tampered | somehow she manages in her misery { completed }

somehow she manages in her misery { completed }

When; Saturday night
Rating; PG-13+? (some mild blood & gore)
Characters; Claire Bennet (

adamantined) and Severus Snape (

eduronox)
Summary; Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (boggarts, Death Eaters, and cheerleaders)
Log;

It had never entered his mind in life. No, not even the ghost of the thought had ever courted him. It had taken a few weeks for it to occur to him in the City, and another few still for the concept to simmer and work its way into his consciousness.

He knows it's a foolish desire; a pointless, hopeless goal that will only frustrate him. And yet it's a project for eternity, and an eternity he has.

Severus stands over a basin in the back of his shop - he's not at his laboratory because the idea struck him as he was closing and everything else fell away, it's a problem, an addiction, he's got this thing with his mind when he lets it go - sleeves rolled up, wand set somewhere else. He knows it's going to hurt but he pours the solution over the exposed underside of his left forearm anyway.

For a moment it does what it's meant to, and the black parts of his skin smolder and hiss, releasing caustic vapor (the pain - horrific, yes - is there but he just winces a little, having broken his nervous reactions to some time ago), leaving the untouched parts with just an unfortunate burning.

But then something sparks and flesh shouldn't do that--

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Many of the lights are off or low, but she knows her way through the place with her eyes closed by now, barely having to feel along the counter and the back shelves to wind her way through the back room. She makes no efforts to be quiet, but she's cautious by nature these days and makes her way toward the light in the back softly, rolling her sleeves up and -

Claire knows that smell. She's severely singed herself enough to know what burning flesh smells like. It's likely (hopefully) just a potion of some kind, but she's paranoid enough anymore that she quickens her pace just in case.

Coming around the door frame a little quicker than she anticipated, Claire practically barrels into the room in her haste to see what, exactly, is going on, but what she sees isn't remotely what she is expecting. There are sparks and there is Severus and she's fairly sure that saying, "What are you doing?" with such astonishment wasn't ever a part of her plan.

She says it anyway - "What are you doing?" - but it comes out mangled and scared in her rush to turn on the cold water tap.

He's so absorbed in what he's doing that he doesn't notice the chime of the wards. It's not the 'you have a customer' chime anyway; those wards would be closed off, now, only letting in employees. Like Claire.

The second he notices her in a flash of pale hair about the doorway he swears and shoves his arm into the basin, which is filled with an intense healing potion, thick and translucent.

"It's-- hell-- it's fine!" he half-yells over his shoulder, the sick smell of burning skin still thick in the air, but at least it's stopped. He's wincing, and when he looks down at the wreckage, still obscured by that potion, he cringes visibly, his concentration shaken.

Claire isn't afraid of things like this. She's seen herself break open like china and then mend back together again. She's had bones stick out of her chest and her rib cage sliced down the middle. Blood and burns and pipes sticking out of bodies don't disgust her or scare her. Not on herself, at least. When she sees them on other people, her heart beats so hard in her chest it nearly pounds right out of her breastbone. When she'd seen Jackie, under the pressing terror and utter calm, she had wanted to be sick and had wanted to cry, and the case is no different here.

She's half-yelling herself when she says, "What do you mean fine? It can't be fine. I could smell -"

Her voice cuts off and she tries to peer into the sink. I can fix this, she thinks, but not for long and not seriously. She's too busy looking at his arm, and it's bad and she looks up at him again and repeats herself: "What are you doing?"

For a heartbeat he's furious that she's interrupted him and he's gearing up to scream at her like she's a fumbling student, but it requires he turn around more, and the second he tries it, pain shoots up his arm and he thinks he might faint, so he turns back forward and grips the table with his right hand, left forearm still submerged. The potion is red-hued now, and through the murky substance, he can see muscle, slowly reforming.

He takes a steadying breath. He shouldn't be doing this here. He should have sealed up the shop if he was going to do this here. This was just asking to be interrupted. Stupid.

"It's fine," he repeats, quiet this time, though his voice is tense, shaken. "I just need a few minutes. You - what are you doing here? Are you all right?"

"I'm sorry," she blurts out, at his side still, and immediately she regrets it and wants the words back.

