Spirits of the Earth

The dry rustling of dead leaves was the only sound to be heard from inside the small clay hut. It was a little cube shaped abode, one room, and one door. Outside, the sun baked what was once an aloe garden, but what was now a barren strip of sun bleached dirt adorned with a wilted and crisping aloe plant.

Her long spined stalks shifted against eachother and rasped aloud in the silence, giving an odd serenity to this desolate place. But it was also a reminder of what this place was. It was a place for death.

Inside the hut, in exception of the strip of light that laid in front of the doorway, for it had no door, the room was encased in a cool shadow. Like all houses built in Essyrn, this one was built with temperature control in mind, and kept the interior heavily shadowed. Inside, just close enough to the door to be partially lit, was a table. Wooden of make and old of years, the furniture looked like it had been long since better days. Cracks ran across it's top, and the wood had gnarled with age. That, though, would not be what drew attention to the small and rather insignificant table. No, it would be the deep crimson liquid that had drained into the cracks, and soaked into the grain that one would notice first. The dark liquid was dripping grin a corner of the table and had saturated the sand beneath it.

Beside the table lay a chair, sunken ever so slightly into the clay floor of the hut, and in that chair sat a man without his fingers.

In fact, it was from the stubs of what were once his ring and pinkie fingers that the blood, as that was what it was, had gushed from. Now, the pumping blood was at a weak stream, and the man from which it came was pale and his face drawn in its absence. He was a short man, stout and pudgy. His nose was large and hooked and his chin weak, but he had eyes like an eagle's, sharp and glaring. They had recently taken on a glazed look, and now stared lazily at the ceiling.

He wore a skirt, and a butcher's apron, but no shirt covered his rotund girth. He was a man fat on wealth that did not belong to him, complacent in a place where complacency kills. As to how specifically he ended up here, in a small hut so remote that if you were to climb upon it and gaze around, the only thing you would see is sand, in every direction for miles... that cannot be said. Who brought him here, however, can be mentioned. Lucian Blassköhl brought him here, personally, three days prior, and had severed his fingers.

Then he had left this man, this fat, gluttonous man, with no food, no water, and two less fingers. And he had nailed the butcher's knees to the chair as a fairwell present before he departed. Brys, as the man shall be named, had slowly been dying of dehydration, and blood loss. It would be soon. He could feel death's cold hands wrapped around his legs, even as they still throbbed in agonizing pain. Brys laid his head slowly backward, for he could move no faster than a crawl in his current state, and croaked out a plea to his gods, a plea to save him from eternal damnation, a plea for redemption, and most of all a plea of vengeance on Blassköhl, and his entire family. It was with his last syllable that he drew a rattling breath, and the life slipped from his body...



Brys came to in a basement, underground for sure, very confused. What was worse, was that he had all of his fingers, and his knees were not shattered. Nor was he dehydrated, in fact he felt just as well as he had three days ago, before Lucian had taken him. The pain still echoed sharply in his mind, and the agonizing thirst was faint, like a memory of an injury long past, but here he was.

Brys began to weep, both in joy for knowing that he was not dead in the sand, but also in sorrow, for in the past three days he had experienced the most painful and mentally taxing experience he had ever faced. And he had thought over his experiences, he had repented in all but name. It seemed the gods had granted him mercy, and a second chance.

"How do you feel Brys?" A voice said to him. He knew that voice. Blassköhl.

Brys recoiled, sliding against the damp stone of the cellar, his eyes wide in fear and confusion. How could Lucian be here? In fact, how did he get here himself?

"Did you enjoy your little vacation?" Again the voice from darkness, and Brys had no answer, "I trust you will be reporting exactly how much coin you make from now on?"

Brys did not understand what had happened, or how, but he could guess as to why. His greed had resulted in this nightmare. In his terror, he nodded in agreement to Lucian's question. The next thing he heard was a high pitched whistle and then all went black.


The Butcher would wake in his own home, soon, but by then Lucian would be on his way back to the gang headquarters. He needed rest. Inducing such an illusion, compressing three days into half an hour, was taxing. Brys would, if he was smart, start giving a truthful representation of his earnings to the Sandlillies. If not, his next encounter with the Son in the South would not be so imaginary.

Lucian, although stoic and cold to the world on the journey from the outer slum to his inner city apartments, was anticipating the headquarters. He enjoyed the company of his long time friends, and had words for a few. Goyne, their number cruncher, would need to be updated on the status of the butcher's income. He wanted to speak to El'sahm about ordering more alcohol for the upcoming party the Sandlillies were hosting, and he wanted to speak to Zira. Even if he couldn't always get out what he wanted to say, simple conversation with her calmed his nerves. The two men who had accompanied him to the Butcher's territory stalked behind him like dogs to their master. Lucian snorted at the comparison; It wasn't so far from the truth.

The headquarters were surprisingly spacious and lavish, but to Zira they were stifling. She needed to be out, she needed to run.

Failing that, she at least needed to get away from Goyne's incessant muttering about incomes and profit margins. Gods, one of these days she was going to go cat and bite that damn counting hand, she just knew it.

The shifter sighed, rolling onto her back and letting her tail flick lazily as she mentally berated herself. She needed to be calmer. Why was she so anxious lately? It wasn't like she didn't know how important Goyne's work was, most of the time she even liked the man. Why was she so on edge.

With a soft huff, she rolled back onto her side, eyes flicking out from her perch on the slatted balcony out over the city. Her tail flicked back and forth in slow, sweeping strokes, paws kneading absently at the wood beneath her as she basked in the sunlight.

Suddenly her rounded ears flickered and she sniffed, then raised her head. Her mouth opened and tongue flicked out in a quick cat-smile and she gave a soft "Rrrow!", alerting anyone in the building in earshot that their boss had returned.

In quick, graceful movements she jumped from the balcony to the first story's roof, slid down the gentle slope, then jumped to the stone of the street. With a happy chirp, she came bounding out to greet Lucian and the two men he'd taken with him- it wasn't so odd a sight in Essyrn to see an exotic pet greet her master in such a way, though Zira would have hated the comparison.

"Hello Zira," Lucian said, stone-faced. His smiles were rare and usually came about for odd reasons. Still, he extended a hand in offering to the cat shifter, as one would a dog. It didn't help that he smelled of a cellar, Lucian was still Lucian.

"Would you guess who I ran into today, on my way back from the butcher's?" He asked, indulging her in conversation he knew she enjoyed. Personally, he couldn't care less for the seemingly meaningless exchange, but he also knew that she would pester him with questions and witticisms if he didn't give her something to chew on first.

Zira was one of his oldest companions, from here anyways, and as such, she had earned special privileges over the years. His tolerance of her extroversion for instance, or the fact he extended himself to her in any way at all. Lucian wasn't solitary so much as violently reclusive, like an angry wolf who's been kicked out of the pack. He would bite and snarl at any who approached, except for the cheetah who had been his first true friend here.

The cheetah chirped again and rubbed her head against his palm, but quickly pulled back to give him space. She liked the touch, but she knew better than to push him after a long day.

Padding along beside him, the cat suddenly had two legs, tail shrinking away as she rocked up onto bare human feet and tilted her head at him, her multitude of braids falling around her face. The sarong and wrapped breastband that had been enchanted to stay with her through a shift were her only coverings as she walked along beside him, more or less ignoring the two guards.

"Who?"

"The Elf-Orc," He told her, swinging the double-hinged door open in front of them, "Y'know, the girlishly attractive one, Bounty Hunter. He brought some companionship this time, but I'd be damned if it wasn't another freed slave. He's too self-righteous not to set loose every poor soul in a pair of shackles he sees."

Lucian walked through the door into a velvet hall, pausing momentarily to remove the slippers he wore outdoors. Lined with precious metallic light fixtures, the hall that led to the common room was probably worth more by itself than the entire upper floor where he had met Bolion some twenty minutes prior.

Zira quirked an eyebrow as she followed him. "You mean Bolion?" She'd never actually spoken to the bounty hunter- the only time she'd met him she'd been in cat form, but he did leave an impression.

She shrugged. "Not everyone is lucky enough to be traded away to the Sandlilies to pay off a debt," she pointed out casually. "If he wants to free them, that's his business, isn't it?"

"Perhaps," Lucian replied, "Until he's freeing slaves from our business partners, or burning down drug dens out of a sense of moral obligation."

Lucian walked toward the second door they'd come to since entering the building, an iron faced slab of reinforced titanium, with hinges thicker than sapling oaks. This door was not so easy to open. Lucian had a password but didn't bother to so much as knock. He was tired, and all he had to do was give a mental signal to the bouncer on the other side. The slab swung inward as he approached it, not a hitch in his stride. This was his kingdom, this prime real estate, and inside it he was supreme.

The shifter fell back into her place just behind and beside Lucian- closer than most people dared to get, but still distinctly separate. She shrugged.

"Well, if he does, you just give him a warning. He'd back off quick enough, I'm sure." She tilted her head the other way. Something in her old friend's scent was...off. Anxiety, maybe? No, that wasn't quite it. That was completely out of character for him anyway.

She didn't ask. If he wanted to talk to her about it, he would. Otherwise, she'd probably only piss him off by asking.

Lucian shook the tension from his hand and blinked away the tiredness of the road, kicking off his sandals. He let himself drop into a beanbag chair, a leather bag filled with tiny dried beans; Hence the name, Beanbag. Lucian sunk into the chair, sighing, and snapped his fingers at a dark skinned man.

"Alan, I'd like a glass of cold water," He said, "And a mango, and a knife." Alan left immediately, giving only a nod in Lucian's direction before going to find that glass and mango.

"Would you tell Goyne that our Butcher was taking more than one hundred pounds of silver for himself every month for the last three months, and have him adjust our income budget for that, Zira? I'd appreciate it," He asked, sparing a look the shifter's way.

"Of course." She nodded, though her eyes flickered over him in a worried sort of way. He seemed tired. Well, he was usually tired, she supposed- perhaps she was being too precious about it.

Shaking the thought away, she slipped out of the room to find Goyne. The man had set up shop on the second floor and she knocked at the door to the makeshift office.

A muffled voice came from behind the door, something along the lines of, "I'm busy, leave me alone!"

That was just Goyne's way of saying hello, however, and he promptly opened the door to find Zira waiting for him. He smiled widely and extended his arms before stepping back and gesturing to his tiny accounting room.

"Welcome to my abode," He said cheerfully. Risiart Goyne was a northern man, of the same nomadic people that Lucian hailed from. Lucian had brought him down south a few years ago, as he trusted only one of his own kin to do something so essential as keep financial records for the organization. As such, he was tall, like Lucian, and thin as well. They were actually second cousins, Blassköhl and Goyne, and Goyne shared many of Lucian's features as well, inherited from a shared great-great-grandparent. One major difference was his nose, large and hooked, taken from his grandfather, a southern man. Goyne was older, however, and was nearing his forty-eighth year. His hair was close-shaven, but he wore large mustaches and his chin had a light dusting of stubble. "You never drop by of your own volition. Is Lucy back?"

The cheetah shifter quirked an eyebrow as she swayed her way into the room. "Can you blame me? Gods, man, you keep so many books and papers in here it smells like the musty end of a library." She crinkled her nose dramatically, but there was no real bite in her tone.

She nodded and leaned back against the door frame at his question. "Mhm. Wanted me to tell you the butcher took a hundred pounds silver once a month for the last three, asked if you could adjust the income."

Goyne crinkled his own nose, and asked, "That fat man, Brys?"

He walked back over to his desk, steeped as it was in piles of paper and thick volumes of printed records. The walls all had shelves filled to the brim with such papers, floor to ceiling, but each filed and sorted especially to Goyne's liking. It was a maze to anyone else, but Goyne could find what was needed at any given time on the turn of a dime.

"I'll have to if he was packing that much away. Three hundred pounds of minted silver... That's a lot for a low-level provider. Lucy probably scared the shit out of him for it. Poor man." Goyne wasn't being sarcastic either, and he wasn't exaggerating. Lucian's methods of punishment were well known, and had left people emotionally unstable and mentally broken before. If he had opted to scare Brys, he could very easily inspire real terror. Goyne did feel a measure of sympathy for Brys as well. He'd once asked Lucian what he could do, and Lucian had replied by showing Goyne one of his darkest fears and then one of his greatest desires in a split second. It had given the older man a new respect for Lucian's boundaries, to say the least.

Zira frowned slightly, but she didn't comment. She knew as well as anyone what Lucian could do- it had been quite a strain on their early friendship, when she realized how easily he could make someone come undone. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't been scared of him, and she could tell he knew it.

But she also knew he never did anything without a reason, and she'd chosen to trust those reasons. "Yeah, well. So you've got the numbers then? Need anything else?"

"Ahm... Yea. You can tell Lucy we're now above the budget we need for his party, and can if need be, pay both our operational fees and add a little extra to the party budget. You can also add in that we can increase tobacco production at a lower cost, but only if we pay Connie's men for it, and shift all of our current stock to her holdings. That way we don't have to mortgage out the drug den from those dicks north of the Delta, and we can fuse the opium dens with lower incomes to increase our total profit from the areas. On the topic of opium, we've also invested into that rooftop garden system, and it's rather expensive, so we'll have to muscle down on the protection money to finance it."

Goyne glanced up from his sheaf of papers and noticed the slightly bored expression of his guest. He said then, "Or you can just tell him I need to talk to him later."

Her eyes hadn't exactly glazed over, but she certainly wasn't paying as close attention as she could have been. "Ah, yeah, I will. Thanks, Goyne."

