Difference between revisions of "Logs:Potent but ineffective"

After dinner but before bedtime, when it wouldn't be too rude to invite company up for a drink, Tacuseth's mind is the target of a stream of chaotic, intense feelings. Feelings that are surely surging strongly enough that were they not channeled to him, they would have spilled out to where everyone would have heard. That wouldn't do. No one but Tacuseth could know that Rasavyth was in pain, was filled with terror. That he felt helpless. Help. He needed help. Would they? Could they? Jumbled images of K'zin looking at Rasavyth with emotionally dead eyes, the feeling of Rasavyth straining to push past immovable stone to get in to the weyr. To get to his lifemate at the table. Helpless! (To Tacuseth from Rasavyth)

Naturally, the blue pair is away. Well, not too far away, but close enough once Tacuseth feels the intensity of one bronze weyrling. The cry for help shifts the density of shadows to focus towards him, sending a « We're comin', » since it's evident that the pair has just arrived back to the Weyr from wherever they've gone. Perhaps it could be noted that there's really no question given as to the nature of this S.O.S call. It sounded like trouble, and this pair is drawn to trouble like a dragon to a wherry. (To Rasavyth from Tacuseth)

The panic ebbs, just a little. It shifts, transforms into a new kind. It's the kind when one's been caught with their pants down or with their hand in the cookie jar. Then the desperation of a lover seeking not to be thrown from an embrace. Rejection gashes deeply through the young bronze. His Achilles' heel triggered. The bronze is backing out of the tunnel ichor seeping out of deep scrapes. As the blue lands, the bronze is falling off the ledge, spreading wings and soaring high. Fast bootfalls herald K'zin's coming as he skids to a halt on the ledge, looking pale, nauseous, tear-streaked and scared. "RASAVYTH!" A hand throws up into the sky as though to draw him back by pulling some invisible thread that links the two. But there is no thread and the bronze does not look back.

Tacuseth lands, just as the bronze is backing out and taking to the sky. Before the blue can even settle, Jo's landing on the ground and wrenching her helmet and goggles from her head as she shoots one weyrling, then dragon a look. « Rasavyth! » the blue calls, just as at the same time his rider is confronting K'zin. "What the fuck, K'zin?" she's sending, looking him over briefly before adding, "Tac has me thinkin' ya gone and thrown yerself off yer own ledge and wanted me to come-look! I think he might've used those very words. What's goin' on?"

K'zin can't even spare a thought for Jo just at this moment, his hand still reaching, "Do not between!" He bellows into the whipping wintry wind. It might be shocking to one who's never seen him 'command' before. Sweet, innocent K'zin, usually so full of blushes and goofy grins. This is not the boy K'zin, but the man. The bronze's flight ceases its ascent immediately. Shocking, perhaps, even to K'zin, that he is, in fact, able to exert his will over his lifemate in the way that the bronze has so often exerted his on his rider. K'zin's outstretched palm is bleeding, too, scrapes evident, there, and trickling slowly off his other hand as well. Dark spots are harder to spot on his knees, but there. "Come back." This is quieter, and still not to Jo. It isn't until K'zin sees Rasavyth wheeling back toward the ledge that he spares a look for the bluerider, his form rigid. "No." So apparently he at least heard her, the words put in his mental cue once the more pressing matter was seen to. "My dragon is a ruthless, lying, many-faced bastard who's been keeping secrets from me since the moment he was born. That's all." Just another day in High Reaches Weyr, right? Lying, secrets, ruthless ambition.

Jo and Tacuseth look on between the weyrling pair. They watch it all unfold, looking from one to the other, keeping their silent counsel. Then, once it looks like Rasavyth wasn't going to Between, Jo steps aside along with her dragon to give the bronze room to land while as one, they look to K'zin and his abrupt answer. Nothing comes from either after it, right away, either. Not until, "Yer dragon and ya had a row?" she asks at the same time Tacuseth reaches out towards Rasavyth with « Where were ya goin'? » He's curious, surely, especially since he was called. "What secrets would he keep from ya?" Jo tacks on then.

