Claudia. (veterinary) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-12-02 11:18:00 |
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“How are you enjoying the beach?” Claudia asked Nathan, as she took a seat next to him to eat her lunch on the boat. She didn’t see how anyone could not enjoy this trip, for all the complaints some people had about IVI they definitely knew how to plan a good trip. Still, she wanted to make sure other people were actually enjoying it too. After winning the last beach trip with her team and then talking about how amazing it had been she, for some reason, felt the need to make sure that Swan Beach lived up to its name and that everyone loved it as much as the swans had. Which was somewhat ridiculous, it’s not like someone disliking the beach would actually be a slight against her or her team but she couldn’t help but feel that way regardless. ==== The ocean was on the top-five list of things Nathan missed the most. It wasn’t quite the same here, not having his family around, but he would, most definitely, take it. Any beach was better than no beach, and this island was a pretty damn good substitute for home. “It’s great,” he said to Claudia as she sat down beside him. “I’ve missed this.” Admittedly he’d missed the ocean itself a lot more than the whole tanning-swimming-beach thing, but that was the boat was for. He’d never done much snorkling, but he was ready to try that out. “It’s the same one you went to before, yeah?” ==== Claudia nodded in confirmation. “It’s different being here with a different group of people though.” There were people she was close to in both groups but with Swan they had all been her friends, whereas this beach trip had more people she didn’t know too well. It was still fun though, and nice to get away from the outback for a change. It was going to be hard to have to leave again and return back to school. IVI had said they planned on arranging more trips like this though so she was looking forward to them too. She didn’t hate IVI but it was hard being stuck in the same place for so long, especially when that place was in the middle of nowhere. “Where do you think they’ll take us next time?” ==== He had to agree on that. Going anywhere with all the Flamingos was asking for trouble, though. There was enough drama as it was. Not that Nathan was that aware of it. If it wasn’t for Conner, who remembered everything that went on regardless of if he wanted to, he’d have no clue about anything. But it was nice to have someone providing a summary when he arrived at training and it had the distinct air of ‘something is going on here but I have no idea what’. “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “It’d be too much to ask for back home, don’t you think?” ==== Claudia was hoping for a Sydney trip. Maybe they’d even let her stay at her own place or at least let her visit her mum and dog during the trip. Even if she didn’t get to do that, Sydney was home and a trip back there was one of the things she wanted most. “At least we’ll get to go home for the holidays,” she said. School or university holidays were not usually something Claudia really loved, finding herself bored after a couple of weeks but she was looking forward to that month more than anything, a huge list in her head of what she wanted to do in her limited time back home. She was pretty sure the promise of going home was one of the main things keeping her sane at IVI. “Less than a month to go now!” she added excitedly. ==== “Yeah, it’ll be fun seeing everyone again.” Of course, having to break it to Bailey that he had to leave again after a few weeks, that’d be a lot less nice. His nephew didn’t understand why he had to go away in the first place. He was almost afraid to see how things were back home, too. Were they still harassing his family? Had Dad managed to keep a job for more than a month? How was Tessa doing? It was too much to worry about, and nothing for this boat, this beach, this weekend. That was what he tried to tell himself, anyway. “Glad to see you and Allegra are okay, by the way,” he added. “I didn’t want to get in the middle of it, but... yeah. Nice to see you worked it out.” ==== Claudia nodded again, though she did think catching up with old friends was going to be a little weird after barely talking to them all for so long. It wasn’t really the people at home she missed anyway, aside from her mum, her cousin and Jason, who she had always planned to catch up with but wasn’t sure if that was still an option anymore, or even if she should want to. She didn’t want to think about that now though, the beach was just for enjoying herself and forgetting about everything else. “Thanks,” she replied. She was glad that people hadn’t really tried to interfere, it was between her and Allegra and she liked to keep it that way. There was no point bringing everyone else into their stupid drama! “I’m glad we worked it out too. I wouldn’t have enjoyed beach weekend so much if we were still not talking.” ==== “This is way too good to do alone,” Nathan agreed. “Not that we’d be alone. I mean, half the school is here either way. It’s just... different, I guess. With a close friend.” Which sounded either boring or stupid, he wasn’t sure which. Possibly the latter. But that was nothing new when it came to him. ===== “Definitely,” Claudia agreed. “Even with half the school here, hanging out with people you barely know is never the same as spending time with your friends.” She sometimes wondered, especially after not talking last week, how much different IVI would have been without Allegra. She was lucky enough to have ended up in a team she loved with people who she now considered close friends but maybe her other friends would be a different group of people without Allegra here. She was glad that even though she had to leave everything else behind she at least got to have Allegra here with her, starting new and making all new friends without having one person who you knew would always be there for you would be difficult, she didn’t know how most other people were doing it. “Do you wish any of your friends were Vols and could be here with you?” ===== Nathan