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xp_logsAfter Marie-Ange gets out of the Medlab, she and Doug talk about their new statuses quo, what they need to do in the wake of recent events, and work their way from Norse mythology to Harry Potter.
"There's a joke to be made here about the half-blind leading the half-lame," Doug murmured as he leaned against Marie-Ange on their way back upstairs. He'd been discharged first, but he'd spent very little time in his room. Between Angie in the medlab, Laurie having gone her own way and more-or-less "Dear John"-ed them all, and Wade buggering off to do whatever it was he was doing, the space seemed even more lonely than usual. Granted, he'd been doing a lot of sleeping, but it had mostly been on the couch and it had been far from restful.
"My pirate joke was funnier." She had not remembered making that post - and still was not sure where she had even gotten her tablet computer from, it had been not there one wakeful period and there the next, appearing mysteriously just like food, antibiotics, IV changes, good drugs and clean clothes. "I think." Marie-Ange was oddly - or perhaps not a bit oddly at all for her - steady about the entire hospital stay.
"Well, yes. I'm pretty funny when I'm high on a boatload of painkillers, too," Doug said with a chuckle. He didn't find Marie-Ange's steadiness odd at all - after over a decade of time together, he'd almost never seen her taken aback by events - surprised, yes, but her strongest reaction tended to be a mild 'huh'. Of course, he wasn't sure that even he would ever know how much of events she had actually seen. It was impossible to tell.
Marie-Ange shook a fall of hair - greasy, unwashed and if Marie-Ange had anything to say about it, twelve hours from being unceremoniously hacked off by whatever stylist would come into the mansion and not ask questions - off her face, and her cheek and forehead twitched, as though she was trying to raise an eyebrow hidden under bandages and medical tape. "Rather only half a boatload. I am being stepped down to nothing that requires DEA approval or prescription scheduling."
Doug's head bounced back and forth and he pursed his lips. "Well, I suppose the docs know best. What about your, uh...traditional migraine cure?" To be honest, Doug would almost welcome the half boatload of painkillers instead of the bone-deep weariness that nothing seemed to be able to even put a dent in.
"Not permitted in sterile hospital rooms when the patient has just had surgery to her sinuses. Also not permitted to smoke anything until I stop sneezing scabs." This, Marie-Ange was clearly perturbed about. "Which I suppose is logical but they did not need to be such prudes about it." Which doctor - or physicians assistant - or medical student - or nurse - had been the prude, she was not saying. She frowned, and then counted on her fingers. "I am not sure I missed it. The last time I went this many days without a headache was..." She wrinkled her nose and frowned. "Years. That time the one ex-history professor with the fez broke all the telepaths."
That had been quite some time, and...Doug's grip on Marie-Ange's arm tightened. "That was when your precognition was broken," he said. "I mean..." Talking his way around the 'frankenberry cat' seemed a bit more taxing, like he was trying to push his thoughts through a strainer. "Is that a possibility?"
"Not even a very small one. The precognition is quite intact." Marie-Ange tapped at her face - and specifically at the bandages covering her eye. "I think, a bit, ah, well, at the risk of being pretentious." The slip into actual Old Asgardian was just as wobbly as ever - she only practiced the language around the few people who had gone there with her, and really only these days for profanity, or the occasional dirty talk. "I know I hung on a windy tree, nine long nights."
Difficulty thinking or not, some patterns just screamed out. Nine days on a tree...Marie-Ange had been in an induced coma because of her injury for nine days after the mission to rescue Topaz. And she had lost an eye. "Hrafnasueltir," he muttered, then belatedly remembered the meaning of that particular curse. "Have you, uh...seen any corvidae?" he asked. He knew Marie-Ange could be very touchy about ravens.
Marie-Ange shook her head, and frowned. "Have not been outside yet. I only get to leave the infirmary because I promised I would not do anything to risk infection, and birds are filthy germ carriers." She scrunched her forehead, and the bandages taped over her eye and cheek bunched up. "And any birds who think they will just show up should rethink it, or else I will ask the nearest firestarter to bake them into a pie."
"When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing..." Doug hummed. Now there was an absolutely grotesque mental image - Odin's ravens coming to do some prophecy whatever, getting roasted, put in a pie, and then bursting back out like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He shuddered.
