Make Me Bleed solo fin

This is part of Aly's Cast the Bronze storyline. You can find other portions here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Immediately following the events of this thread.

Make me bleed if you need to confirm that it's something I can do -

There were people talking nearby, but also, somehow, very far away.

Aly turned her head towards them, but no matter how much she tried to move, it felt very much as though she was under the effects of a Slowing Charm - like her body was caught in amber, moving through molasses.

Her eyes would not open, either. She suddenly understood the meaning of heavy eyelids, for they weighed about as much as an Erumpent holding a Beater's bat and hurt just the same.

There was something wet coating her hands.

She finally managed to blink her eyes open, though her vision was blurry and distracting. The setting around her seemed to be mostly shades of tan, the occasional dark brown shadow draping across the field, some blinding white lights flickering tall and thin from various places. It took her a moment to recognise the hazy location as the Hospital Wing, and her first thoughts were about as jumbled as her sight: 'S the Wing... did I bring someone here? Then nod off? That must be it, yes, just fell 'sleep...

A dark, person-shaped shadow draped across her view, obscuring the thin lights and vague shades of tan and brown; Aly struggled to blink the sleep from her eyes and tried to push herself to sitting, though her limbs felt very much like noodles and her hands were still damp. The person above her made comforting sounds, hushing noises, and gently pressed on her shoulders, forcing her to lay back down. Still, the Healer in Aly herself had not been entirely tamped out by the years of wanting a different career; she managed to pry her very dry lips open and mumble, almost incoherently, "...'r they al...wright? Who'd here?"

"Hm? Your friends?" the voice, completely unfamiliar, said. "Oh, we sent them away. Told them to come back when you were awake. It's not very productive having twenty clamouring Ravenclaws in here while we're trying to work." A fuzzy bright light was shined into one eye, then another, though Aly flinched away from it each time. "You seem to be waking up nicely, though, which is good."

It was only then that Aly realised she was the one in the hospital bed. Her left leg was smarting terribly, to the point where when she tried to move it it felt almost impossible to move, as though it weighed the same as a thousand mountain-sized sandbags. "'m... 'm I a patient?" she slurred, met with a bit of laughter from the shadow overhead and a resounding yes. The Ravenclaw captain tried to think back, to her last memory, but everything was so blank that she couldn't pinpoint exactly when she had stopped remembering anything and her voice was still about as blurry as her vision. "H... how'd I g-get... here?"

The shadow seemed to be fussing about, likely one of the Healing interns Aly had never met. She couldn't yet open her eyes enough, focus her sight enough, to look clearly at their face. They pressed lightly on her left thigh, causing the captain to wince; she murmured something about it hurting, and the shadow nodded with a low hum. "Makes sense. You went down quite hard on the Quidditch pitch during your match against Slytherin, I hear. Took several hits before one of their Beaters finally got you off your broom - which one of your teammates has, by the way. They were rather insistent I let you know it's fine."

Such a thing was good to hear, indeed. Aly had put much care and effort into her Oakshaft since receiving it from the broom fund at the beginning of last year, and she was relieved to know that she would not have to delve into the fund for another one. She sighed slightly, trying to adjust her body to be more comfortable with little success, before being struck with a thought like a Lightning Spell out of the blue. "The match," she mumbled, finally being able to turn her head to look at the shadow, who was still too foggy to be recognisable. "Who won? Di' we... di' we lose t' 'em 'gain?"

The shadow laughed once more, giving Aly a friendly, gentle pat on her shoulder. "Don't you worry. Final score was two hundred and ninety to fifty in your favour." As Aly tried to do mental maths - something at which she was already not particularly talented when her brain was working at full capacity - the shadow provided some much-needed clarification. "First time Ravenclaw's beaten Slytherin in four years. If it's not already, it'll be all over the school by morning." Their hand moved down to Aly's - and for the first time Aly realised that her own hands were clenched together in a ball over her stomach, holding something close and dear to her chest. "Maybe now that you know that, you'll go ahead and let that go. I've left a wet cloth here so you can clean yourself off when you feel up to it - we could barely get a wandtip in there to suction you up. I'll leave you to do that, then. Just call out if you need anything, all right?"

The shadow moved gently away, pulling a curtain closed behind them as they left the area of Aly's bedside just as her vision began to clear. A few rapid blinks did the trick, her strength regaining exponentially by the moment, though she still felt decidedly off. She tried her best to focus her green gaze on her balled-up hands, only now seeing that they were coated in red. Her own blood. Nausea and bile pushed at the back of her throat, but she swallowed them both back down and peeled one hand away from the ball, flexing it and crunching it closed into a fist as she slowly reclaimed feeling in all five of her fingers. She'd clearly suffered some nasty hits, then, even though she didn't remember most of them - especially the last one, the one that had apparently knocked her clear of her Oakshaft and right into this bed in the Hospital Wing. The aforementioned wet cloth was one-handedly taken, Aly rubbing it between her fingers and palm in a half-successful attempt to get off the blood. Now that one hand was free, she could feel a slight buzzing in her other palm, and a strength-utilising attempt to focus her vision on the buzzing revealed a small golden wing poking out from between her wrapped index finger and her thumb. Aly peeled back the thumb ever-so-gently, revealing a vibrating golden ball hidden deep within the curled fingers that made up her fist. Golden, but splattered with scarlet hue.

A laugh bubbled up from her chest, but once it passed her lips it hurt. She clasped her mouth shut, sinking back into the pillows that the Hospital Wing interns had clearly propped up behind her. Even in her unconscious state, Aly Salinger had been unwilling to let go of the Golden Snitch once she'd caught it. A pity she couldn't remember the catch. It must have been spectacular.

She did her best to clean off both hands while holding the Snitch, still refusing to let it go in here lest it be lost among the high rafters and draping beige curtains of the Hospital Wing. They had stripped her of her jersey, which she would find folded on the bedside table when she finally found the strength to get up out of the bed, and her left leg had been broken from the hits and the fall. It had been repaired here in the Wing, of course, but she would still be sore for a few days. The interns would explain this all to her in time, and she would head off to the Great Hall at dinnertime, ready for a terrible surprise she had no idea was coming. But until then, her head would be full of foggy relief and joy. As a seventh-year and a captain, she had done what - for four years - had seemed to be the impossible: beating Slytherin in a Quidditch match. If that could be done, then perhaps a Cup wasn't out of the picture this year, either.

If a bit of blood was what it took, so be it. Aly would bleed twenty times over again if that's what was necessary to carry her beloved team to one final victory.

- and I'll paint it red...

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