faderift | [CLOSED] Dwarf business.

After last time he went out on the lash, Yngvi would rather it be in Hightown. The drinks are better here, less people might take exception to the fact that he's Yngvi then he can easily stagger back to his lady's estate at the end of the night. It took a bit of convincing to make sure he could even leave but he almost manages to swagger in, nodding to a face or two that he knows, more that he doesn't because yeah, a lot of faces have changed.

"How's it goin' mate?" Easy, natural, casual, not at all rehearsed or anything like that what are you talking about he wasn't dropping lines in the mirror to make sure he sounded like a person and that his face moved like a face should move as he drops into a seat. Less dwarf than Kit might be expecting. Maybe something passingly familiar about Kit to him but Yngvi hasn't survived to this point without keeping sharp. "This is where you get good drinks, isn't it madam?"

The serving girl smiles, probably because she has to, but Yngvi'll tip well regardless.

A little under a decade is still plenty of time to change a sprog to the point where he's nigh unrecognizable to the fellow who once trounced a couple of human ne'er-do-wells giving him a hard time in Darktown. With a bit of time, familiarity might tug at the edges of Kit's memory; but for now, when he greets Yngvi with a warm grin, there's no recognition in his eyes at all.

"Hey, glad to defer to your expertise, salroka," he replies, takes a drag off his cigarette, and then twists some in his seat so he's facing his new drinking companion.

"I believe you said something about good Avvar shit when we were planning this little excursion. So c'mon," he adds, giving an idle flick of one hand, "let's get drinking."

As a rule, faces aren't forgotten. Raise a child the Carta way, or at least the way Einar's branch had with raising, and you can train just about anything into them but dwarven faces tend to blur together. Yngvi spends most of his days with anything but dwarves.

That word catches him. Sometimes he's good enough to get his face to just go blank, usually he smiles like it's all water off a duck's back but he jumps hard enough his knee smacks off the table. Hard. "Dunno what the fuck that means. Ain't from them parts, folk don't speak that where I'm from." It's not a good lie because clearly he does know what it means but that's a common enough word, even humans know that one. He just doesn't want more of it. Knows he can't school his face right if he has to hear dwarven because people don't know he speaks it, people don't even know he speaks and understands Orlesian fluently.

"Yeah, right, fun thing 'bout when your boss lived here before and he was a pretty popular fixture, so long as you order somethin'," and he does that, tips generously because Einar didn't raise a fool, and Yngvi knows what folk get paid, and she's an elven girl so who knows what her life is, and because he's asked for an empty mug each to go along with it, he whips out a decent sized flask. "They don't mind much if you bring your own. This is some honey mead stuff? Dunno they drink some rank shite too but this is good. Blows the tits off some people."

Yngvi's knee connects with the underside of the table, and Kit startles, his brows immediately creasing into a worried furrow. "Shit, man, are you all right--" he starts, but Yngvi's words run roughshod and anxious across his and he sees no point in trying to interject again. He settles back in his seat and lets the kid's comment (for he is a kid to Kit) about not recognizing dwarven slang go without comment for now; he keeps his face friendly as can be, but files that bit away for later consideration.

"Dunno they drink some rank shite too but this is good. Blows the tits off some people."

"Here's hoping I'm not 'some people' or this is going to be a weird night out." He smiles his thanks at the serving girl, offering her out a few more coppers for her trouble, then holds out his flask to Yngvi to have his mug filled. Once that's done, he brings the stuff up to give it a curious sniff, then swallows down a generous mouthful. ...It's potent stuff, but he's definitely tasted stronger. No weird shit going down in the Blooming Rose tonight.

"So where'd you get this stuff anyway? You spend much time down in the Frostbacks?" Steering the conversation away from dwarven things, at least for now.

Well not on their end. Yngvi might've lingered but he's not in the mood and he's not about to go back to his lady's after a thing like that or to shared rooms with Wren even if she's away and he doesn't fancy staying alone so that renders things moot.

