Fought

Follow up to this.

She didn't know how long she'd been laying there. She watched clouds pass into a purple darkness, her skin feeling too small for her body. It was stiff, and her head was too heavy to budge. Someone had to find her. She was soaked with rain, her cheek swollen from the kick. Someone had to find her, someone. Feebly, she raised her head after a few moments of bracing herself, lifting herself up. It screamed with a dizzying metronome, and she took a second to calm the headache that bore into her brain with an icepick.
Her bag lay sprawled out a few feet beside her. It was a dark brown from the rain, the hard leather characters glistening in the yellow automatic light that had come to life beside the field. If only it didn't begin to rain. There would probably be someone making their way toward the field, and someone would find her. It was vacant, though. She waited for the shout of a worried person, but the campus was probably empty from the torrential rain that drove everyone indoors.
Remember me. She would never forget. The knife plastered to her leg, tucked into her kneesock, was cold. She could have killed her. If she wanted to, she could have killed that girl. She was too scared to even think of that.
Her phone was in the deepest compartment of her bag, but the screen was still a little wet. She brushed it off with her sleeve, getting to her feet and holding her stomach. Tap, tap, call Larissa Wicker. She felt the blood begin to trickle back onto her soiled shirt. Pick up, pick up, please.

Classes had just ended. Walking out of the classroom was one of the best feelings in the world to Larissa as she packed her bag, walked out the door and pushed through people in the hallways. She was ready to get back to her room, get comfortable, do some homework and relax. It was what she had been looking forward to all day long. Plus, she wanted to see Kaya when they both returned to thank her for the meal that was placed in the fridge this morning for her and Daniel. It was such a lovely gesture and it definitely made the summer's day even with the overcast skies and the white noise of what seemed like perpetual rain today. With a smile on her face, Larissa made her way back to the dorm room. Upon entry, she closed her umbrella and placed her backpack down in her room before skipping into the living room and knocking on Kaya's door. She really wanted to go ahead and tell her how great the peanut butter sandwich was, but there was no answer. She must not have been back yet. With a shrug and thinking nothing of it, she turned around and headed back to her room, pulling out her books and began studying.

A few hours had past and with all of her homework done and Daniel already back and in his own room, Larissa had changed into something more comfortable and was now sitting on the couch flipping through the channels on the television. She had already eaten dinner was simply enjoying her time until it dawned on her that she never heard Kaya come back. Not that it mattered. Whatever Kaya was doing was none of her business and she wasn't going to push herself on the girl. She would just wait patiently, even if that was the last thing she wanted to do. With a sigh, Larissa readjusted on the couch, turning so that her weight was on the arm of the couch and her knees pulled into her chest. She was just about to get super comfortable when she felt her phone ring, the vibrations amplifying the noise through the materials of the couch. With a bit of confusion, Larissa picked up her phone and looked at the number.

"Kaya?" she asked herself, staring at the caller ID for a moment before sliding her thumb across the green button to answer the call. "Hello?" she greeted, putting the phone up to her ear.

"Help." It seemed that the voice on the other end spurred something, ending the odd calmness she had demonstrated in the hours she laid there, blanking in and out. She began to cry. "I'm on the soccer field, help." She would try to walk back, but it hurt her stomach to move. Those discs bore into her deep. They still lay cracked and splintered on the field around her; that and blood were the only things proving what had happened there.

The words immediately sent chills down Lariss's spine. She'd never heard anyone in such distress and trying to cope with it was a bit difficult for her. Her brain couldn't exactly comprehend what was just said or what was happening, and she couldn't figure out if she wanted to just hang up or jump off the couch and run to the soccer field. All sorts of scenarios were suddenly running through her head as she tried to figure out what was going on. After several seconds of silence that in her mind only felt like a couple, the summer finally spoke up as her thoughts cleared up. "I'm on my way," she said weakly, her voice cracking and wavering from the realization that her friend was almost certainly in some kind of danger.

Not even bothering to hang up, Larissa jumped off of the couch, shoved her phone into the pocket of her sweatpants, put on the first pair of shoes she could find which happened to be Daniel's tennis shoes, and ran out the door as fast as her legs could take her. Tears forming in the corner of her eyes as the summer could only fear the worst, she skipped down the stairs and out of the residence hall, dashing across the campus in the rain until she finally reached the soccer fields. Already drenched from head to toe in the freezing rain, she stopped after passing the small bleachers on one side of the field, her hands raised up to defend herself but no one was there until she saw Kaya  standing not too far away, clenching her stomach with one hand and her phone in the other.

