ways_infirmary | (no subject)

For now, he is alone and awake; too scared to sleep, or leave. He can't leave until his scars are healed; it's too hard to think of explaining to Jean-Claude.

He's reading a book another patient has left; it's shallow, and trite, and requires no concentration whatsoever. Just, in other words, what he needs.

Teja comes in, and remains, almost shyly, by the door.

"Asher?" he asks, in a quiet voice.

Asher looks up, slowly, hissing as fresh skin is pulled too tight, too fast. He smiles, with one half of his mouth, gesturing rather stiffly to the chair beside his bed.

"Teja, welcome."

Lovely, piteous, painfully familiar, obviously strange. Looking at the blood-drinker always gives Teja a little stab.

"Greetings," he says, approaching slowly. "I heard from Guppy Sandhu you were hurt by the nightmares as well, and were in the healing place; but he would not tell me how bad it was."

"I would say that it looks worse than it is," Asher murmurs, "but I would be lying." The covers are held off his body with a steel frame, and Asher's beautifully pale skin is not only marred as usual, but red and inflamed, still raw in some places. He has bandages over his groin, but of course, Teja won't be able to see that.

"It would have been the original injury, relived in nightmare?" Teja says. "Maybe improvised upon, and worse than it was?"

He remembers what Merlin had said -- when it truly happened, his brother had not cut off his wings.

Pause.

"I am sorry," he adds. "It is painful to see, to imagine how much it would hurt you."

Asher manages a laugh, though he regrets it an instant later.

"I could not imagine it to be worse than it was the first time I suffered such torment," he mutters darkly, his eyes dull and glazed over with pain.

Although at least, centuries ago, he had been spared the sight of his dear Julianna's body. Though he dreaded to think of that...thing as his lover, his companion. He can still smell the stench of burning flesh, hear her rasping, broken voice in his ear. It makes him shudder, briefly.

"I fear it might have been my fault that it got at you," Teja finally manages. "It is, people are claiming, the spirit of an evil doctor that tries to invade this place to try out cruel practices on the very special people that inhabit it. That devastated place of healing I saw in my vision was his. He does so via the minds of what they call 'psychics' -- those that can see true visions. Have special gifts of the mind. I have those, although they are very minor, compared to what a blood-drinker has; he might have gone from me to you."

Asher reaches out, healthy fingers wrapping around Teja's arm, as he has done in the bar before.

"It is not your fault, Teja, son of Tagila. If this spirit, as you say, is spreading through the bar, I was chosen as soon as I walked through the door." His voice is soft, reassuring. "And it is certainly not your fault that I have such memories to be used against me."

Teja doesn't pull away; he even moves half a step closer and very shyly does something he has never done before -- he touches the golden hair, stroking with the tips of two fingers. This is no more Totila than the dull strand from the vision was -- but this is, at least, somebody, a person, not a cruel illusion.

"It might have noticed you because of me," Teja argues, but he is already half-convinced that Asher is speaking sense.

Asher does smile, then, his eyes closing as Teja gently touches his hair.

"Sit, Teja," he gestures to the chair once more, happy for companionship.

"It might have noticed me if I had not joined you, Teja. Who can say?" Asher knows he has almost won the arguement; it's a relief, for he doesn't have the energy to argue in earnest.

Teja sits, taking away his fingers from the golden hair; he would not presume on familiarity with one that he hardly knows yet, even though he might be a friend, eventually.

"It might have," Teja concedes, not wishing to argue either. "It does like to injure us as deeply as it can; some, it will touch by the soul, some by body and soul both, as it did with you, or Merlin Sawall."

Asher's mouth turns down into a soft moue of displeasure as Teja's hand drops away; he misses people touching him, it is not something that often occurs these days. But he can sense Teja's skittishness, and doesn't wish to presume.

"And did this Merlin speak to you the same evening I did?" He asks, wondering who else in the bar has been affected. Whether it is something from his world, or another, causing such horror.

"No, he did not," Teja says. "He spoke to me a few days before, in the forge. Before I ever had my vision. I do not know had they started then for any others."

Pause.

"But Merlin Sawall is very powerful; he is an Amberite that goes from world to world the way other men go from village to village, and a shape-shifter in addition."

"I have not heard the term, but surely, then, if he met you before your nightmare, you could not be the cause of his pain or mine?"

"It does not mean that the being that causes them could not have seen Merlin, and his power, through my eyes when it rode me through my own nightmare," Teja says. "That would be part of the danger - it might know what one it has touched has known before."

"Perhaps you should find out," Asher trailed off as he tried to move, hiding a wince. "When these visions and nightmares began. You and I, and this Merlin, cannot be the only people who have had dreams that have intruded into reality."

"Oh no, there were more - this is an attack on all of us, by an entity of ill will, a Doctor Gottreich, who as I understand is a spirit, and who wishes to try out his methods on us, as we are all so out of the ordinary," Teja says. "That much is already known. And people are finding out about it, and finding an answer for the question how to stop him. No, I am merely wondering if he has taken his route to you, and maybe to Merlin, over me."

"And what will become of this doctor?" Asher nearly growls, finding out that it is one man responsible for the pain caused him, and others.

But mostly him. He refuses to go back to St Louis with his scars fresh and new, and so it seems as if he may be stuck here for a very long time. Unless, that is, he can regain his strength by feeding, or through magical means.

"If that was known," Teja says, "or even how to get at him, it would already have happened. There are enough bold men here" -- short pause -- "and women, to make an end of whoever does this to us, were it but known how to reach him, where he is, and how to end it."

Asher does not like to be helpless. He sighs, head falling back against the pillows. He's ill-tempered, today, and as good a friend as Teja is quickly becoming, Asher's patience is worn to shreds.

All he wants is Jean-Claude to hold him, soothe him as he had attempted to hundreds of years before. But here, he is more alone than he has ever felt, not even a familiar voice in his mind to keep him company.

"I need to rest," he murmurs shortly, turning his face away from Teja.

"You do," Teja says. "I will leave you, then."

But before he gets up, he reaches out again to once more stroke the tumbled golden hair on the pillow.

He hates to be helpless jusut as much.

Asher closes his eyes, sighing softly at the light brush of fingers against his hair, not daring to move as Teja stands.

"Thank you, Teja," he murmurs.

Teja resist the pull to slide his fingers in more deeply, to touch as he has not touched in -- how long? But this is another.

Instead, he stands and strokes again, and quietly says, "I would come again and see you, in a day or two, if I may?"

Asher nods.

"Come tomorrow night, I would be glad of the company." Perhaps, or at least in a better mood than he is now.

"I will. Sleep well," Teja says, taking his hand away reluctantly. He turns, and manages to suppress his sigh until he has closed the door of the healing place behind himself.