ArchivedLogs:Squeezing

Squeezing
Dramatis Personae Rasa, Sebastian
In Absentia	2014-04-11 Part of Perfectus TP.
Location <XS> Medical Lab - B1
Gleaming and sterile, the school's medical facility is all cool science in contrast to the mansion's old-world old-fashion. All stainless steel and antiseptic tinge, the room is filled with the quiet whir-click of the various implements that comprise its medical equipment -- all state-of the art. The hospital beds are curtained off for privacy when they have patients, and in one of the alcoves there is a small operating theatre visible. More heavy-duty equipment is visible in the lab in the back, where the securely locked cabinets keep sensitive equipment out of the reach of teenage fingers. Despite the fact that Rasa has been sitting in the med lab for over twenty four hours, ze has been rather inaccessible, all things considered. While majority of hir surface issues were cleared up during hir short stay at the clinic, ze is not completely healed physically and is not doing well psychologically. Ze has spent the last day or so sedated, only beginning to come out of it early Friday morning. Ze looks absolutely exhausted despite the sleep, dark circles under hir eyes, accentuated by hir powers, more than likely. Hir skin is a grayish ash color and hir hair is string tucked behind hir ears. Ze is on IV fluids and a good deal of pain killers, given the glassy look in hir eyes. Ze has the blankets pulled up to underneath hir arms and drape across hir body, showing the gap where hir leg should be. The medbay doors whoosh open softly; the footsteps that creep in are soft, as well. Sebastian smells like he's only just gotten out of the shower, vanilla-bubblegum body wash clinging to his still-damp skin. He's dressed in a wrap top that hangs down to mid-thigh, zigzagged in vivid green and purple, layered over a plain white tank; the pants it is paired with are black, hugging his legs tightly and accented in silver metal studding. His ankle boots are black as well, studded, too, and adding several inches to his otherwise diminutive height; despite their chunky heels he moves quietly in them, perhaps out of long practice. One webbed hand rests down on his messenger bag, more sound coming from the scritch of his claws against its canvas than from his footsteps. His sharp teeth sink against his lips, black eyes wide as he sneaks over towards Rasa's bedside. "... Rasa? Are you -- can I. Be here?" It takes Rasa a moment to react to the sound of Bastian's words, hir distraction thick and deep. Ze turns hir head slowly, hir eyes still out of focus and a vaguely nauseated look on hir face. Hir brow furrows up, one wrinkle at a time, stacking on top of each other, eyes squeezing shut at first, then opening as ze gives one firm nod in response to his question, the muscles in hir jaw flexing as ze clenches. Hir good leg draws upward toward hir chest, hir arms wrapping around it, the combination of limbs coming together to disguise the odd shapes under the blanket. "I'm... sorry." "{Sorry?}" Sebastian echoes this in Vietnamese, puzzled, coming closer only at the firm nod. "Why are -- what do you have to be -- /I'm/ --" He shakes his head, pulling a chair over but not actually sitting. "Rasa, I --" His gills flutter, and his eyes just fix on hir face, inner eyelids blinking rapidly. "No. You're here now. /I'm/ here now. You don't -- don't have to. Be sorry. Just have to be /here/." "Not being a very good patient," Rasa admits quietly, leaning forward until hir forehead rests on hir knee. Whatever else ze means to say or is thinking is lost as hir skin remains blank. Hir head does move, shaking slowly at something unheard or unsaid. Ze stills eventually and turns hir head to study Bastian, eyelids heavy. "Look nice. New clothes? Taaallll." Ze gives a little smile. "Smell good, too. Funny how I can miss the way people smell." There's a pause, and a little whimper that closes hir eyes and puts a single wrinkle between hir brows. When it dissipates, ze peeks over at Bastian again. "Hi." "I'm not a doctor." Sebastian blushes at the mention of new clothes, nodding and smoothing a hand over his top. He finally does sit, unhooking the strap of his bag from his head so that he can set it down in front of him. "I miss the way people smell a lot. Our room doesn't smell the same when you're gone, it's --" His eyes lower, head shaking. "I missed --" He stops again, gills fluttering rapidly. "I brought your homework," he says abruptly, /awkwardly/, stooping to open the bag and extract -- his tablet from it. Flicking it on out of sleep. "Because you were gone and there was a lot of homework and you missed it and I brought --" His cheeks color darker, brow rumpling in sudden apology. "... I didn't know what to bring you." "S'okay," Rasa adds after a moment of quiet. Ze grabs a pillow from behind hir neck and shoulders and positions it in front of hir as ze rolls onto hir side. Ze hugs the pillow, tucking hir stump back behind hir other leg. "I don't want anything." Ze pales more when ze mentions that, eyes gaining moisture as ze swallows hard. "The room... maybe... could use some music." Ze nods emphatically at that, hir hair bunching up and matting against hir face. "Or movies." "You could print these out," Bastian is saying as he offers the tablet towards Rasa, "or copy them..." He trails of uncertainly, frowning deeper. There are files neatly organized in a folder, by subject; assignments collected -- and then /completed/, answers entered, papers /written/. Shane probably did the Russian. His expression lights again at the mention of music or movies. "Oh! Oh, I could do those. I -- have those. Or -- Netflix has those. Pandora has those. Grooveshark has those." His fingers flick towards the tablet, and he bends down, too, to pull a set of earbuds out of a side pocket of his bag. "...you did my homework?" Rasa blinks in confusion at the notes and homework sheets and everything else that Sebastian put together for hir, "/did/ did? I ... thought you just... collected it." Confounded, ze wets hir lip and nods, eyes losing their focus. "What... comes next, B? You've... done this before. What happens next?" "Well -- you weren't here," Sebastian says awkwardly, as