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The mind across the table was faded and blurred by the time he arrived. Not taking any chances, now that she knew for certain. Not that he could blame her. Multiplication and division, real and imaginary numbers numbers numbers. At least she wasn’t washing it down with whiskey this time. But rather a. Two. Two glasses of what appeared to be iced tea, one that she had been sipping at while she waited for him. She wasn’t glaring either.
Just watching him with that analytical coolness that made his stomach try to punch his liver out through his nose. There were too many eyes in the shadow of that look, not even having the decency to squint or peep. Scalpel sharp. Flaying back layer after layer of his skin to observe and record and document the way he writhed. Watching with the wide pupiled confidence of.
No. Mortum may not have considered herself his friend but there was the distant hope that she also didn’t consider him a toy. A plaything. An oddity to be dissected. Something to be dragged back into the dark. Yet.
“Are we going to sit in silence the whole time or was there a reason you asked me here?” clipped tight, making scissors of her teeth to cut the usually smooth vowel sounds short. Definitely annoyed with him. But she’d agreed to come. She had agreed. She. “Monsieur Abekket.”
Don’t let the lack of mon amie smack you on the way out. It gripped at Richard’s throat all the same and he had to clear the slightly sore note out with the rest of the dust. No time for pleasantries, then. No desire to ape the appearance of a friendly meet up. Or even a professional one.
“Thank you. For agreeing to meet with me again,” he fought back a wince. More than a little bit of him had hoped she would interrupt him. Ricardo would have interrupted him. Cut him off and gone straight to. She crossed her legs under the table and. The expression was supposed to be one of mildly annoyed boredom. Separation and distance. Formality. As far as he could guess.
She wasn’t pulling it off well. The curiosity always showed at the corners of her lips, the way they would grow more shallow as she tightened. Holding her questions back. Annoyed. But too many thoughts in her head, even behind the haze, to get away with being bored. Her eyes were locked for a long moment on his right arm, still hanging strangely at his side. “I wanted to give you an update,” the approaching thoughts of ‘wonder if it’s a first date, they both seem so tense,’ as whatever Mortum had ordered arrived stopped him for the moment.
“On?” but the pause was registered, both bodies leaning—when had they leaned in towards one another?—away to make room for the waitress to plop down a basket of jalapeno poppers on the table between them. The grease coating the little fried devils could have been used as survival beacons and Mortum’s eyes relaxed slightly. Numbers always left behind migraines. Sometimes nausea. Hangover style symptoms and the urge to eat the three main food groups, cheap, greasy and spicy, was occasionally included in that.
He waited until the server’s thoughts were squarely on the other table, where someone was going to leave her an even bigger tip if she swung her hips when she walked away.
“Mitzi,” the name clung to his lips. Claws digging. Digging. Piercing in deep as Mortum’s eyes hardened into diamond points. Diamond tipped bone saw teeth dragging over the nerves in his spine. Threatening to paralyze him if he so much as twitched in the wrong direction.
Beneath the table he tried to untense his legs. Tried to keep his hands above the table, fingers of his left hand shredding his napkin into tiny squares and then rolling the squares into little balls and then.
“It was rather rude of you, Abekket,” heat. Fresh blood rushing into frostbitten fingers. Searing without any blisters to show for it. Not a single inch of him could blame her for. “You didn’t even say hello,” said almost as a joke, if comedy came flavored with foxglove.
What?
What did.
“Ah, beans,” out before he could stop it and the strange…well, he did always say it with the same tone as profanity. The strange swear made her eyebrows raise, fury temporarily sidelined as the curiosity through a pointy elbow, muscling its way back to the front. Lips curling.
“Indeed?”
“Yeah,” Richard felt his good hand reaching out to take one of the battered peppers and set it on his plate, just to have something to do with the nervous energy threatening to overload his skeleton. “That’s part of it. Most of it, actually,” hedging. Dancing around the words because there was no way to say this easily. No way to. Shit. Should have tried to lead in with the armor needing repaired. Make it business, purely business and not let any memory of the bottle blonde come flouncing in. But there she was anyway, checking her reflection in Mortum’s glasses. “I…I assume you saw her recently?”
A silent crunch as that bone saw caught the edge of a vertebrae. They’d joked about her not being that sort of a doctor. Less and less funny as the vivisection pressed on and stranger and stranger organs were being revealed.
“Saw her?” holding the syllable up to the light for closer inspection, heedless of what may have been dripping off of it.
