ataraxionlogs | ( open ) show me how to lie

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( open ) show me how to lie

CHARACTERS: severus snape & a variety of people patient* enough to put up with his ass. (*maybe)
LOCATION: various.
WARNINGS: tba.
SUMMARY: open log for april.
NOTES: if you want to do something but can't think of an opener, feel free to send me a pm, i don't mind writing starters!

Maybe, Severus reflects as he stares down at his arm in the privacy of his small quarters, the whole department thing was a bad idea. SCI » 028 » 084. It inspires a kind of tired bitterness in him thinking about the advances muggles have made in science while wizardkind have hidden away and gotten very good at hovering in place. He remembers the American venture of Apollo 11, remembers the terror and wonder of it, nine years old and imagining if that's what these slow and dull creatures can do just think, just think, what's waiting for him in the world his mother comes from.

SCI. SEC. OPR. He imagines arrangements in three letters for other headings. For gravity management or temporal repair, for mysteries and healing. Science is such a lifeless word and here he is with it stamped next to another, older brand, both self-chosen in one way or another. Xenobiology is a joke and he knows it but his interest is real, and his determination is true - if he has to crowbar magic into this place with stubborn viciousness and arguments then so be it. He won't be trapped here otherwise and damn everyone who disbelieves or shrugs it off or rolls their eyes. They are incomplete people. They have to build machines to see just a fraction what he breathes and touches and manipulates. And he will not hide from them.

He works, both in the "safe" laboratory they've been shuffled to in accordance to security's fussing, and also up in the burned-out attic space of the forsaken genetics rooms. He senses the instability, but doesn't fear it. He cooks meals and occasionally tolerates company, he visits the gardens - for royalty or for his own version of hunting; he considers trying to plant things, has little aborted fantasies of potion-brewing, but doesn't go anywhere with it. He contemplates a dozen projects and, hell, maybe he'll do all of them. It's not like he's going anywhere anytime soon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The conversations that Ilde has had, to date, with Severus Snape-- well, they haven't exactly bonded very closely. Yuri called it making friends, when she said she'd sung for him, but she's relatively sure that she'd be obliged to take a picture of whatever expression suggesting that to Severus would produce because it'd be amazing. They aren't friends. Or even particularly friendly, much of their acquaintance.

But he does seem to know a thing or two about-- things, fairly specific things, and she doesn't really want to deal with someone who might experience empathy and want to talk about her feelings or some kind of similarly insipid and useless bullshit. She just wants someone to make the world make sense, and he seems like her best bet; she knows two wizards, but only one of them is enough of a prick to remain indifferent to how she might be impacted by what she's asking about, she's pretty sure. Sirius seems to actually like her. He might ask stupid questions like 'are you all right'.

And that would be terrible.

So, shortly after the jump, he gets a message on his comm device:

"What would make blood intoxicating? For a vampire. If the person whose blood it is was completely sober."

...no context? No context.

Severus has other things to do in life aside from sit at his device and wait for messages, so he's not immediately on hand when Ilde leaves her inquiry. It's a good two hours or so before she gets a response, and it's text:

Completely sober is relative. Routine medication (allergy pills, psychiatric rxs, etc) that has no impact on one person may cause any number of reactions in another via blood. Extreme hormonal differences or blood disease may also be a factor. Alternatively: cursed, charmed/enchanted, inhuman. The list could be infinite given differences in realities.

And it's not until ten minutes after that:

Why?

This is not a very comforting answer, given how many of the suggestions on that list she's pretty sure she can comfortably rule out. The options she's left with don't really thrill her, and it takes her a while to answer. She's already had the actual-feelings portion of this experience near Ward - and that mostly consisted of insisting she was completely fine, anyway - but it just feels awkward and bizarre to try and explain again.

Eventually--

Something weird happened after the jump.

Stop playing with vampires.

It's his immediate, flippant response. Of course something weird happens when people screw around with blood - vampires are not natural creatures. They're created in the metaphysical laboratory of reality's darkness and their existences are bound to the health and sanity of whatever bastard turns them. At home the respectable bloodlines have either died off or retired from the view of all others, leaving skittish individuals who have voting privileges but tend not to be welcome in bars, seeing as they can rarely keep themselves from staring at exposed necks like children over cake, no matter how polite they are. People need to reel their stupid behavior in. What is it, idiot blood chatter week? Ugh.