She pushed off the door frame and tripped lightly back down the hall to the room where she'd left Lucien.

"He says he's fixed it, and something about the drug den and the party and paying Connie's men- I dunno, you should probably talk to him," she said breezily as she entered the room.

Lucian raised an eyebrow at Zira's lackluster explanation, turning his head in the beanbag chair. He made a mental note to visit Goyne before he went to sleep but didn't prioritise it. If it was urgent, Goyne would find him. At the very least he would have told Zira to emphasize her message.

"What's wrong?" Lucian asked, "You seem... perturbed. Goyne didn't bore you that much, did he?"

The shifter snorted and flopped down beside him, using a corner of the chair to rest her head as she twisted onto her back to look up at him. "Maybe it did. Your cousin is not an interesting man, Lucy," she pouted dramatically, simplifying the relationship between the two men casually.

Lucian's eyebrow remained raised, and he added, "If he hasn't grown on you in the three years you've known him, I doubt you'll ever find him interesting."

He watched Zira, his expression dry and almost bored. He was really thinking and probing, trying to get a read on his friend. She'd known his mental touch long enough to be able to pick him out among her thoughts, but that was half the fun. If he could get his information without her knowing, was essentially his game. He was combing carefully through her thoughts, trying to understand what had her so uncomfortable. Maybe it was himself, he thought, and a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. It didn't get much farther than that. However, the thought that his mannerisms would still set her on edge after so long amused him.

It took longer than normal for her to notice the tickle in the corner of her mind. Eyes closed, she frowned, then smirked to herself. Furrowing her brow slightly, she concentrated on a single thought, throwing into to the front of her mind in an effort to block Lucian's probing with the spectacle.

He knew she didn't appreciate being snooped on, served him right.

The image she chose was half memory and half a conjured fantasy, something she'd idly considered in passing and had deemed useful for just such an occasion, but hadn't had the chance to test before: an image seen through her eyes, looking down at her own body as pale fingers traced the spots over her shoulders and slipped around to her breasts, hands sliding to her hips to lift them and the fantasy lover lowered his mouth to her, making her spine arch and her breath hitch.

She cracked an eye open, hoping she caught Lucian off-guard and wanting to see his reaction.

Lucian's rather dead expression had turned to one taken aback and slightly confused. He didn't know exactly how to feel about that, but he could guarantee she'd caught him. The fact that that of all things was her sole focus right now meant either she'd zeroed in on the one thought or she'd been doing something very different in the accounting room.

"Well." He said after a momentary silence, "That was... interesting. Definitely not the view I was expecting to see today, but I'm not objecting." He laid back further into the beanbag, and then asked, "You aren't fucking my cousin, are you?"

And just like that the fantasy man in her mind changed to Goyne. She recoiled dramatically, screwing up her face and shaking her head to rid herself of the image.

"Oh, ich, no. He's a nice enough man, but- ugh. Just no." It wasn't that Goyne was unattractive or bad tempered- she just couldn't imagine really being with him like that without feeling all kinds of awkward.

Suddenly smirking, she quirked her head to the side and chirped, "Admit it, I got you." Never before had she really "won" this little game, and though she wasn't entirely sure that was what had just happened, she was still pleased with herself.

"Yeah.." He relented, "You got me. I don't know why you decided to do so in such a fashion, but you did." He leaned forward in the chair, despite just sitting back into it. He was fidgety, stressed even. The Illusion of Brys' 'vacation' had strained him. "So without my interference," he withdrew his mind from hers, "Will you tell me why you're on edge?"

She paused, unused to him asking questions point-blank like that.

Then she sighed and rolled onto her side, propped up on her elbow to look at him. "Because you are," she admitted on a sigh. "You're...tense. Well, tenser." Her eyes softened slightly, head tilted to one side, and she lowered her voice though no one was really around to overhear. "Was it the butcher? Are you just...tired?"

It felt like more than that, but she didn't want to push her luck. She cared about the man, but she knew how defensive he could be about things like this, and the last thing he needed was to push her away right now.

Lucian sighed, and considered ignoring the question in favour of a change of topic, but said simply, "I had to cram three days into half an hour, and I'm exhausted. And tomorrow, I need to go scare some ghetto rats into submission. It's taxing, Zira, but I wouldn't expect you to understand why."

He'd not normally open up, given the steel fortress reputation he liked to cultivate, but he knew if he didn't she would continue to be off center, and he could never relax if she didn't.

And here they were again. She wouldn't understand, she couldn't know what it was like. It was true, she could no more understand his powers than he could empathize with her urge to shift, but...

Sighing, she leaned her head against the corner of the soft chair again, looking up at him through her lashes. "You could try to explain it," she offered quietly. It wasn't the first time, and the others hadn't exactly been well received, but she had to try. "I won't pretend I could ever understand completely, Lucy, but I'm your friend. I- I care about you, and I want you to know you can talk to me."

His brow furrowed, and he started motioning at nothing with his hand, saying, "It's not something you explain, Zira. It's..." He tried to explain himself with help from abstract hand gestures, but he didn't get very far. He gave her an exasperated look, almost angry, and counter offered something he knew she might not like, "I can't explain it to you, but if you want I can show you."

It was the first time he had offered that specifically, but not the first time he'd offered to mess around in her head. He'd been mostly declined before, on the basis that she didn't like other people creeping around in there, but he did it most of the time anyway.

Zira blanched a bit. "I-"

She didn't want it. She didn't want him rooting around in her head- well, more than he already did. But... But she had the feeling that he needed this. Maybe not right now, but someday he was going to need this, someone who understood as best they could what he dealt with.

She closed her eyes a moment, then mumbled. "Alright. Alright, Lucian- show me."

Lucian regarded her gravely, before entering her conscious mind with his. It would be strange for her if he didn't restrain himself, a sort of merging of consciousnesses, and it could very well disturb how she perceived certain things. It had occurred before, and in those times it had, Lucian had been able to essentially puppet those he'd melded with, simply because of his superior mental capabilities. He didn't wish such a thing on Zira.

What he did was show her firsthand what it was like, for half an hour, to mess with Brys's stimuli and make him believe only what Lucian wanted him to believe. Lucian had to craft a painstakingly real world, adjust Brys' perception of time, make him truly believe everything he felt and saw was really happening. He had rooted through Brys' dark thoughts, pushing them to the surface and whispering his fears in the back of his mind. He'd paralyzed Brys in reality, to keep him from flailing in his cell and inflicting real damage. And he had to do all this while remaining aware that only thirty minutes of real time were passing; while staying calm and collected as Brys' fear and pain washed over him in powerful waves. He'd had to enact the beating himself, momentarily inserting himself into this mental simulation, and then forcibly retreating, whilst trying to keep it from falling apart.

He showed Zira this as if she were doing it herself, although it was little more than watching his actions through her own eyes like she had done to him. The only difference was that she would feel it as well. It took a full thirty minutes to convey it all, the sensory overload and the complex false reality he had maintained, and while she was under he was awake, assuring people that her limp form was indeed fine. She hadn't passed out, or fallen ill, but was indeed alright. Only after exactly thirty-one minutes did he release her mind, hoping she wouldn't respond too negatively to the experience.

The shifter came to with a jerk and a gasp, her hand flying out in an attempt to steady herself, to find an anchor. Her eyes were wide, chest heaving as though she'd just sprinted a mile, lips parted with sharp pants.

That was exhausting. How did he do it?

"L-Lucy?" Without thinking, she clutched at his hand, still trying to pull herself back to the real world. Her vision was flickering, switching between the physical world she could see before her and the mental construct Lucian had let her be privy to.

Lucian's breath grew shallow at the unexpected contact and had half a mind to wrench his hand from hers on impulse, but tightened his jaw and let her use him as a comfort. For now, at least. He even went as far as to return a squeeze.

Without speaking, he tried mentally to calm her, removing the last vestiges of the illusion. He also tried to reduce her panic, but it was powerful enough that he stayed mostly at its fringes. If he wasn't careful her emotions could overtake his like Brys' almost had. If he had become overcome with such a panic... well the last time was when he'd been beaten before joining the Sandlilies. He'd left three men mentally retarded then. One had been all but dead. With that in mind, he stayed very wary of the primal aspects of her mind.

Another few breaths and Zira started to calm. Slowly, she blinked her eyes open and they finally seemed to focus, though they were still wide and rather startled looking.

"Oh!" She realized she was clutching his hand and snatched it back with a wince and a murmured, "Sorry."

Carefully, she sat up, focusing on breathing and laying a hand over her chest as though to assure herself she was still present, still real. "Gods, Lucian...how do you do it?" she whispered, not really expecting an answer.

"Rather easily, actually." He told her, returning to his customary blank stare. He'd been as open as he'd wanted to be, and now he preferred the solitude provided by his own thoughts. Maybe he'd call Zira into his quarters later. Until then, however, he stood up and began walking towards Goyne's room.

"Eat something," he suggested, "It'll do you good."

Zira nodded dumbly as she watched him go. Carefully, she got to her feet. For a moment her equilibrium felt off, but she oriented herself quickly and made her way through the manor to the kitchens, a frown wrinkling her brow and her mouth in a tight, thoughtful line.

It had been five hours since Lucian had given Zira a peek into his nearly daily life, and he had just woken up from a nap. His rooms were lavish, a large four poster bed adorning the center of his room, draped in red curtains and resting on a large velvet carpet. The bed was too large, in his opinion, fashioned as it was for multiple bodies. He wasn't the kind to hire whores, though, and his closest relationships aside from his mother, brother, and two sisters, was Zira.

He felt safe to say he wouldn't be using the bed for its intended purpose anytime soon. But hey, maybe someone else would, if the party he was hosting at the end of the week was to be as big as he expected. He wouldn't even be mad if he found someone in his bed during the Delta-wide event he'd been planning, but he might be annoyed. He briefly considered entertaining someone himself, before spurning the idea. Lucian stood, swinging his legs off of his bed, to go to his front doors. He told one of the guards to find and fetch his feline companion, and to be quick about it. He wanted company.

"Feline" was all too true when the man who'd been sent to fetch Zira found her. She was stretched out in a patch of sunlight that came streaming through one of the high windows in foyer, belly full after a quick snack in the kitchens and all in all feeling much better than she had been.

While she spent much of her time in human form, at heart Zira was a cat, and napping in the sun was practically required as such. She gave a quiet growl when a hand tapped her flank to wake her and lifted her head, eyes glowering and ears pinned.

When the man just muttered, "Boss wants you," she got quickly to her feet and shook herself, then padded up to Lucian's room. She poked her head around the door and gave a soft, chirping mew to alert him to her presence.

Lucian laid in his bed, studying the swirling mandalas on his ceiling while he quite literally twiddled his thumbs. The maroon silk sheets came up to his waist, and he was shirtless, as he often was when sleeping. He lazily lifted a hand and beckoned her forward, saying, "Close the door behind you."

He'd been curious about something he didn't fully understand, and seeing as he confided regularly in Zira, and he trusted her to be fully honest with him, he'd called for her. He didn't motion to get up from bed, and a light tap next to him on the king sized mattress indicated he wanted her to join him in observing the designs above him.

The cheetah cocked her head, curious, and did as she was told. She butted the door closed behind her and slunk her way gracefully across the room to leap up onto the bed and lay beside him carefully.

Turning onto her back and taking human form happened in one smooth motion and she allowed her eyes to flicker over the ceiling. She didn't press him- he'd tell her what this was about when he was ready.

It took him a few minutes, but eventually what he was curious about came out, "That Orc boy from the slave arena, the one you don't like me knowing about... do you think of him often?"

His tone, normally hard and unforgiving was soft, very unlike the facade he put on around most people. When he was alone with those he was comfortable with, his emotions began to show more, and though it was a rarity for Zira, his mother and siblings had seen it often enough. He became much more vulnerable like this, and a misstep by whoever he was sharing his feelings with would shut him down. He knew this, and hoped Zira didn't make any missteps.

Zira tensed up. Logically she'd known he was privy to those memories, but he'd never really brought it up before, and she could pretend he didn't know, or didn't care.

Apparently he did.

She almost wanted to be angry...but she knew how rare it was for him to be so open, and she didn't want him to feel punished for that. He couldn't really help what he did- it was as natural to him as shifting was to her.

So she sighed and forced herself to relax, eyes still on the ceiling. "Half-orc," she murmured quietly. "T'klah. Yes. I...think about him a lot, actually."

She turned her head slightly to look at him and asked softly, "Why did you want to know?"

"I don't... work well, with emotional connection Zira. You know this."

He struggled to find words to put his thoughts to, but he tried anyway, saying "As a consequence, or perhaps for entirely different reasons... I don't see people like that." He turned his head to look at her, a worried - almost afraid - look on his face. Normally the most animation he got was a grim smile or a scowl. "Is that normal? Even with my sisters, and my brother, I find it hard to tell them that I love them. I'd do anything for them, but I can't fucking tell them that!"

He ran his hands through his hair, letting the words roll out. He kept his problems pent up and only now were some of the pressing ones coming out. "Everyone I meet, they've at least looked at someone and felt something that I've never felt, and I've never understood. I don't know what that's like, and I don't know why... it drives me insane!"

Her eyes widened slightly and she sat up on one arm, shocked more that he was revealing so much than at what he was saying.

"Lucy..." Gods she wanted to touch him, but she was afraid that might make it worse. She fisted her hands in the sheets. "I- I don't really know if I can tell you what's normal," she answered honestly. "But...of what you showed me earlier is what it's like for you all the time...gods, Lucian, it's a miracle you can force yourself to talk to people at all, let alone try to convey that kind of emotion."

