Panic [Will]

No, that’s not entirely correct – everything is a blinding flare of agony.

She has no sense of time, no sense of place, no… well, no sense – but for the pain, but for the slick sensation of blood across her skin. Something inside her – maybe many things inside her – is broken.

She has to get home.
She has to get to Will.

He had often wondered if she would be there when he returned from work, if he’d wake up one morning and find her gone, if she would decide it is too much, too little, not enough, suffocating, too hard, too easy… this is the first time, though, that he wakes up to find she has not returned home, that the apartment is empty of her presence, that there is no breakfast in the process of being made, no lunch made up of leftover meatloaf from the night before for him to take to work.

It’s the first time in the past two months that she. is. not. there.

She is not far though. She had almost made it home, she had the fire escape ladder in her hand, pulled down and ready to climb, the fire escape that leads to the window that is always unlocked, and opens just far enough for her to enter. She’d almost made it, before they caught her. If only she’d been a little faster, a little stronger, a little quicker… if only she hadn’t have gotten on the wrong bus to begin with, if only she hadn’t landed in bronzeville waiting for the next bus, if only she hadn’t….

If only…
If only…
If only…

She coughs, and whiteflashhotlights go off behind her eyes as she curls up into a fetal position, attempting to brace herself, to stabilize ribs that must be broken. She can’t breathe. It hurts to breathe, and when she wipes her mouth, there is blood across her lips, there is blood in her mouth, there is blood… too much blood.

She’s closest to the fire escape stairs. If she tries, it may take her two days, and she may not survive the trip – but it’s better than facing the landlady, than getting Will evicted because of causing “more trouble than his money is worth”. She forces her eyes to focus, to take stock in where she is, to measure the force of will it will take to get her ass to the ladder, to pull herself up to the landing of Will’s apartment.

She pulls and tugs her sweatshirt, that over-sized hoodie down over her painfully thin frame – despite eating well for over a month now, she is still as thin as ever. Her jeans… her jeans were threadbare to begin with, and are tattered shreds now. Modesty is the least of her worries. She just has to get up those stairs. Has to get to Will, before he goes to work.

It takes her over an hour. She has not been so badly injured since she left Seattle, since she landed in the hospital for a week, since Mama J insisted she take the money, and run. She knows well this agony, she knows well what every move is doing to her insides, the organs that are bruised and bleeding, that are sliced and diced under broken (…crushed…) ribs, beneath the soft flesh of her abdomen where injuries flare from the inside out. She knows well just how close to death she came, how easily it would be to push her over that edge and have her fall into sweet oblivion – where presumably, nothing hurts, and assholes have been evicted for sweet White Knights who care only to make your life better.

It would be easy to give up.
She is too fucking stubborn.

It takes her over an hour, but when Will wakes to find her presence missing, when he makes his way to the living room, she has managed to get herself that far – to the landing, to the window, a window she now slaps at to get his attention. She hits the window, and her hand slides away, leaving a crimson smear in it’s wake.

Hi, honey. She’s home.

he was many things, but William D’Aubigne was not an adept liar. And though he was well bred, at the end of the day so many of those who would miss him would do so for all the wrong reasons.

He got up to go about his daily routine- it was funny, really, that his routine had changed so much now that Maija was there. He stopped, hearing something of a pitiful, wet slap on the glass of the window. He stopped, he turned-

he paled.

“Oh fuck,” and it was the only thing he could think of to say.

Will made a dash tot he window, opening it up quickly. His stomach turned, his head was spinning, and he didn’t have the medical knowledge necessary to really do much of anything for her. He tried to get Maija inside, his calm was something forced.

“Oh god, Maija? Maija, come on, talk to me.”

She peels her lashes apart again, to look up at him, a hand lifting to wipe across her eyes again, trying to clear them and not doing a damn thing to help her vision at all. Expressions rarely are more than a flicker across her face, though he’s learned to read them, learned to know the twist of her lips is amusement, that the glitter in dark eyes is the same, that the weight of her gaze can signify anger – or passion. Even now, the twist of her lips holds a bit of amusement as she rolls her eyes upwards to look at the window, then back to him again…

“….yeh unstuck it…”

Hello captain obvious and not at all important…

She grits her teeth as she tries to suppress a cough, turning her head away from him until it passes. Her breathing is ragged, wet as she spits to the side and groans. She reaches for him after though, and murmurs as she does her best to help him help her inside. “…s’jumped. cut one.. ain’t…remember much else…”

Every move is agony, ever inch gained seems as one is lost to the whitehotflash that stars across her vision. She’s still talking though – still conscious. That must be good… right?

