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It wasn't exactly icy on the road, but late night, temperatures near freezing, one wrong, hard turn and there are four cars sprawled in the middle of an intersection, late night on a New York City street. Maybe someone did it on purpose? More likely, someone was drunk and simply not paying attention. Either way, there are two different EMS services on scene now and Hilde herself has just skidded up in the big old bus she drives with her half asleep partner for the evening. It's rote actions now — figure out who needs triaged, what's being taken care of already, get through the bodies, see if anyone is dead.
Of course, she already had the last answer. One is dead. Or would be soon. She could feel it. Someone half buried in the back seat of the second car. None of the other EMS workers probably even realized the person was there yet. But she knew. "…we got a critical in car two. I'll handle it… you see who we need to load up." Her partner knew if she called critical, by now, it meant the person was dead. It was one of the creepy things about working with Hilde. She didn't care. She just moved.
Swinging down out of the bus, she double times it in the direction of the chaotic scene. She's got her pack slung across her left shoulder and shows no fear as she tries to lean down into the precariously leaning vehicle to see the mostly crushed person. "…Fuuuccckk…." she breathes out. It wasn't going to be easy to even get into this one to hold their hand.
*
Rubber melted in a track leaves its sickly stench upon the air, a heavy Goodyear cocktail over the rusty reek of metal and spilled oil from a punctured line, a crumpled frame. Broken glass shines in the iridescent slick painted over the blackened ice that forms when the hour is late and the mercury plunges back into the bulb, a beautiful view if one were inclined to appreciate the natural patterns and elegant effect of smeared lubricants and bodily fluids. Alas, while some people might be enthralled at the expense of human life, Scarlett is not one of them.
She clutches the receiver of the payphone, still talking to the operator in a low, rapid clip. Chance puts her on this street, leaving a meeting in one of the buildings where counterculture sorts congregate beyond the judgmental eyes of their business clad peers. Those little clutches of dreamers and believers, followers of a different beat of us in, frequently meet in apartments and shops, wherever they can. So here she is, wedged partly inside of a phone booth, relaying the details.
"They're here," she says. "Thank you. Yes. Yes, I— no, you don't need my name. As long as the people get to the hospital."
Hanging up, finally, on that lifeline to an authority with some capacity to heal, rather than her particular art, is a graceful outcome. She pulls her coat around her and dashes out, boots clipping against the pavement. Others would be direly afraid of slipping, but not the yoga master, putting up with the skidding. She hurries towards the paramedics, the healers by another name. "They came around the corner," she calls. "I didn't see the first car, but the second."
*
Hilde's partner, a young man with a shock of red hair and blood shot eyes, has enough adrenaline in him to be moving fast now. He's working on the same car as her, but the front seat driver who has half crawled out a window. "Ma'am….ma'am, please, stop moving. We will get you out of there, but you're going to make it worse!" He tries to reassure the woman, but he isn't exactly the best with bedside manner. He's leaning in the half shattered window, trying to assess the damage to her more than the car, before he wraps arms gingerly around her and tries to carry her away from the glass before she hurts herself more. She had enough fight that her back probably wasn't broken.
"We have it under control, ma'am, thank you…" He echoes to the southern belle who, while trying to be helpful, is probably considered an intruder on the situation now. He's also given up asking for his partner's help as Hilde is now half knelt in the pool of blood beneath the car. She's got one hand around the person's palm in the back seat, but it's not enough. She curses beneath her breath.
"Can someone help me roll this fucking thing over?" The woman half growls out, not really caring who is listening. She just can't move a car ENTIRELY on her own. Even if she's stronger than she looks. She stares back at the woman in the back seat, her voice quieter, "…You are not alone." She affirms softly, even if there are no promises that she'll be okay. Then Hilde is moving to get her shoulder under the car. She'll try and do it alone if she must.
*
The bohemian's expression holds a measure of sorrow for the pain so vividly painted before her, reaffirmation for precious beliefs on life's value. Though they have infinitely more expertise than she in dealing with matters of the flesh, Scarlett may hold the advantage for tearing into a barrier. The cold chars her breath into silvered clouds, puffing around her in a streaming cloud of faded gossamer. Moments of truth are not always so bald as this one, but she inclines her head to the sky for a moment.
