Description: Whip and Shurui find K'-- or what's left of him-- in the wake of Geese's punishment. Both take it rather hard.
Perhaps, one could suspect that Shurui would be the last to figure out something's wrong. There's the whole bad eyesight angle, and, well, it isn't a surprise to see the other two missing for a day or two before mysteriously reappearing, like a pet cat coming and going as it pleases.
However, Shurui knows something's wrong the second the door opens. Well, the fact that the knob, along with the rest of the door, *isn't* there to recieve her key. The little bit of sight she does have confirms that she's seeing the innards of the apartment froyer instead of something solid. The apartment building is deathly silent. She smells something metallic. Blood? Maybe. Maybe it's just her imagination, filling in the bits and pieces of what probably might be there if, indeed, there was a struggle here.
And the possibility of that struggle is why she takes off her glasses, eyes opening in an attempt to percieve any instance of body energy. She steps through, carefully. Everything feels.... *wrong*. The destruction makes it hard for her to move- what's not supposed to be there is, and vice versa. No sign of people, though.
She's cold. She feels wind. The window's open. No. Something's glinting, something- glass? Broken glass. She pricks her finger on one of the shards, then.... looks down, to see what exactly broke it.
It's a few minutes later that her face is closer to K''s own, a hand slipping underneath his head to slip a towel. "I called 911. Hang in there! I know you're alive! I can see you!" Towels, haphazardly taken from the bathroom, get piled on top of him, trying to conserve what little heat he has left. "I'm here. Once I get your wounds covered, I'll call Whip. Don't worry- you're not alone anymore." The words may seem too confident to be coming from a girl who just saw her psuedo big brother lying nearly dead, but the emotion behind them does not make light of the emotions whirling inside Shurui.
Relief at finding him before it was possibly too late, fear that it is too late and she'll watch him die, sadness and guilt at the fact that he was alone and she wasn't there, selfish happiness that she wasn't there. Anger- at herself, at whoever did this, at the selfish prospect of losing her chance at a Christmas. Guilt, that she feels these selfish emotions. Child-like love, bared raw, with nothing to mask it as everything else has been pressed into the task of keeping K' alive and warm.
Geese's personal brutalization, while formidable, only killed K' halfway. The young man was built to withstand incredible amounts of punishment, such as the sort Howard inflicted upon him in no small measure. He might have been able to remain conscious and mobile if Geese had left things at that... but the older man hadn't gotten where he was today by sparing his enemies any savagery he might yet be able to inflict.
The drop was what killed most of the rest of K'. It was a fall of several stories, with little to nothing to catch him when he hit. It shattered what of K' hadn't been broken already, the sheer concussive force of it triggering mass internal bleeding and knocking him senseless. For a long time, he'd lain there: completely out of sight of the street, out of sight of just about anyone that didn't casually look out a window. His body had stalled there on the verge of death.
The only reason it hadn't given up entirely had to do with that will of his. That will to protect that forces him to linger long enough to make sure those he took charge of haven't been killed. But in this condition, K' can do nothing but wait. So he waits-- and with time, is rewarded.
Dimmed yellow eyes crack open, just barely, when the sensation of being touched triggers feeble instincts to rouse and defend himself. The half-dead ex-experiment moves slightly, like a wolf dying in a trap and yet still trying to survive. A growl stirs feebly in his throat, a warning sound with no more strength than a kitten, when he senses someone hovering too close by him, but as he tries to move the bleeding worsens. It pools beneath them horribly.
He hasn't recognized her quite yet. And the fact he seems to react as though fearing an assassin come to finish the job means that he can barely even feel the warmth of the towels being draped over him.
K' never did like being touched. Shurui always made it a point not to touch K' unless she wanted to prove a point, or, in some cases, show her irritation. Here, it's neccessary. Touching his head was perhaps unneccessary, but the towel underneath his head at least raised it slightly.
He doesn't seem to recongize her, but he's too weak to shrink away from her. "Don't move. It'll make the bleeding worse. I know you hate being touched- trying to do the best I can. Bear with me." It's good that he's reacting to her, at least; she finds a minute amount of relief in just that. He's awknowledging a presence, even if he can't distigush that it's an ally.
