faderift | open | If this is an accident then where's the hurt?

Entry tags:

open | If this is an accident then where's the hurt?

WHO: Yngvi, open
WHAT: A night of regret or Yngvi has attempted to cope and has a night off from that, it goes about as well as expected
WHEN: 22nd/23rd Bloomingtide (evening through small hours)
WHERE: Kirkwall; Hanged Man, various points in the streets, ends up in the Gallows (will possibly detour if you desire)
NOTES: Yngvi's been MIA until pretty much now, perhaps glimpsed in the company of other dwarves but definitely not around Inquisition turf. So. He resurfaces. In grand fashion. Warnings; heavy drinking, drug use (shrooms), language. Yngvi and growing up carta but for real.

The Hanged Man
Joking, well 'joking' aside, family is family and thus family are entitled to sizeable portions of your life and your person as they see fit to carve off for themselves, or so it goes in Kirkwall and the Carta, or how it goes in the part of the Kirkwall Carta Yngvi's been part of all his life until Asher Hardie plucked him and Gunnar from it and took off with them.

Figured that if he did wade back in, there'd be Asher. But no. Just an Inquisition that tosses them at red lyrium and the Gallows and--

And family that welcome him with the sort of open arms Yngvi was expecting. Swallowing him whole into Darktown but after the Gallows it's almost pleasant. Familiar at least. Things don't change. Same damp and iron tang catching in the back of his throat, same hacking coughs, the shadows that watch you same as the ones where he is right now. The Hanged Man with that aroma of piss and vomit should help clear the worst of it. Maybe. Missed a few things and the hair of the dog turned into something else at the announcement. Everything feels like his eyes got swapped in a trade he wants to take back but he can't he can't he can't and do he laughs into his pint about Dalish and Orzammar then laughs again.

Undercity crawl
Eventually The Hanged Man gets a bit too close to nostalgic. He's off. Stuffing something in his face that certainly isn't on their menu but fuck it, it's his. Ain't got much what is so why not? Either you're coming with him out of a misguided sense of responsibility, wanting to see where this mess goes or you're the unfortunate soul a drunk dwarf has staggered right into.

Gallows chaser
All good things come to an end and part of Yngvi knows he does have a place to rest his head. Mess that he is.

Hi Gallows he's back did you miss him? He's maybe missing some clothes but that's neither here nor there now is it? Ignore his call to his lady that's not for your peasant ears.

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Her peasant ears are pointed and pricked up at the notion of this dirty little dwarf having a lady at all, so it's thin little elf hands on his shoulders steering him away from quarters and towards, quite probably, a bucket. A bath may have to be involved at some point, but she'll start with something she's pretty sure she can spring on him unawares first;

"You smell like nothing a lady wants to hear from," she informs him mercilessly. "Come here, petit, let me at you."

The tattoos are on her hands and not her face; they and the accent say city elf, even as the softness of her says probably a hustler because she's definitely not been doing the sort of labor most elves are accustomed to.

Mouth moving faster than his brain, a name tumbles out before he can help himself but 'Melisende' won't mean a thing to her and she's not. Melisende is that one cat prowling about that puts the fear of the Maker into mabari and they look nothing alike. The hands make him jump.

"Why are they soft?"

Because most hands that touch Yngvi in pretty much any capacity have no room for softness and he holds himself very still waiting for someone to round the corner. An uncle, one of his numerous fathers, something that sort of shape. "Can't hear a smell. No. Smell a noise. Can't smell noises. You don't know m'lady." What seems to be the officer, problem.

No one else comes. It isn't quiet - a city, a stronghold, these places are never quiet - but it is quiet enough, still enough. No one else comes, only these two small things being small in a sympathetic shadow, with his puzzled face and her soft hands.

Margaux gives him a little push. "I know ladies," she says, poking him in the nose with her knuckles. "Here, and off with your shirt."

(Don't get excited.)

The shirt gets stuck because Yngvi never did grow into those ears now did he (or it's the potatoes finally growing behind them, been long enough since he washed back there that you could very well plant a decent sized crop behind each one, feed a small family on them) and because he doesn't know where or how or why he's moving his body.

There's a lot in his pockets. "The mushrooms are mine. Might lose wee fingers." Certain folk can't afford losing them. Elves and dwarves right at the top so don't go poking in his stuff with all the sharp bits.

For once, Yngvi feels what might be shame. Please recoil at too many scars, ill-advised tattoos, some bruises and that line of poetry slapped on the titty.

"Could fight you." Petulant. Or striving for it. Kind of hard right now with his nips out.

She's been careful where she steps.

Pays to be, in a city like this. Pays to be careful, when Kirkwall's near enough to the rest of this shithole excuse of a country to risk some familiar faces.

