#mark yarin

[gottawhump]

Understanding

The Chronicler

CW/TW: none I can think of. Seems to follow from here. Do you see why I have a hard time organizing this isn’t a coherent linear way?

Cien carried Mark to the bed, settling him with great care and gentleness.

“He will sleep a while yet. But the danger’s past.”

I nodded. “Thank you, and—I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, dismissing the apology. “It’s not important.”

“I wronged you, Cien. I thought, I assumed—-”

“Nothing I haven’t encouraged you to think and assume.” He glanced back a the sleeping man, smiled. “But I do care about him. For him.”

“You... why?”

“It’s hard to spend time in someone’s mind, and not care.”

“He’s mindblind.”

“Yes. And for months, for the sake of our alliance, I’ve been trying to change that.” His smile faded. “Not with much success. But—-we’ve talked—-and I’ve caught flashes, fragments.”

I felt his mind brush mine, light as fingertips, offering to share. Accepting, I opened to the tumble of images, sensations, memories. Nothing complete, nothing clear. But more than I’d known, before.

“Do you see why you couldn’t heal him, my lady?”

“He has no name.”

“It is not his fault.” Now he sounded fierce and protective. “It is how his people made him.”

“I know.”

[gottawhump]

Tears

The Scientist

CW/TW: a stressed caretaker, catatonic whumpees (m/f). Connected to this. Within the Torturers’ Guild.

I wished, again, for magic, for telepathy, just so I could reach and touch their minds with the reassurance that we were safe now, that the ordeal was over. I told them, instead. Over and over again.

I talked until I was hoarse, and hoped they’d heard. I babbled, reciting rules and regulations, statistics, planetary conditions. Anything that came to mind, however meaningless.

I sang, poorly, whatever I could remember and made up things when I couldn’t.

I coaxed them to eat and drink, to at least suck some tea or broth through a straw. Sometimes they did. Constans helped, sometimes, and had better luck.

He spoke and acted with authority, and it got through to Cien. “Drink your soup, boy, you need to keep your strength up.” Even in the depths of his catatonic state, Cien obeyed.

Constans treated Khalara with a detached professionalism, keeping her wounds clean of infections, shifting her to prevent bedsores, forcing her to drink and swallow just enough. She was a subject to him, important not for herself but because Cien cared for her.

Cien heard and responded to Constans’ voice, rarely mine, and I realized I resented the man for that. I didn’t like thinking too long about why he got the response he did, unfailingly.

I talked and I babbled and I snag. Time passed, and they didn’t wake.

Don’t cry. Don’t ever cry here. But I did.

[gottawhump]

“Do You Love Her?”

The Scientist

CW/TW: Just complicated character relationships. Emotional whump?

“Do you love her?” I asked.

“I-I-I-” Cien stammered, swallowed, stopped. Bowed his head.

She cried, and I held her!

She never let him touch her. She rarely allowed anyone to touch. Didn’t he realize she was breaking down? Didn’t he care? Or was this what he wanted, to break her down far enough she would accept him?

“Never mind.”

“Mark, is she all right?”

I couldn’t ignore his urgent anxiety. I shook my head.

“Dear God.” He covered his face with his hands.

It looked, and sounded, like genuine concern and real grief. H would do anything for Khalara, I thought, except the one thing she needed. I got out of my chair, tired of tasting futility.

“Don’t-don’t come to my house for a while, Cien.” I rose from my seat. “I don’t want to see you.”

[gottawhump]

Betrayal

The Mage

CW/TW: not sure if any apply. Discusses a leonine bargain, whumper/whumpee dynamics. Emotional whump, probably—nothing quite like hurting people you love.

“How can I forgive you? You are destroying her, and all I can do is-watch.” I heard the pain in the quiet words, and sorrow in the next ones. “I suppose, you’d prefer I left her alone.”

This might be over by now if you did—-I pushed away the thought, the habit. “No. I am-grateful.”

Doubt darkened his eyes for a moment, but it passed quickly. He didn’t read minds, but I saw him processing small things, drawing conclusions.

