𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍━━ "𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐮𝐛𝐢𝐦"

[azhefa.]

x.

xxxx
❝ ♕ ┄ ＥＶＡＮＧＥＬＩＮＥ ✧ ❞ x ᵈᶤᶠᶠᶤᶜᵘˡᵗ ʳᵒᵃᵈˢ ᵒᶠᵗᵉᶰ ˡᵉᵃᵈ ᵗᵒ ᵇᵉᵃᵘᵗᶤᶠᵘˡ ᵈᵉˢᵗᶤᶰᵃᵗᶤᵒᶰˢ
────────────────────────────────────────────
xx ➣ xeva, rose x●x the abomination x●x female x●x 25 x●x nephilim [unknown] x●x heterosex/rom x●x single

once again, eva was stuck in the hospital overnight for observation. she'd had another fainting spell at work the night before and was rushed to the hospital even though she assured everyone she was fine. the blonde lays in the hospital bed silently, her eyes staring up at the ceiling as she tries not to get upset. this was just another medical bill to stack onto her already towering expenses and it wasn't even a useful one. the doctors still have no idea what was wrong with her, countless tests were run throughout the night and early morning, some of which have been done before in vain. it's highly doubtful that any of them would have changed. eva huffs out a deep sigh and tentatively moves to sit up in the bed, the muscles in her back protesting the change and it makes her bit her lip in pain.

the curtain that was closed to block her view of the door is pulled open quickly and a nurse appears at her side looking a little frazzled. eva hadn't noticed, but her heart rate had skyrocketed due to the pain and the nurse had gotten an alert at the nurses' station just outside the door. the two talk for a minute, though it was mostly eva trying to assure the older woman that she was fine and it was just her chronic back pain that was the cause of the alert. "i promise, ms. lily, it's just my back, you know how it is," she says to the nurse, offering a bit of a smile to try and placate her. the nurse doesn't seem very convinced, but nods and heads off to start her rounds, letting eva know that the doctor will be in soon to discharge her. eva thanks her and carefully gets off the bed and starts to get dressed.

about an hour later the doctor comes in and sits in one of the armchairs meant for family and goes over the test results. once again, everything was fine and all tests came back negative. eva nods and asks questions at appropriate times, knowing it would be expected of her but she was numb to it all now. after the little meeting, he hands over her discharge papers and unhooks all her leads and walks her to the elevators. he expresses how sorry he was for not finding anything yet again and promises he'll keep trying. eva gives him a smile and thanks him before stepping into the metal box and riding it to the ground floor. as she makes her way out of the front doors, an alarm is sounding over the speaks and codes are being called for whatever emergency has just arrived in the trauma wing. eva hopes whoever it is would be alright as she heads across the parking lot to the bus stop on the corner.

eva takes the bus almost everywhere she can since walking wasn't a very fun past time with such back pain. she scrolls through her planner on her phone and sees that she's got a free day until the evening when she goes to work at the local diner. with so much time to herself, she decides to go grocery shopping since there wasn't much left in her fridge these days. eva checks the map app and finds a store closer to her house so she stays on the bus for another twenty minutes before departing and heading down the street towards the shop that was a few blocks away. it wasn't a fun walk, but at least it wasn't miles away.

x.

xxxxlocation; hospital > bus > street x●x mentions; dallas [kind of] x●x tags; open
────────────────────────────────────────────

[crabodile]

━━━━ k e l s e y !!❜ ━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
kelsey lee | the jokester | location; human city -> west building | tags; dallas
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kelsey was silent, still afraid, somewhat, that her and Dallas' little scheme had been discovered so suddenly. She stood there, fingers tapping her thigh as she replayed everything in her head. Calm down. She caught onto little of the conversation, too lost in her own mind. When she heard the guardian angel's words, how she attempted to side with Kelsey even if only out of spite, a little pressure oozed off her shoulders. It was as if a light switched in her head, a realization of what had happened. The adrenaline began seeping out of her veins, nerves shifting to slow fatigue. With straightened shoulders, she found her words, quite suddenly, quickly piping in with, "Perhaps here isn't such a good place to stop and talk." A sharp, obvious sweep of the room let her take in all the chaos. The deaths of innocent people all being looked over by one of the (supposedly) holiest creatures alive. Maybe she had little to be able to preach about, since she had probably caused plenty of no-life threatening injuries (but injuries none-the-less) but it seemed... odd.

"We're all a little shaken," Kelsey added, shifting her weight to her other foot. She glanced at the door where Dallas had disappeared through. "We need a minute to get it together. Us three may be immortal, but the detective here, that girl, and everyone else is not."Scrunching up her face, she rubbed the heel of her palm between her eyes as if she was exasperated from trying to speak to a rather stubborn child. She spoke deliberately, careful to keep her tone respectful even if a little bit of a bite peeked in every few words. "Mr. Detective here is right. You may not care about the lives that were lost today, but we're in the human world right now. These people had families, and jobs, and reasons to be around. They aren't angels, but they're living like we are."

