(no subject)
Ellen is seated at the bar, her high heels hooked over the slats of the stool. There is a glass of vodka half-drunk before her. She is presently eaves'-dropping on a conversation that is of actually very little interest, of two large men in very fine hats a few stools away. She is dressed in grey businesswear with her hair done up into a severe tail. Her expression is schooled blank, but the customary stiffness of posture is too much to maintain on a barstool. She sits straightish, but diagonal. No one has hit on her.
Darra pushes open the door, striding into the dim bar with the sort of strong-willed confidence that comes with being used to dealing with this sort of place and people. She's in heavy boots, worn jeans and denim jacket, and despite the dimness, sunglasses. Short, messy blonde hair falling around her face and a half smoked cigarette complete her 'look'. Her stride takes her right to the bar, swivling onto the stool near the woman dressed in grey. "Gimme a beer." She demands, slapping a couple of beers onto the bar in front of her.
Ellen gives the newcomer a sidelong look, dark with distaste -- and then sits abruptly very straight, pale eyes narrowing as she eyes her in the dim light. She says nothing at all.
Darra's doing better. Normally the other woman's sudden sitting upright paired with the look would be enough to send Darra into a challenging tyraid. But instead she only turns to return the woman's look, her mouth pulled taunt as she just stares back, her hand still resting possessivly on her dollar bills.
Ellen's stare is cold and unwavering. She also holds very, very still.
Darra breaks the look as her beer is brought. "Okay, enough. Not gonna bite ya." She finally speaks as she turns back to face forward. One hand plucks the cigarette from her mouth as the other lifts her beer up for the first few gulps.
Ellen turns her gaze away to affix it to her vodka, but every muscle in her lean frame seems to have snapped to corded tension, poised like an animal about to flee or fight. "What do you want?"
Darra looks back, one brow arching over her glasses. "Want? I wanna drink my beer." She retorts, words tinged with her west coast accent. "What am I /supposed/ ta want?"
Ellen gives her a look of stark disbelief and then picks up her vodka, her grip whitening tight upon the glass. "Enjoy it," she growls, and takes a long drink, nearly finishing the contents of her grasp and muttering something German and unpleasant on the next booze-roughened breath.
"I plan on it." Darra gives the woman a lingering sidelong glance before shaking herself slightly and turning ahead again. Strange people in these places. Reaching up she pulls off her sunglasses, squinting slightly until her eyes adjust. These are pushed up onto her head to free her hands again, allowing her to return to alternating drags on the cigarette and gulps of beer.
"I don't know what you are playing at," Ellen snaps with a cold precision of pronunciation, slamming the glass back down on the bar.
Darra looks back over sharply at the woman. "'The fuck? I ain't playin' at nothin'! I'm just sitting here drinking my damn beer, you're the one convinced I'm after something. Lay off!" Her voice lowers close to an irritated growl.
Ellen stands and slaps a twenty dollar bill down on the bar. She says nothing.
Darra's gaze flickers to the bill, then back up to the woman. She doesn't speak either, just eyes the other carefully. Very carefully.
"I would have killed you if I had stayed," Ellen snarls, and turns on her heel to stalk out of the bar.
Darra lets out a low whistle turning back to the bar, waiting until the woman is out of eyesight and hearing range before twirling one finger up the side of her head. "What'a whack job...damn city's full of 'em." She mutters to herself.
The door slams behind Valkyrie. The low and largely masculine murmur of the bar continues in her absence, barely disrupted.
Cranky, insane and mildly inebriated.
It is evening, but the general hubbub of the streets of Chinatown has not entirely died down. Ellen Dramstadt walks through at a measured pace, but makes no particular courtesies for those who loiter in her path; in each instance a moment's pause is all the tall, lean woman in grey businesswear allows before shoving on through.
"--No, thank you. Cheers," Lucy says easily, stepping away from the little kung-pao kiosk with a plastic bag full of early-morning dinner. The grey-suited woman steps evenly in front of her and Lucy nearly collides, carefully stepping back just in time to drop her chopsticks and get a scramble-hold on the lo-mein. Her arm is still not at all used to not resting in plastic and vinyl against her side. "Er--sorry, mate."
