14455/Evening Emergency

Evening Emergency
Date of Scene:	19 March 2023
Location:	Apartment 3A (Phoebe's Apartment)
Synopsis:	When Robbie Reyes is struck by some Heavenly weapon, he reaches out to Phoebe Beacon for help. Things are touch-and-go, but Phoebe manages to draw the shards of the weapon out of Robbie's body and restore him -- even though the demon inside makes a brief appearance! Robbie will, however, get dino nuggets and tater tots, so this is probably a win...?
Cast of Characters:	Robbie Reyes, Phoebe Beacon

---

Robbie Reyes has posed:
It's a perfectly, unremarkably quiet night in Gotham. One might almost say *too* quiet, which is in a way remarkable on its own. The pickpocketers, murderers, thieves and general n'er do wells have been laying low-- maybe due to the cold front that's moved in, and brought even colder rain with it. What started as a drizzle's morphed into a veritable downpour, creating a racket as it batters the gutter pipes and windowpanes, and in the *swish* of vehicle traffic on the street below.

Phoebe, if she's still awake at this strange hour somewhere on the border between 'too late' and 'too early', may hear her phone ping with a solitary text message:

> need help. please be home

And then nothing. Any reply she sends shows as unread.

Well, nothing until the *CRASH* outside Phoebe's apartment door some twenty minutes later. Sounds vaguely like something Robbie-sized hitting the floor, if she had to guess. He's swimming in and out of consciousness, soaked in rain, and bleeding like a motherfucker from several vicious stab wounds-- including one in the centre of his chest that may or may not have missed his heart.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    *DING!* Accompanied by the throbbing of a heartbeat. Robbie never needed help. There was nothing much she could do other than fight beside him; her healing would hurt him like a motherfucker, and Phoebe had stared at the message for a good two seconds before she said she had to exit a terrible social engagement. 3A was on her hotlist for portalling, and she was there before he was.

    >What's wrong.
    >I'm here.
    >I CAN track you down

     -- and then the crash. Phoebe was to the door, slamming it open as the light from the short hallway and the little kitchen area floods the hallway, and she spots the body.

    "Shit -- shit shit shit--" Phoebe whispers. and she collects herself.

    One: Robbie shouldn't be bleeding like that. That means that there's something that's agonizing his own healing ability.

    Two: The only thing, according to what he said, was something holy that would be able to make lasting wounds. Which means there's something holy about the weapon that hit him.

    Three: Holy weapons can kill Ghost Riders. IF they're made of Heavenly Stuff.

    "Hold on, Robbie--" Phoebe whispers, and she grips on his shoulder -- "this is going to suck."

    The smell of the next room is astringent. It smells like a hospital. The light turns on, and it's brilliant white, and Phoebe is already moving, using all her strength to try and carefully place Robbie on a gurney.

Robbie Reyes has posed:
It turns out Robbie's heavier than he looks. While he's more leanly built than most of the bat boys -- owing to relying far less on raw strength than demonic prowess -- he's still nearly six feet of athletic young man.

By the time he comes to again, he's being hauled atop.. a gurney? And briefly thinks he's in the hospital. Which causes him to panic and try (ineffectually) to shove Phoebe away and clamber back off again. "Can't-- can't help. Need to find my girl--" *whump*, out he goes again, half on and half off the thing. But at least he's not struggling anymore, or running his fool mouth about his *girlfriend*.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Hey -- Hey! It's okay Robbie, it's okay--" Phoebe grunts, trying to hold onto Robbie and not knock her operating gurney away.

    Robbie is six feet of athletic man, but Phoebe has been trained in how to bring down larger people -- bit different getting them up.

    "It's okay. I'm going to fix this." she whispers to him softly, looking at her hands momentarily, and his blood on them, and her blouse, and her skirt.

    She takes a deep breath, and goes to scrub in. Her hair's pulled back, her hands get scrubbed, and she assembles her crash kit.

    Sponges and forceps and needles. Local anesthetic and adreniline shots, medical scissors to cut away his clothing.

    Alas, poor jacket.

Robbie Reyes has posed:
Curiously, there's almost no sign of Eli at the moment. She may be able to sense the thread that binds them together, and feel the dark heart of the demon that resides in him like a symbiote. But it's as if he's.. inert at the moment. Dormant. The only mind she'd feel, if that were a thing she could, is Robbie's.

And the jacket, thankfully, seems to have similar properties as his car: so long as he's wearing it, it can generally mend itself. So that'll be a problem for later.

Robbie on the other hand, has looked better. He's sprawled on the bed, dark curls matted with blood, and several stab wounds visible on him: centre of his chest, left ribs, left upper thigh. And a shallow slash from hairline to jaw that probably looks worse than it is.

