Of Broken Bones and Brittle Flesh... Compelte

They say that hearing is the last thing to go when someone dies. They are not wrong about that, hearing is also the first thing to come back as well. He would hear the nurse meandering, the sound of cloth. He would hear that before he even knew pain. Yes, the pain would soon come in terrible unrelenting waves. But for now he would hear just a distant pair of voices he knew well: Vladimir and Marion.

The wounds would heal, there were so many of them from walking. From his clothes melting into his skin - yes there was a fair amount of polyster in that blend. He would not know the pain, he did not even have the logic to perceive that it was coming. He simply felt this stupid sense of peace within himself that his friends were nearby and they were OK. A tingle of pride permeated what little function his mind had. he was not alone. A feeling that he had but never really thought about. It was something everyone felt sometimes, even in a crowded room. Like he did not belong. That he did not deserve to belong. That he was secretly (or considering the recent events at the ball, not so secretly) unwanted.

Still his mind was restless, just the two voices. He wondered and worried if everyone else was OK. Heck, was HE going to be OK. Was this a coma? Had he been a vegetable for the last few months or years? Like a torch lit, the boy's sense of panic rose. Where was he? Where was everyone else? Was Wren OK? That girl that set him on fire, did she survive? Rafael, the guy he thought was his friend but obviously not. he even thought about him for a moment in passing. Not in hopes that he was suffering, but the idle thought that he hoped otherwise. There was Jack, he heard his voice near the end. Well, the end of that. Whatever happened to him? Was that abusive boyfriend of his --

This was where things got ugly. She stared at the young man, she was not sure if he was breathing. It unsettled her to consider the fact that she might be working on a corpse. She needed to debride the wounds, remove the dead flesh (and there was a lot of it) preferably before he roused. She winced preemptively as she cast the charm, "Tergeo." A cleaning charm essentially, something to clean away the eshcar. the death and the filth. Beneath was raw flesh and... blood?

No, that could not be blood, it was too dark. It looked like ink welling up in these deep canyons on his body. This would prove to be a long and difficult process. For the most part she ignored the duo at the door, they were standing under their own power so they did not need her. By the laws of logic and the basics of triage, they were near the bottom of the list. "Find somewhere else to go," she called out to the duo. "I am way too busy to be dealing with either of you." Customer service hardly the woman's forte, she almost preferred patients like this. Unmoving, complaint, unquestioning and in need of her. There was a sense of victory and success. There was this peace of not having the hear them, a fact that was almost always too brief.

Vladimir was not going anywhere. Not yet in any case, he just needed to see Marion off. He would watch her leave, never a bad thing. Then he would remove his jacket. Mussed up from fighting and Marion's tears, the jacket was nothing that the cleaning charm could not fix. He would hold it in half once and sling it over his shoulder. He was wearing a simple white button-down shirt, the sort that Simon Cowell might wear and a pair of loose-fitting black pants over a pair of combat boots. He had a bit more modesty that Cowell of course, his buttons went a little higher. Respectably attired, he would enter the Hospital Wing and address the nurse. "Hey, how's my friend doing?"A simple inquiry, the one someone would expect to hear from a student not that the nurse seemed to be in any mood.

"The magic is in his blood, I would be careful," Vladimir warned. Ah yes, that was the reason he had stayed as he took a few more steps into the room that smelled of too much bleach and iodine. "They set his blood on fire, his organs are cooked," Vladimir explained rather simply. "Didn't want his" should be call her friend or girl-friend? "Girlfriend," he decided "to see that." The blubbering mess that she was happened to be the bane of most nurses existence for good reason, could never get anything done when they were exposed to their theatrics.

"My father is Thaddeus Athanatos, he could get him a bed in St. Mungos like that," he snapped his fingers. In truth, one look at the kid and most reasonable humans would give the kid a critical care room on sight. He was doing something else in saying that, he was creating a scene for the nurse. It was not that the nurse was particularly weak-willed but rather she was too busy. Too task-oriented. She was not paying attention to the right things because she was too busy dealing with the necessary things.

He was not saying those words for Victor, there was no way that he could know how awake and alert Victor was. In truth, Victor was far from awake. There was just some semblance of cognizance, however slight. The boy'd brain was boiled within its skull. Even if he survived, he was never going to be the same.

The nurse would continue to debride, his blood would escape the freshly re-opened and raw wounds and would pool over his body. The room was well-lit, his blood like ink. His charred flesh would break and sometimes rip away. A moist, squelching noise. A crisp crunch. That was his body, well what remained of it. Magic and nature, the cruelty and indifference of men (and women) being the root cause. But he would start to feel it.

The pull.

The raw, searing pain. It would blinding but came like needles. His nerves sadly alive, capable of pain. He wanted to scream, but his brain worked not his body. He wanted to push back. Run away. Guard himself. He could not, he could just feel pain. Pain everywhere. It was spreading, not just where the nurse worked. Where the nurse was pulling, ripping, removing. No, it was everything from his head, the hair burnt away leaving only a blackened scalp to his arms and his tiny digits.

She really did not have the time or the abundance of patience to deal with some know-it-all teen that wanted to tell her how to do her job. Read one fantasy story about medicine and suddenly you're a doctor. A google search bear synonymous with a medical degree. "I am busy," she announced flatly, not that it stopped the boy from talking. "He's hurt," she answered his question bluntly giving no details. She had better things to do than hand hold some kid. "And I would like to get him back together so he or another one of you accident prone masochists can show up at my doorstep at death's gate against tomorrow." Salty, yes. Enough to cover a plate of fries.

Then he mentioned something about it being in the blood. As good as, no a better explanation than the one she had gotten which was none. "You saw what happened?" An apparent change of heart, she gestured with her free hand for him to come over. Last one, at least in terms of debridement. Not that the boy was out of the woods yet. This was gonna hurt let heck. So much of his clothes had been burned into his flesh, making what was two one.

