*** HARMONIA has joined 710.35.155.17 <HARMONIA> Buongiorno, sorry I missed you. <HARMONIA> I'll happily get back to you as soon as I'm done with whatever business I'm on. <HARMONIA> Please leave a message.
[He makes it a little under time, actually. He spends enough time in 38-8 that he knows shortcuts, and after the description of what's going on, he's really not interested in prolonging this any longer than it already has been.]
[It's just under nineteen minutes, then, that there's a sharp rapping on the apartment door.]
[It's been a very long 20 minutes, for Atem and for everyone else on the seventh and eighth floors! But Atem, in his full fog form, gets the door almost immediately.
He's well fed. He can afford to be a little loose with his vampire speed.]
In here.
[He steps aside almost immediately, to allow Giorno in -- and lead him to one of the bedrooms.]
[Ryou's been cycling through spells of quiet and loud throughout those twenty minutes, but Giorno's shown up during a quiet time, where Ryou's just curled up, his skull still half-exposed and what skin there is reasonably gray. His body is less human at this point, and the proportions are more correct, but there is lingering humanity, in the way that his shadow aura hasn't manifested yet, and his skin was honestly far too light.
Ryou also has one ear. A single pointed ear which had finally grown out and was twitching...but not really hearing yet.
He's still disoriented, more so because Atem had left so quickly, and now he was alone in his head.]
[So first of all there is a giant fucking bat in here.]
[Giorno blinks rapidly for about 0.75 seconds before recognizing who he’s looking at. It would be nice, he thinks, if people could warn him to expect them in fog form sometimes. Whatever. He enters the apartment as quickly as he recovers, following close on Atem’s heels. Getting to the individual without a head has got to be his top priority.]
[But somehow, it’s much, much worse than he expected.]
[He wasn’t lying to Atem before: he’s seen a lot of gruesome things in his time. This, though, makes him stop briefly in the doorway, pausing to take it all in. It’s horrifying, and it looks like it must be terrifying for Ryou, but there’s something else that makes him pause.]
[Quietly, he crosses the space between the door and the bed, bending down to kneel on the floor where Ryou can hopefully see him, in the event that he’s even lucid enough to notice. He carefully keeps his hands on his thighs, not reaching for him yet and watching Atem out of his peripheral vision.]
[For a moment, Atem's not certain what Giorno is talking about. Ridged brows furrow over liquid red eyes. There's nothing he deliberately hid; for him, the injuries and the deliberate desiccation of the corpse are in entirely different categories.]
[Giorno covers his mouth, and for a moment, Atem worries that there's something else, something he hasn't noticed, something even more wrong than a re-growing head somehow, and his stomach drops--
--and then, Giorno calls Atem's boyfriend, who has been carefully protected from rot and decay, surrounded by the right sweet-smelling spices to ensure he remains holy and is not rejected from the afterlife for smelling foul, and laid in the kind of state that anyone besides perhaps a member of the Egyptian royal family would envy, beef jerky.
Oh. He means the dehydration.]
...that's what you're talking about.
The Ring-Spirit and I decided to dry the body out, so we could keep it here without it starting to smell. If we hadn't, he'd have to have stayed in a freezer, or Dyster...it's better for him to revive somewhere familiar.
[He'd made his way to the side of Ryou's bed when he came in, too -- if Ryou was still been looking for the presence that had been here a moment ago but left him alone, Atem caught his hand. He doesn't give a shit if Giorno sees it; keeping Ryou as calm as possible (which is, admittedly, not very calm, on top of being an extremely difficult and touchy task) matters more.]
[For the record, Giorno's already assuming they're together. You don't just mummify someone you don't care about a lot. The handholding is just extra confirmation.]
[Also, you only do really stupid shit for the people you love the most. He hides his face in both hands now.]
Did it not occur to you [—slightly muffled—] that a dehydrated body will be much, much more difficult to regenerate? Almost certainly more painful as well. The human body is over sixty percent water, and most monsters appear to contain a similar proportion. Imagine trying to regrow major body parts with muscle and skin that's too dry to stretch without tearing.
[Ryou can feel more than one presence around him, though only one is asserting itself for now. His fingers twitch and curl loosely around Atem's, not all the way. Given what Giorno is talking about here, there's probably been another reason for that which has a little to do with his motor functions being shit because he's been regrowing his brain...and something else to do with how inflexible his skin actually is.
