bigapplesauce | Don't Believe Me Just Watch

Current Location: Carl Schurz Park on the East River (Rift's edge)
Current Music: September 10th (forward-dated)

Entry tags:

Don't Believe Me Just Watch

"All right kids, here's what it is," says Iman cheerfully. She's punchy today. Spent the last couple days helping Greta move into the formerly-ROMAC apartments, now just apartments - under whose maintenance, well, that's still a bit of a jumble but Greta has a home now, a good safe distance from the former Base, and moreover, it's a beautiful day for some science. She flexes her left hand and gestures demonstratively at the park's edge, the river beyond it, and more to the point, the Rift's border. Not that anyone she knows of has tried escaping Manhattan via the East River, but Satan's notes definitely helped her construct a solid map of its perimeter, and now that she's so close she can almost feel the crackle of energy, tingling a little in her fingers. Exciting stuff.

It's dawn, almost no one's out yet, and at least one of her companions doesn't look too pleased with the choice of hour, but he never looks pleased, so it's moot.

"This is the Rift's edge," she says with a mostly mocking long-buried academic air. "Runs all around the waterfront keeping us boxed in. The rumors tell us that its recent, what do we want to call it, tantrum was immediately preceded by two rifties breaching the border, if not physically, then some other way. We don't know how they did it but we know it can be done." She gives Greta a little smile. They know now that the escapees were Andrew Noble, his husband, and their children, the very same Greta had been looking after - and she knows Andrew had been her first friend here. But the escape has left them with something very important: a proverbial jumping-off point.

"What I'm gonna do is feel it out with this baby." She gives them a little wave with her left hand. "This is what I do back home, and this is possibly the first and last time I'll ever be presented with so clearly delineated a membrane. So if I can't breach it, I can at the very least interact with it, study it, get some idea how far it might bend under the right circumstances. And that's what I'm gonna do."

Well, she's excited anyway. Rush knows he's more or less here to spot her in case something goes horribly wrong, an eventuality she's assured him won't happen, she'll be careful, she promises. Greta, she invited for a little clean fun showing off, and because, well, she wants Greta to know if there's hope of getting home. Much as that eventuality pains her to think about.

Anyway. She cracks her knuckles unnecessarily and gives them a big grin.

"Ready?"

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His mind is refreshingly easy to control without the influence of recent sleep, and he feels better than he has in days now that the bruising on his ribs has stopped causing him extreme pain with every infinitesimal movement, and in reluctant compliance Rush stands, arms folded, uncertain as to why Greta has been selected to accompany them. She has proven herself reasonably astute, and perceptive, certainly, but surely these matters extend somewhat beyond the talents of the layman.

He has been very clear on the point that he does not consider this a good idea, from a personal or scientific standpoint, but he is in no way concerned.

He is in no way concerned.

Rush inclines his head fractionally in acquiescence and looks away.

"Be warned that should the Rift make any attempts on my life as a result of this," he remarks dryly, "I will be extremely annoyed."

It's been an odd few days, trying to get resettled in a new apartment and deal with the conflicting emotions of Andrew's successful escape. She will miss him, of course, and the twins, but he got out. Just as Iman said, it can be done. She could go home.

And the Rift could throw another temper tantrum in response, which is one of the reasons she can't quite bring herself to just be grateful Iman's trying. Not that she's trying anything big today, of course, but still. It's hard to be pleased by the thought of getting out of here if it means a heavy punishment for anyone and everyone left behind.

There are other reasons not to be pleased, chief among them that Iman is her friend, and a successful escape would mean losing her, too, but Greta pushes those aside. It's not as if anyone's actually going anywhere right now. Which means the Rift shouldn't have any reason to kick up a fuss. Right?

"It wouldn't," she insists in response to Rush, though there's a heavily implied 'would it?' To Iman she adds, probably without need, "You'll be careful?"

"No one's getting their lives attempted on, calm down," says Iman with a dismissive wave. "I'm being as careful as I know how. Don't you worry." Either of you, though she directs it at Greta. There's no helping Rush.

