Take care.
Who: R'vain, Tavaly
Where: Infirmary, T'zen's bedside.
When: Evening 4, Month 6, Turn 2
What: Tav is glued, R'vain comes to gawk. Kinda.
Other: Freaking love R'vain. GAWD.
A sentinel. Almost tree like - a willow - with the way whatever she's doing she seems to loom over T'zen's bloodied cot. He rests, now. But there were probably times in the middle of the night when rest was robbed and his new set of aches and stitches gave him grief. For all the world it looks like Tavaly has slept not at all. Blue circles like runner hooves ring each pale eye. Right now, she's absently sewing together what looks to be a vest made from toughened wher hide with soft lining. Her stitches are slow. Clearly, she doesn't care about this piece of work. For the first time, with punch and and needle in hand, she is not absorbed in her task. Immath, settled next to and under the wing of blue Uneth, merely watches a stray moth fluttering about the open cavern on the dragonside.
"This ain't good." R'vain has at his side, in the entrance that leads up from the caverns, a young woman of no particular importance. He's not even touching her. But he does turn toward her and put out his hands, and into them the member of the Weyr's lowest eschelon of staff before 'drudge' starts getting bandied about puts first a folded blanket, lightweight and knitted of muted shades of blue and green. Atop it she then puts the little tray she's been carrying, on which rests simple food, a sausage in a bun and some apple mash. His words were enough that she knew to part ways with him here, so she goes on back down into the caverns, and /he/ treads out among the cots, through familiar aisles defined by the beds of the sick, injured and dying, toward the willow that waits by T'zen's side. The closer he gets the slower he moves-- it takes him some effort, see, to try to quiet his always-heavy steps.
Quite a thing to see, really. Both of them. Beings strong on their own, confident and unshakable when their worlds are intact behind them; when old memories lay dormant and new terrors are unseen. But even she, with all her great ideas and tough hide cannot disguise the ache, the body-bending worry that comes when someone quite close has been injured.. and she is unable to do a thing about it. Could not prevent it. Not even for the Luckiest Man on Pern. She hears the steps. She has heard many today, low, murmuring voices trailing behind them, vaulting about the infirmary hold, and every one of them has been ignored, unless it strictly deals with how well he's recovering. Because he has to. And it has to be quick. However, there's something familiar about the footsteps that try to be reverent. And it's so out of place in her mind that she looks up, a ghost of herself, and focuses on R'vain's face for several moments before she manages to blink and come back into herself, out of her thoughts. "Hey.." She says hoarsely, the dirt road scaling down her tongue only now apparent to her. Long hard night with many tears, that constricted greeting implies. "Ch'you doin' here?"
"What d'you think?" R'vain's tone is utterly devoid of the reproach, the tease, the gruff sneer that it could, and normally should, contain on such a reply. He's gentle, as much as he can be, so his own voice is sandy and rasping back at hers. "Came t'see you." A glance at T'zen includes him, nominally, in the pronoun that can, after all, be a plural. But the bluerider is in no form to eat sausage and probably not even apple mash, and he has blankets enough of his own. This should be telling-- but if it's not, there's this also. R'vain bending to a crouch beside Tavaly's seat, then dropping the crouch to a one-kneed kneel. So descended he can look up at her, and try with a paw for her hand or her knee or, failing both, the edge of her chair. "How're you doing?"
"Better than he is." Which is saying something. She's the accident prone one, the one most easily broken doing terribly wreckless things, or getting blindingly peeved enough to punch walls and weyr. And here she is, nearly whole for the first time, bent near the bedside of her wounded, drowsing lover. Not Tava's favorite place. When he knees and touches her hand, her own sort of.. flinches. A twitch of her eyelids and closed expression follow as she forces herself to settle. "He'll.." Appreciate that R'vain came? Probably not. "Be asleep for a while, I'm afraid.. If his condition changes, though, I'll have Immath send word to Ruvoth." If she's in her head enough to do so. "How are the Weyrlings? I'm sorry I wasn't there this morning.."
