"Neph," Hannibal says, a touch of creaking, rotten ice in his voice. Neph doesn't want to hear it. She did her best with the fire, and they can't wait around to make sure it catches because somebody insisted they all get out together instead of taking a reasonable headstart.
"C'mon why aren't we moving?" she pulls her left-hand knife and tucks the tip of the blade against her collar, slitting her bloody outer layer with one downward jerk. The hilt is alien in her hand, awkward and too-small, as though she were handling it through seven layered mittens.
"What's wrong with your eyes?"
Will grabs the back of her seat, her head bounces off the headrest and the knife goes tumbling into the footwell. "Ff-!" she starts to swear, starts to grab for the blade, but Will's words combine with the weight of Hannibal's stare, and her fingers go to the outside corner of her eye instead. "My..?"
The boys swat at each other, short and heated and totally unnoticed. Light gleams off Neph's fingernails, faint as a check engine alert on the dashboard. She breathes out around the dead coals in her stomach and almost expects to see smoke. Instead there's just...fear and guilt. The usual.
"I'm--" the squabble ends with Will half-hanging off her seat and Hannibal not-scowling at them both. They radiate concern and all she can do is reflect gaping terror back at them. They don't know. She never mentioned Burnout and all its wide open vulnerability to either of them and they don't know and now they're going to find out. There's no stopping this collapse.
She thought she had more time. Enough to make it back to Baltimore and stagger up the steps at least.
"It's, yeah, my--it's a warning," Neph turns the creepy glare of her eyes into her busted shoulder and digs her knuckles into her sockets. "I overdid it. Burnout. I'm gonna--"
Cringing, eyes squinted to minimize the glow as much as possible, she looks over her hand at Hannibal. It's not fair to leave him with two people to carry. They don't even know where they are, and when she thinks about everything he's gonna hafta do by himself...
He's the smartest person she knows. If anyone can do it--that doesn't make it right, but if anyone can do it--
--if she were gonna trust anyone to do it--
"In like half'a hour I'm gonna pass out," she tells him. "I mean like...coma. For a, a couple days, maybe more. It's--don't freak out, it happens, just, um, there're some Pewter vials in my desk? Pour some in me now'n then and I'll...be fine?"
The elixir might speed things along, or it might not. Physical healing's one thing, but she's scorched the path of magic through her body, ripped of callouses and scraped down to viscera. Burnout puts her out of commission so all that rawness can scar over. Who knows if potions help with metaphysical scarring? Not this girl.
"I'm sorry, Hannibal, I'm so..." She's supposed to be stronger. Maybe if she hadn't spend all day running through exercises with Jericho, but. She did, and she isn't.
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"C'mon why aren't we moving?" she pulls her left-hand knife and tucks the tip of the blade against her collar, slitting her bloody outer layer with one downward jerk. The hilt is alien in her hand, awkward and too-small, as though she were handling it through seven layered mittens.
"What's wrong with your eyes?"
Will grabs the back of her seat, her head bounces off the headrest and the knife goes tumbling into the footwell. "Ff-!" she starts to swear, starts to grab for the blade, but Will's words combine with the weight of Hannibal's stare, and her fingers go to the outside corner of her eye instead. "My..?"
The boys swat at each other, short and heated and totally unnoticed. Light gleams off Neph's fingernails, faint as a check engine alert on the dashboard. She breathes out around the dead coals in her stomach and almost expects to see smoke. Instead there's just...fear and guilt. The usual.
"I'm--" the squabble ends with Will half-hanging off her seat and Hannibal not-scowling at them both. They radiate concern and all she can do is reflect gaping terror back at them. They don't know. She never mentioned Burnout and all its wide open vulnerability to either of them and they don't know and now they're going to find out. There's no stopping this collapse.
She thought she had more time. Enough to make it back to Baltimore and stagger up the steps at least.
"It's, yeah, my--it's a warning," Neph turns the creepy glare of her eyes into her busted shoulder and digs her knuckles into her sockets. "I overdid it. Burnout. I'm gonna--"
Cringing, eyes squinted to minimize the glow as much as possible, she looks over her hand at Hannibal. It's not fair to leave him with two people to carry. They don't even know where they are, and when she thinks about everything he's gonna hafta do by himself...
He's the smartest person she knows. If anyone can do it--that doesn't make it right, but if anyone can do it--
--if she were gonna trust anyone to do it--
"In like half'a hour I'm gonna pass out," she tells him. "I mean like...coma. For a, a couple days, maybe more. It's--don't freak out, it happens, just, um, there're some Pewter vials in my desk? Pour some in me now'n then and I'll...be fine?"
The elixir might speed things along, or it might not. Physical healing's one thing, but she's scorched the path of magic through her body, ripped of callouses and scraped down to viscera. Burnout puts her out of commission so all that rawness can scar over. Who knows if potions help with metaphysical scarring? Not this girl.
"I'm sorry, Hannibal, I'm so..." She's supposed to be stronger. Maybe if she hadn't spend all day running through exercises with Jericho, but. She did, and she isn't.