genessia | [ Action | OPEN ] if love's a fight then I shall die, with my heart on a trigger

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[ Action | OPEN ] if love's a fight then I shall die, with my heart on a trigger

Who: Cassian Lynch, Tannusen, and OPEN
Where: The hospital folks wake up in when they've died.
What: A direct continuation of this scene.
Where: Six+ hours after Cassian's death.
Warnings: Angst, probably some gore, more angst.
NOTES: Folks are welcome to encounter him wandering the hospital, but please don't prevent him from finding Cass in that thread at the end of it.

- - - - -

Tannusen could be found wandering the hospital in a daze, dried tears caked on his face, his right arm and hand a bloodied, burned mess. His soul, already crumbling to ash in places from the act he'd just committed, smoked and hissed at being inside this banal place that ate away at the Faerie like an acid.

He didn't care.

The tiger wandered the halls, brushing aside the fake people who tried to stop him for one reason or another -- it wasn't visiting hours, his arm -- without seeming to really even register them.

...

Eventually, eventually, one of the rooms he glanced into made him stop in his tracks. Pause, for a long few minutes in shock. He hadn't really expected Cassian's body to re-appear here, and wasn't sure, yet, what it meant that it had. Tannusen stepped into the room and stared at the body for another long moment, not quite registering that it was breathing; the expression was no longer slack with death.

It was only after he'd climbed right onto the hospital bed with the unconscious man that he realized there was a heartbeat drumming away in that thin chest.

He didn't know why.

The tiger just clung to the smaller man and shut his eyes, listening to the sounds of life where there shouldn't have been any.

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"... Ye knew its name?" Cassian had been... sort of aware of it. To an extent, but he'd never told Tannusen...

Then again it was pretty clear Tannusen had known a lot about the beast when the knife finally plunged into his chest.

"... Clean."

He felt clean. For the first time in two thousand years.

"It had a whole list of names," Tannusen raised his good hand to touch the side of Cassian's face, eyes re-opening. "Good. Clean is... good."

Hastur had been anything but.

"You had that thing in you since you were a baby. Even with a normal lifespan..." let alone two thousand years, "its absence must be strange."

Freedom could be too strange for words.

"I can't really... explain it proper. Like bein' sick, perhaps. Your stomach full of filth, skin infected, ye feel stuffed to the gills with foul disease.

... Tis gone now, it is.

I feel as if I'm light. As a child again."

He stroked his fingers across Tannusen's cheek, tracing lightly over his cheek bone.

Tannusen cupped Cassian's cheek with his hand and let his eyes slide closed again, so tired.

Months, and months. Just dragging himself toward the finish line, not caring what lay beyond it... he was worn out, all but a smoldering wreck. Especially inside; his soul was like a big, broken pane of glass in light of what he'd done.

Wielding cold iron, murdering with it, murdering someone who loved and trusted him. Was there anything more banal? In all of any existence?

But here he was, past the finish line with his head in Cassian's lap, listening to his voice, feeling the warmth in the skin under his palm, tracing over his own face...

"I still can't believe you came back," he whispered, "but I'm glad. I'm selfish, but I'm glad. I couldn't... endure, without you."

"I don't want to leave ye, Tannusen."

His hand lovingly, almost reverently, traced over an ear.

"I want to wake up to your face, every day, for the rest of my life. T'would be sweeter than heaven and all the angels in it if I could just wake up and see ye every day."

That ear heated, along with its twin, and Tannusen's cheeks, just a little. A faint blush. Shy.

Yes, even now. Always, when such soft emotions were involved; such heartfelt sentiment.

"...You'll have to, eventually." So, naturally, he ruined it.

Cassian was mortal, now.

Tannusen... was not. Not really. In a constant state of recycling, until all the bengal tigers died out and he ceased to reincarnate and... ceased to exist. No heaven, no hell, nothing to mark that he'd ever been.

"... Aye. One day.

And the gift of my mortality I'll take with me to heaven, and tell everyone who it was that would shatter his own heart and soul to bless me with it."

That was precisely what he'd done, too. Tannusen wasn't surprised Cassian knew the extent of it, even purely human as he was now. Tears seeped out of his closed eyes and tracked up into his hair-line. Only a few; he was too dehydrated from hours of crying to form another stream of them.

"I did say I'd do anything for you," he murmured, "and anything to help you."

The stars hadn't stood a chance.

"And I knew ye'd not lie to me about it."

Not about that. Never about that.

He bent to press a kiss to his head, brushing tears away again as they started to fall.

"Do ye want me to find ye a drink, Tannusen?" A beat

"Water. Somethin' cool."

Tannusen didn't really want to move... but they weren't safely tucked away in the basement yet, were they?

"...Yeah," it was also hard to deny how utterly dehydrated he was. It would only be a minute, at most. Cass was going one whole room away if he just got water out of the kitchen. Just one room, it was fine.

One room.

"I need to get some of the... dross, too," he murmured, trying to sit up.

"Aye, of course, luv." One glass of water with ice, for you Tannusen.

He'd help him to sit up, making sure not ever to disturb the flesh of his burned arm as he went, leaning in once more to press a kiss to his cheek before getting up to get a glass of water.

"How long do ye need? To heal. How many days will it be?"

Tannusen leaned into the kiss to his cheek before Cass got up, himself. "For my arm?"

