[FIN][1v1] Setting the Record Straight (Mort v. Bella)

[medigel]

Ow. Ow. Ow. That was the first coherent thought he got past the buzzing of angry bees in his head, just before the pain struck him. Jackdamn ow. The knight had hit him with unnatural force - he literally couldn't imagine how the lance would have felt without making the wound seem to hurt worse in response.

Moaning, he stirred to life under her attentions and coughed out more blood, noting something was being wrapped over his chest. One eye fluttered half-open to view, with dismay, that the witch was crying over him as she bandaged him up. "H-Hey. Hey," he mumbled over her mantra, coughing again to clear his throat before giving her a weak, wincing smile. "S'just a fight, mkay? M'fine n-now. Uncle." And then, out of nowhere, a thought came to him and he rasped almost tonelessly in his exhaustion, "D-Don't cry for me, Scargent-tina..." Followed by a chuckle. Gregory's musical obsession was probably going to come in handy.

He would have moved to sit up, but her lap was comfortable. Mort also didn't trust how his vision still remained fuzzy on the sides, as if even a strong poke would send him back to unconsciousness.
 

[AyeAvast]

By the time Mort's moan filtered through the witch's words and frantic mumbling, she'd ripped most of her pants off and applied them to his chest and now presently wore a pair of very short shorts. But that hardly even registered as the zombie who had woken up in her lap was far more important. With a tiny shriek of mingled dismay and delight, Belladonna stopped her attempt to heal him however poorly and instead fluttered her hands over him, unsure what else to do. And when he called 'uncle' and tried to sing to her, it only made her cry all the harder.
"I didn't think he would hit so hard! And now your chest is a-a-all messed up and I-I-I-I can't even sleep on iiiiiiiiit!!" Was the blubbering reply she gave him as the witch pressed her hands to her face. This was a horrifically dramatic reaction and she knew that, but still she could not stop herself. There was simply no way she could fix this right now, not when he was broken and she had been the one to do it.

"We can't ever have a fun fight! I always have to ******** it up! Its not fair!" She told him from behind her hands, her words stifled by her own fingers.
But this was not a good reaction. This was not going to ease his worries, this was not going to make this any better.
Belladonna tried to tell herself that, tried to stop her crying, but all she managed was a slight decrease in the action. Not very much, but enough to mumble out "I'm really, really sorry darling..."  

[medigel]

"Hey..." She kept crying regardless and he wished he could lift a hand and wave away her concern. As it was, he could only manage to move a hand over her makeshift wraps. "Bells c'mon, s'a fight," he continued mumbling, his eye sliding closed. "N y-you're third year. Things're gonna hit harder. I-Isn't...first time got this n'way."

In his minor concussion he almost thought to joke about how Red had reached through his chest to his Core, so he was totally used to holes in his chest. But he actually managed to keep that one back.

The hand on his chest curled into a thumbs up. "P-Passed test. Happy hobhood, Bells," he said with a bloodstained smile. "S'no need to b-beat self up for doing well. M'proud you came this far."
 

[AyeAvast]

Perhaps it was his kindness over this whole situation, the fact that he could easily wave the thing away with a hand (err, attempt to wave) that made the witch only feel worse. Because the zombie had, more or less, scolded her for crying Belladonna did her best to stop, but no matter what Mort said it would not erase the horrid feeling in her stomach. A feeling that said even though she'd passed onto being a Hob, and won the fight, and had come very far, that she still hadn't come far enough. She still cried at the drop of a hat and couldn't even temper her enthusiasm toward her boilfriend.
With a heavy sigh that witch rubbed her hands against her face before she removed them to look down at Mort.
"Thanks." She replied in a small voice as she gave him a small smile.

"If you give me a few minutes... I might be able to try to heal you." Belladonna offered after another minute of silence. To be honest she wasn't really sure if that was possible, but it was worth a shot, at least.
Carefully, as though one wayward little nudge would send him back into unconsciousness, the witch brushed a bit of blood off his cheek.
"So what did you do while I took my exam?" Simple question with a simple answer. Anything to keep him anchored to the world, anything to keep Mort from passing out again.  

[medigel]

Mort issued a soft "mrr" as she touched his cheek. "Y-Yeah, if could...'d be nice. Otherwise will be here f-for long while for own rec-covery." Though if it was to be spent in her lap, Mort was alright with this. Quite alright. He wasn't aware that she had torn off the majority of her bloomers to staunch the bleeding, but that was probably for the best - he didn't have the energy to fully appreciate it as he should.

At her question, his smile leaned more towards the since side. "Ah...g-got sucked into portal when took little walk. Was at strange school place with Alex n' Xiu n' ghoul n-named Taima, n'...n' we were a-all human..." He was making a face at this point. "All had these robes n' wands 'n scarves. Was really surreal."
 

