healer.
she bristles pricked / prodded to aggravated response, lips parted on SHARP retort ( left to sting / bleed on duller skin ); she draws back from the ire with only PRACTICED ease, biting down sharp on the tongue that nearly returns vitriol in kind. rudeness, she can handle you cannot make your mark in this profession without that shell / defence as coat and cloak. perhaps she’s SURPRISED; that someone with such miserable air, should still have the momentum to snap his jaws in some mimicry of MALICE.
❝ you lost it? ❞ like a household key, left abandoned on the kitchen counter / spare coins, fallen wayside to the gutter? you cannot LOSE an integral part of you ( but then, anyone who has known suffering, knows that isn’t true. ) her brow furrows: gaze raking back again in slow consideration / analytical curiousity that melts into dawning REALIZATION. ❝ were you ❞ don’t say it! trauma / grief were better left to their own quiet resurgence. ❝ you lost your bending … recently? and you haven’t had any hint of it since? ❞
‘ well, i wouldn’t have come here if i’ve had hints of it, now would i ? ’ his words are knife-cut wounds, sharp as razors, and tahno knows - tahno is aware, because he’s not a goddam idiot, he doesn’t just not exist now that he doesn’t have his fucking bending with him ( except does he ? does he really exist ? ) - that maybe it’ll do him no good dripping threats to people who could potentially help, who could perhaps cure him. but he can’t help it. it’s easy, and it - it’s more. whatever he’s feeling ? besides the dark and vast emptiness, trying to entice reactions from people makes him feel more than this shell that amon has left behind.
the throbbing in his head weighs heavier - a biological warning, maybe. a huge red alarming sign cautioning him from over-exerting, from not being a total dick. and tahno hisses. pinches his temple. ( if this was before, he’d have waterbended to soothe his own damn self. but he can’t now. he can’t. and it’s— ) ‘ yes, recently. ’ he answers the question fluidly. at least this is normal now: every clinics and bending institution he’s went to ask relatively the same fucking questions. tahno can do routine. can trust it. ‘ i’ve had the perpetrator held his thumb right here on my forehead. and i felt- like i was drowning, like something was pulling an organ out straight from my head. it was rushed. every muscle in my body feels tight. and it was aching like i’ve trained my body in an extreme amount days after. and this- this fucking headache— ’ a hiss. ‘ —it won’t go away. no matter what i do. ’


















