Strong [Private]

[FragmentedPhosphor]

Paul frowned at her blunt, bland, and incredibly unspecific answer. He hated when people answered his questions without really answering them; leaving such gaping holes in the who, what and where had put his life in danger countless times, and if the kid was part of some shady shit Paul felt he had every right to know what it was. For all he knew, he may have just pissed off another of his powerful enemies by picking her up, an idea that hadn't crossed his mind until just then. If she was part of some underground experiment or something of the sort, and the wrong people were involved...


Cress, however, did not give him time to think too long on those matters, instead pulling out her pocketknife. For a moment he worried she was going to menace her with it- not that she would need it, but the appearance of a weapon, however small, always evoked that reaction- but she did not, instead slicing into her own skin, opening up a scar Paul had seen, but never asked about, before he had a chance to really object. "Fine." He snapped in response, reaching back to grab the medical bag. "I'll get you your damn tweezers, give me a moment..." With that he rummaged around in the bag for a moment before finding the requested object, and he pulled it out, as well as a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He quickly splashed a bit of the isopropyl onto the tweezers, sterilizing them- the last thing he wanted was for the kid's wound to get infected because she shoved unsterilized equipment in it- and handed them to Cress.


He was not happy with her rather panicked attitude, but saw no other option than to let it play out. He had no chance of stopping her- certainly not physically, and with how she was acting he wasn't sure how much common sense would get through her skull. Furthermore, if she actually did find some sort of chip in there, it would at least save them from any ambushes that the 'bad people' might set up- and the kind of people that would chip children like dogs were not the type of people he ever wanted to meet. He had only ever heard of something like that being used in the more powerful human trafficking rings- and even then he use of it was discouraged, considering how easily the signal could be hacked and used against them.


Which, of course, lead to the one question Paul had been trying to ignore throughout his time with the kid- just where the hell had she come from? 'A bad place' wasn't much of an answer to go off of. A lot of people he knew came from 'bad places'- but none of them were so ignorant about modern life, and although he knew plenty of women who shied away from his touch because of their past, or his physical appearance, nothing he had ever seen quite matched the feral reaction Cress had to other people. Wherever she had come from, he needed to know at least something about it- ignorance was deadly, and if the kid had kidnappers bold enough to grab her in broad daylight after her he had no doubt not being in the know might just kill him.


Yet after a moment he realized that train of thought was slightly unfair. He wasn't the only one in danger traveling with her- his presence was enough to put her in the crosshairs of half a dozen powerful enemies, too. Yet she hadn't asked anything about his life, clearly illegal though it was-- Unless she thinks this is normal...? He pondered the thought for a moment before discarding it. By now she had seen too many shows on the crappy televisions when he rented a motel room about 'normal' life to think this was what the average Joe did- that, and he knew she was smart enough to have figured out his aversion for the police and seedy places where he did his deals was less than legal.


He watched Cress warily as he mulled things over, ready to help if she ended up tearing or twisting something she wasn't supposed to while she dug around with the tweezers. The sight made him slightly queasy- too many memories of digging bullets out of is own flesh- but not nearly enough to affect his response time. She was lucky he knew more than just basic first aid- if anything went wrong, as long as he didn't need advanced equipment for it, then he would be able to stop it from killing her. Now, whether or not she would accept his help was a different matter entirely- but he would tackle that problem later.

 

[Soleil Overland]

Cress snatched the tweezers as soon as they were offered to her, all but plunging them into the incision in her wrist. She had done this once before, and was less worried about screwing up something vital than she probably should have been. (Sometimes she forgot that she couldn't just turn to Priska and go "this hurts, please fix it" anymore. She'd spent her entire life with a healer by her side, someone who could mend even the worst and most painful wounds with a touch, and so the concept of being careful wasn't necessarily one that Cress was familiar with.) She dug around silently, breath and hands shaking, for a good six minutes, but found nothing. Giving a small curse, Cress dropped the tweezers in her lap and pulled a piece of bandage out of the bag, wrapping it around her wrist to staunch the bleeding. She then pressed her fingertips to her eyes in the hopes of holding back the tears she could feel fighting to form, taking a few deep, shuddering breaths before dropping her hands and beginning to wipe the blood off the tweezers.


"Okay...okay..." she muttered to herself, dropping the tweezers back into the bag once she was satisfied they were clean and fixing her gaze in the dash, hands splayed in her lap, "Okay, I'm going to make a long story short, alright? There's this..." She hesitated for a moment to try and think of the right word. "...facility. I don't know how I got there, but I've lived there for as long as I can remember. And it's--it's run by the doctors, right? And there's a bunch of kids there, ones like me, and the doctors do things to us, screw us up and make us...not right." She took another breath, fingers curling into fists against her legs. "I guess you could say I'm lucky, because I still look like a human, and some of the others look like monsters, but I don't feel very lucky, because whether I mean to or not, I always cause the doctors problems, so they hate me more than any of the others, and they're mean to all of us, but especially me. So I got out, and I ran away." 


Cress finally turned her head to look at him, giving a bitter laugh with tears glimmering in her eyes. "They'd probably be happy to have me out of their hair if they didn't think I'd expose them, so they gotta get me back," she explained, hating herself for the way her voice wavered, "But I'm not going to the police--I'm running straight to another one of their damn facilities! Kind of funny, isn't it?" She reached up and wiped furiously at her eyes, swearing beneath her breath.


To an outsider, she would sound insane. Why on earth would she go through all the trouble to escape, only to turn and flee to a place that was just as bad and dangerous? But outsiders didn't know about Priska. They didn't know the sweetness of her lips, the warmth of her hand in theirs, the feeling of her arms around them, holding them firm against her chest and whispering reassurances in their ear. They didn't know how she could see the good in everyone, even when people couldn't see it in themselves, and they'd never seen her take hurt and suffering and turn it into something bearable and beautiful with her presence alone. They didn't know how much Cress needed her.