Fic: Spin Recovery, Part Fourteen (PG)
Dec. 31st, 2007 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalForty-nine pages in and the plot finally shows up. Par for the course for my stuff, I think. :)
He was coming out the clinic doors when he spotted Hazel approaching, head down, stomping with deliberation down the corridor. “Hello again, Miss Swiftoot,” Rufus greeted. “Fancy seeing you again so soon.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bloodshot and with a snarl on her lips. “Morning,” she growled, then went inside the clinic without another word.
Puzzled, Rufus took a seat on a wooden bench near the clinic and waited. Forty minutes later she came out again, looked considerably less edgy, though she was moving with deliberation, as if she was in pain. He got up as she began to pass him again, saying, “May I offer you another ride home?”
“No,” she replied, neither stopping nor turning to look at him. Rufus began walking after her. She appeared to be doing her best to ignore him, even as he kept pace with her.
“Taking the train again, are you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Certain you don’t want that ride?”
“Yes.” When he failed to conveniently disappear she turned to him and added, “I’m fine, thank you. I don’t need help. Your assistance is not appreciated. Go away.”
“You’re not coming in for your leg, are you?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed in irritation. “That is absolutely none of your business.”
Actually, from a strictly technical standpoint it was, given she was his mother’s subject, but he didn’t feel like pointing that out to her. Instead he answered simply, “Myself, I’m a drug addict.”
“What?”
“I’m a drug addict.”
She stopped in the corridor to turn and look at him again. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I thought whatever is your trouble, aside from the obvious problem of your leg, that it must be something pretty hideously embarrassing at minimum if you don’t want to talk about it. Myself, I find my tongue going into knots when I try to discuss my problem with my mother and sister, but it’s much easier with my therapist or a total stranger like yourself. I just wanted to point that out.”
“What drug?” she demanded.
“Juno,” he answered. Strange how just invoking the name made his gut clench up as he fought the Need that suddenly filled his head.
Her ears perked forward, and it seemed to Rufus as if her expression became just slightly… interested? “You’re a combat pilot?” she asked.
He nodded. “A freelancer, now medically retired, obviously. Mostly I escorted civilian ships to ward off pirates. I was good too, he wanted to add, except for just once. Instead he said, “Were you a pilot as well?”
Her expression grew closed once again, “Once. Medical discharge.”
“What happened, flight accident?”
She nodded. “My docking bot malfed when I was coming aboard the cruiser I was assigned to. Instead of pulling me through the docking bay doors it slammed me straight into the side of the ship. Crushed my cockpit and my leg with it. It took them three hours to pull me out of there and it was only by the Holy Den Mother’s grace that they didn’t have to do an emergency amputation right there, in a vacuum.”
“What model fighter were you flying?”
“An S/A-152 Gull Wind.”
“Oh, I’d just read in Aerospace Monthly that they were pulling them off the line for problems with their docking bot’s software.”
“Yes, my accident was the reason.
He winced. “I hope you were unconscious for the rescue.”
“I was awake for every moment of it,” she said flatly. “What did you fly?”
“A Swift Wing. Restored her myself,” he said, allowing her to change the subject. Ah, his dear White Knight, she’d probably be broken up for her component parts by the dealer he’d sold her to. The flash of regret he felt for her fate was enough to overcome his need for Juno, at least for a moment.
“A Swift Wing! You were trusting your life to an antique like that?” she said derisively.
“Here now, she was a good bird! They don’t make fighters with lines like hers anymore.”
“Yes, for good reason. Those bloody accordion wings of theirs tended to fly apart when you were accelerating to reach orbit in an atmosphere.”
“Bosh! Anyway, why did you take a medical discharge? Gull Wind pilots are in short supply these days. Even with a broken leg, your commander should have been patient enough to allow you to complete therapy and return to duty.”
Her expression grew wary again, like a candle being snuffed out. “It wasn’t my choice.”
Rufus’ brain, temporarily distracted by the presence of a pleasant looking vixen willing to talk shop with him, finally came back online and started putting two and two together. She was medically discharged after a painful accident without her consent. She comes into the clinic at least every two days, going in with a snarl and coming out with… well, less of a snarl. Miss Swiftfoot didn’t lose her commission just because of her leg, you idiot, she's receiving a placebo for an addiction.
“Painkillers?” he asked cautiously.
Hazel let out a long sigh. “Yes. You can’t imagine how much it…” She glanced at his empty shoulder and turned her head away. “All right, maybe you can.”
