Who: Cian & Damia What: A favor owed Where: A clinic in the Tenements When: After this Rating: PG-13-ish Status: Complete
He’d told her five minutes; it had taken ten, but he’d had to make a detour.
He stormed into the half-empty, dimly lit waiting room of the clinic, hand fisted around the collar of a man nearly his own height (rage was always a great strengthener). The guy looked like he’d been through the wringer, but he’d been crawling out of the mouth of the indicated alley right as Cian had been racing by, and had thus been brought along like so much garbage.
Which he could still become, depending on the answer to one very crucial question, which Cian barked in the direction of a familiar blonde sitting in a dilapidated chair against the wall: “This him?”
Damia Ravin looked like she’d seen better days, propped in her chair with one legs drawn up, forearm pressed to that knee. She hadn’t suffered as fatal a wound as the other blonde within, but her hair hadn’t yet been combed through with her fingers, leaving her rumpled but unharmed.
Her eyes raked over the man’s face before moving to Cian’s, the affirmative answer written in her gaze. “I don’t think he’s bleeding enough to be here, do you?” He could use some greater wounds.
“Hm.” With a deceptively careless gesture, Cian slammed the man, head-first, into the doorframe. With a gurgling sound, his eyes fluttered shut, and the gambler released him to sprawl gracelessly on the floor, once more unconscious. “Just seems to need a nap.” A cold, flat look at the clinic receptionist had him turning his gaze back to the papers before him as though they were utterly fascinating. Cian was already typing into his communicator. A few short words was all it took.
Someone would be along to pick up the garbage.
“You look like hell, blondie. What the fuck happened? And where is” my idiot right hand “she?”
Shifting to accommodate a numb leg, the corsair settled her head back against the wall. “Being tended to by a mage to make sure the poison from the blade of a dead man won’t kill her,” she admitted without casting a single glance at the unconscious man on the floor. “I don’t know how it started. You’d need to ask her when she’s awake.”
And it wasn’t her place to mention how they’d had Ash on the asphalt. What would’ve happened if she hadn’t intervened when she had.
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” And not yelling was going to take every ounce of control he possessed. Fucking truce, but damned if he’d be the one to break it first. They were going to be civilized about this.
And if she had no answers to offer, well. Sleepy the thug might be convinced to loosen his tongue a bit.
He walked up to the reception desk, dug around in his inner jacket pocket, and tossed a rather weighty sack of coins on the counter, ignoring the jumpy receptionist’s wince at the thump. “For the ladies’ care,” he said, his tone carefully bland. It would have paid for the care of a dozen -- and he had no doubt it would buy the man behind the counter his vice of choice.
And, together with healthy fear, his silence.
“Get yourself checked out,” he told the corsair. “Borrow a hairbrush or whatever.” Not that paying for her to see a crappy tenements mage was going to tip the scales back to balance. Damn everything. He was an asshole most of the time, but he was a fair asshole. “That favor,” he said. “In Pisces? Negotiation’s done. Call me when you’re ready.”
The words had Damia pausing, light eyes questioning, though only for a moment. They were of a similar nature, as one often was within the Thieves Guild’, operating under the protection of a handful of rules. Don’t talk about the Guild, be careful who you trust, nothing comes free, pay what is due and expect it of others. And she wasn’t one to throw away the opportunity.
She didn’t smile, but the corner of her lips twitched as if she’d planned to.