carter bennett ( human ) . (solepurpose) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2013-06-24 20:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | #solo, 2009-09-27, carter |
welcome to the land of fire, i hope you brought the right attire.
Who: Carter.
Where: The Budget Lodge; Carter’s room.
When: Very early morning, just after midnight.
Over the course of his life, in all the time he had been a hunter, Carter had experienced pain of varying degrees. As a teenager he had almost been blinded. Before his twenty-first birthday he had almost had his throat torn open. Less than a year later a steel pipe had punched clean through his leg and pinned him to the ground. Only four years ago he had had his back slashed so viciously it was a miracle there had been no nerve damage. Bennetts were hardy, they got knocked down time and time again only to pick themselves up, bloody and battered, and keep on fighting. Carter was no exception. Time and time again he had been beaten and bloodied and broken in one way or another and he was still fighting. Still drawing breath and putting one foot in front of the other, loading his guns and making sure his blades were sharp so he could continue his family’s work.
That didn’t mean he was immune to pain, that he didn’t feel it as any mortal would. He did. For all their strength and endurance the Bennetts were just human at the end of the day and Carter had the scars from all of those close calls as all of his siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles did. Or had, more accurately in many cases. Edward Bennett had borne them until the day he had drawn his final breath. Even Rebecca, one of the most respected of their old and prolific line, had suffered terribly over the course of her life. She wore her scars proudly, without shame, as her last surviving son did. She had taught him well.
It was Rebecca who had taught him, more than Edward, how to tend to his own wounds. Hospitals asked questions, they worked with the police and launched investigations and none of them could afford that. Hunting had always been something of a grey area but after the Light of May it was illegal, without question, now that people knew about supernaturals they were outraged by the idea that there were men and women out there who made it their life’s work to hunt and kill the creatures who had finally stepped from the shadows into the light. It didn’t matter to those ignorant masses that the supernaturals the Bennetts specialised in hunting really were monsters, that they took joy in harming others, that nothing pleased them more than to traumatise, torture, and slaughter innocents. More members of his family than he could count had lost their lives to all kinds of vampires and demons over the years they had been taking up arms against the supernatural. More would continue to fall over the years that lay ahead, maybe even Carter himself. Not many Bennetts lived long enough to retire, as his mother had.
As he awkwardly pushed the motel room door shut behind him he tried not to leave blood on its surface, making his way carefully in the dark to the bathroom where he flicked on the light, stopping in the main room only long enough to draw a bag from beneath the bed using the toe of his boot, grimacing as the act of bending to pick it up rewarded him with a flash of pain and a moment of light-headedness that had him pausing in place until it cleared. It only took a second and then he continued on. A smear of crimson found its way across the switch and the old tiles on the wall. Carter didn’t notice. It didn’t matter. He would clean it later. Keeping his priorities straight was the main thing he had to remember, his mother’s firm voice clear in his head as he set the bag from under the bed down on the counter beside the sink. Almost methodically, not even really needing to think about what he was doing or why, he withdrew certain items from the bag of supplies, pausing again when he realised his right arm was trembling.
Setting his jaw and drawing breath in through his nose he looked down at his side where the skin had been slashed open. Blood was working its way slowly but steadily out of the wound in a small stream, creeping down his side, over his hip, over the tough material of the trousers he wore. If he stood still long enough it would make its way to the floor and puddle at his foot. For several seconds Carter stood looking at it, assessing it silently, and then he made himself get back to work.
His shirt ended up on the floor, his jacket too, the former as much a victim of the blade as he was himself. It would have to go. There was no point trying to save it. The jacket was salvageable. Certain materials ended up on the side of the bathtub, the shower curtain pushed all the way back and to the wall. Carter sat himself on the side of the bath, one leg on either side of the tub’s wall, his boots and socks and even his trousers removed along with everything else, tossed onto the floor of the bathroom to be dealt with later. His right hand was still trembling a little. Clenching it into a fist and then loosening it again, Carter repeated the motion until the fingers remained steady and he trusted them to do what needed to be done.
Several deep breaths in and then out helped to brace him for the worst of it, his hands unscrewing the cap of the bottle. It was one of two that had come out of the bag and the second sat a little ahead of him. The mixture in the first bottle would sting, disinfecting the wound primarily but it would work just as effectively to clear his head of the cobwebs that had started creeping in after the fight and the ebb of adrenaline. The alcohol would clean the wound, the hydrogen peroxide would disinfect, both together would hopefully negate anything harmful that might have been on the blade. Carter wasn’t about to take any chances. Without giving himself a chance to think about it any more he poured some of the clear liquid over the wound in his side, setting the bottle down immediately and gripping the edge of the bath with one hand, keeping his teeth firmly gritted to stop any sounds beyond the tight and strained groan in the back of his throat from escaping. Head bowed, eyes squeezed shut, he waited for the stinging to pass, his breathing slowing as the worst of the discomfort passed. Without straightening he opened his eyes and looked to the wound past the messy tumble of his hair that had been knocked from its tidy sweep during the fight. The bleeding had all but stopped but it would be stupid to take chances.
