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Who: Lightning, Wen Qing, Little One
Where: Medical Car
When: Fiddlesticks Day 13
What: Little One needs a medical check-up, and the medics need to discuss Things.
Warnings: TBA

In general, Light tried to stay out of the kid's business. Sometimes she'd poke, but she was fairly self-sufficient; she didn't want to scare her off with solicitousness. She knew what she'd been like at that age. Hell, Light knew what she was like now. Point was, a decision to be hands-off combined with the weirdly respectful behaviour she received as a 'priestess' meant that it took two whole days for Light to throw that decision into the void. She'd marched over to the girl, who was still both limping and wincing whenever she reached across the table for another pancake. Folded her arms. Given her a Look.

Five minutes and three increasingly stern 'suggestions' that the kid come with her to medical to see Wen Qing later, and she was pushing her ahead of her into the examination room. Gently, but implacably. She'd already tried to wriggle away with excuses along the way.

A little late, she rapped a knuckle against the open door.

"Got time for a patient?"

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She really wasn't that badly injured and she hadn't wanted to go to see any doctors. Mostly because she had never seen a doctor before and being examined sounded like an altogether worrying and stupid thing. But Lightning was not one to disobey. So when it became clear that the priestess was not going to take no for an answer she reluctantly let her steer her towards the medical carriage.

She knew of Wen Qing but had never spoken to her. She got a wary nose wrinkle and a polite nod in greeting.

As usual when she wasn't seeing to any patients or tending to her files, Wen Qing had her nose in a book and was taking notes. Honestly, half her reason for spending so much time in medical was that it was a good place to get some peace and quiet so you could work.

She looked up, her eyes brightening at the sight of a very welcome visitor, then dimming again with concern when she realized it wasn't a social visit.

"Of course," she said, slipping from her chair, "come in." Her eyes went to Little One, who she had seen around the train but never taken much notice of until now. "What happened?" she asked bluntly. With children, she figured one mishap or another was likely, though at least this one seemed too old for there to be any mishaps of the got-lotus-seeds-stuck-in-your-nose flavor.

The social visit had rather gotten subsumed by making sure the kid wasn't hiding any major injuries, but it was definitely still on the cards. Lightning turned her head to hide the slight smile in response to Qing's look - she was still trying to make sure the kid behaved, after all. The stern expression needed to stay. She took her usual place leaning against one of the parts of the wall not covered in diagrams or cabinets. The professional could take over from here.

She could answer for her, but why? The kid was more than capable of reporting back on her own. She settled her shoulders more comfortably, and folded her arms across her chest.

"A stu... A jellyfish did be happening." This doctor did not seem the type to allow mischief and Lightning was stood there sternly. Lightning took no nonsense either and so she was trapped.

She could be polite though and she could report. Both were skills she had. She was better at the latter than the former honestly but she did her best.

"I do no be having any cuts that will no be stopping bleeding. I can be feeling all my fingers and toes and can be wriggling them too." She demonstrated. "I have no been coughing up any blood."

Which meant she wasn't dying. Probably. She wasn't a doctor.

"Hmm." The doctor in question fortunately wasn't overly bothered by patients who weren't terribly polite, far more concerned with them being cooperative. Which this girl was - and actually, also surprisingly polite on top of that - but that she already knew the questions she would be asking was conspicuous in its own way.

"I take it you get hurt often to be so experienced with doctor's visits," she noted, eyes sharp as they took in the little girl, then looking up to meet Lightning's eyes with a meaningful expression. She would be expecting an explanation for that later.

"Sit down on the examination table and let me take a look at the damage that jellyfish did."

Behind the girl's back, Light rolled her eyes. This is what I have to deal with on Red Team, she seemed to say, when she met Wen Qing's look with one of her own, along with an exasperated half-shrug.

"I was casting wide-range healing magic for most of the fight," she did interject, once the kid was directed to the table. "Something to keep in mind."

She'd used healing magic around Qing before, if nothing else but to show how maddeningly imprecise it was. Injuries would heal, bones would straighten and knit together, skin would grow anew. But it did nothing for exhaustion and strain, for a body pushed past its natural limits.

She shook her head, "You do be being the first doctor I did ever be meeting."

She had met magical healers, like Lightning before. Priestess Elena could heal but she couldn't remember ever seeing a doctor.

She looked around to see the examination table that had been pointed to her and she clambered up before sitting crossed legged.

"Well then welcome to the world of conventional medicine, where we do exams, prescribe bitter-tasting medicine, and patients are expected to follow the instructions of their doctors," she says briskly, if a little bit wryly.

She shoots Lightning an amused look. "I wonder what the damage count would be if you hadn't been casting healing spells during battle... or maybe I would rather not even know." Yes, actually, she doesn't want to know. She never likes to think too much about the damage Lightning puts herself into every battle. She may be well-equipped to handle anything life can throw at her but that doesn't mean Wen Qing has to like it.

