You'll Catch The Crazy

Having polished off his second severing of Firewhiskey, Nemo set aside the empty glass upon the table to his left. And with the agility that his career had lent him, he caught with ease the deck that he’d been thrown.

With haste, he dug into to the cardboard in which the cards had been concealed, noting briefly and without intention the state of the box. Little tearing at the opening. If they were used often, the flap would have ripped at the edges. He moved the box from front to back in his hands. The corners are bent inward. They’ve seen the inside of a cabinet or box for years. He’d learned over time that tarot cards often remained loyal to their previous owners with the passing of a deck from one Seer to another, but this particular set did not appear to have been used more often than was necessary.

Nemo slid into his palm the small stack of cards, before proceeding to flip each individually between his fingers, much in the nature that one would when dealing to a table of blackjack participants. When he felt satisfied with the number of times that he’d shuffled the cards, he squared them in his palm once more and flicked the first upon the deck to face him. This card would reveal the nature of his question, and would act as a guideline for his reading. His question being: What did I see when I read Jack Dyllan? Her future had been clouded in far too much symbolism for him to have determined what he'd seen on his own.

For the duration of the month, Nemo had pondered over the results of a third party reading regarding The Savior. His trip into her future had left him with far more questions than those with which he’d begun. His curiosity was beginning to get the better of him, and Nemo was not known for frequently practicing self restraint.

“Sexy trick,” Nemo commented with the arrival of an enchanted stereo, the albums he’d asked for, and a howler. Though he had not looked up from the ritual in which he was partaking, the spinning box in which they’d made their appearance had not gone unnoticed. He grinned with twinkling excitement in response to Khaat’s identification of the albums that they’d been provided with, “Double Vision: my favorite song,” he noted in a tone so uncharacteristically quiet as to suggest that he hadn’t been aware that he was speaking aloud.

Khaat laughed when Nemo commented it had been a sexy trick.

"I've never thought of him as sexy," she laughed. "I think it would horrify us both." For Khaat, Michael was, well, family. "But he does know some rather impressive spells," she agreed. She watched his concentration over the cards. "Isn't it a bit disconcerting to look forwards like that?" she asked, honestly curious. There was the threat in the future, always, of seeing she might lose someone else she loved. She didn't want to know.

In the past, on the other hand, she always found she was far more curious about looking for pieces of the past, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She preferred the chase of a really great mystery. And, she could still sometimes see some of those she'd loved and lost. She hadn't found future work to be that way. It was more like following just one thread of a tapestry to see where it went.

She finished her firewhiskey and set her glass aside. One was enough.

"Perhaps, if I were looking at my own timeline," He replied in the nature of a distracted man attempting to simultaneously accomplish one too many things, though he seemed content in his work and the conversation that he and Khaat shared, so long as it continued to veer off of the topic of his dysfunctions. He moved out of his chair, and plopped down upon the hard floor below, deciding it a much easier task to spread out such a large number of cards before himself with more space to do so.

"A premonition struck me earlier this month," he muttered as he arranged each in what was perhaps the only instance under which Nemo Omara was truly careful and aware of his every action. "It burned itself in my mind, but I can't make heads or tails of it," He added distantly.

Nemo did not turn his gaze away from the task at hand, but rather, lifted an arm without paying any mind to the direction in which he'd extended it, and he flicked his finger outward, striking his mark expertly. The glass with which he's fingernail had collided rung for a brief moment. And it was in this way that he requested that his cup be refilled as he carried on, flipping over cards and examining each with eyes narrowed in concentration. His foot never halting as it repeatedly drummed against the floor.

His 'ringing' his glass, despite his preoccupation, felt a bit like he expected her to be subservient. Still, if plying him with firewhiskey mellowed his mood, she wasn't above it. She flicked her fingers lazily at the bottle, and it refilled his glass.

She watched the cards as he laid them. No, this surely was not his timeline. Clearly not. And even what little she did with the cards told her that whatever he was looking at, while it might have made sense to him, looked just murky and blurred to her. Mixed messages and references. Odd. And then when he mentioned having a premonition, that did intrigue her. She tended to either get flashes of information from the past, or she seemed to be able to see more concurrently. Premonitions for her usually came in the form of hideous nightmares. Fortunately for her, her father had married a seer who worked in much the same way, so being rousted up in the middle of the night to blood curdling screams had become a way of life in the Lupin house. And her husband was getting broken in fast.

"I hate premonitions," she heard herself say under her breath. Then she caught herself. Maybe she would have part of a second glass after all. She motioned the bottle to refill her glass, and diverted her attentions back to his cards. After a moment she looked over at the bottle and scowled. It was not going to stop filing her glass and seemed to be intent on running the glass over. She snatched the bottle out of the air. Arrogant little charm. Either that or the illness was making her magic go wonky again. Oh well, no point in ruining perfectly good firewhiskey.

"Some of us depend on it," his reply was curt, thus betraying the cord that Khaat had unintentionally struck with her words. Nemo caught himself, however, and reached for his glass once more, deciding it best if he provided his squirming nerves with another dose of alcohol.