Blaise lets herself wander through the streets of Chinatown, enjoying a few hours to just look, poke around, and basically, have nothing to do. Even wandering though she still carries herself with her usual, confident, tall baring. She's wrapped in a long peacoat, protecting her from the chill she doesn't really feel anymore. Maybe she's just growing used to it. She whistles a few notes as she strides past a food stand, but they die on her lips as she barely avoids the near collusion of a grey suited woman and another woman with food. "Easy there." She smiles slightly, sidestepping closer to Lucy and out of the way.
"/What/--" Ellen spits, but this time instead of shoving on past her attention is arrested. "Easy there," she sneers, the pale blade of her gaze flicking to the other woman. "Do you address a horse?" She eyes Lucy's arm and then turns to look at the younger woman's face, her gaze a sharp question.
Lucy blinks, pulling back sharply. "Why--no. I was just apologizing for bumping into you," she explains, a little incredulous. The bag is spun slightly to create a loop in the handles, then hung easily from her wrist. She flashes an equally apologetic smile at Blaise, abashed at her own clumsiness. "Sorry."
"There's other things I could have said I suppose." Blaise's Australian accent becomes apparent as she speaks further. "But I figured what I said was a /bit/ more polite." She smiles, the end of her nose crinkling. "Don't worry about it." She waves a hand lightly to Lucy as she reclaims the chopsticks in a single, graceful motion, then hands them back.
"My apologies," Ellen says stiffly. With the understatement of the extremely polite, she expands, "I am a little on edge this evening." What she has is not exactly an accent; it is a manner of speaking, sharp, refined, excessively formal. Her hands work into fists at her sides, and then unfist, flattening against the tailored grey that falls over her hips. "What is the matter with your arm?" She jerks her chin towards Lucy's arm. "This is a doctor-recommended course of treatment? It seems /inconvenient/ and /slow/."
"Well I can't bloody use them now," Lucy laughs, sliding the dirty chopsticks back in her bag. At Ellen's words, she glances down at the sling holding her arm up and gives it a little rueful grin. "Dislocated my shoulder a few weeks ago...Only have a couple days before I don't need this at all," she explains. "Well, until recuparative exercises and all that nonsense...but yes," she concedes, shifting the strap of the sling, "it is rather inconvenient and slow. But what else can you do, eh?"
Blaise winces slightly as Lucy explains. "'M sorry, mate." Her arms fold over her chest lightly as her attention flickers to the other woman curiously.
"Dislocated shoulder." Ellen repeats the words as though she has never heard them before. She lifts a hand and runs it over her own shoulder and neck, the knit of her brow baffled as she turns a fierce look at the sling. "The humerus separated from the scapula," she says, and these words come as though from a long way away. She turns a very blank look at Blaise, and then looks back at Lucy again. "How long ago did this injury occur, may I inquire?"
Lucy arches her eyebrow, nodding with just the hint of a smile. "Er, like...March 5 or something. Maybe the fourth. Are you a doctor?" she asks, eyeing her arm as if a doctor's very presence will fix it.
Blaise turns her head slightly, her curiosity about this greysuited woman rather increasing. While she has nothing to contribute to the conversation at this moment, she continues to linger and listen out of pure interest.
"The /fifth/," Ellen repeats. She draws herself very straight and lifts her chin with a flare of her nostrils, an angry flicker flashing through blue-grey eyes. "That was /twenty days/. You are still not healed." Apparently incensed by nothing more than the passage of time, the tall woman does not answer Lucy's actual question. She looks at Blaise as well. "Tomorrow that is three /weeks/," she says, as though she is expecting them both to share in her vitriol upon the subject of the counter.
"Uh," Lucy says eloquently. "Right. I miscounted." And then, in an afterthought and rather uncomfortably, "Sorry."
