#ty amelie for the header haha

[kadavernagh]

TIMING: Saturday Morning, at around 11pm PARTIES: @faunandfl0ra @kadavernagh LOCATION: Downtown, Wicked’s Rest SUMMARY: Conor gets a good shock and ends up looking a little more goat-y than he likes. Regan is there to pull him aside and worry about his weird legs. CONTENT WARNINGS: Car crash tw

“I appreciate it man, you’re a lifesaver,” it had been a while since he last broke a string on his violin. With Mother’s day behind, and the amount of money it brought in, Conor had finally taken a trip to the local luthier, and gotten his bow rehaired as well. It would be nice to play again. He barely had time to do anything for himself this month, and his various encounters with other fae had left him in a state of anxiety that simply wouldn’t go away. 

He had 4 hours before he opened the shop again this afternoon, which left him plenty of time to unwind, right? 

The faun stopped for tea at the local coffee shop. He would head home soon, but it was a sunny day, and he liked walking around on such occasions. His cup in one hand, his violin case in the other, he let his stroll take him around the neighborhood. He had reached the seafront, and stopped to look at the crabs which for once were napping on the sand instead of being up to no good. Things were quiet at last. He could tell there was another fae approaching, but while he had already met four, he had gotten used to sensing them in the street. There were quite a lot of them around here, weren't there. 

What he didn’t sense coming was the car turning a bit too fast around the curb, other drivers honking in protest. The tires screeched against the pavement, and Conor turned on his hooves, wide eyes staring at the vehicle headed his way. What was the expression again? A deer caught in the headlights? There were no headlights. He was a goat. It was still a pretty damn good expression in this instance anyway. What are you doing? With shock past him, he stumbled back, although it was the driver’s swerving at the last second that would save him. The faun tripped on something, probably his own foot, and sent the cup of tea flying. Call it a terrible sense of preservation, but his violin’s safety came first, and his glamour last. 

Did falling down always hurt so bad? 

It would have been appropriate to compare Regan’s life to a car crash in most respects. She often did. What happened less frequently was witnessing an actual one. She had been paying more attention than the man on the curb was – maybe it was that awful bubbling feeling in her throat as the car rounded the corner way too fast – but she was too far away to help. There was a honking of horns and whooshing of lungs and before Regan could will herself not to scream, don’t scream, bite your damn tongue off if you need to, it was over, no scream needed. And no one had died. 

Her own cup of coffee had fallen out of her hands at some point and matched whatever discarded beverage was dropped from the almost-dead-man’s. Evidence that too much emotion still flowed through her during moments like this. Right. She had responsibilities here as a doctor, a first responder. As the car peeled away, she noted the license plate number. A vanity plate, of course. She’d make them regret driving away without checking up on who they almost hit.

Almost. But not quite. Her attention turned to the man, who seemed understandably shocked. He was clutching a heavy-looking case like it was keeping him alive.

“Are you–” Okay? That was what she wanted to ask. But her eyes caught on the pair of horns above the man’s head, and she traced them down to his skull, where they poked through his mop of wavy hair in a manner that looked all too real. Those weren’t there before. And his ears, too. She would have noticed. Horns appearing out of thin air? The prickling and tickling across her shoulders and arms as she got closer to him? And then – she looked down at his legs, or where regular legs should have been, and they looked bent in some grotesque configuration underneath his pants. Okay. She’d seen enough to make up her mind. 

“With me.” Regan grabbed him by the shoulder, scrunching her face up at the intensifying buzz of her skin. She noticed a couple of pedestrians staring; initially they showed only concern, but they seemed to notice the same things Regan did and concern melted into confusion. “Can you walk? Your legs don’t look –” She offered her support to help him catch his balance. “They don’t look the steadiest.” Regan tried to shove him toward an alley in a manner that wasn’t as gentle as she would have preferred, but efficiency was to be prioritized. A fat rat flushed out of a fallen garbage can and scattered across the alley. “This is hardly a place to assess your injuries, but we may not have a choice. Considering your, uh… say, you didn’t just come from one of those ‘cosplay’ gatherings, did you? I was informed about those.”