He witnesses the flinch, or the closing eyes, or something. Whatever it is, he withdraws his hand and props an elbow on his knee, the blanket and foodstuffs all balanced on one arm, firmed up by the grip of that hand. "You don't need to be sorry," snorts R'vain. "I brought you some things." He goes down then onto the other knee so he can unload things, letting the blanket slump onto the makeshift lap of his sloped thighs, then holding up for her the sausage and sauce. He does not look particularly hopeful about it. "Tav, I came t'see you." Which is exactly what he said before, but without the glance at T'zen this time. "You have t'take care of yourself so you're golden when he's ready t'go, and if you won't do it-- " He shrugs, meatily, broad.
"I'm right as rain, R'vain." The girl says, lying. Whether to him or herself, well.. Not at all clear. "The healers have been very kind. They check on him then ask me if I need anything, now and then. IT's always the same though. I need him to not.. be here.. Like this." Once more, tears try to spring into the red rims of her already bloodshot eyes. Seems there are some tears that still need to be shed. They hover, though, settled enough only to gleam. She glances down as the tray is called to attention and sort of snort-laughs. "I'll see if I can't get him to eat when he wakes up. Thank you.. I do appreciate.. all this." She reaches over and pats his shoulder in a very R'vain-like manner. That's whack. "I'm going to find who did this.." She says quietly.
"It's for /you/ t'eat, Tavaly. When did you last do that?" He starts to glare a little bit, brows furrowed to cast a shadow down over his upcast gaze. "And y'sound like he does. There's been enough one-man shows in this Weyr. Enough heroes. We need a force. If th'guards can't do it then we will." He puts aside the plate, lowering his head, picking up the blanket to offer it to her, as the food was shunned. "If you're goin' t'sleep here, y'ought t'ave something that's not one of their cot-covers t'curl up in."
Ignoring the first question, the second draws a slow, cruel grin. "The guards do not have what I now have." She whispers exceptionally low so that only R'vain's ears can hear. The grin is very subtle, only the upward twitch at the left corner of her mouth giving it away. "I have something to look for. Something to place. I need to wait, though. He has to wake up." She takes a deep breath. "It was clutched in his hand when I first took it to hold.. a scrap of cloth. Someone around the weyr is probably lamenting a favorite shirt. The exiled Donavan said it was a woman.." Her eyes are centered on the patch of cloth covering T'zen's body that hides the wicked wound. "They are all connected.. All these things. She wounded Issa, too.. I know what I want done to her."
"A'right, good, we know some things..." R'vain stares up at Tavaly, starting to look a little wider of eye than the Weyrlingmaster usually manages. In the end, where a normal person might ask, warily and with a soft undercurrent of horror or titillation, 'What is it that you want done, Tavaly?' Well-- R'vain asks, "D'you think she's goin' t'care about a shirt if she's goin' around tryin' to kill people?"
"She'll care enough to try and hide it. Because she won't know where the missing piece has gone.. She won't know that it's not sitting on the Guards' desk, or in the Weyrleader's hand. She's going to try and get rid of it. It may be lost in the laundry, or thrown in the refuse.. However, when I talk to the folks I intend to talk to, everyone's going to be looking for it.. To see just where this scrap has been torn from. Whoever she is.. T'zen got her one good, this time. She's going to be scared, now.. Because he knows something. What he knows, I'll find out when he wakes up and is ready to share it." She reaches over, stroking the man's blonde hair away from his forehead. For all the talk of maiming people, the delicate ministrations are quite the juxtaposition. "I want to see her tied to a tree far away from here during a heavy Threadfall. And I want to watch."
"Oh." R'vain does not think that far ahead about things such as shirts, obviously. The somewhat wide-eyed expression he regards her with is the kind that bears new, interested respect. "Yeah," he agrees, lamely, about staking this woman out for Threadfall. "You'll have t'fly th'fall then, I think. Unless y'got a tree next to a cave. I guess." The practical issues of her envisioned punishment provide R'vain a little weak opportunity for conversation. After exploiting it this badly he looks down at the blanket, then folds it a new time and tucks it in under the chair she's sitting in. "When he wakes up then, what I want is for you t'let me know. Have Immath let Ruvoth know. And I'll get th'chambers for you, and you can call in everyone you want t'start th'search." His mouth presses thin, a feat of its own. "Til then, Tav, you got t'take care. If you won't-- " This time he'll say it. "I'm goin' t'try."