(The Marches are full of the scarred and mean; rather fewer ran around with a Volar on their good arm.)

But this is the problem with watching where you step: You lose track — and quickly — of the rest of it. Darktown is a maze, and one she hasn't seen in years. This cheap attempt at getting her bearings is quickly looking to cost a lot more than planned.

"Watch it —" He staggers, and she snarls, shoving out on instinct. Her pockets may as well be empty, but it doesn't pay to look any kind of easy mark. A better look at him, and her assessment shifts: If he's a pickpocket, he's stone fucking drunk in it. "— Shiiit,"

Melys hisses, because that's far-gone on far-gone. She's not getting any useful directions out of this one.

But there might be something in his pockets, still.

"How're you even upright?"

Edited 2017-05-25 07:37 (UTC)

Ioane is finishing up for the night-- the hours are long and hard, wake early, go to bed late. She's folding laundry in the courtyard when she sees another drunk tumbling home, and it's nothing new, even before she got here. This is about the hour these things pass. Lushes remember where they sleep, and drag heavy feet home to find whatever rest can be got before the next day finds them. Soldiers, she's learned quickly, drink to get to sleep, but this one's a dwarf, she notices out of the corner of her eye. She recognizes this dwarf, which means it's her responsibility.

She pulls a spare blanket down from the clothesline and clicking her tongue. "C'mere, you sot." She hands him the blanket, only realizing belatedly that it's a damn shroud on his size.

It suits her very well that Yngvi get stuck a moment - she doesn't offer to help him, he'll get there in the end and maker knows what he's got in those pockets, she does rather like her wee fingers, but also it gives her time while he's not immediately attending what she's doing to fill a smaller wooden bucket with water from the barrel. She hefts it. This would never work if he were bigger than she is, she thinks, snagging a scrap of fabric that will do for a wash-cloth.

"You shan't," she says, undeterred by this show of petulance, gripping his shoulder - he's probably stronger than she is but he's also much drunker and she can make bolting difficult and unwieldy if she wants to - and unceremoniously dumping her bucket over his head. "Now you hold still--"

These people are their extra rations of height, it's just rude is what it is but no one accused humans of having good manners about them most of the time, a mutter under his breath when he encounters something solid enough that doesn't let him just keep going the way he'd like to. The way he's used to doing.

The thing speaks. Double-rations makes him tip his head back and it's doing that when he's this close that is almost his undoing, arms flailing as he keeps himself upright with his face screwed up like a bulldog jus swallowed a wasp. "Whassit to you 'eh? Not allowed to be walking?"

You wanna go mate? Think you can handle all this? Good boot to the chest and he's an upturned tortoise making disgruntled badger noises is what he is but with a lot of extra teeth so mind the pockets.

"'M Avvar." Yeah. Yeah he can sell her that line. He has totally got this.

If Yngvi wants someone to blame for being stuck in this place under the banner of a cause he's only partially behind, Cullen is probably the best person to project that onto. He's the highest ranking Inquisition member who has made the journey, and let's be honest, it's easy to vent at him. Cullen isn't going to judge anyone who wants to judge him, and without the girls, he doesn't really have a stabilizing influence. Sometimes you just don't want to be sober, and sometimes drinking in your office only means that you'll be interrupted. Here, no one is going to interrupt him. At least, that's what he's hoping.

Though he does recognize the dwarf, the one who antagonized Baldewin, and really that should tell him all he needs to know. Namely, that he shouldn't get involved. There's that tendril of responsibility, though, wound all the way through him and wrapped very firmly around his moral compass. So he comes over. "Are you all right?"

Some sense drove Yngvi here at least. Animal instinct that usually has the smaller beasts lying low when something large comes prowling, holding still so very still as their hearts pound out of their chests because the Gallows, absurdly, is safe. Safer than the undercity where he's been obliged to rest his weary head, jerking awake because someone might knife you for your boots or a slight, real or imagined. The Gallows is hard work and memories and too many bodies but a lot of faces he knows. Some he likes.

(One he very much likes. Could snap him like a twig and take his head off without breaking a sweat, that's what you look for; the person that could kill you nice and easy.)

Looking up, Yngvi attempts a roll. Fails. Trips. Entangles himself. "Ghost of the Gallows!" He shouts, muffled and thrilled and standing on his own feet because-- "s'dark. Where's the light? D'you pilchard m'lantern?"

Manhandling he knows well, still squirming around like a well-greased nug in Margaux's grasp until he gets his head out, shakes the shirt away (dirty as it is, it's incredible it doesn't make a doomed bid for freedom, clawing its way to someone who might try to scrub if the dirt isn't what happens to be holding the stitching together) and he spies the bucket too late.

