Thou Seest My Needs

Participants:

abby2_icon.gif arnold_icon.gif samuel_icon.gif

Scene Title Thou Seest My Needs
Synopsis In the wake of Samuel's improbable rescue, Arnold is left in the hands of the exact person he needs.
Date April 13, 2009

Outside Old Lucy's


The dead of night, late in the evening and the bar closed up. Abigail's taken out the garbage, the lights have all been turned off save the one just inside the door and over the bar, made easier so that if someone breaks in, cops can see what's going on should they drive by. Brenda had left ten minutes ago and home is just down the street and quick enough to get there in the spring evening that leaves things balmy and nice.

Out the door she goes, red hair - Not the blonde that Lydia had predicted - up and away from her face, tank tops, bar apron draped over her and fishing for her keys. The deposit for the bar in her purse to be dropped off along the way at the bank, she's having a good day and is oblivious to what might be landing her her lap soon enough. But this is the healer that he saw in earth tones across Lydia's back and the same woman that stood at his table and willingly lost thirty dollars to him.

This close to curfew, the population on the streets is sparse. Someone's dog is barking in fits a block away, some thick throated wolf-thing neglected in a backyard square, with the kind of yowl that might carry across tundras, and in this case, echoes across a sleepy cityscape. A truck goes careening down the strip of asphalt that makes its stripe through Greenwich Village, washing the sidewalk briefly in yellow headlights. Abby's own footsteps seem to bounce their percussion off the faces of buildings that face Old Lucy's.

"Help! Please."

It's nothing particularly creative — someone like Abby might have heard it before now. It could almost be a trap, if not for the fact no one is descending upon her. With the sidewalk immediately behind them floodlit in streetlamp illumination, she will mostly see the shape of an old man crumpled against the pavement, the lankier, more lithe silhouette of someone younger, if still middle-aged, kneeling over him. One hand is placed down on the older man's chest, stemming injury, the other tangled in loose, age-gnarled hand.

There's no doubt who the younger of the pair is talking to when he lifts his head again. If it's a stab wound, she heard no scuffle. If it's a gunshot wound, she heard no damn gun fire. "Please, hurry, he's old," is pragmatic, an edged plea, Irish lilt to its syllables.

The entire thing makes her freeze in spot, hand on the handle to the bar and looking at the pair. She never was one to turn away healing. Most circumstances. It take a split second for her to decide what to do, to take her purse, chuck it into the bar after snatching out her cellphone, locking the door. If they're after money, they'll have to fight her for the keys.

But something tells her that they're not here for money. "I'm coming" SOuthern lilt and sweet, carrying her as fast as her boot clad feet can bring her towards the lamp lit pair. She can see the red between fingers, attempts to stem some sort of wound. She's no stranger to people turning up at her door for healing, even cops do it. Just never with so much silence involved.

"it'll be okay. I'm here, I can help him. Where's he hurt?" Trying her best to sooth the lankier gentleman as she comes to knee beside the old man, gracing him with one of her beatific smiles.

"Here." Samuel puts out a hand, sopping in dark blood, taking her hand and guiding it towards the chest wound. On someone younger, healthier, a shoulder shot is painful and not necessarily deadly, if it avoids the major artery that runs through it, which it probably has, all things considered. In a half-decent movie, the action scene might not even slow that much. The man lying sprawled on the concrete has gone ashen, however, wheezy breathing sucking in through a slack mouth bristled silver on his lip and narrow jaw, his eyes in glassy slits.

The younger says the obvious. "He got shot. He's sick also. If you can help him— "

"If the bullets in there still, you'll need to have someone cut him open and dig it out, I don't got the know how or the stuff to do it, not out here" And the old guy might not even have the time left. She lets him guide her fingers though, hands slickening with the dark liquid, finding the hole in his shoulder, looking up to his companion.

"It'll be okay, I promise, take your hands away" Not an order, a hushed request as she sets about to doing what she needs to do to make the old man better. How sick was he? She wouldn't know until she started healing, started feeling the pull and what sucked on the gift. She starts in, under her breath, the prayer that she needs for her ability to work.

"My Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of Thee. Thou and Thou alone knowest my needs. Thou lovest me more than I am able to love Thee. O Father, grant unto me, Thy servant, all which I cannot ask. For a cross I dare not ask, nor for consolation; I dare only to stand in Thy presence. My heart is open to Thee. Thou seest my needs of which I myself am unaware. Behold and lift me up! In Thy presence I stand, awed and silenced by Thy will and Thy judgments, into which my mind cannot penetrate. To Thee I offer myself as a sacrifice. No other desire is mine but to fulfill Thy will. Teach me how to pray. Do Thyself pray within me. Amen."

