damned_institute | Night 47: Women's Bathrooms (F01-F40)

Entry tags:

agatha,
ema skye

Night 47: Women's Bathrooms (F01-F40)

[from here]

It wasn't until the bathroom door closed behind the pair that Ema finally let go of Agatha's shoulder and started walking independently. Arbitrarily veering right, Ema hobbled to one set of red counters and went about the unpleasant business of removing her pants, peeling the cotton away from her skin where the drying blood had caused the fabric to stick. Belatedly, Ema realized that by peeling off her pants she also peeled away some of the scabs that had started to form down her right leg, and the bleeding started fresh.

Well, that was stupid. Ema scolded herself mentally; she needed to stay on her game here. Even though she'd never taken a class in first aid, the development should have been obvious if only she'd been thinking clearly. Well, at least this way she could get the cuts honestly clean, so maybe it was the best plan after all.

Ema shook her head roughly, hoping to help clear it up a little. Her mind was a mess.

Once her pants were in a pile on the floor, Ema hopped up onto the counter and turned to place her feet into the nearest sink. Time to get a good look and get these cuts and bites cleaned up.

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While Ema was doing all that, Agatha was checking her scratched knuckles. Apparently the rat hadn't quite failed to break the skin, but it was only weeping a little without even a peek of red except where some bits of rat had stuck. She'd had worse from Krosp.

That left just Ema to see to. No problem, thought Agatha. Except that, when she turned on the water, a rank smell filled the air and the light could hardly shine through the stream. "Sweet lightning," she muttered, "are they trying to kill us? What if someone needed a drink?"

Ema made a face at the rancid water; disgust trumped pain and trauma both. "No kidding. I've seen crime scenes more sanitary than this." So much for preventing infection. Every time Ema thought she'd seen the worst this place had to offer, the Institute managed to surprise her.

It was still better than nothing, however, so Ema cupped the dirty water in her hand and then running it over her injuries. Pumping some soap into her hand from the nearest dispenser and making a lather in her hands, she added, "Hopefully this will keep the water from doing too much harm." Assuming it was antibacterial and not some sort of harmful substance. Her experience so far indicated the latter, but what other option did Ema have? With any luck, she could cry to the nurses come the morning. Not that she trusted them, but at least they looked sanitary.

This was ridiculous. Ema deserved better treatment than this--she was a scientist, and a damn good one considering her age. She shouldn't have to deal with fighting mutant rats and cleaning her wounds in dirty water in a dark bathroom. The indignation that bloomed within Ema was sizable indeed, and the girl found herself bristling as she began the careful business of cleaning out her wounds, which weren't pretty to behold; the rats had really done a number on her, particularly the one that got its teeth in.

Agatha had been planning to do that herself, but... for someone who clearly didn't go in for combat, Ema wasn't doing a half-bad job. Agatha was actually kind of impressed, and certainly not inclined to intervene when there were other things that needed doing.

First of all, she turned on the next sink over. The gore on her hands had started to get cold, clammy, and even more unpleasant than when it had been fresh. Just about anything would be better to have on them, at this point. "Maybe it's just rust," she suggested, but without much hope; that wouldn't explain the stink. At least she felt cleaner. "Or something else that's only bad if you try to drink it."

Next, she started poking through Ema's makeshift bag. The stuff the light's casing had been made out of broke into reasonably sharp pieces, apparently; that could be useful for a number of things later, but right now she only needed it to start a rip in her shirt, a couple of inches from the bottom. The strip came away nicely after that.

Only after the ripping noise faded did another voice (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/820826.html) become audible. The running water hadn't helped much, and neither had the fact of its source being buried under other supplies. "--forgotten about me?" it asked.

"Maybe," Ema agreed, her tone betraying her anger just a little as she starting rinsing the soap off of her legs. "I still hate this place." She could have grumbled more, but what was the point? The statement spoke for itself.

The two of them worked in silence after that, Agatha tearing cloth and Ema getting the last of the soap out of a bite that in all honest needed real medical attention. A third voice cut through the room out of seemingly nowhere, causing Ema to turn off the water to hear it better. There was a bit of panic at first--someone had invaded the bathroom, and that someone could be hostile.