No she isn't. She is not sorry at all. She is furious. It's one thing for someone like her to toy with something like this. It's something entirely different for someone like Severus to do it, too. Claire doesn't know what sort of reasoning allows this line of thinking, but as she stares hard at his arm she still wants those words back, still feels justified in feeling like that.

When she answers, it's somewhat distant, her eyes on his arm, half-morbidly fascinated and half-making absolutely sure that it all heals as it should. "I'm fine." That's a lie. "I'm fine. I just wanted to - I don't know. I should've pinged you first or something, I don't know."

As an afterthought, she touches the back of his good arm, just above his elbow, and squeezes. She doesn't know why. Maybe she hopes to be reassuring, though it's clear he doesn't need it.

He tenses up when she gets near him, first and foremost making certain that his forearm is facing palm-down in the basin. She touches him and it's an effort not to startle or jerk away. He can't remember the last time someone has touched him at all in a way that wasn't accidental or absolute necessity, or some peripheral balancing act. It's frightening.

"I-- nothing happened?"

He sounds awkward and anxious, he knows that, and he tries again. "I don't mean to say that you aren't permitted to-- I just."

Fail harder, Severus, that'll help-- "Do you need something?"

It's not that he's trying to get rid of her, but he's very under dressed and obviously in the middle of something and has his half-disintegrated forearm stuck in a bucket of regenerative potion and he has no idea what to do. His first thought is that she's come to get him and inform him of something horrible - is Regulus dead again? Did Sylar come after her? Did her father leave? Is, hells forbid, Sirius back? What? Did Lupin eat somebody?

She lets go, sensing how uncomfortable he is, looks at his arm in the basin, looks back up at him, looks at the frayed ends of her sleeves. With her head down, Claire starts to say something, opens her mouth but actively has trouble getting what she wants to to come out. She thinks her stomach hurts but can't be sure, which is a strange thought but one that she can't help.

After a minute, she looks at him directly again and manages to get something out. "I couldn't - Zach is just - I didn't want to be in the apartment anymore. I can't stand looking at Zach like that and not doing something about it and my shadow was shouting at me all day, you know? I just... I didn't want to be there anymore with nothing to do but look at the network or play cards or something and you said something last night about the boggart thing I don't know."

It comes out in a rush, and she has to take a breath when she finishes speaking, winding her hands in the loose elastic around her wrists. Guilt clouds her head now, and she swallows, the tang of the potion and the lingering scent of burnt flesh sharp in her throat.

"You're fine, I'm... I shouldn't have been doing this here. I apologize for frightening you." His voice is quiet, calm by now. It still hurts but there's nothing to be done about it so he just stands there. His skin is reforming now and it's an extremely bizarre situation. This substance isn't something used at Hogwarts or even St. Mungo's; too many rare dead things in it, killed in ways that trap their life essence. It works fast (though not nearly as fast as Claire herself works), but it hurts. It hurts like hell, actually, and it just compounds on the pain from the initial damage.

"I gave Regulus the day off, because of the damn.. shadow thing." Come to think of it, why isn't she going to see him? Though it's a bit late, anyway.

She watches again, fascinated on a base level now, interested, almost, in comparing. If she did the same damage, she would be fine by now. Maybe she should consider letting -

No.

"You didn't scare me," she says, then shakes her head immediately, so hard that her ponytail works its way across her shoulders and settles haphazardly on the left one. "It's okay," she corrects. She worries her lip a moment, starts, "What were you -"

But it's none of her business, and he's made that clear enough without coming out and saying it. She's learned to read the obvious and to appreciate the subtleties. Regulus is somewhat easier to talk about, however, as things in regard to that are less subtle. "I saw him earlier tonight," she replies, tugging at her hair now, nervous fidget, "for a little while. Can I, uh, do you need... help with anything? I can get something..."

He half-listens after she begins and then stops to ask. He wonders if he should just come out and say it. Would she ask Regulus otherwise? Is the imagination worse than the truth? Would she even care and, concerning that, does he care what she cares?

He doesn't want Regulus to know what he's up to, though he can't pinpoint why. Maybe it's because Regulus was only a Death Eater for so long. He never had to deal with fourteen years of unending, slow burning.

Severus wants the Dark Mark off of his arm. But he knows it'll never be gone.

