Participants:
| Scene Title | Exit Wounds |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ben treats Helena's wound with assistance from Cat. |
| Date | January 6, 2009 |
A wrought-iron fence borders several small garden beds and the stone stairs leading up to the house's front door. The house itself is a structure of old stone - not even concrete blocks, but quarried stone — with natural-color wood doors and window frames. The windows on the ground floor are barred.
Inside, the level is divided into only three rooms. The first is the foyer, with polished hardwood flooring, a freestanding coatrack on either side, iron-dark against soft-amber interior walls. The main staircase spirals up from one corner of the foyer, girded by a wrought-iron railing.
To the right from the entrance is the kitchen. The walls just off from white, the floor tiled in dark gray. In the center of the kitchen is a black-topped island, matching the counters that line the room. One wall is dominated by an eminently modern stove framed by an anachronistic brick hearth. Cabinets above the counters have glass doors; the windows above the sink are framed in light-colored curtains, the illumination they let in adding to the expansive atmosphere.
The dining room takes up the back of this floor. The far wall is brick and stone, with a facade of a fireplace mantle in the center. Interior walls have been painted a tone intermediate between amber and ivory, which is also the accent color in the dark rug beneath the long dining table.
Ben's only been to the Hangar a couple of times since he got the address; mostly to familiarize himself, meet some people, that sort of thing. So he knows where he's going when he, Cat, and Helena arrive, and in short order he's got them set up in a clean area with an examination table. "I'm going to clean it out so it won't got septic," he tells Helena as he prepares. "You were lucky."
Helena went quiet for the right back to the Hangar, and it's she who gave the passwords to allow them entrance. The Hangar was a good choice, it's medical area is stocked extremely well. Helena's eyes have gone glassy, and without adrenaline and something to do, she has nothing to really distract herself from pain, or what she did. The removal of her pants was a humiliating and painful experience, requiring an assist from Cat to help cut the denim off and ease it off her body. Now she lays on her side, and there is one thing that keeps her from unraveling from all those things:
She will be absolutely fucked before she cries in front of Ben.
She took some moments to speak with persons running the place when they arrived, having been around it a few times, not giving more detail then they required, and is now with Ben and Helena as the work begins. She assists with exposing the wound so the medic can work. She studies the injury and looks at the woman's face, commenting soothingly "It's an easy treatment. You'll be patched up in no time, and we can call Abby to make a more permanent fixing if you want." It is an easy wound in Cat's eyes, in no way comparing to Gillian's forehead after the Sylar attack.
Eye contact is made with the leader, Cat watches for signs of the aftermath to what she believes was Helena's first blood, and she remembers her own just months before. How she'd held it in, and only let one person see the extent of its effect on her.
A person who now is only memories, still without even a retrieved body to lay to rest or cremate.
Ben, while he never graduated from medical school, has that clinical way of looking at people that's all business. Pants, schmants. He offers Helena two pills and a little cup of water. Painkillers. Something that'll numb while he works. When he sets to work, his touch is gentle and deft. "Easy treatment," he echoes. "Just cleaning and some sitches. Do those people know what they're dealing with? The virus?"
"Oh sure," Helena kids. "Now you give me Vicodin." But she swallows them quickly. "I Wireless and Liz know the situation. We have to trust them to take the appropriate steps." She leans her head back down, closes her eyes, and not liking what she finds behind them, opens them again. "It's possible that the Vanguard will assume we killed her. We need to be prepared for retribution.'
"That's a possibility," Cat replies. "Meanwhile I'll contact Wireless soon and see if she can give me missing persons reports to compare these faces with, to see if we can identify the people in that trailer and maybe even detect a pattern to those who were chosen for what they were undergoing, and also see about reported thefts of whatever drugs were in those IV bags." She pauses then, before returning to Ben's questions. "Unknown, on that front. Vanguard's members may not know what he plans, having been fed bullshit to deflect questions, or they may be true believers in the entire thing. Best to presume they place zero value on human life."
Swabbing occurs. "Grenades generally point to that sort of mindset," Ben says, blinking a few times. Because that chick had a grenade. He is not used to things like that. "And the thing with the treating people like disease-incubating cattle." Swab, swab, swab. "…Is there any way of, I don't know, talking to these people and telling them what's really going on if they don't already know? Or is it a waste of breath?"
"If Kazimir didn't care about his people, he wouldn't have bothered with having Ethan arrange that whole subsequent kidnap and torture of you and Dani." Helena points out. She stares at the wall and concentrates on not flinching, though now things are starting to go a little fuzzy, and that's nice. "They'll figure it out. And I mean, what we say? Oops, I accidentally killed your agent because she threw a grenade at us?" Her words are clipped, like she's testing herself by saying it.
"Does Kazimir care about his people?" Cat asks in a speculative voice, "or does he just pretend to care enough to make them believe he cares, until he no longer needs them? Or was it even him that ordered the abduction? It could be that others took that action on their own. We can't know which answer is correct, there are so many possibilities."
Her voice has become edged with grief and the controlled rage she feels regarding the subject of her fallen companion. "And yes, they'll figure it out. One of them is a psychometrist. All he needs is access to her body. As to her death, it's simple; this is always how it would be. They intend to kill us at one point or another. We fight back, or die. If that means they don't survive, they don't survive."
You have been applauded.
Ben glances over at Cat at the mention of kidnap and torture. He then quickly averts his eyes to his work; it's coming along nicely. He opens his mouth, closes it, reconsiders. Awkward. He finally outs with, "Ready for stitches."
Helena nods wordlessly. She has an irrational desire to tell them both some very rude things, but is also self-actualized enough to realize it's not really her, it's the pain and the medicine and the trauam. So she keeps her mouth shut until she can finally manage something. "I have to consider all the angles. I'd rather be ready for something than not."
"I need better weapons," Cat states, quietly. "Who do I see about that, Stormy?" She watches the blonde's face, hoping to keep her attention on things other than her leg being sewn up.
Ben leans over to collect the supplies he's already laid out; he looks up at Helena and murmurs, "Ready?"
"Conrad knows where the cache is." Helena says. The hand that is topmost in her sideways state clenches into a fist. "Ready." she says with a quick nod.
"I'll see him soon," Cat states, her own hand offered out for Helena to grab and squeeze if she chooses. "Thank you."
Ben quietly works. And he's good at it, which really makes it a shame he's not actually a doctor and instead is wandering around where grenades are being thrown about all willy-nilly. "You're a trooper," he encourages.
Helena presses her lips together tight and glares at Ben, her eyes red before she looks away and just tightly nods. She grips Cat's hand and says nothing, because chances are one of them will get told (quite irrationally) to fuck off. And that really isn't something you want to say to someone who's helping you.
She stays quiet for now, her mind wandering through information gathered and analyzed, going over it all again, as her hand is provided for squeezing without complaint. Cat watches Helena's face, and among those thoughts is whether the two will talk of her first causing of death, or if it'll be another of those things they understand and never speak of.
 January 6th: We've Got Bodies |
 January 6th: The Creeper Stare Alert |