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Emily is flying along the promenade, absolutely abuzz with excitement. Sir Pentious made it! Charlie was right!! Not even Sera sending her away can hamper this. It’s fair enough anyway, obviously Sera would like to investigate a little on her own, that’s fine. Emily can wait a while to show Sir Pentious around, though she hopes she’ll get to tell Charlie that her plan worked sooner rather than later. Still, she’s just so excited.
In all her flitting around a flash of dark grey catches her eye. She looks down and focuses properly, finding Lute walking down below. Her heart (or whatever she has) flutters for a moment but quickly she realizes something is wrong. Lute is disheveled and dirty, her gait staggered, and most importantly she’s missing an arm. Immediately concerned, Emily glides quickly down to her.
“Lute! Are you alright?” Emily asks as she settles next to the other woman.
Lute stops and looks at her, clearly having to take a second to focus. “Hm? I’m fine, ma’am,” she replies vaguely. She’s able to keep up her usual respectful tone so she must not be horribly hurt, but it’s pretty obvious she isn’t actually fine.
Emily surveys her, not convinced at all. “Are you sure?” she asks. She steps around Lute to get a proper look at her. She looks rough, the missing arm clearly rather grisly, with what must be her own blood all over. Whatever happened it also seems like it must have been a little while ago, meaning Lute has been going around like this without getting help.
“I’m sure, ma’am, I’m-“ Lute is cut off as she goes to take a step again and her legs start to give out. Quickly Emily catches her and holds her up by her good arm over her shoulders.
Once Lute is steady Emily says, “you’re not fine, Lute, you need medical attention. Unless you want to slowly bleed to death and regenerate.” She’s as stern as she can be about it.
Lute sighs before slowly nodding. “I guess you’re right,” she concedes. She sounds defeated and angry.
“Here,” Emily says as she stands up straight and spreads her wings. Then she wraps them around and with a little flash teleports the two of them to her room.
It’s a modest, rounded space, with tall windows on one side that also act as an exit to a nice little balcony. Along the other wall there’s a proper exit door as well as a bathroom. Then there’s her bed with a nightstand and elegant vanity next to it. A small table sits in the center of the room. Everything is gentle shades of white, grey, and gold.
Emily gingerly helps sit Lute on the bed. Lute exhales deeply and her body sags as she settles, conveying a deeply felt exhaustion. Emily steps aside to be able to look at her again. She has angelic blood all over her uniform, with cuts on her face. A bruise too, which makes Emily assume there’s more elsewhere. Plus, of course, the missing arm. The torn uniform obscures it a bit. Emily blushes a little realizing what she has to ask next.
“Can you… remove your uniform?” Her voice is hesitant. When Lute looks at her she quickly adds, “so I can look over your wounds.”
Lute considers her for a moment before going, “alright,” to which she then shifts to start pulling at the bottom of her top. She’s slow about it and it’s clearly a bit of a struggle. Hiding pain is something she’s rather good at but it takes effort and she must have been doing it for some time now, and that mask slips a little once the cloth near the stump of her other arm is disturbed. She stops then and sighs annoyedly. Looking up again she asks, “a little help, Emily?”
Emily tingles a bit and immediately replies, “of course!” before stepping close to start pulling gently at the uniform. First she helps Lute take her stump out of what’s left of the sleeve. Lute grimaces but quickly resets her composure. With that done Emily starts bunching up the uniform from the bottom. Her breath catches a little as more of Lute’s stomach and chest are revealed. She’s just enraptured by the sight of Lute’s soft white skin, and her chest and the bra she’s wearing, even with the clear bruises she has all over. She’d probably hide her face if she wasn’t actively in the process of helping. Trying not to be distracted she continues lifting, slowly over Lute’s wings and head, careful to avoid brushing against the stump of her arm too much.
Finally with it off Emily sets it to the side of the bed. She forces herself to keep her focus on the task at hand as she returns to look Lute over. The bruises don’t look great but the arm is definitely the worst and in need of attention the most. While she’s looking at it she hesitantly asks, “what happened?”
Lute looks down at the stub and answers, “I had to pull it free from rubble after that bitch Vaggie got the better of me.” Her voice and expression are soaked with disdain and she pronounces Vaggie with a soft G. Emily senses it would be a bad idea to correct her.
Instead she steps away and says, “well, it needs to be cleaned and wrapped.” When Lute grunts vaguely in affirmation Emily turns around to approach her little center table. Here she conjures up a medkit and a towel along with it. Opening the kit she grabs bandage wrapping, scissors, and a bottle of alcohol. Setting them on the towel she lifts them all up to carry them over to the bed. She picks up the alcohol first and takes off the cap. With a glance at Lute’s face she warns, “this will sting.”
Lute nods stiffly. As she raises the stump Emily moves the bandage and scissors off the towel so she can lift it up along with the bottle. Making sure Lute is braced, she carefully pours some of the alcohol. Lute inhales sharply but doesn’t flinch. Emily dabs with the towel after the fact, wary of making it hurt any more. Then with that done she sets the towel down and picks up the gauze.