“Well, my pain was relatively swift,” he told her. “I actually did have to have a field amputation, quite horrifying and more than enough to knock me out. When I came to, my arm was already gone and the wound cleaned up. What I feel is mostly phantom pain these days. I imagine yours is more direct.”
“Oh, yes. After I got out of the sick bay and they put me back in my cabin, the ship’s surgeon gave me a bottle of pills that was supposed to last me a month. I went through it in less than two weeks. After that… Goddess forgive, I wanted it so bad. Anything to make the pain go away. I ended up picking up some black market crap at our next planetfall that lasted me until I could get my next legitimate refill from the sick bay. That only lasted me a week. By then I was so loopy with the stuff that I couldn’t even walk with the crutches. My record up until then was clean though, so my captain decided to be merciful and recommend a medical discharge instead of a court martial proceeding.”
Rufus stopped himself before expressing some form of pious sympathy. He strongly suspected that anything resembling pity would earn him another snarl. The vixen’s pride had been sore wounded by her weakness, much as his had been. All the worse because what she had lost she’d likely never get back. I could buy myself another fighter, if I really wanted. She’s never going to be allowed to re-enter the military and fly combat again.
“Fragg it!” Hazel snarled suddenly, looking at her watch. “I missed the bloody train, yapping with you!”
“That’s all right, my previous offer still stands, Madame Swiftfoot,” he told her.
“Well I suppose I’m going to have to go with you now,” she groused. She followed him back to the car park, where Whitebrow was waiting. This time around he took the precaution of calling and leaving a message for his mother and informing her that Whitebrow would be with him at all times, so she would have need to worry.
Halfway through the drive, she spoke up and asked, “Why Juno? You must know what that crap does to a pilot’s nerves and reflexes eventually.”
“I didn’t care,” he answered honestly. “After… after a certain incident, I some trouble flying. Combat jitters actually. Even ordinary escort missions on milk runs began to terrify me. Juno made everything better, or so I thought.”
“I know that feeling,” she admitted.
They rode on in companionable silence until they turned onto the hilly road where her father’s house sat. Whitebrow was forced to reverse thrust on the skimmer quickly as they rounded a turn and found the road blocked by a mob of about twenty people.
“Oh, no,” Hazel groaned.
“What’s going on?” Rufus asked.
“I’m not sure, but I can guess. Help me get out.”
He helped her out of the skimmer and followed as she hobbled over to the crowd, which had surrounded a ground skimmer with a terrified middle-aged vixen inside. They were an unruly bunch, keeping the skimmer circled so the poor woman couldn’t drive away and shouting things like, “Go back to your own home!” and “We don’t want you here!” Which seemed a bit contradictory to Rufus, given they were preventing her from leaving, but it probably wouldn’t have been wise to point that out to them at the moment.
“Bom! What’s going on?” Hazel called out to one of the males in the crowd.
“We found her sneaking around the back of your da’s place with a hand scanner,” the young male answered. “She’s with a surveying company hired by the Brushtails! They can’t even wait to get rid us before trying to dig our homes up!”
“Oh, fruit,” Rufus muttered. So these were the valuable hills where the sevenium lay. Digging their claws in, hardly seemed an adequate description of this mob’s anger at the idea of moving.
“Oh, by the Holy Den Mother, Bom, what do you think this is going to accomplish?” Hazel demanded with exasperation. “You want to give that idiot noblevixen back at Brushtail Manor an excuse to bring the Civil Protection down on us?”
“Let ‘em come!” the male said angrily. “Maybe we’ll get on the newsnets and get a nice story out of it, so her farmer noble friends can laugh at her!”
Well, this bunch wasn’t exactly a shining example of farmer lord/commoner relations, Rufus thought. Then again, from the sound of things, Bethany’s earlier suggestion that it was just a matter of negotiating compensation seemed a touch inaccurate as well. Fruit, I can’t believe my mother let things get this ugly, though. “Excuse me for a moment, Miss Swiftfoot,” he said apologetically and began to push his way through the crowd to the driver’s side door of the poor vixen’s skimmer. “Beg your pardon, madam, but are you with a surveying company hired by the Countess Brushtail?” he asked loudly. Even with the skimmer’s windows sealed, she still heard him well enough to nod quickly, her eyes wide with fear at the bizarre situation. “Thank you. Forgive me for a moment, I need to borrow your skimmer’s bonnet,” he told her.
