[Open] "Bored."

[seesobserves]

WHO: Sherlock Holmes and Open
WHAT: Working off some steam by way of target practice
WHEN: Early Firstfall
WHERE: Skyhold training grounds
NOTES: Either prose or brackets welcome!

The first arrow seems to land wildly off-course, on the very edge of the target, but the archer who fired it keeps an impassive face while he raises the next one. To anyone who happens to be watching, it's clear this time that he actually is taking aim.

The second arrow hits the entire other edge of the target. Sherlock draws the third, notches it, takes aim.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The arrows fly in more rapid succession as he goes on. While the lines aren't perfect, it soon becomes apparent that instead of aiming for the bulls-eye, he's firing a pattern into the target: specifically, a smiling face.

Comments

[amygdalae]

Bruce always kept himself busy in Skyhold as much as he could; being busy meant more reasons to not deal with people he'd rather not have to talk to, and he was here to do a job in the first place, anyway.

The particular spot where Bruce needed to go to at this time did involve him having to pass by what counted as the Inquisition's archery range, or something like that. Normally at this time there really wouldn't be much people around, but today clearly something had changed.

Bruce blinked at the sight of multiple arrows stuck onto the target, blinking again when a new one jabbed itself in along with the others. He turned his gaze on the direction it had come from, eventually getting to the point where the shot was fired. He looked at the man (archer?) as he nocked a new arrow and shot it without even pausing for a moment to aim. Either he was very good or, well, just wanted to shoot for the heck of it.

[seesobserves]

The truth was in fact somewhere in between — he was decently good, and didn't care enough about his aim in this case to carefully plot out each shot. It only had to be good enough for the shape to make sense.

If he noticed he was being watched — and he did — he didn't give any indication until his work was finished. Just after the face came into being, he fired off one more arrow. This one landed in the bulls eye.

Sherlock lowered the bow, admiring his handiwork. His mouth twitched, and expression that was neither a smile nor a frown.

Then he stepped forward to retrieve the arrows. The first one was pulled out of the target relatively easily, but the second proved to be stubborn. Sherlock tugged once, twice, then placed his other hand against the target's face to give a bit more leverage.

[amygdalae]

Well if he was going to do this in the open then it was only natural that people were going to look. Although Bruce was trying not to stare too much, since that'd be rude. But considering everything, it was proving to be a bit hard to take his eyes away. There were... a lot of arrows. Was he going to take them out and shoot them all again?

--then again, he supposed it wasn't as the arrows could just be left there.

He continued to watch the archer (he certainly looked... spry, for an archer, Bruce noted mildly) take out the arrows from the target, keeping a mental tally on them each each arrow that was taken out. Just how many did he shoot into there?

[seesobserves]

Nearly twenty - nearly an entire quiver. Which gave Sherlock more than enough time to think on the man who was watching him. A little mental exercise, based on the few details he'd spotted out of the corner of his eye.

Slight bruising on his face. Older scars, too, on his hands, but not from fighting. The blow to the face was recent, and there was no sign of his having fought back. A pacifist who got punched was probably standing up for something that made the other person angry. That last bit was conjecture, but it wasn't as if there'd been a lot of rowdy carousing at the tavern. If someone was throwing punches, they had a reason apart from being drunk.

"Was it the mages, or the elves?" he called out.

[amygdalae]

Bruce blinked at the question, abrupt as it had been, and took another second to realize that the man was actually asking him.

"I--sorry," he started, looking pretty confused with how suddenly it had come up. "What?" Mages or elves? Was he asking him what he was supporting? That certainly would be kind of blunt, in Bruce's honest opinion. Of course, ignoring the fact that his feelings on both of those subjects were complicated at best. Well, mostly about mages. Elves he was entirely neutral on.

[seesobserves]

"The person who hit you was taller than any elf, so you could have been defending the Dalish." The next arrow made a dull, woody thunk as Sherlock yanked it out. He gave the man a definitive glance - yes, I'm talking to you. "Then again, maybe not. There's enough tension surrounding the mages to make them a possibility."

Or it could have been both. But there was really no way to tell that.

[amygdalae]

At least now Bruce could see that he was the one that the man was addressing to. Idly he reached up and touched the fading bruise on his head; the pain had long faded, leaving only the mark, and even that would go away in time.

"It wasn't anything as noble as that," he replied, doing his best to give a smile as he replied. "Somebody I knew was being threatened. I just wanted to prevent anything else from happening." Of course, Pel just happened to be an elf and a mage, but that didn't really factor into why he did it.

[seesobserves]

Semantics. The man had to be equivocating.

"Balance of probability; there's barely any other reason for a person to be threatened around here." Unless — oh, there were Tevinters skulking around here somewhere, weren't there? That could be a reason to stay cagey about it... and just there, Sherlock found he didn't particularly care enough to dig. The information would out eventually, if it had to.

"After all," he went on, with a subtle air of faux-cheeriness, "we're all in this together."

[amygdalae]

There was truth to what the man was saying, but Bruce himself wasn't one to go into the politics of the issue. For him, it didn't matter - all he saw was somebody he knew being unjustly threatened, and tried to help.

Still, he frowned a little at how obvious the fake-cheeriness was, not entirely approving of that. Of course he knew he had no right to really give any opinions, but false words as such never rubbed him the right way. "We're all here to help, regardless of our opinions on several matters." He tried his best to choose his words carefully, wanting to sound as neutral as possible - stepping on toes was never want he wanted to do. "Otherwise we won't even have a place to have our differences on."