Second Floor Girl's Shower to Room 218, Laaaaaate Tuesday Night

[glacial_queen]

Karla hunkered down in the corner of the shower and cried. She'd managed to keep up her facade of 'no, no, I'm fine' up through the portal trip and back to the dorms. She'd begun shaking in her room, kicking the blood-soaked gown into a corner with a cry of horror. By the time she'd gotten into a shower, she'd been sobbing.

It wasn't just the whole being stabbed thing, though that was ranking pretty highly. There had just been blackness for awhile--a deep, all-consuming darkness (Darkness?) that had held her tightly and refused to let go until Raven came and forced it away. Karla couldn't dwell on how close she'd come to death because if she did, she might just never stop crying.

But it really hadn't just been being sacrificed on a meat-tree that was getting to her. It was the smell in the air as she'd walked through the orgy, the scent of anticipation and lust and sweat and sex. Had she closed her eyes, she never would have known she was in this world and not in Glacia, at one of Hobart's parties. It was the stress of this weekend and not knowing where her friends were and if she would ever see them again. Of feeling the land dying by inches as she walked. Of being stabbed and poisoned and getting up to hold off a friend who was also a vampire...

Of having her Sapphire wrenched for her and profaned by the maenad. She thought she could still feel the grubby residue of that bitch's touch on her Jewel, like fingerprints on her soul. Some of her tears were pure relief at having it back, having it safe. Karla had seen the revulsion in the eyes of her friends when she'd ripped the maenad's heart out, but she'd meant it when she'd promised agony for agony. The maenad had just been more metaphorical about it.

And so she held her knees and cried big gulping sobs until she felt hollowed out inside and the water had long since run cold.

[For one please! NFB, as this happens after radio]

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[wwiii]

Warren had gotten Emma's message. He'd gotten it while a good hundred feet off of the ground, taking advantage of a beautiful night even though he'd sworn up and down that he was going to avoid the dark altogether for just about the rest of his life, which would explain why he was dressed and making his way to Karla's room so quickly.

Because... Really, you don't get a message like that and waste any time in the world acting on it. He would have come running in his underpants just as quickly.

"Karla?" A careful knock on the door to her room. "Are you in there?"

He wasn't going to ask if she was okay. If what Emma said was true, then it was safe to assume that she was anything but.

[glacial_queen]

Karla's answer came from behind him. "No, I'm over here," she said quietly.

She was wrapped in a big, fuzzy towel that covered her from neck to knee. She looked almost like a child in it, nearly swallowed up by the the thick cotton. Perhaps it was less that than her woebegone expression, which she attempted to exchange for a smile when she saw him.

It was...less than successful. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Did you need me?"

He had to be there because of his trauma, right?

[wwiii]

If 'his trauma' was allowed to include how worried about her he was, then absolutely!

Please excuse him for not replying to that question verbally at all once he realized that she was behind him. He sort of needed to wrap her in a gentle hug, arms and wings both.

[glacial_queen]

Karla wasn't going to protest the hug. In fact, she was just going to drop her little bag of toiletries and cling for a minute. He'd chalk it up as residual worry for him, right? No reason to think he'd know about the whole 'almost sacrificed' thing.

Sometimes Karla forgot things like 'her friends were indeed capable of talking to each other.'

"Wanna go inside?" she asked. "We can keep hugging, but I like to minimize the amount of time I spend in public in a towel." See? She was joking. Clearly no trauma here!

[wwiii]

None at all. Warren could totally tell. Really.

"Inside would be good," he agreed, trying on a shaky, worried little smile. "Sorry. Hugging was sort of top priority at the moment."

[glacial_queen]

"Hugging is always completely okay with me," Karla said firmly. "After the evening I had--you did get my message, right?--I kind of needed one, too."

Karla was clinging to the belief that it was only residual trauma from the weekend that had Warren out here at stupid o'clock in the morning. At least she was until she opened her door and saw the dress--drenched scarlet and now drying to a deep brown--shoved into a corner.

"Ummm...." Perhaps he hadn't seen it?

[wwiii]

He'd seen it. Warren had seen it, could see the blood, and it took a good deal of self-control to keep from just grabbing her into another hug before they were even totally in out of the hallway.

He did stare at it for a moment, yes. And his hands were shaking a little by the time he tore his gaze off of the clothing and looked back toward Karla.

"The evening you had," he repeated.

[glacial_queen]

How did one say, 'I got stabbed while bound to a sacrificial meat-tree' to one's recently traumatized-with-a-meat-hook...whatever their relationship was now?

"I'm better now," Karla said quietly, figuring it was best to start right there, with the obvious. "Raven Healed me completely." With a kiss, but Karla was sticking to the basics right now. "I don't even have a scar."

She knew that for a fact, considering she'd searched obsessively for one in the shower. It hadn't seemed right somehow, that she should have come so close to death and still have nothing to show for it. But other than the angry pink of her still-healing radscorpion attack, Karla was unmarked.

[wwiii]

How Raven had healed Karla, Warren didn't care. She could have stripped her naked and rubbed her down with massage oils, and so long as Karla was still alive when it was all said and done, Warren wouldn't complain.

"I'm... glad she was there," he said, once he remembered that he was possessive of such a thing as a vocabulary, and that he probably ought to use it. "How are you?"

He wasn't worried about the sort of scar that could be seen, now.

[glacial_queen]

"I just had a really long cry in the shower," Karla confessed, reaching over to take his hand. "It was kind of overdue, but tonight was pretty much the icing on an already awful cake."

She took a deep breath and said as calmly as she could, "Tonight, at the orgy, I was meant to be a sacrifice to the maenad's creepy god who comes." And wasn't that a thrilling title for an orgy-god? "My Sapphire was stolen from me and then I was stabbed. Bobby and Kennedy rescued me from the meat-tree and brought me to Raven to be Healed."

[wwiii]

Some little piece of Warren's brain managed to shut down entirely somewhere through that explanation. There were phrases like 'meat-tree' and 'sacrifice' being used, and those would have thrown him after a good weekend.

So he squeezed her hand. And then he was wrapping her up in his wings again.

"Don't you ever get offered as a human sacrifice again." Said the guy who was impaled on a meat-hook a few days ago. It was totally different. "I'm glad you're still here."

[glacial_queen]

"I will be very happy if it never makes it onto my agenda again," Karla mumbled into his shoulder. "It wasn't the most painful part of my weekend, but definitely the scariest."

Wait--she had totally not meant to say that part out loud. Talking while traumatized was stupid.

[wwiii]

"I can't even imagine," Warren mumbled, rubbing gentle little circles on her back with one hand.

Actually, he probably could, in fits and starts. Feeling trapped, tied down. Looking death in the eye. What his father's attempts to restore his humanity didn't manage, his time spent in Rapture certainly did.

He didn't think that was what Karla really needed to hear, either.

"If there's anything that you need... Anything. Someone to talk to, whatever... I'm right here. I won't go anywhere unless you want me to."

[glacial_queen]

"Could you stay?" Karla asked, unconsciously gripping him tighter as she did. She didn't want to be alone right now, not at all.

"Talking would...yeah. And just holding and hugging and..." She shook her head, trying to banish the maenad's image from her mind. "She was awful and then I was awful and I still don't regret doing what I did to her but I don't want to be alone with it, either."

[wwiii]

"Then you don't have to be alone with it," Warren whispered, pulling her a little tighter still. "I'm right here. I'll be right here."

Well, right here, and kind of guiding her toward the bed, hoping that it didn't seem too forward that he was doing so. This sort of seemed like a good time to sit down. It all seemed... pretty heavy.

[glacial_queen]

Sitting down was a brilliant idea. Adding 'on the bed' was even better, because it wasn't like her desk chair was big enough to cuddle on. And Karla could really go for being held right now.

She might even eventually remember she was in a towel and change. Or...maybe not. He was wearing pants, right? The Rule was totally being observed.

"We don't have to talk about anything," she babbled. "You just had a weekend so horrible I probably can't even imagine it, the last thing you need is me talking to you about this. Sorry. I'm sorry."

