genessia | [closed] silence is broken

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[closed] silence is broken

Who: Szelhamos and Tannusen
Where: Genessia City - Velvet Lust
When: Backdated to the heeeaaaatwaaaave.
What: Szel's been actively avoiding talking to Tannu, while still hanging around his bar, since the soul incident.
Warnings: Talk of old abuse.

After the first time Tannusen had approached the demon and Szel had literally just poofed away in a cloud of smoke, the tiger had backed off. Plenty of reasons ran through his head why the man may not want to deal with him directly anymore, and... well, he couldn't blame him.

Tannusen just went about business as usual, lounging around in his usual upstairs booth sipping tea. His legs were on the seat itself while his back was against the wall the booth stood beside, and he was actively doing something or other on a laptop on his lap. Reading, mostly. And sometimes a lot of typing.

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"Well, you've been extremely interested in not hearing much of anything, from me," Tannusen set the little machine onto the table. Szel had claimed nothing had changed, which to Tannusen meant he was still supposed to leave the spider alone. "But yes, you dress-down nicely. I suppose this 'heat wave' everyone is complaining about must suit you."

"I was working on something."

Specifically working on thinking of what the hell to say. About everything.

About what he saw.

If he should say anything at all. Honestly, it didn't seem like something that would be quite appropriate being brought up in a public place off handedly.

'By the way, what was with all that past abuse lol' seemed like a shitty thing to say.

"I don't have to hear anything if I saw half of it."

"You were working on something... in my bar, where if I got a little too close to your seat you poofed out like a cartoon character leaving a person-shaped dust cloud behind?"

Tannusen didn't bother to not sound skeptical, there.

"Ah, yes. I figured by your reaction that you saw quite a lot. I didn't see any of it."

But he'd seen Szel. Yes indeed. He'd seen how he'd reacted, and he doubted very much it was Dakshin Rai's atrocities that had been causing such a stir in the seraph as to make him try to sing for him.

Edited 2017-07-16 06:54 (UTC)

"Excuse you." Asshole.

"I know this is going to astound you but sometimes I like to say things that aren't tailor made to hurt feelings. Don't even tell me you don't have any, you and I both know that is a massive cesspit of bullshit."

He's allowed to lie all day about feelings though.

"I saw a lot yes." A beat, as he pulled his thoughts together.

"It's why I left, but not for the reasons I know you're telling yourself. You're not disgusting.

... Like that.

You can be, but that has less to do with your past and more to do with you giving me 3 AM booty calls."

"Oh, like you didn't end up enjoying yourself too, that time," Tannusen chuckled.

Look at that deflection. Look at it, blind guy.

"And I am."

Disgusting.

"I figured you'd seen it and cottoned on in a way Cass never will."

"We're not talking about that, that was an example of the type of disgusting you are."

Gross.

"It's a very common type of gross that most surface dwelling beings of actual flesh and blood are, congratulations. You're almost normal."

Anyway.

"Situations beyond your control however do not make you disgusting."

"..." Tannusen was quiet, losing much of the polish that Szel couldn't see anyway, gaze dropping down and to the side, to his own hand on the table.

"... It's like assuming you're trash because someone set your house on fire. Maybe, just maybe, the person who set your house on fire is a garbage person, and you were but one of a hundred other people who've had their house set on fire, and they're wrong.

And you didn't do anything to deserve it.

Sometimes, people are horrible, terrible, garbage people to people who don't deserve it.

The universe is a bleak, dismal, callous machine that doesn't care who or what it chews up as it forges ahead, and plenty of perfectly good, perfectly innocent, perfectly wonderful people get devoured and shat back out, Tannusen.

You're going to be married to someone who I know would agree with me."

Yeah, yeah he knows. Of course he knows.

"Probably because he has personal experience in the matter."

"I could have run away sooner. I could have killed him."

Tannusen spoke almost too quietly to be heard over the loud club around them.

"But I liked it."

"You could have set everything on fire, cannibalized half the population and carved someone's skull into a fashionable drinking glass, since we're on the topic of could haves.

You could have also been a child in the middle of no where with no where to run, no one else to take care of you and burdened with the knowledge that if you'd skipped off you would have been dragged kicking and screaming back to the fold for a doubly worse time, still within the area of could haves.

You could have been trying to stay alive.

I've never really met someone who chewed their consensual fuck partners face off because they just liked the sex so much."

Happy kids also didn't try to carve their own heart out, panicking because the knife slipped, grinding and scraping against their own breast bone... making a mess. Failing.

