Work Text:
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…
The rain is incessant, and so is Tyscaro’s headache. Today should have been market day, but instead he's stuck in his home and hoping the time will pass sooner than later. He is not the man of his youth who would have gone out regardless of the weather. Now he is too old to be slipping on cobblestones, unless he wants to break a hip or two.
…tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…
He stares a moment longer at his window’s awning where the terracotta has split open to let water stream down in that loud pitter-patter refrain that bothers him so. It was supposed to be fixed by now. The coin from his only planned commission this month would have covered it… if she hadn’t changed her mind at the last moment.
“I am being sent to the capital,” was what she’d said, and that was all she’d needed to say at all. Not their capital. The capital. And now the merchant is gone to a faraway Imperial city while the tattooer’s roof leaks back in Artanis.
Lightning flashes through the clouds, briefly illuminating the reflection of his weathered face back at him in the glass before it disappears again.
Bah.
Pipe smoke trails after him as he pulls away from that and instead turns his focus back to sorting out the remaining supplies of his life’s work.
A life’s work that every day slides closer to extinction. The traditional tattoo practices of Artanis were dying out even before the Empire laid its many eyes on their border. Where once a piece was done over days, perhaps even months, paid for with blood and patience as much as money, now innovations in magic can give you the same thing, at least on the surface. Why let an old man dig his way through your flesh when you can just pay a mage to do it in a matter of minutes, fast and painless, cheaper even? And better yet, if politics due to a rivalry thousands of miles away now makes your tattoos even more taboo, the magical sort are now so easily removed. A few minutes, and you are made anew in the image of a perfect citizen. They do not need to make their mark on you when you are so willing to remove the ones of your people instead when you are called to their front lines--
Tyscaro feels a soft hand at his back, hears a voice tell him to breathe in, and breathe out--
A knock at the door interrupts the ghost.
His eyebrows shoot up. The merchant? But no. When Tyscaro opens the door, an elf stands before him.
Three things about him immediately jump to his attention. The shockingly red hair that frames the stranger’s face and neck like an unruly mane, even in the rain. The way the man towers over him, even if time hadn’t already stooped over Tyscaro’s back. And the half-defeated expression that marks him as perhaps one of the most piteous beings Tyscaro has ever met outside of a mirror.
…tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…
“Can I help you?” he asks evenly.
“I…” The stranger pauses, eyes darting around as if seeking something just out of sight. “I was told you do tattoos.”
Tyscaro should be elated. A potential client, something he direly needs. But something about this man sets the hair on the back of his neck rising, something he cannot quite place. He wants to shut the door in his face even as he imagines just how easily the warrior could break it down.
“I do,” he replies, rolling the long pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. “Are you seeking one?”
“Two, actually.”
Two! Ha! He’d thought the elf looked young; it must be his first time getting this sort of decoration. Tyscaro isn’t surprised; they’re all the rage among adventuring, mercenary types. Monsters they’ve never slain on their backs, good luck charms across their hearts, all that sort of flashy thing. Even as broke as he is, he’s not in the mood to waste his time coming up with a design for someone who clearly hasn’t experienced enough bloodletting for it to matter.
Sagging a little, Tyscaro sighs and pushes the door shut a little. “Then you are seeking the mage Xandus.” He points out to a distant tall roof where the Guild resides. Undoubtedly they are not under a leaking roof. “They can take care of you there, child--”
The stranger catches a gloved hand in the door and holds it open.
“Well the thing is, I… I can’t go to Xandus.”
“Why not?”
…tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…
Silence stretches between them, dramatically so if it wasn’t for the annoying little stream of rainwater splattering onto the stoop and the feet of both men.
When he finally speaks, the sentence comes out of the young man’s throat like stone dragged up from a grave. Heavy, rough, and unwilling.
“Because I am a Wayfarer.”
Tyscaro sucks in a breath before he can stop it. Shit.
The Spire’s mysterious destruction still ripples through Artanis, being its closest neighbor and all. Even now rumors fly at every tavern and shop about the cause, despite every speaker knowing that they have no answer for the sudden abolishment of the Wayfarer Order and likely never will.
