[Mature] Long, Long Way Down

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 21 Roalis, 2719
On a Street off the Wharf

Niccolette was standing. It had taken her a long time to find her feet; she had sat amidst the glass, the spilled beer, her own sick smeared on the floor, and the blood for a long time, too weak to rise. Eventually, the bar had returned to humming life around her; eventually, the last of the disturbance had nearly faded, though the rest of them left her a wide berth.

As well they should, Niccolette thought.

She had cried; she would not call it weeping. She was familiar, by now, with all the subtle differences amongst types of crying. She knew sobbing from weeping from merely crying. These had been tears, and there was no mistaking it, but they had been only tears. They had trickled down her cheeks, but not wracked her, not left her helpless and dashed upon their shores, not tossed her about in a maelstrom, directionless and grasping for help.

And, eventually, she had stood. Niccolette had found the seat of the stool in her hands; one was bleeding from the palm, a small cut half-scabbed already, and from round crescents where nails had dug in sharply at the wrist. Her skin was darkening from red to purple-blue, bruises in the shape of a man’s hand and fingers wrapped around her skin.

The purple silk shirt – Uzoji’s shirt, Niccolette thought with a desperate burst of pain – was ruined, ripped open at the side; it gaped open, revealing a swath of pale skin beneath, ribs visible in the light, and the edge of a curved burn scar that ran from hip to her lower ribs, with odd definition through it – like the lifelines of a palm, seared into her skin. The pants – Uzoji’s pants, too – were smeared with filth as well, no better than the rest of her.

Niccolette wobbled; she pushed her hair back off her forehead with a dirty hand. It hung lank and loose around her head; her ear was throbbing, though she could hear nothing. It sent spikes of pain through her head all the same; something she did not wish to think about had dried on the skin beneath the lobe of it. Her lips were dry and chapped; even the soft silk ached where it brushed her skin.

Walking was harder than she expected. Niccolette pushed herself off the bar, drawing herself up as best as she could, and went. Her hip ached; she had banged it against the human who had dragged her down to the floor when he fell, the same one who had grabbed her and refused to let go, who had fled almost as soon as he had released her. It was stiff when she first moved, but Niccolette forced herself onward through it. She knew it for bruising, and nothing deeper, and she could not stay there on the floor forever.

No one got in her way; no one spoke to her.

Niccolette was glad for it.

Niccolette dragged herself through the bar with slow, uneven steps. Her ramscott held indectal in the air around her, but it was an indectalness with an edge; it buzzed, ever so faintly, and shifted, and flickered, the brightness uneven. It was powerful still; no one intruded on the edges of it, not as she walked.

Slowly, the galdor made her way outside. She shuddered; the night air of Roalis was cold against her, ripping through the fragile shirt. She made it a few more steps; she stopped. She was a street or two shy of the Wharf. This was no place to stay, Niccolette told herself, shaking. She needed to go – she needed to –

It was hard to hold onto her thoughts; it was hard to hold on to anything. Niccolette took a step, and then another; there was a wooden crate, nearby, propped above a filthy, disgusting puddle. Niccolette gripped it, leaving a smear of blood with her palm, sending an ache through her bruised arm; she lowered herself down onto it, slowly, sitting. She cradled her face in her hands, smelling beer and sick and blood still; she knew she was crying again, but they were only tears, and she did not see what she could do about it. The world was half-empty; the other side was a rush of noise that she could not pick apart, drifting through strands of tangled hair.

At least, Niccolette told herself, feeling the street spin all around her, feeling the queasy heave in her stomach as it pitched – as least she was upright. She surrendered, briefly, and sank a little deeper into the tears; she let the world pass her by, and did not try to know anything more.

[Leander]

21st Day of Roalis

The harsh scent of drink can be smelled on his person, Leander knew it and so did everyone else who was unfortunate enough to come into contact with him. More than that, people could see him struggling to maintain his balance: he felt like he was walking the deck of a storm-tossed boat. If only the ground would stop moving.

