The first thought to cross Judal's mind was; why does this shit always happen in the rain? He thought it was a very valid question to be asking. It seemed like any time anything dramatic was happening in movies, books, hell even songs; it was always in the damn rain. As far as he was concerned it seemed terribly impractical. It was a little difficult to grasp the drama when you could hardly see through the downpour around you, and that was if you had an umbrella. What if you were walking into a final confrontation and you tripped in a deep puddle? Or a roll of thunder made it so you totally couldn't hear your dream guy's confession?
Or what if you were standing there with two armfuls of groceries and you just saw a guy fall out of the sky into a planter while simultaneously being soaked to the bone because you had no hand to carry your umbrella?
Judal looked between the heavy bags in either hand and the iron gateway in front of him, the open path between himself and the planter screaming "bad decision" at the top of its lungs. A familiar flicker of annoyance passed through him. He had a strain of bad luck that always seemed to find him in the wrong place at the wrong time. No matter how many precautions he took, odd and unlikely circumstances just followed him like a plague.
On the one hand, he was tempted to just keep walking to the front of his building, ignoring the odd apparition entirely, and go back up to his apartment with his groceries. He could put the falling figure off as a trick of the light and just go upstairs like it never happened. Or, he could do the incredibly unwise thing and get involved in whatever madness he'd just witnessed, thereby welcoming whatever trouble may follow.
He deliberated for a moment, then groaned and swerved towards the gateway into the courtyard behind his apartment building.
The light from the streetlamps grew dim the deeper into the courtyard he trekked and a shiver passed down his spine as the shadows began to lengthen. He'd never liked the courtyard much, though he'd convinced himself it was kind of charming when he first moved in. The truth was that even in the daylight, it was creepy.
It was long and narrow, constructed out of the alleyway between two buildings, surrounded by a wrought iron fence that had long since lost whatever color it was painted and adopted an off shade of gloom. To the left the concrete opened into a row of open dirt that housed the dried up carcasses of long dead trees, their gnarled branches tangled into the fence and bowing out over the rest of the courtyard.
In the center, there were three long planters spaced out evenly, probably once meant to be full of flowerbeds but now boasting nothing more than dirt. Against the back wall there was a bench of the same iron as the gate, and a second one was settled back against the wall of the apartment building, beside the door. When it was first planted, it had probably been a quaint little escape for the building's residence, but it had long ago fallen into disuse.
The second planter was half full, like the rest, but the remainder of the space was taken up by the body of what appeared to be a young man dressed like the stunt double from a movie set somewhere between medieval times and imperial China.
Judal looked up, squinting through the rain, trying to see if there was anything hanging overhead that miscellaneous men could come falling from. The roof of his building was off limits so it couldn't be there, and there was no way he could have landed flat on his back in the planter from the roof on the other side. Straight above, there was open sky.
A helicopter maybe? he wondered, but that seemed relatively melodramatic. And besides that, it would have to be incredibly low flying for him to not be splattered all over the concrete.
Wherever he had come from, he was clearly injured and lying in a mound of dirt was probably not doing him any favors. Judal moved forward, then remembered his groceries.
He looked down at the bags.
Well, he clearly couldn't carry them and the man at the same time, for starters. If he took them upstairs he'd only be a few minutes, but depending on how badly hurt the man was that could be the difference between life and death. If he left them here though, they were going to get waterlogged.
The man in the planter let out a wheezing cough that rattled his chest, his whole body shuddering violently before going absolutely still.
Judal dropped his grocery bags.
Leaning over, he hooked his arms under the man's body and heaved him up. He didn't look like he was supposed to be particularly heavy, but unconscious he was nothing but dead weight. Judal struggled, but got one arm under his torso and the other under his legs. He lifted, and immediately strained his back. Right, you're supposed to lift with your knees—Well that applied to boxes, not armor wearing men, right? Sure.
Judal shambled his way towards the back door into the building, mounting the two small stairs and realizing belatedly that he should have opened the door first. Groaning aloud over a peal of thunder, he eased the man down, meaning to sling his arm over his shoulder and swearing profusely when he realized he didn't fucking have one.
Suddenly very glad for the darkness, Judal stood there a minute with the unconscious man held a fraction too tightly against his front, heart racing. He had almost lost his grip on him, hence the panic, but more importantly the guy seemed to be sans an arm. What kind of soldier only had one arm?
Remembering this was not the biggest issue at hand, Judal kept one arm around the man's waist, back to the door, and fumbled his keys from his pocket and into the lock.
"Fuck yeah." he muttered to himself when the door eased inwards behind him, pushing with his back and pulling the man in after him.
In theory, the trip up four flights of stairs while carrying an unconscious person was going to be about as difficult as carrying his groceries. In theory, Judal was also better at weight lifting and cardio than in reality. Theoretical Judal could run up and down four flights of stairs and still be able to run around the block without getting winded. This was why theoretical Judal was theoretical. Actual Judal almost dropped the man twice.
