oo3 ∞ i'm on your side when nobody is, 'cause nobody is [ location: the forest ]
Near where Solomon dozed off a few hours earlier, dappled with light coming through the thin gaps that still exist in the frame of what will be his home here, Ambrose stirs.
It would be more accurate to say that he tries not to stir, finding himself in something like peace and clinging determinedly to the dissipating sleep as a balm over his ( Read more... )
Leila comes to see Sol when she decides it's worth braving the swirling rumors of 'trouble' all over, in a red dress buttoned up the front, surprisingly low boots (only three inches of heel), tying her hair back into a braid as she makes her way into the half-done house. She comes through the doorway absent-mindedly, so used to the presence here that she barely pays any mind to the difference in it, saying, "Sol, I thought you were going to be by an hour ago, did you get distracted by trees again--"
That sentence continues until she glances up and sees him, hands still at her hair for a frozen instant, eyes wide, and then she drops them down to her sides. Leila goes stock-still in the doorway, head tilted to one side. Your move, stranger, because she would love to hear who the hell you are.
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It must be said that Ambrose doesn't provide the best of first impressions. Accumulated grime, sweat and dried or drying blood lends him a certain unpleasant stench - he might be used to it by this point, but Leila presumably isn't - and Sol's clothing (trousers, a shirt that was probably clean this morning, shoes by the doorway) hangs loose on his wasted frame. It takes him longer than he likes to register her and react, but his reaction is shockingly minimal.
"Hang me, I've gone mad," he says to no one in particular, the voice right and the accent all wrong, and then he turns his attention steadfastly away from her.
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It's not great, but it's not worse than being around certain chemists of her acquaintance back in Baltimore, and she's rather distracted, at the moment. Leila hears him speak, and though the accent is wrong, yes, she knows his voice by this point. She presses a hand to her mouth, quietly processing the sight of Solomon like this, clearly wrecked, clearly having undergone pretty thorough torture, because that's more staggering than anything else. But she can't stay like this for long, so she moves forward, one hand balanced against the wall.
"You haven't, actually, this--it happens to people, sometimes, they turn up here in this city unexpectedly. Sort of like magic," she says, quietly, that last part half-to herself, and then takes another step forward.
"I don't know what's happened to you, and I'm not going to ask questions, but you need medical treatment."
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"It'd have to be, now, wouldn't it." 'Magic', that is; Ambrose's tone is bitter and despite himself he flinches when she moves toward him, his attention unwillingly drawn back to her, flat and unfriendly. He can't quite bring himself to trust this, his wariness pronounced even as he can't really do much to prevent her if she keeps moving.
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She pauses when he flinches, lowering her eyes in thought, but then strives forward anyway. Leila kneels next to Ambrose, dress skirt pooling around her thighs and against the floorboards, and he might notice that she looks at him like she knows him, but he might not, too, given his present state.
"I know you have no idea who I am, but I promise, I'm not going to hurt you. I'll swear on it, to anything you want." Leila rarely experiences any situation where she can't keep her own aching sincerity from showing itself, even if she feels it, but this is not something she ever anticipated finding. She remembers the very vague things Solomon has said about his past lives, but the idea of encountering one personally never even occurred to her, and she's certain that must be what this is.
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Whoever had the bright idea of burning the holy cross into his flesh probably had no idea how far the consequences of it would go; the most Sol's said about Ambrose was to Leila, and that was precious little.
And he will be sorry for all of this later, but Ambrose looks back at Leila as though he wishes more than life that she were someone else.
"Doesn't mean much at all if I do the choosing," he mutters roughly, so we can safely assume that the British stiff upper lip thing has been around about as long as there have been Englishmen. "I'll wager you'd have trouble finding anything left to hurt, girl."
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...tellingly, even now, she can't resist the slightest bit of an argument, tone still quiet but matter-of-fact, bracing herself while she speaks: "Actually I think it'd mean more if you chose, considering you don't know me, and you don't know what means anything to me. But oaths are always predicated on a leap of faith, so if you don't want to make one right now, that's more than understandable."
She meets his eyes for the duration of that, chin tilted up a little bit pridefully; she'd swear on the moon, for him, and that's something she hasn't done since childhood, but if he doesn't want it, there's no point.