Hie legs weren’t working as well as he would like… neither were his hands, or his fingers. He knew what he wanted to do, but it seemed that his body wasn’t listening. His legs swayed left and right as he exited the tavern, having been cut off just moments before for being too intoxicated. It was rare that Leander allowed himself to drink this much - or maybe he did, but for whatever reason his body wasn’t handling the cocktail of drink and drugs in his system as well as it normally did.

The crisp, fresh air of the night whisked across his face. He immediately felt better now that he was out of the stuffy main room of the pub. Their loss, he thought as he focused all of his energies into putting one leg in front of the other. Suddenly, he found himself some distance from the tavern, with no memory of how he got there. The passive glance around, for a moment at a loss as to where he was. Ah, yes, he remembered. Leander chuckled to himself, fanciful of the idea that he could be lost in a town he had lived in for a decade. He knew the town by its landmarks: every drinking establishment marked a turn in the roads on his way home to the Attic.

“…Ms… Ib… Ibutatu..?” The boy slurred the words, despite instantly feeling more alert. There, just a ways down the path, was a familiar figure hobbling towards him. She hadn’t, up until this point, noticed him, and Leo took in what he considered to be a frightful sight… which was rare, given that he had been around his fair share of brawls.

Not that the woman looked worse for wear than a sailor failing to have a good night in port, but the fact that it was Niccolette, whom Leander had last seen when ailing, made the sight before him seem all the worse. Her clothing was torn across her body, revealing skin and old injuries to the passive. Tear tracks ran down her face and her breathing seemed not quite right.

Like clouds dissipating to show a clear night sky, the fog on his brain lifted and he regained full faculty over his legs. The passive made hurried movements towards the galdor, “Ms Ibutatu, are you alright?” A stupid question, Leander thought even as the words left his lips, of course she wasn’t alright; she looked a right state. “I mean…” maybe the fog lingered, “What happened?”

Upon closer inspection, now reaching out to help her stand as he had the last time they had seen one another, her skin felt cold and clammy to the touch, and she winced when he took hold of her wrist. Wincing for causing her further distress, he looked down and noticed the beginnings of a rosey brush forming just below her hand. “We need to… what happened?” Leo repeated, feeling every bit as dull-witted as he must have sounded.

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 21 Roalis, 2719
On a Street off the Wharf

At some point, the waves of cold had started. Name them, Niccolette thought, bitterly. Chills; they were chills. The ache of them rippled through her; her teeth chattered, and she clenched her jaw against it. Sitting was worse than standing, then; Niccolette pressed her hand into the side of the crate and stood.

She did not quite walk so much as stumble, but she was moving, at least, for a little while. She knew she was not alone on the street; figures passed on the right and the left. No one stopped; no one even entered the barrier of her field.

No one, except -

Stopping was harder than she had expected; Niccolette swayed, slightly, and then held herself more firmly upright. Leander was staring at her, and then he was hurrying towards her.

Are you all right, he asked. Niccolette snorted; tears welled up in her eyes again. She let out a little involuntary gasp of pain when he took hold of her arm. He was standing very well; he smelled, Niccolette thought, vaguely, of alcohol.

Her stomach churned; the Bastian turned away, shaking, pressing a hand to her mouth. Tears stung at her eyes again; they trickled down her cheeks. Perhaps she was lucky, this time; perhaps that it was only that there was nothing to bring up, anymore.

Niccolette looked back at Leander; her head was throbbing. She wasn’t sure what he had asked; it was hard even to tease out words in the stuffy night air, hard to separate them and hold them one by one. Are you all right, she remembered, frowning, and then -

What happened.

Niccolette shook her head; she winced at the spike of pain the motion sent through her head. ”Nothing,” she said, running her tongue over dry, chapped lips. She swayed a little more, and felt Leander’s grasp on her unharmed wrist tighten. Her jaw was chattering again; she clenched it against the waves of chills rippling through her.

”Nothing,” Niccolette said again, more firmly the second time. Her eyes fluttered shut, then open again; she focused her gaze on his face. ”Let me go,” Niccolette tugged feebly at the wrist in his grasp; a few more tears slid down her cheeks.