Wide eyed, the faun clawed at his violin case like his life depended on it. His eyes fixated on the car as it drove off, as if nothing happened, as if they hadn’t nearly run him over. As much as the idea of living, when everyone he grew up with died or had already died, made him feel sick, realizing that he could have been gone right then brought a rushing, overwhelming sense of nothingness to his head.His nose wrinkled in what looked like anger, but his eyes were humid. He felt too much and he couldn’t even swear his heart out like he usually would. 

He stared at the car until it vanished around the corner, the woman’s -no, the fae’s- voice reaching his ears. Conor was alright. He was… He looked down at his legs, who didn’t look… Well they looked normal to him, which was absolutely not how they were supposed to look. Oh fuck. He reached up to his head. Fuck, fucking crispy shit on a cracker, fuck. Focus. He’d learned how to do that in the days that followed his ‘growth spurt’ of sorts. He was 13 then. 57 years later, he still let it slip when he panicked. He needed to calm down. He just needed to focus on something calm. 

“My legs are fine,” he replied. They were fine. He just had to make them look like so, and agree to follow her somewhere no one could see him like that, the sound of his hooves no longer muffled by a spell. “I’m a… what? Cost play?” Wasn’t that the name of a British band? He didn’t like their music, but he also didn’t see the connection with him here. “You…” He pressed his lips together. He wasn’t making sense and he needed to make sense right now. She was fae, she must have known things. “You and I… We’re both…” Brilliant. He was ready for the debate club. “Fae…Right?” He didn’t like it, that word, or associating himself with it, but what else was there to say to explain his legs, his horns and everything wrong with him? “I need to focus. They’ll go away if I focus,” he assured her. She didn’t have any on her head, so she must have understood that much, right? He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, cutting himself off from his surroundings for a second. For the most part, this meant pleading please please please please go away until it all came true. 

“Well, your legs don’t look fine. They look like you’ve broken some bones. But…” Given the way he was walking, Regan doubted that was the case. Though his gait was terribly clumsy, just not strained. And there was a weird clopping noise accompanied by each step. Did she even want to know? She peered out of the alley, noting that the gawking bystanders hadn’t followed them, and heaved out a sigh. 

The word fae wasn’t one she had wanted to hear, but it was a reasonable thing to ask under the circumstances. Interestingly, he seemed as uncomfortable saying it as Regan was hearing it. “Yes. I mean, no. Well, yes, but –” Regan froze. It was such a simple question, yet one of the most complicated ones in the world for her. She wasn’t like him, some antler-covered, floppy-eared bambi man. But she was more like him than the people who had been staring. “We have something in common. I prefer a different word, or none at all. I’m helping you because…” She searched herself, making sure this wasn’t a lie on a technical level. “Because I am a doctor. And you were nearly flattened by a car.” Some small part of her still wanted to think the antlers were part of a costume, but this was confirmation enough that they weren’t. “So they’re real, then?” She asked. There was that one patient she’d had at Saol Eile, a visitor from a neighboring community, who had possessed similar antlers and ears. Perhaps a relative. 

When he mentioned needing to focus, Regan understood. “Oh! This is a glamour.” Something in her eyes brightened for a moment, before dying just as quickly. She had both seen and heard about glamours. Her grandmother tried desperately to force her to succeed in them, resorting to methods that marred her wings to this day. But Regan never could. She could never give over the last bit of her skepticism to believe it was possible, as much as she desired to hide herself from the world. She flicked the pendant on her necklace between her fingers, silently thanking it for existing, as much as she hated the thing for existing just the same. “Does this happen when you’re, um, frightened? You grow horns? Are you sure your legs are okay?”

