thewarningafter | IC inbox for Snowblind

[He'll do her the courtesy of matching formats. He still doesn't recognize her even when he sees her face, wonders how often they even crossed paths back in New York. His is the face of someone who's tired as hell; there also happens to be a yellowing bruise on one side of it.]

I think I'm about as okay as anybody gets here.

[He has his cloak back, which was a huge relief.]

I take it you got out alright as well.

[She also looks very tired, and like she's lost some weight rapidly, and recently. Not extremely healthy, but alive.]

Everything is relative, I guess. But I'm okay. My death price, or whatever that was, is finally fading off.

You... you alone?

For now, looks like. If you don't mind my asking, what was it?

Were you alone before? I... it seems that we've lost some people.

[She looks down at her hands.]

I couldn't use my hands. I had no feeling in them.

Who's missing? I've run into a few people, but I don't have any traveling companions, if that's what you mean. I was alone when we were taken to the other place.

None at all?

Right. Beckett was with us before we woke up in that other place. And now, he isn't - he's nowhere to be found, and not responding to messages.

[It's very obvious on her face that she's very worried about that, because the idea that he might have got stuck in whatever place they were in is terrifying.]

None at all. They were like two paperweights at the end of my wrists.

Shit.

[The exact same thought immediately occurs to Stephen -- but he remembers, too, the static. The place had been torn apart behind them as they ran. He doesn't know anything about Beckett beyond the various claims that he's a vampire, but he wouldn't wish that on anyone.

And enjoy that grimace at the description, Claire. Paperweights.]

The penalties, or whatever they are -- it doesn't make sense. Not unless it's acute MN poisoning; we know the regular kind presents a huge array of symptoms.

Yeah.

[As he grimaces, she smirks.]

None of it makes sense. It's not death, either, it can't be. I'm leaning towards comas, of some sort, and being fixed behind the scenes. But they always leave something behind, like it's too much to completely restore us.

Or like restoring us overloads the system and brings on its own symptoms -- if MN poisoning is a result of the nanomachines active in our blood, presumably higher levels of repair activity mean higher levels of poisoning.

[He's not going to touch the question of whether it can be real death. He's pretty sure it is, but he's also pretty sure she needs to believe it's not.]

Yeah, or - restoring us takes a toll on the nanomachines, which then have to disregard a system for a while. I don't know. Or it's just punishment. You shouldn't have died!

[She waves her finger at the camera, her voice taking in a scolding tone.]

Young lady, if you die one more time you are grounded.

Might help if they stopped giving us ways to die.

[Helplessly, she chuckles.]

Might help if some people weren't so willing to die, either.

[She's not talking about herself, even if she did jump in front of danger to keep Kid out of harm's way.]

Maybe 'experimenting' about 'death' isn't really us putting our best foot forward to find a way out...

You're telling me.

[He's thought the morgue experiments were stupid since he first heard of them.]

In House's and Sherlock's defense, they've proven that their experiments' results are repeatable. That's about all they've proven, though.

I'm not entirely sure what they're trying to accomplish. What any of these experiments are trying to accomplish. Davesprite's, I get - it was for his sake, to make sure, to himself, that he was real. But jerking around with life and death, it's so pointless.

[Part of her knows that some of it is due to House being so anti-religion and wanting to stick it to the faithful, but whatever. It still doesn't accomplish anything.]

It's supposed to prove what else is real.

[He does get it. He knows perfectly well what House is planning, and why he's planning it.]

Once we know what's real we might be able to change the way we interact with it. That's the idea, anyway. I just don't know that the little tidbits we learn from it are worth anything like a human life.

Hmm.

[While potentially useful, it's still not getting them closer to home.]

You're a doctor. Shouldn't nothing be more precious than a human life to you?

[That stings, and it shows in his face. There's more shame than anger there, though, for all that it makes him snap in his own defense.]

You think I'm condoning it?

You seem to be contemplating it.

[She doesn't mean to upset him, but maybe - maybe getting through to him could save someone's life for the sake of an experiment that might tell them absolutely nothing at all. House could die, and not come back at all.]

There are chances, huge chances, that the experiment would be inconclusive, and House could never come back to it. Then what, you know? Then... what.

[He draws in a long breath, lets it out again in a slow sigh. He's tired, so tired, and it shows in his face.]

Then he'll have killed himself, same as if it was conclusive. It's not worth it. I know it's not worth it. We might learn something, but that doesn't mitigate the cost.

I just don't know that any of us can stop him.

Do you think he doesn't care about the cost? Is he suicidal?

[Her voice takes on a clinical tone, all work. She doesn't want to speculate much on House's mental state, but it would explain a lot.]

Beyond his history of lethal self experimentation, he also has a history of goading dangerous individuals to attack him.

[Thanks, Sherlock, for that observation.]

I'm not gonna act like I can give him a full psych eval based on what I've seen, but from what I can tell? Yeah.

[She sighs again, biting her bottom lip.]

This is worrying.

[What's worse, and what he isn't going to tell her, is that House is already planning his next death.]

I know. Do you know if there's anyone here he's likely to actually listen to? Because he's not having it from me.

No idea. I think he had a friend here, for a while, but he's... passed away. House does make a point of keeping most of us as far away from him as possible.

I'd noticed. Publicly, at least.

video, same evening

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