She holds his eyes still, searching, lips softly pursed. It feels no more true than saying it's all his fault—but she'd allow him the lie if it brought him back close enough for them to actually talk.
"If I say yes, can I pass time in your office again? Can we re-start our lessons?"
“If,” Stephen says, as stubborn as a dog with a bone, “you can also admit that you didn’t ruin anything. These things happen. I’m… alright, yes, I’m feeling sore that I failed you, but it’s not about the turn to magic. Magic’s great. We need more magical healers, honestly. But it’s that I, personally, did not have the skills nor the magic to save you when I needed to.”
Dryly, “And for someone with a saviour complex, that rankles. But it is not your fault. And— well.”
He folds his hands around the roll of clean bandage. Admitting it feels like peeling his skin off, but he forces himself to do it, words pressed through a breath, a sigh: “Besides, I miss having you in my office, too.”
They're just as stubborn as each other, a match for pig-headedness as much as curiosity and intellect—but whatever objection she might have to his demand is cut off by the one-two punch of the dryness on saviour complex and his unexpectedly sincere admission. She blinks, once, twice, eyes wide on his, and her lip wobbles for a moment—
Ness looks down, breathes deeply through her nose.
"Alright. I didn't ruin anything."
Harder to believe than to say, but saying it is the first step, or so she's read. She raises her stump to him for wrapping, heroically avoiding sniffling or hugging him or anything that could possibly make this any harder for him.
The work is a welcome distraction, a chance to catch their breath and let him focus on the task. Stephen unravels the bandages around her stump, sets the fabric aside, and then carefully examines the elbow-turned-stump; more meticulous than usual, more on edge about any signs of this going wrong again. He looks for any inflammation or thready red veins. Tests some of her sensitivity, a gentle touch against the skin to feel if it’s hot to the touch.
He delays a moment to let Ness examine her own wound (with a strict warning to not press too hard, remembering experiments with a particular cuff), letting her indulge whatever clinical curiosity she has, getting to map the progress of the healing.
Once they’re both satisfied, he starts to replace it with clean bandages, concluding, “It’s looking good. No signs of infection, and healing well.”
"Am I still on track to be able to wear a prosthetic in a few months?"
Ness looks at her elbow-stump, craning her neck to try to see the skin more clearly. It's easier to poke and prod and learn about it that way than to try to see it, but that's not stopping her—and hey, you know what—
"Can I—" she wiggles her fingers at Stephen, and gives his mind a polite little psychic knock. She can't see her stump clearly, but he can!
He hesitates a little too long. Reading his mind and what he broadly chooses to think on the surface, it’s a different game entirely from letting her use his actual physical senses, peering out through his eyes like a mask. A more thorough puppeteering. A surrendering of control.
But they’re trying to get back to normal, back to these psychic exercises and the trust they imply, and so Stephen eventually nods, and Ness feels the metaphorical door open.
He hesitates, and so she hesitates too, her smile slowly slipping as she realizes she's overstepped. Even after he nods and opens the door for her, it takes a moment for her to decide what to do. When Ness finally does slip into his thoughts, it's more gentle than usual, a polite and unobtrusive slink into the back of the room.
She's not puppeteering him—though she could, maybe, for a few minutes at least. There's a lot she could do, she thinks, levers she could pull and switches she could press—but that's not what she's here for. Seeing through Stephen's eyes isn't quite the right way to describe it—she's not hijacking his senses, more seeing what he sees like it's a moving portrait, filtered by his thoughts and impressions and focus.
Her stump through his eyes is... well, it's about as unsightly as it had seemed from her less than ideal vantage point. The scar is only just starting to settle in, raised and intense as the skin knits back together—not inflamed, though, not swollen or miscoloured. As far as she can interpret, it looks as healthy as they could hope for, and Stephen doesn't seem to see anything he didn't expect.
"Can you," she speaks out loud, it seeming more polite, then pauses, pulling her thoughts together. "Can you think more... purposefully? About what you see, from your professional perspective."