But those were on Garou. And they did not play by the same rules as kin. Because these injuries would kill people like him and Maija. These injuries were more mundane but no less serious. And, in his rational mind, he would have thought that this could be dealt with. that she didn’t need to move, that movement could cause more damage.

But right now, his rational brain wasn’t working. this was Will. William D’aubigne- a man who, up until a few years ago, had a nurse for a wife. A Child of Gaia for a lover, and favors to call in should anything happen. Right now? Not so much. So, he had to improvise.

“Okay, uhh… ” he was thinking. He didn’t know what to do. And all he could do was try to figure out where she was bleeding and try to stop it. “We need to call an ambulance.”

He wants to call an ambulance, and the protest is automatic… “…can’t…pay…” She’s a stubborn shit, always. But she doesn’t stop him from finding his phone, from making that call, even as he tries to find where she’s bleeding. There’s a lot to take in – though the internal bleeding is the worst of it all. A cut on her lip does not explain the amount she spits to the side – it’s possible she’s punctured a lung, compounded by the way her breath rattles in her chest, the way her body seizes when she tries to breath deeply. The bruises are many, already blossoming black and blue across her belly, her thighs, her wrists, her neck.. her jeans are in tatters… her panties (..the green pair, not the blue. The blue wait in the dryer where they’d tumbled to dryness last night..) are torn, and crimson and don’t think about that too much else there are many more things to make one angry, so angry, raging screaming horrible MAD – so we’ll move on to the bruising, the bleeding, the gash in her thigh that thankfully missed any important arteries, and still seeps…for all there is outside – the majority of the damage is internal, is where he can’t bandage and hold and help.

Somehow, though, somehow she still talks – despite the effort it takes… “…shh. call. b’fine… worse b’fore…” she still tries to make HIM feel better….

There was that rational brain, trying to make sense of it all. And all he could do was process the information and feel simultaneously sick and enraged. Genuinely so. In a way that he hadn’t felt in some time now. Composure was not allowed to falter, but then again he had thrown that composure out the window a long thirty seconds ago.

And in his rational mind, the one that was AWOL, he was counting crimes. he was counting them because it made it easier, because it made this easier to process. It would take a moment for him to realize he was a defense attorney. That, even if they did find who did it, he wouldn’t be on the prosecution’s side.

She said that she’d be fine, and that it’s been worse before.

That, for some reason, didn’t help. At all. At all. He gave no indication that this was the case, though.

But he called anyway, taking whatever was nearby [unfolded top sheet- he’d done a load of whites and refused to fold it.l Said there was no point because he was just going to shove them on the bed anyway] and applying it to her thigh. William was clueless in regards to first aid, had no idea what he was supposed to do except call 911 and do whatever it was they needed to do.

“Don’t move,” he said.

(if only, if only, if only…)

He tells her not to move, and lips twist into a bit of a smirk, that turns into a grimace as he presses the sheet onto her thigh, setting another stab of pain through her already thrumming body. She couldn’t move at this point, if she really wanted too – everything she had was spent in getting to the apartment, to climbing those stairs…

(later, later he’ll wonder why he didn’t hear her – how he slept through it all, when she was right. down. stairs…)

He’s counting the crimes, and she’s counting her breaths, and listening to the call, as she drops a hand to rest against his, against her thigh, squeezing gently. She’ been through so much – this? Years ago, it would have just been another day…

“Do you want to press charges?”

…he’s scared. That doesn’t do much to help her own state of mind though it is something she’ll wonder about later. He’s scared, and he’s scared for her – angry and demanding and wanting revenge unsure of how to channel it all, all for a streetrat who shouldn’t mean a thing to him at all…

The call ends, and her thumb slides against his hand that presses against her thigh. Just a touch, a move to let him know she’s still there, she’s still with him, as he asks his question. Her brow furrows slightly, and she tries to suppress another cough, groaning with the effort and waiting until it passes to answer. He’d asked her such a question before, the first night, though that black eye pales considerably in comparison to this, doesn’t it…

“Gang bangers… ain’t know if.. i could describe’em well enough..” honesty there, though there’s the issues of paper trails, and getting caught, and all of that too.

