[Imogen] A phone call had started all this. The stitches were itching, Nash complained, likely in a southern drawl, likely with a curse word or two. There had been a brief but distinct pause in response before Imogen had spoken.

Why doesn't he stop by her office, she'll take a look.

It's Friday night, nearly eight pm. By now, Chicago has begun to gear up for the weekend. And Imogen is at the office doing - whatever it was she needed to get done.

Call me when you get to the front door, she'd said which presumably is what he does. The front lobby is darkened, though he can see the outline of light through the door that separates the public from the bulk of the building. During business hours, anyone can enter the lobby. It requires a key-card or permission to get any farther. Now, he is left in the warm, spring night, waiting.

The door opens - he knows the hallway to which it leads, the waiting room he had spent hours in. It is a main corridor for everyone to just about everywhere in the building. The only ones who do not see it often are the body removal teams - they use a delivery bay, from there, straight to the morgue. Imogen is dressed in slacks, her lab coat over her blouse. The coat's pockets are weighed down, pens, notepads, other various errata she might need throughout the day. It's white fabric is clean, unstained.

The lobby lights turn on automatically as she moves through it, filling the room with fluorescent. Her hair colour comes into full glory, her pale skin, her dark eyes. She does not wave as she reaches the glass doors, merely stepping up to them to handle the lock. They click as she undoes them, stepping back to let him in.

"C'mon," she says, as he steps inside, "We'll go back to my office."

[Nash] As he was when she found him in the lobby, unaware of his presence or his purpose in coming, no warning picked up before the tall long-haired asshole inserted himself into her afternoon without apology or preamble, Nash is waiting. This time, he is wide awake, upright, standing outside the medical examiner's office without a cigarette or a stack of papers nestled in one arm. It's just him, in heavy dark-washed jeans and that black leather jacket despite the fact that it's not all that cold out today.

He's staring off into the distance, the wind tugging at the ends of his hair, and he doesn't look through the glass doors until the lights flash on behind him, splashing stark white onto the cement beside him. Nash turns, revealing his face to have been recently shaved and his eyes stained with insomnia, and when she pops the door for him, he takes it from her with a ghost of a smile on his lips.

They're dry. Whatever he's been doing in the two weeks since they last saw each other he hasn't been drinking enough water.

"Your office?"

He sounds astonished. He's yanking her leg even as he's stepping inside and out of sight.

"Shoot, Doc, you ain't gotta try and impress me. Brought my Swiss Army knife, can just go at it on the sidewalk."

[Imogen] Imogen casts him a disparaging glance. "I'd remove 'em 'ere," she says, "but I don't want the security guard t'walk in on us. Might be a bit awkward, yeah?"

There is a sense of humour to her mouth - though admittedly it is one as dry as bones.

She does not repeat her suggestion of 'C'mon', merely tilts her head toward the door and starts that way, reaching into her lab-coat pocket for her key-card.

[Nash] "Ah, hell, looks like you and me got different definitions of 'awkward.'"

He's teasing, his sense of humor far more obvious than hers: he has to fight to keep a shit-eating grin off his face, and his eyes crinkle with the effort. Though they're tired, there is a light in them that one doesn't tend to see in a man who's so beaten down by life that he can't see the point in getting out of bed, let alone laughing once he's there.

He's been beaten, sure, but so have all of them.

They walk down a hall that is by now familiar to him, or at least approaching such a thing, and he puts his good hand into the pocket of his jacket as they click and clomp together.

"Gotta be honest, I'm a little nervous. I hear most'a your patients don't come walking outta here when you're done with 'em."

[Imogen] "Most of my patients," she observes without turning toward him, unlocking the door with her card, "do not walk in either. I imagine this puts a point in yer favour."

She pushes the door open, stepping inside. At the end of the hall, the elevator.

[Nash] Hello, elevator.

Nash doesn't make a comment alluding to their first meeting, to the fact that they'd spoken because they didn't have much of a choice but to speak. There isn't much point dwelling on how things would be different if the kinswoman had never taken off her jacket, or if the kinsman had kept to himself that he saw it in the first place, or that he recognized it.

"Your patients start walkin' in, we got problems."

