genessia | Remember I will always love you

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Remember I will always love you

Who: Szel and Dorothy, changing into Szel and Tannusen
Where: Fayren, then Everglade at the Rectory
When: Early hours of the 10th, at sunrise
What: HIIIIIGHWAY TO HELL only it's not fun and super shitty and no one is happy also warning for potential talk of abuse/mutilation/death/everything that Christmas is clearly all about happy holidays

There's a voice post made, just to two people. After all, he'd really only ever spoken to two of them. Its short, it's sweet, and it is near impossible to miss how the voice cracks at the edges, as if some sort of pain was starting to chew away at his composure.

"Thank you both so much for everything you've done for me, Tannusen, Dorothy. I really appreciated being able to talk with you while I was here.

Dorothy! I'll remember you when I get back." If he got back.

"I have a few questions I need to ask, that I wouldn't have thought of if I hadn't met you. Please, could you meet me in Fayren? As quickly as possible would be best. My coordinates are here-"

And those directions are quickly rattled off with an air of deep urgency, before he moves on.

"Tannusen!

I need you to just keep something in mind, okay?

I need you to... I..."

There's a flustered, stuttering laugh.

"Tannusen, I'll always like you, no matter what, alright? Even if sometimes, it might not look like it, okay? Please be patient with me.

I'll miss you."

And with that, the feed abruptly ends.

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With the urgency of the post - she doesn't even take the time to make a response.

Dorothy travels quickly to the coordinates, wondering, and even a little worried.

She is almost certain this was one of the people who had their Memories changed. But - she wasn't certain at all who they were, before. Still didn't know. Were they ... beginning to remember who they were?

That post sounded like a goodbye.

Once she's at the coordinates, she's looking around - surely he wouldn't be that hard to find. His wings were hard to miss.

No, his wings were impossible to miss.

Even now, as their waning light flickered through the trees.

He didn't want to. He didn't want to go. He could feel something trying to dredge itself up, like some beast just under the surface of a smooth, glassy lake. It hurt, and the damage it was doing was showing already, the sunset colored wings appearing grayer, dimmer, the edges blackening.

He spotted her quickly enough, waving from the clearing he'd picked.

"Here! Here I am, you came so quickly, thank you!"

"Of course."

She sees it - the darkened plumage, the edges turning to black - she sees the pain being echoed in the way the wings moved. Her eyes went wide, and she walked over to him quickly.

This was not a metaphor, just as he had not been a metaphor all along. A solid component, to a tale within a Memory within what might have been a lie - or might have been the truth.

Her voice is quiet, when she said, her voice almost sounding worried, "You are losing your feathers."

An awkward, musical laugh, like the sound of nervous fingers across so many, too tightly pulled strings. It was a high, sharp sound, its music belying the pain behind it.

"That's... yes. Yes, I... suppose that's what's happening." He had a good idea of what was happening, after his talks with Tannusen, after how he'd listened in to other conversations with the man.

And after a few hours going back through stored logs on his own phone.

He'd had his time to mourn for what was going to happen.

A massive feather slowly slipped from the others, gently falling to the ground as soot began to encroach over the glassy surface, the wing it'd fallen from painfully bending just a little.

"I wanted to tell you earlier, but I... it wouldn't be fair of me to upset you like that. I knew this would only be temporary. I didn't... want to... I didn't want to give you false hope."

She stands close, very close, and wishes she could - ease the pain, somehow, or offer any words to console. Words which would be lies. While she had the ability to lie to others - lying about what was going to happen now seemed cruel. Almost as cruel as the truth.

Her expression - her eyes were wide, her mouth thin, little changes. Communicating a world of sympathy. For a stranger, whom she hadn't actually met.

A bird whose wings have been plucked will shed all its feathers and turn into the beast it was before it evolved into a bird.

What sort of beast was he to become?

"I knew, you were one of them," Dorothy admitted. "Whose Memories had changed."

It was little consolation - her touch wasn't even very warm - but she offered a hand.

She continued, "I know, I have not really met you."

And he took that offered hand, his own touch warm, and only growing hotter by the second.

"No I... guess you haven't." A pause, as he thought over this...

"But I think I'm still... here, even if it may seem like I'm not." He'd seen the posts, after all. Dug through every private correspondence that had been recorded. So many awful, terrible things, but even in them he could still see something.

"When you do meet me, Dorothy... I want you to know that I... I'll remember this. I'll remember what we spoke of, I'll remember how you treated me.

I think I will.

And I don't want you to... It will hurt to know that you... Please..." How to word this, no matter how he said it, it would sound awful.

"... Please don't hate me, Dorothy?"

"You're still the same person," Dorothy confirmed. "Perhaps with different choices. Your life will mean something different. How you view - myself, or Genessia, will be different."

