Such generosity had never been expected.

The offer to rebuild their school had arrived out of nowhere, while they were still reeling from the attack. Still cursing as they sorted through rubble. And while those who had fled beforehand were still flowing back in, wordlessly. What was there to say?

Such generosity was beyond words.

Not just the school. A medical center, as well—clean, modern, and unprecedented outside of a town much larger than their own. Fully staffed. To the question of where the money would come from to pay for those doctors in future years, the young voice on the phone had simply seemed to smile. It was not for them to worry about. He had plans. While the rebuilding and construction was going on, would they mind if he came down to supervise things? It had seemed like a somewhat cynical request. Foreign aid could disappear before it did much rebuilding at all, though; having the investor himself watching did give a certain incentive for the money to pay for what it had bought. In the next breath, however, the boy seemed to be naively unaware of that concern. He asked them if they would permit his mentor and himself to act as their healers, while they waited for the ones he had hired to arrive. Though he was quite unskilled, his mentor more than made up for him; and, after all, it was the least that they could do. Healing was their gift, after all.

Such generosity was beyond question.

The boy spoke perfect Spanish. More than perfect—his words even held the accent of a true Colombian. And when a local teen had called out to him in stupid city slang, “¿Vientos o maletas?”*, he’d replied “Vientos, gracis. Y tu?”** with an understanding half-smile. And then he had insisted upon starting his work, though he hesitated over the more complex cases—those would wait on his mentor. Broken bones and such were well within his realm, though. As were stabs and slashes. Gunshot wounds. He did not ask many questions of his own, either. Healing was healing.

Such generosity had, of course, its price.

Slate lowered his hand from the young man’s face. The young man, perhaps seventeen years old, blinked brown eyes for a moment in slight confusion. That was his mind, trying to understand something that had just happened. Something that was beyond it to understand. The shot to his shoulder was healed, though antibiotics would be needed to clear the last of the infection from his body.

What confused him, no doubt, was the sudden sense of loyalty he felt to the teenager sitting at his bedside. The confusion would pass. The loyalty would not. “How are you?” Slate asked aloud. And then, without so much as a blink, he asked his real question. Who do you work for, and how did you get injured? Reply to my questions in the same manner they are asked. It was an order.

“I… I am fine, Senor.” The eyes darted for a moment. An internal struggle that he could not win. Not without distinctly more will power than his fever-hot mind could muster, and not without the aid of his own mutation. …I work for Amido Gonzales. Those paramilitist bastards shot me when I—

Amido. He is with the FARC? You are with the FARC? Slate interrupted.

Yes, Senor. Yes to both. Some part of him still struggled. It was losing quickly, however. It had already lost, the moment the Colombia teen had given the American permission to heal him. Slate required permission to enter a person’s mind. He did not require permission for what he did, once he was in there. And though he could not retain the memories he saw while their minds were connected, he would remember if he had inserted the loyalty command or not. If he had, then he trusted himself to have done it for a good reason, even if he had to relearn what that reason was after the fact.

Good. Stay in the area; volunteer to help with the rebuilding, for now. I may have need for you. Do not tell anyone of this. The blue-eyed teenager gave a small smile down to the boy on the bed. “Try to rest. You’ll be fine.”

“Yes, Senor.” The boy replied. Of course.

Slate stood from his chair, stretching slightly. Yesterday’s rain had broken the heat. Unfortunately, that had lasted only until the sun had risen. It was now a bright sunny day, and for a teenager who had flown down from a chilly New York spring, it was stiflingly hot.

He made his way towards the sink, and splashed cold water on his face. It helped. For approximately as long as it took to towel himself dry. Colombia. He should have started his take over with Canada. Preferably northern Canada. Where there areas up there which kept their snow all year round? He had the sudden desire to visit them. At least everything was proceeding smoothly.

He turned to the other healer in the room; a man who did not appear far from his own age. “Thank you for coming, again.” He stated simply, and not for the first time. Since he had nearly killed Tarin… he had known that his plan here would have crumbled without his own powers, no matter how capable the rest of the Kabal members were. He had banked too much on himself, and quite nearly ruined everything before they’d even begun: he had almost lost his nerve for healing. He was a still far too much of a novice to be trusted. With his mentor here, however, he felt a certain confidence again.

