faderift | [OPEN] Running with my roots pulled up

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Running with my roots pulled up

WHO: Bruce ~~Banner~~ and whoever else
WHAT: Rumors abound. Bruce is good at pretending he can't hear anything. A dracolisk makes everyone's life hell.
WHEN: Across Justinian
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Belated open log thing for the remainder of June; prompts and such are under the cut. Starting in brackets but feel free to switch to prose and I will follow. If you want specific prompts/starters, let me know @

knightblazer or PM this journal!

one. trouble on four hooves. (stables)

[It's not exactly the first time the horsemaster is on his case and it probably won't be the last as well, if the current situation is to go by it.

Horsemaster Dennet wasn't exactly thrilled with the dracolisk that had decided to trail all the way back here with him (muttering along the lines of 'as if one of them wasn't enough'), but the one that Bruce... was stuck with had a tendency for more collateral damage. Nothing major, at least, but after breaking three gates and four fences in its apparent nightly ritual of getting out of the stables there were some lines that needed to be drawn. Thus, this current situation.

The hammer in his hand pounds loudly against the nails as Bruce does his best fixing up the damage the dracolisk had caused in the last few nights. The sleeves of his threadbare shirts are rolled up, for even with the chill here pounding away like this still made him sweat quite a bit, especially as he continued to toil away the hours.

Beside him the dracolisk chewed delicately on some hay, clearly much calmer and less prone to violence now that its human was around.]

two. not quite back to business (healing tents, courtyard)

[It was impossible to ignore the rumors, even if they weren't that hotly circulated, for better or for worse. But still the damage had been done and it would be a lie if he said that things were the same as before.

Nothing was the same as it used to be. After the fallout with Adelaide things didn't really quite look up. Patients who once came to him for help now avoided his gaze entirely and went to others, and the new ones who came in now looked at him with wariness, with all the suspicion that frustrated Bruce more than anything else. This was one of the reasons why he hid his magic away, why he stuck to herbs and what he could do with nothing but his head and his own two hands. He was here to help and he didn't need his magic to do it. It wasn't worth any of this.

(But of course, he deserved it. He knows that. He deserves every bit of this.)

Still, regardless of everything, he came here to do a job and despite all that had happened, there were always going to be people who needed help. So Bruce does the best he can, going around the courtyard to treat whoever was willing to accept his help and aiding anybody who came to his tent while he was in there.]

three. midnight mulling (battlements)

[The battlements had, in a way, become something of a sanctuary to him now. When the night gets this dark and most of Skyhold is asleep, the biting chill of the cold and the silence of the night comforts him well.

On most other nights he'd have the excuse of potion brewing to be up here but tonight that desire isn't there. He sits on the floor, back against one of the walls as he glances out to the mountains that surround them, the sky above that twinkle with countless stars. When everything feels so vast and overwhelming its easy enough to lose himself into the sight, to let them take him away from the chaos of his mind and his soul. To find that momentary peace within himself again, when every part of him rages for something else otherwise.]

wildcard.

[Feel free to throw in your own prompt or PM/contact me to plot out stuff!]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[Even Bruce has heard of the horrors that had been Kinloch Hold - hard not to, since he had still been in a Ferelden Circle at that point in time. The Blight was one thing, but to hear of what happened, to imagine the gruesome things that spread around... that had been one of the many reasons then why Bruce resolved to make his choice to do something, to try and make a difference. To prove that things could be better as long as they tried.

How that had all turned out instead.]

Even if I didn't leave then, I'd have been an apostate anyway when the Circles fell. [Not that Bruce had been there - in fact, he had been far, far away when it all went down. Harlem had still been a wound all too fresh, the aftermath of it something that had taken him so much time to get over. Even now he's still not entirely over it. Harlem had been the beginning of the end - or maybe it was just the end. It's hard to say on some days. But now its probably impossible to find an answer.

A finger scratches against his arm, an unconscious gesture as he stares out into the night, the mountains and the sky, watching the stars twinkle. Times like these, its almost easier to believe that Thedas could be at peace, that there was no war, no Corypheus, no Rift and no demons. If only.]

I can imagine so. [He eventually says after a pause.] It's all the more commendable. Being a parent must be hard during these trying times.

If you're in that much pain, all the more reason to not get drunk.

[He says that with a mildly unimpressed look, although he supposes its too late to really say that now, since its clear that she's speaking from past experiences. But hopefully now she'll keep in mind if something like that ever happened again - if she gets... 'shot' at.

Speaking of that, Bruce can only blink at the explanation and subsequent demonstration that is given to him. He... can sort of see what she's trying to show, although its still hard to wrap around his head. (For one, what exactly is a pistol. Or a musket.) As much as he can understand from her, it feels like she's describing some sort of portable catapult. Which, given how large catapults were, only made it all the more confusing.