Blaise nods to Ellen. "You're right, it is." She agrees. "But these things don't just heal overnight. The human body usually takes it's own good time taking care of that."
"Wrong," Ellen tells Blaise coldly. She holds out a long-fingered hand towards Lucy, her skin pale in the ill light that sputters and glows from light-up signs and Chinese characters. "Let me see."
There is a definite moment of hesitation before Lucy lifts her right arm up. Glancing around as if engaging in some illicit action, or perhaps to look for a way out, she carefully pulls the velcro off the sling cover and slides her arm out of it. It's not nearly as painful as it was in the beginning, and pulls out almost easily. "What are you going to do?" she asks, not really expecting an answer.
Blaise narrows her gaze slightly as she watches Ellen. "As far as I know they still do." She maintains her position on the subject. "What do you do? Natural medicene or something of the sort?" She's not really expecting an answer either, but she still asks.
Ellen does not touch Lucy's shoulder; there is no need. She takes her wrist instead, and her grip upon the younger woman's limb is like a vice. "The human body takes precisely as much time as I require to do exactly what I require of it." Her consciousness expands like zooming out on a map, racing through the cellular structure of the limb she holds. "Observe." She does it with the swift efficiency of a woman who has healed many such minor trivialities before. The reknit of scapula and humerus back into joint and proper alignment is not enough of a demonstration; unhinged though Valkyrie is, she is aware that it is invisible to the naked eye (at least, the naked eye not hers). The protuberance begins upon Lucy's left hand but grows rapidly, shaping itself into a delicate digit matched to the pinky that already exists, until within a scattering of bizarre seconds the girl simply has two of them beside each other as though they have always been there.
Lucy stares. And stares. And stares for another long moment. It takes several more before a high-pitched "What...did you do?!" can come wheezing out of her mouth. She can't even move her arm from Ellen's firm grip, can only stare at the sudden extra digit in shock and, to say the least, horror. "What the bloody /fuck/ did you do?!"
Blaise stares as well, her mouth pulling back in a look of shock bordering on disgust. "What the bloody hell?" She tears her eyes away from the girl's hand to look up at Ellen. "That's some very freaky shit you've got going on there." She tells her, somewhere between awe and horror.
"It is an extraneous digit," Ellen explains calmly. She releases Lucy's arm and takes a step back, letting her hands clasp neatly behind her back. "I have done whole limbs on rats and squirrels. I believe you are my first human trial." Some tension has gone out of Ellen's starkness of posture and stiffness of carriage. In as much as this is readable, she seems pleased. "Your shoulder has been repaired. Have a good evening."
"Well, bloody fucking good for you to put extra shit on me!" Lucy cries, pulling her arm into herself protectively. The sling is merely shoved into an inside pocket of her coat as she hastily steps back. "I can't--how--God, get /away/ from me!" Face crunched up in appall and disgust, Lucy hides her hand inside her coat and practically runs in the other direction.
"You do /what/?" Blaise is not amused in the slightest. "You know, maybe you should /ask/ people before you start guinea pig shit on 'em!" She glances after Lucy, taking a few steps backwards after her even as she still looks at Ellen.
Ellen seems if anything quite puzzled by this reaction as she watches Lucy run away. "It is not as if I destroyed anything," she says reproachfully.
"Most /normal/ people don't want extra fingers or limbs sticking out of them." Blaise shoots back. "God, woman. Go get some help." She shakes her head disbelivingly at Ellen.
Ellen slants an annoyed look at Blaise. "I could destroy all manner of things," she says, with a hint of growl sneaking into the measured alto. "I could have melted her ovaries or turned her neural tissue to chowder."
"It's people like you that give /all/ mutants a bad name." Blaise can't completely hide her digust at this. "Like I said. Go get help." She shakes her head again, half turning and taking several more steps after Lucy.
Ellen snorts. "Idiot," she decides, self-righteous in the pursuit of her "science," and sets off in the same direction in which she was originally going.
Hey buddy ... do you need a hand?
Ha ha ha.