He still can't see--no eyes yet, the skin and musculature had been growing from the neck up and hadn't quite reached that high up--but he can feel...vibrations. Pseudo-sounds? He lets out a murmur that isn't coherent, and his one ear twitches again.
Then he manages a single word.]
Who...?
[Ryou is "calm" for now, but that question sounds a bit edgy--a warning that he might just start shouting if the almost-sounds he hears become anything other than soft.]
My logic was that, since shades are weak to water, and their natural state is incorporeal, it wouldn't be an issue.
[Ryou's child-body and his shade-body are so different...why is one of them growing into the other? Why is this so -- physical? When Atem goes on, his voice is slower, quieter.]
I've come back hungry before, but never with the injuries I suffered not healed yet.
[Was this, actually, a terrible mistake? Did Atem needlessly make this regeneration harder than it had to be, because Ryou's healing isn't following the patterns Atem's familiar with?
[Slowly, Giorno lowers his hands. As he places them back on his knees, resets his posture, he stares down at Ryou and presses his lips tightly together. He's upset, truthfully. He hates when people hurt more than necessary. He wishes he didn't have to do this — but if it's a choice between the speed at which he can heal and waiting for the Fog to do its work, there's absolutely no question that he needs to.]
[All right. He exhales.]
I don't know how to rehydrate mummified skin, and even if I did, I don't think we'd have time to do that. So this is most likely going to be extremely painful and result in some tearing.
[Tearing. Great?]
Do you think you can keep him calm? He doesn't seem thrilled that I'm here at all.
[Ryou's fingers tighten a little more around Atem's, the stretched skin across his bones looking pretty painful already. Compared to his usual state, he's so small...so weak looking.
There's still blood regenerating within him, at least, and that does help with hydration. Maybe it won't be so bad.
Suddenly, he tenses. For one moment, he could have sworn he could hear. The vibrations had shifted to something he could parse, but only on the side with the actual ear. So, he hears the last thing Giorno says--
"He doesn't seem thrilled that I'm here at all."
--and it puts him on the immediate defensive.]
What--who are you? Wh-who are you?! Where am I? T-tell me!! You're not Atem!
[...Not calm. Definitely not calm.
He tries to pull his hand away, incorrectly assuming the voice goes to the one gripping his fingers and jumping to the immediate conclusion that he's not in a safe place.]
[--can he hear? Atem's not positive Ryou can, or if he can, it's not proper hearing. Atem doesn't let go of Ryou's hand, but brings his horrible bat-head down to it, bringing Ryou's fingers in contact with a furred face.]
It's all right! He's a friend! I'm here. You're going to be all right.
[Eventually. On the other side of what promises to be a lot of pain.
If Ryou digs claws into Atem's snout right now, he could do a lot of damage. Atem's eyes are close to sharp-edged, enormous monster hands. But he presses his face into it anyway, giving proof that's hard to fake.]
It's Giorno Giovanna. He came here to help while I was shedding my skin -- remember?
[It's the instinct to freeze catching hold of him again. Even once he realizes what's happening, though, he doesn't move a hair, both for his own safety and for Atem's. The vampire's got things under control, as well as they can be under control. And if worst comes to worst, well—]
[Ryou's claws seem all the more sharp with the skin pulled tight to his fingertips, and in a panic, he does dig them into Atem's cheek, just below the eye.
The damage is minimal however, for one reason. He can hear, and with Atem this close, asserting that everything's going to be okay...even though it's hard to hear and distinguish the all of the words, like someone's yelling across a room with a screen in front of them...he recognizes the voice.]
O-okay.
[That's all he says. He doesn't apologize for the damage he's done, because he can't see it, and he's too stressed to know that he's cut Atem's cheek at all.]
[The blood-price is small, much less than the most Atem would be willing to pay to reassure Ryou.
The feeling he gets is the crawling guilt of bringing a pet who doesn't understand what's happening to an unpleasant vet visit. What's about to happen is for the best, but Atem can't explain it; it's going to be bad, and it's going to feel like a betrayal.
He pulls the hand from his face, holds it between both of his own.]
It's going to be all right.
[Then, he nods at Giorno. Now's as good a time as ever.]
[Right. It's good that Ryou trusts Atem so implicitly. That's going to make this much, much easier. With a soft exhale, Giorno relaxes, fixing his posture and nodding back at Atem before closing his eyes.]