"Ugh. Why would you even consider a singing pie of birds." Marie-Ange stuck her tongue out and scowled. "Singing zombie death birds, that is awful." She waved a hand in Doug's direction, still clearly disgusted, and reached out to poke him in the side.
and missed
There was the briefest profane muttering about depth perception and then a short spear appeared in Marie-Ange's hand. It was old, carved wood gone smooth with use, and tipped with a dull grey metal. "That does remind me, I have a favour of you." She poked him in the side, gently. Mostly gently. At least gently enough not to draw blood.
"The hell? Where the fuck did that come from?" That was not anything that Marie-Ange could be seeing to create - it wasn't part of her tattoo, there wasn't any spear like that nearby that she could be looking at, so where the hell had it come from? Between the lost eye and the nine days, he was liking the implications less and less.
The spear disappeared as fast as it had appeared, with none of the usual wet mess. It left the briefest chill in the air, and then was gone. "I only have a guess." Marie-Ange said, with a careful glance up and down the hallway. "Fewer headaches in exchange for an eye? That seems ill balanced, yes? Even if I took such a very long time to making the decision, it is not much of a bargain." She rubbed at her face, scratching around the bandages. "I am not even sure this is enough to cover all of the other costs."
Talk of additional costs, and additional payment, didn't exactly fill Doug with joy. "There's only so much a person can give," he observed, a sour note in his voice at the amount he'd given himself. It was worth it, but he was allowed a bit of grumpiness, he thought.
Marie-Ange snorted. "Well, I am not giving the fairies my toes." She wiggled her very bare toes in protest of the very idea. "Also I was bored in hospital and may have ruined your entire Netflix recommendations."
"As long as you weren't watching Paw Patrol or something like that, I think I can manage," Doug said with a smile, then sighed. Dealing with Netflix was a lot easier than dealing with everything else. "So what do we do now?" he asked Marie-Ange. "You, me...Wade's gone...Laurie being Laurie..." The foursome had been a stable thing, until suddenly it wasn't. "And I don't mean in just a relationship sense. What's next?"
"In the very short term, we take a nap. I have an oversized bed, blackout curtains and a rain noise machine and I want to sleep." She'd taken one nap already, but medical things were so exhausting. "And then, my favour. I have an errand for you."
Doug grimaced. All he wanted to do was sleep for a year or two. But if Marie-Ange had an errand, it was probably important. "Okay, but I'm going to need something to help me get around." He was already leaning even more heavily on her over the course of the relatively short trip. "What's the errand?"
The dull poke in Doug's side meant the spear was back, though this time, blunt end into his ribs. "I need you to convince Topaz to go to therapy." And like the spear, this was blunt, unlike Marie-Ange's usual wry way of talking around everything important. "Real therapy, with someone outside of the mansion. I respect the Professor as much as anyone, but neither he nor Haller can provide objective treatment, and Topaz needs both those of us inside it, and someone on the outside to keep her grounded." She pulled the spear away, flipped her wrist, and set it down as a wooden cane, still half covered in bark and thin green vines. "It will not last, but I have another under my bed, in the same style."
Doug knew very well by now that under her bed was where Marie-Ange kept the things she knew were going to be needed at some point in the future. He knew what a few of those items were, but even then he generally had no idea what purpose they might serve. He wasn't upset at the implication that she'd known this would happen to him, though - they'd had that fight before, and a breakup, and miles of drama between then and now. He trusted her. And besides, it had been worth it. "Real therapy, with someone outside the mansion? Gee, I can't imagine who I should take her to." He smirked, one of the first easy-going expressions he'd shown since the mission. Looked like Gus Grim was getting another patient.
"I forsaw many an excellent apple crumble muffin for you this autumn. Or perhaps those lovely chai and pear ones." Marie-Ange said, much more cheerfully than just a moment earlier. "I am quite serious, It is therapy, outside of our little enclave, or... " She looked up at the ceiling, trying to find the right words. "Oh bugger, you have read Cursed Child, yes?"
"Huh." Doug scratched his head, working on keeping up with Marie-Ange's train of thought. "Harry Potter...time travel...Voldemort's daughter?" Then he remembered just who Topaz' father was, and winced. "Shit."
"Rather a large amount of it, yes, but preventable." This was definite - far more than Marie-Ange had been in the past. "Well, perhaps in this case, transmutable? It is hard to tell, I was not given nearly as much information as I asked for while I was in my coma."