He thinks about it distantly as he works, ignoring his communicator for another while. (Someday someone else is going to grab it.) It's a complete fluke that he imagines her as a student. Someone, a second year maybe, old enough to trust him but too young to speak frankly, staring at her shoes in his office and verbally tiptoeing around something, wanting help but being unable to ask for lack of experience with turmoil. He stops what he's doing.

Oh. Fuck.

I'm in the last level of the biology labs.

The first text - and the more flippant version of what Grant spent some significant time trying to hammer into her head, don't do that, Ilde - is met with consternation, acute aggravation, and-- that's all, because he's nailed it exactly and she isn't sure she wants to press any harder to get what she wants. She's supposed to talk to people from Elena's world, see if any of them know why this might happen, but she doesn't know them, and she does know Severus.

So when the second arrives, she doesn't respond; she just pulls her cardigan on and trudges down to the biology labs, presenting herself slightly awkwardly when she gets there.

"...hello."

"There's coffee."

And lo: there is. It's set up on top of a Bunsen burner because Severus holds nothing to be holy; he doesn't say it's because synthetic tea tastes like shit or make a crack about being unpatriotic. He doesn't particularly care. There are a few mugs stolen from a kitchen nearby, one of which has already made a charmingly stereotypical faded brown ring on some of his papers. He used the edge of part of one for a rune.

He'll wait until she sits down on one of the lab stools across from him, and then- "What went on?"

Neither hurried nor suspicious. Something is Up, that much is clear, but she's functional enough to communicate with him and creep down here to see him, so it's not an emergency and he has no need to interrogate her.

With a mug of coffee in her hand - she's perfectly content taking it black with no embellishments; it seems like the way to go, just now - and her feet tucked underneath the stool, she says, "I sort of know this girl, Elena-- we met when I first arrived, she was...a bit weird, but nice. Anyway, when I got to the lockers, she wasn't well, and there was blood all over the inside of her locker, and she was like-- desperate. She said she was ill, and I...it's stupid in retrospect, I already got scolded, but I offered, so."

Her shrug is awkward and one-shouldered. "She said I smelled funny, tasted funny - like, lots better than she was used to. And she was so drunk. Like, slapper on ball night drunk. Completely tits up. Which she wasn't expecting, either, so I guess-- not normal. And I feel weird, since then? I was trying to explain it, it's sort of...a bit like double vision in my head. Not actual double vision, I'm seeing normally, it's just...I don't know, hard to describe. Like I'm going in two different directions at once."

"The blood inside her locker could be from anything, first of all."

Just putting that out there, before anyone starts panicking. Without speaking to this Elena woman he doesn't know what state she was in before, what blood deprivation does to her or her kin, what mixing sources might do to her, and so on. Severus isn't exactly a vampire expert and he's not so naive to think that even what he knows of at home will apply seamlessly here. There will be no jumping to conclusions in any direction.

"Did she actually bite you or did you cut yourself and let her suck it out without her fangs penetrating you anywhere?"

There are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to say that with a straight face. Severus Snape has many skills.

Edited 2014-04-12 22:34 (UTC)

He makes an excellent point about the blood she'd already consumed; Ilde brightens, a little, at the thought that this could be completely nothing to do with her. Besides whatever's happening in her head. But that could be not her fault, too! That would be grand.

...so taken with this notion, she doesn't spittake when he asks his perfectly reasonable question.

"She bit me. On the wrist, I thought it'd be less weird." It wasn't. For the record.

"May I see it?"

He doesn't reach for her hand, but gestures as if she should lay her wrist on the table between them. He assumes it's healed by now through whatever means since he didn't notice a bandage on her, but he should take a look anyway in the event there's some kind of reaction, even a subtle one. "Did you ingest anything from her?"

You know, anything stupid that'd give a person unforeseen reactions, like vampire blood.

Ilde makes a face as she lays her wrist out - it has healed, neatly. "I didn't want to. She said it'd heal the wound and make me not feel so woozy, and I really didn't want to go to medical and tell them what an idiot I'd just been. Also she'd already torn open her wrist."

