Re: Hell's Kitchen, Marvel, Clem & Matt
[This was a most common question with those who bothered to have an extended conversation with him. It was one thing to have no perspective, but the loss of something they viewed as so pivotal seemed to be a thing of combined horror and fascination. Matthew was very patient with such inquiry, as generally his trade had been in fleecing such people who underestimated him. (Not lowly good people, of course, only those who had money to pay him for information.) He was currently well afloat in this world (more than he ever had been before, in fact) and he was not accustomed to hunger as he once had been.] Ay, that I do, though I knew not what I had then.
[He sniffed and tried not to sneeze. He didn't just smell smoke, he smelled burnt bodies, and fear that was not hers, guns, the nurse who had touched her bandage, the laundry soap in the fabric of her shirt, the men she worked with, all individual. He knew better than to mention these things, even if he had breath and the words for it. His expression of fearful doubt lingered a while longer despite her reassurance, but it faded as time went on, and he didn't start bleeding again or coughing up blood, both things he had seen before. He would smell it if his wounds went septic, which the coming days would tell.
Carefully he put his palms out between them, identifying the location of the stethoscope by running loose knuckles into it, and he took it from her to feel down the length of the tubing. A hearing device, he finally comprehended. He could already hear his own blood, it was just the location of the sounds he was not sure of.]
[This after a great deal of incredibly painful bandaging for which he tried not to resent her. He lost several shades of color under his nasty cuts and white scars after this process, and dropped back onto the expensive pillows.] 'Tis a less wily soul I am in this New York of thine. My heart is too easily touched. [He had burn scars and whipping scars and scars from falling and being bound; he had scars on his scars on his wrists, implying a number of times in captivity where there were nothing so dainty as handcuffs. That was just what was visible on his front and back.] I know you not well, and yet I suspect you are as well of tender heart, in search of fiery battles for which I can imagine no practical use to a lady of quality. [He held out the stethoscope to her.]