Doug sighed. "Let me just make a phone call before we have that nap."
"There's a joke to be made here about the half-blind leading the half-lame," Doug murmured as he leaned against Marie-Ange on their way back upstairs. He'd been discharged first, but he'd spent very little time in his room. Between Angie in the medlab, Laurie having gone her own way and more-or-less "Dear John"-ed them all, and Wade buggering off to do whatever it was he was doing, the space seemed even more lonely than usual. Granted, he'd been doing a lot of sleeping, but it had mostly been on the couch and it had been far from restful.
"My pirate joke was funnier." She had not remembered making that post - and still was not sure where she had even gotten her tablet computer from, it had been not there one wakeful period and there the next, appearing mysteriously just like food, antibiotics, IV changes, good drugs and clean clothes. "I think." Marie-Ange was oddly - or perhaps not a bit oddly at all for her - steady about the entire hospital stay.
"Well, yes. I'm pretty funny when I'm high on a boatload of painkillers, too," Doug said with a chuckle. He didn't find Marie-Ange's steadiness odd at all - after over a decade of time together, he'd almost never seen her taken aback by events - surprised, yes, but her strongest reaction tended to be a mild 'huh'. Of course, he wasn't sure that even he would ever know how much of events she had actually seen. It was impossible to tell.
Marie-Ange shook a fall of hair - greasy, unwashed and if Marie-Ange had anything to say about it, twelve hours from being unceremoniously hacked off by whatever stylist would come into the mansion and not ask questions - off her face, and her cheek and forehead twitched, as though she was trying to raise an eyebrow hidden under bandages and medical tape. "Rather only half a boatload. I am being stepped down to nothing that requires DEA approval or prescription scheduling."
Doug's head bounced back and forth and he pursed his lips. "Well, I suppose the docs know best. What about your, uh...traditional migraine cure?" To be honest, Doug would almost welcome the half boatload of painkillers instead of the bone-deep weariness that nothing seemed to be able to even put a dent in.
"Not permitted in sterile hospital rooms when the patient has just had surgery to her sinuses. Also not permitted to smoke anything until I stop sneezing scabs." This, Marie-Ange was clearly perturbed about. "Which I suppose is logical but they did not need to be such prudes about it." Which doctor - or physicians assistant - or medical student - or nurse - had been the prude, she was not saying. She frowned, and then counted on her fingers. "I am not sure I missed it. The last time I went this many days without a headache was..." She wrinkled her nose and frowned. "Years. That time the one ex-history professor with the fez broke all the telepaths."
That had been quite some time, and...Doug's grip on Marie-Ange's arm tightened. "That was when your precognition was broken," he said. "I mean..." Talking his way around the 'frankenberry cat' seemed a bit more taxing, like he was trying to push his thoughts through a strainer. "Is that a possibility?"
"Not even a very small one. The precognition is quite intact." Marie-Ange tapped at her face - and specifically at the bandages covering her eye. "I think, a bit, ah, well, at the risk of being pretentious." The slip into actual Old Asgardian was just as wobbly as ever - she only practiced the language around the few people who had gone there with her, and really only these days for profanity, or the occasional dirty talk. "I know I hung on a windy tree, nine long nights."
Difficulty thinking or not, some patterns just screamed out. Nine days on a tree...Marie-Ange had been in an induced coma because of her injury for nine days after the mission to rescue Topaz. And she had lost an eye. "Hrafnasueltir," he muttered, then belatedly remembered the meaning of that particular curse. "Have you, uh...seen any corvidae?" he asked. He knew Marie-Ange could be very touchy about ravens.
Marie-Ange shook her head, and frowned. "Have not been outside yet. I only get to leave the infirmary because I promised I would not do anything to risk infection, and birds are filthy germ carriers." She scrunched her forehead, and the bandages taped over her eye and cheek bunched up. "And any birds who think they will just show up should rethink it, or else I will ask the nearest firestarter to bake them into a pie."
"When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing..." Doug hummed. Now there was an absolutely grotesque mental image - Odin's ravens coming to do some prophecy whatever, getting roasted, put in a pie, and then bursting back out like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He shuddered.
