Which Side Are You On?

Khaat and Brian made sure that Ne'Os got to St. Mungos. The healters came immediately to meet the knightbus and to help move Ne'Os inside to the emergency wing. Things began to move relatively quickly once they got inside. She commanded healers to help her get hiim stabilized. She detected a couple of the younger healers about ready to give her some static about treating Emof. His reputation always did seem to proceed him.

Khaat immediately shifted to take her staff to task. She told Brian to stabilize Ne'Os and then she turned to the staff.

"Have you read the sign on this building lately?" she demanded.

"What?" they asked.

"Go read it! Tell me what it says!" she ordered. They rattled off the official hospital name to and she glared at them. "Where does it say we treat whoever we choose? As it stands, my hospital, my rules. He's my patient and if you intend to work here, you will treat him as such. If you don't, then you can leave now and perhaps find a nice little shop to work for." They immediately fell into silence. She returned to her duties and soon had Ne'Os stabilized enough to let him rest. From her own experiences, she knew sleep was not entirely going to be welcome until he had had a chance to come to terms with the damage that Grindelwald had done. For now, what he truly needed was sleep without dreams. And that took a special spell. She cast it to allow him to rest. It might only hold a few hours, but she hoped that he would start to recharge a bit in the process. She had him admitted and moved to a room and ordered one of her more reliable healers to stay. She did not want him left alone unless she was sure he was going to be able to deal with whatever Grindelwald had opened up in his mind.

Ne'Os had finally found restful sleep, but it didn't last very long as he woke only a few hours after it had started. As soon as he woke he suddenly remembered every horrible memory he had experienced during the curse. He noticed he wasn't alone there was a female healer in the room; leading Ne'Os to believe he was on a suicide watch of some sort.

He could see the healer was patiently waiting for him to pull himself back together enough to be checked on. A few seconds later he had quieted some of the memories and their accompanying thoughts. He gave the healer a smile. The woman then walked over to the side of his bed

"How are you feeling?" she asked in a caring voice.

"I feel well enough I’m a little sore from being thrown around as i was but I’m fine" Ne'OS said dryly clearly avoiding the real question.

She smiled taking the hint that he wasn’t ready to answer just yet. "Is there anything i can get you?" she asked.

"A sketch pad would be perfect" he said remembering the bird he had been drawing in order to keep his brain occupied on anything but remembering.

The healer found a pen in her robes and a small pad of paper she then drew her wand and enlarged the paper and then preformed a spell that removed the lines from the paper. "Here you go I know its not perfect but I can’t quite leave you alone" she said.

Ne'Os gave her one of his warm smiles and quickly started sketching he frowned at first when he realized the ink was but quickly fixed that by placing his palm on the paper and mumbling a spell to change the color of the ink as he needed it. He found even this small spell tiring but worth it as the ink turned a nice dark purple color. He then continued drawing, and quickly came up with the base outline of a bird.

Khaat had been mindbogglingly busy. She had delivered a baby and done a difficult surgery. She had lost all track of Brian, who had been summoned off elsewhere, and she wasn't exactly sure where she'd lost him at. She made her way back to the trauma floor, and stopped at the nurses' station, picked up Ne'Os's chart and proceeded to his room, figuring he might wake fairly soon.

She wasn't entirely surprised to see he was awake, and she was glad to see her staff was still attentive. "Go take your break," Khaat told her. "And if you see Hannah, please ask her to send some tea, please."

"Yes, Director," the healer said, leaving.

"You're looking a bit better," Khaat said to him. "I know we've had our differences from time to time, but for what its worth, I do have some idea of what you're dealing with." She wasn't ready to give a great many details about her own experiences, so she could not imagine he would immediately just want to disclose every ugly thought and feeling that was going through his head. "She's not a bodyguard. So you know. But I do know that for awhile, the nightmares will be difficult to control. That's why I left someone with you. Sometimes they can be...difficult. I didn't want you to have to deal with that." She didn't want to say anything more about that. And that was just as much for her benefit as it was for his.

"There are not that many people who have survived that. I just thought perhaps you might like to know you arent' alone. I know what it took for you to survive it. And I know what it takes to move forward with your life afterwards." She heard some the very soft distinctive sound of a tea tray being delivered. Hannah was good about sending tea promptly. And she was also very good at simply floating a tray to its appointed destination. The tray floated in gracefully, and Khaat motioned the tray to a table. "Looks like Oolong," she said, peeking into the pot. "Would you like a mug of tea?"

Ne'Os continued drawing as Khaat entered and dismissed the healer and continued while she talked. He of course was listening but he couldn't help but smile when she said she knew how he felt. He finely put the pad of paper down when she offered him the tea. "I haven't had a good cup of tea in a very long time." he said slowly sounding as if he had trouble finding the correct words.

He looked at her for a moment studying her face thinking over what he would say next. "Despite the fact you use magic to keep me free of nightmares you can not stop the ones that plague me when i'm awake. His curse has unlocked the memories of what it was like when i was dead...When you die as I did you do not go to find peace nor do you go to meet death. You reach a level that man can't comprehend. It is a level where you know everything possible for every single moment." he said still staring at her his eyes looked as if he was experiencing great pain.

"And now...now it is gone. My mind has pushed it all deep down perhaps forgotten it entirely but that knowledge even for a short time leaves its mark. But that is crazy isn't it. Perhaps I am crazy and I only think I have known those things." he said looking down at the sketch of the purple bird. By now he had added multiple details such as feathers and a complete beak. The only thing that was missing was the eyes.

"What do you consider you and I Khaat?" he asked.

