ways_infirmary | Millitimed to Yesterday Evening

Hawkeye doesn't know what some of the things in here are, though he certainly isn't going to mention that to the man with him. He just makes a beeline for the first bed he sees--propped into a sitting position at the moment--, helping the captain down and his feet up. He pulls the hot dogtags off over Ryan's head. "I'll hold onto these for you," he says, slipping them into a pocket. "Don't go anywhere." He heads for the nearest sink and starts the water running, hunting around for a basin and some cloths, which are found easily.

Ryan doesn't bother answering. While he's glad to lay down, everything hurts right now. There's a slight groan as he settles into the bed.

There's something he should be telling the doctor, but it's hard to think straight. A preexisting medical condition...he groans again.

Hawkeye's back pretty quickly, sleeves rolled up and hands clean, carrying a basin of cool water with some cloths tucked under his arm. Setting the basin down, he glances up to be sure that Ryan's head is flat and not on a pillow. He snags a couple of pillows off another bed and props the captain's combat boots up on them. "Easy there," he says, wetting a cloth and draping it across the burns on his right arm. "I can probably talk enough for the both of us."

If he had a choice, he'd flush the burn. But given the large area it's covering, that he doesn't want Ryan on his feet or leaning over a sink right now, cool compresses are going to be the next best thing. He keeps working.

Oh, oh that feels good. There's still something, though, something important. He twists a little, agitated. He's...

"Not human," Ryan mumbles.

He's working quickly, now, wetting cloths and applying them. Not usually a surgeon's duty, but he knows well that he has to cool the burns before they can do further damage. "Really," he says. "I'm perfectly capable of keeping a conversation going by my--" The words register. Hawkeye pauses only a second or two--anywhere but this place, he'd dismiss it as the mutterings of a man in severe pain--then keeps moving. "Not human?"

Ryan gives a brief shake of his head, wincing. If he weren't so badly hurt right now, if he were a little more himself, he wouldn't be telling a complete stranger this. But there's far too much pain to think straight.

"Werewolf," he rasps, then relaxes. Now he can let the doctor work.

To his credit, Hawkeye's hands keep moving, through it's more due to mechanical reflex than strength of character.

It's good that one of them is relaxed, anyway.

How the hell do you treat a werewolf?

At the moment, just like a human. No matter his physiology, he has to be cooled down, and that, Hawkeye can do.

Once he's satisfied that that goal, at least, has been accomplished (even if it's with much less one-sided banter), it doesn't take more than a minute or two to find a bottle of aspirin in a cabinet and produce a glass of water. That much, he figures, has to be the same. He shakes two tablets out into the palm of his hand and returns to the bedside, balancing pills and glass in one hand so that he can pick up a blanket with the other and pull it over the other man's legs.

"Upsy daisy, Captain," he says, leaning down, ready to assist. "Need you to sit up a little to take these. It's just aspirin for now."

Ryan does as told, rising up enough to take the pills and swallow. He eases back down and closes his eyes.

Yeah, he's just going to lie there for now.

That's good. Hawkeye has some serious research to do. "I'll be right over here," he says, and he heads for the nearest bookshelf, though not before looking Ryan over one last time with an expert eye. Satisfied that he'll be fine for the moment, he sets the glass of water on a table and starts thumbing through the books.

There are some interesting titles here. Some of them are, he is quite sure, not in English or any language he's ever seen. There are a few titled in Chinese characters. Some look brand new. Some look as thought they ought to be rotting away on a shelf in some English manor's library, covered in dust. "Capital show, old fellow, pip pip," Hawkeye mutters at a copy of Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical.

Some of the books aren't books at all. Hawkeye avoids those after he picks up the first one he sees and can't figure out how to get whatever it is open.

Finally, though, he spots something. "Magic and Medicine: A Guide," he reads quietly, shaking his head to himself. Who would keep this in a working informary? Driven by that question, he pulls out the heavy book. The cover is blank but for the title, stamped in simple gold lettering, and he rises and opens the cover. He flips past 'amulets,' 'goblins,' and 'precognition,' among others, and his eyebrows rise higher and higher as he sees the pages of tiny lettering that, upon quick examination, appears to be medically sound. And did -- funny. His eye must have ticced; he almost thought that that diagram had moved.

