I will not take from you, and you will not owe / I will protect you from the fire below [OPEN]

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Who: Alleyana Tabris and OPEN!
Where: Greenhouse car, or just outside 3-A.
When: Any time between Mission 10 and the healing/time reversing plot.
What: Two prompts and a wildcard. One's just light gardening stuff and the other is crazy bad phantom limb pain awfulness.
Warnings: Phantom limb prompt outside of 3-A -- and threads from it: graphic in terms of physical pain and description of past torture.


xxxxxit's not in my mind, it's here at my side / go tell the world that I'm still alive

( I will match prose/bracket format. )

xxxxx🛡️ Greenhouse Car

Any time after the most recent platform, Alleyana could be found rummaging around in one of the garden plots in the greenhouse car. Poking around in the dirt, fussing over the tinniest sprouts from the seeds she'd bought at the shop. Watering some and not others, because of the twenty seeds she'd acquired, only one had a double, and some of these plants were from very different parts of Thedas.

So having them all share one plot was probably doing a bit more than flirting with disaster, but here she is anyway, working with what she's got.

With her whole entire one (1) hand that barely works.

xxxxx🛡️ Phantom Limb

In her mind, Alleyana's left hand blazes with uncontrollable power, power that leaks out of her eyes and through her gums, searing every vein, dragging her up into the air, screaming and kicking, bones glowing white hot through her flesh--

She wakes with a sharp, pained noise and lunges out of whatever bunk she's been using in her assigned sleeper. Blind with pain, she scrambles for the door and stumbles out into the hall, not even sure what she's doing. All she knows is she wants to get away. Somewhere private. Somewhere quiet.

She's not going to make it that far.

"Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just."

Not a recital so much as a mantra to keep sane, the Inquisitor only makes it a few staggering steps down the hall before she has to drop to the floor, curling as much as she can around the stump of her left arm.

"Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood the Maker's will is written."

She can feel it. It's not there, but she can feel it melting from the inside...

xxxxx🛡️ Wildcard?

xxxxx(Wildcard.)

Comments

Phantom Limb

[miseris_socios]

Ken's walking down the hallway when he sees someone staggering in his direction. He moves quickly towards her as she falls, his Evoker already pressed to his head when he gets there. He pulls the trigger and there's the familiar sound of a gunshot mixed with breaking glass.

"Diarama!" Nemesis appears, spinning for a moment before lifting a limb. A warm energy gets cast at Alleyana - not enough to totally relieve the pain, but enough to help a bit. The figure disappears and Ken pockets his Evoker again. "Hey... can you hear me? Let's get you to medical." He's not sure what else to do for someone so clearly in pain.

Re: Phantom Limb

[inquisitor_lavellan]

There's a few good things going on here. One, Alley is far too distracted to do more than flinch at the sounds of a gunshot and breaking glass. And two, she's been hit with healing magic plenty of times before, and at least isn't alarmed by the very concept.

That's mostly where the good news ends. Alleyana's still curled around the stump of her left arm -- and the black metal bar that completes the length of it. Forehead to the floor, she hisses in a breath and then picks up her head...

And can still barely think straight.

The pain's a lot more... distant, now. But it's still like the difference between being immolated and only having a leg on fire. It's an improvement, but oh boy, what a low bar it is.

"Medical... ain't gonna... do shit."

[miseris_socios]

"They have painkiller there. It might be able to help more... I can only heal so much. I could try again if that makes you feel more comfortable." He sits down, reaching out to cushion her head from the floor with his hand. "And there's people who know more than me there."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"...Fine, let's... go there then."

If anyone tries to balance her humours she'll just distract herself from the pain of her missing arm by punching them with her ruined hand. That sounds like a plan!

"In a... in a second," Alley's not quite able to get up yet, still clutching the stump of her left arm with a white-knuckled grip, hidden by her soft leather glove. But she does at least pick her head up off the kid's hand, so that's a start.

[miseris_socios]

"Okay." He doesn't move away, just sitting there. He's really not sure what's going on, but she's hurt. "... It's okay. I'm still here. I know being in a lot of pain can be tough so... I hope it doesn't sound like I'm patronizing you when I say you're doing a good job."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Alley's covered in enough scars just on her face for it to be obvious she's used to pain. And there's the whole missing arm, thing.

But this pain where it feels like her arm is there, and melting from the inside? That's a new one to the Inquisitor. She's just glad it's kind of distant and dulled, now.

It probably won't stay that way for long. So with gritted teeth, she sits up on her shins and then lunges up to her feet.

"Let's go."

[miseris_socios]

He's aware. Still, he's trying to be reassuring, like when Chidori was first trying to get him to sit still for healing. He nods and stands up, moving alongside her easily, keeping up the brisk pace. He can call a medic if he has to... but medical will have better options, anyway.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"You know how to use anything when we get... there?"

Hesitation because the pain is starting to creep back in, and accompanied by a stumble in her step. Time to move faster, she thinks.

[miseris_socios]

"Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what's causing what you have, but there should be something that can help." Ice packs, painkillers... there's got to be something. He follows along with her, still keeping up.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"It..." Alley's still holding onto the stump, too, crooked fingers of her existing hand gripping it around the black metal bar that juts off the end. "It feels like my arm's back, but it's not. And it... feels like it's... melting from the inside, again."

Not at this exact moment, of course. The pain's dulled by Ken's... spell? But may as well describe it while she can get words out, however hesitant.

