I have half a mind, it's cracked and breaking

[sipthehoneylikeabutterfly]

The ragged stump of Ienzo's arm had been a mangled mess. Szayel had carefully trimmed away everything ruined beyond repair, playing conservatively with how much of Ienzo's arm he left behind. He didn't have enough to be useful; all trying to save more of the arm would get anyone would be a higher risk of later complications. In the end, he removed everything left below the shoulder joint, which also gave him enough undamaged skin to cover the amputation wound somewhat tidily. It was still going to be scarred, but at least it wouldn't be twisted and puckered scar tissue on the end of a stump.

The very first thing he'd done, once he'd cut away enough damage to see what he was doing, had been to seal off the blood vessels. Ienzo had lost a lot of blood, and Szayel hadn't needed to get a band around his good arm to know his blood pressure would be dangerously low. Nel had worked on that, feeding drips into his veins and casting curative spells to accelerate his body's own replenishment speed.

Szayel had put aside what he'd removed in a kidney dish, temporarily focused solely on the task at hand. With Lumi hovering over his shoulder, he hadn't expected to get a chance to keep so much sample tissue anyway, but he'd hoped that if he pretended to ignore it then Lumi would also pay it little heed.

Once the obvious wound had been covered Szayel turned to a more detailed examination of Ienzo, a task which required stripping him of most of his clothing. There were parts that seemed as if he'd be bruised and sore, but no other obvious, major injuries seemed apparent, and Szayel couldn't find evidence of any internal injuries that required attending.

Nel carefully applied bandages to Ienzo's arm and up over his shoulder while Szayel cleaned away his things, simply moving them to the back of the infirmary for the time being. He wanted to take the excised tissue and store it, safely, but that would only make things look obvious to his audience. Instead, after moving things out of the way, he returned to Ienzo's bedside, as if he'd only been intending to do that, and gave him a dose of the antidote for the sedatives they'd used.

They needed to see if he was capable of consciousness, after all.

"He's going to need close monitoring," he said, mostly to Nel. "Through the night as well." It might in the least be another chance for him to get his hands on some samples, too.

Comments

[thechillyacademic]

"When he was a boy," a young boy. He can't have been more than six. "He lost his parents. I believe I told you this," he said, looking at her.

It was true that they hadn't been close for many years. Between Ienzo starting to outshine Even back in Radiant Garden and his vote on things counting for more, and then the events of The Organization, and Castle Oblivion, where he hadn't given him the respect he felt he deserved, the two had drifted apart, as often happens. Even so, Even still cared about him.

There were types of closeness that time and distance could never really shake.

"It affected him quite badly," he told her. "He didn't speak for a long time. Please understand that it wasn't that he couldn't -- he certainly had the ability. He simply didn't. It is called elective mutism. It can be a result of shyness, anxiety or, in his case, trauma."

He looked at his hands, both of them curled on the tabletop, one thumb rubbing the other restlessly.

"That he seems to have recovered cognitive ability, and because his faculties appear to be intact... but he has failed to speak, as yet," he raised his eyes again, to look at Nel. "It is a concern I think you should be aware of."

[declaregamuza]

Even had told Nel about Ienzo's history. Some of it, anyway. She'd thought, at the time, that it was their shared history as orphans that had brought Ienzo and Ulquiorra together. Ulquiorra had been older when he was orphaned, but no less badly affected by it. He said so little about it all that it came as a shock, every time, when something cropped up that tipped Ulquiorra off a precipice most of them hadn't even known was there.

When he'd come to the Arrancar project, she'd known he was a Rozarrian orphan, matched up to Murciélago. It had both upset and angered her, not least because that Hollow felt like despair, and hopelessness, and if she closed her eyes the sound of sobbing children played in her ears.

They'd learned later, once they'd come to the Palace, that he'd lost his parents in Gongaga. Then they'd helped to destroy Midgar and turn it into a trinket of phenomenal alchemical power, and then they'd learned, Ulquiorra had learned, that his only surviving relative had left their family to die.

He'd struck up his friendship with Ienzo after that. When Even had told Nel that Ienzo too was an orphan, she'd thought it a good thing that Ulquiorra had found common ground with someone. With someone that had coped with it better.

Now it sounded like Ienzo hadn't coped with it better at all, and she sighed, and put her head in her hands. "Poor kid," she said, eventually. What else was there to say?

She looked up at Even, smoothing her hands down her face so she could peer at him through her fingers. "So you think that's why he's not speaking," she said. It made sense, in an awful, worrying way. "How long did it take him to start talking when he was little?"

How long might this last?

[thechillyacademic]

"Just over a year after we got him," he said, frowning somewhat. "He started getting interested in the science behind what we were experimenting with and started speaking as though he'd been doing it the entire time."

It had been sudden, and they had made sure not to draw so much attention to it that he withdrew into silence again. Before long, and on the right subject, he became difficult to shut up.

"I expect you are to be his primary healer," now the surgeon's job was done, "so I thought it prudent you know. I daresay you will need to keep an eye on him."

[declaregamuza]

A whole year? Ienzo? It was hard to imagine him holding his tongue for five whole minutes, let alone a whole year. He must have really struggled to handle the trauma of losing his parents.

She wondered what the trauma of losing something as vital as an arm would do to him.

Nel sighed and nodded, running her hands back over her head, and then rested her chin on one hand. "Yeah, I'll keep an eye on him." So, he wasn't likely to tell anyone if there was something wrong. That was going to make things more complicated.

"I hope he isn't mute," she said. "The next few months are going to be hard enough for him without that."