He opens his mouth to protest.

Swallows a mouthful of water when it sluices over him and emits a high startled yelp of alarm before he sputters. "I did nothing to you! This how you get your jollies? S'in my boots not-monsyoor." Yngvi's Orlesian is atrocious, he can't recall the word for lady in it right now.

There's an art to getting drunk in a place where you might get stabbed and that usually means not looking like you're looking, using whatever it is you're doing to take a glance around, have a listen. All taught by the Carta, honed by the Boneflayers. Handy that way. Yngvi's not wholly unaware of human feet approaching, tenses by way of pulling his mug closer to him but he's been in bad places and there aren't people here who'll get involved.

It takes a while in his drunk haze (maybe more, didn't really ask what the Medicine Seller's mushrooms really do or how long they take to part) to recognise the face. Very blonde. Very feathery. "'m having a drink, s'allowed. Night off? Being back home and everything? In the Hanged Man - ain't you heard what folk're saying?" The words become less muffled once Yngvi actually does pull his head up off his sleeve properly to attempt sitting up. Key word: attempt.

Rey isn't particularly afraid to be out in Kirkwall after dark. Even without the two lightsabers on her belt and the large white mabari that has become her shadow, this city feels like something close to home for her.

She hasn't seen Yngvi in a while, though that could be just as much her fault as his as she's also been scarce, so when he runs right into her it's a little of a surprise, and it takes a second and an offended "Oi!" for her to realize she recognizes the dwarf. Once she does, annoyance melts away a little into concern.

"Yngvi? Are you all right?"

Stupid to get attached to people, especially rifters who could be here today and gone tomorrow and perhaps might one day be revealed to be demons or spirits or perhaps some sort of highly advanced fade slug squelching around in skin but has anyone accused Yngvi of being particularly bright? No. No they have not. Not in recent memory.

His memory isn't really extending far beyond three pints ago unless he strains sometimes right now so don't take that for gospel. (Why would you ever with this one?)

"Rey!" He beams once he's not about to go tipping over, names and faces in that place that don't really get to go dull out of necessity. Something sharp might get stuck in him if he ever forgot those so you train that into someone very young, very small. "I am grand. Had dinner. Supper. Drinks. Chewy drinks. And gifts."

Yngvi's assurances that he's grand don't really soothe the look of concern off Rey's face. She opens her mouth for a moment like she's about to ask a question before thinking better of it and shaking her head.

"You look like you can barely stand. C'mon, I'll walk you home." Because she clearly couldn't have his being found dead in a ditch somewhere on her conscience.

Margaux grips his hair at the nape of his neck and applies her improvised wash-cloth to his face, entirely unmoved by his protests, saying only, "So is the filth," as far as the matter of water now being in his boots. And then a moment later, "Mademoiselle," since he was at least trying.

She has a firm hand for how soft and small - she seems to be trying to work out what's beard and what's just disgusting, Yngvi, what the fuck.

"You are a little more sober now, eh?"

"Home?" Yngvi mouths it first. Repeats it three more times for good measure. Slowly. "I'm home."

This is home. This is Kirkwall and it raised him so that makes it home, doesn't it? Now he's back again, sort of slipped out of the lowest parts of the undercity and below again but everything the light just about skims the surface of to give different sorts of shadows, that's home.

"Whole city is home-- Rey I never took you on the tour!" And his whole face crumples because why didn't he? Oh- wait. Wait it's coming back to him, let him just...yes. Yes there it is, playing that back for the audience right now, it's a live instant replay folks. "Abducted me, bastards, s'why."

"Mademoiselle…" Dragging it out longer than he needs to, he twists his face this way and that until his hair starts to sting enough that his eyes water, blinking at her long enough that he's prompting something. Because this is very familiar in a weird way so he should probably know more than just: "pretty hair, funky ink and all."

(He is unaware he's said that bit aloud. Even with water in his mouth.)

"That's a very scur-- spur-- acc-us-a-tion to go throwin', you even big enough to be tossing that. Petite?" Wait does he drop the 'e' for a lady? Someone smacked that into him once upon a time, someone that just got done thumping a few lessons back into him, why can't he remember. "I've been so much worse. Thought I'd be worse again, new things were a let down."

Or: maybe you should find out what your own state of mind does when you're taking mind-altering substances Yngvi.

He's hopefully too drunk to notice Cullen's hand hovering near his back, ready to attempt to catch the dwarf should he unbalance himself. Attempt is probably also the key word in this case. "No. What are folk saying?" He's not sure that the information will be particularly useful to him, but Yngvi talking is much better than Vngvi shouting, or running, or shouting and running. There's something unsettling about seeing a dirt clot take flight.