“You’re sure you don’t just want me to say it aloud? Seems like it’d be easier,” Stephen says, bemused, but then gamely swivels in his chair and focuses more on the stump rather than her face. Directs all his attention back to it, thinking more purposefully, a conscious internal narration rather than vague background murmur.
A lot of the train of thought defaults back to clean, clinical medical jargon, dense and impenetrable; but seen through his mind, she can glimpse the real meaning of it. It’s healing well. Scarification and wound sealing and limb shrinkage all within normal parameters. Still not ready for the prosthetic, but on track —
(and most importantly, not plummeting her straight to death’s doorstep anymore)
It makes sense to assume a verbal explanation would be easier to follow, and Ness doesn't know how to explain to Stephen that it's not, necessarily. Yes, the medical jargon is opaque, and it's strange to see herself as a collection of medical data and not a person–but seeing it through the filter of his thoughts and understanding offers comprehension she's never had the education to attain for herself. He thinks the words and she knows what they mean because he knows, which is fascinating and cool and Ness doesn't want to retreat–
But the spell only lasts so long before she'd have to cast it again, and Stephen was hesitant enough to allow her in to begin with; she won't overstay her welcome. Her eyes re-focus as their violet glow fades, and she offers an excited smile.
"That was fascinating–I understood it all when I was reading your thoughts, but now that I'm out I only know as much as I did before, I just know that you thought it looked alright. The implications–"
Hang on–Ness trails off, smile fading as she thinks better of the commentary. Perhaps by reading his mind she could help with procedures, treatments where Stephen could use a third hand... but perhaps also it could be strange to have his knowledge co-opted so completely in that way. Besides, her remaining hand won't be much more effective than his own, no matter how adept she's forced to get with it.
So. A different topic, then.
"What happened to me?" It's no less fraught a subject, but in light of what he thought about death's door, it's the one that's most top-of-mind. "That is, I know that the site became infected. Was it that? An infection that grew out of control? I can't remember much after I first returned to the infirmary."
It’s nice seeing her smile again, bright and excitable. It makes his own expression soften, in both fondness and relief.
Stephen scoots back a little so he’s not quite so close, no longer all up in her business for the examination. “It was, yes,” he says. “If only Volante had finished his experiments, the penicilin would have helped a great deal. But without any actual antibiotics yet… we’ve nothing to combat an infection effectively.”
He hesitates over the next point. He doesn’t want her to feel to blame any more than she already does.
“I suspect your bones being crushed by the bookcase also complicated matters. It wasn’t as clean of an amputation as it could’ve been otherwise, in a fully-controlled environment. Your body was worn out, undertaking the recovery and regrowing tissue and fighting the infection alike. Sometimes it’s just too much.”
Any further blame she feels compelled to ascribe to herself is locked away behind pursed lips, furrowed brow—she'd thought it an elegant solution to concerns about inspiring others to follow in her footsteps, but maybe it was unnecessary, after all. If Stephen had pushed back even slightly—
But he didn't, and they can't change anything about how it went now. Whatever regrets either of them might have, they'll have to live with them.
"Was he—I hope he didn't feel... responsible, in any way. He's no more at fault than either of us," if Stephen is insistent that she shouldn't blame herself, and she insists that Stephen shouldn't blame himself, certainly Volante is even less a part of that conversation than they are. More quietly, an aside to herself, "I'll have to check in with him."
She tries to think to what she does remember of that long, hazy period: snippets and snatches of conversation, fogged apparitions and a heavy blanket of confusion over all. What did she say? Nothing coherent, likely, and she has no secrets that she's afraid of having divulged, but—
"I, we, conversed sometimes, didn't we? I remember that I spoke to you, I can't imagine it was anything that could be described as lucid, but—"
“We did. At the start you were fine, mostly wanting work to keep yourself busy, but towards the end I can’t say it was very coherent. You weren’t always aware where you were; I think you were mixed up with Candlekeep a few times. Your magic went a little haywire, but nothing serious; not beyond what any other rifter might do when trying to grasp their powers.”