"Kaya!" Larissa cried out, her breathing heavy as she darted to her friend, stopping a couple of feet away and gasping at the girl's wounds. "What happened?"

All she could say was a murmured, breathy, "Help, help." She stepped forward slowly, and her face was contorted in pain and fear. She had not been like that since Nanook. She had not been like that since her friend's incident. She was not going to talk about anything. She was done trying to talk. She just needed to get to the infirmary, and quick. She'd heard there were doctors there. She heard they could heal anyone.

No more talking. Her knife clung tightly to her leg, tucked into her ankle, the outline clear in the black of her stocking.

"Yes, right. Right..." The words helped snap Larissa out of her own shock and pushed her forward to help. The sight of Kaya's wounds and the blood that stained her clothing made the summer want to gag but she forced it down as she tucked herself under one of the girl's arms to help her walk. Each step was slow but urgent as they made their way to the infirmary. Larissa had a fairly solid hold on Kaya, but trying to find a place to hold onto was a little difficult with the wounds. Her shoulders were practically off limits and a grip on her side would cause too much pain on her stomach. Not to mention the bruises, most of which Larissa couldn't even see.

"We're here," she said softly as she opened the door to the infirmary, using her foot to keep it propped open as she walked Kaya inside. It was her first time ever being in here, so the summer really had no idea where else to go from here. Did they just wait or with an emergency like this, should she go ahead and take her back to one of the beds? As they moved deeper into the room, she simply looked around for any kind of sign as to what to do but decided against trying to wait patiently. "We need help!" she said loudly without trying to shout in Kaya's ear. "Someone, please!"

She hated desk duty, especially on slow days like this. Every second she sat there, listening to the clock tick by, was a second she could've spent doing something else, anything else. Hell, even getting turned into Wright's personal custodian was better than just sitting at a desk handing out band-aids, but how many times could you mop the floor or rearrange pencils before you started to lose your mind? The more time passed by, the less it felt like a job and more like solitary confinement. They needed a unique way to punish her, she guessed. Even if it was something like this.

Kayla leaned back into her chair, her feet kicked up on the desk, staring up at the ceiling. She hated this place.

Her prayers were answered, but not in the way she wanted.

The door swung open in the other room. Shouting filtered through the walls, pleas for help. Kayla jolted up, and then shot to her feet, electricity crackling around her fists.

When she saw them, she stopped in her tracks. Kayla recognized one of them, vaguely, from the rooftop, but her gaze was locked on the girl at her side. She was covered in blood and drenched from the rain. Electricity flickered over her head.

"Drag her into one of the cots." She wasn't cut out to be a nurse, but hell if she was going to wait for Ethan or Logan right now. Right now, her head was spinning trying to remember all the first-aid classes she'd slept through or blown off, but it was just a jumbled mess of vague tips and instructions. Fuck it. They'd figure it out step by step.

Kaya felt relief when she saw the nurse, and almost found this an excuse to sleep. Her cheek was very swollen at that point, the skin almost purple and bruised. What woke her up was the crackle, the spark of electricity that seemed to give a brief curve to her. Whatever that was, she was wet, and water and electricity did not work well together, at least according to the Nat Geo magazines in her old room. She made her way to the bed, separating from Larissa and sitting on he edge. It almost seemed odd; despite her swollen cheek, she sat like a normal person, almost like she was in a waiting room, but she was covered in blood. She hurt all over, but that didn't show. She looked down, remembering the girl in the back of the class that wouldn't tell her her name.

Remember me. Kaya said nothing. There was no talking, it hurt everything in her to talk.

Larissa began heading that way until Kaya began walking off without her and sitting down in the cot closest to them. The summer was stunned at how easily the girl moved despite her pain and how... composed she was. There was still blood everywhere but there was no reaction. As the girl that was sitting at the desk began to move quickly to help, Larissa watched, stuck in her place at an utter loss as to what to do next. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that she had seen that girl with the electricity on the rooftop not too long ago and remember how dangerous she looked, but now she was here helping Kaya. At least, that's what Larissa was expecting. For about a minute, the summer was silent as her brain tried to process everything that had just happened in the past several minutes but she was still in too much shock to deal with it right now. She had no idea how Kaya was dealing with this so well.

