Where Death Treads Not

[Skid]

((Events in this thread continued from How The Mighty Have Fallen))


“No.. No, no no no!” Frenzy, panic, perhaps a hint of self-loathing. He’d let this happen. His carelessness. He couldn’t control himself, or comprehend what his body was going through. He hadn’t thought of everything, and it had cost him Teagan’s life. He began CPR on her almost peaceful, pure, nubile and naked form, but it proved to do more bad than good in the end; brought out the cuts, the scars, the bruising around her eyes from the intensity of her hysterics. Even the marks where his hand had pulled her attention to him. He was destroying her.

It refuses to remember Our trails. What creeps and crawls within Our wake. If only It were brighter…

“Shut up!” He struck out at a counter, wiping it clear and sending jars and instruments clattering to the floor as though Hethen himself were seated upon it. He had to draw himself away from Teagan. His wake? What did that even mean? He left nothing but death and destruction in his wake! Life could only bloom once death had taken its toll, and-

“…I can fix her.” He turned back towards her.

It may have mastered cognitive thought after all..

“I don’t have to listen to you. I just have to get rid of you..” But how could he get rid of him? He’d been forced into pushing loose the power that Hethen emanated, to preserve himself in an environment permeated on every level by Death. Within a being too timeless to hazard at the age or power of. How could he reverse something like that?

How is it that We must do everything for It? We cannot explain such a simple process to such a feeble mind. It may shatter, change, revert.

“I don’t need your help!” His denial knew no bounds, but it was at this moment he set his palms upon Teagan’s sprawled, dead body and began to force the changes within himself. His shoulderblades were forced apart, tearing the weak, Human skin apart for the thick boning of wings to fight their way loose of the prison they resided within. His jaw distended, causing the bolts in his lips to split out into top or bottom, as his jaw split wide and exposed row upon row of resurgent teeth. His split tongue lashed in an almost rabid fashion, while Teagan’s veins began to flow black. The color drained from his claws, leaving them black, while scales forced growth at an accelerated rate to tear apart his skin and leave only the shining black-grey he was so blissfully used to. His eye began to bleed gold, while Teagan’s vacant stare flooded with black and washed out again.

Her heart beat once, and the darkness drained slowly. Skid was screaming in multiple intonations, voices, words and tongues as his body wrenched back and forth between the two, one wrestling to maintain his stability, the other striving for regularity and what was correct.

The battle raged for what felt like days before Skid was finally sleek and new, shiny and fresh once more. The ground was slicked with his blood, and Teagan’s body had given off irregular, strange, and strained heartbeats throughout. But with Hethen’s presence eliminated, life surged through her battered and broken frame once more.

The woman shot forwards, taking in a gasping breath, then screaming and panicking over the disorientation she’d been presented with. It was only really due to Skid’s body forcing hers back down that she didn’t fall from the table.

Skid’s palm openly slapped Teagan across the face when she began to struggle, and as she looked up at him and the black flowed through her veins across the mark for just a barely-there moment, he pulled her by both shoulders in to enfold within his arms. His mask was in tatters, his wings were limp and useless against the ground as was his tail, and he held barely enough strength to overpower the recently deceased.

“Don’t you dare.. Ever again. Never.” His face rested against the side of Teagan’s neck, and tears streamed down her cheeks in silent disbelief.. Of everything.

“Did I fall asleep..?”

[Teagan]

At long last, Skid had found it within himself to break the experiments and move Teagan to the bedroom to recover in a more relaxed, warm setting. His studies had turned up the expected, though undesirable, results in the end and he had to work quickly to ensure that her body acclimated properly to its new state; something he'd dubbed "half-death." It was with much care that he'd wheeled both Teagan and the massive cart of equipment into the bedroom to set up alongside the bed, where he settled her halfway beneath the comforters and blankets.

The upper half of her body was left exposed, and a plethora of tubing ran from her in all manner of places. The blood that was once pure and simple now held wisps of black, and Skid found himself greatful it was in such light and insignificant amounts, lest the tubing would require a changing at least once. Something he had no desire to go through the stresses of. He'd brought up a chair to watch her from, as his presence in the bed may have provoked her to move, or him to unsettle the tubing. It was there that he'd sat and momentarily slept on and off for hours on end.

[Teagan]

Teagan curled up on a chair in the main room. Skid had brought her clothes after spending the previous night in bed hooked up to those tubes and machines like a Frankenstein’s Monster. She held herself in her bandaged arms and raised her eyes to the man.

“I am sorry about your mirror. I do not feel like myself at all.”

Through that sewn together mask, Skid’s eye locked onto Teagan. There was always difficulty in observing his mood or predicting what he was thinking because of it, but she would guess he was somewhere between pissed off and never letting her out of his sight again. Skid had watched her for a while, and when she finally spoke he narrowed his eye. All this time spent, and she apologized about the mirror. "The mirror doesn't matter." A set of claws scratched at his upper arm, until a scale was pried off.

Teagan’s chin dropped to her chest at Skid’s words. She had questions that she figured could be answered by him, however, the way the conversation was going already; she didn’t think any answer would be more than one dismissing sentence. Still, the silent room’s tension seemed more threatening at the moment.

“I will take my things and be gone tonight. Am I ready? I did not want to be so troublesome.” She spoke as if she just came from an incubator. Troublesome was an amazing understatement as well.

"Don't leave." He still sounded angry, though it was strange with the words the way they were. A plea wrapped in a gruff demanding mutter. "You can't go. I have to know whether you're alright or not." His scratching shifted to the other arm, until a small scale fell from his wrist. "You're curious about something." He was trying not to yell at her, yet.
He knew he wouldn't be able to keep himself from it long.

She made a face at seeing the second scale fall from his body and her eyes went to his again when he read the questions on her features. Teagan wouldn’t question Skid’s stance on her leaving.

“What is wrong with me? Why do I look this way?” If she had it her way, she would have just chalked it all up to being her fault and dealt with the situation. That wasn’t going to cut it here.

"You died." He tightened his grip on his own wrist for a moment, letting it loosen again after the pressure registered. "And I forced something out of myself to help resuscitate you. I believe a small echo of it imprinted upon you, though, given the state you were in."

For a very brief moment Teagan felt relief. She died. There was a small amount of pride to her to know that she at least did not fail at that. That feeling twisted itself into concern when she realized what else Skid had said.

“There is something inside of me… ?“

"Yes." Simply. "Something is inside of you. A very, very small echo of something that is inside of me. I don't know how exactly, but your reaction to it was phenomenal." He could've been scowling.

“I will stay… why is it so warm in here?”