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whumpy-daydreams · 3 months

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Capture the flag

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apologies this got so long and its not even that whumpy?? anyway have a sci fi action sequence

CW: guns, military whump

327 missed their team. They wondered what they were doing, how training was going, whether they missed them too. They wondered if 305 would be angry.

But the month was almost up. Only two days before they reunited with their team. First they had to get through two days of evaluation, and the first was with Whumper.

327 had no idea what to expect as they were escorted from their cell. They weren't led to the training rooms though, instead heading to the armoury, Whumper standing with crossed arms in the doorway. 327 saluted, keeping their eyes forward.

"For your combat evaluation you will be assisting with Company 4's defence training. You have three hours to retrieve the flag in sector seven and return to the extraction point. Any questions?"

327 knew Company 4. They still had 3 years of training left before getting deployed, though that didn't mean they were harmless. Like 327 they had been trained since birth, moulded into perfect weapons.

"Am I to engage with Company 4, sir?"

"What the fuck do you think?" Whumper stepped aside. "Suit up."

327 didn't waste time getting into their armour. It felt comforting to be inside the padded gel suit again, to know there was a layer of metal between them and the world. As they slipped their helmet on the neural interface fired up, the visual display merging seamlessly with their vision.

A sea of jungle spread out below them. 327 stood at the edge of the open jet door, waiting for the order to jump. They were glad Whumper had chosen this location - it was a place they'd trained in many times before.

"Preparing to drop in three... two..."

327 stepped off the jet. Arms tight to their sides they plummeted towards the canopy top, numbers dropping at the edge of their vision as the suit calculated the time to impact.

The armour was designed to absorb the force as 327 hit the earth. They rolled, retrieving their rifle, scanning the trees for any heat signatures.

All they had to do was think and a translucent map of the area was displayed, overlaying the jungle around them. Three miles north-east. 327 doubted any of Company 4 would spread so far away from the site they were protecting.

Unless... They activated their camouflage, the surface of their black armour rippling to refract light instead of absorb it. It wasn't perfect, but it would help.

327 set off through the jungle. It didn't take long before they were close to where the flag should be.

But there were still no heat signatures. No signs of movement. No signs of anything in the forest. 327 checked the map again. Yep, they were definitely in sector seven. So where was Company 4?

They made sure to scan the area thoroughly, on guard for ambushes. There was nothing there though.

"Colonel Whumper this is 327 in sector seven. No sign of Company 4 or the target, sir. Over."

327 waited for a response. "This is 327 requesting situation update. Over." Their comms were silent, not even static to suggest interference. 327 was on their own.

Maybe this was part of their evaluation. Think. What would you do if you were hiding a flag? The answer was painfully obvious. They weren't protecting a location, they were protecting an object. So Company 4 had left sector seven.

It was just a question of which direction they'd gone in. 327 scanned the ground. They didn't know how many people weapons they were trying to find, but they would have left signs. It didn't take long to figure it out.

327 moved north. Company 4 hadn't left much to show their path, but that didn't matter. They'd made enough of a dent in the forest for them to follow.

Finally there was a flash of movement. The heat signatures were low - the suits shielded a lot of radiant heat - but it wasn't hard to miss three figures in black armour in a sea of green.

327 crouched down, silently ordering their armour to engage cooling mechanisms. It could only maintain it for an hour before draining the power, but when you were outnumbered... well, it was worth it.

Attacking now wasn't the right choice. 327 was made for stealth, designed to infiltrate behind enemy lines or eliminate targets from a distance. The three figures weren't heading anywhere. 327 recognised the stance, the bored alertness of being on guard.

As silently as possible they crept to the left, hidden in the undergrowth as they went around the first set of guards. A voice in their ear almost startled them.

"327, this is Colonel Whumper requesting status update. Over."

Why now? "Colonel, this is 327. I've located Company 4, preparing to advance. Over," they whispered, quickly setting the suit's settings to silent.

"Understood. Over." 327 resisted the urge to grit their teeth, turning their attention back to the mission. Enhance heat signatures, they commanded the neural interface.