He clambered up onto the front of the skimmer and waved his arm. “Pardon me! Pardon me! Could I have your attention for a moment?” Confused, the mob quieted down from their angry shouting to look up at him. “I’m an acquaintance of Miss Swiftfoot back there, I’m sure some of you are her neighbors, and I’m attempting to get her home. If you could be so kind as to disperse and let this poor vixen be on her way, so my driver can get around, I would appreciate it.”
“Who are you?” someone called out.
For a moment, the question stopped him short. After a moment, he answered, “Ah, well, you see, I’m Viscount Ru Ofanius Brushtail, the Countess Brushtail’s son.”
A mutter went through the crowd. It was a mixture of doubt and outright anger, but with a healthy helping of Oh, fragg, if he was reading it correctly. Right, time to take the initiative. “I understand you are extremely upset. That’s why I’m giving Miss Swiftfoot my com code, so she can speak to me directly about this situation. I’m sure all of you, like her, would greatly prefer a peaceable solution to this ugly business, correct?”
“You can tell the Countess she can…” someone started to say, before the person next to him yanked hard on the fellow’s ear to shut him up.
“I’m certain my mother is going to hear everything about what happened today,” Rufus said amiably, giving the crowd his most disconcerting smile. He hopped down from the skimmer’s bonnet and began waving people aside. “There now, move aside, let this vixen out, please,” he prompted. The crowd parted and the surveyor powered up her skimmer, swiftly pulling away and retreating back down the road.
He walked back to where Hazel waited, sitting on the bonnet of his own skimmer. ‘My card, madam,” he said, pulling out an encoded calling card from his shirt pocket.
She snatched it out of his hand. “You told me your name was Shorttail,” she said sharply.
“No, I told you my name was Ru Ofanius. Technically speaking, it was Whitebrow who addressed me by the pseudonym. I’ve been using it at the clinic for obvious reasons.”
“What by the Cold and Dark is a Brushtail doing going to a public clinic for drug addiction?” she asked.
“Well, that’s a very complicated subject,” he said. “The short version is: sometimes I don’t agree with my mother either. Tell you what, why don’t we discuss the matter over dinner, say tomorrow evening?”
“Why should I have dinner with someone from the House that is trying to drive me out of my house?”
“Well, for no other reason than you’d have my uninterrupted attention for two or three hours. Surely that would be valuable, if you’re trying to get your point across to my mother.”
Hazel looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “It would,” she said. “Fine then, it’s a date. You can take me home now, Lord Brushtail.”
He bowed to her. “My pleasure, madam.”
TBC
He was coming out the clinic doors when he spotted Hazel approaching, head down, stomping with deliberation down the corridor. “Hello again, Miss Swiftoot,” Rufus greeted. “Fancy seeing you again so soon.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bloodshot and with a snarl on her lips. “Morning,” she growled, then went inside the clinic without another word.
Puzzled, Rufus took a seat on a wooden bench near the clinic and waited. Forty minutes later she came out again, looked considerably less edgy, though she was moving with deliberation, as if she was in pain. He got up as she began to pass him again, saying, “May I offer you another ride home?”
“No,” she replied, neither stopping nor turning to look at him. Rufus began walking after her. She appeared to be doing her best to ignore him, even as he kept pace with her.
“Taking the train again, are you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Certain you don’t want that ride?”
“Yes.” When he failed to conveniently disappear she turned to him and added, “I’m fine, thank you. I don’t need help. Your assistance is not appreciated. Go away.”
“You’re not coming in for your leg, are you?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed in irritation. “That is absolutely none of your business.”
Actually, from a strictly technical standpoint it was, given she was his mother’s subject, but he didn’t feel like pointing that out to her. Instead he answered simply, “Myself, I’m a drug addict.”
“What?”
“I’m a drug addict.”
She stopped in the corridor to turn and look at him again. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I thought whatever is your trouble, aside from the obvious problem of your leg, that it must be something pretty hideously embarrassing at minimum if you don’t want to talk about it. Myself, I find my tongue going into knots when I try to discuss my problem with my mother and sister, but it’s much easier with my therapist or a total stranger like yourself. I just wanted to point that out.”
“What drug?” she demanded.
“Juno,” he answered. Strange how just invoking the name made his gut clench up as he fought the Need that suddenly filled his head.
Her ears perked forward, and it seemed to Rufus as if her expression became just slightly… interested? “You’re a combat pilot?” she asked.
He nodded. “A freelancer, now medically retired, obviously. Mostly I escorted civilian ships to ward off pirates. I was good too, he wanted to add, except for just once. Instead he said, “Were you a pilot as well?”
Her expression grew closed once again, “Once. Medical discharge.”
“What happened, flight accident?”
