Cleaning and Mending
Log Info
- Title: Cleaning and Mending
- Emitter: Dolan
- Place: Soldier's Defense
- Summary: Dolan arrives at the Soldier's Defense with a group of victims from the totenmaske attacks while Andelena is there for a routine checkup after her recent encounter with some Kulthian 'artifacts'. Once the shock of seeing Dolan covered in blood wears off, Andelena gets Dolan into a room to clean and heal his wounds. All the while, they talk about what happened and touch briefly on Andelena's disowned noble family.
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- Dramatis Personae =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- Andelena 6'0" 180 Lb Human Female Redhead with steel-grey eyes and powerful build. Dolan 5'10" 174 Lb Human Male Brown-haired human with scars down his face. -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
A summer night, the hours well into the second watch, find a quiet Soldier's Defense for the most part. The night is humid and still, and most of the patients are asleep. In the foyer, though, there appears to be a discussion in progress. Not the angry sort, no, but a fraught one nonetheless. Several Hearthguards stand in conversation with a man, and three other figures surrounding him, all of them in some form of physical contact with either him or with each other.
The figures are easily the worst part of the whole tableau. A lucht, a human, and a half-sil, all of whom have makeshift clothing at best. Their faces are blank and featureless, as if eyes and mouths had simply wiped away or had never existed. Each has one nostril through which to breathe, and their bodies are covered in weeping sores. They act frightened, staying close to one another, and to the man with them, who seems to be explaining their state to the Hearthguards.
The man himself is a fighting sort, with well-kept, straight brown hair that falls nearly to his collar. It does nothing to obscure the melted and furrowed flesh of his own face, nor the right eye socket into which is set a golden gem in a steel-and-bronze ring. He, at least, seems to have all his features, and the left side of his face seems to be that of a normal human. Dolan is blood-spattered, from armor and full panoply of weapons to the white-and-gold mantle pinned at the shoulders with the stylized dragon that marks him as one of Daeus' Coronae.
Andelena had been fast asleep on the couch when Dolan left--the Sunguard has a bad habit of falling asleep on the couch at random, cultivated from years of sleeping in all manners of beds and makeshift beds--and awakened later to shuffle her way to the Soldier's Defense, wearing a tunic and a pair of breeches from the communal closet.
"Thanks for the clean bill of health," Andelena says to a cleric of Althea as she steps out into the foyer. She looks like she has more to say when her steel-grey gaze settles onto the three victims--
And a blood-splattered Brydion, wearing the white-and-gold mantle.
"Shit!" Andelena yelps, and she rushes forward to him--though she stops short of the three victims without faces. Concern and worry flashes on her features as she looks at them, then at her man, caked in viscera. "Bry, are you okay? What the hell happened?"
All three of the victims shy at the sudden noise, and seem to be in varying stages of cowering in fear, one dropping to their knees, another falling over and scooting backwards, but not so far as to leave his proximity. It does reveal that his lower half is harder hit, and the right leg is just about caked in blood, tears in the trousers at hip, thigh, and calf revealing that the answer to her question is most likely no.
"Just a minute, Andie." Brydion does not immediately turn to face her, and the Hearthguards squat down, reaching for clearly terrified and blood-caked victims. He, too, seems to be treating them with compassion, and wears a mien that is at once haunted and determined.
"Come on, let's get them somewhere safe." The Hearthguards move to do just that, and eventually coax the victims to come with them, while their leader tells him, "We'll do what we can for them, We can't make any promises, but -"
He stops short, clearly having seen Brydion's leg for the first time. "You didn't say that you were hurt."
Andelena notices that hurt leg, all right. She frowns deeply at the victims and murmurs a self-chastising reproach under her breath before she watches the Hearthguards urge the faceless people to come with them.
"I'll heal the leg," she says authoritatively to the Hearthguard's observation. "I'm his partner. I always patch him up."
Her eyes flicker back to Brydion. "If that's okay with him. I imagine he just wants to get out of here once everything's settled." There's concern in her eyes rather than any upset.
Brydion watches them go, looking after the mangled and abused remains of people, then turns to Andelena, the demeanor of the Corona replaced with that of the farmboy, and yes, he's definitely hurting, as well as tired and probably tapped out on prayers as well. That twitch in his jaw is a telltale. "Good timing, Andie. That was a nasty business. No, she can handle it," he nods to the Hearthguard. "Thanks." He takes a step towards her, as if to kiss her, but it's more of a limp. It is holding him, but he is heavily favoring it.
