19 April, 1895 — London Party

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Content WarningDrugs, overdose, trauma

Someone get a healer. The words were said with urgency, by whom he couldn't recall. Maybe it had been him. Don Juan had certainly noticed how the woman's breathing had grown shallow and hitched, and he'd seen the hint of blue beneath her fingernails. At the time he had perhaps been in one of the best positions to notice anything, since everyone else's senses were dulled by one or more substances. Don Juan was sober except the alcohol he'd had tonight, because he was always fucking sober these days. This wasn't the sort of party where you were supposed to be sober, so he'd had a lot to drink, and since the fuss had started he'd been feeling disconnected for entirely different reasons.

Things moved quickly, or maybe he only thought they did. Someone knew a healer who wouldn't take names or spread stories. Someone had something in their medicine cabinet that could get her to throw up. It was unclear whether this helped anything, really, but it was conventional wisdom amongst addicts that any emergency brought on by something you'd taken could probably be helped by vomiting. Don Juan left the room to the sound of the woman wretching and panting for breath. He was mostly undressed — it was that kind of party — and couldn't muster up the memory of where his clothes, specifically, had ended up. Probably some of them were in the room with the woman and the crowd of people trying to help her, in which case he might never see them again. He wasn't going back in there.

Griffith had something that could have helped her. It had brought him back from a worse state before. This was useless knowledge, though; Griffith was tucked away at Hogwarts, and presumably not taking his letters (not that Don Juan had tried to write). He didn't know what was in it, so he couldn't have even tried a ham fisted reproduction. Was it strange that he'd never asked about what was in the substance that saved his life before? He hadn't expected he would need to know. The cure was, in his mind, bound up with Griffith in the same way the drug had been. He hadn't anticipated existing post-Griffith; it hadn't seemed to matter.

He found his coat and slipped it on over his bare chest. He left it hanging loose when he went out to the back garden. He needed the pockets, primarily, more than the cover. The cold was good, but he needed a cigarette.

His hands were shaking too badly to light it for the first minute, two, five. He sat on the stone wall that separated the patio seating from the flower garden, facing away from the house. The woman inside was probably not dying. They'd gotten her to throw up, and that could fix anything, or so he had supposed once. He lit the cigarette. The smell made him feel nauseous, but he took a drag regardless. He wanted to be at Dean's, but there was too much happening in the house behind him for him to get to the floo, and even if there wasn't he couldn't show up in this state. He needed to calm himself down, find some clothes, rehearse the story he wanted to tell when he arrived. He finished his cigarette and pulled out another. Six cigarettes left in his case. Hopefully that would be enough.

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Sybella Capobianco

  

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MJ made this <3

Sybella woke up to the sound of rapid tapping on her window, which could only mean one thing. While she wasn’t a medi-witch, entirely practiced at waking herself up and getting dressed on a sickle, she still threw back the covers, groaning as she steadied herself. She’d been in the midst of a pleasant dream for a change, instead of her usual nightmare of waking up in a cold, dark cell with iron bars. Still. One more breath. The healer pushed off of the mattress and stumbled to the window, unlatching it and grabbing the scroll from the owl’s outstretched leg.

On it were only a few words and her friend’s hastily scribbled name; all the information she needed.

Cursing under her breath, Sybella launched into movement, throwing on her nearest tea gown - a more simple design with less lace and frills that she reserved for times like these - and tapping her wand to her hair which wrapped itself in a bun in time for her to quickly stick a few hair pins in it while she hopped into her boots. She grabbed her kit, slipped out without waking anyone else, and apparated to the address to which she was summoned.

When she arrived, it was to a party that was half broken up and half still in progress. Bodies writhed around her while the scent of smoke and sweat invaded her nostrils. She followed Giorgio into the room where her patient - Kitty - lay. Someone she’d had to unfortunately treat before. Before she even knelt down next to her patient to get to work, Sybella was casting a diagnostic spell to determine what else might be ailing her. A quick read told her it was indeed an overdose as everyone had been expecting, and she began to give orders to those who remained crowded around. To most, she said to give them room and go back to their activities while she urged her friend to stay with them in case she needed an extra hand.

Someone had given Kitty a tincture to make her throw up - something Sybella had to make a note of as she quickly rolled the woman on her side to prevent her from inhaling or choking on the drugs she’d imbibed. After the sounds of retching had passed, Sybella handed the bowl to Giorgio before turning back to her kit and taking out a tincture she’d concocted herself. She calculated the dose before filling the syringe and injecting it intramuscularly.

Now it was time to wait - after three to five minutes, Kitty’s color returned back to normal with her diagnostic reading, and Giorgio offered to keep watch over Kitty to give Sybella a break, which she gladly took; she had confidence in her friend to alert her if anything went wrong, and she needed to fully wake herself up. The healer stepped outside, breathing in deeply as the cold air hit her skin. She stood there for a few moments, enjoying the peace and quiet…and the smell of smoke from someone’s cigarette. Someone was perched on the stone wall nearby. She wandered over, arms crossed over her chest and peered up at the man.

“Ah. It’s Mr. Dempsey with the Italian tattoo,” She greeted with a small smile. “I’d wondered when I would run into you again.”

  

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Sybella speaks with a slight Italian accent.
Her family is well known throughout the Sicilian Mafia; if your character is attuned within those circles, they might know who she is.

Don Juan hadn't realized he had company until she spoke. He had registered the sound of the door opening, he realized belatedly, but he hadn't made anything of it over the other noises in the house and the noise of his own thoughts. He didn't expect anyone at this party had enough of a grasp on propriety to still say Mister, so he was expecting maybe a maid sent to shoo everyone out — an ominous sign for the woman he'd left vomiting in the upstairs room — then he recognized the woman from a previous conversation, what felt now like a lifetime ago.

