xp_logs | Penance, Tommy and Amelia- Saturday afternoon

x-penance.livejournal.com posting in

Down in the infirmary, someone wakes up. And reacts badly to the whole business.

Cold. It was cold.

Her hands clutched spasmodically at the blanket, log talons shredding the thick material. For the first time in an eternity she blinked. shuttering that blank blue stare. Killing the instinctive whimper, she peered cautiously around. Not the orphanage, not the Bad Place, not... the other places, the ones she couldn't really remember clearly. And certainly not her mother's apartment, small and dingy and always dim because her mother kept the curtains drawn against prying eyes. Not home.

Where was she?

The bed had railings and crisp white linen (torn and tattered now from contact with her skin), like a hospital. But where were the doctors, the nurses, the other patients? Only the very wealthy could afford a private room. There had to have been some kind of mistake. She ought to get up, find someone, explain so her mother wouldn't have to pay the bills...

The pillow had become embedded in the spikes that had once been hair and her careful efforts to prise it off only shredded it further, pieces of foam and cloth littering the bed. Her feet-talons scratched the floor when she stood, swaying a little, and whenever she moved there was the shrill scraping noise of a knife on tile. She would have winced, only her face felt heavy, stiff, like when they'd made masks at school, cool clay becoming hard as it dried, straws up their noses so they could breathe... She stopped herself in the act of clawing at her face and made herself take a deep breath - this wasn't the time for panic. She needed to find someone, find out what had happened, straighten out this mess. She took a tentative step, foot skidding on the tile and she had to grab at the bed railing for support. More damage - she gasped softly at the deep gouges her claws left.

Again the impulse came to flee, to escape this strange hospital and disappear, hide. But she wasn't an animal, a monster, she was a responsible human being. And that meant dealing with this the proper way. Gritting her teeth (no changes there, thank God), she pressed down harder on the floor, using the sharpness of her claws to gain purchase. She'd apologise for the damage later. Making her slow, careful way to the door, she pushed it open timidly, grateful it hadn't been latched - it would have been beyond her to figure out how to turn a doorknob with her hands this way.

However, what lay on the other side of the door was not the hospital ward or corridors she'd been expecting. She'd thought to see dingy hallways with marked worn linoleum and marked walls painted washed-out green, bustling staff, perhaps even a patient or two. Instead there was a silent gleaming metal corridor, pristine as the inside of the space ships on that television series about the Star Trekkers. This time the whimper escaped - what kind of place was this?

A noise caught her attention and her head jerked up like an animal scenting danger. The movement unbalanced her and she crouched, using her hands to support herself as much as her legs. Her talons left more long scratches along the floor. The noise drew closer, resolved itself into footsteps and then stopped dead as a man, no, a boy, a teenager older than herself, came around the corner ahead and stopped, staring.

Okay so Tommy wasn't exactly happy to have to be down in the medical wing. He'd gotten his hands stuck in one of his gloves after he accidently turned two of the fingers into silver while working on another set of jewelry and he just could not concentrate into turning it into something softer that he could then break.

It had been embarassing having to come down and get it cut off, but it was finally done and he could head back upstairs with no one finding out except the medical staff.

Of course, that was until he turned the corner and there was little spiky red thing in the middle of the hall. Not expecting it, he was startled and fell back on instinct as he took a step back, eyes wide, hands up in front of him. "What the fuck is that?!"

She couldn't understand the words but the tone spoke volumes. Flinching back, she almost lost her balance again and she dug her toe-talons into the floor and crouched a little to balance herself. She bared her teeth at the effort, unaware that the grimace might be taken as something a little more threatening than that.

Which is exactly how Tommy saw it and even made a graceful display of tripping over his own two feet as he scrambled back away from it, still startled. Hitting the ground, he cursed again, this time at his own clumsiness, rather then at what he realized now was probably a scared newcomer, but it was little late for that. "Ow, shit!"

He'd fallen? She began to move forward, reaching out her hand in an instinctive gesture to help him up, forgetting that she had the equivalent of five long blades extending from her fingers. Tommy scooted back a little and she tried to smile at him, only her face wouldn't move right and it came out as another baring of teeth...

There was a puff of green smoke a few feet away down the hall, a puff that turned into a billowing cloud with surprising speed. "Thomas, don't touch her," Amelia said crisply as soon as she had reformed, then turned her attention to the girl. "You... Penny," she said, a flush of what could only be irritation coloring her pale cheeks. Amelia Voght did not appreciate having to call her patients by nicknames used by the people who had bought the child like a piece of property. "It's all right," she went on. "But you need to stop right there and come back with me to the infirmary now."

Smoke? There was a fire? But then the smoke became a woman, a woman who spoke to her the same way the woman who had come to the apartment and taken her from her mother had. And the name she used... The girl backed away, talons skittering on the metal floor, and then turned and fled, practically on all fours and her talons leaving a trail of damage. Gone was all thought of responsibility, of talking to someone. This place was too strange, too frightening and she only had one thing on her mind: escape.

Ahead of her the green mist started to form again and she skidded to a stop, glancing around wildly for another route. Anything other than facing the ghost-woman again, whose demeanour smacked of the people who had taken her from her mother. No way out... wait! There was an air vent above her, set into the wall near the ceiling - without hesitation she scrambled up the wall, using her razor-sharp talons to gouge out foot and hand-holds. Reaching the vent, she slashed at the cover, the thin metal disintegrating under her touch.

"Wait!" came the shout below her, and she ducked into the duct, her small size easily accommodated. Out, she had to get out - that was her only thought as she scrabbled her way into the maze of ducts and away from the strange place. Her claws on the sheet metal let out a series of tinny pings as she made her way into the depths of the ventilation system.