"Now, I'll need you to give me your wrist as I'd like to check your pulse and your qi. Then I'll need to take a proper look at the area where you were injured by the jellyfish," she reiterates, eyes warning off from any protest, "and I'd actually like to give you a full exam while I have you here. Not that I don't trust Lightning's skills." But she isn't sure she trusts the girl when she says she has no other injuries.

"You don't wanna know," she agrees. Especially given that she's pretty sure she watched at least three people throw themselves into attacks once they'd realised they would be healed afterwards. The kid among them.

Honestly, given she's never seen a doctor before, they probably should have forced her to get checked up before now.

She was pretty certain people would have died. There had been enough unconcious by the end even with Lightning's healing that it would have been much worse without it.

She had seen magical healing before, been healed magically even but this was her first time properly seeing it in a battle, where it made the different.

Suffice to say she is impressed. She held her arms out towards the doctor. "What do my qi be being?"

Her frown at Lightning deepens a little more and there is a sharpness to it which promises further discussion later on, where she fully intends to order her to be careful.

"Your qi is the spiritual energy which runs through your body," she explains patiently, turning to Little One once again. "You have different kinds of energy in your body and if they are imbalanced, it makes you sick. You may also have blocks somewhere in your body, where the energy can't pass. It's like when your leg falls asleep. This is very bad news for a cultivator, since we use our spiritual energy in fighting and in everything we do, even being able to walk for longer without tiring than other people or for lifting heavy things. For diagnosis, I start with it since pulse diagnosis is the fastest way to get a quick overview of your state without needing you to undress and physically examine every part of your body." She gives the girl an amused look. "It's like getting to cheat on a test but it's allowed."

She's heard the explanation before. It's inevitable when she spends so much time in medical, really, but the way Qing's explaining it this time is ... not simpler, really, but, more suited for someone with no context.

The deepening frown, however, is ignored with practised ease. She'd love to not have to heal exclusively, but when the worlds are sabotaged like that one was... They're left to their conversation, as she starts to think of ways to lessen the problem.

She nods, understanding the explanation though she's never heard the power that runs through all living things called qi before. She is aware there are those that can sense it and see it, at least on her world.

"What do a cultivator be being?" She glanced at Lightning as well, asking both of them.

She smiles, pleased that the girl seems to be not only listening but comprehending what she has told her, too. It is always pleasant to have an attentive student.

"Cultivators are basically just people who cultivate their qi to form a golden core. It makes them stronger and better fighters and a few select ones may reach immortality. But more practically speaking, it is people who use their powers to fight against supernatural dangers humble people have a hard time standing against, such as vengeful ghosts or monsters."

She looks down to her sleeve, where she once wore the flames of the Wen clan. "We organize in sects. I was Wen sect. Wei Wuxian was Jiang before he was cast out. Lan Wangji and Lan Sizhui are Lan."

She could see it now, the 'priestess' label growing inside the kid's mind, but there really wasn't a way to warn Wen Qing of what she was unleashing admitting to all of that power. ... Well. Maybe she'd look after herself more with two babysitters. Or, maybe she'd get into even more trouble, feel she had the backing for it.

"Don't look at me," her look back to the kid is wry. "I hadn't heard of 'em until I got here."

She understood that very well. People who could use the power inside, the qi as magic. In her world they were priests and priestess'. In Wen Qing's world they were called cultivators.

Her gaze was firmly on Wen Qing now, this was the very closest to a world that worked anything like hers she had heard about on the train.

The sect thing was different but compared to someone like Peter's world this felt a lot more familiar

"What do a sect be being?"

She chuckles a little at Lightning's comment but she really doesn't mind answering the questions of the child. She is bright and attentive, and it reminds Wen Qing of teaching another though much younger child on the Burial Mounds.

Maybe, if her world hadn't imploded, she would have taken a Wen girl of this one's age as her student soon enough to teach her medicine. Honestly, it makes her heart ache a little with what could have been.

"Cultivators are organized in sects. They are... It's a little bit complicated, they are like warrior orders or the army of a feudal lord, but not quite. The leader is like a lord, as the position commonly passes to the heirs of the sect's founder, and they own lands or other assets to finance them. But most of the time they don't fight wars over land or against armies of humble people, they go and fight monsters or vengeful spirits." Her face tightens. "They fight amongst themselves, though, for power or over disagreements, and they will wipe another out."

Her eyes seek out Lightning without realizing it, seeking the reassurance of her steady presence.

She anticipated that turn in the tale as Qing spoke, and when the other woman glanced over, she was ready with a slow, sure nod. They were far from sect politics - so far as she'd heard of them - here, but Lightning had since resolved that should any of her detractors find their way onto the train, they'd have the full wrath of a l'Cie set against them.

