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When they get to Pentaghast's flat, Sera makes a beeline for the bathroom and shuts herself in with the light off for a couple minutes. She's not – she isn't – she can't be – upset, but she needs, uh, a moment. She isn't nauseous and she doesn't have to expel anything from her body in another way, except for a tight ball in her chest, but Pentaghast probably assumed she did and doesn't bother her before she has the chance to unfurl herself and turn the light on.
Time to assess the damage:
No bones broken,
No lost teeth,
Black eye forming,
Skinned knees,
Bruises also forming on her left ankle and right elbow (that's gonna make shooting hurt for a little bit),
Some splinters from fucking around on wood floors,
Stinging lungs.
So, really nothing worse that her bruised ego.
Sera exits the bathroom to find Pentaghast having a hushed conversation with her mobile in the entryway. Pentaghast says, “gotta go, she came out,” and slips the phone into her pocket. The look she gives Sera is frighteningly motherly.
“Are you -” she hesitates, “okay?”
Sera rolls her eyes, shrugs, smiles, but it doesn't placate the social worker.
“If you won't go to the hospital, at least let me look you over.” Pentaghast starts walking toward her. “Were there any sprains? Can I see your hands?” She reaches out her free hand to take Sera's, but Sera crosses her arms, burying her hands into her sides.
“Hey, I don't like being nursed or mommied. Do you have a kit around here? I'll patch myself up and be out of your way.”
Pentaghast pauses, “Mommied?”
“Mothered! Jesus, leave it alone and don't mind me – and tell your friend not to either.” Sera scoffs. “Go get your precious sleep.”
Pentaghast looks like Sera has just slapped her. (God, how does the woman work with children for a living?) She snaps back quickly, though, and bombards Sera with even more strange mercy.
“I am so sorry for making you feel like you're a burden on me,” Pentaghast says hurriedly. “I don't think you're a burden at all! Please let me help you, there's no shame at all in it.” She pauses. “After all, if I help you, you will be able to get on your way sooner.”
Sera backs away while Pentaghast tries to placate her, but Pentaghast only follows, and Sera ends up back at the bathroom, and somewhere during this Sera uncrosses her arms, and Pentaghast takes her hands ever so gently, and the look on her face is so sincere...
Sera relents. Pentaghast turns on the bathroom light, leads Sera to the toilet, has her sit down, and gets out a first aid kit from a cabinet above the toilet, which gives Sera a nice eyeful of her rack.
Before Sera finishes staring, Pentaghast crouches and examines her eye, then straightens. “I will be right back.” Then, while Sera commits Pentaghast's boobs to memory, Pentaghast disappears into the dark flat for a little bit and returns with a bag of ice and a cloth. “Hold this over your eye,” she hands it to Sera, who moves to slap it on her bruise, but grabs it before she can. “Gently!”
More gently now, Sera holds the ice over her eye and shakes a little bit in amusement, for Pentaghast kneels before her to administer care to her knees. This is going better than expected.
She yelps when something that stings makes contact with skin. “What the shite?” She jerks her knees up and hides them under her free arm, kicking Pentaghast in the process. Pentaghast, in turn, yanks at Sera's ankles and growls.
“Don't do that!” She snaps. “It's just antibacterial spray.”
But she stands up and takes a washcloth from a basket on the counter, wets it, and puts some soap on it. “This should not sting so much.” She kneels again and puts a firm hand on Sera's thigh then dabs the scraped skin with the cloth. It doesn't sting. When either her patience starts to wear, or she trusts Sera not to kick her again, Pentaghast begins to rub the cloth around.
Sera chews on her lip and takes the ice off her eye for a moment because it's starting to feel uncomfortably cold. She considers the woman before her – Cassandra – a social worker with a nice body and probably a strict church-y lifestyle, considering how uncomfortable she looked at Bianca's. Sera considers conversation topics. What had this wealthy foreigner been doing in a pub in Littlemore? Why did she jump to the defense of scrappy lesbians who started fights? Is she Spanish? Does she go to uni?
“So uh,” Sera says.
Pentaghast glances up at her.
“You from somewhere else?”
Pentaghast sighs. “What tipped you off?”
“Locals don't mind troublemakers like me.” Sera smiles as subtly as she can. “You'll never get any sleep if you make a career out of helping us.”
“Is that the culture here? The young people causing trouble and no one trying to set them straight?”
Sera crosses her arms. “Is that what you're doing, then?”
Pentaghast's face hardens into a poker mask, and stands up to rinse off the washcloth. Sera's question hangs in the air until she finally settles down again and says, “this is how you live?”
Sera sighs. This isn't going to get anywhere, after all. “Did you run around stopping fights all the time back home?”
Pentaghast flashes a nice, wry smile, but it's gone in a second. She doesn't reply. After rinsing off the soap, she tapes a couple gauzes to Sera's knees and gently takes hold of her ankle to look at the bruise. Immediately after the fight, Pentaghast had checked it for twisting or spraining, but there was just the bruise.
“Will you let me touch your bruises to wash and put ointment on them?” She reaches down by her knee and pulls out a little white tube which she hands to Sera. It's a bunch of medical bullshite to Sera, so she shrugs after pretending to reading the label and hands it back.
“Yeah, it's fine,” she says.
Pentaghast pulls Sera's foot, shoe and all, into her lap and cleans off the ankle, all the while filling Sera with even more flurries. It's even worse when she breaks out the stuff in the tube and rubs some in. It smells faintly minty and feels cold when being applied, then starts to tingle. Sera's starting to lose her composure (pff, like she has good composure ever anyway) by the time Pentaghast frees her foot and moves on to her elbow. This bruise being treated is just as weird but a little less sensual, since it's on an elbow. When she's done, Pentaghast clears her throat and returns the tube of sinful goo to her kit.