[Imogen] Neither does Imogen - though she had once made a quip the first time she had seen him after that one, memorable meeting. Still, by now, the joke would be stale. And tempting fate.

They reach the elevator and she presses the call button - they do not have to wait. There is almost no one else in the building, and no one has used the elevator since she arrived. Once inside, she presses the button for her floor. He can see the options - some of them requiring key, both on floors above them and below them. A secure building, or at least best efforts toward it.

"It's happened," she says, almost off-hand.

"Rather dramatic, all things told."

[Nash] When he glances over at her, he has his disbelief visibly suspended, though just barely. Eyebrows are lifted in interest rather than outright dismissal, and he rattles his keys in his pocket as he attempts to guess, perhaps betting with himself, what the circumstances leading up to that moment in time had been.

Key-rattling proves to be a horrible distraction from itchy stitches; he takes his hand out of his pocket and pats at the sleeve of his jacket, trying to alleviate the discomfort without raking his blunt nails across them.

"That come with a story?" he asks, eyebrows returning to their neutral position.

[Imogen] Imogen turns her head slightly to look at him, an eyebrow arching slightly. "A dead child was still moving, so we incinerated her," she says, blandly.

She does not live up to her bloodline, that's for sure.

[Nash] The man standing in the elevator with her is a father. Of how many it isn't entirely certain, but he's up here in the first place because he's trying to find his progeny, and that alone is more than the majority of inadvertent paternal donors would think to do in these circumstances. He could have just left her alone to her own devices, done what he wanted to do with his life and not involved himself in a long, drawn-out process attempting to ascertain that yes, in fact, he did manage to deposit yet another Trueborn child on this earth.

Most parents would hear what Imogen says about the dead child and find themselves hurting, upset, to think of such a thing. Most parents, however, are not Kinfolk parents.

"Hate it when that happens," he says, his blandness cut through with an air of solemnity despite the seeming flippancy of his tone, and curls his left hand up on itself to stop from patting his arm again.

[Imogen] The reality is - Imogen does not know he is a parent. He does not know she is not. There are lines of privacy clearly drawn, at least for the moment.

The elevator moves upward smoothly, with the assurance of a well-maintained building, or at least a new one which has not had the opportunity to fall to disrepair.

Imogen's mouth twists slightly. "It really is quite inconvenient," she remarks.

The elevator comes to a stop - the doors open, and she steps out, walking down the carpeted hall. Her office is wedged between two others and she had locked it before heading down. There is a pause, while she takes a rather respectable set of keys from her lab-coat pocket, fitting one into the door knob.

[Nash] Her response has him snorting, the sound a combination of amazement at her detachment and amusement in its sentiments finding a resounding home in his brain, and that seems to be all there is to say on that topic. When the elevator comes gliding to a stop this time, they aren't locked between floors or looking at flickering lights or uncertainty when the doors release them back into the hallway.

As Imogen works on finding her key and getting the door open, Nash sidles up to one side of the door, hovering out of the way without lounging against the wall like some sort of buffoon. He doesn't talk, either, doesn't try to fill the silence with pointless conversation; either that or he's biding his time until they don't have to worry about the walls having ears.

[Imogen] The door is labelled with her name - Imogen M. Slaughter M.D. A.F.P, and beneath it, office hours which appear to not be the conventional term for office hours (that is to say - business hours) unless the kinswoman only works for two hours, and even then only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The door opens, and she steps inside. Her office is not small, but it has a closed in feeling, mostly due to the sheer volume of contents. Bookcases line nearly every available space, complete with reference materials from text books to journals on Forensic and Anatomical science. The one space that does not have books has filing cabinets. Her desk is clear - for the moment - no open files or papers, a laptop quietly humming away in the corner, an iPod sitting in its dock, on pause. There are no pictures, no signs of personality - except the diplomas behind the desk

"You can close the door," she says, walking in with familiarity, stepping around the desk to retrieve her office chair, "Ha' a seat."

[Nash] You can close the door.

"That I can, Doc."

So he does, with his good hand, quietly and without dramatics or flourish. It clicks shut, and he does not lock it. It will either lock on its own, or he is trusting that no one is going to come careening in out of nowhere when it's this late on a Friday evening and everyone has gone home or gone to the bar, gone somewhere that isn't remotely resembling work.

