tampered | closed;

There's just a quick glance at his pursed lips before he turns back to his food and slides it onto a plate. He understands her worries, but this is still a weird conversation to be having after knowing each other for this long.

"Maybe when it first happened, but it healed awhile ago... Besides, they only look bad. They weren't deep or anything... If they reopened, it still wouldn't have been too bad."

His voice is entirely casual - almost cheerful - to try to put her worries to rest. As he speaks, he cracks four eggs into the pan, and they sizzle loudly.

He sounds way too happy about this. Even if he isn't as bothered by it as she thought he was, she really doesn't believe he'd react quite like this.

Is he just trying to act like it doesn't bother him? Somehow, that answer doesn't seem right to her, either. "Really...? I could've sworn you didn't really like having your neck touched..."

She moves closer as she talks, wanting to make sure she doesn't miss anything--and also just because she likes being close to him.

If has hands weren't both busy, he'd reach out to touch her and bring her even closer. Having her ask about this is giving him a little bit of a headache. He can't think of why she would assume something like this when she never really brought it up before.

"Did you think that because of the scars...? Really, I'm fine... I don't even notice them most of the time."

He gives her a little, innocent smile. "I'm not as ecstatic about it as you are, but..."

"Well, yeah, and..." His reactions when she got near his neck didn't seem like good ones... But did she really just get that confused?

...After a moment, she sighs and shakes her head. "We're not ecstatic... But if you're all right with it, then it's not a big deal. I mean, I'm glad. I thought whatever happened when you disappeared that time must've been pretty bad..." Her voice started out pretty light, but it gets a little somber again.

He thought they were on the same page until she turned serious again. Her concerns seem so strange. His mind jumps to the times he ran into the woods - some of the times without telling anyone - and he knows how much she hated when he did that.

"I just..." His words stumble out of his mouth. "I like going out and being on my own. It's not always something bad. That's why it's not a problem for me not to go without you again..."

Rita thought they were coming to an understanding, but now she's confused all over again. She furrows her eyebrows and says, "No--I mean, we can talk about that later--I'm talking about that time you were to that 'Hell' the curse created. And then...that's what how it happened, wasn't it?"

"That...never happened..." He says slowly, head throbbing as he tries to understand her. "I didn't even go with Klarth and Katara when they went there," he explains. "I..."

He doesn't really know. Almost to escape this confusion, he starts breaking up the eggs and sloppily scrambling them in the pan.

Now she's starting to realize for certain that he really is acting differently about it. When he pauses, she immediately corrects him. "Tyr, those two were the ones who brought you back."

He looks over at her again, somewhat taken aback.

"What are you talking about? I wasn't there. You mean Kanone..."

She has to mean Kanone. This doesn't make any sense.

"I don't know anything about Kanone," she insists. Something's really off here--it's not like he's totally wiped it from his memory, because he remembers the curse happened, but it's more as though he forgot what happened to himself. And while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, Rita doesn't really think about that. She only focuses on the fact that he isn't remembering properly, which brings a whole bunch of other worries.

"You were definitely there. You were recovering for weeks."

"From what?" he questions immediately, his voice rising.

"No-one was really hurt; Katara made sure of that. There's no way I was recovering for more than a few days if something happened to me."

Now the thought creeps up on him - that she's implying that his scars that run over his neck and snake over his arm and chest are from that curse - and suddenly he doesn't really want to eat anymore. His face twists in disgust and he slides the pan over to the an inactive burner.

"What do you mean, nobody was really hurt?! You almost-" He almost died, but she manages to stop before she says that, and puts her hands on her hips. "My point is that it happened and you were hurt. Where were you thinking those scars came from, anyway...?" She is a little curious what he thinks happened. Maybe it'll help her figure out what's going on.

She doesn't need to finish that sentence to guess what she means. Whenever he looks at the scars, how deep the one on his chest looks, he thinks of how it must seem like he was tortured to death. Having a jagged scar run across his throat looks like he was executed.

But that wasn't the case. Even if it looks like it, he was never hurt like that. He looks away and falls silent for a while, face grim.