Tavaly reaches a hand out to touch his cheek. "Thank you." She says with all sincerity. Her eyes are set, now, no teary gleam. This is better. The Tav that can hold onto anger and let it keep her solid. This is far more easy to work with while T'zen is fast asleep. "I have to fly fall in four days, anyway." She snorts, then. "My first legitimate fall in 2C and my weyrmate will not be flying with me." Her hand continues to brush back the bluerider's spun-gold locks and she breathes deeply for a moment. "I'll take care of myself, R'vain, don't worry.. Just, when it's so quiet in here.. I feel like if I leave for a moment he'll wake up and I'll miss it."
"Tavaly, you cannot fly 'fall." And just like that he's pushing himself up to his feet. She may loom like that tireless willow over her weyrmate; he will loom like, well, like the Weyrlingmaster over her in turn. Even looming, though, in this place he is helpless, neither healer nor attacker, and denied in his every effort to care for her in person. So he runs his tongue over his teeth, lifts a paw to rub at his furry chin, thoughtful. "Stay with him. I'll be by now and again. If you ain't eating I'll notice."
"If I don't fly fall, he'll be disappointed. And I want to. For him. For the both of us." Tav says. Then, with a careful glance in his direction, and a face devoid of mirth or smile. "Dara brings food down to me every now and then I'm not starving."
"Then you're goin' to have to-- " Pause. "Does she now." Tavaly won't smile. Fine; R'vain smiles for her, just a bit, keen and thoughtful behind the paw now rubbing so broadly that it all but obscures his mouth. "You're goin' to have to convince your wingleader. There anything else I can bring you?" At last he puts out his hand again, toward her shoulder-- but without touching her he draws it back and stuffs it, inadequate, into his pocket.
And other ways to shush a Weyrlingmaster. Tav is a lexicon of them, these days. She shakes her head, bowing it in his direction. "No.. But thank you. I appreciate it, even if I do a piss poor job of showing it at the moment. I'll make you something, later. A hat, maybe." She says the last to herself, really, mulling it over as her eyes glue themselves back onto the prone man on the sad little infirmary cot.
"Tav-- " His voice cracks, and there's only one syllable there for it to crack on. Not good. He turns half away and uses a sideways look at "Don't. I don't need nothing." And then he's off.
Where: Infirmary, T'zen's bedside.
When: Evening 4, Month 6, Turn 2
What: Tav is glued, R'vain comes to gawk. Kinda.
Other: Freaking love R'vain. GAWD.
A sentinel. Almost tree like - a willow - with the way whatever she's doing she seems to loom over T'zen's bloodied cot. He rests, now. But there were probably times in the middle of the night when rest was robbed and his new set of aches and stitches gave him grief. For all the world it looks like Tavaly has slept not at all. Blue circles like runner hooves ring each pale eye. Right now, she's absently sewing together what looks to be a vest made from toughened wher hide with soft lining. Her stitches are slow. Clearly, she doesn't care about this piece of work. For the first time, with punch and and needle in hand, she is not absorbed in her task. Immath, settled next to and under the wing of blue Uneth, merely watches a stray moth fluttering about the open cavern on the dragonside.
"This ain't good." R'vain has at his side, in the entrance that leads up from the caverns, a young woman of no particular importance. He's not even touching her. But he does turn toward her and put out his hands, and into them the member of the Weyr's lowest eschelon of staff before 'drudge' starts getting bandied about puts first a folded blanket, lightweight and knitted of muted shades of blue and green. Atop it she then puts the little tray she's been carrying, on which rests simple food, a sausage in a bun and some apple mash. His words were enough that she knew to part ways with him here, so she goes on back down into the caverns, and /he/ treads out among the cots, through familiar aisles defined by the beds of the sick, injured and dying, toward the willow that waits by T'zen's side. The closer he gets the slower he moves-- it takes him some effort, see, to try to quiet his always-heavy steps.
