fw sir heron shaw is not a casualty of war. (adjustments) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-10-16 00:03:00 |
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At nine forty-five on the dot, Ofelia was seated in the waiting room, bright and early and ready for her usual checkup. The specialist’s clinic was small but well-equipped, run by a gifted and well-educated white mage with a doctorate in synergy and a client list as long as his arm—the very best her hard-won gil could afford. The only downside being, of course, the interminable wait for said physician’s attentive service. But she’d grown used to this ritual over the course of the years: the woman was seated primly in one of the chairs, one leg stretched out in front of her and a copy of The Valendian Standard splayed open in her lap as she pored through the news. Another woman had entered just a few minutes previously, which meant – in her experience – that the good doctor would be occupied for a while. The room was empty, crisp and clean, containing nothing but the front desk, twin rows of chairs facing one another along the side wall, a few overly-verdant green plants (more synergy, perhaps?), and a receptionist tittering over what looked like the Ask Ellie column. Ofelia sank lower into her chair, absorbing herself in the news. Enough so that when the light chirp of the bell announced someone else’s entrance, she almost didn’t look up over the edge of her paper to take in the new arrival. Almost. It’d been some time since Heron entered an establishment with a bell over the door. He looked up at it skeptically before giving the rest of the room his customary once-over, eyes knocking into the gaze of the room’s only other occupant. To say the knight darkened the office’s doorway would be more literal than euphemistic; as with many of the more modern buildings in Emillion, his head and wide shoulders seemed to nearly brush the frame. The bell was cleared with a hint of a duck. Until he started moving again, it was easy to miss the cane. Or perhaps, he considered, it would’ve been stranger to see someone without some sort of physical impediment in these offices. It was odd to be here, as though he was conceding one final, precious thing in his struggle against the injury that’d defined his life since his abrupt retirement. The slip of paper pressed into his hand by his guild-affiliated therapist was still in his pocket, the cold burn of pain still echoing up his half-useless leg. Fine. After checking in and being warned about the wait, Heron maneuvered himself into a chair a few respectful seats over and across from the other patient, noting her extended limb with a mild pang of empathy. Settling in, he propped his polished oak cane against a knee and looked up at his company, who’d gone back to her paper. Her impassive face was striking, and not totally unfamiliar, with high, freckled cheekbones that met the world like the sails of a ship. Heron looked away, patting for a book in his breast pocket. Her eyes tracked his movement the moment his own attention lapsed. What a considerate choice of location: it was the perfect seat in Ofelia’s periphery, just across the aisle so she could hover the crinkled newsprint at eye-level, and yet sneak a few glances at the fellow who’d joined her in weathering this wait. It was hard to miss, once you knew what to look for – even if she hadn’t trained herself to catalogue and chronicle such physical details, there were the years of personal experience to draw on. So Ofelia noted that it was the same leg as her own: the man favoured the left when he moved, settling himself gingerly into that chair with a wincing care that didn’t befit most warriors. The fact that he was here meant it must have been a bad one. The cane might mean it was relatively fresh. (She’d abandoned hers a while back.) Blond hair, craggy face, shoulders broad, looking half again too large for his chair, especially a rickety one. Fighters guild, clearly. Before even speaking a word to this stranger, she’d started instinctively compiling a mental dossier on him. So she might as well. “What are you reading?” Ofelia piped up, the paper lowering and the curiosity rising. “If I may ask, of course. The reading material here is, well. Lacking.” The receptionist shot her a Look, which the woman pointedly ignored. Heron’s fingers closed on the thin volume just as she spoke, and he paused, feeling simultaneously disturbed and (curiously) as though he'd been caught in the midst of something illicit. After hardly a blink, though, he was drawing it from the inside of his coat and turning to face his fellow invalid all in the same gesture. Clearing his throat as if from disuse, Heron held the cover up for her examination. The smallish book looked old, its indigo cloth binding wearing grey at the edges. A scythe in faded gold was embossed just below the title, itself barely legible: The Pestilence. “Adventures in librarian recommendations,” he said, letting his hand fall, the distant half-smile on his face almost conciliatory. “Not generally one for novels.” Nor was he generally one for counterculturalist philosophy, even if the text in question was decades old. She was right about every conclusion save one: the cane had little to do with the relative newness of his injury. He’d been cut down one and one half years hence, but it was likely he’d never be without it. Then again, there'd been a time when they said it'd be a miracle for him to walk again, and another time still when the miracle was keeping the leg at all. He eyed the paper in the stranger’s hands. No waiting room expert he, but neither had he figured any civilian operation would have anything more stimulating to read than months-old society goings-on. “Fine news agencies of our city not serving you well, I gather.” “Not so much. I get a better view on the ground – from the people involved, rather than reporters.” (There was a fine line, however, between Zhou and the inquisitive noses of the press. Pot, meet kettle.) “How’s The Pestilence? I’ve read one novel by that author. The Outsider, I believe? Though it’s been the better part of a decade, so I can’t remember much beyond that it was bleak and I liked it. Anjou writers aren’t my specialty.” Her easy