"Been all over since I left here, well, not Tevinter because who wants to go to Tevinter," plenty of dwarves do because it's a good life if you're in deep with the right people but Yngvi's not and Tevinter's an abhorrent sort of place, "and not Qunari places because that'd be a really stupid idea. Boneflayers leader who started it before he passed was part-Avvar. Made us somethin' like kin? Guest rite stuff in his hold and a few others."

Nearly a year. Nearly a year since Asher passed and back here for it, so far from any sort of mountain and Avvar have a weird view of time but he'll need to mark it. Probably. Part of him wants to but more of him is blindsided by just how close it is suddenly as he takes a decent swig, enjoying the burn. "Gave me and Gunnar the last name so we'd fit in and it'd sound like some of their hold names do, Congealedinagutterson, like, because it's where we're from, says how we came about y'know?" Can you hear that Yngvi is fond, that Yngvi still clings really tight to that even now the way a child accustomed to having nothing clutches to anything he gets because he might not get things ever again, clings tight enough that they'll need to rip it away from him and think it's not worth the effort of fighting him for it.

Kit can hear it, and it strikes a chord in him, and makes him think suddenly of a little casteless boy on the streets of Dust Town; a little boy who'd fight tooth and nail to keep hold of his bowl of gruel. A little boy who'd pick up a shiv because Beraht put a clean shirt on him and told him to stand up straight.

He doesn't think Yngvi's leader was at all cut from the same cloth as Beraht; maybe more like Nolan, except with less of a stick up his ass, just based on Yngvi's obvious affection for the unknown man. The parallel is there, but it's thin and brittle. Kit takes another swallow of mead and gathers his thoughts.

"Gunnar," he says and scratches one of the grey patches in his short, neatly kept beard. "That your brother?" The name seems to tug at something in his memory, but he can't place why.

A smile slides out, easier than they've tended to come to him lately but Yngvi misses Gunnar like he misses a part of himself and it's easy to talk about him. Gunnar's the one doing grand off with the rest of them, sending letters back and forth when they can (more on Yngvi's end, him being the one with far more hours in the day for the letter-writing part.)

"Carta brother," as if it answers everything because are they brothers by blood, brothers in the Carta sense, or is it both? Best to keep people guessing because he always answers Carta brother with that look in his eye. "There were a bunch of us but we ate the rest, me an' him from our sort of lot 'bout that age were the best of 'em so we got to stick around, get into all sorts of scrapes. He's...in Nevarra? Was last I heard from him. D'you meet him on your travels? I'm the charming and handsome one out the two of us, he just got all the weird stuff."

"He's... in Nevarra? Was last I heard from him. D'you meet him on your travels? I'm the charming and handsome one out of the two of us, he just got all the weird stuff."

"Yeah, you're all right," Kit replies with an easy grin, clearly teasing, and taps the excess ash off his cigarette before taking another puff. Blowing out the smoke, he shakes his head and then scratches the edge of one eyebrow, pensive. "Don't think I met him--not in Nevarra, at least, never went there when I ran with mercenary companies. Might've gone under it though when I was still with the Legion." Not that a Legionnaire ever really leaves the Legion; it follows you, it stays in your blood, even if you leave the Deep Roads behind.

Kit considers Yngvi for a brief moment through the smoke; the kid's radiating nervous energy like heat from a bonfire, and the drink doesn't seem to be putting him at ease at all. He considers a different approach.

"So you ate your other brothers and sisters, huh?" he remarks, takes another gulp from his mead, and nods his head as though this seems like a perfectly reasonable and plausible thing to have done in Yngvi's situation. "I don't know if I had any brothers or sisters growing up in Dust Town; maybe I did the same thing." He's kidding, but there's a bit of sadness to his joke that's impossible to miss.

