hadriel_logs | i got the feeling that something ain't right [OPEN/CLOSED]

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i got the feeling that something ain't right [OPEN/CLOSED]

Who: Rey and You!
What: Deathclaw tango and the aftermath, along with maybe any other general whatnots for the month of July. ¯\(°_°)/¯
Where: The City, Rey and Nick Valentine's Home (House 1401), wherever your heart's desire.
When: Post-Intro log.
Warnings: Violence, language, and mostly violence.

I. The City [OPEN]

It's that time of month again. Equipped with her Exurosuit, Rey is already prepped when she heads out. Though seemingly unarmed (she had been training with the sword, but wouldn't nearly consider herself adept enough with the weapon to feel confident bringing one into combat), she isn't what you would consider helpless.

Some things not even Rey can prepare for, however. She doesn't get the chance to make it to the Colosseum, before halfway there she is stopped by the sound of an animal growl. And not belonging to something fluffy and/or cute.

She ignores it at first, attempting to act like casual, unsuspecting prey. Having been here long enough, she's since anticipated the appearance of new creatures accompanying the arrivals.

What she couldn't anticipate was the walking death machine skulking the city streets.

Rey doesn't move, gawking at the creature for a moment. It isn't much different from the others she had contended with here, but something about it screams more predatory and deadly than anything like overgrown spiders or chests with teeth.

Perhaps it's the sword-like claws, which it bears with a threatening poise as it locks its red eyes on Rey. She isn't going anywhere, the legs of her sturdy armor holding her in place as she gaps at the creature. If she runs, it'll surely follow. If she fights, who knows if it'll be something she can tackle on her own?

Before she has the chance to calculate such a gamble, the black and scaly beast sprints towards her on its massive hinds. It's a lot faster than it looks. Rey stumbles back, curling her fingers into fists as she braces herself for impact. It makes a clean swipe towards her head. No doubt it would have lobbed her skull clean off her shoulders in a matter of seconds just then, had she been a hair slower. She stumbles back, nearly tripping over her own feet when the beast is quick to recover and swings its massive arm again.

This time, its colossal claws tear into the chest of her armor. This sends her reeling backwards, crashing her sideways into one of the walls of the building.

"Der'mo," Rey curses under her breath, tasting blood in her mouth from where she had bit the inside of her cheek. She rolls in time before the creature can lunge towards her, cornering her up against the wall.

The light indicators of her armor flare up then, as she turns and faces the creature. Many times before had she gone up against synthetic creations much larger and greater in numbers than this. She had combated whole platoons to a battalion of soldiers who were trying to kill her.

This? She can do.

Heatwaves ripple in the air around her, as the light indicators on her armor brighten. Sparks inspire flames, casting at the tip of her fingers. She can do this. She just has to be ready, and hope like hell that no defenseless individual finds themselves cast into the middle.

II. Home (House 1401) [CLOSED to Nick Valentine]

Pieces of armor peel off as Rey staggers through the front door of the place she calls home. Bruises riddle her arms and chest. Cuts and scratches and gashes pour blood down the side of her face, a trickle dribbling from the corner of her lip. The metallic taste fills her mouth as she collapses into the couch, not caring to change out of her underclothes before dropping her armor on the coffee table.

"Think you could've been a little more help?" she says aloud to no one in particular, and no one answers in return. Rey's head tilts back against the cushion of the couch, staring up at the ceiling with blurry vision. She squints, shaking the senses back into her.

Though no one had answered her rather specific query, the response of Safronov's echo, the Russian sniper she had once been, seems to scoff at her from the recesses of her mind.

Rey huffs, bringing a bruised hand up over her eyes. "You've no room to talk."

She doesn't know if Nick is around to hear her speak with the ghosts that live in her head. It isn't something she is oft to do unless she's alone, at the risk of looking like a crazy person talking to voices that so rarely talk to her back.

It's probably better that way, anyway. Though it had been those echoes that helped retain Rey's sanity during those long weeks of isolation at the sky prison, she can't imagine the impression her old habits would leave on anyone who isn't aware.

"Fuck you, too," she mutters to the smug, silent phantom.

III. Wildcard

[ooc: I might add more prompts as they come to me, but feel free to hit me up if you want to do something or choose your own adventure here!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Just when she feels like she's fading out at any second, Rey whips her head in Nick's direction at his exclamation. Her heart gives a jerk at the thought that, if anything were to happen to him right then, there wouldn't be much she could do about it. She can barely move, and what little she can do involves a world of hurt.

