genessia | [ action | closed ] in the dark, in the night and in my dreams

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[ action | closed ] in the dark, in the night and in my dreams

Who: Cassian Lynch, Tannusen
What: One night out of the many that happen regularly, off camera.
Warnings: Angst.

Tannusen's never been an easy sleeper. Before chrysalisis, he'd had more than enough nightmare fuel just from living under Trench's thumb. After, the downpour of snippets of countless lives had simply added itself to the pile.

These days, most of his nightmares revolved around more recent events. Even those that didn't start that way often ended up morphing in that direction; a tightrope act gone wrong melted into the sensation of that knife in his hand, popping through Cassian's chest cavity.

Sometimes, other nightmares added their own twist. Sometimes it happened in the Subarchway, just like in reality, the Faerie easing Cassian's dying body into the mud, badly-burned hand still clutching the knife through his heart. Other times, the death happened in a dark and filthy cell somewhere out in the southwestern desert, done as a mercy killing to save the priest from the unending horrors that awaited him if he continued to draw breath.

Once in a while, the theme of the nightmare came after the killing. After he'd washed and re-dressed and tended to the body, like in reality, and those blank-faced automations had come to take him away. In his dreams, he wandered the hospital corridors and either never found Cassian at all, or found him still dead, room temperature and slack-faced.

Permanent.

Gone.

Lost by his own traitorous hand.

No matter what spin the nightmare of the night took, Tannusen never woke gently from these dreams. Nothing so dramatic as to gasp or jerk awake, but consciousness would suddenly click on, and he'd hold very still, just like now.

Just like now, awake in the dark, heart pounding in his chest, his hands shaking slightly wherever they'd come to rest. The burn scarring all across his right hand ached more than usual, even where it spiraled up his arm, and he slowly pulled it close to tuck against his chest. Eyes still closed, he shuddered, wondering how much had been real. Maybe Cassian being alive in the hospital had been the dream, after all... maybe reality was a lot colder than that.

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Tannusen would wake, yes, and the burn would ache, of course.

And yet, next to him, would be Cassian.

His arm flung over the other man, slack in sleep but still holding on, his face almost buried in Tannusen's side.

Breathing, if a bit harshly and shallow, but it was the same was it was every night. So close, in direct contrast to the cranky and independent little asshole he was during the day.

Needy and soft.

As if Tannusen's wakefulness was infectious, he stirred, mumbling a few slurred words in Irish before reaching up to touch the other mans hair.

"... Had a fright?"

Oh. Oh he could hear his heart, his head resting so close to his chest.

"Is... is this real?"

Oh, he asked that a lot, these days.

Voice tight, throat closed, eyes still shut because if he opened them and this wasn't real...

Ah, so it was a fright.

The response was for the still groggy, but decidedly more concerned than tired man to climb up the bed a bit more, and brush a kiss against the other mans jaw.

"Aye. Still real."

The low rasping growl of the accent, a bit cracked due to sleep yet.

"I'm still here. You're still here."

"It's not me I'm worried about," Tannusen lifted his hand, the one that wasn't echoing that pain from before, to touch the side of Cassian's face. Eyes still shut, but it wasn't like Cassian was hard to find after that little kiss.

"Sometimes the dreams are exactly what happened, but you never come back."

It was said in a quiet murmur, barely audible at all.

"Sometimes you come back just long enough to die again. And sometimes it's even more..."

The ordeal hadn't been the sort of thing one just shrugged and moved on from just because everything had turned out alright in the end. That trauma was never going to totally leave, let alone this quickly.

Even his soul wasn't ever going to be the same. Yes, Szel had stitched all the broken bits back together, but...

"Tis you I worry for like this." Even if his own death would never leave Cassian's memory either, he'd still... not entirely been able to view it as negative. In that moment, that release had been the kindest thing he could ever remember.

But those were words he felt would not help the situation.

"Tis safe here, Tannusen. I promise, between yourself, Dorian and everyone we know, tis very safe."

Another kiss, softly at his temple.

"... Do ye need to walk for a bit?"

Tannusen finally cracked his eyes open, searching out Cassian in the dark. Easier for him than it would be for many, with the senses of his other form bleeding over in places.

"If you want to," the tiger murmured, shifting in place carefully in place to lay on his side, facing the priest.

He wasn't going to go for a stroll by himself, though. If he let Cassian out of his sight, he'd be certain the man had never come back after all. This could all be delusion, sheer madness cracking through his already broken mind in response to the banality of murdering a loved one with an iron knife.