She turns to face the invisible wall and rolls her shoulders back before reaching up slowly, her fingers splaying out. She doesn't even need to apply any of her usual techniques to feel it - it's there, it'd keep her from climbing up on the rail and hauling ass over the edge if she wanted to. Her fingertips tingle all the more as she makes contact - it doesn't hurt, though she could imagine it hurting if she pressed harder, or tried to ram her way through it. As it is she's barely touching it now, the fields of electromagnetism between her molecules and the border buzzing with activity.

"I can feel it," she says, her tone now a little deeper, serious and invested. This is so fucking fascinating. "It's - I mean it's exactly like dimensional layer, but you know normally those can be accessed from anywhere, no specific point, not like this. This is incredible, like a little pocket dimension. Like it's squatting. Or, well, I guess we are." She tosses a grin over her shoulder, see, I'm fine, then turns back and refocuses, feeling out the surface, if there are any cracks. There aren't, of course, it's incredibly fortified, but - well, it's not like when she tried before, in the park on her first day, when there was just nothing, no reaction. This, she could probably fuck around with, if she wanted grievous consequences. All they need is more information, a weakness to exploit, a distraction, maybe - something. The notes Rush passed onto her contained some theory about that, something she can toy around with in the weeks to come.

"You know, normally," she says conversationally, half turning back to gesture expressively with her other arm, "I'd be able to just peel this away, I mean, that's how I got here in the first place, sort of spreading out the molecular field a bit, making a hole I can crawl through. Quantum tunneling, essentially, but on a larger, much more literal scale than this universe has ever imagined it. I mean this thing is like, impenetrable, obviously I'd have to do a lot more work to-"

Her sentence cuts off with a sharp intake of breath, a gasping response to a sudden frighteningly firm tug on her arm, like it's been magnetized; she's yanked neatly inward, the limb disappearing right up to her elbow, she can still feel it, in that nebulous space between, but it's - something's pulling now, inexorably, and she has nothing to brace against.

"What the," she starts to say, not even afraid for how bewildering it is - this isn't supposed to happen, it's not supposed to invite her in - and then the force yanks again, pulls her in right up to the shoulder. "Fuck-!"

Her first reaction is not panic, it's just indignation. This was not supposed to happen. Not in front of her friends.

Rush says nothing. He looks pointedly away, surveying the expanse of dark rippling water from beneath lowered brows.

He is in no way concerned.

Asadi begins properly and he watches, eyes glaring and intent, but she appears to have everything well within hand. He cannot altogether suppress the swelling sense of wrongness to the entire procedure, the wrenching anxiety unnervingly similar to that which was summoned by every premature, unfounded, disastrous attempt to dial Earth. He cannot deny the advantages to exploring the Rift's boundaries; to abort such a massive, critical undertaking over nothing more than some poorly-defined bad feeling would be nothing short of scientific anathema.

She flashes them both a reassuring look, a confident flash of teeth, and the air alights with a sudden static. He tenses, feels the hairs on his arm stand on end in congruence with the faint buzz of too-charged, too-ionized particles, and Rush looks at her sharply at the same moment her arm jolts.

It submerges itself in the Rift, the great barrier folding beneath it, and he does not need to hear her startled exclamation to know that the entire endeavor has unceremoniously and abruptly misfired. Rush uncurls from his taut, unnerved stance immediately, lurching at her, one hand fisting around the material at her other shoulder, the other snapping over her free elbow.

"Back off," he hisses, the uneasy edge to the words verging on panic, his voice ragged and his accent thick. "Back off now."

The only reaction Greta can summon for most of Iman's lecture is polite bewilderment. Much of the language sails right over her head with room to spare. But she didn't expect to understand it all, and that isn't really why she's here. Iman had wanted to show her what she could do, and Greta had wanted to see it, if not understand it.