She looked down at her hands. "You're family knows you love them. You don't- telling someone that doesn't have to be in words, you know? You can see it in the way the act, in what they do fonyou, and what you do for them."

Another pause, then she hedged, "Or did you mean...romantically? Like- like me with T'klah?" Gods she didn't want to dredge up those memories, but if that was what he needed to talk about then damnit that's what she'd do.

"I'm aware of my family's knowledge," he said, "I don't worry about them because I know they understand me in ways I sometimes don't understand myself."

He looked back towards the ceiling, and said, "Yes, I'm saying romantically. I don't look at people, and feel attraction. And I mean any person, male, female, humanoid or otherwise. Everyone is the same, they're all just... tools. Machines I can tinker with, not people I can grow to understand..."

Oh gods she was so uncomfortable talking about this. But he wouldn't have asked for her if he didn't need it.

"Lucy." She couldn't stop herself from reaching out to him, though she drew up short from actually touching him. "How long have we known each other now? Am I still just a tool to you?"

She honestly wasn't sure what to expect for an answer.

"Fifteen years, almost..." Lucian gave her a hurt look, "No. Gods no. If I viewed you like... one of them-" he gestured to the door, and behind it, his guards, "I wouldn't have said any of this to you. I trust you..."

He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and running him his hands through his hair. This was stressing him out, and he didn't know how to unwind. The last five hours hadn't done it, and neither had the nap.

"Exactly." Zira sat up beside him. "So that means it's not that you can't see people any other way, it just...takes you a while." Which was understandable, all things considered.

She smiled softly and leaned forward, tilting her head to look at his face. "Lucian, what can I do right now? In this moment, forgetting everything else, what can I do for you?" Gods she just wanted to help him. She hated seeing him so obviously distressed, not least because it happened so rarely.

Lucian spared a distressed glance Zira's way, opening and closing his mouth around words he didn't know he wanted to say. After turning back to his sheets, searching for an answer he couldn't find and a minute of him running his hands through his hair like a nervous wreck, he turned again to her.

"Just..." he looked almost like the words pained him, but in reality there was nothing he wanted more, "Just be here please." He extended his hand and kept his gaze on her, hoping against anxiety ridden hope that she wouldn't walk out in his time of need. It didn't make sense, but that was the thing he was most afraid of right now and he didn't know how to deal with that.

Zira's heart broke a little bit for him in that moment. Carefully, she took his outstretched hand, letting her fingers slide against his to interlock.

"Okay," she murmured, offering a small smile. "It's okay, Lucy. I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere."

Very, very carefully, ready to pull back at the first sign of his discomfort, she shifted closer to let her shoulder rest against his, still holding his hand gently as she twisted slightly to make the offer of more contact clear, if he wanted to take it.

"Thank you," Lucian said in a whisper, staring at the sheets between his legs. He turned to look up at Zira, words ready on his tongue, but what he saw silenced him.

Behind Zira two giant, floating, luminescent eyes stared at him. They were fiery and lidless, their slit pupils trained at Lucian. Their flames licked at the cloth hanging from his banisters, setting them aflame. Underneath them a monstrous mouth, wide enough to swallow Zira whole split into a dripping grin, black oil spilling from in between its jagged teeth. Lucian could do nothing but stare past Zira, eyes wide and heart beating like a drum against his ribcage. A terrified snarl worked its way onto face, even while his grip on Zira's hand tightened.

He was about to say something, anything, but a whisper in his ear caught the words in his throat. Gurgling, wet laughter from behind him, close enough to feel the breath on his ear. His breathing hitched and panic shot through him like lightning. Around him, his world burned and he couldn't move to stop it. And those eyes, those wretched eyes. They stared, and stared, their monstrous mouth widening with each beat of his staccato heart. The oil dripping onto the floor caught alight. He could feel the pain, the heat of burning. All he could hear were the whispers and the crackle of flame. He took a fistful of the sheets with his other hand and tried to crawl away from the endless fiery stare, the inferno. Unwittingly he started to take Zira with him but he ran into the source of the wet, whispering voice. Jerking back from what is was he'd touched, he looked behind him only to see a towering gray figure, skin both wrinkled and taut, bloated like a corpse. The face of a long-dead mummified woman watched him unblinkingly, empty sockets where the eyes should have been. It extended a skeletal hand to him, crooning in the voice of his eldest sister. "Why are you afraid?"

Lucian still couldn't speak, but he managed a strangled whimper, before running back into Zira. He spun back on her, glancing frantically between the towering freak behind him and the friend in front of him. Behind her the eyes and their gigantic mouth drew closer, dripping oil onto his sheets and setting them aflame instantly. Zira began to burn before him, apparently perfectly content with the flesh bubbling off of her arms. The oil crawled up her arms to her face scarring her spotted skin every inch of the way. Lucian's breath caught in his throat, stuck with whatever screams he couldn't let out, and he scrambled back for the foot of his bed, kicking frantically at his sheets, trying to escape the burning oil and the eyes and the freak. And Zira, whose face had been half burnt off, yet still she didn't seem to notice. Lucian was beyond panic. He was terrified, petrified, and hyperventilating, choking on his own fear.

She smiled. "Of course. What are friends for?"

He looked like he might have been about to say something else, but suddenly he stopped, and she saw his eyes focus on something behind her as they widened, obviously panicked. Instinctively she turned, ready to defend against an attacker- though how one would have gotten past the guards she had no idea- but there was nothing there.

"Lucian?" She looked back to him, brow furrowed quizzically. Then he was suddenly scrambling back, jerking her hand with him and she gasped, caught off guard. "Hey, what- Lucian!"

Either he didn't hear her or he was ignoring her. He seemed to be having some kind of fit, and she started to panic. She'd seen that expression before, wide eyed and focused on something that no one else could see, but she'd never seen him react so explosively to...whatever it was.

"Lucy? Lucy!" As he scrambled for the foot of the bed she followed, eyes wide as she tried to meet his gaze. "What's wrong, what's happening? Lucy, whatever you're seeing it's not real. Can you hear me?" There was an edge of desperate panic to her voice as she reached out for him and took his hands in hers, squeezing tightly. Could he even see her anymore? "I'm right here, okay? Listen to me, Luce, it's okay, I'm here. I've got you, just come back to me, please."

She tried to keep her voice as even as she could, but her hands were shaking slightly, knuckles white as she clutched his fingers with her own.

She was saying something, touching him, but he couldn't hear her. Only, he could see her. He could see she wanted to say something, and she was grasping his hands. Lucian tried to say something, but the freak leaned tall over the both of them, her rictus grin and dead sockets grabbing Lucian's attention. Her voice, unlike Zira's, was clear and strong.

"Little Brother," it asked him in the voice of his sister, "Why do you run from me?" It reached out for him, making to caress his cheek. He cried out against it, trying to push further against the bedposts without much result.

His guardsmen, however, heard him. They came barreling through the doors, curved knives at the ready and panicked expressions on their faces. If someone had gotten to the boss, they were sure going to pay for their mistake. What they saw confused them, the cat-girl clutching at a terrified Blassköhl. They moved toward the bed, intent on separating the two.

Zira flinched when he cried out, wanting so desperately to help him but unable to actually do anything  that she could see.

"Lucian, please, it's just me, I promise you're safe-" She kept up her constant stream of soothing babble, stroking her thumbs in little circles over the backs of his hands.

But then the guards were in the room and her head flew up, eyes wide as in a matter of seconds she realized how this must look. "Wait- no, wait, it's not what it looks like, he needs help, please-"

The guard who reached the bed first grabbed her by the shoulders and jerked her back, throwing her to the floor. She yowled, kicking and clawing at him. "Get off me! I have to help him, get off!"

Lucian's one comfort, his one link to reality was Zira. Even when she was burning alive in front of his eyes, the fact that she was there kept him from going over the edge and lashing out against his visions. She secured him in his terror, but now she was gone. Torn away by burly beasts, tall and thick like tree trunks. They spoke in a garbled tongue, and he saw them rip his Anchor away. He saw her fight them, to no avail, and his fear turned to anger. Make no mistake, he was still afraid; Now he was no longer the cowering dog, but the cornered wolf. His yelps turned to snarls and his barks into bites.

Lucian lashed out, sending waves of sensory overload - deafening noise, blinding light, choking scents - towards his own men. He threw his mental bulk at them again and again, each time providing a fractional window into his reality. Zira, unprotected, would see his terror in strobe, the fiery monsters flashing in and out of view every few seconds. His guardsmen, however were experiencing much worse. Unlike his careful and intricate execution of Brys' nightmare, Lucian's defense was a heavy, clumsy, but dangerously effective weapon. A proper analogy would be a scalpel and a mace. Both could kill, if wielded correctly, but the manners in which they did so were very different. In perhaps ten seconds or more of this mental bombardment, his guardsmen would be nothing more than vegetablized husks of the men they once were.

Zira gasped, a scream caught in her throat as visions of- of something that seemed an awful lot what she imagined the northerners would call "hell" flashed before her eyes, faded, then flashed again. For a moment she was stunned, frozen. Then she began to realize what was happening- or rather took a guess- and her stomach lurched.

The guards had dropped her, clutching their heads, mouths slack and eyes starting to go glassy.

She had to stop Lucian. She had no idea if she would be in time, but she had to try. "Lucian!" Flinching when fire flashed in the corner of her eye, she forced herself to ignore it and launched herself at him, tackling him back onto the bed and wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders- simultaneously an effort to soothe and restrain, though she knew physically holding him wouldn't do much to stop his attack.

"Lucy, look at me!" she begged. "I'm right here, you're okay, you're safe, I'm not going to let anything happen, just please please please wake up!"

His Anchor came rocketing back, free of her restraints. Between his mental backlash and her physical distraction, his hallucination began to crumble. The fire he saw enveloping room began to flicker in and out of view, but the burning sensation persisted. And he couldn't turn away from the flames, pinned as he was by Zira, so he clenched his jaw and bit through the pain.

His pain override his will to fight and he succumbed to it, releasing his hold on the guardsmen. He screwed his eyes shut and growled through the agony, straining against Zira. His nickname, Glassjaw, was no misnomer; he wasn't a strong man, and Zira was athletic and well toned. She could keep him there, albeit with effort, if she could withstand his hallucination until it fell apart.

Lucian could only sit, eyes closed for fear of what he thought he saw, and burn. At least, he felt as if he were burning. Every time his terror-world came into view, both he and Zira were already horribly burnt, blackened and bubbling, but they would then be whole again, and then again aflame. So he decided not to look.

"Zira..." Lucian managed one word, amidst the deafening roar of the flames and the white noise of his own defense mechanism. It was one word, barely above a whisper, but in it resided his strength and his will. If Zira couldn't hear him, couldn't know that what she was doing was working to an extent, then they could very well stay there for hours.

The shifter could still see the flashes of fire and destruction as Lucian's powers lashed out, but she clenched her eyes shut and just held onto him, forehead pressed to his temple as she continued her stream of soothing murmurs.

Then he spoke, or at least she thought he did, and her eyes flew open. "Lucy?" She sat back slightly, drawing him with her as she kept her arms around him, pulling him up so they were both sitting in the middle of the bed. "It's me, Luce, I'm here. You're safe, I promise," she whispered.

It may have been only minutes, but it felt like hours. Eventually, Lucian blinked and when he opened his eyes again, the world had stopped burning. He was no longer tortured by visions of monsters, and the world was as he had left it.

Except his men, trusted colleagues, were writhing on the floor. One hadn't moved at all since Lucian stopped having his attack.

"I've broken them, haven't I?" He asked quietly, though perhaps not of Zira. Perhaps it wasn't a question, because he knew better than anyone the effects of mental domination. He was looking at it.

"I- I don't-" Zira looked at the guards and winced. She didn't know the men well, but their faces were familiar.

"Should I...?" She wanted to go to them, to at least attempt to take stock of their state, but she wasn't honestly sure if she should let go of Lucian. Her arms relaxed slightly, though they stayed loosely around his shoulders.

"It won't matter now." He said bluntly, "If they can collect themselves, they will, but if not... they won't be the same. You can do nothing for them, and though I might be able to... I don't... I don't trust myself. Not yet."

Lucian broke his stare from the men and focused on Zira, "Are you okay?" A rare occaision was the day Lucian showed genuine concern so openly, but a rarer day still when he wore it on his face. His expression was a combination of guilt, anger, and most of all the shadow of fear. His fear was fresh, but he was also afraid for Zira, and her wellbeing. If he'd nearly vegetablized these men, he might have injured her in a similar matter.

It almost felt as though she could still see the flicker of flames in the corners of her eyes, the whisper of a hulking figure leaning over them.

But she smiled, hesitantly brushing her fingertips against his cheek before pulling her hand back. "I'm fine, Lucy. Are you- I mean..." She bit her lip, normally slitted pupils dilated to nearly consume her eyes as she looked him over with concern.

"Gods, I was so scared," she whispered. Without thinking she leaned in to hug him again. "I thought I'd lost you there for a second."

Lucian stared blankly at Zira, expression distant and almost pained. It was as if he was thinking, remembering something that he didn't know how to deal with. He visibly refocused, his pupils dilating and finding Zira amidst his mental fog.