if this is explanation enough for the completed assignments. He fidgets in his seat, claws clicking against one of the metal studs in his pants. One side of his mouth twitches slowly upward, his head giving a very small shake. "Well. You could talk to my Ba. About your leg, he's a wizard at that. Or there's a woman at the Clinic who -- who can help with healing, she might be able to /fix/ it, she brought Pa back practically from death. And -- and after that." His head tips back, gills fluttering again as he looks upwards, as if searching the ceiling. "Well. After that maybe we kill them." His voice is oddly calm about this. "We're going to have to," Rasa agrees quietly, hir voice hallow. "He's dead set on turning us all into spare parts." Hir hands cup hir forehead gently, eyes closing. "No one is safe. Powerful though. Need something to stop phasing. Maybe... tech? Disruption of phased particles - maybe a field? Lay a trap." Ze inhales deeply and pauses, mind shifting gears. "Met her. She put my skin back." There's a twitch in the corner of hir eye. "They skinned me, B. Took my skin... right off." Hir voice starts to slur with emotion and ze shakes hir head, eyes welling up again. Ze sets hir jaw and hugs the pillow tighter. "A trap -- where would we lay one, though?" Sebastian scrunches his eyes closed, though his head is still tipped back towards the ceiling. "Ba won't even come back here. He's afraid -- he's afraid --" But here he /stops/, very suddenly. "Oh. Oh gosh. Oh, gosh, I don't -- think anyone. Told you. Did they." He pushes a slow swallow down his throat and pulls his booted feet up onto the chair, tipping his head down to rest his chin on his knees and curl his arms tight arund his shins. "... about your leg. Rasa, do you know who that man was?" "God." Rasa replies with a curl of hir upper lip, distaste stirring tangibly in hir throat, causing hir to cough and swallow hard against hir gag reflex. "Didn't introduce himself. just... took... and ate... and preached." "Ate?" Sebastian -- probably /should/ be more horrified by this, really. His brow just furrows, though, puzzled rather than shocked. "Why?" He's quieter when he continues, a little tense. "-- It was John Sublime." His fingers curl in hard against his shins. "The head of the Sublime Foundation. Who stopped our evictions and helped get Pa and Dusk out of jail and just got Shane's shoplifting charges dropped this week and --" He shakes his head, hard. "It's how they've been learning so much about --" His shoulders tense, hard. "He's got this church. This cult. And after they took Anole, and then Dusk, Ba went to -- to find them. To find what they were doing and the people they took and try and find a way to stop them." He stops here, his claws digging harder in against his shins. "Rasa, he -- he --" "Why what? Why did he ... anything? I don't know. He wanted me to eat with him, but... I couldn't. Food just... was wrong. Is wrong." Rasa frowns a little, head bowing and shoulders lifting up toward hir ears. As ze listens to the change in topic, hir emotions deaden, hir expression 'relaxes' but with the drugs in hir system, it's more absent than anything else. Ze tries to focus harder the more distraught that Bastian becomes, hir brow furrowing with hir concentration. "Is Micah okay?" "This cult of his." Sebastian's voice has gotten a little bit hollow. "He's been taking parts of people and -- and putting them /on/ other people. Giving them superpowers. But also -- also," he explains slowly, "making himself out to be a healer of some sort. He put Dusk's eyes on a blind girl. And Ba -- he took your leg. And he -- grew it. /Onto/ Ba." A small shudder runs through Sebastian with this explanation. "I don't -- really understand how. If he ate -- ate it. I don't think Ba's okay. I don't think any of this is okay. He thinks the man's in his head now. Trying to spy on -- the school or something. Steal all of us? Take all our powers. I think," Sebastian says again, "that we need to kill him." "Yes. I know. He's making himself into a god. He wants to take us and break us into little bits and distribute us across all of humankind. We're supposed to feel honored, you know, that we have this opportunity to live on. Forever. Tiny sections of existence, little worm, crawling in the muck of another life, making /their/ lives better. Making /their/ race supreme. I'm a fucking gift. And it's his gift to me... to use me. I know! I fuckin... Know all this." Rasa's voice finally breaks, tears flowing down hir cheeks in hot streams, hir fingers digging in to the pillow ze is holding. "I just... don't know... How to kill them - because you can /want/ to kill him and you can /try/ to kill him, but these people... they reach inside you and grab your life - your heart... your lungs - and they squeeze everything out of you... and kill you when you can't even touch them. I don't know how to do it. You or someone even smarter than you is going to have to figure out how do it." Ze presses hir face against hir pillow, sobbing now. "I... can't." Hir last words are muffled by the fluffy layers of cloth and fiber, hir shoulders shaking as ze tries to control hirself. Sebastian presses his lips together, here, inner eyelids rapidly blinking. His legs slide down off the chair, and he gets up from it, the sleeves of his shirt slipping down over his webbed fingers. He slides in to hitch a hip up onto the edge of the bed, leaning in to curl his arms around Rasa's shoulders and now just squeeze, gently close. Rasa continues to cry and shake for a few more minutes, pressing into Sebastian's arms. Hir breathing is labored and hitched, like something is wrong with hir lungs - or more specifically just one of them. Ze coughs as ze tries to take a few deep breaths, the sobbing stopping as the breaths come more easily. "{Apologies}" ze utters in Russian. "You can, though, you know." Sebastian only says this once Rasa's tears have calmed. "I mean. I mean, they can't squeeze /everything/ out of you. They can try, but they won't get it." There's a quiet rumble of growl that sounds in his chest, and for a brief moment his hug tightens, just before the bell rings with a gentle flashing of notification lights and he lets go. "We won't let them."