[open] general hospital: envy edition

[thereneverwas]

WHO: whoever
WHAT: infirmary catch-all for the envy demon shitshow
WHEN: yknow
WHERE: The Gallows infirmary
NOTES: injuries, gore, all that you'd expect

[Throw in your healer toplevels or your injured characters dragging themselves in. Go hog wild. Live your truth.]

Comments

Smithy Squad

[thereneverwas]

Shortly this shitshow, a heavily bleeding Barrow huffs and puffs his way into the infirmary with a colleague under each arm. He has the wherewithal to deposit them both across one mattress before he has to catch himself on the bedframe with a wince, clutching at the ugly laceration on his hcest.

"Anyone here," he calls faintly, glancing back over his shoulder to see the veritable trail of blood that has followed him through the building from the smithy. Just as well.

[tadpoled]

Since the first call for people acting strange, Tav has decidedly attempted to Stay Out of It. What can he do with escorts following him around, reminding him of the danger he poses to all he comes across?

Heal, he remembers, far too deep into this mess. So, he calls the two guards to allow him into the Infirmary to heed the call of the injured. While he's not sure how many injuries he'll be able to care for before the exhaustion takes over, Tav will do his damnedest to work his hardest.

To remind himself he is more than a monster.

He barely beats Barrow to the Infirmary and is in the process of setting up a bed when the man enters.

"Tav," he calls out, smoothing the sheets and gesturing for Barrow to join him. "Lie down and I'll be using magic to close up the most serious of you injuries first."

More because he's only seen his magic in action when it came to his own blisters and it wasn't strong to completely seal those. But perhaps he hadn't used the strongest form of his healing magic at that point.

[thereneverwas]

The voice is familiar, but not in a way that Barrow is interested in recalling at the moment. He shakes his head, gesturing toward his two semi-fallen comrades.

"'s bleeding like a bitch but won't kill me," he mutters. "That one hit his head and probably worse," he explains, gesturing to Cedric, and then to Vanya: "that's one of the missing folks, Maker only fucking knows how bad he's off."

[tadpoled]

"I'll heal them in a moment," Tav murmurs as he moves in closer to Barrow; bleeding is easier to treat than head wounds and the mysterious wounds.

He wiggles his fingers, drawing forth on what he knows is a limited font of healing magics, turquioise light dancing along his hands. Glancing up at Barrow, he reaches for the injured man's chest.

"Here we go," he prompts before he murmurs the incantation, "Vis medicatrix!"

The wound will mostly knit shut, bit by bit under Tav's hands until they begin to shake. A scab will most certainly be left behind as the elf pulls back, catching his breath.

[thereneverwas]

With an intake of breath as though to argue, Barrow is already too late to stop the elf from touching his chest, healing it; and though he can't deny that it's accompanied by relief (deeper than he thought-- he's not going to die again, really really), when he sees that the healer is winded, the tension returns to his brow.

"All right," he says gruffly, "now them." His tone is uncharacteristically brusque; if it turns out the newcomer's magic is spent from that, they're going to be having Words.

[tadpoled]

"Now them," Tav replies, still out of breath as he moves to the closest of the two: Cedric. A head wound will far be more difficult to pin point the exact place to start the healing. He can only guess by any sources of blood and if no blood, then beginning around the temples.

His hands already shake from the effort of healing Barrow when Tav searches for an obvious place to start.

"Did you see where he was hit?" he asks, even as he calls forth on the font of healing magic once more.

vanya + cedric.

[elegiaque]

After the day everyone's had, Gwenaëlle finds herself— still running on lingering adrenaline, searching out something to do, somewhere to be, what useful thing she can not have to worry about tomorrow when the dust has rightly settled. It isn't difficult to find, especially not in the infirmary, which is how she comes to be at Vanya's bedside,

a not unfamiliar place to be, at that. Some healing has been done already, and he needs the rest, but fully aware of what he'd been running on himself when he'd launched into the fray against the demon that had taken his place, she tamps down the inclination to shrink from pressing him and instead, with her free hand, very literally presses his shoulder. Gives him a little shake, relatively certain he's not going to swing for her the instant he wakes, if only from prior experience, and wafts the smell of a hot, plain broth near his face.

“You're not getting out of eating something,” she mutters, “stubborn idiot.”

[wearyallalone]

The fact that Vanya is roused is probably somewhat thanks to the healing he received earlier, or maybe it's what he's been through the past weeks. (It's not as if any of the four of them got decent sleep on the floor of a cell.) Whether it's one or both, his breath shudders and his eyes open promptly after she shakes him.

"Is it done? All four?" he asks before he's even fully awake. He does at least resist the initial temptation to sit up rapidly or, for the moment, at all. There's a brief sense of deja vu from Gwenaëlle sitting beside him in the infirmary, but his initial question is enough to keep him anchored to the present.

