open

[acreage]

WHO: Holden, you!
WHAT: A catch-all for the month(?)
WHEN: After Satinalia and onwards
WHERE: Kirkwall, Gallows
NOTES: There'll be post-murderhaus stuff in here, so there may be references to some of the horror movie occurrences!

Starters will be in the comments! I'm sorry, I'll write a real log one day.

Comments

[acreage]

"It was a very large spike," he says dryly, with apparently no such compunctions about gentleness. But he doesn't resist any ministrations, moves as she directs him as best he can. "That's fine."

He is definitely not attached to the shirt, ruined as it is anyway. There'll be evidence of some emergency first aid, fabric repurposed into bandaging — also bloody — wrapped around his midsection.

[tender]

"Tell me what happened?" she prompts, softer as she lays his torso bare and turns her gaze to the makeshift bandages. There's a soft intake of breath as she unwraps them, eyes the stitching. He's very lucky they'd had someone capable of tending to this wound even in this cursory way.

She almost asks: Do you have any idea of how deep this went?

But that's not a helpful question. How could he know? She reaches for the bowl of warm water to try and sponge some of the crusted blood away and get a better sense of the injury.

[acreage]

There's a part of him that's tempted to suggest, it looks worse than it is; because all the dried blood, which they'd only had so much time and so many resources to clean, has to make everything look scarier than it might, and because there's the instinct to reassure. A point for autodocs: they're incapable of worrying, report the damage and begin treatment with bare, clinical readouts.

(A downside: The machine keeps trying to switch to hospice.)

"Our innkeeper," he says, trying not to tense too much as she works, "happened to keep a collection of torture instruments."

[tender]

Her hands pause over the wound. It's unfair, but her first thought is not Holden. It's Leander, absent from the clinic. Athessa, drawn out of the room by Colin. She takes a deep breath.

"All of you?" She asks, as if she can't already guess. He'd seemed the worst, but what had made this, had he been conscious for it? Had they all suffered? Her jaw tightens as she carefully sponges around the neat row of stitches over his stomach. She will have to decide whether to take them out or leave them in and work around them.

"Is he dead now?"

[acreage]

"All of us." And then, on another breath, "He is. Edgard, Athessa, and Vanadi stopped him."

Stopped, killed, same thing. Focusing on the conversation is a distraction from her work; she's being gentle, just cleaning, but he isn't wild about anything touching his wound.

"Barrow and I were in iron maidens. Athessa was on a rack. Richard was chained to a table. I'm not sure about everyone else."

[tender]

A pause, while Derrica takes a deep breath. Her eyes focus on the wound, as she sponges the last of the blood. Or rather, as much as can be before she has to go to work. Her hands stay steady through it all.

"You were very lucky," is all she says, after a long moment. Her voice softens over the words. "I'm sorry that happened to you."

Part of her wants to call for Isaac. Would he not know better what to do with this wound, whether to cut the stitches, what warning signs to look for. But Isaac is busy, and Derrica doesn't want to keep Holden waiting.

"I can't take it all away. You'll have to heal on your own," she cautions. "But I can make it a small matter, rather than something that could take months."

[acreage]

He takes his own time answering.

He was very lucky, that he knows; without the others, but especially Sawbones, there's a good chance they would've been hauling his body back. And that's a shitty prospect to consider, particularly because he wouldn't want to do that to Amos. But it's hard to be sorry this happened to him when he did come back alive, and so many didn't.

I can't ask you to do that is a first instinct. But she can help, and this is no trivial thing, not like the bruise. She's offering; and he doesn't want to slowly recover for months.

So, he nods.

[tender]

It's just as well, because Derrica wasn't really asking. She's accepted deflection of her gifts before, but those were lesser injuries. A scrape, a bruise, a bloody nose. Little things. But there is something wrong in Holden's body, and she doesn't think she would be able to draw away from him to let that pain weigh him down for weeks.

"It won't hurt," she promises. "Remember, deep breath."

Not so necessary, but maybe something which would make the strangeness of this easier for him. She knows he isn't used to magic. However willing, she still recognizes the instinct to balk in the face of it.

When she puts her hands over his stomach, very lightly flattens her palms over his skin on either side of the puncture. Her eyes close. When she breathes out, power flowers from her hands. It meets his skin like the flow of water, rippling outward from her palms. Her fingers are silhouetted there against a soft green glow as the magic works, knitting together the wounds deep beneath his skin.

[acreage]

Remember, and he does.

So he takes that deep breath and lets her work, and this time it feels different. Not different. The same, but more: the gentle glow, a cool sensation enveloping and replacing the deepest pain. It's nothing like the buzz of chemicals in his blood, injections or pills to ward off ill effect.

He says, "You know, we're lucky you're here."

[tender]

The spell winds itself to a close. The glow fades. The ugly puncture has faded as if weeks have passed, instead of minutes. Sweat pricks at the nape of her neck. She lifts her hands from his stomach, gives him a tired smile in return to an undeserved compliment.

"That's kind," she tells him, eyeing the wound critically. "Isaac might have done better."

By way of explanation, rather than risking Holden coming to some other conclusion, she adds, "He's older than me. That helps, most of the time."

Lived longer, had command of his abilities longer, deeper reserves and more exacting knowledge of how to use them. All this time in Riftwatch has reminded Derrica of just how much that matters.

"How do you feel?" She prompts, a pinch of worry in her expression.