Glowing yellow shapes brightened, revealing fifteen- no, twenty - people scattered through the jungle ahead of them. From the way they moved, 327 could guess the flag was at the centre of the concentric circles they made.

327 got as close as they could before opening fire. Four people were on the ground before a single hit landed on 327. The beam of a stun laser glanced off their electromagnetic shield as 327 sprinted, using the trees for cover as much as the could.

Rays of light shot through the jungle, the quiet ambience turning into a symphony of energy as Company 4 began to group together.

Their suit could take ten full hits before the shielding failed, and another five before it would malfunction completely - a simulation of mortal injury.

327 changed tactics. Using the undergrowth as cover they changed position constantly, able to down another five people before taking a full hit. The biometric display flashed orange.

That wasn't right. It was registering three hits, not one. 327 didn't have time for this. They'd spent almost an hour finding the company - they'd have to be quick if they wanted to get to the extraction point on time.

From their position they picked off one person after another, keeping an eye out for any sign of the flag they were supposed to be retrieving. Finally they saw it: a piece of black fabric wrapped onto the arm of one of the weapons.

327 ran. Orange flashed again, another warning that their shields were compromised. It didn't matter.

They dropped the people flanking the flag-bearer and tackled them to the ground, straddling their chest as they grabbed their pistol. As 327 neutralised the flag-bearer, their shields went down.

It was time to get out. 327 sprinted west, their map overlaying the trees as they headed for the extraction point. They didn't need heat signatures to know there were six people on their tail.

A flash of light went overhead as 327 ducked just in time to avoid a stun ray. They rolled, taking position behind a tree. Light filled the air again as they went up against six opponents, keeping one eye on the charge left in their weapons as the felled two people.

Suddenly it occurred to them that Whumper had tampered with their equipment. The realisation was unwelcome but not unsurprising. 327 pulled back as a stun ray zoomed dangerously close to their head.

There were still three people left when their weapons ran out. If 327 wanted to reach the extraction point without 'dying' they needed to eliminate the others.

When another shot hit them, the visual display shot red.

But 327 was already there, swinging out a leg to down the person on the right, fist knocking another's head back. They grabbed a handgun from the first, quickly shooting three rays at their helmet, not bothering to watch as their armour disabled, rendering them motionless on the ground. Two more to go.

Red spilled across their vision again. One more hit and 327 would fail their evaluation. They spun, each shot hitting its mark as their target fell prone.

The visual display shuddered as a powerful kick to the stomach sent 327 to the ground. Their gun fell to the side, their opponent scrambling to get to their own. 327 got there first.

Luck was on their side. The last member of Company 4 fell to the ground with only one shot.

327 clambered to their feet, fallen opponents scattered around the jungle floor. One hour to get back to the extraction point. Tying the flag to their arm, 327 started running.

They could see the jet through the trees, positioned in a clearing, already prepared to take off. Whumper was waiting by the door, focused on his watch as 327 halted in front of him, saluting. Two minutes. Just two more minutes and they would have failed.

"The flag." Whumper held out a hand. 327 handed it over. "Cutting it close. Get on."

It was as much praise as they could hope for.

#mortiawrites #living weapon #living weapon whumpee #sci fi whump #tw gun #military whump #whump writing

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theres-whump-in-that-nebula · 1 year

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Neurological Sci-Fi Whump

- Whumper uses a mind-reading device on Whumpee when they refuse to answer questions and it leaves them with long-term brain fog

- Passing out after making telepathic contact with a vastly-intelligent alien because of being exposed to a flood of images and other information humans aren’t meant to be able to receive (or just because it’s scary) ST: PIC season one, anyone?

- Multiple parasites or demons with conflicting interests take over Whumpee’s mind, making their body contort in ways it should not

- Nausea, headaches, and dizziness caused by low-gravity conditions in space (the brain floats up in the skull, causing pressure to be placed on it). Source

- Concussions in the aforementioned low-gravity environment and all their horrible complications 👀👀👀👀

- Alien Whumpee losing a sense after an injury to an organ (Like Shran when he got his antenna chopped off with a bat’leth; he lost his sense of balance which ended up making him fall and impale his leg on an icicle 😬 god I love Enterprise… so many people got their legs impaled in that djdjdjdjdjskdjdjsk)

- Alien that slowly feeds off the brain, making Whumpee behave more and more erratically until they die (bonus points if everyone around them notices something is Very Wrong… Also consider the possibilities for emotional whump)

#whump #angst #science fiction #writing prompts #sci fi whump #whump prompts #injury prompts #mental whump

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sickbaysaturdays · 1 year

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[ID: Futuristic font reads “sickbay saturdays” over an image of an empty Star Trek TOS sickbay /ID]

Welcome to Sickbay Saturdays!