By the time he got to his apartment door, Judal was wheezing and his muscles were complaining loudly that the groceries were trial enough and this was just plain old torture. He grit his teeth through it though, going through the same process of getting the door open as before and hauling the stranger inside.
There was an instantaneous feeling of comfort to being in his minute apartment. The front door opened inwards and Judal crossed the threshold into the familiar smell of citrus and ink that seemed to permanently stain his living space.
From the front door one entered directly into the living room, a large square that had been crammed full of a couch, coffee table, TV set and assorted bookshelves of disorganized shapes and sizes. The bottom right corner of the room had been cut off by a wall to house the kitchen, a large portion of the wall missing so one could see directly into the kitchen from the living room.
To the right of the living room were two open doors, one leading to the cramped bathroom and the other to the equally boxy single bedroom. It wasn't fancy, decorated in second hand furniture and rugs and sporting only two windows on the far wall, but it was home.
Judal deposited his impromptu guest on the couch as gently as he could, sparing a moment to groan and stretch his back. He ambled back to the door, shutting and locking it while toeing off his shoes before turning on the main light.
"…Ugh." he grimaced at the sight of rainwater staining into his favorite rug. It was red shag and the largest rug he owned, set in front of the couch under the coffee table.
He was even wetter than he'd thought he noted as he went around to the two standing lamps and turned them on, looking down at himself with a scowl. He stopped, the light in front of him flickering on, illuminating the odd stain on his shirt he'd been staring at.
It was too dark to be water, in fact it looked more like spilled ink. Judal pressed his fingers to it and pulled them back, looking at his fingertips and finding them stained with something warm and purple.
For a moment, it didn't register, then he whirled around and darted to the couch, leaning over the back to look down at the man he'd left there. Sure enough, there were stains forming on his couch cushions, too dark to be from water, even if rain water were purple, which it wasn't.
Then again, neither was blood, usually, but what else could it be?
Come on Judal, like you're one to fucking judge some guy's weird-ass blood condition. he berated himself with a frown. It's not like he was the prime example of your average human being.
The point was that this guy was bleeding all over his furniture but, more importantly, bleeding. He was hurt, and pretty badly at that.
Judal wasn't terribly accident prone, but after a long line of wrong place wrong time incidents, he'd learned to be prepared. His first aid kit was massive and had hardly been touched since he'd dropped almost sixty dollars on it, but it seemed the investment he'd been griping over was about to pay off. He got it settled open on the coffee table and then turned back to the man.
"Okay, so," he muttered to himself. "How the fuck do you remove armor exactly?"
It wasn't like they taught this kind of shit in school. Judal stared at the young man's ensemble, aware that every second he spent looking was a second more he was bleeding out. Finally, he decided to just go for the obvious seams and see what happened.
What happened was a lot of fumbling and swearing later, he found the first clasp. After that figuring out where the specific straps and buckles were was easy and he managed with only mild consternation. It took a while, but he got the chest piece off the man and set aside. The shoulder braces were much easier to get off, by some miracle, as were the arm guards.
Judal stopped as he reached his left arm, leaned over his chest and frowning at the injury. Well, injury seemed like a rather light word for it, he was missing the arm altogether. Where it should have been there was a stump with a ragged pinkish scab.
"What the hell happened to you…?" Judal found himself muttering softly, holding the mangled limb gingerly.
The cut was too clean to be an amputation. It looked like someone had very neatly taken a hot knife and slid it through butter, only nothing was supposed to go through muscle and bone that easily. More concerning though, the wound that should have been there… wasn't.
There was no bandaging or sutures, indeed no evidence there ever had been, just a huge scab covering the entire open surface. Judal wasn't a medical student, but he was fairly certain that was not how the human body worked. In fact, the longer he looked at it, the more he began to realize it wasn't a scab, but a very thin section of brand new skin.
Now, Judal knew for a fucking fact that wasn't normal.
For the first time, Judal took a good look at the man he'd dragged up several flights of stairs and into his apartment. The first thing to strike him was that he was incredibly good looking, even covered in dirt and purplish blood. He had fine, sharp features and high cheekbones, and a strong jaw to accompany a thin, pink mouth. His hair was the same color as wet printer ink and was coming loose in long strands from a bun at the base of his neck.
Judal had a feeling his skin was likely a little more warmly colored than it currently appeared to be, but blood loss tended to do a number on one's pallor. He was also, Judal couldn't help but note, built to suit his armor. From what he could see of him through his rain soaked clothing, he had the kind of athletic build people spent years working towards.
And, he noted as one hand rose to brush aside dark bangs, he had ears that lifted at the top into points. For a moment, he considered tugging on one, but some ingrained instinct told him they were absolutely real.
He let his fingertips skate from the point down along the curve of his ear. A shiver passed through the unconscious man and Judal jerked his hand back.
