milliways_bar | (no subject)

Asar-Suti lifts an eyebrow.

"So you're not quite fired yet, if you're working?" he asks.

He's not used to people with iffy job situations, and finds it rather interesting.

"No, I grovelled and he's let me off, thank goodness." Guppy replies ~~causing his mun to reach for the mini-dictionary to check the number of multiple consonants in the third word~~. "Like I said, the fact that I wasn't blackmailing him or sleeping with his daughter counted in my favour. But I'll have to tread carefully for a bit and get back into his good books."

"I'm glad you weren't fired; you seem very attached to your job," Asar-Suti nods. "And really, you deserve commendation for your courage, if anything, for standing up to your boss, even if you later turned out to have been wrong."

"No, really, I don't. I made a total mess of the whole thing. Not to mention being completely unprofessional about it before confronting him. I was extremely rude to him."

He fiddles with his hair, remembering a few rather tense scenes ~~in which his mun wanted to strangle him for being such a twit~~.

"Turns out he was investigating my father too. So the correct justice should prevail, which can only be a good thing."

"That means your father gets fired, and you don't have to work in the same place as him any more?" Asar-Suti asks, hopefully.

He is, after all, the Dark God of the Ihlini. He he no pity for anybody who harmed someone he counts among 'his people', which are friends nowadays, no longer follower, but take the same sort of priority over any ethics, pity, or common decency.

"Possibly. I don't know what the exact rules are, but the worst thing that could happen to him careerwise is that he is struck off by the GMC. But that might not happen. He might just be disciplined or suspended on full pay pending investigation. It depends on the strength of Harry's evidence."

He is torn between the underlying love that he has for his father, the unbreakable bond between parent and child, and the feelings of disgust and betrayal. His heart still wants the friendship that his head knows can never come now.

Some parents, you have to disown, is Asar-Suti's opinion. Ginevra, after all, killed both hers without a second thought when she brought down the fortress of Valgaard. And, if Asar-Suti now thinks of Cynric, she was right to do so.

"What's a GMC?" he asks, instead.

"General Medical Council. It's basically the people in charge of all the doctors in Britain. We have to register with them to make it legal to practice medicine. If you get struck off, it means you can't be a doctor any more. It's most doctors' worst nightmare.
They keep an eye on doctors to make sure we're doing our jobs properly. To make sure we aren't abusing patients and so on. There have been a few pretty nasty cases of doctors committing murder and such in the past, by abusing their positions of trust. Systems like the GMC are there to try to prevent that sort of thing happening again."

"That sounds very sensible - healers have a great responsibility and should always be answerable to some council of peers," Asar-Suti agrees.

"Oh yes, absolutely. Can't have corrupt people like my father running around doing whatever they feel like."

He fiddles with his hair, again feeling the pang of divided loyalties.

"So, what have you been up to?" he asks, feeling the need for a change of subject.

"Reading books," Asar-Suti says, vaguely. 'Missing Gil' would be more like it, but he doesn't want to worry Guppy.

Guppy looks at the book. He could guess that Asar-Suti is missing Gil, but isn't going to bring the subject up, in case he gets upset.

"What language is that in?"

Asar-Suti wouldn't get upset, just droopy. But still, good thinking.

"It's an Earth language; I think it's called German," he says, in answer to Guppy's question.

Guppy looks at it.

"Oh yes. I don't speak German, but there's 'ein' there, which is 'a'. Is it good?"

He marvels at Asar-Suti being able to read a language that he doesn't even know the name of. Must be a god thing.

It is a god thing.

"Yep, that means 'a'," he agrees. "It's a funny language, using suffixes as well as changes to the stems. Like - Hebrew crossed with Latin, sort of thing."

"Some medical terms are like that. It's like things ending with -itis mean inflammation of."

Guppy is not a great expert on languages.

Asar-Suti smiles. "And now imagine the terms ending on '-itis' changing inside, and you have German," Asar-Suti says.

"So like haemophilia and haemothorax?"

"No, the 'haemo' part stays the same all the time; it means 'blood', as far as I can tell," Asar-Suti says.

"Yes, it does, but it's on the front. That's not what you meant is it? Was I right the first time then, like arthritis and laryngitis?"

Asar-Suti shakes his head.

"Nah, sorry; German is more complicated than that."

Guppy gives it up.

"I've never been much good at languages. What's it about?"

"I don't know yet," Asar-Suti says. "It's metaphorical in some way, I think."

"I'm not disturbing you am I?"

Scampi jumps on Asar-Suti's shoulder and starts playing with his hair, purring in his ear.

"Oh, no, you're not; the book will be here aferwards, afer all," Asar-Suti says, reaching up and cuddling the kitten.

He grins at it out of the corner of his eye.