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Who:Gaheris Rhade and whoever helps him out...
What: Rhade is running from Candlelighters after he's been found out.
Where: Right on the outskirts of Dog Fenn, coming in from Syriac Well.
When: Late in the evening. Date flexible to mun necessity.
Warnings & Notes: Blood. Violence likely. Always with the angst warning. Until his boneblades grow back they won't be readily visible.

This section of Baedal has gotten cool and crisp at the late hour. The families in Syriac Well are probably enjoying their sleep, or their firelit night in one another's company. No doubt a couple of tired parents are interrupted by children disturbed by sounds outside, or the folks themselves are left to stare at the ceiling at the sound of thumping or a heavy impact. At least one block will have something to talk about the next day, unfortunate though it was they would probably have entirely the wrong idea later.

The source of these noises hits the pavement with a roll, before continuing up the sidewalk toward more busy, populated areas. Somewhere that might have more signs of night life and decent lighting. He fumbles with a blood soaked hand to try to send off a message from his CiD- not even of himself at that moment. Recordings of a few conversations he'd been privvy to, because no one suspects boyish expressions and demure natures (that were excruciatingly against his instincts to emulate) to be anything but honest. The screen lights up a smear of red from his thumb.

These shoes are impractical and too loud. He puts the device in the pocket of his overcoat and begins to sprint, realizing that he couldn't abandon the wingtips like some sort of bizarre pastiche on a Grimm fairytale. He'll be just asking for the militia to hunt him down on some manufactured charge.

He's so close to Dog Fenn. He can smell the restaurants closing down for the night, and still hear the buzz of a few more people out. He doesn't stop running. In fact, he throws himself into it. Faster than any normal human, but not like a vampire. He still has to strain, feel the pounding of blood in his chest and his head grow dizzy. As long as he stays ahead, as long as they don't stop the message from going through, he'll have accomplished something.

He hurks at the feeling of sharp metal in his shoulder-blade. He will have to commend the man for having impeccable aim with that crossbow. He's barely made it past the first shop and he had to slip into an alley and pull that one free of his body, too.

Few people here knew Gaheris Rhade before he "vanished". He'd not made a point to be personable, and when he'd discovered what was happening in the city it had filled him with a sense of resentment. A reminder of what drove his people to subjugation over the humans. A reminder that the lives of his people were simply offered to the Magog, that they weren't entitled to compensation after the planets they brought life to were obliterated by the horrors of their invaders.

And then he had gotten his mind stuck on Dylan, on Dylan's face, and that last question to him.

Gaheris. What have you done?

And he'd vanished, he'd become another person, a Mr. Emory Morris (a poor boy with a home education and a fear of the unfamiliar city, needing his new employer to show him around and all the kinds of people that he needed to be wary of). A poster-boy smile and a chipper tone for all the old hands he worked around and impressive to the haughty ladies. And he remained that person until the nasty moment that finished his recording, where someone grabbed his arm and realized that the boneblades he'd sanded down were still there. They'd asked him what sort of freak he was. He said the proper insult was Uber, and it was after that final word that it cut off. That's the final thing Hasi would recieve.

Rhade does his level best to keep from leaving more blood than necessary. A trail will defeat the purpose of losing the men following him. He hangs onto the bolt with slick fingers because he'll need something to make a last stand with.

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With a nod, Cindy heads in the direction Benny (or Vanessza to her) points out and finds herself the makeshift triage room. The smell of antiseptic is strong, but that's the least important thing to Cindy right now. She hopes Benny's skill is as good as her word.

"An arrow and a couple stab wounds. At the very least." Cindy drops Rhade on the bed unceremoniously, but gently enough that he isn't jolted into having internal bleeding. "I don't think he's human."

He slowly comes to consciousness in a clean room, surrounded by the harsh scent of antisceptic. The side of his face has joined the rest of him in hurting, but the blood is clotting; he heals fast (not instantaneous regeneration, but fast).

He clumsily covers his nose with the back of his hand, eyes closing again almost as soon as they open. But he is doing his best to stay awake.

"Easy," is from just above him, a woman's voice, working on him with gloved hands and the steadiness of experience; she slows what she's doing when he starts moving, but only to make sure he's not going to panic and jostle her and open up a wound worse. In smooth, accented English she's calm and almost lulling-- "My name is Dr Vanessza Bernát. Cynthia brought you to my apartment, and I'm patching you up. I need you to keep holding still for me, sir."

He grunts, and holds still. He can hear her, but everything is muddy and muffled in his head, and when it's not muddy and muffled it's buried under a white noise of aching parts.

It's another minute or so before he speaks again. "I need to make sure-" a breath, and another attempt "-I had a message to deliver. I need to make sure it made it. I need to get in contact with..."

Oh. Stab wounds. He did not miss you.

