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Needle, vial, observe, repeat.
The cycle is as natural to Anaxagoras as breathing--though, if he had paused long enough to think about it, he might have noticed how shallow and hurried each breath has become.
But of course, he doesn’t. His hands tremble ever so slightly, enough to make the lines on the glass waver, but he never stops. Weakness doesn’t register. Only results.
The edges of his vision blur, faint shadows creeping at the periphery, but he dismisses it as nothing more than background noise. Even as the faint tremor travels up his arms, he keeps going, absorbed entirely in the experiment.
A soft knock at the door barely pulls him from the rhythm, followed by a quiet click. He’s too tired to look up or care, but he vaguely registers that it’s Hyacine dropping by to check in on him like she usually does after a few days of locking himself in his lab, always a responsible medic and teaching assistant. The girl steps in with a sharp inhale, instantly noticing his condition with her trained eyes, taking in the cluttered bench and splatters of golden blood across the table and floor.
Right, how many days has it been?
Two? Three?
“Professor Anaxa, you haven’t eaten in four days!” She answers his internal thoughts, sighing to express her frustration, Hyacine doesn't bother nagging excessively, having gotten used to his habits, but still reprimands him out of concern. “Being a Chrysos Heir might make you more resilient than normal people but that doesn’t make you immortal.”
Ah yes, the golden blood flowing through his veins, probably the only reason keeping him from ending up in the nether realm at his state, and also precisely the subject of his current experiment.
“Don’t call me Anaxa.” He says on autopilot. “Since you’re here, assistant, do help me draw another vial. As you can see…” the alchemist gestures at his shaking arms, various needle holes where they definitely aren’t supposed to be, caused by his loss of precision.
“Professor, you’re bleeding all over the floor! Did you forget that you’re anemic? I know your experiment is important to you, but it won’t mean anything if you pass out again.” Another sigh. The girl knows and respects him well enough to realize that nothing she says will deter him, so she offers a compromise. “What about my blood? I’m a Chrysos Heir too.”
Anaxa shakes his head. “Need to keep the variable consistent.”
“Then at least let me wrap up your arms.” Hyacine says sternly, frowning at the open cuts from where syringe tips might’ve slipped too far.
If Anaxa wasn’t so tired, he would definitely argue; any second not spent on research is a second wasted. But truthfully, dark splotches are beginning to appear in his vision, his mind feels unclear, he can’t stand without swaying and taking a seat actually sounds pretty nice right now. And maybe Hyacine wasn’t wrong that fainting again would not help his experiments go any faster.
So he says nothing, and Hyacine takes it as silent agreement. She sets her medical bag on the nearest unoccupied table and begins rummaging for bandages. Finding what she was looking for, she begins walking across the room towards her stubborn professor.
No, something is off.
Though Anaxa’s mind is clouded with fog, his ears perk up as the faintest hissing registers in the back of his mind.
Everything seems to happen in slow motion when his line of sight makes contact with a flask, cracks gradually blossoming across its glass, until--
“Hyacine, down!”
Instinctively and without a second thought, Anaxa lunges forward and wraps his arms around his assistant’s frame, enveloping her, protecting her from the incoming explosion. Shards launch in all directions as a wave of heat washes over them, along with remnants of the batch that should not have reacted.
A loud boom sends them both flying across the room, stray lab equipment and furniture knocked from their places, causing a cascade of damage.
Anaxa twists so that his own back hits the wall, hard, before they both crumple onto the floor in front of it. The impact nearly knocks him out, but some part inside the jumble of his thoughts forces him to stay awake to make sure the student still in his arms is safe. Even though he's used to these kinds of mishaps, no one else has ever been caught in the crossfire before.
Anaxagoras will never forgive himself if his own student got hurt because of his mistakes.
He wills his lungs to work, dragging in air through the metallic taste of blood. His whole body protests, but he shifts just enough to see her. Wide eyes stare back at him, frozen, afraid, but otherwise thankfully unharmed.
“Hyacine…” His voice is shredded, and he lets out a ragged cough, though it rattles in his chest. A line of blood spills down the corner of his mouth. “...Sorry…”
That’s all he manages before the adrenaline dies down. Pain crashes into him, full force--he can feel the glass biting deep into his back, heat clawing through skin. His head throbs too, telling signs of a concussion. Nothing unfamiliar to him of course, that’s why Anaxa has no doubt that he’s probably about to pass out very soon.