[AyeAvast]

The 'mrrr' registered somewhere within Belladonna without her being totally conscious of the act, for she continued to brush her fingertips over his skin even after she'd wiped all the blood off. Despite the odd position, the witch made a concentrated effort to relax, to let herself unwind. If she did not calm her tits down, there was no way she was going to be able to heal Mort. Since she really didn't have the strength to carry him to Nurse Cricket, and because waiting here for him to heal was going to take literally forever, the only other option was a spell. She just needed to calm down, recharge her magical batteries and give it another go. Easy!
With her other hand the witch threaded it into Mort's hair, carefully trying to soothe herself by soothing him. Sure to be ginger about it, Belladonna tried a few deep breaths, a few counts in and a few counts out. Anything to calm her worried heart.

The reply she got was not the one Belladonna had expected. She'd anticipated that the zombie would have occupied himself with any other variety of things, except portal-ing. The students had been warned to avoid them, so for a moment she considered scolding him, but he had said 'sucked into'. That meant against his will and there was no use scolding someone who'd been forced into a situation they didn't want.
But a strange school? With robes and wands and scarves? And Xiu and Alexander were there and--
"Human? What do you mean you were human?" Belladonna asked in a quiet voice shot through with curiosity and a mild dosage of worry. How dreadful that all sounded!
And poor Taima! It must have been right after she'd finished her portion of the exam, which had to have been awful since that meant she wasn't given the opportunity of a shower first. Poor ghoul!
But wands and robes and scarves? What odd kind of portal had Mort gotten himself into?  

[medigel]

Mort made a small nodding motion, trying not to disturb her fingers as they worked their magic. "Mean like alive," he clarified. "No rotting o-or stitches or . . . or anything." His face continued to twist with strange emotion (it could have been either pleasant or repulsed, but it was hard to tell with his eyes closed) as he remembered the sensation of being whole. No air going through his body or anything. Or . . . or that one thing he didn't like mentioning that he was sure she would pick up on her own. "Didn't . . . ever notice how much needed t-to breathe; a-almost passed out couple've times. Or how have t-to deal with heartbeat all the time." Or how it raced and struggled against his ribcage at certain thoughts -

"I-I, ah, also talked better. Didn't have to deal with faulty brain." Mort knew her take on his speech pattern but chose to disclose that fact anyway. That much he could smile about without uncertainty.

As far as what they did, well . . . "Weirdness. Ran into th-this room with huge cerberus dog. Tried using sticks b-but didn't do nothing. N' was this huge dungeon sittin' beneath it . . . H-Had no idea where was going."  

[AyeAvast]

Alive.
What a horrifyingly odd concept. He was alive right now, Mort was living right under the witch's fingertips, but it wasn't the same as... Being alive, she supposed. As having to breath or what a heartbeat felt like. As being whole and untouched by death in any way whatsoever. A thought flickered through the witch's mind, but it was an insubstantial thing she couldn't be bothered with right now.
"Did you not like having a heartbeat?" She asked as though she were merely just curious, though one hand did press against her own chest for the briefest of moments. There was so much she wanted to ask him, so much she wanted to question him relentlessly on. It wasn't fair that she always had to carry around the physical indications of her affection and feelings, that she always had a racing heartbeat or had to stop for air and he didn't, but the one time he did she wasn't there. That she could have felt his heart race under her fingers, or listened to his breath catch over her, and she'd missed it. These thoughts were almost enough to send her back into her little shallow ditch of despair from before, but the witch heaved a suddenly meaningful gulp of air and let it go. No sense in really getting upset about it. Luck was a cruel creature, after all.

"You know I love your faulty brain even if its not really faulty." Belladonna added with a sweep downward to press a light kiss against Mort's forehead, the closest she could get (or wanted to get) to his brain. There was electricity in that thing, no way she was touching it!
The cerbrus dog bit was a bit odd, especially Mort's mention of the sticks.
"Your wands were useless? That's unfortunate... Did they need a special incantation, maybe? Or maybe they were activated by one's FEAR. Except, if you were human... How very strange." Truly it was a shame the witch hadn't been given the opportunity to tag along, for both seeing Mort as a human (however odd the experience would have been), but also for possibly finding out how to operate those wands. Because magic.
"But you're alright? Not too scuffed up?"

A lick of regret flashed through the witch at that question, for if he hadn't been bruised and beaten before, he surely was now.
Quick to hurry on, she tilted her head over him, effectively making a curtain around him with her curls.
"So! What was it like being human? Did you enjoy it?" This was a two fold question that Belladonna did not fully realize she was asking until the words passed her lips. That little niggling thought had returned without total cohesion and the witch realized belatedly that human definitely meant whole in that way.
Best to beat around exactly what her brain was trying to ask because the witch wasn't sure she wanted to go treading such brittle ground, as the topic had been nothing but touchy between them. And not in the fun way, either.  