She nodded. “My docking bot malfed when I was coming aboard the cruiser I was assigned to. Instead of pulling me through the docking bay doors it slammed me straight into the side of the ship. Crushed my cockpit and my leg with it. It took them three hours to pull me out of there and it was only by the Holy Den Mother’s grace that they didn’t have to do an emergency amputation right there, in a vacuum.”
“What model fighter were you flying?”
“An S/A-152 Gull Wind.”
“Oh, I’d just read in Aerospace Monthly that they were pulling them off the line for problems with their docking bot’s software.”
“Yes, my accident was the reason.
He winced. “I hope you were unconscious for the rescue.”
“I was awake for every moment of it,” she said flatly. “What did you fly?”
“A Swift Wing. Restored her myself,” he said, allowing her to change the subject. Ah, his dear White Knight, she’d probably be broken up for her component parts by the dealer he’d sold her to. The flash of regret he felt for her fate was enough to overcome his need for Juno, at least for a moment.
“A Swift Wing! You were trusting your life to an antique like that?” she said derisively.
“Here now, she was a good bird! They don’t make fighters with lines like hers anymore.”
“Yes, for good reason. Those bloody accordion wings of theirs tended to fly apart when you were accelerating to reach orbit in an atmosphere.”
“Bosh! Anyway, why did you take a medical discharge? Gull Wind pilots are in short supply these days. Even with a broken leg, your commander should have been patient enough to allow you to complete therapy and return to duty.”
Her expression grew wary again, like a candle being snuffed out. “It wasn’t my choice.”
Rufus’ brain, temporarily distracted by the presence of a pleasant looking vixen willing to talk shop with him, finally came back online and started putting two and two together. She was medically discharged after a painful accident without her consent. She comes into the clinic at least every two days, going in with a snarl and coming out with… well, less of a snarl. Miss Swiftfoot didn’t lose her commission just because of her leg, you idiot, she's receiving a placebo for an addiction.
“Painkillers?” he asked cautiously.
Hazel let out a long sigh. “Yes. You can’t imagine how much it…” She glanced at his empty shoulder and turned her head away. “All right, maybe you can.”
“Well, my pain was relatively swift,” he told her. “I actually did have to have a field amputation, quite horrifying and more than enough to knock me out. When I came to, my arm was already gone and the wound cleaned up. What I feel is mostly phantom pain these days. I imagine yours is more direct.”
“Oh, yes. After I got out of the sick bay and they put me back in my cabin, the ship’s surgeon gave me a bottle of pills that was supposed to last me a month. I went through it in less than two weeks. After that… Goddess forgive, I wanted it so bad. Anything to make the pain go away. I ended up picking up some black market crap at our next planetfall that lasted me until I could get my next legitimate refill from the sick bay. That only lasted me a week. By then I was so loopy with the stuff that I couldn’t even walk with the crutches. My record up until then was clean though, so my captain decided to be merciful and recommend a medical discharge instead of a court martial proceeding.”
Rufus stopped himself before expressing some form of pious sympathy. He strongly suspected that anything resembling pity would earn him another snarl. The vixen’s pride had been sore wounded by her weakness, much as his had been. All the worse because what she had lost she’d likely never get back. I could buy myself another fighter, if I really wanted. She’s never going to be allowed to re-enter the military and fly combat again.
“Fragg it!” Hazel snarled suddenly, looking at her watch. “I missed the bloody train, yapping with you!”
“That’s all right, my previous offer still stands, Madame Swiftfoot,” he told her.
“Well I suppose I’m going to have to go with you now,” she groused. She followed him back to the car park, where Whitebrow was waiting. This time around he took the precaution of calling and leaving a message for his mother and informing her that Whitebrow would be with him at all times, so she would have need to worry.
Halfway through the drive, she spoke up and asked, “Why Juno? You must know what that crap does to a pilot’s nerves and reflexes eventually.”
“I didn’t care,” he answered honestly. “After… after a certain incident, I some trouble flying. Combat jitters actually. Even ordinary escort missions on milk runs began to terrify me. Juno made everything better, or so I thought.”
“I know that feeling,” she admitted.
They rode on in companionable silence until they turned onto the hilly road where her father’s house sat. Whitebrow was forced to reverse thrust on the skimmer quickly as they rounded a turn and found the road blocked by a mob of about twenty people.
“Oh, no,” Hazel groaned.
“What’s going on?” Rufus asked.
“I’m not sure, but I can guess. Help me get out.”
