1719, Arras.
He helped when he could, how he could. Carlisle has been living in France for long enough now that English starts to feel awkward on his tongue and in his thoughts when he comes across the odd medical text when he absconds with them from any library he can break into. The cellars of Notre Dame des Argent is safe most of the time; the priory had been decimated in the Forty Years' War. The see had reinstituted its use as a hospital and didn't mind Carlisle coming and going as he pleased.
Le Beffroi squarely in front of him, Carlisle moves quickly with scrolls in hand back to the church at the far end of the city across la Petite Place d'Arras.
" -- Ramaseu d'sous! Va t'en, putaine d'mirde!"
All they do is fight. All they do is fight and when I can't sew them up and make them better I'm the one that has to move to a different city, Carlisle thinks acerbically to himself, immediately angry at the lack of charity he feels towards --
"J'vas t'tuere."
It's not screamed or shouted as a warning or threat. It's a statement; Carlisle goes sprinting. The papers get saved first, placed carefully in a corner. "Arr'te!" Carlisle cries out around the corner to stop the young man trying to beat down a shopkeeper's door with a plank of wood.
"Degage-te."
Carlisle lunges at the man, enough to barrel him off the stoop of the shop but stops before his weight crunches the attacker between himself and the ground. Carlisle's standing again (too quickly) and wrenching the plank out of the human's hand.
-- The human's run off before it sinks in that his 'fuck off' isn't the same voice as he heard say 'I am going to kill you'.
Carlisle doesn't need the board to knock the door down. The copper of the blood is immediately assaulting Carlisle's thoughts. Exsanguinate, from the Latin exsanguinātus. Drained of blood.
A orange-red hank of disheveled hair flips backward, wiping his mouth. He smiles.
"Buongiorno."
Carlisle stares at him blankly. Once he looks up to the gold eyes so different from his own red ones, the stranger stares back.
"Français? Italiano? English?"
" -- English," Carlisle stutters finally. "And French. A little Italian."
"...You're him. We've heard about you." The smile becomes awed. The stranger steps over the prone human form lying on the ground; Carlisle doesn't know the dead man's name.
"Who?"
"Come with me."