For a given definition of well. I'm quite happy with my current circumstances, thank you.
[ Is he? Not really. Though in many ways, he's better off now than he was in the before-times; he had felt content then, knowing that he had the love and approval of those around him, that his life was going down the correct path. Now, he gets to live as he pleases, and nobody seems to approve at all.
It is what it is. They've got bigger fish to fry than to snipe at each other. He wraps his robe around himself a little tighter (do try not to glance at his bare, hairy legs sticking out from underneath it), and stomps back over to the nearby stable to grab a shovel, still tacky with damp hay. ]
I don't know what we'll do if it is dangerous. It's not like either of us are fighters. But I can just about wave this around, [ he says, brandishing the shovel before stomping forward to the front door, looking a bit trepidacious. ] Only the gods know what we'll find in here... ugh. [ He knocks at the door. ] Joann? Joann? Please say you're in there!
[ There's no answer. With a searching glance behind him, he opens the door. ]
[She feels an odd flush of defensiveness when he makes the perfectly reasonable statement that neither of them are fighters. Why do her feelings lately make no sense? It doesn't do anything to improve her mood.]
I don't know. An amateur with a big dirty shovel might frighten me more than a swordfighter who knows what he's doing.
[She peers around Claude into the building. There's the shop counter and its old-fashioned register, there's the fashionable clothing hanging from the racks... being well-lit by natural light, because there is a big hole in the ceiling at the top of the staircase.]
I don't know about that. I've had plenty of unskilled men try to take a swing at me before, and it really wasn't so...
[ He trails off, gaping at the hole where their apartment ought to be. It's enough to sober even him, even if he had been trading barbs largely to distract himself from how distressing this whole thing is. ]
Shit. Joann? Joann! This can't be possible -- no act of the gods could explain this!
[ He runs up the stairs by instinct, as though he could find some trace of her there, calling her name and reeling in disbelief. The strangest part about it is how at peace it all looks, as though her clothing was meant to flutter in the wind. ]
Shout something if you need help! Ethlyn's here with me, we can get you out!
[ He's so frantic in his desire to find her that he fails to realize that the stairs beneath him have begun to groan in dismay, without the grounding of the top floor to hold them steady. ]
[Claude running up the stairs to an absent second floor is already an alarming sight, but the noise that the steps make quickly becomes worse. Ethlyn rushes after him but her feet halt at the bottom. Setting foot on them will only make things worse--and even as she runs over she can hear the groans start to become cracks.]
Wha... oh, gods, [ Claude mutters, going as pale as a sheet as he feels more than hears the stairs begin to crumble beneath his feet. He does what nobody should do in such a situation: he freezes. He's too petrified to run down and risk being caught in a mess of jagged wood and metal, in splinters and debris, but equally as scared of climbing atop the structure and perching up there like some flightless bird.
In the end, as the structure begins to groan its dismay, the stairs fall out from beneath his feet. With instincts he didn't know he had - instincts he shouldn't have, if he weren't too panicked to think about it - his arms shoot up and grasp onto the ledge of the building, right where the upper floor has been seemingly torn off. The rough wooden edges dig into the palms of his hands painfully, his shoulders and arms protesting with the sudden surge of weight. When he dares glance beneath him, he sees a whole lot of things he'd rather not land on. ]
E-ethlyn?! [ That swaggering dastard is gone, replaced with the frightened young man Ethlyn once knew much more. ] What do I do?!
Those are the words that come to mind. But they die before they reach her lips. That won't help Claude at all. He probably can't do anything, but she has to.
She quickly picks and stumbles her way over so she can look up, and then she grabs a fragment of the late banister that isn't too splintered up to start bashing and shoving some of the debris that's directly beneath him.]
Hold on! You've got an archer's shoulders; you can do that!
[When she has time she'll be able to wonder where that came from. But if she can clear some of the worst of it away from him, maybe she can--can get a pile of clothes beneath him or something for when he inevitably loses his grip.]