He turns to the w's, and there it is, below 'wand' and above 'witch.'

'Werewolf.'

Frowning to himself, glancing at the man in the bed, Hawkeye reads the entry. Most of it is in reference to the effects of a werewolf attack on a human, but at the end -- he can use that. A quick hunt later, and he has a fairly nondescript bottle labeled Cephalexin in his hand. He recognizes the prefix, at least.

"Hey, Captain," he says, taking a seat in a chair beside the bed. "Got some more pills for you."

Ryan's feeling slightly better now, as the aspirin was absorbed into his system fairly quickly. Once more he rises to take the pills, offered this time with a glass of milk. He doesn't even think to ask what they are.

He puts his head back down, lets out a little sigh (or is it a gasp?), and closes his eyes once more.

Hawkeye thinks to tell him, at least. "Antibiotic," he says, lifting away the glass. "It'll fight off infection."

He spends the next couple of minutes checking the burns again, taking his vital signs--fast heartbeat, he thinks--and writing down everything he can think to add; notes on care, the antibiotic, the dosage, the degree of burns, treatment given. He's planning to stick around, but he isn't certain whether or not another doctor will be in.

That done, he sets the pen down and says not unkindly, voice pitched low, "Get some sleep, Captain. I'll be back soon to check up on you."

And he will.

Right after he's had a good, stiff drink.

There's something that might've been a growl or might've just been the HVAC system from the corridor, and then the door opens.

Wells hates places like this. He's never been big on doctors anyway, and the air smells of all sorts of chemicals here- not to mention the memories it raises of a certain room. But there's a few things he's got to check up on, so he sets his jaw and enters.

God, he doesn't want to be here.

The swelling from the burns has gone down some, but Ryan still isn't looking too good. His face, chest, and arms are uncovered and the skin there is red and covered with blisters, some of which are rather large.

The medication's doing what it's supposed to do, though. There's still pain, but that's off a ways. He's laying on the bed, eyes closed, when he hears the door open. He doesn't take any notice till the scent reaches him. Even then, he only stiffens slightly.

It's possible Wells may not be there for him, after all.

Possible, but the gods are not that kind to either of them.
It takes him a moment to take the next step; the others are easier, but not by much. He stops a little ways off from the bed. Even at that distance he can make out the amount of damage Zuko did; he lets out a long, low whistle.

At that, Ryan cracks an eye at Wells, soon followed by the other. There's a ghost of a glare as he turns his head slightly to see the other man, but only a ghost because it hurts to move.

Possibly this is why he doesn't say anything.

"I don't even like to think of how much that must've hurt at the time," says Wells. "Christ, that looks nasty. Have they run a painkiller drip yet?"

"Aspirin," Ryan rasps, mouth barely moving. The doctors aren't sure what's safe to give him just yet, or even if it makes any difference. But better safe than sorry.

"Why are you here?" he continues, not looking happy. Well, less happy. He sounds better than yesterday, at any rate.

Wells makes an indelicate noise. "You're going to need paracetamol at the very least, I can tell you that," he mutters. Then he raises his voice a little. "Wanted to make sure you weren't about to die a second time, or some shit like that."

The last thing he wants is for Zuko to be a murderer.

Ryan's eyes narrow slightly at the mutter, and he misses most of it. It's hard to hear when you're laying down and the man speaking isn't exactly close.

"I'm surprised to hear you care," comes the dry (dryer) response. He'd tilt his head, but yeah, ow.

If your blood belongs to anyone, it belongs to Cooper, is what Wells wants to say- but he doesn't. Two years of fugitiving teaches you to guard your tongue well. Instead he says, "Yeah, well- you don't get out of learning to put a rein on things that easy."

Ryan starts to arch a brow, but stops almost immediately. Still, Wells might be able to see it.

