Scene #9412: Post Cut Clarity

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	The texts that Kukuru gets from Petra are fragmented and breathless, full of hasty typos from trembling fingers. 'Someone's dead', is easily gleaned from them, and so is 'come to Hydrochoeria', but besides that, Kukuru can't really tell 'who' or 'why'. Thankfully, that's not important! Petra's part of the family now, so when a very serious request like this comes from her, it must be worth paying attention to. Petra doesn't come out to show Kukuru the way up to the wizard tower orbiting the castle, but Kukuru's visited often enough to navigate all on her own, especially teleporting most of the way. Coming out of the warpgate, Hydrochoeria looks as peaceful as ever, with all of the various groups who live here going about their days, and none of the defenses of the island activated against any kind of 'attack' that would result in someone dying. But going up the stone steps inside the tower, Kukuru is suddenly assaulted by the thick stench of blood, followed soon by Petra's appearance staggering into the doorway and blocking her from seeing past her into the room. At first it might look like Petra's the one who needs a resurrection: there's blood splattered all over her in lines and spray, caked under her nails and soaking her arms up to the elbows. Her jeans are stiff and heavy with it, and there's even plenty of it in thr tacky early stages of drying on her face, especially around her jaw and the front of her neck. Her shirt, oddly enough, seems almost pristine in comparison-- the only blood on it is soaking through from underneath. Petra's face is flushed red and her breathing is heavy and ragged. The hazy look in her eyes when they skitter over Kukuru's face several times before eventually locking into eye contact almost looks drunken or drugged, and her spine shivers with tremors that run all the way down to her fingertips, gripping the side of the doorframe. Past her, Kukuru can smell a corpse in the lab somewhere, and Petra struggles to form words, voice strangled and distantly manic. "K-- Kukuru. You won't get mad at me, right? And-- and you have to promise to not tell anyone. Really really promise. I mean it."
Kukuru	How often does Kukuru actually read something from Petra, anyway? She hears her on a pretty regular basis both in person and over the radio, so she's used to a certain level of wordiness from one of the newest members of the Concord family. Text messages are far les common, but the ones she's received so far have generally been coherent and formed well enough that the messages she gets today are already cause for concern. The contents seal the deal for her, and Kukuru only takes as long as she needs to get dressed before she's already teleporting right to the warpgate to Hydrochoeria, going through it, and then heading straight for the wizard tower. The lack of apparent danger does slow her down just a bit as she makes sure she has a big, carefree smile on so as to avoid tipping any of the ocals off that something might be going on. Her showing up in a cheap t-shirt and old sweatpants, clearly not picked to look good compared to just being the fastest thing she could grab, might still be a slight tip off, but she doesn't make a show of where she's going. Once she's out of the warpgate, she teleports again to get into the tower, and then she follows the blood smell all the way up to where Petra is. Predictably, Kukuru's first move is to get some healing pumped into Petra when she sees her in that messed up state, joining her at the doorframe and not moving in even as she smells that familiar stench further past Petra. "Easy, Dear. I'm here, I'm here... Where does it hurt? Did you get attacked, or did..." She pauses, then purses her lips slowly while looking Petra over with that concern still being the primary expression on her face. "Of course not. Did someone explode all over you? Oh, I hope you weren't hurt...!" Taking another deep breath to see if she can recognize any other smells through all that blood, Kukuru holds her hands out to Petra, offering them in case she wants to hold onto Kukuru or something. "Of course not, Petra. Now. Is this someone we like, or someone we need to hide?" She asks, clearly starting to brace herself mentally for whichever possibility this all turns out to be.