What is it?

A weekly(ish) event to explore and celebrate unique possibilities for writing futuristic medicine! Run by @withalittlebitofwhump. Not just for Star Trek!

This is first and foremost a whump and hurt/comfort event, but we’re also here for futuristic medicine, cool leaps in medical science, body-focused SF, and transhumanism in fiction, especially that informed by and inclusive of disabled people.

How does it work?

Tag new posts "#sickbay saturdays”. We’ll reblog a selection of these posts, but this will also let participants find your content, even if we don’t reblog it.

For your older posts, either reblog and tag us, or send submissions or asks.

We’ll mainly post on Saturdays, EST, but there’s no strict cut off for participation! We plan on posting (automated) prompts Friday nights and monitoring tags on Saturdays.

How do I participate?

All formats are welcome! Consider:

Giffing your favorite scenes

Sharing video clips

Recommending favorite on-theme fiction or fanfiction

Posting excerpts and quotes from whumpy books

Sending asks ala TAT

Writing fanfiction

Posting your own art

Or anything else that doesn’t violate “Tumblr good citizenship” guidelines. (No re-posting, don’t tag us if you know the OP doesn’t want to interact with whump blogs, etc.)

Please make sure to use the tag “#sickbay Saturdays” so that participants can find your content even if we don’t reblog it.

Interested in helping out? Drop us a message!

Focus / restrictions:

We have a futurism/sci-fi focus. Please don’t clog up the tag with unrelated works!

Please tag common triggers and consider putting works with strong/many triggers under a read more. All explicit content should be clearly marked (N/S/F/W, "lemon”, “explicit noncon”, etc are all acceptable) and should either be under a cut or be a teaser linking to the content. Please refer to this post for other things you may want to tag for.

While the focus is on “classic” whump (action adventure / environmental as opposed to captivity/conditioning), anything with appropriate tags / warnings is welcome. To help folks keep track, action adventure / environmental whump will be tagged “purple whump” and captivity / conditioning as “orange whump”, based on OP’s tags. "Orange” and “purple” tags are arbitrary tags we use to help community members that suits their preferences without implying morality.

We’re unable to reblog everything -- we’ll reblog a selection of what’s tagged every week. If we don’t reblog or post what you send, it’s probably because it slipped through the Tumblr cracks, we’re trying to control the amount of posts, etc. You can find the rest in the #sickbay Saturdays tag!

Upcoming Themes:

February 11: Pan-sci-fi warm up week (anything SF-med goes, but Ari will mostly be offline so this blog will run on a queue/a bit late)

February 18: Sickbay [official kick-off!]

February 25: Desert Planet

March 4: Android

March 11: Side effects of space travel

March 18: Healing pod malfunction

March 25: Kidnapping

April 1: Field medicine

April 8 (Genre Focus): Cyberpunk

April 15: Futuristic Drugs

April 22: (no event)

April 29: Cryosleep

May 6 (Fandom Focus): Star Wars

May 13: Field medicine

May 20: Torture

May 27: (Medical focus): Disability in Science Fiction

#sickbay saturdays #whump #whump community #science fiction #sci fi whump #star trek #star wars #pinned post

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monarchthefirst · 9 months

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Just thinking about a low-key conspiracy theory that the Deep State officials of the world live on a substance found in human blood called adrenachrome. Basically a hyped version of adrenaline that can only be harvested when the human (preferably a young one) in in extreme pain.

