Rowan on the Wing (rowanonthwing) wrote in downfallrpg, @ 2010-04-16 22:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2015-09-02, liah, liah and rowan, rowan |
Heirlooms
Who: Rowan and Liah
Where: Their hotel suite
When: Late afternoon
Getting back to the hotel was awful. Rowan had two backpacks of collected stuff with him, dangling from his arms, and one was twice as heavy as the other since it had a shit-ton of paper in it. It made flying in a straight line actually take effort, trying to balance himself out. And trying to even the load didn't work very well: the books and other things didn't really shift well, and then still fit. So he just strained harder on one side than the other.
Then half the city, it seemed, was on fire, and he had to fly around the smoke so he didn't go through it. That added another half an hour to the trip back, because he just couldn't get enough height to get above the smoke.
And then there were bird-monsters who decided he looked tasty.
That had been a big problem, since Rowan really didn't want to get eaten, and he couldn't really dodge very well with his arms full. He managed to get raked across the back before he dropped one of the backpacks onto a passing roof and got his gun out to shoot it. His aim was apparently getting better, because it fell out of the sky, looking half-dead on the way down and very dead once it landed.
He had to fend off two more before he finally landed on the roof, exhausted and bleeding and feeling barely alive. Even then, he still had to bolt back into the stairwell to avoid another dive-bomb. That fucker got shot at, but this time Rowan missed.
Liah was bored. Boredboredbored. She might've left the room and wandered around the hotel, but she was watching Juny, so unless she wanted to take the child with her, she had to stay put. Juny was in her room doing something, who knew what but at least she was being quiet, and Liah was flopped out on the armchair in the living room of their suite, her hair falling over one of its arms and her feet dangling over the other. She was mostly waiting for the nail polish she'd put on her toes to dry. Black, since it was all she had. She'd love to somehow get hold of another color or two.
She was stirred from her lethargy by a sharp, very loud sound from overhead, and her brows drew together in a frown. Was that a gunshot? Not even thinking about the fact that it might not be a very intelligent thing to do, she was up and stuffing her feet into her flip flops and running for the corridor. She didn't even take time to open the door but just went through it, as she did the door to the stairwell once she got to it. She pounded her way up the stairs and went through the door that would lead outside... and nearly ran right into Ro. "Wh--?" she started to say but was halted by what looked like blood on the back of his shirt... which had evidently been clawed by something.
The birds veered off, leaving Rowan to slam the stairwell door with a mutinous mutter and a wince. "Hi," he told her sourly, picking up one of the backpacks and shoving it at her. "Carry that in, wouldja? I gotta-- ah-- I gotta change my shirt and see how bad this is." He picked up the other backpack and starteed slowly and tiredly for the suite door, stuffing the gun back into his pocket. "Wouldja believe there's flying monsters now?" he told her in disgust.
The backpack Rowan thrust at her felt like it weighed nearly as much as Liah did, and she struggled to carry it. No point in complaining, though. Rowan was hurt, and he'd flown no telling how far carrying both of them. She pretty much dragged it down the stairs to the twelfth-floor corridor and then hefted it up in both hands as best she could. "Flying monsters? Why wouldn't I believe it?" There wasn't much about their situation that would surprise her anymore. "One of 'em clawed you?" She hoped they had some Neosporin or something tucked away in the bathroom of the suite.
They did. Rowan had picked it up from one of the other hotel rooms they'd raided, given, at the time, his annoying tendency to run into things while trying to practice flying. He nodded to her question. "Wasn't expecting it... hadn't run into any before today, and all of a sudden there was a shit-ton out in the sky right this afternoon when I had too much stuff to fly well. Ugh." He pushed open the suite door and dropped the backpack he still had onto the nearest surface-- the little duvon couch along the wall inside the door-- and started painfully undoing the buttons keeping the flaps of his shirt together around his wings.