There's a sensation, of more touching, but of things being wrapped where warmth is escaping the most in the way of blood. Shurui can't always guess correctly where an injury is; all she can do is look at the pulsing of K''s body and where it's sending energy. Broken pathways also show, sometimes confusing her on what's on the surface and what's not. The wet texture of blood coats her fingers as she attempts to stop the bleeding on the worst parts. "... If it'll keep you conscious longer, I don't mind you being angry. Keep focusing on me or my voice. Don't go to sleep."
The maze of injuries, internal and external... who the hell did all this? NESTS? But why didn't they stick around to collect her or Whip? .... Maybe they're still around?
She furrows her brow and frustration, then, taking off her jacket, lays it over K''s chest. Another source of warmth. Something familiar. Really, it doesn't matter- with all the running she did, she's hot. K''ll need that heat. "... Funny how it's me that's trying to keep you warm, huh? Me, who always had to bundle up..." More touching, but it's careful. Practical. Pressure of towels on places where blood is trickling out. "I'm hot now, though. Ran down the stairs. Don't care if you get the coat bloody; it's just a coat, right? You need to get warm." She's running out of towels. "The ambulance'll be here. I'll call Whip. You'll want her to be there, right? You'll be able to see where she is. We'll make sure you're okay."
Right now, K' is too weak to do much of anything. It's jarring and perhaps disorienting to see, especially for someone in front of whom K' has always tried to show strength. Perhaps he's even too weak to hear her onslaught of words, only seeming to process them as a buzz of sound to which he faintly reacts. He can't quite focus, but it's clear to see that he's straining to see who she is. His frail hostility has drained away.
The warmth of the towels slowly starts to register, and as K' rouses a little more fully out of his half-consciousness, a violent shivering starts to set in. The flames usually warming him against the cold of the air have burned so low they can't do a thing to help ward off the deep chill of the December night. The good news is that some of his wounds, the shallow ones, have almost literally frozen shut; the bad news is that all the major ones pour out too much hot blood for the same to happen to them.
It takes a long, dreary few minutes of staring. K' lies unresponsively beneath her ministrations all the while, simply watching her as she works in a dreamy sort of way. When he finally recognizes her, a look of confusion slowly settles into his expression. "Sh...shurui." Why is she here? Geese will know she cares about him if she's here. He'll kill her if he knows.
With a massive effort, K' grasps at her wrist as it brushes past him. A grasp that once had the strength to break stone now barely leaves any weight or pressure on the girl's skin... even though he certainly looks as if he's trying to be very emphatic. "Y...you can't be here..." He tries to tighten his grasp, to fix his gaze, but neither succeed. K' tries to issue a command, but ends up with a mere whisper. "You can't... can't be seen with me."
He goes quiet, as if he had expended what little energy he had in that effort. His hand slips away. It's a few moments before he can gather himself again to clarify, "He'll kill you."
There's a second reason for Shurui's talking- it's noise. Something he can't ignore. Something annoying, a buzzing of words he can't walk away from. Life. Annoyances. Warmth. Dirt smeared with blood on a girl's hands. Cloth. The hoodie comes off, revealing a white t-shirt underneath. It too is placed on K''s body, like some sort of weird altar.
When the hand finally grasps hers, it catches her attention. She also grasps back, locking her hand around his as her eyes direct themselves to K''s face.
She can't be seen with him? .... No, it can't be NESTS, then. They already know Shurui and K' care about each other in some capacity. Someone else? Does this have something to do with the last time he and Whip were in the hospital? "..... It's that serious, huh." She looks sad, closing her eyes. Thinking. She opens her eyes. "We'll deal with it later. I'm here, so the damage's already done. If you die here, it means I did this for nothing. You need to survive. Besides..."
She frowns, but the hand remains there, its warmth leaking into K''s own. "If they wanted to know who cared about you, they'll find it whether or not I'm here, and whether or not you die. So it's better to live, so you have a chance of at least doing something about it. Am I making some sense here?"
There's something odd about the grasp K' maintains on Shurui's wrist. The odd thing is that it's his left hand. K' was so quick to use his right hand frequently once it'd been freed of the glove, as if proud of its newfound dexterity; it seems odd that he would not do so now. The reason soon comes when closer inspection reveals his right arm has been shattered deliberately and cleanly: snapped in three places, as if whoever had attacked K' had wished to break whatever progress he had made out of spite.
The damage is already done, she says. K' shuts his eyes as if the thought visibly burdens him, his ruined frame slumping against the stones and the towels trying to hold his blood in. He slackens visibly, incredible exhaustion seeping into him. His hand starts to slip away, but Shurui holds it too tightly for it to escape.
