epidemiology | (no subject)

[Isengrim, with his skull-like face and the deep lights in his sockets serving as "eyes", could see things Sieglinde could not. Things like death.

Things that smelled like Koltira, the one who had broken its bones and tried to injured its mistress. The Green Witch may have forgiven her attacker on the basis of the fact that he had hardly been himself, but for all his cleverness, in the end, Isengrim was a beast, and his grasp on morality was more black and white.

But Sieglinde wasn't yet ready to notice such things as her familiar's negative reaction, instead trying to summon up some sort of energy for a greeting. (Hadn't there been something she was going to tease Riza about? It seemed long ago now, and petty in the face of their current circumstance-)

What happened?

[The question itself seems to confuse her, and she shakes her head a bit to try and wake from her groggy state. (If she perhaps used an acidic base, perhaps it would react with Koltira's blood like-)]

Nothing, I was just working on a project- I apologize if Isengrim bothered you...

[Working on a project or not, Sieglinde's current condition is hardly one Riza can let pass by. Her lips tighten briefly in resolve and moments later she's doing her best to usher Sieglinde back into the room. (Perhaps that's a mistake though; she notes the stack of papers on the table, the tidiness of a bed that doesn't look like it's been slept in much, if at all.

Has Sieglinde left her self-made prison at all this past week?)

Briskly, because Isengrim is the last of her worries right now:]

He's never a bother. [More importantly:] When was the last time you slept? Ate? Go sit down, I'll get something from downstairs.

[Her tone suggest she'll brook no argument, though whether or not Sieglinde has any desire to comply remains unseen.]

[Though Sieglinde was quite intent on resisting such a thing, she had recently passed the thin line between "tired, but still effective" and "too exhausted to properly function". She tried digging her heels in, but all she manages is to pick up one of the papers that had fallen from her familiar's mouth before she's back in her room.

Which is an absolute disaster. There are a few meals scattered here and there gone cold and unappetizing, (attempts made by Masamune), but most of the mess is more magical and scientific in nature. Magic circles all over the floor, experiments mid-process, something bubbling over a small burner.]

I-

[Before she can even make a proper protest she feels like she's already back inside, standing helplessly as Isengrim skulked after them, ears flattening to his skull, watching Riza carefully.]

Just earlier, I believe...

["Earlier". Well, she didn't actually have a good grasp on what day it was, nor the time outside her room, so... technically not incorrect.]

[She'd believe "earlier" more if there weren't clear films glazing over the dishes scattered around the room, and questionable green fuzz sprouting from one now completely unappetizing dish.]

Take a seat. Stay where you are. [To the four-footed friend in the room:] Don't let her go anywhere, or back to her work.

[She doesn't know if Isengrim trusts her, wouldn't fault him at all if he chose not to listen, but surely his love for his mistress trumps his wariness of the no-longer-dead woman in the room. Regardless, she doesn't wait for an answer, giving Siedlinde one last worried glance-over before marching out of the room and towards the kitchen.

Nausea dogs at her heels all the way downstairs but she pushes it aside, resolutely keeping at bay until she collects a tray with two plates of food and makes her way back. The larger plate's placed before Sieglinde, steam rising gently into the otherwise stale air of the room.]

[Well... it was her own room, so even if she wanted to, it wasn't like she could really go anywhere. Sieglinde gave in with a sigh, collapsing back into her chair once she wrested her papers back from Isengrim and swatted the familiar weakly on the "nose".

She spends the moments after Riza leaves trying to shuffle her notes back into the correct order, turning down the burner on her bubbling vials, trying to rub sleep out of her eyes with the heel of her hand before casting about for a case of pills, popping one into her mouth and swallowing dry.

Did food smell good? Sieglinde can't remember suddenly, staring at what she's presented with for a long moment before she turns to Riza.]

- Thank you. I did not realize it was breakfast time.

[... It's dinnertime, Sieglinde.

But she didn't know if she was ravishingly hungry or not at all interested, reaching over the food to stop one of her liquids from boiling over on the desk while she tried to show an interest, picking up a roll to begin nibbling on.

... Scarfing down.]

[The inaccurate assumption doesn't go corrected, Riza satisfied enough by the simple sight of Sieglinde finally eating after what must surely be too long. She picks at her own food while Sieglinde eats her own, nausea rearing its head again and refusing to be quelled this second time around. It's easier to focus on Sieglinde anyway, and some of the knots inside loosen as she sees color returning to the girl's cheeks.

She waits until half of Sieglinde's plate is gone, with a few small attempts at her own food during that time, before speaking up again.]

How are you feeling?

[Better, she hopes.]

[While that plate disappears, Sieglinde doesn't actually stop moving. She adjusts the temperature on the boiling liquid, she jots down notes, pours over a magic circle and erases one of the sides only to redraw it almost exactly the same...