“It’s…complicated,” not meant to be a whisper, but it was all his voice would let it be, leaning back in again. A tiny spark in the back of his head when Mortum did the same, not leaning back away but instead matching his motion. Conspiring with him. The way she used to lean in when. Richard bit his lip, not hard enough. “There’s…Alright. I. You know what I am,” waiting for the nod to come and sagging with relief as Mortum indulged that need. Too generous, but he wasn’t about to argue. “I think there were,” gesturing to the side of his head, fingers wiggling uselessly. “I know there are others…in there,”
Too public. This was too public but it wasn’t as though he could ask to meet in her lab. “And there was a situation,” although it wasn’t, his brain pointed out with a deeply offended tone, as though the Farm didn’t already know where he was and what he as up to. Hard to get more public than that. All that was left was to have it plastered on every newspaper and on the 9pm broadcast. And that would be coming soon enough with Mia.
“A situation,” she echoed, annoyance creeping back in front of curiosity as he stammered and struggled his way around actually saying what the hell was going on with him. Not with him. She couldn’t give less of a fuck about him. She cared about what was going on with Mitzi.
“I was outside of this body. And uh. I think one of the. The,” fingers twitching in the air, twisting themselves into his hair to try to keep this from becoming a scene. “I’m not sure how it happened. Besides um. Being strong enough to…resilient enough to keep themselves together. One of them is inside that body now,”
Mortum seemed to take a moment to digest that information. Sipped her drink. Took a popper and placed it on her own plate. Made no move to eat. Who knew what she already knew about how possession could work? How deep her feelers went into the darker and more twisted back rooms of illicit academia. Richard hadn’t been able to find any other instances of possession and multiple minds in the same body—not in the way that he needed. Demons and mirror dimensions and consulting doctors or priests if you had these signs or symptoms. “And this person…did not recognize me? Despite having--,” a pause. Not saying shared. Nothing was shared, it was all stolen. Wasn’t it?
Richard winced. The interest was surging, he could see it in her face. The way her shoulders shifted. She was harder to read than Ricardo, but only because he was getting his minor in Ortega Body Language Studies. He might still be able to get his associates in hers. If he had to. If she kept agreeing to meet with him. If she kept taking numbers to keep her thoughts safe and private from him.
The idea that he would be able to blunt force his way through the thick weight covering her thoughts wasn’t quite ready to wake up yet. “I can’t be sure,” clearing his throat again, trying to dislodge more of Mitzi with it. Maybe if he could coat his words with enough of her memory this would go smoother. “She’s going by a different name now,” the knee jerk urge to keep. Her. She went by her now. To keep her safe. Keep her name to himself. “And when we last spoke, she told me that she had almost completely forgotten everything about…being in my head, instead,”
Like a waking nightmare, she hadn’t called it. Not out loud. But Richard’s memories, the memories of being in him, being a part of him, were giving Hope night terrors. And every time they met now, she was trying harder and harder to erase them. To forget. Completely without malice, of course. Without conscious malice. Just. Wanting to cover the exposed nerve endings with a thick layer of. Cover up the too bright, too flinch back feeling of knowing for real with heavy, muffling insulation. To be his friend. And only a friend. To not know him as intimately as she knew herself.
Couldn’t really cast blame on that, could he? Even Richard didn’t want to know himself as well as he had to.
“Interesting,” was all Mortum offered, for the moment. Watching his face like a hawk. Ah, beans. He couldn’t even guess what his face had been up to. Twisting? Probably. The drugs in her system kept what she was truly making of all this neatly tucked out of sight. “Is that all, then?”
“That’s all about her, yeah. If you see her again just know that it’s not Mitzi, or. I mean. Me. I suppose. Anymore,”
Something clicked in Mortum’s jaw. Whether it was the decision to believe him or simply the decision to pretend to believe him to see where this conversation was leading…well. He couldn’t tell with the heavy curtains pulled over her mind. They didn’t budge with his gentle prodding, and he knew a more. A less. He wouldn’t be able to make it subtle enough for the good Doctor not to notice.
Another shift across the table. Tension that he hadn’t registered being released as she sighed again.
“Just her body,” ah. The sticking point. Barbed wire in her tone that dug in deep. Mitzi had been her friend, as much as people in their line of work could have such luxuries. And the revelation that it had always been Richard in there. That Mitzi was as much a person as his sweater.