It calmed and contented him significantly.

Three cards lay before him, turned over beneath his frantic eyes. Having done far fewer third party readings than he had traditional, due to the nature of his business through The Source, Nemo had chosen to put to use the technique of identifying three different linear points in the subject's life. The information that he obtained from those three points in time of his choice would have to quench his curiosity for the time being, until he could convince The Savior that it may be of importance that he read her more thoroughly.

He was not concerned. Nemo had divorced himself from his subject as he examined each of the cards upon the floor. His own biases would in no way effect his reading - of that he was certain.

The Past: An angel.

Nemo's eyes flicked beneath his eyelids as the words of his mother rang clear; during a lesson in which he'd been taught the meaning of every tarot card, every symbol, and she had given him a story for each. "Lay it to rest? I thought I'd left it behind, all of it!" An image of a spirit outstretching her long arm in the direction of the past, seared Nemo's mind. "You cannot hide from it, run from it, or rid yourself of it. But you can call it up, and come to terms with it. Are you willing to do that?"

He breathed deeply and rocked forward, opening his eyes once more.

The Present: A winged devil.

For the second time, Nemo's upper body was knocked several inches backwards as his eyelids pressed against one another, as though an invisible force had struck his chest. At once, fire engulfed his eyes, leaving nothing to see but the tongues of flames. "All I am doing is bringing out what is already in you!" his mother's interpretation of the Devil's tarot rang clear throughout the tunnels of his ears. He hissed, throwing his eyes open.

The Future: Eight of Cups.

For the third and final time he was overtaken by his tarot-guided premonitions. But what he saw when his vision swiveled in the direction of the future, was a familiar mop of unruly red hair. No more of The Savior could be made out, but a single word repeated itself, enveloping her image, "Surrender!"

"Well!" Nemo called out as he reeled himself in, withdrawing from his reading. He had already begun to stack the cards upon one another, squaring them off. But, despite the word with which he had attempted to alert Khaat that he'd returned, he had nothing more to say, though it may have sounded so. Instead, Nemo reached for his class once more, and began to drink from it without pause. He was starving for alcohol.

And some of us would rather die than to see any more pain ahead of us, Khaat thought, her past rearing up to bite into her spirit hard enough to resurrect her fear of the future. Now who exactly was the wounded? She said nothing. She told herself it was merely hinky solitaire. She refused to spy into the reading he was doing. It was too threatening.

She was relieved when she heard the announcement of his finishing of the reading. Good. Enough games. Let the tarot stay just a Halloween ritual, she told herself. Not a thought that her mother would approve of. She could almost see the scowl her mother would give her for wanting to reduce the significance of the tarot for a seer. And then her mother would have promptly called her on her horsecrap.

"Do yourself a favor and take the sleeping potion," she told him, moving mentally back into being professional and pushing her own thoughts and feelings aside as quickly as an unwanted entree. "You can't possibly swallow enough firewhiskey to get to where you want to be and stay there. You know that. You know that sometimes a bit of rest works far better."

Without argument, Nemo stood from the floor where he'd previously been seated and stepped across the room. He had no quick quips with which to respond to Khaat's insistence that he begin on the sedative. For the truth that the drought would do little to help him sleep weighed heavily in his heart. It had been several days since he had last slept; he had little use for such tedious things when he became manic. 'Twas an element of his disorder that he often cherished, but had grown to despise as his body began to reject the world around him as a result. The sedative would do little more than make peace of his thoughts, but that was more than enough of an effect to please Nemo. No matter the fact that he would not be welcomed home by the comforting arms of a few hours' rest: he'd take the momentary satisfaction.

With practiced fluency, Nemo threw the potion back with a quick toss of his head and flick of his wrist, before offering Khaat the vial in which it had previously been contained. He then proceeded to take a seat beside her, and recline backwards. He had visibly relaxed with the introduction of alcohol and sedatives into his system, but his consciousness had not yet been freed from the death grip of his thoughts of what he'd found beneath The Savior's exterior. Nevertheless, he was no longer jumping.

Nemo cast a sidelong glance in the direction of the woman to his left, his lips quirking at their corners, "So, have I passed your unorthodox examination, Barbie?" he inquired in a tone that suggested that a high would be creeping up on Nemo very shortly. His pupils had already begun to dilate. Perhaps he should have taken in to consideration the several other vials of sleeping drought that he'd pinched from the Hospital's potion supply room earlier that afternoon. The thought elicited a hearty laugh from Nemo, who carried on giggling in that manner for several minutes.

Barbie. He'd fired that shot with pinpoint accuracy. It made her give him a smile that had just a wee touch of the sardonic to it. She let him laugh. Mania wasn't a crime. And if he got this manic, then the pit he fell into, when it came, was, no doubt, terrifyingly deep. Surely the mania seemed like a gift while it lasted, but always knowing that the other edge of the blade might not be far away.