[medigel]

His brain's whirring increased to an audible purr for a few seconds after the kiss. Whirrrrrr~

He dealt with the easier questions first and opened his eyes just so that he could roll them. "Not Fear, humans too dumb t'know how to use. Dunno what was n-needed, but clearly human w-wasn't, as usual, able to do something." Horsemen called them cattle for a reason, even if Mort had seen enough of them to remember that they had emotions and lives and thoughts as well. Really the only time they got to be real threats were when they got a weapon and became Hunters, and even so they were still borrowing a Halloweener's power. "B-But m'alright. Portal thing was just like living in haze-dream: feels real when doing it, but when out, know it isn't."

But had Mort liked his brief time as a human? As the witch hovered over him and her locks cloaked their faces, his expression twisted into a thoughtful frown as he laid there. "Mrrr . . . Yes n' no," he answered after a while of deep thinking, his gaze getting a glossy look Bells would come to know (if she didn't already) as the look he got when going into personal introspection. "Heartbeat was . . . strange. N-Not used to constant thrum, but was like brain humming in a way; not unpleasant for most part. Still, hum is hum, n-not super important or loud (usually), n' doesn't . . . Doesn't skip or race or slow down 'cept when in sleep mode; is just there in background as sign've good Fear health, record as one long f-flat line or note. But heart is d-dynamic, pounding, visceral n' red n' center've life. Bleeds if sympathetic, breaks with sorrow, can be anywhere or a-anything needs be: stuck in throat, imprisoned in p-prison've rib cage, out on sleeve for world to see. It . . . m'thinkin' suits you more," he concluded with an unassuming shrug and smile, as if that one sentence summed up his rant without need for explanation.

The death knight had probably hit Mort a lot harder than expected, because even he looked a little surprised (and chagrined) at how much he had spoken on just that one detail. He swallowed a little bit of blood down before moving on. "Uh . . . Was weird to have all that weight," he told her, the glassy look gone. "Y'know, f-from missing chunks no longer missing. N' was weird operating with a-all that inside you, like was walking skin n' bone inkjar, only instead've powder had o-organs fill up." Eech. "B-But at same time could talk better, think faster, see farther, n-not hear whispers . . . So, uh, all in all w-was mixed package."  

[AyeAvast]

"Well yes, but... Even if you all were Human, you would still know how to use FEAR... But I was just speculating..." Belladonna replied with a shrug, unsure of what else to say. Really, she could only speculate as not only had she not been there, she most likely never would be. Fun portals where she got to wave around a wand and wear a robe didn't happen to her. And even if they did, it would have been an utter disappointment to look at all the friends with odd new bodies and look down to find herself still the exact same. It was a depressing thought, so the witch only went back to carefully threading her fingers through his hair.
A noncommittal mumble was Belladonna's reply to it being a haze dream, for she never had those. She just dreamt. One day she would pester him and ask if a haze dream was any different than a normal dream, or if it was just his version since he sort of didn't sleep, but he had taken a moment to think and the witch leaned over him to watch. The glossy look had only been seen a handful of times, but it was not something unpleasant or something already worn thin. It was a curious expression that elicited its own form of wonder in the witch as she bid her time until Mort finally spoke.
The flood of words surprised her, but a faint smile began to tug on her mouth as she talked, for he rarely spoke so much. It was an odd thing to consider that Mort now knew in vivid detail exactly what it was like to exist as Belladonna did. To be at the whim of this tiny little organ that had so much meaning and emotion assigned to it. The smile on her face grew until his conclusion wiped it off and replaced it with a look of surprise. Oddly taken aback by this, the witch felt, with a heavy sense of irony, her own heart lurch forward in her chest.
"I suppose so... You are much more even than I ever am." Belladonna finally replied with a return of her smile, though her cheeks had suddenly gone all over red. Certainly this was a compliment of the highest order, for how could all those things be bad?

A momentary pause punctuated their words as she the witch carefully shifted her legs underneath Mort's head before the limbs threatened to fall asleep, which made her wonder if the same could be same for Mort. How opposite could two people possibly be?
Still, her blush came back in full as her horrid brain filled in the gap left by the zombie's words about additional weight until his own words erased the thought. Stop that right now you lecherous harlot! Belladonna chided herself as she nodded to encourage him to keep talking.
"Its not that much weight." The witch offered with a wry look that bespoke the fact she contained all that weight, thank you very much. "Was anything vastly odd? Was there anything you had that you don't have now that was alright?" At first she'd only meant perhaps improved sight or maybe a bit more skin, but as the thought made itself apparent Belladonna almost flopped over and despaired. Why was she so desperate after that one particular thing? And why was it so easy to play but actually asking after it was too much?
In any odd attempt to distract them both from anything unsavory, the witch tilted her head to one side, raising the curtain of hair a little on the opposing side.
"Doing alright?" She meant both physically, as well as with the whispers, but like so many other things, was not yet willing to ask it full on.  

