Forward dated to After The Water Event because something something something

[feckinboomstick]

Who: Cassian (Now as one person) and Amberdrake
Where: Attleton, at Drake's office
Why: We've all learned an important life lesson about punching tigers.

So... returning to one body was actually a lot less painful than one would imagine. Rather it sort of happened while both halves were asleep.

The painful part, on top of clashing memories, was the insane amount of physical damage. All of it. Just all the physical damage ever. Is his jaw broken? Shit there's holes in him too holy fuck how did those get there- Oh his ribs were broken again.

... Welp.

There was always Drake, but as Cassian recalled... Drake didn't much care for Everglade. And he really didn't need this to be more trouble than it already was.

Which was why, a good... hour or more later, Amberdrake would get a visitor.

In Attleton.

In a very thick obscuring cloak, not that it'd matter due to the fact that one of them was an empath and the other one was walking around with like more than three broken bones at a time.

Not even a voiced answer to alert or greet him, just a text-

I've cocked some things up

Comments

[feckinboomstick]

"I don't think ye'll be such a poor partner that I'll be ruined for the rest of me life.

... I bet ye twenty red bills I'm the one that cocks it up."

[black_black_heart]

"That would be an impressive feat," Tannusen admitted. It was a joke, but his tone just wasn't there.

[feckinboomstick]

"Don't fret about it. I'm not askin' for it here and now on the desk, or tomorrow, or the week after.

It'll happen when it happens."

[black_black_heart]

"That poor desk would break anyway," at least he sounded mildly amused at the mental image.

Tannusen continued to stare at nothing in particular for a moment, then shut his eyes with a nigh-imperceptible sigh. He was an angsty, sad piece of shit when one got past the flirting and joking... and that very fact, because he knew it, just made it even worse. His brain was one big catch-22.

[feckinboomstick]

"Ye need a sturdier one in here with your activities." Yeah he knew better.

Not much to say now, but Cassian didn't leave. Just continued to rest beside him and hold his hand, trying to think of a way to get Tannusen out of the funk that he'd gotten him into now.

Good job, Cassian.

[black_black_heart]

"Mh," Tannusen had gotten himself into this funk, thank you very much. He was extremely skilled at it.

As he'd told Cassian before, his brain was just a bunch of bear traps. Stumbling into one here and there was just... going to happen. No avoiding it.

But, he turned his hand over in Cassian's and very deliberately knit their fingers together as a silent apology for being such a downer. His hand wasn't nearly as callused as the priest's, but he didn't seem to mind that any more than he minded anything else about the guy.

Tannu stayed quiet for a while, but eventually something occurred to him to ask. "How did you avoid Holly Strike, during the fight? It was that spell near the end."

Look at that topic shift.

[feckinboomstick]

He's still gonna feel bad about it, okay? Tannusen was like the one person here he actually really liked, it sucks that bringing things up makes him sad.

It's normal to be sad about that!

For a time, they sat there in silence, Cassian just fine with this. Then the question came up, and there was a faint, non-committal shrug from the priest.

"Tis how it's been since I stopped agin'. Guns misfire, nooses snap or loosen, wood won't ignite or goes out immediately.

Escaped from bein' drowned once because the lock was faulty.

... "Lucky" is what they call it, I don't know if that's the case for me."

[black_black_heart]

"Is it just fatal things it counters? I know you get injured." After all, Tannusen had bitten the hell out of his shoulder, and broken his jaw... and helped re-break some ribs.

[feckinboomstick]

"Just fatal things, apparently. I've still gotten me arse kicked more times than I can count. Always stops just shy of dyin', course."

[black_black_heart]

"Well, I'm glad I didn't kill you, on top of everything else," Tannusen sighed, and was finally able to look at the priest without squinting. The spell had apparently worn off, finally. "And Holly Strike is a bad way to go, anyway. You know, it's technically the same spell as that healing I did on you that one time... how weird is that?"

[feckinboomstick]

"Trust me at this point I think that's impossible, so ye don't need to fret about accidentally murderin' me.

Somethin' will keep it from happenin', even if it's the ceilin' fallin' on ye."

That... was odd, he had to think on how that might work.

... God.

"How does the spell operate then?"

[black_black_heart]

"When it's healing, Heather Balm, it just mends what's broken -- it can be a person or a tree or someone's glasses. The spell itself doesn't care, although we're all better at casting on some types of things than others.

"And when it's used offensively, Holly Strike, it breaks the target by expanding upon tiny imperfections. Little microscopic scratches become deep gouges, and so on. It feels exactly as great as it sounds."

It had been the one thing in the whole fight to rip a scream out of the Tannusen double who'd been hit by it. His skin had been falling off in big bloody strips, after! Getting his eye torn out, getting bounced off walls, electrocuted, having his shin bone snapped through his skin... no screaming.

Holly Strike, though, shit. Not a good way to go, indeed.