“Just the body,” nodding, swallowing back bile and wishing it was a beer instead of the watery iced tea he had to take a swig of. Not a sweater. Never a sweater. A real, living human being. One who hadn’t reasonably been about to get up and start having a life of her own, but still. Meat and chemicals that had been a person, once.
“I had half a mind to mock you for the new haircut she has, but I’ll save that for your own,” almost. Almost lighter? As Mortum gestured loosely up at his own hair. Not an olive branch. But it also wasn’t another incision. Richard felt his fingers untangling and sliding back down onto the table as Mortum leaned back in her booth. Tapping at the cooling popper with the tines of her fork and seeming to enjoy the slight crunching sound it made.
“Thanks,” hollow with surprise. She was making jokes? Small ones, true, but. More than he deserved.
“Don’t mention it,” spearing the appetizer, letting out a little plume of steam as if to punctuate the command. “What else was it you wanted to discuss?” still clipped tight, but something had changed. Something had caught her interest in the idea that his body hopping was not restricted to himself, but indeed other people.
“Well. The uh, situation that I mentioned I was in,” slamming the brakes and stopping hard enough to make Mortum’s eyebrows lift.
“Everything taste alright, over here?” the waitress had swung back into their orbit, thoughts still glossy and light. She didn’t think their date was going well. Wondering if she should ask them if they wanted to split the check.
“Everything is fine,” Mortum took the lead, smooth and smiling back to the other woman in a way that said, surprisingly unsubtly, that she was welcome to leave any time. The waitress picked up on it, thoughts muttering, and turned swiftly on her heel. Oh. Oh, the good doctor was very curious then. Hiding it better now that she took a bite of the appetizer and has trying to huff around the melted cheese burning her tongue with any amount of dignity.
Richard earned himself a half glare from his equally failed attempt not to huff out a chuckle. He cleared it away with short cough in his good fist.
“Monsieur.” Not a suggestion. More like a warning—he’d better get back to business quickly. Even if that was the corner of her mouth ticking upwards.
“Right,” and Richard could feel his voice dropping out of his throat. A stone through still water. Settling at the bottom of the ocean and coming back coated in ice and filled with strange brine. “I was in an altercation with the Catastrofiend,”
Mortum stopped chewing. Eyes slightly wide on his face before she swallowed audibly and put her fork down. The rest of her face remained carefully blank, but there were questions beginning to line up behind her teeth. “And yet, here you are,” giving him a vague gesture, doubt evident in the motion. Which wasn’t entirely fair, something in him protested. Sidestep had fought the Catastrofiend once before, after all. Even if this newest encounter had ended in a similar way, surely Mortum knew that he’d fought it before. Or. Was she poking at him?
“Not unscathed,” he heard the reply more than he registered saying it, motioning to his damaged right arm.
“Indeed,”
“The armor—your armor,” he corrected, knowing that a small appeal to her pride would be both obvious and at least a little successful. “Kept me alive. Kept my arm attached to my body and most of my blood inside it as well,” if it hadn’t pressurized itself around the area automatically. Had it been automatically? Or had the Rat King triggered it? Either way, the feature had saved his life.
An open ended pause and in it Mortum shifted again, sitting back and crossing her arms over her chest. Impossible to tell if the appeal had landed. “I am pleased to know it performed to your standards. I assume then, that this meeting is to discuss repairing it?” back to being clipped. Back to. Had he said something wrong? Or. More wrong than he already had.
“Among the other things, yeah,” maybe he hadn’t. If. The very slight way her eyes softened when they looked away from him, staring at a far wall for a longer moment, lips pressing in against one another. “There…was something wrong with it,” half remembered, but those brief flashes before his anger had gotten the better of him still dangled into his mind like fat, venomous spiders. “Its body was wrong. More wrong than I’ve ever seen it,”
“How so?” any attempts at pretending to be bored, to be detached, were gone. She was back to leaning in, elbows on the table, food left to cool and congeal on the plates between them.
Richard found himself leaning in, although he only had the one elbow now to match her. It was too familiar feeling, too. Stop thinking about it. Answer her question. “It was like it had degraded, if that makes sense. Started to break apart or…decay isn’t quite right,” but it was as close as he could get. That rancid smell. The way it had twisted, wrong. Wrong even for its already bizarre form. “It was still fast and dangerous. But its mind felt,” shaking his head, eyes leaving her in favor of staring down at the cheap formica tabletop. “Drained,”
But that wasn’t right either. Drained the way a husk of a nearly dead insect was drained. Not quite hollowed out bones. Alive, still. But in a way Richard couldn’t bring himself to envy.