Petra Soroka	Despite how it looks, Kukuru's healing on Petra doesn't find nearly any wound at all besides some shallow scratches and a few deeper, but minor, punctures. She can confirm there's no poison in her system either, and her unsteady state is entirely the result of emotion-- probably panic-- rather than anything that was done 'to' her. Petra's eyes are wide with practically animal fear when Kukuru's first words to her are reassurance, pupils twitching back and forth between her eyes and her lips. "No. No, I'm not-- I-I'm not hurt. It's not--" Petra seems to notice the blood caking her fingernails for the first time out of the corner of her eyes and hastily hides them behind her back. "There's no attack. Or-- or explosion." In response to Kukuru's question, Petra looks like a stone gets lodged in her throat. She braces herself and then steps stiffly backwards to allow Kukuru out of the stairway and into the room Audrey uses for research. It's a wide circular room, the circumference of the tower itself, with the Pole Star armillary sphere slowly rotating in the center, and several tables scattered around with books and the Spinning Star on top of them. It looks about the same as normal, except for the one, obvious thing. In one corner of the room is the source of the radiating stench of iron and vomit, with a blanket clumsily thrown over top of it. A trail of blood leads away towards the other door to the bedroom, but given that it's smears rather than drops, it's easy to tell that the subject wasn't the one moving to cause that. Underneath the blanket, blood pools out into gaps in the stones and only just starts to soak through the cloth that was recently placed over it. Flopped out of one side is a slender arm that's turned pale underneath a tapestry of severe purpling bruising and long, deep cuts. And out of the top of it, though the eyes are very carefully covered by the blanket, is a mess of brown hair that was curled into drills before being drenched in the blood it's lying in. Petra's back is tense to the point of shivering while her eyes stay locked on Kukuru for her reaction. She hovers loosely between Kukuru and the corpse, not entirely looking like she's trying to obstruct her anymore, but compelled to position herself defensively as if she could if she really needed to. She works her jaw to loosen up her gritted teeth and flexes her fingers before grabbing her elbow. "I-- I don't know. Neither of those. I-- well, organizationally, we-- 'we', like her. She can't stay dead. I just, really really-- for so many reasons, really can't have anyone knowing about this."
Kukuru	There's some small relief to be felt when Kukuru can't find anything physically wrong with Petra, and Petra might even be able to see that slight relaxation in her shoulders once she stops cycling those nanites around. "Good, good... Um. Okay! So how did...?" Please tell her it's a body to hide. Hiding bodies is easy. Kukuru knows lots of good hiding places, and she knows plenty of ways to dispose of the evidence entirely. It wouldn't be the first time she's done that for a Concord member, and it definitely won't be the last. Seeing Petra having trouble speaking has Kukuru inhaling slowly to brace herself for a much less pleasant version of what's to come, though, but she can't quite guess what she'll see as she steps into the research room. This is someone that they like, isn't it? Petra doesn't strike her as the type to kill anyone callously without this kind of smell following her, anyway, but the fact that it doesn't look like she was trying to hide anything yet helps Kukuru brace a little more by the time she sees the blanket, the blood pool, and the all too familiar arm and hair. It never really gets any easier seeing a dead family member, even for someone that's used to reviving so many of them and even has in short succession not so long ago. Not long enough ago, even, and she chokes up briefly once she recognizes who's under that blanket. She doesn't speak up right away as Petra explains things however briefly, and it takes her a few moments to collect herself before slowly nodding towards Petra. "I... I understand, dear." She doesn't really understand a lot of things, but she knows well enough not to just start yelling, crying, asking unnecessary questions that won't help her fix things before things deteriorate too far to salvage any of this. "I won't... N-nobody else will know." She says with a shaky nod, holding a strained noise in the back of her throat as she approaches Audrey's body to start assessing the damage. "How long ago did this happen?" The specifics don't actually matter, but having something to ask and listen to should help both of them. Kukuru doesn't want to freak out, and she doesn't want Petra freaking out. "Is it just the cuts here, or are there others I need to look out for?" Kukuru asks, knowing already that she'll be doing a thorough sweep of the corpse to make everything's probably treated anyway. She places a hand on the blanket and inhales deeply through her nose while her teeth clatter briefly against each other unevenly, and then she pulls the blanket off to get to work. "Will you...? Mm." No, that's not something she needs to ask now. That can wait until Audrey's up. "Can you clean her up while I'm working? Sh.. She shouldn't wake up with all that still on her." Kukuru helpfully takes out several beach towels and a big camping-container of water, setting those aside for Petra before turning her eyes back to Audrey with another pained whimper. "Thank you, Petra." She says ahead of time, making it clear she wasn't really asking just then. With all that lost blood, Kukuru really has to get her nanites fully flowing for this, giving the body an intense green glow. The nanites work on closing up and fixing open first, knitting together flesh and purging toxins before restoring all that blood Audrey's lost. Getting her blood volume back up could very well take a while until she finally pours in enough of that healing science power before all function should be restored, but it's the sort of thing that Kukuru's done plenty of times before. She looks somewhat nauseous over realizing she's gotten faster at this, too, just like how she had been by the end of the war.