"All right? All right? This hair? Envy of Orlesian ladies." Never washes it, never has to wash it except that one time a young elven lady with long beautiful hair and soft tattooed hands forcibly bathed him with such gentleness he didn't know how to stand it. "You need to go to Nevarra, s'great. Real lavish place but without all the Orlesian foppin' about with masks and fashions getting swapped on you all last minute so you end up lookin' like a tit because last time it was spines and teeth and this season oh no it's probably, dunno, a green hand and pretending you've come from some magical place." Look, as far as bizarre Orlesian trends go Yngvi would absolutely not put it past the Orlesians to eventually adopt Rifters as some sort of trend for a little while especially if any of them do anything particularly daring that earns them the love of the Court.

A swig of his drink and he has another thing to add as if remembering. "Would say that if you go for a drink in Nevarra? Don't get into contests with randoms or you wake up a Reaver three days later," that's a true story, it's one of the two stories people tend to know about the former leader of the Boneflayers after all, "but the corpse perfume? Every vintage is a fine one."

If the Inquisition will not make him foreign affairs correspondent or their cultural affairs correspondent then he will be their resident sommelier.

"Hate sayin' it but if you don't remember? There's a good chance you did, like, people are frogs, and life is a goose, and goose got sharp beaks with teeth and appetites." Dusters got even less than they do in Darktown, tighter margins. "Though you didn't have to fight the doglords for the food in your mouths is all." Thats's not a thing Yngvi would admit to people but he recognises that tone, and Kit's the life Yngvi might've been if life had been different so in the Blooming Rose on a busy enough night it feels safe enough. (As if he's ever known anything different to safe enough.)

"Though you didn't have to fight the doglords for the food in your mouths is all."

The comparing or ranking of one kind of suffering to another has never sat well with Kit, and his heart twinges with some pain when he hears Yngvi do it. But he doesn't take him to task over it, or over the pejorative word for the Ferelden refugees, because there's a vulnerability, an honesty in that confession that can be felt past the nervous energy pervading everything else the young man says.

He takes another quick drag off his smoke and taps the ash off again; a vulnerability in exchange for a vulnerability, then. "I didn't have brothers or sisters, but there were these other dusters I ran with," he remembers, smiling wistfully. "Ended up part of Beraht and Jarvia's outfit, so it turned out about as you'd expect. But we kept each other going; you blow off the dust to find the vein of silver, right?"

Sometimes it's all you have and the thing is that Yngvi still knows that he's had it better than some people so he's got grounds to toss out a complaint like that but still know that he's allowed to be angry over it all. Everyone goes on about the doglords but how many of them were living in the dark with a bunch of angry people getting angrier and angrier, because scared and hurt people get angry too, and even if they didn't have the Blight, refugees in a cold damp place without much all crammed in means sickness spreads like wildfire.

"Weren't she a right fruitcake that one? Wasn't there for doin' much with her, been below for some shit, I mean trade happens like it just poofs outta thin air or some shite but that one? Turned the air blue the old men and women did and if I'm sayin' that?" Yngvi makes a face, shaking his head because things had kind of settled down when there'd been less Jarvia to deal with, things had been less tense and nervy after the old folks didn't come back pissed-off and grumbling after whatever deals went down. "Always wondered, d'you have to blow Darkspawn shit off the silver? Like, bloke to bloke, dwarf to dwarf, is that a thing?"

Edited 2017-08-16 21:47 (UTC)

He barks out a laugh, grinning around his cigarette--can't help it, that's pretty hilarious--and takes another swig from his mead. The mug is empty, so he motions to Yngvi to top him up.

"Man, wouldn't that be a treat," he says, chuckling. "No, it's like nug shit and vomit stink--sticks to everything like a nasty film. I think it might be worse than the darkspawn blood, and I've been up close and personal with that enough times to know."

He gives Yngvi a wry look and asks, clearly kidding, "Why, you looking to join the Legion? 'Cause I gotta say, this?" And here he holds up his tankard of sweet mead, eyebrows raised dubiously. "Gonna be hard to come by down in the deep, salroka."