She looked away, and then pulled a sheet over him. The child hardly looked human at this point. She felt her stomach do a pair of backflips.

Yes, yes I did ma'am. "A bunch of kids were picking on him," Victor that is. "He was trying to impress some girl with some flowers. He learned a trick..." he waited a few moments to make sure he had the nurse's attention before he continued his side of the story. "He used a bit of his blood to enchant the flowers to change colors like a muggle mood ring," he continued. There was a risk to performing some types of magic. Beyond the taboo and the knee-jerk blood magic is bad because it sounds edgy and therefore must be 'wrong.'

Not all magic involving blood is bad, but it can be dangerous. Dangerous to the practitioner. Dangerous to the subject. Even if there is no ill intention on the part of the user. That is why training is needed. That is why not everything 'dark' is truly banned. Why curses, jinxes and hexes are taught, learned and employed. Bad is not evil but everything evil is most certainly bad.

"They set his flower's on fire," he explained. "When that happened, he caught fire," A simple cause and effect. It was magic, not just fire but also blood that had brought Victor to this deplorable state. The nurse was well-trained more than likely and perhaps even equipped to contend with most maladies but there was something exceptional about this situation.

"I don't think he will be chasing any girls for awhile," he added with a charming half smile. "But, I don't think there is enough burn creams and salves to treat this, he was cooked from the inside out..." he explained. "You'll hit bone and still find black," a warning if there ever was one.

The pain was unbearable but there was no promise it would relent. He could hear Vladimir's voice as muffled as it was, he could hear it. SAVE ME! KILL ME! JUST STOP THE PAIN! There was no logic, not when there is suffering. Pain steals the logic and makes it something of its own. The want is not to survive, but to escape. The antithesis of the intention as pain is a mechanism necessary to live - it tells one that the pot is too hot, that the knife is too sharp, that a limb is broken and should not be used. It is meant to preserve function. Yet right now, these biological impulses were working in the inverse.

The last rip. That final tear. It left his insides raw. His blood was seeping out into those open and wet wounds. The light was that nurses saving grace. But when in pain the darkest impulses emerge. The spite and the blame. The fear and the want for retaliation. This growing bitterness that accompanied this knowledge that he could not escape. Subdued and defenseless. Pain filled his being. He would have preferred the nothingness, that terrifying abyss that had met him.

Yet a voice he knew was hope, as dim as that light was it persisted.

Childish bullying got a kid hurt this bad? Admittedly the stern nurse was angered by the implication. "What do you know of the blood magic used?" A basic question, know the beast she was trying to treat. But as she looked down at that quivering, exposed flesh and saw the blood pool the remainder of what the teen had just said would click in the back of her head. "Is there something wrong with his blood?"

It was black like ink. He was not breathing but he was bleeding. She knew enough about human biology to know that the dead don't bleed but they also breathe. What the heck else is wrong with this kid? Pride was however assailed, the implication that what was wrong with Victor was beyond her scope. Her stubborn pride might get him killed.

"Get me some wound cleansing potion, a few bottles," she clarified a number that was in terms of bunches rather than a hard number. Medicine was after-all an imperfect science. "And some Mandrake Restorative Draught, whatever is in the cabinet." Both the employment of basic logic, clean the wounds - those deep craters in his flesh and the raw exposed muscle reaching near the bone. That and something that might restore the boy to his previous, perhaps state. It made sense.

"It won't fix him," Vladimir warned but complied. "Mr. VanCleaf was treating him for a chronic... blood condition." That was the best way of putting it. "Took a dose of thick golden potion once a week," he continued ash he opened the cabinet, his back to the nurse.

"His blood is cursed. Made him interesting in all things blood, he studied blood magics. The guy is way over my head in the stuff he knows, amazing stuff," typical Ravenclaw exalting knowledge even if what was learned was ultimately destructive. "He also spent a lot of time with Professor Price," he lied this time. Yes, the former Professor of Potions that left abruptly to work at St. Mungos. "Professor Price probably knows everything there is to know about his extracurricular activities," he continued to lie. he found the bottles requested and handed them off to the nurse.

"The thick golden potion just holds the curse at bay I am afraid.... and it is still slowly creeping through his body. Makes his blood thick and black, like tar. It is incredibly painful and saps his vitality. Cursed blood, a bit of magic... and some roses -- he called the technique blood roses," not very creative but he did not care. Half of what he said was a lie, the rest was either an obvious truth or a wild guess on his part.

"My father has some ties at St. Mungos. Price relocated there to help the London COVID-19 cases with the muggles," a detail the boy casually knew because Elliot did not make that trip by choice. The man had learned far too much. A geographic cure was in order. "He knows... Victor better than anybody." In truth, Elliot Price had never seen the boy outside of the classroom but the nurse did not need to know it.

There was something about the talkative Ravenclaw that made her uneasy but she could not put her finger on it. He looked well-groomed and respectable. he was smartly dressed. Friendly, polite and courteous. He was concerned for the well-being of his friend and shared information readily. He seemed more than willing to answer and and all questions. Of course she did not know that half his answers were a lie, a manipulation or another process devised to push her towards an intended course of action.

She accepted the potions and administered them one by one. First the wound cleaning potions, they fizzed a bit when they made contact with his flesh. Second the restorative. Once given, she was confident that he would regain consciousness although she feared what lucidity would look like. If his brain was cooked, she wondered if there was anything left to bring back. If what she was about to do would be a cruelty.

She took a harsh singular inhale through her nares as she administered the restorative. It was likely that she would immediately regret it but it was like a car accident - so terrible and gruesome but she could not bring herself to look away. "H-how soon can you contact your father?"