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Not even three hours later, Scott opened the door to Elysif’s flat and instantly was greeted by me running in front of him. “Scott, stop him!” Elysif shouted from across the room.
“Why?” he asked, wandering in and hanging his coat on the coat rack calmly.
“She has been trying to dissect me for the past hour and a half,” I yelled as I ran around a table to avoid her.
He cocked an eyebrow and pulled out his flask. Taking a swig, he let out a deep and heavy sigh. “I am too sober for this,” Scott mumbled to himself, before yelling to Elysif, “I’m disappointed in you, Elysif. I would have thought that you would have caught him by now?”
“Scott, you ass! Help me!” I shrilled at him, as I dove out of Elysif’s way, while she attempted a tackle. Rather than tackling me, she crashed into a loveseat that sat in her living room with a mix of annoyance and pleasure. Because of this, she got up and began to chase me again.
“Well, he is a slippery bugger,” she replied to Scott. Scott reasonably ignored her and meandered into her living room so he could sit down, only to turn right back around and strut towards her examination room that I originally woke up in. Her living room had become a mess by this point, due to me trying to avoid being dissected. There were several pieces of furniture flung around and currently resting in some odd positions.
“I’m guessing that you now believe that he is from the future, so you are trying to dissect him?” Scott asked Elysif from the examination room as he pulled out a pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco.
“Well, I won’t believe he is from the future until I see some proof; and that watch of his isn’t enough proof,” she replied as she chucked several scalpels at me.
“I don’t care if you want proof that I am from the future, just please don’t cut me open; and Scott, don't smoke in here!” I yelled as I avoided the medical blades flying in my direction.
“Why can’t I smoke? It doesn’t hurt anyone. In fact, it’s medicinal,” Scott said before lighting a match.
“Actually, smoking causes asthma and cancer. On top of that, it’s worse for nonsmokers to be around smokers due to secondhand smoking,” I explained as I ran past the examination room. Scott stopped the match right before he touched it to his pipe bowl. Setting the pipe down, Scott blew the match out and marched into the room that Elysif and I were currently in. Just as Elysif ran towards him in an attempt to get closer to me, Scott flung out his arm. In one swift motion, he grabbed her and pressed her into the wall. Planting his right arm beside her head, he looked her in the eyes.
“You lied to me. You said that smoking would stop my cough. But I find out from future boy that it’s the exact opposite. Did you do that on purpose?” he asked in a soft but furious tone. To me, it was like watching a romantic drama or perhaps a detective show. She stood there for a moment, fidgeting before stuttering out.
“Do y—you really believe he is from the future?” Elysif asked in hopes of deterring the conversation, and also to gauge whether Scott was willing to believe me or not.
“Iscariot believes, so and that’s good enough for me,” Scott replied.
“W—well, you know medicine isn’t an exact science. Doctors learn new things every day and... sometimes they're wrong,” she stammered out.
“Well, there goes one habit,” he said before stepping away from Elysif in a show of disbelief. “What’s next, that my booze is killing me?” Scott asked sarcastically.
“Well, it kind of is. It is easily destroying your liver, especially with how much you drink,” I replied.
“I… Well, then my liver is going to die,” he stated stubbornly as he lifted up his flask, taking another swig of his booze. “Hey Elysif, do I need my liver?”
“Yes,” she said, as if it were a stupid question.
“Can you get me a new one if I destroy this one?” he asked with absolute deadpan.
“Yes, but I don’t know if you would survive,” Elysif said with a fairly concerned expression.
“That’s good enough for me. Come on, Lou, we're going to the flat to rest for a while, then it’s back to Whitechapel,” Scott said, grabbing his coat from the coat rack and then turning to Elysif and saying, “Thank you for watching him.”
“You’re welcome, but don’t come back here unless you’re dying, got it?” Elysif stated with an annoyed look.
“Yes, I know,” he said, as he stepped out the door which happened to lead to the bottom floor of our apartment. I trailed behind him out the door and waved back to Elysif.