[ The weight of his body hanging limply underneath him feels heavier by the second, but he finds himself surprisingly able to hold on without feeling as though he'll plummet to the ground anytime soon. Instead, he lifts himself up with everything he can so he can rest his weight on his forearms instead of relying on his fickle fingers; he can feel the jagged wood digging into his skin as a result, cutting into him and drawing blood, but he finds he prefers that over a snapped neck.
What he doesn't understand is why he trusts Ethlyn to know what to do, as though she's not some housewife with as few ideas as to how to deal with this as Claude himself. And he doesn't understand what she means by an archer's shoulders. Sure, he knows how to use the bow and arrow, but that's purely recreational, purely ornamental, and of little use to her.
Not that he has much time to consider that, not while he's concentrating on just hanging on. ]
What are you even doing down there? [ He swings his body, trying to gain traction on the smooth wooden wall with the bare balls of his feet. ] I really don't see a way out of this that doesn't end with broken bones!
Getting things out of the way! [She's resorted to kicking bits of the splintered staircase away, still casting frantic glances up at Claude to make sure he's not about to plummet right on top of her and a lot of destroyed staircase. She just catches sight of a few drips of blood as he manages to pull himself up a bit--immediately she thinks of splinters and bandages, but it makes his predicament very slightly less imminent.
She's done as much as she can clearing the ground beneath him, and so she dives towards the racks of clothes, yanking sweaters and scarves off their hangers, shirts and trousers from tables, to pile up as a makeshift landing pad. Joann should have sold pillows instead.] I've piled up as many soft things underneath you as I can! It's the best I can do!
[Now. What else can she do. Catch him...? He's a fully grown man and while she isn't tiny, she's not exactly up for catching one hundred and eighty pounds in her outstretched arms. But maybe she can help grab him--steady him--keep things to a sprain rather than a snap.]
[ Wait, why did he say that? He's not a religious man -- and he certainly knows of no gods of luck. He's too worked up to think much about it, not with the screaming of his muscles, working double-time to keep him up as long as possible. ]
Okay! Here I go!
[ He hangs there. ]
Here... I go.
[ His knuckles turn white. He squeezes his eyes shut. ]
Ethlyn, I just want you to know that this is very scary, and if I snap my neck and die, I'm absolutely coming back to haunt everyone who has ever wronged me. Which isn't you, incidentally, but you might see me around. At least I'll be a very handsome ghost.
[ Okay, he's very clearly stalling. But after a little more rambling, he kicks off of the wall so that he can get some distance between himself and the debris of the stairs, arms curled over his head, and lands with a massive thump in the midst of the soft clothing.
He doesn't land with a snap, per se. But there is something of a crunch, and then a quiet moan of pain. ]
I'm not dead, [ he informs her, voice muffled. ] More's the pity.
You'd better not! The last thing I need is a ghost at a charity picnic, haunting the potato salad!
[Unconsciously, she clasps her hands together tightly as Claude prepares to drop. She can't blame him for taking a long time to let go. This is a mad idea. If she had another five minutes, she'd have come up with a better one, but she didn't. And if it does kill him, he'd have a right to haunt her along with everyone else.
She can't breathe when he finally does let gravity take hold. Bits of clothes go flying as he lands with more than a simple thud. The sound of a breaking bone shoots through her heart--my fault--and yet it seems to cut something loose.]
Hold still. Okay? [Her steps are brisk as she moves towards him, snatching up a long scarf and a broken spar.] What was it? Your leg? Your arm?
Shoulder, or arm... I think? Which is good, because that's what was covering my neck. [ With a groan of pain, Claude manages to roll onto his back, still clutching at his shoulder. He can't tell if it's broken, or a fracture, or perhaps just dislocated; whatever it is, it's absolutely screaming in pain in a way he's utterly unused to. He blinks back tears (though not with as much success as he'd like) as he looks up at Ethlyn's face, as determined as he's ever seen it. Oddly determined, he thinks. She's just the gossipy neighbour everyone loves to roll their eyes at. Shouldn't she be running off, yelling for help? Instead, she looks singularly focused, intent on helping him herself for some unknown reason.