And it's nice. Iman is obviously in her element, and Greta can't help but feel some vicarious enjoyment as her friend lectures away. She's still not entirely comfortable with the way her friend's hand is all but pressing against some Rift-built barrier - it seems like tempting fate - but everything's all right so far.

And then, abruptly, it isn't. There's a sudden charge in the air, her skin prickling the way it would before a bad storm. Iman's arm seems to vanish as she's jerked toward the barrier, and Greta chokes off a cry of alarm. This shouldn't be happening. Rush has Iman's other arm a moment later - this definitely shouldn't be happening - and she stumbles forward a pace or two without any clear plan, without any clear thought except for a growing, wordless dread. "Iman...?"

"I'm trying!" she grits out, startled by Rush's hand on her arm, too distracted and frustrated to really note it for what it is. "What, you think I did this on purpose?"

She's already expanding her fingers, fighting back, trying to fray the space around her arm. The resultant fold is more significant than she meant it to be; it's a full tear, she can see into it, see her arm in it, though she can't pull it back out. In apparent response to her efforts, a powerful pulse passes once through her body, nearly winding her.

"Get away!" she snaps, shoving Rush back hard enough to dislodge him. He's not safe holding onto her, neither of them should get close. The gap is still widening, the barrier folding inward, creating a little tunnel, just as she'd explained - the inside of it nebulous and void. "It's doing this on its own, I didn't - "

And then it snaps her up, pulls her in, she's thrown heavily to the ground, if it can be called that. Everything here burns with electrical energy, she can't really see right, she can just see the world, Rush and Greta, back through the open gap. It's not far, crawling distance, but she can't crawl, can't reach, can't move. Too many forces conflicting, pressing and pulling, and her arm caught at the center of it. Her hand convulses violently and her whole body follows, wracked immediately with intense, overpowering pain; her face contorts to scream but she doesn't have enough breath for it. Oh god, no, no no no. It's shorting, the mechanisms frying, breaking down, and if she doesn't stop it, if it gets bad enough, the recoil of it will hit her nervous system and her brain, and it'll destroy her, maybe even kill her. This wasn't supposed to happen, this wasn't supposed to happen. Not after she promised - not in front of Greta.

She twists and struggles but she can't get up, can't do shit, can't even speak.

An out-thrust hand slams him back and away immediately before the fabric of the barrier folds smoothly into itself, gapping into something terrifyingly inconsistent and rippling and difficult to look at. He is only propelled back a few staggered paces, his expression twisting into one of horrified alarm as it jerks her sharply inward - or outward, perhaps more appropriately - with a violent crack of discharging energy.

He glimpses the unnatural topography of the interior, a spatial fold punctuated by the stutter and crackle of a building charge. He seizes upon the half-remembered scrap of a dream in which Asadi exercised that similar function and its damaging, painful result, and reacts with an immediate, desperate fervency.

He hurls himself into the unnatural continuous warping of space, into the stench of ozone and its distortion of physics, landing halfway on top of Asadi and clapping one hand over the elbow of her hissing, spasming left arm. Immediately the shock jolts up his arm, arcing around his spine and possibly eliciting an appropriately pained sound of some kind, torn out between furiously clenched teeth. He claws at empty space with his free hand but he has left himself with no appropriate handholds and so he wrenches himself partway around and thrusts out his hand and snaps out to Greta between agonized breaths - "Grab. Grab hold, now."

Iman's arm hasn't vanished. It's still there, the center of a hole in the world that is yawning open around it. She barely hears her friend's objections, too busy staring in horror at the shifting world beyond the tear. It defies any description besides wrong. But then Iman shoves Rush away, and Greta's gaze snaps back to her, confused and frightened - why on earth would she shove him away?

And then, as if it was merely waiting for Rush to let go, the Rift sucks Iman in. Greta cries out in alarm. Some distant part of her wonders if it's taking Iman home, if it's selfish of her to object, but no. The horrible, shifting mouth remains open, allowing them both to see inside, see what it's doing to her. This is a punishment. This is torture.