A face is pulled; bodily functions from the other end with the face and the teeth isn't something Yngvi had taken into consideration and the idea troubles him more than a lot of other things he's heard lately. He'd eat little cakes with deep mushrooms in them sooner than that.

"I've got twenty nugs, you can keep nugs clean, s'not hard, slippery when wet but they like a bit of dust to scrabble around in, think it's good for them up here? All pale and pasty? Don't fancy a nug all burnt up, might make people think they're sausages more than usual." Yngvi's quiet as he pours, considering that because they're going to be in Kirkwall for winter so he'll need to make some arrangemets in case people get peckish, not one hand is laid upon his nugs with hungry intent or the hand comes off.

This time he can ignore the salroka, maybe it's a habit like how he says mate when he doesn't even mean it because that's reflexive, it's punctuation and pause and a word to fill up space between the rest of the words. "Like it up here and I'm gettin' three wages so absolutely not I'm not doin' that fun as it'd be to see who'd show up to my funeral." Fucking no one Yngvi you haven't just been burning bridges you've been tossing qunari explosives at them and salting whatever you can find. "Avvar trade with Orzammar though, they're stupid and just get boring shit or too stubborn to ask for real good booze that does more than get you drunk, this is a thing you can sit back and enjoy when you're camping after a long day of tramping from one place to another or getting paid by some rich ponce to do whatever thing they can't be arsed dealing with."

“Three wages sounds like you’re making bank.” It doesn’t, really--what’s ‘bank’ to anyone but the nobility in Kirkwall? Yngvi looks like he’s doing well enough for himself to be able to spend time in the Blooming Rose, sure--but he doesn’t look like someone for whom the word ‘security’ means anything except ‘something I don’t have.’

He rolls himself another cigarette, lights it, and takes a puff while listening to his new friend talk, not interrupting, just listening. After he’s gone quiet, after they’ve had a second or two to let silence fill the air between them rather than the rapid-fire of Yngvi’s words, Kit gives him a pensive look.

“I feel like I made you angry,” he says simply. “When we chatted through that sending crystal, I mean.” He taps the ashes off the end of the cigarette, considering it instead of Yngvi. “You sounded pretty mad.”

"Man of the world, having a best friend who was in the Coterie gives you an edge too." Bless Liadan, lady of the coins in the Boneflayers and second in command who can beat the Carta for managing finances and keeping it all straight in her head even on the road. Stipend covers it better than wages but it sounds good. Makes him sound like he's got resources to spare.

Still, he's got two boltholes and one belonging to his lady with her estate and title, much more than most if his life and luck sour.

Watching Kit, he hides the face he makes best he can behind his mug of mead as he thinks on that longer than he wants to. It all comes bubbling up again, all the things he tried to push down when he was getting himsel ready in his lady's house in front of the mirror. "'s life. Lot of things goin' on here, the whole back here thing, bein' a dwarf here thing, or just bein' a dwarf yeah?" If this was a world where they had bottles and labels on them, Yngvi's wound be shredded but as it is he settles for tracing the pattern on the tankard, worn smooth in places by time and too many other hands passing over it. "Good way to find out what friends you got." Or the friends you don't actually have as the case was for him.

”Good way to find out what friends you got.”

He isn’t so sure it is; plenty of topsiders don’t get it, won’t ever get it, much though they try. But if their hearts are in the right place, if they come at this shit in good faith and not looking for a quarrel--

Kit isn’t looking for a quarrel.

He takes another drag off his cigarette and leans his large forearms against the countertop. Around them, the lazy, indolent chatter of the patrons and workers of the Rose around them carries on; there’s nothing of note happening to really warrant a distraction for either of them. “I know you don’t know me from any other old duster come up from Orzammar,” he admits and glances Yngvi’s way, “but I want to be your friend. If you’re in the market for making new ones. What do you say to that?”

Yngvi looks hard at Kit's face, scratches at old memories buried down in an old dark place, digs them out from a place he doesn't disturb easily. Maybe he looks different and he's not entirely convinced but what does he have to lose? It'd go easier with Gunnar to confirm but this is him alone, solo.

"Just cause you helped me out as a kid don't mean you owe me shit," Yngvi sniffs, not as confident in this as he'd like but he's right, he has to be right. Why else would he care? Everything else has come back since he's back so why not this one too?

He continues, sitting up straighter from his slouch because that's what Asher would have done, what his lady would do. "I'm a big boy now, don't need to be mates with me because you feel sorry for the whelp you helped."

”I’m a big boy now, don’t need to be mates with me because you feel sorry for the whelp you helped.”

“What?” If he looks blindsided by Yngvi’s response, it’s because he is. Kit takes the cigarette out from between his lips and blows the smoke off to the side, then returns his full attention to Yngvi; he missed something here, that much is obvious, but he can’t figure out where he went awry. And either Yngvi is mistaking him for someone else, or Kit has just traipsed right into uneven ground without the right boots on.

“I’m--sorry--” he starts, brows drawing together in a deep furrow, “--I don’t remember…” His words taper off into baffled silence, and he looks back at Yngvi with both regret and apology in his eyes. His response falls far short of the mark, but it’s all he has to offer in the moment, as caught flat footed as he is.

Why would he remember? Stupid Yngvi, why are you this stupid, comes creeping, finds a way same as the cold wind does through the tent. Same as you always try to peg it shut, cinch the fastenings, Yngvi forges ahead, grips his mug tight in both hands and leans across the table as if to help Kit remember.

They all looked the same then, what's one more face in the dark, in the dirt, how many faces did Kit see all his life before the Legion and after, just as hollow in the same places, the feral starveling fire in the eyes.

"There were humans and they had shivs, me and Gunnar were smaller," he's insistent, he remembers this, he remembers this so clearly now and why is it so important that Kit does, why does he care, he doesn't, he shouldn't, this is more than half his life ago. "You stopped them. It was you, I fuckin' know it was you."

Just two faces that passed you by, not even a footnote in your life, that's it, that's always the sum of it Yngvi.

A couple of kids in the streets of Darktown, just two warm bodies repurposed by the Carta to do the rough work, to thrive or die for the family, and the family's bottom line. Two young scamps without any manners who'd have been no match for six drunk Marchers looking to rough up some dwarf kids before their shit ale and gin worked its way out of their systems--

It had felt good to put them face down in the dirt and teach them a thing or two about backing the fuck off. He hadn't even needed to use either of the axes that he'd carried with him since he was about the age of those two boys, if not younger--

Kit stares back at Yngvi in dumbfounded silence, the slow light of recognition kindling in his eyes.

"...you got taller," is his stupid response, along with a hesitant, wondering sort of smile. He shakes his head in disbelief, reaches for his cigarette.

Darktown was always Darktown and will always be Darktown; the underbelly of Kirkwall that ripples with that thick smoke choked in from the foundries and the spray of the sea, a damp that hangs in the air with the misery and the malice. Darktown is the great hall and misery, malace, suffering, shattered dreams, drowned hope and all the rest are the high lords and ladies all pay homage to. You sit at their table and glance sidelong. Never look too long or then your luck sours.

Yngvi or Gunnar or both of them must've done it then. He still remembers it. Flashes here and there (maybe he'd remember more if he dreamt, that's something he's noticed living around humans and elves and elfbloods as long as he has) of how sharp the blades had been and the tang of his blood in his mouth when he'd been grabbed hard enough that he'd bitten his tongue, Gunnar's sweat that even then had the acrid layer of whatever he'd been working on with the alchemists.

