the hands of those monsters, ever cutting and scraping

[asklepios]

Who: Adam Monroe and Benevenuta Crispo
What: The first attempt. (If at first you don't succeed--)
Where: A few blocks away from Thames, in Flyside
When: Newdi evening
Notes: The polyvores never end. (Also, for clarity, this particular attack is not driven by Vicious' influence - he hasn't been in the city long enough - but will provide helpful context for later conflicts.)
Warnings: Blood, violence, temporary death (immortals just walk it off, yo). Self-injury to demonstrate healing properties.

Eccentric but sleepy, Flyside doesn't see quite so much excitement ordinarily - it must have seemed like an ideal opportunity to catch her leaving Thames, unprepared and undefended. Even on her own, she wouldn't have been either of those things, but Adam had shoved her into the doorway after the first blow (there's blood at her temple, and when one of the concerned onlookers gathering glances there she rubs her hand back into her hair to push it out of the way, smearing Adam's blood and providing an obvious explanation for her unbroken skin), and it had been a mess, violent and quick and tangling a confused and frightened group of bystanders in the ensuing mess.

The knife is still in his thigh, where it caught the artery - she's doing her best, but there's only so much she can do here on the side of the street, trying to simultaneously keep him conscious and force back the unhelpfully concerned members of the public who at least don't offer to call the Militia, avoiding the inconvenient position of being forced to either accept or say no. She's maintaining pressure on the wound with one hand and trying to dial her CiD with the other, but there's blood spurting through her fingers and his pulse is slowing and there's no time, which has always struck her as the stupidest complaint for her to make and that still doesn't change the fact that there isn't anything she can do. Well; palm the knife when he's dead, because even in moments like these she's a creature of forethought and she has no illusions about who the intended target was.

--and then she's swearing under her breath and improvising in a hurry, tearing strips from the bottom of her already-bloodstained blouse and binding them around his thigh in an effort to disguise the suddenly unmarked skin under his torn trousers. (She doesn't need to pull that tight, but her first instinctive response to his heroics was 'irritation' and now she's been blindsided twice over, as irked protests go it's a mild one.) “Act concussed,” she hisses in his ear, on the pretext of checking him over again.

Comments

[lazarusrisen]

Which raises the question of how; Adam has never been concussed and he gathers that it's not exactly a condition where one remembers how one acted.

But if it's momentary confusion and quiet on his part she's after, she gets it. He may not die from large, grave wounds such as these, but the sudden and copious blood loss does still send him into shock until his body can close the wound and replace the lost blood.

Replacing his lost cover, however, is going to be a more pressing problem. She's seen too much. Hopefully he won't have to make his efforts go to waste and kill her himself. "I can explain," he says, weak, breathless, one hand grasping her arm. "Later."