Before that, Tyscaro had been familiar with them. After all, they couldn’t get tattoos from mages, could they. He’s surprised he didn’t recognize the signs his subconscious had picked up on earlier, but it has been so long. They had been uncommon customers even before. Now they didn’t come at all.
Until now.
The cinders in his pipe have long since died. He sucks at the ashes until it burns his mouth.
“I will take your coat.”
The elf’s name is Cassander Inteus.
Every word he speaks seems to weigh on the young man like a lodestone. He sits by the fireplace, forced into a hunch by the shortness of the stool, with a heavy blanket shielding most of his shape from view while he wrings water out of his hair. If one ignores the sword at his hip, he looks rather scruffy, like a kitten brought in from the rain. That thought almost makes Tyscaro chuckle, the idea that somehow an infamous warrior trained in unnatural arts needs defending from a tired old man like him.
But Tyscaro has seen this sort of grief before. Has felt it wear his face and squeeze his bones. Feels it still.
He does not laugh, and instead gives him more tea before getting out his pencils.
A plush rug and some pillows have been pulled out to let them both sit more comfortably in the center of the home. Candles have been set out around them, not purposefully ritualistic, just necessary for the darkened skies, but acceptably so anyway. As the thunder rumbles on, Tyscaro prepares to make the young Wayfarer bleed.
“Take off your shirt,” he instructs as he prepares his spread of little pots and tools.
Cassander pauses, eyes wide for just long enough that Tyscaro wonders if he’ll refuse, before he obeys. As the shirt gets folded and put to the side, Tyscaro notes the two ragged scars line down the other man’s back. They are pale and lancing in comparison to the field of freckles blooming across the rest of his brown skin. Clearly this one has met his match more than once in his young life, and had come out the winner each time. A survivor.
“Good. Now lay down, on your side.”
When Tyscaro first puts his hands along the arm they will work on first, Cassander flinches hard enough for him to let go.
“If you’re not ready, we should stop now,” he offers quietly but firmly.
“No,” is the reply, fast and sharp, followed by a shaky chuckle. “I was just caught off guard, is all. I’m sorry.”
Tyscaro opens his mouth to say that he isn’t surprised. Nearly all magiani that he’d worked on in his long life have said the same thing in various ways, most of them Wayfarers and some of them not, all of them unused to someone normal being so cavalier about touching them. He wonders if any of them were known to this Cassander… but just as quickly, he folds the comparison away in respect for the long- and recently-dead, and instead focuses his attention instead to the bowl of soap and water beside him.
The process is intimate in a way that many are not expecting. A tattooist must wash them clean like a parent, trim them like a shearer, and then cut them like a surgeon. But he has also learned along the way that a tattooist must also listen like a friend. Some weep, some chatter, some laugh, some lay there in silence and stare at the wall. As he finishes the final stenciling of where his blows will land, he waits for Cassander Inteus to reveal which one he is.
Tyscaro picks up his tools. In one hand, a tattoo comb, lined with needle sharp teeth carved from bone, now dripping with ink. In the other, the small mallet with which he’ll drive the comb through his skin. “I am beginning now. I must ask again: are you ready?”
This time, there is almost no pause.
“I’m ready.” Cassander breathes in, deeply, and breathes out through his teeth. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
The old man smiles to himself and dips the comb into the ink.
The tapping begins.
Before long, a sword begins to forge itself.
They are both dripping with sweat by the time the outline is done.
There are many gaps left in it still, for flames to be ignited in swirls of color and darker shading of the blade itself to be slowly etched in, but doing the work of both the inking and the stretching of skin, along with having to pause every so often to wipe off the varying fluids that result from both, has brought sharp pain into Tyscaro’s weathered joints.
It was to be expected. This is a job meant for two, after all.
But that was then and this is now. Now, the experience is even more demanding on him and Cassander both, something he feels deeply shameful about. The extra strain has led to more than a few customers abandoning their requests out of impatience. He thinks about this gloomily as he cleans the engraved sword one more time, cloth sliding cleanly from pommel to tip, as if he is a Wayfarer himself cleaning a weapon. The blood is true to the mental image, at least.