"...I'm trying to remove something," he says, not looking at her, flexing his hand a bit, wincing as he does so. "It's not something I'd like to broadcast."

How would he even explain it to her? It's like having a swastika and an iron cross eagle, except Hitler is psychically connected to it. Christ. Really. He shifts, rolling his left sleeve down, not caring about getting the potion on it or how raw and painfully oversensitive his skin is. He doesn't want her to see it. It doesn't occur to him that she might have already seen her boyfriend's.

"Ah.. you could run the tap with room temperature water, I don't imagine hot or cold would be terribly pleasant.."

Claire nods and moves slowly now, like she's tired or moving through water. She does as she's told, however, rolling her sleeves back, unblemished forearms, and turning the taps on, adjusting them as well as she can. Though she tries to make it perfect, she's sure it's too warm and keeps turning the cold water on. Some intrinsic part of her has to get it perfect or she'll just fall apart.

Over her shoulder she watches him, saying, "You don't have to - I'm not going to say anything." For a brief moment she leaves it at that, silence in the room except the water running and her pulse pounding in her own ears. But then she picks up the thread before he has a chance to say anything at all. "Anyone. I won't say anything to anyone."

And that includes Regulus. She's kept enough secrets in her life, keeping one more doesn't exactly seem horrendous, and because it's Severus' secret, it doesn't bother her nearly as much as it might if it were someone else. If she had found Regulus in this position, she would have told Severus immediately, but that doesn't seem pertinent now: Severus already knows what Severus is doing.

"I think it's okay now," she eventually points out, meaning the water, stepping back and wiping her wet hands off on her thighs.

He's aware that he's frightened her, but there's nothing to be done about it. There's nothing comforting that he can say, except a lie, and he's got enough of those coiled around him already. So he just moves on.

Severus pushes his sleeve all the way down to his wrist before he removes his arm from the basin, slicking off the substance (which smells a bit like bleach) as much as he can before moving to the sink to rinse off. It stings, but he refuses to react, not wanting to make her feel responsible for anything (a strange desire, seeing as a month ago he was only tolerating her, when did this happen?).

He can still see the outline of that black tattoo through the wet white fabric, and it unsettles him. Fortunately his arm is turned inside, away from her. He stares at it. There's a reason why he covers up so obsessively.

A minute or so passes and he cleans up, still moving gingerly, and twists off the tap.

"...Thank you." For fixing the water. For not flipping out. Whichever.

Claire moves over to the other side of the room, both to give him space and to get away from what's just happened. She rifles through things she knows she's allowed to touch, tidies a small mess she left there earlier and forgot about - at least that's what she tells herself - and keeps her back to him until he's finished.

She turns when the tap goes off. "You're welcome." It comes out somewhat automatically, but she does mean it, even if she thinks he has nothing to be thanking her for. When you get down to it, they're both kind of pathetic people in a pathetic situation, and it doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon. Claire can try, however.

"So, uh, you mentioned something about the boggart thing?" She looks at his arm unconsciously, and then rubs the same spot on her own, as if it's burned her, too. Claire poses it like a question, although it's not. Her tone is full of Please, don't kick me out yet and a million other things she can't bring herself to ask or say.

He flexes his fingers more, working out the pain of too-new tendons and nerves. The solution is incredible. It took him a long time to brew it. Now that his blood is mixed in with it, it'll be useless (even damaging) used on anyone else, but he can store it for his own future use. At home, he'd be in prison for even having acquired the ingredients.

Severus tugs at the cuff of his left sleeve, making a bit of a face as it refuses to cooperate for a moment, then wincing as it does, drying quickly with a spell that's almost too warm to tolerate against his skin. The now-dry fibers are rough and uncomfortable, near pain, but he ignores it in favor of moving to put away that basin, sealed.

"Ah, a boggart..." he says, voice mild, taking on something of a half-there air, not unlike teaching second year potions, sometime mid-year, when his mind is on auto-pilot. "They're an entity that takes on the shape of what you fear the most. They're very accurate and, due to that, dangerous, if what you fear is something lethal."

"That's what I was told, basically," she says, trying not to sound overly indulgent or interested. She avoids using Lupin's name because she's one-hundred-percent positive that the mood in this room is already negative enough, and she has no desire to see it sour even more. Maybe she should go. It takes her about five minute to get from the shop back to her apartment on Zach's bike, but Zach is back there. So is everything else.

