[Log] A Little Suggestion
Who: Tiriana, W'chek
When: Day 1, Month 4, Turn 26
Where: Snowasis, High Reaches Weyr
What: Tiriana tells W'chek what he can go do, now that B'tal is gone.
It's officially spring, not that you'd know it at the northern Weyr. The snow's still heavy and the caverns are cold, which is probably why so many people are hanging out in the bar this afternoon. Tiriana's one of them, curled up at a booth with her legs stretched out onto the other side while she nurses a drink.
Some people have more serious reasons for wanting to be here. It's late enough in the afternoon for liquor, isn't it? The bronzerider who goes to the bar has to repeat his drink order twice through his teeth, but he finally manages to get a glass in his hands. With a straw. W'chek's face looks like it had an unfortunate meeting with the side of a mountain or a very large bluerider, one or the other, though the bruises look a few days old at this point. He keeps his head down as he goes to find a place to sit, but finds the first attempt occupied by a Weyrwoman. "Oh." The word is muffled, indistinct. "Sorry." He turns and settles at the next table over, instead.
Tiriana is, by and large, somewhere in her own little world, but the greeting earns her attention enough that she blinks and peers around, glass haflway to her mouth. Its progress stops there, though, when she sees W'chek. She sets it down again. With a certain amount of glee, "You look like hell."
"Thank you for noticing." When he speaks slowly enough, he's not too bad at enunciating, anyway. W'chek inserts the straw in his glass, eyes it with utter disgust, but gets his lips around it anyway and manages to take a drink before he sets it down on the table before him. "Would like to say it looks worse'n it is, but... no." Another sip from the straw, but this one doesn't go quite so well, and leaves him coughing into his sleeve afterwards.
"Good," is Tiriana's response to that, watching W'chek cough with obvious smugness. She reaches for her own glass, taking a sip with a much easier time of it. "If anyone deserves it, it's you."
After a few more coughs, W'chek swallows and takes a deep breath. "He liked you. Could at least say you're sorry 'bout it." Not that he's disputing this business of deserving, as he plays with the straw in the glass and doesn't actually look over at Tiriana or even in her general direction.
Tiriana leans forward, her mouth curving into more of a sneer. "I'm just sorry he felt like that was the only way to get rid of you," she says viciously. "It should have been you, you know that? It should have been you. No one cares if you live or die anyway."
"Should have. Yes." At that, the bronzerider's dark eyes finally lift, chart the distance to the Weyrwoman's booth, to her face, like maybe something could be found there. Surely W'chek must know by now not to be looking for kindness, anyway. "Sorry. If I could--" He shakes his head, clears his throat a bit, then takes another drink. Small sips really don't get you enough to make a difference. "I did l--" But he cuts himself off. Too personal. Instead: "Sorry."
"No, you're not," is Tiriana's insistence, accompanied by a snort. "If you were, you'd do something about it. You'd go /between/ yourself and stay there. Do us all a favor." She leans back, lifts her glass for a long drink. Then, "That's what people do, anyway, when their lives are such a shitfest it's not worth living anymore. Like the old weyrlingmaster, or the Weyrwoman."
At that, W'chek goes very quiet, although he doesn't do anything sensible like getting up and going away. "But--Zhikath." He can barely manage to pronounce his own dragon's name under the circumstances, so it's not really more than a muddy mumble. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, his glance goes out towards the bowl, then back down at his drink. "No. Probably right. You're probably right." He starts to get up, then, pushing his chair back and pulling himself to his feet as though that's a lot more difficult than it should be for a young man his age. "'Scuse me. Got some things to take care of."
"He should have known it'd come to something like this," is Tiriana's offhand observation regarding his bronze. "It was really kind of inevitable." She doesn't look happy, exactly, at the effect she has on him, but all the same there's something satisfied in her expression. "Sure. You go on, have a /great/ day."
The glass is picked up, but even though it's a long way from empty, W'chek doesn't seem to intend to finish it. One long deep breath in, held for a second, then let out slowly. "S'pose it was. Yeah." The bronzerider still stands rooted to the spot for the moment, but at last he turns towards the bar, away from Tiriana. Then just one glance back. "Thank you." With that, he takes his glass back to the bar, and then makes his way off into the lower caverns, to wherever he left his coat.