And then another dwarf, not one of theirs--

The laugh chokes out of him, like he's back in the Vauquelin estate in front of one of his lady's mirrors (if only, if only). "Not much. Fucked up royally then, missed a few dinners for that." Missed a lot of dinners because even an investment needs some lean periods because it has to be reminded that it isn't the only one.

Kit doesn't laugh; his smile grows pained at those words: "Fucked up royally then, missed a few dinners for that." It doesn't shock or stun him, but something in him cracks at it anyway, some part of him that remembers being that disposable child down in the dark; he was a prized fighter until he suddenly wasn't. How quickly the Carta had ripped him apart then.

"Yngvi," he starts to say, lifts a hand as though to brace a hand on his shoulder like he would a son, a nephew, but he stops himself, scratches at his short beard instead. At last he drops his hand to his cigarette again, picks it up, and takes a drag from it. "Shit, I don't even know what to say."

When flinching is trained out of you (trained isn't the most accurate word but if he goes fishing around for them then he'll think on it too long and best not, not in public) you adopt other ways to do it. Shaking his hair out of his face is a production his collar gets involved in when it gets down there too because you don't flinch when people touch you, that's the first big mistake you make after all, then they know weakness sure as the wolf spots the weak, the very old, the very young first in the flock.

"What's there to say?" It's a long time ago now (not that long ago though, Kit one of the few people who could hazard a fairly accurate guess at his age) so he shoves down whatever he's feeling, puts on a smile he practiced enough that it's good, better than good, looks right convincing. "Grew up, didn't get m'self killed. Had plenty to say on the crystal I think."

"What's there to say? Grew up, didn't get m'self killed. Had plenty to say on the crystal I think."

At that Kit smiles again, a warmer grin that shows some white teeth. "Yeah, you said a fair bit," he agrees. He tries not to, but he ends up going a bit quiet again, considering the young man who sits at the table with him with new eyes. It's rare for him to cross paths again with the people he's helped throughout his life--mostly because he does what he can to put some distance between them. Better them only know that he helped them once, rather than know him any better than that. (Before he can let them down.)

He digs his heels in against the instinct to bolt, turns his slight fidgeting instead to fiddling with his cigarette. "For what it's worth," he says, "I think you've done real good for yourself."

Life as a mercenary means people drift in and out. Some of them are contacts for jobs, equipment, lodgings, odds and ends or just bits of gossip, some of them are firm friends you know how to get hold of or leave notes for. Even nobles become people you become accustomed to on a regular basis too since that's the nature of it all; work for them, go to the parties, mingle, find new work. (None of them are his lady, none are so loved by all, none do quite so much or have that same presence she has.)

Not knowing what to do with this information because when did another dwarf last tell him that? Has another dwarf ever said that without a qualifier? Wasn't there always something about improving himself. About how he could do it better, faster, quieter, no unbridled praise in the Carta and he can feel his cheeks heat in a way he will absolutely blame on the drink if he's called out on it. "Yeah you say that, don't know 'bout all the other shit and you-- I mean shit, Legion to this? How'd that even work? Legion to Darktown to wherever you went to now." The deflection is a little desperate, mead sloshing over his hand as he refills his drink but this is embarrassing, what does he do with those words?

He doesn't try to draw any attention to how Yngvi's hands shake, spilling a bit of mead across his fingers, and instead turns to tap ash off his cigarette. It's a deflection, but it's still a good question, one that Kit feels he needs to provide an answer for. What kind of answer is the only thing.

"I left the Legion," he replies, tone carefully neutral. Then, "Well, I didn't leave--no one ever really leaves, it stays with you--" He pats his chest over his heart. "But I couldn't stay down there, after the Blight. Couldn't stay away, either; I went back, time to time, but not for long." He goes quiet then, studying the end of his cigarette; there's obviously more to say about what led him to the Inquisition, but he seems suddenly unsure of how to say any of it.