There were more injuries, beyond the new bruising on her wrists and the cut on her hands; the light would just catch a healing cut on her throat, a long line against the pale skin. There were bruises, too, on her ribs, although they would be hard to make out against the burn scar, or covered up by what remained of the shirt.

”I just -“ Niccolette’s eyes fluttered again. She took a deep breath. ”I need to lie down,” she told Leander, looking at him.

Niccolette could not have said what she felt at the sight of the passive. He was nothing to her, or perhaps slightly more than nothing; a colleague, someone she had worked with more than once. Desperately irritating, Niccolette thought. She did not know why she was crying - apart from the obvious, but sometimes she could still find more specific reasons.

For a moment she thought it would be worse than tears; for a moment she felt sobs welling up in her chest. She stifled them, bit them back, and shook her head despite the pain. The tears calmed too, and Niccolette gave up any pretense of keeping the shirt clean, and wiped her face on the sleeve, sniffling, and tried not to look at it. She had handkerchiefs, somewhere, but it was more than she could manage to find them.

Niccolette swayed, again, her eyes half shut; she shuddered, and blinked them open once more, and frowned at Leander, no less confused than she had been moments ago.

[Leander]

21st Day of Roalis

It wasn’t often that Leander stopped and truly worried about the life of another. In Old Rose Harbour, where life was lived at a mile a minute and very few stopped to think of anyone outside their own bubble, Leander wasn’t alone in this. It was just their way, and Leander was as closed off as they came.

When the tears came, Leo’s first instinct was to turn and leave. Such a show of emotion was not something he was equipped to deal with. But then she gasped in pain when he touched her, so the tears might not be purely internal. And this was Niccolette. the woman who had saved his life - apparently - more than once. She had seen him at his worst, though probably never at his best, and he had seen her in a similar light.

He would not walk away from her.

Everything about her screamed pain. “Nothing?” The passive repeated incredulously. “Are you shitting me, Niccolette?” The polite use of surnames thrown to the wind in the momentary anger that welled up inside of the boy. She couldn’t be serious about hiding this. Worse, she sounded like she wanted him to leave. He did acquiesce to releasing her arm, as it seemed to be causing her pain, but his hand didn’t go far from her general vicinity, ready to catch her if she fell, like he had failed to do last time she had taken ill. What he wouldn’t do to have Howie nearby, he could hand her off to him and carry on with his night. She was really killing his buzz.

Now stood next to her, he had the chance to take her in more fully. His gaze trailed down her dishevelled form with a piercing intensity, lingering on the plentiful wound sites that littered her form. “I never knew ‘nothing’ could cause so much external damage to a person,” he muttered sarcastically under his breath.

Oh, she just needed to lie down. By Leander’s estimation, she needed a whole lot more than that. A physician would be a good start, he thought, and then they could take it from there. Well, she could take it from there. Leander would be long gone by that point, he hoped. It seemed Nicolette wanted that as well - her gaze wasn’t murderous as such, but it carried enough vitriol to know that he wasn’t welcome. Had it been anyone else, Leo would have left by now. He wouldn’t have even stopped his nighttime rambling to rush over to them. But this was his colleague… not quite a friend, but there was something there which held him in place.

He watched her sway on the spot, eyelids heavy, and he shifted his own weight towards her, arms outstretched and ready should she crumple to the ground again. Then she blinked, and her eyes met his. For a moment it seemed like she barely recognised him, or was surprised at his presence.

The boy’s eyebrows furrowed in genuine concern, and he knew in that moment that his night of alcohol-infused frolicking was truly at an end. “Let’s start with getting you home. Can you walk?” Circle, he hoped she could, for he knew he was not strong enough to carry her weight alone. Gingerly, he looped one arm underneath hers, hoping it would not cause her to cry out in pain again. He could take most of her weight if she leaned on him, and that was the best he could hope for.