She poured tea for both of them and handed him a mug. "I do insist they know how to brew decent tea," she said.

"You know," she said, choosing her words carefully, "You're right. Nightmares are one thing. The terrors that are still there when your eyes are wide open are quite another. At least when you're asleep you do have the ability to hope you'll wake up soon. I can't change the realities that either of us have experienced. For what its worth, though, I don't think you're crazy. I think there are possibilities that exist beyond what most people experience in this lifetime. Well, I know there are. If you're crazy, then I am too. And I'm sure there are those who would like to argue that."

She looked over his work and smiled. "I didnt realize you had artistic talent. You really are quite good." Then she pondered his next question. "You and I? Well, we've been on same side and on opposite sides. But...I don't think we ever lost a certain...understanding between each other. I guess I consider it a very unconventional friendship of sorts. What do you think we are?" She knew there were people who didn't approve of that certain amount of trust that she had always had in Ne'Os. But, she also knew, somewhere, that if someone truly wanted to harm her and Ne'Os was there, she believed Ne'Os would help her. He had in the past, and she believed he still would. And she had not hesitated today when he had been in trouble. Hesitation hadn't been even an option in her thinking.

Ne'Os accepted the tea he had been feeling off since before he and Jess ambushed Zada. “Cheers” he said taking a sip. “Maybe I should force my people to learn the fine art of tea” he said smiling at the thought. “Then again they might try to slip something in it.” He frowned as he listened to her it wasn’t angry it was more of the fact that she couldn’t lie and tell him it would go away. “I think they would be right though. Who does what I do and is sane?” he asked rhetorically.

“I don’t think it’s my talent. This bodies brain seems to have stored some things from its previous occupant.” He said admiring the raven for a moment. “I’ve been thinking of changing the tattoo that the death eaters wear. Besides it will need to be done anyway look.” He drew the sleeve to reveal the scar that had once been a tattoo. “It is all but gone. I’m sure I can still call the others if I need to but…” He trailed off and shrugged.

He had been avoiding her question on what he felt their relationship was. But he knew he needed to answer “You are exactly right; we do seem to have an understanding. Despite the fact that I have done everything in my power to harm you, you still help me when I need it. I owe you my life many times over. You saved me from the corruption of a artifact I couldn’t control, you have patched me up after many battles. And now you have even helped me when my mind has gone to pieces…” He paused for a second and held back a sneeze.

“I want to repay you in some way. I want to make a new artifact. Its capabilities would be very simple all it would do is that If you ever need help and I mean any kind of help even if it is as simple as making a cup of tea all you would need to do is speak my name. I would then hear it and come find you. I would also try to make it so if you were ever unable to call me, and you still needed me I could find you, though that part may be tricky.”

He flipped the notebook to a clean page. He looked down and started to draw a complex spell diagram a intense look of concentration appeared on his face. He paused for a second and looked back up at her “Of course I would only do this with your permission. I find that spells such as this can have odd effects when it is bound so closely to a person as this would be.”

His offer made her smile. "Thank you," she said. "I used to have something similar when I was married to Rob. It was a pair of antique rings. Not sure where he got them, quite honestly, or how exactly they worked. He wore one and I wore the other. The stones changed color depending on whether I was in danger or not. But the bloody idiot let his ring get eaten by one of Charlie Weasley's dragons a long time ago. I haven't had that sort of security since. We were never able to find replacements for them. And it seems one ring is truly useless.

"But the idea really does interest me. You do have a rare gift for making artifacts. You do know that I would not use it unless I were truly in trouble. It is no secret that I have friends on both sides of the law. Its never been an issue to me. And, honestly, it was no issue to me when I knew you were in trouble today. I never even gave it a thought. And I know you've come to help me when I needed it. More than once."

She remembered not hesitating for a moment today. She remembered feeling genuine concern for him, knowing he was facing the formidible dark wizard alone. And she hadn't wanted harm to come to Ne'Os. It would have sounded odd to some people, but she did trust that his desire to kill her was in the past. She wasn't sure why she trusted that, but she did. When he had been in trouble, she had been drawn to him.

"I have had a bit of time on the other side of the veil myself," she told him. "It has changed my perspectives a bit on life. What is important to me now is that my children are safe. No matter what. Your artifact interests me just from that standpoint alone. I don't ever want to be in a position where I can't protect them. You think you can do this?"

Ne'Os smiled when she had accepted. She was right when she said he had a ability to make artifacts. It appeared that was one of the few things with magic he did excel in. He looked at the paper again and tweaked a few of the runes and added others. He waved his hand over the paper and muttered a simple color changing spell so that the runes he indicated turned bright blue instead of black.

After a minute of this he answered "Yes, I think I will be able to make something like that. And no I know you wouldn't abuse it" he said chuckling slightly. His face grew serious again as he continued "It will take some time for me to gather what I need to construct the artifacts. Especially since my wand is now quite lost somewhere in Hogsmeade I will need to buy a new one." he rolled his eyes slightly at that.

"I will also need to know ages and names of the people the artifacts will be going to. that way I can transfer them to the Latin language and make the spell I need." by now he was twirling the pen between his fingers. "Also I will need to know what kind of vessel you would like. I can make a set of rings, amulets, clothing, or anything really. Just as long as it would stay on the person or at least near them. Oh and I would if you want to have me make these out of different objects at least try to keep them built out of the same thing that way I won't need to change the spell much."

He couldn't help it any longer he erupted into a coughing fit that he had been holding back for a while now "sorry about that I never get sick. But then again I guess I have always been a vampire before now. I'm not entirely sure they do get sick. Although I could have just been lucky.