"This one is on you," she tells no one in particular, clearly addressing someone with a fondness and pang of worn pain as clear as a vein of silver in ore. Then she tugs on her sleeves, keeping them loosened around her wrists.
Coming around to the same side of the ruined car as Hilde, she puts her hand on the crumpled wreckage of the chrome bumper. A handhold might be hard to find, but the days when wearing heavy-duty, fine gloves are an advantage are few. This, too, is one. "I can hold it up while you get her out. Assistance optional," she adds, voice soft and clear, carrying a vestige of an accent. English? Maybe. Savannah's finest class? Possibly. Planting her feet apart, she balances on her heels and lifts her toes to feel for her balance. Those yoga asanas practiced without fail finally have a purpose other than giving her exquisite breath control and core strength.
If and when Brunnhilde gives her the go ahead, she'll lift the car, straining a little to manage the balance. Or making a show of it. Chances are very good she's not straining much at all.
*
"You'll break your back doing this alone." Hilde mutters. The fact she was planning on doing it alone aside, it's generally a safe assumption to make. But, with two of them, the tall, spidery woman seems confident they can get the car rolled over. She also doesn't seem worried about bracing the patient inside the back, as if she knows already it simply doesn't matter. "One…two….Three." She calls. Much like Rogue doesn't have an issue with lifting it, there seems more strength than their should be behind Hilde's shoulder in that push. Maybe she's got a lot of lean muscle from working the ambulance so long. The car groans, metal protesting against the other vehicle, but it does manage to at least be upright, leaving that crushed back driver's side door still hopelessly stuck, but the passenger door is now far more accessible.
"…thanks. Got it from here." And then Hilde dashes around the back of the vehicle to that door, dragging it open and ducking her head in so she can gather what is left of the woman's broken body in her arms. It is not a pleasant sight. Lesser accustomed people to it would probably puke. Hilde isn't bothering with gloves or even, really, tools right now. She just holds the half crushed, broken doll of a woman, more blood and broken bones on the outside than she is fabric, and slowly backs out of the vehicle. Her voice comes in low, slow whispers now.
"…you aren't alone… what… what do you believe? Do you want to pray?" Last rights. She's whispering the woman her last rights. There is something distant in the medic's eyes too, too glassy and closer to white silver than actually blue. Hilde isn't all here now either.
*
The bashed undercarriage shows the effects of a hard turn and the subsequent travel outside intended operating parameters. However much leaks from that skewed, cracked body, the car pumps out its lifeblood, a fatally wounded beast slouching to the chrome gates. Scarlett makes a sound at the back of her throat from the noxious array of chemicals and human suffering beneath, though she dutifully clings to the torn bumper and the frame. The vehicle barely wavers, which would imply something plain: there is no way she is strictly human, not with that musculature fashioned into a lithe figure, rather than one on par to Olympian athletes.
Blood-bright hair streams over her shoulder in her elaborate braids, woven in a fashion to be undeniably foreign. The comfortable style for her is roughly last seen around Iceland, 1248 or so. All the same, she peers into the bloodied wreck of the carapace through its dented door once Hilde pulls free the doomed woman, and utters her own silent prayer, burning witchfire eyes shut.
It may be distinct that her prayers go to a different place, in a different language, than any proper young lady of the south (or southern England, for that matter) would invoke. At least in this day and age, but her thoughts are largely in her head. Waiting a little longer, she lowers the car to its shredded wheels and turns away, lending a bit of privacy in a maelstrom gone suddenly cold, and mostly silent.
What more can she do? Draw a shape on the hood with her fingertip, the rune of travel. Then move over to the car, giving victim and saviour the peace she can. A search for any further victims is easily enough done through the windows, checking that no child slid under the seats or someone was suspended from their seat belts, mistaken for dead.
*
Other than that strange, distant look and the fact she's a bit too fit for her spidery frame, there is nothing unnatural about Hilde. No weird languages or foreign tones. She's born bred Bronx and she acts like it, through and through. While the fact she's giving last rights might not be exactly normal, there was no regulation in what the hell EMS companies did these days. Maybe she was super religious? Who knew. Those silvery, strange eyes flicker over the other woman for another heartbeat at the different language and strange tracing. It's like a flicker of memory, but then it's gone. The amount of deja vu she felt these days was beyond uncomfortable, but she had no time to concentrate on it now.