"What can I do to help?" she finally managed to ask, her voice wavering from the shivering she was doing. For a while, she had completely forgotten about the rain and the freezing temperatures but now that they were here, it was all coming back to her and she realized she was still soaked while standing in a puddle she made on the floor from the rain water.

This was bad. Blood had seeped through the fabric, staining through the front of her uniform. Shoulder. Stomach. What the hell could've happened to her...? How long had she been out in the rain like that? "Lay down and pull your shirt up," she snapped, with more of an edge in her voice than she'd intended, sparks popping out over her head. Getting a look at the wound would be the first step. From there... Well, they'd figure it out. She glanced over at the other girl. "Bandages. They're somewhere over there." Kayla gestured to a cabinet with a lazy wave of her hand. "Grab a few towels too, yeah?" There'd be a stack of blue cotton ones in one of those drawers, somewhere. Right now, she could barely concentrate. They were both soaked.

Kayla walked over to the side of the cot, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She felt out of place in a place like this, with a position like hers. I'm not a doctor. But she couldn't tell either of them that, could she? It was her fault for letting the Headmaster rope her into this. "Can you talk?" she asked, her eyes wandering over the dark stain. "Tell me what happened."

Kaya did as she was told. She let herself slowly fall onto the bed, lifting up her shirt over her stomach. She didn't grasp how cold she was until this, and began to shake slightly. The wound on her shoulder blade reminded her of its existence, and she winced but said nothing. Kayla asked her to recount what happened, and again she said nothing. Just kind of looked up at her, brown eyes glaring up. She could never recount bad stories. There was many a time where Papa asked her what happened, the obvious intent to punish her for something bad lingering in his tone. She just couldn't say what she did. She'd stare and stare silently. When the Arviat people demanded what happened after Nanook took her friend, she didn't have the voice for anything for a week. She hated her thin, breathy voice. It abandoned her when she needed it the most.

Larissa nodded and quickly made her way to where Kayla had pointed. Opening the cabinets, she looked around, shoving supplies out of the way in every direction until the bandages came into view. Scooping them into her arms, she closed the cabinet, readjusted so that the supplies were sitting comfortably in her left arm and used her other hand to open the drawers close by. Inside were several clean towels in which she grabbed several in her hand and tossed them so that they draped over her arm. Using her hip to close the drawer, she walked back over to Kayla and dropped the supplies onto a nearby table. "Is that enough?" she asked, still amazed at how calm Kaya seemed to be right now. "If there's anything else I can do, just let me know."

That wasn't helping. She was conscious, right? She hadn't gone into shock or anything and couldn't hear her? Kayla bit on her lip, silently snatching one of the towels off the table and pressing against the wound, putting pressure where the blood flowed out. After a few moments, she wiped some of it away. It was an ugly cut, but clean, like a sword slicing through flesh. How the hell did that happen? Was she attacked? There was her other wound too, on her shoulder, but that could wait. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asked to the other girl, the one who'd brought her in. If this girl was being so silent... "Do you know her?"


Her attention turned back to the patient. With a breathy sigh, she grabbed a roll of bandages and held out a strip, starting to wrap it tight around her waist. She didn't know if it needed stitches or anything else, but for now, it'd have to do. "Are you dizzy? Woozy?" Fuck, where was Ethan when she needed him? C'mon, work with me here...

Kaya looked at her for a few moments, and it seemed like a moment that her motor functions were down too, but she gave a silent and slow nod at the last moment of the pause, citing the fatigue as she wanted to sleep but couldn't stop shaking. As Kayla wrapped her in a bandage, she twisted her body and tapped at her shoulder. Another cut went through her vest, not as deep as the others, but there. It was painful on her shoulder blade, stiffening the joint.

Larissa nodded. "Yes I know her. Well, kind of. She's my roommate." she paused, thinking back on how she found Kaya. It wasn't very long ago but after all of the craziness that had happened, it felt like ages ago, and whatever happened didn't even involve Larissa. "A...As for what happened, I'm not sure. She had called me and asked me to help her. I found her on the soccer field. She was standing, though, when I got to her. I don't know if that's a good thing or not." Unfortunately, Larissa never saw the flattened penny blades that were left on the ground. She remembered stepping on something harder than the typical ground but didn't even bother looking down while her friend was practically bleeding out.