Andelena steps forward and kisses him--but there's another purpose to her kiss, as she carefully and subtly pulls him into a position that's a little easier on his leg. The fact that she's two inches taller than him and is no slouch in the build department makes her an excellent candidate for a human crutch, after all. Once she leans back, she still has an arm around him, not daring even for a moment to let him fall.
"Let's go find a room and I can heal you up there," she suggests, already looking around to see if there happens to be one open. "Not having you limp all the way to the apartment if I can damn well help it. Those poor people--what the fuck did that to them? You put whatever did that in the ground, right?" Not whoever--whatever. It might as well have been a beast in her eyes.
Brydion smiles and leans into the kiss, blood and all, but when he pulls away and turns back towards the Hearthguard, it's to fins that the man has already turned away to attend to another couple coming in, the woman clearly in distress. He's definitely leaning some of his weight on her. "Yes, we did," he answers flatly. "Totenmaskes. Undead creatures that feed on human essence and steal faces to hide among the populace. One got in the refugee camp, and we tracked it back to the noble district." So that's what he's been doing for the last several days.
He puts an arm around her as well, holding her tightly. "It was damned nasty, Andie. A room used for - using of sex partners."
Andelena looks absolutely horrified as Dolan discusses the totenmaskes. "I'm never complaining about bacon grease ever again," she says, in her usual coping manner of dry humor in the face of terror. "Gods, Bry. That sounds absolutely fucking horrifying. I was wondering what you were up to all that time, but, you know--figured if it was something you wanted me to know about, you'd let me know about it."
She absolutely lets him hold her. The blood doesn't seem to bother her. The compassion in her eyes suggests that letting Dolan know that she's here and she's not upset is more important right now.
As the pair walk in search of at least an open cot to use, Dolan flashes a half a smile. "Tracking the damned things halfway across the city," he answers. "You were busy with the temple, or I'd've asked. Guess I win for craziest thing this week." There's some of his cheek. "Hope they'll be all right."
"Craziest thing this week? Might be all fucking year. The fey shit doesn't count since we did that together," Andelena replies with a small huff and a small grin as they search. "Honestly, after getting paralyzed by... Kulthian artifacts or whatever the fuck those snake things were, I took the chance to take it easy for once. I'll still take that over what happened to those poor people, though."
Andelena spots a vacant room and saunters in, leading Dolan to the cot. "Alright big boy, take 'em off," she says in a teasing way. Sure, the wound sucks, but she might as well get him to laugh in the process. "I want to clean that wound if I can before I apply healing prayers to it."
"It's not just one, Andie." Dolan limps over to the cot with her help, and drops mantle, armor, weapons, and under layer in a pile next to it, then settles gingerly down on it and removes the trousers as well.
It's not one wound. It's three. A nasty and filthy-looking bite in his right hip, a set of clawmarks down his right thigh, and another single claw across the outside of his right thigh. All are dirty, and the bite at least is fairly deep. All in all, painful, but not really dangerous, and though the muscles are slashed in several places, the structure as a whole is sound.
Cleaning them is going to be a nasty business, though.
Andelena winces as she looks at all three of the wounds, inspecting them. "Damn, no wonder why you're hurting," she says. "Those fucking things did a little number on you. Good news is that I should be able to heal them. Bad news is that it's gonna be a bitch to clean. It'll probably sting like the hells. Sorry in advance, babe."
She quickly takes stock of the medical supplies in the room and gets to work, choosing to address the hip wound first as it looks like it's the angriest of them all. "Who all went with you?" she asks as she begins to go about the process. Try to talk through it--it takes the mind off the pain, at least a little.
"Telamon and his fiancee Lana," Dolan answers, turning just a little to give her better access. Yeah, it definitely stings, and his jaw's still twitching. "The khazad druid and her dog - I think the dog's name is Rocky? Shilde," he adds suddenly. "We couldn't find more that fast. I knew about what you ran into. I was told to let you be. Kulthian artifacts, huh?"
"Yeah, something like that," Andelena says, continuing her cleaning work. She's trying to be as gentle as she can, but some things can't be helped. "They were in a shipping container that was dropped and broke open. They killed a bystander despite a nearby Muse's healing efforts--think her name was Nemori. A sith-makar named Aelwyn and I were wailing on the little fuckers until we broke them."
She pulls away from the wound, apparently satisfied with her cleaning efforts there. "A little shopowner apparently bought the things. Paid 10,000 gold pieces for them. Obviously, he wasn't happy that his order was now broken--but apparently whoever sold them to him described them as inert. They sure as shit were not inert when they killed an innocent man and locked my whole damn body up." Now she moves on to the healing prayer, mending that particular wound before she moves on to another one.