The woman with the Fianna glyph tattooed on her biceps invites him to sit, and he pauses to shuck off his jacket first, still favoring his right arm though it's been two weeks since the stitches were put in his arm. As Kin to werewolves, he heals faster than the average human being could expect to, yet that does little for the fact that he still has to heal, period.

Smoking as much as he does, at his age, certainly doesn't help hasten the process, but he's clearly getting better. He doesn't shout when he jostles his arm getting the jacket off.

"Real cozy," he says, his eyes drifting around the office for illustrative purposes as he eases his wiry form into the chair. A moment later, he's unbuttoning the cuff of his button-down shirt to expose his forearm, which has an Ace bandage wrapped around it now instead of white gauze.

[Imogen] She glances briefly about, her mouth twisting. "I believe this is actually a step up from my last one." She does, for all her poise and subtle displays of money work for county.

She pulls her desk chair from behind the bureau, sliding it in front of him, then heads back to the desk. There is the sound of a drawer opening, though he cannot see it, he can see her bend toward it, then pulling out a bottle of alcohol and a wrapped set of tools - tweezers, small scissors.

She sets these down on the desk before taking a seat in front of him and reaching out to take his arm with cool, firm fingers. "Your mobility startin' t'come back?" she enquires almost absently as she begins to unwrap the bandage.

[Nash] He's had plenty of practice wrapping his arm with one hand; when she undoes the bindings, Imogen finds that he hasn't cut off his circulation or further damaged the tissue, and he has had the sense to keep a gauze pad between the Ace bandage and the wounds as they healed. Nash isn't in a huge hurry to demonstrate that he can flex his wrist without pain, but he does wiggle the fingers of his right hand when she asks about his mobility.

Once it's unwrapped, she can see that there is still deep bruising in his forearm, but it's healing.

"I can use it if I have to," he says. "For driving and whatnot. Still hurts like a bastard, though."

[Imogen] "I imagine it does," she says, somewhat mildly as she turns his arm slightly to examine the bruise. She sets the tensor bandage and gauze aside, drawing his forearm forward, and herself as well, slightly to get better access to the stitches. A moment of light prodding of the one healing wound before it appears she is satisfied.

She draws up one knot carefully with tweezers, creating space between it and the wound bed. A quick snip and the knot parts, allowing her to pull the stitch free. It is a most curious sensation.

"Let me gi' yeh some advice," she says, her mouth twisting. "The next time yeh find yerself wi' the use o' only one hand and needing stitches, instead o' intendin' on using that hand to somehow sew yerself back up, use it t'give me a call."

A glance upward, a stitch neatly held between the tweezers, the scissors poised, "I don't imagine kismet will permit me t'come upon yeh wounded twice."

[Nash] Having the stitches removed involves considerably less work and anguish on either of their parts than putting them in had. Aside from a brief flicker of consternation at the feeling of having something pulled out of his flesh without pain accompanying it, Nash doesn't even seem to register that Imogen is doing anything to his arm.

Then she's giving him some advice, and green eyes--gone back to their normal hue of foggy gray now that he isn't walking about in a state of concussed agony--lift from where she's working on him to find her face. What she tells him now would have done no good to tell him at the time of the injury; he hadn't been able to tell her what day it was the first two times she asked him. There wasn't much point telling him anything he would need to remember the next day.

Fate won't bring them together in the aftermath of injury like that again, she supposes, and Nash flicks his eyebrows in unwilling agreement.

"Well, Doc," he says, "somehow the thought of callin' for help didn't cross my mind. I'll write that one down."

He doesn't tell her there won't be a next time.

[Imogen] Her smirk fades as she nods, turning her attention downward again to her work. She is quick and efficient. This is not a complicated task. Draw up the knot, snip, pull the stitch free of his skin. Soon there is a tidy pile of black stitches set beside the bottle.

She does not seem to feel the need to fill up the silence with prattle. Her one comment, one with purpose, rather than small talk, said she has nothing else.

Draw up a knot, snip, pull the stitch.