This cannot continue. She can't lose Iman, she can't, she can't.

Rush throws himself through before Greta can move, clamping a hand around Iman's arm and grunting in pain. The other flails back toward her, and she doesn't need him to order her to grab hold. Her hand seizes around his wrist as a sudden, sharp pain lances up her arm. She couldn't let go of him if she wanted to. Just as well. She will not lose them - not either of them. Not after all Rush has done for her, all Iman is to her. Greta grabs hold with her other hand, digs in her heels, and pulls with all her might.

It won't let her go, won't let her breathe, and for a horrible moment she just wants the gap to close, if it's going to kill her, don't make them watch, just-

Rush's weight landing on her comes as a surprise, jerks her out of that bullshit thought cycle, no, fuck that, she's gonna fucking live. She grips onto him weakly with her good hand, looking up at him, frantic and pleading - he shouldn't have come in here, Greta shouldn't be reaching in but they're pulling her out, or the Rift is letting them, whatever, she feels the adhesion give, her left arm coming free with a sharp stab, and as she finally breathes real air again she lets out a pathetic, sobbing cry.

As she rolls out onto the ground, the gap closes up behind them, she's left shaking and staring up at them, her hand still wrapped around Rush's arm, and her eyes lock onto his, wide and desperate.

"Rush-" her voice nothing but a thin, strained whisper, "-help me."

Another sickening shock snaps its way from right wrist to shoulder in a painful fractal discharge, arching his back, but he continues to cling to the fizzling, spitting, dying arm and Greta's fingers wrap around his wrist, his feet digging into the indefinable surface as they haul one collapsing mechanism out from the grasp of another.

They spill onto the ground in a panting disarray, Asadi's hand gripping his, the other a disordered mess of fraying circuitry.

It is tied directly to her nervous system. It is tied to her brain.

He does not need to run a potential risk analysis to know the potential risks.

He is in no way concerned.

The fading tone from the Rift's violent retaliation drills into his ears, distant and unbroken.

In a swift, methodical movement, Rush frees his hand from Greta's and leans over the sputtering prosthetic with its shuddering internal components.

"All right there, lass," he murmurs, a distracted, unrealized litany as he scans the arm for any immediate methods of defusing it to prevent any potential damage. That was altogether too optimistic a notion, clearly, but his hands move deftly up and down in search of a means of access to its interior.

Her body aches and her nerves are jangling, but they're out, they're all out, and that awful maw shuts with a self-satisfied snap. Greta falls to her knees beside Iman, looking her over, her expression drawn and anxious. Her arm seems to be the problem, but she knows nothing of that kind of technology; it's hardly an oven. Rush is trying, though. She just has to let him work.

But Iman, poor Iman, she's still in agony. And Greta knows a little about that. Not enough to make it stop, as she so wishes she could, but enough to do something. She can't just sit here, useless.

"Here," she says, reaching for Iman's free hand and taking it in her own, still aching from its earlier work. "Squeeze as hard as you need to, all right?" Greta attempts a bracing smile, and it's as unsteady as the rest of her. "We've got you. You're going to be fine." If she just says it with enough conviction, maybe it will be true.

'Lass' would be worthy of a punch under any other circumstances, but in this situation it's just unnervingly comforting. Her eyes tilt to Greta's but she can't look at her, not yet, that'll be the end of her; she tenses and jerks with another painful spasm shooting up from her elbow, her heartbeat feels arrhythmic, this needs to end now.

She hates this. She hates it with every fiber of her being, everything she is. Her arm is part of her, she made it herself, she was never in danger of anything like this back home, where there were safeguards, tools, people who understood the limb and how it worked. Now, in the park, all she has is Rush's considerable skill, and as much as it is, it isn't enough. Not to save it. She has to give it up or she will die.

