Theresa "Tess" Servopoulos (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dog_eat_dog) wrote2020-10-21 10:52 pm
dog_eat_dog) wrote2020-10-21 10:52 pm
Scarification
For vaccination and alloveragain :
A lifetime ago, Tess dabbled in chemistry.
This was not the sort of chemistry she learned in high school labs. It wasn't done out of curiosity. From the start, she knew what skin did when sloshed with battery acid, or what happened to a body too close to an ammonium nitrate blast. It was pure necessity, or at least what felt necessary at the time. After a few bad incidents, she switched to selling materials. No more checkpoint bombings. No more Fireflies. It's been a few years since she did even that much.
The willingness to do what needed to be done for survival stuck around, though, and she never really forgot what she was doing.
The relevant bits come back to her now, preparing ingredients in between household chores. Joel is out on patrol, due back in a few hours, and Ellie is out running errands, due back soon, and Tess is going to be ready for both. She has good timing for these things.
She nips out into the backyard, a pair of old rubber gardening gloves shoved in the pocket of her jeans, and she rounds the far side of the house. It's the least trafficked side of the yard, nestled beside a row of trees, and so no one has been tending to the wooden barrel there but her. She crouches down, pulls on the gloves, and drags the thick plastic dish bucket out from under the raised bottom of the barrels. The lye water sloshes precariously, and she lifts it and takes it into the house. It's been filtered through the white ashes multiple times now, and though she doesn't have a test to measure the pH, she's sure it's almost on par with sodium hydroxide. An alkaline. Highly corrosive. A metal hydroxide.
Also used for making soap, if anyone snoops and asks.
Tess brings it upstairs to Joel's workshop, setting it down carefully on the workbench, far enough down that no one will accidentally disturb it. She goes to the linen closet next and pulls out a couple of mismatched wash clothes and towels, and those go on the bench, too.
She gives the vise grip a considering look and then winds it open, turning the metal arm over and over and over again until it is wide enough to fit a wrist. She tests it on herself, seeing how awkward it is, how risky it is to the whole arm if the wrist is locked in there. It won't be comfortable, even with a washcloth or two padding out the harsh metal. It's not going to be comfortable period.
Tess goes back down the hall a third time, this time to the bathroom. She plugs the sink and fills it with cold water. She props the door open, blocks it that way with the corner of a laundry hamper. The path needs to be clear.
All ready.
Just in the time: the sound of the front door opening.
vaccination and alloveragain :A lifetime ago, Tess dabbled in chemistry.
This was not the sort of chemistry she learned in high school labs. It wasn't done out of curiosity. From the start, she knew what skin did when sloshed with battery acid, or what happened to a body too close to an ammonium nitrate blast. It was pure necessity, or at least what felt necessary at the time. After a few bad incidents, she switched to selling materials. No more checkpoint bombings. No more Fireflies. It's been a few years since she did even that much.
The willingness to do what needed to be done for survival stuck around, though, and she never really forgot what she was doing.
The relevant bits come back to her now, preparing ingredients in between household chores. Joel is out on patrol, due back in a few hours, and Ellie is out running errands, due back soon, and Tess is going to be ready for both. She has good timing for these things.
She nips out into the backyard, a pair of old rubber gardening gloves shoved in the pocket of her jeans, and she rounds the far side of the house. It's the least trafficked side of the yard, nestled beside a row of trees, and so no one has been tending to the wooden barrel there but her. She crouches down, pulls on the gloves, and drags the thick plastic dish bucket out from under the raised bottom of the barrels. The lye water sloshes precariously, and she lifts it and takes it into the house. It's been filtered through the white ashes multiple times now, and though she doesn't have a test to measure the pH, she's sure it's almost on par with sodium hydroxide. An alkaline. Highly corrosive. A metal hydroxide.
Also used for making soap, if anyone snoops and asks.
Tess brings it upstairs to Joel's workshop, setting it down carefully on the workbench, far enough down that no one will accidentally disturb it. She goes to the linen closet next and pulls out a couple of mismatched wash clothes and towels, and those go on the bench, too.
She gives the vise grip a considering look and then winds it open, turning the metal arm over and over and over again until it is wide enough to fit a wrist. She tests it on herself, seeing how awkward it is, how risky it is to the whole arm if the wrist is locked in there. It won't be comfortable, even with a washcloth or two padding out the harsh metal. It's not going to be comfortable period.
Tess goes back down the hall a third time, this time to the bathroom. She plugs the sink and fills it with cold water. She props the door open, blocks it that way with the corner of a laundry hamper. The path needs to be clear.
All ready.
Just in the time: the sound of the front door opening.
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"You want to walk around a minute first? Square yourself up?" she asks. "Normally I'd say the adrenaline is good, but you look nauseous and I don't want you to pass out on me."
If Ellie hits the floor with her wrist in the vice, she might hurt herself, after all, and Tess isn't too sure she'll be able to catch her with her attention on where the acid ends up.
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"I'll be fine. The fear of Joel finding me passed the fuck out with acid burns is more than enough to keep me awake, don't worry."
His outrage is unavoidable no matter what they do.
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Tess feels, on the other hand, like she is going to maim a girl who is, in no small way, one of her own. There's no avoiding that, but there's no living in Jackson without doing it.
