of earthquakes and aftershocks

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 10th September and a few days after
OPEN TO: Inn Residents, whoever else might be in the building: then, everyone!
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Open

---

Earthquake

It's 5pm, or would be, if anyone paid much attention to things like clocks here. Sunset isn't for another two and a half hours or so, and the day's been hot. Not as humid as it has been. The Inn is mostly quiet, as it's hours after the midday dinner and the only people around either live at the Inn or have reason to be there. Supper will be made soon, as it's been a good day with the food supply.

Then, a minute later, the ground starts to shake.

Repairs and Aftermath

The Inn hasn't been as badly damaged as some other buildings. Foundations are still strong, walls haven't been cracked. But it's a big building, with lots of furniture and light fixtures, and it got shaken.

Having been turned into the unofficial community centre, it'll take some work and a few days to get everything straightened up again.

There's also the little matter of the water supply...





ooc: this is a party-style post, so set up your own OTAs or tag around and have fun! Setting is both for the day of the quake and a few days after to try and fix things up.

Comments

[booklegging]

"Have to give them credit for patching you up before throwing you in the deep end without a pair of water wings."

It'd been apparent from the very first moment Jess had woken up gagging on water in a completely different part of the world that their faceless overlords could pull off mind-boggling feats. Helping heal a girl from the source of her limp just so she could run the risk of eating poisonous berries, or getting crushed in an earthquake, our burning away her stomach lining with tainted water are all examples.

Mind-boggling and insane.

Done with the sink, he let her hand slip from his grasp and gestured back to the table, letting her know it was all right to sit back down. "Wish I could say I could take care of this cut with the same flair. Sorry, you'll have to settle for a bandage. But the trade off is that you get to stay conscious the entire time."

For a brief, covert moment, Jess lifted his gaze and presented the back of her head with another look of thought, quietly considering. This town had its complexities, and so did people. So did this girl.

He wasn't so naïve to think the way she'd framed the injury was the whole truth of the story. There was something in the solemn way she spoke about it that teased at him, a thread just out of reach that had the feel of a half-truth. After all, people rarely offered up stories, whole and complete; Raven had just demonstrated that. Bits and pieces of them, yes. Their favorite bits. Polished pieces. The ugly, unvarnished truth was usually the last thing to come out.

"How did you get it?" he asked her as he slipped back into his seat and slid the mortar closer. "The wound to your leg, I mean."

[specialise]

She bit her tongue.

Getting her hand stitched up, or even just patted down with a clean, damp cloth, would never compare to being ripped right open and operated on without anaesthetic and while being conscious. It wasn't something Raven liked to boast about, not like that time when she'd saved Sinclair's ass on the Ark.

She walked back to the table, taking a seat as she looked at her hand. She winced when she folded her fingers into her palm, feeling the flesh stretch as she did so. But that didn't mean she'd stop herself from repeating the action a few moments later.

Not wanting to look at Jess, she kept herself busy looking at her hand before she stopped herself from curling it around the edge of the table. Looking up at him, she answered with little emotion, "I cut it on the metal of our drop ship. I was underneath it trying to fix something, didn't realise a panel was looser than anyone expected. A real deep cut that could've gotten infected, but I guess the stars were watching out for me that day."

A psycho had let loose on the entire camp, gun in hand, and had chosen to aim his bullets into the floor when she hadn't been quick enough to crawl away. It wasn't a story she wanted to tell. It showed too much vulnerability, and Raven wanted to erase it from her story.

[booklegging]

That loose thread continued to dangle in front of him, inconsistences that begged to be pulled apart: her downcast gaze, her monotone reply like she were reading off a script of something that had happened to someone else instead of recounting an injury that had, if her phantom limp was anything to go by, seriously compromised her ability to walk and caused her a great deal of pain.

Jess was silent for a beat. Even if her response was peculiar, what could he say about it? Maybe she just didn't want to remember what had taken her out of commission, or the strange powers at work that had put her back in commission. He could hardly fault her for that.

"So this klutziness is a habit. Good to know," he remarked. He took some of the mushed plantain onto his fingers. "This might sting a bit."

Dabbing it over the cut, he made sure there was an even layer to act as a seal, then reached for the bandages, winding it over top and around her hand. Almost done.

"Let me know if it's too tight."

[specialise]

Raven inhaled sharply through her nose, felt her fingers flex a little in reaction to the sting, but she kept her hand as still as she could. Her body had tensed before had relaxed as she recalled being in worse pain than this.

She'd survived a bullet to the back and surgery without painkillers. She could survive him placing something cold and stingy on her open cut.

Still, she breathed deeply through her nose, forcing herself to relax. It was odd to be taken care of by someone who wasn't Finn, Clarke, Abby, or Jackson. They'd all been talkative in their own ways, their bedside manners differing. She'd preferred Finn's to Clarke's once, but now she'd grown to want to fend for herself, fearing Abby and how she'd lock her down in a bed and grill her until her leg was back in function in a desperate need to get away from her.