Her grip was firm, not caring about the heat the messenger might be giving off. Her eyes did not move away from his, unblinking as always.

"I don't know the creature you are without your wings," she said, "And I don't know if you will appreciate that I know you with them."

It was the truth, and that was really, in the end, all she could offer.

"You might hate me, but I will not."

The smile was genuine, even if pain made it sharper.

"Yes... I'll still be me." Though whatever he might be in the future was...

Well, there wasn't much time left to wonder about it.

"I don't want to hate you. Please remember."

And then, a wet, visceral POP, the sound of taught flesh bursting, the sound of hardened resin cracking. A wing snapped as a jagged, black line split across the angel's face from ear to ear, viscous, black, acrid smelling fluid starting to ooze from the open wounds.

This would be all she'd see, for the moment, as a pained shriek cut the air.

Strings snapping wildly in that voice, the instrument tightened too far, as the being sank to his knees, burying his bleeding face in his hands as the beautiful plumage blackened, the wings twisting and snapping as the brute force of Hell's influence rolled over him.

The light was snuffed, and the air filled with the scent of caustic poison and drugged smoke.

At the sound - of ripping bone and muscle - Dorothy steps back, releasing his hand, only out of necessity. She didn't think the person he used to be would appreciate having damaged her.

What the person he was becoming wanted, however, remained to be seen.

The smoke, the noxious air surrounded her, and Dorothy did not flinch. She registered the materials of ozone and smoke, acid and chemical, though smell was not the word to use for her sense. Wondered, for a moment, if it would pit or mar her chassis - but at the moment, she didn't care.

It looked painful. Terrible. It was a sort of unmaking.

She wondered, if this was the same, when Angel had fallen - or if it only followed the metaphor. She'd likely would never know.

What was left when it was over might have been hard for many to look at. Beautiful glowing robes ripped open and filthy, wings broken and bleeding, feathers pulled from their homes leaving black and bleeding holes in some places, while the fires of Hell set the tips ablaze, smoldering and glowing with a far fouler light.

He'd not wanted to come back, not like this. He'd hoped his idiotic past iteration might have been smart enough to at least find a hole to hide in, where he could put himself back together in peace. Where he could hide the fact that he'd ever been anything else other than-

His head jerked up, unsure if he was in fact alone now. Had she left? It was easy immediately to tell why he might not have been sure. The golden eyes were gone, long so it would seem, the charred sockets oozing with the same black, foul smelling fluid that oozed from his torn mouth, his mutilated wings.

Silence, desperately listening for any sound.

It troubled her, looking at him suffer - though in the literal sense, it was easy. Simple to stand. To observe. To see one creature's life come apart, becoming unmade, as he became something which seemed to be painful by very nature.

Dorothy was not one to look away from difficult things.

Beside her, unbidden, her hand twitched. No. He would not accept help, would he. Would she, after suffering so much, in front of someone she didn't know?

But she saw his hand come up, hunting, like an animal searching for sound. Her mind raced, possibilities and variables - but - just like with any other stranger - it was perhaps best to start at the beginning.

"What is your name?"

Everything looked as if it hurt, open sores and leaking, infected wounds, burns that still seemed to smolder and smoke even as, by sheer instinct, he moved to rub at them, flaking off burning skin like so much ashy snow.

No, he'd not accept help. This was the pinnacle of humiliation for him. All that carefully crafted effort, the time he took before to never appear weak, to look hurt, to seem small or pitiful, all undone in a second before someone he barely knew.

He'd hoped maybe she'd ran during the transformation.

There was a pained gag when it became clear she was still there, swinging his head towards the sound of her voice.

He had to leave. He had to leave now. But even as he began to dissolve, the air filling with the smell of burning opium, there was an answer, sharp and pained, as discordant as a smashed instrument.

"Szelhamos."

... He owed her that much.

Tannusen also knew a farewell when he heard one, staring down at his phone for a while after receiving that message. He'd nearly taken off for the coordinates the seraph had listed off for Dorothy, but... no, he'd... give him that much.

The only way to resist heading out and taking Jethro to Fayren was to stand stock still in the living room, staring down at the phone in his hands, refusing to let himself move.

Just, staring. Making himself be lost in thought, dwelling, so that he didn't charge off and do something stupid.

"Szelhamos."

From her own mouth, of course, there was none of the harsh tones, clashing, like a piano which had been thrown from a building, and then stepped upon. (A particular sound she knew from experience.) It seemed fitting, that his name as he was now could be spoken so easily by a mortal mouth.

She did not move, she did not run. She did not move closer, to offer help, or sympathy.

Dorothy did say, quietly, "My name is R. Dorothy Wayneright. I wish we could have met under better circumstances."