Her question, likely rhetorical in the first place, goes unanswered. It's debatable whether he even heard it, considering his condition just seems to get worse and worse. The blood just keeps pooling thicker and thicker. And K' just keeps shivering, his lean frame shuddering from the cold and blood loss even as Shurui desperately tries to do what she can to combat both.
Anyone inexperienced with seeing other people die might think K' was about to do so, right now. The truth of the matter is that he's not quite there yet; but he's close, and will get a whole lot closer if nothing is done fast.
Half-delirious from massive shock, all his usual will and strength and determination stripped away along with his blood, K''s basic fearfulness starts to show through. The fear that had always defined his nature, but which he had always fiercely hidden with harsh words and harsher actions, slowly comes out. The young man is visibly afraid. His eyes can't focus enough to even try to be resolute, and the strength to make any of his usual shows of bravado or defiance is gone; his body is too weak to even tense. He never used to be afraid to die, never having had anything he particularly cared about losing-- not even his life, to some degree-- but now?
Now he'd leave too many things behind he isn't sure can do without him. And now, he looks afraid: possessed of the fear of an animal finally snared in a trap it has tried so long to escape. "Wh-where is she?" he stammers, partially out of cold and partially out of something else. "Sh-she's not coming." He promised her he would always find her. Why isn't she finding him?
He can't die. He can't. Shurui wants to scream and cry and pound her fists like some three year old throwing a tantrum, but she keeps it in. Tucks it in, so that K' doesn't have to see her cry on top of facing his own fear. And yet... it's scary, to see such a fearless man shake. It's only that sense of being needed that keeps Shurui going. She'll protect him. Just like he protected her. She found him.
Everything has to be okay.
But the blood just keeps coming. And all Shurui can do is show him the same amount of strength he's shown her. He's shivering. She's out of towels. Her hands go to his face, holding against his cheeks. They shift to his shoulders; she lays her head down against his chest, careful not to press its weight against the towels and jacket covering there. "Sorry, I-I know you don't like being touched. Trying to keep you warm." She closes her eyes, trying to stem back tears. He'd been here. Alone. Sure, neither she nor Whip could've known, but, to die like this, alone...
His words keep her from falling further into that depressing cycle of thoughts. Yes. Where's Whip?
Dark eyes open. Sirens ring in the distance. She raises her head "... I was going to call her once the ambulance comes. Wanted to get you as stablized as I could." She flips out her phone. "Here. I'll call her. Just keep with me; together, we'll get you taken care of, okay?" She speaks to the phone; the words are recongized, and a stream of beeps are heard as a number is called. "Please, don't drift off on me. You wanna hear Whip's voice, right?"
Despite the danger of K''s former profession, despite the violent world for which he was made, the fact remained that K' was built to kill others; not to be killed himself. The sensation of being so grievously injured is a new one to him, one which he's finding he hates in all its fear, its weakness, and its shameful loss of control. There were so few people in the world who could reduce K' to such a critical condition, at seeming whim, that for him to be in one now shocks him as much as it might anyone else.
The truth, however, is that he is far from fearless. That Shurui thinks he is was an intention of his. He would like for the world to think he's far more removed, far more cold, and far more impervious than he is, but he isn't. He shivers even more violently when she touches him, partially because he's unaccustomed to feeling contact that isn't bent on hurting him, but eventually his movements start to fade: especially when she talks to him to tell him what she's doing. It could be either a good or a bad sign.
Were he more conscious and capable of higher thought, his immature and inexperienced mind might wonder at having earned this kind of loyalty from her. That the fact he looked out for her could spur her to want to return it in kind, when the roles are reversed and he can no longer protect her. He never learned that there was any kind of loyalty but that spurred out of fear. He never really learned that people could want to keep him even after he's broken and is potentially no longer of constructive use.
Her last question gets heard, the sentence likely registering in his mind only because it contains the name of his sister. K' tries to shift towards her, tries to nod some indication he wants to hear her voice, but all he really succeeds in doing, ultimately, is turning his head a little. His eyes do manage to find hers, however. They lock there.
The ravaged young man starts to relax under Shurui's slight weight and warmth. At first one might think he was calmed by the fact they'll theoretically soon hear Whip's voice, but then one just realizes that he's starting to drift back towards unconsciousness, even despite Shurui's attempts to keep him away from that killing sleep.