Petra Soroka	Petra flinches at Kukuru's quiet choked noise as badly as if Kukuru had slapped her across the face. After a tense few seconds of looking away from her, Petra starts creeping up behind Kukuru as she approaches the body, hunching over and looking past her shoulder towards the corpse like a guilty dog tagging along to nervously observe the vase it knocked over. Petra's seen plenty of corpses, Concord and otherwise-- if you count the ten thousand year time loop, then she's likely seen more than anyone else-- and she's even killed several, but this one in particular draws her attention like picking at an open wound. When Kukuru reaches to pull the blanket off of her, Petra lets out a strangled yelp and teleports to interrupt, instantaneously pressing the edge of the blanket down so that Kukuru can't lift it. Not explaining that at first, Petra pants as if she just ran a mile, eyes wandering. "Uh-- how long? Um. How-- how long did it take you to get here? Twenty? Twenty minutes? Maybe twenty five? Thirty? Something-- just add a little. Five minutes. Maybe-- maybe ten. I don't know. Not much-- long. So that's good." "Is it just the cuts here, or are there others I need to look out for?" "There's, uh--" A short, shrill laugh, that causes her hand to shake. "Ahah-- ah, um, a bunch. Maybe a lot. Probably. It's not-- I have to, um... how do I-- I have to do a thing. I'll, be right-- right back. Give me space?" When Kukuru steps back, there's a sudden flash of magic-- Audrey's magic, actually. A sheet of Silver drips up from the ground in a reverse waterfall to form a wall she can't see through, and pearlescent cracks around a fracture in space signal teleportation, from magic that Petra must've borrowed from the corpse, either before, or after if that's possible. She, and the corpse, are gone for about a minute, until another flash of the magic precedes the flesh-on-stone scraping of Audrey's body being laid back down on the ground. The morphmetal wall melts away. Petra now has big splotches of secondhand blood on her shirt, and Audrey is now only half-covered by the blanket, and wearing a bra with bloody finger smears on the straps. Petra doesn't turn her face away from looking at Kukuru, but her eyes slant down diagonally to angle towards the body, and then back up. Predictably, the rest of her torso isn't in that great of a state either. There's bruising all across her abdomen and around her neck, and particular bands of it that were bad enough to ooze blood when there was more to lose around her wrist. Besides that, there's long slits of cuts, unnervingly neat and straight compared to the rest almost like butchery. Additionally, there's fist-sized clusters of bruises around the upper half of her torso, with arcs of almost-puncture wounds, that can't be explained as anything besides bites. Petra stays statue-still until Kukuru starts moving to heal Audrey, and then wobbles and crouches down to grab a towel. "Oh. Cleaning is-- that's good. I mean, she'll probably want to-- well, who knows. I've been killed without getting a chance to shower afterwards, haha. It's fine." Petra touches the wet towel to the corpse's arm, where it immediately sucks up trails of pink through the texture of the fabic like mycelium. She barely moves it an inch before freezing and rambling again. "Like-- like, I didn't mean to, y-you know? I'm thinking-- oops! Oopsie daisy, right, hahaha? Just a little-- just a little slip of the everything! Gosh, clumsy me! Haha, hahaha. Ha."
Kukuru	The jolt to keep Kukuru from lifting the blanket has her blinking slowly in confusion, thankfully born from the regular sort rather than the judgmental kind. Without an explanation forthwith, it does means Kukuru is left to start thinking about why Petra's behaving in such a way, but that's quickly interrupted by more questions. It feels better to have these questions going back and forth. Less time to dwell on Audrey being dead and how that must have made her feel leading up to it. Less time to dwell on how Petra must have felt finding her in this condition, even if she already knew it wasn't some kind of attack or explosion. "Not much-- long." That helps ease Kukuru's mind somewhat, even if her expression is still wavering between wanting to cry a little and wanting to hold fast so Petra has someone to lean on through whatever freak accident must have caused this. "That is good, mhm... Not GOOD good, but better than... Mm. Not enough time for her head to shrivel up and get mucky, then." "Maybe a lot. Probably." "I have to do a thing. Give me space?" Whatever sense of relief Kukuru might have felt at seeing that her work could be done more deliberately does, thankfully, get interrupted by Petra's odd-sounding laugh, but she's not one to question that sort of thing much even when she really really should. Audrey's only been dead for less than an hour, after all, so there's still plenty of time. "Mm. Of course, dear." Indeed, Kukuru does step back to let Petra get to work, turning just long enough for that flash of magic to get her looking right back over once more. Recognition flashes through Kukuru's eyes at seeing audrey's magic and the Silver in use, but the specifics don't quite click for her as something to be particularly wary about. It's Petra and Audrey, after all. They're close enough that Kukuru can trust her to do whatever she needs to do, and it gives her minute to get a few things set up for cleaning later: Extra towels, a change of clothes, bandages and even a few light scarves. A minute's long enough for her to even get some bottles of water set up, too, and just in time to hear and see something happening behind her. "Not too long, like you said." Kukuru comments with an awkwardly forced chuckle, clearly intended to try and reassure someone (herself? Petra? It's unclear) about all this. Did Petra actually say that about what she had to do? Kukuru's not going to fact check that. Those new splotches of blood on Petra and the partially-uncovered Audrey does start to raise some questions in her mind, but there's not enough time to finish those thoughts once she sees the wounds. "These weren't from an attack or a.. A explosion?" She remembers what Petra said, but she still murmurs that in a deeply pained tone. It's one thing to see this sort of injury coming from an attack where she can properly direct something like anger or vengeance, but there's no outlet for this helpless feeling. As she looks Audrey over, however, Kukuru starts to notice something. Although she isn't a licensed professional in basically anything, she still recognizes these kinds of wounds from past experience alone. Petra had already told her there wasn't an attack even though so many of these wounds look like the sort of thing that wouldn't just happen on their own. There's too many to be purely accidental, as though...
Kukuru	"like, I didn't mean to, y-you know? I'm thinking-- oops! Oopsie daisy, right, hahaha?" Yes, that confirms it. "I... I see. Yeah, that's... That's very clumsy, alright. Silly girl." Another awkwardly forced chuckle of attempted reassurance, and Kukuru closes her eyes just to reduce some of the mental stack while she gets to work. She can still hear every little thing in that room and smell every bit of blood and vomit still there even then, but the respite from seeing things helps some as she focuses on treating the wounds first and foremost. The cuts and punctures need to be closed so any blood restoration isn't wasted, the bruises need to be mended so Audrey isn't in terrible pain when she awakens. Kukuru even has to do some hands-on work to make sure all of Audrey's limbs and parts are aligned properly so the nanites don't force things to regenerate without fitting together where they should, or healing things into her body that shouldn't be there. "Audrey's lucky we're here to clean her up, then. Waking up covered in everything is real gross. She can at least feel clean while we... Um. Talk about..." She trails off for a moment, trying to figure out how to even begin addressing what she's seen. In true Kukuru fashion, she forgets to finish that sentence, focused as she is on getting Audrey back to a recoverable-then-recovered state.