He blew out a stream of smoke. "I didn't figure you for this kind of party," he said. She had told him her name, last time they'd spoken, but he was having trouble finding it in his brain now. He was having trouble with stopping his hands from shaking, too. One thing at a time.

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MJ made this <3

Where she expected what she assumed to be the man’s overly confident grin and a flash of interest in his eyes (not particularly at her; she just remembered she’d presumed he gave that look to nearly everything that had a pulse), she found someone who looked like he’d been thoroughly shaken. It didn’t take a professional to make that diagnosis - one look at Mr. Dempsey’s hands and she guessed if she gave him a glass of water half the contents would be on the ground from how much his hands were vibrating.

“It’s not a scene I’m unfamiliar with,” She responded, turning around to lean against the wall beside him. “I don’t frequent them often anymore, but I know many who attend them still and I like to make myself available for help whenever I can.”

  

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Sybella speaks with a slight Italian accent.
Her family is well known throughout the Sicilian Mafia; if your character is attuned within those circles, they might know who she is.

There was something off about her response, and for a second he couldn't tell what it was. The words themselves seemed unassuming enough, and her tone was mild. He had the sense that she didn't really belong here, though, and had since she'd first spoken. Eventually he realized what it was: she was sober, and it had been at least an hour since he'd talked to anyone who wasn't slurring their words. There was no chance that she'd been here all night and he'd missed her. If she'd gone off in a private room with someone shortly after arriving that might have been feasible, but if that were the case she would have been intoxicated by now.

"You're the healer." The realization that she must not have been here long combined with the phrase available for help had brought it together for him. He shifted on the wall slightly so that he could pull the coat closed over his waist, a paltry gesture of modesty given he was wearing only drawers beneath it. "So then she's...?"

Not dead, presumably, if the healer was wandering in the garden making quips about his tattoo. She had probably been flirting, he realized distantly; he hadn't had the wherewithal to recognize it at first. He was in no fit state to think about that, but by now she probably realized as much. He took another drag of his cigarette and, uncharacteristically, coughed on the smoke.

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MJ made this <3

To Sybella it was obvious, given what she’d just done, though it occurred to her that she had failed to mention her profession last time to Mr. Dempsey at the party. Of course, there had been little reason to mention what she did for a living. Not when he’d been chatting about tattoos and all but propositioning her for something more intimate. It wasn’t as if she had been completely against the idea. Full of himself or not, Sybella was intrigued by him to say the least, and there was an aching in her chest lately that she knew had to be addressed sooner or later. Whether it was a path she’d wanted to go down again, she couldn’t say for sure but she wanted to trust her desires.

“I am.” She affirmed, tracing the lines and shadows of the yard with her eyes as she spoke. “She’ll be alright. I was able to stabilize her and Giorgio’s looking after her right now. I usually wouldn’t allow it, but I trust that he knows when to call me back if something changes.”

Sybella watched his shaking hands from out of the corner of her eye, the wheels in her mind turning. She paused before asking, “Do you know Kitty well?”

  

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Sybella speaks with a slight Italian accent.
Her family is well known throughout the Sicilian Mafia; if your character is attuned within those circles, they might know who she is.

She got me off once was the first answer that occurred to him, but it would have been disrespectful to say that when Kitty was presumably still passed out upstairs in some lesser form of medical distress. He only knew her from places like this, where sex was sometimes easier than conversation. Most of the people at this party would probably have an answer not too distant from his. If she had died tonight, would anyone in his house have attended her wake? Likely not; Don Juan wouldn't have gone, suspecting that whatever friends and family she had outside of this scene wouldn't have wanted to see someone like him there as a reminder of the kind of lifestyle that had killed her. But she was a regular here, and odds were good that she had already alienated her family and whatever sober friends she had once had. Maybe if she had died tonight, no one would have gone to her wake.

It would have been a different story if he had died in December. His brother was the Minister of Magic; the service for his death would have been a state affair and a society spectacle. It would have been well-attended, but maybe not by anyone who mattered. If he'd died in December, he wasn't sure whether Dean would have gone to the funeral. Like most of the tangled bodies inside, he had ostracized most of the people who actually cared.

"No," he said, shifting uncomfortably on the wall. "Not well."

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MJ made this <3

She let his answer hang between them, watching his breath from the cigarette billow in front of them in a white cloud. It swirled in the air, following the trajectory of his exhale. Absently, Sybella reached out to poke at the edge of the cloud with her pointer finger. She pulled. A thin trail of white smoke followed her gesture as she traced her finger through the space in front of them until it gathered in a small ball in the palm of her hand.

“No? Hmm, then I presume it’s not her well being that you’re bothered about,” She murmured quietly, her tone observational as opposed to anything resembling accusatory. She’d been mistaken in her assumptions after the party where she’d met Mr. Dempsey. She figured him to be aloof and rather care-free; it served her right to be so wrong. Most people who attended parties like these had at least a briefcase full of problems they were either trying to banish completely away or otherwise; the fact that she had so erroneously assumed about the man beside her bothered her.

As a healer, she told herself, she should know better; that not all wounds were visible, and the brief signs she saw of Mr. Dempsey tonight told her there were certainly ones he was hiding.

“I must say Mr. Dempsey, I had you pegged as someone who did not have many emotional scars if any when I last encountered you.” She paused, the ball of smoke in her hands currently in the shape of a half crescent, and she looked up at him. “I apologize.”

  

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Sybella speaks with a slight Italian accent.
Her family is well known throughout the Sicilian Mafia; if your character is attuned within those circles, they might know who she is.