She would have blamed herself for his not showing her around, considering she'd been moping and not excellent company since realizing Obi-Wan was gone, however Yngvi's words made that thought die before it reached her lips.

"Abducted you? Who abducted you?" Her brow furrows, her mouth half open like she's unsure entirely what to make of that, but if someone abducted Yngvi she's perfectly willing to track them down now and show them her lightsabers up close. Even if he's clearly escaped. It's the principle of the thing. She doesn't like slavers or kidnappers.

Rolling his eyes is a stupid idea. The whole room decides to go spinning with them and it takes the room a long time to stop. It's still at an angle and he stares off critically into a corner where someone's Tal-Vashoth bodyguard is standing perfectly to attention to assess that yes, listing. The colours are all very bright.

"You what?" Rewinding, pause, playback. Enhance. Kirkwall has at least added something of a vaguely salty air to him because even Darktown gets hit with that but the smell is mostly damp, mostly whatever Yngvi's drinking that might eat a hole in the table if he spilled it when he leans in. "Either they're stupid and oooh it's the Hanged Man let me sit in the seat like that one weren't just some-- some puffed up doglord killing folk with their mates--"

If those dead mates of Yngvi's could maybe stop being in the woodwork he would appreciate it, he leans away, sprawls out over the table so as not to see it. (Kids don't consume mushrooms in an anxious state, or check with your medicine seller what effects they'll have depending on how you are.) "Or demons and blood magic everywhere. And that's just us. Inquisition. S'that us?" Is that question for Cullen? Well Cullen's here he can answer if he likes because Yngvi was sort of 'asked' to round up more dwarves and he did but a bit sullenly.

What is intended as a gentle gesture to convey 'we're in Kirkwall and I'm a dwarf from the Carta so shh it's all good' is a bit heavy on the sleeve flapping flail instead. A lot of noise and motion that he has to course correct for and he staggers, spins around in a full circle then stares because where-- right Rey. Yes.

"Family things, prodigal son returns from where he's been for the past-- so they just. Show up. In my life." Something hiccupy gets into his throat all of a sudden that he's been trying to drown most of the night, the Hanged Man didn't have enough booze or it didn't have the right booze or something about it wasn't working because it just kept rising up again, why isn't it working? "Didn't ask for this, bein' here. Again. Home."

Most people might cut off body parts to get to go home again. Yngvi would cut them off to never go back but they could well be the price of trying to get out of here again. Bits of himself left behind.

It doesn't make a ton of sense. Then again, the dwarf is clearly drunk enough to be sloshing, so maybe looking for sense is a fool's errand. "That's us," Cullen confirms hesitantly, because it seems like the one clear question he can answer. Are they the Inquisition? yes. Even Yngvi, because why not? "We are the Inquisition, but... we're here to make things better, not worse." Now he's taking a little bit on faith, hoping that he's understood the meaning behind the slurred words and disjointed thoughts. "Do you believe that?"

The concept of family being a bad thing is a little bit foreign to someone like Rey. She would give up anything to know who her family was, to feel like she truly belonged somewhere. Even if Maz Kanata had said her family would never return for her, she still wanted to know them. Know if they were still alive, or if the reason they'd never returned was because they were dead on some distant star.

The way Yngvi speaks though, makes it clear enough to her that not everyone feels this way.

"You didn't have to come here," she starts, slowly, shaking her head a little. "You could have said no, couldn't you?"

"Better." Yngvi tries it out as he pushes himself up so he's sitting, head lolling back before he can get that under some sort of control. "I mean, what's better? Red lyrium being gone is better. And-- and less bones? Prob'ly better." Not no bones, this is Kirkwall, this is built on blood and bone and one day they'll build a higher level on top of Hightown and a lower level through Darktown to make up for the amount of dead they have pressing in and around them, it's just the way of it and the Veil will probably smother them if it hasn't ripped itself again. They're stitching that up. The rifters. His lady and folk like her but obviously not like her.

He fingers one of the cuts on his hand from some of the work, cleaner than the rest, a line that has the suggestion teeth did it.

Thinks hard about his words because Yngvi remembers the commander's face better in Templar armour from trying to avoid the commander ever seeing his face when this was Yngvi's proper home before. But all dwarves probably look very much alike when you just see a lot of hair and a coat. "See...Right...It's like this," he stops and starts in this vein for a while, holds up a hand and downs his pint, ignores the thing swimming to the surface to choke him before the words actually get out because someone said you should lance a wound so the body heals. "No one knows what better is? Orzammar, yeah? They think it's better if all the dwarves are good ancestor and paragon loving dwarves down there where 'trade happens' and we all stay in our place. Dalish think all the elves should run off into the woods because they're like Orzammar dwarves and know best, don't want to ask city elves, no no no, why? All stupid ain't they?