"Rush," she chokes out again, tugging her hand free from Greta's and gripping onto his shirt. "Listen. You have to - you have to sever the connection." She winces and barely bites back a scream, god, this hurts so much, more than the initial accident, more than anything she's ever fucking felt. There are tears in her eyes when she forces herself to continue hoarsely: "Open it up, there's a, a panel in the upper arm under the shoulder joint, you have to - have to cut the wires. Tear them out if you have to, just do it. Now."

The effort of saying all this has ground her down even further, and she drops back heavily, her hand falling back to her side, opening, seeking Greta's again. She needs that contact, just as Greta knew she would, offered it so immediately and freely, and she's going to need it all the more very shortly.

"All right," he says, patient and measured, one hand briefly drifting up to support the back of her neck, his thumb going to her pulse in the same fluid motion. Its rhythm is erratic. She is, clearly, in considerable pain, and it is in everyone's best interest for him to work quickly and efficiently.

He fixes her with an even, controlled look, and says quietly with every confidence, "you're gonna be fine."

He pulls away.

The panel is exactly where she described, and he can feel it despite the raw and pounding ache reverberating through the nerves of his shoulder and his hands - a thin, white filigree peeks out from beneath the cuff his shirt, stark and pale against his skin, but it is of little consequence. Rush depresses the panel and it opens with a staggered whirr of damaged circuitry.

He is not in possession of any means to simply clip or cut the interior wires, but the shivering discharge crackling through them cannot afford to be ignored. He winds his fingers into the arm's innards, wrapping his grip securely around them despite the unsettling electric stabs of unstable energy prickling up his arm.

"You're gonna be fine," he repeats, again looking at Asadi with a perfectly composed control of facial expression, and in one harsh, merciless jerk, rips the circuits free.

Greta bites down on the insides of her cheeks, unable to match Rush's unshakable calm but unwilling to dissolve into a mess, not when Iman needs her. She retakes her friend's hand the moment it's offered, trying to keep her grip firm and reassuring without being too tight.

She can't look at what Rush is doing. She can't avoid looking at what Rush is doing.

Acting on a desperate impulse to give Iman something to focus on besides the pain, besides the necessary invasion into her arm, Greta reaches out with her unoccupied hand, her fingers sliding beneath the edge of Iman's hijab, her thumb stroking her cheek. Something gentle, and harmless, and good. "It's okay," she breathes, bolstered by Rush's reassurances.

But she still can't help but grimace when he reaches into the mechanics of Iman's arm and tears.

It's too much - Rush looking her in the eye like that, has he ever looked at her like that, it looks weird on him, no one should be looked at like that. She stares back until Greta catches her attention, drawing her over just in time, before Rush breaks her.

She hadn't indicated it would hurt so much but both of them could probably guess it would.

She hadn't really known herself what it would feel like.

And it isn't just the pain, cracking down her spine so hard her back arches, she gasps violently, the aborted start to a scream before the breath goes out of her, her eyes shut tight against it, against both of them, she was so stupid and so arrogant to think she could just play around like this and nothing would happen to her, Rush was right to worry and right to advise against it; it isn't just that, either, neither the pain nor the shame, it's knowing that her arm is gone, again, for good this time.

It's nothing now, a dead weight at her side, agony swelling in her shoulder like it's been dislocated, the illusory sensation of torn, flaring muscles, but there's no organic damage, nothing that can heal, it's just a fucking prop now, and she is nothing without it.

She tilts her head away from it, away from Rush and his calm, calm reassuring fucking face, into Greta's hand. The pain is dissipating now, or maybe it's just her receptors dulling, her consciousness fading out, yeah that's probably what it is, and she needs it. She wants to say something reassuring but she can't, too tired to even open her eyes, and that's just as well too because she's already crying (Greta must feel it, her fingers getting wet) and she doesn't want to, not in front of anyone, it'll just be worse if she opens them now.

She grips a little tighter at Greta's hand before she just lets go entirely, she's too tired to face this, maybe ever. Unconsciousness is preferable.