Though she's been given a week to break the news and tie up loose ends, Whip's already wasted half of it stalling. A few days have passed and she still hasn't told either K' or Shurui her new orders, and that three days from now she'll be boarding a plane back to Ikari headquarters in South America. And, unlike the previous international missions she's accepted that have pulled her to faraway places for weeks at a time, this one she cannot promise she'll be returning. Not for a long time.
Today, in particular, she's been avoiding both her housemates in lieu of spending the day alone, working up to the nerve to tell them that she has to leave. Whip is sure Shurui will handle it fine -- the girl has a maturity beyond her years to rival wise old men -- but K'? Who is she kidding; he's not going to take it well. There's going to be an argument, and no doubt on the tails of that one ugly fight, neither of them she particularly has the taste for. She's not sure how she'll get him to understand. She supposes that's why she's stalling.
Whip grumps to herself on her lonely walk through Southtown. She needs to stop being shy and face this directly. She has to stop dragging her heels and tell them. She's an Ikari Warrior, and Ikari Warriors are supposed to be fearless. They're supposed to be hardy and courageous, and not slinking off to hide from inevitable confrontations with moody family members. She has a duty to K' as much as she does the Ikari, and he needs to know.
So now she just needs to find the best way to tell him.
She's going over about eleven different methods of announcing her new travel plans over in her head as she changes direction, resignedly striding home. The night is dark and crisp, and her breath mists visibly in a sad, steamy puff as Whip mentally crosses out method #4 and #7. Crossing her arms, hugging her handbag close to her side, she chews on her lower lip and spends the next several minutes lost in thought. So much so that she, at first, ignores that strange feeling that starts to curl in her gut as she gets closer to the apartment. But then it becomes too much to simply ingest, and Whip furrows her brow, trying to explain away the cause for such a sensation. She's not sure what it is, but it's leaving her anxious. It quickens her step--
And then she hears it. Out of nowhere, an ambulance peels down the road past her, the sirens shrieking and bathing the darkened streets in reds and blues. Whip stares suspiciously after it, her step stopping when it turns a corner in the direction she's going -- home.
Then her phone starts to ring.
Her stomach flops over sickly.
Whip doesn't answer the noisy beep of her phone; she's too busy running. With all her genetically-imbued muscles, with all that doctored blood surging in her veins, it takes her a minute a change to race the half-mile home. It's the longest minute of her life. She even beats the paramedics there, shouldering through the front doors of apartment complex and climbing the several storeys of stairs up on frantic leaps. The fear makes her unbelieveably fast.
The first thing she realizes about her home is that the door is missing. The second is that everything is destroyed. Third is that it must be her brother's blood what is painting the walls. Still panting from how she raced to get here, Whip spends a broken moment simply standing in the broken ruins of what used to be the living room, grabbing handfuls of her dark hair as she turns a full circle to stare at the devastation. She's calling for her brother, a wild edge in her voice, as she searches out every one of the empty rooms. That's when, fourth, she realizes the window -- the one whose sill she used to sit and smoke -- is gone.
Five seconds later, there is a noisy skid up ahead as Whip all but launches herself out of that hole in the wall, using the heels of her boots against the brick to control her fall. She lands in a slight roll, immediately launching back up to her feet to step purposefully towards the distant, darkened sight of her brother dying in an alley.
For a short time, there's nothing the Ikari Warrior can do but stare. She's seen so much in her short, unremembered life, but never this. Anyone who catches a momentary glimpse of her may catch it: the sight of uncommunicable, all-consuming rage that darkens her eyes. But, like a momentary spasm, it's gone, and when the young woman finally moves again, she looks almost like nothing is amiss. She almost looks tired when she drops to a crouch at K''s other side.
"Move, Shurui," Whip demands out of nowhere, not unkindly, but with a voice that rivals the December air in sheer chill. "You can't keep him warm that way. He's bleeding out. You need to apply pressure hard. Don't care about hurting him."
Because Whip sure doesn't. You worry about pain relief only with the dying, and K' isn't dying. Not now. He's going to stay alive for her, even if a little discomfort has to ensure that. Hopefully trying to wave away the younger girl's attempts to keep her brother warm, the Ikari quickly shoulders out of her own coat, stripping down to her blouse and revealed pair of shoulder holsters that keep guns holstered close to her sides. Quickly searching K''s wounds to find the source of the worst of that pooling blood, she bundles the heavy suede and then seals it over the hole, pushing down firmly, almost painfully to staunch the arterial flow. It's already darkening the fabric, but she refuses to let up.