[Steve asked him once if he had any senses as a monster that he hadn't had before. It was then that he explained the expansive sense that is Gold Experience, the feeling of being able to feel the pulse of every living thing around him, the push of sap and thrum of blood, the feeling of connection. Being in Ryslig in comparison was like being blind for so long. But now it's just a little easier. Because when he closes his eyes and reaches out for Ryou, there he is. That strange body doing its best to heal and struggling against bindings that were meant to help.]
[Giorno doesn't have to open his eyes to find Ryou's hand, to take hold of it in both of his own, a mirror of Atem's actions on the other side of the shade's prone form. When he speaks, it's for Ryou's benefit in the event that he can truly hear now, and for Atem's in the event that he can't, or that only Atem's reassurances will do anything to calm him.]
I'm going to do this as quickly as possible. Squeeze my hand as hard as you need to. It will hurt, but then you'll feel better.
[So saying, he reaches through the alive-but-not regenerating form of Ryou's body and begins his work. Eyes still closed, brows drawn tight in focus. He takes this so seriously. The process starts uncomfortable rather than painful and doesn't look like much of anything, but that's because of the state of Ryou's skin. It's not right, so Giorno has to change it. It's only once it's a bit more flexible, more elastic, more alive that he's able to slowly but surely coax it to grow over Ryou's exposed skull.]
[And so on from there. He wasn't lying: it hurts. A lot. But he's also very, very efficient. If he's not interrupted, the whole process will take something like five minutes.]
[Ryou doesn't like the sound of this...but he's been scared for a very long time. Ever since he'd begun to revive he's been terrified. At least now, it seems he's surrounded by friends, and he can tell because he can finally hear them, at least vaguely.
The fingers of both hands curl to grip around both Atem's and Giorno's loosely. He can't see yet...but he can put his trust in them both, even if his brain is screaming at him to be cautious.
Pain...? He's used to that. He's not good at handling it, but...he is used to it more and more lately, so Giorno's words don't scare him, he just gives a vaguely affirmative murmur. Yes. He gets it.
When the regenerating begins, he squirms a bit. It doesn't feel great...it feels like something's being changed, but he can't quite put his finger on it.
It's only once the skin starts to stretch and pull itself across Ryou's exposed skull that the discomforted squirming starts to pick up. He whines at first, and his fingers tighten. But as the healing goes on longer, he starts to cry out in pain.
It's at some point around the third minute that his eyes finally regenerate. It's effectively as if someone's turned the light on in his skull.]
S...stop, wait! Wait, it hurts!!
[But deep down, he knows Giorno won't. Because he can't leave the job half done, can he?
Ryou's eyes glow even brighter than normal as the skin stretches tight to his skull, as his hair grows out into an unhealthy, stringy looking mane. It might look better--he might look better--if he didn't feel so dry.
It's like someone's tried tanning his skin like leather for days, the way it looks--unhealthy and taut to his bones...but at least it's covering his head now. And for as much as as he's screaming and carrying on, the worst thing Ryou does is kick his feet and grip the others' hands as tightly as he can, which...admittedly isn't that tight. He's too weak for that.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
<harmonia> → action
[He makes it a little under time, actually. He spends enough time in 38-8 that he knows shortcuts, and after the description of what's going on, he's really not interested in prolonging this any longer than it already has been.]
[It's just under nineteen minutes, then, that there's a sharp rapping on the apartment door.]
action!
He's well fed. He can afford to be a little loose with his vampire speed.]
In here.
[He steps aside almost immediately, to allow Giorno in -- and lead him to one of the bedrooms.]
it's a-me, gore-io!
Ryou also has one ear. A single pointed ear which had finally grown out and was twitching...but not really hearing yet.
He's still disoriented, more so because Atem had left so quickly, and now he was alone in his head.]
Help...please help...don't...l-leave me...
sorry for the delay lads
[Giorno blinks rapidly for about 0.75 seconds before recognizing who he’s looking at. It would be nice, he thinks, if people could warn him to expect them in fog form sometimes. Whatever. He enters the apartment as quickly as he recovers, following close on Atem’s heels. Getting to the individual without a head has got to be his top priority.]
[But somehow, it’s much, much worse than he expected.]