The problematic part, of course, is those tiny weapon fragments left behind that Phoebe can hear even now, vibrating together in terrible harmony, as if his body were a verrillon.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Well, Eli was a concern -- one she wasn't looking forward to, but the realization that she could barely sense Robbie's demonic hitchhiker was... rather disconcerting.

    Ordinarily in a hospital there would be a whole trauma team. Ordinarily on her own Phoebe would be relying on healing magic.

    SHe had neither, now. She cuts away at Robbie's clothing, through leather and denim and cotton, and she takes stock of his wounds. The left upper thigh wand center of his chest were the immediate concerns. She starts a liquids drip -- coconut water, as close to human plasma as you can get without having to keep a steady blood supply on hand. Next goes on a sensor around his finger, clamped gently to monitor heartbeat.

    She'll worry about everything after that afterwards. She was decently sure his healing ability would burn out any infections the same way hers does.

    The first concern was the upper left thigh, femoral arteries and veins bleed out very quickly.

    "All right Robbie --" she states, through a surgical mask, talking to him in a gentle voice "I'm going into your left thigh now. I can hear whatever's stuck in there. I'm going to get it out with my forceps. You just --" she looks up "... just lay there and don't die on me."

    And she dabs at the wound with a sponge, and then holds it open to see what's agonizing his own healing ability.

Robbie Reyes has posed:
There's not much for him to do but lie there and bleed, for the time being. He's not entirely unconscious-- at some point, when Phoebe leans over him to start the drip, he meets her eyes. And then he's gone again.

Which is probably a mercy insofar as what happens next: holding that leg wound open, which makes it leak blood in a thick river down the side of his leg.

But with the aid of her Sight, what she *can* easily see are tiny fragments of what appear as glass, wedged into his flesh. One particularly nasty one has nicked the femur itself; all look tricky to extract with her forceps.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe staunches the bleeding as much as she can, but it's... bad. She can't lie. Robbie had lost a lot of blood. For a moment she was brought back two years. A different person she loved, lying, bleeding out on the floor of a bar, growling at her to 'fix it' -- an impromptu lesson in control of her three 'threads'.

    She looks to Robbie's face, and then back to the injuries.

    Fix it, Phoebe!

    And she takes a deep breath, focusing her attention as she lays the bloody forceps down, looking at the blood dripping down Robbie's leg.

    Phoebe closes her eyes. She sorts out the noise of the vibrating glass, that singing in her ears of harmonized clarions.

    She turns her right hand palm up, her left hand palm down, folding her fingers as if she were cupping water.

    And she tries to pull them, envisioning those threads that encircle her in the astral drawing each shard she can sense out of his body.

Robbie Reyes has posed:
It's not the worst he's had. But it's certainly not *good*. And unlike Eli, Robbie has a finite quantity of blood in his body. If his heart stops beating, he's gone-- and the demon will find a way to tear itself out and find a new host.

His breathing's gone all shallow and slightly gasping, like he's trying to get air into his lungs-- one of which sounds like it might be punctured, given that faint whistling, sucking noise. Struggling to keep his eyes open, he gazes unsteadily at the girl's darker ones. No thought as to whether she's qualified to do this, or might kill him right here on the table. Just complete and utter trust in her hands and her skill.

And then the song changes, from that soft and almost slumber-inducing melody to something higher pitched and frantic as those tiny shards are coaxed out, slow but sure by Phoebe's magic like they have no power to resist her. They're beautiful, crystalline and perfect-- even covered in his blood and viscera as they may be.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    She knows that whistle. She's had it once or twice herself before she had proper armor. Her right hand comes down, and she reaches for his hand to hold it. She's there.

    She won't let him go without a fight.

    Her fingers curl against his briefly, and as his heart begins to flutter. Hold on, Robbie.

    Phoebe pulls all those holy shards from him, crystaline, tinted ruby red with blood, gathering in her left hand and dripping crimson onto her dark skin.

    And Phoebe pulls back on her own 'Holy'. not the blast with which she used to disrupt Robbie himself at the fight club, or the brilliance of light that she used to ash vampires once upon a time. This she focuses purely on the Healing, just to get the process started, experimentally first on sealing up Robbie's lung.

    Don't make me call Gabe to tell him I couldn't save you, she thinks.

    Don't die on me right after I tell you that I love you.

Robbie Reyes has posed:
In this case, it's unlikely even the armour he wears on duty with the Avengers would've helped him much-- the blade of whatever cut him is clearly robust enough to slice through pretty much anything thrown at it. His street wear didn't stand a chance.

