#daichi.

Then a new priority took over, the images switching from ice and skin, to bandages and blood: Stop the bleeding, gauze, any fabric, arms, hands; Apply pressure, more pressure– Stevie shuddered, her eyes squeezing shut. When had she gotten this cold? – Blood transfusion, half a liter, one liter; CLOSE WOUND– New priority, the muscles in her limbs relaxed against her will. – Heart rate too low; Begin CPR; Begin CPR; Begin– DEFIBRILLATION– If her ability actually had a voice, it’d be shouting. A desperate and urgent kind of sound. It shouted and shouted in her mind. Rang every alarm she’d ever heard. Until it all just.. 

Stopped.

Her mind’s eye went still. The alarms went silent. The visions of blood and bandages and heart monitors just.. vanished. All at once.

Leaving only a quiet darkness in their wake.

Peace.

Some still conscious part of her mind knew what the silence and the darkness meant: There were no more options. It’s too late. She wasn’t going to make it.

That still awake part of herself knew that she should feel sad– her life was ending. And there was no light to stumble towards, no flashes of her life or loved ones before her eyes, no familiar voices tempting her from beyond. 

Just a peace and a quiet that she’d long since forgotten could exist. She should be sad, but all she could feel was a fuzzy, overdue sense of pure relief. 

Then that, too, faded away. To numbness, first. Then to nothing as even her consciousness gave up on her. 

.

.

All at once, the shouting and the alarms of her ability flooded to the front of her mind, jolting her consciousness back to her body. Options again flashed before her eyes: BEGIN CPR; Begin CP– Blood transfusion– The flashes went down the list of priorities as a warm, glowing energy sparked her body back to life, solving each problem it found. – one-point-five liters, half a liter– The energy was too familiar, and as her mind opened and cleared, her answer came to her: she’d seen this energy pattern before, seen what it had done to every individual cell. 

Theodora. 

Her voice comes through, soft and warm. ‘I believe in you all.’ The glow disappears, but the warmth remains, spreading through her body from within. 

A last goodbye.

Apply pressure to wound, hands, any fabric; Stitches– The tears came back next, hot as they streamed down her still cold cheeks. Stevie whimpered as a stranger’s hands gripped her shoulders, barely hearing their pleas for help– not from her, but for her. They were begging her to get up, if she could, or they’d have to let go. They’d leave her.

MOVE– came that inner shout again, loud and demanding– Stand; Apply pressure; MOVE NOW– instead of some procedure or process, the flashing visions of her intuition showed her an image of herself– bloodied and haggard, looking like death still had some kind of grip on her. A figure, blurred with no real face, behind her, helping her to stand without disturbing the pressure her hands held at her stomach. 

MOVE–

The alarms in her mind rang on, and Stevie willed her body to comply. To move. Theodora’s final gift spread it’s rejuvenating warmth down to her legs, and they twitch before finding their mobility. Her eyes finally open to see a second pair of hands as they help her to her feet, her own hands still pressed as firmly as she could over the knife wound in her stomach. As she tried to hobble away, she looked back at the body of her friend and former patient, motionless as she lay scooped up in the arms of the one that’d stabbed her. She tried to train her ability on the omega’s body, but when she willed it to ignore her own problems and focus on Theodora– there was nothing but silence. With a grateful sadness hanging heavy in her tired heart, Stevie released her focus, allowing her ability to return to monitoring herself. The flashing of instructions and noise flooding back to the front of her mind.

Keep up pressure to wound;