He looks bad, but not significantly worse than when she found him yelling at the ferryman. He'll probably be a little better for a bath, a shave and new clothes, though that won't take care of the weight loss or the mess of blisters on his feet. At least none of the blood on his shirt is his.

[dissolving]

He's washing the blood out of his hair when she arrives, stooped over a basin and shaking loose bits of scab. Magical healing is a marvel, true -

But fuck, he still feels run over. Cedric pushes the heel of his palm to mouth, considers the little Orlesian at the end of the row. It's a slow business to retrieve clean rags, more water; lay them upon the short table beside her. There if needed.

(Vanya looks like he needs a sandwich or a burial shroud. Take your pick.)

"All four," Probably someone's said that by now, time is fake. Cedric settles across the other end of the cot, perched on a chair, neck and chest ruddy with bruise. "So you should eat before she makes you."

[elegiaque]

“Do not entertain for a moment the idea that I can't make you, Vanya Orlov,” has a certain ominous determination to it. Whether she thinks she can physically take him right now (a solid 'literally right now? yeah, I reckon') or is simply prepared to call in reinforcements— unclear. Although the eye she's casting over Cedric doesn't suggest she has interpreted him, precisely, as reinforcements.

He looks like he ought to be lying down, too. He's got a limited amount of time before she does something about that.

“It's done. Sit up, you're going to eat this very slowly—”

She remembers what it was, coming back after that long walk. Iorveth holding her on his chest at night, for warmth and a barrier between her and the hard ground; how little they had managed to scrounge and scavenge. No money, no weapons, no crystals to call for help...

She remembers making herself sick, at first. Even knowing better.

[wearyallalone]

He does sit up slowly, though whether it's obedience or the inability to move otherwise is anyone's guess. Cedric's appearance, though, got a small flicker of relief of its own. "Glad to see you aren't dead. I heard Barrow call your name." But ... they'd been busy, and then Vanya hadn't been conscious.

Why exactly Cedric is at Riftwatch is a thing he can pursue later, if at all. He doesn't know if Cedric is equally glad that Vanya made it, considering, but his own relief is unfeigned. Vanya is logically aware that a demon wearing his face doesn't make anyone that demon kills his responsibility, but the feeling would have been hard to shake all the same.

To Gwenaëlle, he adds, "I am not going to force you to force me, I promise."

for Loxley

[armd]

Getting directed to go to the infirmary when she's already told three, maybe four other people that it's only a head wound, it looks worse than it is, is lowkey infuriating but it certainly is true that Loxley needs a visit. Maybe stitches. Abby, dreading anybody trying to fuss over her when she's already fucked off at herself for getting bookshelfed in the middle of an important fight, pauses. She disguises the brief hesitation by redoubling her arm around Loxley's waist, helping to take a little more of his weight off that leg.

She says casually, "We could skip it. I can do those stitches for you."

And she is only half joking.

[charmoffensive]

The grunt after Abby's adjustment is—grateful, first, but she might recognise the internal frustration of dealing with an injury to begin with. He ought to have hung back, but for the librarian suddenly forced to the frontline. Also, he has demon shit on his coat, and the person helping him did indeed get absolutely demolished by a book shelf.

She says that. He considers it.

"Are you handy with a needle or are you just saying that?" has the tone of: not no. He is, himself, no fan of being overly fussed over. The amount of times he took his bleeding self to his shared room with Richard for the other Tassian to unfussily sew him whole is a testament to just that.

[armd]

For this reason alone it is good to be made to leave; the uninjured of them may hang back to help with the clean-up effort, and Mobius will be pissed about the books that got covered in demon ooze... It's gonna be tense in there. Abby'll most likely chip in with that once everything has settled. She'll be sorting what got spattered into piles: keep and chuck. A sad day.

She says, "Both. I'm handy, and I'm saying it." Ha ha. "And my head fucking hurts," is only something she'll admit because they're no longer within earshot of the others. Now it may slip out from underneath of her stubbornness, and she's only a little whiny. "There's gonna be people in there."

Asking questions, wanting a blow-by-blow. Did you get him? No. She didn't get him, not even once.

"D'you think they'll flip if we duck out?"

[charmoffensive]

Derrica may be there, he thinks. It isn't a thought that spurs him onwards. Truly, he doesn't wish to distract her. Doesn't wish to worry her. Certainly doesn't want to be a draw of her valuable energy. This last thing, he knows she would credibly manage herself, but the first two—

A slight laugh at this question.

"I think," he begins, "that we were very heroic and brave, and no one should do any flipping out at us for any reason."

They might. But who cares.

"I'll follow your lead."

[armd]

"They're gonna think we're demons," she points out, "Or that I'm a demon, and I'm taking you off alone to kill you."

The joke falls flat; that did just happen with the thing that stole Edgard's face, the one that has pretending to be him for weeks. It has been happening with the others. Abby clears her throat. "I'm not," she adds lamely after a moment's silence. "Ellie cleared me. I cleared her."