But then Riza is talking, and she turns her head. Vaguely notices the lack of eaten food on the older woman's part, the fact that Isengrim has inserted himself between them and hasn't stoped staring directly at Riza. (Just like he'd done when Koltira had been by.)]

I am most fine.

[It's a rehearsed like, considering how obviously haggard she was physically, but she's quick to deflect, instead gesturing to Riza in turn.]

Doesnthe food not agree with you?

[Riza manages a smile, but it's wan, stretched thin over her lips.]

I haven't been feeling well lately.

[An understatement, to be sure, but she's hardly about to spring her own death upon Sieglinde, who looks to be in far worse shape than she. Her own concerns slant sharply Sieglinde's direction; Riza's well aware of her own limits and her own shortcomings, able to course correct where necessary. She's not sure Sieglinde's learned that just yet.]

Please don't forget to eat and sleep, Sieglinde. Whatever it is you're working on can wait a few hours.

[Ideally more than a few hours, but she's seen Sieglinde's persistence in action, and knows better than to try and restrain it fully.]

Is it indigestion... ? Nausea? I have something for that.

[It's easier to shrug off the words she's been hearing now for days. It can wait. She pulls her satchel from beneath her desk, opening a side pocket. You should sleep. She rifles through the contents before coming up with a pack of pressed powder pills. You should eat.

Ignoring it was easier at this point, than arguing or trying to explain why she felt compelled. Why she couldn't stand the idea of resting on her laurels and letting potentially another disaster happen because she hadn't worked hard enough.

(If she had begun research for Koltira sooner...)]

If it is something else I still may be able to help.

[It's a sweet gesture but....

One hand reaches out, fingers curling around the small satchel of pills briefly before she carefully pushes them back across the table. Back to Sieglinde, and back to some hypothetical person in the future who might have more use of them than she will.

There's a sadness to her voice as she speaks, a certain sense of finality.]

This isn't something you can cure, Sieglinde. No one can.

[Not according to Koltira, though her emotions regarding him still run rampant and untamed.]

I'll be fine in a few days.

[Not something she could "cure". Something that would ebb naturally over time.

Sieglinde's brain makes several connections, slowly, methodically in her exhaustion, the gears moving obviously on her face as she suddenly remembers what it was she had planned to tease Riza about, before all of this madness, before her projects began failing, before Isengrim's injury, before she had lost the ability to sleep.

The scene she had seen out her window, of Riza and Lancer-]

Are you...

[The last time she had said something like this outloud she'd been resoundly lectured by Kida, so Sieglinde lowers her voice a bit, hesitates.

Certainly it something that would cause mixed feelings in this sort of environment, the danger of ALASTAIR's work... could cause nausea and lack of appetite, a general malaise in the beginning months that ought naturally end...]

Are you with child... ?

—What?

[Her fingers spasm around the pills, gaze flying up to meet Sieglinde's. Despite the lack of any physical injury to her lungs, Riza feels the air violently leave her lungs as she stares at Sieglinde, eyes saucer-wide and mouth agape. For a few stunned moments, there's nothing but silence, and Riza sitting across the table looking like a dying fish out of water. Then:]

Absolutely not.

[Forceful, and accompanied by a firm shake of her head. That's not a possibility she even wants to begin to consider, not when there's a million other loose ends she needs to tie up first. Besides, unless Lancer had been lying to her, conception shouldn't even be possible. She says as much, though it's absent-minded, an afterthought meant as reassurance to herself rather than any sort of enlightenment for Sieglinde.]

He said it wasn't possible anyway.

[Sieglinde seems kind of relieved to hear that, sagging in her chair with a release of breath, though she'd be quick to inform Riza that it wasn't based on any conceptions about whether pregnancy was a good idea or not in this place, (she was planning on it soon enough, after all), or whether Riza would make a good mother or not, (she had a good head on her soldiers, seemed like she'd be good at discipline)... Just-]

And here I almost thought Gilgamesh lied to me when he said he would be unable to provide an heir...

[Which really, would have put quite a bit of her research into Servant infertility into the trash bin, but... wait, then-]

Do you... want to be at any point? I have done some research on the subject that seems a shame to waste...

[After all, Gilgamesh was gone, and he had left her only the gold bracelet she wore on her left wrist, taking her first choice for sire out of the picture... and it would be good to have a test subject... Though she'd have to remove Lancer from her potentials list as she'd had to remove Achilles... she respected Olivia and Riza too much, and they didn't seem the type to share...]

[If Riza had any inkling of the thoughts swirling inside Sieglinde's mind right now, no doubt she would have bolted up out of her chair and made a run for it. (She's pragmatic and even-keeled most days to be sure, but a woman can only take so much questioning into her personal life, especially from a twelve year old.) Even without being privy to those thoughts, she finds herself frazzled enough to snap back and put an end to this particular line of discussion.]