All of it is delivered like a brisk after-action report, because he, too, would have wanted to know what he did when he was out of it. But then Stephen hesitates. “You called me… Osu, I believe. Is that someone you knew back home?”
The unfamiliar word had sounded significant: a proper noun, perhaps someone’s name.
Ennaris has no secrets—but that does not mean there's nothing she could be embarrassed by.
"I called you—what?"
She stares at Stephen, wide-eyed, embarrassment rising red-hot in her cheeks. She's barely called Vazeiros osu, he never liked it when she did, it's not a normal part of her vocabulary. This is unbelievable, ridiculous—a hideous betrayal of her subconscious, even if she was hallucinating—
Not important. He asked for an explanation—but gods, how could she? She's supposed to look Stephen in the eyes and tell him— This is so mortifying.
"It... is someone i knew in Faerûn, yes," she hedges at first, not meeting his eyes, but sighs after a moment and looks at Stephen full-on, rueful. "It means father, but affectionate. Like papa, or dad."
Which certainly says some things about how her subconscious sees Stephen, doesn't it. It's not such a surprise, of course, she knows herself enough to understand what she gets out of their relationship and why his approval means so much to her. But that it's so concrete, such a formed feeling...
"I must have been hallucinating Vazeiros. That happens with fevers, doesn't it?"
(with a constitution score of 16, she's never been sick enough before to find out firsthand.)
The awkwardness is reciprocated, and she can see it in the suddenly sheepish way that Stephen averts his gaze for a moment, glancing off to the side as if there’s something terrifically interesting on the wall of the infirmary (oh, look at that poster, is it a little askew? does he need to straighten it?). He’s an arrogant man, confident and self-assured, but there’s something about this topic in particular which strikes him off-balance, fueled further by her own embarrassment.
He’d very specifically said to Gwenaëlle that he didn’t want kids. It had been a whole conversation. Funny, how he winds up here anyway—
“It does happen,” Stephen says slowly, cagily. It’s a handy excuse, but he’s also seen Vazeiros — or at least a dreamed-up version of him — and knows that they don’t look much alike, between the purple skin and white hair and height.
So eventually, he adds: “Freudian slips— that is, slips of the tongue happen. It’s fine. I mean, frankly I’m surprised I haven’t accidentally called you America yet.”
This isn't fair, her inner teenager whines, to lose him to awkwardness in the same conversation in which she'd just won him back. How can she possibly explain that whatever she, in her deepest and most self-indulgent of thoughts, may want, she knows what the boundaries of their relationship are? She'd never ask for more, she's lucky enough to have what she does, he doesn't need to give her any more—
"America?" She pounces eagerly on the change in focus, happy not to linger on her unknowing mistake. "That's where you lived before this, isn't it?"
He's mentioned his former country in passing, sometimes, explained the basics of it, its name and the major cities he's made reference to. Her curiosity has induced him, even, to explain if there is a New York, is there an Old York? But that doesn't explain how a slip of the tongue could have had him calling her—oh!
"Wait, America Chavez was one of the witches from that dream! You..."
are using her to get a re-do on mistakes made with America and Wanda. Right.
Ness slumps in her seat a little, disheartened at the reminder, but she doesn't allow herself to mope.
"Are we very alike? America and I, I mean."
Edited (it's not perfect but IT'S DONE) 2025-08-19 18:40 (UTC)
“No,” is the automatic answer, without even having to stop to think about it, almost smiling in the response. Stephen hasn’t mentioned the girl much to anyone in detail, besides marvelling at America’s abilities and their implications, what it might mean to be able to open your own personal rifts in Thedas or be able to go home, but— there’s still a fondness in his voice when he speaks of her.
“Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, the two of you don’t look at all alike. And in personality, she’s… well, ruder. Impatient. Punchy, literally and figuratively. But in other ways…”
He trails off, trying to figure out what drew the line between them besides the fact that they’re his mentees. There had to be something else which didn’t have anything to do with him.
