In Dire Straits - I've let me down, down, down, down [Setebos]

These days Inaria's ghost was hard to pinpoint, even if you knew where to look.

Tonight she was haunting a lesser known section of the garden that was kept away from the general public in the interest of health and safety, a section secreted away past purposefully planted thorn bushes where toxic flowers coiled and bloomed. Even as isolated as it was, she was no stranger to this part of the woods- always fascinated by the bright, beautiful pigments but knowing not to touch by a caretaker who knew that knowledge and respect for dangerous things were the only ways to truly teach a child preventative caution. Curiosity if not delicately pruned over the years by experienced hands had its own consequences, and Merope was one such believer.

Weiss padded over in that silent way of hers from the lilies to stand near the foxgloves, the light of the crescent moon painting the sharp angles of skeletal ribs and prominent hips under too thin fur in thick, unforgiving swaths. Nothing had changed; pretty promises were always going to be just empty words in the end. It was unclear just how much of a secret it was that her weight had begun to dip into life-threatening numbers more suited to the jackel Marquis than the Jacana Dire she was, but above everyone else there was no way it couldn't be one to her family. It couldn't be one to Ghost who had been near coerced by Luxord to help her find something to fill her stomach, and couldn't be to her mother who knew of her worsening condition at least in its budding stages and had to find outside help to try to raise her in the sire's absence. It couldn't be a secret, and yet in the end they like everyone else always left her alone.

Perhaps she should accept that alone was the way she was fated to stay.

She curled her hand just around the flower, and breathed- imparting the warmth she herself so desperately needed in favor of saving those flesh-velvet petals from the frost creeping at their edges. To take care of these often forgotten flowers was a task she had bestowed upon herself in the night hours long ago when she had no one but herself for company, and still the spirit to this day tended to them like they were her own children. Mismatched eyes traced the flare of trumpets for any sign of creeping fingers of ice to see where she could help next. Maybe it was because there was a beauty in them from being so toxic that perhaps she identified with or maybe because they too seemed forgotten- both possible explanations for why she would help them instead of holing herself up away from the chill in the air, but to a keen eye there was something off about her behavior. It seemed less motivated by heavy introspection and more of a sleepwalking routine, as if she was a marionette held up and moving while someone else pulled on the strings.

With an embrace as warm as the one dissociation wrapped her in, it was easy to forget that she was freezing to death.

Little explored the section of the garden that had become Weiss's personal Eden may have been, but Setebos was familiar with every inch of the garden, even its lesser-known corners barely touched by the sunlight. Setebos did not often venture there, as the specimens of flora that bloomed behind the protective labyrinth of virulent thorns were not pertinent to his work, but when he did wander into that treacherous division, it was merely to observe. Botany was one of his passions, and it was why he spent so much of his time in the garden, obsessing over the growth and maintenance of these plants. When the cold swept through Inaria, bringing snow to lay devastation to his carefully-cultivated greenery, he retired to the caverns they used to store medicine, and salvaged what he could.

Winter had eroded the vines which had once made the hidden grove nearly impassable. Setebos was consumed with ensuring that their dried stockpiles of medicine remained uncontaminated, but once he realized that the entrance had been revealed to him, it was as an afterthought. He had no idea that he had been sharing the garden with a ghost; two caregivers nurturing their separate sides of the forest. Weiss's imprint was so ephemeral he could barely perceive it through the frost.

For the first time, Setebos noticed the pawprints in the melted snow surrounding the withered vines, and knew they were not his own. Setebos decided to investigate. He was curious, but his interest had not taken that sickening downturn into suspicion and then panic. Maybe this constituted some degree of progress; the fact he could acknowledge another person's presence without assuming that they were there to kill him. Maybe he was just having a good night. (He still threw a dark look through the dark trees, as if to deter waiting Jettes and Nereids.) Ordinarily winter was not kind to him, and there was so little to distract him from his darkening thoughts.

He couldn't sleep, as always. That was why he was in the Garden during this insensible hour. Caring for the few flowers that survived gave him something to focus on beyond the ghosts of memories. A few plants persisted through winter's end; a lily here to soothe the nightmares, a tulip for his guilt. Too many things haunted him.

With spring approaching, the pristine dunes of snow were beginning to recede into puddles of slush, revealing patches of fledgling stalks of grass. Setebos's footsteps over the changing terrain at first sounded as crunches, then squelching, then the slight crackling of frost-sprinkled grass bending to his weight as he carefully picked through the withered vegetation. While the Healer's Garden was recovering, the poisonous flowers struggled behind a glass case. Setebos gave a nearby foxglove a pitying glance.

Weiss was bent over, the arch of her back a wilted stem, head low to the ground. He almost took her for a prey animal, at first, from how slight she appeared. Setebos's breath turned to ice in his lungs and he blinked, expecting her to dissipate when he opened his eyes, but she lingered. She lingered, in spite of wobbly legs and an empty stomach. He had not witnessed such obvious malnourishment in an Inarian since Cappella, and that was because she was recuperating from her detention in Saboro.