He helped her out of the skimmer and followed as she hobbled over to the crowd, which had surrounded a ground skimmer with a terrified middle-aged vixen inside. They were an unruly bunch, keeping the skimmer circled so the poor woman couldn’t drive away and shouting things like, “Go back to your own home!” and “We don’t want you here!” Which seemed a bit contradictory to Rufus, given they were preventing her from leaving, but it probably wouldn’t have been wise to point that out to them at the moment.
“Bom! What’s going on?” Hazel called out to one of the males in the crowd.
“We found her sneaking around the back of your da’s place with a hand scanner,” the young male answered. “She’s with a surveying company hired by the Brushtails! They can’t even wait to get rid us before trying to dig our homes up!”
“Oh, fruit,” Rufus muttered. So these were the valuable hills where the sevenium lay. Digging their claws in, hardly seemed an adequate description of this mob’s anger at the idea of moving.
“Oh, by the Holy Den Mother, Bom, what do you think this is going to accomplish?” Hazel demanded with exasperation. “You want to give that idiot noblevixen back at Brushtail Manor an excuse to bring the Civil Protection down on us?”
“Let ‘em come!” the male said angrily. “Maybe we’ll get on the newsnets and get a nice story out of it, so her farmer noble friends can laugh at her!”
Well, this bunch wasn’t exactly a shining example of farmer lord/commoner relations, Rufus thought. Then again, from the sound of things, Bethany’s earlier suggestion that it was just a matter of negotiating compensation seemed a touch inaccurate as well. Fruit, I can’t believe my mother let things get this ugly, though. “Excuse me for a moment, Miss Swiftfoot,” he said apologetically and began to push his way through the crowd to the driver’s side door of the poor vixen’s skimmer. “Beg your pardon, madam, but are you with a surveying company hired by the Countess Brushtail?” he asked loudly. Even with the skimmer’s windows sealed, she still heard him well enough to nod quickly, her eyes wide with fear at the bizarre situation. “Thank you. Forgive me for a moment, I need to borrow your skimmer’s bonnet,” he told her.
He clambered up onto the front of the skimmer and waved his arm. “Pardon me! Pardon me! Could I have your attention for a moment?” Confused, the mob quieted down from their angry shouting to look up at him. “I’m an acquaintance of Miss Swiftfoot back there, I’m sure some of you are her neighbors, and I’m attempting to get her home. If you could be so kind as to disperse and let this poor vixen be on her way, so my driver can get around, I would appreciate it.”
“Who are you?” someone called out.
For a moment, the question stopped him short. After a moment, he answered, “Ah, well, you see, I’m Viscount Ru Ofanius Brushtail, the Countess Brushtail’s son.”
A mutter went through the crowd. It was a mixture of doubt and outright anger, but with a healthy helping of Oh, fragg, if he was reading it correctly. Right, time to take the initiative. “I understand you are extremely upset. That’s why I’m giving Miss Swiftfoot my com code, so she can speak to me directly about this situation. I’m sure all of you, like her, would greatly prefer a peaceable solution to this ugly business, correct?”
“You can tell the Countess she can…” someone started to say, before the person next to him yanked hard on the fellow’s ear to shut him up.
“I’m certain my mother is going to hear everything about what happened today,” Rufus said amiably, giving the crowd his most disconcerting smile. He hopped down from the skimmer’s bonnet and began waving people aside. “There now, move aside, let this vixen out, please,” he prompted. The crowd parted and the surveyor powered up her skimmer, swiftly pulling away and retreating back down the road.
He walked back to where Hazel waited, sitting on the bonnet of his own skimmer. ‘My card, madam,” he said, pulling out an encoded calling card from his shirt pocket.
She snatched it out of his hand. “You told me your name was Shorttail,” she said sharply.
“No, I told you my name was Ru Ofanius. Technically speaking, it was Whitebrow who addressed me by the pseudonym. I’ve been using it at the clinic for obvious reasons.”
“What by the Cold and Dark is a Brushtail doing going to a public clinic for drug addiction?” she asked.
“Well, that’s a very complicated subject,” he said. “The short version is: sometimes I don’t agree with my mother either. Tell you what, why don’t we discuss the matter over dinner, say tomorrow evening?”
“Why should I have dinner with someone from the House that is trying to drive me out of my house?”
“Well, for no other reason than you’d have my uninterrupted attention for two or three hours. Surely that would be valuable, if you’re trying to get your point across to my mother.”
Hazel looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “It would,” she said. “Fine then, it’s a date. You can take me home now, Lord Brushtail.”
He bowed to her. “My pleasure, madam.”
TBC