So, post-apocalyptic sci-fi whump, anyone? Teenagers getting kidnapped and tortured for their blood to be filtered and drunk by undercover political freaks?! Heeeellll yeah!!!!!!!😈😈😈😈😈

#whump prompt #sci fi whump #whump because I like it no questions allowed and conspiracy theory is some of the best writing prompts in existence btw

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verkja · 2 years

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Idea for sci-fi whump - a character is stuck (captured, crash-landed, etc.) in a location with much higher gravity than their native environment. No matter what shape they were in to begin with, suddenly actions as basic as walking or even standing are monumental tasks. Circulation would be affected too.

While the character could theoretically adapt over time in some ways, gaining stronger, denser muscles to compensate for the increased strain on their body, that would require them to have access to sufficient nutrition and the ability to move around. Neither of which is guaranteed, especially in a whump story.

#if this has been done - let me know because i want to read it :D #also good if they *weren't* in the best of shape originally and find any kind of movement incredibly difficult in the new environment #whump prompt #sci fi whump #whump #my prompts #environmental whump #sort of

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montammil · 2 years

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different dimension whump

Whumpee gets transported into a new dimension. They see who they know as Caretaker, and get all excited, introducing themself to Caretaker and trying to explain the situation to them. They frown when they see the absolutely horrified look on Caretaker’s face.

Caretaker prepares them both some tea after they calm down and they confirm Whumpee is real. They talk for a bit, and suddenly Whumpee feels so... tired.

“Did... did you drug me?” they ask as they try to get out of their chair, only to be held up by Caretaker.

“I’m sorry, dear, I really am... But I can’t have you leave me. Not again.”

“Wh’t are y-you talking about?” Whumpee tries to fight, but find it close to useless, their limbs feeling like lead.

They sigh. “You-- or your... alternate you escaped one night. I tried going after you, but some moron mistook you for a deer. I took you to the hospital, but... but it was too late. I lost you that night. You left me.”

“Wait. Escaped?” they slur, falling into who they thought was Caretaker’s chest

Caretaker, or rather, Whumper, shushes them. “Go to sleep, darling. Don’t worry, I’m going to do so much better this time, I promise. Let’s get you to your room. It’s just the same as you left it.”

#whump #intimate whumper #kidnapping whump #tw kidnapping #whump idea #sci fi whump #creepy whumper #whump writing #this kinda sucks but i need to see more whump like this #literally my favorite trope if you can call it that #no but seriously tag me if you ever do or have done anything like this #whump scenario

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just-here-for-the-whump · 5 months

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@whumpcember Day 7: Fainting - Stargate Atlantis 1x3 Hide and Seek

#whumpcember2023 day7 #whumpcember2023 #day 7 fainting #whump #stargate atlantis #rodney mckay #sci fi whump

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just-a-few-prompts · 2 years

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Just woke up from a dream involving Caretaker, Whumper, Whumpee, and a lot of hallucination.

Whumper forces Caretaker to hold Whumpee as they lead them to several spots in a tall, multi-floor building. Each spot is where Whumpee was tortured by Whumper into hallucination or delusions.

Maybe this corner makes Whumpee fear loving gestures as always, ALWAYS being the prelude to violence. Maybe this empty room is where Whumper made Whumpee hallucinate everybody in their life abandoning them, scorning and making fun of them as they leave. This table? Whumper won’t even TELL Caretaker why Whumpee freezes up and can’t stop screaming there.

The last spot is the worst hallucination of all; Whumpee is surrounded by strangers, all of them closing in for the kill. Whumpee can fight back, even has a knife, but they just keep getting closer and closer.

Even if Whumpee doesn’t have a knife in REAL life, Caretaker is being hit rather hard now by a panicking Whumpee desperately fighting for their life.

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whumpy-daydreams · 1 year

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Following Orders

Writing Masterlist

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CW: forced to kill, electrocution, living weapon whumpee

327 stood in front of Whumper ignoring their pounding heart. Two days since they'd got back to base. Two days spent in a grey concrete cell, thinking about the training they'd have to do for a month with Whumper.

They knew it wouldn't be easy. Whumper had always been the harshest when it came to training - pushing them until they couldn't go anymore and then pushing some more.

Whumper’s favourite training exercise was a virtual shooting exercise. 327 wore a headset that put them in a crowd and signalled the targets they had to eliminate. They also wore a vest that delivered electric shocks any time they missed a target or got shot themselves.

