Who: Anna and Tas When: Today, September 8th Where: Tas’ apartment What: Tas has a bad dream involving a death that touches close to home Rating/Warnings: Pretty low. Status: Complete
Tas had not expected it to end that way. Even with all the signs - Flint spacing out in the middle of a dragon fight and his chest pain that he blamed on the dragonlances even though the dragonlance had been pressed against his right shoulder and he was rubbing his left shoulder - Tas had thought that it would have been something exciting. There were dragons, and sword fights, and friends who’d betrayed them, and all the other things that made up a great story.
What didn’t make a great story was some old dwarf running after some immortal man and then collapsing because he had a heart attack. What didn’t make a good story was Flint dying at all. Flint wasn’t supposed to die. Tas and Flint were supposed to make it through this, and then they’d go back to Solace, where they lived together in their house on the ground (Tas had always wished he could live in one of the houses in the Vallenwoods, but Flint wouldn’t hear about it and Tas had lived with Flint since he was but 16). Flint wasn’t supposed to just… die like that. And not because of some stupid, stupid heart attack.
When he’d woken up that morning, Tas hadn’t gotten out of bed. Flint’s helm - which, with his dying strength, he’d bestowed upon the kender - had appeared next to Tas on his pillow, and so Tas had gathered it in his arms, buried his face in the griffon mane (Tas was still pretty sure it was actually horsehair, but Flint had insisted it was a griffon mane from the moment Tas had given him the helm when they’d first started on this ill-fated adventure), and cried silently into it, completely forgetting that he’d made plans with Anna for the day.
Anna was super excited to be hanging out with Tas today. She hadn’t seen him in forever, and she was so very much looking forward to going on a beach adventure! They had a shell collection to collect after all. But when he didn’t show up, she was concerned. She texted him a couple of times, then called, and no answer came. Anna decided to go to his place and knock on the door. Hard. No answer again. So she tried the handle, and, to her great surprise and luck, it opened.
“Tas?” She asked, poking her head into the apartment. “Are you okay? I’m worried. We were supposed to collect shells.” She moved further, to the hallway, and down it toward his bedroom.
Tas heard the door open, and at first he thought it might have been Raistlin coming back home. Then he heard Anna’s voice, and remembered that he was supposed to meet. He forced himself out from his covers - it was a lot harder than any other time he had done the same - and made it to his bedroom door just as Anna did, eyes rimmed in red and still wearing his pyjamas. “Oh, sorry Anna. I forgot. I don’t think I can go today,” he said solemnly.
Anna wasn’t sure what she was expecting. She never really feared for the worst--her brain didn’t work that way--but she was a little nervous that something had gone wrong. Poor Tas! He normally would have answered his phone! She came to the door and met him there, jumping a little in surprise when he was suddenly in the doorway. “Tas!” She said, then frowned. “...are you… okay?” He didn’t look okay. He looked like he’d been crying.
Tas shook his head quietly and sniffled. “No,” he said after a moment. “I just had a really bad dream.”
Anna’s face cracked. Concern and sadness broke between her eyebrows, and within a moment she was stepping forward to wrap her arms around him in a huge hug. Because Anna was ridiculously good at hugging, and did it a lot. Did it well. She turned to lead him back into the room, kicking the door closed, and guided him to the bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Tas hugged her back tightly and snuffled. Then he nodded. “My really good friend Flint. He… died in the dreams. Why is everyone dying?” Flint, and Sturm. All those other people who he hadn’t really known that well if at all, even if he’d seen their bodies later. The more it piled up, the harder it was for Tas to deal with.
“Oh, no.” Anna shook her head a little, feeling tears springing to her own eyes. She sat down on the bed and pulled him down beside her. “Oh, Tas, I’m so sorry.” She hugged him again, one arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders. It was then that she realized how small he was. He wasn’t always this small, was he? She thought she could remember him saying something about it from the Dreams. Like how she’d gained her white streak in her hair? And now he was… kinda a hobbit? Or something?
“How did it happen?” She asked. Maybe more details would help her console him better. Or maybe he just needed to get it all out. Either way, she was here for him.
Tas leaned against Anna when the sat on the bed, but when she asked how it happened he sniffled loudly, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and pulled away from her to tell the tale. Just because Flint’s death hadn’t been as great as he deserved didn’t mean Tas couldn’t make it as great as he deserved. “It was him, and me, and our friend Tanis, and we were surrounded on all sides by dragons,” Tas said. “The big black acid spewing ones! And, well, we were all sure that we were toast. But then Flint, he took up his dragonlance, and he… and he…” Tas sniffed, not able to go on. For some reason, the story just felt so disingenuous that he couldn’t continue.