[Nash] This is a task that he could have damn well done himself. He is stubborn, he has scissors in his toiletry bag, and he's left-handed. Instead of doing it in the bathroom of his motel room, with the glaring light in his eyes and the chance of further injuring himself looming in the distance, Nash had picked up his cell phone and called Imogen's office and bitched about his stitches itching something fierce.

Clearly, he is capable of calling and asking for help, but it would be something of a lie if he were to claim that the reason he hadn't called for help two weeks ago had to do with his head injury. He hadn't given any sort of an explanation at all, had just left it at It didn't cross my mind.

Yet her smirk drifts away, and they're left in silence, Imogen diligently yet quickly removing the stitches from the front and back of his forearm, Nash sitting with his elbow on the arm of the chair and his eyes alternating between his appendage and the doctor's face. She doesn't see the need to prattle, and he seems to have come to the conclusion that attempting to get to know her is an uphill, pointless battle that will only end in embarrassment if not rejection.

Unfortunately for Imogen, Nash is not deterred by things that are impossible, even deadly. Case in point: he went into a house where reports of an explosion were covered up by the media while looking for a man he had never met before in his life, and drove back to the city with a massive concussion and a broken arm.

The man is an idiot. Noble, perhaps, but an idiot.

"Lemme ask you somethin'," he says, but leaves her room to decline or refuse.

[Imogen] There is a brief pause - though her work does not stop. She is, apparently, waiting for the question to come, as if expecting that he was not waiting for her input.

When it becomes apparent that he is waiting, however, she glances up, an eyebrow arching. "You can ask," she says. Her tone makes it clear that whether or not he receives an answer is still debatable.

[Nash] "What would'a happened if I did?"

He's alluding to something she said before the conversation diverted away from the original topic, and so he elaborates:

"Sewed up my own arm."

[Imogen] "Given the state you were when I saw you," Imogen answers without missing a beat, "I consider it very likely you might have stitched your wrist to your nose."

[Nash] She hasn't heard him actually laugh, yet. To be perfectly frank, Imogen doesn't say much that could be described as 'hilarious.' Her sense of humor is very dry, even when she's teasing, and oftentimes she pauses before she speaks, as though she's attempting to wrap her head around whatever Nash has just said, or else she just doesn't want to give him the first response that comes to mind.

When he laughs, it's sudden, as though she's surprised him, but it isn't loud or braying or caustic. His demeanor lends itself to the idea that he has a decent sense of humor; the fact that he's as old as he is, in the subsection of society in which they find themselves, and he doesn't have any gray hair--anywhere other than his jaws, that is--or an overabundance of wrinkles means that he has to laugh more than occasionally.

"Probably," he concurs when he quiets down.

[Imogen] The corner of her mouth twitches - it is not quite a smile. He's not seen her do it yet - somehow in Imogen the line between a smile and a smirk is something sharply demarcated. A true smile is a pleasant thing, one that comes naturally, that breaks control.

Smirks are drier, more caustic. Edged, and tightly rained in.

She seems to far fit the latter description than the former. Still, a twitch of the mouth.

"Stitched yerself up before?" she enquires a few moments later, after the warmth of humour has faded. Another stitch on the desk.

[Nash] "Stitched up other folks before."

There is no jubilance or gloating at his having managed to coerce that not-quite-a smile out of her. He hasn't known her long enough to know that it's actually a rare thing and not simply an indication that they just don't know each other very well yet.

"I was a Master-at-Arms in the service, not a hospital corpsman. Tell ya the truth, I didn't do a very good job."

[Imogen] "Ah." The sound is short and meaningless.

"Like I said." This slightly wry, as if what he has said merely cements it, "Call me instead."

[Nash] He doesn't have to have spelled out what would have happened if he had done the job himself, beyond the fact that he would have done a terrible job, likely scarred up horribly. If she hadn't provided him with antibiotics, he would have developed an infection despite his best attempts to clean the wound and adhere to sterile technique. If he hadn't been taking his antibiotics, the infection would have gotten into his bloodstream, and he would have become violently ill. He would have eventually succumbed to it, and they wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation because he would be dead.

Instead they joke about how he would have secured his wrist to his face, and he confirms what it is she'd suspected: Nash was trying to be a big damn hero, he doesn't actually have the skill set necessary to keep himself from dying if he couldn't keep himself from being injured in the first place.