Her blood-greased hands clench slightly, but that mechanical look in her eyes doesn't falter, not even when Whip leans over to stare down into her broken brother's face. "K'?" she calls, her voice clear and strong and ordering a reply. "Do you hear me? Don't move your head. I need you to keep your eyes open and look at me. You can't fall asleep. Can you hear me? Blink your eyes to tell me, K'."
It's probably quite a sight. A bloody K', with a desperate, bloody Shurui on him, swaddled in bloody towels, Shurui's own coat, her hoodie, many wrapped tightly in specific places in an awkward bid to keep him from bleeding. Shurui's done the best job someone with poor eyesight can do in such a position; Whip taking over will ensure the bleeding stops completely.
When Shurui hears Whip's voice, she obliges, all business, in direct contrast to the empathic psuedo-sister she was before. She nods. "... Yeah. Tried to stop the bleeding as best I could, but... all I could grab ahold of were towels." Her face becomes stone-like, movement reverting to her tightening fists. Shame rides on her voice. "... I... couldn't find my way around beyond that. Couldn't risk wasting more time."
It disappears. She's switched back to helping. "The biggest one is h- yeah, you found it. Couldn't get it to stop with just the towels- y-. Yeah. The energy's flowing differently. Whatever you did worked. Here's the second worst." She points to a wrapped part. "He's barely conscious, but I still see him. He was asking for you. Wanted to hear your voice. Didn't know where you were so... tried calling you. Guess you were in the middle of finding out too." If Whip doesn't object, she moves back to tending to K''s body as Whip goes to keep his attention. Sirens are getting close.
She's silent. "It's not NESTS, this time." There's sounds of voices nearby. "He said I could get killed if they saw me with him. Wouldn't make sense if it were NESTS; they already know his connection to me."
Insensible and rapidly losing consciousness, K' only rouses again when a sudden jolt of pain electrifies his senses. The pain is a good sign-- it means he's not too far gone to feel it-- but it's still not a pleasant thing to experience. He chokes audibly as Whip presses her coat to that injury, the blood in his throat escaping as a trickle from his mouth when he coughs a feeble protest.
But when Whip's voice comes closer, K''s agonized tensing relaxes slightly. His eyes force open again slightly, though the way his gaze misses his sister's eyes clearly shows he's having trouble focusing. He stares up at where he thinks she is steadily, not seeming to hear her orders-- not comprehending much of anything but the fact that she's finally here. Both of them are unhurt.
He reminds himself he needs to stay alive to protect them, if Geese tries to kill them too. But it's getting harder by the second to fight the tiredness. He wants to sleep... especially now that his sister is here. She'll take care of things now... he'll just--
The resurgence of his sister's voice, sharp and commanding, slaps him out of his daze again. His gaze finally manages to find hers. With a massive effort, K' tries to move to touch her, to grasp onto her with the arm that isn't broken in three. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers that he promised she'd never have to be alone again, and that he'd always be there. Suddenly cripplingly afraid that he'll break his promise-- the only promise he ever made he gave much of a shit about keeping-- he tries to latch onto her, a distinct fear flooding his expression. It's probably the only time either girl will have ever seen him quite this afraid.
"It's-- funny..." K' manages around the blood in his throat, trying to get out his usual smirk, half-delirious and obviously finding things amusing that shouldn't be amusing, "...that it happens-- now that I'd kinda -mind- if I died..."
A Whip of any other time and place would be trying to assuage Shurui of that shame and guilt that is palpable in her voice. Right now she doesn't even seem to hear it at all, as well as half of anything else the girl tells her. That kindly-smiling and over-expressive young woman is gone, replaced by a soldier taught by the Cartel not to feel and by the Ikari not to suffer one's duty with the unnecessary. Right now, her only duty is keeping her brother alive. Everything else is meaningless.
Even mention of her brother's aggressor doesn't bring Whip to bat an eye. There's no time to think about that now. And Whip knows that if she tries to, she's going to lose focus. Instead of getting angry, she arranges Shurui's makeshift first aid, shifting and turning the towels to stuff the drier sides of the material sharply against K''s wounds and firmly pack them there as she did the first. Her treatment is harsh, just short of rough, but Whip's experience with first aid has only ever been on the battlefield, where wasted time means lost limbs and lives.
