lee_fallon | PSL - Molly Shares Her Magic

Entry tags:

PSL - Molly Shares Her Magic

His first round of chemotherapy had gone so much better than Lee had expected. He'd been sick, but not overly so, and at the end of it the results had been so positive that Lee had been even a little excited to start round two.

Four days in, however, and Lee was sure the way he felt during round one was a fluke. He'd been miserable since Monday afternoon, had no appetite of which to speak, and anything he had managed to eat (mostly because of Eric's insistence), had come back up not long after. He was given some anti-nausea meds on Wednesday which were helping take the edge off, but his entire body was still aching, his head had been pounding for days, and his gastrointestinal tract was a wreck. This was exactly what he remembered from the last time he'd done chemo years ago, and it hadn't mellowed at all with time.

On Tuesday he'd gone into the woods with Kavinsky and his compatriot, and while they'd made some good progress, the things they'd tried had ultimately failed, sending his would be saviors back to the drawing board. He had two more weeks of treatment, and while he knew he could get through it (he had before), he remembered that his friend Molly Carpentered had told him that she was going to look into some magic of her own when he spoke to her last, and now seemed like a reasonable time to see if she had any ideas. Even if she can't cure his cancer, she might be able to do something about the pain.

So this morning he sent her a text message, and she'd replied not long after, telling him of course she remembered him and that she'd be glad to come by and see what she could do for him. He'd replied with his address and many thank yous, then settled onto the couch to rest while he waited for her to make her way over.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

it hadn't surprised Molly to get a text from Lee asking her to come by. She'd been working on Lee's issue for a while. She didn't know much in the way of healing magic but she knew enough about pain to know she could at least do something about that. And maybe more. She had a few things she wanted to try.

Packing a bag, Molly got in a cab and went over to the address Lee gave her, making her way to the door and knocking lightly. She knew Lee had been going through chemo again and as much as he'd invited her here she wouldn't want to disturb him if he'd found a moments peace.

Lee had only been dozing, expecting Molly's knock, and the sound of it woke him easily. He took a breath and heaved himself up off the couch, standing still for a moment to steady himself as he crossed to the entry way. Checking it was Molly on the step, he unbolted the door and opened it.

"Hi," he said, smiling as cheerfully as he could manage. "Thank you for coming," he added quickly, standing back from the door to let Molly inside. Once she'd crossed the threshold, Lee shut the door behind her, locking it again.

"How are you?" he asked, taking a step toward the kitchen. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Molly crossed the threshold and was immediately hit with an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. Lee's exhaustion was bleeding through her defences and she had to take a breath and shore them up a little or she wasn't going to be any use to him at all.

She returned his smile and nodded. "I would love one, but let me make it. Might as well get started with this." She said, fishing a small bottle out of her stuffed bag. "It's a tincture to give you some more energy. Good for nausea and appetite too." She said. He was going to need it, by the looks of him. "Kitchen?"

"Right through there," Lee replied, gesturing to the door to Molly's right. "There's an electric kettle on the counter, it should already have water in it," he told her. "There are teabags in the cabinet above that, some loose leaf tea too, if you'd prefer that," he went on, moving back to his place on the couch to sit back down gingerly.

"The sugar bowl is up there as well, and there are clean mugs in the dishwasher," Lee added once he'd caught his breath. "Thank you, Molly," he finished, sounding tired but grateful.

Molly watched him go and made sure he was settled, frowning. She went into the kitchen and made them both tea, making his sweet because the tincture she was about to give him was bitter as hell.

Coming back to him, Molly sat in the chair next to where he was on the couch and handed him a small glass vial.

"Drink it all in one go and give it a minute." She said gently, murmuring the activation charm over it so that the liquid glowed golden in the brown bottle. "It's going to make you feel terrible for a second but then the magic will find your centre and it'll start to feel so much better." If she could do nothing else, this would at least give him some comfort.

Lee took the vial from Molly's fingers, peering at the faintly glowing liquid inside. It looked so simple, and he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, probably something more like what he'd seen at the cat party, at Mardi Gras, glitter and sparkles, something a touch flashier.

He smiled at Molly and pulled the stopper, lifting the vial to his nose to smell it, more a habit born from tasting wine than anything else. It didn't smell like anything either, and he licked his lips, tipping the vial against his lips and tossing it back like a shot. The fluid that flowed over his tongue was intensely bitter, and Lee couldn't help the grimace he made as he swallowed hard.

