sixthiterationlogs | of earthquakes and aftershocks

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of earthquakes and aftershocks

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Raven's smile was smug.

"Of course it is," she said, and was glad Jess wasn't exactly within earshot to hear. She didn't want her reputation for being an arrogant space girl to go down the pipe if he saw how her expression wasn't one that was completely smug.

Raven was thinking of Sinclair, and how he'd be looking at her with an I told you so lingering on his tongue. She'd spent the three long months after Mount Weather berating and talking down to herself and about herself, and she knew that within this minute, he had to know that something had happened where Raven Reyes proved him right.

She didn't take a step back from the system she'd built with Jess' guidance. She looked at it, as if daring it to tear itself apart and test her patience, but it continued to thrum as she thought it should.

After a moment, she bellowed, "Don't drown up there, Brightwell! Bring your ass back down here!"

Footsteps thundered on the basement steps, made graceless with haste and excitement. Never before would he have thought he'd look at water pouring from a tap with so much relief. At best, Raven had just ensured they could still make use of river water without it burning away their stomach lining. That was something to be glad about.

"Water's running. You did it. I think you really did it." Clearing the last step, Jess rejoined Raven, and as he did so he used his arm to deliver a celebratory smack on the back. "Nicely done, genius."

She hadn't misrepresented her skill when it came to mechanics and engineering. Having seen real talent in action in the form of Thomas, he could tell the difference.

Raven smiled, rolling her eyes, and looked at him over her shoulder. Eyebrow arched, she asks, "You really doubted me?" Pulling a face, she shakes her head, and stands up. "Of course you did. You're an idiot."

At her full height, she looks over her handiwork, and lets her gaze turn critical as she leans forward to brush her fingers against one of the pipes. It's not necessarily something close to anything she's done on the ground, but with Sinclair in her ear and her own faith in her hands combined, she knew she'd be able to figure out some solution.

She's glad she could at least contribute. It's the one thing she felt like she had been failing back home.

Brushing her hands against her grey scrubs, which were much dirtier with grime and dust, she turns back to him. "I'm not just a pretty face, you know."

"I doubted the old pipes. You doubt yourself more than anyone here," Jess replied evenly, looking the remodelled water tank up and down. "Take the compliment."

He could be satisfied that idiocy had been what had kept him losing sleep to this building project so long as it worked and they no longer had to worry about drinking water as much.

"No, you just have a dirty face." They had had to virtually tear apart part of the basement to have room and access to work, and half the dirt they'd kicked up looked permanently adhered to Raven. But she was in her element, that was undeniable.

Wasn't that Raven in a nutshell?

The only person who doubted Raven Reyes was the woman herself. Kyle Wick often built her up, usually in his own way, and she always knocked herself down. Ever since losing her leg, her habit had grown worse. Believing everyone else looked around and saw her as someone who was more baggage than a useful tool to be put to work, she'd taken it out on herself so they wouldn't have to.

She didn't make a move to wipe any grime from her face, and it wasn't out of a spiteful need to prove she didn't believe Jess at all. Raven did. She often sported grease stains on her cheeks and the dirtiest nails found in Arkadia. It was a badge to be proud of.

"A dirty face means hard work, Brightwell," she said. She stretched and heard something crack. She gave him a pointed look. "Yours is really clean."

Jess snorted and crossed his arms. They both knew he slacked off about as much as Raven did--which was none. "I wish that were true."

He, at least, was acutely aware of the state sporadic bathing had left him in these last few days. The first thing he was going to do if the running water cleared was wash his badge of pride off. Thoroughly. And maybe splurge with the makeshift soap. He wasn't going to be the least bit sorry to see that kind of 'hard work' go down the drain.

"You're welcome, by the way."

She looked at him with an arch to her brow, but her lips remained curved upward to inform him she knew exactly what he was responding to. She wasn't going to thank him for his help. It'd be out of character and expected if she did so.

Or would it be unexpected?

Looking down at her hands, Raven brought them close to her face to inspect. Finger brushing against the open palm of her left hand, she pursed her lips. "Got any bandages?"

There was a nice, long cut along her palm. Raven hadn't felt it sting until she'd pulled her head out of the water system game, and now found any movement of her hand pulled at the skin uncomfortably.