“Can you heal infections?” He asked, curiously. “I do not believe I can.”

There would be no accidents like Tarin, with Sebastian here. He could do this. And he could do it while only causing the deaths he personally approved of.

((* “¿Vientos o maletas?” == Lit. “Winds of suitcases?”, but is slang for “How are you?”; a pun off of “bien o mal”, “good or bad”.

** “Vientos, gracis. Y tu?” == “Winds (good), thank you. And you?”))

It may have been a bit of an exaggeration to say that Sebastian had never been this hot before. He just couldn't remember having been this hot. Sure, India and Siam could have their warm days, but they had certainly never gotten this humid in Sebastian's memory. Then again, he had time to get used to those places even if they had boiled him just as much as the
South American country was trying to do. In Columbia, he had gone straight from a comfortably air conditioned plane into the sweltering heat of the jungle in the very middle of its eternal summer. At least, he hoped it was summer. If it was going to get any warmer than this, he would probably melt. Unicorns were more well suited to temperate climates, he decided. Unicorns were comfortable in tundras, grasslands, alpines, taigas, and any other more chilly biomes. They were not creatures of the tropics.

Why had he even agreed to come to this miserably hot patch of jungle? What could have possessed him to get on an airplane, of all things, and send himself hurtling at several thousand miles per hour in nothing but a tin can with a pair of giant metal surfboards sticking out of wither side? What could possibly have transpired to cause him to actually put 'comfortable' and 'plane' in the same thought? Why was he even here?

Slate had asked him, that's why.

His healing pupil had wanted experience, had found an area of the world that desperately needed healers, and had nicely asked for his mentor to come along for guidance. He couldn't possibly have said no. Not to those baby blue eyes.

And so, Sebastian had shifted to an age where he was still capable of rationalizing like an adult, but was young enough that he didn't have much body hair to worry about. What little hair he had left on his chin, he ruthlessly shaved. The tousled white wavy locks on his head were butchered to an average of no longer than an inch. He would be dealing with raging hormones for the whole trip, but it was worth it to counteract the raging heat.

His clothes consisted of clothing actually purchased from a store, rather than sewn by hand. They included light colored tank tops and cargo shorts, slightly altered to allow room for a tail. It was all kind of clingy in the hot weather and the shirts tended to be soaked within ten minutes of putting them on. He was seriously considering switching to a style that would have been more common in Egypt back in the day. Give him a white linen kilt any day. Simple to sew, and simple to wear.

The town in which Slate had requested the unicorn man's presence was an interesting mixture of primitive and modern. To Sebastian, it seemed like someone had taken two different time periods and shuffled them together. Skinny chickens wandered freely throughout the village and roosters crowed at all hours from their perches on thatched roofs. A few of the buildings used electric lights, and those lucky enough to have electricity often sold cold water they chilled in their own refrigerators. In a few of the houses, the blue glow of a television could be seen through the windows at night. In the center of the village stood the well, where the village people could draw their daily water. On the very outer edges of the village stood the latrines.

The building in which he and Slate had set up their impromptu hospital was the local church. It was relatively spacious, and had a sink with two reservoirs. One stood full of water filled by buckets carried from the well, while the other drained the used water, returning it directly to the ground again. The building also had a few electric lights strung on wires that crisscrossed below the rafters that supported the thatched roof that made working into the night possible if it was ever necessary to do so. The plastic chairs that made up the church's seating were resting places for the injured before the two healers had a chance to deal with them. Still others laid on the floor as they waited to be treated. For the most part, those that had to lay down were treated first. “Worst first” was the healers' motto in times of crisis. It was the best way to save the most lives.

It was very hot. Even the icy cold sensation that coursed out through his hands whenever he healed someone did little to make his body temperature go down. Sebastian wouldn't complain, though. He'd never complain when he was healing over the stump of someone's lost arm or trying to carefully maneuver bullets out of someone's shoulder.

To distract himself from his own discomfort, and to take the patient's minds off of what he was doing, he practiced his rusty Spanish by talking with the patients. He hadn't used the language for quite some time, and his accent when he used it was distinctly different from the Columbians'. Gradually, he was getting used to the way they pronounced things, such as pronouncing the letters c, s, and z all the same. He still hadn't quite figured out why the locals looked at him like he had just arrived from mars whenever he used “vosotros”. His vocabulary was returning, but apparently some of it was out of date. What was the use of learning languages when they kept changing all the time? Perhaps the languages changed just to spite the immortal or keep him constantly on his toes.

