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.
no subject
no subject
"Goddamnit, Ellie," he says, exasperated. "Whatever you two are up to, I'm not in the mood."
no subject
"Race you!"
At least her barreling up the stairs will give Tess a warning.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
"You're both noisy as fuck, it's like you never learned to sneak around," she scolds them both.