ring_for_giles | Come Sail Away Inbox

"My tattoo's gone. Shit!" He pulls the blanket away and starts to look for the others. Shoulder, shoulder, right calf... "Can you see the one on my back?"

The crow in flight, breaking a spear in its beak, is still there.

"A crow, yes. It's still there"

There's an urge to reach out and run his fingers over the linework, and Giles would have ignored it were it not for the memory of Bash asking to hold his hand in a vulnerable moment when they'd first met. So instead he gives into his newfound and ever present need for contact, and traces the shape of the crow and spear in what he hopes is a soothing manner.

"I'm sorry it's been taken from you, that must hurt tremendously. Was it especially meaningful to you?"

Bash lets out a shuddery breath, like the wind in the shudders on an autumn evening. His shoulders relax, and he glances gratefully over his shoulder at Giles.

"It was the only one of my tattoos that was for me, not for anything relating to my pantheon or any of the gods or divine magic shit. It was just...a coffee plant."

"That sounds particularly important then. It is a cruel thing to have a part of oneself taken away so quickly," his fingers are still drifting over Bash's back somewhere between a massage and a caress, "The mirror must have kept it when you stepped through. I would not want to give false hope, but perhaps there will be a way to have it returned to you eventually"

"Mmm. Doesn't sound quite right. Mirror wasn't being malicious, mirror was hungry. It wanted me for a juicebox. Like being blown by a black hole--there was nothing at all that was personal about that." Though where the tattoo went if his gut feeling is true, he can't say.

"I see. Perhaps you're right," Giles nods, despite the fact it lands far outside of his expertise, even discounting the fact that he hadn't witnessed the event himself, he's still trying to puzzle the answer out in his mind "My depth of experience comes from a far more hostile world than this one, after all"

There's a small pause, wherein Bash tries to rank the hostility of a.) his homeworld and b.) Duplicity against the Serena Eterna, and comes to the conclusion that any ranking will inevitably be as arbitrary the podium for a given Marble League event. No world is safe, all worlds are fucked. But some might be more fucked than others.

But the thought exercise is simultaneously both far-enough removed from reality and distracting enough that he's beginning to feel almost pretty much sort of human again. Erm, demigod again.

"Were you up all night waiting for me?"

"I was. It seemed... Important, that someone be here when you woke up" Giles smiles just slightly, head tilting to one side "And it appears I was correct on that front"

"Not every someone'd be s'good as you, Giles." Bash glances up with a warm gaze. "I've missed you."

Giles huffs a bit, looking away
"Thank you. I am certainly glad to be myself again, even if everything comes with a little more difficulty now."

"More difficulty?" He finishes the water, setting the glass down on the nightstand and sitting up more properly now. "How's that?"

Giles folds his hands in his lap, staring at them with a bone deep weariness
"Because of what I am, mental strain can take a rather large toll. Sometimes, like now, I am alright. Slightly more fragile perhaps, but sound of mind. At others... I'm not entirely present. I forget things, important things. I detest being a burden, but I have no choice but to rely on Oswald to look after me in those moments."

"He's your north star. Your anchor." Bash nods understanding. No, he doesn't quite have Clarity to consider. But he knows something about dissociation after trauma--both from personal experience and from helping to anchor Jeff. "I know I'm not as close, but if there's fuck all I can do to help, I'd like to."

"He is all that and more" Giles smiles, with a contented sort of wistfulness, "Thank you for the offer, Bash, I shall try to remember it."

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