"Um, yeah," He was quiet again, face hard and cold. In a heartbeat, he had withdrawn, emotionally unavailable again. He pushed away from Zira, sliding off of the bed and walking over to a dresser wider than his double-doors. Finding a thin linen shirt, he slipped it on and made a beeline for the exit.

"I'll find someone to clean this up..." He said back to her, walking through the doors, "Take the day off."

That was all it took. He was gone again, without so much as recognition for anything that had just happened. Hell, if he walked fast enough, he'd be out of the building before anyone else knew what had transpired. His voice, down the hallway, could be faintly heard ordering someone to go take his former bodyguards to the infirmary.

The shifter didn't resist as he pushed away, just blinked at him.

He was closed off again, and she didn't know what she could do to help him. Or if she should even try. She swallowed thickly and ducked her eyes. "Okay," she whispered as he instructed her to take the rest of the day off.

It took her a moment to collect herself and clamber off the bed, casting a last glance at the guards before she hurried from the room. She paused just outside the door, then suddenly she was a cat, spotted fur rippling as she shook herself and set off down the hall.

She was following Lucian's scent, picking her way down the hall on soft paws with her head lowered, ears pressed back against her head.

If he truly didn't want her around, he would tell her so. But sometime he was more receptive to the cat, seeing as she couldn't really speak in this form.

Lucian could be found on the roof of his stronghold, as his scent would show Zira. He had many places in the city that served his needs for solitude, but on a subconscious level, he didn't really want to be alone. He couldn't, and wouldn't express that. Not even to Zira. That didn't make it any less true.

He was watching the streets several storeys below, the tiny people who resembled insects crawling around with self entitled purpose. And like insects, their lives meant nothing to him. That unnerved him, though he couldn't rationalize why. All he knew was that every other memeber of his organization would seem appalled or at least momentarily distraught at his apathy. They would feel some sort of morality regarding the strangers scuttling about their lives. And he did not. He felt no urge to feel for those people. That was what truly unnerved him.

Zira followed his scent to the roof, where she paused. Then she huffed out a small breath and hopped onto the flat surface, claws clicking against stone briefly.

Near silently, she passed her way over to her friend and sat beside him, almost touching but not quite. Her ears flicked and her eyes darted up to him, then down to the ground to follow his gaze.

Gradually, she lowered herself down so she was laying with her front paws crossed and hanging just over the edge of the roof, tail twitching back and forth every once in a while. She was close enough to feel the heat from Lucian's body, but maintained a careful fraction of distance; if he wanted contact, he could take it, but she didn't want to force it on him.

Silence reigned in the dwindling twilight, the sun's dusk rays just peeking out from behind the horizon, colouring bands of cloud and sky bright colours against the inky darkness.

Lucian stared down at the street, sad frown contorting his face. Tired eyes were laced with sorrow, but he didn't want them to be. He didn't want to show his guilt. The corrosive pain that lurked just under his apathetic shell... it was a solitary one, and that was by choice. For someone to even understand his issues, much less empathise with his pain... wishful thinking. It was easier to put on the façade. It had always been easier.

"Zira."

His voice was raspy, thick with an unidentified emotion when he finally used it, "One day, I'm going to lose control. Something is going to happen, and I'm going to destroy so many people."

He slid his chin into his hands, eyes fixated on an elusive thought somewhere below, "And I'm not going to be able to ignore that, when the time comes. There will be no running. No forgetting. Not then."

The cheetah lifted her head and fixed her eyes on his face as he spoke. She didn't know what she could do, what she could say. With a soft huff, she lowered her head to butt gently against his hand, like a kitten asking to be pet.

Then she pulled back, shifting her body to sit with suddenly very human knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. Her shoulder touched his, barely, and she let her chin rest on her knees.

"Then I'll be here," she murmured after a few moments. "I'll be here for whatever you need, Lucian. I can be whatever you need me to be, I can do what you need me to do."

She hesitated, then reached out to let her hand hover over his. "Can I...?"

Lucian sighed inwardly, and his face fell ever so slightly. He gave Zira a melancholic glance, his grim features tinged with a sadness he couldn't explain.

He turned his palm upwards and said quietly, "Do as you'd like."

These last weeks had set him into a sort of depression, one he didn't often show - even to himself. Like most of his problems, Lucian masked this and ignored it. At least, he tried to. If he held it in too long, it would manifest as these bouts of emotional vulnerability. He hated that about as much as he hated the mental seizures that had plagued his nightmares since childhood.

He held his gaze on the cat-girl's face examining the freckles dusting her cheeks. They did resemble the markings of her cat form, even holding the same slightly asymmetrical pattern. Even faint tear lines could be distinguished, the barest shade darker than the rest of her complexion.

"I suppose I shouldn't be so closed off, huh?" He said with a dry sarcasm that would have worked if not for the inherent dejection in Lucian's tone.

Slowly, Zira let her palm come to rest against his, her fingers curling around his gently. She met his eyes as his own searched her face, wondering what he saw- or what he was looking for.

She smiled a bit, but there was little humor in it. "Maybe," she murmured, tone teasing but eyes deep and serious. Following an instinct she didn't entirely understand, she dropped her head to nuzzle against his shoulder briefly before pulling back again, a soft purr rumbling in her chest.

"You don't have to be, with me at least. You...don't have to talk either, if you don't want to. Just...baby steps?" she offered softly, absently tracing her thumb over the back of his hand she held.

Aside from keeping her grip on his hand, she didn't try to extended anymore long-term contact, hoping she wouldn't scare him off and make him close up again.

"Do I..." Lucian began, voice quiet, "Scare you? What you've seen?"

As he spoke a hard sort of grimace took to his face, and he unconsciously squeezed Zira's hand. He averted his eyes, deigning rather to stare down at the street below.

"I'm not... I don't always see... those things," he said finally, glancing back up at her, "It's not always like that." He rushed to assure her this, but left out the fact that even if he was not constantly plagued, he always saw the images whenever he closed his eyes. Burned into his retinas were the faded shadows of torment.

Constant ignorance served him well in that regard, and apathy also. But his visions did take their toll. His resolve was wearing thin even as he spoke with Zira, and if he did not soon stop either he would shut himself back in against her, or he would emotionally break down then and there, on the roof.

He knew this, and... well, he wasn't truly opposed to the idea. It had been so long since he had been able to open himself up to another... perhaps now was a chance he would not soon get again. Or perhaps never again. He'd sacrifice his iron walls for tonight, at least, if only to ease his own selfish desperation for a true connection. Nonetheless, a small and stubborn voice berated him for even entertaining the thought. Emotional isolation had worked in the past, why not now?

Was she scared of him?

"No, Lucy." She glanced up at his face, then back to their hands. "I'm...scared for you. But you don't scare me." She clutched his hand a little tighter. "I- I really thought I was gonna lose you for a second back there..."

Her throat went tight and she had to cut herself off, glancing away. She had to be the one who was okay. She needed to be strong, just in case he needed her.

"What can I do?" she whispered after a moment. "Right now, what can I do to help?"

"If I knew, I'd have had you do it already," He said dryly. He didn't smile. A thin lipped grimace had settled in, and his eyes roamed across the street but he did not see it. He wasn't looking, rather, he was trying to not look... but he wouldn't close his eyes.

"You don't have to put on a front you know," he said quietly, in a much more reserved tone. It wasn't that he was closing himself again, but he found that he could sometimes come cross as insensitive when exposing his knowledge of other's people's inner emotions to them. "I know you aren't as emotionally stable as you'd like to believe. You're broadcasting quite a bit right now..."

Normally it was the bluntness of his acknowledgement to intrusion that pushed people away, but that was a tool he used often when he was being pestered. Now he hoped it did the opposite, but he couldn't say what Zira would do. As attached as she was to him, and he to her, he didn't really know her all that well. That was the problem he had with people. He could understand their emotions, their thoughts, and everything they had ever done, but their irrational and rash decisions were beyond him. He couldn't predict some of the things people did, and for someone who had made it their business to do that, that was a problem.

Zira stiffened. "I...am?" she said slowly, sort of processing that and trying to figure out how to respond. Or if she even really should. "So...what does that mean, to you?"

She liked to think she knew him fairly well- at least better than most- but that still left her in the dark about a lot of things, particularly in regards to the specifics and mechanics of his powers. Could he sense all that? Even the confusion she had about trying to figure out what he could and couldn't read from her?

"Imagine... it's like someone has thick perfume on," He said, "You can smell it easily, and because they went overboard, if you try hard enough you can tell what scent it is specifically. With enough practice you can pick out the individual scents that make up the whole pungent thing."

Lucian locked his fingers together, clasping Zira's hand between his in the process. If he did it intentionally or had even noticed he'd done it at all he showed no signs. He continued, trying to rationalise his experience, "You've just had an emotionally taxing experience... and it shows. You've got a sort of emotional cloud that you aren't actively or passively trying to conceal. Most people try to keep their inner feelings hidden to a certain extent, but you're definitely not, and there's good reason for it, don't get me wrong."

He turned to her, focusing on her eyes, then shifting his gaze down to her nose instead, "If I wanted to I could delve into that psychic scent, of sorts, and muck about inside your thoughts and emotions. Get the full reading. But the way you're broadcasting everything, I don't need to, at least not to understand in sparing detail what you're feeling."

"...In all honesty I think you're in shock, mostly, with a good layer of concern - misplaced or otherwise - an underlying sense of confusion, the ever present self doubt... and a little bit of fear. Which... is why I asked you if I scared you. I don't want to be the reason for your terror, but if I am, I'd rather like to know..."

That actually made sense to her. Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps he'd done it intentionally, but equating her "emotional cloud" to a scent made things click a bit better into place in her head. Her cat knew what he meant, of nothing else.

She started a bit and glanced at their joined hands when he clasped hers between his, but didn't say anything. "I am...still processing," she admitted after a moment. "I'm still not sure I...entirely understand what just happened. What I saw. So there's that."

She let out a breath and glanced away. "And maybe you think the concern is misplaced, but it's there all the same. I can't help that I care about you, Lucy." She looked back to him, then said on a sigh, "Which is where the fear comes from too, I guess. I wasn't lying, I'm not scared of you."

Strange as it may seem- even a little illogical- that was true. She wasn't scared of him, because she trusted him. "I'm scared of losing you," she mumbled eventually. "I- I'm scared that one day- one of these times you'll go someplace I can't reach you and-"

She huffed out a breath and looked away again, unable to properly finish the thought.

Lucian shifted his eyes back to the street. He wanted to promise that he'd never go anywhere she couldn't find him. That he could control himself. At the least to persuade her from investing so much time into him, for her own sake.

But he couldn't. He couldn't tell her any of those things, because he didn't know that he would always be within reach, or that he could even be reached at all. He couldn't control himself at times, and he was the person who knew that the best. And as much as his nihilistic approach to relationships was evident, he needed Zira. He greatly enjoyed her company and he needed an emotional outlet, lest he have another outburst. And god knew what his irrational emotions would be like.

"I want to get drunk," he said suddenly, and flicked his eyes back to Zira. A cautious smile pricked at the corners of his mouth, "Can I get you a drink?"

An answering smile played at the edges of of Zira's lips and she nodded. "A drink sounds really good," she chuclkled quietly, giving his hand a little squeeze as she moved to her to her feet.

Lucian deftly rose from his seat, and asked in an uncharacteristicly cheery manner, "Can cheetahs hold their liquor?"

He leaned over the edge of the building, examining the road below. Two stories, perhaps three. Plenty people for what he intended. He leaned farther off of the edge, slid his hand out from under Zira's, and fell off of the roof. He twisted just as his fingers left hers, so that he got a glance of her face before he dropped. His was rather expressionless, containing only his trademark muted curiosity.

Then he was gone, off the edge and falling fast. The sensation filled his chest, and he involuntarily gasped before dozens of hands groped and strained under his weight. The crowd of people below had, as one, saved him from hitting the ground. Of course, it wasn't really up to them, it was up to Lucian. They were going to save him whether they liked it or not. He took a deep breath, kindly thanked them all and pushed off from their grip, before glancing back at the roof. He wondered what Zira would say when she got back to him.

The shifter screeched, rushing to the edge of the roof too late to catch him even as she reached after him.

There was a moment of pure, heart-stopping panic before she realized he was alright. A growl started to build in her throat and she shifted, jumping from their flat rooftop to a near, lower one, then down to the ground.

Even in cat form it was a big jump, and her paws and legs protested, but she hardly felt it. She was a pissed, probably more than his prank warranted. Yowling, she stalked toward him, tail lashing and eyes snapping irritatwdly.

When she reached him she butted her head into his hip, instinctively sniffing him over for injury though she knew he was fine. She didn't trust her human self not to snap at him, so she stayed a cat, glaring and nuzzling in turns.

Lucian ignored the head-butt, deigning rather to absentmindedly tousle the hair along the scruff of her neck. He was listening to the crowd he'd manipulated, but not with his ears. Their muddled thoughts were interesting, and a few stronger willed ones were very confused as to their actions. They'd probably felt the impulse to do what they'd done, but hadn't gone full zombie like the rest.

Lucian smirked at the thought, dropping his hand to scratch under Zira's chin as he walked. The nearest bar was around the corner, but he wanted hard liquor, and lots of it.

"D'you think they'd let me buy a bottle of Gin, the Black Heron?" He asked the cheetah, before asking another question right on the heels of the first, "Do we have any booze in the HQ?"

Damnit.

That fucking smirk.

That was why she couldn't stay mad at him- it wasn't even worth it. He didn't even notice, half the time, just looked off into the middle distance and patted her head... Actually, the scratching felt rather nice. If he moved just a bit to the left- ahhh...

