2010-05-11 - Good Morning Surprise

People - especially people like Leo Stenbuck and Louise Halevy - can get away with a lot of crap, even in A-LAWS. But it is still a military organization, and that means certain things simply must be done. One such thing is getting up earlier than God could have possibly intended.

As such, at 0545 UCT, the alarm clock in Louise Halevy's room goes off, as it does every morn that Leo Stenbuck has spent the night. Technically, it doesn't have to go off until 0600, but Leo - being Leo - likes to get the blood flowing upon waking up by--

-- well, by what isn't important, because the first thing Louise notices upon waking up is that Leo isn't in bed. Very possibly the second thing she notices is that the sheet is missing, too, leaving only a heavier comforter to cover her totally indecent self.

The mystery of where these things have gone is solved as soon as Louise rolls over; Leo is sitting on the floor, similarly naked, with his back to Louise's desk. He is half-underneath, half-on top of the sheet from Louise's bed; upon it lies the bloody, smashed remains of what seems to have once been Leo's cell phone, and the white and blue Mister Bushido mask he bought for the ZAFT peace masquerade.

He is also unconscious, and notably pale. This may be beacuse his right palm is torn to shreds, shards of glass still sticking out of it, and his left thigh is covered in a line of long, shallow cuts.

They're too uniform to be accidental.

At first, Louise -- still not having completely thrown off the softness of her upbringing -- attempts to pull the sheets up around herself when the alarm goes off. This /usually/ gets broken by Leo Stenbuck doing... what Leo Stenbuck does, but today, things are different. It takes her a few seconds to realize what, exactly, is happening.

Did he abandon her? she wonders, as she slowly slides the sheets off herself, turning to the other side to see no Leo; turning a little further, though, she sees the horrible truth of Leo's wounds.

For all that Louise has taken marvelously to combat, she doesn't do well with blood and guts /outside/ of a robot. It reminds her too much of the event that changed her life -- so when she sees Leo lying there, unconscious and bleeding, she instantly believes the worst.

"Leo!?" she cries out, just panicking for the moment, trying to wake him with the sound of her voice alone. "Leo! Leo!" She looks around for her own phone, a first aid kit, tweezers, /something/ --

Well, the good news is, Leo isn't dead; when Louise sees him and starts panicking, he shifts enough for his head to loll forwards onto his chest, and lets out a small groan. But he doesn't open his eyes, and he certainly doesn't move to get up.

At least Louise's screaming will probably draw the attention of someone who can help her!

A FEW ROOMS AWAY

'Leo! Leo!'

Brough Grabbs is continually astonished by the piercing quality of Louise's voice. Stirred from sleep by her screaming, the Ensign groans, rolls over, and covers his head with his pillow.

He might be more alarmed if he didn't hear something similar on most days.

HERE

Okay, maybe not.

Help seems not to be forthcoming; as such, Louise finally realizes that she has to do something, and her eyes /finally/ track to the room's first aid kit. Frantically scrambling for it, the Warrant fumbles with the box for a few seconds before finally just using her freakish cyborg strength to snap the locking mechanism clean open and pulling out two things: tweezers and a roll of gauze.

Louise, having no idea what she is doing, starts with the shallow cuts on Leo's left thigh, hastily wrapping them in more gauze than they'd probably need even if they /were/ deep. She fiddles with the tweezers in her hand, asking Leo, "What happened? Leo? Leo? Answer me!" She sounds like she's going to throw up out of panic alone.

Leo groans a few times again as Louise frantically wraps up his thigh, but he is of basically no help during the process, forcing her to manually lift his leg for each go-round of gauze. It is a pain in the ass.

Somewhere in there, however, he must have woken up, because when she shrieks for him to answer her, he lifts his head off of his chest and opens his eyes; they're bloodshot, and have dark bags under them. He looks dully up at Louise for a moment, as the gears in his head slowly begin to turn.

He remembers the events of last night - of this morning, he supposes - far better than he wishes he did. But... what's he supposed to tell Louise? That his dead girlfriend came and deleted all the pictures of her off his phone, so he... he... did... this? Something tells him that won't help.

So instead, he rasps, quietly, "I had a nightmare."

When Leo talks at last, Louise breathes a momentary sigh of relief... but that quickly goes away when she finds out that this was entirely Leo's own doing. "... oh, Leo..." she murmurs, taking his hand in hers, tilting it such that she can get at most of the splinters of glass.

"You... it's OK. You'll be all right. I'm going to just -- get these out of here, and then..." And what? Take him to medical? That seems like it'd be the best way to do it, she thinks -- they'll ask a lot of probing questions, but he's not going to be okay without the right kind of help, which is frankly more than she can provide.

It does not help that she still has no idea what she's doing. She can get the glass shards out, but by God it's going to be agony.

Leo's arms stay totally limp as Louise lifts his hand to examine it, and his response to her reassurances is simply a tired grunt... but when she pulls the first shard of glass out of his hand, he lets out a strangled scream and arches his back, wrenching his hand away from Louise. "Wait," he begs, weakly lifting his left hand to press it against Louise's bare stomach. "Wait, just... give me a sec--"

He takes a moment to suck in deep, ragged breaths... and, as he does, his eyes drift down to the mangled remains of his phone. He stares at them for a second, and then convulses oddly again and pitches forward to bury his face in Louise's chest.

He doesn't actually cry - of course - but his shoulders do spasm wildly. All told, he acts more 'in pain' than he did when Louise yanked the glass out. After a moment of just freaking out, he chokes out, his voice muffled by Louise's... talents, "Gone- they're all- gone- I don't-"

Even though Louise has almost no idea what Leo is talking about, nevertheless, she holds Leo in closely as he starts to spasm. It's rare seeing him so broken up; she's seen him angry, seen him losing it... but she's never actually seen him /hurt/ like this.