"Where do you think they came from? Were you there?"

He didn't die, at least--that much was a small relief--but she can only imagine how badly he must have been injured when they found him.

"I wasn't," she has to admit, "but they weren't there before that happened. For whatever reason...you've forgotten."

"Or maybe they were wrong. Neither of them are always right..." He's quick to second-guess it. All he knows is thinking that he almost died feels wrong in so many ways.

"I didn't forget anything. I probably got these in the war. There were assassins back home too, you know..."

"No, there's no way you did." She says it immediately, though somewhere in the back of her mind, she wants to teach any assassins who went after him a lesson. A painful one.

But she's focusing more on how strangely he's acting right now, because it could be a curse...or something else. "I know that one on your neck wasn't there until after that curse, so they had to happen here." After a pause, her expression grows serious. "There's no way you could just forget something like that unless something's messing with you, Tyr."

"Rita..." His hand grips the counter to ground himself. This isn't right. How would she know if it was there or not?, he thinks. Were they that close? He doesn't even remember that.

This entire thing is making him sick.

He turns his back to her, not liking how she's looking at him right now. He hates when people pry too much (why?), and her eyes are definitely trying to pry into him.

"You're making a big deal out of nothing. I know what happened, so don't keep assuming you know everything about me. It's really annoying..."

Her eyes widen in surprise, and then her expression quickly hardens a little. Something's very wrong if he's saying that. "Now I know there's something going on." She can't be too angry with him, knowing that this isn't how Tyr would normally talk to her--but it's still irritating to hear that.

She scowls and crosses her arms as she stares at his back. "If you remember, we've blacked out and forgotten things before..." She hates bringing it up, but it's exactly what's on her mind. "When those parasites were controlling us, remember?"

She's really starting to piss him off until she brings up their first meeting.

Some tension drains from his shoulders. She's right about that... They blacked out everything. They were run ragged but couldn't understand it. Is that what's happening now?

His head hurts even more now.

"I remember..." he admits after a long pause. And that's all he'll say.

She watches him intently, waiting for more. But though he doesn't say anything else, she softens a little. "So you know why I'm worried... It's weird for you to forget something that big. I want to know why, or if you've forgotten anything else..."

But where she should she start thinking? If Tyr has forgotten more than just his involvement in that curse--and why would he only forget that?--then any one of his memories could be affected...

"Could it just be ones you made here?" She's mostly thinking out loud, not really talking directly to him. "Or ones from before that, too?"

Irritation rises as she keeps talking. Which memories he's lost, the idea that some were tampered with. It's disgusting, and with only her here, she ends up being the target of his annoyance.

And he knows that, so he tries to calm down. She doesn't deserve this.

"How am I supposed to know? This still doesn't feel real... I don't feel like I've forgotten anything."

He must be feeling pretty awkward about this, she realizes... She is basically telling him that something's messing with his mind without him knowing. Of course he isn't going to like it.

"I know. It doesn't sound like the memory's missing, more like...it's altered." Her own voice is pretty calm--she's a little worried about him, but on the other hand, it could be only temporary. "If it's just a curse, it probably doesn't mean anything. Maybe they'll come back tomorrow."

He nods slowly. That makes more sense. Some of his tension eases as he considers it.

"Right... So let's not worry about it now. If it's serious, it won't end for a while."

Saying that, he turns back to the discarded food and slides the sloppily scrambled eggs onto the plate with the sausages. They should be cooked enough.

She watches him, her heart feeling a little like something's tugging on it, and finally blurts out, "Sorry. It's not like I wanted to make you worry something was wrong." Her hand runs through her hair again, fidgety. "Let's see if it goes away by tomorrow."

"Right," he answers with a small smile. "Thanks for thinking about me...but let's not worry about it now. It might just be a weird, pointless curse."

With that, he holds the huge plate out to her with a smile.

"For now, let's just eat some breakfast. You're worrying too much over nothing." He hates seeing her fret. She must have just been so worried, and he was taking it out on her.

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