"But you're dead. With the Legion." Admitting things to another dwarf about dwarf stuff is a slightly more tricky country to navigate because everyone keeps moving borders and boundaries but he's been with the Inquistion near a year, he can claim he picked things up here if he wants. "Isn't the whole deal that you just stay down there and die down there, how d'you even come up here?"

Yngvi had been a kid who hadn't cared much more beyond making sure he had food in his belly when he'd met Kit, he certainly hadn't been going to ask after his life story back then but this...this is something. Something he knows not personally but about going back and not being able to stay and that murky strange business.

"Yeah. That's the deal." Kit remains very still, looking at his half-empty mug of mead. He picks it up, twists it to look at it a second, then drains a substantial portion of its contents in one go. When he sets it down again, he's still quiet.

It's not that he's avoiding answering the question; Kit's deft enough at deflecting questions when he doesn't want to answer them. It's the sheer enormity of the reason, the gravity of his own mistakes--his crime--that makes him stop short before he can even begin speak it. Like being at the bottom of the mountain and looking up.

"We came up," he says, after a long spell of silence, "to fight the Blight. Went to Denerim, saw that mess." He waves a hand idly; for a second or two, he struggles to find his words, and there's an odd little smile at the corner of his mouth when he speaks. "I saw so many surface dwarves there, you know. They had good lives, got to spend their days in the sunshine--what difference did it make to them if some deep lords thought they'd lost their stone sense? What's the shame in being casteless up here when you've got the chance for so much?

"And it got me thinking--it made me think, if my folks had just come up here when I was a little thing--if the other dusters had just come up here, instead of..." He trails off there, jaw clenching, then unclenching.

The Blight is a thing that happened somewhere else and made Kirkwall harder to live with. It's uncomfortable to hear about it. Boneflayers didn't talk too much on those things since they were all a mishmash of places and people, and Asher more Avvar than he was doglord, too young to have been a soldier but too many people all flooding in here hungry, desperate, and probably sad but it's not like people in Kirkwall weren't hungry and desperate already so why was he expected to care then and still care to this day? It was the people in the dark and the people in the alienage who lost out the most to that flood of folk.

Still, doesn't change that he doesn't like hearing about it much but he asked so he listens.

"Been to Denerim after that, full of cheap tat," Yngvi proclaims because that's probably helpful yeah? Can't let Kit think Denerim is the be-all, end-all, Denerim isn't all sunshine. (Still shame in being casteless, live long enough up here and stay put in a place and there are those who carry it all on their back like the Dalish do, asking ancestors permission to sneeze.) "Spend their days in the rain too, like, s'all sort of balanced out and you got taxes and all, someone's takin' a cut."

Good life, what the hell is that, how do you even measure a good life? He squints, tips his head to examine Kit, wonders how someone can live the life he has and see a good life instead of maybe just a better life.

Yngvi knows the other uncomfortable truth though. "How does a demon get into the world, well a mage has to go make a certain sort of deal usually it's a whole nasty business and that's usually how a duster gets their family up to the surface but a demon deal ends a bit quicker than a dwarf one."

"...but a demon deal ends a bit quicker than a dwarf one."

"Yeah," Kit replies, and he agrees, with all of it. No, maybe 'good' wasn't the right word, maybe 'better' was... well, better. Maybe trying to put the mass of feeling and memory that led to his departure from the Legion into words was the mistake. He can feel the pressure of Yngvi's scrutinizing gaze on the side of his face, and while he doesn't exactly wince under it, he does reach for his cigarette again, only to discover that it's finally burnt out and there's nothing left of it. He mashes the cherry out in the ash tray.

"Maybe I just didn't want to die for fucking Orzammar twice."

Flagging over one of the girls, Yngvi puts on his best smile for a mug of the house special ale because it's been forever and sometimes a man does miss that, one for Kit too because Yngvi has zero shame about drinking the drink someone else doesn't want.

