faderift | [open & closed] and when that day comes

Lazar lingers in the doorway. Shoulders lift, brow lowers. A flare of —

Something. Something old, dead and buried. A skinny kid with his fists balled behind the wagon, teeth grit around the certainty that no one gives a damn. No one will take it serious.

He's not a kid any more. And he shouldn't give a damn.

Clarisse stirs. Abby stumbles. And at last, he pushes the threat from his face, and hauls arms under Barrow's shoulders to lift. Sure, they'll find the bed. And then he'll wait on the end of it, for want of a chair. He'll wait, until it's done, or they find someone big enough to drag him out.

(Maybe later, he'll spare a thought for Clarisse. Thoughtful's never been his bag.)

She's definitely concussed, but Clarisse still manages to sound offended when she says, "No I don't," so she'll probably be fine. Abby has set her upright and by locking her knees she manages to stay that way without too much swaying in one direction or the other. Helps that Abby keeps hold of her by the arms so she can't really go anywhere.

Now that she's up she can see the blood all over Abby's face, smeared across her cheeks and still dripping over her top lip. "Oh, shit, Abs," Clarisse says, all the irritation in her voice replaced with sudden alarm, and lifts a hand like she could possibly wipe it clean herself. She stops with her fingers just touching the warm tackiness of Abby's cheek, and then it occurs to her that she should maybe figure out what's going on first.

It hurts to turn her head but she does it in time to see Lazar hauling Barrow up under his arms. Across the room, the open doorway and the door lying several feet away from it. The room looks a fucking mess. One of the beds at a weird angle, like someone knocked it out of place. There's a broken chair on the floor, big splinters scattered in every direction.

Clarisse blinks hard, like clearing her vision might force the scene to resolve itself into something that makes sense.

"The hell happened in here?"

That she naturally argues back is a good sign, a relief. Abby gives a gusty sigh. She says, "Can you sit down for a second?" and adds, "for me," to make Clarisse actually consider it. Thank god this place is full of beds, huh. If they were going to take a couple knocks to the head each at least it was in the infirmary.

Barrow is being shuffled out of the room behind them, Lazar's arms roped underneath of his own, and Abby finds she can't turn to look; a bruised pride can hurt worse than a broken nose. She leans back from Clarisse's fingertips brushing her face. "It looks worse than it is."

And will look worse later — she can feel the break across the bridge and some sore, tender place behind her eyes is already throbbing but there's little she can do about it right now. A problem for future Abby. As for right-now Abby: is Clarisse sitting? She eyeballs her before crossing the room to find something she can wipe her face with that isn't her own arm. "Barrow happened. He knocked the door down and took you out at the same time — Lazar had to come in and back me up after this."

This being the state of her and the roll of bandage she's just torn off to wad up against her nose.

Yeesh, okay, message received. No more touching.

Clarisse finds the nearest bed and sits on the end of it, watching Abby while she crosses the room and tears off some bandages. She reaches up and massages the back of her own neck, pauses with a wince as her palm brushes up against the knot behind her ear.

"I don't remember any of that," she admits. It's embarrassing knowing that he took her down like that with zero trouble, and the embarrassment pisses her off. She'd like to go give Barrow a few good hits to remind him who's in charge, but acknowledges that too many sudden movements might not be a good idea just yet.

"Fuck Barrow," she mutters. What's his problem? And the room all messed up, the door destroyed—Clarisse knew he was strong, but not so strong it'd take both Abby and Lazar to get him under control.

"I'm not surprised. You went down pretty hard — I didn't see it but I heard you hit the floor." Then saw her lying there unresponsive, slumped on her side. Thinking about it makes her clench her jaw and frown, situating the bandage up underneath her nose with a little more force than is strictly necessary. Her teeth grit against the ache. She admits, "It freaked me out.

"So did Barrow. I've never seen him like that before."

And right up until she'd turned the corner he sounded a lot like something else. Abby hasn't really thought about the infected in a long time.

"Neither have I."

Clarisse frowns, looking down at her lap. She wants to say something useful about moving Barrow to a more secure location (where would that be, though? the dungeons?) for the duration of... this, but it's hard to pin down a fully coherent thought. She feels foggy, a little sick to her stomach.

"What are our next steps?" she settles on after a bit. "He shouldn't stay here."

"I dunno." She hasn't seen this situation before either and can't tell where they're headed — is this the worst that it gets, for Barrow? They could be on the other side of it now. She points with her chin. "Lazar's got him for the moment but I think we should let Strange know, he'll probably have a... recovery roadmap, or something."