“I don’t know a different word,” he pointed out. Conor didn’t know many things regarding who he was. His mother was clueless about those things, and his father wasn’t the most helpful, unsurprisingly. Now she was nearing the end of her life, and he didn’t even want to know where his old man was. “And I would rather fucking be normal but here we are,” he motioned to his legs, and then his face, as if to just highlight the obvious non-sense at stake here. Who the fuck looked like that? Not someone normal. 

“You’re a doctor,” the faun repeated. So this was all she cared about then? Whether he was fine. “I am fine,” his stomach churned, as if to express discomfort in the face of a lie. He grimaced. Fucking hell. He needed to stop doing that, but somehow, saying I’m fine, that shouldn’t have counted as a lie, right? Everyone lied about that, not because they wanted to lie, but because they didn’t want people asking why. He should have just smiled. He didn’t smile much, but that was better than feeling sick, wasn’t it? 

Fucksake.

She asked about his horns, and he sighed. This was all he hated. Talking about himself, and worst of all, the parts he hated about himself. “Unfortunately.” And that was it. He didn’t want to elaborate. Maybe she wouldn’t ask more questions, he hoped. How could he focus if she asked more questions? His heart was still racing from earlier, and he knew he was still in a bit of panic, but Conor also felt an urge to look normal again. That’s all he wanted : he wanted to look normal, to be normal, and go back to his place, with his violin, have a bit of quiet, a bit of peace. This was all he asked for. 

He was a stubborn guy, and if he pleaded enough, focused enough on what he wanted… It would work. “My legs are fine. Faun.” The word was spat out, like an insult. “Means I’ve got legs like a goat, and this fucking bullshit growing on my head.” He finally looked at her again. “You’re not a faun, are you? You’re another sort of…” He didn’t say the word this once, and looked away as quickly as he had looked at her. They were alone here. At least, there was that. 

There was venom in the man’s voice as he spoke about himself, which immediately cut into Regan’s composure. She never expected this. He wasn’t… proud? Perhaps not at a moment like this, when secrecy was at stake, but he didn’t like what he was, how he looked? That was slow to sink in. The others at Saol Eile were always crowing with pride, screaming with it, and she was used to competitive displays of wings, comparing and complimenting. She never wanted any of it, but she couldn’t escape it. She assumed all fae must have been the same way. All of the ones she’d had the displeasure of meeting were. But there was him, this one, and something was very wrong with him in a way that, honestly, seemed right.

“You don’t like being –” The notion still made her mind reel. When she spoke again it was a statement, not a question. “You don’t like this. You wish you were like everyone else.” Years ago, there might have been some giddiness in her voice, some rejoicing at finally finding kinship, but she couldn’t access it now. It felt more like a kick than anything. Those first couple of years she went from other to other like she was seeking table scraps, hoping to hear that she could have normal, that she could have the life she wanted and the life she left, but as her grandmother said numerous times, some desires could only be met with a knife. Regan had excised her hopes and wants out of herself, slowly, methodically, and the thing that remained did not – would not – waste time wanting what it couldn’t have. Now she was faced with someone who mirrored that young, ignorant doctor, except he hadn’t gone shed his old self. He was the most sensible fae she’d met, and, perhaps, the most terrible and hardest to face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think you – I’ve never met one like you before. Not the, um, goat… thing. The other thing.” Regan took a step back, uncertain. She hadn’t considered that she might have been crowding him before. That probably didn’t help with his focus. Especially since he looked like he could barely stand on his own legs. She had questions about that, but now seemed like a bad time. Her uncertainty was uncomfortable, and she needed to discard it. Regan swallowed thickly, her eyes darting away from the man’s strange antlers and fixating on a particular brick that jutted out from the side of the building. Her fingers twitched, and she could almost feel the blade between them. Regan’s voice was hollow and flat when she spoke again. “Banshee. It means I don’t have a say in what I want. It means I gave up being a person when I gave up being human.” 