From the look on her face, it was evident that Mortum agreed with him. Shoulders tense for a little too long, eyes not meeting his for a fraction of a second more than he would have expected. She wasn’t afraid of him—her use of numbers notwithstanding—but. There was something there. A mix of fascination and.
And then it was gone. Her mind seemed to rotate back to where it was needed. Focused in. A microscope dial turning until the slide beneath it was in perfect focus. A. That. Wasn’t right? He shouldn’t have been able to sense that, not yet. Not with the drug in her system. Was it wearing off, it couldn’t be wearing off, it couldn’t have been in her system for longer than. “Was that the only damage done to the suit?” if Mortum noticed any change, if she felt any cool melt-water drip into her mind, she didn’t show it. The heavy curtain cover over her mind was slipping far sooner than either of them had any right to expect.
“It was the only thing I couldn’t repair on my own,” he confirmed, tongue suddenly heavy in his mouth.
He could do it.
He could feel that he could do it, if he wanted. It would be terribly easy now, to twitch back the fabric. To reveal whatever was under the covers.
Instead he felt the fingers on his right hand try to curl into a fist, the fingers and knuckles moving strangely, the nerves not responding in the right ways and sending a lance of pain up through to his neck. Gasp out of his lips before he could think to stop it. Mortum flinched but otherwise made no move. Stayed silent as the pain faded. “Hard to get much done with one hand,”
“Mm,” breathing in steadily through her nose and then puffing out a sigh through her mouth. Taking another breath and then reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I will. Take a look, Monsieur Abekket. At twice my normal rate. And you will owe me a favor,” hand sliding to rub over her left eye. The migraine was starting to settle in, Richard could feel the echoes of her pain in his teeth. Distant but gathering speed.
Too fast. Maybe it was the pills themselves? Had she gotten a bad batch of numbers? Or taken them too soon before he had arrived? Whatever was causing it, there was no way Mortum hadn’t noticed as well. There was movement of her reaching into.
“Don’t,” and freezing hard, expression unkind and breathing slowing down as she tried to keep herself under control. His tone was too close to a plea for her not to be startled by it. “Don’t take another one,” Richard could feel something tight in his stomach twisting sickly—the look Mortum gave him was. Don’t put a name on it. Putting a name on it would only make it feel more permanent. “I’ll head out, now,” scooting his chair back slightly, good hand raised palm up in supplication, as though she were reaching for her gun and not her pill case. Equal dangers. “I agree to your price,”
“You shouldn’t, yet. I haven’t told you the favor I need from you,” and there it was, the slip of her mind, too fast. Too keen edged. Wondering if he’d seen inside, if he knew what she wanted, what she was interested in and. Richard pulled back, physically and. And the other way, as well.
“I trust you,” not entirely true. But there was enough there. She hadn’t shot him. Hadn’t exposed him. She. Had agreed to meet with him here. Even if it was just a misplaced lingering fondness for Mitzi.
It still seemed to take her by surprise. “What?” softer than it merited, watching him scoot even further back and move to stand up.
“I trust you,” he repeated. “Which might be stupid of me, but I can’t really ask you to trust me on it, can I?” trying for the joke, to dull something that could have sliced. There was no hint of a smile on her face, not even a whisper of taking that statement as funny.
“Very well,” hand not moving from her purse, fingers still curled, eyes pinned on him as he grabbed his bag to leave. “You know where to leave it,” and it could have been anything. The money. The armor. Whatever it was she was going to ask him to do. Steal something? She knew Mad Dog wasn’t a thief, not usually.
“I know,” and he shouldn’t. Shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t do it. Shouldn’t. Should fucking not, “It was nice. To see you again, I mean,” which seemed to hit somewhere that she wasn’t expecting to have to block.
“Was it?” disguising whatever choked quality her voice had with a long drink of her iced tea and firmly looking. Not away from him. Looking very squarely at him, in fact. At the semi-limp arm at his right side.
“Yes.” It had been. Mortum had been his friend, once. Whatever that word could mean in their situation.
And something pushed at her mind. At her lips, pressing thin again as if it could stop whatever it was she wanted to say. Nothing made it through, though. And when Richard turned to leave, Mortum stayed silent and made no move to follow him.