There's still no sign of Eli as the last of the shards in his leg, and then his ribs are drawn out; not even a whisper. Which is probably for the best, since it affords Phoebe's magic the opportunity to heal the damage that's been done to his human form.

It still *hurts*, mind. The light wars with his darkness, stirring it from its catatonia. A flicker of it behind his eyelids, and that scent of burning metal ever so briefly before the demon's driven back again. The wound starts to close up, blood drying black and burning up like ash as it's subjected to the wash of her bright magic.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Magic works in weird ways.

    Phoebe continues to hold Robbie's hand, the recalled shards balled in her left hand, pricking her palms, mingling her blood briefly with his before she releases them into a basin on the side table, and Phoebe gives a soft gasp.

    She laces her fingers with Robbie's, and breathes out unsteadily. Usually, her healing feels like a warm sensation, the tingling of your leg falling asleep after sitting cross-legged too long, with cool water running against the nerves to soothe them, but Robbie's been enmeshed with Eli so long that she's not sure what it would feel like to him. Watching as the blood dries black, and then burning like ash. The acrid smell of burning metal catching against her nose as she closes the wounds. His jacket and jeans shredded. His T-shirt cut open to show his chest.

    "I've got you, Robbie." she whispers softly, her left hand coming up to rest on his stomach, her right still entwined with his hand as she raises it and gently presses her lips to his knuckles.

Robbie Reyes has posed:
His hand is limp at first, and unresponsive to her smaller one entwined with it. His skin's gone cool and-- no, not clammy. Almost the very opposite. As if in some accelerated state of dessication and decay.

Once the last of the glass-like shards have been pulled out, his whole body seizes up, then thrashes hard against the table, against the hand laid on his stomach. His hand is ripped away from hers, and the demon comes roaring back to the fore. Roused from his slumber, and Robbie's far too weak to drive him back.

But Phoebe's magic isn't.

The smell of burning metal intensifies, to the point of smoke rising from the point of his jaw, his cheekbone. The heat comes rushing back into his skin, his heart beats, and the demon melts away again. He's left sheened in sweat and the remnants of blood and torn clothing, but whole.

"Phoebe?" His lashes graze open a fraction.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    For two heartbeats, Phoebe thinks she's lost him. Her heart rises to her throat, and she squeezes his hand again, working her jaw a moment as her eyes wet and she prepares for the worst of it -- and then the last shard is removed. Phoebe gives a sound of surprise, and she *feels* the demon come roaring back, and the teenage mage and healer is forced to switch her focus, agile in turning from despair to defense; Robbie's body was already rife with her healing power, it's enough to give ther the edge as she forces the demon back down, her jaw locked open as she gives a sound of struggle against the influence of the demon, relacing her hand with his and bringing her left hand to Robbie's chest, holding him down, the palms of both hands glowing dully.

    The smell of burning metal fills her nose, and she draws her gaze up, watching as steam... smoke...? rises from his cheek, his jaw, as if some of the skin had torn when she wasn't looking.

    Then his warmth returns, that too-hot-to-be-human heat, and the feeling of demon melts away again, and she hears his voice.

    "/ROBBIE!/" Phoebe hisses, and her hands draw up to his shouldeers. The heart monitor beeps. Blood pressure stabilizing.

    "Oh thank fuck it worked!"

Robbie Reyes has posed:
The smoke's gone, and with it that acrid smell; it's just Robbie looking up at her. Robbie with his mismatched eyes, dark curls damp with sweat and matted with blood that isn't his.

"Hey," he mumbles, voice gone all sandpapery and rough. He tries to lift his hand to touch her, but-- nope, that still hurts. His demonic passenger will undoubtedly be able to handle the remaining repair work, but until then, it's pain city.

"I wasn't sure I got to you in time. You okay?" He's earnest about that, too. Like he's afraid he might have brought something unsavoury to her door, or caused her to overexert herself.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Take it easy. You've been through a rough ride." Phoebe whispers quietly.

    She smiles, at Robbie asking her if she's all right.

    "Am /I/ okay? I pulled like, a hundred shards of some holy weapon out of you, some that lanced your long bones, you had a pierced lung and drug yourself up three flights of stairs to the apartment and you're asking if /I'm/--" she startles a moment, and then she just cries, just a moment, and tears run down her dark, flushed cheeks.

    "You need to get cleaned up. We need to get you cleaned up." she whispers to him, and then very gently, blood on her own blouse still, she leans forward and puts her forehead against his, surgical mask still covering her mouth.

     "I'm gonna put you in my bathtub," she whispers, "and wash your hair until your own healing kicks in. And then I'm making dino nuggets and tater tots."