Claire has a lot of fears, but they're hidden down deep, most of them anyway, and while she isn't entirely sure that Sylar manifesting as she saw him on Homecoming night is a great idea, it's the only thing she can wrap her head around. She feels paralyzed by him now: where before his intent was clear but his ability to get close to her was lacking, now the chance that Angela or even Peter might let him within striking distance of her and the idea that he's manipulating them all to do it chills her where she stands.

Not that he would want her anymore, having what she has. She imagines herself sometimes, when she thinks of this, of what might have happened, of how it might have went, and she hates everyone and herself for it.

"I kind of wanted to see one, but... I mean." She just kind of motions uselessly at him, not sure how to put that into words.

"People tell bedtime stories that laughter gets rid of them," he tells her as he slides that basin onto a cabinet shelf, locking it away, "but it's the spell that modifies their structure too quickly in a direction they're not meant to go, and they collapse in on themselves. It forces them to work against their nature. Darkness to light. It's just as easy to get rid of them by simply approaching them with a large group of people. It'll get confused and implode in on itself."

Obviously, boggarts are not the smartest or most complex of creatures. Potion away, he picks his coat up and pulls it on, careful over his left arm. He has to pause to unbutton it there, the constricting pressure still too much.

"I know," he says quietly, and meets her eyes. "You want to know if you're really afraid, or if you've gone numb."

She watches him, not even out of the corner of her eye or by bending her head to hide it. Claire is unabashed in her concern. It doesn't pay to hide away things like that, even if he might not want it. She's not afraid to help him if he needs it, actually wants to if it'll do some good. There's always pain when she heals, always, and she can't imagine anymore what it must feel like to have something like that initial burn, snap, peel linger.

Claire comes over a little bit more as he unbuttons his coat, feeling less like one of them is going to bolt now, feeling more under control. There's a mental image that she has in her mind of the wound - open, raw red and eaten away passed tissue and sinew and down into bone, naked white exposed, staring up. She gets rid of it by focusing in on what he's saying, keeping an eye on him.

"No," she half-heartedly corrects. "Well... partly, I guess. I think I'm afraid, but I don't want to be. That's what you're supposed to do, right, if you are? Face your fear? I figure this is a little safer than the alternative." She pauses, moving around the room again to have something to do with herself other than stand there. "And you're here anyway. It's not like anything could go wrong." Claire doesn't even know if boggarts can go wrong, but she trusts him so inanely that it doesn't matter, though that does make her wonder: "Can they like... kill you? Scare you to death or something?"

Cut open your head, anyone?

It's unsurprising that her inherent goal is less bleak than he expects of people; sometimes it takes him a minute to remember that not everyone is as cored out inside as he is. Even lately, with how he's... been.

He feels her eyes on him, but he doesn't react. He thinks about saying, 'It's just pain,' but doesn't. Bleak. It doesn't matter - it's just nerve endings flaring up and sending sparks to your brain. You only feel it for as long as it lasts, and then nothing. He finds it funny, in a way, that he can still feel pain this acutely when dead. He knew people who inflicted pain on themselves to feel alive.

Surprise. You feel dead, too. Sort that one out.

"I've heard of a few cases. Some very young children, caught alone, afraid of drowning or the like. It's not common, though. I think the only adult case in recent memory was a man afraid of a homicidal tube-sock man. They found him strangled to death by giant tube socks."

This is all said very deadpan, because it's true. Unfortunately.

"I'm not sure offhand where one is, however." Pause. "A boggart, that is." Not a sock monster.

Though he doesn't know where one of those is, either.

Edited 2008-11-15 15:25 (UTC)

It takes a minute to sink in, and the silence that stretches between the end of what he's said and the beginning of what she does is very long. She spends this time staring straight at him, digesting how deadpan he is, trying to imagine in her head what a death by tube-socks would entail, how it might play out.

And then she just laughs. She laughs so hard she actually covers her mouth with her hands and presses her lips together but keeps giggling. For someone like Claire Bennet, not laughing for days is unacceptable, and it feels like she hasn't done it in months. "That is," she says between laughs, "totally... what I'm going as... next Halloween."

