2022-05-05: Hellooooooo Nurse!
- Log: 2022-05-05: Hellooooooo Nurse!
- Cast: Emilia Eschonbach, Milly Ashford
- Where: Emilia's Dorm Room, Ashford Academy, Nagoya, Area 11
- OOC - IC Date: May 3rd, 0096
- Summary: Milly decides to pay a visit to a sickly student. Emilia assumes the waking world is a dream. The waking world was never so gentle to her as it was today.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
It's been a rough few weeks for Emilia. The grounding was pretty emotionally devastating- the knowledge she had made life difficult for Milly and the Student Council worse. he was being a nuisance, a bother. Drawing Grandfather's attention. All because she'd been so excited she hadn't been careful. This was all her fault.
That thought had spent the past three weeks ruminating, interrupted only by a terrorist attack, and then the flu that came with it. On the upside, drifting in and out of consciousness meant she couldn't think about it as much. But even though her grounding is over, she still hasn't been able to leave her room. Unreliable and useless. The Black Knights were surely going to discard her, and her club will have recruited someone to take her place... And she'd have to make up for lost classes, if she's even allowed to stay...
Right now, Emmy is wrapped up under the covers, in plain, unflattering- and frankly a little small- grey cotton pyjamas. She has extra blankets, the additional weight a little comforting. Her curtains are closed, and her room light is set to low. Her TV is on on low volume, set to one of the local BTV channels. An awful daytime show plays in the background, but Emmy's not really paying attention. It's just to have a voice around.
She lays on her side- her hair is surprisingly messy, fluffy, slightly curly and a little chaotic. There's going to be tangles she doesn't want to deal with but when she's that sick, it's not an option. Even sick and without makeup, she's still beautiful, but the rings around her eyes are dark, and the highlights she makes to her features are less obvious. She's certainly got a good base to work from. Her flip phone is on the bed next to her, her hand resting on it, but she's not really looking at it. It's more that it's there, her lifeline to the outside world.
The one she won't use. She doesn't want to make more trouble.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
It's been a little while since Milly saw Emilia, come to think. She isn't sure if she's extra grounded, busy at work, or has made herself sick, or some combination of all three. At first she thought she might just be withdrawing a little after her grandfather's intervention, but... now it's starting to get worrisome.
She does a little investigating first. Sure enough, Emilia is sick, apparently; people have heard the general wretchedness from her room. Milly kicks herself for not moving on this one sooner -- but only a bit.
"Yes, hi, Valerie? It's Milly. I need to borrow a few of my outfits from the club room. I doubt there's anyone else wearing my size this year, but just to be on the safe side... Great. Great. Yes, two, four, and five."
There's two sharp raps at the door, followed by, "Concerned Miss Prez, keying in!" ... What, you think the Student Council President *doesn't* have access to the building keys? She's almost certainly doubling as a resident assistant.
Milly pops in in a nurse's outfit. More accurately, she shows up in two nurse's outfits -- she really wanted to wear the white jacket, but the red cross skirt might be a little much and Emilia probably can't handle... the stimulation of seeing Milly in a bikini right now, half-jacket or not. So she's decided to throw the half-jacket over a more conventional (though very skintight) nurse's outfit as a compromise.
"Oh, you poor thing," she coos. "Not flu vaccinated this year, huh...? I guess I'm not surprised he didn't spring for it, but still..."
Her lips purse a little. "... Well, the good news is I *am*, so it looks like you have me for my whole shift!"
She reaches into her nurse's bag, pulling out her phone again. Tap tap tap. "Rosalie," Milly says, tone firm. "I'm calling in that favor from last December. Detangling spray. Chicken soup. Tea with honey and garlic. And... get me the Experimental Cooking Club's micro-freezer full of normal ice pops if you can? No pressure on that one. Yeah. You have a budget of 20 dollars. If you can make it happen in fifteen minutes, I'm sure I can find another twenty somewhere, too." Click.