It starts, within a few moments of the whispered prayer words leaving her lips, trickling forth from her fingers and into his body, warmth and things good and clean feeling settling in on the old man. She stays kneeled above him, little gold cross winking in the streetlight and shadows, eye's closed.

When Samuel vanishes, it's with a wink down at Arnold, who manages to catch it even through moist blurriness and the haze of pain. It's also completely without sound, having retracted enough at Abby's request to balance on his haunches, fingers dripping red rubies onto the grey pavement, until there is nothing to drip, and Abby is bent shut eyed over the injuried man. Arnold's priorly gripped hand goes slack and rests on his belly as he lets his own eyes slip closed.

The tug on Abby's ability is stronger than any gunshot wound, hidden deep, but not out of range like infection and blood disease. It's a blackhole, a slow death in the form of a brain tumour that eats at him with every blip to and fro through the space-time continuum. Deeper still is the wear and tear of age — not impossible to still if impossible to reverse, but it's the kind of effort that might take everything she has to offer, threatens to topple her.

But she's healing him, when you get down to it. Swallowing, he places his hand over her's.

She's startled, the disappearance of him there, then gone, knowing one other who's done that before. A time traveler, but the odds of more than one… Could be a teleporter, who's visual and auditory effects are silent. It hiccups the flow, slowing it down a fraction before it surges forward against to the flow that it was before. "Will your friend be back? I'll need some help to get into the bar. You'll need some blood. I know some folks who can get me some and get you hooked up. There's an apartment above this place that's empty. Comfortable beds and couches if you don't mind a wee bit of dust"

Tired chases at the corners of her voice, not speaking loud because she can't but because she doesn't want them to attract anymore undue attention than they might already. "My name is Abigail. How long have you had what's sitting in yer noggin?" If the older gentleman can talk.

An elbow juts out, braces against the concrete, pushing himself up to sit as his rheumy eyes swim a stare around as if Samuel were still lurking nearby, but no. They're alone, now, and confusion mutes the old man for a few seconds before he's looking back at Abby. "My head's been hurting for a year now," he says, with a sleepy blink. Another awkward shuffle, obviously weakened from bloodloss and all those concerns she cited. Arnold takes a shaky breath in.

"Is it— gone?"

"Not yet, but it will be. I can get rid of all of it. I just wasn't expecting to heal and I didn't bulk up before doing so." She keeps one hand at least, pressed skin to skin, letting the healing flow even as with each tick, eyelids seem to garner a bit more weight. "I got… I got another ten in me, and in the time it'll take fer the blood to go into you and replace what you lost, I can rest a bit and drink the sludge and can get rid of all of it"

Blue eyes peer from under red bangs, worried for the old man. "You're friend know where to find you, or is there anyone that I can call for you? Anyone at all. I don't know where your teleporting friend went to"

Laughter that sounds a little like a typewriter with a bad cold makes Arnold's chest tremor painfully beneath her hand. Teleporting friend. "No, no. I can— I have my means of making my way back. Or finding him. Just need to get some— some rest in me and I'll be good as new." He swallows, then touches her wrist in a limply gentle gesture. "Dear, could you help an old man up to stand? Then if— then maybe I can take you up on that room 'bove your bar."

"Only if you promise to catch me if I go down, deal?" She offers him her hand, shifting her weight back so she can push up with her knee's and in turn, help the older man up. "I even got a really good old whiskey that I can crack open, if you need a good stiff drink. I still didn't catch your name" Not a teleporter? Invisible maybe? Maybe.

"Lets get you up, get you and me resting and see if I can't leave with a reprieve from the aches that come with age for a little bit hmmm? I might even feed you, if you ask nice"

Getting onto his feet seems like less effort tonight than usual, despite the lingering ache in his shoulder that Arnold cannot tell is phantom or real. He leans on her arm as they head back for the bar, and he smells mostly like blood. "Let's start with the whiskey," he agrees, his bony fingers squeezing her wrist in what he hopes conveys gratitude as he wearily minces for the door at her guidance. They leave behind an empty street, a blood stain just left of a halo of streetlamp light, and the silhouette of a watchful bystander across and down the street.

Samuel waits until the door snks shut, before vanishing into another time and place.


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