If she looked taken aback by his attitude, Conor didn’t immediately see it. He wasn’t ever good at spotting those things, because he didn’t look at people’s faces often, and because right now, he was still in a state of limbo. The adrenaline wouldn’t come down, and he couldn’t help but think again of what just happened. What if the car hadn’t swerved. What then? He was about to step aside, to react, but… Her voice, thank God, brought him out, for a bit, of his trance. “I don’t like being the main attraction to a freakshow circus?” He heard it before. He had heard his dad tell him how proud he was to see that ‘his son’ (Conor regretted not being more violent back then) was a faun just like him. What a fucking nightmare. What a fucking bloody nightmare. Pride? How could you possibly be proud of being nothing like someone normal? 

Then and now, all he wanted was to have a normal life. 

“What other thing?” He fell silent for less than a second. He knew what she meant, even if it all was confusing now. “They’re all so fucking proud of being like that, heh?” There must have been a middle ground, somewhere being accepting who you are and feeling like the next best thing since easy-to-spread butter. 

She stepped away, his eyes settled on her shoes, if only to make sure that she wasn’t going to leave him there now. Yet, he appreciated her giving him back his space. He nodded quietly, if only to vehiculate his thankfulness. Now all he needed to do was keep his breathing steady, and to focus on what he wanted to hide. His legs would remain the same, his horns would still curl on the sides of his skull, but soon they'd be gone.

With a feeling of control, of some sort of control, he crossed her gaze again. At last she'd see him in a way he didn't mind being seen. 

"Banshee… I heard stories about you… back when I was a wee boy," he didn't quite smile, he didn't feel like it. Those stories always scared him back then. He wasn't sure how he felt now. "You too heh? It was nice, wasn't it. When things were simple ?"

The man was right – he did simply need to concentrate. Regan stayed quiet, letting him focus, knowing he probably hated having anyone see him like this. She wouldn’t bring up his appearance again. That would be easy to do, given how much she wanted to forget what she had seen. The horns dissolved away like they had never been there to begin with, nothing more than a figment of an overactive imagination. That didn’t make seeing the process any less disturbing. Regan averted her eyes, somehow more stunned to have the horns and crooked legs gone than there to begin with. She had seen stranger, experienced stranger, but it was unpalatable all the same. “You fixed it.” Regan said simply, though regretted her choice of words immediately after. But they were true.

That same, eager part of her kicked again. Her thoughts wanted to pour out of an overflowing dam. I tried to remove my wings, I wanted to disfigure my larynx, I screamed for hours when I saw myself, I hate it, I hate them. But those couldn’t be her thoughts anymore, could they? No, they belonged to someone else. Someone lacking in discipline, purpose, and dignity. Someone who hadn’t yet been broken and built themselves up anew. That mousy, awkward doctor who died along with her father. Regan bit her tongue, tasting blood and wishing for a metallic tinge that never came. “Not about me, personally, I assume. You’re the only one here who knows.” Her eyes flicked toward the alley entrance, as if someone could have snuck toward them while they had been talking, then back to the man’s. “I don’t know whether to say the stories are probably true, or probably false. Things… felt simple. But they never were. It was always lurking, a pathology in my family’s lineage.” She hesitated, and ultimately decided not to explain further. The banshees didn’t like others knowing how the young ones started out – weak, powerless, and stupid. Her loyalty was to them.

“That… aside, are you alright? Did your life flash before your eyes?” A cliche, but one with some truth. Regan had found that her biggest and worst regrets came digging themselves out of the grave as she was digging her way in. But she was always pulled back out, or pulled herself back out, and the regrets stayed buried.

You fixed it. Damn right. “I did, thank fucking God,” the faun brushed his hand against the grey fabric, smoothing out wrinkles his actual legs might have left in it, then ran his fingers through his hair, as if it would make everything better. It made him feel better, and perhaps was this all that counted right now. His shoulders dropped and he rubbed his hands against his face. This was fine, no one had followed them, which meant that no one knew what the fuck they’d just seen was very much real, which meant that he’d be okay, because she was like him. 

It’s okay, he repeatedly told himself. It’s all okay. As long as he believed it to be true, it would be true. 

