cont. ✮ @solaregina
It had been child's play to eliminate the immediate threat once the dagger had gone through the poor girl's chest, given a reaper's speed and weapon. For the time being, they were safe.
...Insofar as the definition of safe was: no-one was outright attacking them at that present fraction of a millisecond.
Rarely, Grelle Sutcliff considered saving those who were quite suddenly and randomly added to the to-die list— these things happened, after all; the list was a powerful force, but free will was ever such an adversary to play against— and really, human lives were plainly and evidently fragile. Decades were mere eye blinks; illness and violence were simple hazards of drawing breath.
But this girl...
Not only was she a significant part of the entire mess that upper management had been frustratingly tight-lipped about as of late, but she was also...
Well.
She was Angelina's.
So, the reaper's scythe was temporarily abandoned nearby, as she removed her coat— Angelina's coat— and, in quick succession, first yanked the blade from the wound, before pushing down upon it with inhuman strength, gritting her teeth against the very real doubt in her mind.
Grelle Sutcliff wasn't a doctor.
Her hands had never been made for healing (they were quite literally the hands of a corpse, for god's sakes!).
But, frankly put, this girl, under absolutely any circumstances, could not die. Grelle simply refused to let her.
So, she had to stop the bleeding, first. Then, she could worry about things like germs and stitches and the girl's physical pain (the dear thing...).
To calm both her nerves and the girl's, Grelle took up a quiet song, humming aloud sections of the third movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.
"Don't close your eyes." She whispered between bars. "And don't reminisce. Think of your future. Think of how badly this hurts. Think of..." Grelle struggled to recall details of the girl's life. It was easy to lose track of such things among every other human she'd learnt about that day alone— but this one was special. She was Madam Red's niece, and she...
She had a— "Brother. Think of your brother's hug when you come back to him alive. It's going to sting, I'll bet, but it'll be worth sticking around for. So don't you dare close your eyes, and don't you dare start remembering. You hear me?"