He means to say something cute and pithy, but the pain has removed his filter. Plaintively, he says, ] Where did she go?
[ He may be a philanderer and she may be a cheater, but there was real care there. He'd take a dozen falls to ensure that she wasn't somehow horribly murdered by an act of god. ]
[There's a steel in her voice. She can hear it. But she can't think about it. If she thinks about it, it will go away, and she'll panic and fall to pieces.
She picks up a scarf and an orphan balustrade and puts them beside her. Then she reaches for his arm. She needs to find out where the break is.]
This will hurt, but I need to know exactly where the break is so I can splint it. [She's as gentle as possible, but she knows he will probably have to yell, or shed more tears, or both.] And then we can ask everyone else about Joann. There must be a reasonable explanation.
[ Claude stares up at the missing ceiling above them. It's nothing. It just vanished. It could be him next, or someone else he knows, the parents he's estranged from, the bar he works at, the sunny patch of grass he used to nap in as a child, even Ethlyn. There is no reasonable explanation. He knows this. He knows that Ethlyn knows this too, and she's just trying to keep him calm, as though soothing a lost child.
The comparison is apt, though he wishes it were not. He feels like a lost child. ]
My arm, [ he finally says. ] Upper arm. Close to the shoulder as it can get. [ His eyes dart over to Ethlyn. ] I didn't know that you knew how to do this.
[Oh, no, Claude, don't ask her to think about it. Ethlyn fumbles with the splint and the fabric for a moment. She shuts her eyes a moment, and then opens them again. Claude being in his pajamas means she has a good look at what's going on. She can see that it's not right, and it's starting to swell up. That's what injuries do.]
...Blood flows to the injury to start the repairs. It clots up around it and forms new bone, slowly, carefully, and that's why you put a cast on it. [As she speaks, she begins to splint his arm, carefully, knowing that it will hurt.] You have to keep it still. You don't want complications later if the bone heals wrong.
[There's something else she should be doing. She's sure of it. It's a big hole in what she's doing, as gaping wide as the ceiling that isn't there. She doesn't know what it is--she can't figure it out.]
Like I broke my arm, [ Claude says bluntly, raising his other arm up so that he can wipe at the tear tracks staining his cheeks. Normally crying about something isn't anything he'd be caught doing, creature of pride that he is... but he'd dare anyone with a broken arm not to cry about it, or to shout out in discomfort as he had. His tolerance for pain isn't so immense as all that.
But he is grateful. Horrid gossip though the lady Ethlyn may be, she was well within her rights to abandon him to this foolish task, to sprint away when he fell, to shove this problem into somebody else's lap. Instead she stayed, kept him company in that no-nonsense sort of way, tended to him the best she could. He sucks in a breath between his teeth, trying to keep some clarity of mind. ]
...but it feels like it should hold. [ The widow, a medic. Who knew? ] Thank you, Ethlyn. Really.
[Ethlyn sits back on her heels and sighs in relief. Only now does she feel a bead of sweat trickling down the side of her face, and she reaches up to feel that her forehead is wet with perspiration.]
I'm sorry I couldn't do more. [She looks into his eyes. She's known Claude as a rake and a flippant charmer. Seeing this side of him, knowing that he does truly care for the women he dallies with, hurt and scared... she feels bad for the judgment she's held of him.] We need to get you to the clinic. But I will keep looking for Joann.
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expiationlogs2024-03-09 08:37 am
no subject
[ Is he? Not really. Though in many ways, he's better off now than he was in the before-times; he had felt content then, knowing that he had the love and approval of those around him, that his life was going down the correct path. Now, he gets to live as he pleases, and nobody seems to approve at all.
It is what it is. They've got bigger fish to fry than to snipe at each other. He wraps his robe around himself a little tighter (do try not to glance at his bare, hairy legs sticking out from underneath it), and stomps back over to the nearby stable to grab a shovel, still tacky with damp hay. ]
I don't know what we'll do if it is dangerous. It's not like either of us are fighters. But I can just about wave this around, [ he says, brandishing the shovel before stomping forward to the front door, looking a bit trepidacious. ] Only the gods know what we'll find in here... ugh. [ He knocks at the door. ] Joann? Joann? Please say you're in there!