"Lot of mages say 'oh look at me I was so sad let me out' but people'd do a lot for a roof and regular meals and folk watching them. And Templars get tricky. " He glances around just to make sure because you never know, you never know. Also that was a lot of words and he's slightly lost again.

Family hurts in the end; him and Gunnar have the Carta, Nasir's got a twin he lost to the Crows and found again, apostates raising babies gives you Amalia, Melisende won't talk about bits of alienage life, Liadan nearly cracked under the loss of hers to the Chantry explosion and resulting chaos then there was Asher's whole mess. So. Yngvi would swerve it really. Only he learned all his tricks from them.

Turns out that he's not as good when he's playing with the same hand as everyone else.

"No. Asher," it's his voice that cracks on that name like it's been doing lately and he screws his face up. "Asher signed us on when he came. Then Asher died but we still wanted to honour the contract for him and the rest of us so I said I'd stay in Skyhold. Only we weren't staying in Skyhold but Melisende said you said you'd stay and Inquisition said 'we need dwarves' and here I am. Here. All the teeth and the bones."

"And I'm Andraste bloody risen," Her hand snatches out to try and tug his collar upright, just enough to keep him off his ass. "So get out of the aisle and try to look alive."

A stout dwarven woman passes by them, trailed by an elf with half her ear gone. Melys exchanges a glare with the latter, angles behind Yngvi like a talisman: See, I've got business here, fuck off,

"You want to make a little coin while you walk?"

Like she'd pay him even if she had the scratch.

"Someone take a hammer to you?" That's incredibly insensitive but this is how statues generally lose pieces and he's only ever seen stone Andraste's. Now if she was calling herself Maferath? Those are always in a weird arrangement, some of them maybe on ropes? Bits of wood and stone on scaffolds and pulleys or something like that, he isn't sure, they're an odd people after all erecting strange monuments to a betrayer. Why waste the effort?

Yngvi's a shit talisman but better than an amulet of Andraste by miles because he can punch, kick, bite, spit - can an amulet do that? No. No it can't. If one can though he wants it.

"What colour of coin? Might roll. Like rolling." Also legs. Where are they, what are they for? Things he will possibly forget at some point on this new venture he's apparently about to set out on.

"Margaux," she supplies, presuming he's fishing for at least a name - this is very familiar, she doesn't appear to have a hint of shame about it, chattering at him briefly in exasperated Orlesian she doesn't expect to be understood when she finds the state of his ears. What the fuck is happening here. Is it the birth of a tiny civilization. Get ready for some genocide, Yngvi's Ear -

"I am bigger than you, no?"

Literally just him.

"That dalish one was snobby to you." Yngvi doesn't quite hear himself because she - Margaux, what's the thing about cats and their mothers that makes absolutely no sense because everyone made it sound like a bad thing when, objectively, actually useful to have cats around? - is scrubbing his ears out but he remembers. Because the snobby Dalish is his boss now too and laughing about that is and isn't why he's here.

With her.

"To some folk, yes, to others absolutely not. Right now? Absolutely." Do you like word games Margaux.

"Only one of us hammered here."

But she'll swat at him with a swath of empty sleeve, because you don't answer dickery with anything less than kind.

"Shiny," There's a colour for you, only kind of colour that matters. "Get a whole lot shinier, you keep on your feet. Ain't in the mood to kick you around like a ball."

Be a bad plan, here and now, be the kind of thing undoes the purpose in having him about. Dwarves kicking dwarves is one thing. Here, human and neck-deep in their territory, it's another. The last thing she wants is to discover this asshole's some long-lost cousin of someone what owed someone what owed someone, or some shit like that. Some people will take any excuse to make life difficult.

"You're not a fun guy."

Please hold while he creases with laughter, bursts right at the seams. Fun guy. Fungi. Oh man that's good sometimes he amazes himself where's the weird elf guy so he can slap his back to make sure he knows this is all him, where are the nug children they should be here to appreciate this.

There's some clean skin once he can breathe. Dirty again when he wipes that away with his sleeve though he reaches for hers because it's there. Because he's got them grabby dwarf hands. "See a shiny thing you think 'maybe that's a bit of gold' when you're wading through a bog but most times? Just some bugger's buckle, one bit what rust ain't eaten yet.

"I roll." He demonstrates. Manages that because survival but does not stick the standing up at the end bit. "To where? M'...what are you? No. Wait...Who!" Nailed it. Look if he's going off with strange humans he needs to have something he can attempt to remember even if drunk Yngvi will likely screw over sober Yngvi because there is no Yngvi that has nice things for more than fleeting moments unless those nice things are material goods that don't actually count. (The real treasure is your heart. Or in it. Someone said that to him and he maybe tried to bite them.)

