(no subject)

[never_promised]

Here comes someone looking like death warmed over: gaunt, with sunken eyes and cracked lips, shuffling through the door in a sumptuous dressing-gown. It seems to take him several seconds to recognize the main room. When he does Henry laughs without much enthusiasm and makes his way to one of the couches by the fire, where he takes off his crown and closes his eyes.

Comments

[clayforthedevil]

He looks bad. Fetch-a-doctor bad?

...Too-late-for-a-doctor bad?

Bahorel gives him a couple of minutes before coming over to lean on the back of the couch. "You're well out of practice in your old life, to be falling asleep in plain sight in a tavern. Dressed like that? You'd be lucky to wake up without a small museum painted onto you."

[never_promised]

"I did not sleep." His knuckles are white where they grip the crown. "I did but close my eyes."

[clayforthedevil]

Right.

" Did you close them here, or back in Merry Old England? Do you remember?" There's more patience in the question than in most of the conversations he's had with Hal.

[never_promised]

"France. I am yet in France." Well--all right, not exactly. He manages a laugh. "Or was, before I came here. And I suppose I must return to France, though I had rather it were England."

[clayforthedevil]

".. France, right. Hold that story."

It really isn't much of a good idea to leave a person alone when they're looking like Hal does; Bahorel's only gone long enough to get drinks. The one he holds out to Hal is steaming and smells notably more herbal than alcoholic. " --Can you sit up?"

[harryhotspur]

Harry doesn't recognize the figure by the fire at first. Luckily, Henry's closed eyes buy him a moment to conceal his surprise.

"Never hast thou so taken after thy grandsire." Gaunt? Get it?

[never_promised]

Percy. Of course Percy is here in Milliways--but is it more a case of of course Percy is here, where the dead go? No, he can't think it. "--Nay, but I am not in my grave, and so the resemblance cannot be so great."

[harryhotspur]

"And yet not so well, methinks." He hesitates. "What wondrous medicines this place possesseth I know you know-- or else you have forgot."

[never_promised]

"O, I am sick of doctors!" See, he can manage a joke! Sort of!

He lets go of the crown long enough to scrub his face with a hand, to try to smooth his hair and straighten his dressing-gown. "But 'tis true, the doctors here are wondrous wise and skillful. That Frenchman, what is his name..."

[harryhotspur]

"Joly," Percy supplies. "A fair name, and a pretty skill he hath. Wouldst have me seek him out?"

[starrydome]

Elrond sees the man. The way he walks. The tone of his skin. The sunken eyes. The cracked lips.

Well.

He walks over, his robes rustling lightly, his footfall light.

(It makes him a little uneasy. Men who are - no longer breathing and yet breathes here. But such is the nature of Milliways. And they might as well have need of comfort and respite as other Men. Even more so perhaps. )

He is dressed in greys and purple today. Like a sunrise on a rainy day.
Or a sunset.

(Thoughts of Men and their mortality are difficult. But that should not keep him from doing what he can to help).

He doesn't speak at first.

[never_promised]

It takes Harry some time to notice him; he's not exactly asleep here in front of the fire but he's not exactly all that awake, either. But he opens his eyes, and sits up a little straighter, and smiles a courteous smile while trying to bring the person's name up from his memory.

"...Elrond," he says, after a pause that's maybe just a little too long. "How fare you, sir?"

[starrydome]

"I am well," Elrond replies.

"And when I saw you sitting here, I thought to myself that you looked like you might be in need of something warm to drink."
Something soothing.

He is a healer, but he will not insist on herbal tissanes.
It says a lot that he does not ask the Man how he is feeling.

[never_promised]

He laughs a little. "Look I so ill? Well--well, you may be right; I would not say no to a warm cup, broth or the like."

Harry is so very tired of broth. But he's stopped arguing with the doctors.

[starrydome]

"I had thought of mulled wine," Elrond replies.

Glorfindel would approve.

[just_cant_lose]

'Oh, dear.'

Jim actually sounds sympathetic for once, and not even as if he's faking it. He has no intention of doing much more than passing comment, but he's not about to let this slip by. So he flops down on the sofa opposite Hal; his hands are full of his mostly-finished drone, but his eyes are turned to the king.

'Got to this bit, have you?'

Youch. Nasty.

[never_promised]

Very nasty. Dysentery carries some people away within days, but a strong and determined young man with the best possible care can manage to scrape along for a good three months or so. Good times.

Which is to say that when Henry finally opens his eyes and looks at Jim, it's with a face that clearly and eloquently says-- Fuck off.

[just_cant_lose]

'Mmm,' he says, as if Harry had spoken aloud - which he did really, just not with words.

'Don't worry, I'm going.'

At some point. Not yet.

'Can I get you anything?'

Genuine question.

[never_promised]

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "...News of thy death? A rope to hang thee with?"

He's had time I say handwavily to come to terms with a thing or two. Regain some of his sense of humor, even.

[just_cant_lose]

Jim's eyebrows go up.

'Bit harsh,' he says, mildly.

'Actual death threats? I haven't stooped that low.'

Why you got to be so mean, Harry? Admittedly, it would be a little pointless to threaten death to a man he's always known would be dead soon enough - but that could be said of anyone, if you wait long enough.

[electro_kinetic]

"Wow."

Noriko has never been much for doctors herself, but Henry kinda looks like he's on the more urgent end of needing one. He looks like a walking--sort of--advertisement for a banana bag. "Whatever you got must be a hell of a bug."

[never_promised]

Yeah, he's definitely looked better. By now he's millitimesyhandwave been checked out by Joly--who would have preferred Harry stay in the infirmary overnight, but Harry doesn't really see the point. Hasn't he been confined to bed enough for the last months?

...so of course he's celebrating his freedom from medical care by sitting quietly in front of the fireplace again and nursing a cup of whatever Joly told the bar to give him. He raises his eyebrows at Noriko. "Ay, I am pestilence itself." Nice to see you too!

[electro_kinetic]

"Got the horse too?" she asks, looking at him from under her bangs as she settles in a chair with a cup of tea and a plate f what looks like golf-ball sized mounds of pinkish white, each wrapped in a leaf.

"I'd get you a beer, but that seems like a poor choice."

[never_promised]

While he's been sick and dying--a long, tedious process--no one has been so callous (let alone improper) as to sit and eat in front of the king. He's not sure what the leaf-wrapped dumplingish(?) things are, and he's trying not to eye them too obviously, because that would be pathetic.

"I thank you for the tender thought," he says dryly. "But I am well provided; Mistress Bar hath her orders from the doctor to feed me up."

[electro_kinetic]

First things first: Noriko has zero care for propriety or birth rank. So she is perfectly willing to sit there next to a (by her time) particularly famous English King and eat. But she isn't oblivious, and so his eyeballing of the mochi catches her attention, and she reaches for one to scoot it by the leaf to the edge of the plate towards Henry.

"You can have one, and it might make you feel better," she says, eyes flicking from his face to the rice and back. "It's just sticky rice colored pink."