She snorts suddenly.

"I sound like dad."

After turning the phrase recovery roadmap over in her head a few times, Clarisse turns her attention to the more important issue: telling Strange. Yeah, he'll have to be told, the infirmary's a mess and Barrow's his patient.

Maybe they should tell Marcus too. Barrow just went berserk and it took two people to get him under control. Then again, everyone already knows he's trying to go off lyrium, so maybe Marcus would consider it redundant.

Realizing she hasn't said any of this out loud, Clarisse says, "Yeah." Yeah she should tell Strange, yeah Abby probably sounds like her dad, yeah.

"Hey, are you okay?" Her face. It doesn't look like Abby's bleeding anymore, but there are already bruises forming under her eyes.

Maybe that's not a satisfying answer. Maybe Clarisse wants to go solve this with her own two hands but Abby doesn't see how they can help out any further — neither of them are experienced when it comes to deal with lyrium withdrawal symptoms and when Barrow finds out he knocked them both down to get to his stash...

She sniffs wetly, makes a face when blood hits the back of her throat. "Yeah, I'm okay."

Then she sighs and amends that, cuz it's Clarisse, cuz she's looking at Abby like she wants to do something about all this. Before, she'd touched her so gently with fingertips and thumbs. "I mean — it fucking hurts, but I'm okay."

She stops holding the bandage up in front of her face like a shield. "Does it look as bad as it feels?"

Edited 2025-03-19 01:48 (UTC)

Abby's right that Clarisse wants to do something. She'd like to go into the other room and kick the shit out of Barrow, not enough to really hurt him, the guy's already hurting enough, but just enough to get back at him for this. Get it out of her system.

Clarisse takes a closer look once the bandage is off. Even though Abby's been wiping it away, there's still smeared blood drying on her chin and cheeks. Clarisse's hand twitches. She's itching to get some cold water and a towel and clean it off for her, but she doesn't think Abby'd appreciate the offer.

"I mean it's definitely broken, but you're gonna look like a badass."

"Thanks." Ish. Looking like a badass is not something she's ever worried about but she knows it's important to Clarisse and it makes her smile a bit anyway... There's blood on her teeth. It's not the first time she's had a broken nose either, so even though she knows it sucks to have one she also knows it'll heal up fine.

She gestures to her own head and leaves the wad of bandage behind on one of the tables for a moment. Remind her to bin that later... "Can I...?"

Touch you. Lazar was the one who felt her head for breaks, one hand splayed across the back of her head like a web; Abby wants to double confirm what he already figured out.

Oh, so she can't touch Abby but Abby can touch her, huh? Clarisse sees how it is.

Still, she would not say no to Abby running her fingers gently all along her skull, even with the headache from hell, so she tilts her head a bit, wincing at the movement, and says, "Sure." But then seeing how this might actually work in her favor, she adds, "If I can clean your face off after."

Fair is fair.

Abby looks surprised by the sudden trade proposal, but nods all the same. "Okay."

It'll probably go quicker if Clarisse helps — and she'll be more gentle to Abby than Abby will be to herself, too. Hmm. Before she can examine that thought more closely she strokes her hand through Clarisse's hair, half to feel for where she landed, half to comfort her. She's tense, wincing from pain.

She says, "Holy shit Clarisse," soft and concerned when her fingers find the lump near her ear. She skims her fingers gently near it. There's no blood matting in her hair or anything, she didn't break the skin. But it has to really fucking hurt.

Clarisse wishes she had broken the skin. Blood is at least a tangible result, like with Abby's broken nose. She could have come out of this with a cool scar breaking up the pattern of her hair, but instead she just has a stupid lump on her head and feels lame as fuck about it.

And it does hurt, which is even more annoying.

"It's okay, demigods have thick skulls," she says, sort of as a joke even though there must be some truth to it because, "There's this guy back home who I swear got knocked out with a brick more than one time on the same quest. At least that was the story I heard."

Once Abby seems satisfied that she's in one piece, Clarisse slides off the bed and, less woozy now, gathers up a cloth and some water so she can clean off Abby's face. She motions for Abby to take her spot on the edge of the bed.

"A brick, Barrow..."

She doesn't keep touching the lump for any longer than she has to; once she's confirmed that it's there, and is huge, she retracts her hand. It's fine and Clarisse will be fine. Demigods have thick skulls and heal quick — she takes her spot with a sigh, clearing her throat with a grimace. Her mouth tastes real bad. It's going to be good to get the blood off her face, and swirl water around her teeth and tongue.

"What's the worst injury you've ever had? ... Not counting anything here." Death was the worst injury here. Hard to top that one.

Clarisse twists her lip, thinking, and starts to wipe away the blood on Abby's face. She starts at her chin, working her way up slowly so she doesn't bump her hand against Abby's nose.

"Once I was near the top of the lava wall at camp and a boulder clipped my shoulder. I fell off and broke like four ribs and smashed the shit out of my face on the way down." As far as injury stories go, it's kind of lame, because it wasn't like it happened while she was doing something heroic, but the thing is, if a Greek monster hurts you badly enough for it to become your "worst injury ever" story you're probably dead anyway.

She dabs the gauze under Abby's nose, trying her best to be gentle. "What's yours?"

"Fuck," Abby says in sympathy, wincing — then adding, soft, "Not you." Not her hand or gentle daubing with the gauze to get the blood off her skin, because in that Clarisse is completely gentle and attentive. She reacted to thinking about having four broken ribs. Most Abby has ever broken was two.

"Uhhh..." Then she's quiet, thinking for a moment. Broken bones are bad but not worst, and she's had some gnarly gym-related injuries before but nothing that kept her off her feet for too long.

Eventually, shrugging as if it isn't that big a deal, she says, "Got caught by the Seraphites while I was in their territory — I told you about them, right? The death cult freaks. Anyway, they knocked me out and tried to hang me. And gut me. In that order."

Uhh... "You've mentioned them," Clarisse says, before adding, "Isn't gutting someone after you hang them kind of overkill?"

Like, she's into overkill as a general concept, just not when it pertains to hurting people she cares about. Doesn't matter that it was however many years ago now, she's still frowning as she wipes at the last of the blood under Abby's nose.

"How'd you get away?"

"Yeah," Abby deadpans, "I think it was a sex thing for them."

Kind of a flippant reply in the face of the actual number of bodies she saw blood and gutless, dangling from ceilings, but sometimes jokes are the only way forward through it. She rubs her neck without realising, around the spot where the rope had bit in. Clarisse is pretty much done mopping her up and she has a little fucked up wish then, that there had been more blood and Clarisse's hands would have a reason to keep moving across her face all gentle like that, but — alas.

"That's when Lev and Yara showed up. They got me down. Well — Yara did, Lev didn't want to at first. Thankfully she convinced him."

A snort, even though it feels like it vibrates right through her already achy brain. "You're funny."

Clarisse remembers Lev. Abby's brought him up before, talked about him like he was a friend. Yara is a name she can't place. She doesn't think Abby's talked about her yet, but it's not necessarily strange for that to be the case. Live in Thedas for a while and it sometimes feels impossible to describe people and places from home. Not because they aren't important. They're just not relevant anymore.

The realization makes her feel a little sad—there are all these people and places and things from home that they'll never talk about here. "Is Yara another friend of yours?"

"Yeah," Abby says, her tone light and even. Her hand closes up on her own knee in a gentle fist. She says, "She was Lev's older sister. She died, she — was killed by the leader of my old group."

And it still hurts. Still feels like she failed Yara, or like she could only choose one of them to help and she picked Lev so that meant Yara couldn't make it in turn. Abby doesn't know if it's ever gonna stop feeling like that but at least she can finally talk about it to people she thinks should know.

"Oh, shit." Clarisse places the bloody rag aside, intending to deal with it later, and hoists herself up onto the bed beside Abby, letting their legs brush each other.

She still doesn't know the whole story around Abby's situation back home. That there was some kind of turf war happening is clear, but there are lots of smaller details that have never come up. She supposes they don't really matter much in the end, and Abby clearly wanted out.

"She was just a kid, huh." What else is she supposed to say? Sorry? Like that would make it better, or something.

"Yeah."

Yara was basically his guardian in lieu of their mother but that didn't change the facts: she was a kid, and Lev was even younger. Abby shrugs her shoulder. "I didn't even really know her that well."

Not that that really matters in the apocalypse but it's hard to explain — not that she thinks Clarisse won't get it but that she can't really find the words. You're close because you have to be, you need back-up and to be able to count on each other in the moment. You might not even really know each other's names. It makes her smile a little, remembering. "Her and Lev called me 'wolf' for ages. They had funny names for everything — they called the infected 'demons'. And Lev called my flame thrower a dragon weapon."

[open & closed] and when that day comes

sorry to clabby he will check in later xoxo

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clabby...

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cw discussion of hanging

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cw discussion of hanging/cult murder

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