goodnight, sweet prince

Who: Aaron and Lenore
Where: Aaron's hospital room in the critical ward
When: 3am

Lenore had been bustling by the bedside of her new patient, keeping as quiet as she could (which for her, was very), studying his chart and pouring water for when is he eventually woke up. Which she honestly didn't think he would. He was very, very broken. She looked at him, what was left of him, that pulpy, barely concious mess, and felt a small stab in her chest. How could one human being do this to another? Lenore figured if you wanted someone dead, fair enough, but do it cold and hard. Don't leave them a messed up pulp of creature. Give them their humanity, their dignity. Do not cause pain.

Then, she almost jumped - her eyelids flickered slightly anyway - as he croaked at her. Something that sounded like "My dick.." and then moaned.

"Shhh, dear," she said softly, hiding the surprise and stroking a hand ever so gently down the side of Aaron's pulverised jaw, "Don't try and move, hmm? You'll hurt yourself even more. Here's some water, carefully now," she moved the cold glass to his cracked, bloodied lips, and waited for him to be ready to swallow. Her tone was very kind, very clear, and most noticeably the type you would use on a small, sick child. She leant foreward slightly, a tendril of hair slipping from underneath her white nurse's band, and moved the hand that wasn't holding the glass behind Aaron's head, ready to help him if he needed it.

"The doctors patched your groin up as best they could. You'll scar quite badly, but everything should still function. Go easy for a while. It was a close thing to stop the bleeding you see, and the last thing you would want would be to pop the stitches," Lenore rattled off, putting the glass back and picking his chart back up, "You've been unconscious for quite a long time," she added, her tone quiet but businesslike. She was sympathetic, but what good would that do? He would want to know how badly he was hurt. Which was very. The kind of damage that lasted forever.

For a few seconds he just seemed to lie there, but then and he sucked in a gasp, which was clearly a little too much for his ribs, and caused a noise she took for a sob.

Except for a short period the morning he arrived, he had been unconscious for what, two days? Of course some of that was surgery. The list of injuries was pretty long, and most of them were serious. Concussion, hypothermia, multiple bruises, cuts, scrapes, a boot print bruise over his broken right wrist, fractured ribs, several lacerations which required stitches, a stab wound which required surgery, and a very broken left ankle. Punctured lung. Cracked pelvis. Hairline skull fracture. Not to mention the blood loss. Massive, massive blood loss. There was the carving on his abdomen to deal with too, which had been stitched up was still quite clearly some sort of mark. Lenore sighed and crouched next to the boy's bedside.

"Poor thing. The police brought you here, and not one visitor, and you'll be scarred and broken for a very long time. Things will hurt forever. Your lung was punctured, you know that?" she said in a straightforward soothing voice, crouching by his bedside, "You've probably got brain damage" she sighed, her cool white hand resting gently against the bloody heat of his forehead. It hurt her. Someone wanted him dead and hadn't done it right. Someone was foolish and cruel.

Someone would owe her money when she was done.

Without even really thinking about it she slipped the pillow out from under his head and pressed her lips against his eyelids. He moaned softly. She pressed the pillow down, firm, over his face. He didn't struggle, and she felt relief flow through the atmosphere of the empty ward as the life kicked out of him. Up her forearms and down her spine in delicious shivers. She had ended his suffering. She had ended the pain and the broken bones. And out there, somewhere, she had ended the need for a vendetta. Vendettas lead to more hurt. Lenore couldn't have that on her conscience.

She calmly replaced his pillow, and clicked her way down to the incinerator to get rid of the old one - the slight red-brown imprint of his wounds still marking the case. Poor baby, he was with the Lord now. She murmured a prayer as she watched the pillow go up in flames, and then went to return to her rounds.

Back in the critical ward, a blue light was flashing. A Doctor ran past her with a harrowed expression, sighing to himself about complications of surgery, and damn if he'd ever seen someone so pulped survive so long anyway. Lenore smiled to herself, and wondered if maybe she'd visit Angelo after her round was done. She missed the warm velvet of his breath.