"Shit," Liah said, sounding mildly out of breath as she let the backpack she'd been carrying fall to the floor next to the couch where Rowan had put his. "That means you're gonna have to be ready to like, fight anytime you go out to fly." She was quite displeased about that, and it was obvious in her tone. Like life wasn't difficult enough with the freaking apocalypse and total freaks of nature running around, but now they were up in the sky, too? Seriously? "Need any help?" she asked him, tucking her hair behind her ears and watching as he tried to get his shirt off.
"Probably will," Rowan sighed, which was an answer, kind of, to both questions. He'd definitely have to limit what all he brought back in the future, though. Two heavy backpacks wasn't going to cut it. Given he wasn't planning on going back to their houses any time soon, though, hopefully it wouldn't be an issue.... "Don't think I can reach my back too well...." He stripped the shirt off finally, wincing at the motion, and started for the bathroom. "Once I'm bandaged up, or 'least cleaned up-- dunno if they got me all that bad, really-- once we're done with me, you can see what I brought back."
Great, now she'd be even more nervous every time he went out. Liah chewed at her lower lip contemplatively as she followed him to the bathroom, unable to really tell how bad his back was. So many feathers, the pinions... yeah. "Hope they didn't," she said, glancing around for Juny. She might've still been in the bedroom. It might upset her to see her brother bleeding. She pulled her little flashlight out of her pocket and turned it on, because it'd be dark in the bathroom even with leaving the door open. Once inside it she put the light on the counter, placed so it would provide as much illumination as possible. She picked up the only clean washcloth that was left-- they really needed to try to do some laundry or raid the storage room for more towels and washrags-- and turned on the faucet to wet it. "It doesn't like, burn or anything, does it?" she asked, not wanting to speculate out loud on whether or not the thing that had clawed him might be poisonous. Who really knew?
"No, just kinda stings and pulls when I move." He couldn't spread his wings in here, it was far too small a space, but he could stretch the first joint of them away from his back, which he did, leaning a little on the back of the toilet and trying to fold the rest of them against his sides and outstretched arms. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and he didn't quite fit, but at least it got his feathers out of the way of the three parallel gashes on his lower back. "Don't think they got the wings, more the skin inbetween 'em...." Which was probably a good thing. He didn't think bandages, or even bandaids, would work too well on top of feathers.
"Ouch," Liah said sympathetically. She stood to one side of him so the light from the flashlight would shine on his back. "Doesn't look like the wings got clawed." It was fascinating to see the structure of his wings up this close, and she was reminded of the other morning when she'd tried to touch him at the base of them and had gotten rebuffed. This was something completely different, though. Fortunately for both of them, she wasn't a typical girlie girl who got grossed out at the sight of blood. Still, she hoped her wiping off the talon marks wouldn't hurt him too much. "Okay, here goes." She set her teeth into her lip again and got started, bracing herself for him to flinch or swear as she pressed the cloth to the bloody wounds.
He did both, hissing between his teeth and grounding out an under-the-breath, "Shit." He tried to be stoic, though, anyhow, and just braced himself for the rest. The tension made the bleeding pick up a little, though. There was a lot of crusted blood, and as Liah wiped that away, it let fresh seep out again. "How bad does it look? Won't need stitchin' will it?" Not that he had any idea what a wound that needed stitching looked like, and Liah probably didn't, either. But he didn't really want to bother Zane about it. He still didn't want to like that guy, and he wanted to prove he could be self-sufficient.
Liah's nose wrinkled, and she bit her lip harder as she forced herself to continue. She'd patched Jensen up once when he'd laid his cycle down, and in her experience it was best to just power through and get the ouchy parts over with. "I don't think so," she said when he asked if he'd need stitches. "If it'd just stop bleeding, I could tell better." She folded the wet cloth over to a relatively clean spot and set it over the wounds, pressing down firmly but (hopefully) not too hard. "Try to hold still. I'm gonna see if putting some pressure on it helps." She nudged the back of one of his knees with the front of hers, just an affectionate little poke. "Do you know if there's bandages in here?" She couldn't remember if they'd put first aid stuff in here or not.