[medigel]

If Belladonna had voiced her lament about remaining the same for the human transition, Mort would have pointed out that not having to deal with the changes was a blessing in disguise; certainly the experience had thrown him for a loop in more ways than one. "S'enough for me to notice," he retorted with a small but cheeky grin. "You don't 'cuz already have all've it. N' most here." His hand patted his chest and the grin grew. "Imagine i-if didn't have that? Was flat s'me whole life. Then s-suddenly balloon out! Doesn't seem like big change, but is."

And then, after hearing her next questions, he wished he had used an entirely different example. Mort was now as bruise-faced as she was reddened, clearing his throat unnecessarily to buy a little more time to get his mind past the mental block. "E-Err . . . Well. Uh. Y-You know." His gaze drifted to the side as he latched onto her final question to get him out of talking about that. "'S-sides from minor concussion bet I have n' crushed rib cage . . . doing just dandy~" Mort answered with an anxious chuckle, toeing around the whispers almost as much as he was around the other issue.

If he ignored them both long enough maybe they'd go away.

"You?"  

[AyeAvast]

Not entirely sure if Mort was making a joke at the expense of her fabulous bosom or not, the witch only fixed him with a smile and a wink before she squished herself together quickly. And the witch could argue that the same thing had happened to her years ago, only it had been permanent and she'd been forced to make the experience a positive when it could have so easily been a negative. But she only gave him her own cheeky grin and shrugged once more.
There was really no point in arguing with him, as it would only really be a difference of opinion. Instead Belladonna just enjoyed his smile, as it was a sight she dearly loved but always feared would become a rare gift. As if in way of trying to keep it, she swept down to press a kiss to his cheek, though it was an odd thing with him still in her lap.

The second wave of questions only made his smile disappear and a darker tint take over his face, which was precisely what the witch had feared happening. She winced and bit her lip, quick to avoid her gaze in silent apology for such a question. There was no possible way she could remind him that no, she really didn't know and perhaps he should tell her, so instead she let his answer suffice. Even if she was vastly curious, it was not something she could bring herself to question. Every other push before this had been a hard won battle, almost a literal fight instead of a natural progression. Unwilling to jeopardize what the witch had already, she just let it pass. As much as she wanted this particular bit of information, it was not worth the uncomfortable situation they would have to wade through. A shame, really as it didn't have to be such, but very little went precisely as the witch wanted.
What came next wasn't much better as the words made Belladonna wince again.
"I am very sorry about that... Let me see what I can do..." Belladonna instructed as she removed her hands from the zombie's hair and instead moved them to hover over his chest.
She drew in a breath and slowly let it out as a pink light swam over her hands. It wasn't much, nothing enough to fix him all the way. But it was enough to knit most of the broken bones back together well enough to move. A few heavy moments passed before the witch was done, a few more deep breaths had to be taken before she finished and moved her hands, though she did lean forward to gingerly inspect the wound. When she found it mostly healed, she nodded down at Mort.

"We should probably visit the Nurse's office for a pumpkin pill, but you should be able to walk now at least." Belladonna announced with a smile and a wiggle to indicate he needed to stand. Careful to help him reach an upright position, the witch once more tucked herself underneath one of his arms to act as a small crutch.
"I have you, and I'm a Hob. I'm wonderful." She added with a quick reach up onto her toes for a kiss. It was horrifically cheesy, but still. It was true, and that's really what mattered.  

[medigel]

Mort exhaled a soft sigh as she healed him, letting the pink light take his tension along with his pain. She wasn't pushing, and he could relax once more. He could imagine how strained it was on the witch's end to stay silent on the matter, but in lieu of recent events he just wasn't . . . comfortable bringing any old sensitive issues up along with the new ones. Running away wasn't going to solve it, he knew, but Mort was ever an escapist by nature. Bells was a ghoul he loved, but that next stage was just so new that he wanted to continue dragging them at a slow pace so that somehow, some way, nothing would ever get terribly screwed up. This was a precious thing to him: he would approach it, along with his other deep-seated habits, with unequaled care and caution.

For now the battle was over: he owed her a song - Jack, that was going to be interesting. With his wounds mostly recovered it was an easier affair to get him up, and the kiss she received tasted of his blood as it had stained his teeth and tongue. But Mort looked much more relaxed after the fact, which wasn't surprising given how hard they had fought (and how hard she had knocked him out); the tension was gone from his shoulders as he pulled his red-headed little crutch close and shambled along with her.

"Y-Yeah, let's . . . By the way, you on top? Sexy. B-Bit scary, but sexy," he added most casually as they left.

Yup, he really had hit his head pretty hard.