The maneuver is, apparently, successful. The staggered cry that cuts itself off in a pained, strangled sound is unendurable, and it is even more unbearable than the knowledge, the full knowledge that she asked this of him and he executed this and this should be sufficient in preventing any neurological or neuromuscular or nervous damage, it should be because it has to be.

Asadi begins fading almost immediately. The pain must be immense. It must be. The arm is still and functionless at her side, its internal wiring fucking devastated by his own hand and by the Rift's, and he does not look up at Greta he simply continues to work quickly and logically and works one arm beneath her back to carefully pull her upright.

"She'll be fine," he assures Greta, his words a brusque, ideally calming assessment. "We're getting her out. She's gonna be fine."

Oh no oh no no no. Iman arches her back and clutches Greta's hand in an agony she can almost imagine, but this is nothing like what she's been through. Iman didn't anticipate this, can't call it a necessary pain. And there is no reward, no goodness that can come of it all, no weary relief or quiet joy: just a broken arm that lies limp at her side like a dead thing.

It's too cruel.

Greta's vision blurs as Iman turns her face into her hand. There are hot tears dampening her fingers. And then Iman's grip goes slack, and Greta lets out a panicked sob, frantically wiping at her eyes so she can see what's happening, oh god, is she, has she...?

She can't. She can't.

No. She's just fainted. She's still alive. She's going to be fine. Greta buries her face in her hands, only giving herself a moment, then drops them into her lap, briskly wiping her tears and Iman's into her skirt. No more of this. She can't be useless.

"My apartment's close," she says, reaching out to help support Iman's weight. "Can you lift her on your own?"

"Stop crying," he says, his tone never diverging from its even pitch and volume. The arm is the most difficult to manage, sagging with an unnerving stillness at Asadi's side as he pulls it over the uneven slope of his shoulders. The motion elicits more pain than is natural or expected and he buckles momentarily, but adjusts for the aching pulses in his abdomen and shoulder immediately and accordingly.

"I've got her," he confirms, teeth gritted against the drag of what amounts to a complete dead weight against him, but his grip is unrelenting and he does not let her drop. He meets Greta's eyes unwaveringly, his measured composure a nearly transparent veneer over the locked blaze of something flinted and savage and resolute. "We have to go."

The brusque order stings, and Greta bristles. "Oh, I apologize," she snaps without so much as a crumb of genuine contrition, clambering to her feet. For goodness' sake. Does he think she doesn't know how useless her tears are? "Please forgive me for not having as--as insufferably tight a lid on my feelings as you do on yours."

Not that sniping at Rush is any more useful than crying (though it is a bit more satisfying). They need to get Iman out of here, and he won't be able to carry Iman the entire distance - she saw the way he buckled when he first lifted her. Little as she wants to leave Iman's side, she could do with a few moments away from Rush. "I'm getting a cab," she announces, striding briskly towards the street. Hopefully she can flag one down by the time he catches up.

His eyes narrow incrementally, but the only strain to the words is what carries over from the effort it currently requires to keep both him and Asadi upright while neither of them are in optimal condition. Greta departs before he can summon any sort of rejoinder, and by the time he has partially carried, partially dragged Asadi to the waiting cab, the nerves in his shoulder have compacted into a blistering, shearing point of agony that is having a truly detrimental effect on his internal structure if the hollow flaring behind the adjacent shoulder blade is any indication.

"We are helpful to her only as long as we stay calm," he says, injecting the final word the barest fraction of impatience. "She will be fine. Act like it."

The driver is staring at them.

The driver is staring at them and gaping, and Rush is trying to maneuver Asadi into the cab with a minimum of muscular coordination on his part or hers, and is also currently trying not to have a headache.

"Unhelpful," he snaps at him. "We require your services. I suggest you employ them."

What a wonderful time for him to revert to the unpleasant personality he'd been when she first met him. Well, that's not an entirely fair assessment - but neither is his assessment of her, if he feels the need to talk down to her like that. It's not as if she's having a complete breakdown. Her eyes are dry, now. She's just not prepared to treat Iman's horrible pain and subsequent collapse as a minor inconvenience. The better to, what, conserve energy that can then be channeled into inexcusable rudeness towards their driver? She could just about smack him.