That was the real question, wasn't it?

What all even could be fixed...

"All of ye."

It was more than his arm, the arm was just the outer crust of the deeper damage, like an iceburg.

All he could see was the smallest fraction of it.

"I should know if the rest can even... even be helped, in like a week."

Was Cassian willing to stay here, that long? Tannusen wasn't letting the man out of his sight for more than five minutes at most, any time soon. Whenever he so much as blinked for too long, he was sure he'd open his eyes to an empty room, find out it had all been a hallucination after all...

"A week, is it." He returned with the glass of water, sitting back down again after placing it close to Tannusen.

Straw included.

"My my... I'm going to have to ask someone to tend to the shop while I'm gone."

Tannusen had fetched a few pieces of very stale gum out of an end-table drawer, but he took the water first, sipping carefully at it lest he freak his system out by trying to chug.

"I'll contact Dorian for you," he offered between sips, "I'm already going to be talking to him. He knew that I was going to have to kill you, if not the exacts on why. Did a lot of research on heaven for me, for peace of mind."

It hadn't granted him much.

But any little scrap had been better than nothing.

He'd wanted to know more about the place Cassian was going...

"He needs to know you didn't stay dead, I know he's worried. Do you want him to mind the place for you?"

"So he knew did he?" Held his tongue and his composure well, Cassian never guessed it. That was a scary level of acting right there.

He's impressed!

"He's a good man, a good worker. Aye, tell him to manage it while I'm out, if he would. He should know I'm safe here. Perhaps a touch... tired, I suppose is the word."

Not nearly as tired as Tannusen, but-

"Going to have to give the man a raise."

"Yeah, I tipped him off after the whole heaven question. I was anonymous on the network, but eventually let him know who I was. And why."

Whelp.

"Here," Tannusen offered one of the stale pieces of gum. Brittle and hard. The foil a little unpleasantly tacky with dust. "Gotta chew the whole thing, foil and all."

Yep, shit's gross. It meant no one would accidentally be popping Glamour from this stash of dross, though. Even if someone didn't mind brittle gum, who would chew it gross foil and all?

"You're going to need an Enchantment to get through the door and I'm obviously not a source right now."

.. Ew.

He takes it, but doesn't look enthused about this, heaving a sigh before popping it into his mouth and cringing.

Bleh.

"Aye, I understand. Is it helpin' though? The bar. Do ye feel any better than ye did before?"

"Yeah," it was at least anything but banal. Tannusen popped a stick of the gross dusty foil and gum into his own mouth, too, chewing away.

For Cassian, the drop of Glamour that would eventually transfer over to him after a minute or so of chewing would bring about an Enchantment. For Tannusen, Glamour reacted much differently, and that drop would slip into his empty stores.

"Once I go all stripey and the world goes weird and such, you can spit it out, there's a trash can by the couch." Probably for this very reason. "I should warn you, I've got an... ally down there. A translation of that damn book of yours, in the form of a copied consciousness and memories, transferred into an AI that projects holograms. It's friendly, despite the subject matter it's storing. Was always trying to calm me down when I grew too distressed. Sang... a lot."

If Cassian recognized who Lil was the past version of, he wanted to make damn sure the priest didn't immediately try to wreck the little ball. It couldn't defend itself, and he'd grown quite fond of it despite his best attempts not to.

Edited 2017-05-28 12:48 (UTC)

Just because it's not banal doesn't mean it's nice, TANNUSEN.

The face the priest made was priceless though, as he chewed on the dusty, brittle stick and foil.

"Aye." Groooosssss gum. "An AI? The devil made an AI that's memorized that book, ain't no one's held it since I've gotten it." All two thousand years ago. "I've not got an issue with the thing if it doesn't bother ye, Tannusen."

Of course, he hasn't seen it yet.

He has no idea.

"Someone I promise you don't like," Tannusen chuckled weakly at that, still chewing away. That expression on Cassian's face was pretty fucking priceless. "You gotta promise not to try to wreck the little thing when you meet it, though. It's been doing its best to keep me... as sane as possible, through this process."

Edited 2017-05-29 04:44 (UTC)

"Tannusen, if I could name all the people I don't like without pausin', we'd be here till Doomsday. Is it a person what who's still technically alive, are they human, and are they present here?"

Look it's not funny this gum is garbage.

However, he's starting to blink a bit more heavily now, as the Enchantment actually starts to take hold.

And for once? It's not a discordant, layered mess. He peers at Tannusen... and then reaches up, resting a finger on a stripe.

"... It looks like ink...?"

"Alive, not human, and on this world," Tannusen confirmed, "I stole the hologram from their sub-archway."

Which was... saying a lot. A lot about a lot.

"Oh, you can actually see me properly, now?" the tiger blinked, and then smiled his lopsided, real smile. "They're not ink. Tiger stripes are all on the skin, the fur just grows black where it sprouts from those spots."

Just like the black streaks now present in his hair. If he had a buzz cut, they'd be stripes.

A long... long pause.

"... I'm gonna break it."

NO CASSIAN. He's already getting irate and they haven't even seen poor little Lil yet.

Still, somewhat distracted by the markings, tracing his fingers over each of them, as if surprised to find the skin smooth, no sign of raised flesh or dips.

"It's... it's lovely." Oh and to finally see it without getting dizzy, that was a nice touch.

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