"Shit…" Judal breathed, increasingly aware of the fact that he may have just thrown himself head first into something very dangerous. "I don't know if I should be asking who you are or what you are."
Unsurprisingly, the man didn't respond.
A heartbeat passed, then Judal snapped into action again. There was a man possibly bleeding to death on his couch, and the only thing between him and an inevitable fate was Judal's mediocre medical skills. He only hesitated a second before he simply stripped the man out of his clothes. Modesty was for those not dying of blood loss, he could pick a fight later.
Judal tried his hardest not to stare, but it was difficult not to. The scar marking the man's face traveled down over half of his body, carving a cruel path of memorial pain over his pale skin. He didn't want to think about what might have caused that kind of scarring when he had a body that seemed perfectly happy to start healing itself at rapid speeds.
The injuries Judal found were all surrounded by similar pinkish marks to the stump of his arm, already sealing themselves shut if they weren't closed already. He passed a few marks he thought were scars, but he couldn't be sure and didn't stop to inspect. Methodically, he wrapped bandages around the man's limp body until he found the first serious looking injury since his arm.
This one, Judal decided, was a lot more worrying. It was still open, letting a sluggish flow of off-color blood flow out of the man's body down onto the carpet. It wasn't particularly large, but as Judal leaned in to peer at it, he realized there was something lodged inside.
Some instinct told Judal that whatever was inside the wound was keeping it open and no amount of stitches or bandaging was going to help. If he kept bleeding like this, he wasn't going to make it through the night.
"I really, really hope you don't wake up." Judal muttered absently, turning around and rummaging through the first aid kit.
Two minutes passed before he came up with a marginally above average sized pair of tweezers.
"Fucking seriously?!" he swore in scandalized fury. "I paid—Oh for the love of fuck!"
He turned back to look at the injury on the man's side, then looked back to the tweezers. There was no way they were big enough, or for that matter strong enough, to get a hold of whatever was in him. Judal didn't know much about anatomy, but he knew there were a lot of arteries and generally important organs in the vicinity of the wound. He didn't feel like risking it.
He went for the latex gloves.
Even as he pulled them on, Judal questioned whether or not this was a good idea. No, his common sense decided, but you're going to do it anyway. Which was true.
Pressing one hand to the man's side, Judal used thumb and forefinger to stretch the wound, just slightly. Blood gushed out in a small waterfall and he forced himself not to jerk back or swear. This needed his utmost attention. He took a deep breath, shutting his eyes for a moment and counting backwards.
When he reached zero, his focus sharpened to the task at hand, his hands no longer shaking and his jaw clenched with resolve. He reached forward slowly, easing one finger just slightly into the open wound.
A person's insides are hot. Not warm, but hot, like holding your hand a few inches over a fire. There was a similar feeling of danger to it as well, a latent instinct telling you you should really not be there. But Judal pressed on, making sure he had pressure on the thing embedded in the man's side before catching the other side under his thumb.
He gripped, then, slowly, centimeter by agonizing centimeter, drew it out. It was painstaking. He barely breathed. The seconds ticked by like hours and his mind was a constant stream of prayers that the man did not choose this second to wake up.
Then, all at once, it came loose and with a last sharp jerk Judal pulled it free and drew back with a gasp of; "Yes!"
Blood gushed out of the open puncture, then began to slow to a trickle, the edges of the wound drawing inwards ever so slightly. If he kept watching, he was sure he'd see the wound begin to close itself. He didn't wait for that.
Judal dropped the object with a metallic clink onto his tabletop and immediately went for the bandages. The next five minutes were spent maneuvering the man's body to allow him to circle the bandages around his middle. As an afterthought, he finally bandaged the stump of his missing arm, just in case.
"Okay." he muttered to himself, sitting back. "Okay. I think that's it. I think."
Judal sat back on his knees, blinking at the man lying on his couch. He looked around, taking note of the purple bloodstains dotting his carpet and soaking into his couch. There was no way he was going to be able to salvage them, or his shirt for that matter. His eyes strayed to the object on his coffee table.
It looked like someone had hacked the handle off a throwing knife and just used the blade instead, if it could be called a blade. It was maybe five inches in length, but for some reason it was curved in several spots to almost resemble a slithering snake. It was difficult to tell what it was made from, seeing as it was coated in dark blood, but just looking at it made Judal shudder.
He looked back at the stranger. Maybe it was his imagination, but he almost thought the man looked peaceful now.
Lightning flashed outside, drawing Judal's eyes to the window. A split second later, he gasped in horror, eyes widening.
"My groceries!" he hollered, completely forgetting the severity of what he'd just done and bolting up.
He scrambled into his shoes and out the door again, racing down the stairs two at a time to try and go save his drowned purchases.
On his couch, the fallen fae let out a slow sigh, another shudder rippling through him as magic began coursing through his body once more, skittering towards his wounds and sealing them shut.