She takes Sera's hands to examine the splinters.
There are more on the left hand because Sera had been using her right one to brawl more than keep herself steady (at least until her arm got kicked). Pentaghast stands up again to grab something out of the cabinet. While she rummages through a makeup pouch or something, Sera enjoys the view and puts the ice pack back over her eye.
Since it's taking a while for Pentaghast to find what she's looking for, Sera tries her hand at conversation again: “Are you from Spain?”
“No,” Pentaghast hums, “my family lived in Barcelona for hundreds of years, and I grew up there, but the Pentaghasts have lived in Genova for the last century.”
“And now they live in Oxford?”
“And now I live in Oxford.” She finds the tweezers and kneels back down. “And what about you?”
“Nothing exciting, if you want to trade grandmummy stories.” She recoils her free hand to her chest, “hey, why don't I soak these for a bit?” Sera is not looking forward to getting the splinters removed.
Pentaghast sets the tweezers down, offers her hand – but when Sera takes it, moves to grasp her good elbow – and leads Sera through the dark hall to a dark room that's maybe the kitchen. Pentaghast turns on the light and, indeed, it is a kitchen. She leaves Sera by the oven that is by a sink and rummages in a low cabinet by the fridge for a moment before producing a large red bowl from it. Sera deliberately avoids touching anything or stretching her hands too much because they're starting to hurt or she's starting to notice the pain; while she does this, she looks around the kitchen, which reveals a little more of Pentaghast's character. There are hints of the woman being a cook in a wooden cutting board, a mortar and pestle, a bowl of fruit. But Pentaghast also has a few gadgets. There is a small coffeemaker sitting beside a microwave oven. Sera wonders if the woman uses them both every day, or if she buys meals. Or does she make everything herself and keep them for show?
“Here,” Pentaghast says. She presents Sera with the large bowl, now full of water and cushioned by a towel. “Go sit at the table and soak your hands in this.”
Sera realizes she left the icepack in the bathroom.
“I, uh-”
“Oh, let me.” Pentaghast sets the bowl at the little table by the window.
Sera nervously retrieves the icepack and sits obediently at the designated place. Pentaghast takes the other seat. Is living by oneself lonely, Sera wonders: does Pentaghast even know her neighbors in this cushy flat?
“Did you move straight to Oxford from Geneva?”
“Yes,” Pentaghast takes one of Sera's hands and places it in the bowl. The water is cold. “It was no small task, and not a brief one either.” She hesitates. “Between transferring to a new parish and a new court, it has taken me about a year to move.”
“So you work with the law?” Sera swirls her fingers around in the water.
“With children and families, yes. I try to keep families together if it's best for the children, and find better homes if they're beyond saving.”
“What a hero!” Sera doesn't conceal her disdain.
“I don't do this for glory, I want to help the less fortunate as much as possible.” Pentaghast has clearly had this discussion before. There's a little pride in her speech, like if Sera pushed her even further, she'd get into a full rant about the needy and how the fortunate must help them out.
“Ugh, stop it, you sound so uppity!” Sera giggles and sets the ice pack on the table. “Can we talk about something else? Why'd you leave your family?”
Pentaghast chuckles, clearly taken aback. “I'd rather not discuss that.”
“All right, how about Oxford? Is it nice when you're rich?”
Pentaghast isn't really taken aback by the jab. “It is,” she says bluntly but not proudly. “Do many locals go to the school?”
Sera buries her hands in the water. “Not the little people, no.”
“Why not?”
“I don't know, it's repulsive there! I'd rather meet foreigners on my own time than a classroom and I can't stand being talked down to. Those professors, they can smell it on you if you're not the right kind of student.”
Pentaghast starts worrying about Sera again; she picks up the ice pack and presses it against her face. “Let me hold this on, or you'll get a headache.”
“I already have a headache because you made me think about Oxford.”
“You brought it up!” Pentaghast takes Sera's hand and starts looking over the splinters. She sighs, “I was sheltered in Barcelona from the social disparity, and Geneva does not have so much of it. I apologize for my ignorance.”
“It's fine, whatever. Would you get the splinters out of my hands please?”
Pentaghast quietly sets about doing that. Sera is not so quiet; she whines and loudly complains whenever a bit of wood is pulled out or some skin is pinched. When Pentaghast finishes one hand (the left had a lot more splinters than the right), Sera guards her hand and won't let Pentaghast take it.
“Will you stop?”
“Just-just give me a minute!”
“You'll feel better when they're all gone.” Pentaghast puts her hands on the table as Sera crosses hers under her arms. “And besides, the sooner I'm done, the sooner you can get home.”
“Oh, I'm in no rush.” Sera stares at Pentaghast's hands. “It's not so bad here.”
“Well some of us have work to wake up early for, pardon me.”
So much for taking the bait. Sera grumbles and lets her hand be mended, cursing and squirming the whole time.
She jumps up from the table. “Guess I'm being put out, then?”
Pentaghast rises more slowly. “You can do what you wish, but I will be going to bed now.”
“You won't want to deal with me in the morning.” Sera says hurriedly then pauses. “Thank you.” She puts one damp hand on Pentaghasts shoulder and the other on her face, and presses her mouth into the other woman's, takes her lower lip between her own. She breaks off the kiss to breathe “see you around,” into Pentaghast's mouth as she trails her fingers up to her other cheek. Pentaghast hasn't reacted at all, she just stares wide-eyed, her mouth slack.
Sera kisses her again, then flees to escape the aftermath.