Kelsey wasn't used to justifying her actions; normally, she was a hit-and-run kind of girl. She rarely faced confrontation, careful to keep herself out of major trouble while having as much fun as possible. She hadn't even truly seen an archangel for decades, nor speak to one. Maybe it was just the exposure to the human world that she got, but Rachael simply seemed a little more heartless than Kelsey could remember. She only wanted to avoid the whole mess and fly to the hospital to check on her friend. Sure, they had been attached together since the whole fork-stealing incident, but who could expect how easy it was to bond like the spontaneous fools they were? She hadn't been so worried about any client nor other humans as she was now. Dallas wasn't just some other walking creature to Kelsey; they were friends. Perhaps they would soon get in trouble for such a relationship, but Kelsey was willing to take that risk in the first place. No take-backs.

"It is obvious that whatever was happening is over now." She frowned, itching to fly. Her wings rippled uncomfortably in their dropped position, similar to the way a cat's fur waved when it stretched. "And that it is probably unrelated to us as angels past the fact that there was a client involved. Let us let the humans handle their problem right now and not get in their way." She paused, a look of contemplation taking over her face, "And, we should, perhaps, check on said client. It seems like a lot of paperwork if she isn't doing too hot."

Racheal was an archangel, sure, but Kelsey didn't really understand; if she was there simply for the shooting, what was her role in it? Kelsey and the other guardian had been there, sure, but they had both also not died or anything, nor had Dallas as the other guardian's client. She ducked her head, unwilling to speak anymore, a little afraid she had been dancing on thin, cracking ice. Racheal could explode, suck her and this other guardian under at any moment. They would crash into the freezing water, Racheal trapping them with her power for as long as she wanted as they struggled to defend themselves and stay afloat. She was wary of that, of course, but she also didn't regret a single word. Humans were living, too, and Kelsey and the other guardian weren't heartless, mindless dolls no matter how hard they tried to be.

[འབྲོག་ཁྱི]

❝ 𝐷𝐴𝐿𝐿𝐴𝑆 𝑊𝐸𝑆𝑇 ────────
╴╴─────╶╶ ┈┈┈ ╴╴──── ♕ ────╶╶ ┈┈┈ ╴╴─────╶╶
tagging; Odile (kinda), mom & sis NPCs ─ location; West building > hospital ─ wc; 1,764

The last thing Dallas could remember before blacking out was the soft smile of the angel looking down at her. Everything was quite fuzzy, shifting in and out of focus, or blurring together as if they were blots of watercolor and the waxy outlines of their shapes had simply given in, but she had the impression that this wasn't something the woman did often. This was someone who didn't need to smile to make all the eyes in the room shift in her direction and then sheepishly divert to something else ─ an ugly vase or a replica of a famous painting of some iconic landscape ─ to try and hide the fact that they had been staring, because being caught looking at someone who radiated such dignity and control must have been a serious faux pas. Yet, she had smiled for Dallas as she lay bleeding onto the expensive flooring and warding off the vague thoughts of the bodies around them that kept poking at the waning edges of her consciousness. She hadn't thought that comfort was something she had required at the moment, but the strange wave of reassurance washing over her had proven her wrong just before everything faded to darkness.

Clinically white lights sailed across her field of vision, and for a moment Dallas thought that she must have been in a taxi, watching streetlights flash past the windows as the car weaved through the city. The shapes shifting around her spoke of something different, but her mind wasn't given enough time to place her strangely light-feeling body into a setting before an object was placed over her face and the only thing she could perceive was the sensation of her consciousness slowly slipping away like fine-grained sand through one's fingers. Then she was back in the lobby. Bullets whipped past her before the booming spray shifted further away and soon back towards her. The people stood still, all facing the man with impassive faces and unaffected eyes as he stomped through the glass doors. Tens of unstoppable projectiles ─ more destructive than something so little should have ever been allowed to be ─ traveled through the air and towards the people standing motionless in front of them, but just as they should have torn through their unconsenting targets, they shattered into tiny fragments and rained down onto the floor. But as her body faced the same challenge, the bullets ripped through her without effort, never slowing down until they lodged into the wall behind her. She looked down to see stark red stains blossoming onto the fabric of her shirt before blending together into a sea of crimson across the expanse of her front. The sensation of falling gripped her and she began expecting the impact of her body meeting the floor, but it never came, leaving her with an unnerving feeling of something unfinished ─ of floating in-between where she had been and where she was supposed to go.

Dallas' consciousness began leaking back to her like rays of sunlight breaching into a dark cavern. Her eyelids were heavy and it was as if she had to force them open before she could squint against the brightness of the room attacking her vision. It was instinct to blink and help her eyes adjust to the light, but she was worried that closing them, even if just for a moment, would mean falling back into the strange mix of unconsciousness and dream that she had just waded her way out of, and she really, really wanted to stay in what she believed to be reality. The feeling of tubes poking at the insides of her nose and puffing oxygen into her airways fought against the oddly blissful lightness encasing her body, and she grabbed at the thing with unsteady hands, tugging it off her face. Moving made the feeling of weight atop her side grow into a dull pain, clearly numbed by a generous amount of whatever they were pumping into her, but it was worth it to get the thing out of her nostrils. A familiar face appeared by her side, gently grabbing her wrists before lowering them back atop the rough hospital-smelling blanket draped over her body, but it was too late to prevent her from doing what she willfully insisted on. "Don't do that," her mother's concerned, slightly agitated voice commanded her, and Dallas turned her face just enough to look up at her. She looked tired, but only the amount her polished demeanor of a socialite would allow.