Yes, she ingested vampire blood because she wanted to be polite and avoid doctors. This is not an all time high for her decisionmaking skills, and she appears to be acutely aware of that even as she manages to lay out precisely how stupid she's been without equivocation or giving into the temptation to lie.

Oh for the love of... Severus doesn't say anything about her decision-making process, but he looks at her. It's a look that perfectly demonstrates how foolish he thinks she's been, and how serious he is about her never doing this again. It's impressive how impeccably he's been able to nail I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed considering he's only been teaching a few short years and has no children of his own. But by god has he got it down.

"Has there been any soreness or discomfort?" He does reach out now, pressing against her wrist gently with his fingertips, probing for any off colors or twitches. He's not expecting any, but he's going through the low-level checkmarks in his head before he moves to anything else.

"Have you thrown up or ingested anything since? Besides coffee."

Her skin is cooler to the touch than it should be, for a human; Ilde is more preoccupied with studiously avoiding meeting that look in the eyes than how her wrist feels, because she caught a glimpse and has seen it often enough in her life to not feel the need to stare him down, presently.

"No, it feels fine. I felt a bit woozy before that, but then it was all right. I just feel a bit odd." After a moment-- "Sad. But not exactly? Like it's an echo. And not all the time, kind of..." She makes a vague, unhelpful gesture with her free hand. "Like listening to the radio when you're driving up and down through a valley, or something."

Her coolness could mean anything. Everyone runs at different temperatures, she could be in shock, whatever. (Then again, it could be related to something else and something very specific. But he will maintain: no conclusion-jumping.)

"I can't closely guess what may have caused Elena to react the way she did," Severus tells her, withdrawing his own hand. "There are a number of variables at work on her end. For you, however, I can say that you may be having a reaction to contact from her fangs, from blood transference therein from whatever she was drinking before, or ingesting her blood. This long after the jump, however, and it should be on its way to being out of your system." Unless it's a blood-transmitted disease, alternatively, but in that case symptoms wouldn't be showing up so soon, nor behaving like this when they do.

"Has the intensity of your disorientation changed at all since it began?"

"A little," she says, trying to think her way through it. "I'm not disoriented, per se, any more? But not because it's stopped, just..." She purses her lips, then shrugs, a bit awkward: "More like I'm getting used to it? And it's not so disorienting when it's sort of normal. Like-- background noise."

Alarming when she wasn't expecting it, but slowly becoming something that's just there.

Severus is, disconcertingly, not sure if that's good or bad. While it's a relief in the realm of continued functionality that whatever's going on with Ilde hasn't incapacitated her, the fact that it's rapidly integrating itself means it's going to be harder to pinpoint. And harder to remove, if it comes to that.

He decides not to voice that concern.

"I'd like to do a few tests to see where you are cognitively," he says after a moment. "Nothing invasive. I'll shine a light in your eyes and have you follow it, walk in a line, answer a logic puzzle." Some of which sounds like normal doctor-ing, but are more geared towards displaying metaphysical signs that Severus is familiar with. If she actually needs a blood test, he'll have to call Charles.

Probably best she not hear that just at the moment.

"All right," she says, considering - it sets her a little bit at ease, the approximate familiarity of what he's asking for. She spent a lot of her childhood being patiently examined by physicians, and there are aspects of those visits that at this point feel like rote. Even if there's nothing normal to her about this, at least there's something in it she can orient herself with.

Then, "Thanks."

He shrugs. It's fine. They are acquaintances, and besides-- xenobiology. The very thing he's been so dismissive, even disdainful of, ends up being the first real work for the department he's doing. Despite the fact that he's sure Ilde is here because of him personally and not because of any department headings, it's a funny turn of events. (Or something.)

And so after shuffling a few things around, they begin. He has her follow a light with her eyes, at first randomly and then ticking it back and forth like a metronome. He has her walk from one aisle to another, then again with her eyes closed. Has her trail out a little maze on a sheet of paper he makes by pressing his hand against it. Asks her her name, where she's born, how she'd cross a difficult river if she had to. Lastly he sets a dozen small strips of paper in front of her, blank and seemingly identical, and ask her to choose which ones she likes immediately. Three of them have invisible, faint notes of a charm on them - nothing more than a magical pencil-mark.