K'zin steps to the side along with Jo, but his eyes have left the brunette and gone back to his lifemate, watching the approach. The mind that Tacuseth reaches is a thoroughly unfamiliar landscape. There's no trace of reflection. There's ooze, but it's more sense than sight. There are no shimmers, no comforts to be found, only feelings. He feels... broken. Broken-hearted? Yes, that too. But he feels like an imperfect play thing. Not the doll K'zin would have chosen to play with, if he played with dolls at all. Not the dragon K'zin wanted, hoped for, wished to have. He feels not good enough. It causes him to despair. Rasavyth has so few real feelings of any kind that this rejection by the one who matters the most has him hating himself. If it were another, any other, he'd tell them to go fuck themselves and have done, but this is K'zin. No matter how he might wish it otherwise, the bronze cannot not care. If dragons could cry... K'zin's tears a passed, only glitters in the starlight show evidence of its passing. He steps to Rasavyth as he lands. "Don't you ever think..." He trails off after that stern admonishment, hand rising to meet the lowered bronze head. « He hates me. » The whimper comes before K'zin's words to Jo, his tone hard, emotionless. "Everything. Anything he didn't think I could handle. Anything I wouldn't accept." Emotion abruptly blossoms on his face as an intensely pained and torn look comes, looking back at the bronze. "I didn't think dragons could be so selfish. So... evil." The word elicits a woeful creel from Rasavyth.

Silence is something the blue pair is really good at, and so it's being put to use here as both Tacuseth and Jo gauges the myriad of emotions seeping in through the bronze weyrling pair. Tacuseth's shadows are soothing and easy nonetheless, sending with the wealth of male camaraderie on his side, « He will come around. My woman says they always do. » Words meant to soothe, maybe? On the rider side, Jo is left studying K'zin's tear-streaked faced with underlying interest, and only looks away towards their dragons towards the end. "Thinkin' different doesn' make one evil," she counters that one quietly, her chin lifting slightly. "And, selfish is perception, ain' it? Aren' we all selfish, one way or another? Can we expect our dragons to be any different?" Looking to him now, "Whatever this is," she states the next firmly, but carefully, "make yer peace with him. He's yers, and yer his. That ain' changin', no matter how good or evil ya think he is. He's dies, you die. Ya die, he dies. Best get that into yer head right now or be one of the sorry ones yer weyrlin'masters tell ya about. How 'bout we go inside?" Jerking her chin towards the dragons, "Tac will look after him," she seems to promise.

Misery. Uncertainty. Rasavyth can't find his clever words and witticisms. But he latches onto Tacuseth's words as a tether to sanity. He's not there yet, but he's hanging on to the hope the blue offers him. K'zin's gaze is unblinking as he stares at Jo as she speaks. The way his face is so blank again, it might make her wonder if he's even hearing her. "You're right." It's simple sounding. So simple sounding that there's no doubt that it's anything but. He moves toward the inner weyr, beckoning her to follow. He gestures to the table, "Crack it open." The bottle she brought him as a weyr warming gift. "I'll join you as soon as I've cleaned up his scratches." K'zin moves toward the training room.

While Tacuseth continues to envelope Rasavyth's mind in cloaking shadows and the very low hum of the crowd, Jo's eyeing K'zin and his simple acceptance. "Am I?" she prompts, not expecting an answer to that. She does follow him in slowly, the heavy booted steps heard as she arrives to the table where she's staring at the bottle she brought him long before. Arching a brow at his back, "This stuff's pretty potent for someone with yer current state of mind," she seems to warn, popping it open in no time, anyway. She nods on K'zin heading off to clean injuries, uncorking the bottle to take the first drink.

"Potent is good." K'zin replies, a reckless edge to his baritone. It takes time for K'zin to get the hot water from the hearth in a basin and tear up a clean towel and grab some salve from one of the shelves in the training room. Then he's crossing to the ledge. Tacuseth can be audience as K'zin rigidly, but dutifully tends to the scrapes on each shoulder. "Does it hurt anywhere else?" Rasavyth flinches. K'zin doesn't speak to him aloud. It's not necessary. But now? It seems to carry significance. Apparently the answer is no, because K'zin returns, setting all his first aid items at the end of the table. Then he's tending to his palms, not bothering to salve them. The scrapes are more surface area than depth. It'll be a painful few days for sure. But that was guaranteed already. He leaves the table to go to the bedroom, returning in his exercise shorts - black silky affairs that are too short to be respectable, feet now bare. They're functional, though, for remaining somewhat decent while giving him access to his knees. He sits on the table to tend to them. "I meant that you were right that our lives are tied together and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm his rider, he's my dragon." He doesn't use the word 'lifemate'. He pauses between knees to lean across the tabletop to reach for the bottle.

By the time K'zin returns, Jo is sitting at the table with the bottle ready for him. She has her black gloves off, tucking them into her open jacket as he moves about. Tacuseth is a watchful audience to the interaction between rider and dragon, and perhaps the interactions are being relayed to Jo since by the time K'zin is there and tending to him, she's watching him all the more until he speaks. "Is there somethin' ya wanna do about it?" she counters, leaning back more comfortably in the chair. Her voices stays casual, and easy as she notes certain words. "Get rid of him? March yerself right down to those sands and see if he could climb himself back into any shells left from yer hatchin'? Ya thing he would let ya get rid of him?" One question after another, nudging that bottle within his reach. "Why doncha tell me how this all happened?"