No person entered, however, and Ema realized fairly quickly that the voice was coming from the radio Agatha had brought along. Curious and confused, Ema strained to listen. Even though the words were muffled, they were clear enough for the girl to get the gist of it. Something about a man named Jack coming back, which caused the Head Doctor to disappear at some point. Whatever it was--did she say a spell?!--had failed, however, but this woman promised to help by not letting everyone down again. Clues to follow.

All in all, the message itself didn't make all that much sense to Ema, but it wasn't without its information. The but of into that Ema took most to heart, however, was the presence of a resistance. Someone was taking a stand against this place, helping out the prisoners from the outside. It was more than she could have hoped for! They hadn't been left to rot alone in this hell!

"Did you hear that, Agatha?" Ema called, suddenly re-energized and cheerful--cautious optimism wasn't in the girl's vocabulary. "We're going to get clues on how to get out of here!"

Agatha did know what cautious optimism meant, but she did have a tendency to forget how it could possibly apply to her, and at the moment her grin was bigger than Ema's and twice as toothy. "Of course I heard! I'm not just going to ignore something like that."

As she said that, she fished the radio out of the bag and turned up what appeared to be the volume control. No need for any more of it to be drowned out by the many noisy activities offered by a mad scientist's lair, though she didn't think they'd missed anything important this time.

It wasn't really surprising that Landel had enemies. One was apparently dead, or at least believed dead, and the only other one they knew about seemed to be acting utterly alone and with no apparent resources except for secrecy and a transmitter. Agatha herself had no tools, only one ally (who, though she couldn't have been much younger than herself in years, seemed painfully young in life) and no idea where she was.

She'd been in worse situations, all things considered.

"Now turn this way if you're done with that bite," she said firmly, holding up the strip of shirt. "You'll need to be patched up if we're going to pursue any of them."

Agatha didn't have to tell Ema to turn twice; Ema even gave Agatha the courtesy of shaking off a bit of the water as she swung her legs off the side of the counter. They were going to get Ema patched up and back on her feet, and hopefully by then the voice on the radio will have followed through with her promise of more information.

Clues. Investigation. This was Ema's stuff. For the first time all night, Ema felt like she had some control over the situation, and it showed in the giddy smile that remained on her face. The physical fighting could be left to Agatha, and between their two scientists' minds they should have little trouble stringing clues to their obvious conclusions. The pain in her legs even seemed like less of a burden at this point. The Institute had bitten them hard (and quite literally, in Ema's case), but not hard enough.

It was time to bite back.

"You can cut up the shirt I used to make that bag if you have to." The strip of fabric was enough for Ema's ankle, but there was also her other leg to consider. "That should be good enough until tomorrow morning, and then we'll corner a nurse and make her take care of it the right way."

"I'll look forward to that." Agatha had allowed those "nurse" minions to move her around so far, but that had been while she was still getting her bearings. The idea of getting what they actually needed from one of them was quite an appealing one.

Winding and tying off the cloth was easy and quick, and almost before Agatha had finished her sentence she'd gone back to the bag for more. Their meager supplies would be easily carried in much less than a full shirt's worth of "bag", so she didn't see any reason to not do that in preference to shortening her own shirt to an indecent degree.

"Move that leg around," she suggested, raising her voice a little over the sound of tearing cloth. "Make sure it's not going to slip when you walk."

"Me too," Ema agreed. If Agatha's expression was any indication, she wasn't going to take "no" for an answer from the nurses. Ema had to admit, the mental image of Agatha giving one of them hell was enough to bring a bit of a smile to her face. After all of the hell that the two had been put through tonight, it would be very well-deserved.

As instructed, Ema wiggled her left leg around a little while Agatha tore off another bandage. The fabric stayed put. "Looks like this one will be okay. Tight enough without cutting off the circulation." Agatha was adept at impromptu bandaging, it seemed. Good thing.

It paid to get good at that sort of thing when half of Europa wanted a piece of you, preferably one you needed. And your suitors seemed to be competing to rack up the most internal injuries, as if that would impress you somehow. ...Agatha missed them already.

The pang of homesickness was brief, though, and mostly buried under the excitement of discovering their unseen new friend, so she didn't stop grinning. In fact, once she was done binding Ema's other wound, she found she could no longer keep it to herself. On impulse, she reached over the counter to hug Ema tightly.