Then, she just as swiftly appears to retreat out of silence, reaching to grab Shurui by the wrist and firmly direct the girl's hand to the worst of K''s injuries, having no time to try to guide her with words along. Whip's blood-greased hand pushes Shurui's flat against a layered bundle of towel and suede coat with the brisk command of, "Keep pressure right here. Don't let up."
And then Whip's attention turns to finding that of her brother's, unwilling to allow him to lose consciousness at such a critical state. When he responds to her steely orders and meets her eyes, she only stares back at him, solemn and unmoved. Relief doesn't even soothe the hardened lines of her face. On the contrary, she only looks more inclined to frown.
Even K' grabbing her arm wins him the shortest of pauses, but the soldier remains unpleated. She doesn't even reply his comment, all that morbid humour lost on her icy seriousness. "Don't move. Just concentrate on my face. Keep watching me and keep talking. Can you do that?"
To be soothed in some way would cost K' blood; for Whip to chose to accept Shurui's apologies for what they are is exactly what Shurui wanted. To apologize to the one person besides K' himself that she was worried about is a temporary balm on inner pressures inside. Whip's doing the one thing they both value the most: making sure K' doesn't die. .... Because, even if he dies here, it won't be from lack of trying. And he won't be alone. K''s voice rouses Shurui's attention. "You got something to stay alive for."
He might not even hear her, but Shurui's not one to mind. She just wants to keep him awake. Her hand moves, but is guided more specifically by Whip. This time, she speaks to her. "Okay. The other one's still holding. The smaller ones appear to be closed, but that may be due to cold or clotting." People are coming. Help.
K''s aura stretches beneath her fingers like a collision of faint lukewarm fire, patterns disjointed and disowned through excessive force. It reads like a novel, telling her what his physical body tells Whip's sharp eyes. It's not NESTS, this sort of savage violence and beating. Shurui can't put her finger quite on it, but it doesn't fit in with Igniz's style, or the style of his known operatives.
Slumping back when bidden, K' obeys Whip with a sort of bloodless, dreamy lack of resistance. His hand slips from her wrist. His head similarly tries to slump away... but when Whip snaps for him to keep focused, it stops. With a great effort, it turns back, and he tries to look at her. "Tired..." is his eloquent response. He blinks affectionately up at Whip, blood loss and the possibility of death stripping away his usual stonefaced emotionlessness, and his eyes linger shut just a little longer each time he does.
The pain he's feeling seems to be growing less. The pressing of Whip and Shurui's hands against his injuries doesn't seem to draw the same agony it did initially. It's probably not a good sign. "Neither of you should be here," he eventually says faintly, his eyes narrowing as if seeing them for the first time-- realizing just why it is they shouldn't be showing such obvious concern over him. His eyes shut inevitably, and for a while he says nothing.
"...If Geese finds out--" Clearly K''s judgment has been impaired by his blood loss. Were he really aware of what he was saying, he probably would have been more careful about dropping that name.
It seems as almost the roles have shifted between brother and sister, as K' seems to have picked up Whip's patient, forbearing affection, while Whip looks much more inclined to K''s intolerant frowning. "Tired?" she clips back at him, as though prepared to have a conversation with someone bleeding himself out on the pavement. Her dark eyes, which are usually so gentle, are empty of anything but an authoritative disapproval. And she barks down at him like a steely sargeant, "You can sleep later, soldier. Right now, you keep your eyes open and you look at me, got it?"
Whip glances away then, briefly, her attention having only the patience to perform things one at a time. Multitasking appears to be a talent that is years beyond her at this point. She nods a little distantly to Shurui's examination of K''s other wounds while she busies herself appraising his right arm. She dares not touch it. There would be no point in doing so. A stray thought manages to squeeze past her single-minded focus:
Who would do this to him?
Fortunately, Whip hasn't long to ruminate on that. Her sharp ears pick up on distant noise, coming from straight up ahead. It's the paramedics, taking the route she did and no doubt are having their own moment to gawk at the destruction that used to be someone's home. "DOWN HERE!" she calls up, and in reply, someone sticks his head through what used to be their window and a part of their wall, looking both surprised and horrified by the scene that awaits them several storeys down.
"We'll be right there!" he shouts back and disappears, talking immediately into his crackling radio receiver.
