wildmage_daine | October 29th, 2018

Daine probably could have begged the day off, if she'd really wanted to. Mithros knows Saturday night had been awful, and the weeks leading up to it hadn't been much better. It's left everyone in the farmhouse shaken -- especially Lyall and Biffy. Maybe she ought to be there when they wake. It wouldn't hurt their peace of mind.

But neither of them will be up until only a little after her shift ends, anyway. And part of her likes the idea of just having a normal day, even if they still have to force the normalcy a bit. It'll do her good to work. More importantly, it'll do the People good. They need her, too, and she can't justify letting them down on little more than a whim.

It ends up being a busy shift. There are a few cases that they've held onto until she could get there, the better to have them sorted instead of merely patched up and rescheduled for a handful of check-ups. She mends a bone or two and clears up a handful of infections, and before she knows it, four hours have gone by and Dr. Molina is insisting she head home before she gives herself a migraine. Daine could probably argue that point, but the sun has gone down. Best to head home.

She's nearing the Park when she hears a distant screech of tires and a thud. She barely registers the sound before a sympathetic flare of agony burns through her hip, and she stumbles with a gasp. It's only thanks to a well-placed rubbish bin that she's able to stay mostly upright, and she clings to it, her head spinning. Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith, she's dislocated her hip.

No, she realizes a beat later. Someone else has. The car struck a dog; it's his pain she's feeling, loud enough that her mind can scarcely tell the difference.

She grunts quietly as she forces herself to straighten, then starts to limp towards the accident.

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She takes a slow breath, both to steady herself and to keep herself from mulishly insisting that she doesn't need to sit. In truth, she probably does; it's just that sitting back down now wouldn't make getting back up in five minutes any easier. Some food would help more, but she won't get that on the sidewalk.

"Not normally," she explains. "I'd be fine if I hadn't done much else today, but I just came off a busy shift at the clinic, and..." She cants her head in sheepish acknowledgment: she's overextended herself a bit.

In a more stubbornly reassuring tone, she adds, "I've done worse to myself; I had to sleep for days after I healed Kit's ma. All I really need now is a snack." As if to demonstrate how fine she is, she straightens, letting go of the wall's support... and lists toward Rowan a moment later, her hand instinctively lifting to grip his shoulder.

So much for reassuring. "And maybe a nap," she admits, cheeks prickling.

His brows lift, both in mild surprise and a little hint of unearned "I told you so" as Daine explains that she's tapped for energy at the moment, magical and otherwise. Rowan knows how hard it can be to admit to that, so deep down, underneath the playful exterior, he's impressed. She's not asking for help, but she is admitting, in a way, that she needs it. That works for him.

He opens his mouth to counter her argument that worse makes this somehow okay when she leans in towards him and grips his shoulder. By reflex, his arm goes around her, hand settling high on her hip to keep her steady.

"Come on," he says, shuffling a step forward to make sure he doesn't end up dragging Daine. "I'll buy you a coffee and a muffin. Hopefully that'll be enough to get you home?"

It's fair embarrassing, needing to be held upright like this after what ought to have been a routine healing job. Then again, she wouldn't say she's suffering Rowan's help. His arm is warm around her, and she's acutely aware of the light pressure of his hand on her hip. She lets herself lean against him, sighing with just enough emphasis to sound exasperated with herself instead of like some smitten maiden.

"That'll do nicely," she says, perking a little at the thought of food (coffee is a little less enticing, but she's not going to split hairs with someone who's offering to treat her, and anyway, that's what cream and sugar are for). "Thank you."

With Rowan's support, it's not hard to keep her feet under her, though he can probably feel that she's a little shaky. As a distraction, she ventures, "I don't suppose there's much cause to teach healing in your realm, since you've got those nano-things. Do you even have doctors? Or does everyone just focus on keeping the little robots running?"

She feels nice pressed against his side like this, delicate and strong. They're walking like they mean something to each other, like more than friends, from an outsider perspective. But Rowan tries not to think about it, only about keeping her on her feet as they head towards a nearby cafe that Rowan knows and likes.

He huffs out a laugh at the question, grateful for a little distraction.