Yngvi wouldn't want to die for Orzammar once. Wouldn't want to die for a place once. Not even Kirkwall (especially not Kirkwall because as much as he loves it, what has it ever actually done for him really?) but maybe there's a different pride or something similar you get if you belong to a place. Humans with their home countries. Elves for the home they don't have. Dwarves that did come from down there.

So his question is...awkward. It shows on his face because he's young and not some practiced honeyed bard, morbidly curious about dying for somewhere. Not for people (his lady who he'd open a vein for, the Boneflayers and Aura Hardie who he'd lay his life down for, Wren who wouldn't let him probably but who he'd still fight for) and some bigger more complicated things that he thinks matter more than home. Things that have gotten him in arguments lately. "Was it really for Orzammar?"

"No." It's not an answer he has to mull over for very long; the truth comes to him easily, and it's probably one he's always known, even if he hasn't exactly had the opportunity to put the thought into words. He shakes his head once, jaw working as he tries again to find the right words, and fails. Instead he reaches for the mug of ale, briefly glances Yngvi's way in thanks, and then sips from it.

Once he's done with it (for the moment, anyway), he sets it down and says, "If I died for anyone, it was for the Legionnaires."

Suddenly self-conscious over how much of himself he's been pouring into this conversation, he glances at Yngvi again wearing a chagrined expression. "This is probably a lot more about some old guy than you ever wanted to know, huh?" he says, his tone and expression self-deprecating out of sudden nervousness.

"Shit, I-- I didn't expect you to answer that one." So rare are the occasions when Yngvi's given an answer to questions like the one he just asked that he's unsure what to do with what he's found out. It's a big thing. To have someone tell you that and it makes him feel strange, like maybe he's been trusted with it even if they're miles from Orzammar or anyone that'd give a shit about why a dwarf does or doesn't do anything.

It's a subtle distinction but he finds himself nodding before he finds his voice. "Yeah, I get that. Like, I'd do that for the Boneflayers and there's a few folk I'd do a lot for. Open a vein. No questions." See, Yngvi can do dwarf humour too.

(Only he doesn't mean those veins, he means his, without hesitation, without thinking, without flinching, he'd do it and wouldn't regret it.)

"Listen, you could be Orlesian or a doglord," he teases with a big grin, leaning over to give Kit a shove, "'sides you're not old. You'd be fuckin' dead if you were."

"Open a vein. No questions," Yngvi says, and when Kit nods along in silent agreement, he's not talking about the stone kind either. He'd have died for his brothers and sisters in the Legion, if they hadn't died for him, first.

(He likes to wish that they died for him, for the Legion, rather than for Orzammar. It's the only way he can stomach knowing that they're still dead down there.)

His thoughts are leagues away when Yngvi gives him that shove, and he almost sloshes his mead out of his mug when he catches himself on the table. He turns to look at Yngvi in surprise, only to find that big, teasing grin on his face, and he instantly finds himself slowly but surely smiling in return; the kid has an infectious smile, if no one has told him that before.

"'sides you're not old. You'd be fuckin' dead if you were."

That makes him laugh, warm and genuine. "Yeah? I can't be alive and old at the same time, huh? Guess that makes me a spring nug like you in that case." Now if only his knees would agree with him.

"Carta has old people but they're like, proper sort of old and you don't know how they got that old but you ever see cats with one eye, bits gone out their ears, think they're curling their lip at you but no that's just their face? That's old. Then it's rich folk who get other people to do stuff. Maybe you strike it lucky if you do a thing and people look after you." Healers get to be old if the things they're curing don't kill them first, and someone who can do smart stuff like reading and writing, special mending and that, folk'll keep them alive if they can outside the ranks of the nobles or the ones with money but him and Kit's like?

Nah. Don't get to be old and alive. Not if they're the kind that pick up the weapons and do the work.

Besides, Yngvi's seen old people and he takes a drink, pulls a face. "I'd hate bein' old. Sounds proper shit."

[CLOSED] Dwarf business.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject