faderift | [OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

WHO: Kit + OPEN; starters for Cade and Benedict
WHAT: Just a catchall kind of post for early September.
WHEN: Throughout early September; sometime after Benedict is removed from solitary.
WHERE: Halfway between Lowtown and Darktown; around the Gallows, generally;
NOTES: None yet, will update as needed.

It's not quite mending broken fences with the people he's most recently pushed away, but Kit has taken some concrete steps towards getting his shit carefully pieced back together after the end of a particularly turbulent previous month.

I. A HOVEL SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LOWTOWN AND DARKTOWN

This is his home turf now:

It's a ramshackle sort of hole in the wall just off one of the too-beaten footpaths leading from Lowtown down, down into the dark; but in the morning, there's still a sliver of light that comes through the window, and that's enough for Kit.

Sharing lodgings with some other Inquisition personnel, while ostensibly the safer option, just doesn't suit him right now. And besides, one can hardly call his existence here lonely. Just about every evening when he comes home, he's got to escort the same blear-eyed drunk out of his dining area; "c'mon, Chuck, we did this yesterday--your place is just down the street a way's, need me to walk you there?" Etc. (Who even knows how the guy keeps getting in.)

Whoever used to make use of this hovel left some of their belongings behind; at present, Kit is setting out old crates of random junk near the street. Already, some of the stuff is being picked through by street kids and other urchins.

II. THE GALLOWS DUNGEON (BENEDICT)

Word reaches him via some avenue that the Tevinter kid has (finally) been removed from solitary confinement and placed in a new prison cell--this one far removed from the magister's. Kit isn't sure how much interaction those two are allowed anymore, and decides that it isn't his mess to sort out or clean up.

The guards don't give him any trouble when he arrives at the dungeons and states the purpose of his visit, but give him straightforward directions on how to reach Benedict's cell. Down the stairs he goes, a freshly lit cigarette tucked into one corner of his mouth, and he wanders down the corridor of cells--some empty, some sporting the odd occupant--until he finds Benedict.

Kit stops just outside the bars and looks in at him appraisingly. "Hey," he says--it's a pretty straight-forward greeting, all things considered.

III. AROUND THE GALLOWS

Whether or not the Scouting Division has staked its claim on specific hours for the purposes of training exercises, Kit has set aside time in the very early morning for taking certain members of the division (i.e., anyone Beleth Ashara has sent his way) through some remedial work. To him, the exercises are fairly basic: fighting stances; weapons and armour maintenance; how best to engage an opponent in close-range combat when one doesn't have the training in close-quarters combat. He'll save reconnaissance and other skills for a time after he's sure his current gaggle of students know enough to keep themselves alive in combat.

Once the training session is over and his students have dispersed, Kit takes a smoke break by the dingy ferry that shuttles Inquisition personnel back and forth between the Gallows and Kirkwall, then heads up to wherever the Other Powers research offices are situated.

[OOC: Please feel free to interact with Kit at any point during this series of events! Want to be part of the remedial training session? Go for it. Want to ambush him for conversation in the mess hall? Ambush away! This would also be an excellent opportunity for him to interact with anyone else who is part of the Other Powers special project.]

IV. LOWTOWN (CADE)

Whomever previously squatted in the hovel Kit has recently begun renting left behind a few belongings that seem too valuable to just toss out like garbage. He gave first dibs to the homeless and the urchins that haunt the roads and alleys near his new place; however, after a handful of days, there are some plates and other bits of crockery left behind that he's got no use for, and evidently no one else in Darktown does, either. Kit won't get much money selling them, but he knows of a place somewhere in Lowtown that will take donations for the poor--or at least, they did so when he was last in Kirkwall, after the Blight.

So that's where he is now, milling around in Lowtown after dropping off his donations (along with what little money he's got left that he can spare). He's ambling away from the front door of the shop when he spots the back of a familiar blonde head, accompanied by some drooping, hunched shoulders that belong to someone who looks so generally defeated by life that Kit finds he recognizes the fellow instantaneously.

He cuts his way neatly through the middling crowd to catch up to him. "Cade, right?" he starts, coming into his line of sight, and offers him an easy-going grin. "How's it going with you, salroka?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"He's a scared kid," Kit argues back, fighting down the instinct to talk right over Simon and barely accomplishing it. He can't keep the annoyance (bordering on outrage) off his expression, however, and gestures back at the Gallows. "Yeah he's a prick with the personality of a hornet's nest, but you look me in the eye and tell me that you actually believe he's a Venatori agent."

"What I believe he is," Simon snaps back, "is a volatile little hornet's nest who hasn't done a single thing to prove he deserves more freedom than he's got right now. That 'scared kid' has assaulted everyone I've ever seen get near him, his own mentor included." He'd even given Benedict the benefit of acknowledging that he would probably be fighting every enemy agent within arm's reach too, were he captured by the Venatori himself, but he wouldn't be trying to hurt his own allies out of spite. That's beyond the pale, and Simon has no desire to analyze why the brat would do it.