But he does not worry, because if there’s anything he trusts more than he trusts himself, it’s the capability of his students.
“No! Professor, you have to stay awake!” Seeing the scholar’s eye flutter, Hyacine quickly snaps out of her daze into professional mode, though still shaken. If he slips now, it will be difficult to tell if--no, when he will wake up again.
Anaxa’s normally porcelain skin is even paler than usual, and his breaths are quick and shallow, in an attempt to compensate for the lack of blood flow. She carefully pulls herself out of his arms and sits up, running a hand down his skull to check for damage. Thankfully, there’s no external bleeding, but the way his eye is unfocused cannot rule out a concussion.
Her other hand moves to his wrist, and she sucks in a sharp breath at how quickly his pulse is beating--nearly 115 beats a minute, she counts. Tachycardic.
Gently flipping him over and doing her best to ignore his groan, she examines his back, now soaked through with liquid gold. Shards of various flasks and stray glass equipment protrude from his coat, embedded from when they launched into him or when he crashed into the wall. Despite Hyacine’s familiarity with injuries of all kinds, the sight still nearly makes her blanch.
Slipping off his outer coat to better access the damage, she discovers that his shirt is matted and scorched onto his skin. Thankfully, that means most of the blood on his back has either dried or the glass is blocking it from leaking any further, or the open wounds were cauterized by the burns, though none of that makes the situation any better. She concludes that she shouldn’t put additional pressure on it due to the foreign objects anyways, so she turns her attention back to his arms which are in an even worse state.
“Professor, can you tell me what hurts?” She asks as she rolls him back to his side, fingers shifting to his carotid. 140 beats now, alarms ring in the back of her mind.
“Wha…?” Anaxa slurs, not fully processing the question. “‘m fine…”
Hyacine ignores him, panic rising, tearing his sleeve open and wrapping his arms with the bandages in her hands because she for once doesn’t know what else she can do. Anaxa needs help, and soon.
He’s going into hemorrhagic shock.
“Professor, stay with me,” she mutters, her voice shaking.
Although Hyacine has grown accustomed to treating the wounded in several situations, learned to always stay calm and positive as a first responder, and has even pulled Anaxa himself out of life-threatening conditions, the situation at hand still makes her mind scramble. The dark part of her feels guilt, even though she knows logically that it’s not her fault. But perhaps, if she wasn’t here at the wrong time, he could have taken cover, could have avoided getting hurt. Wouldn’t have needed to protect her.
She shakes her head and forces the torrent of her thoughts to focus, turning her attention back to the man in question. His eye is unfocused, wandering, not quite seeing her. The light in them flickers like a candle about to go out, and the familiar, haunting scent of metal fills her nostrils-- blood, mingled with the tang of ozone still lingering in the air from the explosion. She can feel the clamminess of his skin under her hands. Anaxa’s whole body is now shaking uncontrollably. The tremors are worse than before, his fingers twitching, curling into a stiff, uncoordinated grasp.
Think, Hyacine. There's no time to waste. She needs to stabilize him fast.
But what can she do? She can’t leave him here alone when he’s so unstable, but she also can’t stay here and do nothing with no resources to help. Even though her professor is so small and light, she’s still shorter than him and can’t move him easily without jostling the injuries.
“...Sister…” His lips are barely parted, but she still hears him rasp.
The weakness in his voice nearly shatters her composure, but she forces herself to concentrate. “I’m sorry, Professor,” her voice breaks, watching the blood seep through the bandages against his pale skin. She can’t tell if it’s from the external injuries or if there might be internal damage too.
Now out of gauze, she quickly moves to apply pressure to the bleeding wounds with her own hands, but his blood isn’t clotting properly, and it doesn’t stop spilling. Hyacine’s palms are quickly coated in gold, the colour of his blood glistening where it pools. Her heart clenches.
“Professor, stay with me,” she begs, more to herself than to him. “You’re going into shock, I need you to stay awake.”
But he’s already fading.
Feeling the figure in her arms grow limp, Hyacine leans in closer, her voice dropping to a whisper, hands frantically checking his vitals again. “Anaxa, listen to me. You can’t pass out before I get you stabilized. I need you to stay awake, just a little longer, okay? Please…”
His eyelid flutters again, and she can barely make out the faint twitch of his lips. His pulse weakens, and she feels a knot form in her chest, her own breath quickening. The hypotension is setting in--his blood pressure is too low to support basic functions.