This process is clearly unpleasant for Dolan. He's listening, focusing on her words, but lets out several hisses and a couple of curse words as she works. "Why would he spend ten thousand gold pieces for something that doesn't - do anything?" The healing spell sinks in, and flesh knits beneath her hand. It's a delayed reaction, though, and he doesn't relax immediately, instead trying to breathe deeply and focus on her words. "That must have been scary as hell. It locked your body up?"
The look of concentration on Andelena's face is all the evidence that Dolan needs that the healing is proceeding as expected. If he wasn't cursing and hissing from the process, it'd be more concerning. "Don't get up," she informs him out of an almost rote process. Last thing she wants for him to have is a muscle spasm. "I gotta get the scratches on your thigh next."
She returns to the cleaning process, gently getting at his thigh. "The man wanted them as display pieces. I guess he runs one of those weird little shops with all sorts of shit in it, and having those things would make him look more legitimate. Either way, he looked all sorts of upset about the bystander. Didn't clock him for having malicious intent, so I let him go. Plus, the man was so old that he could up and keel over tomorrow if the wind hit him just right."
While not as deep as the bite, this one is nasty enough, and again, Dolan turns himself just a little to grant easier access. He stares at the ceiling, focusing hard on the conversation instead of the burning in his leg. "Probably for the best. No good can come of those Kulthian artifacts. Best to just leave all of that stuff be. There's a reason the gods destroyed them."
"Yeah," Andelena murmurs. "Next person I ever meet who insists on having shit from a dead civilization imported so they can show it off on their coffee table or something is going to get my foot up their ass. I didn't get paralyzed for long--the Muse cured me of paralysis--but that was the most uncomfortable I've ever fucking felt. Even worse than when Mother tried to betroth me to that fat fuck who was sixty years old and had three dead wives. Baron Whatshisface. I don't remember, she tried marrying me off to a dozen of 'em."
She keeps going a little longer on the thigh wound. "I still wonder if she was punishing me for my 'bad attitude' by specifically trying to find the ugliest motherfuckers for me. Not that it matters now."
"I don't get it, Andie." Dolan grabs a handful of the edge of the cot and squeezes as she works, trying to keep his breathing even. "That whole thing about social climbing. Why couldn't she have done it by just being a decent person?" Politics has never been the farm boy's strong suit. I mean, obviously she was looking for people that could advance her, and whether you were happy with of no consequence, but - what did it get her?"
"Same thing that having shit from dead civilizations sitting in your shop gets you as a shopkeeper--status. Fame. Clout," Andelena says bitterly. "Mother really only cared about herself and playing her stupid game of noble ladies and noble lords. Being a 'good person', in her dictionary, is about kissing her feet and doing as she tells you--and I was only ever someone she hoped she could marry off high enough to make marrying my brothers to rich women easier."
She backs away from the wound now that she's done cleaning it. "One day I'll hear that she choked to death on her caviar or something. I'll probably laugh my ass off when she does." The sentiment is an odd one to lead into healing prayers, but she does it anyway. Not the first nor the last time.
This time, Dolan relaxes more when the healing magics fade away. He's still tense, but the death grip on the cot relaxes, and he lets out a long breath. His whole leg is still shrieking, between the wounds and the cleaning, but it's fading away now. adn the last of the wounds is more long than deep. "Fuck that," he agrees, some of his cheeky grin returning. "Besides, you did better in the eyes of the Knight than she knows."
"I don't think she cares a single piss about the Knight," Andelena says with a smirk as she looks up at him. "Only sent me to that Temple because she thought I'd shape up. Which, you know, I did shape up... in the exact opposite direction. And also found this cute little farmboy who told me I was the most beautiful gal he'd ever seen."
The smirk widens into a wicked grin. "Well, okay. Not little. Not in the places where it matters--and you hit your growth spurt pretty quickly anyway. One more to go." She pivots around a little and starts tending to the final wound on Dolan's thigh, the single claw.
"He still does think that." Dolan's cheeky grin is laced with pain, although it is clear that her efforts so far have taken the edge off. "I ought to remind you of how little I am, when we get home. "He also thinks your mother is a selfish twit that isn't good for much besides being an example to others. And I'm sure the Knight doesn't care a single piss about her, either."
Andelena snickers like they're teenagers sneaking off for a romp in the hay again, but she shakes her head. "Bry, as much as I'd love to, especially when you shit-talk my mom like that, you kind of took some wounds a little too close to that site. Plus you're not exactly gonna be operational if we get in bed and suddenly your muscles are spasming. Give it a day and then I'll make your head spin."
She finishes cleaning the wound and administers her final healing prayer--the one that will get him up again, if not necessarily running.