She has to scrub her hands over her face and let out a groan that feels like a stretch. The weight of what she's seen is still there, but Claire feels like she can breathe right now.

"I think someone said a closet or something," she goes on, back to boggarts, still cracking up just a little here and there, dispersed through vowels and consonants. "But I mean, it's not big deal. Curiosity can wait."

For a second he's startled at her sudden laughter, and just stares at her, eyes wide. A moment ago everything was so solemn, and ... well it really had been a tube sock related death. And yet-

Severus lowers his eyes, reaching up to push his hair aside, half-covering the smile on his face. The image of her with a hundred tube stocks stuck to her is amusing, anyway. And it's- well- it's funny, isn't it?

It takes him a moment to get his expression back to normal, though he seems less grave when he looks up.

"Well, I could probably find one."

Claire is busy running her hands over her face and remembering how to breathe and only catches the tail end of what she thinks is a small smile. She feels so light that, even lighter than the laughter, at such a little thing that people do everyday but that she has never actually seen from him.

It's one of those feelings: she thinks if she died in that moment, she'd die pleased, so pleased. It sounds melodramatic, and it probably is, but she doesn't care, laughing again, gently, in spite of herself.

When he composes himself, she's more or less fine, still smiling, though that's normal enough for her. "Really?" And there is borderline excitement in her tone, though that's probably just carrying over from the high. Why is she so excited anyway? She dials that down. "I'd appreciate it."

It's not that he consciously doesn't smile. It's that he's forgotten how to; it's left the standard rotation of Things He Does. So when it happens - genuinely happens, not something forced and bittersweet for show or something mocking and sarcastic - he makes it go away because he's not sure what it is.

He doesn't think on those terms, of course. That would be ridiculous. A self-aware man he may be, things like why don't you smile? just don't occur to him.

Scrying out something as silly and simple as a boggart doesn't take long, and it isn't very complicated. He shows her what he's doing, explaining this and that - you get elements of this and burn it this way and cast that spell on this sort of map-thing here, and you have to be able to read the way the dust falls - the sad truth of it all is he's actually a very good teacher. He just hates nearly everybody.

As it turns out, there is a boggart in the damned library. If Severus knew that Lupin was the one to pick that fact out, he'd be mildly annoyed.

Claire pays attention, even though it's pointless to. She's not capable of magic, thinks he even may have explained that to her when she was interested in the whole process of potions but can't remember. It strikes her that she's known him a long time, and that she feels so much more comfortable now than she did in the beginning, afraid that he would fire her or maybe break her neck if she messed something up.

Now she pays attention and listens and tries to follow what he's doing with careful attention to detail. It's fascinating to her: her methods of looking so often involve lifting up bedskirts and peering into closets for forgotten socks. This is new, this is cool, math is power.

"That was really cool." She doesn't say anything regarding the library but remembers once that Luke told her things in their had minds of their own in a way, so it doesn't at all surprise her that something like this might be hiding in there. After a beat, she looks at him imploringly. "Are we going to Apparate there?" she asks. She's still not quite used to that particular concept. It's weird.

Though she is not capable of the sort of magic that he is, she is still capable of understanding it, just like he is capable of understanding computers and surgery. He's also aware that she is literally capable of understanding. It's refreshing to just be able to explain something and not have to argue about whether or not he's lying or having to give "real world" examples.

Severus loves magic. It's the one constant in his life that hasn't done anything horrid to him or abandoned him or backfired. If he has an audience that's not stupid, he can enjoy teaching. It's just that they're so rare.

"I think so," he says, looking down at her. "It'd certainly be quicker."

Rolling her sleeves down again, they tumble over her hands and she shakes them back. It's a strange, almost-apprehensive habit, and she looks up at him with her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed, probably looking like some sort of puffer fish in the process but not particularly minding it. Severus has seen more or less every angle of her, from her attitude to her niceties to how much of a child she can be. He hasn't fired her or told her to go home yet, so she feels as if she's in the clear for now.

Mindful of his arm, although it's not the same one he was burning, she loops her arm around his without suggestion or comment, if only because that's what she's always done. "It's too cold to bike anyway," she starts, giving him a smile. "I think you're too tall to ride on the handlebars anyway." And then she closes her eyes and waits to open them somewhere else.

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