[wwiii]

"My weekend was terrifying," Warren allowed, but that statement seemed to come from some part of him that was now more or less detached from the rest, like a piece of him that he'd broken off and crammed under a pillow somewhere, to be looked at more thoroughly later, possibly with a dose of gasoline and a match. "You need this."

That last part was much more here-and-now, and it came complete with a wing draped around her, soft feathers brushing gently over the back of her neck.

"We can talk, Karla. I'll be fine. And you have nothing to be sorry for, okay? Nothing."

[glacial_queen]

"I think I scared our friends," Karla admitted in a tiny voice. "Not by being sacrificed but with what I did afterwards." She drew in a long, shaky breath. "I killed her, Warren. The maenad. In as ugly and spectacular way as possible."

She drew her knees up and huddled a bit under his wing, worried she'd drive him away but needing to be honest anyway.

[wwiii]

Warren didn't budge. And he really didn't show any inclination to, either. He nodded a little, though, listening to each and every word that she spoke, picking at them and filing them all away.

Karla wouldn't be the only person in the school who had taken the life of someone who had tried to kill her. Judging by the sick snaps that the necks of a few of the Splicers had made back in Rapture, she wasn't the only one in this room, either.

"It doesn't sound as though she gave you much of a choice."

[glacial_queen]

"I wasn't thinking about choice," Karla said. "I was hurt and scared and angry. She'd stolen my Sapphire--" her fingers clenched around her Jewel "--and then stabbed me in the guts. She wanted me to suffer before I died for her god." And she had. Her voice was still a little hoarse from all the screaming she'd done while tied to the tree.

"When I killed her, it wasn't to protect the people of the town, or the people she would have moved on to, or for justice for those she'd killed in the past. It was to get back at her from hurting me. That's not who I'm supposed to be Warren! I'm a Healer, not a killer! But...if I had it to do over, I'd do it again. Probably the same way, even."

[wwiii]

"And I wouldn't fault you for doing it to her a second time, either," Warren murmured.

He still wasn't going anywhere. He hadn't been there, no, and he couldn't judge her, not for something he hadn't seen, maybe not even if it had been something that he did see. It didn't matter. She was scared and hurting, and in his mental list of priorities at the moment, being afraid of Karla for killing somebody who had almost killed her first didn't even place.

[glacial_queen]

Karla sagged against him, not even bothering to hide her relief. She'd been worried that he'd turn away or withdraw from her. Not that she was going to tempt fate by going into further details, but the fact that he could accept it without judging her for it...that went a long way towards making her feel better, it truly did.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Just...thank you. For listening. For understanding how badly I need you right now. For...everything, I guess."

[wwiii]

"You understood, too," he pointed out, gathering her up in his arms and turning his head a little in order to place a soft kiss against her cheek. "So... you're welcome. And thank you, as well."

It all came around full circle pretty neatly, even if the circumstances around the entire week seemed to be pretty horrible ones. And even if she hadn't been there for him on Sunday night, he would have come running at Emma's voicemail message in a heartbeat anyhow.

"Here's where I tell you that you're probably going to have to pry me off with a crowbar in the morning."

Just putting that out there.

[glacial_queen]

"Here's where I tell you that I don't have a crowbar. Wouldn't be able to pry you off even if I wanted to. Looks like we'll just be stuck together."

Oh noes. Karla sure sounded distressed by that. Really.

Being held by Warren was a little island of right in the vast ocean of wrong and craziness that her life had become this past week. Karla was just going to cling to that feeling for a little while, using him as a talisman to ward the darkness away.

"When I was dying--" she stumbled over that, a bit, "--I was filled with so many regrets. Not for things I've done, but for the ones I would never have a chance to do. Save Glacia. Form a Court. Graduate. Be in love. Have someone be in love with me. See Jaenelle set up her Court in Ebon Askavi. Make love. Cook a decent meal. So many, many things. I think I understand Drake's class a little better now."

[wwiii]

Warren's thoughts strayed only for a moment, to the way the world had felt as if it was spinning away without him in the alleyway in Rapture where Mitchell had saved him, and he nodded, just a little. Maybe for a moment, he regretted not taking Drake's class, as well.

"You'll still get your opportunities to do those things," he said, softly. "Do what you can, when you can do it, right?"

Fly.