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 21 Roalis, 2719
Deeper into the Rose

There was something like a giggle which welled up in Niccolette at Leander’s curse and the anger in his voice; it was half-breathless, and it leaked more tears from her eyes, but it wasn’t hysterical so much as genuinely amused. She didn’t quite smile; it wasn’t so much as all that. But it was much more a giggle than a sob, even if perhaps it lived somewhere on the border between the two.

Niccolette had wiped it away on her sleeve along with the tears and the snot and something that had tasted much like blood. Leander was frowning at her still; Niccolette straightened up a little, and raised her eyebrows solidly at him; she wobbled, and sighed.

Leander came closer again; his arm settled beneath hers, resting against her back. She was close against his side; there was no avoiding it.

Niccolette was burning up.

There was a heat to her – dry and cracked – worse than anything he had felt before, worse than the near-backlash which had caused her to pass out months earlier. She was vividly, viciously hot to the touch; it felt like keeping a coal against his side. She was not sweating, although her lips were cracked with the strain of the fever.

Niccolette’s eyes fluttered once again; she sagged, briefly, against Leander, and then straightened herself up. Goosebumps flickered over exposed skin in the breeze, and vanished as quickly as they had come. Her skin ached, all of it; the chafing of her dress against herself was almost more than she could bear.

Niccolette took a stumbling step; she was not in sync with Leander, but she could scarcely go quickly enough to lose him. He could follow along with her, for a little while at least – a block, and then another, deeper into the night and the Rose, further from the shore. Two blocks, and then three, and four, and perhaps - perhaps they were growing close to Quarter Fords; perhaps, for a moment, Leander could hope they would make it there.

Niccolette’s teeth began to chatter. She shuddered; she turned her face away from him, even as her body pressed against his, involuntarily clinging to the warmth of his side. She whimpered; there were tears streaming steadily down her cheeks again, and she breathed, shakily.

“I cannot,” Niccolette whispered. She crumpled, slowly; she did not collapse, eyes shut, as she had before, but she could not stand either. She sagged, instead, all of her weight abruptly catching on Leander’s arm; it was the only thing which kept her even partly upright, and so instead of hitting the ground all at once, it was her knees which hit, first, hard enough to send a ripple of pain through both of them. The Bastian’s hands hit, next, and she shuddered, palms scuffing painfully against the filthy street.

Niccolette was breathing hard from the exertion of the walk, from the fall; the chills had gone, and she was fiercely, blazingly hot to the touch once more. Something was trickling from her ear once more, draining down the side of her neck; she shook her head against the pain, and gagged as it grew worse. She crouched there, waiting, not sure if sobs or vomit would wrack her first. Neither came, this time, but neither did her strength. Her teeth chattered as she tried to gather herself, burning hot but shivering with each brush of the wind.

[Leander]

21st Day of Roalis

What was wrong with the woman? Her eyes leaked tears like a flesh wound on the arm. Everything about her was loose and unstable, from the tears, the snot the… was that blood on her face? She was hot to the touch, hot like she had been casting magic left, right and centre.

“Niccolette, I need you to…” there was no way she was going to make it home. Leander glanced around, looking for another option. “Look, there’s a tavern over there. We’ll go there and - woah-” the galdor seemed to slip over herself, Leander grabbing her as she seemed to right herself without his support. “-we’ll go there and get a room.” It was slow progress, but the pair of them hobbled across the street to the tavern waiting for them on the corner.

The noise in the tavern, compared to the quiet stillness of the outside world, was overwhelming even to Leander. He pre-emptively gripped the woman harder around her waist to keep her upright in case she became overstimulated too. The last thing he needed was for her to drop on the doorstep.

“Oi, Leo - no. No, no, not tonight.” The bartender shouted as he rounded the bar and came, arms outstretched as if he wanted to push the passive back out from whence he came.

“No, Harris, it’s okay, I’m not here to drink. I’m here because,” He gestured with his free hand to the mess of a woman that he was propping up, “we need a room.” He dug into his pocket for money to pay for said room, coming up short by a few coins. “Shit, look,” Leander smiled sheepishly at the bartender before turning to his waning companion, “Niccolette do you have any money on you?”