Then, after a pause, "Is there anyone I can call, for you?"

It seemed she was incapable of completely ignoring her desire to help after all.

Suddenly, the room filled with smoke.

Sweet smelling, hazy and familiar, to an extent, but the obvious scent of the fallen seraph's foul blood burned with it.

He'd panicked.

He'd gone for the last place he'd felt comfortable.

And that was not Hell.

Black and filthy feathers scattered everywhere as the sound of Szel's body hitting the floor like a bag of bones and meat sounded almost wetly, gagging and gasping as shattered words in Enochian cried out.

Half a plea, half a command.

Where was Midge? Calling for the lesser demon before his brain could catch up with his own mistake.

A mass of black bile and sooty feathers, near indecent and only saved on that account from just how the broken wings uselessly fell across him, hair unbound and sticking to the open, bleeding slits on either side of his face.

The discordant, painful noise sounded again-

MIDGE.

"No."

He was almost gone, fading away in the wind. He had a place in mind, he was so sure it was home.

"Leave me.

Forget me."

"I will leave," Dorothy acknowledged. He'd need only have asked.

However, "But I will not forget you."

And watched him disappear, like the horizon of Paradigm itself.

Tannusen's phone hit the floor a second after Szel did, clattering up against the leg of the nearby couch.

"Szel?!" The tiger was at his side immediately, not quite kneeling down; not quite touching, although so close to doing both those things by sheer instinct held back by a shred of reason--

A shred that vanished at the second cry of ruined Enochian. Tannusen's knees hit the floor and before he could stop himself he was touching Szel's shoulders, close to the face but not quite; he couldn't see him well enough just yet, those wounds--

"Don't run, don't-- just stay with me, please--"

It was a lot to come back to. For a while he'd gotten so used to not hurting.

To be abruptly shoved back into reality, his reality, was going to take a lot out of him.

Shit. Shit. He'd fucked up. This was not home in the slightest, and he jerked away as Tannusen touched him. Not far, no, but enough to ensure his fingers wouldn't get too close to the foul liquid oozing from his destroyed body.

Yes, that was right, he'd never seen how he looked for real, had he?

No words for now, he had none to give, each miserably broken wing twitching and jerking as if he'd meant to try and fly away, or cover himself.

His hands moved to his face instead, covering the scratched out eyes and the massive, bleeding gash he could only in generosity call a mouth.

A flicker of glamour and Tannusen carefully draped a cool, smooth sheet over the demon and his ruined, flinching wings. Offering him some cover, and with a material that shouldn't snag and catch like a blanket might have.

"I'm..." tearing up, but he ignored that, not even sure -- in the moment -- why it was happening. It felt a little like it was his turn to get stabbed through the heart, seeing this. No, not seeing; it was knowing this was real. "I'm sorry."

He understood not wanting to be seen.

Blinded, he couldn't see the tears in the other mans eyes, but he could hear them in his voice instead. The familiar sound of a throat tightening, and his own ached in empathy.

"Don't." Hissed, broken, tugging the sheet over every mark of abuse, permanently etched into his flesh.

"Don't pity me."

"It's not pity," Tannusen couldn't stop himself from reaching out again, this time attempting to tug some long, silky hair out of a black, sticky wound, careful to only touch the clean hair itself.

"You know how much we overlap, I... damn it, Szel--"

More hair being moved, if he got away with the first try.

"Let me see you."

"I don't want you seeing this." His ruined face, his broken body, shattered wings and scorched flesh. The hair dragged out of a wound, forever trapped between a fresh cut and scabbing.

"Not you, not anyone." The veil of hair pulled aside, his face still buried in his hands, a single, agonized sob shuddering through him.

"No one should see it."

Pooka were renowned for their ability to give comfort, but Tannusen had never had much gift for it outside of some very specific situations. Which... this didn't fall into any of those.

But he had to try.

Deciding he didn't really care about potential burns, especially with Heather Balm at his disposal, Tannusen shuffled closer to the fallen seraph and attempted to gather him up, sheet and all. "Come here."

He could fight. He might not have enough energy to try teleporting again, but he had enough to push him away, to bite him and give the fairy a fatal dose of the venom that ran through every inch of him.

There was another cry, the same sound it was before-

Midge

And at long goddamn last, there appeared the insect. Not to attack, not to whisk his bleeding master away. The bug popped into existence with a sound not unlike the snapping of fingers, curling up on his chest, clearly unbothered and unaffected by the toxic bile that oozed from him.

This, it seemed, was finally enough to cause the erratic, pained motions to stop, another gurgling, agonized wheeze bubbling up from him before he just... gave up. Not bonelessly, mindlessly limp, but the fight simply drained away, broken wings finally limply hanging from him.

Useless and shattered.

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