Audrey Basque	Some time passes! Audrey is 'put back together' and cleaned up enough, amidst no doubt awkward standing and chatting. Audrey gasps, shooting upright to sit. She coughs, a bit of bile, saliva and blood flinging itself out of her lungs and throat. She's pale, and shivering, and shaking; but that's surely normal for someone in her position. Her breaths are raspy, like there's something pressing against her chest; there isn't. Her body's just struggling to breathe, on trauma alone. If she can perceive anything at all, it seems to take her a good minute of staring emptily ahead while she tries controlling her breathing. She settles on hyperventilating, but at least air's coming in now. It'd be impossible for her to know she died; she remembers... dropping by her dorm room, getting a text from Petra, rushing on over... taking five minutes to show her the stash of opened crates, courtesy of Schneider... and one thing surely leading into another, retiring to her room and... Did she pass out? She's passed out before. A lot, actually. Even when she doesn't, her memory of her time with Petra is always blurry and hazy as a default, leaving only a faint impression of having been paid attention to, of pain she couldn't describe, and an afterglow that defies how unpleasant and awful it all is. There's really only so much she can take, and Petra has a gift for looking for that exact limit ruthlessly and with an otherworldly dedication. But it's certainly the first time she wakes up feeling nearly so... what even is this? Numbness across her whole body, and cold, and eyes that sting from accumulated dirt. A bit of dried blood in her mouth, lingering pain across her whole body. She reflexively reaches for one of her wrists, feeling for a cut she can't find but can definitely feel. Healed...? When thoughts are finally able to form again, and her vision's just good enough she can see Petra and Kukuru, she yelps-- no sound comes out of her throat, but her body instinctively knows to back away against the wall and curl up, both to cover herself (she's dramatically underdressed!) but also to get away from... Petra? The room never comes into focus. Silently, her golden blue eyes dart from table to table, to Kukuru and Petra again, to the vague shape of the armillary sphere in the center of the room, blurry but made out just barely. Back to Kukuru and Petra. How did she get here? Why is Kukuru here? Petra being covered in blood doesn't even register yet. "W... wh...." She coughs and tries to clear her throat, failing to vocalize 'what happened', but that might be safely implied anyway.
Petra Soroka	In her panic-delirious state, Petra somehow didn't even consider the idea that she could have covered this up from even Kukuru knowing the cause. It felt, from the moment Petra heard Kukuru coming up the steps, like there were a million eyes trained on Petra from every direction, dissecting her under their stare. What Lilian said only hours-- had to have been hours, right?-- earlier in the radio, about an imaginary audience inciting a nervous breakdown, seemed more like a prophecy in retrospect. Petra's guilt was painted onto her, and painted on Audrey too; not just that it was Petra that did it, but every detail of how, each movement of the knife and the tension in her hands around her neck illuminated for the crowd's consumption. It only registers far too late, when Kukuru weakly repeats her question about the explosion. Petra awkwardly, shrilly laughs and runs a hand through her hair, sweat washing blood out from under her nails in pink rivulets. Oh god I'm such a stupid bitch. How many times did I berate serial killers on TV for doing the same thing? I should be used to this, I've literally killed more people than Dahmer-- or have I? Seventeen-- how many have I killed? "Silly-- silly me, alright. Hahahaha." Without consciously doing it, her towel-rinsing came to a stop, and her hands began tightening around Audrey's lifeless arm hard enough to bruise it all over again. When she realizes what she's doing, she flinches away, muscle cords on the back of her hands standing out from tensing them into claws. "Just-- just clumsy. I'm always just a little bit-- but it'll be fine in a minute. There'll be...." When Audrey suddenly moves, Petra shrieks so loud that she doubles over into a coughing fit. She's seen Kukuru heal the dead innumerable times before, she was there for most of the resurrections during the war and before that too, but rather than just a short yelp of being surprised by the jolt of movement, the noise she makes is straight out of a horror film. Her face is pale, making the blood splatters stand out against her skin even more. She looks at Audrey with eyes wide enough to see the whites around the entire edges, palms planted on the bloodstained stone ground with her fingers slightly curled to hide the nails. When she makes a weak, grimacing smile, there's a tiny glimpse of red on her teeth. "Morning-- sk-skater girl. Nothing happened. You're fine. There was-- just an accident. Nothing's wrong."
