milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Bet they weren't trained by Batman, though," Steph says. Steph, overconfident? Never. "I'm pretty good. I mean, I beat up a whole gang once, during the war."

She did, too! She was very proud of herself. And then she died, because DC sucks like that.

"Hm. Perhaps."

It's not like he has any experience at all with women like this. Those women who did fight back in his world, chose different methods.

Steph grins at him.

"Melou didn't believe me either. He was all 'who looks after you, then?' I look after myself."

"But what do you live on?"

He's just about come to terms with the idea of a woman knight. But even Alanna lives within the kind of structure he's used to.

"The Bar, at the moment. I work for Security." She runs a hand through her hair, grinning. "When I was alive my mom worked at a hospital, and when she didn't spend the money on drugs I used that for groceries."

"Your father abandoned your mother?" he asks sympathetically. "Or died?"

It should be noted that a 'hospital' for him, would be run by monks or nuns if it existed at all.

"Abandoned us, and then died," Steph says, and shrugs. "He was a criminal. It was no great loss."

"And so then your mother went to the convent? But it didn't sound as though it suited her..."

"...convent? No..." She shakes her head. "No, we stayed at home. Well, I did run away and live on the streets for a bit, but Robin made me go back to Mom."

"But the sisterhood is the best place for widowed and abandoned women. And you said the hospital..."

He's confused.

"We can take care of ourselves," Steph repeats, looking at him curiously. "Hospitals aren't convents. Not in my time. Mom's just a shift nurse. Works at night, comes home during the day. Or - she did, anyway. Don't know what she's doing now."

"Then who pays for the hospitals?"

"The people who use them, of course. Who pays in your time?"

"Donations, partly, from the rich who feel generous. And the Church."

Steph ponders that. "I guess sometimes the rich donate. Bruce Wayne does, a lot. But mostly it's user-pays. Your system's probably better than ours."

" - of course, our health-care's probably better than yours." She grins.

"It depends where you are. Many people do survive wounds."

Steph blinks. "...what sort of wounds? I mean, are we talking slight-scratch, or leg-chopped off?"

"With swift enough care, it's possible to survive the loss of a leg. But of course, you can never work again. And if you don't seek care, even slight wounds can kill."

He's thinking of Gaheris, whose wound really hadn't been very bad.

"Mmm," Steph says. "Yeah, we're ... a little more advanced than you guys, I think."

A little.

"How would it be done in your time, then?"

Lest it seem the narration has forgotten about Carney, not at all. He's there, watchful as ever.

"With - drugs and stuff. Antibiotics. And if someone loses a leg, they get prosthetics, so they can still be almost as good as before. Hardly anyone dies, unless they're really badly hurt, like I was."

"..antibiotics? Prosthetics?"

These words are unfamiliar.

Difficult to explain, too - Steph never even finished high school, she's no doctor.

"Well, prosthetics are fake limbs, that work like real ones. And antibiotics are ... medicine."

Of the future.

"That stops people dying."

"To stop wounds going bad?" he guesses, hopefully, blinking at the idea of fake limbs that actually work.

"Yeah! Exactly."

She isn't sure, but that sounds about right.