Take a Shot

Cautious

"You need to be more cautious from now on. If you aren't more careful, it's going to keep ripping."

Emerald rolled her eyes, which Gordie ignored. The healer tipped Emerald's head to the left.

"What got into you, to drink poison? You're smarter than that." Emerald didn't even offer a shrug as a response. "Yeah, not sure what I expected. Matt's been pretty tight-lipped about it, too," Gordie mumbled. She put a fingertip on the assassin's throat, feeling around the edges of the re-healing wound. Emerald's throat moved in a nervous swallow. Gordie nodded to herself. Muscles, both conscious and unconscious, still responsive. No redness or swelling around the wound. No oozing. All good signs.

Emerald bopped her hand blindly on the table next to the chair as Gordie felt around the wound. Her hand finally landed on a whiteboard and its marker. She uncapped the marker with her teeth, her throat muscles tightening. Gordie nodded again. When Emerald turned the whiteboard around, Gordie tore her eyes from the wound to the board. She squinted, trying to parse through Emerald's worse-than-usual handwriting.

Only safe out. Bastards wanted to recruit me. Wanted to avoid backlash from Harmony, thought to get rid of him

"Guess they didn't know you that well," Gordie giggled. Emerald snorted and gave a small nod.

Emerald and Matt were a skilled operator team, even if Matt had been taken out of the field some to focus on Harmony's princess. It made sense that other organizations would want to recruit them. If this organization had been as broke as Matt implied, it made more sense for them to go after Emerald. Her ice-cold persona and fiery temper made her seem more capable of handling a rough-and-tumble life of thievery, poverty, and blackmail than grinning, happy-go-lucky Matt. In reality, the opposite had proven to be true: Matt was more than comfortable in situations where all he had to him were his smooth words, quick mind, and charming smile; meanwhile, Emerald made her list of supplies methodically, and if even one thing was off, she threw heinous hissy-fits. Matt had been 'relegated' to babysitter for King Joy and Queen Lea's silver-haired heiress, not because he wasn't valuable on the field, but because he was invaluable in raising a well-rounded, resilient child while her parents ran the organization.

Princess Roma was coming up on her ninth birthday soon, though. To the sages, that meant she was old enough to be advanced in her royalty training, which meant no more babysitting from soft-hearted Matt who let her skip lessons to play outside. The black-haired operator did still spend an inordinate amount of time with the young, silver-haired Tamer, but he could also go out on actual jobs again, the hardcore kind that he and Emerald normally took, where risk was imminent death and reward was more money than Gordie could imagine. And because they were together more, both of them were getting hurt less. Up until this incident, that is.

"There's good news. That hospital treated you well. It's not very often you see a patient carried in, having ingested poison and thus ripped apart a newly-forming scar. I'm very impressed. Their magic didn't take as well as it could have, because of your temperance device..." Gordie took a deep breath and sat back on her stool, putting her hands in the front pockets of her healer smock. Emerald rubbed her throat, slowly tipping her head back down and to a more neutral position. "But altogether, the magic they used made sure the break wasn't permanent."

Emerald nodded. She drew her letters out more carefully this time, partly due to being able to see them. She flipped the board to show Gordie. The healer squinted for a moment, then sat back.

"Why are you writing in common?"

Emerald pursed her lips and tapped the marker on the board insistently. Gordie chuckled, holding her hands up in defense.