He would not at all be hard to find, having almost draped himself now entirely across Tannusen himself.

He'd shift to allow Tannusen to move, curling up against him.

"Only if ye feel ye need to, luv. Somethin' to clear your mind. If ye think ye'd feel better walkin', then I won't hesitate to come along."

Gotta put on real clothes though for that, he's not wandering around in his pajamas.

"This is never going to clear," Tannusen couldn't help the faint earnestness in his tone, there. Cassian was saddling himself with a broken man, one even more broken than when they'd met.

He didn't... "It's never going to. I'll still be like this even after I unravel."

Very little of what had gone down had anything to do with him being a Faerie, after all.

"I was already too mad. Now I'm just... I can't trust my own senses, Cass. What if this is the dream? That happens to my kind... bedlam is a very real risk, with how high my glamour's gotten..."

Edited 2017-08-19 07:12 (UTC)

"Nae, Tannusen. I'll help ye, every step. I promise, even if it never goes away... ye will know peace."

At least some extent of it. He'd certainly try.

"I'll find help for you. Us."

Since at this point, both of them... needed it. Cassian was no paragon of sanity himself after all, not after all he'd seen, all he'd been through. This was as much necessary for himself as it was for Tannusen.

"I'm not a dream, Tannusen. I'd do anythin' to prove it to ye."

"And your lungs," Tannusen added, because now he'd pester the other man if it came to it. That body swapping incident had been a lot of fun and games, yes, but it had also informed him just how bad Cassian's breathing situation was.

"You're... mortal, now. If you don't take care of yourself, you'll die all the sooner. If this is real, I don't want..."

He'd already cared for Cassian's corpse once, and he'd do it again when it came to it. But the further away that was, the better.

"Aye... yes, and me lungs." No getting around that now. It was one thing to be a wheezing mess, it was another when your wheezing mess of a body was taken for a test drive by your fiance.

Couldn't really downplay the sensation now, now could he?

"Tis another thing we'll work upon. For now, I only want to see you happy, Tannusen. Not banal.

Just happy."

"I've never thought you wanted me to be banal," Tannusen murmured, reaching to cup his scarred hand against Cassian's cheek. The ache was minimal, now. Talking was driving some of the fog of those nightmares back, for the time.

It wouldn't last; it would never last. Tannusen couldn't trust his own senses, his own mind; himself in general. One constant loop of gaslighting, because he knew he was mad, and madness meant nothing could be relied on. Bedlam really was perched right on the edge of his mind, waiting like a vulture. He could feel it. Every time he looked at a stranger and didn't know if what he was seeing was 'real' or not; every time he woke from one of these nightmares...

"As for myself, I'll do whatever you think is best, Cassian. I mean it. Not because of any power dynamic shit, just... I don't know what to do. I'm becoming my own unreliable narrator, at this point. I'll tell you if something is going to fuck me up as a Fae, but otherwise... if you're getting help too, I'll do it."

"I'm just guessin' meself, luv..." A scary thought for himself, he needed a professional. Cassian had 2000 years of life, yes, but... Well that wasn't a psychology degree.

"Aye, of course I'll find help. Anythin'."

Anything that would keep Tannusen on a road towards getting better. Even if he was never at a hundred percent, it was better than being at the bottom.

Once again, he settled next to him, curling up against the other man and draping an arm over him.

"I'd do anythin'."

"Someday," Tannusen sighed, shutting his eyes again. He wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon, but he could relax anyway. "Someday I want to be less of a worry for you. Seems all I'm good for these days is angst."

"I don't mind worryin' for ye."

It meant there was someone who mattered that much. Someone he could worry about. Who wouldn't perish long, long before he ever would. His fingers curled in Tannusen's hair, threading the ends through his fingers.

"Please don't let it consume ye."

"You should have someone who makes you happy, not just worried."

There it was. The usual argument... but it wasn't going to go away anytime soon.

"Ye do make me happy. Every day, wakin' up to see ye, next to me in bed. That makes me happy. Seein' ye in me house, hearin' ye speak to me every day.

That makes me happy.

Knowin' you're here. That ye will be here, that I won't be wakin' up alone anymore. That I don't have to be alone anymore.

This alone makes me happier than anything ye could ever imagine."

