My God, the words from her mouth nearly had me seeing red. She was right? The fuck she was. The audacity to tell me "I told you so" was blistering, and I felt blood boiling against every injury, ache, and fracture my body had endured. The words had me gritting my jaw, and had I not needed her assistance, I would probably have shattered the glass holding every precious fucking herb in the shop, letting them whither and crumble at an alarmingly rude and audacious rate.

"His plan was to find you after handling me. Fortunately for you, his injuries were far worse than mine," I nearly hissed, having absolutely none of the composure I'd possessed the night before. I exhaled through my teeth, absolutely irate with her ability to get a rise out of me. The blatant, plain way she had asserted she was right felt like sandpaper in open wounds. I ... I shook my head hotly, sucking on my tongue to taste kinder, more civil words. "Yes, you were right." I felt like a chastised child, wanting to stick my tongue out and make a face when she turned around to assess what herbs she might need.

"All of the customers you don't have?"

I couldn't keep the sharp edge to my voice, a brow raised as I looked around her shop, scanning for any evidence of customers. Feeling like my point was proven, I turned my gaze back to her with the crystalline blue of them skeptical. Her potion hadn't worked the night before (okay, thinking about it, perhaps it wasn't necessarily her fault that the potion didn't work but my lack of information which in itself a problem and it wasn't practical or reasonable to blame her)... Why the fuck was I here if it hadn't worked the night before? Mildly annoyed with myself, I ran the less brutalized hand through my hair. Maybe it wasn't in my best interest to antagonize her, especially if I anticipated any kind of help or cure at her hands. I took a deep breath, as if that was going to get rid of any residual contempt I had somewhere in me for any event that had taken place recently before shutting my eyes to exhale. Maybe that was pretty pointless, but it made my voice a little less harsh and helped my shoulders slump some, alerting her that she had power over me in the situation.

Besides, isn't vulnerability endearing?

I bit my tongue at her sigh, debating whether or not I wanted to comment on disturbing her as an inconvenience but the same small voice reminded me I needed her help. And an even smaller voice reminded me that I had ended up walking home from the cab ride with a distinct memory of sweet breath nearly against my lips. I had then briefly thought about reaching a hand around the back of her neck to pull her back against me, and had thought better of it. Never had I met a woman who didn't appreciate an agonizing game of cat and mouse, playing on the absence of touch, seduction, or whatever emotion one might feel, regardless of what you might expect an outcome to be. I had learned never to expect anything, but I had definitely been on point the night before when I'd felt her shiver from my fingers against her neck or the small of her back.

I found my reply lost somewhere beyond my thoughts when she questioned my catalog of injuries. My head was aching, my pulse somehow fuzzing my vision with every heartbeat. The throbbing and pulsing reached all of the injuries, finding the fractured areas. I had suffered worse injuries than every single one I had sustained the night before, and somehow felt comfortable letting the pain cloud my eyes. The last time I had been this wrecked had been what felt like a lifetime ago, standing on a different continent's soil. In the United States, I had never found an individual who could take away any kind of my liberty. I had way too much faith in myself, and in my mind that I was going to come out on top. Granted, I had pursued that faith last night while ambushed by Frank but it didn't sit well, and left a sour taste in my mouth that I was eager to get rid of. There was a nearly meditative silence where I felt the bitter that had run as hot as my temper ebb away, and I was able to be corralled in a docile manner to the back of her shop, breathing a seriously heavy sigh of relief at the heaviness of the dark, dampened lighting there.

Serafina looked at home, her movements fluid and almost ethereal as she arranged whatever she had brought with her into her little work-cave. I almost didn't want to remove my gaze from her, finding my eyes trained to follow her movements. I knew it was a heavy gaze, one that people often felt uncomfortable under but she had proved the opposite the night prior. It was rare that someone mirrored her reactions, as in taking me in stride and providing a worthy opponent. Okay, maybe not opponent, but the metaphor stands viably. I wasn't disappointed, again, when her commanding tone radiated the silence and I even found my lips curling into a humorous smirk. I'm pretty sure she would have whiplash from the whims of my mercurial attitude of the encounter, but it didn't stop me from the remark that rolled out.

"While I am typically all about exhibitionism, wouldn't you be more comfortable giving me a minor healing potion?" I studied her for a moment, before finding myself in good humor again once I had decided it was fair game to strip for her, allowing her to see whatever injuries I might have. I wasn't necessarily qualified to catalog them, anyway. Besides, what had she said... I would have to work harder to prove she'd enjoyed the dramatic experience my existence often provided?

"Yes, ma'am," I said, hoping she understood I was hardly a threat, and hardly the predator I'd been the night before. Using my good arm to slip my sweater off, I moved too quickly and wasn't able to stop the expletive that was hissed out with my breath as I twisted the broken arm. I didn't mind pain, and I didn't mind showing the vulnerability of being hurt; but it somehow felt oddly intimate showing someone the brutality of my mistake. The broken arm was mangled in the somewhat-sling I had concocted earlier, but the bruising ran up my arm, almost as dark as the tattoo on my inner bicep. The bruising ran across my chest, an abstract display of a sickly green-purple color. The bruise and green-yellow discoloring ran around my side, darkening against my ribs. I had thought about some kind of bleeding, maybe broken ribs, but I hoped inwardly it looked better than it felt to spare her the nausea. The only humorous injury had been the near tear of a nipple ring â€" but honestly, I guess that could have been taken out, anyway.

The removal stopped at my jeans, politely declining that offer, regardless of the near absence of feeling in my hip and knee.

"Fortunately, at least my walls and furniture were easy to mend, so I've got that going for me," I said softly, seating myself on her work bench, my expression mirroring that of a petulant child in no way an attempt to evoke humor, but more than likely doing so at my own cost. "If you're uncomfortable helping me, I can be an adult and go to a hospital."

See? Manners.