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When Thaisha stirs, Hal almost collapses with relief.
Sure, there's a mask that somehow managed to piece itself back together on her face - but Bolaire's fine, so he isn't too worried. He is, he feels, the normal amount of worried for when you're ex-wife has a cursed artefact attach itself to her face.
Speaking of Bolaire, the man in question seems vaguely panicked, as Thaisha opens her mouth to say something.
"Everyone out!" He snaps before she manages to get a word out.
Everyone else dutifully traipses out; Hal is currently being used as an impromptu pillow, and Shadia does not so much as move a muscle. He cannot blame her.
Bolaire apparently can.
"Shadia," he sighs, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead, "I need to check that Thaisha's doing alright. I can't do that particularly easily if you're hovering over your mother the entire time."
Something like discomfort flickers over the mask - no. Over Thaisha's face, because that's probably what it is now. If, in all the years they've known each other, Bolaire has not managed to free himself from his own cured artefact, he doubts they'll be able to pry what appears to be a counterpart to the thing off of Thaisha.
Shadia goes, though not before shooting her father a significant, pissed look. He nods at her quietly, while Bolaire plops to the ground before their friend.
He runs a tired hand over his face. "Hal," he says quietly. "I'm going to say some things that won't make much sense to you. I... I will answer any questions you have afterwords, but for now I need you to let us talk."
Hal can do that.
"Alright," Bolaire murmurs to himself. "Simple shit first, Bolaire. Establish the timeframe."
He raises his voice now, clearly speaking to Thai. "How long since the last Shaper fell?" He begins, voice steady.
"Verily, my sibling; at a glance, naught but thirty years." Both Hal and Bolaire flinch like they've been struck. The voice isn't Thaisha's - except that it is, now, isn't it? The incredibly incorrect date, however, is what's really concerning Hal.
Bolaire checks, voice shaky, "And is that the actual answer, or was it the only halfway relevant line you could pilfer from The Script?" Somehow, Halandil Fang knows that The Script is capitalised.
"And could we not have both, dear Comedy?" Thaisha counters. Comedy, too, is capitalised, though he could not tell you why.
"Because it's actually been seventy years," Bolaire informs Thaisha, voice carefully neutral. "And is-" he glances over to Hal, before grimacing and continuing, "-is Thaisha still in there?"
Hal goes very, very still.
Because his- Bolaire is talking as though that is in question. And seeing as Bolaire is the one with the cursed mask on his face, Hal reckons he knows what's what.
But that means- If Thaisha's survival is in question, then what about Bolaire?
Because for the entire time he's known the man, he's sounded like that. He has sounded, Hal realises with something approaching nausua, like the mask on Thaisha's face.
Has Hal ever known the man behind the mask? Or just a prop, playing pretend?
The thing wearing Thaisha hesitates, apparently casting around for some line it can repurpose from their lauded Script, when Thaisha cuts in.
"Yes," she snarls. Hal has never been so happy to hear Thai pissed and confused and pissed about being confused. "My head hurts, and my eyes hurt, and thinking is weird as fuck, but yes. So explain to be what the fuck is happening here, Comedy, before I figure out how to move my body and throttle you with it."
There are too many things wearing his friends. Fuck it. They are now Comedy and Random Theatre Archetype Two.
Comedy flops onto the floor in apparent relief. "Oh goodie," he it mutters, only slightly bitchy, "I don't have to figure out how to explain to Hal that my sibling ate my friend."
Thaisha apparently regains control of a hand for long enough to flip Comedy off.
He It flips her off right back.
Hal is finding it surprisingly difficult to remember that Comedy is not Bolaire. The things a good actor, he'll give it that.
"What were you up to? Before they put you to sleep," Comedy clarifies.
It's Random Theatre Archetype Two that answers. "The Cycle will not end; one day, you will realise this, you foolish little Panto."
Comedy sits up so fast Bolaire's back makes alarmingly crunchy sounds. His lip curls slightly in disdain. "You did not just repurpose fucking-" he cuts himself of, grimaces. Searches around for a synonym, apparently.
"Her lines," he settles on. "I know you didn't, because that would be really fucking insensitive while you're literally wearing the granddaughter of the entire reason we were fucking made, Hero. Especially when Rage had, like, seven separate lines about how war never changes or however it went."
"Where is Rage, anyway?" He muses, and shit, Hal forgot that this isn't Bolaire again. "I mean last I ran into zem, ze was on a rampage after Sandra." It glances over to its sibling. Apparently remembers that this Hero doesn't know who Sandra is.
"Ah. Muse." It adds. "But yeah, Rage was on a fucking warpath. Only reason I didn't go with was that-"
It cuts itself off. Glances over at Hal, who isn't sure what expression he's making, but hopes it's suitably cold.
It's then that Thaisha makes a tiny, choked, terrified sound. "Bolaire-!" She manages, and the thing wearing his friend pulls the mask off her, horrified.
"It was so-" Thaisha is trembling, "calm," she gasps. "It was going to smother me, Bolaire. Because that's what The Script told it to do."
"I think- I think something changed it? When you mentioned your siblings." She whispers into his shoulder. "I don't think it actually wanted to? But it was like a switch had flipped."
"The Script is... technically a geas," Bolaire admits, with a shudder. "If someone managed to alter it- And we'd never know, not if we were asleep while it was altered."
Hal... Hal knows how to admit when he was wrong.
The mask before him is too... Bolaire, to be anyone else.
"Do you-?" He doesn't want to actually ask. If he asks, then that means this real.
"No, no," Bolaire hums, reassuringly. "Its the first thing Jekyll did when we ran into each other at the Falconer's Rebellion. And then of course, Rage noticed we were on the other side from zem and started yelling obscenities at us from halfway across the battlefield while ze angrily worked zir way towards us." He laughs fondly.