Damp bloodied gauze ended up balled and scattered in the bottom of the bath as Carter worked, pacing himself, working steadily as he had been taught. More times than he could count he had gone through these same motions but as he sat there and made sure the wound was clean, applying sterile saline solution from the second bottle he remembered the times when he hadn’t been able to, when he had been immobilised by the wounds and the severity of them. More clearly than he cared to Carter could recall how much it burned to have his own blood run into his eye, the taste of it as it had trickled into his mouth. The wound could have been much worse but he had been too compromised by it to tend to it himself. His mother had seen to it herself, treating it in such a way that it had barely scarred. When the demon had tried to tear out his throat he had barely been able to stand for the shock that had swiftly followed the rush of the blood loss, Carter remembered staggering against a wall and then little else. He had awakened over a day later with his neck dressed in sterile bandages. Elizabeth had taken care of that one for him. The wound that had left the scar in his leg had left him unable to pick up his own weight, forced to wait in the growing dark until help arrived, unable to do more than press his jacket against the wound after he had somehow found the strength to pull the shaft of metal from his flesh. When that blade had slashed the length of his back he had been all but immobilised, out of commission for weeks, months, and it hadn’t been his family who had pulled him out then. A siren, of all people, had helped him up from the ground while his consciousness was fading, making sure he got somewhere safe where he could be treated. His family had come for him, his mother first and foremost again, it was Rebecca who had worked on the wound more than anyone else and remained by his side during the worst of his recovery, but Carter remembered very clearly that feeling of hopelessness, the dread and shame that had come with the realisation that he could not help himself. If Athena hadn’t been there he would have been killed, left to bleed to death in the dark of that old factory while that vampire had his way with the girls he had stolen from their homes.
Carter tossed the last of the gauze into the bath and reached for the sterile dressing, shaking his head to try and dismiss the memories. None of them helped him now, he only had his own hands and his own experience to fall back on and that was more than enough. His mother had made sure of that. The sound of the dressing’s packet tearing open seemed so loud in the room, the rubbish tossed loosely into the tub with everything else, the sterile pad pressed carefully over the wound that he had stitched together himself. The memories hadn’t been entirely useless, he supposed, positioning the pad so that the entirety of the injury was covered. If nothing else they had kept him from feeling the needle piercing his flesh and the pull of it as he worked to bring the parted edges together again.
It was only a couple of minutes before he started moving again, taking the items from the edge of the bath and setting them back on the counter by the sink instead. The discarded items could wait until later to be dealt with but he needed the supplies back where they belonged just in case he needed to move in a hurry. Each one was checked almost automatically, routinely, before being placed back in the bag, Carter couldn’t afford to carry around bottles that were almost empty, just as he couldn’t afford to risk running out of thread or dressings. Only when everything was back where it belonged and accounted for did he step out of the bathroom again, not wasting any time staring at himself in the mirror to look for the inevitable signs of the fight he had just walked away from.
Carter didn’t notice the time on the clock when he dropped the bag back on the floor by the foot of the bed, pushing it underneath where it had come from with one foot. When it was out of sight he moved to the door again, making sure the window was fully covered beforehand. Methodically he checked every lock, his hands no longer bloody after the application of the disinfectant and the saline solution, everything had been washed away into the tub that he would clean thoroughly after he had gotten some rest.
Anyone else might have dug painkillers from a drawer or a bag, taken several with water, but Carter settled only for the latter. Painkillers dulled the senses, slowed the mind, they were a risk he wasn’t willing to take. The discomfort was something he could live with, something he had lived with before, and more than anything he wanted to feel what had happened. Running from the pain, ignoring it, wouldn’t teach him anything. How could he learn from something if he hid from it? Every wound was a lesson, a reminder that hunters had to keep their reflexes sharp, they had to be ready for anything. Bennetts especially. There might come a time when someone with a grudge or a mission of their own stepped out of the darkness and came for him and he needed to be prepared for that.
The glass was only a third full when he set it down on the bedside table, the room as dark as it had been when he had stepped into it, even the light from the bathroom extinguished now. Carter was careful when he sat himself down on the bed, just as he took care when he laid back, having to roll onto his left side away from the wound to keep it from being pressured.
It wasn’t going to be easy to sleep but he was still alive. Still breathing. Still able to fight. All things considered, Carter couldn’t really ask for more.