She feels kind of awkward just doing this in silence. Fishing for something to say she ends up trying, “I take it the attack didn’t go… well.” She about winces at herself for that. Quickly she focuses very intently on unwrapping the gauze the right amount.
“No, it didn’t,” Lute says through clenched teeth. “They figured out how to kill us. As simple as our own steel.” She shifts slightly as Emily starts to wind the bandage around. “We got some of their cannibal army but only one from that shitty excuse for a hotel.”
It clicks for Emily now that Lute must not know that Sir Pentious was redeemed. She doesn’t feel particularly inclined to inform the other woman of that. It hasn’t been easy for her to reconcile her care for Lute with learning about these exterminations and how Lute feels about souls in Hell, so she can’t imagine her taking that kind of news well. Instead she just keeps winding the bandage, making sure it’s covering nicely and neatly.
Something must have come across in Emily’s demeanor because Lute sighs and says, “sorry, I know I’m never this angry around you. And that… we don’t agree, about this.”
There’s a note of regret in her voice, and when Emily glances at her face while grabbing the scissors there’s a little bit of it in her expression too. The littlest bit of hope that Lute could come around, stop the exterminations even, flares in Emily’s chest. She doesn’t focus on it, though. Trying to push on that front right now doesn’t seem like the right thing to try at the moment, even with what Lute just said. Emily just replies, “you know I’m your friend, Lute,” as she snips the gauze and sets down the rest of the roll with the scissors. As much as she’d like to express something more strongly than “friend” now doesn’t seem like the time for that either.
“I know,” Lute responds simply. Not a revealing answer any one way or another but Emily will take it.
Now she takes the still alcohol spattered towel and lifts to dab at the cuts on Lute’s face to clean them and wipe the blood away. When she moves to get at the cuts on her body that were hidden under the uniform she suddenly realizes something. It’s odd that Lute was wandering the promenade by herself, Emily wouldn’t have expected that she would be the first one to help care for her injuries. “Hey, where’s Adam?”
A shadow passes over Lute’s face and Emily’s stomach drops. Looking away and speaking in a pained voice, Lute just quietly says, “he’s dead.”
Emily’s breath catches and she gives a similarly quiet, “oh, Lute.” She sits on the bed next to her and places a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I can’t- I…” she trails off. She doesn’t know what to say. Lute was always very close with Adam. Emily wasn’t close with him herself, the way their personalities clashed didn’t lend to it, and learning about the exterminations definitely colored her opinion of him, but she never would have wished death upon him.
Lute doesn’t reply but her breathing gets tight and a little shaky. Emily stays there with her arm on Lute’s shoulder for a bit longer before deciding to distract with healing again. She conjures up a cooling pad that she can place over one of Lute’s bruises. She gently does this for the most noticeable ones across Lute’s torso as Lute’s breathing returns to normal. Emily hopes this is making Lute feel emotionally better on top of physically helping. Action helps her, at least.
When Emily finishes with the pads she sits to the side again. Warily, she asks, “what… are you going to do now?”
Lute doesn’t look at her. “They’re threatening everything, Emily. They need to be stopped. They need to pay.” Her voice is strained and cold. She clenches her hand into a fist.
Emily’s chest sinks. “Lute…” is all she can say. Her feelings on the matter are very clear.
Lute stands up suddenly. “We’ve gone over this, Emily,” she says, still not looking at her. She steps past her to grab her uniform to start working it back on.
A little desperation fills Emily. “But… Lute, please-“
“Enough, Emily,” Lute cuts her off forcefully. She finally looks at her, face stoic. Then she starts to stalk slowly over to the exit.
Awash with even more desperation and pain, a last, pleading impulse overcomes Emily and she jumps upright quickly. “Lute, wait!” she calls. Lute halts but doesn’t turn around. Voice heavy with emotion Emily says, “please don’t do this Lute, I… I love you.”
The air in the room seems to freeze. Emily hardly dares to breathe. She stares at the back of Lute’s head, filled with terror at how she might respond. Every second stretches for an eternity under the weight of what she’s expressing.
Finally, in a voice hardly more than a whisper, Lute says, “don’t do this.”
Emily’s breath catches painfully in her throat. Tears start welling up and she takes a step forward as she starts, “Lute, please-“
“Emily,” Lute cuts her off again, now nearly at a shout.
Emily refuses, trying again with, “I just-“
“EMILY,” Lute yells, voice pained. She turns her head enough that one eye can look back at Emily. Tears are streaming from it and it’s filled with an even deeper pain than her voice. “Em. Please. Don’t.”
Emily wilts. Lute turns her head again and walks silently over to the door. She opens it and takes another step before pausing. “Thanks for the medical care,” she says stonily. Then, without looking back, she shuts the door.
Emily is left all alone. Standing there by the bed, staring at the door. She sniffles, and wipes at her face, and then starts to cry. She staggers onto the bed and curls up on it, trying and failing to restrain the tears. All her feelings are crashing down on top of her. Today had been such a good day not that long ago. So full of hope and joy. It’s all gone. It all left with Lute out that door.
And all she can do about it is cry.