#if i had my way this would be the prompt for torisen to spend kind of an unexpected amount of time in tagmeth

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Waking Up Not Knowing Where They Are + tori taking care of jame?

Aw, HELL yeah.  Once again, I’m sorry my readmores are borked.  For this H/C meme!

It was Marc who sent him the letter--Marc, by way of Rue’s stiff and uncertain script.  It was a short thing, barely the barest courtesies before Our lady has been poisoned, and we cannot wake her.  We have captured the culprit and taken her into custody, but she was only a tool.  If you have Kindrie Soulwalker with you, my lord, or know where he might be found, we need him here.

Because of course it had to be Kindrie, Torisen remembers thinking in a daze as he sent for Burr and told him that Torisen would be riding to Mount Alban.  Of course Jame would allow no other healer near her, even unconscious, even poisoned.  Torisen can’t imagine what might happen to a healer who attempted to force their way into Jame’s soul unwelcomed--it didn’t occur to him to wonder what might happen to Jame, except that she might feel sorry, later, for the healer’s fate.

Now he is at Tagmeth, and Kindrie is sitting at Jame’s head, his fingers light on her closed eyelids, and Torisen is trying not to look too closely at his lordan, his sister, his--

Whatever Jame is, these days.

She looks sick, in a way that Torisen has never seen her, not even after that terrible winter in the Women’s World, when she had been awake for weeks and outrunning the infection in her cheek.  Jame’s face is gaunt and grey-cast with the fever the poison stoked under her skin, her glossy black curls dull and tangled, and she’s shivering, off and on, these delicate tremors that bring attention to the way her wrist bones stand out through her skin.  She seems asleep, but restless, murmuring noises that never become words, tossing her head, trying to struggle out from under the blankets her Kendar have piled on her.  She moves like a swimmer trapped in mud, and the harder she struggles, the more distraught she seems, like a nightmare is rising around her and she can’t hope swim to the surface.

Kindrie makes a soothing noise in his throat, an idle hum, a snatch of music, when Jame gasps under his touch, and she settles, like she trusts that Kindrie is there to pull her out of the water, and Torisen is--

Torisen is something he cannot name, at the sight of it.  Something hot and bitter twists in his chest, and he tentatively names it anger.  He wants to snarl at Kindrie to fix this, wants to shake Jame for allowing it, wants to shout at her Kendar for not stopping it.  He wants to curl himself around Jame like they’re children again, waiting for the moon to rise again, and send everyone else away.  

He settles for standing against the doorframe, a passive block to keep the fretting figures outside from entering to disturb Kindrie’s work--no one has it in them to brush past the Highlord.  Burr had made a gesture as if to take Torisen’s place, but he’d swallowed the offer and gone to interrogate the culprit instead.  Torisen makes a mental note to thank him, and to be cooperative next time Burr forces him into his court clothes.

It takes an hour before Kindrie blinks pale eyes hazily and removes his hands from Jame’s skin.  He smiles hesitantly at Torisen.

“She should be fine,” he says.  “She won’t be able to enter dwar until the fever breaks, but the poison didn’t take hold the way it should have.  She’s...difficult to corner, for deep healing, but really it shouldn’t matter.  It might be a rough night, but she should be in dwar sleep by morning and up making a nuisance of herself by the next day.”

“Thank you,” Torisen says quietly, before anyone else can burst out in gratitude.  Kindrie’s smile firms up a bit, and he accepts Marc’s offer of a meal with transparent relief, and Rue comes in to rearrange the blankets, fussing over her lady’s pillow for a long few moments before turning to Torisen.

“We can find you quarters, my lord,” she says, direct and unwary and a little defensive.  “I don’t think m’lady ever really expected you to stay here, so nothing’s as well suited as you might be used to, but--”

“No, that’s all right,” Torisen says.  “I’ll keep watch.  Just put Kindrie up, if you have the space, and I’ll stay here.”  She looks faintly bothered by that, somewhere between Burr’s constitutional offense at Torisen’s determination to do menial tasks and outright protectiveness, but when Torisen sits down in Kindrie’s abandoned chair, she leaves without a word.

Rue closes the door behind her, and Torisen is alone in the quiet of his sister’s room as Jame begins to stir again.

Torisen doesn’t know how to do comfort anymore, if he ever did.  He doesn’t have Kindrie’s unconscious ease with it, doesn’t have Rue or Marc’s persistence of affection.  All he can do is brush an escaping curl out of Jame’s face and wonder if he should just--leave, before she can wake up and learn he’s been here.

“It’s all right,” he tries to say, but the words don’t even reach his mouth, strangle in his throat.  He feels like his voice is gone, like he’s the one with a fever again, something foreign growing in his lungs and silencing him.  He tries to call up one of the songs their mother used to sing, the old ballads that no one ever knows except, sometimes, scholars, but his throat is still and he can’t muster the energy to change it.