In the end, he settles on: “She was initially afraid of her powers, too. And she’s curious and determined and independent. So, in some ways, I suppose you’re alike.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"If I say yes, can I pass time in your office again? Can we re-start our lessons?"
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Dryly, “And for someone with a saviour complex, that rankles. But it is not your fault. And— well.”
He folds his hands around the roll of clean bandage. Admitting it feels like peeling his skin off, but he forces himself to do it, words pressed through a breath, a sigh: “Besides, I miss having you in my office, too.”
no subject
Ness looks down, breathes deeply through her nose.
"Alright. I didn't ruin anything."
Harder to believe than to say, but saying it is the first step, or so she's read. She raises her stump to him for wrapping, heroically avoiding sniffling or hugging him or anything that could possibly make this any harder for him.
no subject
He delays a moment to let Ness examine her own wound (with a strict warning to not press too hard, remembering experiments with a particular cuff), letting her indulge whatever clinical curiosity she has, getting to map the progress of the healing.
Once they’re both satisfied, he starts to replace it with clean bandages, concluding, “It’s looking good. No signs of infection, and healing well.”
no subject
Ness looks at her elbow-stump, craning her neck to try to see the skin more clearly. It's easier to poke and prod and learn about it that way than to try to see it, but that's not stopping her—and hey, you know what—
"Can I—" she wiggles her fingers at Stephen, and gives his mind a polite little psychic knock. She can't see her stump clearly, but he can!
no subject
But they’re trying to get back to normal, back to these psychic exercises and the trust they imply, and so Stephen eventually nods, and Ness feels the metaphorical door open.
no subject
She's not puppeteering him—though she could, maybe, for a few minutes at least. There's a lot she could do, she thinks, levers she could pull and switches she could press—but that's not what she's here for. Seeing through Stephen's eyes isn't quite the right way to describe it—she's not hijacking his senses, more seeing what he sees like it's a moving portrait, filtered by his thoughts and impressions and focus.
Her stump through his eyes is... well, it's about as unsightly as it had seemed from her less than ideal vantage point. The scar is only just starting to settle in, raised and intense as the skin knits back together—not inflamed, though, not swollen or miscoloured. As far as she can interpret, it looks as healthy as they could hope for, and Stephen doesn't seem to see anything he didn't expect.
"Can you," she speaks out loud, it seeming more polite, then pauses, pulling her thoughts together. "Can you think more... purposefully? About what you see, from your professional perspective."
no subject
A lot of the train of thought defaults back to clean, clinical medical jargon, dense and impenetrable; but seen through his mind, she can glimpse the real meaning of it. It’s healing well. Scarification and wound sealing and limb shrinkage all within normal parameters. Still not ready for the prosthetic, but on track —
(and most importantly, not plummeting her straight to death’s doorstep anymore)
no subject
But the spell only lasts so long before she'd have to cast it again, and Stephen was hesitant enough to allow her in to begin with; she won't overstay her welcome. Her eyes re-focus as their violet glow fades, and she offers an excited smile.
"That was fascinating–I understood it all when I was reading your thoughts, but now that I'm out I only know as much as I did before, I just know that you thought it looked alright. The implications–"
Hang on–Ness trails off, smile fading as she thinks better of the commentary. Perhaps by reading his mind she could help with procedures, treatments where Stephen could use a third hand... but perhaps also it could be strange to have his knowledge co-opted so completely in that way. Besides, her remaining hand won't be much more effective than his own, no matter how adept she's forced to get with it.
So. A different topic, then.
"What happened to me?" It's no less fraught a subject, but in light of what he thought about death's door, it's the one that's most top-of-mind. "That is, I know that the site became infected. Was it that? An infection that grew out of control? I can't remember much after I first returned to the infirmary."
no subject
Stephen scoots back a little so he’s not quite so close, no longer all up in her business for the examination. “It was, yes,” he says. “If only Volante had finished his experiments, the penicilin would have helped a great deal. But without any actual antibiotics yet… we’ve nothing to combat an infection effectively.”
He hesitates over the next point. He doesn’t want her to feel to blame any more than she already does.