"I understand." Benevenuta keeps her eyes on what she's doing, most concerned in the immediate with ensuring his safety and wellbeing; a secondary concern is whoever's after him tracing his steps here, but she's more than capable of taking care of herself. First things first. "How time sensitive is it? --I need you to be patient. Tell me if you need something for the pain."

"Extremely if they're following me." If they break in, and got his CiD while he was like that, he will be helpless to stop them. He needs to erase his message history (if the device will even allow him to).

He does slump more against the table though. "Nothing. Thank you." Polite, even in discomfort. "It heals quickly." But he wants to stay aware of how bad the injuries are, of his disadvantages.

"If you sent it by CiD, it will have gone through." And while she's not making any assumptions about his message content, she fleetingly wonders at the wisdom of using the network for anything where security is a priority; this isn't her first rodeo with a police state.

"All right-- this isn't as bad as it could be, especially if your body heals quickly, but you've lost a lot of blood and I'm not done with these sutures. You're going to need to rest here, at least tonight; you can contact who you need to when I'm finished."

He almost argues that it's not what he's worried about, but he doesn't. Instead, he just lays there and decides to wait it out. Talking too much could make them more of a party to something they might not want to be involved in. The Candlelighters are dangerous as it is. It's better in this case not to try too hard.

Maybe the one that got away didn't get a good look at anyone. He hopes so.

She keeps an eye on his face a moment longer, but accepts that silence for what it is and goes back to work quickly and quietly. (Everybody's got their little frustrations tonight. For instance, blood really doesn't come out of silk and this robe is never going to be the same.) The stab wounds are shallow enough that she's mostly worried about possibility of infection or a poisoned blade, but the arrow wound in his shoulder and the evidence he wrenched it out himself worries her a little more -- he could've done more damage pulling it out, if not left shards of the head in his body.

"This is going to hurt more," she warns him, but she tries to keep her examination of the wound itself as mercifully brief as she can manage without half-arsing it. When she's satisfied, she's back to cleaning, suturing and bandages, leaning back from him to blow stray hairs out of her eyes. It'd be better if she could do this in the hospital, if she had more resources, but there are a hell of a lot of reasons not to go to the hospital in any city and she's acquainted with most of them.

When she's done sometime later, rolling her gloves off and disposing of a few things in the medical waste bag, she scrutinizes him for a few minutes. "I'm going to get some fluids into you and keep you here at least overnight, but if you want to use your CiD, call anyone, please go ahead. Your shirt was a lost cause, but your shoes are at the end of the end of the bed." On the off-chance he's going to freak out if any of his belongings aren't where he can easily find them, she deems it prudent to point them out.

"Well, at least somebody's shoes are still useable."

That voice comes from a far corner of a room and a blonde sitting on a stool in said corner. She's filing the fingernails on her just washed hands, porcelain white and young skin clearly defying her true age. Cindy honestly looks like she's waiting for an appointment with the doctor for a regular checkup instead of watching the guy she dragged all the way here and dumped on Benny to work on.

"So, are you going to tell me who that guy I stabbed was or do I have to go and figure it out myself?" It's better he tells her, really. Her finding things out herself may lead to him getting a knife in his own head.

"It's not for me to say." Rhade could go down with his ship and his secrets if he needs to. That was one of the reasons he'd been chosen by the Drago-Kazov instigators with their plan. "If the person I'm calling tells you, then I don't care."

He groans as he moves, not really caring about the shoes but more for the coat he'd been wearing. Once nice, but soaked with blood too. The pockets had things he needed.

He drowsily grabs through the contents. A wallet, a fake ID. Doesn't matter anymore. He'll clip that and discard it. The (mostly ruined) clothes are scholarly, but the wraps around his forearms guarding filed down protrusions of some sort are leather. He squints for a moment. He has no idea what he owes. Instead, he drops a couple of pieces of gold (like one could find in the fog) on the nearest stand. "I'll tell you this much. They don't like xenians."

His CiD. He pulls it out and starts to delete his send history. He doesn't know where this is. "Speaking of which, can I contact someone in my cohort to retrieve me?"

Once he has the CiD, Benevenuta does several things things: pocket the gold, because questioning it when people pay her for something is unwise on several levels, take away the over-sheet that he'd bled on and steer him back down onto the bed itself.

"You can, but I'm keeping you here overnight to make sure you're not going to collapse when you leave in the morning," she says, with the kind of placid certainty that speaks to a confidence she can make him take care of himself if she's obliged to do so. It isn't threatening or forceful, just-- very sure. "If someone needs to come and check on you, we're in Syriac Well."

She supplies the address, absently. "And I need to wash up. Excuse me."

Cindy nods at Benny, both as a compliment to her skill and as the excusing she requested. She herself is staying right here in the room. She doesn't quite trust this guy, with his secretive ways and no desire to give her information on the men she saved his ass from. If he's going to send a message via the device, she's going to be obvious as hell and eavesdrop.

