02.14.10 - Dri Will Fix It

Location: Halyard Rathole, Dri's Room

Characters Involved: Adriel, Tameus, Dagan

Dri's room. It's dank... and dark! But not too dark. The rat has all of her candles burning bright, to light the room for her... guest. Tameus. The buck from the other day. The buck that Saug and Dagan decided to mess with... and they /ruined/ him. When Dri came upon the ruined buck, she was not pleased. Now she's got him back here. How is anyone's guess. He's on the mattress and his wrists and ankles are chained to keep him from going anywhere, but there's enough slack for him to be over on his side. The small rat female is hovering over him with a wet wash cloth, cleaning small scratches and wounds with a tender touch. She has already done the major work of tending the larger wounds, what needed cleaning and stitching and bandaging already done. Now she's just... fidgeting at him, really. Waiting for him to wake up.

Well, it takes a bit, but finally Tam starts to rouse. After.. who knows how many hours. He shifts - one might imagine you could /hear/ his cracked ribs creaking. He's not even fully conscious before his muzzle twists up in pain, and he releases a small groan from the back of his throat.

"Do not move, mm? Be still," Dri croons softly. She pets his ears back, gently, her dark eyes glinting in the candlelight. "Stitching you again will hurt more now that you are awake, if you pull them." Does that voice sound familiar, Tam?

Not really! Not for a moment, anyway. Tam's eyes pinch tightly shut, his mouth slightly open to take in wheezy breaths now that the pain is really hitting his conscious brain. Ow. /Ow/. The chains holding him in place clank slightly as he shifts, not trying to get up, but starting to move into a more curled-up position. Not very far into it, and the change in position sends sharp pain through him from those ribs - he groans again. His eyes open, focusing slowly in front of him, then lifting to Adriel. He... just stares at her face. Like he can't quite comprehend who she is.

Adriel sees his confusion, his mind's attempt to place her. Her sharp teeth show in a rather... tickled smile. "I stole your coin pouch," she reminds him. She pats his ears again, scritching gently at the base of them. "See?" She turns her still-bruised cheek to the light.

Tameus's ears press back, and flinch at her fingers stroking them. He draws his head slightly away, a distrustful look on his battered face. "What th'--/nnh/." As soon as he tries to talk, he's reminded of that dislocated jaw - now fixed, but still quite painful. One hand automatically moves up to his face, and is stopped with a jerk by the chain tethering that wrist.

"I said don't move," Dri frets with a bit of a scowling pout. She sinks down onto her butt, sitting cross-legged while she watches the curious hare. "Someone ruined you... so I thought I'd fix it." He's hardly any fun to play with like this.

Oh, good. Ruined. What a nice thought. "... an' keep me captive while y'r at it?" Tam asks gruffly, wincing with the words and speaking with kind of a heavy tone from trying to move his jaw minimally. His head lowers to his arm, ears slightly quivering with the raw, aching pain. All through his body.

He's not /ruined/, just... uhh... inconvenienced. Severely inconvenienced. Frankly Dag is curious about who or what exactly Adriel is talking to at such an hour, like the walls of their flophouse do anything to muffle sound. What insulation? The greyrat pokes his head into her room, leaning around the open doorway. "Why," he asks, casually, "Are we entertaining a hare?"

"You can go when you're well," Dri muses in an absent fashion. Her whiskers twitch and her eyes turn towards the open doorway just before Dag appears. When he appears she rises and goes to meet him, leaning up to sniff at his muzzle. "Someone /ruined/ him, Dagan..." Her ears fold back, then, and a dark look crosses her expression. "You should /kill/ them."

"Hh." This kind of pain would usually lead to one clenching their jaw, but. Ow? Tam's eyes shut until he hears that voice - not that he recognizes it, but he looks up, and his ears jerk out to the sides in a startled reaction to seeing Dagan. "... what th'.. /hell/, y're.. /friends/..?" Uhg, no.

Dagan grins a little at the suggestion that he kill them, and presumably himself. "I have toyed with the idea," he says, though the voice is slightly distracted as he watches past her at Tam. Sparing a twitch of his nose for her, the rat steps into the room, looking down at the slightly-broken hare. "You healed him," he says, with a bit of distaste. "If he were strong enough to live he would have done it on his own."

"I /told/ you, Dagan, I want to /play/ with him... I can't very well play with him if he's dead and I'm not... and it wasn't /my/ time, so it can't be his." Dri slinks after the larger rat, slipping her arms around his waist to peer around him at the hare. "I told you - death can have him when I'm done." She nuzzles at his bicep.