"For me or the boy?" There's a sarcastic tint to it because if he remembers correctly, Zuko's the one who lost control.

"He's in the cells for what he did," says Wells, who hasn't decided yet whether to thump Zuko for it or buy him a beer. "And if I thought he'd listen to me I'd do him like I'd do any recruit who lost his temper. Thing is, though-" And here he leans closer. "I know Zuko, see. I know him pretty fucking well. He's been through a lot of shit and it hasn't been enough to set him off. I don't know what you said to him, but you're fucking lucky he didn't do you ten times worse. For both your sakes I plan on seeing to it that neither one of you lets himself get that bloody stupid again. As far as I can, anyways."

Ryan has no intention of giving Zuko that chance. Not until he knows he can do better against him. That's something to plot over another day.

"What did you find at Gruinard?" he asks instead. What Zuko said has been eating at him, and there's a scent of anger in the air for all his voice is cold.

He will not think of that room. He will not.

"Authorisation for preliminary human experimentation once sufficient results were had from the dogs, for one thing," he says instead. "I didn't see a whole lot of evidence that they'd necessarily be volunteers, but the protocols for beginning work with humans if jumping up the dogs worked out were in place. All nice and neat and proper."

( This room smells of antiseptics and cleansers- of smoke and burning and blood, yes, but only what's come in from the outside. This place is otherwise spotless. Grey-green tiles on the floor, darker tiles along the lower half of the wall, white paint above. Air-freshener dispensers mounted every fifteen feet along the walls, the sort that give off a spray every half hour or so by the look of them. There's an anatomical chart of the human body hanging on one wall, just next to the medical exam table- )

No. Not that room.

He expected as much. But what Zuko had said: You would have gotten then killed at worst, infected otherwise-

That was a lie. And if that was the story Wells was spreading...

Nobody was supposed to die. Or be infected. Not that night.

"And your men?" he asks, angry enough that he sits up some to see Wells better.

It takes Wells a minute to realise Ryan doesn't mean the dead ones.

"What of them?" he says, a little more roughly than he'd intended.

Ryan sits up even further, ignoring the pain that lances through him. He won't wince, not now, not in front of Wells.

"What plans did you find? What have you been telling people?" He's almostalmost growling, because as much as Ryan may twist the truth, bend it and shape it to say what he wants, he doesn't outright lie if he can help it.

It's the little things that let you live with yourself.

And if Wells has been saying that Ryan set him and his men up to be infected or killed...well, that pisses him off.

Ah.

Wells lifts his chin a little. The urge to slip into another accent- the one that sets Ace to wide-eyed silence, say, or even Father's- is very strong, but there's no need of it here. This can stand on its own.

"What I've told people," he says, "is no more than the truth. My lads and me were sent up to Scotland and told it was an exercise- training, against the Special Forces. We didn't know you lot were there 'cos you wanted a werewolf, and we didn't know you wanted us specifically 'cos of Cooper, and we didn't know you'd fucked up your intel by a factor of fucking five. That's what you were there for, and that's what you wanted us there for- you wanted bait so that you could bring in a monster alive."

"As far as plans-" He snorts, a humorless, dry sound that might've been a laugh once. "I know what happened at Rendlesham Forest twenty-four years ago, Ryan. I know what else is out there, beyond the monsters you and I and Andrew know. I know what they're willing to do to keep those things out of our world, and frankly, I don't know if they can do it and keep any kind of grip at all on their humanity. The dogs, and the werewolf project, were only the beginning."

Ryan takes a moment to process this, eventually sinking back down into the bed. There may even be a firm, short nod at Wells' version. It is the truth, after all.

As for the rest of it...

"You can't be a soldier and stay innocent, Wells," and the tone says Wells should know this. "It should be enough to stay loyal."

( "My country is better off without the likes of you-" )

"I never said anything about innocent, Ryan. But I'd rather break faith with my country than see it break faith with the generations yet to come."

He smiles, thinly, tiredly.

"I know what I am, Ryan. There's a word for men who do what I did. But I'd do it again if I had to, to keep England from becoming the kind of place where the men who're supposed to protect it are willing to give off being men and take up being monsters."