I died, Sieglinde. A few days ago.

[Her breath catches, then releases in a sharp exhale. She sags visibly, head bowing down enough that strands of her hair fall past her shoulders, obscuring her face.]

I'm not pregnant.

[Once the gears start turning, once Sieglinde has grabbed on to a particular train of thought, it takes a lot to slow her down- let alone stop her. She was already thinking she could perhaps compile her research and copy it, (she wouldn't hand over the originals, of course, there was still a Servant quite high on her list of potential sires for her eventual heir), hand it over to Riza in case she wished to pursue such a thing in the future... maybe she would,maybe not, Sieglinde had learned that reproduction was not as important to all people, but that-

Saying that sort of thing would do it.

Her hands still first, then the rest of her before she jerkily turns her head back Riza's way, face somewhat devoid of... anything, really?]

... what?

[Perhaps she had misheard. Perhaps she really had neglected her physical needs too much in favor of her research, and this was an auditory hallucination? Perhaps a dream? Because she said a few days ago, which was the ambush, but then the memory returns, the surge of magical power she had felt in the midst of the chaos, hiding away and nursing her own wounds, (mental, more than physical), the conversation she'd had with a certain death knight in Nalawi-

The gears began to move again.]

[Carefully, her fork's laid down on her plate, appetite now fully gone and the previously neutral scent of stew turned bitter in her nostrils.

Her insides are still a wreck of emotions, only barely soothed by her conversation with Koltira days ago. Answers she'd gotten aplenty but peace of mind had opted to remain elusive and out of reach, something gained only by the slow passage of time. But for all that she feels a wreck inside, she manages to keep her expression largely composed, the shadows on her face born mostly out of exhaustion.

She repeats the words a second time, quieter, more restrained.]

I died. Only for a few minutes, or so I was informed, but I was dead all the same.

[If her body had stayed colder longer, if she hadn't been near Koltira at the time.....would she still be here, trying not to gag over beef stew and chatting about her own death as though she were chatting about the weather? That much she hadn't asked Koltira, too wary of the answer to want to know right away.]

[Death did not have to be the end. Not physically- not if you could get to someone in time. Blood stopped pumping through the veins, oxygen stopped flowing to the brain, all of those things could cause lasting damage, but if the person was revived in time... heartbeat could be restored. Life could be restored.

But magically... Sieglinde had always known necromancy existed when she had been a girl, but the line of the Green Witch did not dabble in the dark arts. (That's what she had always been told.) Coming into ALASTAIR, however, had opened her mind to even more possibilities in that field, from true resurrection to an enthralled half-life. Even a spell to wake the dead mere minutes in order to take from them knowledge.

But it had always been abstract. Just something to read about, never a spell she should ever see cast. Never on someone she cared about or even knew.]

Koltira brought you back... ?

[She already knows he did. He is the only one she knows capable of such a thing, after his talk of it before the battle in Nalawi. But still, she wanted that confirmation.

Hadn't she told him, back then, that she would heal anyone injured to make sure they needn't be brought back in such an unholy fashion- as he had been cursed to be? Hadn't she swore to work to prevent that ability ever being used on one of their own? ]

[That comes as a surprise, the mention of a familiar name she'd never even alluded to. Her head snaps up, eyes rounding and zeroing in on Sieglinde across the table. How...?

No, best she ask aloud.]

How did you know it was him?

[Had someone else told her, Koltira himself perhaps? She can't imagine any of the handful of people she'd mentioned it to thus far suddenly turning into chatterboxes and spreading it to the whole team. (Though theirs is not a particularly large team - surely some of them must be good friends with Sieglinde?)]

[And so it was. (Another promise she'd failed to protect, because when the ambush had begun... she wasn't of use to anyone. Riza had died.)]

He told me- before, in Nalawi. He said that he was capable of true resurrection, that none who fought beside him would fall.

[She'd had trouble believing it, then. That it could be a life brought back from death without true cost, some loss, or price, but he had assured her that was the case. That he held no thrall over those he raised... that they would merely be ill for a time before they returned to health.

And here Riza sits, ill for a time.]

I did not believe him truly powerful enough for such a thing until...

[Until she'd seen him in his frenzy. Her gaze flickers nervously to Isengrim, and the way the familiar, who had once been quite fond of Riza, seemed now to almost avoid her, view the aura around her suspiciously. Koltira had been the one to snap the skull-faced canine's leg... and recovery had not been enough for the beast to forgive.]

[For Riza, it's less a matter of power than it is a matter of sheer ability - never in her life could she imagined such a thing to be possible. Why would she, when every attempt that had been made to bring someone back from the dead had ended in failure and something that could only be termed divine punishment? An image of Edward flashes in front of her, his automail arm and leg glinting in the sun. Her gaze drops guiltily to her hands, both still resting on the table before her and both still wholly intact and hale.