"Check in the cupboard under the sink?" Rowan suggested, gritting his teeth at the pressure but pushing back, against it, to hopefully make it stop bleeding faster. "I think there's bandaids and neosporin and shit under there...." He didn't know if they had actual gauze bandages, though. If not, that was a definite oversight, and they'd have to do something about that. Fast-ish. He wanted to be as prepared up here as possible, so they didn't have to wander around downstairs to get anything they needed.
Though after this, he'd be doing a lot of wandering around downstairs for the next couple days, because he wasn't risking himself by flying when he was hurt like this. He wanted healed before he went out again.
"I will in a minute," Liah said, not wanting to take away the pressure she was putting on his back. "Does it hurt any less? Probably not with me pressing on it," she answered herself ruefully. After another thirty seconds or so, she lifted up the washcloth, but in the dimness she couldn't tell if there was any improvement. "Here," she said, reaching for one of his hands. "Can you kind of hold this?" If he could, her plan was to go get whatever supplies they had. If he was too contorted to get his hand free, she'd have to come up with some alternative.
"Not in place, but I can hold it," Rowan answered, looking over his shoulder at her, out of the corner of one eye. There was no way he could reach over his back now, not without contorting painfully, and probably not very well. He could, however, lift a hand over his shoulder to take the washcloth and just hold it. "Or I can sit down and you can just lay it on me." That might be better than nothing, he supposed.
"You're like a big pretzel," Liah said, then snickered a little. She stretched her free arm out behind her, leaning over almost enough to overbalance and stumble-- but not quite-- and snagged the flashlight. Peeling back the corner of the washcloth, she looked at the wound. "Okay, just stand still. I think I can get the stuff pretty quick." Carefully she set the damp, bloody cloth down and moved to bend down and rummage around beneath the sink. There was Neosporin and gauze and even some of that white surgical tape, but she wasn't sure how well it was going to hold on his back. She guessed they could give it a try. "Neosporin," she announced, taking the top off of it and moving behind him again. "Shouldn't burn or anything."
"Go for it," Rowan said, leaning back down against the toilet back, and stretching his wings as forward and out of the way as he could. " ... thanks," he added, right before she started layering on the antibiotic goop. He might not want to thank her when she started, because burning or no burning, touching open wounds was gonna hurt-- but he wanted to now, because she was being awesome. "At least I can make it up to you, dealing with me bleeding all over the damn place, when you're done...." He thought she'd appreciate what he went through all that torment to get, at least.
"Whatever, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think you were gonna make it up to me," Liah said, clearly joking by her tone. She slathered her fingers with the antibiotic cream and got to work, putting her free hand on his hip to steady him as much as she could. "Sorry," she said, knowing what she was doing had to be painful. At least she was done relatively quickly and washing her hands. "Ew, this stuff doesn't wash off well," she complained. It especially didn't when there wasn't hot water, but there wasn't much they could do about that right now. "Want me to see if the tape'll stick, or do you wanna let it dry first?" she asked, not knowing if the wounds would start bleeding again without bandages on them immediately or not.
This time, Rowan managed to not make any noise as she laid fingers in and around the gashes, though he did tense up again. They were still bleeding a little sluggishly when she was finished, though Rowan couldn't tell, and he didn't want to twist around to try and look, since he had the feeling that'd make it bleed worse. "I dunno, is it still bleeding? Maybe you could just stick the tape up above the cuts, I guess, where there isn't any of the goop...."
Liah turned the flashlight on it again once she had her hands dry. "Yeah, it is," she sighed. "I'd better try the gauze." She set to work, feeling all thumbs as she tried to tear the tape off the roll, having to resort to using her teeth, and then stick it to her forearm while she put the gauze squares in place. "Couldn't the bird monster have clawed you more evenly?" she complained as she tried to cover all of the wound. "This shit's hard to cover up all the way." Like he could have done anything about that. Finally she had it covered as well as she could, gauze taped in place. "Don't do any jumping jacks or have wild sex or anything, or that'll come off," she said, smirking as she threw the bandage wrappers away.