Seeing him struggle with his phone, Rey holds up a hand before pushing herself onto her feet. Her posture is broken, like she's got a two-ton weight holding her down on one side. She wipes some of the damp blood down her chin from the open cut in her lip.

"Take it easy." She's quiet, unable to raise her voice above a murmur.

Rey is so out of focus right now that she doesn't trust herself to deal with the wirings in order to reattach Nick's severed limb. She limps towards Nick's arm, ignoring the twinge in her muscles when she moves to scoop it up off the floor with one hand and place it over the nearly broken coffee table.

She looks at him with a weary smile. It's about the most comfort she can offer in her current disposition. "Will get someone over here. Then I'll take care of your arm. Okay?"

Nick watches Rey as she gathers up his arm, his eyes focusing on the way she carries herself, his metal hand tightening on his shoulder in frustrated defeat. He wants to help her, but there's not much he can do. He can't pick her up and carry her to the clinic, certainly not while he's missing an arm. He doesn't have the medical know-how to treat her himself. Hell, given the only hand he has left is the bare one, he can hardly even use the touch screen on the phone to call someone.

He stifles a sigh. With the way he's still getting prompts to run diagnostics, there's still plenty wrong with him, and he needs to check it out. He's just going to have to trust she'll call someone, and she will be okay. She's a hardy woman, tougher than she seems in some ways. More fragile in others. They're lucky to be alive. If either of them were truly human, they'd probably be dead.

His mouth draws a wide frown across him; he realizes the best way for him to help her now is to help himself. Rey won't get any rest while he's still struggling to stay upright; she'll run herself ragged just trying to make sure he doesn't power down again. It's what he'd do in her shoes, after all.

His eyes flick back to hers. "Okay," he agrees. "I need to go run a couple of scans before my internal clockwork decides to do it for me. You gonna okay for a few minutes?"

In order to pull herself through this, Rey has to start thinking like Nick: If she wants him to survive, she has to look after her own damned self as well. After everything they've talked about and everything they've been through, what would happen to Nick if she's not around?

Well. Short of one mechanic, for one thing. But she's aware that there is more to it than that, and she has to face this fact. She also can't expect Nick to be doing a whole lot of good with only one metal arm and possibly wearing himself down at the rate he's going, especially without her around.

Yes, she'll just take to get her shit together first, then figure out how in the hell she's going to be any use to Nick.

"No worries, I'll be fine. Suppose it's one thing to thank my father for..." She waves a hand, as though putting it on display. "Quicker cellular regeneration, or something of the sort. Wouldn't expect any miracles, but it beats the alternative."

The alternative being having to wait for several weeks for whatever injuries she has to heal. Which, even then, is still more of a boon than what Nick has. His condition isn't exactly something that can be improved with time alone.

Though he gives Rey another uncertain look, he finally nods, acquiescing that one of them has to cave to their injuries before the other one will. They're both stubborn, but he's the one whose body is occasionally beeping as it tries to get him to go run internal scans.

"All right," he responds, his tone alone enough to say he's trusting her on this, though he doesn't particularly feel good about it. "Think I'll take the spare bedroom down here for these diagnostics rather than risk the stairs."

Rey nods, fighting another cough in order to say, "Good. You're not using those stairs for a while."

It isn't a suggestion -- it's an order. And for once it comes with an authoritative tone, husky from her scratchy voice. She's been charged with far worse soldiers than Nick.

"Do you need any help?" She's pretty sure she can still hold her own. Him, she isn't so certain.

Rey's tone definitely comes across as authoritative -- given how she reacted the last time he'd pushed his mechanical body too hard, he knows better than to step out of line this time. No stairs for him for now.

There's a beep from somewhere in him again, and he shakes his head. "If I don't make it to the bed, you'll know. Make that call, now."

And off to the spare bedroom he goes, hoping his diagnostics don't take longer than an hour.

Fortunately, Nick doesn't fight with her on this one. Rey wasn't expecting it, but one can never be too sure sometimes, especially when dealing with someone who almost equals in her own levels of stubbornness.

And just like her command, Nick makes his own as well. It isn't unreasonable. The cough is worrisome, even for her, and isn't something that can go unchecked. She nods, watching her roommate until he disappears into the room.

Believe it or not, Rey actually intends to make good on her silent promise there. She won't be any good to Nick if he comes back online to find her corpse in the middle of their home, and it isn't like the city is bustling in mechanics with knowledge in synthetic anatomy to be of any use to him. No, Rey is going to have to bite the bullet on this and accept this stupid thing called personal responsibility.

Whatever happens, she would much rather be in the comforts of her room, though. If Nick does wake up sooner than she anticipates, she'd prefer he not be there to hover, fuss, and fret over her while someone is attempting to do their job. Or whatever it is he would do.

As she goes to retrieve her phone from her pocket, she makes an attempt to remember which people are on board at the clinic. She's never really visited the place, and hasn't made much of an effort to familiarize herself with those that work there. Other than perhaps Kate, who she had only met once in person and once in her dreams...

Suppose that's better than nothing.

Just as Rey starts to dial the number on her phone, that cough starts up again. This time, it becomes a full out episode, her hand shaking and fingers instinctively clench around the device as the pain only grows, swelling inside her chest.

Shortly after, sweat beads down the side of her face. She hacks, wheezing as she throws her hand back up over her mouth once again.

Thick, red fluid bubbles up the back of her throat. The metallic taste of blood fills her mouth as it spits out into her palm.

The phone drops to the floor. Rey gaps down at the splotches of blood in her hand for only a moment before the pain of her internal injuries overwhelm her. She attempts to inhale again, but it's more like sucking in hot, burning air into her lungs.

Gasping, her legs give out. Her head spins. The last thing she sees is the floorboards just before she collapses face-first towards them...

It's the morning after. Several hours have passed since Rey has been put to rest.

As it turns out, she did not end up dying in her sleep, as she would have expected. Rather, she found herself experiencing a long sleep, mercifully devoid of dreams while her body attempts to fix itself.

When she gets up, the pain has mostly subsided. The medical treatment provided by Muscovy has proven to be effective, between his practical knowledge and whatever magical aid he had administered to her injuries. That doesn't mean that she is without aches here and there, but she is, for the most part, more than capable of standing on her own two feet without collapsing.

She brings a hand over the bandages wrapped around her chest, before limping to the dresser to pick out a clean tanktop to throw on. The throbbing pangs in her shoulders and the shock in her muscles make lifting her arms over her head a rather difficult endeavor, but she manages. After all, she always does.

Dressed and mostly cleaned of blood, a more recovered Rey steps out of the bedroom to look for Nick in the living area. With any luck, no wires or metal or anything became dislodged while he had been running those diagnostics. She could do without seeing him fall on his face again, as he had last night.

It's no surprise Nick is already up -- even if he ran every diagnostic he could (which he didn't), he'd have been up well before Rey awakened from her much-needed rest. He's pulled some of his clothes back on, identifiers of an individual among other synths. There's his undershirt, covering up the opening in his back, the panel still removed from the day before. Over that is his one-armed button-up, though it's unbuttoned for now. The bottom buttons aren't even attached anymore, anyway. He's missing his coat, which has been tossed across the back of the easy chair, draped there after he'd hastily shrugged it off the night before; he wouldn't have normally shed it so carelessly if he hadn't been worried he was going to power down at any second.

And in the hours Rey has been asleep, he's had a lot of time to mull over that.

As for Nick himself, he's on the coach, where he's been quietly working on notes. His single hand more than enough to work on the paperwork spread across the coffee table. As Rey exits the bedroom, he looks glances her way.

"Seems we had company last night."

Edited 2016-07-17 02:16 (UTC)

Seeing Nick getting to work is hardly the least astonishing thing Rey could wake up to. Hell, she'd be more concerned if he wasn't.

At the doorway to her room, Rey just stops. If Nick is implying Muscovy, then chances are the two had crossed while she had been out. She grimaces.

"Are you surprised?"

Silently she's wondering if Nick didn't believe that she would actually call anyone when he had asked. Which wouldn't have been too far from the truth, considering that Muscovy had dropped in on his own. Even though she hadn't planned for things to go that way, guilt does have its way of weighing down into the pit of her stomach.

Hand over the cloth covering her bandaged ribs, Rey sinks into the empty space on the couch next to Nick, more than happy to be off her feet again. "Hope he didn't give you any trouble."

For some reason, the kid is wary of Nick. Perhaps he's jealous, believing that he had been replaced or something. Rey can't fathom any other reason; only speculate.

Nick might have been surprised that their company was a child rather than one of the doctors in town, but he keeps that to himself, his glowing eyes not leaving the papers before him. Despite his mechanical nature, he feels leaden, tired; it shows in the way he holds himself, in the slight slump of his shoulders, in the crease in his brow. A heavy mind can weigh one down just as much as physical fatigue.