She turns her attention, at last, back to Emilia. "Let's elevate that head a little bit, okay? I have the feeling you haven't eaten much lately, so if you overdo it you might throw up..." She doesn't actually move to do it yet. Better to get a sense of exactly how Emilia is tracking.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emmy hears the voice outside her room, and blearly turns her head towards it. The door lock is being rattled against. She blinks tiredly as it opens. Is it meal time already? The school doctor had set something up but-
And then there is a sexy nurse who is also Milly and Emilia's eyes widen, well, as much as she can. "Milly...?" Her already soft voice is quite weak, and raspy. Her throat is probably pretty raw, given the coughing and vomiting. So she's not tracking... great. It takes her a few moments to work through the most likely possibility. Milly has arrived in her room, despite all the trouble Emmy made, dressed as a nurse, here to look after her, the worthless girl no one wants.
"'s a dream..." She mumbles, putting her had back on her pillow. At least it's a nice dream. Milly talks on the phone, and Emmy takes in about as much of it as she does the TV. So when she turns back to Emilia, it takes a few moments for Emilia to realize it's her. "...okay." Elevate the head... She starts to lift her head up, try to shift her her weight and push herself up with her arms. She can do it, but not easily- it's clearly taking her a lot of effort in her current state, and some small joint pain. The flu is rude like that. Once she's... 'elevated' if not comfortable, she stops and rests. It's exhausting, truly.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly tends to let people try things on their own before she just does them for them -- but this is a little bit too much. "Hmm, is it?" she asks, at the response of s a dream,' but she decides not to fight it. If she's feeling that horrible, though...
Milly scoots forward a little ways. She takes Emmy by the shoulders, carefully, and starts to adjust her. "Oh, wow, you haven't even moved these pillows in a while..." she murmurs; she gets Emmy to lean forward a little bit, then grabs the pillows and fluffs them out a bit. "Hrm," she says, rearranging them a little bit; after a moment, she decides to take the topmost blanket off, too, and gives it a few folds until it can act as a makeshift additional cushion.
As Milly puts Emilia back down, she's *much* more comfortable; Milly has managed to arrange her pillows and one blanket into a gentle upward incline -- enough to make it easier to keep her head up (and not gag on her own vomit, if it comes to that after she eats). "There," she says, a little more firmly.
She really should have thought ahead about the hair. In hindsight this was obvious. "I've got some news for you," she says, gently. "Lelouch is going to figure out how to get you a less monitored bank account without it getting back to your grandfather. Kallen is working on a few things, too."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Dream Milly sure sounds like real Milly. But Milly takng her shoulders, Emmy leans forward into her a little. Not really consciously, but shifting the weight, supporting herself a little less. "Your hands are warm..." It's still mumbled, more just observation the only real touch she's had in-
She's not going to think about it. Too long ago to remember. Too sad to want to think about it. Too lonely.
"It's nice..." She's a little spacy, but also surprisingly relaxed. She's too tired to worry. Besides, it's probably a dream. She can relax through that, right? Eased into a more comfortable position, laid down, she closes her eyes for a bit. She's sleepy, but she can listen to Milly's voice. It's nicer than the woman on the news, Her forehead does crease at the good news. "Miss Nunnally's brother? Why?" She pauses. Kallen too... "But... I'm making trouble... She told me."
She is probably her Grandfather's secretary. Sounds like the grounding involved a phone call. No wonder she took it so hard. She sighs, sadly. It'll all be back to the same when she wakes up anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"... Well, the fact you can tell that means your fever's probably breaking, so you shouldn't be this bad off for too much longer," Milly says, on the topic of her hands. She takes a moment to fuss with the finer points of Emilia's positioning.
"Your grandfather's secretary sent a letter to the Student Council telling us to discontinue regular check-ins unless we could meet a fairly high standard of documentation. They followed up with a nag letter after what happened the other weekend." Milly doesn't sound happy about that. "Actually, just a second."