"You shouldn't have to settle for 'better than nothing'," Tannusen murmured, "better than nothing, who also stabbed you in the heart. Better than nothing, who comes with so much fucking baggage. There has to be better than better than nothing. You deserve better, and you'll never convince me otherwise."

"I don't want 'better'. Tis a subjective term."

He moved to take his face, gently, between his hands.

"You're all I want. You're everythin' I want, Tannusen. I don't need 'better', because 'better' don't exist for me. I had two thousand years to find 'better', and I've not found a man that fit that term until I met ye.

And thanks to ye, I know peace, and I'll know finality. Ain't a single man I've ever met who gave me that gift."

Tannusen lifted a hand to the back of one of Cassian's. The scarred one again, with that detailed little claddagh ring on his finger.

"I'm going to miss you when that happens."

Only one of them was mortal, after all. And when Tannusen stopped reincarnating, what waited for him?

Nothing. There was no heaven or hell for his kind, only nothingness. They'd never see each other again.

"... I'll miss ye too, Tannusen."

It still wouldn't really be heaven without him. The thought was dismal, painful. He didn't want to think about it, and he tucked into him once more.

"Mum would have loved ye. I think me father would have liked to have known ye too. Didn't believe in fairies, he did."

A pause.

"... Would have been funny to see the look on his face if he met ye."

"Most people I've dealt with didn't believe in Fae, to be fair," Tannusen's hand shook a little against Cassian's, the tiger trying to tamp down grief that was hopefully decades and decades away from being necessary... again.

"It's commonly known now but back then, they hid."

He moved to press his lips to Tannusen's middle knuckle.

"I'm the luckiest man in this entire feckin' town, Tannusen. I love ye more than anythin' else, anyone else."

"I'm sure he'd have had plenty more to be disturbed by than that," Tannusen didn't quite manage to sound amused, it was such a weak attempt at humor. A priest from two thousand years ago? Tannu could only imagine his views on a wide assortment of things that fit him.

Like being male, and having seduced the guy's priest of a son.

...Yeah, Tannusen expected that guy wouldn't have been his biggest fan, Fae or not.

"If you found someone better, you know I wouldn't get in the way."

"Tannusen."

He gestured now, out the window.

"Never mind ye compared to the lumps and pillocks of me own world, the lumps and pillocks there are masterminds, artists and poets compared to the wobblin', slack jawed, gigglin' wads of interdimensional goose droppin's here.

If ye be better than anyone I've found at home, ye be a god compared to anyone else here."

That earned a startled, but amused, sound out of Tannusen.

"What, you mean you're not going to be running off with Ted?"

It couldn't be all bad, if Cassian had it in him to insult the whole rest of the world.

"If by runnin' off with Ted ye mean runnin' off with bits and pieces to feed to the frogs, aye sure I'll run off with him."

Cassian.

"I'll run off with that giggly blond minger too.

Run her off a feckin' cliff."

"I did offer to invite him to the wedding to use as a piñata," Tannusen pointed out, "it's not too late."

"Even if ye did we all know all he'd do is make obnoxious phone calls from the next city over for a full hour.

The man's twig and berries approach the size and functionality of the statue of David, Tannusen."

"Just think, he's already dressed the part; we wouldn't even have to staple tissue paper streamers on him." But no, for one, he wouldn't show up. For two, a piñata was supposed to be silent and Tannusen doubted Ted was capable of silence even when unconscious.

Three, he doesn't actually want to deal with that nonsense.

"Sorry I aggro-ed that other idiot onto you. And that poor potato joke didn't deserve to be beaten to death and then beaten into paste and eaten. Though I suppose it explains some things."

"Eats it by the dollop, doesn't she? It's the lead paint chips that gives it the pleasin' texture, I'm sure."

"Crunchy," Tannusen agreed, and reached over to thread his fingers through Cassian's hair.

"Like her feckin' beloved crisps."

He couldn't hide the laugh behind the caustic tone though, as Tannusen moved to run his fingers through his hair.

"Maybe she has the two confused. She did say they make them out of lots of stuff besides potatoes."

"Dim as a dead bulb, she is. I've a mind to hunt her down and pelt her with potatoes, but I don't need the constabulary crawlin' up me arse."

"Considering how fast she had at least one other idiot charging in blindly to her defense, I think you'd get swarmed by more than the local popo."

Nothing he hasn't seen before, of course. Entire Freeholds full of idiots had tried to try to take him out over perceived slights against a member or three of theirs. One of those Freeholds didn't exist anymore, nor did the house Tannusen and Isaac had owned in Toronto, packed full of Roande's best explosives before the twenty or so Fae had gone sneaking in there looking to jump the pair.

It was all one big crater, now.

Yeah, the tiger wasn't a big fan of herd mentality.

"Unrelated, but you know that spell I accidentally turned Lil human with?"

May as well bring it up now, now that his mind's a little cleared.

"Bloody useless twat, can't even defend herself against a bloody child."

The muttering tapered off as Tannusen mentioned the spell. His brow arched a little.

"Aye, I recall."

"I need to practice with it more before I use it for this, but," Tannusen continued to toy with Cassian's hair, "I could use it to turn you into a tiger temporarily, if you ever want to know what that's like. Or anything, really. Works on me, too."

A few months ago, he might have balked at the idea. Now, however, considering everything that has happened...

"... Sounds like it might be interestin' aye."

"It's not based off your current form, like my pooka shifting is."

So he wouldn't be stuck as a scraggly, albino, wheezing tiger with bad eyesight.

"A... tiger is a great deal different than a human though. Different leg shapes, skull and teeth and such...

Seems like it might hurt a bit."

"Oh," Tannusen blinked, not having considered that concern. "Well, like I said, I'll be trying it out on others first. But if it works like my pooka shifting does, it's instant. It's nothing like having everything pulled and pushed into shape. Neither of us has enough mass for a tiger, even, if that was the case. Let alone a dragon or something."

That's right.

Once he gets this down he can turn them into fuckin' dragons.

"Lil certainly didn't have the mass or the meat for a human body."

"... Aye, this is true." He'd almost forgotten about the tiny AI.

"... Alright, and we know now it wears off eventually." He'd been so relieved when the angel shrunk back down to six inches again.

"It doesn't tire ye none, does it?"

"No more than drawing doors through things or shifting myself the normal way," Tannusen twisted some of the hair he was playing with, before letting it un-twist on its own. "Glamour is glamour. None of my magic takes anything else out of me. And when I do it on purpose, I should be able to control how long it lasts. Lil going human was an accident. One minute I was talking to the little ball, the next there was a damn human on the table sending papers everywhere."

"So it won't hurt you, and it won't hurt me, and it certainly won't be permanent."

Not seeing any downsides so far.

"Will I still think like meself? Or will I be a tiger all the way through?"

"From what I can tell, it's supposed to work a lot like pooka shifting. Maybe a little less complete, since I am a tiger and you'd be borrowing the form of one, but it has to come with a set of instincts or the form wouldn't work. You wouldn't be able to walk. And if I shifted one of us into something with wings, apparently flight works just fine -- that wouldn't be the case if the shape didn't come with a manual of a sorts."

Tannusen shrugged a little.

"I've not used Elder-Form on myself yet, so I don't know for sure. But even for a pooka, I retain my own thoughts while shifted. It's just that there's a lot of instincts piled on over the top of it, a lot more than usual. I've always got some of them, no matter the shape I'm in, but even you would be in danger for a second or two if you startled me too badly while I was in my other form."

And if there was one person he wouldn't consciously harm, it was Cassian.

Not without a damn good reason, anyway.

"But considering I can still cast spells and fight alongside squishy meaty people while in that shape, I'd say it's not too bad other than the startle response. We've both got pretty significant willpower."

"So I'll think a bit like a cat, but a cat with a mans brain, aye?" That, at least, was what he could make of it.

A very, very smart cat.

"Just have to be careful then, I suppose. I don't want to run headfirst into someone, scare meself shitless and eat them."

Tannusen laughed at that, "If it's anything like being a pooka, it's like being yourself... but sharper. Like being you but with another layer added on top, I suppose. Everything's sharper, stronger, with urges and instincts firing off in all directions. It's nothing like being controlled or anything, it's just... like tuning into a different frequency. I imagine if there's any form I can cast with such accuracy, it'll be that one."

Otherwise any other kith could just emulate being a pooka with this spell, and they couldn't.

"As for running into someone and then eating them, I'll be with you the whole time. I just want you to see what it's like, if you want to. Not come out of it bloodied and traumatized."

Tannusen knew well how that could go.

He'd done it, after all. In more than one lifetime. Bloodied and traumatized summed up his entire experience as a tiger in that last lifetime, the one he had the pelt and skull from.

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[ action | closed ] in the dark, in the night and in my dreams

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