Jess turned away from the latticework of piping that made up their new cobbled-together design to see her holding her opposite hand. After time spent living together at the inn, he'd come to understand Raven could ignore injuries and physical discomfort almost as well as any trained High Garda in the field, so her inquiring about bandages all of a sudden made Jess half-expect to see her missing a finger.

"How bad is it?" he asked, moving to take a look. Of course something like this would happen when they don't have any clean water to wash out wounds with just yet--that's the sound of the universe laughing at them. "I guess you can't do battle with ancient plumbing like this and expect to get away scot-free."

But it wasn't too bad at all. A gash, fairly shallow. She probably wouldn't even need stitches.

"Yeah, I have something for that." He nodded his head at the stairs. "Let's go upstairs. The good news is you'll survive."

"Goody," she answered dryly.

It wasn't deep, but she knew it'd be uncomfortable. A hand that stung as she moved it could be easily ignored, but Abby Griffin's voice was in her head, and she was really worried about losing her hand. The town didn't have Abby Griffin as its Head of Medical, and so Raven's tolerance for a cut that'd been born from old pipes and other pieces didn't make her feel incredibly confident.

The town needed Raven Reyes with two good hands and two good legs, and so she was forced to take care of herself for the good of everyone else.

She didn't wait for him to take the lead. She began to walk to the stairs, and climbed it on two good legs. Not glancing over her shoulder, she said loudly, "Are you a medical professional, too?"

Truth be told, she'd probably survive. Things like tetanus were always a concern, but Jess certainly wasn't trained well enough in Medica to know what to do about it. "Field medicine," was his answer and the extent of his experience. If luck was on Raven's side, cleaning it and dressing it would be the end of the story.

"Sit," he said, directing her to a chair in the kitchen.

A scavenger hunt for supplies in his room turned up with some mulched plantain leaves, cloth bandages, and the little clean water he'd collected from the trees in the park. It wasn't much, but he felt it was still safer than the spring water, which had had him wary every since they'd found it. Even so, the choice was Raven's and when he set his supplies down on the kitchen table next to her, he said, "Do you want to try the spring water? This isn't it, but people keep saying they think it has healing properties."

Whatever that really means. It's no secret Jess has reservations about it.

Reluctant to listen to him, Raven supposed if she heeded his suggestion to come upstairs, she might as well commit to the entire experience. She'd lost a leg; why not a hand, too?

Sitting down on the chair, her posture didn't suggest she was comfortable. With her back pulled away from the rest, she sat as though she was ready to leap up and run away — or go back downstairs to cut her hand up some more.

Watching him, she eyed him with an arch to her brow when he spoke of the spring. "You really believe in that?" Her voice didn't contain a bite; it was more musing, quiet in its tone, as she wanted to know his opinion on what she'd heard around town.

A spring that could heal. She wondered where that was on her ground. She could've used it a long time ago.

Holding out her hand, palm up, she left it on the kitchen table as though it wasn't a part of her. She didn't even look at it. "Sounds like something people just want to believe in, you know?"

"In magical spring water that cures all ills? No. But I can't ignore the results," he admitted. "If I leave room for belief in other worlds and other times, a healing spring isn't outside the realm of possibility."

Taking a mortar and pestle down from one of the kitchen's cupboards, he sat and added in the bits of plantain so that he could grind it up further.

"All things considered, it could cure blindness and it'd still be suspect the way it just appeared in an area we frequent, right when we needed it. I for sure don't believe in coincidences."

"How long does it last? How does it heal? Would it take away from something else?" Even though Raven looked at Jess, she wasn't asking him. She took to him as though he was one of her transparent boards. Her words were the white marker and Jess was supposed to simply wear it.

She looked down at what he was doing with the mortar and pestle, but wasn't focusing on that. She was quiet for a long while, and when she spoke again, she wasn't looking at him. "Were you hurt before you came here?" She looked up then, looking him over as though she expected him to wear new bruises, as though summoned by the mere recollection of them existing.

Jess kept mixing, glancing up only the once, but a single glance was enough to say what he was thinking--that they were in agreement about the spring having too many unanswered questions to make it trustworthy.