“¿Cuál es su trabajo?” the pale skinned healer asked the elderly gentleman whose badly cut arm he was currently healing.

“Mi camello ? Yo cultivo. Cultivos importantes para venderselos a estados unidos.” The dark skinned old man grinned with his not quite full set of teeth at the younger pale man with the horn. He seemed to be enjoying throwing strange phrases Sebastian's way and watching him blink as he tried to figure out why they were suddenly talking about camels when he had clearly asked about the man's job. Had he said something incorrectly? He hadn't thought so.

Just a few moments later, the man was making his way out the door with a “gracias” and Slate was thinking him once again for traveling all the way down from New York.

“Again, you are welcome. I could hardly say no when you asked so nicely.” Actually, he hardly could have said no, even if he hadn't asked nicely. So far, he had a poor record of even wanting to say no to the young healer. And that's how he had ended up with an apprentice. And how he'd ended up with said apprentice in a faraway jungle treating bullet wounds. He was glad he'd said yes, though. Both had been interesting and worthwhile experiences. It was interesting to discuss and experiment with the different ways their two powers accomplished similar things and it was rewarding to be using those powers to make a difference somewhere they were really needed.

“Can you heal infections?” He asked, curiously. “I do not believe I can.”

“You do not believe you can, or you know you cannot?” He was not trying to sound patronizing. There was a key difference between the two phrases. If there was a possibility Slate could learn to heal infections, then it was worthwhile to pursue learning it. If it was simply something his mutation simply could not effect then there was no use wasting time trying it again and again. For example, Sebastian couldn't cure cancer. It was a disease that the body made all on its own, and there was nothing Sebastian could do about those diseases that were written right into a person's biological code. It was simply a part of them.

“If you cannot, I can take care of the infections with relative ease.”

>> "You do not believe you can, or you know you cannot?h

Slate's mouth opened confidentially; paused; closed. His eyebrows furrowed the slightest bit. "I am not sure."

>> gIf you cannot, I can take care of the infections with relative ease."

"How is it that you heal them?" Slate asked, blinking baby blues curiously. "I... the only way I know to heal is rather... nonspecific." Slate generally healed every physical affliction a person had, all at once. The infections did not heal when he did that. Nor did cancer. He had tried to heal cancer, one time--the sort of 'one time' that was really many, many times, strung together by feverous retrys and a lack of sleep--but there had been nothing he could do. Nothing he had been able to do at the time, in any case. That had been his second attempt at healing. And his third. And forth, and fifth, and sixth. And so many more. They had all failed; healing an already healthy body, while leaving the growth that was killing it intact. He could not say he had honestly tried just now, to heal the man's infection.

Something settled heavily in his gut at the mere thought of trying. If he tried once and failed, should he stop? Twice? Three times? Were was the line between brutalizing his own mind and giving up? He hadn't given up on Tarin; he'd succeeded in reuniting the man's consciousness with his body. And that rejoining had sent his body into a shock strong enough to stop his heart. If the DocProf hadn't been there to cover for Slate's mistake, Tarin Brooks would be dead. Where was the line between giving up, and admitting that he was not good enough? He did not know.

But if the immortal could heal a thing, then perhaps he could, to. If he learned. If he did not give up. If he did not make mistakes. Mistakes were not allowed. Mistakes killed. People were not allowed to die because of him, not unless he specifically ordered it. It was intolerable.

But Sebastian was here. Everything would be all right, because Sebastian was here; he could keep using this ability of his without fear of failing, because Sebastian was here.

>>>"I am not sure." ... "How is it that you heal them?" Slate asked, blinking baby blues curiously. "I... the only way I know to heal is rather... nonspecific."

Sebastian paused for a moment while he considered how to explain his mutation and after a brief pause he answered carefully, “When I heal someone I have to be touching them. There is an energy within my body that always stands at the ready to heal myself or others. When I touch someone, this energy flows into them and it heals them. I can, not really feel, but sense the energy as if the other person's body is an extension of my own. After so many years of healing, I've come to be able to sense what types of maladies I am healing in another person. As that energy spreads throughout a body, it heals the most life threatening things first, then moves on to the smaller things. Anything that is not part of a healthy person's body is eradicated including disease, infection, and other poisons.”