shrugged. How did you say I don’t really have any left without sounding utterly pathetic? You didn’t, probably. “My power isn’t compatible with close friends,” he went for. “It’s not safe. You should, you know, stay away too. Probably. I wouldn’t want to -” He didn’t complete the sentence. He really didn’t want to think about what he might do to Claudia, or anyone else, if something happened. It was the reason half his friends at school carried sedatives to incapacitate him, after all. So he’d never have to find out. “But um. Yeah. I wouldn’t wish it on a five-year-old, but I miss my nephew a lot. It would be nice to see him more.” ==== Claudia was lucky with her power, she knew that. Occasionally she found it useless, like when trying to defend herself in a nightmare, but for the most part she liked it. It couldn’t hurt anyone and it helped animals! She knew not everyone was as lucky with their powers, Allegra complained about hers enough that Claudia had realised this early on, but she’d never really considered how hard it must actually be for those with dangerous powers. Still, Nathan had never been anything but nice to her and she wasn’t going to judge him based on the fact he had a dangerous power. People weren’t their powers, even if sometimes they did influence them a lot. “It’s okay,” she told him with a kind smile, “I want to be friends anyway.” Claudia didn’t even have any siblings so there were no nieces or nephews for her to miss but she knew that being away from family was hard so she could understand Nathan wanting to see him more. “He could always have Kody as a playmate if he came to IVI,” she joked. ==== It would be easier if he could be all tough-guy-i-don’t-want-to-see-you when he tried to convince people they’d be safer without him, but Nathan just didn’t have it in him. He was stuck worrying and arming his friends with syringes crammed with sedatives, hoping he’d never actually hurt them. “As long as you’re ready to stab me with a needle if it all comes down to it,” he said with a laugh, although there was really nothing funny about it. Still, Claudia carried one like everyone else, and Nathan was pretty sure that he could trust her to use it. She was all about stuff other people would find super weird and occasionally disgusting. “I’d like to see Kody spend five minutes with an actual five-year-old,” he remarked. “I think he’d run screaming within seconds.” ==== “I’m definitely all for stabbing you with a needle if I have to,” Claudia replied, a little more excited about the prospect than probably normal. It wasn’t that she wanted it to ever come to that, she doubted it would be pleasant for Nathan, but she had no problem with needles or jabbing them into other people, even if she was more used to animals than humans. It could be good practice for having to immunise animals! Because even if she could heal them, immunisation was still important. Prevention was better than treatment. Claudia didn’t have much experience with five year olds but Nathan seemed to know what he was talking about so she trusted he was right about what would happen if Kody spent time with one. “It might be good for Kody,” she replied with a laugh. ==== “Great. I’ll hold you to that one.” Maybe this was what he’d done wrong before. Not having a friend who thought absurd things like needles were exciting to play with. No need for tasers, then, nor for frying pans, steel pipes or cricket bats to the head. Always a good thing. Less of a headache, too. “A great experience for everyone involved,” Nathan promised. “Real kids beat pretend ones any day of the week.” They were way more interesting too, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. ==== “What’s your nephew like, then?” She asked. “If you’re okay talking about him.” Home could be hard to talk about, reminding you exactly what you were missing, but at the same time it was nice to think about the things you were missing sometimes. There were so many things Claudia hadn’t thought about missing that she now realised she did which she thought would make going home more valuable as she’d appreciate everything so much more. Missing everything did suck though. ==== Bailey might be his nephew, but Nathan was every bit the proud father in spirit. It kind of ended up that way, when a baby came into your life at fifteen and never left. “He’s smart. Much smarter than me anyway. He does this... like lego thing? Which is super complicated. Sometimes I get to help, but only if he’s feeling generous. He helps me to cook and bake and stuff. Makes a decent chocolate cake with some help. And um, he’s reading a little. Not like big things, but he’s better than I was at that age. But most kids are, I reckon.” He shrugged, feeling a bit awkward. “Sorry. I’m sounding like...” well, a girl, but he didn’t want to say that out loud, “...um, I don’t know. I talk too much.” ==== It was kind of disheartening to hear that even a five year old could bake better than she could. It was like that stupid Junior Masterchef show on television. Not that Claudia ever watched it, study was more important than seeing little kids cook but her mother watched it sometimes so she’d caught bits and pieces of it and those kids were using cooking techniques she hadn’t even heard of, let alone could do. She hated how inferior that show made her feel. But Nathan’s nephew sounded cute, better baking ability aside! “It’s okay, you can talk as much as you want,” she had asked so it wasn’t like he was just talking about something she didn’t even want to hear about. “It must be hard being away from him when he’s still growing up.” That was how she felt about her puppy at least, always checking in on her mother to make sure she was training her properly and asking her to send pictures so she could see how they’d grown. She was sure puppies and little kids were similar. ==== “We’re all missing someone, don’t we?” Nathan shrugged. “Looking forward to Christmas, though. It’ll be nice to see everyone again.” He tried to rein himself in a bit, because sharing too much? Yes, that was something he did a lot. Far too much. It was no secret that he had a nephew and his mother waiting back