Milly holds up her camera for a moment. There's a distinct simulated shutter sound. "All right, timestamped... let's just send this off to our legal team..." Typing absently on her phone, Milly says, "Let's get this started right."
She finally remembers to answer the question. "I asked the rest of the Student Council for ways to outmaneuver these requests. The Student Council doesn't participate in humiliation or kicking people when they're down unless I, personally, find it really funny."
She sits on the bed, saying with a little seriousness, "This isn't funny at all."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
"...hope so." Emmy's eyes are still closed as Milly fusses. God she's tired. She wants to leave her claustrophobic room. She wants to... "...see people again." She doesn't seem to realize she's speaking the thought. "Shouldn't... It's bad for them." This is probably the most unfiltered Emilia that Milly has gotten. This might be an important visit for both of them.
She listens quietly as Milly tells her the situation. She opens one eye just enough for the flash to go off, and she winces. Legal team? What does that mean? And then it finally clicks. "You're not going to just... go along with it?" Something feels uncomfortable about it being okay if it's funny. Would Milly be helping Grandfather if Emmy was funnier? But...
'This isn't funny at all.'
The weight on the bed has been another thing she hasn't felt in so long. Not since Mom... "It...it's okay...You d-don't..." She starts coughing, cutting off her existing stammer, taking ten seconds or so to recover. "He... doesn't make it worse... if you do what he says..."
There's something about the way she phrases it. Emmy knows he'll always make it worse for her. But she doesn't want Milly... She doesn't want someone who has been so kind to her, someone so amazing as Milly, to get beaten down the way she herself is, for the crime of defending her. "I can... I can manage it..."
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
There's something that happens as Emilia mumbles her way through her true feelings. Milly gets *angry*. It's a subtle thing; her nostrils flare, and tension enters her shoulders. There's a knock at the door after Emilia says her piece; Milly calls, just loud enough to be heard through the door, "It's open." (It's a knack she's developed in her time at Ashford.)
In comes a brunette, *also* in a nurse's uniform, with her hair in a high ponytail. "Oh, you heard which ones I borrowed?" she asks, giving a wave. "Hi, Rosalie." Emilia, of course, definitely knows Rosalie from the Fantasy Seduction Club. Rosalie has a small cart full of soup and tea, and on the underside, a mini-freezer.
"... Wow, she looks like crap," the brunette says, as she moves to find an unused outlet for the mini-fridge. "That's going to make next week kinda boring..."
Milly shakes her head. "No club business right now, okay? She needs to rest. We'll catch up later -- as can you two, right?"
"Right."
It's not long before things are sorted out; the cart gets parked next to Emilia's bed, the micro-freezer is plugged in, and the detangling spray comes to rest in Milly's hands. She also has a brush, now, conveniently. "See you later, Rosalie. I need to get her going a bit."
"Take care not to get sick yourself, Miss Prez," Rosalie says, before heading back out.
Right. Back to serious time. "I try not to pick stupid fights," Milly says, "but I hate losing, and I'm not going to do what he says, except insofar as I can do it in ways that embarrass him and keep you safe."
A beat, before Milly manages a confident smirk. "*That* would be the kind of humiliation the Student Council would participate in. I don't want Ashford Academy to become an accessory to this kind of thing."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emmy doesn't catch the anger, it takes a fair bit to break through the fog. The knock does, though, but Milly's answering it. Emmy's head turns to Rosalie. Why are they both... Emmy blinks a few times as she brings in the cart. She kinda zoned out on the phonecalls. Soup, tea and a freezer? Oh. Milly said something about eating...
The comment on Emmy's looks hit like a brick. They're going to get rid of her. She needs to look good for ther club to have a use for her. But there are plenty of pretty first yearsShe turns her head back to look forward while Rosalie talks about her like she's not there, trying to hide the fear on her face, not as well as usual. Only for confusion the take over. "Huh...?" Why would next week be boring?