Torisen doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there, smoothing his hand over Jame’s hair when she grows restless and trying to find his voice, when her eyes finally open.  It’s not dramatic, she just blinks open unfocused silver eyes and stares up at him with a kind of childlike confusion that makes his heart ache.

Her voice is a thread when she says, “Senethari?  Can I have some water?”

Who does she think he is?  Not Sheth, nor the man Bear that Torisen’s never met--she sounds too young, too trusting, asking for help so honestly.  Maybe--maybe the changer, the man she had called Senethari when he died on the Escarpment.

Torisen forcibly sets the question aside and silently stands to bring over the cup left on the table.  Jame’s eyes flutter closed again while he’s gone, and they open when he sits down and says, “Drink.”

She doesn’t take the cup, just narrows her eyes like she’s looking through heavy smoke and asks, “Tori?”

“Yes,” he says, and his voice gives up on him, doesn’t say thank God, I was so worried, everyone was so worried, you’ve been asleep for three days and I thought you were going to leave me die.  It’s for the best, probably--their fragile detente is always so precarious, and he’s sure that if he says something wrong, she’ll send him away.

“Why are you here?” Jame asks hazily, in that thin rasp of a voice.  “You should be at home.”  She stirs with more intent, pushing herself up on a shaking elbow.  “Father--did Father chase you out too?”

Her words are such a clean, brutal blow that she’s managed to swing a leg over the edge of the bed before he can bring himself to move.

“Don’t get up,” Torisen says, alarmed, and puts the cup down on the floor so that he can press her back down to the bed with both hands.  He can just picture her trying to stand and immediately falling down in a heap.  “It’s all right, I’m--I’m fine.  Lie down, Jame,” he says, and manages to force her down flat again.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Jame says, looking up at him and curling one hand into his sleeve.  He can feel her claws scratch against his skin where they’ve torn the fabric.  “It’s not--did Senethari let you in?  He shouldn’t have.  Father has to take you back.  Did he make you leave?”

This--please, God, Torisen isn’t strong enough to handle this.  Jame is supposed to be the sane one.  “It’s okay,” Torisen says, helpless, and sits down on the edge of the bed.  “It’s all right.”

Jame blinks, like she’s as confused by her questions as he is, but she doesn’t loosen her grip on him.  “Are we--where are we, Tori?  It’s so--why are you here?”

“We’re at the keep, at Tagmeth.  You called for me--or, your Kendar did.”

“At the keep?” Jame repeats.  She’s frowning, confused, and tugging lightly on his sleeve.  He grabs her hand and starts trying to unclench her fingers--he needs to get Kindrie, surely, to find out if this delirium is dangerous, but Jame’s grip is tenacious and she’s managed to put three clawed fingers clean through the cloth of his shirt, so that he doesn’t have a hope of getting her off unless he cuts the sleeve completely.

“Yes,” he says, and tries to make his voice as gentle as he can manage.  “At Tagmeth.  You were poisoned, do you remember?”

“Poison,” Jame murmurs.  She lets out a hoarse noise and says, “Unclean.”

“No,” Torisen says, and they’re both clearly taken aback by how loud his voice is.  Not his memory--Shanir, godspawn--but remembered with perfect clarity nonetheless.  “No,” he repeats, more moderately.  “You were given something.  You’re going to be all right.”

“Father will be angry when he finds us,” Jame mumbles.  She curls toward him, on her side, so that her fist is still clenched in his sleeve and her face is pressed into his leg.  “Don’t leave, okay?  I’ll tell him it was my fault.”

“I won’t leave,” Torisen says, the words hanging fragile in the air.  His hand is still resting on hers, fisted into his shirt, but he’s given up on prying her loose, just cupping the delicate bones of her hand in his palm.  Her skin is hot and dry, but a shiver runs down her spine and she curls tighter into him, even though he must feel cold to her.  “I brought you water,” he tells her quietly.  “You need to drink.”

She’s already asleep again.