"The one with the coin," She snaps, then, grudgingly (because really, he's got a point, this is all easier with names) — "Melys."

No point in bothering with a fake one. Easier ways to track her down, if someone starts fixing to.

"Figure you can roll your drunk ass back up to daylight?"

Starlight, at this time of night. Whatever. After a beat, she grimaces, offers out her sleeve once more. Better than holding hands to keep track of the little shit.

"The dalish one is snobby to everyone," she says, on the uncharitable evidence of Beleth's increasing strain in dealing with what she'd clearly not anticipated being quite so complicated a task - Margaux still laughs, sometimes, when she remembers that her insincere suggestion made the cut to be voted upon. "Tilt your head."

She'll tilt it for him, that's fine, can't be sure a man this far into his cups is going to understand things like 'directions'. Taking them, or, like, up vs down.

And then, thoughtfully, "I am much bigger than you this minute," because she likes word games just fine.

"Y'know," he sways too much saying that to get it right, has a moment of 'am I going to throw up and disgrace myself' but it passes after a moment of looking alarmed and bone white under it all that still leaves him dripping cold sweat under his hair, under his collar so he tries again. "Y'know, this place. S'got ears. Whole place. Every bit. Melys. Yngvi knows that."

Half the people just 'happening to be out' at this hour are doing it for a reason if they're not actually out for a valid reason they're going to put a name to. Maybe she knows, maybe she doesn't, he's not going to be accused of not being neighbourly by his new boss unless it's specifically to her because he doesn't need to be nice to her at all ever.

"Is that-- I'll have you know I watched three uncles, one aunt," aunts are infinitely more sensible unless you've put gin in them then forget about it, "and seven cousins go up into the sky, swallowed before there were rifts, humans and elves and horny people only care when it happens to them but us? No. We just get stuck dealing with it." All this with a firm grasp on the sleeve. "Only weird folk fall out, could be slugs, awful Fade slugs with teeth but folk still care more 'bout them. And mages. And nobles than all this."

"Can't wait for her to try it in the alienage, they'll cut her into bits. Feed her to things. Old things. With teeth. Rows of 'em." Both hands attempt to fashion a lamprey mouth in front of his mouth, with what he would assume a lamprey makes, swears blind he spoke to one once, taught him and Gunnar great lamprey wisdoms about survival and clinging tight to a few things. Of course some of them might get all weepy around a Dalish but he knows as many that won't, who'll either have harsh words or nothing at all.

Nearly toppling, his head is more to one side but it's back. Directions are there, those are things Yngvi knows in his bones and knows when he should go with them because it's easier and less likely to result in a bad thing: don't raise your kids Carta, it does bad things. "Never seen someone with hair like yours, s'shiny."

Compliments aside, Yngvi sighs, stares straight up with eyes that have no right to look so clear when he's this drunk because honestly, he won't fight her on that one. "Everyone's bigger'n me this minute. Always. Always always. Just forgot maybe. You feel real big on a mountain or with proper big folk y'know?"

Yngvi, huh. It doesn't ring a bell; lots don't. A few years around here might as well be an Age for all the changing faces. Doesn't mean she won't ask around later —

"Yeah? You trying to keep yourself in or out of them?"

Ears. He's talking enough to lay even odds, though she'll stake a third option, the one that goes too pissed-out to remember.

"Lords got money. Mages got power. Demons got novelty,"

Does she really believe Rifters are demons? Jury's out. But it sounds a little less fucking stupid. She starts off slow, the better to check what direction he's angling towards. Place is a labyrinth, and she's not fixing to find the monster in the middle.

"It don't matter who. Don't matter where. People take." That's nobility for you, and maybe they both oughta learn from their example. You fill your hands, you fill your pockets, you do what you can to keep on top of the heap. "You want someone to give a shit, you gotta give them a reason."

Oh Melys if he hadn't left all his drink in the Hanged Man he would drink to that because wow isn't it just rude that they go and do things like that? So maybe it's more than a few for Yngvi. Maybe he can hang names on people responsible for making it necessary to go seeking out new faces but still. Principles. You have to have them. Or scruples? Are they one and the same? This is the sort of language bullshit Orlesian statue fondlers are here for.

"This place is an ear, all of it is a….big swirling drain, someone's on top of someone, on the side of someone, don't matter." Yo don't need to know all the intricate ins and outs of it to know all there is to know but he does know. Or he knows enough. A dwarf doesn't have magic but there's something that Kirkwall has that nowhere else does, a thing with no name but older than most other things; Tevinter, the Veil, the way it's been built the way the world got built but a dwarf doesn't voice that when he's generations of Carta deep and just prying himself out of their clutches once again. Anyway he's just said what he's said. He realises it with a scowl too long after he can go trying to take it back because you try taking back from humans and it sometimes gets a bit knifey.