Mark’s hands twisted together in his lap. “Help me understand, Cien. I watched you court Khalara, in all seriousness.”

You watched me fail, over and over again. I nodded, a jerk of my head.

One of Mark’s hands clenched, opened flat. “Do you know—-that terrified her, too? Did you enjoy that?”

“No.”

I could almost hear him say, that’s something. But he didn’t. He spoke calmly, almost detached. “No. Now this-situation with her child. You could have chosen a different route.”

Now you have a gift she won’t refuse, he’d said.

“But you chose this,” and I flinched from his disgust, “instead, and it seems to me that you enjoy extracting every bit of possible agony out of the-situation. I have seen you ready to tear pieces off someone who laid a rough hand on her.”

He sighed, closed his eyes. “Now, you’re trading moments of mercy for moments of affection. The logical progression, I suppose, from the primary arrangement.”

“Yes.”

“Do you—-do you imagine this is some show of your love?” He opened his eyes, spread his hands wide in question. “Is this what they taught you in the Torturers’ Guild?”

“Yes.” I wanted, suddenly, painfully, to touch his mind and share the memories of apprenticeship and training, of Constanns trading the semblance of affection for the semblance of kindness, between breaths of pain. Simpler to share than to speak of the unspeakable.

I checked the impulse, knowing it futile. If I tried, he might—at best—receive only confused fragments, and experience a great deal of pain. Something like a smile twitched my lips, fell away. I could share all of this with Khalara, but it would only fuel her nightmares.

“I am sorry, Cien.” I saw pity in his clear brown eyes, heard it shading his calm voice.

“Don’t.”

[gottawhump]

Here

Cien Dheur

CW/TW: fever, begging, lady whump. Have a sick fic.

“I’m here, I’m here,” I said.

“Pleaee, Cien, I need Cien,” she begged.

“I’m here, Khalara. Right here.” Did she even hear me? She didn’t see me, eyes fever glazed. I brushed back a strand of sweat soaked hair, feeling helpless. She flinched from the touch, and I cursed, quietly. Not quietly enough; she flinched again.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Please?”

I couldn’t stand it. I had to leave the room.

I drank my tea. It was supposed to be calming.

Mark took a chair across from me. “She’s asking for you.”

“She doesn’t know I’m there.” I drained my cup, rinsed it and left it in the sink.

“Fevers do that, sometimes.”

“I know.”

“I’ll go sit with her for a while, if you aren’t going back. I don’t like to leave her alone.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

He smiled. “Yes, I’m pretty sure.”

I felt something inside me relax. “I’ll go sit with her. Just, give me a few more minutes.”

“I know it’s hard on you.”

“It’s nothing.”

[gottawhump]

Unexpected Confrontation

The Mage

CW/TW: once more, complicated character relationships, emotional whump maybe. Precedes this.

“You sent me away from your Demesne, at our appointed time, because I offended you, and now you want to talk? Here?”

He flinched, though I was more incredulous than angry. “Yes.”

“Then sit, refresh yourself.”

He chose his seat, angled from my desk, lacing his fingers together. He said nothing for a while, studying me. I spread my hands, ceding the opening to him. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, quietly, “Do you know what you’re doing to Khalara?”

“I’ve done nothing to her, Mark.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “Do you know?”

“I know she’s unhappy.” I closed my left hand, letting the pain stab up my arm.

“Whatever you did the last time you saw her—”

“She cried. I held her, Mark!”

“I wish you would keep your hands off her.” The quiet venom astonished me. “I wish you would stop playing this-sick game with her.”

“What’s wrong with Khalara?”

“Nothing.” Mark spat out the word with viciousness. “You’ve done nothing to her.”

“If there something I can do-”

For a moment, I saw hatred twist his face, pure and raw and utterly alien to Mark, and I flinched from it. He closed it off quickly, resuming a semblance of his usual calm. “You know what you can do, Cien. But you won’t, and you keep making her ask.”

I shook my head, not denying.

“Do you love her?”

My head jerked up at the sudden whiplash change in his tone, and the echo of my last conversation with Khalara.

“I-I-I-” I swallowed the stammering incoherence.

@painful-pooch