ways_infirmary | (no subject)

(no subject)

The infirmary is dark, but upon entry, the lights come up and several machines start humming. The interactive mode of several of the ones that Hank McCoy placed there automatically activates and so there are telltales on several screens around the room. The beds are of several types, including at least one standard Earth type bed, which contains straps for convulsing patients as well. The room lays quiet.

((ooc: put here as a placeholder for HarperBadness plot))

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Harper gurgled, holding his hands to his chest in horror.

Then he laughed deliriously, a horrible, gurgling, high-pitched laugh.

Whoever had done this had a sense of humor, that was for sure.

They were laughing somewhere while he suffered.

Story of his life.

"Shit!" Duo hovers over Harper, not even knowing where to start, now.

"Nita, did you learn how to heal at all? We're gonna need more than compresses and stitches, here!"

He grabs the discarded theta-delta wave device and tries to stick it back on Harper's neck.

Duo was quick, but at the moment he was panicked. And Harper, well, Harper'd learned how to grab things and hold onto them as soon as he could grab things. He had adrenaline fueling him, and terror, and pain, and with a quickness he shouldn't have been capable of in his condition, a hand whipped out into Duo's pocket and pulled out Harper's gun.

Duo probably made a grab for it. Hell, they all probably did, but it didn't matter.

Nothing mattered to Harper after the next few seconds.

He had tried. He'd been there quite a few times, but never had the balls to do it.

Agony was a very good motivator.

In one quick gesture, he held the muzzle of his gauss gun under his chin with blood and gore-drenched hands, closed his tear-brimming eyes (before they closed, they stared at Duo and screamed "Howcouldyouhowcouldyouyoupromised!"), and pulled the trigger.

Then he died, simple as that.

The only people who even noticed were the four in the room. (If someone else had to clean the spattered blood and grey matter off the headboard, they'd have noticed as well).

A limp hand slid down off a bloody chest to rest on the red-soaked sheets, unmoving, as glassy eyes looked upward.

Harper didn't look peaceful.

He didn't look like he was asleep, either. He just looked very thoroughly dead,which was exactly what he was.

The stars kept spinning, the universe kept ending, and everything went on as if nothing had happened.

Because, really, nothing had.

Who cared about the death of a worthless kludge?

Laini is two steps back from the table. Staring.

Just staring. Eyes wide in shock and ears flattened. In a couple moments she will remember to breath again.

Who cares about the death of Seamus Zelazny Harper? One seven-tailed kitsune, at least.

There is not anything she can think to say, other than a whimper in the back of her throat.

Impossible things do happen sometimes.

They didn't in this case.

...Okay, so the mun lied--they did.

The wound in Harper's head closed, grey matter, bone, blood vessels, tissue, skin regenerated. The wound in his chest closed up. The smell or sense or whatever-it-was of magic curled through the air, and even though it didn't clean him up, it did heal him and wake him up.

Harper started breathing again with a huge, ragged, shuddering gasp, almost like the automatic thrashing and expulsion of gases that occurs in bodies after death, only it wasn't, and continued gasping for air.

But this wasn't mercy, oh no.

The second Harper realized what had happened and where he was, and that there was, yet again, a pain and pressure building in his gut, he whimpered: "Fuck. Fuck!"

He wouldn't try the gun again. It'd hurt and he knew that whatever it was that had done this to him wanted him to suffer.

And they didn't want the suffering to stop.

Nita just stares.

This horror -- these things --

the buzzing and stinging of little dark lancets against her skin

are almost beyond her experience.

a myriad of tinier glittering points of power, and these were of a darker fire

And this, the regeneration, is unlike anything she's ever seen.

Wizards see things that can't happen every day, but this can't. Creatures -- matter -- does not appear out of nowhere, and people do not come back from a gunshot through the head. They don't.

"I'm knocking him out," she says, voice shaking, moving to his head. A few words, and a touch to his temple, and he slumps in unconciousness.

The lumps under his skin don't stop.

"What else can we do?"

Just because Harper heals doesn't mean what happened before is erased. Duo was close, when Harper pulled the trigger.

He is very pale under the spatters of blood. And brains. Can't forget those. The soldier in him squashes that voice before it says anything else, and he turns to the others.

"I'll stay."

Duo picks the gun up off the floor and flicks the safety back on.

Laini is doing her best to take deep breaths. Hyperventilating would not be good. It would not. At all. - So she keeps telling herself.

"... I'll stay too. We might be able to figure something. I- This is beyond any sort of magic I know. Its not my type! But I can help take care of him. The spell- it can't last forever. ... I can't."

Nita takes a deep breath, and stops halfway through, because the scent of blood is nauseatingly strong. Like the nausea really needed the help.

"I'll stay too. But I really--" She breaks off and pushes her hair off her face with the back of her wrist. Her voice is more than a little shaky when she continues, "I really need to be go be really sick and then try and sleep for a while. But I'll come back in as often as I can. At least we can keep him out of pain."

McCoy doesn't say anything - just pulls on a new pair of gloves, and gets back to work. Later, when Harper is either healed, and properly recovered, or when he's dead and stays that way, he'll go find a nice quiet corridor and let death know (or is it Death, in this strange bar?) exactly what he thinks about this whole situation. At length. Using as many four-letter words (or more, if he feels like using Klingon, or Romulan) as possible.

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