Kukuru	"Hahahaha." Even Kukuru's not so dense as to miss awkward laughs like that, and she inwardly berates herself for asking such a terrible question. She knows that kind of fake laugh because she's just used it herself, but that guilt gnawing at her doesn't stop her from smiling and nodding. "O.. Of course, dear. Well, we can talk about all that later once Audrey's back with us." There should be a strong sense of relief that nobody broke into Audrey's home just to kill her, but there's still a nagging feeling in Kukuru's heart that keeps growing by the second. It grows more intense not when Petra re-bruises Audrey's arm, but after Kukuru forces another chuckle and pumps some more nanites into the arm to get those bruises fixed up. "Now now, dear. We don't want her waking up with any more injuries. That could scare her more when she gets up and starts reliving... Um. Whatever happened." It's not until Audrey finally reawakens and Petra screams that the feeling finally becomes clear to her: She should be having the kind of reaciton Petra's having, not smiling and waving meekly like she does when she sees Audrey moving to hte wall. She should still be horrified even by whatever accident happened, and she should be allowed to let that horror out instead of just smiling like nothing awful had happened. It can wait until everyone here's situated and she goes back home later. She just needs to hold it in for a while longer. "Oh, Audrey... Welcome back, dear." Kukuru smiles serenely like she usually does, lip quivering a little as she continues that struggle just to hold it together. Audrey's reaction to coming back to life is one that Kukuru's seen enough times, at least, to already have a beach towel in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. She helpfully holds the towel up over her own face so Audrey can maintain some sense of privacy from at least one set of eyes here, even while holding it forward and keeping her other outstretched arm to the side with the water bottle already slightly twisted open for easier grabbing and chugging. A few more seconds, and she hears the questioning noises that don't come out quite right. "It's okay, Audrey. You're safe here. No need to rush, okay?" She speaks softly, as she wiggles the towel and bottle lightly in her hands, slowly shuffling towards the wall Audrey's backed herself into so as to make it imminently clear that she's ready to stop at the slightest noise of discomfort. "Maybe..." She pauses, taking a slow look around the rest of the room that she can actually see with the towel block Audrey from her view. "... Do you want something to eat? I can make something fresh, or... Would my place be better? Somewhere away from all this mess? I-I can take... Clean it up after, if you two want to..." This would be a good time to actually ask Petra about what terrible accident happened to cause this. What they were doing. She wants to know, but she can't bring herself to ask. "... Rest up, wash up, eat, whichever. H... How does that sound?"
Audrey Basque	If the room and the blood don't register, it'd be hard for the screaming not to. Petra shrieks just loud enough to overpower the awful, debilitating ringing in Audrey's ears. It comes with a headache, free of charge, as so many things do these days for her. The unique sensation of a new sort of pain coming into focus everytime the numbness washes off a new body part, or anytime she focuses on one of her limbs to move it. Phantom pain, evidently... but pain nonetheless, and not the sort she's 'gotten used to'. An accident...? No, that doesn't make sense, she didn't... she wasn't experimenting, was she? It could be... something from the open crates? That they didn't account for? That doesn't track, though! Something bad enough Kukuru had to come? She stares at Petra and Kukuru, leaving Kukuru's offer of water and a towel hanging while her brain catches up with the fact she's being offered anything at all. She does flinch, when Kukuru approaches, but it's involuntary. Sights catch up. Petra's a bloody mess. She must have gotten healed first? "A... Are you.. okay?" A million questions. She can't think while Kukuru's bombarding her with them, so she finally manages to shake her head with a grunt. "N-no... here is fine... no food... water, water would be... good." Her throat is dry and still a bit caked in blood. She tries to straighten herself by sitting again. "What kind of... accident?"