Instead of answering, Dallas allowed her eyes to wander back down, glossing over the lines snaking into her arm, and finally settling on her sister sitting in one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs at the back of the room. Natalie was smiling as she met her gaze, clearly relieved that her little sister was feeling well enough to do something as stupid as removing the things the forbearing medical professionals had carefully placed on her to help her stay just a little more alive than she would otherwise be. "I feel naked without a hat," Dallas said hoarsely, her throat dry from a lack of use and what must have been several hours of unconsciousness. Natalie's smile broadened at the remark before her face fell, clearly anticipating what was about to happen. Their mother scoffed, an all-too-familiar huff of joyless laughter, and in the corner of her eye, Dallas could see her throw her arms into the air in exasperation. "That's what you're going to say?" she spoke, voice just high enough to feel shrill in the room that was quiet except for the low beeping of machinery. "You nearly die, make us sick with worry, and that's what you say?" Natalie stood up from the chair, taking a few steps towards their mother. "Mom," she spoke in a placating tone, perhaps with an edge of the kind of embarrassment only a child could feel towards their parent, and a hint of warning to watch the way she spoke to someone who had just endured hours of surgery. Dallas could only watch with groggy eyes as their mother stormed out of the room, followed by Nat, who cast an apologetic look in her direction. She wasn't really certain why Natalie was apologizing for their mother's behavior to none other than her own little sister, because by now, they should've been more than familiar with the way things worked in the West family. Maybe it was the sort of treatment one had to endure after the aforementioned near-death experience.

The noises of the hospital leaked into the room momentarily as the door was opened once more and a nurse walked in, seemingly unaffected by the family drama. It was a short, middle-aged woman in crisp, light-blue scrubs. Someone who oozed the sort of motherly affection Dallas' actual mother liked to dispense in rare, small doses. She didn't fight it when the nurse leaned over her bed and placed the tubes back into her nostrils ─ she would just take them out the minute no one with any kind of medical degree happened to be looking. The woman bustled in a seasoned manner around the bulky hospital bed, adjusting the way the lines ran into her arm so they wouldn't get tangled now that she was awake, and checking the numbers on the screen that Dallas couldn't quite see from where she was laying. "I'm nurse Gina, doctor Silvestri will be with you shortly," she recited in a way that made it clear she repeated the words dozens of times each day, but was surprisingly far from cold and clinical. Nurse Gina stopped her movements to look at her, sporting a smile that was just cheeky enough to make Dallas question whether this was an actual nurse or someone sent from the heavens above to keep her entertained. "You seem like the type to try and make a run for it with the IV still stuck in your arm, but I recommend sticking around at least until dinner. There's pudding for dessert." Dallas breathed a few bursts of mildly disoriented laughter, as much as she could without the pressure in her side becoming uncomfortable, and rasped out a playful yes ma'am.

Doctor Silvestri was a far cry from the energetic nurse. Dallas' mother had already returned to the room, dragged by Natalie, and they had sat in tense silence until the tall man with greying hair had marched inside and begun detailing each boring minute of her time in the hospital in a low, droning voice that made her tune out the moment everything that seemed relevant had been said. To put it one way, she had arrived with a serious lack of blood inside of her body as opposed to on her clothes and the stretcher, and lost consciousness intermittently throughout the journey from the ambulance to the operating room, where a skilled team of surgeons had stitched her side back together. The good news was that there would be no permanent damage if the inevitable, gnarly scar was left unmentioned, but the process of recovery would be tedious ─ and they were a little concerned about any potential shrapnel still inside of her, where it most definitely wasn't supposed to be. Dallas had thought about mentioning that maybe she was part woman, part desk now, but considering the way it had turned out earlier, she spared the line for later. But maybe she had been uncharacteristically silent, because as soon as the door closed behind the doctor, Natalie turned to her with a concerned look.

"Are you alright?" came the question that Dallas always dreaded, and so she averted her gaze from her sister. She stared at the white blanket tucked against her body, but doing her best to seem as if she wasn't doing it for the reasons she was. Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of the fabric, trying to derive some sort of comfort from the minimal movement. She felt fragile in a way she had never felt before, in spite of all the broken bones and stunts gone wrong, and the possibilities of what would follow having to lay in bed unoccupied gnawed at her mind, the various shades of darkness waiting for the slightest break in her defenses. "I'm great," she chirped with a brief glance back at Natalie, having to dig deep for any sort of truth to her reassurance only to end up with a tone that lacked any credibility and a smile that she predicted to have fallen awfully flat.