Turning back to Rhade, Cindy raises her eyebrows, a silent statement that she isn't going anywhere and he can just deal with it.

Whatever the message is, he's just texting it rather than talking. Just a message to Hasibe, not connected to anything he sent her previously. He doesn't notice her eyeing him. He's too busy looking at the CiD, searching through and deleting things.

When Benevenuta returns - she'll clean the plastic over-sheet properly later, she's washed up and is for the time being still wearing her blood-stained robe in the interests of not staining anything else if he gets antsy and busts a stitch tonight - she raises an eyebrow.

"Should I expect anyone else at my door before morning?"

Gaheris's compatriots-- or whoever's chasing him.

"Probably since he refuses to tell us who we should be looking out for. Especially me, really."

As a Fable, Cindy has superior senses over a regular Mundane human's, but even she can't see that tiny little screen from the distance between them. Damn. Doesn't matter anyway. There are still ways she can glean information if just to sate her curiousity.

"So I take it you're xenian?" She's going to state the obvious and break the silence in the room if he won't. Leave it all to Cindy. "And don't try to lie because you've pretty much admitted it earlier."

Edited 2011-12-08 06:07 (UTC)

"It depends on whether or not someone was following me," he says bluntly. "If she knows no one followed her," he inclines his head toward Cindy, "then no."

But he's quiet for a moment. He usually speaks of what he is with pride, and he's went weeks without it. It's a little difficult to not just sputter off with all the ego of one of his kind everything about what he is and where he comes from.

"I am." He simplifies it to that. "They weren't aware of what I was. I surprised them."

Preferring not to rely on the judgement of a relative stranger - she likes Cynthia, as much as she knows her, but they're casual drinking buddies and not especially appraised of one another's extracurriculars, it's nothing personal - Benevenuta is already working through what precautions she may need to take with the apartment tonight and for a while in the near future. (Professional hazard. Of several of her jobs over the years, honestly.)

The way Rhade phrases it makes her think he attacked, until she reconsiders in light of the sentiments she's become acquainted with since Baedal. (Being in a place where such things are possible at all is new, but not outside of what she's prepared to deal with.) She considers him for a few moments; she'd be classified that way, likely, but it doesn't occur to her in the moment. Thinking of herself simply as separate is too long-ingrained for the time being, though the prejudices here offend her on principle.

(She's got a lot of those - principles.)

"And you don't want to say much more," she presumes.

Cindy would consider Benny smart and more than capable for not trusting her at face value, much like she doesn't trust Benny enough to exchange real names. Everybody's Cynthia's friend when she's downing Jägermeister, but they aren't Cindy's friends. That said, though, if anybody comes here looking for payback while Cindy is here, they're regret it greatly.

"Well, you know, it's pretty hard to watch all around you while dragging about a hundred plus extra pounds to safety." She smiles, but in no friendly way, and goes back to filing her nails. "Exactly how did you surprise them?"

She could up and admit that she is a Xenian herself, but why should she? Not after she lied to his face.

"I can't file my boneblades down more than I have. They're uncomfortable enough as it is. They weren't easy to hid. I didn't attack anyone. No one that didn't attack me first, anyway." Which is how he interprets that question. But he rubs one of the arm wraps absently, around where one man grabbed his arm.

"The woman I'm expecting is named Hasibe." And then he realizes as he looks at the state of his belongings that leaving shirtless/ in bloody clothes might possibly be construed as odd. Hmmm.

"You should ask her to bring clean clothes," Benevenuta observes, almost dryly - she's so mild it's hard to tell, but her sense of humour is there, underneath the tiredness and need to be strict with someone who she's presently considering a patient. "You'll need those in the morning."

Boneblades, eh? That perks Cindy's pretty little blonde head right up, but she doesn't ask about them just yet. Also, that Hasibe name is not familiar to her at all, but she's still curious... okay, outright nosy.

"Girlfriend?"

"Passing acquaintance. She cooks spicy food." He doesn't mention that she works at the Vault, even though his paranoia that someone could Barge in is dying down. "Though I think my last girlfriend would have liked you. She was attractively assertive."

He will make favorable comments about Beka until the end of time, he supposes. She may have left, but it made her no less exceptional. And now that he thinks about it. "Perhaps I should actually rest." Before he babbles more pain-filled nonsense.

"Yes," firmly, "you should. If anything, if you are uncomfortable, if you start to bleed again, if you feel anythin that I missed-- it is a small apartment. I am not going to be far."

"Interesting." Both on Hasi's kitchen skill and this guy's ex-girlfriend. Only not. She was hoping for something more substantial.

Cindy gets up and brushes imaginary dust off her pants. "Well, I think my job is done here. Vanessza, tell me you have something stiff to drink."

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