[tanoraqui]

#torisen that emotion you are feeling is JEALOUSY please get with the program #this is nominally set after by demons possessed although not in any particularly specific timeframe #jame was poisoned by the randir of course. once torisen gets Answers they sit down and plot some stuff together. #if i had my way this would be the prompt for torisen to spend kind of an unexpected amount of time in tagmeth #just a couple weeks or so. long enough for jame to make some hesitant overtures of welcome and affection and secret-sharing. #tori doesn't really know how to handle it but Damn He Sure Is Trying #also a near-miss with jame dying of poison without him even being there has made him...a little paranoid#I HAVE ANOTHER ASK ABOUT THE KENCYRATH AND I'M SO TORN #BECAUSE ON THE ONE HAND: IT ALSO PROPOSES A VERY EXCELLENT SONGXIAO CONCEPT #BUT ON THE OTHER HAND IT WOULD BE P E R F E C T FOR MORE OF THAT LOTUS EATER AU I PROPOSED #i actually thought about this being a lotus eater au but like...that would have been Long and also Sad #(jame knows it's a dream and that all she has to do is wait for someone to come get her. or for her shanir powers to rip her a door.) #(but...she waits. it's nice to have tori smile at her is all. and this dream of tori brightens just by seeing her.) #(kindrie comes in to find her and looks at her dream and looks at jame and she says 'don't say anything to him' and they don't.) #(jame wakes up with tori sitting beside her and for a moment she forgets and kisses him and then she pulls back and apologizes)

Waking Up Not Knowing Where They Are + tori taking care of jame?

Aw, HELL yeah.  Once again, I’m sorry my readmores are borked.  For this H/C meme!

It was Marc who sent him the letter--Marc, by way of Rue’s stiff and uncertain script.  It was a short thing, barely the barest courtesies before Our lady has been poisoned, and we cannot wake her.  We have captured the culprit and taken her into custody, but she was only a tool.  If you have Kindrie Soulwalker with you, my lord, or know where he might be found, we need him here.

Because of course it had to be Kindrie, Torisen remembers thinking in a daze as he sent for Burr and told him that Torisen would be riding to Mount Alban.  Of course Jame would allow no other healer near her, even unconscious, even poisoned.  Torisen can’t imagine what might happen to a healer who attempted to force their way into Jame’s soul unwelcomed--it didn’t occur to him to wonder what might happen to Jame, except that she might feel sorry, later, for the healer’s fate.

Now he is at Tagmeth, and Kindrie is sitting at Jame’s head, his fingers light on her closed eyelids, and Torisen is trying not to look too closely at his lordan, his sister, his--

Whatever Jame is, these days.

She looks sick, in a way that Torisen has never seen her, not even after that terrible winter in the Women’s World, when she had been awake for weeks and outrunning the infection in her cheek.  Jame’s face is gaunt and grey-cast with the fever the poison stoked under her skin, her glossy black curls dull and tangled, and she’s shivering, off and on, these delicate tremors that bring attention to the way her wrist bones stand out through her skin.  She seems asleep, but restless, murmuring noises that never become words, tossing her head, trying to struggle out from under the blankets her Kendar have piled on her.  She moves like a swimmer trapped in mud, and the harder she struggles, the more distraught she seems, like a nightmare is rising around her and she can’t hope swim to the surface.

Kindrie makes a soothing noise in his throat, an idle hum, a snatch of music, when Jame gasps under his touch, and she settles, like she trusts that Kindrie is there to pull her out of the water, and Torisen is--

Torisen is something he cannot name, at the sight of it.  Something hot and bitter twists in his chest, and he tentatively names it anger.  He wants to snarl at Kindrie to fix this, wants to shake Jame for allowing it, wants to shout at her Kendar for not stopping it.  He wants to curl himself around Jame like they’re children again, waiting for the moon to rise again, and send everyone else away.  

He settles for standing against the doorframe, a passive block to keep the fretting figures outside from entering to disturb Kindrie’s work--no one has it in them to brush past the Highlord.  Burr had made a gesture as if to take Torisen’s place, but he’d swallowed the offer and gone to interrogate the culprit instead.  Torisen makes a mental note to thank him, and to be cooperative next time Burr forces him into his court clothes.

It takes an hour before Kindrie blinks pale eyes hazily and removes his hands from Jame’s skin.  He smiles hesitantly at Torisen.

“She should be fine,” he says.  “She won’t be able to enter dwar until the fever breaks, but the poison didn’t take hold the way it should have.  She’s...difficult to corner, for deep healing, but really it shouldn’t matter.  It might be a rough night, but she should be in dwar sleep by morning and up making a nuisance of herself by the next day.”

“Thank you,” Torisen says quietly, before anyone else can burst out in gratitude.  Kindrie’s smile firms up a bit, and he accepts Marc’s offer of a meal with transparent relief, and Rue comes in to rearrange the blankets, fussing over her lady’s pillow for a long few moments before turning to Torisen.

“We can find you quarters, my lord,” she says, direct and unwary and a little defensive.  “I don’t think m’lady ever really expected you to stay here, so nothing’s as well suited as you might be used to, but--”

“No, that’s all right,” Torisen says.  “I’ll keep watch.  Just put Kindrie up, if you have the space, and I’ll stay here.”  She looks faintly bothered by that, somewhere between Burr’s constitutional offense at Torisen’s determination to do menial tasks and outright protectiveness, but when Torisen sits down in Kindrie’s abandoned chair, she leaves without a word.