"Ugh. Why would you even consider a singing pie of birds." Marie-Ange stuck her tongue out and scowled. "Singing zombie death birds, that is awful." She waved a hand in Doug's direction, still clearly disgusted, and reached out to poke him in the side.
and missed
There was the briefest profane muttering about depth perception and then a short spear appeared in Marie-Ange's hand. It was old, carved wood gone smooth with use, and tipped with a dull grey metal. "That does remind me, I have a favour of you." She poked him in the side, gently. Mostly gently. At least gently enough not to draw blood.
"The hell? Where the fuck did that come from?" That was not anything that Marie-Ange could be seeing to create - it wasn't part of her tattoo, there wasn't any spear like that nearby that she could be looking at, so where the hell had it come from? Between the lost eye and the nine days, he was liking the implications less and less.
The spear disappeared as fast as it had appeared, with none of the usual wet mess. It left the briefest chill in the air, and then was gone. "I only have a guess." Marie-Ange said, with a careful glance up and down the hallway. "Fewer headaches in exchange for an eye? That seems ill balanced, yes? Even if I took such a very long time to making the decision, it is not much of a bargain." She rubbed at her face, scratching around the bandages. "I am not even sure this is enough to cover all of the other costs."
Talk of additional costs, and additional payment, didn't exactly fill Doug with joy. "There's only so much a person can give," he observed, a sour note in his voice at the amount he'd given himself. It was worth it, but he was allowed a bit of grumpiness, he thought.
Marie-Ange snorted. "Well, I am not giving the fairies my toes." She wiggled her very bare toes in protest of the very idea. "Also I was bored in hospital and may have ruined your entire Netflix recommendations."
"As long as you weren't watching Paw Patrol or something like that, I think I can manage," Doug said with a smile, then sighed. Dealing with Netflix was a lot easier than dealing with everything else. "So what do we do now?" he asked Marie-Ange. "You, me...Wade's gone...Laurie being Laurie..." The foursome had been a stable thing, until suddenly it wasn't. "And I don't mean in just a relationship sense. What's next?"
"In the very short term, we take a nap. I have an oversized bed, blackout curtains and a rain noise machine and I want to sleep." She'd taken one nap already, but medical things were so exhausting. "And then, my favour. I have an errand for you."
Doug grimaced. All he wanted to do was sleep for a year or two. But if Marie-Ange had an errand, it was probably important. "Okay, but I'm going to need something to help me get around." He was already leaning even more heavily on her over the course of the relatively short trip. "What's the errand?"
The dull poke in Doug's side meant the spear was back, though this time, blunt end into his ribs. "I need you to convince Topaz to go to therapy." And like the spear, this was blunt, unlike Marie-Ange's usual wry way of talking around everything important. "Real therapy, with someone outside of the mansion. I respect the Professor as much as anyone, but neither he nor Haller can provide objective treatment, and Topaz needs both those of us inside it, and someone on the outside to keep her grounded." She pulled the spear away, flipped her wrist, and set it down as a wooden cane, still half covered in bark and thin green vines. "It will not last, but I have another under my bed, in the same style."
Doug knew very well by now that under her bed was where Marie-Ange kept the things she knew were going to be needed at some point in the future. He knew what a few of those items were, but even then he generally had no idea what purpose they might serve. He wasn't upset at the implication that she'd known this would happen to him, though - they'd had that fight before, and a breakup, and miles of drama between then and now. He trusted her. And besides, it had been worth it. "Real therapy, with someone outside the mansion? Gee, I can't imagine who I should take her to." He smirked, one of the first easy-going expressions he'd shown since the mission. Looked like Gus Grim was getting another patient.
"I forsaw many an excellent apple crumble muffin for you this autumn. Or perhaps those lovely chai and pear ones." Marie-Ange said, much more cheerfully than just a moment earlier. "I am quite serious, It is therapy, outside of our little enclave, or... " She looked up at the ceiling, trying to find the right words. "Oh bugger, you have read Cursed Child, yes?"
"Huh." Doug scratched his head, working on keeping up with Marie-Ange's train of thought. "Harry Potter...time travel...Voldemort's daughter?" Then he remembered just who Topaz' father was, and winced. "Shit."
"Rather a large amount of it, yes, but preventable." This was definite - far more than Marie-Ange had been in the past. "Well, perhaps in this case, transmutable? It is hard to tell, I was not given nearly as much information as I asked for while I was in my coma."
Doug sighed. "Let me just make a phone call before we have that nap."