His eyes fell on her. She was quiet now. There wasn’t much going on in head then, and he wondered what was happening in hers. The silence was welcome though, and he almost felt regret when she spoke again. “Not about you, no. Just… Stories about the woman who wails for the dead,” he read stories about fauns too, many, more than he could possibly count, but none of those helped him make sense of who he was. It was always about who he was supposed to be, and it felt like reading an horoscope written by someone who didn’t give a shit. 

He glanced toward the entryway, “I won’t tell anyone about you, don’t worry.” His gaze dropped to the floor, which would be when it fell on his violin case. He hoped it managed to protect it… Squatting down to check on it, he looked up at her. “I found out when I was entering teenagehood, one day you’re perfectly fine, the next, you’re…” he didn’t have the heart to finish his sentence. What was there to say here? Pinching the strings on his instrument, he left out a sigh of relief as they rang out exactly like he wanted them. He did it a second time, if only to be sure, and with a shake of his head, answered her question quietly first. “I just froze. I think I thought of my mom, and my cat,” and the fact that he didn’t want to go just yet.

“I appreciate it.” Regan said, with no emotion. It didn’t matter whether or not she trusted him. He would stay true to his word, or he would not. And given their shared trauma, she wasn’t willing to attempt to bind him to his words. “I won’t tell anyone about you, either. I’ll pretend I never saw.” For a second, she tried to summon that mental image of the man’s legs, all bent in grotesque directions, but it wouldn’t come. It would be easy to repress. “A teenager, huh? Your entire life must have been uprooted.” It seemed young, but she had witnessed those much younger being forced into their nature. At Saol Eile, the standard age seemed to be around 4 or 5, though each family had their own customs and traditions. “I was twenty seven. I know I still look about that age. I’m not. There’s no going back. The only way is forward.” The fat rat scampered across the alley again. She wanted to blow it up.

“What do you have there?” Regan nodded toward the instrument in the man’s hands. It was clearly important to him, judging by how he clung to it when he was about to be struck by a car. More important than his beverage, at any rate. An alleyway hardly seemed to be an appropriate spot for something of such great importance to him. And now that his appearance was under control, they could depart. “Shall we? I need to replace my coffee.” 

“I appreciate it,” Conor repeated with the same deadpan air she sported moments ago. What was there to say about her anyway? He hadn’t seen her do anything out of the ordinary. Just two people having a chat, in an alleyway. 

“Yep, I was 13, nearing 14,” he sighed. He hadn’t told anyone about that. He supposed it made sense she knew something no one else knew of yet. “I left home around then,” the thought brought a smile to his face. Ironically, that had to be perhaps his saddest memory from childhood. Her words were an echo to his, except for the fact that he had kept aging ever since that day. “I’m not 13, obviously,” his expression had fallen back into the usual air of jadedness, as he told her of things that were simple. The truth was simple, memories weren’t so. “You’re right though, there really is no going back,” certainly no way back home for him. His family was aging normally, they’d be gone in a year, in a few decades for some others. And then it would just be him. 

He glanced over at the rat, then back at the violin in his lap. Putting it back into its case, he slung it over his shoulder and nodded along. “And I need to replace my cup of tea.” He paused. “I’m Conor.” 

Whatever the man’s story was, Regan was certain it was as pitiable as her own. Maybe more so, as the tethers between her past and present were ever-thinning. She felt sorry for her old self, and that was all. Regret was to be rejected and removed. He had gone through no such evolution, and she could see the sadness heavy around his eyes even as he tried to stuff it away. She had questions about his childhood, his family, and how he managed to get through each day, but she feared asking them. She was supposed to be bigger than her fear, but in this case, she knew addressing her emotions would only lead to so many more. And he deserved to move on, too. 

Regan tilted her head at the introduction. Before, there was some anonymity. She had shown too much of herself to someone, but that someone had been a stranger. And she’d seen too much of him, but without a name, who could she tell?

Conor, apparently, trusted her.

“Dr. Kavan–” 

Maybe she could extend a little bit back.

“Regan. I’m Regan.”