Jess was okay. That was all she'd let herself conclude.

Watching him work, she asked, "Where'd you learn to do this?"

[booklegging]

"The High Garda," was the easy answer.

Carefully, he wound the rest of the cloth over her palm, snug enough to keep the gash covered, but still loose enough to let her keep her mobility.

Of course, he'd known his way around a bandage and antiseptic before he'd ended up in the ranks of the Garda. There had been one time when he was six, when he and Brendan had been roughhousing at the dinner table while Liam looked on; Brendan had been too fast for him and ended up stabbing him in the leg with a fork, leaving him with three perfectly round holes welling with blood. Their father had made him leave the table and clean it himself. A lesson to be quicker the next time.

His first war wound. It hadn't been his last, or his worst.

"Standard training. Carrying your own kit is a requirement in case someone in your unit's injured in the field. I'm not the person you want to ask if you need open heart surgery, but I can find my way around a cut." He tied off the bandage and looked at her expectantly. "How's that feel?"

[specialise]

"Like a half-assed bandage," she replied. She flexed her fingers, looked over her hand, and didn't pick at it. That was the best kind of compliment anyone who wasn't Abby or Clarke Griffin would ever receive.

It'd do. She didn't know how well it'd work against her ignoring any medical advice on how to take care of herself, but it was better than leaving her palm wide open for an infection to crawl inside.

Letting her hand remain still, she didn't push herself away from him and start for the stairs that'd lead her back toward her invention. Though Raven itched to use her fingers, she had something here to build. A picture of Jess, one that would appear slightly more accurate and rely less on observation and what she could glean from the things he said.

"If I ever need surgery, you're definitely not cutting me open. You find Abby Griffin and you pull her ass out of the fountain." She's the only person Raven trusted to cut anyone open, painkillers or not. "How many people have you done this to?"

[booklegging]

"That would make sense given it is a half-assed bandage," he said good-humoredly, his delivery purposely measured and dry. "Sit on that for a day or two, we'll see how it heals up."

There, that sounded doctorly, didn't it? He thought those of them here who actually were medically trained might appreciate his effort to offer the kind of reasonable advice he didn't put into practice in his own life.

A nod of his head to show there'd be no unauthorized use of scalpels on his part. "Abby Griffin, sure. I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm fishing for newcomers," he promised as he started to put the table back into order. "How many people have I patched up? You mean how many people were in my squad? I think we all left a little of ourselves behind in those training arenas. You should count yourself lucky--the last person I had to give medical attention to was bitten by a poisonous snake."

Mentioning Helva brought with it tumultuous memories, bobbing to the surface of his mind like debris cluttering the ocean after a shipwreck. Some of them--actually, most of them--Jess was reluctant to look at too closely, and he brushed them aside. It all felt so long ago.

[specialise]

Poisonous snake, acid fog. Both ended the same way, didn't they?

Raven's been fortunate enough not to run into any creatures on the ground that could easily end her stay on it. She'd kept her eyes peeled for it while on the ground, but with the Grounders trying to pick them off one by one, then the Mountain Men snatching them up in bulk, she'd forgotten that there was another enemy on the earth.

Mutilated deer seemed like good friends at this point.

She looked at Jess rather than her hand, it remaining still despite it stinging slightly. She ignored it. Raven excelled best when she ignored her physical pain, leaving her to think she was strong when she knew she was anything but.

Studying him for a moment, she didn't snipe at him. Her tone was lower than normal, curious. "How'd that go?"

[booklegging]

"She was alive, last I heard." Alive and well is a different story, but he hopes that's the case. Helva hadn't deserved to get caught up in Wolfe's troubles. None of the squad had. "I can't take credit. Someone else had the anti-venom on hand."

He'd be misleading Raven to let her think he'd played doctor on a teammate and saved her life all by himself; he'd brought help, but in the end it had come at the cost of Tariq's life. When all is said and done, and the wins and losses of that day tallied, he'd had a greater role to play in getting teammates killed than saving them.

Once Jess had his supplies reordered and ready to be taken back upstairs, he flashed the girl a smile that let her know he was done playing doctor on her for the time being.

"Anyway, you're done. And no magic water needed."

[specialise]

Glancing down at her hand, Raven pressed the pads of her fingers against the softer portion of her palm as if to test it. His handiwork would be nothing like Clarke's, as she had hands that were made to fixing people's scrapes and bruises, but he'd done a job she thought would earn him some seal of approval from the resident medic.

Appearing content with her bandaged hand, Raven stood and no longer regarded it to be injured. There was work to do, and so little time to do it.

"Thanks," she said, with a slight nod of her head. "You didn't do as shit of a job as I expected." It was her way of complimenting him, despite knowing it wasn't exactly the best way to go about it. Standing a bit straighter, Raven set her mind back to work, and planned to do the exact same thing.

Voice louder, and that pompous attitude he might have grown to expect, she added kindly, "Which is good, because I need this hand to make magic happen."