"Alright, then," she says. "Let's do this. I'm going to lock you in, apply it with a cloth, and we're going to count to forty-five together. Then I'm going to let you loose, and we're going to dunk it underwater in the bathroom by sixty."
Tess is fully expecting to be dragging her by then.
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"I thought you hadn't done this before," Ellie jokes.
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She takes Ellie's arm and guides her back in, placing the pale sliver of her wrist and winding it in the cloth before winding the vise closed, slowing as the metal starts to put pressure on skin, cranking experimentally when it starts to bite in too tight for her to move.
"Try to get out."
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She gives it an experimental yank, and then tries to pull harder. Stuck.
"Don't think I'm getting out of here unless you let me."
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Tess picks up a set of safety glasses off the worktop and puts them on Ellie's face. Might as well remove all risk of blinding Joel's daughter, too. She looks at the bucket of lye and pulls on her rubber gloves.
No going back once they start.
And then she freezes when she hears the sound of the front door opening, and the heavy footfall of boots on the downstairs hallway floor.
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"The fuck? Shit! Get me out, get me out!" she says, flinging the glasses off and trying to wiggle out of the contraption, but she really is stuck. The hell was Joel doing back so soon?
Maybe they can play it cool. You know, just hanging out. In your space. With a bucket.
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"Hey!" She says, too loud, too cheerful. "You're back early."
Like. Way early. What the fuck, Joel.
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It started with the patrols being shorthanded, one rider out with the flu and two others god-knows-where, and that left them with two more routes than they had patrols. Then his horse had taken a bad step and lost a shoe, necessitating a quick return to the stables anyway, and by time that was dealt with, there was no sense in going back out, not if he still wanted to make it back before dark. A whole lot of bullshit.
"That I am," he says, a little exasperated, leaning back on his heels. "Might as well have just stayed home today."
But it has been a while since he heard that kind of enthusiasm out of her, and he's not about to blow that off.
"You're in a good mood."
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"Huh? Me? I'm just..." Faking it. "Wasn't expecting to see you so early, is all."
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"Ellie," he says. "How many times have I told you to keep that covered, even in the house? What if it wasn't me coming in here?"
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"Yeah? Like who, Tommy?" No one else would just barge in. "It's fine, Joel."
But hey, better he be annoyed about that rather than come in ten minutes later to her attempting not to scream bloody murder.
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He shifts his weight to move around her and go upstairs.
"Tess out?"
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"I think she's taking a nap. Headache. That time of the month or something."
Slick, Ellie. Real smooth.
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His hand lands on the bannister too, just below hers, and he levels her with a deadpan look. He has one foot on the first step.
“Well, I’m not the one who thunders up and down these stairs like I’m tryin’ to put my feel through ‘em,” he reminds her, with a jerk of his head to the side. Move.
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Ellie stays put, trying to buy Tess more time. As angry as Joel would be at her, she knows Tess would take the brunt of it. It wouldn't matter if the whole thing was Ellie's idea or not.
"What's for dinner?"
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“What’s upstairs that you don’t want me to see, huh?” he asks.
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"Tess," Ellie says quickly, "She's just--in a bad mood. PMSing. You really don't wanna go up there right now, she almost ripped my head off and I just asked if she wanted to watch a movie later or something."
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The cherry on top is her reaching for his arm, meaning to turn him around and pull him towards the kitchen.
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“Ellie,” he says firmly. “What the hell is Tess really doing upstairs?”
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Maybe if she wasn't a typically moody teenager that never really seeks to hang out with Joel, this wouldn't be so suspicious.
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It’s difficult to not be paranoid sometimes, especially when Ellie turns on a dime.
She’s been so quiet with him lately.
“You go on to the kitchen, then,” he says, lifting his hand from the railing so she can pass. “I’ll creep up there real quiet, get what I need, and come back down.”
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"Goddamnit, Ellie," he says, exasperated. "Whatever you two are up to, I'm not in the mood."
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"Race you!"
At least her barreling up the stairs will give Tess a warning.
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He isn't going to race her, not with the way his back will punish him later, but he does follow two steps at a time. The hell is she going to do at the top?
"Ellie!" he growls after her.
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Tess is very glad she has a fair amount of experience sneaking around. In the months they've been here, Tess has learned the precise location of every loose floorboard, every creaky door. While Ellie stalls the least relaxed man to ever walk the earth, Tess tiptoes back and forth, shoving towels out of sight.
But she's not quite quick enough. The most precarious thing to move is the lye itself, and there's nowhere easy to put it, nowhere to hide it. She's got both hands on the tub when she hears Ellie thundering up the stairs, and she knows she won't make it to the bedroom where it'll neatly slide under the bed, so she just puts it back down on Joel's workbench and drags a drop cloth over it.
By time Ellie's in sight, and Joel right behind her, Tess is at the door to head them off.
"What's with all the thundering around?" she demands. "What happened to patrols?"
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Ellie can see the fucking bucket right there and it makes her stomach lurch.
Joel knows when so much as a tool has been put back in the wrong place in his shop. He'll definitely notice a random bucket.
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"You're both noisy as fuck, it's like you never learned to sneak around," she scolds them both.