What can she do? What can she do? Hyacine is the best medic of the era, there is no doubt about this. But at this moment, as her professor lies nearly unconscious in her arms, her mind comes up blank.
But she doesn’t pray to the Titans, because hoping for a miracle would be no better than admitting that she’s already lost.
A dangerous idea suddenly crosses her mind. It’s by no means sanitary or safe, and it might not even work, but they're both Chrysos Heirs…
Rolling up her sleeve, Hyacine gives herself no time to regret her decision as she grabs a nearby syringe and jabs the needle into her own arm, pulling up blood as quickly as she can.
Her professor will not die on her watch.
She draws just enough blood to make a small transfusion possible. Her stomach lurches as she works, feeling every beat of her own heart in her fingertips, while his pulse stutters in and out of time.
She sets the syringe of her blood down for just a moment, setting Anaxa down carefully and jogging back to her bag, grabs the IV line, drawing it quickly, slipping the catheter into his vein, taping it in place.
Her heart pounds in her chest, but she doesn’t stop. Hyacine threads the needle into the IV, pushing the essence of her own blood into his. It’s risky, his body may reject it, may even make his condition worse, but it will at least momentarily make up for the fluid loss, and it’s the only option she has.
Anaxa’s breathing becomes more laboured by the second, desperate for oxygen. She holds his hand, trying to anchor him, trying to keep him here with her.
“You’re going to make it, professor,” she chants like a mantra. “Just hold on.”
He doesn’t respond.
Suddenly, Phainon bursts into the lab, healers from the Twilight Courtyard not far behind him.
“I heard an explosion so I ran to grab the healers and--”
Phainon’s words die on his tongue, face growing pale as his eyes fall on the wreckage.
Glass littered all across the floor, broken equipment and half collapsed furniture strewn all over the room. Light smoke rises from various spots as alchemical solutions spill where they shouldn’t.
And in the corner, his pink haired friend hunched over his professor who lies still in her arms, blood, too much blood, covering the both of them.
“Hyacine?” He breathes, voice tight with disbelief. “Professor Anaxa?”
The healers shove past him, efficient and blunt, commands clipped and practiced. “Clear a path! Move the shelves!” One straps a portable stretcher into place, another is already checking Anaxa’s pupils with a flashlight, fingers on his wrists.
Hyacine snaps out of her daze, and quickly begins to recite his symptoms and what happened. Explosion, stage 4 hemorrhagic shock, possible concussion, second degree burns, internal damage inconclusive.
Her hand still grips onto Anaxa’s, trembling. “Please, we don’t have much time.”
One healer gently pries Hyacine’s other hand from the IV line. “You’ve done well, Miss Hyacine. We can take it from here.”
“I’m fine,” she lies. Her head spins, and her fingers don’t stop trembling, but she lets the healer take over.
Another set of hands lands on her shoulder, and she turns to see Phainon’s worried expression. “Hyacine, I’m not a doctor, but… what you did was dangerous.”
“Then what else was I supposed to do?” Her voice cracks as her eyes well up, and she looks away, lowering her voice. “Wait and watch him die?”
Phainon kneels beside her and gently steadies her swaying form, as they watch their professor get carried away on a stretcher. “It was dangerous, and reckless, but you saved him.” He breathes, and pulls her into a tight hug. “Thank you, Hyacine. For saving him.”
She doesn’t answer for a while, until she chokes out a small whisper, barely loud enough so that only Phainon hears it. “No, he saved me.”
When Anaxa cracks open his eye, the lights of a familiar ward feel like stars collapsing into him. Pain keeps trying to find a pathway into meaning, but the edges of everything get woolly, as if he’s being folded inward.
His whole body screams, yet it feels numb at the same time. The gown and bandages scratch at every inch of his skin, and his mind is muddled, which causes a wave of discomfort to wash over him. Then, he registers the smell of antiseptic as it assaults his nose, and he gags.
“Professor?” Someone calls softly, before a pink blob pops into his vision.
He blinks as the blob takes form into his student. “How long…?” He asks, voice hoarse from lack of use.
“A week,” Hyacine answers as she helps him sit up. She opens her mouth to say something else, but stops herself, and silently moves to check his vitals instead, expression unreadable.