But besides that, he could get the gist of it. Whatever a 'pistol' or a 'musket' was, they still sounded dangerous. Bruce wouldn't want to be at the end of one.]

It sounds very bad. [...that's the best he can say, really.] I suppose its a good thing you don't need to worry about something like that hurting you here.

[The details Bruce will never talk about, but its easy enough to simplify what he learned from his mistakes, the guilt he still carries, the danger he's now become.]

It's magic. What can one expect from something that is still so unknown after all the Ages spent understanding it? [There's a bitter twist to his words here but Bruce doesn't hang on it for long; there's no point anyway. It'd only remind him of things best left untouched and silent.] It's something nobody was ever meant to have. Or at the very least-- [A brief pause.] --not humans.

There's always the usual cold and fevers running around, and injuries from construction and soldiers who need healing from their missions. [He gives her a slight shrug.] Whichever you feel is most suitable to what you can do.

[Bruce more or less pinches the bridge his nose and lets out another sigh.

(Hear it. Just hear it.)]

I don't have any reason to own a mount.

[He's a healer, for crying out loud. He rarely goes out of Skyhold as it is.]

[Please call him adorable to his face, he will have no idea how to respond to that.]

Um-- [Give him a minute here, Ser Warden, this is all very sudden and he needs a bit to process all of this--] --I can make my own dinner.

[...yeah, that's all he's got.

See: his currently very unsure expression.]

But you have never been shot. [For a brief shining moment, she is the expert, only she's teasing before she has a question of her own.] Would magical healing do anything to alter my state of mind at all?

[There was also whatever they gave her on the mercifully separate occasions where she broke her wrists, a rag over the mouth and nose until the world went dark around her and she woke up with a mouth that felt dry as the desert.

One day she'll draw her pistols again since the person that called her a demon when she spoke about them is a friend, and since rifters aren't treated with so much fear and hostility. Although that...that's less of a concern now, since she counts herself as Inquisition, and it does make her wonder about how much the Blights and wars must weigh on them here when there are so many things she takes for granted that they simply don't have. They have magic, true, but they don't even use magic for many of the things she'd think they'd use it for.]

Who is to say what the future holds in Thedas when we spill through the rifts? [Araceli and the Outsider might have talked. Araceli might know how to make gunpowder back home anyway. What could go wrong.] You're saying there's nothing at all between magic and the variety of weapons to hand that couldn't do the same sort of thing?

Broken bones and injuries sound more like my forte. ( She pauses, still seeming uncomfortable about something. )

So what's the deal, anyway, do I just come around here whenever I want to help out?

An injury is an injury, regardless of what the nature of the injury is. [Be it being stabbed or burned or... shot, the result is still the same. Wounds bleed, infections are a danger and pain is always a constant. And treating injuries is what Bruce came here to do in the first place - be it through magic or working without it.

The next part of her words has Bruce pausing. It's a fact that the Rifters are... well, they're certainly nothing like what Thedas has known. Somedays he can believe their claims of other worlds and places, but other times he can't help but wonder if they just came from some distant land that went beyond the borders of the world that their maps show.]

Not to my knowledge. [Well, maybe besides the Qunari blackpowder, but Bruce's knowledge of that is only minimal. Only tales of what it could do in Seheron, and what he saw in the aftermath.] But I suppose you can't discount the possibility.

[A blink at the question, since for him that all came out rather... left field.]

Whenever you feel like you can. [He says, almost echoing her words.] No point forcing yourself and it ends up needing somebody else to take care of you, too.

This subject won't be dropped. Simply postponed.

[They need another spirit healer. They're at war, and there's no room for cowardice. Neither Anders nor Justice can wrap their minds around this stance, but right now they don't need a fight. With one more glare, Anders heads off to get back to work.]

[ There's a lengthy pause. Cassandra's own history with magic is a complicated one. It had taken a long time for her to stop blaming all mages, all magic, for her brother's death. It's all too easy to understand Bruce's fears; she can sympathize with him, and even respect him for it. She had seen too many mages who did not take the responsibility of magic seriously enough, and someone had always ended up paying the price for their negligence.

But then...there had been Galyan. The mage who had taught her so much, who had changed her entire outlook. She bites her lip, glancing over at Bruce. She had appealed to his faith once before, and still he had been skeptical. ]

Are you Andrastrian, Bruce? Do you believe in the Maker?

[ Not judgmental - even the Right Hand of the Divine wouldn't get very far condemning everyone who doesn't believe. Merely curious. ]

[There's a very long pause on Bruce's end, this time. Did he believe in the Maker? That's... well.