“I suspect your bones being crushed by the bookcase also complicated matters. It wasn’t as clean of an amputation as it could’ve been otherwise, in a fully-controlled environment. Your body was worn out, undertaking the recovery and regrowing tissue and fighting the infection alike. Sometimes it’s just too much.”
no subject
But he didn't, and they can't change anything about how it went now. Whatever regrets either of them might have, they'll have to live with them.
"Was he—I hope he didn't feel... responsible, in any way. He's no more at fault than either of us," if Stephen is insistent that she shouldn't blame herself, and she insists that Stephen shouldn't blame himself, certainly Volante is even less a part of that conversation than they are. More quietly, an aside to herself, "I'll have to check in with him."
She tries to think to what she does remember of that long, hazy period: snippets and snatches of conversation, fogged apparitions and a heavy blanket of confusion over all. What did she say? Nothing coherent, likely, and she has no secrets that she's afraid of having divulged, but—
"I, we, conversed sometimes, didn't we? I remember that I spoke to you, I can't imagine it was anything that could be described as lucid, but—"
no subject
All of it is delivered like a brisk after-action report, because he, too, would have wanted to know what he did when he was out of it. But then Stephen hesitates. “You called me… Osu, I believe. Is that someone you knew back home?”
The unfamiliar word had sounded significant: a proper noun, perhaps someone’s name.
no subject
"I called you—what?"
She stares at Stephen, wide-eyed, embarrassment rising red-hot in her cheeks. She's barely called Vazeiros osu, he never liked it when she did, it's not a normal part of her vocabulary. This is unbelievable, ridiculous—a hideous betrayal of her subconscious, even if she was hallucinating—
Not important. He asked for an explanation—but gods, how could she? She's supposed to look Stephen in the eyes and tell him— This is so mortifying.
"It... is someone i knew in Faerûn, yes," she hedges at first, not meeting his eyes, but sighs after a moment and looks at Stephen full-on, rueful. "It means father, but affectionate. Like papa, or dad."
Which certainly says some things about how her subconscious sees Stephen, doesn't it. It's not such a surprise, of course, she knows herself enough to understand what she gets out of their relationship and why his approval means so much to her. But that it's so concrete, such a formed feeling...
"I must have been hallucinating Vazeiros. That happens with fevers, doesn't it?"
(with a constitution score of 16, she's never been sick enough before to find out firsthand.)
no subject
He’d very specifically said to Gwenaëlle that he didn’t want kids. It had been a whole conversation. Funny, how he winds up here anyway—
“It does happen,” Stephen says slowly, cagily. It’s a handy excuse, but he’s also seen Vazeiros — or at least a dreamed-up version of him — and knows that they don’t look much alike, between the purple skin and white hair and height.
So eventually, he adds: “Freudian slips— that is, slips of the tongue happen. It’s fine. I mean, frankly I’m surprised I haven’t accidentally called you America yet.”
no subject
"America?" She pounces eagerly on the change in focus, happy not to linger on her unknowing mistake. "That's where you lived before this, isn't it?"
He's mentioned his former country in passing, sometimes, explained the basics of it, its name and the major cities he's made reference to. Her curiosity has induced him, even, to explain if there is a New York, is there an Old York? But that doesn't explain how a slip of the tongue could have had him calling her—oh!
"Wait, America Chavez was one of the witches from that dream! You..."
are using her to get a re-do on mistakes made with America and Wanda. Right.
Ness slumps in her seat a little, disheartened at the reminder, but she doesn't allow herself to mope.
"Are we very alike? America and I, I mean."
no subject
“Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, the two of you don’t look at all alike. And in personality, she’s… well, ruder. Impatient. Punchy, literally and figuratively. But in other ways…”
He trails off, trying to figure out what drew the line between them besides the fact that they’re his mentees. There had to be something else which didn’t have anything to do with him.
In the end, he settles on: “She was initially afraid of her powers, too. And she’s curious and determined and independent. So, in some ways, I suppose you’re alike.”