Before she realized what she was doing, Zira had leaned into his hand and started purring, eyes sliding to half mast. Her tail swept back and forth contentedly in a lazy arc as she trotted along beside him, purring loudly.

It took her a few moments to realize he'd asked  question and she tried to snap herself out of the momentary daze. Jerking away from his hand, she shifted back to her human form and arched her back, hoping his absentmindedness and her dark complexion would hide her suddenly furious blush.

"Ah...I know some of the boys have a "secret" stash of ale, but I doubt that's really your speed right now. Your cousin might have something more your style tucked away, but other than that..." She shrugged. "Maybe some wine in the cellar?"

Lucian let his hand fall to his side as Zira shifted. Perhaps the wine would do. The nagging voice in the back of his head said that getting drunk could be dangerous. Its objections were in vain.

Lucian knew full well what happened when he got drunk. His powers became dulled, and though he was intoxicated, he couldn't hear any other thoughts. It was a momentary escape, and unless he got so drunk he blacked out, it would be safe. In all truth, when he blacked out he didn't know what could happen, but the past had made it more than clear. He would try to use his powers, couldn't, and sometimes he would push so hard it would cause highly dangerous chain reactions in the brains of everyone near him. So... don't get hammered, just get a little tipsy.

"Sure..." he said cautiously, "let's have the wine."

Zira shrugged. "Yeah, sounds good." She hesitated a moment, then offered her hand. "C'mon. Let's head back before this crowd starts really questioning why they saved your stupid ass."

"With skill, they won't." He said in absolute certainty, before sliding his hand into her grip. He rather enjoyed the contact. It was like an anchor, keeping him rooted in this too real world. His daydreams could not persist when he was constantly being pulled back into reality by Zira and all the things she did.

There was a certain allure, having her lead him back through the streets. Someone else was calling the shots, and he enjoyed it. A weight he didn't know he had, a burden of responsibility, was for the time being lifted from his shoulders. What a feeling that was.

She was fast too. He was sure of foot, and balanced well enough under stress, but Zira was also an actual cheetah. Sure, she wasn't in cheetah form, but like that old saying goes, you can take the shifter out of the animal, but you can't take the animal out of the shifter. Something like that.

"Slow down," Lucian laughed, when his hand began to slip from Zira's grasp. Only the tips of his fingers clung to hers, like a rock climber's. He assumed if she lost physical contact with him, she'd stop and retrieve him. So he halted, directly in place, and his fingertips brushed against hers as they slipped away, again. This time he wasn't falling off of a roof, but the sensation was nearly identical.

Zira's hand slipped from his and she huffed, twisting to pout at him over her shoulder. "Maybe you need to speed up," she teased as she moved back toward him and took his hand again. She linked their fingers this time rather than simply wrapping hers around his, connecting them more securely.

She liked it when he laughed. He didn't do it often enough.

With another huff, she started moving again, slower this time, just a step or two ahead of him as she guided them back to HQ.

Lucian fell back into a small, sad smile when Zira locked her fingers with his. It wasn't that he was particularly sorrowful for the moment, it was just his predisposed expression. However, he felt a twinge of guilt at having Zira lead him back to the Headquarters. What for, he couldn't have said.

Well... perhaps he could have. But he didn't want to, and that was perhaps a more powerful factor.

"Do you like this?" He asked, lengthening his stride and meeting Zira's pace, "This..." he brought their interlocked hands up in front of their faces, "Physical contact? Hand holding?"

"What?" She blinked, then glanced down at their interlocked hands and suddenly found her cheeks heating- though she had no idea why. "Oh, um...yeah, guess I do. It's...reassuring."

She looked back to his face. "Sorry. Do you want me to stop?"

"No... I'm growing accustomed to it," he said, sad smile twitching with amusement, "I just don't really understand why you would do it in the first place. Physical contact has always been a sort of, necessary action, if an action taken at all."

He wasn't opposed to the gesture, but Lucian was a little caught unawares by her answer. What about physical proximity could be reassuring?

Zira shrugged, glancing ahead. They had just about reached their destination, so she slowed her pace a bit, making an effort to match his steps.

She glanced down at their hands again. "Well...what if I lost you in the crowd or something?" She gave him a sheepish sort of half smile. "I know, kind of a silly worry, but... I dunno. It could happen. And it's...nice knowing I have an anchor to you. Just in case."

Just in case.

"What a fucking... a fucking..." Lucian's angry words faded, and his vision blurred before snapping back to reality, "Zira! Can you, please, just, can you go get me that other bottle? Please? I'll love you if you do it... I mean, I love you anyway, but I'll love you more, y'know?"

He pointed shakily at an unopened red wine on a table perhaps five steps away. But he was laying down on a makeshift bed consisting of pillows and blankets, on the floor. It was actually more like a couch, being long enough for several people to lay down comfortably. He didn't exactly remember how he'd gotten there, or why, but he didn't care. All he knew was that the blankets kept him warm.

And he was cold because his shirt wasn't on him. He furrowed his brow, confused for a moment, then took another sip from the half empty bottle of gin he'd poached from the gang member's stash. The burning of the drink on the way down pulled his attention away from his shirtlessness. He was barely awake as it was, eyes red and half open, and he couldn't stand without toppling over... wait, that was why he was on the ground.

Lucian giggled at his own ignorance, belched, and threw up in his mouth before washing it back down with another mouthful of alcohol. Then he flopped over onto a few throw pillows, and groaned.

"Ziraaaaa..... Where are you? I can't... I can't feel you anymore. Come over here please?" In all honesty, he'd lost Zira a while ago, but was sure she was still in the sprawling top floor room somewhere. Probably. Everything's beyond his normal senses was a buzzing smear of movement and white noise. Listening, in a sense, only got him a fuzzy feeling and nothing nearly normal. He could barely think his own thoughts, much less listen in on others'.

Zira tried to spring up, but found herself swaying and had to put a hand against the wall to steady herself. "Whoa... Okay, maybe I've had enough," she muttered to herself.

Still, her wine-fogged brain didn't put up to much of a fight in telling her now would probably be a good time to cut her boss off. She just swayed her way over to the table to snatch up the bottle, cradling it to her chest as she half-staggered back to Lucian's makeshift couch.

She grinned despite herself at his odd, slurred affections, then laughed outright, though she wasn't quite sure why. "Can't feel me? What, you wanna pet the- the cat?" she teased, hiccuping a bit as she collapsed beside him and held the bottle out.

She certainly wasn't going to have anymore, but far be it from her to tell her employer he needed to stop. She resolved to keep an eye on him though.

With a throaty purr, Zira snuggled into his side, butting her head up under his chin like she might have in her cat form. "So? How much do you love me for the wine?" she teased with a tipsy giggle.

"More... than you know," he said quietly, eyes closed and drowsy. He brought the fresh bottle to his lips, drinking much more deeply than he probably should have. He let his arm fall rather awkwardly into the crook of her neck, but repositioned it and after a few tries got his arm back down. He rested it over her shoulder, spilling some of the wine onto the floor before swearing and righting the bottle behind Zira.

"I don't know what cat I'm supposed to be touching," he said incredulously, "because you're a person." His other arm was above his head, pinned at an odd angle. He could feel her against his skin, but it was a distant feeling, like he was watching it happen rather than experiencing it.

"Why are-why... why are you wearing clothes?" He asked, picking at the shoulder strap of her shirt. "Why am I not wearing clothes? I mean, I'm - I've got pants. But I don't have socks... or a shirt, and you have a shirt. Why... did you take my shirt?"

Zira laughed again,. "Y'know what, Imma just let that one go. But believe me, when we're both sober- soberer- sobrerer?- I'm gonna be making all sorts of cat jokes and just what you're allowed to touch,"  she chuckled.

At his question, she lifted her head with a bit of a frown. "Um...oh, there!" She pointed, smiling triumphantly. "You said you were hot, you threw it there, 'member?"

She twisted to lean against him again. "Why? Want it back? Or would you rather I join in?" She leaned back to tug her shirt up over her head, then collapsed back against him in her breatsbamd, smiling tipsily. "There, see?"

Lucian stared at the chair she'd pointed to. Sure enough his shirt was there, draped over the arm. Then a second joined it, and Zira was much warmer when she laid back next to him. He closed his eyes with a grimace as a painful headache hit, then left just as quickly. It was like a mental jab, if anything.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself tracing the spots that dusted Zira's arms, shoulders and back. He smiled, a genuine, toothy smile, and began tiptoeing his fingers along the spots on her shoulder, like one would do with a map and compass.

"I've always like your spots," he murmured, almost childlike, "They're so pretty." He continued the finger dance, humming a nonsensical song along with it. He asked then, "And what is it exactly... that I... I-" he hiccuped, the spasm disrupting his little counting. He began again, and continued, "I am allowed to touch?"

Her spine arched and Zira purred happily under his touch, far too drunk to bother to try to curb the reaction as she normally would have. "Really?" She smiled, arching into his touch. "You don't think they're weird?"

Her skin was peppered with more than spots: scars littered his sides, shoulders, and back from her time as a coliseum apprentice, but she wasn't as self conscious of those as she would have been normally.

What was he allowed to touch?

"You're the boss, Lucy," she sighed in answer after a few moments. She was still teasing, eyes glinting playfully. "Doesn't that mean you're the one who makes the rules?" With a contented little sigh, she pressed slower. "Feels good," she added in a distracted sort of mumble as her purring redoubled, vibrating through her chest and throat.

"Hey," Lucian said, suddenly very serious. In fact his switch was almost comical in its speed and intensity, "Are you okay? You're vibrating. I think-" he hiccuped again, "Are you alright?"

He sighed, rather belatedly at her question, "I don't want to make the rules anymore Zira. They're... hard. I don't like them. They don't like me. It's not a good relationship." His hand hand walked its way down to her waist, and began tracing the spots back up her ribs. He reached for the wine bottle with his other hand, succeeded in knocking it over and spilling it near Zira's hips. He managed to right it again, but not before a good half of the nearly full bottle had spilled, now pooling as far as mid thigh on Zira's smaller frame.

"Shit," he said, brow furrowing again, "Sorry."

His sudden severity caught we off guard, but then she was laughing again. "I'm fine, Lucy. I'm...better than fine. 'S just purring." Even as she spoke, the soft, rumbling sound continues in her chest.

She frowned when he spoke again, lips drawn tight and eyes searching his face with a sudden concern. "Boss-"

She gasped as cool liquid soaked her clothes and skin, making her flinch back and scramble to sit up. "Ah, fuck." She winced and wrinkled her nose. "I'm gonna smell like wine for a week." With a regretful little smile, she moved to push herself to her feet. "Sorry, I should go clean up- whoa."

The room tilted sideways and she collapsed back into her rear, head spinning. "Um...maybe I'll give it a minute or two..."

"Let's just, move these," he said pushing himself into a sitting position, shuffling the blankets away, and laying back down on the cold adobe floor. The wine puddle soaked into his baggy hose, but he didn't seem to notice.

"I don't mind the smell of wine," he crooned, before slipping into a raspier tone, "Not least on a woman so damn fine..." lyrics to an old tavern song he used to sing with the gang before he became he boss. He giggled a little hysterically, and his head dropped to one side. He watched Zira, or at least her back, and giggled more. The spots trailing down her spine were a tad darker than the rest.

"Your spots are so pretty..."

The shifter chucked, rolling into her side to face him. "You are drunk," she laughed, eyes sparkling as she shook her head. And "you may not mind the smell, but my nose is m-more sensitive than yours." She hiccuped a bit and wriggled around, managing to undo the tie of her folded skirt.

"Aha!" Once she'd managed to loosen the material, she could kick the wine-soaked garment away. "Much better."  Left in her smallclothes, she tilted her head slightly at Lucian, a few of her braids falling into her face.

"Really?" He voice sounded suddenly rather small, almost childish. "You really think they're pretty?" Even as tipsy as she was, she knew the glow that sparked in her chest was real. Her spots had always been an oddity, a mark of what a rare, desirable pet she was.

But what Lucian said felt...different. Like they were pretty just- just because.

"Yeah..." Lucian said, smiling like an idiot, "How far down do they go? Can... I... find out?"

He held a hand out to Zira, groping loosely at the air in her direction. He found the bottle of gin, and nearly downed it in one go. His threshold was pretty much passed, and another drink or two and he would be blacked out. But he was far beyond rational judgement. He tried to rise, faltered, and fell back with a thud. He cracked his head against the floor, and swore violently as he did so.

"Ziraaaa," he called, albeit quietly. He put his hands on his head, and slid his legs up so that his knees were in the air.

"Oh- gods and demons." zira swore quietly and rolled onto her hands and knees to crawl back over to him. "Lucy? You okay? Lemme see."

Twisting to sit with her legs folded to one side, she lifted his head onto her lap, frowning in concentration as her fingers combed through his head, trying to see if he was bleeding. "I think that's enough for today," she muttered, at least having the presence of mind to recognize that.

Lucian was seconds from passing out, both due to his intoxication and because of the minor concussion he'd just given himself. In his pain, his blind, lost pain, he tried to latch on to something mentally.

But he couldn't. It was like trying to find purchase among wet stone, and slipping over and over again. Falling farther each time. He began to panic, and pushed against his mental barrier much harder than he should have. Much, much harder.

