"Letters"
by Acey
Manda Podima, here's the promised update before Thanksgiving! =) Everyone, please note that I'll be gone on vacation to my grandparents' house in Charleston, South Carolina from November twenty-sixth to November thirtieth, and so unless I sneak onto my cousin's comp for hours at a time in the early hours of the morning I highly doubt there'll be any updates during that time. So, before I leave, here's an early Happy Thanksgiving for all of you!
Obvious Disclaimer: Mr. Toriyama can draw much better than I can. If I only had a scanner I could show you just how monstrous my lack of talent with drawing the DBZ cast really is... but I don't and I won't, and instead will not further delay chapter seventeen.
"Miss. Miss." The words went through her blurred mind like a psychic's chanting, repetitive, ingratiating. Several moments went by before she knew who the speaker was refering to, and still more before she responded in turn.
"C-cook." A hesitant utterance from one usually so dead-set in all her ways. She tried slowly to move an arm, but her cook stopped her movements, pushing it gently back down to her side.
"Don't, the doctor says that you shouldn't strain yourself, Miss, especially now, right after--"
Her mistresses' eyes lost part of the vague look they had had since the beginning of her visit to her room, when the cook had been escorted in by the said doctor. He had been a good enough man, the cook had thought, grave and polite in his scrubs as he asked if her mistress had any family and so on, and telling her that she would be all right within several weeks as long as no strains were put on her. Official things that the cook identified with, could understand, put into English. He'd told her that her employer would not look so well, would look out of it until the effects of her pain medications wore off, and the cook, in mild bewilderment, had seen them for herself.
The eyes had been dulled by medicated morphine, like a manga character's when in a trance or faint, watered-down as an artist fades paint shades. The too-sharp, too-obvious, pointed intellect had gone from them, leaving a sort of hollow where it had been. The face-- Cook did not particularly wish to look upon it, covered in white gauze and bandages, an intraveinous unit in one arm. Her left leg was in a cast, elevated. And that doctor had called her lucky.
'Some idea he has of luck,' the cook thought as her mistress spoke.
"The car crashed. It crashed."
The woman closed her fingers on part of the bedsheet, gripping it tightly.
"It was a hit-and-run; they don't know who it was, Miss--"
"I do, Cook."
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Clever cowardice on his part, to find such a way to evade her eventual realizations and pursuit. Very clever, and so like him, the remains of her former colleague. Gero.
The woman had known it to be him right before the moment of the crash, when she saw the steel blue of his eyes. Like a blind man's they had stared at her like they both saw and didn't see her, or that they saw only her, a stare so malicious and sadistic to remind her of Renassiance artists' depictions of the Devil. She had never seen his or anyone else's eyes like that, so cruel, calculating. She never would again.
'He must have known I would go that route. He must have known, somehow.' The thoughts emerged starkly, finally, from the daze of the medications. 'The only question is how he did.'
No more was he behaving as a child with a new game. Gero was as a desperate man, raising the stakes to include the risk of her own life and not just the possible ruination of his. The letters were not intended for her amusement or for her warning; if they had once been they were surely not now. He did not trust her. He had discovered that she was no longer his confidant, that as she was closer to the truth, as she decoded each correspondence, her intent to reveal all became more pronounced. Gero's former colleague had turned against him, he either had realized it the day of the crash or had known it all along.
Or if perhaps he had never maintained his trust in the woman, he was instead still toying with her, a cat-and-mouse game. If that was the case then he might have merely been showing his power over her by something more deadly than a few pieces of paper, not serious enough to kill her. Or he had tried to kill her all along...
"Miss." Cook again, interrupting her thoughts.
The woman made a serious look half-hidden by bandages. "Yes, Cook..."
Cook was smiling, plump, plain face losing what little dour there was in it.
"I brought you dinner, Miss..."
She pulled out platters snuck into the hospital by heaven knew what method, filled with food, her mistresses' favorite dishes, baked potatoes still hot, the butter condiment melted and near -evaporated on their surfaces. Chicken very warm, fresh and good-smelling. And the remainders of last night's apple cake.
"Didn't have time to get the lemonade in a thermos, Miss, but--"
Her mistress heard nothing else of the apology as she realized with a start and nearly a cry that her Cook possessed a gentler, kinder heart than she had ever known was there.