Away enough from the car that, if it catches fire they won't immediately die, Hilde sinks to her knees with the nearly dead in her arms. She rests the woman's shattered back against her thighs, thankful for broken spine and the lack of pain her companion is in. One bloodied hand comes up, smoothing through her hair. It won't be long. There are no more requests for prayers. Just a low, quiet humming from Hilde's throat as she does every last thing she can to smooth the transition from life to death. The song is haunting and soft, something from church but too slow for any choir. It's halfway between a lullaby and a dirge as she counts those last breaths.
In…out….in… out… Nothing.
*
What does one do, watching another person drift away from their body? Do they stand vigil in silence or recoil behind a convenient barrier, raised by a culture that fears death and the talk of it? Such intimate moments are known in other cultures, even embraced, but not here. Her hands together, Scarlett withdraws from the vehicle seeing nothing in there of a threat. The only reasonable place to go is the distant curb for the moment, where she can try to take in and process everything seen.
The tenderness of a woman tending to the dying soul. The frantic efforts to stabilize another gone into shock, so she doesn't do more harm to herself. Two simply too late to help.
Sinking to the chilly concrete, Scarlett resists the urge to wrap her arms around her knees. Instead, she bows her head and gives herself over to the role for the mourner, the witness, the altogether too rudely alive when others have suffered fate's calling. The song washes over her while she says nothing, letting in the soft hymn to some place where it might wash out the stirrings of grief. When one can do nothing, they can still pay respect.
*
Hilde's eyes track something that is not there. From body to above, elsewhere, across the street, gone. Maybe the medic really has cracked, thinks she sees dead people. Ghosts. Maybe she does. Either way, it's over and done now. She just shakes her head slowly, hand reaching up to brush some sweat or blood off her brow, smearing more with her fingertips. She doesn't care. She shifts, standing up and picking the broken body up in her arms again. There is no real care there now. It's just a shell for the coroner and mourning family members.
"Joe, this one's gone… Gonna put her away for transport. You almost got that one strapped in?" She calls to her partner, no affect on her features from what she just went through. It's simply another night. She carries the woman uncomfortably close to the mourning Scarlett on the sidewalk, as she walks towards their rickety, large bus and crawls up inside with those too-long legs, managing to balance her broken cargo the whole way.
"…Thanks." She calls to the red head from the back of the truck, a minute or two later. The moment won't last. Joe will be back and off they will go, but for the moment she acknowledges the girl is there.
*
"Thank you." What an odd thing to say to a person doing their job. Scarlett finds her voice as she stares at the destruction, then up to the long-legged, attenuated figure smeared in blood. Offering a handkerchief comes to mind, but halts when her thoughts catch up, possibly. "Am I required for anything else?"
A simple enough question, there, as she holds her arms around her knees, and peers into the night with an inscrutable depth to her hooded gaze. Things have been seen, things she has to piece into an imperfect tapestry of knowledge, and see where the tendrils take her. "Forgive me, but what you were singing sounded terribly familiar. Does it have a name?"
A passing query, no more. A memory grasped in the dark. No less.
*
The ghostly blonde stares down at the redhead for a few moments, actually a bit confused by the woman possibly being required for something else, "Uh… No. No. Go home. Hug your family or some shit, you know?" Hilde offers the things you are supposed to say because she knows these are reminders that some people need. With that reassurance, she's ready to jump back down off her bus and help Joe in with the stretcher, but another question comes.
A question that actually confuses her a bit more.
"…Singing? I…I dunno. Wasn't me. Sorry. Maybe the radio's still on somewhere?" She genuinely doesn't seem to realize she was humming before. Before it can perplex her more, Joe's calling her and she does jump back off the high floor of the bus' inside. "Gotta work. Get out of here. No one needs to see this shit." With that last commentary, Hilde half jogs back to her partner so they can load up the living into the bus. They'll be out of there in minutes.