The first five minutes went well. Six targets, all eliminated promptly and accurately. And then one of their teammates appeared, labelled as a target. 327 faltered. Their knees hit the floor hard as electricity burned across their body, stronger than usual. Shaking slightly, they lifted their arm and shot team mate in the chest. It’s not real.

They repeated the phrase over and over in their head, convincing themselves that they weren’t systematically killing their teammates, seeing them collapse and blood pour out of their lifeless bodies.

But when Caretaker’s face appeared 327 turned away. Over and over they screamed, as the bullets from virtual Caretaker hit them again and again, until they were seizing on the floor from the electric shocks that spasmed across their torso. It seemed like hours before it stopped.

Whumper peered down at them, trying not to look too pleased. “An order is an order, 327. I don’t care if it’s your teammates - they are not your friends. You are weapons. You do not falter. All you should care about is doing what you’re told. Anything else and the enemy will win.” They pushed 327 onto their back with their foot. “But you are defective.”

#whump #whumpee #whumper #sci fi whump #electrocution #this is inspired by halo and american assassin because whump thats why #mortiawrites #living weapon whumpee

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yet-another-heathen · 1 year

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Writing Prompt

An alien requesting that it's human shipmate 'wish it luck', immediately before going on a dangerous mission from which it knows it will not likely return.

If this inspires you to create, please tag me so I can read it @yet-another-heathen !

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theres-whump-in-that-nebula · 8 months

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[A and B are sitting in an alien holding cell]

A: “Do you hear that?”

B: “What?”

A: “The humming.”

B: “It’s been humming since we got in here.”

A: “No, no— It’s getting louder. Listen.”

[both listen]

A: “I don’t like that.”

B: “What do you think they’re doing?”

A: “I don’t know but it can’t be anything good.”

#writing prompt #whump #angst #writing prompts #sci fi whump #capture

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lumpofwhump · 2 years

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The Scavenger and the Forgotten 4: A Bit of a Thief

Content: Gun violence, terrorism, gunshot wound, dubiously consensual drug use and medical treatment, medical whump, conditioned whumpee, antenna whump, gruff caretaker, nonhuman whumpees, nonhuman caretakers, multiple whumpees, multiple caretakers, accidental whump.

The firefight had started up suddenly. A burst of machine gun fire into a narrow, crowded street in Xenotown was met with a few return gunshots from a shopkeeper, bringing a green-uniformed naturalborn human to the ground. The desperate dying man fired off another round of bullets, one of which grazed the leg of a terrified-looking older genmod as his Girn companion pulled him, already stumbling, to the relative safety of an even narrower side street.

"SHIT," Clee yelled as Radu howled in pain and nearly pulled her to the ground. Adrenaline overcoming whatever small tendency she might have toward gentleness, she looped his arm around her shoulders and hauled him, thrashing and crying out, around the corner. She covered his mouth as she lowered them both to the ground, looking away guiltily under his pained and panicked gaze. Still, she continued to stifle his cries until there was no more gunfire, no more footsteps, only the moaning of his fellow injured.

She peered cautiously around the corner. Aside from a dozen or so bodies on the ground, the street was completely deserted, its storefronts shuttered and its carts abandoned.

Radu let out a whine of pain through clenched teeth, but flinched as Clee looked back toward him.

She sighed, figuring she deserved such a reaction after that morning's rough wing washing. "Hang on," she said, before darting over to a food cart with a sign neither of them could read. She rummaged through it, and settled on a can of salt and a large handful of napkins. That left water and bandaging.

Radu poked his head around the corner just in time to see her nab a canteen and an armband off one of the fallen naturalborn soldiers. She looked at its insignia with disgust on her face, and hesitated for a moment before spitting on his corpse. Or at least Radu hoped he was a corpse by now, given all the blood he'd lost.

"I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but this is gonna suck," Clee warned Radu upon her return, not bothering to explain this act of disrespect. "Less than an infection would, but still, sorry in advance."

Radu had been expecting worse, actually. He could tell that Clee was trying to be careful in wiping the blood off and compressing the wound. She even winced a couple of times at his pained sounds. Maybe she wasn't still mad at him.