"Alright," he acquiesces, a smile staining his voice but not actually making it onto his lips in its entirety. "I will."

[Imogen] And again - silence. She snips the last stitch and draws it free, one hand keeping his hand where it is, while the other reaches for a sealed packet of gauze. Her fingers leave his skin so she can tear open the package, soaking it in isopropyl alcohol.

"This might still hurt," she warns, wiping it across the wound, and the small dots left by the stitches, one hand secure on his arm to keep it still.

"And you're done." She gets to her feet, beginning to clear the debris from her desk.

[Nash] She warns him that it might hurt, but he doesn't prepare himself for the possibility, nor does he react when she swipes the pad across the surface of his skin; the alcohol leaves a brief patch of harsh cold in its wake as it evaporates, but she doesn't press down hard enough to aggravate the bruised soft tissue or grind the still-healing bone.

"That wasn't too bad," he says, and hauls himself to his feet once she's stepped back enough for him to do so.

Once on his feet, the kinsman examines his arm, taking in the front and back now that the sutures are out. It's still going to scar, but right now it's pink against his tanned skin instead of stark white. Satisfied, or at least able to live with it, he picks up the Ace bandage with his left hand and starts to wrap up his forearm again. It still needs support while it heals; he's smart enough to grasp that concept.

"Send the bill to the motel, huh?" he asks, picking up his jacket as he prepares to see himself out.

[Imogen] "I'll do that," she answers off-handedly, with utterly no intention of doing anything of the sort. Consider it a family discount, though she would never call it such. Still, it was something she did only for the blood.

"I'll walk yeh down," she says. Perhaps for his benefit, or perhaps because she does not trust him, whatever the reason, it does not matter. She has gathered the more obvious signs of wound care and bagged it. Leaving it where it is, she starts toward the door.

It may be that she has only a small allotment of words - a quota which once it is used, results in silence. She says nothing as she leads him toward the elevator. If he does not spark a conversation, it will continue all the way to the lobby.

[Nash]

She warns him that it might hurt, but he doesn't prepare himself for the possibility, nor does he react when she swipes the pad across the surface of his skin; the alcohol leaves a brief patch of harsh cold in its wake as it evaporates, but she doesn't press down hard enough to aggravate the bruised soft tissue or grind the still-healing bone.

"That wasn't too bad," he says, and hauls himself to his feet once she's stepped back enough for him to do so.

Once on his feet, the kinsman examines his arm, taking in the front and back now that the sutures are out. It's still going to scar, but right now it's pink against his tanned skin instead of stark white. Satisfied, or at least able to live with it, he picks up the Ace bandage with his left hand and starts to wrap up his forearm again. It still needs support while it heals; he's smart enough to grasp that concept.

"Send the bill to the motel, huh?" he asks, picking up his jacket as he prepares to see himself out.

[Imogen]

"I'll do that," she answers off-handedly, with utterly no intention of doing anything of the sort. Consider it a family discount, though she would never call it such. Still, it was something she did only for the blood.

"I'll walk yeh down," she says. Perhaps for his benefit, or perhaps because she does not trust him, whatever the reason, it does not matter. She has gathered the more obvious signs of wound care and bagged it. Leaving it where it is, she starts toward the door.

It may be that she has only a small allotment of words - a quota which once it is used, results in silence. She says nothing as she leads him toward the elevator. If he does not spark a conversation, it will continue all the way to the lobby.

[Nash] She'll walk him down.

"Ah, hell, ain't you sweet?" he asks, as though that's the next natural component of their conversation's course and not a smart-assed response to what passes as sociable for Dr. Slaughter. As they walk out of the office, he simultaneously works his upper body back into his leather jacket and holds the door open for her. It involves using his foot as a doorstop. It likely doesn't last long.

As they walk, it seems as though he's going to fall into a silence that is either companionable or respectful. By now he has to realize that she doesn't take well to idle chatter or pointless discussion; by now, she has to realize that Nash is fully capable of keeping his damn mouth shut when necessary, but there is almost always something on that mind of his. He has the sense to keep it until they make it into the elevator, at least.

"So you hear we got ourselves an ambassador to the full-bloods, now?"