The unicorn man tilted his head at his apprentice, “I'm not sure if that will help you or not. The way you heal is so different from the way I heal. Your method is instantaneous, while my healing takes time. If we examine the way your healing works, or if you demonstrate it on me so I can feel what happens we can determine if there is a way for your powers to eradicate infections.”

The best way that Sebastian knew to find out the extent of a healing ability was to keep experimenting with different things and trying things in different ways. The successes and failures would eventually define the boundaries of the gift. It had taken him a long time to learn the extent of his own gifts, far longer than this boy probably would have to learn about his, but he had not been exactly diligent about his own practice at the beginning.

“You probably didn't know this, but my tail is actually supposed to be about a foot longer than it is right now,” Sebastian swished it around and demonstrated with his hand how long it was in its full glory. “Due to some unfortunate circumstances late last Spring, it was amputated and has been slowly growing back ever since. It will most likely reach its full length again by summer, if it continues to grow at the normal rate. Would you like to try and fix it with your instantaneous method? The experience might help me learn a bit more about how your healing abilities work.” The unicorn shifter had to admit, at least to himself, that it would be nice to have his tail back to its normal self again. It was still a decent tail now, but it wasn't the same as when it was its full and most glorious length.

"How was it for you at first?" Slate asked, grasping on to the line in the immortal's explanation of his powers that promised a tie to his own experiences; ' After so many years of healing, I've come to be able to sense what types of maladies I am healing in another person.' "Were you able to differentiate things at first?" Because Slate certainly knew that he could not. Not yet, anyway. Not to any degree of confidence. There felt like there should be more, when he healed; and he knew that the first time he healed, he specifically targeted an injured foot. He had not done that since, though. Suffice it to say... that here in Colombia, he had other concerns while he was in a person's mind. A slight blush rose to his cheeks. Ah. Perhaps it would be wise to take advantage of his mentor's presence, and truly put forth effort into training his ability. Perhaps. That might be the more honest thing to do, now that he thought of it that way.

The suggestion of a demonstration took him aback. Baby blue eyes blinked as he looked at the man's tail. "I never would have known it was not whole," he said. It really was a very nice tail.

His eyes shifted from the elegant appendage up to his mentor's face. He tried to keep his unease out of his gaze, but it was probably still evident. Sebastian was offering him something, but the immortal did not understand the full magnitude of what he was suggesting. Free access to his mind. That was a dangerous thing to offer a psychic such as Slate.

And he may not get such a good opportunity again. The immortal's age made Antonescu look like a babe, and Slate himself like a fleck of floating dust; even if the man's abilities weren't so useful, that experience and wisdom alone would be quite a force to have on his side. True, unquestioned loyalty--

...The teenager swallowed. He would heal the tail, and that was all. That was the honest thing to do. The temptation was the dangerous thing. But if Slate was not capable of self-control, then he was not capable of anything. A mere thought could make the immortal his until one of them died. But that would not mean nearly as much as if the man joined him willingly. He could wait for that.

"All right," he stated with absurd simplicity. "I will try. Do I have your permission?" Some day, he might even tell Sebastian just how much that question was really asking.

>>>"How was it for you at first?" ... "Were you able to differentiate things at first?"

Sebastian looked thoughtful for a few moments. It had been so long since he had first discovered he could heal, that the memories were difficult to recall at first. It took a moment of poking around through the cobwebs in his brain until he found the correct ones and blew all the dust off of them. Once he had grasped them, though, the memories were quite vivid despite their age. His first healing had been a rather traumatic experience tangled up in a lot of emotions, and strong emotions were the clearest way to imprint a memory permanently.

“No, the first time I ever healed anyone I didn't know what I was doing. When it happened no one was more surprised about it than me. I was about twelve years old and had a tail and a horn and without and other inherent abilities it seemed to my family that I was meant to be a goatherd. So, I spent quite a bit of time following goats around, steering them toward the best grazing lands and the freshest water. I didn't have very many friends my age, though. My physical features combined with all the time I spent in the fields alone with goats for company was enough to deter many of the polis' children from wanting to befriend me.”