His efforts rebounded, of sorts. In his mind, it seemed as though they ricocheted, bouncing off of his invisible wall and hitting him right back in the mind. In reality, he could only truly recognise his own mind. So he had tried to force his way into whatever he could find, and had tried to infiltrate his own consciousness as if it were an alien one. That could send someone into their own subconscious, effectively rendering them comatose until they found their way out.

But he was drunk, so when the searing pain started, he immediately stopped. But his actions had other consequences. The self-infiltration created a sort of feedback loop, a static projection of his pain and confusion that rolled out in white noise waves in the immediate area. Anyone within sixty feet or so would feel the rolling headache he was going through, in waves, punctuated with sharp stabbing pain behind the eyes.

After a minute, it stopped. Lucian moved his hands from his face, more confused as to what happened than as to its effects. His eyes hurt, but not in the stabbing way they had before. Though he couldn't see it, the immense physical pressure as a side effect of his feedback loop had burst the smaller blood vessel in his eyes, and everything around his irises was more or less bloodshot to hell.

He started to tear up involuntarily as his body tried to cope with his pain, and  latched onto Zira's arm with one hand, saying softly, "I'm sorry... I'm so, so, so sorry... I- I'm just - it's... I'm sorry, Zira..."

Pain jolted through her skull and zira cried out in shock, almost reeling back from him before she remembered how badly that might end. Gritting her teeth, and clenched her eyes shut until the pain faded, continuing to stroke her fingers thehoigh his hair in the best effort at soothing that she could manage.

When he grabbed her arm, she flicked her eyes up to meet his gaze and tried for a smile. "It's alright, boss," she murmured, patting his hand. "Really, I'm fine. It's okay."

She paused a moment, then tried to slip his arm around her shoulders. "Think you can stand? We should probably try to get you to bed..."

Lucian responded by pushing himself into a sitting position, using Zira as a support, and managed to get on one knee.

"I dunno..." he told her, caution in his tone, "I'm... not so sure ab-" Lucian closed his eyes for a second seemingly in pain, before continuing, "about that. My balance isn't so good.... anymore." He was thinner than she, but also much taller. He weighed more as a consequence, but Lucian had never found Zira to be lacking in strength. He hoped she could support him if they got to walking anywhere.

"Maybe we should just-just go to the blankets over there?" He suggested, vaguely motioning to the dry pile of furs, blankets, and pillows he'd been using earlier. "I need to take off my pants anyway... Might as well have an alternative."

Despite herself, Zira found herself chuckling. "Alright, come on then," she murmured, pulling him to his feet and quickly tucking herself against his side to act as a crutch.

It was rather like the blind leading the blind. She wasn't nearly so far gone as Lucian, but she was fairly tipsy herself, and staggering over to the pile of blankets seemed to take more effort than it really should have. Laughing- though she wasn't sure why- she helped lower Lucian back to the ground and collapsed beside him.

"A-alright. Can you manage your breeches yourself, or y'need help with that too?"

"I think, I can take my own pants off... thank you very much," he said defensively, fumbling at the strings tied around his waist. Never mind that he couldn't actually feel his fingers, he managed to loosen a knot, and slide the partially soaked leggings down to the knee, and kicked them off from there. It was a little pathetic, the flailing inadequacy of his attempts, but ultimately he got them off.

Underneath was a simple linen wrap, a little looser now than it had been earlier, but still functional in obscuring his junk. Lucian pulled a tiger-skin blanket over his shoulder and curled into his side, bloodshot eyes on Zira.

He extended a hand to her shoulder, seemingly prodding her skin at random. He was actually counting spots again, having not lost his infatuation with her epidermic patterns. He wasn't pressing too hard, but enough that she would definitely feel it. His mouth moved over silent words, numbers, as he counted. He'd finished her left shoulder, with twenty three, and slid closer. His hand shifted to her shoulder blade, and he began counting the spots on her back, a much longer task to be sure.

Zira started a bit when he began poking at her shoulders. She'd expected him to just go to sleep. Twisting to look at him, she arched an eyebrow. "What are you-?"

Her voice does when she saw his face, really looked at him. Gods, he looked like he'd lost a fight with a demon. Possibly several. She sighed and laid down beside him, scooting closer to share body heat- she'd wound up in nothing but her underthings after all.

"Let me look at you." She cupped his cheek in a palm, eyes searching his. She tsked; a few vessels popped, which wouldn't be fun to wake up to, but they shouldn't hurt too much as long as he was gentle with himself.

"Go to sleep, Lucy," she urges with a small smile, turning onto her side so her back was to him. A long scar that traveled from her right shoulder almost to her left hip stretched as she arched her back. The mark almost wove around her spots, as though someone had taken great pains with a thin blade to ensure the pattern wouldn't be disfigured by the scar itself.

Lucian gave up his counting to lightly trace her scar with the pad of his thumb, from shoulder to hip. Actual concern entered his voice, perhaps sobering him a fraction, when he asked, "How did you get this?"

He left his thumb on the end of her scar, but the rest of his fingers took hold of her hip, where he left them. His other arm he slid under her, wrapping her in an embrace. She was still a little damp, but he couldn't feel very much anyway. The heat was what he registered, and he quite enjoyed it. The blanket they shared kept the heat it, and it was already warming up. Lucian poked a foot out of the fur, probing the cold floor with his toes.

She tensed, shoulders hunching forward. "It's um...from before. When I was in the coliseum." She shrugged. "I...didn't want to fight. There was this little girl, some northerner, I would have killed her if they made me fight. So I...didn't."

Another shrug. "My master thought I needed a lesson."

She tried to laugh it off. "Weird you've never seen it before."

"You've never been naked enough before," he replied. A teasing grin lit up his face, "At least not with me..."

He continued dancing his fingers along the spots on her hip, hopping over the band that was wrapped around her hips and starting again at the edge of her midriff. The spots fell off where her underside would be as a cat, which he found highly intriguing. It was odd that the spots carried over, but the cream coloured underbelly did not.

His little dance slowed and he craned his neck up, looking for something, "Where'd I leave that wine?"

Zira shivered as his fingers continued their exploration, then chuckled quietly. "Well, you know me. Not enough clothes happening in this city for my tastes."

Her back arched slightly as his hand was suddenly brushing against the side of her stomach, a soft, feline chirp escaping her lips. She blushed heavily, hoping he wouldn't notice just how much she like the almost-belly-scratch.

"Wha- oh no. No." She laughed again and twisted to wrap her arms around him, mock pinning him against her. "No more wine for you, not tonight."

"Really now?" He challenged, tipsy smile spread wide, "Because between the both of us - and I'm pale, mind you - you're the one who's all flushed."

He tried to gesture to her face, but she had him in a pretty clinched position, so he left one hand on her midriff and one supporting the both of them on the floor. He laughed suddenly, squinting his eyes at her, and said, "Your tear tracks darken when you blush. Cool. Cool, cool cool. Cool...."

He brought up the supporting hand, not taking into account what it was supporting, and dropped like a rock into the makeshift bed of furs. It was soft, but Zira's added weight was unexpected, and he was sandwiched between her and the ground.

Her blush darkened and Zira frowned and opened her mouth to snip a retort- but then they were flopping back into the ground and she went sprawling over his chest with an "Oomph!"

"Oh, shi- sorry." She tried to move off him while still making sure he couldn't go for the wine. "And I'm not blushing," she lied quickly. "You're just...drunk. Don't know what you're seeing."

"I'm drunk, not... blind," he teased, stupid smile wide on his face, "You're totally blushing! Is it the spots? Because... you're self aware of your spots, and you... you don't really like them. Right? That's what it is?"

He slid his hand out from between the two of them and pushed off of the floor, partially taking her with him. He scanned for the wine, found his target, and tried to get to his feet with little success. His intozication and Zira more or less on his lap made it very hard to even get to a crouch.

"Oi!" Zira clung to him like a monkey, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. She hoped her weight would prevent him from getting up.

"I'm not self-conscious about them," she muttered as she tried to make him lay back down. "You've just...never said anything like that before, is all."

Lucian tried fruitlessly to get up again, resulting in him resting on the palms of his hands. He drew his knees up, but they couldn't go very far with Zira in the way. Lucian stared wistfully after the bottle of wine, before sighing dejectedly and turning back to Zira, whose face was so close that his nose brushed her cheek and bumped into her's before he could process that she was in the way.

He could smell the alcohol on her breath, but he could also taste it on his own, so if anything it was a rather odd combination of secondhand booze fumes and the scent Zira either gave off naturally or wore consistently. Lucian wasn't sure, but he did find it hard to accept that someone naturally smelled like honey.

A few strands of his white-blonde hair fell across his eyes, but he ignored them. He was focused on Zira's golden eyes, the flecks of bronze and shades of nearly metallic colour captivating him. He said nothing for a second, simply staring, as if dumbfounded, at Zira.

"You've got pretty ey-" was all he managed to get out before he kissed her, the conflicting choice of either complimenting or kissing Zira colliding in a drunken decision. Odd. She kind of tasted like honey too.

Her heart skipped erratically up into her throat as his nose brushed her cheek and her breath grew shaky for a moment.

Yeah. She'd definitely had too much to drink.

Thankfully, they wouldn't be having any more, as her attempt to keep him in place seemed to have worked. She gave him a smug grin and was about to quip something about his inability to toss her off- but then he was staring into her eyes like that and her voice petered out.

Pretty...what? "Mmf!"

Zira's eyes went wide and she gasped sharply against Lucian's mouth. Her whole body went rigid, the hands at his shoulders tensing so her claws pricked at his skin.

She was caught between pulling away and- and pulling him closer, hanging suspended between the two impulses for several long moments. Then, slowly, she melted against him, tasting the wine they'd been drinking and something else that must have been just...Lucian.

"W-wait." She forced herself to break away from him, turning her head away and drawing in a few sharp breaths. "You- we've been drinking. This is..."

A very very bad idea.

But she hadn't let go of him.

"This is fun..." he giggled, smiling like an idiot. Lucian wasn't the most cognitive at the moment, and he couldn't register much in the way of touch. He was effectively numb, except for the tips of his fingers, his inner legs, his face, and his chest. He could only partially feel Zira's heat, but where he did she was a furnace.

He kissed her again, albeit sloppily, and slid down back into the furs. He nipped at her upper lip and drew his hands to her lower back. Sweet honey, heat, and wine. He drew back, only to look her in the eye agin, and finished his previous thought, "I meant to say you had pretty eyes, but I couldn't, because I was kissing you...But now you know."

Had he just...giggle.

Dear gods.

Quite in spite of herself, Zira found herself starting to grin. "Look, I won't say it...wasn't fun, but-" He was kissing her again, and she really didn't want to fight it. The small part of her brain that was telling her what a bad idea this was grew gradually quieter while the part that pointed out that even drunk he was quite a good kisser took over.

"Mmm..." She blinked down at him, forearms braced to either side of his head. "Well. Thanks." Smiling a little giddily, she pecked the tip of his nose. "I like your eyes too. And your hair. Have I ever told you that?" She let her head drop to nuzzle against the crook of his neck, a rumbling purr vibrating through her whole body.

"Ooh," he exclaimed, rather surprised, "That's a new sensation. How do you do that?"

His smile perked up the edges of his eyes, crinkling them in an odd way. He looked more lively when smiling than he ever had in a fight. It was very strange indeed. "And no, I don't think you've ever mentioned my hair. You said... said, once, that my eyes were very commanding... but that was a weird thing to say..."

He shut himself up with the task of nibbling on Zira's ear, working around the braids and digging his fingers gently into her back. He curled a leg inward, his thigh pressing up against her, and began to giggle again. He wasn't even laughing at anything, he just found what he was doing oddly humorous.

"Well, I like it. It's all...sunny." Zira chuckled. "Purr? How do I purr? Is that what you're asking?" For some reason that was highly amusing to her.

Less amusing was the pressure of his thigh against her and the tingly shivers that sped down her spine as he nibbled at her ear. Her pupils dilated slightly and she sucked in a sharp breath, forcing herself not to do something humiliating, like start riding his thigh.

Despite how the idea was becoming more and more appealing.

"Um, Lucy?" She swallowed. "Do you, um- what are you-?" Why couldn't she make words happen?!

"Do I what...?" He asked, leaning back from her ear. He sat up, boosting her with him using the same thigh. "Because... I don't know if I do, sometimes... y'know?"

He was rambling. He wasn't even thinking on his own words. Beyond the primal desires of fucking, eating, and sleeping, he was not there. He further proved this statement by giggling neurotically, and going in for another kiss. As he did, since he was sitting up, he curled his back a little bit and in the process pressed his leg harder against Zira.

"Oooohhh shitshitshit." Zira squeezed her eyes shut, biting her lip. "Luce, that- ah..." She swallowed thickly and for a moment tried to disentangle herself from him. "That-

Damnit.

"That felt good." It seemed she was inebriated enough that her filter had all but entirely disappeared. Grumbling about poor choices under her breath, she tilted her head to kiss him again, for the first time fully reciprocating the affections he'd been peppering over her.

Bad idea be damned. She liked kissing him, and who were they hurting, really?

"Yeah..." he agreed, although he couldn't have known. He then realised that he didn't know, so he tried to probe against her mind.

The haze was waiting for him, thick and blurry. A mental sludge, and he was trying to walk through it. But with every step, every struggling push against the haze he felt a twinge behind his eyes, until the syrupy feeling barrier broke, and a sharp stabbing pain ripped through his forehead, travelling both a breakneck pace and torturously slowly through his head until it both stabbed and softly bounced against the back of his skull.

