7298/Going To Pieces

Going To Pieces
Date of Scene:	10 August 2021
Location:	Main Room - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	The Aftermath of the Shi'Ar raid on the Grey household has some very serious repercussions for Terry, as Gar and Kian find out.
Cast of Characters:	Terry O'Neil, Gar Logan, Kian

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Terry O'Neil has posed:
    The aftermath of the Shi'ar raid on the Grey household had been one of those Pyrrhic victories for Terry.  There had been very little time to talk, as some people needed medical attention, and other things needed to be rounded up.  And then, at the end of it all, the Titans got a ride back with one of the other portalers from the X-Men, since Terry made it very clear that they no longer had any Rabbit Holes to rely upon, and didn't explain any more.
    He didn't explain anything right away, either, when they portalled back to the tower—but rather he marched straight for the Main Room and curled himself up on the couch.  Despite not having a trace of a visible injury, he has a disturbed expression on his face, one that speaks to a lot of things that he simply isn't saying.

Gar Logan has posed:
    The return to the Tower was… concerning.  Not just because of what happened with the woman known as Jean Grey, which is quite troubling, but also because of what happened with Vorpal.  He went all Manxsome, and that was troubling in its own right.  By the time Beast Boy got over there, things were even more chaotic than usual.  Gar had seen that side of him only in video form, from when the shifter was believed dead by the hand of his evil dupe.
    Now, the worst parts were probably the blood all over his costume, red with strange purple sparkly effects going through it, and the fact Terry was, well, just Terry.  When he gets up on the couch and curls up, Gar looks himself over, debates something internally, then just slips out of the costume down to his underwear.  Best not to get the sofa all bloody, or get Manxsome's on Terry.  "So…" he says, sliding up next to the redhead.  "What happened back there?  Something very not good, I know.  But what?"

Kian has posed:
    Kían is still a little rattled from the whole experience, but that's normal… mainly because although he has been better at taking part in team situations, this sort of thing still isn't normal for him.  He perches on the back of the couch, looking down at his friend.  "Terry tenár'h… what happen to you?  Are you all right?  You were… a third form I haf not seen before.  I haf been told about it, but I haf not seen it, and it was… concernin'."
    Apparently, the bird has not noticed the red splatter on his kilt and vest.
    Yet.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    Terry is quiet for a while while he sits on the couch, feet on the cushions and knees to his chest.  It isn't really possible for him to look paler than he is, but he looks slightly washed out and haggard, as if he had just spent the mother of all-nighters and then ran a marathon.
    "…I can't… I can't be Vorpal anymore," he says with a sliver of voice.
    "It's over."

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan coughs.  "Bullshit."
    That's the first thing that comes to mind, so it's what he says.
    But, there's worry in the word.  Concern.  "Seriously.  That isn't funny.  Of course you can be Vorpal.  If you couldn't be, you'd be dead.  You told me yourself that's how it works.  It should pass on to your mom, or April, or someone else.  You never said anything about it working like this.  What happened back there?"
    He looks Kian's way, as if he'll be able to help.  "Did you see anything?"

Kian has posed:
    "You haf been in that situation before," Kían says, "an' you got your rhy'thar back.  Therefore even if it iss los' for now, it iss not los' forever."  Ever logical Kían.
    He blinks at Gar.  "I am sorry, tenár'h.  I was so focus on the robots wit' wings, I only saw a little of what happen."
    He reaches down to stroke Terry's cheek, although he's careful to keep his mind to himself.  "An' even if you are not the Cheshire anymore, we are not over."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "…you don't understand," Terry answers, his eyes flit over to his two companions, and then he says, after another moment of silence:
    "My other body… it's mortally wounded.  That glowing man—his blood just…"  He shakes his head.  "If I change back to Vorpal… I'm going to die.  I could feel myself dying, that's why I changed back so quickly.  Even as the… other form, I could feel parts of me failing.  I just—"
    He lets out a shuddering breath and hugs his knees closer to his chest.
    "I can't switch back again without something that can heal me faster than my body might die."
    He glances over at Gar and Kian and realizes he doesn't know what will happen if only one of his bodies dies.  And it occurs to him that he isn't ready to find that out just yet.

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan's gaze passes over Kian again, on to Terry, then elsewhere in the room.  This… is not something he understands well.  He hasn't had a different being as part of him.  He shifts, yes, but while each animal comes with various instincts and urges, he's normally in control of that, and it's still him.  Not someone else that he shares a body or consciousness or anything else with.
    So, this has him flabbergasted, dumbfounded, whomperjawed.  "So… we just, uh, figure out how to heal Vorpal faster, right?  That's it?  Hey, we found a way to save me and grow my arm back, right?  If we can do that, there's gotta be a way.  We just have to find it."
    But, as he tries to reassuringly rub Terry's closest shoulder before sliding the arm behind his back, he's tense, a little bit on the trembling side.