Setebos bolted - not for Weiss, but away, for the forest. Finding food during a winter night was difficult, but his nose and eyes were still good, and he was able to locate a rat's nest and make short work of its sleeping occupants. Paltry nourishment, but it would do in an emergency, or at least until he could find better. Setebos snatched up the two rats and returned to where he found Weiss, expecting to see her there, and when he did, he dropped them at her paws. In case she was wondering what, exactly, she was supposed to do with them, he pushed the slaughtered rodents closer to her.

"Eat it," Setebos commanded sternly, eyes narrowing. "You're starving." If Weiss refused his charity, he was prepared to knock her skinny ass to the ground and shove the food down her throat.

( It's for your own good! )

[Image: waka1_by_liquidwings-dbizbcs.png]

"Poor things..." she whispered under her breath, unaware of her fellow insomniac as she picked through the shallow snow bank as if she herself was a part of it. Browning leaves safe to taste were picked up with a chattering jaw and placed in an attempt to shelter the bells of lilac flowers underneath, and she worked in silence with only the light of the moon painting her way and dripping down the slope of her back.

"Eat it. You're starving.”

You would think that startling a person would cause them to at the very least flinch and demand an explanation in a high, hysterical voice, but it was like the girl with the winter coat had hardly heard anything out of the ordinary at all expect had it not been for a soft, "Luxord…?" that slipped her lips. A shudder as tears swelled at the corner of her eyes jaw clenching back rounding thoughts muffled like they were heard from an old can microphone and separate from the white noise she found herself treading. Hadn’t he… It couldn’t be… Right? Suspended in molasses she turned to greet what she knew with absolutely no certainty was her most recent hallucination, and those eyes were slow in blinking and processing exactly what was happening when it was Setebos paying her visit instead.

She was careening to earth, and all she could do was watch through her fingers.

Weiss didn't move to gobble it all down, but it seemed in her hesitation neither did she immediately turn down the offering that sat at her feet. How… curious it was it see something and know without a doubt that this, this lump of thing was the entirety of your salvation? There were too many gaps between the strikes of her rib bones, too many thinned patches in that once beautiful coat to hide the secret of just how much her feet had already crossed the line to the other side. Bicolored eyes that held the winter and summer sun faded and flared with a lethargy as her mind tried to process the situation and then the man in front of her, the edge of her skirt muddied from the shore of the river Styx.

"It’s the Good Doctor..."

Her voice was hardly a whisper when those split lips cracked to let it slip out, the smell of fresh blood twined with the coiling plume of her breath in the chill. She seemed more wraith than living flesh, her presence less a solid silhouette and more like sunbeams dancing across spiderwebs of frost to flash in peripherals... As if only the right angle would reveal the trick of the light for what it was.

Only ever there and gone again, lost and found.

"I remember you from the Infirmary... I was..." Sponge of a tongue was too dry to do more than stick and skip across the lips it tried to moisten as those drooped eyelids grew heavier with every breath that rattled in her chest. Had they ever formally met? Her memory and body wavered as her head dipped down to sniff at the paltry meal, and felt her stomach ice over and cramp at the thought of swallowing even that amount of food. "A few beds over...."

She began to pick at the food with careful teeth. Whether or not she'd be able to keep it down that was a different story, but for now it was a step in the right direction. It felt like she was existing just under her skin, just under the surface below, and with every affirmative sensory feedback (the taste, his voice) pushed her fingers against the elastic boundary from below.

"It is all right if you do not remember me...."

Glassy eyes blinked in his direction. The fog behind them darkened for a treacherous moment, but the hazy mind that gaze concealed clicked slowly towards recognition. Weiss scarcely seemed to register the kill placed at her paws. Instead, she focused on Setebos's face, making her first feeble effort at discerning his identity; "...Luxord?" she rasped the unfamiliar name in a sibilant and wispy voice that was more vapor than sound, the language whispered between ghosts. It made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.

And then, with revelatory clarity: "It's the Good Doctor..."

Setebos was instilled with the impression that he had been marked, like a spotlight had cast him in unforgiving relief where he was once immersed in complete darkness. For whatever reason, perhaps he was unnerved by her condition or moved by her sudden purpose, he remained silent as she mournfully limped towards her conclusion, wheezing through breathless intermissions. He regretted his compliance as she said, "I remember you from the Infirmary."

What was intended as a pass at conversation or a tether to the material world was laden with unfortunate connotations. Setebos choked on the memory, immediately flooded with thoughts of

pain paralysis,

days lost in darkness,

flashes of screaming, healers hovering over him on all sides,

he bitterly resented, in that moment, how such a casual statement could strike him with debilitating fear. He straightened himself, realizing the tenseness in his jaw, and shook off the goosebumps like ticks. He tried not to pity her too much when she demurely, placatingly, miserably said that she would understand if he didn't remember her.

"I don't recall," Setebos dismissed her tersely. He shoved the meat at her paws again, this time slopping it over her toes. Hopefully, that would draw her attention to it and help her realize that this wasn't just a tantalizing mirage. His insistence seemed to summon her back to reality and she started to peck at one of the rats, not voraciously enough for his liking, but still, this was progress. He watched her as she did so, nodding approvingly, his coldness lifting. "There we go. I'm not leaving until every bit of meat on those bones is gone."

Weiss would learn that the threat of prolonged interaction with the unpleasant, unfriendly doctor was sufficient enough motivation.