Wow! Dragons?? Anna listened intently, expecting more of a story. She was half expecting to hear something straight out of Game of Thrones, but then poor Tas couldn’t go on. She wrapped her arm more tightly around him. “I’m so sorry, Tas. It must have been awful.” Now she was imagining Toothless spitting acid and melting people’s faces off--like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Go Anna with her pop culture references today. She was on point.
Tas nodded, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “He really deserved to have something better,” he sniffed. “He was the best dwarf - no, the best person on all of Krynn. He was grumpy, but he had a heart of gold. And he was afraid of boats, and always said he was allergic to horses but I think he might have just been a bit afraid of them too.”
Anna really didn’t know what to say. She didn’t like boats, either. Her fear stemmed from something really traumatic--the death of her parents--so maybe Flint’s fear did, too? She empathized with him, and suddenly it all became more real. The loss, the despair. It was heavy on her shoulders, squeezing around her heart. She felt tears rolling down her own cheeks as she tightened her hold on Tas, letting him talk it out.
Really, Tas didn’t really want to talk about Flint anymore. It made his heart hurt in a way that he’d never quite experienced before. It was the kind of feeling that made his throat close up so much that he could barely breathe, let alone talk, and it felt as though someone was grabbing onto his heart and squeezing as hard as they could. When Anna tightened her hold on him, he tightened his hold on her, burying his face into her shirt.
Anna gave Tas a long couple of minutes to let out some of those emotions. She finally pulled back a little, and dipped her head down to take a look into his face. “I’m so sorry, Tas. What can I do? How can I help?” She asked, running a hand up and down his back. It was smaller than she remembered. Strange. “Do you want me to make you something to eat or to drink?”
“You’re already helping,” Tas hiccuped, pulling away and rubbing the eyes with the back of his hands. “Oh! I think I have a nice bottle of brandy! Would you like some?” he asked, hopping to his feet.
Funny how alcohol seemed to help all those things that it really shouldn’t be used for. But Anna nodded, breaking into a smile. “Yeah, I’d love some.” She grinned, and hopped up to her feet, too, to follow him. “You know, I kinda miss the bouncy house.”
“I think I’d like it today,” Tas said. “There’d be no way I could be sad walking to the kitchen if I still had a bouncy house. But, you know, actually living in a bouncy castle isn’t nearly as great as you’d think it would be. It gets really boring after a couple of days. And then you always had to be concerned about popping things. And nothing’s really very comfortable. I mean, the bouncing was lots of fun, but have you ever tried sleeping on a plastic couch? He made it to the kitchen, climbed onto the counter, and grabbed the bottle of brandy from the cupboard.
“Did it get cold?” Anna asked, following him into the kitchen. She shoved her hands in her shorts pockets. “I mean, sleeping on an air mattress can be really cold!” Not that Anna’s spent a whole lot of time sleeping on air mattresses, but she knew that the cold air inside the mattress could keep a person cold. “I’m a little sad I didn’t insist upon a sleepover when your apartment was all bouncy.”
“No, not cold,” Tas said. “Just uncomfortable. And squeaky. Really squeaky.” It had been very annoying. “I don’t think I’ll be making the mistake of wishing to live in a bouncy castle again. At least, not while I’m living in the Orange County. Maybe instead I can wish for Flint to come back alive. Do you think that would come true?” He sure hoped it would. “I’m sad you didn’t sleep over either. But maybe next time one of our places gets magically transformed, we can totally have a sleepover.”
“You know, we don’t have to have a magically transformed place to have a sleepover.” Anna mused aloud, glancing through Tas and Raistlin’s apartment. “We could just… make a big pillow fort and use that as an excuse!” She turned back to Tas looking absolutely thrilled at this idea.
“Oh! I like pillow forts!” Tas said. Flint was still sitting in the back of Tas’ mind, but the grumpy dwarf moved aside slightly for the thought of a Pillow Fort. “Yes! Let’s make a giant pillow fort! I’ve got lots of blankets!” He opened up the bottle of brandy and drank straight from the bottle, before handing it off to Anna and running to his linen closet. “I’ll go get everything!”
Anna hadn’t really been expecting to be handed a bottle of brandy, but then Tas was excited again at the idea of building a pillow-slash-blanket fort. She brightened and gulped from the bottle, then winced at the taste before running off after him. This was gonna be an amazing night!