Ghoulified Yoriko: Changing
It's still Wednesday where I am, so I can still call this a WIP Wednesday! Have some more Ghoulified Yoriko!
The hospital is a wall of noise and misery, at first, and Yoriko grits her teeth. The machines and ventilation buzz in her ears, the beeping echoes in her head, the tube lights make her squint at the brightness and highlight her red-tinted vision, the antiseptic stink increases her queasiness. A few people they walk past give Yoriko strange looks, and a nervous-looking nurse winces when Yoriko meets her eyes. Her new escorts do a lot less carrying than Hazmat Suit and Colonel Hamada-san, and a lot more patiently keeping her from falling as she pushes through with moving while locked in her own skin. Each step is like wading in knee-deep molasses, and the tight, clinging resistance keeps making the length of her stride shorter than her brain says it should be, tripping her up. Yet it's not as if her legs are shaky - she's steady on her feet if she stands still.
She can on her own feet, and now she's walking. There's a ragged kind of pride that rises in her chest, holding the worry and uncertainty at bay. I can do this.
One of the ghouls looking after her points them towards a row of elevators. Step by step and out of step with her own body, she gets closer. They nudge her gently to the side as gurney wheels rattle on the floor and someone calls out.
"Make way! Coming through!"
Yoriko takes advantage of standing still to take a deep breath through her oxygen mask, despite the metal-and-plastic smell of it. A breath that stutters when she looks at the person on the gurney - red-and-black eyes, wheezing breath, oxygen mask... and growths sprouting out of their body, tentacle-tree limbs that twitch weakly. It's like they have kagunes growing out wherever, instead of their back. She shudders as the gurney enters the elevators they're slowly walking towards. Sucks another breath of oxygen.
Her skin crawls with unease. One eyelid and her fingers twitch. Her fingernails itch a little.
Am I going to grow kagune-things all over?
Yoriko shudders again and shakes her head, tries to shake out the mental image.
"Are you okay?" asks one the ghouls who's been helping her not fall over, whenever her feet or the floor aren't quite where she thinks they are.
"Trying not to think," Yoriko takes a breath, "about what we just saw," she admits, swallowing a spike of queasiness.
"You'll be fine, you're standing by yourself and walking with a little help," he says, a little awkwardly.
It doesn't help the swell of unease as much as it should.
She crowds into an elevator along with the ghouls helping her, and a nurse with a clipboard under her arm, who is ever-so-slightly familiar. On second glance, the nurse is also a ghoul - wine-red eyes over a black sick-mask, patched scrubs that don't quite fit her, a pouch-belt of mismatched medical supplies, and barefoot. The ghoul nurse glances over at Yoriko as the elevator doors close.
She's wearing a handmade-looking nametag that simply reads "Reina".
Yoriko's fingers itch to do something, but she doesn't know what. The "going up" announcement makes her ears ring. She rubs at them and shakes her head, jostling the oxygen mask loose for a moment. The brief breath of hospital air somehow feels better despite the antiseptic stink it carries. The nurse glances over again, locks eyes with Yoriko for a moment, then flicks her eyes to Yoriko's companions. The ghoul nurse - Reina-san, Yoriko reminds herself - shifts her footing uneasily, scratching the top of one foot with the other, and Yoriko wishes she could do the same, to ease the itch in her toenails. Reina-san steps closer.
"'scuse me, Miss? Are you okay?"
"Ugh," mutters Yoriko, "no I'm not. My ears are ringing, and everything just feels... wrong..." Yoriko trails off.
"Oxygen mask, huh, and twitchy fingers, ringing ears, feeling of wrongness," Reina-san checks off on her fingers, "do you feel sick to your stomach?" she asks, looking Yoriko in the eyes.
"A little bit... why?" Yoriko mumbles through the mask.
"Too much oxygen, possibly," Reina-san turns to Yoriko's companions, "take her mask off."
They scramble to follow through, with mumbled apologies to Yoriko. She drags in a breath of stale elevator air, smelling of acrid chemicals, and yet it's like breathing fresh air after being in a cold, damp, musty basement. Yoriko's shoulders relax as she breathes in and out, and so does Reina-san, judging by her posture. Yoriko focuses on breathing evenly in and out. She takes one hand in the other and rubs her nails, relieving the itch a little bit.
The automated floor announcement startles everyone. Yoriko steps her slow way into the hall. One of her companions holds the elevator door open, the other, and Reina-san, stand close to Yoriko as she walks. Yoriko's little party turns down the same hallways as Reina-san, hallway after hallway, turn after turn. They pass a crew of gas-masked ghouls repairing a section of wall, and Yoriko winces at the piercing whine of power tools. She's slowly gotten used to the way she needs to walk, to keep her balance against her skin fighting her, and unlike downstairs, so far she hasn't almost fallen on her face.