It's unfair, to say the least. But then again, so is life. She'd learned that lesson quick.]

Now you do.

[Her tone's empty, dry like ash. What else is left to say on the matter? Well, there is one thing.]

I hope he does not have to use that skill frequently in the future.

[Please let there not be more deaths.]

I told him not to.

[It was wrong- if you considered things that went against the natural order as "wrong". There was nothing natural above bringing back the dead who had passed the short and fleeting time frame in which a person might naturally be revived. Little natural in forcing a soul back into a corpse. She had always been taught that the darker magics such as necromancy were not to be tampered with, that they came at a price.

It was easy to be sure she would never wish for such a thing when she'd been alone, torn from her world and without anyone to care for or rely on. It had been easy to take the high ground and condemn reviving the dead before she had people she would do anything to bring back.

If Masamune... if Graham... if Haise... if Olivia... if countless others...

If Riza.]

I am sorry.

[Sorry she had died. Sorry she hadn't been able to keep her head during that ambush and heal like she ought to have. Sorry she had made such an error in diagnosis. Sorry she had ever thought something that would have meant Riza's death.

Sorry for a lot of things.]

[Her body's still in pain from dying and being brought back, but it hurts far more to see Sieglinde so quiet and small on the opposite side of the table. Riza reaches out, one hand wrapping around Sieglinde's tightly for reassurance.]

Please don't be sorry. It isn't your fault. It's not the fault of anyone here.

[Not Sieglinde's, for being unable treat Koltira's symptoms earlier. Not her own for being caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, and not Koltira's for doing what he believed to be right and just. (She's still not sure she fully accepts his reasons, but she understands the validity of them now.) There is no one here to blame save for perhaps life itself, and even then life makes for a poor scapegoat.

Besides, there's no point dwelling in the past and on things neither of them can change. All they can do is move forward.]

I'll be fine soon. But take care of yourself, Sieglinde. I'm sure I'll recover faster if I don't need to worry about you as well.

[It's easy to blame herself, because she's always been responsible for everything. Responsible for the wellbeing of the women in her village. Responsible for the formulation of the Ultimate Magic. Responsible for the future of the Green Witch's line.

To replace the responsibilities she had lost, Sieglinde had simply taken on as many as she could in ALASTAIR. Responsible for the wellbeing of Audentes' members. Responsible for the formulation of a solution to their problems. To Koltira's, to Haise's, to Graham's, to anyone's who asked for her aid.

She doesn't feel like she's the one who deserves comfort, feels like she should flinch away from soft touch, but she can't. Not when Riza is... dead. Risen. Undead. Whatever was proper to call her now, according to the rules of Koltira's world and his spellwork.

Instead, her bottom lip trembles as she squeezes Riza's hand.]

There is no need to worry for one such as I- You should focus on yourself, Riza.

[She can only imagine what it must feel like- to have lost not a "world" like she had, but your physical life only to have it somewhat magically returned to you, your soul called back to a shell it had been forced from.]

[Perhaps she should focus on herself, at least in the immediate future, but Riza's own priorities have never worked that way. Her friends and the group of people she's considered 'hers' have always come first, of higher importance than herself, and Sieglinde certainly falls into that former bucket.]

I'll always worry about you, Sieglinde. You're important to this team, and to me.

[Genuine words, and ones she means from the bottom of her heart. But since making both of them worry serves no purpose whatsoever, Riza changes the subject, switching the focus from either of them onto something more neutral and more tangible.]

Tell me about your projects then, if you can.

[She doesn't expect the full details - nor does she expect to understand most of the details even were they to be given - but it'll be a nice change of pace from being left alone with her own thoughts. Besides, she's been remiss in spending time with Sieglinde, and learning about the younger girl's own interests and likes.]

[She's important.

Sieglinde had grown up thinking she was important- it had been something she'd always taken for granted... until her world had collapsed around her ears and she couldn't any longer. It wasn't something she could assume anymore, not something she felt like she deserved, or something she expected came without expectations.

But she couldn't doubt Riza. How could she, when the older woman had been nothing but honest with her, treated her with respect... hadn't she?

And she didn't want to talk about it anymore, and really, who could blame her, so as curious as she was it's all Sieglinde can to do nod, turning in her chair to grab her tablet and her notes, spreading them out over the table between them.]

... of course.

[Here was the diagram of a man who lacked a physical heart and yet still lived, his emotions dampened as consequence. Here was the formula of a compound she was trying to come up with that would trick a certain person's stomach into thinking the food in question was coffee. Here was the chemical she was refining to target the magical build up that triggered a certain elf's blood frenzy.

All the things she tried to do in order to hear words like you're important to this team, and to me.]

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hot mess

smh

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i can't believe this

can u rly not?

i rly cannot

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wraps this up like a week later, sighs

<3