[He wasn’t lying to Atem before: he’s seen a lot of gruesome things in his time. This, though, makes him stop briefly in the doorway, pausing to take it all in. It’s horrifying, and it looks like it must be terrifying for Ryou, but there’s something else that makes him pause.]
. . . There’s something you didn’t tell me, isn’t there.
[Quietly, he crosses the space between the door and the bed, bending down to kneel on the floor where Ryou can hopefully see him, in the event that he’s even lucid enough to notice. He carefully keeps his hands on his thighs, not reaching for him yet and watching Atem out of his peripheral vision.]
ain't no thing!!
What do you mean?
no subject
[Giorno covers his mouth with one hand briefly, but his eyes still look very pained.]
My friend, he looks like beef jerky.
no subject
--and then, Giorno calls Atem's boyfriend, who has been carefully protected from rot and decay, surrounded by the right sweet-smelling spices to ensure he remains holy and is not rejected from the afterlife for smelling foul, and laid in the kind of state that anyone besides perhaps a member of the Egyptian royal family would envy, beef jerky.
Oh. He means the dehydration.]
...that's what you're talking about.
The Ring-Spirit and I decided to dry the body out, so we could keep it here without it starting to smell. If we hadn't, he'd have to have stayed in a freezer, or Dyster...it's better for him to revive somewhere familiar.
[He'd made his way to the side of Ryou's bed when he came in, too -- if Ryou was still been looking for the presence that had been here a moment ago but left him alone, Atem caught his hand. He doesn't give a shit if Giorno sees it; keeping Ryou as calm as possible (which is, admittedly, not very calm, on top of being an extremely difficult and touchy task) matters more.]
no subject
[Also, you only do really stupid shit for the people you love the most. He hides his face in both hands now.]
Did it not occur to you [—slightly muffled—] that a dehydrated body will be much, much more difficult to regenerate? Almost certainly more painful as well. The human body is over sixty percent water, and most monsters appear to contain a similar proportion. Imagine trying to regrow major body parts with muscle and skin that's too dry to stretch without tearing.
no subject
He still can't see--no eyes yet, the skin and musculature had been growing from the neck up and hadn't quite reached that high up--but he can feel...vibrations. Pseudo-sounds? He lets out a murmur that isn't coherent, and his one ear twitches again.
Then he manages a single word.]
Who...?
[Ryou is "calm" for now, but that question sounds a bit edgy--a warning that he might just start shouting if the almost-sounds he hears become anything other than soft.]
no subject
My logic was that, since shades are weak to water, and their natural state is incorporeal, it wouldn't be an issue.
[Ryou's child-body and his shade-body are so different...why is one of them growing into the other? Why is this so -- physical? When Atem goes on, his voice is slower, quieter.]
I've come back hungry before, but never with the injuries I suffered not healed yet.
[Was this, actually, a terrible mistake? Did Atem needlessly make this regeneration harder than it had to be, because Ryou's healing isn't following the patterns Atem's familiar with?
He admits, in that same tone:]
I don't know why this is different.
no subject
[Slowly, Giorno lowers his hands. As he places them back on his knees, resets his posture, he stares down at Ryou and presses his lips tightly together. He's upset, truthfully. He hates when people hurt more than necessary. He wishes he didn't have to do this — but if it's a choice between the speed at which he can heal and waiting for the Fog to do its work, there's absolutely no question that he needs to.]
[All right. He exhales.]
I don't know how to rehydrate mummified skin, and even if I did, I don't think we'd have time to do that. So this is most likely going to be extremely painful and result in some tearing.
[Tearing. Great?]
Do you think you can keep him calm? He doesn't seem thrilled that I'm here at all.
no subject
There's still blood regenerating within him, at least, and that does help with hydration. Maybe it won't be so bad.
Suddenly, he tenses. For one moment, he could have sworn he could hear. The vibrations had shifted to something he could parse, but only on the side with the actual ear. So, he hears the last thing Giorno says--
"He doesn't seem thrilled that I'm here at all."
--and it puts him on the immediate defensive.]
What--who are you? Wh-who are you?! Where am I? T-tell me!! You're not Atem!
[...Not calm. Definitely not calm.
He tries to pull his hand away, incorrectly assuming the voice goes to the one gripping his fingers and jumping to the immediate conclusion that he's not in a safe place.]
no subject
It's all right! He's a friend! I'm here. You're going to be all right.