"It's something of a... two sides of the same coin, situation. My teeth do the same level of damage, but way more localized."

[feckinboomstick]

"Huh... what a curious thing. Never heard of a healin' spell gone rogue like that before. If ye want to hurt someone with healin' 'em ye usually just go for accelerated growth." The result was a tumor, of course. Accelerate it too quickly and it would result in burst cells and massive wounds, but that usually took someone who really knew what they were doing... or who really didn't.

"I know a bit about your teeth at this point. Had some trouble gettin' that one patched back up. I've been pokin' a sample of the effected flesh for a bit to see just what kind of magic was infused with it to keep it from sealin' up properly."

[black_black_heart]

"A... sample of the effected flesh," Tannusen repeated, and squinted at Cassian -- and this time, there was no chimerical glow in effect. More to the point, he squinted at Cassian's shoulder, as though trying to figure out how much of it was missing under the guy's shirt. "The fuck?"

[feckinboomstick]

"I asked the man who what treated me to take a piece of it when he told me it wasn't reactin' to the magic correctly." You know. As you do. Just has a piece of his own muscle and flesh in his house, no big deal!

"I wanted to know why, tis all, couldn't ask ye at the time."

[black_black_heart]

"If you pulled my teeth while I was dead," Tannusen continued to eye Cassian a little dubiously, "...you know, I don't know where I was going with that. They'd be human, wouldn't they? Boring."

[feckinboomstick]

"Actually, I didn't think about that." He did eat that eyeball he found up there though, from what he can remember of his petty, bitter, less pleasant half.

"I was a bit preoccupied at the time. I could have dredged ye up from the frog pond after I tossed ye in there to get 'em but..."

He shrugged.

"Maybe I'll just have to wait for when ye inevitably get one punched out of your face."

[black_black_heart]

Eww, don't tell him about the eyeball. Eyeballs are gross, especially when you just have a human sized mouth to work with. They're all... slick and squishy and not in a nice, meaty way.

"Well, you weren't missing much. I've killed my share of Fae, I know what happens when we die. It would have been plain old human teeth. I bet my ears went round again, too. They're only pointed because my Mask has cracks in it -- once the Mask is all that's left, everything... reverts."

That would be the easiest, quickest way to tell when he'd unraveled. His ears would suddenly be rounded and not pointy!

"And you're out of luck," Tannusen gave in to a measure of his curiosity and prodded at Cassian's shoulder with the fingers of his free hand. It felt solid enough... no craters from gouging tissue out. "I'm pretty sure my jaw would come off, first. The nockers I hired to modify them did pretty good work."

Then, because Cassian seemed interested in this shit, he volunteered more information.

"They're actually manticore fangs, upper and lower. I took them off the one I helped to kill. The nockers filed them down with the same tools they forge chimera with until they'd fit in my jaw, ripped out the originals, and put these in. But since they're not natural, they didn't just sit in the sockets like teeth normally do. They had to be fused to the bone."

Which meant a lot of gum -- and nerves -- had been drilled out. What a fun process. Tannusen would give Cassian three guesses as to whether he was awake and aware for it, and the first two guesses didn't count.

"...Worth it, though." Even if he'd nearly blacked out a dozen different times during the operation. Nockers who lived exclusively in the Dreaming didn't really understand pesky little things like anesthesia. They didn't usually operate on real people!

[feckinboomstick]

"From what I recall ye seemed pretty drably human when I saw ye last. But to be honest, I didn't really poke around the corpse for that long. ... Tossed ye in the frog pond actually, think ye were in there for a few good days before some weirdo's what fished ye out."

May as well be open with that too! WHY NOT.

No there was no craters in there, everything had filled in pretty nice. He ached a brow faintly, but after a moment just silently figured out what Tannusen was poking around for. There was a scar, but nothing really noteworthy unless one managed to get that shirt off.

"What so ye just replaced your teeth with someone elses? And ye call me strange." Now who's the weirdo?

It's the guy with a lion scorpion dragon's teeth in his mouth, that's who.

"I suppose if ye tend to bite people a great deal, then it'd be worth it. I'd just settle for some brass knuckles."

[black_black_heart]

"I've had to walk into enough situations with no weapons on me that I prefer not to rely on anything like that, not even blunt punching weapons," Tannusen's fingers lingered for a second where the unseen scars undoubtedly were; he knew the exact spot he'd bitten, after all. But he took his hand back a moment later.

"Plus they're a great last resort weapon. Even if I'm tied up, most people don't expect my bite to be half as bad." Because seriously, he'd picked one of the least lethal spots he could have in their positioning. Which was just as well, he had no idea what Cassian's 'luck' would have done to him if he'd tried to bite his throat out.

"And they shift with me... I do a lot of my fighting in my other form. Fighting's one of the few things I'm good for, so." So, he may as well modify himself accordingly.