[ There's no answer. With a searching glance behind him, he opens the door. ]
no subject
I don't know. An amateur with a big dirty shovel might frighten me more than a swordfighter who knows what he's doing.
[She peers around Claude into the building. There's the shop counter and its old-fashioned register, there's the fashionable clothing hanging from the racks... being well-lit by natural light, because there is a big hole in the ceiling at the top of the staircase.]
That's... that's impossible. Joann!
no subject
[ He trails off, gaping at the hole where their apartment ought to be. It's enough to sober even him, even if he had been trading barbs largely to distract himself from how distressing this whole thing is. ]
Shit. Joann? Joann! This can't be possible -- no act of the gods could explain this!
[ He runs up the stairs by instinct, as though he could find some trace of her there, calling her name and reeling in disbelief. The strangest part about it is how at peace it all looks, as though her clothing was meant to flutter in the wind. ]
Shout something if you need help! Ethlyn's here with me, we can get you out!
[ He's so frantic in his desire to find her that he fails to realize that the stairs beneath him have begun to groan in dismay, without the grounding of the top floor to hold them steady. ]
no subject
[Claude running up the stairs to an absent second floor is already an alarming sight, but the noise that the steps make quickly becomes worse. Ethlyn rushes after him but her feet halt at the bottom. Setting foot on them will only make things worse--and even as she runs over she can hear the groans start to become cracks.]
Get back down here! The stairs are going to go!
no subject
In the end, as the structure begins to groan its dismay, the stairs fall out from beneath his feet. With instincts he didn't know he had - instincts he shouldn't have, if he weren't too panicked to think about it - his arms shoot up and grasp onto the ledge of the building, right where the upper floor has been seemingly torn off. The rough wooden edges dig into the palms of his hands painfully, his shoulders and arms protesting with the sudden surge of weight. When he dares glance beneath him, he sees a whole lot of things he'd rather not land on. ]
E-ethlyn?! [ That swaggering dastard is gone, replaced with the frightened young man Ethlyn once knew much more. ] What do I do?!
no subject
Those are the words that come to mind. But they die before they reach her lips. That won't help Claude at all. He probably can't do anything, but she has to.
She quickly picks and stumbles her way over so she can look up, and then she grabs a fragment of the late banister that isn't too splintered up to start bashing and shoving some of the debris that's directly beneath him.]
Hold on! You've got an archer's shoulders; you can do that!
[When she has time she'll be able to wonder where that came from. But if she can clear some of the worst of it away from him, maybe she can--can get a pile of clothes beneath him or something for when he inevitably loses his grip.]
Don't fall! Not until I say so!
no subject
[ The weight of his body hanging limply underneath him feels heavier by the second, but he finds himself surprisingly able to hold on without feeling as though he'll plummet to the ground anytime soon. Instead, he lifts himself up with everything he can so he can rest his weight on his forearms instead of relying on his fickle fingers; he can feel the jagged wood digging into his skin as a result, cutting into him and drawing blood, but he finds he prefers that over a snapped neck.
What he doesn't understand is why he trusts Ethlyn to know what to do, as though she's not some housewife with as few ideas as to how to deal with this as Claude himself. And he doesn't understand what she means by an archer's shoulders. Sure, he knows how to use the bow and arrow, but that's purely recreational, purely ornamental, and of little use to her.
Not that he has much time to consider that, not while he's concentrating on just hanging on. ]
What are you even doing down there? [ He swings his body, trying to gain traction on the smooth wooden wall with the bare balls of his feet. ] I really don't see a way out of this that doesn't end with broken bones!
no subject
She's done as much as she can clearing the ground beneath him, and so she dives towards the racks of clothes, yanking sweaters and scarves off their hangers, shirts and trousers from tables, to pile up as a makeshift landing pad. Joann should have sold pillows instead.] I've piled up as many soft things underneath you as I can! It's the best I can do!