"If this was wine, I'd give it a flat zero, totally undrinkable," he joked as he handed the vial back to Molly. "Of course if wine had restorative powers, I'd be the last person in the world with cancer," he added with a grin, swallowing again to try to clear the taste from his mouth.

That pulled a chuckle out of Molly and lightened the mood. He was going to feel terrible for a minute but if his spirits were at least a little lighter, it would give the magic an easier time to find his centre.

"That's why there's tea for after. The stuff that goes into that mixture is pretty vile. But the effect should be worth it. Just give it a minute to work." Molly said with a smile, watching him for any reaction. "It's a first step. There's more stuff that we can try, but you need some more strength for that and at the moment, I'm pretty sure I could knock you over by blowing on you."

Lee nodded, and as the tincture was absorbed by his system he began to feel unwell, the aching in his muscles amplified, headache pounding more heavily. There was a wave of nausea and for a moment Lee was worried he was actually going to have to vomit, gripping the arm of the couch so he could bolt for the toilet if he needed to. He swallowed and took a breath, and quickly the feeling passed, his muscles relaxing.

Leaning forward, he took his tea from the coffee table, drinking a sip. It was warm and sweet, and though it didn't erase the bitterness from his tongue entirely it certainly cut it back a little. When he sat his cup back down he realized his stomach wasn't protesting the liquid at all, and in fact he not only felt like he could eat, he found he wanted to.

"I think it's working," he told Molly, raising his eyes to hers. "I'm hungry," he added with a smile.

Molly blew out a breath and laughed. "Oh thank god. I thought for a second there i'd miscalculated and I was going to be cleaning up your carpet." She smiled at him, easy and relaxed. The colour was returning to his cheeks and his eyes were brighter. Molly was infinitely pleased that the potion had worked.

"I think I saw some bread in the kitchen. PB&J?" She offered. It was silly, but that was the sandwich she always made for her siblings when they were feeling better after an illness. "I make a mean one. Seven siblings, just saying..." She added with a magnanimous sweep of her arm.

"Wow, seven siblings," Lee replied, blowing out an impressed breath. "I have three, and they're all at least eight years younger than me, so I was a built-in baby-sitter," he told her, having a feeling Molly might be the oldest in her family too. "Three was hard enough. Seven?" Lee shook his head. "You must be a patient woman," he said with a grin.

"I absolutely trust your PB&J making skills," he added, reaching out to pick up his tea and have another sip. "Will you have one with me?"

"It's PB&J." Molly said, making a face. "Of course I'm having one." She got up and made her way to the kitchen, expertly slapping together the sandwiches and bringing them back.

She set on in front of him and smiled as he tucked in. "You look like you haven't eaten for a week. Treatment kicking your ass, huh?"

"Yes," Lee replied, meeting Molly's eyes gratefully. "The first round was so easy, I should have known it was a fluke," he added with a laugh, picking up his sandwich and taking a bite.

"Mm, this is good," he told her a moment later, after he'd swallowed. "I haven't actually felt like eating in days," he admitted. "I've really only been doing it because my husband makes me."

"Wait...you got married? When did that happen?!" Molly said, dropping her sandwich. "I know it's been a couple of months but I didn't realise I'd missed that much." She exclaimed.

"Uh, yeah," Lee replied, chuckling a little sheepishly. He hadn't told many people about this, mostly because he didn't really have that many people to tell, and while he wasn't embarrassed or afraid of judgement, he couldn't say he didn't expect people to tell him that he was being rash or reckless.

"We got married twelve days ago," he told Molly, setting his sandwich back on his plate. "His name is Eric, I live here with him," he went on. "He isn't the guy I told you about before. That... I had feelings but he didn't. I haven't seen him since New Years Day," he admitted softly.

"I met Eric a month later," he said. "And I'm as pragmatic as the next guy, but Molly, it felt like fate, meeting Eric when I did. I fell in love with him so fast, and he fell in love with me. I don't know how much time I'll have, and we both want to be married so much, so we rushed it a bit. I know it's crazy, I do, but I'm so happy with him."

Molly shook her head. "Lee..." She said seriously. "Why didn't you call me? I would have stood witness! That's so great!" She enthused, laughing. As practical as Molly was, she was a romantic at heart. And if anyone deserved as much happiness the world could offer it was Lee.

"If anyone deserves the happiness you have pouring off you right now it's you." She said, grinning. "And maybe we can do something about the time thing."

At first Lee had readied himself to defend his choices, sure that Molly would have things to say about his haste, about being crazy and reckless, but Molly's tone quickly changed and he felt relief melt through him.

