middaeg | [closed]

Who: Henry

morbide & Soren

silentsavant
When: Noveuer 28th
Where: Shopping District
What: It's a quest log

It's a promise for 1,000 cunes per hour... and for a bodily function! But as Henry stabs himself for the umpteenth time with a needle and thread, sewing gems and jewels onto the surface of a crisp jacket, he thinks about how hard that simple demand really is — both for to perform, and for him to witness in earnest.

Attaching gems is only half the price promised for genuine tears, and Henry's in a bit of a financial bind. After finding himself ill and stuck behind the Coven's doors for the better portion of the month, he's hurting for money. (If only he were literally hurting, he thinks to himself with a chuckle. Maybe that'd get him to cry! ...Probably not.) The illness was with poor timing: earlier in Noveuer, he'd promised a ("perfectly legitimate") vendor a large sum of money for an excessive purchase. Naturally, he failed to follow through.

And failing to follow through has promise of consequences, he found.

He glances out the window with a sigh. Makes a sloppy effort to attach another gem. Stabs his bloodied finger again. This time, he feels nothing — unfortunately. Feeling the pinprick of the needle is really hit or miss with his nerve sensitivity, dulled and destroyed after years of routine torture. If he hadn't gotten sick, he might've been able to amass the funds to pay off his latest dubious purchase in a timely manner! Now, if he could only just cry for a few hours...!

There must be a way to earn that 1,000. Henry turns his attention back to the interior of the shop, scanning the tops of the heads belonging to other dedicated workers. While some embellished hats and sashes with feathers, others dutifully sobbed into glass beakers. The shop's full of perfect strangers save for one exception. He makes out someone with a familiar hairstyle, though he can't quite remember where he's seen it before...

Henry shifts from his bench with resolution and approaches with stealth, a mischievous smile on his lips. When Soren's shoulder is just within reach, he gives him a light tap.

"Heya, stranger. You having any luck with those waterworks?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He thrusts his hand out brusquely to show its unmarred surface. The skin is tough, though the surface of his palms more tender and ashen toward the center. It was the side of his thumb that should have wept a deep, metal-reeking red, but the back of his digits are plated like midnight-black gauntlets.

"There's nothing to see," he replies on a thick voice. "Hand me the beaker, please. Be quick."

"Right-o," mumbles Henry, soundlessly sliding the glass of crystalline fluid into Soren's outstretched palm. In the process he gets a look at his thumb: sure enough, it's Soren's transformation as a Monster that protected him from his own distraction. It's unscathed. No blood, no cuts.

(Then why the pain...?)

To carry a knife like that, Henry doesn't think Soren should have made the slip-up for any other reason than a distraction. What really went on in his head that he wouldn't share? But he keeps that question to himself, for the time being. He's a lot less interested in Soren's actual crying, though he knows that's the reason for his demand.

The incomplete monster takes the vial and presses it beneath his eye socket to catch the single tear rolling out. He can practically feel the spike of enthusiasm in the room as their employer rejoices over the production of a fresh dragon's tear. The salty fluid oozes down the side of the glass on a patient journey to the solution below.

"As it turns out, onions do make me cry," he whispers. He thinks of what Mist might say to that if she were present. She wasn't as important to him as Ike, but she certainly mattered to him, mattered the world to Ike as his little sister, the last of his family after the night the Black Knight stole his father from him. She'd been woven into the tapestry of his life, featured on the relief of his mirror in the Looking-Glass House, and wishing he could hear her singsong-voice carry the shock of this 'discovery' somehow encouraged another tear to slip from the other eye. Grooves appear on his expression as he bears the burden of painful emotions on top of the ailment that arose from losing Yako.

"They sure do," agrees Henry, his voice a lot less enthusiastic than the congregation behind them. It's not the same cheery cawing that comes from him usually, but something subdued enough that it could be carried away with the wind. He sits in silence once more, his mind exploring the pitch-black caverns of Soren's dismay — Henry, without a lantern to navigate with. He closes his eyes.

