[REG] Some Wounds Can't Be Bandaged (Janice, Vera) [FIN]

[cibarium]

Destiny City's East Heights turned out to be a bit of a distance away from Dove's Nest Apartments when you couldn't teleport. When the sand-flinging senshi had finally blipped out of sight, so he had blipped out of mind: as irritating as it should have been to let another sailor crystal fall out of her grasp, Uranophane did not care. She was focused full-tilt on getting to that complex. On Branch street, near the convenience store. Room 204-B. If Vivianite had teleported anywhere, that's where she would be. Hopefully.

Logically.

It had been getting warmer out lately, even at night the lieutenant's uniform was becoming an equal curse to the blessing it had been during the winter -- she was completely covered from toe to jawline in heavy fabric and knee-high boots and elbow-length gloves, in some parody of a Siberian spy movie scientist. The turtleneck was scratchy and stifling. The breeze from jumping across rooftops brought a tiny bit of relief to the face but not much else. She was running, mindlessly, running for miles, on the eerie power of a corrupted star seed and anger and adrenalin.

Looking back on it, she wouldn't remember how she'd gotten the first aid kit or opened Vera's door. She'd picked it up from home, knew where the spare key was, but her mind would smear it over so her hands were empty one moment and full the next, the door was closed one second and another one later Janice Fitzpatrick was scrambling past the kitchenette, swinging open the cracked door of the bedroom, skidding back to the living room to find her sprawled on the floor, some ways away from her sofa.

"Vera," her voice was hoarse, and she knelt a foot or two away, setting the kit on the floor and opening it with a couple of clicks. "Valentine." Her hands jerked, she almost started something -- and stopped. Took a breath, and gritted her teeth.  

[Ithiltari]

The girl sprawled on the floor was still, very still. A quick glance would indicate that she was still breathing, the rise and fall of her chest much calmer than it had been when she'd first popped into her apartment. There was still sand slowly trickling off of her, and quite frankly, the living room was a mess. Sand had followed in the wake of the teleportation; dry sand, not sticking to every uncovered bit of skin Vera had.

Vera hadn't heard Janice enter, heard her friend search the other rooms of the apartment. Sometime between Janice looking in the bedroom and heading back to the living room, Vera woke up. The sharp stab of pain in her arm, as well as a dull ache in her head and all down her back made her wonder if that had been such a good idea. It had been nice, being unconscious; there had been no dreams or nightmares to terrify her. Just before she'd regained consciousness, she'd thought there had been a voice telling her that everything was going to be alright, but Vera couldn't quite think of who was talking, who else was in her apartment.

"Janice," Vera breathed out, very quietly, her eyes still closed. Janice, of course she'd have come looking. Not Uranophane. That was smart, her mind suggested erratically, powering down was smart. It was late, but people might still be up. Might ask questions, though Uranophane would surely have dealt with them before they became a problem.

"My arm." She didn't move it, held it very still against her chest. It was on fire, like a skinned knee, like too much skin had been scraped off and nerves left raw. Vera couldn't tell if it was bleeding or not, really couldn't think much past the pain of all her aches. She felt gritty and dirty in addition to everything else, as if she'd spent a pleasant day at the beach.

Vera really, really wanted a shower.  

[cibarium]

There were little rippling piles of sand all over the floor around her, sand, god damn that b*****d, that coward -- the stuff was making the knees of her slacks all gritty and she just knew it was going to end up being hell to get it out of the carpet. The lighting in the living room was low and orange, all cast from a shaded lamp on an end table and drew long shadows out from behind every object in the room, a little needle of black under every grain of sand.

"You're awake," Janice was saying: her tone was strange, and had a strained matter-of-factness to it. Or maybe she was just that bad at expressing relief. It was hard to tell. She seemed incredibly tense, though, relieved people weren't tense.

She was acting strange, even for Janice. The first aid kit was sitting open a couple inches away from her knees and she was hovering, the knuckles of a few of her fingers brushing lightly against the floor. It looked a bit like she was leaning her head on some invisible wall between them; her breath was very controlled, very conscious. The braid she'd started keeping her hair in was all in disarray. In normal circumstances her fingers would be itching to redo it.

This was no normal circumstance. Vera was hurt. Janice was staring at the raw patch on her arm as if it could be mended if she looked at it hard enough. Nothing changed. She still had her teeth tightly welded together, it was taking some effort -- a lot of effort, Vera may have noticed -- for her to unclench her jaw and say anything.

And it really wasn't that dire of a situation anymore, just a skinned arm. But--

"Can you move?" The rhythm of her breath was sent off-kilter a bit, after a few epochs of neither of them speaking. "We should get you to-- we need a sink."  