"Nothing I can do about it, is there." It's not a question. They both know that Impression is forever. K'zin glowers down at his knee as he uses a torn piece of towel soaked in the warm water to wipe over the blood, making it run, now that it's freshly wetted. The knees aren't so bad as the hands, thankfully. His words, by contrast to the bluerider's casual tone, are bitten sharply. Not sharply at Jo, just clipped short. "Did you know he's impulsive? Almost never, everything's a bloody calculation with him. Everything is five moves ahead, but you get his emotions involved and he's going off half-cocked." There's annoyance for this. Where was the bronze going? Possibly neither rider nor dragon know. "What's to tell? We were learning about his forbearers. It turns out that we bear a striking resemblance to his granddam and her rider." This is half-snarled as he presses a clean bandage to the knee and holds it there. His spare hand snags up the bottle and he draws it to his lips, chugging despite it's potency. Only stopping after several large gulps when he has to cough. "How can I ever trust him? Again. He fucking betrayed me. Betrayed us. Maybe I wouldn't have known what to do if he up and said to me," Here K'zin's voice pitches higher and he does an excellent approximation of his dragon's accented tenor, "'My dear K'zin, we're going to be the Puppetmaster of Pern one day, and I'll sell or kill my sister or yours if that's what it takes.' But at least he'd have been being honest with me."

Legs crossing, Jo listens. She doesn't give anything until he's done. She even provides a wan smile for the imitation of voice, presumably is dragon's. "Whomever his forbearers are shouldn' matter," she gives lightly. "Tacuseth came from Taikrin's. he came from a clutch that was rumored to be cracked and deformed in some way. That's just his origin. What difference does it make what fuckin' line they come from?" She pauses to watching him with his knees before she continues with, "How can ya ever trust him again? Take it day by day, is how. How did he betray ya? Is it wrong, him bein' who he is?" Leaning a little forward now, "I mean, perhaps he should've been honest, but it happens to the best of us. Perhaps he didn' think ya were ready to see that side ya want. A lot of folks regret seein' what they think they want to. Acceptance," she touches the word. "Took a good portion of weyrlin'hood for me and Tac to get to that."

"Because," K'zin begins and here his expression turns cold, voice following suit, "Ysavaeth was an ambitious and cunning dragon who deceived a Weyr to get what she wanted. Rasavyth will deceive a world. He deceived me. Like Ysavaeth probably deceived Iolene, her ignorant rider. Like me. It wouldn't matter, except that it does." Because the similarities can't be ignored. "I'm his lifemate. Not his fucking puppet. I'm not a pawn to be lied to. He can--" He starts and then bites his tongue. On the ledge, Rasavyth shrinks, compacting himself as much as the slender bronze can. There's another little growl from the man, "Thanks to him, we're behind in that too. Maybe if he'd been honest with me from the get go, by now we'd be past it. Or getting past it. He's had the whole damn time to deal with it. Me? Sur-fucking-prise! Forgive me if I'm not just embracing the idea that we're going to betray the people I love to get to the top. A place I'm not even sure I want to be." The bottle is taken up again. Drank until the coughing comes again. He might not have answered all her questions, but he's clearly wrapped up in himself just now, so perhaps that explains it.

Not commandeering the bottle from him yet, "Iolene." Yes, Jo recognizes the dragon name, and provides her rider's name to it. Shaking her head as she looks to the ledge, "So what now?" she puts to him for all that, a brow lifted. "It's obvious that ya won' see reason on this matter. That whether he had lied or not, he had his reasons. Reasons ya talk about with him and find ways past," she adds that last quickly. "If it's just the lyin' yer upset about, that I can understand. I would be, too," she admits. "All the rest? Fuck that. It's who he is. If ya don' want power, then he won' push it. Why would he if it's not what ya want?"

"Because it's what he wants." K'zin hisses. "He thinks I'll see things his way. Because he won't change. He can't. He wants what he wants. He will want it always, he will always play the game." That last is said bitterly. "So I guess it's up to me to change. To embrace it." Sliding from the table, he moves around to Jo's side, bringing the bottle and placing it in front of her. "So how 'bout it, Jo. You like bad boys? Apparently I'm going to the baddest there's ever been." Still, bitter, sneering a little, though not at her, the unpleasant look caused by the hatred brewing in his heart for the situation he's found himself in. The ugly look fades a moment, a flash of the vulnerable K'zin that was before this night, "Where is the reason in any of this?" He begs it, softly. Her words not providing enough logic, sense, justification. There is no logic in this place.