"You didn't hurt yourself with that knife... But I'm pretty much a seasoned veteran when it comes to pain. ...You winced before you cut yourself."

For now, he leaves it as a comment.

Soren's penetrating reptilian eyes bore into Henry's blithe and unassuming ones that squint in perpetual mirth, uncanny and unchanging as a statue even though a nuanced life surely beats within. Those eyes may be squeezed almost shut, but they are keen as a vulture's trained on carrion. It is moments like these that outline the true insight of the sorcerer. No matter is too grave to joke about. He laughs in the face of death and suffering, dons the impression that he is immune to the effects of mortal concerns such as loss, and his childish comportment might belie that sharp eye of his. Here it is communicated to Soren quite clearly that Henry knows his tears have little if anything to do with the onion. The look he flashes Henry suggests he knows that he knows. Then, he sweeps his gaze to the desk cluttered by remnants and patterns and tucks the dissected vegetable behind a mound of textiles.

He's on guard; the witch's curiosity unsettles him. And yet, he feels exposed and appraised as his humanity is cut open in front of him. He collects the other tear from the corner of his eye before it can dampen his cheek. In the solution, a brilliant gem is born. It scintillates in the dark like a dancer's sequins catch and flirt with the scant light of the night and leaves behind an obsidian speckle dusted by a starry finish. His sadness, rendered like the boundless sky that separates him from his whole meaning.

"..."

What does he have to hide? He's human. He hurts, too. That's all his tears reveal: what should be obvious to anyone. Whether he has scales or not will never take that quality away from him.

When Soren doesn't say anything but gives him a look that bores into him, Henry can't quite tell what it all means. He readjusts his legs, uncomfortable with the situation he's in and he thinks, hard, trying to come up with something that might cheer Soren up. Something that might reassure him, or something that might comfort him. Something that might get him to stop looking at him like he's his enemy when he just wants to understand.

Something that might express his own feelings, perhaps.

The only thing that comes to mind is something that makes him uncomfortable. But he opens his mouth before he thinks it through, finding it relevant.

"Somebody once told me... that it's the split-second expressions that people make that betray their truest feelings," repeats Henry carefully, like he's speaking a foreign language. His smile is frozen when he laughs airily. "People like you who can't cry are probably the people who need to cry the most. More than that, in front of somebody to tell you that it's okay. You'll torture yourself to death in your own head if you only cry all by yourself! So I'm glad."

A pause.

"That the onion worked."

Soren got so emotional just then thunking bout the ONE time he hugged ike and cried all his repressed feefees out that he bbroke out into a disney song called, "Let It Go" and started spinning around doing ice bitch shit, which made their employer mad so he paid both henry and soren loads of cunes and told them to leave

just kidding that's, idiotic,

here's the real tag

What the fuck is all of this

Being told that doesn't make it any easier to open up; it only makes him want to push Henry away more. Nevertheless, it cuts away at the stitches holding more of his tightly-contained feelings inside. He doesn't have anyone he can cry in front of here. Not anyone he can come out of it feeling fully resolved. When his tears are done being shed, nothing about his situation will have changed. The universe scarcely takes pity on him. This is his conviction.

"I don't need someone to tell me it's okay," he contests on a wet voice, another tear rolling down his cheek that he moves to capture. "I already know it's okay. But crying won't solve anything... Not really."

Henry pauses, unsure of what to say. Because he's not as equipped as others might be for a situation like this, truthfully, especially when it doesn't pan out as easily as many of the people he's ever talked to. Reassuring Maribelle was a piece of cake when he did it with his own tools, and he was always perfectly fine with grappling with Cordelia's problems...

This is just awkward and uncomfortable. He tried stepping into someone else's approach, someone with more empathetic abilities, and it just made Soren cry harder. Henry huffs. He gives up on trying to be sympathetic. It's too hard, so he'll go back to something more comfortable.

"Nope! It won't," he says simply. "But hey, you're here to make money, right? Maybe you'll get a bonus!"

[closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject