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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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.

"Thank you." He unfolds it with a brisk, efficient air and begins cradling the wreckage of the arm in the fabric, tying off at the appropriate places. He is not extremely well-versed in the realm of autoschediastically constructing slings out of spare cloth, but a few firm tugs assures that it will hold. Ideally it will hold.

He takes distant note of some other objects set down behind him in a sequence of quiet clinks but does not address them, and instead executes an unnecessary expenditure of energy by reaffirming that Asadi does, indeed, still have a pulse. It is a repetition of motion he finds annoyingly, acharacteristically illogical, as he has already confirmed that her pulse is present and that she is alive, and to doubly ensure so is both wasteful and inefficient.

But she is alive. She will live. Rush breathes out slowly and retreats, one hand adopting its usual position around the back of his neck in a flexing, soothing press of hooked fingers.

"She'll be fine," he murmurs, though whether it is for his benefit or for Greta's is beyond the scope of his insight.

Greta blinks, both surprised and mollified by his thanks. "You're welcome." She still feels a slight stab of anxiety watching him handle the scarf, knowing full well that he's unaware of its sentimental value (and that he probably wouldn't treat it any differently if he was). But it's in no one's best interests for him to abuse it to the point of damaging it, and he doesn't. Still, she lets out a quiet sigh when he finally steps back, leaving it to its new job. At least it seems to be working well enough.

"Nothing to do but wait, then," she guesses, looking down at Iman. She wants to ask if her arm can be mended, but it seems unimportant when weighed against her friend's current insensibility. Besides, Iman designed it. It might not be easy to mend, but Greta can only assume it will be possible.

"Yes," he says quietly. He rises in search of a table, and finds the nearest one equipped with chairs, two of which he drags to the side of the bed. He sinks into one of them, hissing out a tight, anxious breath between clenched teeth. He passes a hand through his hair and must exert significant effort not to reach to dissect the intricacies of Asadi's arm. In her current state, he is just as capable of making things worse as he is of potentially salvaging anything.

Waiting is intolerable. Both hands drop into his lap, and he sighs.

After all his rudeness, the implicit invitation of that second chair is as oddly touching as it is baffling. Part of her wants to keep on her feet, find something to do, even if it's ultimately useless and even if it takes her ages to complete the simplest tasks because she's checking on Iman every ten seconds. But she can't leave Iman alone, not really. And despite her latent exasperation with the man, she doesn't want to leave Rush to sit there alone, either.

She settles herself in the chair beside him with a quiet sigh. Surely Iman will wake soon.

"That's, er," she angles her head towards the bottle and the glass. "Those are for you, if you need them. You looked as if you... might."

He looks up and blinks in mild alarm, taking note of the two indicated objects for the first time.

"Ah," he says.

It occurs to him that this interaction has fallen beyond the breadth of his understanding of typical social subtleties.

"Ah," he says again, and retrieves both. The painkillers are successful in removing the unbearable edges to the ache in both his head and his ribs, though his shoulder remains oddly unaffected. It is of little relevance. He drains the glass of water, and realizes that it has been a significant amount of time since he last consumed liquid of any sort.

He sets the glass down, the hollow tone ringing in a room that is too still and too quiet save for the uneven cadence of their breathing.

"Thank you," he says after a moment.

Well, this has taken an unlikely turn. "It's no trouble," she says, still facing Iman, but watching him sidelong. She's not entirely sure what to do with his incredibly awkward attempt at something like normalcy, and it's plain that Rush has no idea what he's doing, either.

"... Are you all right?" she finally ventures, turning to look at him. Even setting aside the pain he suffered when he went into the Rift after Iman (which probably wasn't helped by him carrying her up here), goodness only knows what's going on in his head right now. She doubts he'll want to talk about it, but the thought of just sitting in silence and willing her friend to wake up is unbearable.

His left hand goes back to its absent, persistent rubbing of the distal arm, an attempt to scrub away the unquantifiable, unshakable tingle. The nerves have not responded well to their treatment at the Rift's mercies, but the arm is still reasonably functional and he has not considered the lingering effects worth examination in comparison to Asadi's own damaged prosthetic.

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

This he has made axiom. He has overlooked the various points of contention and all other possibilities and dismissed them and has made that his premise, that Asadi will be fine, and that he told her that she would be all right, and the logic is so simply and profoundly flawed but he has no reason to give a fuck should that be the case, which it is, which he knows it is, and god but this thought sequence has become incredibly difficult to control, and so he breathes in what may externally appear to be an abrupt and anxious reflex when it is really nothing of the sort and he exhales and looks his hands and takes note, again, of the white lines on his wrists but also of the thin fractal-like latticework of pale discolorations and he quickly looks away because he made certain of this he did he made certain that Asadi would be all right and so she would because this is his premise and his premises are seldom wrong, and in the cases that they are they are wrong for obvious reasons such as skewed reasoning or nervous breakdowns or situations in which one is suffering from extreme physical duress or mental stress and this premise does not fall under that criteria and it occurs to Rush that his rate of breathing has escalated.

No it hasn't.

"I'm fine," he says, and it sounds faintly breathless but that is not atypical and he is certain that fucking anyone would have difficulty breathing under these given circumstances, which he is not, it is simply that air density has become rather more substantial than he last remembered it being.

He looks at Asadi. She is too still and too lifeless and even if she is breathing it is too easy to make those irrational leaps and so he looks away again.

"She'll be fine."

It occurs to her, far too late, that perhaps the reason Rush found her earlier state so intolerable was because he doesn't have half so tight a lid on his own emotions as she'd thought. There are sizable cracks forming in his poised veneer, and Greta turns back to Iman, not wanting to see it because she's certain that he doesn't want her to see it.

But it's there, and she can't ignore it, either.

"Yes," she says simply, hands folded in her lap. It's her turn to be reassuring. "Of course she will. You got her out of there, and you..." she trails off, inclining her head toward the sling. She doubts he's proud of what he did to Iman's arm, but it was necessary. "You saved her," she concludes, her voice wavering, but only a little.

She glances at Rush, then looks back to Iman, who shows no signs of waking. "She is my dearest friend, here," she admits, quiet and almost conversational. "I... I am glad you were there to help her." She refuses to consider what might have happened if he hadn't been there, and it doesn't matter, anyway. He was, and Iman will be fine.

Perhaps this was too much. She looks down at her hands and tries not to fidget.

It sounds more than a little patronizing and he cannot summon the energy to snap at that response and perhaps that is preferred because she continues and he may not be admittedly excellent at perceiving the varied inflections of pitch and tone because it appears that Greta is having significant difficulties maintaining her own relatively calm demeanor, and so he does not address it and he leans forward and closes his eyes and runs another hand through his hair, finding a bracing regularity in the motion.

"She might not thank me," he says at last. He looks back at her, his eyes dark and meaningful. "We may have to rebuild it. Possibly from nothing. Technology such as hers is - difficult to come by here."

He refuses to accept it as a significant obstacle. He'll create a workaround. It will be inconsequential.

Greta meets his eyes, a faint line appearing between her brows. Iman had asked him, though - insisted in the plainest language that he do what he did. From where Greta was standing, it hadn't looked as if there was much choice. Iman will be... upset, certainly, and frustrated, but hopefully she wouldn't take it out on Rush.

"Well, I'm thanking you," she says, holding his gaze. "And if you have to rebuild it, then... then you will." It might be difficult, and it might take some time, but between the two of them, surely it's doable.

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this is really upsetting

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