“Keep it clean. Do not panic when you see ink draining out, that is normal. But you must keep the bandages on until you come back.” Once on his feet, he groans and pushes his hands into his back until it cracks all over. His entire body aches. “Absolutely no picking.”
Cassander chuckles a little as he carefully pulls his shirt back on. “I understand, I understand. I won’t pick, I promise.”
Tyscaro eyes the aggravated scar on Cassander’s face and chews on his pipe.
The Wayfarer’s hand leaps up as if to touch it too but quickly deflects to fiddle with a small braid instead. His smile has disappeared. He looks wounded enough for the old man to regret his tone.
Tyscaro murmurs, “I just want to warn that doing so will undo our work.”
“Your work,” corrects Cassander. The smile has returned, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I just laid around on the floor.”
“Don’t discredit yourself so much, young man,” Tyscaro scolds lightly. Then, more gently, “You listened to my warnings. Plus you were not half as whiny or wriggly as others before you, and that made for quick work. I could have finished it if my--”
He catches himself but finds he doesn’t know what to say instead. So he says nothing.
The awkwardness is broken when Cassander runs a hand through his hair and asks, “Just one thing… You never did tell me how much it’ll cost.”
Hm. No he hadn’t, had he? Tyscaro sits with a mental abacus in his mind, piecing out the materials and time he has spent here today. In truth, not a lot. Some of them were nearly on their way to being thrown out had this Wayfarer not shown up. They have been waiting too long. He could still ask for some coin though. Should still ask, actually. Though from the tone of Cassander’s voice, there’s definitely a possibility he may not get much of what he could ask for anyway.
He thinks about something else instead and bites his tongue.
…tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…
The rain has stopped, but the broken roof still drips onto his doorstep. Tyscaro scowls at it thoughtfully.
“My roof.”
Cassander blinks at him. “Roof?”
“It leaks, by the door. The sound is irritating. Does that work for you?”
Tyscaro half thinks already that he’ll reject it. Pride and reputation is everything to these mercenary types after all; what would people say if they saw this trained killer up on the roof with nails and hammers like a common laborer. But he is pleasantly surprised instead when the Wayfarer holds out the hand of his bandaged arm to shake.
“It does.”
As he promised, Cassander doesn’t pick.
What he does do is lay in his bed for a long time, swaddled in the privacy of cloud-covered midnight, while his hand wanders over the bumps and grooves that now line his arm. The prickles that follow along behind his touch feels like a responding whisper from his body: I’m hurt but I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.
It stings and smarts like any other wound he’s lived through. He hasn’t been a stranger to pain for a long time.
Now it fills him with a long unfamiliar joy.
Fittingly, the next day is too sunny to test if the young man’s efforts have paid off. He’s never been a mason before, Cassander jests easily, but there’s a first time for everything! He works through the task in a sleeveless vest to let the tattoo’s bandages breathe a little, and Tyscaro can see that he has indeed listened to his advice about keeping it clean.
Indeed, Cassander seems a bit more tidied up in general by the time Tyscaro has him lay down for the next session. Everything about him is a little more alive; his hair isn't as frazzled, his body less tense, eyes a bit brighter.
Tyscaro isn’t terribly surprised. If anything, he's warmly pleased. Tattoos are magical, he’s always felt, in their own unique way. He’s seen many souls walk away more like themselves than they were before, filled with twice as much happiness as whatever pain they had sat through. It was a feeling he knew all too well himself; all he has to do is look down at his own intricately patterned skin, and he can perfectly see the faces of the mentors who put them there. For the first time in... longer than he cares to recall... he remembers young hands feeling along them in awe and wonder. The love that had been shared in the simple touch.
For a moment, he closes his eyes and sits with the phantom of his son for a moment before letting it go with a soft smile.
May this young man discover some of that love as well.
“Well then. Are you ready to continue?”
For the first time, the red-haired Wayfarer smiles in a way that Tyscaro believes.