“Thank you for not dissecting me,” I said to her sarcastically, only to get another scalpel thrown at me. There was barely any time to dodge it, ducking to the side enough to only receive a small nick to my hand. It was the same hand that Iscariot stabbed too. Man, what did my hand do to deserve this? The magic potion she poured on me healed most of my wounds, but this one was stubborn and was only scabbed over.
Because Elysif was on the first floor of the apartment building, all we had to do was go up the stairs. There was also a second flat on the second floor, but it was just used for storage. Due to this, Elysif’s place was much larger than ours. I wondered if the Table gave shitty pay, or if Scott just spent it all on booze? I will probably never know. Of course, I was just happy that I didn’t have to walk too far, my intestines still burned like Hell, even though they were technically healed. Only realizing it now, I was in a lot of pain from running. She did give me a lot of pain relievers after I kept whining about it, though, telling me that it would hurt like a bitch in a few hours. She also said that if it did start to hurt, I should start drinking heavily as she wasn’t going to be giving me any more pain relievers for a while. Upon entering Scott’s place, I was greeted with the same couch that I slept in earlier, and on it, a pile of sheets, blankets, and pillows.
“What are these?” I asked.
“They're yours. I bought them for you to use on the bed in that other room, but it’s coming out of your pay,” Scott said with a crass but somewhat thoughtful tone. It felt distant, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“Aren’t there blankets and pillows on the bed already?” I asked, wondering why he had got them for me.
“There are, but they are covered in stains, and I don’t even know how old they are anymore,” he said, trudging over to his desk and reaching for a bottle of booze underneath it. Chugging some of it from the bottle, Scott let out a refreshing “ah”, before pouring some into his flask. It was very noticeable that Scott has a serious drinking problem. Have AA meetings been invented yet? I didn’t know, but after filling his flask, he meandered into his bedroom, followed by the sound of him almost body-slamming the bed.
“I see,” I said, as I was also tired, so I grabbed the pile of pillows, blanket, and sheets to make my bed. After making the bed, I laid down for the first proper sleep since I had arrived. There weren’t going to be any more crazy old people, changelings, or psycho doctors waking me up.
***
A few days had passed by with nothing notable to mention. Scott has been giving me combat training in the afternoons, and then we scout out Whitechapel until four in the morning. It took me a few days to get used to the new schedule, but it’s not that bad. As for my training… Scott is near impossible to hit, even when he is drunk. Which is all the time. It’s like he uses that martial art skill from the movies that only drunk people can master. Whatever it was, my training consisted of me getting my ass kicked for a while, and then me teaching myself how to control my knife when I’m alone.
We had our usual patrols around Whitechapel, which are all-around boring. The only thing we have to worry about are drunks looking for a fight, and prostitutes trying to get in our pants. Of course, you show them a badge, and they back off... even if it isn’t a police badge. The Table did send me a badge of my own a day or two after we started this routine, and Scott showed me his. They looked the same as both were made of an iron and silver blend with bold letters inscribed at the top which read “Table Officer'' along with my name. The only major difference was that mine had one star at the bottom, while Scott’s had four. There was enough room for five stars in total on each badge.
“What are the stars for?” I asked.
“They show your rank. You only have one star because you just started, while I have four because I have been with the Table a while,” Scott explained.
“How do you move up in rank?” I wondered out loud.
“You could either be with the Table for ten years in order to move up one star, or you could do something that catches the eyes of a higher up. You could also be shady and be granted a higher rank due to a job being too difficult, so that if you die it looks like you were competent. I used to be five stars along with my wife, but that was a long time ago, before she died,” Scott said with a solemn look that had me pitying him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you to think about something as sad as that,” I said apologetically.
“Don’t be, I love thinking of my wife. She made me happy and it reminds me of a time when I didn’t want to forget everything,” Scott said with a rather fake smile.
“I somewhat heard about what happened from Isabell... That either your wife or your partner was killed by a werewolf,” I said, bringing up what Isabell had told me before she died.
He stopped and looked at me. “It was both my wife and my partner. They were one and the same. I know where this conversation is going to go, so let’s stop,” he said sternly, continuing down the road with a quicker stride. That was the only notable thing I could get out of him at the time, but it was something, at least.
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