It takes some time to get through but Severus is patient and thorough. The notes he takes will be illegible to anyone else, and look more like sideways sketches than words. At least there's nothing Ilde can read and become concerned over.

At first, with the light, nothing is particularly awry; she follows it easily, her eyes respond the way they ought to, it's all a bit anticlimactically standard. She's perfectly capable of walking in a straight line to another aisle--

--with her eyes open. With them closed, she veers subtly but distinctly off course, and regards her own route with some consternation when she gets to the end of it and has a look. She's drifted, and it's only a little, but walking in a straight line she's already walked is not that hard.

Her name is Ilde Decima Featherstonehaugh; because she is terribly precise, she adds that her authorial pseudonym is Ilde Sauvageon. She was born in Calais, France. She thinks she'd swim across the river; she's always been a strong swimmer.

And she reaches immediately and without the slightest hesitation for the pieces of paper marked with magic.

Edited 2014-04-13 00:54 (UTC)

Lights are normal. Even walking is normal; not everyone is able to orient themselves perfectly with their eyes closed. Most people begin to veer in circles. Usually not that quickly, but it's not drastic enough to raise any red flags. Her answers are perfectly fine. 'Swimming' is a dangerous choice and it makes him think about inner ear imbalances with people who went into engineering - and so next to the 'fine' note about her walking, writes 'swimmer's ear?' in his own shorthand. Though he doesn't actually think much of it.

He's thinking this is almost for sure an issue with something on the vampire's end until she picks up the earmarked slips of paper without so much as a blink. Severus keeps his face seamlessly neutral. Not quite distractedly, he refills his coffee cup, then offers her some. Once he sets the pot back down he reshuffles the slips of paper and sets them out before her. "Once more," he says, before taking a sip. Everything here is perfectly normal. Perfectly normal.

Holding the refilled mug in one hand, warming herself, Ilde obligingly glances over the pieces of paper and with her free hand selects, unerringly, the same three she'd chosen before. She doesn't seem to think anything of it, and he's not reacting in a way that suggests she should (visibly), so her inquisitive look is more relaxed than she was when she first sat down.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

No change in inflection, no indication that he's noticed anything out of the ordinary - or anything at all. She's being very patient with methods she's probably not terribly familiar with, so he doesn't bother patronizing her about them. And in this situation, he thinks he'd lie about it anyway. For now. He has to know what he'd be telling the truth about first. Severus picks them back up and sets them aside.

"I know you'd feel better with a definitive answer," he begins, "and while I don't have one yet, I can say that I don't think you have any reason for fear or serious concern. Whatever reaction you're having isn't doing anything to hurt you. Stress is a universal aggravator, and it's best you don't enable that in yourself."

Severus looks through his notes, three-quarters of a sheet on his notebook from home. He's using a pen this time, even though he hates it.

"All right." That seems reasonable, and he says yet-- she's content with the implication that he's going to keep looking for one. "Grant - Ward, I think he's in SEC or he's going to join - said I should find out if there are any older vampires from Elena's world that I could ask, if they know anything that might be helpful..."

She shrugs. "He also said never to do that again about five times."

"Mr Ward gives good advice," and finally there's a little bit of sharpness to his tone. "May never do that again be tattooed on the inside of your eyelids."

Seriously, Ilde.

"If you're comfortable with it and have her contact number, I can speak with Ms Elena on your behalf. It might be easier than playing back and forth if you'd like to continue working with me about it."

"I asked her to call me but she hasn't yet-- her number is 026 » 190. I'll probably talk to her anyway, but it's...I mean, I'd like to do that, and you'll know what you need to ask her better than I will." It seems reasonable to her; it's wise that she does talk to Elena herself, just for the sake of them both being on the same page about who knows what about ... who and what, but she's not under the impression that she's the most useful person in this situation.

The slight contrition in her voice is probably because of that sharpness, since she's sidling around having to actually respond to it. All right, all right.

( open ) show me how to lie

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