"We seem to be going the same way," Reina-san says, quietly, muffled by her black medical mask, "say, are you Yoriko-san? Kirishima Touka's friend? Recently married?"
"Yes, I am," she replies, wondering where this is going.
"Boss, er, Banjou-san told me I'm looking after you," Reina-san pauses, "Call me Reina-san," she says, eyes bunching into a smile above her mask.
Even with Yoriko's awkward, constricted walking, it isn't long before they stand at a door marked 310. Reina-san gestures to the room, and offers out a hand to help Yoriko walk. The ghouls who brought her here step back and wave before hurrying off down the hallway. Yoriko rubs her nails again. Reina-san watches her, tilts her head, but says nothing.
The bed is a relief, no matter how proud of herself she is for getting here on her own legs - she's also sore. And tired. And damp with dirty water. There's a change of clothes already waiting for her, clothes that smell-- coffee, old paper, a hint of salt and sweat, warm and safe despite the faint hint of iron, wait a minute-- like Touka-chan. The barely-there scent of the washbasin of warm water is almost alien, it doesn't smell like wet stone, like the water she's been drinking, washing with, even swimming in once or twice, for at least a month. The washcloth doesn't have the well-worn softness she's used to, but is welcome regardless. The soap, at least, is familiar and wonderfully unscented, maybe even from the hideout's own supplies.
She pulls the curtain shut as fast as her prison skin will let her, and Reina-san nods to her. Maybe she's imagining it, but she thinks that movement was easier than waving to Hazmat Suit had been.
There's a struggle to peel off her damp clothes, especially to keep the heat pack she was given next to her body at the same time - but the relief is palpable and full-body. This would be the second-fastest I've ever scrubbed down, if I could just move properly, she muses. The first being the times the hideout had lost hot water in the middle of a shower. The only reason she doesn't kneel in the washbasin and enjoy the warmth is the fear she won't be able to push her body to stand back up.
That fear passes as quickly as it came, as her body crouches for her, then sits in the warm, hip-deep water - a movement less constricting than the much smaller movement of just walking, five or less minutes ago. She sighs in warm relief, despite... well, everything right now. Yoriko runs soap-lathered fingers through her hair, and feels tension drop out of her shoulders. Her skin doesn't quite move with her, she still needs more strength in each movement than she should, but she doesn't feel like she's fighting a rusty iron bodysuit to do simple things anymore. She can lift water in a cup and pour it over her head, not quickly, but not with the kind of difficulty she would have had before. Which is as much interesting as it is hope and relief.
Is it because of the water? Because I'm more relaxed? Am I just getting stronger?
Yoriko sighs, and waves her fingers through the warm water, flexes her toes. It's a less stiff movement than she expected. On top of everything else wonderful about the warm water, it's soothed the itch in her nails down to a tingle.
Yoriko can see Reina-san's feet and ankles, under the curtain, toes tapping to something Reina-san is humming. The motion draws Yoriko's eyes to the scorpion-like tattoos that shift with the movement as Reina-san taps her foot, looking almost alive. Yoriko looks down at her own feet, soaking in the bathwater. She pictures lines and shapes of black ink, looping and wrapping around her ankles, and... she wants to. She's considered getting a tattoo before, sometimes, but a half-formed fear of being marked always whispered in the back of her head.
But now I want to be marked, I'm... changing, and I want to mark that.
She's not sure how long she's soaked for, mind full of curls of black ink, but her fingers are going prune and the water has lost some of the warmth - despite Yoriko bringing the heat pack, now cool, into the washbasin with her. Reina-san's voice interrupts, from the other side of the curtain.
"Are you okay in there, Yoriko-san?"
"Um, yes!" Yoriko responds, taking a deep breath to calm her pulse.
The towel is scratchy, but the clean, dry clothes are wonderful. She bunches the t-shirt to her face and breathes in deep, and once again she can picture Touka-chan with almost jarring clarity - specifically, Touka-chan wearing this soft, baggy rock band t-shirt. She shakes away a momentary fantasy of Touka-chan "sharing" this shirt with her... Whoops. Not right now. Get a grip, Yoriko. She wriggles awkwardly into the change of clothes - she's more limber than she was before her little bath, but moving still takes an extra bit of effort it shouldn't. Yoriko stands, hospital floor cool underfoot, and pulls the curtain aside.
"Feel better? You look like you feel better," Reina-san's eyes smile, despite the mask covering her mouth.
"Yeah, I do," Yoriko says, and realizes she means it, "despite everything," she says, and feels the start of a smile pull at her face.