Quite a thing to see, really. Both of them. Beings strong on their own, confident and unshakable when their worlds are intact behind them; when old memories lay dormant and new terrors are unseen. But even she, with all her great ideas and tough hide cannot disguise the ache, the body-bending worry that comes when someone quite close has been injured.. and she is unable to do a thing about it. Could not prevent it. Not even for the Luckiest Man on Pern. She hears the steps. She has heard many today, low, murmuring voices trailing behind them, vaulting about the infirmary hold, and every one of them has been ignored, unless it strictly deals with how well he's recovering. Because he has to. And it has to be quick. However, there's something familiar about the footsteps that try to be reverent. And it's so out of place in her mind that she looks up, a ghost of herself, and focuses on R'vain's face for several moments before she manages to blink and come back into herself, out of her thoughts. "Hey.." She says hoarsely, the dirt road scaling down her tongue only now apparent to her. Long hard night with many tears, that constricted greeting implies. "Ch'you doin' here?"
"What d'you think?" R'vain's tone is utterly devoid of the reproach, the tease, the gruff sneer that it could, and normally should, contain on such a reply. He's gentle, as much as he can be, so his own voice is sandy and rasping back at hers. "Came t'see you." A glance at T'zen includes him, nominally, in the pronoun that can, after all, be a plural. But the bluerider is in no form to eat sausage and probably not even apple mash, and he has blankets enough of his own. This should be telling-- but if it's not, there's this also. R'vain bending to a crouch beside Tavaly's seat, then dropping the crouch to a one-kneed kneel. So descended he can look up at her, and try with a paw for her hand or her knee or, failing both, the edge of her chair. "How're you doing?"
"Better than he is." Which is saying something. She's the accident prone one, the one most easily broken doing terribly wreckless things, or getting blindingly peeved enough to punch walls and weyr. And here she is, nearly whole for the first time, bent near the bedside of her wounded, drowsing lover. Not Tava's favorite place. When he knees and touches her hand, her own sort of.. flinches. A twitch of her eyelids and closed expression follow as she forces herself to settle. "He'll.." Appreciate that R'vain came? Probably not. "Be asleep for a while, I'm afraid.. If his condition changes, though, I'll have Immath send word to Ruvoth." If she's in her head enough to do so. "How are the Weyrlings? I'm sorry I wasn't there this morning.."
He witnesses the flinch, or the closing eyes, or something. Whatever it is, he withdraws his hand and props an elbow on his knee, the blanket and foodstuffs all balanced on one arm, firmed up by the grip of that hand. "You don't need to be sorry," snorts R'vain. "I brought you some things." He goes down then onto the other knee so he can unload things, letting the blanket slump onto the makeshift lap of his sloped thighs, then holding up for her the sausage and sauce. He does not look particularly hopeful about it. "Tav, I came t'see you." Which is exactly what he said before, but without the glance at T'zen this time. "You have t'take care of yourself so you're golden when he's ready t'go, and if you won't do it-- " He shrugs, meatily, broad.
"I'm right as rain, R'vain." The girl says, lying. Whether to him or herself, well.. Not at all clear. "The healers have been very kind. They check on him then ask me if I need anything, now and then. IT's always the same though. I need him to not.. be here.. Like this." Once more, tears try to spring into the red rims of her already bloodshot eyes. Seems there are some tears that still need to be shed. They hover, though, settled enough only to gleam. She glances down as the tray is called to attention and sort of snort-laughs. "I'll see if I can't get him to eat when he wakes up. Thank you.. I do appreciate.. all this." She reaches over and pats his shoulder in a very R'vain-like manner. That's whack. "I'm going to find who did this.." She says quietly.
"It's for /you/ t'eat, Tavaly. When did you last do that?" He starts to glare a little bit, brows furrowed to cast a shadow down over his upcast gaze. "And y'sound like he does. There's been enough one-man shows in this Weyr. Enough heroes. We need a force. If th'guards can't do it then we will." He puts aside the plate, lowering his head, picking up the blanket to offer it to her, as the food was shunned. "If you're goin' t'sleep here, y'ought t'ave something that's not one of their cot-covers t'curl up in."
Ignoring the first question, the second draws a slow, cruel grin. "The guards do not have what I now have." She whispers exceptionally low so that only R'vain's ears can hear. The grin is very subtle, only the upward twitch at the left corner of her mouth giving it away. "I have something to look for. Something to place. I need to wait, though. He has to wake up." She takes a deep breath. "It was clutched in his hand when I first took it to hold.. a scrap of cloth. Someone around the weyr is probably lamenting a favorite shirt. The exiled Donavan said it was a woman.." Her eyes are centered on the patch of cloth covering T'zen's body that hides the wicked wound. "They are all connected.. All these things. She wounded Issa, too.. I know what I want done to her."