"You're a better seer than I took you for," she said. "I don't think much of the tarot, but that's not news. And, yes, you pass my expectations for the moment. I have a better question. Have I passed yours?" He'd seen she worked much too hard to try to be outwardly "perfect," and it had sometimes come out looking about as genuine as tinsel. And that had been something she'd done to herself. The compulsion to be 'pretty' had come because of how much kids were repelled by her initially just because they knew her uncle was a werewolf. Of course, they had said, she was surely a werewolf too. Idiots. That didn't even make any stinking sense. Never had. And they were even dumber that they bought that if she were pretty, then she surely couldn't be a werewolf because werewolves were vicious and ugly and hairy. Apparently 24/7/365. She didn't much care now if people liked her or not. Or at least it was what she told herself. Nevertheless, the compulsion continued like a permanent "I am not a werewolf" advertisement.

She picked up her glass and drained it all at once. Somewhere in it all, she realized she'd felt her own energies activated. And she felt an energy she knew entirely too well. Death. She didn't know where it was coming from or what it meant. But she felt it. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad. It just was. Had it been in the cards when she hadn't been looking? Was it in his thoughts? Or had he resurrected memories of her own near death experience--her own few moments beyond the veil?

"Do me a favor, Mort'," she sighed. "Don't ever read me, would you? Or at least if you do, don't tell me. I honestly don't want to know." But beyond that, she didn't want him to know that part of her. And if he didn't read her, he wouldn't see it. Maybe. Unless she'd underestimated him--again. She looked at his 'out-of-it' appearance. He had been far too friendly with the firewhiskey for her to believe that he was that vulnerable to its effects. And the potion wasn't made to argue with the alcohol--not to this extent. Why the hell had he made her slow on the draw. She hadn't seen it till now. "Mort, Mort, Mort," she laughed. "You were naughty, weren't you?" It amused her, and it made her laugh. "Be glad its me you got today and not someone else." Almost any of the other healers would have been far less tolerant. But for some odd reason, she liked him.

The accentuated sigh that very well could have expelled Nemo's entire being made it quite clear that he had already obtained from Khaat all the information that was possible for him to have by merely reading her. It was a pity, that he would not be given the opportunity to inform her of what he'd learned; 'twas his favorite part of the routine. "Sorry..." he apologized with a quick shrug of his shoulders and an unintentional grin, "It becomes impulsive when the mania has its say," he elaborated. He'd reached for the Foreigner record and the enchanted stereo, and had begun in the setup of the system, so to provide the too-quite room with something more to say. "But to be fair, I'd read you before you'd asked that I avoid doing so," Nemo added as a defensive afterthought.

With a jab of his index finger into one of the stereo's many buttons, the thing sprung to life in a harmony of guitars. Double Vision drifted throughout the stiff, hospital air - which now smelt the faintest of Firewhiskey. "Aha!" Nemo exclaimed as he settled himself once more in his place beside Khaat, making himself comfortable as his boots drummed along to the rhythm of the song with which he was quite fond, as though they'd taken on a lives of their own. He chuckled alongside Khaat, finding her laughter - or, rather, any laughter for that matter - incredibly difficult to resist the infectious effects of. His darkly shaded eyebrows climbed upward to meet his hairline as Khaat introduced him to a nickname with which he'd never been acquainted, "Mort? That's a new one. Congrats: you've made your mark on my life. I have a new nickname," he giggled into his hands, which he had enveloped his face in during his fit of laughter.

A fit which only worsened with Khaat's inquiry, and the mention of the word 'naughty', which had forever had a strange effect on Nemo. He revealed his face to Khaat once more as he leaned against the armrests that remained between them, his eyes having welled with the glimmering sheen of amusement. "Naughty? Me?" he managed to squeak between labored breaths. "Whooo," Nemo sighed as his breathing was made normal once more, at last. "I had no idea it would take so long for it to kick in!" He exclaimed in a tone of bewilderment, his smile the widest it had ever been.

She really could have been angry that he'd read her already, but it struck her as funny. That old occupational hazard again. It had been her deck after all. It might well have betrayed her to him itself.

"Well, then you know there arent' that many secrets to tell," she smiled. And it was part of the problem in growing up in a family that had been made famous. There wasn't much of an opportunity to hide oneself under any sort of rock. There were precious few things Khaat had ever been able to keep the rest of the wizarding world from knowing.

The only thing she really did want to keep secret was that she knew what it was like to die, to have one's spirit separate from their body, to watch her loved ones grieve for her from outside herself, to see the other side,...and the grief of being forced back. And the fact that she had seen her uncle's spirit since his passing. There were so few who understood that, or had any appreciation that it was even possible, much less the flood of emotions that came with it. Perhaps Mort hadn't gotten that far below her surface. But she doubted that. He was much quicker than she had first thought. It was far more likely that he knew.

"Be glad I called you Mort. There are members of my family that cannot help themselves but to nickname everyone they know. And not all the nicknames are flattering," she laughed.