All that couldn't be communicated with just a look, but that just meant she'd have to keep it up until Qing knew she had her back. The kid, too. Even if she was tight-lipped about her world, a former soldier could tell the look she got in her eye sometimes. The look she was getting now.

"You have something like that back home?" She turned the question back on the kid, voice careless.

"Nobles who do be killing each other for power? Yes we do be having plenty of those." She wrinkled her nose as she nodded. She might find it hard to imagine such a sect but she sort of imagined it like the noble families whose names and connections she could name but whose actual lives were so far apart from hers that spying on them for assignments felt like peaking into another world entirely.

It still did, even now she had seen other worlds for herself. "Your sects do be sounding more useful though, I did no never be seeing a noble be fighting a monster."

She'd never actually... seen a monster in her own world. But the point is true, those nobles who were actually useful joined armies, fought for the queen or went off to be Warriors or Priests. The ones who remained, the ones who bickered and held lavish parties. They were mostly too stupid to fight monsters.

She took note of what Light was doing there, turning the conversation around to get the little girl to talk about her own world, something which Wen Qing appreciated both for being genuinely curious about her old life and for the reprieve it gave her.

By the time Little One came to the end of her explanations, her smile didn't feel paper-thin anymore. Keeping her hands busy by taking care of the jellyfish injury helped, too. Double-checking that there were no stingers left in the wound before tending to the welts and the swelling.

"My sects are useful, I suppose," she agreed, a little amused by such a practical assessment. "I don't think the people who found them care too much about usefulness but... Yes, they are. Or they should be, anyway. Whatever their political goals or philosophies, a sect that doesn't protect the humble people serves no purpose and shouldn't exist. Who fights to protect the humble people in your world, if the nobles won't do it?" She nods towards Lightning. "Do you have people like Lightning, maybe?"

Her eyebrows lifted at that description. Partly because she knew some of the answer - that her abilities mapped uncannily to the priestesses of the kid's world to the point that she'd not been able to shake that appellation after five months - and partly because the idea that someone would see a Pulse l'Cie and think 'protector of the people' was so dissonant.

"We don't exactly have nobles..."

But she'd let the kid talk.

"Yes." She nodded with a small grin, "We do be having Priests and Priestess'. They do be being people gifted with magic from the gods and they can be going to a temple to be training. There do also be being Warriors, they do no be having magic but they can be being anyone who do be going to the temple and learning to be serving the Priests."

There's a hint of awe in her voice, the excitement of a child talking of childhood heroes.

"They do be serving the whole world and doing the gods works so they will be helping anyone, no just nobles and kings but farmers, sailors and anyone who do be needing them."

Or hindering them, depending on the god. But she's not stupid enough to say as such.

All that childish awe has Wen Qing smiling with genuine fondness at such innocence. How sweet to see a child still believing in right proper heroes.

"They sound very righteous, you have every right to be proud of them and their selfless actions. Maybe you can grow up to become one of these Warriors, or if not, to be someone just as admirable in your deeds."

They sound like what cultivators could or should be, really, in a perfect world in which cultivation isn't mired in politics and wealth.

"I think every world needs heroes like that. People who choose to do the right thing, even if that may put them in opposition to the rest of the world."

"As long as you're given magic by the acceptable kind of god," she grumps, almost to herself. It really does seem that the only difference is that the Priestesses enjoy good publicity. The kid is reeling off all of the propaganda that surrounded Cocoon l'Cie, after all. Magic gifted by the gods, trained by the Sanctum... hell, even the Sanctum forces are nominally trained to support l'Cie.

But, not wanting to drag the mood away from the kid's excitement and Qing's reciprocal fondness, she shifts. Quips, with no real heat, "She's got to survive long enough to make that choice, first."

She nodded with a grin at Wen Qing's words, glad that she approved. She did indeed wish to become a hero such as that. Of course her idea of what was right was different, but it would indeed be in opposition to most of the rest of the world.

She side eyes Lightning, not sure if that is a threat. Her eyes flicker between both of them, unsure and trying to unpick what Lightning had just said.

"Of course she has to survive first. But that is what she has people like you for, doesn't she?" Until now, she had been focused mostly on the little girl but now Wen Qing returned her attention completely to Lightning. There was an almost playful glint in her eyes, a little challenging to boot. "Don't tell me you aren't watching out for her already. I know you will teach her what she needs to know."

It seemed to be simply what Lightning, did, how she was. She watched over those on the train.

"You listen well to Lightning, alright?" she demanded of Little One as she finished up with the leg she had been checking on, finishing up after the ointment with a dash of spiritual energy. Not enough to heal, just enough to speed it up. Sometimes it was good for young disciples to bear the reminder of their carelessness for a little while. "She is a great warrior of her people and one of the bravest and kindest people I know. I have done all I can do for your leg today but if you want to get through your days on the train without worse harm, you will listen to Lightning."

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