And then Clee handed him a few of the napkins. "Here, better these than your hand," she said. Obediently, he stuffed them into his mouth with trembling hands, and bit down.

The saltwater burned so much worse than the wound itself. He reflexively jerked away from her and pulled himself back by a few feet, gasping with pain.

Clee looked at him with barely-concealed frustration, her ears angled nearly flat on either side of her face, but gave him a moment to collect himself.

He didn't. Not really.

"Alright, ready?" she asked finally.

"Y-yes," he forced out in a small voice. He recognized that tone. Refusal, or even delay, had never gone over well.

It was no easier the second time. In fact, it was worse. He reflexively swatted at Clee, earning him a screech as his clawed fingers ran across an inch of her right antenna.

When he opened his eyes again to look at her, he wished he hadn't. Her eyes were wide with rage and terror as she fought to keep one violent tremor and then another from sending her to the concrete. When she was finally able to move on her own, she abruptly grabbed him by the shirtfront and forced him roughly to the ground with one hand, while the other was poised to jab his injury with the saltwater-soaked napkin.

She didn't follow through on this, instead tossing her flimsy would-be weapon to the side with a still twitching hand after a long moment of silence punctuated only by Radu's ragged breaths and quiet whimpering.

"This isn't going to work," she muttered. "Here, you want to tie this on for now?" She handed him the makeshift bandage, emblazoned with the logo of the Ganymedean Soldiers of Humanity.

"Thank you, Mi -- Clee," he said, trembling but taking it with a nod. "Thank you. For not --"

"Don't thank me for that," she said darkly, not looking at him as she got to her feet. "I'll. I'll go find somewhere we can stay. Someone who can help."

With that, she got up to her feet, steadying herself against the wall and plodding at a much slower speed than usual back the way they'd come. People were starting to cautiously open their shutters and poke their heads out into the street again, some even coming out to collect (or, in the case of the GSH aggressors, loot) the dead.

Pushing through her dizziness and worsening headache, Clee helped a Yubaghi Girn woman carry her dying husband back into the back room of their store. When the woman nonetheless looked her up and down with suspicion before refusing to give her and Radu a place to stay for the night, she went and took over for a distraught Sarverni in compressing thar daughter's chest wound. Unless she knew even less than she thought about Sarverni anatomy, Clee reckoned the girl wouldn't make it through the night.

The only good news was that the grieving parent arranged for them to stay with a friend of the family - a pharmacist, no less - who lived down the street.

Radu had gone rigid when the unfamiliar, and quite tall, mottled-skinned man with a crown of bone curving around his scalp and a thoroughly unimpressed, piercing red gaze rounded the corner and reached to help him to his feet. Appearances aside, the Sarverni was effortlessly more gentle than Clee, much to her… was it envy she was feeling at this?

Still, he stumbled over to her at the first opportunity. She stiffened as he took her shoulder for support and shook her head, but didn't push him away.

"I could've really hurt you back there, you know," she said about halfway through the painfully slow walk to their host's home. Even as she looked straight ahead, she could feel his stare on her, that look he got sometimes when he was trying to figure out what she meant, what she was going to do.

When he was finally satisfied that this wasn't a threat or a trap, he responded simply, "But you didn't."

She scoffed. "That's… what's the saying here? A small step?"

"A low bar," the pharmacist, who'd introduced himself as Talpury Belud, corrected without looking back at them in Ganymedean that was as flawless as it was clipped.

"Yeah, that," Clee said, feeling self-conscious at being overheard.

Radu paused for a long moment, trying to put his thoughts together, painful and jumbled as most of them were, and turn them into words and phrases that made any kind of sense. "I didn't -- couldn't -- at the labs, I never…" he struggled out, squeezing his eyes shut in an effort to focus. "Miss sent me back. The wiping, I barely made it, and then, with the, the things they put in me --"

"The wings, you mean?"

He nodded. "They didn't work. I didn't work. I was scrap." He shuddered at his own words.

"Do I want to know?" Clee asked with a grimace.