"We talked," he notes shortly. His pen scratches across the paper, filling the silence. "How you holding up?"

Even though she had just woken up, Rey is still worn down by the events of yesterday. Her body had taken care of the more serious damage, but she isn't her father. She can't so simply recover from missing limbs and broken bones like it's nothing. It is, regrettably, one of the few things that makes her a little more like-human.

Whatever their conversation may have been, perhaps it's for the best that Rey not ask for the specifics. She just leans back, resting herself against the soft back cushion of the couch.

"Well enough. Nothing that a couple days' rest won't heal." More than what she can say for her roommate. "And you?"

Good to make sure Nick didn't run into any errors during those diagnostics he was running.

Edited 2016-07-17 03:16 (UTC)

"I've been better," Nick replies, his pen stopping on the page, eyes flicking to her a moment as he sees how she holds herself. It's a definite improvement over the day before, but he's still grateful she can heal so quickly. Normal people don't have that option -- neither do old prototypes like himself.

He signs off on a report with a sigh, knowing what information she's looking for: the results of his scans. "Don't think I'll be patrolling again anytime soon. Got a bent shaft in my leg. So much for that fix."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's better taken in small doses, even though she can probably tell some of his other problems just from looking at him. The missing arm is the most obvious ones, but some dislodged parts have a trickle-down effect, cutting one system off, then another because of that one. It all adds up to make a hell of a lot of repair work to be done.

Edited 2016-07-17 03:23 (UTC)

The fact that Nick is downplaying his condition is obvious. Rey bites her tongue, knowing that she is no better and no less frustrating about the matter.

"It's fine. I've still got a few parts left."

The edge of her lip twitches, her mouth tightening into a thin line. She knows that those parts aren't going to last. Back when she had ordered them from Hope, it had been for the existing issues Rey had noticed, both on the surface level as well as when she had taken a peek at his insides. There is more damage now than before, which means she may have to go back to Hope for more material.

She glances to Nick out the corner of her eye, realizing that he isn't going to like that option, but it's the only one they have. "Mind if I take a look at your arm now? Shouldn't be too hard to reattach it."

For the time being, she'll just keep her sights on the immediate problems, rather than discussing the ones they will have ahead of them.

Nick returns her glace for only a second, worry still firmly planted in his brow. "If you don't mind. I'll need both hands to sew the sleeve back on my coat. Kind of need two to pull off the detective look."

He chuckles somberly, setting his pen aside and pulling off the buttonless button-up, his eyes lodging themselves firmly on the floor. He knows good and well that there's no way Hope gave her enough parts to fix all the problems he now has. That means more work for Rey, as he can't do it himself in his condition -- more debt to the gods, all because he couldn't keep his nose out of the Colosseum, left the rescuing to people who were better suited for it. Who was he kidding, thinking an old synth like him could help against deathclaws?

Well, he had helped, right before getting his arm ripped off. People were safe because of him; he needed to remember that. What happened to an artificial man like himself didn't really matter in the end.

... except to her. And the fact that it matters so much to her is at the heart of his concerns.

When Rey gets up to retrieve the severed arm, the pain is at least dulled to the point she barely notices.

"What, you mean you don't have one-armed detectives where you're from?" It's a poor attempt at making light of things, as she goes to sit back down next to Nick once his overshirt is removed.

If there's one good thing about Nick being what he is, it's that reattaching a dismembered limb isn't quite as difficult as it would be were he human. They also wouldn't have had the luxury of waiting overnight for this process to work. No need to even worry about the arm withering with decay, or the smell, not to mention the blood...

Seated on the side of his stumped arm, Rey leans in to examine the wires sticking out. Don't want to connect the wrong pieces and end up with Nick being stuck with a backwards function for his hand in some weird way.

There are times where Nick's mechanical nature works to his advantage; being able to lose an arm and live to tell the tale because he can't bleed to death is handy, both literally and figuratively. Not at it hadn't given his system a real shock. It's good to have some upsides to being a synth; the fact he was built rather than born has plenty of drawbacks in the Commonwealth. Those problems are less prevalent in Hadriel, but they still exist at the back of Nick's mind, still remind him he's nowhere near as human as he feels.

And given the unease burdening him currently because he's worried about his family and what the future may hold, he's feeling pretty damn human at the moment.

"We might, but most folks seem to come with two," he notes, shaking his head. He's letting this place get to him; he can't do that. "Though given all the radiation, I'm surprised some haven't sprouted a few more."

