( open ) show me how to lie

[darkart]

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.

Comments

[woodlander]

Well, many of them were ancient. She was relatively young, at her six hundred years, and she lacked the loftiness that came with Elven nobility. Tauriel was not a Lady, though Severus was not the first to move to call her that here. She only smiled.

"You honour me too much," she said, inclining her head in acknowledgement. "I am only Tauriel one of Mirkwood's guards. Here I answer to Thranduil, the Elvenking. Do you know him, or others of our company? You do not seem unfamiliar with the Elves."

[darkart]

Six hundred years his senior still probably counts as Lady, but he's not about to argue with a woman about her age. Any woman, really, but much less an elf.

"I've only spoken to him in passing," Severus admits of Thranduil. Once about magic, and once when he tripped over stuff in the gardens, because he's a dungeon-dwelling library nerd who's really terrible at dealing with natural terrain. He hasn't sought the king out since, partially because he doesn't think he has anything to say to royalty, and partially because of the giant neon blinking signs hovering all around him announcing KING THRANDUIL IS UNWELL courtesy of his entourage. Severus is content to leave well enough alone.

"Mostly I've been assisting the Princess Nuala."

[woodlander]

Tauriel inclined her head in the tiniest nod, and her lips quirked in something like a smile.

"I am acquainted with the Lady Nuala. With with her brother, Nuada." The first name, she said with fondness; the second, with a hint of wariness. "Both of us reside within the flets here. It is good to know you are her friend. I hope that you will always feel welcome, should you wish to visit her."

So don't be intimidated by other lady Elves, like Galadriel and Luthien, for example. Compared to them, Tauriel wasn't frightening at all.

"May I ask how you have been assisting her?"

[darkart]

His mouth twitches slightly when she says Nuada's name in that tone, but nothing more. Only the barest hint of a wry smile. If you squint. Severus understands Nuada - in a shallow way, the way he speaks to people - but he also looks clinically at how he conducts himself and wonders a little how he hasn't gotten himself murdered yet. (Personally, there are no hard feelings. He lobbed some insults once, but even elven royalty has to get up pretty damn early in the morning to come up with words to hurt Severus Snape's feelings.)

"I began with aiding her sewing," he tells Tauriel. "Transfiguring fabric for her to use. Now she's asked me to ward your flet."

So those sigils, that echo of magic, slowly being woven into her living space - is from this human. Severus has been working on it on and off for some time now, tailoring protection and function. In the end, it won't burn, it won't collapse, it won't rot or wear down, it won't lend itself to eavesdropping or intruders once it's locked from inside. And it will very nearly kill anyone who walks over the threshold with malicious intent.

[woodlander]

Tauriel tilted her head, her interest undisguised. Such a short time ago, this sort of magic would have been very strange to her - the kind of thing that belonged in tales of Mithrandir. Now, it was rather different.

"You are a wizard, like Sirius Black," she said, naming the wizard who seemed of a similar age to Severus. Perhaps they knew each other. "He came here once, and showed me magic that was charming. What do you ward the flet against?"

Her tone stayed gentle, and careful, but her gaze was serious.

"There is great danger here. Did the princess tell you that?"

[darkart]

Severus has lost count of the number of times people aboard the ship have volunteered Black's name with enthusiasm, attached recklessly to the standard of a wizard, an embarrassing benchmark if there ever was one. He silently reminds himself that the idiot has been here for years and there's nothing to be done about it, but something changes in his face anyway. It's very slight, but one might interpret it as Tauriel having said something very insulting by accident, and Severus being too polite to point it out.

"We are from the same world," he says, and thinks he deserves every award for not sounding as displeased about that as he could, "but we are not alike."

There are more important things to converse over. Severus moves on, with an air of finality about the whole unfortunate Sirius topic--

"She spoke to me of it, the creature who menaces your king and by mere existence, everyone here." He speaks of it frankly, and with a certain familiar gravity. "I know something of dark magic, and of war. I don't take the work I'm doing lightly."

[woodlander]

Tauriel was surprised. She had liked Sirius very much, finding him both charming and cheerful. It had been easy, becoming friends with him.

Severus clearly felt otherwise, so she did not press the matter any further. Instead she focused on the work he was doing. Her eyes darkened when he spoke of dark magic, and she inclined her head.

“It is a darkness that has breached our perimeter already,” she admitted, a wary tone in her voice. “If by your own art you can help to prevent that, I will be most grateful – as will all my people, I believe. Though in doing so, you may draw the Enemy’s attention to yourself. I do not want you to be harmed through the act of helping us.”

[darkart]

That sentiment gives him pause. Severus genuinely isn't used to people worrying over his safety - he recognizes that it's normal, that he's a stranger and because she lacks the context of his world that Tauriel has no reason to write him off as a tool to be used and nothing more, but it's still unusual enough that it throws him for a moment. His slip is only barely noticeable.

"Better me than someone who can't defend themselves," he settles on. He isn't ignorant, but he also isn't afraid; Voldemort has killed whatever fear he may have once had within him. Severus knows his life doesn't really matter. Being in danger of losing it doesn't qualify as a reason not to do something.