"Anyway, it's Leila, not 'girl'," she murmurs back, "Dr. Leila Yilmaz, if you must, but just Leila is shorter."
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The look he gives her carries edges - in its defiant skepticism - of the man who came after, but that man has never been driven to this level of fatalism and whoever he is now, he looks away. It's taken him a while to pick up on the recognition that she regards him with, but what he mentally terms her 'sass' (for the record) finally clues him in.
(Well, he's always had a type.)
"Ambrose," he says, grudgingly. "Ambrose Roy."
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"All right, then. I'll be back in a few minutes, so just- sit tight."
And she'll rush. Leila rises, straightening her dress, and glances at him over her shoulder on her way back out the door.
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"As if I could do other." ...but he says it quietly, so she might miss that as she leaves. Part of him doesn't expect her to come back, watching the light fall in through the lattice-work of wood above him; part of him still thinks he's finally snapped and lives in these delusions while his body breaks, too. There's no sense in arguing the point, as after all it either matters or it doesn't.
When she returns, he hasn't moved, but he has fallen asleep. Barely.
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But she does return, and after only about fifteen minutes, too. Leila has a large duffel bag at her side now, and she sets it carefully on the floorboards nearby, opening it to take out a blue pill, a plastic cup, and bottled water, pouring the last into the second. She doesn't wake Ambrose intentionally, just yet, but waits to see if her presence rouses him as she looks through her things and considers what she'll need.
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Sleep comes easy and goes yet easier, lately; when Ambrose stirs and wakes he says nothing, just watches. Something about her is familiar, the way the trees that beg for his attention are familiar, and equally as alien. He doesn't know them and he doesn't know her- at least he thinks so. Certainty is escaping him, and he half hates the thought of healing for removing the focus that he's using to avoid all the rest of this.
Let him die and have no more concerns with the 'where' or the 'why'-
-he doesn't think she will, somehow. "What's that?"
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"This is medicine," she says, setting down the pill and water glass next to Ambrose, "you swallow it, take it with water. It's spongy, not hard, so it won't be too difficult for you right now."
She indicates what looks like a large flashlight nearby. "This is an electrical device I'll shine on you; it's a form of magic that I can use, and it'll help you heal very quickly. I brought clothing, too, things that look a bit like what yours must have. I thought that'd be easier than--well, clothes from where I live."
Blue jeans, for example, are not something she's going to inflict on him immediately. Leila wonders idly if what she's got on is dreadfully immodest by the public standards he's acquainted with--probably, but she knows Sol in any iteration, so that's not really going to be a problem.
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No, her clothes are the least of his concerns about now - and it has to be said that Ambrose has never been very good at upholding the standards of his day. He really did manage to hit as many possible reasons for the Inquisitors to deal harshly with him as he possibly could.
For now, though: "What manner of witch are you?" in a whole differently-suspicious tone. Allies, presently, are few and far between - and what she's showing him and describing is nothing even recognizable.
(While these days he tends to spit after the words 'Celestial Chorus' habitually, Ambrose was never very interested in the habits of other Traditions or particularly inclined toward trust and cooperation.)
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"I think of myself as being more of a scientist," she says, carefully, "I belong to the Sons of Ether--I know, I'm a woman, but things are somewhat different where I'm from."
She is aware that for him, the Etherites have probably only been apart from the Technocracy for a few hundred years, and if Verbena are wary of them now, it must have been doubly so in Ambrose's era. That said, she is being honest for a reason, and while you can say what you will about Etherites, they don't do this to people for simply being different.
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'Sons of Ether' inspires about as much trust as she might predict - 'none' - and Ambrose scrutinizes her as he weighs it. Whether or not he can trust her; whether or not he should; whether or not he has a choice here. It speaks well of her that she tells him, he concedes, even if he has a hard time envisioning the Sons of Ether accepting a woman. The science-minded mages haven't been well known for their progressive views of the sexes.
"What would you swear on?" he asks, abruptly. "Don't talk me in circles with my choices or yours, I'll bleed out inside before we've come to an agreement on that. Tell me your answer."
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