[Now. What else can she do. Catch him...? He's a fully grown man and while she isn't tiny, she's not exactly up for catching one hundred and eighty pounds in her outstretched arms. But maybe she can help grab him--steady him--keep things to a sprain rather than a snap.]
no subject
[ Wait, why did he say that? He's not a religious man -- and he certainly knows of no gods of luck. He's too worked up to think much about it, not with the screaming of his muscles, working double-time to keep him up as long as possible. ]
Okay! Here I go!
[ He hangs there. ]
Here... I go.
[ His knuckles turn white. He squeezes his eyes shut. ]
Ethlyn, I just want you to know that this is very scary, and if I snap my neck and die, I'm absolutely coming back to haunt everyone who has ever wronged me. Which isn't you, incidentally, but you might see me around. At least I'll be a very handsome ghost.
[ Okay, he's very clearly stalling. But after a little more rambling, he kicks off of the wall so that he can get some distance between himself and the debris of the stairs, arms curled over his head, and lands with a massive thump in the midst of the soft clothing.
He doesn't land with a snap, per se. But there is something of a crunch, and then a quiet moan of pain. ]
I'm not dead, [ he informs her, voice muffled. ] More's the pity.
no subject
[Unconsciously, she clasps her hands together tightly as Claude prepares to drop. She can't blame him for taking a long time to let go. This is a mad idea. If she had another five minutes, she'd have come up with a better one, but she didn't. And if it does kill him, he'd have a right to haunt her along with everyone else.
She can't breathe when he finally does let gravity take hold. Bits of clothes go flying as he lands with more than a simple thud. The sound of a breaking bone shoots through her heart--my fault--and yet it seems to cut something loose.]
Hold still. Okay? [Her steps are brisk as she moves towards him, snatching up a long scarf and a broken spar.] What was it? Your leg? Your arm?
no subject
He means to say something cute and pithy, but the pain has removed his filter. Plaintively, he says, ] Where did she go?
[ He may be a philanderer and she may be a cheater, but there was real care there. He'd take a dozen falls to ensure that she wasn't somehow horribly murdered by an act of god. ]
no subject
[There's a steel in her voice. She can hear it. But she can't think about it. If she thinks about it, it will go away, and she'll panic and fall to pieces.
She picks up a scarf and an orphan balustrade and puts them beside her. Then she reaches for his arm. She needs to find out where the break is.]
This will hurt, but I need to know exactly where the break is so I can splint it. [She's as gentle as possible, but she knows he will probably have to yell, or shed more tears, or both.] And then we can ask everyone else about Joann. There must be a reasonable explanation.
no subject
The comparison is apt, though he wishes it were not. He feels like a lost child. ]
My arm, [ he finally says. ] Upper arm. Close to the shoulder as it can get. [ His eyes dart over to Ethlyn. ] I didn't know that you knew how to do this.
no subject
...Blood flows to the injury to start the repairs. It clots up around it and forms new bone, slowly, carefully, and that's why you put a cast on it. [As she speaks, she begins to splint his arm, carefully, knowing that it will hurt.] You have to keep it still. You don't want complications later if the bone heals wrong.
[There's something else she should be doing. She's sure of it. It's a big hole in what she's doing, as gaping wide as the ceiling that isn't there. She doesn't know what it is--she can't figure it out.]
How does that feel?
no subject
But he is grateful. Horrid gossip though the lady Ethlyn may be, she was well within her rights to abandon him to this foolish task, to sprint away when he fell, to shove this problem into somebody else's lap. Instead she stayed, kept him company in that no-nonsense sort of way, tended to him the best she could. He sucks in a breath between his teeth, trying to keep some clarity of mind. ]
...but it feels like it should hold. [ The widow, a medic. Who knew? ] Thank you, Ethlyn. Really.
no subject
I'm sorry I couldn't do more. [She looks into his eyes. She's known Claude as a rake and a flippant charmer. Seeing this side of him, knowing that he does truly care for the women he dallies with, hurt and scared... she feels bad for the judgment she's held of him.] We need to get you to the clinic. But I will keep looking for Joann.