Tameus looks.. less than pleased to be on display. This week's special exhibit: Tameus Sade, Broken In Pieces? For the moment he's glaring hard at Dagan. Adriel's theft is not quite so enraging as Dagan's stabbing - which Tam seems to only just remember, jerking his head a little around to get a look at his hand. It's in a bad way, wrapped in bandage, swollen. Throbbing. "... y' .. /bastard/, y' ruined m' damn hand!" he snaps.

Dagan's eyes are almost depthless. Not much to focus that glare on except the firelight dancing off them. You could glare at his nose, tho'! It's about midway between them. "It will heal," he says, with a faint grumble. "I fear your soul will not. Dri has placed it in peril." By.. healing him, yes. The religion of his is certainly a curious one! "But do not worry," he murmurs. "I shall pray for you." He reaches across his torso with his opposite arm to prickle the top of Dri's muzzle with his claws. "You do not cheat death of what is His."

Adriel's eyes narrow slightly at Tameus' words. What did /Dagan/ do to his hand? She turns her muzzle into his shoulder with a faint shake of her head. "... Do you think death would wait for me? He was not meant to die. He was meant to be my amusement. Death knows." She sounds fairly sure of herself, slipping away from Dagan and past him, to resume her spot cross-legged at Tam's side. She pets at his ears, again. "Did he do this to you, pet?" she croons. Her eyes turn up to the other rat, unreadable.

Tameus's lips curl slightly and he bares his teeth at Dagan. Somewhere beyond the bruising and cuts on his face, he looks /really pissed/. ".. him an'. An' th' other guy. Rat.. guy." Yeah, him. The buck doesn't seem so bothered by the petting now, distracted and agitated by Dagan.

Dagan snorts. As if /she/ could know what their Lord wants! "You've ruined it all by healing him," mutters the rat. As for the implication that he caused this, well, who cares? "One does not pass up an opportunity to do the Lord's work," he says.

A quiet hiss works out of the rat female, her tail swishing and then curling over Tameus' waist in a possessive fashion. But she doesn't speak against Dagan. She just turns her eyes to the buck and continues to pet and shush at him quietly, to soothe him. "Dri will fix it."

Tameus's muzzle turns to the side with a small growl of frustration. He stares at that hand, the muscles in that arm tensing as he tries to curl his hand. Flex the fingers, /anything/, but there's nothing more than a slight shift in his fingers. "... dammit, /dammit/," he mutters. Did his voice just crack a little, or is that just the gruffness that's been there since he awoke in this state?

Dagan's gaze is not pitiless, like you would expect. No, if anything, Dag believes that Dri has selfishly denied Tam his honored place in the great beyond, and left him with nothing to show for it but a broken body. The rat takes a step back, to turn and watch a candle sputter. "All you have done is prolong it," he murmurs. "I can smell his hand going bad. The sepsis will take him."

Adriel leans in close to Tam's ears, her breath soft and warm on his fur. She shhhhs, crooning at him. "... Do not listen. I will not let you go. I will cut off the infection if I must," she reassures him with a gentle scritch to the top of his head. "Dri will fix it.... you will see."

Tameus's shoulders hunch, ears pressed tightly back at Dagan's words. He takes a few shaky breaths and turns his dusky eyes up to Adriel's face. One is in a bit of a squint from dark bruising around it, on the socket and cheekbone. "/Don't/," he gruffs out. ".. 'm nothin' wit'out m' hand, don't y' understand?"

Dagan turns his nose away from them, wrinkling it in disgust. The way she dotes upon that soulless piece of meat is disgusting. "Try not to get too attached to this pet," he says. "Use him then discard him." The rat waves his paw as he turns to leave, headed for the 'door'.. the hole in the wall where a door should be, anyway.

"I will do as I will," Dri replies dispassionately to Dagan, her eyes turning to follow him from the room. They flicker back to Tameus' face, though. "You have two, pet. One is just as good." Her smile shows in a flash of teeth and then it fades, with a slightly brooding expression. She ducks forward again, to whisper to Tameus. "... he thinks he knows the will of the keeper of souls, mm? But if Death can be swayed by a useless little ratling.. then Death is week. You see? And so Death will be my plaything, as well." She presses a gentle kiss to Tameus' brow and rises, then, heading for the door. To leave Tameus there, on his own, for the time being.

"I can't be a damn /long patroller/ with /one hand/," Tam grates out, taking heavier breaths with his growing agitation. And.. worry. This is looking very very bad, is it not? If there's an infection spreading in his injured hand, he's not very confident about Adriel's ability to deal with it. ".. let me go. Jus'. Let me go home. Th' healers there, /they/ c'n do somethin'..." He's talking to her back as she walks away. Argh.

"I am capable," is all Dri offers Tameus as way of reassurance. And then she, too, is gone.