However… “they’ll.. they’ll report it… even if I ain’t… right?” The hospital, presumably. She seems to remember a report filed before she left Seattle, though the memory is as fuzzy as the events leading up to it. He only used her as a punching bag though. Who knows who’ll be these guys’ victim next. And it’d give Will something to concentrate on – that revenge. “Maybe…yeah.”

She’s never reported on her own before – years of abuse gone unreported – they learn very quickly not to ask questions. Maybe this time – it’s time to ask ‘why’ and to make an effort to make it stop.

Oh, fuck. Just … fuck.

He was trying to think about what he was going to do or say next, and he didn’t want to admit that he was scared. That he needed something to fixate on so that he didn’t float off into thoughts not so perfect thoughts. He waited. and…he waited.

“It’s not okay right now,” he said. He didn’t lie and say that it was. “But eventually it will be.”

The most comfort he could offer.

This – this he can’t control.

He tells her that it’s not ok, but it will be, and that is what breaks through… the wall she’s built through the years, the bricks she’s put in place one by one, hit by hit, word by word. She learned long ago to cry was only to receive more pain, to be broken was only to give them the satisfaction and she trained herself, years – years! – to not break through, not break down that wall.

Even now, the breaking, the broken bits, is found only in the swell of tears that swim over dark eyes, that pool in the corners, and trail down into matted and dirty hair. It’s not okay. It’s not okay at all.

But it will be – he promises it will be. And that more than anything else, break her. She closes her eyes, and turns her head slightly… hiding even now.

William D’Aubigne dealt with horrible situations. he’d lived through them, seen things he had no right to see, and still kept his head up. Had experienced things, and knew from an empathetic state how easy it was to see a person hurting and not want to fall apart as well. [Last time something hurt this much, he’d had someone hear to deal with it with him. but the person who would help him deal was the one hurt. He didn’t know what to do now.]

“it wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“…i know.” she says, and somewhere in her head she does, though deep down in her gut, where things are bleeding and bruised that should not be, she is worried that it was, indeed, partially her fault.

He wipes her eyes, and she catches his hand with hers, and presses it to her cheek, and just holds him there, holds on. She takes more comfort from him, from his being here, even from his anger and rage on her behalf, than she ever could have back home, back when this was a daily, weekly occurrence…

“m’glad yer here.” lord knows what she would have done if he had left early.

And all he could do was assure her that it wasn’t her fault. And he believed it, as much as she didn’t. As much as she understood the laws of the street, they were not the laws on the books. Those were the ones he understood, the ones he could argue, but her unofficial ones were just as important.

And his presence could be some kind of comfort, even if he was sitting around in a half-dressed state, waiting for the approaching ambulance.

“I..” he didn’t know what to say. Odd, such an articulate man who managed to become speechless so often.

Though, if given the chance, she’d like very much not to make him speechless this way again, thank you very much.

She turns her head, and presses a kiss to his palm, ignoring the comparatively simple pain of the cut in her lips for the affectionate comfort. “Yer comin with me… right?” She doesn’t want to go alone, not that she thinks he’d let her – but she has a reason to ask. “…should get dressed…” She’ll just ignore her own state of dress – as it’ll all be stripped away soon enough. Not much she could do about it right now anyway.

He nodded, and he couldn’t really force words out at that moment. And for that moment he could hide behind the fact that he was scared for her. That he was terrified that Maija was going to need to go to the hospital. That she was fucked up beyond all recognition in a way that was going to leave quite the paper trail. That was going to get her taken back to Seattle if she wasn’t careful and yet-

and yet…

He then found some words for the time being. “Yeah, I guess I’d better… Hell, no, it’s fine. They can deal with boxers and a shirt.”

She can’t possibly know the fears he has, not even understanding those that are for her, and the circumstances that could make this go so very wrong, and get her taken away. She’s three days before her birthday. She’s three days away from adulthood, from freedom. They only have to hold them off that long, too keep from the mandatory report clause, to keep the papertrail contained.

It could work.
It very well could fail.

And in the distance, sirens.