He let out a strangled whimper, went limp, and cracked his head against the adobe floor. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he gurgled something before going silent entirely, his eyelids fluttering but never sliding closed.

Well.

That certainly sobered her up.

For a few moments Zira was frozen, staring. Then she gave a soft cry and snapped upright, trying to lift Lucian so she could check him over for injury. "Lucy? Lucian!" She carded her fingers though his hair- he wasn't bleeding, but he'd hit his head hard.

"Fuck." She looked around a little wildly, approaching panic. "What should I-?" Was anyone close enough to hear a call for help? Should she risk leaving him alone to get someone?

Lucian was left dazed and slightly detatched from his body. He could still feel everything, but his mind was a separate beast... and without the direct influence of his physical brain, the odd psionic space from which he drew power, he was now primarily in. He'd never known about it before. It was the place that fuelled his abilities, and kept his mind just slightly apart from what was now a slowly dying body.

He could see Zira, on top of him, and panicking. When had she gotten there? Didn't matter.

Mustering his strength, he tried to grab her attention, mentally screaming, ZIRA!

Zira jerked, snapping her head around. Had she just heard...?


"Luce?" She blinked down at him. "Can- can you hear me?" Oh gods, what was she supposed to do?! She grabbed for his wrist to feel his pulse. "C'mon, boss, wake up, please..."

Oh thank the gods, you can hear me... Zira, I need you to pick up my body. I think I'm choking on my own spit.

Lucian was in a very odd position. His drunken physicality was blocking him from reconnecting, but it also meant he was more or less sober until then. He could think, he could act, and he could solve this problem. Never mind the problem that was his bodyguard straddling him nearly naked.

Hurry up now, I may be a big boy but I'm a drunk big boy!

"You- you're what?!" Almost instinctively Zira followed his orders, propping his body up against hers with a soft grunt of effort and tilting his head slightly onto her shoulder in an effort to keep his airways clear. "How- what in- what the hells is going on?!"

How could she hear him? Why wasn't he speaking?! "Ohhh this is so weird," she muttered. "Are you dead? Are you dying? Fuck, please don't be dying."

I'm... uh... I'm here, kind of. I'm not in my body, really, if that makes sense. Caught in between my body and wherever I am now... but not dead! Yet... honestly I don't know. I can't go back in.

If Lucian had control over his lungs he would be hyperventilating. But he didn't. So he wasn't.

Am I propped up? I can't really see too well... I mean, I could see through your eyes, if you'd let me, but I'd have to go through your mind to do so. Is that an option?

"Uh...s-sure?" She blinked, staring at the unconscious- was that the word for it?- man in her arms. "I have you propped up..."

She grasped his wrist again and breathed a small sigh, shoulders relaxing slightly. "Your pulse is evening out a bit, so that's good. Wait." She blinked again, jaw going slightly slack. "Did you say you can't go back? You're stuck?"

Yeah, I'm... kinda stuck. This is pretty fucking weird, and it's never happened before, but I can't go back.

Lucian gave a moan, wet sounding but otherwise not too alarming. An anguished expression played on his features, but he didn't move, and didn't wake.

I mean, I can feel your consciousness, and I could definitely enter it if I wanted. It's always like that. But... for my body, there's nothing. It's like a rock, or a table. I can't feel it.

"Fuuuuuuck." Wide eyed, Zira looked around the room as though that might yield some answers before flicking her eyes back to Lucian's face. "Well...maybe..." She huffed out a breath. "You could...hitch a ride until we get you to a healer or something? Maybe someone else will know what to do..."

If the blow to his head was what was blocking him, maybe fixing the injury would allow him back into his body?

It was the only idea she had.

Hitch a ride... alright. I should use someone else, just so you don't have me tagging along for every other thought.

Lucian disconnected himself almost entirely, only keeping a rudimentary link to Zira. He could communicate, but not much else. He was blind, deaf, and formless. He hated every second.

Now hurry up and get someone in here please. I can't stand this feeling... it's really the lack of feeling. Gods, this is awful.

"O-okay. Gods. Fuck. This- fuck." Zira scrambled to her feet and ran for the door, sliding slightly as the world tilted sideways.

Seemed she was still rather tipsy.

"Fuck." Growling under her breath, she knocked the door open and called- yowled might have actually been a more accurate description- down the hall, "Guard! Someone get a healer! And someone else get in here to help me!"

Taking a moment to try to right her balance, she turned and moved back to Lucian's unconscious form, somewhat more gracefully than she had made it to the door. "Okay. Can you...hear me? You still there?" She pulled his head into her lap. Was she supposed to keep his head elevated?

I haven't left. In case you've forgotten, I am sort of confined to the options of ethereal hovering or catatonia, even in panicked thought, Lucian had time for biting sarcasm.

Wendell, a thin boy perhaps just out of puberty, with a shaggy mop of dark hair and deep green eyes came barreling through the doorway. He'd come first because someone had shouted for help, and second because the person who was shouting had been a nearly nude Zira. The Boss's cat, as she was known among the lower ranks, was often drooled over by the Sandlily runner boys.

"Whatsit you need Miss Ha'ten?" Wendell used the oddly formal address because if he called her any of the slightly racist and more often than not promiscuous nicknames she'd earned among the boys, he'd most likely get slapped.

Brow furrowed in a deep frown, Zira snipped back, "Well there's no need to be an ass, I was just-" She cut herself off when the boy came running into the room, looking up at him sharply.

"Right." Shit, what was his name? She knew his face, his scent, but she'd  always been bad with names. William? Warren? "Lad, I need you to-" Wendell! That was it. A little too pleased with herself, Zira slung Lucian's arm around her shoulder as she continued, "-to help me get the Boss here back up to his quarters, yeah? Subtle-like."

She may have been stronger than she looked, but Lucian was not a small man. She didn't want to risk attempting to move him on her own and injuring him further.

She was so caught up in her worry and confusion that she actually forgot she was all but naked, quirking an eyebrow at the boy. "Did someone call for the healer?"

"Uh, yeah, Jackie's booking it to go get that old woman who lives around the bend. Y'know the one who drinks too much and can't speak common?" Wendell spoke clearly enough, but anyone who was paying attention to him would see he was sneaking peeks at everything below Zira's collarbone every time she looked away.

Zira, don't be alarmed by this. The kid will be fine.

Lucian's words were punctuated by Wendell buckling, catching his balance, and standing up warily again. His posture was different though, his expression cautious and expectant. When he spoke, his tone was changed as well, adopting an eerily similar cadence, "Well. That worked wonderfully... Although I don't particularly enjoy being confined to a pubescent, gangly, drugged up child's body." He sighed, and said, "It'll have to do."

When he made eye contact with Zira, his irises were revealed to be no longer green. They were a piercing gray-blue.

Zira nearly dropped Lucian's body.

"What the ever-loving, actual fuck!?" she whisper-shrieked, eyes wide. "Don't be alarmed, he says! You- you can possess people? Since when?!"

Tonight was just full of surprises it seemed.

With a sharp breath, the shifter shook her head quickly as she readjusted her grip on the physical Lucian- gods, this was so weird- and stood up carefully. "Okay, know what, we can talk about it later. Right now we need to get you- the real you- back...together." She frowned. "If- you could- I mean the kid could- just grab the feet, alright?"

She had Lucian half cradled against herself, his body's lolling head pillowed surprisingly easily against her breast and one arm around her shoulders. "If you lift his...your legs, we can...get you back to your bed. And then the healer can have a proper look."

Her eyes flickered over the boy-who-was-Lucian. "How long can you keep that up? You sure he'll be okay?"

"I can keep it up as long as I can stay awake usually," Wendell-Lucian explained, hefting his other legs up by the calves and angling his other body, "But that's a normal scenario. And this isn't possession, not really. I'm distracting his mind with the thing he wants most, to keep his subconscious busy while I dick around in his nervous system. And the eyes are just me looking through his eyes, like I proposed with you. Happens with everyone."

Wendell-Lucian shuffled awkwardly around towards the door, making sure he lined up properly so he could carry the comatose Lucian through properly, "As for the long term effects, I don't know. I'm not messing with his head so much as suggesting what to do with his body. He is still very much in control... Hence the illusion. He's daydreaming, basically. But unlike a normal daydream, this one doesn't snap very easily. I am still connected to my own body. I can feel everything twice right now. Once for Wendell here, and once for Myself. It's kinda trippy, and I'm trying to focus on the one, but it's kind of hard."

"That sounds...like a lot. I'm sorry." Zira shuffled along after him, making sure to keep Lucian's head as stable as she could. "So...he won't remember this? When you jump back into your body he'll just...wake up?" She frowned. "What are you distracting him with, anyway? Will he remember that?"

Getting through the door was tricky, but she had a feeling the stairs would be harder. She eyed the flight at the end of the hall, gave a small whimper, then shook herself mentally and continued tiptoeing along carefully. "C'mon, better let me lead up the stairs."

"Eh, this is pretty standard fare. It's stuff like this why the boss kept me," Wendell-Lucian was making a reference to the previous leader of the Sandlilies, who had brought him into the fold nearly a decade ago. "Chances are, he'll remember the dream more, and vaguely remember doing some physical labour. As for what it is he's distracted with... I just used what was on the forefront of his mind at the time. So he's currently getting hot and steamy with you."

Wendell-Lucian gave Zira a wolfish grin, one that looked very much like Lucian, but with the features of Wendell. Unnerving, to say the least. "Funny thing is, I didn't orchestrate that. I just put whatever preconception he had going on and him into a box, ignited the part of his brain that stimulates deep dreaming, and took over. He's very much keeping himself busy."

Wendell wasn't very tall, by Lucian's standards, but he wasn't short either. He was about sixteen, having hit his growth spurt and dropped his voice, but he wasn't quite so large around the shoulders as a man fully grown would be. He was perhaps three, maybe four inches taller than Zira, and that made the carrying uneven. It wasn't helped that Lucian was accustomed to longer limbs. Still, they made it to the stairs easily enough.

"Wha-?" Zira's jaw dropped, then she shook herself and glowered at the boy. Man. Whatever. "Wonderful. Just...wonderful," she grumbled to herself.

Once they'd reached the top of the stairs, she guided them around to shuffle toward Lucian's quarters. There was a man standing guard, but luckily she was accustomed to thinking on her feet.

"Hey there." Looking properly sheepish, she nodded her head toward Lucian's body. "Boss figured we deserved a break. We got a little...carried away. Y'know how it is." She gave him her best charming smile, hoping he wouldn't question the severe lack of pants that was currently happening. "Oh, someone's gone to get the healer, just to be safe. Could you send her up here when they arrive?" she added as she bumped the door open with a hip and started shuffling through.

"Yeah, sure..." the guard replied, a man by the name of Caill. He wasn't a very expressive sort, but even he was stifling a grin. It wasn't every day that a drug runner, the boss's half naked body guard, and the totally hammered Lucian Blasskohl came waltzing upstairs.

Wendell-Lucian kept quiet until they'd gone into his room, and swung the door shut. When he was sure it was closed, he turned back to Zira, genuinely grinning. He normally wasn't so expressive himself, but his lack of mental situational awareness, basically his ability to feel everyone's intentions, he was having fun with surprising Zira. It was, for perhaps the first time in his life, something unexpected. Her reactions, that is.

"What? It's not like he'll think it was real," Wendell-Lucian said, dropping his other feet onto the bed, "It'll just be a really good daydream. Besides, it's not like these boys don't look at you anyway. You'd have to be blind to not see the way they fawn over you."

Zira hefted her friend onto the bed and half collapsed beside him as she misjudged the sheer dead weight of him and was dragged down with an "Oof." Scrambling to right herself, she glowered at Wendell-Lucian.

"That's not the point. It's..." She trailed off, eyes going a little bit wide. "The boys- you're saying they...they what?"

Okay, she wasn't oblivious. She knew she got looks. But she'd always assumed that was just...her spots. Or her closeness with Lucian. Idle curiosity, or maybe the same desire to "own" her power that her first master had possessed, not...whatever the hell Lucian was implying.

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "Gods, I do not have time to deal with this. Just- damnit, I need some clothes." Her face felt rather hot as she jumped to her feet and started hunting through the room for something she could cover herself with.

"So if the kid's daydreaming," she muttered, trying to distract herself, "you're...totally in control? Like, what if he snaps out of it?"

"Imagine," Wendell-Lucian began, "You have your eyes closed. Normally, when they're closed normally, they don't open. You can also close them by yourself. But if something gets in front of your face, they'll open automatically, yeah?"

He sat on the bed next to himself, examining his own face as if it were a stranger's, "Now what I'm doing is forcing those eyes shut. He can try to wake up, but he won't. He might feel like he can, but the illusion will keep him there. Worst case scenario, he starts believing that is reality. Then we pull him out, and he had a really vivid dream."

"Oh...kay." Zira straightened up from her search, biting absently at her lower lip. "So... Still no idea of how to fix this then?" She gestured to the unconscious body on the bed airily as she approached.

Cautiously, she settled herself on Lucian's other side and reached out to take his hand in hers automatically, a gesture of comfort that she genuinely wasn't sure if it was meant for him or herself.

Well. Not that it would do him a whole lot of good, in his current state.

"I've never been in this situation before," Wendell-Lucian said, going to finish Zira's search. As much as Wendell and drunken Lucian preferred Zira without clothes, Sober Lucian did not. It wasn't that he didn't find her attractive, he just valued her dignity more than a glance at exposed skin.

