Crystal and Nathan, Monday morning

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

Crystal swings by the boathouse to talk to Nathan about the ice climbing trip. She finds father and daughter engaged in a battle of will over whether Rachel's going to take her medicine. (Pssst. The baby's winning.)

(OOC note: This is entirely based on RL. I just took my poor little niece's behavior last weekend and added telekinesis.)


She'd meant what she said. She was going to give field trips a try. Call them field trips, call them anything else, they were what they were and no members of the royal family of Attilan were afraid of silly things like field trip curses. Crystal had been interested in the ice climbing trip even before the mass comas resulting from an unfortunate event during the previous official field trip, and now her resolve was strengthened even more.

The only reason that Nathan heard the knock at the door was because Rachel had stopped screaming to catch her breath. "Come in!" he called, rather more loudly than he should have, and reached down to grab the fleeing toddler, who had slipped out of his arms with an entirely too adept twist of telekinesis. "Come here, you little..."

"AAAAAAAH! AAAAAAH! AAAAAAAH!" She paused for breath, struggling wildly in his arms, and then repeated the screams telepathically.

It sounded like someone was being murdered in there! Crystal entered the boat house on full alert, fully prepared for the worst. However, instead of finding someone being murdered, possessed, kidnapped, or blown up, Crystal quickly discovered the truth of the matter: Nathan and Rachel were having a father-daughter bonding moment. "I see that you are busy," Crystal said. "I can come back at a later time."

"No, it's all-"

"AAAAAAAH!"

"-right," Nathan persisted grimly, carrying his daughter towards the kitchen as she continued to scream, her face as red as her hair. The antibiotics were there. He'd prepared the little syringe, and Ray was going to enjoy her strawberry goo, because he'd be damned if he let himself be beaten by his not-yet-two-year-old daughter. "I'm just giving Rachel her medication. For her ear infect-"

The syringe skittered across the counter, and Nathan barely managed to catch it telekinetically before it landed on the floor. Rachel howled, thrashing - and the larger bottle of strawberry goo went flying next. Right at Crystal.

Her first instinct was to defend herself by sending the bottle flying in the opposite direction. However, she was sure that this would have a messy and unappreciated result. The bottle of strawberry goo came to a stop barely an inch away from Crystal's face. She eyed it for a moment, then took hold of it. "No thank you, Rachel," she politely told the young child. "I do not have an ear infection and therefore do not require this medication."

Rachel, still thrashing, focused on Crystal for a moment, letting out the most heartrending sobs imaginable. Had she been able to talk, it would have been something along the line of My father is an evil bastard and someone needs to save me from him!

Crystal glanced at Nathan. "I take it that she does not wish to take her medication. Has she tried it and does not like it or she simply does not even want to give it a try?"

"She's tried it," Nathan said, drawing the syringe over as he sat down on the edge of the couch, Rachel tucked very firmly beneath his arm and still shrieking. "She really doesn't like it. At all. Would you might setting the bottle back where it was for me? I think I may need to be devoting the bulk of my attention to holding her down..."

She will just throw it again. Crystal kept her thoughts to herself as she set the bottle back in its proper place, keeping an eye on it while remaining on guard for any other objects that could be turned into projected missiles. "What is the flavor, strawberries?" Crystal asked, speaking more to Rachel than she was to Nathan. "Maybe you would like to give it another try? It will make you feel better."

Rachel started sobbing again, reaching out her hands imploringly to Crystal. Save me already! Nathan just muttered something mildly profane in Askani and tried to get her into a position where she wasn't going to choke on the damned stuff.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Crystal?" he said, managing - just - a conversational tone as he tried to force strawberry antibiotic goo down Rachel's throat. "I generally only see you down here when your sister's in the office."

There was a reason why Crystal didn't make many trips to the boathouse, and the reason was right there in front of her, sobbing and refusing to take her medicine. "I wanted to let you know that I am very glad that you decided to hold the ice climbing trip in spite of the recent events," Crystal explained.