[Eventually. On the other side of what promises to be a lot of pain.
If Ryou digs claws into Atem's snout right now, he could do a lot of damage. Atem's eyes are close to sharp-edged, enormous monster hands. But he presses his face into it anyway, giving proof that's hard to fake.]
It's Giorno Giovanna. He came here to help while I was shedding my skin -- remember?
[Please remember.]
no subject
[It's the instinct to freeze catching hold of him again. Even once he realizes what's happening, though, he doesn't move a hair, both for his own safety and for Atem's. The vampire's got things under control, as well as they can be under control. And if worst comes to worst, well—]
[He can always fix Atem's eyeballs, he supposes.]
no subject
The damage is minimal however, for one reason. He can hear, and with Atem this close, asserting that everything's going to be okay...even though it's hard to hear and distinguish the all of the words, like someone's yelling across a room with a screen in front of them...he recognizes the voice.]
O-okay.
[That's all he says. He doesn't apologize for the damage he's done, because he can't see it, and he's too stressed to know that he's cut Atem's cheek at all.]
no subject
The feeling he gets is the crawling guilt of bringing a pet who doesn't understand what's happening to an unpleasant vet visit. What's about to happen is for the best, but Atem can't explain it; it's going to be bad, and it's going to feel like a betrayal.
He pulls the hand from his face, holds it between both of his own.]
It's going to be all right.
[Then, he nods at Giorno. Now's as good a time as ever.]
cw skin gore
[Steve asked him once if he had any senses as a monster that he hadn't had before. It was then that he explained the expansive sense that is Gold Experience, the feeling of being able to feel the pulse of every living thing around him, the push of sap and thrum of blood, the feeling of connection. Being in Ryslig in comparison was like being blind for so long. But now it's just a little easier. Because when he closes his eyes and reaches out for Ryou, there he is. That strange body doing its best to heal and struggling against bindings that were meant to help.]
[Giorno doesn't have to open his eyes to find Ryou's hand, to take hold of it in both of his own, a mirror of Atem's actions on the other side of the shade's prone form. When he speaks, it's for Ryou's benefit in the event that he can truly hear now, and for Atem's in the event that he can't, or that only Atem's reassurances will do anything to calm him.]
I'm going to do this as quickly as possible. Squeeze my hand as hard as you need to. It will hurt, but then you'll feel better.
[So saying, he reaches through the alive-but-not regenerating form of Ryou's body and begins his work. Eyes still closed, brows drawn tight in focus. He takes this so seriously. The process starts uncomfortable rather than painful and doesn't look like much of anything, but that's because of the state of Ryou's skin. It's not right, so Giorno has to change it. It's only once it's a bit more flexible, more elastic, more alive that he's able to slowly but surely coax it to grow over Ryou's exposed skull.]
[And so on from there. He wasn't lying: it hurts. A lot. But he's also very, very efficient. If he's not interrupted, the whole process will take something like five minutes.]
continuing with the gore cw
The fingers of both hands curl to grip around both Atem's and Giorno's loosely. He can't see yet...but he can put his trust in them both, even if his brain is screaming at him to be cautious.
Pain...? He's used to that. He's not good at handling it, but...he is used to it more and more lately, so Giorno's words don't scare him, he just gives a vaguely affirmative murmur. Yes. He gets it.
When the regenerating begins, he squirms a bit. It doesn't feel great...it feels like something's being changed, but he can't quite put his finger on it.
It's only once the skin starts to stretch and pull itself across Ryou's exposed skull that the discomforted squirming starts to pick up. He whines at first, and his fingers tighten. But as the healing goes on longer, he starts to cry out in pain.
It's at some point around the third minute that his eyes finally regenerate. It's effectively as if someone's turned the light on in his skull.]
S...stop, wait! Wait, it hurts!!
[But deep down, he knows Giorno won't. Because he can't leave the job half done, can he?
Ryou's eyes glow even brighter than normal as the skin stretches tight to his skull, as his hair grows out into an unhealthy, stringy looking mane. It might look better--he might look better--if he didn't feel so dry.
It's like someone's tried tanning his skin like leather for days, the way it looks--unhealthy and taut to his bones...but at least it's covering his head now. And for as much as as he's screaming and carrying on, the worst thing Ryou does is kick his feet and grip the others' hands as tightly as he can, which...admittedly isn't that tight. He's too weak for that.]