As Nick talks, Rey is doing her best to fix the frayed tips of the wires. Her box is still in the room, so she grabs whatever is available and gets to work.

That doesn't mean she can't talk while she works at the same time. His comment gets a scoff out of her then.

"That's unfortunate. Just think of how much you could get done with more arms. Perhaps carry an extra gun or two, even."

She's joking about it now, but the prospect of having multiple limbs does sound cumbersome.

Nick sits still as Rey works, not wanting to hinder her progress. He knows good and well that she takes her work seriously, especially when it comes to him. At least his arm isn't sparking anymore; at some point during the night, he managed to shut off power going to it.

"Just the one gun is fine. It's more than I need in most cases as it is."

That, and if he had more arms, he'd have to sew more sleeves to his coat. He's already not looking forward to reattaching the one it's missing now.

"Not surprising, coming from the guy who bested a group of kidnappers by beeping at them."

Sorry, Nick, but she is never letting that go.

Once Rey finishes with the wiring in Nick's stump, she reaches for the severed arm. Her head tilts, eyes shifting from the network of ripped cords to him.

"This is going to take some time," she warns. "Hope you didn't have any hot dates planned."

He offers her a wry smile. "I don't think you'd let me leave the house even if I did." While he's not keen on the idea of being under house arrest, it's probably a necessity, unless Rey has another batch of spare parts just lying around. At least there's always paperwork to do.

That reminds him, though: "I need to put in a call to the office. Let them know I might not be in for a while." He won't get his hopes up on this being a quick fix, given the fact he can hardly walk from one end of the room to the other with the bent shaft in his leg and the myriad of internal problems that came up during his scan.

After a thoughtful pause, Rey just nods. "You're right. I wouldn't."

That's just tough love for you.

She resumes her current task, her forehead creasing at Nick's comment. The fact that he's conceding all too easily is worrisome in itself. No insistence that he'll be fine, that he can work. Because Rey knows that that isn't true, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't at least try to convince her otherwise.

Her eyes lift from his shoulder to meet Nick's.

"How bad is it?"

For as long as he had been out, he had to have come up with something during his scans.

He sighs as his eyes wander to the floor again, the conflict of whether or not to tell all the grisly details her playing through his mind. He doesn't want to worry her, but that's already a given: it's not as though he can hide how damaged he really is, especially if systems start shutting down again. She can see right through his insistence that he's fine, especially when he absolutely isn't.

What's worse is that she'll probably need more parts, and that's if she can get him back into some semblance of working order at all. He'd get the parts himself if he could, but even that seems like a tall order in his condition.

"My cooling system is shot," he starts, knowing she'd suspected as much the night before, just as she'd started hacking up a lung. "Something keeps coming loose in my vocal modulator. Probably another frayed wire or bad socket. That patch job to my processor is working for now, but I'm already getting warnings about a loose connection. Least I'm still online, thanks to you."

And that's not even mentioning the bent shaft in his leg, the busted power coupling in the only arm he has left, and whatever it is that's loose in his chest that rattles every time he moves.

Edited 2016-07-18 03:57 (UTC)

Seeing that he isn't trying to dance around the subject is similarly worrisome. It means that all of those things that's wrong with him are serious.

Her expression softens when she looks at him. She's all out of smiles and good humor to try and make light of things now, knowing what is wrong, and that there are probably many more things that he isn't telling her yet. They have to take one step at a time. It isn't like Rey can fix all of his problems at the same time, much as she wishes she could.

"I'll look at all of those things once I've got your arm reconnected. Don't worry. I'll take care of it." She forces a sharp laugh. "Maybe even make some improvements while I'm at it."

Though she knows Nick isn't worried about himself, so much as what Rey may do without him around. Hell, Rey isn't even entirely certain what she would do if he's gone.

Edited 2016-07-18 04:13 (UTC)

Nick tries to offer her a reassuring look, but even he seems too troubled to manage it. He's had a long night of thinking about the damage to his synthetic frame, about what it could mean in the long run. Best case scenario, she manages to fix him, maybe with a little help from those so-called gods when it comes to getting more parts. Worse case would be if she can't do the repairs, and they have to find another engineer somewhere in Hadriel -- if here is one.

And worst is if he can't be repaired at all, or even with repairs, something goes wrong and he shuts down permanently. Rey will blame herself if that happens; he knows her well enough to see that in the cards. He can't put that on her.

"I'll just be glad if you can keep me running at this point," he responds ruefully. "I... think that's as close to death as I'd like to get, for now."

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1/2

2/2 [July 11th]

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