Tannusen had gone quiet again, staring at his own hand on the table once more. The ring on it felt heavy; how could he possibly be worth Cassian's time...

This was becoming increasingly frustrating. It was impossible for Szel to separate the two of them, not after what he knew now.

The insinuation that anything was liked was-

Offensive. Deeply, stupidly, horrifically offensive and it was taking a lot of self control to not lunge at the table and grab Tannusen by his shirt collar.

"It's amazing what the threat of worse things can do for your staying power when your life is already shit."

Tannusen didn't blame other victims for what had happened to them.

Only himself. Only ever himself. He'd been thoroughly brainwashed, and it had never worn off.

That was why he needed 'maintenance', and Szel, so far as Tannusen knew, did not.

"...Yeah," the tiger cleared his throat, still staring at that ring. He slid his legs off the bench and sat up properly, at least, reaching for his tea. "You gonna sit down, or is this just a drive-by 'hey I know you're crazy' and then poof?"

Maintenance happened in other shapes and forms.

Locking himself in the library for weeks on end without food or drink or conversation, or maybe storming through the fortress looking for less loyal demons to rip apart.

That was maintenance. A violent reassertion of control. He was in charge, he made the rules, he could do whatever he pleased.

With that, he did sit. Hurled himself into the seat, a flash of wings flying this way and that before they vanished once more into nothing.

"You're possibly the most annoying person I have ever met in my entire life, and that includes your fiance."

"I'm starting to think that's a compliment, from you," Tannusen fiddled with his tea on the table for a moment, then took a sip. "Assuming you still like me despite it all. Has..." a pause. How to phrase this? Phrase it in a way that didn't make him sound too fucking pathetic, anyway. "Has seeing what you've seen made you like me any less?"

He'd accept a 'yes' at face value. Expected it. Was used to it. Already braced for it, and it was there very subtly in his tone, ever so slightly resigned. It was also there in the way the vinyl seating squeaked faintly as he leaned back just a bit, unconsciously making space for it. That 'yes'...

"Well I don't hate myself, Tannusen."

So there you go.

That's pretty damn honest right there, blatantly up front with his issues and problems therein.

"..." That was an interesting response, and not the expected one. A bit messed up, but not in the usual way.

"...You know, I can't promise that if he walked in the door right now and ordered me to murder everyone in this building and then sit at his feet like a hound, that I wouldn't do it."

Brainwashing.

"Well I'd be sincerely very angry at you, and once I was finished picking his skull fragments out of my teeth I might have to not talk to you again for another month."

"I'm just saying I'm still..." Trench's. At the end of the day... no matter how he might wish he was less broken...

"Might be worth it to get him eaten, though. I've tried a few times, but."

Yeah, no conscious loyalty there. Just pure brainwashing. Programming. Trench had had access to him from before he'd known himself, after all.

"There's therapy for that. I'm not suggesting I do it either. I know for a fact I would make it worse."

So hey, at least he's trying to be a good friend right.

"Short of me giving you a concussion and hoping it wipes out the first sixteen to twenty years of your life, there's nothing I can do to help."

An amused snort at that, Tannusen back to playing with his tea cup. At least he was more relaxed about it, now, instead of tensely waiting for that rejection. So many people who'd found out even a fraction of what had happened had been quick to find other places to be.

And that hadn't been very many people.

"Yeah... let's not, I don't need more head trauma, of either variety. Besides, you stitched my soul up, I'd say that's your good deed for the month."

"I didn't even get a decent thank you from your little pet goblin for that, do you know that? Hasn't even called me up to slur insults at me and throw in a 'by the way thanks', which is how I assume he communicates."

"You did tell him not to contact you," Tannusen pointed out, "he tends to take things like that at face value. He didn't... know."

Know Tannusen and Szel's actual dynamic, that was. Know that Tannusen trusted Szel and that it was actually, shockingly enough, somewhat founded.

...Hey, to be fair, even Tannusen was surprised at this shit. Weren't they supposed to be enemies or something?

"He flat out forbade me from inviting you to the wedding. So, you know, if you eavesdrop just be sneaky. It won't be that interesting anyway, just us being mushy idiots at each other."

"Since when does he listen to me? I figured he'd do it regardless, that's how he handles everything else in his life."

Little asshole.

"Well of course he would, and no I'm not going, I'd rather stick my face in a bucket full of lobsters then see you two cry on each other and make out."

"Him listening is his 'thank you'."

Like, has Cassian ever had a reason to cooperate with something Szel said, before?

"Also he's a little busier these days than he was on your world."

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