“There was one girl, though, who liked to visit me in the fields: Syrinx. I thought she was kind of obnoxious at the time. She was always talking non-stop about the silliest things. She loved to gossip about everything under the sun. Her voice was like a stream, babbling non stop. That day, I still remember, she was talking about a rumor she heard that one of the young men named Paras had made a remark that he was such a great judge of female beauty. She wanted see if he would judge her, then tried to make me guess what he would say.”

“I told her it was silly, that a grown man wouldn't look twice at a girl like her,” Sebastian smiled at the recollection. He'd been so immature then and had understood so little about the way the female mind worked. “She didn't like my answer and ended up chasing me into the forest. I tried to hide from her, but my choice of hiding places turned out to be unwise; a bear cub was sleeping there. From outside I heard a roar and a scream, and I knew what must be happening. I stumbled out of the cave as quickly as I could, just in time to see Syrinx running straight toward me with the mother bear barreling up behind her. There was no time to do anything. We got tangled up and fell. I remember trying to stay between the girl and the bear, so one if one of us at least could survive. All I remember from then on is a tearing noise and a feeling of being cold. I was so cold I felt like I was burning.”

“That's all I ever remembered. When I woke up, it was only two days later, but I had no injuries. Syrinx filled me in on what happened afterwards. I had fallen on top of her and took the brunt of the bear's fury. She thought I was dead at first, but my wounds were healing. Everywhere our skin touched felt ice cold and the cold spread, healing her wounds as well. Everyone called me a hero for awhile,” Sebastian shrugged, his gaze drifted out to the patch of blue sky visible just outside the door, “but I didn't even remember doing it.”

The unicorn man turned his gaze back to Slate's face again, “But you didn't ask for such a long story, I apologize. Sometimes the old memories return and the demand that you relive them, no matter how old they may be. The answer to your question is no, I had no idea what I was doing when I first started out.”

Sebastian let his tail swish back and forth, drawing figure eights a centimeter above the the dirt of the floor. It was an important part of him, and no matter how much ridicule it brought he wouldn't trade it in no matter what the price. He was ready for it to be whole again.

The young healer looked a bit apprehensive at the idea of demonstrating on his mentor. He swallowed hard, as if trying to make a decision about the offer. Sebastian smiled reassuringly and took a step closer to the young man, placing his pale hand on his shoulder. “Don't worry, I trust you. Whatever happens, I will recover. You have my permission.”

>> “But you didn't ask for such a long story, I apologize. Sometimes the old memories return and the demand that you relive them, no matter how old they may be. The answer to your question is no, I had no idea what I was doing when I first started out.”

It took a moment for Slate to rise enough from his thoughts to reply. “No, please,” he blinked, “do not apologize. That was...” That was something invaluable, that he had never thought to gain. A glimpse of something that glimmered in the black of the far past. Sebastian’s words had put a memory in his head every bit as vivid as his own, yet it was something he himself would never live. There was something aching about that. To only hear a story, not live it. Slate’s own scattered memories were like a child’s sandbox, dug out shallowly next to the endless sea-crashed beach of the immortal’s.

“...Thank you,” he ended his sentence. Because there was no concise way to put what ‘that was’ into words. The immortal had already seen and done more than Slate could ever do, from here until his death. Though there was something about that thought that struck him like a challenge: to live his own life in a way that would stand out like a bonfire, even in the spans of Sebastian’s memories.

He would certainly give it a try. The hand settled on his shoulder like an affirmation of that challenge.

>> “Don't worry, I trust you. Whatever happens, I will recover. You have my permission.”

Slate gave a simple nod, setting his hand on top of the man’s own. Bare skin touched bare skin. He entered the unicorn shifter’s mind. And he saw. He saw Syrinx’s face, as Sebastian remembered her. He saw a sandy haired boy asking for a bedtime story. He saw the face of Zeus himself, and the cruel way his lips could smile after the lightning master had taught a lesson to a lower god.

The man’s mind was deeper than any he’d yet encountered. On the outside, Slate’s grip tightened over the hand on his shoulder, as if trying to grip on to something. Anything. Baby blue eyes looked straight ahead, focused on nothing.