The hug was unexpected, but not at all unwelcome. Before Ema had time to really process what was going on, she found herself hugging Agatha back just as tightly.

In a lot of ways, the hug was cathartic. Ema honestly couldn't recall the last time she'd been truly hugged--the weak embraces of classmates didn't count. She really didn't have a lot of close friends in her social circle, and as far as her own sister hugging her... well, forget it. Hugs were something that were mostly out of Ema's range of experience these days. Yet here she was, being strongly embraced by a person who had been a stranger to her mere hours before.

And now? They were allies and perhaps friends, bonded by a common goal and a common trauma. It was a comforting feeling, even moreso than the discovery of the unseen radio ally. If nothing else, the two of them had each other.

"Thank you. For protecting me, for the bandage, for everything so far."

There was an intensity to the gratitude that Agatha found a little weird, and to be honest, almost embarrassing. She'd have done more- she had done more- for total strangers or even people who'd wronged her. Not letting a friendly kid be eaten by big rats seemed like a kind of bare minimum.

It didn't occur to her, either, that something as simple as a friendly hug might have had such significance for Ema. The Clays had always been physically affectionate, and that was just how Agatha interacted with the world, or at least the parts of it she liked. So she didn't quite know where this intensity was coming from, which presented a bit of a problem in knowing how to respond.

After a moment of floundering, she just said "It was no problem." At least it was true.

Ema picked up on Agatha's floundering reaction and realized, belatedly, that her response might have been a bit too much. They had only known each other a few hours, after all, and being so overwhelmingly emotional was both unhelpful and unscientific. Finally breaking the hug, Ema smiled at Agatha in what she hoped was a comforting (but not too forward) manner. "Still, thanks."

Luckily the radio buzzed back to life at that point, thus taking focus away from the awkwardness of the moment. Unluckily, all of the information was given in a way that assumed familiarity with the grounds. Places of worship? Bodies of water? Staff storage? She had no idea where any of that could possibly even be. That put a huge damper on things.

As did the fact that her ankle was starting to bother her. Ema didn't bring it up to Agatha--she didn't want her to worry over something as obvious as the fact that a poorly-cleaned bite would itch and burn. Still, the development was worrisome.

That set of "clues" was really annoying. It wasn't as if Agatha hadn't dealt with needlessly cryptic people before, but she'd never liked them much, either. "Of course," she sighed; she probably should have expected something that fit so perfectly with the theme of bad things getting worse. "I should have known better than to expect her to be useful. That would make it too easy."

Sure, even if they knew what radio girl was talking about, there would probably be worse than rats in the way- unusually big and aggressive though they'd been, Agatha doubted people would seriously refer to them as monsters. But that would still have been easier than what they were faced with now, which... she supposed would be more of the same, wouldn't it? They'd have to learn more about where they were, and it looked as if they weren't going to be told.

"Are you up to more walking?" she asked, a little more brusquely than she would have if her mind hadn't been crackling with bits and pieces of incomplete plans- a good feeling, she thought absently as she rubbed her itchy knuckles. At least it meant she was still herself.

Agatha's exasperation at the cryptic nature of the radio message was palpable, and Ema honestly couldn't blame her for it. If this woman was supposed to be helping them, wouldn't it make more sense to, you know, actually be of some help? Ema nodded in agreement as she reached over and grabbed her journal and pen; really, there wasn't anything more to be said.

Even if the clues were unhelpful, they were worth recording (along with a brief note about the rat attack--Ema could elaborate later). Writing in the dark wasn't easy, but at least they had something to work with. Ema tried her best to write quickly, since they had a lot of ground still left to cover.

After the past two years with Lana, Agatha's tone hardly even registered as 'brusque' with Ema, and what little recognition her mind gave to it quickly assigned the motive of getting down to business. "I should be able to tough it out," Ema answered, not wanting to complain or sound useless. She set her journal and pen aside and started to jump down from the counter. Luckily, she realized at the last second that landing full-force would hurt, so she instead scooted to the very edge of the counter and tried to ease herself off. She stumbled a bit in her landing, but all in all it was a disasterless dismount.

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Night 47: Women's Bathrooms (F01-F40)

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