He shook his head. Another moment passed as he found his way back to his point through a barrage of unwanted memories. "But you still took me with you," he finally managed. "Then again, this morning, and now, even though. Even though I… why?"

"Still trying to figure that out, really," Clee said with a quirk of her antennae that caused her to wince. Radu cringed in sympathy, or fear, or both. "But I mean, what else was I supposed to do?"

"Leave," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

She laughed awkwardly at this. "And then what, you'd die eventually like that, right? I might as well have just killed you with my own two hands, then, and whatever else anyone can say about me, I'm no murderer."

"And what can they say, I wonder," their host interjected flatly as they reached his door, turning around to pin her with a stare.

"Let's see," she said. "Last week I got 'thieving gutter trash,' a couple weeks before that I was a 'half-breed whore,' and, oh! About a month ago or so, I was 'Hiukree terrorist scum.'"

"Is any of it true?" Belud asked.

"Oh, about half of it is," she answered casually, earning her a wide-eyed stare from Radu.

"Well. So long as it's not the thieving part, we'll have no problems," Belud told her, and waved them both inside.

"So, Lycadone," the implicit terrorist sympathizer said once he'd shown them to the small room above his store, crammed with three beds, including his own. Clee froze up, suddenly remembering the twenty four vials shoved in her coat pocket. Before she could say anything that might give this away, however, he turned to Radu. "Are you still using it?"

"Never," Radu insisted defensively. "I didn't need it. I was always good."

"That makes both of our lives easier," Belud told him with a nod. "Stuff's hard to come by."

Clee shifted guiltily in her seat. "If you're looking for more, I might --" she started.

Belud cut her off with a scoff. "You think I'm looking to be robbed?"

Clee promptly shut up.

"In any case," he said, turning back to Radu. "We can use something much lighter then, relatively speaking. Still." He eyed Clee. "You said he has some sort of back injury, possibly infected?"

"Don't touch them," Radu interjected quickly, flinching away from them both. His wings jerked in anticipation, and he winced in pain. "Please?"

Belud looked more curious than sympathetic. "Maybe we should go with one of the stronger sedatives, actually," he said calmly.

Radu swallowed and shrank in on himself, but when Belud approached him with the IV, he extended his arm obediently. He'd always been good.

The pharmacist -- a full-on doctor, really, if only of the underground variety -- was careful in cleaning and properly bandaging Radu's injuries. Clee followed along best she could, getting the distinct sense she might need to know how to do this down the line. It was nearly midnight by the time he finished. He all but staggered over to the kitchen to heat some noodles up for his guests before collapsing into bed without eating any himself.

For the second night in a row, Clee's dinner was far too spicy for her tastes. Half of Radu's, meanwhile, ended up on the floor in his still very sedated state.

As Clee wiped it up, he turned toward her. "You're not," he said in a slurred voice.

"Huh?" she asked, pausing to look over at him.

"Any of the things you said before. That they called you," he clarified.

Clee gave a short laugh. "Excuse you," she told him with mock-offense. "I'm absolutely half-Hiukree. You saw the horns for yourself."

"Sorry!" he said, eyes widening. "I-I don't know -- I didn't mean… I'm sorry."

She shrugged and rolled her eyes, but cracked a mischievous grin. "And don't tell anyone, but I might be a bit of a thief, too. No one's salt, armbands or Lycadone are safe from this one."

The shared joke seemed to set Radu at ease, a lazy smile spreading across his face as he curled in on himself and drifted off. Clee tossed a corner of the blanket over him before heading for her own cot.

Fuck, but her head pounded and her ears rang now that she had nothing else to focus on. She thanked the Healer that Belud had insisted that they stay and rest a few days. Tomorrow it would be worse.

Worldbuilding by me and @soheavyaburden

Taglist:

@whumpsday

@whither-wander-whump

Let me know if you'd like to be added or removed!

#gunshot wound #medical whump #conditioned whumpee #antenna whump #gruff caretaker #sci fi whump #alien whumpee #lady whump #this was supposed to be just a short drabble #ah well #I'd been meaning to write another chapter of this anyways #nonhuman caretaker #multiple caretakers #multiple whumpees #nonhuman whumpee #gun violence #terrorism #accidental whump

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