He saw a woman who looked like WereCat, though the setting was an Egypt ancient enough to still remember how the pyramids were made. He saw a cold medical room, and the elegant length of the poor tail being—

--The tail. He was here because of the tail. Slate struggled his way out of the stream of memories, like a man rolling off of a highway into a ditch. He was not here for the man’s memories. He would not even remember them, after their contact had been broken. What he was looking for was in a baser area of the man’s mind. Once he found it, the actual shift was quick: the tail reset to the full glory of its length, as if someone had let out the hemming on a pair of pants. Very nice pants, of course; nothing else could possibly be compared to the tail. Its skin would be new and soft, and at quite the risk for sunburns for a time, but it was otherwise exactly as it was the last time Sebastian had seen it. Any swishes it might give would clearly be of the ‘fancy meeting you here’ variety; long time, no see.

Slate blinked as he returned to himself, dropping his hand to break the contact between them. Instantly, memories both vivid and mothballed were washed over with gray in his mind. A light sheen of sweat on his forehead and a dull pounding between his temples were all that remained.

That had taken a bit longer than usual.

((ooc: Feel free to feel or not feel Slate’s presence in your mind, as you please!))

Slate's hand on Sebastian's shoulder was warm. Everything in Columbia was warm. The gesture reminded him of another time and place, when he had placed his own hand on the shoulder of his sandy haired son right before he was to be married. It was a gesture that was both comforting and caring.

In his mind gray waves lapped up against the beach of his memories. Memories that were not his own washed over his in cool gray waves. He saw his hands gripping the arms of a chair, his muscles were tight with pain and his claws digging into the plastic and leaving marks there. He saw a pile of tinfoil wrapped shapes and a miniature scraggly Christmas tree with folded paper cranes hanging from it. Next, a plate with a perfectly round pancake in the center next to a plate piled high with slightly less than perfect ones.

Somewhere he felt the grip on his shoulder tighten, but he was so immersed in the memories that he didn't register the physical change in pressure.

The gray tide of memories splashed against him and a spray of red stained his new shirt as one of the Mondragon guards finished his kill a moment too late to avoid splashing his new boss. Then he felt an intense explosion of pain and all too familiar realization that one of his limbs was missing. He led a beautiful woman towards the entrance of orchestra hall and the next thing he knew her soft lips were...

Sebastian blinked and his memories were his own again. It seemed to only have taken an instant and he could feel his tail again as good as new. He didn't remember any of the things he had seen while Slate was in his mind, nor did he remember that he had seen anything at all. To him the shift had seemed instantaneous.

The nerves in his tail stung with their newness, as if the limb had merely been asleep for a time. Sebastian swished it forward into his hand and brought it close to his face, examining the newly formed skin. It was as if his tail had just been born and the slightly pinkish skin felt especially soft where baby white fuzz formed a nearly transparent covering. He let go and let the tail swish experimentally around. It was amazing how different it felt to have his whole tail back again. It felt wonderful.

He turned to Slate with a broad smile, “Thank you.” The tail swished again to express its thanks as well. “For the demonstration as well as the healing.” Slate's way of healing was very different from his own. Somehow he entered the mind and triggered the body to reset back to a healthy version of itself. Sebastian looked thoughtfully out the window for a moment.

“Would you say that the mental connection between the brain and the body is important to how your healing works? It may be that when you heal you can only affect things that are part of the body, so foreign things like bacteria or poisons are not affected.” Sebastian walked from the window to the door, his tail swishing thoughtfully behind him as he paced and thought out loud.

“Another question is whether you are resetting the body to its own template or whether you are resetting it to an earlier version of itself. If it is an earlier version, you might be able to make someone much younger rather than just a little younger. Or, if you can localize your ability and make just one part of a person younger, you could strengthen aging body parts to increase quality of life for the aging.”

That brought up interesting possibilities such as curing cancer by rewinding the progress of the unchecked growth or relieving arthritis by rejuvenating the tissues around joints. Perhaps even degenerative brain ailments could be reversed, though the idea of rewinding a person's brain made him a bit nervous of erasing memories. It would be rather unpleasant to suddenly wake up like Rip Van Winkle and find yourself ten years in the future in an aged body. His pacing increased speed as the possibilities occurred to him. His tail swished excitedly, too. Was it possible that Slate's version of healing could do everything that Sebastian's could not?