"Well, it was sort of a quick decision," he said, smiling. "Eric wanted to get married before I started chemotherapy again, so he asked and we got married by a Justice of the Peace the next day. But we want to have a real ceremony, once I finish this course of treatment," he told Molly. "And, when we do, I'd love to have you there to celebrate with us," he added, meeting Molly's eyes as he reached for his cup of tea.

"Absolutely. I'll be there. Probably crying because weddings are my kryptonite." Molly said, giving him an amused look while they drank their tea.

"So." She said as she set aside her mug and pulled her bag round to her feet. "How long have you got left on the chemo?" The bag clinked as she started pulling out some of the things she'd bought to try. Various corked green glass bottles lined up in front of her along with a soft piece of leather that wrapped a number of foci she'd enchanted for the basic healing that she knew. She also pulled out two much larger bottles of the tincture she'd given Lee already. If nothing else, he was going to be comfortable.

Lee laughed softly. "Believe me, I'll be crying too," he said. "This is something of a dream come true to me."

He sat back as Molly got into her bag, pulling out just the sorts of bottles and supplies that he would have expected from a magic user in a film. Nothing was marked, but he assumed Molly knew exactly what was in each of those containers without having to open them.

"It's variable," Lee replied. "I'm currently doing a cycle where I get treatment five days a week for two weeks, then I have three weeks off. Next week is my second week of my second round. Sometime the week after that they'll do a scan and see if my tumors have shrunk any more or not. If they have, I'll start another round. If they haven't, they'll stop the therapy," he explained.

Molly nodded as he explained. It seemed logical, but it clearly wasn't any fun at all.

Still, Lee was looking better with the tincture inside him and when she looked at him, she could see it spreading out through his core, into his veins, until the magic had mapped out a path through his tumours.

"Okay. Well I don't think I can do better than the doctors, but maybe I can help slow it down." She picked up a length of fine white wood that she'd spent hours polishing and shaping into a vaguely triangular shape and showed it to him. "This is something I've seen a couple of the older wizards use before. It's a focus. The idea is that the tincture I gave you - as well as making the symptoms ease off - acts as a kind of catalyst to move the energy that's feeding the cancer into the wood. If it turns black then it's worked." She shrugged a shoulder. "It's a first step and it's temporary but it's supposed to starve the tumours of the energy they need to grow any more. With any luck it'll give the chemo time to work better. How does that sound?"

Lee's eyes found focus on the triangle of wood as he listened to her speak, and he nodded in understanding as she explained how the focus worked. For all that magic was a relatively new concept to Lee, at least in terms of it being something that occurred in reality, the idea of the way the focus would detract and shift the energy inside was something Lee found very easy to accept. A lot of his studies of meditation and acupuncture had opened his mind to the ways energies flowed in the body, through the Earth, chi and gaia, so many similar concepts.

"I like the sound of that," Lee told Molly with a soft, appreciative smile. "Will I be able to feel it working?" he asked, only curious, not at all afraid. "The energy flowing?"

"Honestly, I don't know." Molly said, shrugging and shaking her head with a helpless smile. "It's possible. It might even hurt, you should prepare yourself for the possibility at least." She warned, tying her hair back and up out of the way while she shrugged out of her sweater leaving her arms bare.

Sitting forward in her chair, she gave Lee a smile. "Do you want to do it here or your room? Wherever you're comfortable with me being in your space. You might sleep for a bit after."

It wouldn't be the first treatment Lee had gotten that caused more pain than his cancer did in general (which, at least for now, was none). He had a feeling it wasn't going to feel like acupuncture or massage, but Lee wasn't afraid of pain.

"My room," Lee answered Molly's question. "As long as you're comfortable there, I am too," he told her, pushing to stand.

"It's not as clean as I'd like," he said as they walked down the hall toward the bedroom. "I'm a minimalist and most of the things in the house are Eric's. He works a lot and has been taking care of me, and I haven't felt well enough to pick up much."

The bedroom door stood open, and Lee lead Molly inside, sitting down on the bed (which, at least, was made). There was a little pile of clothes on the floor in the corner, a full laundry hamper beside it, and a basket of clean clothes that needed folding. The tops of the two dressers were covered in things that needed to be put away, papers and CDs, Lee's iPod and headphones. All in all it wasn't terrible, but it was still more clutter than Lee had gotten used to over his last few years as a nomad.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

PSL - Molly Shares Her Magic

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject