[open & closed] and when that day comes

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow & friends
WHAT: ye olde lyrium detox in its various stages
WHEN: vaguely Wintermarch
WHERE: the infirmary
NOTES: I'll be adding a few starters at a time since I want later developments to feel organic and make sense. please feel free to request something if you don't see it here!

Comments

[armd]

"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.

[laruetheday]

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?"

cw discussion of hanging

[armd]

"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."

[laruetheday]

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?"

cw discussion of hanging/cult murder

[armd]

"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."

[laruetheday]

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?"

[armd]

"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.

[laruetheday]

"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.

[armd]

"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."