Petra Soroka	"Clean it up after, if you two want to..." Petra shoots another wide-eyed stare at Kukuru like a deer in headlights, and then emphatically shakes her head. "No. No. I'll clean up. It's fine. I'll clean it up myself. I know how to. It's not your business to deal with." Petra folds her knees up to her chest and then unsteadily pushes herself to her feet, wobbling as she finds her balance. Upright, Audrey can see the full sheet of blood over her clothes, especially the front of it and the knees-down of her jeans. Petra suddenly twitches and looks all around the room, and then sighs, wiping her hands on her shirt. "I-- I already owe you a favor, Kukuru. You don't need to do chores for me." Her voice is hoarse and clogged, still fighting to get out of her throat without lapsing into a tight whisper. "If she needs water, that's... that's good, though." She doesn't ask for any for herself. "What kind of... accident?" Petra's attention whips around to suddenly fix Audrey with a wildly disproportionate glare, hand balling into a fist around the hem of her shirt. She raises her voice abruptly, halfway to a shout. "Shut up! I said nothing happened! Fucking listen and shut the fuck up!" Petra pants from the exertion of the sudden flare up of anger, and then puts her hands behind her head. Her fingers tense, scraping against her scalp and twisting her hair. "I think everything's-- everything's fine now, Kukuru. Thank you for your help. Audrey just needs to-- to rest. And then she'll be fine. You've been super helpful." Unspoken is, of course, 'you should leave', and the accompanying refusal to talk about or even acknowledge what happened.
Kukuru	"I already owe you a favor, Kukuru." "Don't worry about it, Petra. That's what families do. We help each other when... When things like this happen." Kukuru says, looking over from the towel between her and Audrey towards Petra instead. If nothing else, she can feel a little good about that since being relied on in this kind of situation before Petra thought to contact anyone else... No, that's kind of messed up, too. She berates herself some more for feeling good about that at all, especially when it came at the cost of Audrey's life however temporarily. Kukuru can feel that she's being left hanging by Audrey, too, but it doesn't register in her mind right away. Maybe she's not close enough for her to reach? Audrey's probably still confused and terrified, so looking out from past the towel won't really help her any right now. Maybe it's because she's moving around? Just in case, Kukuru holds still instead of wiggling the towel and bottle around. "A... Are you.. okay?" And then Audrey speaks! Breathing a light sigh of relief at hearing that familiar voice and tone, Kukuru nods quickly before remembering that Petra's the one that's covered in way more blood. Instead of answering, she keeps her mouth shut, but she does finally let out another relieved noise when water is requested. "Of course. H.. Here you go, dear." The towel is offered with the water bottle, too, but Kukuru will put that towel away if it's not taken with the bottle. That'll leave her hands free to bring Petra a bottle, too, even though she didn't ask for it. "What kind of... accident?" "Shut up!" That's exactly the question Kukuru really wants answered, and that's exactly the sort of visceral reaction that has her flinching. Her instinct to not make her family upset has Kukuru holding her tongue, even though she desperately needs to know after coming here. Petra wouldn't have been so frantic about calling her in to help if not for whatever terrible accident happened, and leaving the question unanswered is something even Kukuru knows she shouldn't settle for in these circumstances. "Thank you for your help." Even though she knows she shouldn't settle for no answers, Kukuru's already nodding out of reflex and starting towards the door, as though she's ready to give the two their privacy instead of prying further. "Mhm, mhm... You two rest up, okay? I'll..." She trails off, standing by the door with a hand resting against the doorframe. She stares outside the door, jagged teeth chattering lightly again as she feels that nagging feeling ready to burst right out of her. Closing her eyes doesn't force it back down, deep breaths isn't forcing it back down, and she doesn't even realize that her fingers are boring a hole into that doorframe from how hard she's clamping down on it. She wants to trust Petra and Audrey, but the feeling's too hard for her to ignore. Releasing the doorframe, Kukuru turns back around slowly, trying to keep her tone controlled even while she struggles to speak and face the girls at the same time. "It's not... What happened?"
