chroma | catchall for vax'ildan

[countermeasures]

i WILL make a visualosity just not right now

Comments

[countermeasures]

[a neat, pierced-through wound is a blessing in some ways and a curse in others - it will be easier to clean and easier to keep an eye on, until he's able to get in a pod and get healed up properly, but... if it had just been a little different, he could have so easily died before getting help.

jiuqing is so, so glad he didn't.

she's focused, her hands moving with practiced ease as she treats the wounds despite her exhaustion. this is something she knows how to do - something she can do to help, when so much of this place has left her feeling out of her depth. it's work she knows she can do well, so of course she doesn't want to leave it to someone else.

she can't make the pain of it go away entirely, but she can at least get him fixed up so that he's as comfortable as he can be until he gets his butt in the pods. she treats the wounds she can with the numbing cream before bandaging them up, and once that's done and she's washed her hands, she'll shake out an appropriate dose of painkillers from a bottle and offer them to him.]

...you're both alive, and you're going to stay that way.

[daggering]

[ he will take the painkillers! in fact, vax is a good patient, ish. if the pain bothers him any he doesn't react beyond that initial hiss, just sort of watching jiuqing when she moves off of the worst of it, then holds out his hands for the pills. ]

Yeah. [ ...

he thinks, about malik, turning into that creature, and shakes his head. it's almost violently, and he downs the painkillers dry. ]

Yeah. We are. I'm not letting anyone touch a hair on his fucking head, doc. Not a chance.

[countermeasures]

Neither am I.

[there's something a little sharp in the way she says that. jiuqing is, overall, a kind person, but the one thing she can't stand for is when the people she cares for are put in danger. if anyone so much as thinks about hurting him "just in case," she'll—

a bubble picks that exact moment to descend upon them from the ceiling, and jiuqing, without really thinking about it, presses a hand to it and infuses it with metallic to make it go away.

it's not the medical bay, but another place of healing that the scene opens up on - daxing's imperial academy of medicine, where the country's best doctors are gathered to serve the members of the imperial court. jiuqing is hard at work gathering medicinal herbs when the time comes for a meal break -

only for her food to be stolen. this doesn't surprise her much; she watches it happen, then accepts the food her maid had set aside for her. lunch passes easily enough, as does the rest of the day.

it's evening, by the time the thieves face consequences for what they did. they call for help and accuse her of having poisoned her own food - and it's the truth, but she doesn't feel bad about it. why should she? they deserve the punishment, and they're all doctors anyway; shouldn't they be able to cure themselves?

but they can't. she says she didn't expect the doctors there to be so useless, but this plan never would have worked if that was true.

she knew very well that they wouldn't be able to cure it themselves, just as she knows that just demanding an apology from the academy administrator won't work - this plan is two-pronged: punish the people who had been bullying her, and leverage their punishment to force an apology out of sir chen by putting his reputation on the line.

it works. he apologizes, and true to her word, she prepares the antidote. but when she's chided for being arrogant, she's not ashamed at all. there are times when it's better to keep your head down and wait, but - this isn't one of them. if the outcome will be the same regardless of whether she fights back or not, then she will always fight back.]