting. You don't usually get a killer who varies his technique like this.”
Completely different modes of death. Vicious stabbing compared to strangling. Not just stabbing, in fact, but disembowelment, as though mere death wasn't enough for the dealers. “There's a lot of resentment against dealers, but I doubt the killer knew any of these ones personally. More likely they represent an individual dealer in his life that's wronged him. Now the stranglings...” those were even more interesting, in an absolutely twisted and morbid sort of way. Normally the lack of a sexual component would've indicated impotence, but he wasn't convinced...
“There's a lot of care lavished on these boys,” he noted. “That's interesting. I would say that they weren't always that way though. Some of them had scars on their bodies, indicating past ill-treatment. But not at the killer's hands. No, I think he chose these boys specifically and tried to care for them as best he could. Their age is clearly important; chances are, he's small and slight himself, unable to control anyone larger. I'd say the killer wanted to fix them, not destroy them. He probably felt like he had no choice when they became healthy and refused his care and his sexual attention.”
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Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 6:27 am
"No, no, I didn't think you'd been actually stating you believed it was a real thing. I'm sorry, I only meant to agree with you. That's never something I'd think of when it comes to you. It's alright." Jessan waved her hand at him and his worry. She tried to smile at him in a way that appeared reassuring but she had tea about two seconds from her mouth and it had been a long day. While somewhat used to Leevi and his bouncing brain of happy, the question of the Touching came as a something of a surprise. The Mindhealer coughed as she sipped, the cup put down with just enough strength to show her moment of disadvantage. A handkerchief came from no where to dab at her lips. "The Touching? I... thought about it but wasn't sure if it would be professional. I'm not out of Impressing age, mind you, and I've always wanted to have a bondmate but..."
She tapered off, thin lips pursed. "Do you think it would be alright? Oh, and yes, I'm very sure they're from the same killer. They didn't even know the two were connected until the person was caught. From what I heard, it had been a very interesting man hunt." And she'd disappeared into the shadows as soon as they grabbed him, Natasa gone and completely replaced by another name and dark henna'd hair and eyebrows, a gentle healers smile and no knowledge of brothels. Present day Jessan laced her fingers together, elbows propped on the table with her chin on her fingers. She smiled and smiled, the expression brightening the more that Leevi talked.
"That's impressive. It's worth noting that most of the boys were prostitutes themselves, reported missing from a month to a year before their bodies were ever found, if reported at all. Lower class ones, the sorts few pay attention to, and all had Dust on their person somewhere. So we have a killer that is clearly male - the violent crime and all of that, probably more indications. Small and slight, not familiar with Dealers but with access to Crackdust of his own. But he didn't rape them if they refused him, sexually, before or after." She paused and added, words slow and thoughtful. "Do you think sex matters as a motivator when killing ones loved ones?"
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