Rue closes the door behind her, and Torisen is alone in the quiet of his sister’s room as Jame begins to stir again.

Torisen doesn’t know how to do comfort anymore, if he ever did.  He doesn’t have Kindrie’s unconscious ease with it, doesn’t have Rue or Marc’s persistence of affection.  All he can do is brush an escaping curl out of Jame’s face and wonder if he should just--leave, before she can wake up and learn he’s been here.

“It’s all right,” he tries to say, but the words don’t even reach his mouth, strangle in his throat.  He feels like his voice is gone, like he’s the one with a fever again, something foreign growing in his lungs and silencing him.  He tries to call up one of the songs their mother used to sing, the old ballads that no one ever knows except, sometimes, scholars, but his throat is still and he can’t muster the energy to change it.

Torisen doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there, smoothing his hand over Jame’s hair when she grows restless and trying to find his voice, when her eyes finally open.  It’s not dramatic, she just blinks open unfocused silver eyes and stares up at him with a kind of childlike confusion that makes his heart ache.

Her voice is a thread when she says, “Senethari?  Can I have some water?”

Who does she think he is?  Not Sheth, nor the man Bear that Torisen’s never met--she sounds too young, too trusting, asking for help so honestly.  Maybe--maybe the changer, the man she had called Senethari when he died on the Escarpment.

Torisen forcibly sets the question aside and silently stands to bring over the cup left on the table.  Jame’s eyes flutter closed again while he’s gone, and they open when he sits down and says, “Drink.”

She doesn’t take the cup, just narrows her eyes like she’s looking through heavy smoke and asks, “Tori?”

“Yes,” he says, and his voice gives up on him, doesn’t say thank God, I was so worried, everyone was so worried, you’ve been asleep for three days and I thought you were going to leave me die.  It’s for the best, probably--their fragile detente is always so precarious, and he’s sure that if he says something wrong, she’ll send him away.

“Why are you here?” Jame asks hazily, in that thin rasp of a voice.  “You should be at home.”  She stirs with more intent, pushing herself up on a shaking elbow.  “Father--did Father chase you out too?”

Her words are such a clean, brutal blow that she’s managed to swing a leg over the edge of the bed before he can bring himself to move.

“Don’t get up,” Torisen says, alarmed, and puts the cup down on the floor so that he can press her back down to the bed with both hands.  He can just picture her trying to stand and immediately falling down in a heap.  “It’s all right, I’m--I’m fine.  Lie down, Jame,” he says, and manages to force her down flat again.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Jame says, looking up at him and curling one hand into his sleeve.  He can feel her claws scratch against his skin where they’ve torn the fabric.  “It’s not--did Senethari let you in?  He shouldn’t have.  Father has to take you back.  Did he make you leave?”

This--please, God, Torisen isn’t strong enough to handle this.  Jame is supposed to be the sane one.  “It’s okay,” Torisen says, helpless, and sits down on the edge of the bed.  “It’s all right.”

Jame blinks, like she’s as confused by her questions as he is, but she doesn’t loosen her grip on him.  “Are we--where are we, Tori?  It’s so--why are you here?”

“We’re at the keep, at Tagmeth.  You called for me--or, your Kendar did.”

“At the keep?” Jame repeats.  She’s frowning, confused, and tugging lightly on his sleeve.  He grabs her hand and starts trying to unclench her fingers--he needs to get Kindrie, surely, to find out if this delirium is dangerous, but Jame’s grip is tenacious and she’s managed to put three clawed fingers clean through the cloth of his shirt, so that he doesn’t have a hope of getting her off unless he cuts the sleeve completely.

“Yes,” he says, and tries to make his voice as gentle as he can manage.  “At Tagmeth.  You were poisoned, do you remember?”

“Poison,” Jame murmurs.  She lets out a hoarse noise and says, “Unclean.”

“No,” Torisen says, and they’re both clearly taken aback by how loud his voice is.  Not his memory--Shanir, godspawn--but remembered with perfect clarity nonetheless.  “No,” he repeats, more moderately.  “You were given something.  You’re going to be all right.”

“Father will be angry when he finds us,” Jame mumbles.  She curls toward him, on her side, so that her fist is still clenched in his sleeve and her face is pressed into his leg.  “Don’t leave, okay?  I’ll tell him it was my fault.”

“I won’t leave,” Torisen says, the words hanging fragile in the air.  His hand is still resting on hers, fisted into his shirt, but he’s given up on prying her loose, just cupping the delicate bones of her hand in his palm.  Her skin is hot and dry, but a shiver runs down her spine and she curls tighter into him, even though he must feel cold to her.  “I brought you water,” he tells her quietly.  “You need to drink.”

She’s already asleep again.