"I hesitated," Nathan said, and actually managed to get some of the medicine into Rachel. Who promptly spat it back out, crying, and Nathan's jaw dropped slightly as the syringe bent itself backwards, the plastic snapping when it went too far. "Oh. Oh, that was beautiful focus, munchkin, but argh."

"Still, the trip is going on as planned," Crystal replied. "I can understand why you had to think about it, though." She eyed Rachel and her strawberry-flavored foe. "Perhaps there is a different flavor of medication that is available as an alternative?"

"I don't know that it's the flavor so much as the fact that I'm force-feeding her," Nathan said with a sigh and eyed Rachel intently. Her struggles grew a little less frantic, the screams dying to whimpers. He didn't like to actually 'adjust' her like that, but she had to take the damned medication.

"And yes," he said, levitating over a spare syringe - he was going to have to beg a couple more from Amelia - and the bottle, "it is definitely going ahead as planned. We had to do it soon, or risk not getting the chance."

"You would not have to force-feed it to her if she liked the taste of the medication," Crystal pointed out, looking from Nathan to the quieting child and then back to Nathan. "Perhaps it does have a truly horrible taste. Have you tried it?"

"Unintentionally, but yes. It's fake-strawberry, obviously, but there really aren't that many options when it comes to children's antibiotics." There. She'd gotten basically the full dose, although she was coughing, clearly not happy, and Nathan floated the syringe and bottle to the coffee table before righting her in his arms, rubbing her back. Rachel grasped his shirt and hid her face against his shoulder, still whimpering. "Do you have proper cold-weather gear?" he asked Crystal. "It's liable to be extremely cold in the Adirondacks."

Crystal raised an eyebrow. Unintentionally... wasn't that interesting? The way Rachel was acting, you would think she had just been viciously abused, not that her caring father had just wanted to help his daughter feel better. "I am a living cooling and heating system," Crystal said with a smile. "I do not believe that I need to wear such an outfit, but if it is a requirement, I will obtain the proper cold-weather gear and wear it."

"It depends entirely on you," Nathan said as Rachel continued to calm down, still sniffling. "If you want to be concentrating on moderating the temperature around you while you're climbing a frozen waterfall, you can do that. It might be easier to call up the Patagonia website and buy yourself a coat."

Easier? Surely it would have been easier for him to get Rachel to take her medicine had she not been able to use telekinesis to her advantage, but that wasn't the situation, was it? "I really do not have to concentrate on it very much," Crystal said. "If it is cold, it just happens, but I will wear a jacket anyway." Long sleeves. Ugh.

"You'll be surprised. Patagonia, like I said - some of their stuff is very attractive," Nathan said with a twitch of his lips. "They sort of have a philosophy that just because you're doing extreme sports doesn't mean you don't want to look good."

"I will look at the website," Crystal said. She wanted to say it sullenly but didn't. How attractive the clothing was didn't matter. She'd worn long sleeves and jackets before, she just preferred not to.

"You know, you remind me a little of Catseye," Nathan said, and knew he was being ever so slightly evil. "Of course, she had a distaste for clothes in general, not just long sleeves..." Rachel gave a hicoughing giggle, picking up on his mood.

"I wear clothes," Crystal protested, "but why wear more than I need to?" That baby was laughing at her, wasn't she?

"Oh, of course. It makes perfect sense," Nathan assured her. Rachel kept giggling, between her sniffles.

Yes, they were both having fun at her expense. "See how much better you are feeling now?" Crystal asked Rachel. "The next time you need to take your medicine, you will do so without a fuss, yes?"

Rachel, rather alarmingly, gave a nod. Nathan laughed softly and kissed the top of her head. "If you'll give me a few minutes to put her down, I can show you what I was talking about, online."

Crystal nodded and sighed inwardly, not looking forward to being trapped under multiple layers of clothing. She could, of course, find the website herself, but if Nathan really wanted to show her the site, fine. "Have a good rest, Rachel," Crystal said.