home, but sometimes less info was better. He’d never be one of those strong, silent guys. He’d tried, but it just wasn’t his thing. “So what about you?” He hoped that wasn’t a too straightforward question. ==== “Just my parents and puppy,” Claudia answered. “My dad and stepmother are going to come down from Queensland for Christmas and I haven’t seen them in ages so that’ll be nice.” She really needed to work on visiting her dad more. Not that she could while she was at IVI but she hadn’t actually visited since last January! That felt like a long time to go without seeing her dad, even if she did talk to him on the phone. “And I got a new puppy before coming to IVI so I’m really looking forward to seeing her and making sure my mum has been training her properly!” ==== “They grow up faster than babies. I haven’t had a dog for a few years, but... I know that much. Besides, I’m sure you could train it up a whole lot in two weeks or whatever it is we have off. You do like a challenge, right?” It seemed like it, anyway, with the way she looked at school and everything. And yet, despite her seriousness when it came to that sort of thing, he never got the feeling that she was judging him, which made things a lot easier. Nathan really wasn’t cut out for school, but it was getting easier. ==== They did grow up faster which made it even worse that she was missing the puppy months! Her mother better have taught her puppy not to chew everything just because she was teething! Claudia had too many things on her bedroom floor that she didn’t want to come home to find all chewed up! But Nathan was right, she could train (or retrain if her mother had taught her bad habits!) her dog while she was home for Christmas, she would still be young enough for it to work. “You haven’t had a dog in a few years?” she repeated, “That’s sad! Do you have any other pets?” Claudia didn’t understand people who didn’t like or want pets, she thought they were the best. Not having a pet of her own at IVI was a struggle, even if she got to see animals while healing them. “I would say you should get a new dog but there’s no point since you can’t bring it here.” ==== Yeah he so wasn’t telling Claudia that the reason he didn’t get a new dog after Rocky died was because he was the one who killed him. He’d done a lot of things when feral, but that one was definitely one of the worst. “I, um, never got a new one. After my last one died. We do have a few cats but they’re not really ous as much as their own. Only there for the food.” And cats weren’t the same thing anyway. “Imagine if everyone got to bring a pet,” he said. “Like in Harry Potter. It would be like, heaven. For you.” ==== Claudia loved cats too but she agreed that dogs were better as pets. “That would be amazing,” Claudia agreed. “There’s be so many cute animals and people could go on dog walks together,” her face brightened up as she imagined it. “I bet some people have really interesting pets too. Maybe some ponies or ducks or a ferret. Sara has her snake with her, that’s really cool!” ==== “Do ponies count as pets?” It was a city thing, he supposed. He was pretty sure Claudia came from the city. “Or ducks? I think you’re just calling everything vaguely animal shaped pets now.” Not that he minded. As long as people could keep him contained he’d love to have some animals around. “If we got a couple of each kind here, would it be modern day Noah’s Ark?” he said, mostly thinking out loud. “We’re pretty sealed off. If everything died on the outside we could still survive. Probably.” ==== “Horses count as pets!” Claudia insisted. “I had a friend with pet ducklings too. But maybe we can just have an IVI farm but with less sheep and cows. But some sheep and cows. Lambs are so cute!” Getting Claudia onto the subject of animals was a bad idea. “We should get two of each kind here for that reason!” Claudia decided. Not that she thought that the outside world was going to suddenly get destroyed but if saying so got them to agree to bring more animals to IVI she would go along with it. “I should visit the campus animal sanctuary more.” ==== “Don’t you think you’ll find animals a bit less cute once you’ve been a vet for a while?” Nathan asked, an inconsequential question, perhaps, but he’d always been a bit like that. “If you see sick people all the time, it gets a bit depressing and,” not thinking about mum, not thinking aobut mum, “I guess, you might just see them as things to heal, rather than animals?” Though he had to admit that lambs were pretty cute. There was probably no one in the universe who could argue with that. ==== “No,” Claudia said, shaking her head. Getting sick of animals seemed impossible. “Animals are cuter than sick people,” she pointed out. People usually didn’t look so great when sick but unless they were coated in blood or something similar she thought sick pets were still pretty adorable. “I hope they never just become things to heal. They’re all individual, they’re more than just something I can use my power on.” ==== “I guess they are.” Nathan didn’t think about animals and whether they were cute, generally (lambs excepted), but he supposed that could be true. “I mean, cuter than sick humans. They’re individuals, that’s sort of a given.” Anyone who had had a dog knew that. “Wow, you can talk about animals for a long time.” Which he’d sort of suspected. He’d just never seen it with his own eyes. ==== Had they really been talking about animals that long? She hadn’t even noticed! “Oh, sorry,” she replied, feeling a little embarrassed. Though she was sure most people would prefer her talking about animals for a long time than talking about her dissections of animals. For some reason most people tended to find that gross, but she didn’t understand why; it was just science! “We should stop talking about them and get back to snorkeling so we can see some!” ==== Nathan had to laugh at the look on her face. “I don’t mind! There are worse things to talk about, after all. Like math.” He did agree that they needed to get back to the water, though. They only had a few days of freedom, and so much to do. “And then we’ll talk about those. Rinse and repeat.” ==== |