chatter rolled on without a trace of awkwardness, resuscitating all of her mother’s best socialising habits and delving into the conversation like swan-diving into still water. Other patients at this clinic might prefer privacy and anonymity; over the years, Ofelia had seen people skulking in with their heads down and faces averted, as if by avoiding recognition they might forget that this injury had ever happened to them. But they were the only two here today, and she was dreadfully bored. “My apologies if I’m intruding on some valuable private time,” Ofelia finally added, folding the paper in her lap, then knitting her hands above it. “It’s been very quiet here this morning.” “A better view?” Was she a disaster-chaser, or was this a more professional proclivity? And he let the chatter roll on, with hardly a raised brow to indicate being taken aback, despite how long it had been since he'd been addressed with such cavalier affability. Casual conversation with a stranger in a doctor's waiting room was as much of a flirtation with the concept of being a private citizen as any he'd had in years. Just as the bell on the door had been the signpost of a civilian world into which he rarely trespassed, Heron's framework for this sort of life was populated by tiny, foreign details. The smell of rising scones at the local patisserie. His nephew's hot, sleepy breath against his cheek as he carried the boy to his sky-blue room in his sister's house at the end of every visit, just as he’d done since the boy was an infant. People with nail varnish. The colorful array of vendors in their creative mufti who trotted out blearily for the farmer’s markets at the earliest hour on the weekends, as varied as the vegetables they were selling. Counterculturalist literature. He'd found his world and theirs colliding in more and more confusing ways of late. “Not at all,” he said, replacing the book in his breast pocket. “First time here. Would be strange to schedule private time in a waiting room, imagine.” He looked up at the receptionist, apparently re-absorbed in reading of her own, before turning back to Ofelia. “Though you didn’t mention your name.” “Dreadfully rude of me.” It’d been a conscious choice, a purposeful omission to test the waters. But then the woman leaned forward across the aisle, her leg now folded beneath her chair, and held out a cool hand for a shake and greeting. “Ofelia Zhou. And you?” Omissions felt like the theme of the hour, despite the nigh-brazen familiarity of her tone. Somehow, until the instant her hand was presented, the chat had seemed the sort of supermarket-aisle superficiality easily brushed aside, even to someone who hardly spoke to non-guild members. Heron’s white-blue eyes flicked up to meet hers, flooding once more across that glint of familiarity that sparked at the back of his brain. No mind. He extended his callused hand, enveloping hers for an instant. “Wouldn’t say dreadfully. Heron Shaw.” Unless he was signing something, he’d been increasingly leaving the ‘Sir’ for others to assign. “A pleasure.” She flashed a polite smile. “If you’re competing with reporters, don’t suppose I would have seen your byline around.” Neither did he suppose any sort of gossip columnist would have reason to be in these offices, from what he’d heard of the good doctor. His interest was officially piqued, even if his face was as roughly placid as ever. “Mm. Not as such,” she said. The man’s grip was firm, just as steady and strong as the leg was presumably not. A fighter indeed. Ofelia settled back into her seat and tried not to look at the man for too long. She’d started off instinctively memorising Heron Shaw’s face for the simple sake of it, as she always did – but the assessment had started lingering too long and going beyond mere intellectual curiosity. Beyond necessity. She glanced down at the paper in her lap. “I’m an… investigator, I suppose you could call it. Sometimes the EKP can’t fulfil everyone’s needs.” “No, I suppose they can’t.” He wondered what she would call it, if not an investigator. Heron leaned back, his posture ramrod straight even in repose. A hand dropped automatically to his knee, though his gaze didn’t falter. Her professional type was elusive but not unknown amongst the Order, and his brain ticked through a few possibilities in the blink of an eye. Considering his alliances and the jurisdiction he’d called his own in his matured career, it wasn’t inconceivable he’d heard her name passed through certain shadowy circles in the capital, or spoken to one of her associates over the course of some interrogation or another. The idea he’d never seen the woman in his bodily life before felt more foreign to him, somehow. “Everyone’s needs bring you into this office?” His tone was deceptively mild, and the question was sidesteppable, but Heron shocked himself even as the words left his mouth. Perhaps in a waiting room most of all, injuries could be sacrosanct. The woman’s gaze shifted to look at the cloth-covered ridge of her knee. There was nothing about it on the outside to indicate there was anything wrong, save for when she moved. Same for him, really: the man seemed put-together and complete, a craggy moving mountain – but with a chink in the armour, a lingering awkwardness in the way he walked, presumably a man unaccustomed to his body misbehaving on him. “Some of them,” she said. Ofelia’s mouth twisted. Condensation framed the fronds and tendrils of the succulent plants along the western window, the glass just pricking with the chill of fall. He nearly apologized, but hesitated: inch by inch, putting people off balance with exiguous words was becoming a faint, twisted echo of what he’d done in the field, long ago. The silence pooled vaguely between them, and Heron searched himself for guilt. After a moment of hesitation, she mustered up the rest of the conversation. If there was anyone in Ivalice who would understand, it’d be someone else at this clinic. “It’s an old one, though.” She patted her knee. “Over a decade, but it never quite healed right. I didn’t get adequate help for it until much later, which hindered things a bit. And you?” The briefest of heartbeats — it seemed as if she were prying about his own injury, until Ofelia continued: “What do you