Anaxa hums, but says nothing else. Everything hurts, and he feels like an outsider in his own body; a mere observer. The air of the clinic makes his head spin, and he tries to push down the unease as he coughs, then coughs again. The sound makes Hyacine glance over, and she quickly sets down the clipboard.
She reaches over to pat his back, but then her hand hovers as she remembers the healing injuries, unsure how to help. “Water,” Anaxa chokes out between coughs, taking pity on the girl who is uncharacteristically panicking.
“Right!” Hyacine jumps. “I’ll be right back, please stay put.”
No thanks. Anaxa thinks as he watches her slip out of the room.
He needs out, now. If he stays here any longer, he might actually go crazy, and not in the sense that his coworkers like to call him.
His arms shake as he pulls himself toward the edge of the bed, but he ignores them. Slowly fumbling over, his feet finally make contact with the cold floor, and he flinches.
His right hand reaches over to grip onto the drip stand, which he uses as support as he attempts to stand on shaky legs.
One step, two steps, three--
That’s as far as he makes it before he trips over the uncoordinated limbs and crashes to the floor painfully. Well, at least no one was around to hear that involuntarily loud scream.
“Professor!” …Or so he thought.
Hyacine rushes back through the doorway, water in hand with an expression on her face that’s a mixture of worry and guilt. “I got careless, I should’ve known you would try to escape again. Sorry.”
“The only thing you should be sorry about is forcing me to stay here.” Anaxa huffs as she sets the cup down and helps him back into the bed.
Hyacine crosses her arms. “You just woke up, you can’t move yet! You almost died Professor!”
Suddenly, the delicate facade that she was forcing herself to hold cracks all at once, and she freezes realizing what she just said. “You almost died…” She repeats in a trembling whisper.
Anaxa studies her, wanting to say something in comfort, in reassurance, anything. But before any words can come out, Hyacine throws herself into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, though careful of his injuries. Her face presses against his chest, and he can feel the tremor in her jaw when she exhales. Her eyes grow wet, but not from panic, more like exhaustion.
He grunts at the contact, but he finds that he doesn’t mind when he knows and is relieved that the girl is allowing herself to be selfish for once as she grips on tighter, desperately grasping as if he would slip away if she lets go.
Anaxa finally notices her dark circles and messy hair and wrinkled clothes, the perfect image of someone who has kept themself up for days. An image he’s familiar with. But for some reason, it hurts more to see it in her than when he sees it in himself.
Slowly lifting his hand to her head, he exhales as he combs through her hair.
“Do not be angered by my slumber; I am merely weary, not gone.”
The girl in his arms sniffles, but otherwise stays unmoving as they take in the comfort of each other’s embrace. The steady beat of the monitor echoes across the room and next to her ears, still rapid, but more regulated. Safer.
Anaxa’s head swims less under her touch, and the uncomfortable feeling of bandages on his body and arms fades into something that’s a little closer to nothing. They sit in silence for a long time until Hyacine finally breathes a long exhale, but neither of them release their hold.
Feeling the change in mood, Anaxa lets a crooked smile ghost his lips. “You could be less dramatic,” he mumbles lightheartedly, voice still like sandpaper yet soft.
She shakes her head against his chest and squeezes his waist lightly as if to convince Thanatos themself that he isn’t going anywhere. “Don’t be absurd,” she breathes against him, voice a whisper. “We care about you too. I care about you.”
The words shouldn’t come as a surprise, but maybe it’s the effect of whatever drugs they’re pumping into him right now that they land harder than he expects. He feels ridiculous and oddly unmoored, and for once he’s at a loss for what to say.
“Very good,” he murmurs, because his mouth is clumsy for vulnerability and full honesty weighs heavy. “Then… continue caring. It suits you.”
Hyacine lets out a muffled snort, half-laugh, half-cry. Her fingers trace idle circles at his hip as if bringing him back into himself. For a moment, the room narrows to only the press of her arms and the steady drip of the IV and the possibility that, maybe, at least for now, he will not go anywhere.
Outside, footsteps pass and fade. But at his bed, Hyacine keeps her hold, refusing to let the rest of the world claim him in a way that matters.
Anaxagoras lets himself be held, because sometimes the only experiment left is learning how to accept that someone will hold you when you cannot hold yourself.