"We have technicians that help with resurrections," he explains. "They monitor you as you come back to life and inject you with higher powered nanites. But that's the closest thing we have to doctors, yeah. Everything else is up to the Thunderhead."

Technicians. It's a word used at the clinic, too. She understands the sense of it, when so much healing in Darrow is done with machines -- and it would make even more sense in Rowan's realm, where it's machines actually doing the healing -- but it's never stopped sounding odd to her ears. The way she heals puts her so close to her patients. It's hard to imagine doing so from the other end of a piece of fancy equipment.

"You did well for your first time, then," she says, smiling over at him. "Assuming that was the first bit of hands-on healing you've done, anyhow." He's been in Darrow for long enough that he could've spent any amount of time patching other folk up, she supposes. Not that many such opportunities have arisen for her, outside the bounds of what she's done for the People. Injured two-leggers crawling into her lap are a much rarer occurrence.

"It is," he confirms with a sheepish looking, small smile. It's strange to think about. Stranger still when compared to how he spends some of his evenings, how he's been trained to kill so perfectly, so efficiently, that he's like a machine himself. The opposite of a nanite. Separate and deadly.

It's nice to experience the change, but at the same time... he wonders if he could ever do that for a long time, for a living, as a calling.

No. He knows what he is. And it's not a healer.

"Not bad for a newbie. Hopefully there won't be opportunity to do it again, though."

Her smile softens; it's hard not to be charmed by that admission, how he sounds almost shy about it. She wishes she could sit him down with the Lioness, with her knack for healing and fighting in equal measure. For a moment, she finds herself wondering what that does to a person -- to a realm -- when healing is both so ever-present and so specialized that almost no one ever has to think about it, let alone trouble themselves with how it's done.

And then his next words distract her. "Goddess, no," she says with a little hiccup of laughter, agreeing to both sentiments. "If every animal could just stop coming to harm starting tonight, that'd be fair perfect. Even if it would put me out of work. I could be happily unemployed." She considers the inevitable boredom that would lead to, then adds, "Or end up at the stables, probably. Give riding lessons to folk who sit in their saddles like sacks of potatoes."

"That would be me," Rowan says readily with an easy, assured laugh. He has no qualms about admitting to those sort of weaknesses. He has plenty, and plenty of them can be shared without worry.

They reach the care and Rowan pauses to open the door for her, guiding her in with a light hand to the small of her back.

"All the things I know, I don't know how to ride a horse. I've rarely been out of the city, to be honest."

Daine gives him a thankful, if somewhat sheepish, smile as he gets the door for her and guides her through. She's steadier on her feet than she was a few minutes ago, but she still feels a little light-headed, like she's stayed up far too late and doesn't quite know what's what anymore. It's a relief to find a table and sit back down.

"Do you want to try it sometime?" Daine perks up a little at the thought of teaching him, in part because it's something she knows how to teach. Her job back home had involved helping the trainees with their mounts. Many of them had riding experience already, but it's not as if a lack of it was a hindrance. In some respects, training complete newcomers like Miri was actually easier, because they didn't have years of doing things the wrong way under their belts. "It doesn't matter that you've never done it before. That just means you've no bad habits to unlearn."

Rowan looks a little surprised by the offer, but his no doubt stumbled reply is cut off by the quick arrival of a waitress. He orders them each a coffee and some pastries, just to get some strength back in Daine, and then turns to her again.

"I guess. I mean, it's one of those things I've never thought of doing." He was raised in MidMerica, yes, which still had farms and ranches and the like. But his life was entirely city-bound.

Plus, there's not much use for a horse to a Scythe, is there?

"If you're okay taking on a potentially awful student."

"Oh, I'm sure I could whip you into shape," she assures him with a lopsided grin. But her tone softens into something less teasing as she adds, "And you wouldn't be the worst. I've had a lot of students." The teasing tone returns as she concludes, "And if you are rubbish, at least you'll have a teacher who can apologize to the horse on your behalf."