"And what if his way is better?" Jo counters quickly, fingers lightly tapping the table surface from one hand. "What if he can see somethin' in ya that even you can' see? Is he still wrong, then?" Leaning forward, "A dragon can' force ya to change, K'zin," she dismisses that outright. "Just like a rider can' force their dragon to change. Not if ya don' want to, and it's clear that ya don'. So ya look for compromises. What he's willin' to live with, for as long as he's willin' to remember. I'm sorry, I'm just..." Surprised? Lost? "Beyond him lyin', I fail to see what the problem is," she finishes, a tad wry. "Ambition never hurt anyone. Killed some, sure, but..." Okay, so maybe not the best encouraging words! K'zin coming by her chair with those bitter words on bad boys earns him open laughter as she takes up the bottle and drinks. That laughter lingers, perhaps a bit longer than it should before she sets that bottle back down on the table and turns to in her seat look fully over at the young man. Looking him over slowly then, "I rather like Rasavyth the way he is, yer dragon. Tac's told me all sorts of things they talk about, and I must say, for a young bronze, I'm impressed. He seems to be one of those that gets it. That gets how the world really is. Most don'. Some do, but choose to pretend like there's good'n evil and honor among thieves cuz it helps them sleep better at night." She gives a snort to that and a shake of her head. Lifting a long tracing finger to the rim of the bottle, "Do ya think ya will die like Iolene did?" she suddenly asks now.

Laughter. What a way to take wind out of his sails. K'zin's let Jo's queries about Rasavyth's wisdom go until all is said and done, his pursed lips a sign of his displeasure as he leans on the table beside Jo, arms crossing uncomfortably across his chest. "How is it better to use everyone? To not care for people?" The nature of the world and his bronze's ability to see it is left alone for the moment, though certainly heard. He reaches out a hand, to steal the bottle from under her finger. "And if I did? If I died because of his scheming and plotting and grabbings for power? Wouldn't that serve him right? Don't bad things happen to bad people - and dragons? What goes around comes around and all that crap?" He probably doesn't mean crap as in bullshit, be means it as a throw-away word to mean 'stuff', but in this instance... perhaps it's fitting. Drink.

Jo regards his displeasure for a moment and doesn't answer on the first right away. "It's not about carin', or even usin' folks," she states. "And, if ya have to ask..." she lets that trail, turning to K'zin before she tacks, "Look, I get it. Ya care about folks and all that comes with it. Yer a good person. Even I can see that. I'm sure Rasavyth can too, or he wouldn've found'ja. Perhaps this is an unfortunate match, but it wouldn' be the first one, nor the last. Bottom line," and she relinquish the bottle to him now, "if ya want him to stop, make it so. It's somethin' I disagree with wholeheartedly, and I think ya'd how a shitload of regret for it in the long run, but if ya refuse to reconcile this...to understand him and how he benefits ya, darlin'...then usin' blocks in yer head should he exercise himself in that could work. Or," and she gets up from her seat, "ya can brood in here about how ya gotta bad dragon. As if, really. Yer choice." There's a note of resignation in her guarded tone as she steps away from the table as she says, "Perhaps I'm not the one ya should be talkin' to, but I came because he called. Ya know where I came from," beyond the Hold, "so if yer expectin' me join in on how evil yer dragon is in the great scheme of things, ya've called the wrong one." She sounds apologetic, at least.

There's painful indecision in his expression as she speaks. In essence, all her words boil down to telling him to take action, one way or the other, or the other. Go good, go bad, compromise. Do something. K'zin doesn't know the answer. Another glug glug of the bottle and he's setting it back on the table. "Thanks for coming, Jo." It sounds a little insincere. But then, K'zin wasn't the one who asked her here. "I trust you can find your way out or into my bed." After the laughing, there's no tone to imply he's holding his breath on the latter. It's more added as a way of saying he's going to pass out, but it's not meant to be an unfriendly departure. After the night he's had, it's the best he can manage. There's a stagger as he goes. Jo wasn't kidding, potent.

To the abrupt way of dismissal, Jo only regards K'zin for a few breaths longer before her lips thin and she turns to leave, That last only has her tossing over a shoulder, "I trust that I can." She's gone with a toss of her wild, raven hair, her booted steps and the displacement of wind from the ledge likely being the only indication that the blue pair was gone. Tacuseth sends his shadow touch to Rasavyth as he leaves, the sense apologetic for not being able to help before his touch is no longer felt either.