Kian has posed:
    "Tenár'h, from what I saw today, you haf two other bodies, not one," Kían says patiently, taking refuge in logic.  "Which other body?  The Vorpal body, or… or the… the other one?"  This is way outside his realm of experience.  "Whichever body it iss, you stay out of it until we haf someone who can heal you immediate."  He drops from the couch back to the floor, and curls an arm around Terry, and drapes a wing over both tenár'yw.
    "You haf said I am the voice of sense, yis?  Then listen, yis?"  He radiates a wordless sense of support, and love, and as much confidence as he can muster under the circumstances.
    In fairness, it's not as much confidence as he'd like, but these are very weird circumstances.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "It's only one other body, Kian.  That… is sort of what happens when I go too far into… into the chaos side.  The last time that happened, I thought Gar was dead.  This time, I took a full laser to my arm."
    He glances down at his arm.  It's perfectly fine.  But not the other one, in the other body.
    "You're right… if it weren't so serious… we could have Nadia and Cait help.  But this… this needs magic."  He exhales softly and hands his head, letting both Gar and Kian hold him in their own way.
    "I've just never…"  His voice catches in the back of his throat.  "…it must have been how you felt, Gar.  I felt how my body was starting to die… gods it was awful!"
    He blinks furiously, and now there's tears running down his face.  "And the smell of—I think it burned part of my… and the pain.  I'd never felt… Ah…."
    Despite circumstances, he's doing a good job of not completely collapsing into tears, so at least there's that going for him.

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan again looks across to Kian, concern at odds with his eternal optimism.  Things like this really put it to the test.
    He winces from the description of what caused Manxsome, along with the effects of the (freaking) laser.  "Yeah, uh, I'm not gonna lie.  Feeling like I was about to die, a lot of stuff went through my mind real fast, but then I just kind of thought of something and… well, you saw when you found me.  But the point is I got better.  Magic?  We have Raven, and there are others out there who know magic.  We'll talk to them.  We'll get it fixed, and you can be right again.  Okay?  You can't give up on that.  Understand?"
    Some of it is stream of consciousness talking, but in there is the semblance of an idea, nebulous and unformed as it is right now.  "We just have to find the right magic.  But… aw, man.  Don't think about it right now.  Just… look, we're here."  The hand gives a squeeze of the shoulder on the other side now.  He's warm, still running hot from the battle and the adrenaline of it, but now also the concern.

Kian has posed:
    "Then we will haf a healer on han' for you, so you can change to your Vorpal body safely," Kian says quite matter-of-factly, and deliberately not chasing whatever thoughts are attached to 'it burned part of my…'.  He'd really rather not know, not specifics.
    As for the rest of it, Kian seems strangely confident—but then, he's seen a lot of impossible things in the last year and a half.  "This is only one impossible thing before breakfast, not six, yis?" he says quietly, resting his cheek against Terry's.  One impossible thing is six times easier to do than six impossible things, after all, and the impossible seems to happen a lot around the Tower.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    Terry closes his eyes for a second and reaches out to hold the other two close to him.  There are several deep breaths that are taken, a few of them on the shuddering side of thing, before he is able to finally speak again.  He's not calm, but he's more under control when he speaks.  "Let's… not think of Raven just yet.  She does magic, but I don't think her particular magic is focused in healing.  I've never seen her heal anyone…."
    And then something happens.  The thing that manages to distract him enough.  He glances at Kian for a second.
    "…You actually read the book?" and then he glances at Gar, eyes wide.

Gar Logan has posed:
    "Well, whatever the case, we're not just gonna give up on you, or this.  If I have to go to the depths of hell or something to find a way to make you better, I will.  If I have to give up pizza for a whole week to find a way to make you better, I will," Gar vows.
    This is how they know he means it.  No pizza for an entire week is practically unimaginable!
    The answer to the magic they need might be right under his green nose, for all he knows, but Terry's reaction to something else interrupts his train of thought.  "Book?  What book?"

Kian has posed:
    "Terry lef' me a copy of his Alice books, when he was los' in space an' thought he was not comin' back," Kian explains to Gar.  "But the poin' iss still valid.  Impossible thin's happen aroun' here all the time, an' many of them happen to Terry, so if there iss a way to repair the damage he thinks he has suffer, then it iss mos' likely to happen to him."
    Insert your own caveat about statistics here.
    "It may be Raven, or it may be someone else.  I do not know all the carriers of rhy'thar'yw like you do.  Either of you may know of a healer that coul' help.  At leas', you know where to look better than I do."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "…it's somehow fitting that that gift would backfire on me," the redhead says with a very subdued half-smile.  He gives Gar's cheek a kiss, and then Kian's, and frowns, thinking of something at the edge of his mind, but not quite sure what it is.
    Something with New Year's eve… but what?
    "I'm… tired.  Do you want to just curl up and watch a movie… get our mind off things?"
    His words say one thing, but his body language pretty much implies 'you can turn on a movie and I'll just fall asleep right here', he's got the drooping eyes and the lower level of energy that comes after a severe emotional event.  But there's the comfort of support and closeness.

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan's brows scrunch together.  He's trying to think, but it's not fully forming all the way.  "Yeah.  Let's just… do something.  You're safe like this as long as you don't swap, so… don't swap."  Whatever happened with the Shi'ar and Jean Grey and her parents and all that is, right now, a distant second to this.
    He disentangles himself from Terry long enough to gesture toward the rooms each of them have.  "Just let me go put something else on, and start on getting this cleaned," he says, picking up the costume, "and I'll bring some blankets and pillows back with me."  If Terry even makes it that long before passing out.

Kian has posed:
    Kian peels off his vest, and only in the act of tossing it aside does he notice the brick-red stains that look like… no.  They're not.  He has no injuries, so they can't be, therefore they're not… that.
    You'd think he'd check his kilt, but he just doesn't want to know.
    All he comments is, "This place needs a bigger couch," as he snuggles in closer.