Ivory Hill had spent the majority of her adult life running. Throughout her twenties and the first part of her thirties it was from bombs and bullets. Now, at thirty six years old Ivory was running from something that she could never truly escape fr...
Ivory lay across the floor of the lab, pushing herself up into a plank.
"Are you getting in my way on purpose or are you just really good at doing it by accident?" Grace asked, shifting her legs away from the dark haired woman's head as she adjusted her slide.
"Probably a bit of both." Ivory looked up at Grace, trying to distract herself from the burning in her core and the sweat that was beginning to bead and gather on her back. "Grace?"
"Is it important?"
"No, but-"
"Shh. I'll never get my work done if you keep distracting me." Grace chided gently.
Ivory sank back to the ground, sighing. Trudy and Norm were out at Hell's Gate getting more food supplies, Jake was in his link unit, his mind miles away in the forest and Tigger was snoozing on top of one of Grace's notebooks, refusing to move. Ivory had absolutely nothing to do. Sweat trickled down her nose and she got up, stretching. "I'm going for a shower."
Grace didn't respond, lost in her work.
The dark haired woman left the lab, heading down the hall and into the bathroom, pushing the door shut. She pulled her bandana off and chucked it into the corner so that she could dump it in the washing machine later with the rest of her clothes. Ivory paused, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror that hung above the sink. Bright red was dribbling over her lips and down her chin, dripping onto the floor below. It hadn't been sweat running off of her nose. She was struggling to remember that it was her blood. Her nose was bleeding. It was her blood. Not Olivia's. Hers.
Her face was pressed against the dry ground, the smell of Earth filling her nostrils. The force of the explosion had thrown her off of her feet. The right side of her face felt as though it was on fire. Her ears were ringing so loudly that she thought she would never be able to hear anything again. She probably wouldn't be able to, few people who were that close to a landmine blast ever managed to hear anything more than a sharp whistling noise.
She was going to throw up.
She was ice.
She-
"Ivy?" A woman's voice broke the silence in two. Grace sank down onto the ground, broken glass crunching under her shoes. She shifted slightly, trying to avoid kneeling on the bloody shards. "Can you get up?" Grace asked, keeping her eyes fixed on the younger woman who was hunched beneath the sink, pieces of the mirror caught in her hair like deadly snowflakes. Instinct was screaming at her to go to Ivy and get her out of the bathroom and away from the mess on the floor but she knew that would only make things worse.
Her voice tore into Ivory's head, too loud, too much.
"You've broken the mirror. I heard the glass shattering from the lab. You need to get up. If you're not careful you're going to cut yourself." The redhead swallowed, her eyes snagging on the bloody handprints that patterned Ivory's arms and the floor beside the washbasin. Grace exhaled shakily, changing tack. "Ivy, this is Grace, your boss. You're with me at Site Twenty Six on Pandora in the Hallelujah Mountains. It's December two thousand one hundred and fifty four. It's just me and you, nothing bad is happening to you right now. You're safe." Grace stood up slowly, maintaining her distance. "Come on, when you think you can, get up."
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Ivory lay in bed dressed in one of Grace's T-shirts and a pair of her cargo trousers. Grace had bundled Ivory's blood stained clothes up and hurriedly flung them out of the room, giving her the nearest clothes that she could find to change into. She'd had to clean up the bloody mess Ivory had made of her arms and knuckles, her hands shaking as she gently picked glass out of the deep gashes on the other woman's forearms. When Grace had questioned her gently, Ivory seemed to have no recollection of breaking the glass at all.
"You should get some sleep." The redhead murmured, shifting in the desk chair.
"Hm," Ivory rolled over to face the wall, raising one arm covered in haphazardly placed wound closure strips to shield her face from the lights.
Grace grimaced as she noticed the blood stains that were already blooming on the white bandages. She scooped the snoozing cat from the desk and put him on the bed beside Ivory before sitting back down. Tigger forced his way under Ivory's arm and lay down, purring noisily despite having been made to get up. Grace reached out and turned the lights off.
That night not even the moonlight managed to find its way into the room.
