“Thought you were someone else,” he explained, still not entirely together it seemed. His head was beginning to throb with a powerful headache, and it blurred his thoughts and visions together until he wasn’t quite sure of what he was saying anymore. “Someone I lo-” He managed to catch himself before the confession, but the word he chose to replace it wasn’t much better. “-lost… Someone I lost…” he corrected himself, but the words were still full of pain and longing. Knowing this man before him wasn’t Manaaki didn’t help him stop thinking about him, or how painful losing him had truly been. Because it hadn’t been a loss so much as an outright theft. Even as much as he was still struggling to breathe properly, Tane’s face managed to distort with a deeper pain, one that plainly told anyone who saw it that he was reliving the horrible moment again and again in his mind now. An endless loop, and one he could not easily escape.
“No… no no no no…” he murmured, before he could stop himself. His wet hands came up to cover his face for a moment, as if he could rub the despair way along with the droplets of water still lingering on his cheeks. He wanted to hide behind his hands forever and forget this had ever happened, forget any of this had ever happened… maybe even his entire life… It would be the only way to escape the pain, wouldn’t it? And that bitter loneliness that stung at him even now, when he was inches away from another person… But after a deep, labored breath and another little flurry of coughs, he calmed down again, seeming to melt against the sand. It was hard to let the anger and sorrow go, but it was all in the past now…and so letting go was all he could do. He tried to envision it being washed away with the tide, which he still felt occasionally tickling his ankles.
“Sorry,” Tane repeated, clearing his throat a bit. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was sorry for this time, but he felt a need to tell this man… Perhaps he was just sorry for the circumstances that had gotten them both here, although of course he could see nothing of the stranger’s past or pains, especially not when he was drowning in his own. “Um… didn’t see a tail actually,” he said, realizing for the first time since he’d regained consciousness that this man was very naked in front of him right now… not that he minded. In his experience, nudity was something quite natural, he hardly blinked an eye at it anymore, except for when he knew humans or other creatures might react strangely. And he recalled that humans had particularly strange hang-ups about nudity most of the time. Regardless, after a quick (but likely still obvious) appreciative glance over the stranger’s body, he didn’t make an effort to address the subject. The man could be naked if he wanted, and it wouldn’t bother Tane in the slightest.
“Actually it was your voice,” he admitted. “There was something about it that… well… that made me forget I didn’t know how to swim…” He chuckled, but it quickly descended into another coughing fit, as not quite all the water was out of his lungs quite yet. “It’s odd I’ve… encountered female sirens before and been able to handle myself… You must be very powerful…” There didn’t seem to be any doubt of that… but it made Tane curious about a few things, like how old of a siren this man was, and what exactly had been done to him… “I… Uh- Thank you… for saving me, by the way… But I have to ask… what made you change your mind?”
"I- Alright well that explains that." He nodded, wondering just exactly what there was being hidden beneath the surface, where something he couldn't see had been taking place, but he didn't want to think about that, though it was difficult for him to ignore. His next words raised one of his brows, but something about the correction made him think there was a far different word than he was meant to say in that moment, but he was pushing it down and not letting it out. Seeing that look on his face, that distortion, he knew that look, something told him that the face this man had on his face now was a look he himself had worn several times in the not too recent past, but he didn't want to think about that right now, or at least he didn't think about it too much until it was here staring him in the face.
Max knelt now, it was easier than crouching against the sand after all of the apparent excercise he was doing today, his arms ached just a little, but he guessed that was his own fault for working too hard as well. Max had seen far more of the reaction the man was having to whatever had happened to him in the mirror looking back at him than he'd like to admit. He'd tried to drown the pain in bottles of burning liquid, but that only served to fuel his anger, and he tried not to do that if he could. Then again the pain was so deep, so angry and burning that sometimes it was all he could do to not be effected by all of that pain and give in to the bottles of whiskey in his home, allow himself to be the angry thing that his body wanted him to be, stand in the mirror and let himself see that change from the other side.
"Don't... Apologize.." He said, shaking his head, there wasn't any reason for more apologies, he wasn't the one who had been the cause of the attempted drowning, he'd simply been the victim, though he couldn't help but feel a tiny victory in the fact that he had managed to almost drown someone, it was far more than he thought he could do. "Well.. I have a tail right now, only it's on the wrong side and a big smaller than my usual one. I blame it on the cold though." Even now he could see some form of humor in what he was thinking about. It felt like so long ago that he would have so quickly reached for something to cover himself up, not wanting to be around people when they were in varying stages of undress, which was unusual considering his work as a bodyguard for a prostitute ring, but he wasn't that person anymore, and without that work he wouldn't have met the people who meant the most to him.
"Just my voice?" He asked, slightly surprised at that fact. "I didn't even start singing, I'm surprised to be honest." Max squinted slightly, worried about just how much water he had ingested. "I.. Powerful? I... Maybe.." he looked down at his hands, looking away, wondering whether there was any truth, and just how much he should say. "Well.. I.. It could be because of.. What happened... I.. I used to be a bodyguard in a prostitution ring, and when I brought them down they put a hit on My wife... She was killed... And I.. I went after the men who killed her.. Only they tortured me... And then they killed me... And I can't remember anything after my wedding day.. But we had a daughter and I can't remember her face..." He shook his head. "I guess I changed my mind because I.. I've seen that look... I've felt that feeling.. Drowning... Maybe somewhere along the way I developed some kind of conscious." he shrugged a shoulder, "I.. Sorry.. Downer over here."