Whip looks back down, any relief from knowing help is here killed by what her brother says, in his blood-wet voice. Geese?
She looks briefly confused. He doesn't mean Geese Howard--
But then Whip no longer seems to care, or even remember that lingering thought, because all she can see are K''s eyes closing. Frowning, she presses down on one of his stauched wounds on purpose, giving him a sharp pain to wake him up.
"K'," she orders down at him, "open your eyes. Do you hear me? K'! Open your fucking eyes and look at me."
Internal bleeding. Massive trauma. Shurui could be so much more specific in her appraisal than she was before, but all it would do is cause unneeded worry. There's nothing they can really do besides keep his body temperature from dropping, his body from bleeding out, and his consciousness from slipping from their grasp like so much sand.
If only she could reach down and grasp that energy running beneath her fingertips, take it and coax it to a full flame....
Of course, in the end, the person who has that energy is the one who ultimately controls it. The power of sight does not mean Shurui has any power over a person, despite how one might feel to have their physical and mental selves bared to her undiscerning eye. And then, K' speaks, a painful rasp that seems, at first, to make absolutely no sense at all. "...?" Geese? He's afraid of waterfowl? .... Wait, no. Wasn't there some businessman with a weird name like that? Shurui presses it to one side for the moment as K' loses his battle against that all-prevading need to sleep. She grits her teeth, focusing on the cooling fire showing up against the clotting material of the towel. ".... He's still alive."
Paramedics come in, hesitant to immediately push away the attending two from K''s body, but the immediacy of his physical condition prompts them to intercede if Whip or Shurui decide not to push away just yet.
K' stares at Whip. Some of the expressiveness goes out of his gaze as it fixes on her, pursuant to her demand. He'd like to obey her, but it's getting more and more difficult. He already fought to cling to life for a long time, before either Shurui or Whip ever found him, and most of his usual strength and will to survive already faded in that long hour he lay there alone. The only thing left to greet the two now is a young man who can barely keep his eyes open any longer.
Natural painkillers are already working overtime in what's left of his blood, shutting out the pain and trying to tranquilize him to protect him from the shock. He keeps watching Whip, as she told him to, but there's a distinct sense of strain to it now.
He barely moves under her ministrations. His eyes start to drift shut-- and then a sudden pain rips through his side. Choking out a strangled, agonized sound, he rouses, hissing in a sharp breath and instantly regretting the tax on his lungs.
Seeming to have expended the last of his ability to speak, he says nothing. He just watches the two girls hovering over him as though he thinks he may not get another chance to look at them. That attention, inevitably, starts to fade again, even this young man's prodigious will ground down nearly to nothing by the severity of his injuries, but by that time the paramedics are already shouldering in to take over his ministrations.
Their professionalism renders them endlessly bold in dealing with harrowed relatives; they force their way in to stabilize the young man enough that he can be moved. The both of them would be allowed to ride in the ambulance along with him, but regardless of whether or not either of them take the opportunity, the paramedics don't linger long before they start away to the hospital.
Whip seems as much dead to the world as her bleeding brother. She doesn't notice anything that isn't her brother's fading consciousness, watching her only family, her only link left to her missing memory and stolen life bleed away into the concrete. She doesn't care about anything that isn't trying to bring him back.
"K'?!" she shouts down at his face, looking on helplessly as his eyes inevitably close. "K', open your eyes. Open them and look at me! K'!"
The paramedics arrive in time to see a sneering, snarling young woman grab a dying man by his collar. She's yelling orders down at him, even when she herself knows he will not hear. "Look at me!" she keeps barking, an emotional edge threatening her voice. It sounds like a mixture of fury and something else, something either of the paramedics can't make out. "Look at me, you sonuva bitch! Don't fall asleep! Wake up! Fuck you, wake up!!"
She recoils a hand as to backhand him, and that's when they intervene. It takes the paramedics a second too long to pull her off, but when she finally does, the young woman is suddenly pliant and non-resistant. She backs up, covered in blood and staring rather blankly as that military coldness swiftly returns to bury whatever emotion had tried to pull free from her. In those following minutes, Whip doesn't seem to do much of anything. She stands there, terribly patient as she watches the professionals do their job.
When she loads into the ambulance and sits down, the expression on her face looks dead.
This scene. It sort of reminds her of something. Something she'd rather not have seen at all. ... No, well, it was rather peaceful, come to think of it. Muda lying on the floor of the kitchen, cold and dead, a bit of dried spit hanging from the side of his mouth. To have what once housed such life to be treated as a dead object, no different from a rock or a chair, by her eyes was painful enough. Second was the cold realization that she'd have to start all over again. That she was alone again.
Nothing is forever.
But she wasn't left to her own devices, in the end. Her father was a crafty man, and, having no real obligation aside from passing on his store to another couple, had nothing to lose by giving his small assets to a strange stray girl who tried to pocket some trinket or another from his store. She had savings. College funds. Nothing extravagent to a normal person, but more than someone without a name and a past could ever dream of having.
"This is the extent of what we can do here," Shurui says, eyes hidden as they ride in the ambulance. "It's up to K' now. About that person... do you know him or her?" She looks up. "You think it's something your boss might be able to help with? The people you're with seem to be strong, so..." She wipes her face with her arm. "If it's just one guy, tho, probably a bad idea... I just wanna know who could have done this. And how we can deal with it. K' was worried about that before he went under- that's all he could really say to me, aside mention your name."
He wouldn't be so critical if he hadn't been thrown down several stories onto the hard pavement. If the impact hadn't knocked him out such that he couldn't draw attention to seek medical help until nearly an hour had passed. If he had been found earlier. But then again, if the two of them had found him just a little bit later than they did, they might not have had a chance to try and save him at all. Geese was thorough, but in the end lacked the care to make certain K' would not live. When an investment ceases to be useful to him, it's entirely immaterial to him whether it dies or not.
And why not let K' have a chance to crawl off with his life? It wasn't as if Igniz's discarded freak angel, as Geese sardonically put it-- could do much of anything against the man who owned Southtown.
Especially not the way he is now. The young man drops entirely into unresponsiveness even as Whip seizes and shakes him, trying to wake him with her frantic, mindless shouts. The plunge into insensibility is brief-- K' is still trying to hang on, still trying to do what his sister wants-- but Whip can't know that. And when the paramedics crowd her out of the way, she's sure not to.
He's deathly still and silent in the ambulance, and is like to remain that way through much of whatever conversation Whip and Shurui try to hold. It's at the tail end of it that he rouses dimly again from under the paramedics' frantic ministrations, his head turning limply as he looks for Whip. He tries to focus on her, fails, and sighs out a long breath. His eyes half-shut again.
"I told you... I'd never leave," he's trying to reassure her, even though he's the one in critical condition... though it costs him a trail of blood out of the corner of his mouth to talk. More than a little delirious, he lacks the necessary higher brain functions to do anything but fixate on not breaking his promise. It was the most important promise he ever made, the only one he wouldn't ruthlessly break in an instant. He has to keep it.
Whip is quiet as corpses once she climbs into the ambulance. Her posture is straight, her hands are neatly clasped in her lap, and her face is solemn around streaks of K''s blood, but all her military poise seems weighted, like it's hurting her to keep her spine so straight against something invisible that's pressing down on her shoulders. All-in-all, she looks strangely composed.
Until one catches the look in her eyes and finds it strangely vacant. She stares at some unseen point, patiently, politely, listening as though utter nothingness is attempting a conversation with her and she's doing her best part to remain attentive. Those glassy brown eyes blink steadily every few seconds.
Shurui is talking for quiet some time before Whip even deigns the younger girl a glance. To the casual observer, she looks very much the part of someone who is listening with great concentration. To someone who can see her, Whip looks like she doesn't know where she is or who she is. She just stares.
Soon enough, she looks away without answering any of Shurui's questions, acting as though she hadn't heard one thing. She rubs a little blankly at the side of her face, leaving more swathes of blood along her temple and down her cheekbone. Her arm drops heavily to slant across her lap. That's when she just starts to stare at her feet.
Whip doesn't even notice that her brother has opened his eyes again, and that they are watching her now. She only rouses when he does the impossible and speaks to her. Her head raises, and she fixes him with a strange expression, the look in her eyes like that of someone caught sleepwalking. Dreamy and indifferent at the same time. She watches him rasp what could possibly be his dying words to her -- a dying promise -- and she watches the blood roll peacefully out the side of his mouth.
She can't even breathe to say something back. She just nods a little, with that same dead look in her eyes.
Log created on 23:12:02 12/27/2008 by K', and last modified on 02:11:44 01/03/2009.