Audrey Basque	"There was-- just an accident. Nothing's wrong." "Shut up! I said nothing happened!" Petra raising her voice makes Audrey recoil-- not respond, not point out the inconsistency, that she might as well have misheard. It makes her back into the corner, try to make herself tiny, and ultimately fail, because it's a corner and she's whimpering weakly, breathing irregularly. She even drops the bottle of water she'd just been handed.. PHONE: Petra Soroka says, "But you sure are comfortable here, huh?" PHONE: Petra Soroka texts \| why do you feel so /safe/ around me huh??? "S... sor... r..." She can't even manage that much. "N-No-- I don't... I don't feel... good," she objects, to simply needing 'rest and water'. Even though... Kukuru's already done all she can, medically speaking. She really does just need rest and water. "N-never... mind, what... happened, or didn't happen. It's not... important." A breath. "Don't leave me," she reaches out, suddenly-- there's no distance between her and Kukuru. The room is smaller, Audrey subconsciously twisting the space to place Kukuru by her, so she can grab her arm weakly, desperately. "Please..." An echo of words she said earlier? Or just trying to keep Kukuru here. "I have... guest rooms... you can use..."
Petra Soroka	The tinnitus roar of Petra's stress began its denouement as Kukuru silently slunk off towards the door. Audrey is irrelevant and nonthreatening, on the floor and bloody but alive enough that Petra doesn't need to worry about her anymore. Facing away from the door, she assumes that the trailing end of Kukuru's sentence was a failure to figure out how to say goodbye before leaving, and as her tension eases a notch, the cold absence of adrenaline drains through her muscles. The rough, wheezing sigh that carries the dry ghost of a sob slips out of her, only to choke to a stop when Kukuru turns around and Audrey reaches out for her. "It's not... What happened?" Petra tilts her head to the side to look at the pair of them, huddling in the bloodstain on the stone. Her shoulders rise and fall with each panting breath, anger and horror flooding back so quickly into her system that it causes her to tremble. Her face looks nakedly terrified, as if what's coming out of her mouth is pleading, but her voice is brittle-edged fury. "Come on, Kukuru. Don't make it a mistake to rely on you when I finally started to trust you." She flinches with a full body shiver, jolting around to glare at Audrey. Her body suddenly tenses up like she's about to stomp over and give her a kick to the head, but instead she stays rigidly still. Her teeth grit audibly, like creaking ice over a pond. "You don't have 'guest rooms'. This is my castle. My island. The tower is--" Petra twitches and then suddenly inhales, stumbling backwards a few steps. She shakes her head, ducking her face down, and runs her fingers through her hair to grip and twist it hard enough that it must hurt. She staggers backwards a few more steps, towards the door herself, and shoots a wild-eyed gaze around the room. "Well, of course-- of course Kukuru can stay if that's what you need. I mean, I-I-- I'm not going to police whatever you need to heal. And, I-- I mean, no one ever feels-- totally great after getting healed up from something like that. I should know." It's not entirely clear whether Petra intentionally fully avoided Kukuru's question, or whether this bizarrely oscillating emotional state has left her too dazed and overwhelmed to remember it. Petra presses a hand up to her mouth, curling her fingers until the bloodsoaked nails slip between her lips, as she takes the last couple steps backwards to the door. "I'll-- I'll clean up later. I hope-- I hope you feel better, Audrey."