ways_infirmary | (no subject)

Something stirs up a faint breeze. It settles quickly enough, and there are two people -- one in a vacant bed, the other standing next to it -- where there weren't any before.

"Hey." It's sharper than Mercer intends. "Little help over here?"

Nita turns and sucks in a breath.

"Oh crap Puck."

She hurries over, grabbing a scalpel off a tray as she goes. "What happened?"

Puck, as the astute reader may have inferred already, is not feeling his most chipper tonight.

He's borne the iron as best he can-- even with the doubled pain of having it drawn from him, and the jostling of being whisked to this bed-- but it bled him too much, cut too deep, and there's only so much he can be expected to bear, after all.

He looks at Nita, bright eyes confused and unfocused-- and he slumps back onto the pillow, lashes fluttering shut.

So much for getting answers out of him.

Good thing Mercer's there to pick up in his stead.

"Iron filings shoved into all the skin it could hit. I got most of it out already. Somebody else is gonna have to heal the burns. I can't do that."

He braces one hand on the side of the bed, head bowed and the bridge of his nose pinched between two fingers.

It's not the worst headache he's ever had -- he didn't drain himself that much in extracting the filings -- but it sure as hell isn't helping any right now.

"Oh my god. Okay."

She closes her eyes and breathes out to calm herself a little, then swipes the scalpel across her palm. Placing the cut over one of Puck's wounds, she takes another deep breath and starts speaking.

The silence of a working wizardry builds up around her, and for a moment that's all there is. The attack comes out of nowhere. Iron floats around her and stabs her skin and burns, all around her, with no escape; her lower lip is chewed to a mess; the wizardry has her and she can't make it stop--

And then it lets go, leaving her gasping for breath and pressing a healed hand against unmarked skin.

Whatever she's saying hits something very fundamental, races through Mercer and sends it thrumming. His head snaps up, instantly alert.

As it dies down, he looks at Puck again and exhales. One hand's still rubbing fitfully at the space between his eyebrows.

"Blodwen Rowlands," he says. "The White Rider. Please tell me you know who she is so I don't have to waste time explaining."

"Yeah, I do." She steps back, realizes she's wobbly, and grabs a chair to fall into.

"Jesus. Iron. Do you know who attacked first?"

"No, I didn't see it happen, I just showed up after -- "

He stops.

After Puck's skin was cut to ribbons. After he was bleeding.

Mercer stares down at his arms, still flecked with bits of red from carrying Puck to the infirmary.

Hundreds of cuts from the filings; thousands, maybe. He pulled out thousands of metal slivers -- metal slivers soaked in blood -- and he didn't --

"Fuck!"

Mercer whirls and slams both palms against the wall.

She jumps.

"What?"

"She has his blood."

The bitch outsmarted him. Nobody does that. Nobody ever has, not in ways that matter as much as this one does. Defeated, disgusted, enraged, Mercer shoves himself away from the wall, thrusts out both arms to show off the dots of blood in illustration.

"I didn't clean up the filings before I left. Son of a fucking -- "

This launches into another string of curses as he raises his arms and digs his fingers into his cap. Few of them are in English; some are in languages that've been dead for centuries.

Nita understands them anyway -- it's a perk of knowing a universal language.

"Calm down for a second!"

She holds out her hands, palms down, in a quelling gesture. "Calm down. Freaking out won't help anything." Even if she feels inclined to do the same.

He drops his hands, but the rage has to go somewhere, and he could never sit still to begin with. Mercer crosses his arms to try and stifle it, promptly gives up, shifts his weight from foot to foot, and starts to pace.

Halfway through that, he changes direction and veers for the sink, slamming on the faucet and ducking both arms under the spray.

He's breathing just a little too deeply and evenly to hide the amount of focus it's taking.

"I said I'd look after him," he tells her, flatly. "It was my job."

"You got the iron out of him. You got him here."

She takes a breath, lets it out.

"Next step is to figure out if she does have his blood, and then figure out if she can control him with it. I haven't heard anything about her actually controlling Raven with what she has of his, but I don't know how the rules are different with the Fair Folk."

"Even if she can't control him, it's enough to trap him."

He turns around, drying off his arms on the hem of his shirt. Even after all the water's off, he keeps running the cloth over them.

"And I really doubt she left for good after I pulled the iron out. I bet you as soon as I was gone, she moved in and swept it up. It's been, what, maybe five minutes? That's more than enough time.

Dry -- "Pardon my optimism.

"Okay." She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, thinking. "So. Any ideas for how to protect him?"

"Oh, but inferring I'm a pessimist is such a nasty accusation. I prefer 'pragmatist.'" Equally dry.

He tugs at his cap and resumes pacing, gesturing at nothing to mark his words.

"Aside from kicking her ass, which is another thing I really doubt I can pull off, not much. Keep a much closer eye on him. Steal the filings back -- that," and there's a gleam in his eye now, "I might be able to do if she hasn't cleaned them up."

"Well, he doesn't look like he's going much of anywhere for a little while. Keeping an eye on him ought to be doable."

She eyes him.

"As for stealing the filings back, are you sure that's a good idea? --Um, incidentally, what's your name? I'm Nita, Nita Callahan."

"Mercer. And no. It's a shitty idea, but it's all I've got and I'm one of the few who's actually got a chance of pulling it off."

He sighs, and with no further preamble, drops into the nearest chair, immediately hooking one foot around the front leg and tapping the other fitfully.

"And if you try, am I likely to end up healing you next?"

"Maybe."

He doesn't seem too concerned about this. Nita gets a flash of a grin, faintly manic.

"But I'm really fast and I'm hard to kill. Kind of like a cockroach."

Worst comes to worst, he'll just be bedridden for a couple days.

...Which, for Mercer, is a nasty enough fate to make getting in and out of there uninjured a top-level incentive.

The grin is infectious, and she smiles back.

"Just -- don't get killed. Don't attack her. Don't give her any excuse to defend herself."

"Hey, stealing what she thinks is hers is going to be excuse enough," he remarks, spreading his hands. Then he leans in and lowers his voice to conspiratory tones. "The trick, Nita, is not giving her an excuse to think I was the one who did it."

The look she gives him is serious.

"Good luck, then. Any way I can help? Besides keeping an eye on him," she adds, nodding towards Puck.

"Just -- "

He folds his hands and swings his head around to glance back at Puck.

"Tell me when he wakes up. That's it." He doesn't so much stand as jump to his feet, the movement casual despite its energy. "If I think of anything else, I'll tell you."

"I can do that."

She blows out a breath, and repeats, "Don't get killed."

And a little while later, after recieving Nita's note, Havelock quietly enters the infirmary, making his way along the beds. He looks at the sleeping Fae for a moment, but carefully doesn't touch, then sits by the shadowy wall opposite, watching and waiting.

Just in case Puck wakes.

He knows his own--knows his people, knows his creatures.

He looks down at the sleeping Fae, frowning, and then bends to kiss his forehead. "Sleep in peace, Puckling," he whispers, and hopes it will be enough.

For now.