The woman nodded in the affirmative, indicating silently to her pocket. The passive rolled his eyes and flushed, but wasted no time in pushing his hand into the pocket of her trousers. Finding the purse, he hitched the woman up again and awkwardly fumbled to open the purse up and collect the remaining coins he needed to pay the bartender, who counted it out to be sure himself. “Upstairs, second room on the left is empty,” the man said gruffly.

Leander nodded his thanks before he left. The boy turned back to Niccolette, she seemed to be getting worse by the minute. She needed medical help, Leander knew that, but he also knew that she was highly unlikely to accept such help even if he tied her down and forced her to receive it.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” Leo murmured as he shifted his weight again, allowing her to lean on him as much as she needed. Punters in the bar were busy with their own conversation, but some stopped to watch the passive hauling an utter wreck of a woman across the room. Whatever they thought- well to be honest Leander didn’t care what they thought. All that mattered right now was getting her upstairs.

They were even slower on the stairs. The stairwell wasn’t quite wide enough for two to wal up them abreast. In the interests of stopping the woman from falling down the stairs, Leo had her walk up them first, still supporting her every step of the way where she needed it. “There, that wasn’t so bad… now to just…” they entered the room and Leander all but hauled her the final few steps to the bed.

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 21 Roalis, 2719
Deeper into the Rose

Leander had grabbed hold of her, unexpectedly painful; Niccolette shuddered, but didn’t cry out. Her field tensed, weakly, but she lost her hold on it and it eased back out, sharp and bright but almost loose in the air around her. Back up, then; she shuddered against Leander, but went, slowly, alongside him.

Niccolette was aware of the noise in the tavern; it was a dull, distant sort of ache that throbbed, somewhere, dim behind the sharper noise of Leander’s voice. There was still nothing filtering in through her other ear; the lack muffled the worst of it, and she could half-focus on the sound of Leander’s voice. A room, he said. Niccolette would have giggled at the absurdity of it, but it took too much energy, and the impulse died somewhere inside her, lost.

Leander asked her about money. The Bastian squeezed her eyes shut, blinking at him, and nodded slowly; she couldn’t quite manage to reach for her pocket, her hand shuddering to a stop midway. She felt something like a tremble run through him, and then the pressure of his hand, odd, against the pocket of her trousers. Niccolette closed her eyes, breathing unsteadily.

It was a strange, awkward journey through the room; Niccolette did not look around them, but neither could she manage to lift her chin and move forward with her usual eyes. Her eyes fluttered more than once, but she stayed upright, however much she stumbled. The stairs, then; Leander’s hand was firm on her arm, and he urged her forward when she wanted to stop. A room, then, some strange room, and Niccolette half-stumbled, half-fell to the bed.

The galdor curled up on top of the blankets, her body shaking and her teeth chattering. She pressed her bad ear into the bed, but that hurt nearly as much as letting it be exposed to the air. She was hot – she was so hot – the pressure of the silk shirt against her skin was almost unbearable, but she knew better, however odd and dim and distant the world around her than to remove it.

Niccolette curled up a little more. Another wave of cold wracked her; she held through it, and exhaled, slowly. She opened her eyes, looking blearily at Leander across the room, scarcely able to focus on him. Niccolette frowned, studying him sideways; there was an odd ring of light around him, as if he were glowing. She swore she could feel him; it was nonsense, of course. There was nothing to feel.

Fever, Niccolette knew. Fever, chills, hallucinations. It was not a lack of understanding that troubled her. Her ear throbbed, deep and painful, and she shifted against the bed, taking a deep breath. The shirt torn open against her side had shifted, and she knew from the brush of air against her skin it was Uzoji’s handprint, revealed, all the shapes of his fingers and the lines of his palm etched indelibly into her skin, burned forever onto her.

Niccolette shifted; she reached up, and settled her hand onto it. She closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, quietly, opening them and looking at Leander once more.