It's easy to say 'no'. In fact, the answer is no, but at the same time its more complicated than that. Believing the Maker was something you just grew up with - or at least it had been for him, from where he came from. The Maker was somebody you believed in and there wasn't any question about that. Even if his life hadn't been the best back then, at least there had been the Maker. The Maker was always there, watching, waiting, knowing. Giving you what you needed, he was told before, and all you had to do was to seize it.

Even when he lived in the Circles, the Maker was still in his life. Everything he had been dealt with was a trial, he believed, and all he had to do was to rise against it. So long as he proved himself, he became better, became good - then surely he would be recognized. The harder the challenge, the greater the reward; and so if the Maker would give him so many trials to go through then surely, it meant that he could be something so much greater. That he could be more than the helpless child who was hated by his own father, no longer remembering himself as the powerless boy who couldn't protect his own mother. He would be more than that.

But then--came the failings, the mistakes, the deaths and the ruin and Harlem. He remembers the way everything became crushed in that one night, that moment when he knew nothing mattered anymore. Regardless of what he did, the pain he lived through, the suffering he endured--nobody was going to see. Least of all The Maker.

What reason would a divine being care for a monster like him?

That's when he had tried to do it. To bring an end to the suffering, the pain, the hurt and the anger. To remove himself from the equation and take away the threat he kept bringing to others. But it hadn't take, and when even death wouldn't accept him Bruce could do nothing else but move on.

Bruce realizes belatedly how tightly his fists have clenched and he forces himself to relax, letting out a long, slow exhale. That had all been in the past. A past that he'd never escape from, yes, but--that's neither here nor there. In the end, nothing really matters. The only true certainty in his life is the anger that forever boils underneath his skin.]

No. [He finally says, voice tight, every part of him forcibly still.] And even if he is real, he's not somebody I could place my faith in.

[Not after everything.]

That depends entirely on your reasons. And do not insult me with some ignorant babble involving fear of being sent to the Circle. I hear enough of that from the garden variety apostates present who have never lived in one and draw their basis on fearmongering and rumor.

[There are days she'd quite like to shake Korrin (were she not so huge) for her stubborn clinging to fear/hate of the Circle with no basis in fact to support it.]

I will not rest easy without assurances that you have at the very least received some sort of training. The ill-educated are at too great a risk to burn themselves into a husk or outright kill themselves without adequate instruction on how to control their gifts.

[She's struggling with being very angry about the deception and very concerned that the man will somehow come to harm. At the same time. People underestimate the very real threat that magic can be, especially to those who have it.]

[Bruce, to his own credit, manages to keep his own expression stoic, even if part of him kind of wants to laugh a little at the irony of it all. He wouldn't let himself be here if he couldn't keep himself in control. That had been his own personal stipulation to allow himself to join the Inquisition and try to help its cause. Aside from that one slip up with Anders, nothing else has given him pause on that front.

Still, there's no real way to fully hide the wry curl that comes at the corner of his lips.]

I wouldn't dare to do so, madam. [His voice is at least as honest as he can make it to be.] I choose to keep it quiet because its easier to do my job here. Not all are willing to accept the help of a mage, as you and I both know.

[There are other reasons, of course, but Bruce knows better than to say them. Hopefully this alone can suffice.]

Edited 2016-06-29 10:56 (UTC)

Makes sense. Doubt it'll happen, though.

[Flemeth would never have allowed a daughter to be anything other than proud, and there were times when Morrigan hadn't felt like a mage precisely. A Witch of the Wilds was very much a thing in and of itself that, the isolation that had come with it along with the teachings no Circle had known, and the time she had travelled with the Hero had only confirmed that. Her reputation in the Orlesian Court since was one of an apostate too, something scandalous. A sorceress. A dangerous and secretive creature that moved in another world to any of them that they could seldom grasp.

She had believed in power and survival. Ends she still believes in but there is salvaging the past, making the world less mundane before that is lost to them. How much knowledge even diluted by Chantry teachings and fear has forever slipped through their fingers with this war?]

Still you left. Or fled, that was how they phrased it prior to the fall of the Circles, was it not? [Reasons for leaving Circles were very few after all, that much Morrigan had learned in her time spent with Wynne during the Blight. The rare exceptions to being locked away, usually if a mage was required to fill the Grey Warden ranks or if a healer was truly needed but there could always be something else.

Had that been the case with him? It is still early but she may learn; he did tell her much before, and she likes him well enough after all.]