"Ignore him, please," she says, slipping into the back from the other side so she can take Iman's weight on her own perfectly capable shoulders, thank you very much. "Here, I've got her," she insists, cradling Iman's upper body as if she was a very overgrown child and letting her head loll against her shoulder. Once they have Iman as comfortably arranged as the cab allows, she looks back to the driver. "Park and 90th, please, quick as you can."

Maybe it's the fact that she was good enough not to snap at him, or maybe its the pleading don't-make-this-harder look she gives him, but the driver turns around with a resigned sigh and pulls away from the curb.

He cedes the majority of the required interaction with the driver to Greta with a grunt and a weary flap of a hand. Asadi does not stir throughout the duration of the trip, but neither does her condition appear to worsen in any visible way.

Rush does not waste time regretting unfavorable conditions or circumstances, simply rubs the aching, mildly uncooperative stiffness of his right arm. He does not examine it. Distractions cannot be afforded currently, and his own slightly damaged arm takes a low position of priority compared to Asadi's much more damaged, much more vital one.

He told her that she would be fine and so she will be.

He wrenches the cab door open before the vehicle has even fully halted outside the building, presumably Greta's, and immediately begins to collect Asadi.

It's unsettling how still and silent Iman is - Greta can't call it peaceful, knowing what ground her dear friend down to this point - but at least she can take some comfort in the steady puffs of air that ghost over her neck. Iman is still breathing. She'll be fine. She'll be fine.

She first helps Rush ease Iman out of the back seat, then thrusts money at the driver - more than required, but he deserves a generous tip, and making change would take too long. A moment later, she's out of the cab and opening the door to admit them.

It's a short enough walk to her apartment. Her hands are shaking, but most of her attention is on Iman, so the key finds the lock on the first try. "You can put her on the bed," she says. At least she's too recently moved in to have acquired any clutter, so the apartment is easy to move through. Then, half-anticipating an infuriating response: "What can I do to help?"

The process of carrying Asadi out from the cab and into the apartment is painful for every inch of it, but it is a discomfort Rush disregards in full. His jaw sets on a harsh edge as he levers Asadi onto the bed without somewhat less care than is intentional; the throbbing to his ribs increases the difficulty of the endeavor significantly.

A swift assessment of her pulse, present if faint, assures him that she is alive if presently not conscious. He begins running hands over the nonresponsive husk that is what remains of her prosthetic, the full power of his attention devoted to the open panel and the frayed chaos of burnt and torn-out circuitry buried within. He presses one hand to the side of his head to ward off the impending headache, the other extricating the first of many wires from within. Some have melted against their fellows from the heat, and it has made their subsequent disentangling maddeningly difficult.

The arm is cold. The lack of heat and life and motion is one he finds intensely unsettling.

Rush does not look up from his work as he continues to evaluate the unfortunate state of her arm, eyes troubled and intent. He mutters the question distractedly without lifting his gaze. "Do you have materials to fashion a sling, possibly?"

"Yes," she replies, almost before the question has even sunk in. But a sling is simple enough, even if her apartment isn't exactly overflowing with spare cloth. After a moment's thought, she goes to her top drawer and slides it open, eyes sweeping over the contents even though she knows there is only one thing here that would do the job. She pulls out the scarf, runs her thumb over the neat, even stitching. It will survive being a sling, she thinks. And she can repair it if it snags on anything.

Everything will be fine.

"Here," she says quietly, setting the folded garment down on the bedspread. She takes in the stiff lines of Rush's shoulders, and the way he presses a hand to his head, and sweeps off to the bathroom, then the kitchen. A few moments later, she sets a glass of water and a little bottle of painkillers on the bedside table, for whoever might need them. Even if Rush doesn't want them, she wouldn't be surprised if Iman did, when she wakes. Which she will. Soon. She must.

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this is really upsetting

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