[acreage]

Well, her explanation at least reassures him that this isn't totally unwarranted humility. But he still says,

"I'll have to take your word for it."

As he breathes, literally, easier than he has since waking up in Medrod's basement.

"Much better." Less pain in general, less stiffness, sensitivity. "Really."

[tender]

A little smile at that, pleased with his answer, before turning to rummage through the box of cast-offs for a tunic to replace the one she'd cut away. It's too cold to send him out of the infirmary without a shirt, even for the short walk back to the Gallows.

"Promise me you'll take everything very carefully still," Derrica says, in the tone of someone knowing full well there's a high chance that advice will be ignored. "You're still healing, and sometimes the shock of injuries like that—just, try to take it easy?"

[acreage]

"I'll try to take it easy," he says, in that too-patient tone of someone who's been given this advice before, and definitely ignored it.

He does move slowly and carefully as he sits up, for what that's worth, and then hesitates. There's been a question at the back of his mind, and now's as good a time as any.

"Can you look at one more thing for me?"

[tender]

"Of course," she answers, turning back with a tunic that might reasonably fit. Her brow has pinched back into concern. "Are you hurt somewhere else?"

It had seemed like just his stomach, but in fairness, the injury there had been so serious that it would have taken precedence regardless. She gives the shirt one sharp shake before stepping back to offer it to him.

[acreage]

"Not exactly."

Technically, everywhere else, on a molecular level, but. Anyway. The shirt's so shredded at this point that it's easy enough to shrug whatever's left of it off his shoulders, and to turn one arm towards Derrica so she can see the reddish, raised triangle of skin and exposed bit of metal of his implant. The whole thing glimmers blue, faintly.

"Have you ever seen something like this before? The blue glow."

[tender]

Her first sense is that it looks painful. Or that it might have been painful going in. The first brush of her fingers is very light, as if testing whether or not disturbing the raised skin would make him flinch.

"Did he put this in you?" She asks softly, fingers drifting to touch the silver gleam of metal. The color of the light is wrong to have come from a rift, as far as she knows. But it doesn't make sense; no one else had come in with such a thing. She'd have at least heard Sister Sara reacting to one if she'd discovered it on someone else.

[acreage]

He doesn't flinch.

But it's still strange; not a place he's used to being touched, except sometimes by Naomi. He's always self-administered his own meds, or did before Thedas.

"No, no," he says, shakes his head. "Souvenir from home. It's a medical device."

He figures the phrase is going to be self-explanatory enough, whether or not it's one she's heard before.

"But the light is new. It never did that before I got here. I thought it might be some kind of magic you might know about."

[tender]

"It feels like..."

Derrica trails off, frowning a little over whatever conclusion she's circling. Holden doesn't flinch, so she lays her palm cautiously over the device embedded in his skin, breathes in deep. The tingle of energy coming off it is familiar, even if nothing else is.

"I don't know if it's magic," she tells him. "It feels like lyrium. Do you know what lyrium is?"

[acreage]

When she touches the implant, it won't be recognizable as any kind of known magic.

He frowns at her answer, thinking back to his first days in Thedas, the primer on living here.

"I know touching it is supposed to be bad for your health."

[tender]

"Only if in it's raw, pure form," Derrica says, a little distracted. "Dwarves can refine it, but something like this..."

It isn't dwarf-made. He'd have said as much if it were. The blue glow leaks through her fingers.

"Does it exist where you came from? Would it have been used to make this?"

The sensation coming off it reminds her of her Harrowing, of the bitter potions she'd used to bring lightening cracking down at sea. But that's far removed from this device in his skin. It isn't a benign thing, but she's never seen or heard of anything like it in her lifetime.

[acreage]

"Lyrium? No."

The only thing that glows blue like this is something that definitely did not come here with him, had no part in his implant.

"This is just technology. I know you don't have anything like it here, but I know how it works. Worked."

He had to; so he could know how to use it, and to not be in the dark in case of malfunction or just maintenance.

The logical conclusion is that something about it changed when he fell through that rift. He could've guessed that much from the new glow, but the how still makes no fucking sense. How it changed; how it works now. Exactly how screwed he is without the crucial other component for its function.

"It's fine if you don't know."

He'll just reach out — ow, more carefully — for the tunic she was offering earlier.

[tender]

"I don't," Derrica says, her hand lifting from his arm. "I'm sorry."

And she's a little hesitant about where exactly to tell him to go next with his question.

"What did it do?"

The end result is still going to be directing him towards Research. Or Julius, maybe. She isn't certain which of their resident mages was given to tinkering, and she also can't say with any confidence whether another Rifter would know any more about it than Holden.

[acreage]

This is usually an easy answer.

In a universe where oncocidals are a pretty standard supply item for any ship's medbay, and not particularly difficult to synthesize — and where everyone knows about Eros and the role the Roci played in it — this is an straightforward admission. As time passes and the function of the glowing becomes more clear, it will be again.

Right now, though.

"It's technically a port. Easy way to inject medicines, if you need to."

And, after saying that, he's going to be putting on the clean shirt.

[tender]

Medicines. Derrica is quiet for a moment, watching him as he eases the shirt over his head.

"Does Amos have one?"

A clarifying question, as she tries to decide which form her next questions will take.

[acreage]

It's exciting that his attempt at deception lasted all of 5 seconds. He could lie about this, but it'd be pretty stupid and come out sooner rather than later.

"No," admitted, as he gingerly pulls the shirt's hem over his midsection.