The good thing for Emmy's current state is stimulus switches tracks really easily, and she can't dwell. Everything's put in place, and Emmy mostly watches as Rosalie leaves. The lavender haired girl looks- well, still out of it. Hardly surprising.
Serious time is... Is maybe more serious than Milly had planned. The words have Emmy looking down. Looking down and tearing up. "...W-why?" Her soft voice tries to raise too far, getting raspier and setting her coughing again, before she has a chance to touch the tea or the soup. This one clearly hurts, but whether it's her chest or her heart, it's a different question. "N-No one..." Talking's even harder than usual. "No one ever... not even mom could..." It's too much. It's all a bit more than she can handle. The coughing fit comes back, and she starts to double over, tears leaving her face onto the blankets ahead of her. A hand comes up to grip the pendant round her neck tightly. A movement as much to gather strength than mitigate fear. When she lies back again, Emmy doesn't try to speak, it hurts too much. She doesn't have it in her to confront these feelings now.
Not even with person giving her the strength to show that they're there.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
When Emilia starts coughing, Milly gives her a moment -- and then, when she starts crying, Milly moves to put an arm around her gently. She doesn't draw her into a full embrace -- she *is* sick, contagiously, and there's a limit to what Milly can do -- but she does make sure she's there for her *physically* just as much as she is emotionally.
She lets her cry, a bit -- and when she finally lies back, Miss Prez leans over to the cart and pours Emilia a cup of tea. "Drink this," she says, a little firmly, before anything else. "You're going to blow out your throat and no one wants that. It's hot, though." She brings it to Emilia's lips for her.
It's a bit of an odd taste, though Emilia may not be in a position to appreciate the oddness; it's oversweetened with an under-note of garlic. It does a *great* job of soothing the throat, clearing the sinuses, and reducing inflammation, though.
"When someone's had power over you from the start, it's hard to get out from under that," Milly explains to Emilia. "Besides! With our title lapsed it's hardly beneath our station to give your grandfather some... acknowledgment."
Milly notes, "That freezer's full of popsicles, if you want something cold and easy to keep down once you get your strength back... and the next time you sit up I'm going to need you to stay sat up for a few minutes. I'm going to fix your hair, at least a little."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
That's a lot for Emmy, just a hug. Just a hand resting on her shoulder, around her back. So little can mean so much. When Milly takes charge, she nods, taking a slow careful sip. Her sense of taste is dulled a little, but she can get the sweetness. It eases the rawness in her throat a little. Not enough for her to start talking. But enought for it not to hurt.
She continues to drink as Milly explains. She does well, managing to get most of it down quickly, safely. She probably really needed even this much. And then Milly mentions fixing her hair.
"O-" She stops, catching herself before she starts coughing again. She's calming down, at least, before leaning forward. She moves to give Milly full access- a little tricky when Emmy's hair goes down to her butt. But her hair is very important to her, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"Sh-sh-sh. Let the tea do its job for a few minutes." Milly doesn't seem to *want* Emilia to speak for this step; once she's got Emilia situated, she reaches for brush, comb, and detangler spray, and gets to work. "... Your hair probably isn't going to be *quite* as shiny as you're used to without some product after something like this," she says, casually. "I have the feeling you already have a favorite, though, since your hair usually looks great... I'll leave that up to you."
Spritz. Spritz. Brush. Milly is *extremely* methodical about Emilia's hair; it's quality hair, so she wants to make sure it's well-cared-for, even through something like this. "All right -- let's see here... once you're not sick anymore, you should try talking to Shirley. Your hair is a little more like hers than like mine, so she might have better advice for the next time you get sick than I can give you. ... Kallen, too, obviously, since she's sick so often." Milly has those nice waves; Shirley's is a fair bit straighter without going full hime.
Another few rounds of spritzing. Milly isn't... *completely* gentle -- there's the occasional tug as she hits a knot that just won't come out without a lot of care, or a cluster of tangles -- but it's hard to be fully gentle with multi-day bedhead in this much hair.