And possibly there is no better example of that than Ryan, in every sense of the word. And in the end, knowing this is what it came to, would he do any of it differently?

He pauses, silently considering. In a word? No. He told Suzi once that she shouldn't have to be strong. That was what people like him were for. You did what was asked of you in the hopes that, someday, people like him would no longer be needed.

He is not a good man.

"If that's what it takes." It's an admission. He knows what he is too, Wells.

It's a price some have to pay.

Wells is not a nice man; he's by far the hardest of his family, and the one least prone to his father's insistence on mercy and second chances. But he did get raised with a conscience, and he's put a lot of effort into keeping it that way.

Perhaps that's part of it.

He runs a hand over his face, not much wanting to pursue the current line of thought any further. Still, he's not the sort to let things fester if he can avoid it, so-

"Any other questions, as long as I'm here?"

Ryan considers a moment. He's not going to ignore a free pass on information.

"Anything you'd like to mention about our shared condition?" There would definitely be an arched brow here because the only thing Wells' told him so far is that the night of the full moon is the worst.

Helpful, Wells, real helpful.

Yeah, well, being sneered at's no way to put a man in a good temper. He's feeling generous just now, so be thankful.

"I'd have to start by sayin' it's a whole fucking lot easier to keep at least some of your shit together if you stay away from meat completely any time you haven't got fur," he says. "I got told that early on, and it's worked damned well for me. You can't afford to give the beast what it wants, or it'll be that much stronger than you come full moon. It's all right to let it out a little bit once in a while, but it's got to be on your terms, not because you're tired of fighting it or want to cut loose."

He pauses, waiting to see how that's absorbed.

Ryan's not exactly sneering, since that would involve moving facial muscles. He does sound unimpressed, however.

He's been told that before, but he still doesn't agree with it. He feels that the 'beast', as Wells puts it, is him, not a separate aspect. He gives Wells a nod to continue, but keeps his face neutral.

"You already know about the healing, I expect," Wells says. "Mind you don't fall back on it too hard during full moon. It takes something out of you to heal that fast, and it gets bloody hard to think- the more you're hurt, the harder it gets. Too much of it at a go and you'll lose it completely. I should know. I got shot twice early on-" He taps the underside of his jaw. "They had to taser the shit out of me to drop me after that."

That's something Ryan didn't know, but it makes sense. He tilts his head ever so slightly.

"What were you doing around people?" He's being very civil. If Wells is going to give him Intel, Ryan can at least not be an arse.

Wells grimaces. "I was goin' with a friend to his own world, and he didn't know it was full moon there," he says. "Couldn't get back on my own, either, so I held out as long as I could. Which wasn't much, since this was bloody early on."

Ryan's going to guess this wasn't a friendly visit, since Wells was shot.

"I see. Anything else?" Still civil, still the neutral features.

"It's not just silver metal that gets you," says Wells. "Silver compounds 'n silver solutions're just as bad. Especially inhaled."

That memory's far too fresh in this place.

Wells gets a sharp look. It sounds like he may have found that out the hard way. Ryan had a bad reaction to silver on his hand. Inhaled? There may be a flicker of sympathy across his face.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Wells nods. After a while he notes, "That's the big stuff. Although I'd be careful at the firing range if I were you. Guns're a lot louder and smell a hell of a lot more than they used to."

Ryan gives a slight nod. It makes sense.

There's a long moment before he stiffly says, "I appreciate it."

"Y'welcome," says Wells.

This place unnerves him, and he wants out as soon as possible. Maybe that's why he's opting not to be a bastard; God knows he's in a position to be. Ist just doesn't seem to suit the situation right now.

Of course, thinking about it only makes the room worse, so he shakes his head. "I"ve got to get going. If I see any of the doctors I'll tell 'em about the paracetamol."

Ryan says nothing because for that he definitely owes Wells a 'thank you'. Civil or not, that's pushing it.

He glares at the ceiling instead as Wells leaves.

Millitimed to Yesterday Evening

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