"A'right, good, we know some things..." R'vain stares up at Tavaly, starting to look a little wider of eye than the Weyrlingmaster usually manages. In the end, where a normal person might ask, warily and with a soft undercurrent of horror or titillation, 'What is it that you want done, Tavaly?' Well-- R'vain asks, "D'you think she's goin' t'care about a shirt if she's goin' around tryin' to kill people?"
"She'll care enough to try and hide it. Because she won't know where the missing piece has gone.. She won't know that it's not sitting on the Guards' desk, or in the Weyrleader's hand. She's going to try and get rid of it. It may be lost in the laundry, or thrown in the refuse.. However, when I talk to the folks I intend to talk to, everyone's going to be looking for it.. To see just where this scrap has been torn from. Whoever she is.. T'zen got her one good, this time. She's going to be scared, now.. Because he knows something. What he knows, I'll find out when he wakes up and is ready to share it." She reaches over, stroking the man's blonde hair away from his forehead. For all the talk of maiming people, the delicate ministrations are quite the juxtaposition. "I want to see her tied to a tree far away from here during a heavy Threadfall. And I want to watch."
"Oh." R'vain does not think that far ahead about things such as shirts, obviously. The somewhat wide-eyed expression he regards her with is the kind that bears new, interested respect. "Yeah," he agrees, lamely, about staking this woman out for Threadfall. "You'll have t'fly th'fall then, I think. Unless y'got a tree next to a cave. I guess." The practical issues of her envisioned punishment provide R'vain a little weak opportunity for conversation. After exploiting it this badly he looks down at the blanket, then folds it a new time and tucks it in under the chair she's sitting in. "When he wakes up then, what I want is for you t'let me know. Have Immath let Ruvoth know. And I'll get th'chambers for you, and you can call in everyone you want t'start th'search." His mouth presses thin, a feat of its own. "Til then, Tav, you got t'take care. If you won't-- " This time he'll say it. "I'm goin' t'try."
Tavaly reaches a hand out to touch his cheek. "Thank you." She says with all sincerity. Her eyes are set, now, no teary gleam. This is better. The Tav that can hold onto anger and let it keep her solid. This is far more easy to work with while T'zen is fast asleep. "I have to fly fall in four days, anyway." She snorts, then. "My first legitimate fall in 2C and my weyrmate will not be flying with me." Her hand continues to brush back the bluerider's spun-gold locks and she breathes deeply for a moment. "I'll take care of myself, R'vain, don't worry.. Just, when it's so quiet in here.. I feel like if I leave for a moment he'll wake up and I'll miss it."
"Tavaly, you cannot fly 'fall." And just like that he's pushing himself up to his feet. She may loom like that tireless willow over her weyrmate; he will loom like, well, like the Weyrlingmaster over her in turn. Even looming, though, in this place he is helpless, neither healer nor attacker, and denied in his every effort to care for her in person. So he runs his tongue over his teeth, lifts a paw to rub at his furry chin, thoughtful. "Stay with him. I'll be by now and again. If you ain't eating I'll notice."
"If I don't fly fall, he'll be disappointed. And I want to. For him. For the both of us." Tav says. Then, with a careful glance in his direction, and a face devoid of mirth or smile. "Dara brings food down to me every now and then I'm not starving."
"Then you're goin' to have to-- " Pause. "Does she now." Tavaly won't smile. Fine; R'vain smiles for her, just a bit, keen and thoughtful behind the paw now rubbing so broadly that it all but obscures his mouth. "You're goin' to have to convince your wingleader. There anything else I can bring you?" At last he puts out his hand again, toward her shoulder-- but without touching her he draws it back and stuffs it, inadequate, into his pocket.
And other ways to shush a Weyrlingmaster. Tav is a lexicon of them, these days. She shakes her head, bowing it in his direction. "No.. But thank you. I appreciate it, even if I do a piss poor job of showing it at the moment. I'll make you something, later. A hat, maybe." She says the last to herself, really, mulling it over as her eyes glue themselves back onto the prone man on the sad little infirmary cot.
"Tav-- " His voice cracks, and there's only one syllable there for it to crack on. Not good. He turns half away and uses a sideways look at "Don't. I don't need nothing." And then he's off.