"... what are?" Louise asks, not sure what else to say to Leo for the moment; she takes Leo's hand by the fingertips again with the hand that /isn't/ holding him close, but doesn't move to pick anything out of it just yet. He said to wait -- so she'll wait.

She glances down to the gauze for a moment, thinking she might try to at least patch up the one area she already went after somehow, but... not yet. Better to just wrap the whole thing at once.

Leo doesn't resist when Louise gingerly takes up his hand again; upon closer examination, the limb seems locked into an odd claw-like contortion. Every once in awhile, it twitches slightly. So that's... probably not good.

Leo is far past worrying about his hand, though; he wraps his left arm clumsily around Louise's waist and pulls her closer to him. He keeps his face buried in her cleavage, and responds, haltingly, "Pictures- my pictures- of her- she- erased them- all I had-"

About now, Leo comes dangerously close to hyperventilating, but manages to force himself to take a few deep - if ragged and shaky - breaths before he chokes, "Don't want- alone-" That's all he gets out before it's back to silence and spasming shoulders.

Yeah, that's going to take a doctor's help. Louise can at least get the shards out, but that's about it. "... Leo..." she says, starting to piece together what happened; one of his exes (Rei? Latooni? /Asuka/?) deleted all his pictures of them together, and probably said some awful things besides.

"... it's okay. I'm here," she says, trying to sound comforting and probably failing fairly spectacularly; you can't comfort someone if you're not comfortable with yourself.

What would /Revive/ say in a situation like this? (Don't answer that.) "... Leo, hold still," she says, finally taking his hand again. "I need to fix your hand." Yet another instance where Louise might not be... the best, person, for the job.

"Don't care- about- hand-" Leo protests, in between sharp, shallow breaths. He pulls weakly at his hand, more to make a point than to actually keep it away Louise. "Don't want- work today- can't- I can't- I can't-"

Leo's grip on Louise tightens, and he pleads, "Stay- with me- please- I need- you- you're- the only- one- who-" It sounds like there might have been more to that thought, but it gets lost in a pathetic, convulsing exhalation, more like a death rattle than a sob.

"I'm- scared-" Leo whimpers into Louise's chest. He sounds more than scared; he sounds... well, terrified. "I'm- scared- don't- want to- go c- crazy-"

"I don't think they're going to make you do anything even if we fix it," Louise says, quite matter-of-factly, taking Leo's hand in hers whiel still holding him close. "Don't worry. I'll --" The more terror creeps into Leo's voice, the harder it is for Louise to keep that composure and be what he needs, the harder it is for her to actually answer him.

So Louise does what she does best in high-stress situations: focuses entirely on a more concrete task. (She would default to 'take pills' but they are on the other side of the bed.) Gripping the shards tight, Louise begins working them out one after another, assuming Leo will stay (relatively) still.

After this, she can report him injured and then they can just stay in, she tells herself. Maybe she can even get the doctor to come here rather than the other way around.

Despite his weak protests, Leo stays still enough as Louise removes the glass from his palm. There isn't that much of it, really; it only takes a few minutes to get all of it out. But Leo screams in terror-tinged anguish with every shard, his cries muffled only by Louise's flesh.

With each one, he writhes as if being tormented by the God damn Devil himself, and his grip on Louise temporarily tightens, only to slacken again for the few moments before she removes the next shard.

When the last shard is out, Leo speaks his first word in awhile to blurt, "Don't- tell what- I did- please- I don't- I d- don't- want to- go- no- be- don't want- be- crazy- please- I'm scared- please- please- I need- you- please-"

His babbling halts, this time because he /actually/ devolves into hyperventilation, sucking in rapidfire breaths, convulsing as he carries out the somehow possible task of suffocating himself by not breathing right.

Not sure what else to do, Louise just quietly pulls Leo in again, holding him close with one hand as she wraps his in gauze with the other. It's a clumsy, awkward process one-handed, and she almost certainly overdoes it... but she manages it, just barely. You don't get to be a pilot, even a subpar one, without a good bit of physical dexterity.

She opens her mouth to say something, but can't, quite; all she can do is hold him there, hoping that he doesn't... actually suffocate. (She is not even certain he can; she doesn't know much about ... pretty much anything medical, as has already been established by her awful treating of Leo's wounds.)

Thankfully (maybe?), Leo does not actually suffocate himself, and once Louise is done attending to his hand as best she can, he moves his arm to wrap around her waist along with the other.

Gradually, he calms down again; it's only about a minute until he's breathing well enough to speak... if in the same halting manner. Which he immediately does! "I'm- sorry- I know- it's- h-hard- I s- shouldn't- I'm such- a bad- I'm so-"

He spasms in anguish again, and then begs, "Please j- just say- something- anything- tell me- I- I don't- please- just- I'm so- scared- tell me- that- you're r- real-"

What a bizarre demand, Louise thinks... but her empathy for Leo, such as it is, is finally starting to dig deep enough into her, and his shared anguish makes her more than happy to do anything she can to make it go away -- for her own sake as much as his. "... Of course I'm real," she mumbles, before leaning forward into Leo, unsure of what else to say or do.

/Now/ he might be suffocating.

He just might be.

Regardless, being smothered in Louise's... affections... eventually does a great deal to calm Leo down. Gradually, his shaking and spasming slows, and then halts entirely; after about five minutes, his grip slackens slightly, and his breathing becomes more rhythmic. He has, apparently, fallen asleep.

Whether this is from calming down after having worn himself out or from oxygen deprivation is unclear.