It is the task of a parent to prepare their child for the world as best they can. There is much I would protect him from yet not so much that I would do him more harm than good, you understand? There is a long and dangerous journey before him, and the lands will grow darker still before it is done. Yet I will be here, I will allow no harm to come to him. [The flame in her palms is lost when they curl into fists, her voice dropping into a low murmur edging on a growl; her gaze is far from him as she too looks out over the mountains as if searching for something or someone, the thing that might come. That terrible dreadful thing that would part her from her son. Yet the dangers are all around her and she knows it same as he must have fear discovery all the while he was here.]

You don't get out of Skyhold much? You haven't any skills in the field? The mount certainly seems to have reason to be owned by you. If it's a matter of learning, I'm certain we can find a suitable teacher...

Doesn't hurt to be cautious.

You have spells that freeze people solid. Or they make it look as if people have been struck by lightning. Mines or walls of flame, or ice. I cannot begin to truly comprehend the entropy spells when I read about them as a break from my studies, or spirits. Especially not the spirits. [Not for lack of trying but that's why she's resolved to speak with the mages on the Council or a great understanding rather than just relying on her books after all. Treating most injuries she can do, or she knows enough about, even some of the nastier things she's seen. Including what happens if people get poisoned by the things in the waters of her home.

What magic can do? She wouldn't even begin to know how to treat it.]

Rifts have dropped things from places, is what I am saying. It spat out these ridiculous spectacles that shaded the eyes but oh what a sight they were, I couldn't look at my companions for fear I would laugh instead of sealing the rift shut. A pistol could fall through. [Or her and the Outsider could meet a blacksmith. And Anders could tell her one thing and Araceli would know the correct substitution to make so she could make gunpowder. Waterproof gunpowder at that.]

Magic must find allies within its own because it will not find them without.

[See, Vivienne can appreciate that people do not trust mages and thus some would not wish to go about advertising it. Appreciate it, but does not mean in the least she agrees. Ignorant people will remain ignorant and superstitious. This is one of the many reasons a Circle exists. It provides a safe haven for mages to practice their craft away from the common, aggressive rabble.]

I will concede that I am impressed at your restraint in only using mundane methods of treating others when you had better at your disposal. But do not suppose that to mean that I am not exceptionally disappointed that you did not share the truth with me.

The truth is out now, however. Have you been treated ill by others?

[ She waits, patiently, but watching him closely as he considers his answer. She can't help but notice the way his hands clench into fists, the way his expression tightens. Something had happened, then. He had lost his faith, and badly. ]

I see.

[ Quiet, as she absorbs what he had said - and what he hadn't. Her brow furrows slightly as she thinks. Faith in the Maker has always been such a part of her life, the steady rock she could fall back on for support when all else fails, that it's difficult to imagine life without it. A life where that comfort and support had been pulled out from under her feet. A life where she is alone.

It's terrifying to contemplate. ]

What - [ She stops, struggling for words. What else is there, she wonders, but doesn't ask. She wants to help him, not make him feel even worse. ] What do you place your faith in, then?

[ Right now he's not being adorable, he's just being confusing. She squints at him, then slowly glances to the left and the right, as if perhaps hoping to find some meaning in other directions. Having found none, she returns to looking at him, and cocks her head to the side. ]

Are you...asking me out to dinner?

[ ?????? ]

[Bruce's response is to shake his head - mostly due to the first question.]

I'm a surgeon. Not exactly something that does well in the heat of battle.

[Sure there's his magic, but... that's not something Bruce will use unless he really really has to.]

[Bruce hums quietly in response. Call it fleeing, call it leaving - its still the same result in the end. He was branded an apostate (truth) and the Templars wanted him back to keep him under lock and key (false). Truthfully Bruce had no issue with being locked up; he deserved it, if anything. Why he had to evade that, however, was not for his sake, but for others. If the Templars did ever manage to crack the secrets of his body, of his existence... he didn't want to think what Thedas would be like now.

Even if he had to keep on fleeing for the rest of his life, Bruce would do so if it meant that his research would be kept away from the wrong hands.

He hears Morrigan's words and though he cannot relate what its like to be a parent, the protection she shows to her own son reminds him of the little he remembers of his mother. She had been kind, amazing and gentle and the reason why he doesn't simply let himself loose despite the want to sometimes, the urge to let everyone and everything feel all the rage that boils inside of him. There are people like her and others, who do not deserve the fate of a rampaging monster. There are people who deserve so much more than what they have.]

I understand. [A soft murmur.] And I think that makes you all the greater for it. In my own travels I've seen so many children abandoned by their parents who would rather care for themselves instead. [And to see them whiter and rot, so many of them, always brought heartache to him as he recalled his own shattered childhood, and the ruined ones of these poor souls who didn't even understand why their own parents would betray them so.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 5 of 7

[OPEN] Running with my roots pulled up

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

IT KEEPS HAPPENING

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