She's got one arm, Melys, but she could get that sleeve around him, choke him.

Yngvi sighs, tips his head back and-- "shite!" almost goes all the way back, flails the free hand and shuffles his feet to keep him going the right way.

"Dunno, give 'em a reason to give a shit then you, y'know, give 'em a reason." The idea is there in his head but the thought won't come all the way; once they notice you, they notice you. You're the dwarf who can get more dwarves for instance and you're the mercenary signed on for the good of the company to make their name and reputation so go do it. Just like that. "Mages got people to give a shit. Then there was a war and most of Hinterlands was on fire for a bit."

"Didn't say there weren't no price."

But he's not a runny-assed tot, no matter how he's fixing to crawl like one. He knows that much. This is just drunk grousing, plain and simple. Some morose nonsense hauled up from the bottom of a bottle, and if she's got to put up with listening to it, Melys figures she's owed a complaint or two of her own.

"Mages always had folks to give a shit. Just didn't like how the numbers stacked up, thought they could get it for free." An ugly little noise. "Guess it's what anyone'd try to do. That's greed for you, there's a banner to fucking rally around."

"Same folks who wouldn't piss on this place burning for the wickedness," There's a joke in there somewhere, about ears burning; she doesn't care enough to make it. "Act like Circle taxes weren't just protection money. Still paying, ain't we? Only now I don't see no results."

Yngvi nods vigorously and regrets it because the world spins, his stomach rebels but he drank with Avvar and Tal-Vashoth, he's done so much worse that it decides to just stay where it should be. There's always the morning after all.

He doesn't like her maybe, how can you tell when you're drunk but if there was a spark going she's stoking it right now, all the horrible dangerous things coming up and out of him, all the unfairness spilling out past his teeth because who cares, who cares if someone hears he's just tired and angry, let it out.

"Like, it's like the Qunari? Those mages? No tongue. Mouths stitched shut. That's how a lot of people live anyway, they just live shut up in a place with high windows and bars on 'em and only care about bits in books writing about how things happened that make it all sound like it was a mages fault." How many people in the world complain about their lot and see a thing done about it when the lord decides he's not going to pay for their grain or let his soldiers run riot or hike up the rent or beat and murder the elves in the alienage? Not even touching what happens in Orzammar because Yngvi's not meant to know, Yngvi's a surface dwarf after all, all of them are the same and no one has any problems at all.

"Champion disappeared, convenient. Hero too. Great big heroes and they just leave, fuck everything over and go. Everyone's scared. It's sad." His face falls a little as he falters in his speech because anger is tiring when you're trying to hold onto it for too long. "This is my home and all this shit keeps happening, all these people come and fuck it up and everyone dies. Or gets hurt. Or they're gone and no one knows where and they're scared. Used to work before. It was all fine. Everything was fine. Everyone knew where it was, where all the pieces went, how it all was s'posed to go and now you come back and someone's given you an old man's glasses and you can't see a damned thing right. You know what I mean? How fucked it is?"

“Then that’s what’s better for them,” Cullen says, treading carefully, mostly because these are questions that people just don’t ask him. Which is a new kind of surprising, that Yngvi should be the first. “Better means that people are safe, happier, living their lives in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone else.” And sure, that’s far more complicated than it sounds, and it’s probably an unattainable goal in the long term, but it’s there. It’s something to strive for, and Cullen needs that. He needs it so badly.

"Safe and happy isn't all things to all men." Yngvi didn't read that in a book, Asher told him that, when Yngvi was younger (not smaller, Yngvi's been as tall as he was ever going to be for a good few years now) and bits of him started to open up. "Some ways of all life always hurt someone--"

Until they get grey, it's not the easiest thing in the world, to tell the age of a dwarf; Yngvi isn't a child, isn't a teenager, but he's still young. Somehow naive in a way, vulnerable and aching, knowing that he really should know better about all of this. "Safe in the Gallows? Rip out all the red lyrium only the ones who know how to do that? My lot. How's that better? I mean yeah, people got paid but what d'you really know about the folk doing jobs for you at the end of the day?"

Dangerous territory he's wandering into and he knows it, can't really help himself, mouth's running away with itself. "Bet the elves don't all agree on better but humans don't ever touch that one even when you should be siding with the alienage ones."

She takes a look at him sidelong. There’s your first problem, she thinks about saying. Thinking you get to have a home. Taking on their pain and fright.

"Hero’s what you call it when someone fucks it all enough can’t no call it otherwise and pretend they’re still on top."