He found the first thing he saw that he knew would cover most of her; A long linen shirt laid across his dresser would do the job just fine. The shirt was large and baggy on him, so it would most definitely fit on her. "So I don't know how to fix it..."

He tossed the shirt her way, before sitting on the ground and closing his eyes. He was checking in on Wendell's projection. The rational centre in his brain was not very active, and so the situation wasn't very realistic. But it was very indulgent.

"Wow," he remarked, "He's... going for it." Wendell-Lucian opened his eyes with an incredulous look, "Do you really meow that much when you get all hot and bothered?"

Zira caught the shirt with one hand and a murmured, "Thanks," as she slipped it on over her head. It was certainly large on her, but the linen was comfortable, and it covered her. And it smelled like Lucian, which put her oddly at ease for a few moments.

She tried not to dwell on that.

Her cheeks heated at Wendell-Lucian's comment and she quirked and eyebrow. "Going for-?"

The faint blush dialed up from a mild heat in her cheeks to feeling as though her face might actually melt. "W-w-w-what?!" she screeched, gaping at him. Her pupils had dilated in surprise, eating up almost the entirety of her irises. "Do I- what- do I even want context for that?"

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "I have no idea what exactly he's thinking right now, and I really don't want to. But I can probably guarantee it's incorrect." There was a moment of silence, then the part of her that was still a little tipsy muttered, "Why so curious? Planning for something I should know about?"

It was Lucian's turn to flush, but he bore it differently. Primarily in that he became more reserved, if not seemingly at a loss for words. Secondarily, though perhaps the more interesting, it was that Wendell did not blush. Lucian's unconscious body was the one that bore his embarrassment.

"Between the both of us," he said in an almost formal tone, "You're the more promiscuous. It's not my fault that any boy who's earned his stones takes a liking to you. And I'm sorry for being curious about the wet teenage dream going on in the back of my head."

His eyes narrowed, but it was because he'd remembered something he wanted to ask, "So, remind me again, how did you and I end up the way we did? My last memory is two cups into the first bottle of wine. Then I wake up, and you're straddling my unconscious body. Why?"

She almost didn't notice the flush the cane to his cheeks. Almost.

That probably shouldn't have made her as vindictively pleased as it did.

She sighed at his question, dropping her face in her hands for a moment. Should have known that was coming. "We were drunk," she answered bluntly. "I was hot, our clothes were messy, we stripped- you wanted more wine but I didn't think it was a good idea, so I...sorta laid on you to keep you still."

Zira looked away, heat rising in her face again. "Then you told me my eyes were pretty and you kissed me. And...I kissed you back."

Wendell-Lucian was more or less speechless, though not particularly surprised at the truth. He'd run the possibilities over in his head, and it was one he'd considered being the most likely, even if a small part of him had hoped against hope it hadn't been.

"Huh..." he muttered, breaking eye contact and staring uncomfortably at the floor, "Well... Alright, I guess. So be it."

He laid his head back against the cold adobe walls, eyes closed and monitoring Wendell's escapades. If he ignored Zira and the tension provided by their current situation, maybe it would go away.

So be it.

So be it?"

"Really?" Zira's voice was quiet, brow furrowed as she frowned down at her lap. "That's...it?" She huffed out a small breath and tugged at one of her small braids. "Look, if you wanna drop it we can, I just... You know what, never mind. So be it."

She stood. "I'll go see what's taking so long with getting the healer."

Wendell-Lucian stared cautiously down his nose at Zira, unwilling to start another conversation just as soon as he'd gotten out of dealing with the implications of the last one. That was a shitshow waiting to happen, at least in his mind.

She's so passive aggressive, He thought to himself, seeing himself in the right.

I don't think so... I think she's hot, said an alien voice from within Lucian's mind. For a second Lucian was panicked, but then he realised Wendell was simply writing off Lucian's apparently wandering thoughts as his own. Lucian quickly shut down Wendell's auto-sensory input, which he thought was controlled already, and pushed him deeper into his concocted dream.

Little pervert, he thought to himself with a sneer.

Muttering curses to herself, Zira stomped her way out into the hall and resisted the urge to slam the door behind her like a child.

Once she had a divider between herself and Lucian though, she crumpled a bit. She sagged back against the wall, shoulders hunching forward and face dropping into her hands. Fuck me sideways.

This shouldn't be a big deal. They'd gotten drunk and stupid, that was all. Lucy obviously wasn't phased by it, so why should she care? It was just a kiss- well, maybe a bit more than a kiss, but she could go ahead and blame that on situational lack of clothing. "Just a kiss" shouldn't feel like- like his dismissal was a physical ache in her chest. Like that "so be it" was ice closing around her heart, an empty pit in her stomach.

Wait.

Fuck.

"Oh hell." She stifled a whimper and dragged her hands down her face.

How long had she been in love with him? More to the point, how had it just creeped up on her like that?! Had she just been willing herself into ignorance, and for how long? Months? Years? This was just...so inconvenient.

"Stupid," she berated herself as she pushed away from the wall. "Stupid, stupid, stupid girl."

Shaking her head, she tried to shove the spiraling thoughts from her mind and strode toward the stairs, leaning over the banister. "Oi! What's taking so long with the healer, huh?"

Lucian left Wendell to his perverted machinations, deciding to rather spend his newly found time focusing on a much more prominent issue, at least as he saw it. His mind, in and of itself, was a tad... torn. He felt odd, in a way he had never felt before.

So he began probing the spot where he felt the wrongness, the part that should have been his physical connection to his body. It was almost tender, like a swollen cut, or a broken limb. Softly, gently, he worked his proverbial fingers into the area, a great discomfort quickly taking hold of him. Still, he pushed forward, spurred by his own pain into action. He dug, felt what seemed to be a connection, a wire or a ligament. Mental tendons, if you will, dangling in the nothingness where he knew his own flesh and blood should have been. He grasped at these strings and frowned.

Then his jaw dropped. Twice. His frown had transferred to his catatonic body. So had his expression of surprise. His eyes were open. On the bed, his eyes, his face, they were animated. He dropped the mental strings and his face went slack, his shoulders limp, and he was catatonic again.

"What in the ever-loving-fuck...?" he swore, confused, afraid, and slightly distraught. But also curious. He quickly picked up the strings again and tried to move his arms. The discomfort in his mind sharpened and came to a rough head. He was forced to drop the strings, and again, he became limp again. Wendell still held up fine, and as far as he could tell, was uninterrupted, much less unharmed.

"Zira!...ZIRAAA!"

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Calm down, calm down. He wasn't paying attention to your rambling brain, he's got bigger issues, just calm down. "WHAT?!" She came streaking back into the room, looking around wildly as she skidded to a stop at the foot of the bed, almost as though she was searching for some invisible attacker.

Which, given recent experience, didn't actually seem that far fetched.

"Lucy, what's wrong? Are you hurt? What's happening?" She looked rapidly back and forth from the unconscious body to the semi-possessed teenager.

"Look," he said as he pointed with Wendell's arm to his own body. He again seized the strings and opened his own eyes, lifted his own head, and spoke. Two voices in one tone and with the same words said, "I think... I can use myself as a puppet... maybe."

He pushed further with the strings, ignoring the pain and scrunching his eyes closed on both the bodies. His expression was nearly identical, separated only by the differing features, and he forcibly sat up, both with Wendell and Lucian.

Then he loosened his hold, only keeping balance and facial expression.

"It hurts, a bit, but I mean..." He was at a bit of a loss for words, both faces turned to his feline companion, "What the fuck, I'm so weirded out right now!"

Zira met his gaze with wide eyes. She had completely blanched, and her stomach roiled a bit at the bizarre sight.

And this is the man I fancy. Really? I hate to think what that says about my tastes.

"Wierded out might be putting it mildly," she managed to stammer eventually. Very slowly, she moved toward the body on the bed and reached out to touch his arm. "Are you- should you really be messing around with this stuff? What if you do something and get stuck permenantly?" An edge of panic crept into her voice.

Lucian shook both of his heads subtlely, as if to his own thoughts instead of to her words, and said, "I don't know, honestly... This is a new experience for me..."

He looked at her as if to say he had no answers, shrugging, but he let himself go limp again. Whether it was to please her, or because he was genuinely afraid of getting "stuck" somehow, it didn't matter. Lucian slumped against Zira for probably the tenth time today alone, and he resumed full control of Wendell.

"Where's the healer, d'you know?" he asked a bit apprehensively, trying to keep his own worry off of his features.

Zira's arms went around him easily for support and she backed them up to the edge of the bed so they could sit. "On her way. Apparently she had to put her kit together, she sent the runner back to tell us and I told him to go back and grab her if that's what it took to get her here." A low growl thrummed just under her words, the worry and tension needing some sort of release.

Without thinking about it she reached out to gently grasp Lucian's shoulder, touching the limp body beside them. She gave a reassuring little squeeze- though which of them she was trying to reassure she didn't quite know.

"It's gonna be okay," she murmured into Wendell's hair, her other hand rubbing gentle circles between his shoulders. "I promise I'll figure out a way to fix this, however long it takes, okay?"

"I hope I don't sound like a jackass, but I'd prefer sooner than later," Lucian said with a dry chuckle. There was no humour in his voice, however, and his brow knotted in an anxious frustration.

"Ayn hu?!" A screech came up the stairs in a particularly grating tone. Lucian grimaced, "It would seem the healing woman has arrived. What... erm, how do we explain this?"

Zira snorted. "Fuck if I know. Tell her we don't know how to bring you back to consciousness and hope if she can snap the real you awake you'll get jolted out of the kid's body?" She shrugged helplessly. "I'll tell her whatever you want me to tell her, Lucy, but honestly I'm at a loss."

"Madha taqsudu, la yumkinuk?" The withered old woman asked, her tone rather perturbed. It seemed that his predicament was a unique one. She was having trouble grasping it, and he wasn't having the best time trying to explain it. It didn't help that he was saying it through the body of a younger boy while his actual self was slumped on a bed beside them.

"'Ana faqat la yumkin! Lays hunak tafsir akhar..." He said in exasperation, all but throwing his hands in the air as he did so. Lucian was not getting any closer to finding an answer or a cure than he was to figuring out what to do with Zira. But that was an entirely different matter... Lucian looked for his feline-shapeshifter lieutenant but found her missing. Where'd she got off to? When? Maybe while he'd been explaining himself to the healer...

While Lucian attempted to get through a semi-coherent conversation with the healer, Zira had slipped out into the hall to track down whoever was currently on guard duty. It wasn't a difficult task, and once she found the three men who'd be patrolling the upper floor she gave them strict instructions to keep anyone but herself and the healer out of the boss's rooms for the time being.

That settled, she made her way back toward Lucian's chambers, but found herself hovering at the door. She could hear him talking to the healer, knew he could probably use a native Essyrni speaker in there to help him out...but she didn't move.

Just a minute, she told herself. I just need a minute to get my head on straight.

She didn't have time for this- this lost at sea feeling that suddenly seemed to have taken up residence just under her breast when she thought about having a real conversation with him. The real him. If they could fix this whole mess.

Which was what she should be focusing on. With a low growl, Zira tossed her braids over one shoulder and stalked gracefully into the room. She easily sidestepped the healer and let herself flop onto the bed in an artful heap beside Lucian's body, eyes sharp as she looked from the boy-not-boy to the older woman.

"She is having trouble comprehending the situation," Wendellucian explained, looking to Zira, "I've explained it like three times, but she keeps telling me I'm making no sense, or that she doesn't understand!"

He said this like his ailment was as simple as a broken ankle or a concussion, but the Healing woman would only stare at Wendell like the boy had lost his mind.

Zira sighed and dragged a hand down her face. "Of course she doesn't understand, Luce. You barely even understand what happened." With a curse muttered under her breath, she sat up a little straighter and addressed the healer in quick, clipped Essyrni.

The older woman responded in kind, gesticulating wildly with her hands, and Zira did her best to explain that her boss's mind- though she told the old woman it was his life force- had been shoved into the boy's body. And they needed her help to get him back.

There was quiet for a few moments, then the healer mumbled a question. Zira rolled her eyes and there was another exchange of rapid fire Essyrni, this time about payment, before the shifter turned to look at Wendellucian. "She knows a tea that is meant to allow people to dreamwalk- move from their own dreams into someone else's. If we give both bodies the tea, do you think you could...slip back in while you're asleep?"

"Well Zira, I don't know." Lucian replied, with a healthy dose of snark, "I've never had the pleasure of this experience before! That being said, I'm certainly not going to turn down the offer. Where's this tea?"

The Boy's body was becoming tiresome, and Lucian was slowly but surely slipping out of his somewhat collected façade. He didn't want to lose it in front of Zira, or the medicine woman, so he sat down and zoned out, staring at the opposing wall. He wasn't deep in thought, not at first, but soon enough he was thinking on all manner of things. That sort of attitude really fostered thought, in all of its wandering forms.

The shapeshifter curled her lip at him. "Oi, don't start with me. I'm trying to help you," she muttered, resisting the urge to cuff the side of his head- either head, really. Gods this was confusing. She nodded to the healer, who bustled out of the room with some muttering under her breath, something about how northerners needed to keep their strange magics to themselves.

With a sigh Zira turned to the boy her boss's consciousness currently inhabited and gestured to the bed, where his unconscious body lay. "Well...get comfy, I guess. From what I understand, you're both going to need to be asleep for this to work."

She was making a concerted effort to come across as bored and a little irritated. If she was being honest, she was starting to approach panic again. What if the tea didn't work? What if he was just...stuck? For how long?

Forever?

Oh good gods.