do?” And in that space between heartbeats, he thought as much too, ready to shoulder it with the forbearance that comes of knowing one has brought the latest indignity upon oneself. And then. “Fighter’s Guild.” Well over a year of practice, and he still didn’t know how to answer the question. “Holy Knight. After a fashion.” Only the sharpest eye would have caught the brief flex in his knuckles, tightening and relaxing around the neck of his cane, the knead of a big cat. “Trainer, actually. Would be more accurate.” He waved a hand. “Enforced retirement as—occupational hazard.” Heron had never been one for oration, but his brevity had become practically miserly in recent months, and the almost aching smile that passed across his face just then suggested an atonement for his inability to explain. The nostalgia he pressed back against these days was for a time not just before the injury, but before such complicated answers were called for or even dreamt of, the easy justice and logic of his world beyond question. For a time when he was never concerned someone might see the smallest sliver of his character and confuse it for the whole. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Mages attached to the Guild have done all they can for me, it’d seem.” Something sharp writhed in her chest at that. An uncomfortable echo, an empathic twinge of pain that skidded across Ofelia’s usually calm and composed expression. Toothless platitudes had never been her thing, after all: life had never been get-well-soon cards and balloons and stuffed animals. No, life in Ivalice chewed them up and spat them out, and they would simply have to cobble themselves together as best they could. This wasn’t the place for polite conversation, so to speak; behind that door waited a mage with diagrams on his walls of flayed muscle and exposed bone, a reconstruction of his patients’ bodies reduced to nothing. So Ofelia watched her unexpected new waiting room partner, and she – the literal orator – wrestled with that even more unexpected silence. Whatever array of conversational skills the woman normally wielded, it seems she’d run aground with them here. Until, finally: “I won’t mollycoddle, since I understand. But for what it’s worth, I do hope that doesn’t turn out true.” She nodded to the door on the other side of the room, the entrance to the metaphorical promised land. “He’s one of the best.” Something she said made him lift his head, the mid morning sun catching the silver in his temples and burgeoning beard; it held a seed of something at its core that felt unnervingly intimate, x-raying him before he’d even seen the flat edge of an exam table. “So I’m told,” he said, shifting in his seat until he could draw out the much-worried slip of paper with a name and an address from his pocket. Sardonic amusement reverberated deep in his chest as he examined it, his personal referral. Something about the urgency with which the doctor had been recommended, and by a specialist White Mage at the monastery, no less, had come to Heron as only a small surprise. The steady buttresses and valiant arches of his faith had begun to give give way to the beast of secular life, and this antiseptic waiting room, this doctor, and this mysterious comrade in injury perhaps most of all—they seemed to suggest the hopes of hard work and the careful investment of emotion ought not to be placed exclusively within the strict boundaries of the Church. Speaking of off-balance. “But,” he said, eyes kicking back to hers as he shook off the intruding blasphemy, “it’s good to have your recommendation.” For all their surroundings were meted and fixed in the office, and for all he moved through them as if the only unsteadiness was in his leg, he might as well have been in the wilderness. “Don’t speak so quickly, mister Shaw.” As if quickly were an accurate descriptor of him at all — this knight seemed to weigh each word as if it were a pound of flesh. Ofelia quirked a smile, finding footing once more in her preferred wry humour: “You don’t know me from Adam. My recommendations might lead you horrendously, horribly astray. Never trust a stranger, after a—” “Zhou?” Both patients shifted, looking across to the desk. The receptionist had stirred to life at last, setting her gossip column aside and perking back to attention, her hand on the buzzer for the white mage. “He’s ready for you now. You can go right on in.” “Hm.” Ofelia unfolded herself from her chair. Now standing, it was clear that the woman was tall and willowy, though still diminutive in comparison to the man opposite. “Well, that’s me. But perhaps I’ll still see you around, first-timer.” Without waiting for confirmation or a more official farewell beyond a warm smile – they’d shaken hands just a few minutes ago, so it seemed unnecessary – then Ofelia swept up her belongings, few as they were, and continued into the office. A few responses sprang to mind, more easily than had any of the others, but just before they called her name, he’d realized none of the retorts mattered: he was here regardless, for better or for worse. His old pragmatism had begun to feel like fatalism, but it helped. At some point during the latter half of their conversation he’d leaned forward, one elbow on the arm of the chair, and he straightened as she stood, unwinding herself sinuously. No formal goodbyes offered themselves up, and though he’d parted his lips to say something more than “cheers,” there’d hardly been time or inclination to do more than nod curtly. Later, there would be plenty of minutes for him to wonder what he might have replied, many of them strung together in this very waiting room, under the watchful eyes of a jejune gatekeeper. Just then, however, with Ofelia’s smile disappearing over her shoulder and her faint limp disappearing her in turn through the doors of the clinic, meaning wasn’t quick to present itself. As with much that had defined his life in the past year, action was divorced from significance, context from connotation, body from spirit, until all he was left with was a tight feeling somewhere in the back of his chest, and a cool apprehension that his new life of observation had only just begun. He pulled his book once more from its inner pocket, and turned to the folded page. |