xp_logs | Sometime before Paige's post about Angelo waking up...

Tuesday evening; around 5-ish

It had been many hours since her meeting with Cain and the Unfortunate Glitter Incident, but power still thrummed through Amanda. 'Whatever the fuck it is about that groundskeeper, there's a fucking lot of it,' she thought to herself as she settled her back firmly against the wall. A small brazier, cobbled together from someone's oil burner and an ashtray, wafted aromatic smoke into her face. Legs crossed, hands lying lightly in her lap, back straight, she closed her eyes lightly, focussing her concentration downwards, beyond the confines of her body, the room, the mansion beneath, until she reached the ICU. She couldn't actually 'see' Angelo, not being a telepath, but with her senses cued by the healing spell she could sense the pain and distress he was in. The damage was like a violet-blue glow, almost painful to 'look' at.

She'd never tried healing from this distance - or any distance, really - before, but if McCoy wouldn't let her do it properly, she'd just have to try it. Besides, what else was there to do? She had more power than she really knew what to do with, and healing was a lot better than hurling rocks around. Or summoning glitter. She cringed slightly, and forced her concentration back to the medlab. Angelo. Pain. Damage.

There was so much. She hadn't experienced this much injury before, even with the worst of Rack's beatings, or the fights over food or sleeping places or drugs on the streets. The sheer enormity of it daunted her for a moment, and she chided herself.

'Break it into small parts, like Romany taught you. Nothin's so big it can't be made smaller.'

The pain first. It was a discord on the edges of her magical senses, distracting and huge. Her lips formed silent words as she recited an old Assyrian charm against pain, focussing her energy not into herself, but into Angelo. For a moment it seemed it wouldn't take, that the distance was too great, but she shoved with her will and made it go where she wanted it, the power she'd absorbed from Cain acting like a jump-start. She couldn't take all the pain, of course, but she lessened it to a point where it was bearable, where it wouldn't keep him unconscious.

The burning next. The damage to the tissue was so extensive, there was no way she could heal it all instantly, besides, it didn't work like that. Magic simply aided the natural process, made it faster, more thorough, juiced up the body's healing abilities. She set in place what she could, encouraging the tissue to regenerate, soothing seared flesh and exposed nerves. It would require further treatments to get him to a point where he could leave the medlab (and that place was no good for anyone), but she hoped that by starting things, McCoy would see it her way. By having Angelo wake up and the healing begin, she figured the doctor couldn't let his stubbornness continue, not if it meant the suffering of his patient.

Fatigue washed through her, and she withdrew. Her body twitched as her awareness re-entered it, and she took a long, shaky breath. Muscles trembling, she looked at the time - one and a half hours had elapsed since she'd started. And she'd missed dinner, too.

"Bugger," she said out loud, and began the long process of untangling herself.

***

In the medlab, Angelo lay unmoving in his ICU bed. Slowly, however, as Amanda's healing spell did its work, his mind began to surface from the place he'd retreated to beyond the pain, up through the darkness towards consciousness. Slowly, painfully, he stirred a little, not yet at the point of opening his eyes.

The first thing he was aware of was the not inconsiderable pain Amanda's spell hadn't yet removed. He groaned, then coughed weakly against the tube in his throat, which brought hurried footsteps to his side. Finally forcing his eyes open, he saw the hazy figures of the doctors moving hastily around his bed in frantic activity, before closing them again with another groan and sinking into a more natural sleep.