************************************************************************
Manda Podima, here's the promised update before Thanksgiving! =) Everyone, please note that I'll be gone on vacation to my grandparents' house in Charleston, South Carolina from November twenty-sixth to November thirtieth, and so unless I sneak onto my cousin's comp for hours at a time in the early hours of the morning I highly doubt there'll be any updates during that time. So, before I leave, here's an early Happy Thanksgiving for all of you!
Obvious Disclaimer: Mr. Toriyama can draw much better than I can. If I only had a scanner I could show you just how monstrous my lack of talent with drawing the DBZ cast really is... but I don't and I won't, and instead will not further delay chapter seventeen.
"Miss. Miss." The words went through her blurred mind like a psychic's chanting, repetitive, ingratiating. Several moments went by before she knew who the speaker was refering to, and still more before she responded in turn.
"C-cook." A hesitant utterance from one usually so dead-set in all her ways. She tried slowly to move an arm, but her cook stopped her movements, pushing it gently back down to her side.
"Don't, the doctor says that you shouldn't strain yourself, Miss, especially now, right after--"
Her mistresses' eyes lost part of the vague look they had had since the beginning of her visit to her room, when the cook had been escorted in by the said doctor. He had been a good enough man, the cook had thought, grave and polite in his scrubs as he asked if her mistress had any family and so on, and telling her that she would be all right within several weeks as long as no strains were put on her. Official things that the cook identified with, could understand, put into English. He'd told her that her employer would not look so well, would look out of it until the effects of her pain medications wore off, and the cook, in mild bewilderment, had seen them for herself.
The eyes had been dulled by medicated morphine, like a manga character's when in a trance or faint, watered-down as an artist fades paint shades. The too-sharp, too-obvious, pointed intellect had gone from them, leaving a sort of hollow where it had been. The face-- Cook did not particularly wish to look upon it, covered in white gauze and bandages, an intraveinous unit in one arm. Her left leg was in a cast, elevated. And that doctor had called her lucky.
'Some idea he has of luck,' the cook thought as her mistress spoke.
"The car crashed. It crashed."
The woman closed her fingers on part of the bedsheet, gripping it tightly.
"It was a hit-and-run; they don't know who it was, Miss--"
"I do, Cook."
************************************************************************
Clever cowardice on his part, to find such a way to evade her eventual realizations and pursuit. Very clever, and so like him, the remains of her former colleague. Gero.
The woman had known it to be him right before the moment of the crash, when she saw the steel blue of his eyes. Like a blind man's they had stared at her like they both saw and didn't see her, or that they saw only her, a stare so malicious and sadistic to remind her of Renassiance artists' depictions of the Devil. She had never seen his or anyone else's eyes like that, so cruel, calculating. She never would again.
'He must have known I would go that route. He must have known, somehow.' The thoughts emerged starkly, finally, from the daze of the medications. 'The only question is how he did.'
No more was he behaving as a child with a new game. Gero was as a desperate man, raising the stakes to include the risk of her own life and not just the possible ruination of his. The letters were not intended for her amusement or for her warning; if they had once been they were surely not now. He did not trust her. He had discovered that she was no longer his confidant, that as she was closer to the truth, as she decoded each correspondence, her intent to reveal all became more pronounced. Gero's former colleague had turned against him, he either had realized it the day of the crash or had known it all along.
Or if perhaps he had never maintained his trust in the woman, he was instead still toying with her, a cat-and-mouse game. If that was the case then he might have merely been showing his power over her by something more deadly than a few pieces of paper, not serious enough to kill her. Or he had tried to kill her all along...
"Miss." Cook again, interrupting her thoughts.
The woman made a serious look half-hidden by bandages. "Yes, Cook..."
Cook was smiling, plump, plain face losing what little dour there was in it.
"I brought you dinner, Miss..."
She pulled out platters snuck into the hospital by heaven knew what method, filled with food, her mistresses' favorite dishes, baked potatoes still hot, the butter condiment melted and near -evaporated on their surfaces. Chicken very warm, fresh and good-smelling. And the remainders of last night's apple cake.
"Didn't have time to get the lemonade in a thermos, Miss, but--"
Her mistress heard nothing else of the apology as she realized with a start and nearly a cry that her Cook possessed a gentler, kinder heart than she had ever known was there.
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