[Ithiltari]

Vera wasn't really notcing much; flat on her back, she could roll her eyes around and see, very faintly, what appeared the be Janice. She could feel the sand, under her, around her, all over her body. It was uncomfortable and she was starting to itch, and Vera could feel tears starting to p***k at the corner of her eyes. She shut them tightly and drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Yes," the teen replied flatly, resisting the urge to scrub at her eyes with her uninjured arm.

"I - are you alright?" she asked, emotion leaching back into her voice. Janice didn't sound entirely alright. She sounded tense, and stressed. Vera would have pursued the thought further, except she couldn't think clearly past the pain from her arm and head. Janice went quiet, though, and Vera was absently grateful. Gathering her thought to form coherent responses was more of an effort than she wanted to put forth.

"Janice," Vera said, on top of the other teen's question. Her eyes were still closed, but she cracked them open to try and find her friend. A short, gaspy laugh escaped her, though there was very little to find humorous in the current situation. "I'll try."

Suiting actions to words, Vera attempted to struggle herself into a sitting position; she'd just gotten her right elbow situated under her when everything went black --

She woke again only a moment later, gasping for air, as if she'd been drowning. "I don't," she sucked in another breath desperately, "Think that's a good idea. Must have." Vera stopped talking suddenly and rolled over on her left side, curling slightly and wrapping her right arm over her stomach. This was not, overall, a good idea, as her left arm fell loose and the scraped area hit the sand coated carpet.

"Hit the floor harder than I thought," she finished after almost too long a pause. Vera was still curled on her side, though she'd picked her left arm up and had it held against her chest once more.  

[cibarium]

"I'm fine," Janice said, her tone horribly pressed -- a preemptive shove against any potential are-you-sures or any other further questioning of the sort. The message Vera could get from that was fairly clear: she didn't want any worrying on her behalf for the moment, she wasn't the one who'd gotten injured. There wasn't a scratch on her. Vera had a patch of forearm that had been sandpapered raw.

She was, she was laughing -- Janice's mouth twitched at the sound, mind racing, if she was reacting that way it meant something was wrong. Something else was wrong --

Vera faltered. Janice immediately rushed closer, her knees grinding bits of sand into the carpet. There was sand everywhere, Vera was covered in it. Janice was hunched over her form like a starving vulture. She could hear her teeth-grinding from up this close, like a boat motor that refused to start properly. Her hands were twitching again, they kept jerking and stopping and tensing back up over her knees like indecisive jumping spiders.

"Don't move. Stay still, don't--" her hands scrambled through the first aid kit, tearing out and lining up everything she would need: bandages, disinfectant-- "move.

"Vera."

Jerkily, hesitantly, she moved to stand. Grabbed a throw pillow off of the couch, set it on the floor and gently pushed it against Vera's head. Then she stiltedly stalked to the kitchen and got a bowl, filled it with water, opened the linen closet and grabbed a rag. This took thirty seconds.

An inexorably long thirty seconds.

"Vera," Janice said again, setting the bowl on the carpet and going back to kneeling on the grit, "I -- do you mind."  

[Ithiltari]

Vera knew better than to press Janice regarding the 'are you fine' - she'd long since learned how to interpret the majority of her friend's mannerisms. Clearly the plum-haired girl was more concerned about Vera than she was about herself, which Vera found vaguely amusing. Everything was almost vaguely amusing at this point, except the sharp stabs of pain from her left arm.

That wasn't funny at all.

"Kay," she whispered quietly as Janice dug into something next to her; probably a first aid kit. Vera's eyes were closed and she couldn't see. She didn't particularly want to open them either, for fear that the room would be spinning, or worse. There was something being pressed next to her head. It was soft, what was Janice doing anyway, she wasn't leaving, was she? Vera could feel tears pricking at her eyes again, and let out a strangled sort of gasp of relief as she heard the water running. Janice hadn't left.

"No, I," she replied, confused. "Mind what?"  

[cibarium]

The thousand reasons to pause and hesitate became a thousand and one when Janice made her return, and got a look at Vera's face before trying to set herself to work. The dimness of the room made it a bit difficult to make anything else, but she could make out a couple specks of light that hadn't been there before, little bright-orange dots that turned into streaks down her face.

Tears.

She'd been crying.

Janice wondered if she was in more pain than it looked like she was -- or if she was upset at her, or if the apparent concussion was making her delirious -- but at the end of the day, it didn't really matter that the tears were there. They still served a potent reminder of how Uranophane had failed... how Janice had failed, and how her partner had gotten hurt because of it.

A hand wrapped around Vera's wrist, finally; time stopped for a moment and then began rushing back forward. "This scrape isn't going to clean itself out," she muttered, and carefully set to work.


[FIN]