Ain’t the Inquisition just full of those, people looking for heroics. First it was the mountains, then it was Orlais. Now Kirkwall — what next? Armies march slow, she ought to know, but generals; generals trip over themselves to talk the fastest.

Call it a cause. Call it a mission what needs spreading, call it worth any cost. What it is, it's hunger. It's every man wants something for themselves: Greed for glory, for a mark on history, for the right to shout that you were.

(Guts soothed and a bruised conscience.)

Maybe they'll do some good with this war, but everyone's going to do a lot of bad on the way. That's just how it works.

"Weren’t that it were no better. Just was you got used to the shape. ’S like a ship in a bottle, yeah?"

That. Probably makes sense somehow, to someone. It's good enough to keep the stream of consciousness rolling, she reckons. Conversations like these, they're not conversations so much as one long, rolling rant.

Pass it back between your mouths like some other simile you're too shit tired to think up, one you shouldn't know the words for anyway.

Edited (DOUBLE EDITS THIS SORRY) 2017-07-08 06:46 (UTC)

Home is always going to be there. Home is always going to be the dark, the gutters, the places where people don't want to be but end up when there's nowhere else but he got a taste for better and knows that it's not what he means when he says it now.

"And some wanker writes a story and everyone laps it up, kisses his arse while they're at it." Yngvi? Bitter? Perish the thought.

(Trusting someone he knows has a sharper edge is a dangerous thing but his lady hasn't been shy about her opinions or presenting her truths, and nothing can be worse than having to hear about the Tale of the Champion when you were on the side that no one actually talked about, the footnotes that were just exciting filler, as if those people don't have lives too, don't have reasons for doing what they did, as if a hero gets divine right to decide it all.)

There's not a battlemaster to be found here who knows what they're doing with everything and despite not being a warrior, he's fought enough real blood and guts battles to know that much.

Armies break badly. The Inquisition is just one big messy one.

Yngvi laughs or attempts to, he doesn't know what you name the noise that comes out of him. Too aware of what it is, the edge of a ragged wet breath, that his mouth is shaped into a grimace not even having the good grace to be feral. "Isn't that how every story is, we're all what some fuck that abandoned us made us long long long ago, just left us to get on with it and don't come crying."

Dwarves have the Stone (allegedly, Yngvi's probably too tired to fight that battle tonight), humans have the Maker and so do some elves, the rest of the elves have the Creators, Qunari well he doesn't care tonight. Maybe the Avvar ones listen but they're still weird and fuck you over if you don't honour them properly too.

It's very true, that safe and happy looks different to everyone, that in some cases safe and happy actually means being miserable. That's not the grander point Cullen is trying to make, though, and he very much doubts Yngvi is in any state to hear it. Doesn't mean he's just going to leave the incredibly drunk dwarf on his own. So, he pulls up a seat and sits down next to him, leaving his hand on a very wobbly shoulder.

"I used to not know anything. Now I try to know as much as I can, but... it's not always easy. I think happy doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing to all people. I think the trick is... to find a way for everyone to be happy that doesn't make someone else unhappy. If your way of being happy is to slit my throat, for example? Doesn't really work."

Flinching is a thing the Carta discourages and actively trains out of you. A flinch is too strong a tell and a sign of weakness after all even if Yngvi's list of people he's fine with touching him is vanishingly small, mostly far from Kirkwall, because this is life and people are handsy and humans are the worst for being touchy-feely in ways that aren't to do with liberating things from your pockets or sizing up if you've got more weapons hidden on your person. (When you're short as Yngvi is, you need to do a lot of inspecting for these sorts of things.)

So he bears it because well, not exactly in a position to argue is he? "Everyone isn't goin' to be happy, I mean, go in the alienage - actually no, don't, look at you, they'll get the wrong idea and they don't need that more than they already do if the Dalish are headin' that way to spout nonsense," he's quick to say it but not sharp because this is a human in the Hanged Man with his hand on a drunk dwarf even in his addled state he knows how this one plays out. "Go in the alienage and see what'd make them happy then go to the nobles and do it. Go ask Orzammar and go ask the Carta and go ask the merchant's guild and then all the dwarves stuck in between all of them that no one sees because you're one of the three and even they don't see you." Does that even translate to a human this high up the ranks? Not being seen but still being seen because you're part of a thing so you could be useful if you're useful and in that case they'll use you until you're done and never let you forget it?

(Yngvi's known a lot of Templars, Chantry worked them 'til they forgot their own names and everything save a hunger a burning blue quenched.)

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open | If this is an accident then where's the hurt?

the gallows. i'd apologise but you'd know i'm not sorry.

i expect nothing less

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undercity crawl;

gallows.

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Hanged Man

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