"I probably can't even fly with that on," Rowan grumbled. "I'm officially grounded until it scabs over or somethin'...." He gingerly straightened back up, feeling the tape pull a little and the cuts seep. They'd probably need to change that later today, but... that would be later. "Thanks, Liah." Folding his wings was a chore, and he wound up holding them a along his body instead of behind it. "I am really fuckin' tired. That was a long haul, man." He turned back to Liah, finally, now that his wings are at least mostly out of the way, and said, "Wanna go see your presents?"
"You're welcome," Liah said, grinning at him. He looked tired, tired and kind of droopy, and she thought that maybe they could just hang out and rest for a while. "You brought me presents?" she asked, distracted from that thought by what he'd said. "Of course I wanna see." That made her wonder exactly what he'd brought back in those huge, heavy backpacks, and she grabbed his hand to tug him toward the front of the suite where they'd left them. "C'mon." In her opinion, anything that could distract them from the dangers of outside and the mundane sameness of hanging out here in the hotel was a good thing.
Rowan had to laugh a little, despite the exhaustion, letting Liah pull him along. "Yeah, I brought you presents. Made a long trip today, an' I think I found you some stuff you'll like.... Yours are in that one." He gestured to the backpack he'd originally shoved at her. "The super-duper heavy one." He, himself, dropped down onto the couch, but sat up quickly as landing on the couch cushions smashed into the bandage and hurt. After a wince, instead he stretched out on his stomach, one wing dragging on the floor and the other folded on the couch back, his arms folded under his chin so he could watch Liah.
Once Rowan had settled himself, Liah dragged the backpack over closer to the couch and sat down on the floor next to it, close to Rowan's head as he reclined on his stomach. "Feels like there's a lump of steel in here," she remarked as she unzipped it. As she pulled out one of the two thick sketchbooks that was in there and realized what it was, she said, "You went to my house?" Duh, of course he had; how else would he have gotten the sketchbook? Liah had always kept them all, stacked in the cabinet beneath her window seat. She flipped pages, smiling a little as she looked at drawings she'd thought she'd never see again. They weren't nearly as good as the ones she did now, she didn't think, but then this was a sketchbook from when she'd been about fifteen.
"I wound up in the neighborhood and had to drop by," Rowan agreed, grinning tiredly from the couch as he watched her. "I tried to grab the ones with the most awesome pictures." Well, he'd gone for ones where he remembered the pictures, which meant Liah had liked them enough to show them to him. "There's more stuff, too-- flip to the back of the second book." That was where he'd slipped the photos-- rather than carry frames or books around, he'd just pulled the pictures out.
Liah wanted to ask him if the dead bodies of her mom and Tricia had still been on the porch, or if Jensen had been anywhere around... but she knew there'd be no way she could force those questions out without completely losing control of herself. Maybe something had dragged them off, or Jens had temporarily come to his senses and buried them. She didn't know, and she certainly didn't need anything else to make her have trouble sleeping at night. "Sorry, I'm sure my room was a mess," she said breezily instead. She finished with the sketchbook she held and pulled out the other one-- this one more recent, actually the one that immediately preceded the one she'd brought with her-- and flipped to the back, curious about what stuff he might be referring to.
Oh... pictures. That was good, and that was bad. Good because there were photos of people she'd never see again, and bad because the sight of those faces made her want to weep as shamelessly as an exhausted child needing a nap. She picked up a photo of herself and her brother, two blond heads close together, almost identical blue-green eyes and wide smiles; her expression was almost grave as she contemplated it.
Rowan's grin faded a bit. "Yeah, I know," he answered her expression more than anything she might've said. "I brought some from my place, too. Just... you know." He fluffed the feathers of one wing in a shrug. He didn't want to have to explain. Explaining would be too hard. Hopefully she understood without him having to go into too much detail. "You don't hafta look at 'em now. If you don't want to. There's more stuff, too."
"Yeah," she said, her voice soft, at his suggestion that she might not want to look at them now. She turned her face slightly away from him, using one hand to stuff the photo she was holding into the back of the sketchbook and the other to quickly wipe beneath one eye. She thought she might actually implode with stored-up grief if she saw a photo of her mother right then. She set the second sketchbook on the floor on top of the first one and dug into the backpack again, wanting to distract herself and also wanting to see what else was there. "Flip flops!" she exclaimed. Liah was the sort who wore flip flops all the time, even when it was cold outside, and she'd had a million pairs. Now she was up to two thanks to Rowan.
Tension diffused. He understood how that could be, and knew it wasn't always something you wanted to do in public. Even if your own suite didn't really count as public, exactly. He snickered, going with the lighter mood that went with her next discovery. "And regular shoes, just in case," he told her. Mostly he thought it'd be a good idea to have them on hand for broken glass or snow or failure to find any kind of heating system in this big hotel come winter. "But yep, another pair of flip-flops. There's more, but not a lot more."
"Thank you," Liah said, hauling out the regular shoes he'd brought, too. That would be handy when it got cold, as hard as that was to imagine right now at the very beginning of September. Next was a shirt-- the cute sage-green one with the scoop neck with little sparkles around it that she'd just bought-- and when she unwrapped it, out fell a pair of sunglasses. "How awesome are you?" she exclaimed, turning her head to grin at him. "It's like you were getting some kind of brainwaves from me about what I'd want the most." She put on the sunglasses and then pushed them up into her hair, posing for him. There were three things she loved a lot, and those things were flip flops, sunglasses and nail polish. Rowan, of course, knew her well enough to know that.
"Didn't I tell you?" he quipped. "The wings were only the first thing I got. I'm a total mind-reader, too." He freed up one hand from under his chin to wiggle his fingers "mysteriously" at her, grinning. Mostly, he just knew what she liked, and there was only so much of what she liked undestroyed, so it wasn't all that hard to grab. "Don't forget to check the front pocket, too, once you're done in the main one."
Right. Liah was probably lucky he wasn't a mind reader. Or possibly unlucky. She hadn't made her mind up on that one yet. "What am I thinking right now?" she asked dryly, smirking at him and then reaching into the pack again, resisting the urge to go immediately for the front pocket. She'd see what else was inside first. Oooh, another shirt, this one red with a maple leaf on the front-- a souvenir from a trip to Canada at the very beginning of the summer. It smelled like her favorite cologne; probably she'd worn it for a few minutes to run out somewhere and then put it back up because it wouldn't have needed washing. "It'll be awesome to have a few things that fit," she said, because the clothing she'd found along the way really didn't, for the most part.
"That I am the most awesome best friend ever," Rowan guessed, completely making that up off the top of his head. His smile, though, was fond and gentle, tempered probably by how tired and sore he was, as he watched her pulling out her things. He'd made her happy, he thought. And that was what he'd been going for. That was what mattered, making each other happy in this fucked up world right now. If she was having trouble with clothes fitting, maybe next time he'd hit up a clothing store or something... they had those in downtown Detroit, right?
"That's not what I was thinking, but you are," Liah said, giving him an affectionate look. She had more shoes, a couple more shirts-- her own shirts, which made a difference-- sketchbooks and photos, all things she'd never thought she'd see again. She went for the front pocket of the pack, unzipping it and pulling out a bottle of gold nail polish. "You saved my life!" she said, doing an undignified and girly sort of bounce as she sat on the floor. "I'm so tired of black nails!" She put the small bottle down and turned herself around, hugging him as best she could with him lying on his stomach on the couch: one arm around his neck and her cheek pressed to his.
Snickering, Rowan leaned his cheek against hers and briefly shut his eyes, freeing a hand a little again to pat her arm and folding his wing around her, since there was no way he could get an arm there. Horray for extra limbs! "Now you get shiny gold ones. That's much better. Less gothy and depressing and shit." He was content to just lay there and get hugged, if she was content to kneel there and hug him, really. This was kind of comfy. "So what were you thinking?"