[miseris_socios]

"Yeah I... might call one of the doctors in after once we get you settled. They'd have a better idea than me." He keeps leading her on, trying to remember where he saw painkillers in the car. They've got to be somewhere easily accessible. "The one I saw was nice, I'm sure she'll help you."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"Leeches aren't going to help with this."

And that's what Alley has come to expect of 'doctors'. Leeches, sometimes weird concoctions to make her puke. Nothing very helpful in either case.

"I just want the pain to shut up. If only this train had a bar."

[miseris_socios]

"There's not going to be any leeches, no one's used stuff like that in my world for hundreds of years." He keeps leading her towards the car... it's not far. Next one over? He's pretty sure, anyway.

"And if it had a bar I think you'd have too many underage kids drinking."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"Not if I drank it all first."

You know, to help keep it away from the kiddos.

She's a helper.

[miseris_socios]

Sure is.

He opens the door to the medical car and points her to a seat. "Sit down." He climbs up on the counter so he can get to the 'over the counter' medicines and look for some painkiller.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Alley just sits the hell down and concentrates on breathing as the pain starts to creep back up toward full strength. Inside her glove, her singular hand is white-knuckled in its grip on her stump.

"Maker's breath."

[miseris_socios]

Ken eventually finds some ibuprofen and a cup. He fills it with cool water and brings it along with two pills over to her.

"Here. Swallow these two - don't chew them - and drink some water. I'm gonna call a medic that can help you, but that should at least start to help."

[subcircuits]

It's late, and Devero's usually a pretty good sleeper, but-- well, everyone has their nights, don't they? So he's up, wearing just his loose pajamas and his new-ish sandals, walking the length of the somnolent train. The way he's focusing on the quiet and the movement of his body, it's almost meditative--

At least, until a body comes lunging out of a doorway just ahead of him.

He jumps back in instinctive alarm, then lunges himself towards the staggering person before he even realizes that he recognizes her. It's the voice that really clues him in; no one else on the train sounds quite like she does.

"Alley?" He reaches her just as she hits the ground, and goes down to one knee beside her with his hands hovering uncertainly. "Alleyana!"

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Alleyana just hisses out more of the Chant to try to hold onto the present, the here and now where her arm isn't literally melting from the inside, crackling and snapping and burning...

"In your heart shall burn an unquenchable flame," she barely gets the words out between her teeth, "All-consuming, and never satisfied."

Fuck that part's a bit on the nose. But it buys her just enough time to glance up at Devero, her eyes wide and wild with pain, "--It's my arm."

You know, the one she doesn't have. That arm.

"I can feel it melting again."

And a fresh bout of pain grabs her and she can't do anything but curl in around the stump even tighter, muffling an anguished shriek into her own shoulder.

[subcircuits]

"It melted--?" Not the time, Devero; the fact that she feels it melting again right now is much more important. Shit, shit, what was it that Chihyoon would do when she was having attacks in her augment arm or leg?

--Things he can't do here. It's not like that grotesque bar Alley sports as an excuse for a prosthetic is equipped with the kind of cutting-edge nocioreactive microTENS pain management sockets that Chihyoon's prosthetics boast. Shit. What else is there?

Triage. Get to triage. It's the only thing he can think as the sound of her shriek fills his head. "Alley, I'm going to take you to medical," he says, scooping his hand under her intact arm and trying to lift her to her feet. "Come on, can you walk?"

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Alley tries to straighten up from her tight curl around her stump, in preparation to stand -- and a fresh wave of pain makes her abort the motion and coil even tighter around it, going super pale under her scars.

"Nnnot until it pa-passes."

If it passes.

[subcircuits]

That answers that. Devero doesn't miss a beat, using his grip on her arm to sling it up and over his shoulder instead. "Hang on," he tells her, and scoops her up into his arms. She's not the lightest thing he's ever carried, but she sure isn't the heaviest, either.

There's four cars between here and triage, and he'll carry her the whole way if he has to.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

The Inquisitor is not used to being picked up, but she doesn't fight the maneuver. Alley stays as curled around her stump as she can get away with, hissing out curses and bits of the Chant alike between her teeth as her vision tries to narrow on her.

Without her singular hand clasped over the stump itself, the occasional violently-green spark crackling past the cinched-closed sleeve can be seen. The residual Anchor, reacting to her pain and increasing it in a literal feedback loop.

It never makes it more than a few inches down the black metal bar standing in as a prosthetic, and it's happening only every minute or two, but it sure is a thing that is happening.

[subcircuits]

Boy, it sure is, isn't it? The close proximity of such obvious magic, especially obvious magic that appears to be causing Alley profound agony, is deeply distressing, but Devero can't let it get to him. Not right now, not when Alley needs help so badly.

So he does his best to ignore the little crackles as he bears her rapidly down the cars between them and triage.

He's definitely feeling the weight of her by the time they arrive, the muscles in his arms and back twitching and protesting and his Interface giving him intermittent warnings about exertion. He's made it, though. He sets her down on the nearest exam bed on the lower deck, not gently but not too hard.

"Tell me what's going on with this," he ask/demands roughly. He just touches the bar of her prosthetic when another one of those sparks dances its short path along the iron, and yanks his hand back quick. "What do I need to know to help you?"

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"I don't know, it's never--"

A fresh wave of pain has the Inquisitor curling back around the stump protectively, the black metal bar jutting out past her side. She can't speak for a moment, eyes clamped shut and teeth bared against the sensation of nerves that aren't even attached to her anymore catching fire.

"I haven't been an amputee for long," she grits out, when she can. "This is new."