So it's fine... Don't worry about it.

To pivot back to him and this injury she's helping to support, "You good to make it to the courtyard?" There's a water pump out there, near the garden.

post-rescue, pre-airstrike (ota)

[altusimperius]

Benedict is too thin, and he's hungry, and he's exhausted all the time, and worst of all, other living people have witnessed what he looks like when he goes for too long without shaving.

That last bit has been remedied by the time he's ready to see any sort of visitor in the infirmary, but his face looks all the more hollow for it, a fact which would distress him greatly if anyone showed him his reflection (something they have likely been advised not to do by now).

He's a bit sulky, and shaken, but generally himself, which is a welcome change from somebody pretending to be him for the last two months. He spends a lot of time reading and sketching in bed, waiting in pissy agony for the next time he's allowed to eat.

[dissolving]

You’re pretty good friends? He’d asked, and Sort of,

A list of names and facts: Byerly, Ellie, Abby, Vega. An engagement, dances, hot wine. The Crossroads. Like a puzzle from the library, or piecing scrap cloth; waiting for the picture to reveal. There was something of the real man in his imitation, real enough to fool a pack of friends.

Every mask needs a form. Cedric settles into chair.

"Hey," Cheerful. Unarmed and unarmored, he’s near a mirror to that first, false meeting. Cleaner, at least. Different bruises. "Got a good model?"

He gestures to the sketches. An eye around the room: Maker knows what he’s drawing. The Doctor, maybe? Better odds than a bedpan.

[altusimperius]

Unlike the version of him Cedric met before, this Benedict doesn't offer any gooey smiles at the sight of a new face (and this face is new). Instead, the corner of his mouth twitches up slightly, like he isn't quite sure how safe it is to answer that with honesty, his gaze searching the newcomer's face for any indication of a trick.

"Can always use more," he rasps, his smile becoming a little wry as he tips the page toward Cedric to reveal that he's been working on an intricate pattern, likely out of his imagination, something that doesn't require a model at all.

[dissolving]

"Maker," Cedric whistles through his teeth. He leans in to peer, fingertip tracing air above the page. "You got a hand for that. How long you been at it?"

Can't only be talking about today, with Benedict's convalescence as public as this.

"It'd look a sight woven in something."

[altusimperius]

What this version does have in common with the demon is how readily he absorbs the compliment, his resulting smile imbued with a vain little glow. Yes, he does have a hand for it, thank you.

"Not woven, but," he replies, as humbly as he can manage, "some years back I designed the mural that's in the staffed dining hall. And painted it."

[armd]

It feels wrong, bad even to come to visit him with nothing. As a friend, she should sneak him some food; as the daughter of a doctor, she knows she can't fuck with his meal schedule right now. She brings him something else instead: a little gift from Hightown, some sort of... stuff you put on your face, in a beautiful, stoppered bottle of coloured glass. Apparently it is 'moisturising', 'rejuvenating' and 'replenishing' (the guy probably would have kept going if Abby hadn't handed over money). It smells nice, a bit like honey, a bit like vanilla.

She gives it to him outright, puts it on his little bedside table. Maybe having a finicky skincare thing will help him feel more like himself. And then she takes a seat, pulling a chair closer to where he's sitting up in bed.

"What're you reading?"

[altusimperius]

Sad and hollow-eyed though he appears, Benedict's face twitches into a pleased little smile at the sight of the bottle, which he immediately retrieves to uncap and smell. By the way his eyes flutter closed a moment, it seems the gift was a success.

"A huge waste of time," he replies, nudging the book toward Abby with his knee as he dabs some of the lotion onto the back of his hand.

The Emperor's Chains is the title of the book, its author some kind of horny pseudonym. It's clearly erotica, or meant to be.

[armd]

While he fiddles with the bottle — she's pleased to see him immediately using it — Abby takes the book and flips it over in her hand. She whistles.

"Geez." But no good, apparently... that sucks. Or doesn't suck at all? as the case may be, har har. "Have you read any of the Hearts in Hiding books? I'll bring you the second one, I got a copy for Satinalia. It's sooo steamy." If he's gonna be lying around in bed for a while yet, may as well be indulgent about it.

"... You good?"

He is... so not good. He's always been fairly slender but now he is too lean and very tired. He smells like infirmary and it doesn't suit him.

[altusimperius]

It doesn't suck enough, obviously, or in the right ways. Benedict is a very discerning reader.

"What's that about?" he asks, apparently satisfied by the feel of the lotion on his hand, because he's beginning to dab it on his face as intended. To her second question, he casts her a quick glance, but offers only a little shrug in response, as if he didn't hear it: pardon you, he's being fussy and vain right now. Talking about indignities and misfortunes can wait for after sexy book club.