Truthfully, though, she imagines he'll pick it up easily enough. He's too careful -- and graceful -- to muck it up too badly. And while she doesn't anticipate a complete disaster, there's something to be said for a pupil who wouldn't suffer any lasting damage from being thrown, or even kicked. It ought to be less nerve-wracking when there isn't really much a horse could do to you, even if it was trying.

Maybe she doesn't mean it as a tease, but Rowan cocks an eyebrow at the comments anyway, a playful smile tugging at his lips. It's easy to play around with Daine, even if he feels sure that he's going to stick his foot in his mouth at some point. But maybe that's just interacting with a pretty girl, not so much Daine personally.

"Not the worst by virtue of number. Okay, I can live with that." He chuckles and shakes his head. "What about the horse apologizing for me for throwing me? I'd be the one with a sore ass."

"For what, two whole seconds?" she scoffs, grinning. She can't imagine that little robots powerful enough to bring someone back from the dead would let their people suffer a little soreness for very long. "If you upset the horse so much it throws you, you'll just have to apologize even more sincerely. Maybe you could bow, or something."

The waitress brings their coffee and pastries, and Daine wastes little time adding enough cream and sugar to turn her beverage into something that's more coffee in name than in taste. She glances up self-consciously partway through the transformation, then adds a prim, "It'll help kick my energy back up." And make it palatable.

"Hey, my pain nanites are dialed down, thank you very much," Rowan says with a chuckle and an amused gleam in his eyes. It's not something he's mentioned before, out of some abundance of caution, out of fear of the unknown, but it feels okay to say it now. With Daine.

"I suppose my ego can take a bruising and I can bow. If the situation calls for it. Everybody likes me, though. I'm quite charming."

He watches her with arched brows and that same gleam of good humor in his eyes as she attacks her coffee with cream and sugar.

"I didn't realize," he says, lifting his own mug -- black -- to blow on it then take a sip. "I would have ordered you tea. Or hot chocolate."

"So you say," Daine says, sounding playfully dubious. It's an odd thing to consider, actually -- she figured pain and injury go hand in hand, so if his nanites take care of one, they'd take care of the other. But she doesn't know how quickly they work. And it's probably safer to feel pain than it is not to, even if you've got nanites to patch you up. Elsewise you'd be forgetting yourself and leaning against hot stoves, or getting frostbite out in the cold.

But the nanites are still there, pain or no, and that's the most important thing. It might be sort of relaxing to teach someone who at least won't die if they get thrown or kicked.

She grins outright when he proclaims himself charming. "It's true. And so modest, too. The horses'll love you."

The pointed look he gives her cup probably ought to embarrass her, but she just shrugs. "More caffeine in this," she points out before taking a sip of her much sweeter concoction. "Which ought to make walking home easier. Unless you really wanted to carry me."

"Hey, being the middle child of nine means I have to learn modesty," he says with a grin.

"And I'd carry you over the shoulder," he says with a playful look, smirking around his cup of coffee. "Like a bag of potatoes. Nothing romantic."

He regrets the choice of word the second it's past his lips, but there's nothing that can be done about it beyond taking a sip of his coffee and moving on as though he hadn't said anything.

Because he hadn't, right? Right.

Nothing romantic, he says, and the amused smile she'd been wearing -- it was a fair silly picture he was painting -- falters. Which is stupid; it's a joke, you're not supposed to be disappointed by a joke. And it's not as if him carrying her romantically would be any less ridiculous.

There's no reason to feel as if he's just shut a door in her face.

She gives her head a slight shake, recovering her smile. "Goddess forbid," she returns in an undertone, eyebrows raised primly. "I can't imagine anyone at the farmhouse would be impressed by you leaving me in a heap on the doorstep." Her cheeks are prickling, but she lifts her chin and arches her eyebrow.

Wrong thing to say. Wrong, terrible thing to say. He nearly winces when he notices the small change to her smile. It's nothing great, not enough to comment on, but it's there all the same and he feels awful for some reason.

Should he have said it was romantic? Was that the right thing to do?

No. Right? He wasn't trying for anything right now. Even if...

Not the point.

He scrubs at his own cheek, then chin, hiding his own prickling skin with a show of thoughtfulness.

"Least of all Kitten," he says with a faint grin. "I know how to behave in order to save my skin."