"That's classified information," Liah joked, winking at him. "I'll never tell, even if you pull out all my fingernails. But then I couldn't use the nail polish, and that would suck." She was already thinking about the fastest way she could find to scrape the black polish off both her fingernails and toenails so she could put the gold polish on. "Thanks for bringing me presents," she said, hesitating just a tick and then kissing his cheek before she sat back. "How does your back feel now? Any better?"
"Sweet mother Mary, I think your kiss just healed me!" he said melodramatically, though he was grinning so it ruined the whole effect. "Eh, it still hurts," he answered more seriously. "I'm just ignoring it. That's what real men do, after all. Ignore pain." He did keep his wing cupped around her, though, since she hadn't pulled back that much. "I just won't move around much for a while, no big deal. But you are totally welcome for the presents."
"Didn't I tell you?" Liah said with a completely straight face. "I can phase and heal people with my wondrous lips." She snickered and poked him gently on the shoulder. She didn't scoot away, liking the feel of the soft feathers of Rowan's wing on her bare arm. She leaned her head against the arm of the couch, her face about a foot from Ro's. "You should chill for a while," she said, her voice softer now. "Just, you know, rest. I think there's some Advil if you want some." What would she do without him? She was fond of Juny, and also Jas and Verity, but Rowan was really the one that held her together, kept her as centered as it was possible to be in this situation.
"Advil would be awesome," Rowan agreed tiredly. "Or maybe Tylenol. I forget which one does which kind of pain...." He shut his eyes and turned his head a little more comfortably on his arms, curling his wing a little closer around her shoulders. "Gotta get up 'ventually, though. I got presents for Juny, too, and wouldn't wanna make her wait too long." He'd just lay here another minute or two, that was all.
"I'll get you some in a minute," Liah said, strangely reluctant to move away from him. Her own eyes closed most of the way, and she watched Rowan from beneath her lashes. It felt like a moment of peace in a life in which they never knew what was going to happen next, and she thought that maybe these moments would be what kept them all sane. "I'm surprised she's not out here already," she said of Juniper. "I dunno what she's doing." Playing in the bedroom she shared with Rowan the last Liah had seen her, but she would've thought the girl would have heard her brother returning.
"Mmm. Maybe she's being nice and letting the big kids play, for once," Rowan suggested with a sleepy grin. He forced himself to open his eyes and push himself gingerly up to sit, though his wing slid even more slowly from around Liah as he moved. It was pretty awesome to hug someone despite not having available arms to do so. "I'd better go find her, just in case she's getting herself into trouble, or somethin'."
"Good idea," Liah said with a sigh, sitting back a little as he sat up. Juny was pretty good usually, but any kid that age was going to occasionally get into things they shouldn't. She hoisted herself to her feet and stretched, then added, "I'll go hunt up some drugs for you." Maybe he'd consent to chilling out for the rest of the day, since he was injured. She never knew for sure how he'd react to things. Maybe the fact that they were both unpredictable was another reason they got along.
"Drugs," Rowan said fervently, wincing at the movement of actually standing and trying to find a comfortable way to hold his wings, "would be awesome. Thanks, Liah." He gave her shoulders a one-armed hug, now that they were both standing, then shuffled over to the unopened backpack. He was going to approach Juniper with her presents, first. Then she might overlook the bleeding part.
Liah grinned at him when he hugged her and swiftly pinched his butt, then skittered on out of range, trilling, "You're weeeeeelcome!" Her plans were to get a glass of water, quickly read the Advil and the Tylenol bottles both to figure out which one would be better to give him, and then join him and Juniper again to see Juny's reaction to her presents. Everything was okay, everyone was safe, and she could just save those pictures for later, when she was alone. Later or even some other day, because she knew they were going to be terribly hard to look at.
"Brat!" Rowan exclaimed when she pinched him, swatting at her with a wing, but then he let her go and crouched down to open up the backpack. He didn't really mean it, after all. While she was gone hunting down drugs, he could squirrel his own "present" out and away where nobody would find it, and then he could haul the rest off to Juniper's room. He hoped she'd be pleased, too. He wanted this whole mess to at least have been worth it.