Fortuitous coincidences were just traps that hadn't been sprung yet, in his opinion. And he didn't appear to be the only one who thought so.

"Hurt?" He thought that maybe she was referring to the fountain water and shook his head. "I was in one piece when they picked me up," and added, "It obviously didn't make much of a difference." Being in fit condition hadn't done him much good against these people; they'd whisked him away like the others all the same.

Unsurprisingly, Jess didn't give her the answer she wanted.

Raven wondered if she was the only person in the town who had had a life-changing injury. Not being able to feel half her leg, let alone support her own body, was one of the worst hands to be given in life. She might not often think pitifully of herself, always opting to think positively and even outrageously arrogant and ignorant to her actual current condition, but Raven suspected her trip in life had been the worst of anyone here.

She didn't advertise it, though. She liked being thought of as useful, and not someone worth pitying.

It made her more determined to give no one a reason to pity her as she did herself.

"I wonder if the water in the fountain is the same in the spring. Everything needs to have a source, right?"

Satisfied with the consistency of the leaves, Jess set aside the mortar for the time being and picked up the container of water and cloth. "All right, that's done. Come over to the sink so I can clean that cut out," he beckoned, standing up.

Jess was briskly efficient applying first aid, using his free hand to hold hers over the sink while he rinsed the cut out. Enemies in the field didn't wait for you to putter around applying bandages to your comrades; the High Garda had trained him to be quick, and when the wound was as clean as it was going to get, he took the damp cloth to the area around it.

"What do injuries have to do with the water in the fountain?" he asked as he swiped away dirt and grime. No one who looked at her hands would doubt Raven's chosen profession. She had grit layered into her skin as much as he had ink on his.

Or... he'd had ink on his. Past tense. He hadn't written a single word in a journal for ages.

Raven moved with him, and winced when he cleaned her wound with the same delicacy as Abby Griffin. That meant there was little delicacy in his touch involved.

She'd gone through worse. There was a slight echo of an ache in the base of her spine from the wound she'd acquired from John Murphy. A cut on her open palm was nothing in comparison.

Watching him work, she figures Abby would think his technique to be efficient. She wasn't going to lose her hand from any lack of care or thoroughness.

She shrugs her shoulder, not answering him immediately. She keeps her eyes down on her hand, moving her fingers and wincing at the fresh sting. "Just that … I had a pretty bad cut on my leg from the last moment I remembered. And I didn't have it when you pulled me out."

It's close to the truth.

"Stop fidgeting." Ask him and he'd say there wasn't a maternal bone in his body, but he could sure sound like a scolding mother sometimes.

Intent on cleaning the area around her wound--calling for Magnus a couple of days from now because Raven has an infected cut would be a poor way to celebrate their success--he gaze remained rooted on what he was doing until she brought up her leg. He paused, cloth hovering just over her skin.

Her leg. The limp. He remembered the unusual way she'd favored it the day he'd met, a quirk he'd gradually noticed less and less of as time went on.

Jess looked up. He controlled his expression well enough, but not his eyes--the questions jumbled to the surface in them. "That's the deal with your leg--you had an injury before you got here? And it was healed?"

She kept her hand still.

To admit she had lost most of the sensation in her leg would be to confess to weakness. And Raven Reyes wasn't weak.

She wished she hadn't brought it up at all, but she needed to know. Had anyone else come through the fountain and found that what had previously been broken had been fixed? Had it felt as normal as it should've, if all had gone exactly to plan and it'd healed as she had expected?

"I had a pretty bad cut," she repeated. It wasn't exactly the truth, given a bullet to the back and said bullet damaging nerves beyond anyone's original expectations was much more than a mere cut. "And it's gone. It shouldn't be gone."

This town was odd. The scar remained on her lower back, and there were other pigmentations on her skin that should've went away if the town was insistent on stealing her disability, but she could walk, and so the internal damage of her leg had been taken away instead.

"You think... the fountain had something to do with it?" His eyes narrowed, though it wasn't so much directed at her; his gaze was distant, focused internally on what Raven had revealed.

No wonder she was curious about the water.

"Why didn't you say anything before now?" He was hardly the type who could point fingers at someone for keeping secrets, but that had been a long time to sit on this kind of revelation. Would they have given her medical treatment just to dump her in an uninhabited canyon? Why?

Edited 2016-11-02 08:59 (UTC)

When Raven looked up, her brow was arched, and her expression wasn't one that was completely kind. She looked at him like he was an idiot. The answer to that question was one he should know himself.

"Let me trust a bunch of people I don't know," she said, a little sarcastically. Raven punctuated it with a roll of her eyes, and an accidental shift of her hand. She stilled it immediately in the hope of avoiding a motherly-like reprimand.

It was easier to shift the focus of her silence toward her distrust of people. It made sense to not speak up immediately. No one in this town was from home, and no one seemed to have a clue as to what was happening. The more she kept to herself, the safer she should be.

It also helped her remain locked in a world where she could ignore the fact she'd become permanently broken.

"Why would I say anything? Who knows what these people would think."

"It has nothing to do with trust," he countered rationally, resuming wiping along the outer edges of her hand. He wasn't angry--he wasn't quite sure what he was, truthfully. 'Surprised' might be the best word for it. "Maybe in the early days when you were sussing out whether the rest of us were playing with a full deck or not. That would have been interesting to know back when we were theorizing what these people want from us."

Pot, meet kettle. Jess realized how ironic it was for him to be advocating for full disclosure, with how many times he'd kept information need-to-know. He'd withheld truth of Thomas' execution from Glain and it had blown up in his face--quite literally, with her fist doing the exploding.

Still, he couldn't really blame Raven. He'd have done the same thing. Actually, he knew he would have done the same--keeping quiet about a potential injury would have protected her. He could see the crystal clear logic of her decision.

"I don't think it's insane, in case you're wondering. No more insane an idea than anything else that goes on here. But that might be proof they held us unconscious for some time before we woke up. Think about it. What if it wasn't the water itself that healed you, but our mysterious benefactors when they processed us?"

It didn't give Raven any peace to know someone might have tampered with her before she woke up inhaling water through her nose and mouth. Even though it was for the better, she was becoming tired of people strapping her down and taking from her.

She didn't owe anyone anything. From the people who had mended her leg to those who resided in the town. Raven knew the information could be valuable, but it was hers to use and find out, and she was never much of a team player when she didn't trust the skill sets of those around her.

Telling Jess was difficult enough. Though she trusted him as she had Clarke when she first met her, she still didn't want to tell him everything. He was hiding something, not quite similar to Clarke's interest in her then-boyfriend Finn, but he wasn't being completely open and honest with her, either.

Despite feeling tempted to inform him her nerves were no longer permanently damaged, she kept it to herself. Let him think it was a cut that might have required stitches that had her walking with a slight limp and wince.

"And why would they do that? We still don't know what they want from us. If they did this to my leg, then that changes things, don't you think?"

"It sure lends credence to the theory they wanted us healthy before cutting us loose in here." There was a slow, deliberate manner to the way he spoke; he was busy thinking now that Raven had thrown him a bone in the form of new information.

Reluctantly, he had to admit that it also added some weight to a possible connection between water and people thinking it was healing them. He was far from ready to give up on empirical thinking and jump on board with the idea they had some kind of Fountain of Youth on their hands, but between Raven and the fountain, and now the spring, the suspicious coincidences were piling up.

Whatever the case, treating Raven's leg definitely suggested the people behind this wanted her to be in fighting form. The million dollar question was--what for? It didn't make sense to him, no matter how many different ways he went over it in his head.

"So we could become unhealthy again?" Raven rolled her eyes.

Her leg was a more important factor than she was willing to give it credit for in the grand scheme of the town. By keeping the fact her leg had suffered permanent nerve damage a secret might be hurting their odds in figuring out what the people who owned this town wanted.

But Raven wasn't ready to acknowledge the fact she was a cripple. There was a weakness found in it, and Raven Reyes was never weak.

Being in this town helped her live in a denial she'd been aching for for three long months. She deserved to feel on top of the world and like her old self, didn't she? Without pain shooting up her hip and without hobbling and being given pitiful jobs where she had to sit, she felt like herself again. A raven who was no longer caged.

"Pfft," she shook her head. Quietly, "This is so fucked up."

of earthquakes and aftershocks

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