One hand comes to rest under that hair, and Milly leans Emilia forward just a *little* further as she assesses the ends. It's a long, long process, but she doesn't seem to mind a bit. "Hrrmmm... is there anything you want? I'm going to guess your fever only broke today, so you should stay in bed until dinnertime tomorrow, even if you wake up feeling better, so we need to get you set up to actually make it through that. I'll send Rosalie by with more soup, too."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emmy is, if nothing else, easy to maneuver and work with. She's very still and compliant. With Milly working on her hair, carefully, methodically, delicately. Emmy focuses on sitting up, on letting her do her thing as she tries to listen. Even the tugs she bears easily.
Still, her mind drifts...
December 24, 0086
Emilia sat on her Mother's lap, as she carefully brushed through Emilia's lavender hair.
"You really have your father's hair, Emmy."
"Like Daddy's? Really?"
"Mmhmm. I always wonder what it would look like if he grew it out."
"...okay! I'll grow it out long! So you can see!"
"Sweetie..."
The question brings Emilia out of her memories. Her good memories. But Milly's question is fair and reasonable, but... anything she wants? It takes Emmy a while to work it out. What she wants...
She's speaking before she finishes thinking. "Can you... Can you stay? At least... at least until I f-fall asleep again?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"I said you had me for my entire shift, didn't I?" comes the teasing from Milly, as Emilia agrees to that. "So let's get you lying down again, and another half a cup of tea. We'll skip the soup for now, but you're going to eat it when you wake up."
She gets herself comfortably settled in next to Emilia, helping her to get herself back into a lying down position again. "And I'll come check on you tomorrow at noon, too. If you need me earlier, give me a call." She doesn't want to infantilize Emilia, and is having to consciously check herself on both pushing her too hard and slipping into 'I'll take care of everything' mode... but jeez, the girl needs someone in her corner.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
"O-oh..." Emilia's blushing, looking down but... Not with the usual trepidation she has in these situations. Instead she's calm, and in the corner of her eyes, there hint of light. Happiness, maybe. She's too tired to defend herself from it. She lies down, with Milly's help. The tea goes down easily too, comforting more than medicinal, but it's so different.
Having the tea and someone to help her drink, more than the flavour.
She nods, that blearyness starting to return. Emmy slowly moves her phone from the bed next to her to her bedside table. Not a sign of pushing it away, the opposite- it means it won't get tangled in the sheets and need her to struggle for it. With Milly next to her though...
Emmy half slides-half slumps toward Milly. It's not a big movement, she can't do big movements right now. It's little more than a small, tiny step.
But it's a step towards warmth. A step toward letting herself want. A step towards someone who cares.
"Thank you..." She takes a short breathe, not wanting to prompt more coughing. Emmy's eyes close, that bone tiredness seeping into her body, even if it's not the flu doing all the work there. Bad thoughts, good memories, they're both exhausting... "You're... really gentle, Milly..." No honorifics. Just Milly. "It's been so long... since someone's... someone has been gentle..."
Those last words are faint and slurred as Emilia drifts off to sleep, easily and quietly next to Milly's warmth. Far more easily and quietly than that girl who insisted on sleeping on the couch after the concert.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly watches Emmy get ready to sleep; she makes a note of it, as she carefully makes sure Emmy is comfortably positioned. Part of strength is pacing yourself, after all. "... Gentle? That one's a first," Milly says, canting her head and smiling at a surprise she's *pretty* sure is pleasant.
She waits about three minutes after Emilia gets situated, to be sure she's actually asleep and not just trying to make her feel like she can go; for good measure, she takes a few moments to clean up the tea service and the chicken soup; there's enough clinking and shifting that if *that* doesn't cause Emilia more than a mild stir, she's probably safe. She leaves a note: 'the tea and soup are in my room mini-fridge; call if you want them! The little freezer has lemon popsicles in it if you're not up to calling. - Milly'
Only once all that is done does she at last make her exit. "Sweet dreams," she says, straightening out her half-jacket.