[Imogen] Ain't you sweet? he asks and she casts him a dry glance over her shoulder as she opens the door, stepping outside. "It's not chivalry," she remarks, as if chivalry were gender neutral and not frequently employed by a man to a woman rather than the other way around. "I'd rather you not happen on the guard on your own."

There is a brief pause as she locks her office door, then a silent walk to the elevator.

He speaks up then, and she casts him a brief glance. "Two o' them to be precise. But yes, I'd heard somethin' of the like."

[Nash] "Like I said: you're sweet."

Once they're in the elevator and it's moving across the scant space separating Imogen's floor from the exit, Nash crosses one of his ankles over the other and assumes a casual stance leaning against the back of the elevator. His right arm is held against his midsection; though it's healing, he'd confessed that it still hurts, meaning he isn't walking around with narcotics in his system to help alleviate the undoubtedly persistent ache in his wrist. This is as close to professing weakness as the Fenrir ever comes, is this protective stance he has adopted.

"Kinda funny, ain't it?" he asks. A beat, and then: "Not ha-ha funny. I didn't see too many people laughin' about it."

[Imogen] She's quiet for some time, the space of a floor or two. She stands straight in the opposite corner of the elevator, whole and hale, unhindered by injury. A hand pushes back her hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear.

"Funny as in odd, is it?" she enquires, rather rhetorically. "Perhaps a bit."

A pause, "Seems rather like this Sept."

[Nash] At her response, which he appears to have not been expecting, Nash lifts an eyebrow and casts a glance over at her. His own hair is in his face, but a sharp flick of his head banishes it back out of the way. It's noncompliant, though, and obstinate; it'll be back.

Seems rather like this Sept.

"Oh, yeah?" he asks. His tone is imploring, though the fact that he doesn't wait for a response seems to suggest he understands; there's not enough time to get into everything else that is 'like' this Sept. "Business as usual, then?"

[Imogen] "Rather. Though I don't imagine it will change much. Or, really, make things worse." She shrugs almost dismissively. "Just another bureaucracy, is all."

A pause. "It's been suggested I gather th'Half-bloods together." It feels like there should be more, and perhaps there should be, but instead, she leaves it precisely where it is, just like that in the air.

[Nash] Just another bureaucracy.

"I hear ya," he says, and though it's offhand and almost reflexive, there isn't much doubt that he does.

Even without knowing much more than that he used naval terminology to describe what he was and what he was not in terms of why it is he can't be trusted to put stitches into another person, let alone himself, that is enough. The human military is one large tangle of red tape.

After that pause, out it comes: she's been approached to gather the half-bloods together.

"What," he asks, clearly amused by what's about to come out of his mouth, "Shadow Lord Barbie can't do it?"

[Imogen] His appellation earns him a regard, but it is impossible to tell if it is disapproval or merely her carefully maintained faÁade in her expression. The line between unreadable and censure is too fine.

"I've been told she's meant t'bridge a gap. Nothin' more."

[Nash] If he has the desire to ascertain whether Imogen is attempting to convey consternation in that gaze or if something else is housed beneath her exterior, Nash can't be bothered trying to dig deeper. Shameless, he looks back at her, eyebrows slightly elevated in something like challenge or repetition of the inquiry, and eventually, she answers.

She's meant to bridge a gap.

"Fantastic," he says, and that's the end of it. "When's this gathering?"

[Imogen] Her mouth twists faintly. "Let you know as soon as I decide if I'm going to do it, shall I?"

[Nash] The temptation to smile is great, yet the Fenrir manages to maintain a straight face. There is a scant handful of seconds as he looks back at her, beating back the compulsion to smile, and then Nash casts his gaze back to the panel indicating which floor they're at, giving her his profile.

"You got my number, Doc."

[Imogen] It is her turn to arch an eyebrow this time at the faintly hinted war of amusement on his features.

"So I do."

The elevator doors open, and she steps out. At this time of night, only the emergency lights are on. The yellowed bulbs cast strange shadows along the hallway, deep pockets of gloom barely breached by the illumination. It dulls her hair to the shade of burning embers. It is deathly quiet here. One could imagine the morgue down below echoing with silence, the corpses still and alone.