"I don't know why you think you'll be safe, if the magister wasn't. And still, I've no objection to anything you want to do with him! If you think risking your own skin to teach basic decency to a spoilt little slavedriver is a worthwhile use of your time, Maker speed you. But I'll have none of it. I could have died in that cell."

Maybe it's that last sentence that snags his attention and tempers some of his anger, but Kit's response isn't instantaneous, and instead takes a few seconds to coalesce into something he'd feel comfortable sharing with anyone. There's no apology or regret in his eyes when he considers Simon, but maybe a flicker of comprehension; the guy clearly went through something terrible in that cell, though it still doesn't follow, to Kit, that Benedict is entirely irredeemable. If the others had seen him in solitary, as Kit had--

He clenches, and then unclenches his jaw. "I'll deal with him," he settles on shortly, deciding to let the rest of the argument roll from his shoulders. He can tell when he's hit a brick wall--almost literally, in Simon's case, by the Paragons he didn't even know humans came in a size that big. "Whatever shit he pulls next is on me."

"You're damn right it is," Simon mutters, not entirely willing to let it go yet. "You still didn't answer when I asked what you think we templars ought to be doing differently. Of course we don't think he's a Venatori agent. He's been more than clear on that much. But you can't seriously be advocating that we let him just roam about as he pleases, magic and all."

"I think you ought to send him home."

Regardless of whatever shocked, horrified, or dismayed look he receives in response to those words, he's unmoved, and instead counts off his reasons on his fingers. "He's not a Venatori agent, and the only thing he was guilty of at the time he was captured was being in proximity to one; if he knew anything else useful, I'm reasonably sure he'd have told it to us when he was in solitary confinement; he's someone's child--possibly someone important, and I don't think we should piss that someone off if we don't have to."

After a pause, he forces himself to add more pragmatically, "Sending him home could be a chance to assess that magister's other connections in Tevinter."

Well. He has been operating under a misconception of Kit's goals, then, and rather than look horrified, he relaxes just-perceptibly as Kit explains them. Even if it is coming from a place of bleeding-heart sympathy that Simon can't get on board with, the actionable advice is sound.

"To be completely honest with you, if I were in charge, we'd have done just that days ago. Whatever Madame de Cedoux says, I don't think he's enough use to us to justify his room and board, even such as it is. You're not wrong. I mean, you may be wrong about the reasoning, but you're right that we'd be well shut of him, and it doesn't much matter why."

He sighs. "Unfortunately, I don't make any of the decisions around here, so I doubt it's going to happen."

It's not a goal so much as a wish; Kit knows the likelihood of getting the Inquisition to agree to send Benedict back to Tevinter is pretty damn remote. He's also not quite willing to talk smack about Madame de Cedoux' motivations, since if it weren't for her pragmatic agreement with his own ends, Benedict might still be locked up in solitary confinement.

Still, in hearing Simon's words, he's quick to seize on an opportunity. He shrugs. "If he's got to stay here," he replies, "I see a lot more harm done in treating him like an enemy, than in taking the chance to see if he could be a friend instead."

It's not Petrana's motivation that Simon doubts, only the logic she'd presented to him, with which he can't quite bring himself to agree. Her pragmatism is at least a better way of looking at the situation than Kit's dogged and inexplicable optimism, as far as he's concerned, but it still leaves Benedict as the Inquisition's problem, the templars' in particular.

He feels ever so slightly as if he's been tricked here, but he can't articulate why and opts not to try. If Kit wants to negotiate, Simon will meet him halfway. There's no harm in it, when anything they agree on is going to remain hypothetical anyway. Neither of them has any power over the situation one way or another.

"Listen, it's obvious that you feel awfully strongly about this. You must have seen something in him that nobody else has, but for the life of me I don't know why you're so keen to take it at face value. You don't strike me as a gullible man."

"...for the life of me I don't know why you're so keen to take it at face value. You don't strike me as a gullible man."

Man, this guy--

"I'm pretty sure I can take him," is all he says, neutral and to the point. It's a hard statement to argue with, too; down in the Deep Roads, he's probably seen plenty of shit far more intimidating than a Tevinter mage with a pissy attitude.

This is about as much of this conversation as he's willing to tolerate now. He raises his eyebrows. "Are we done here?"

Simon, whose last encounter with Benedict involved the little prick acting smug, serene and all but unaffected by his imprisonment, doubts Kit's self-assessment very much indeed. Intimidating, hardly--but manipulative and utterly untrustworthy? That's not an opinion Simon has any reason to let go of, and he's all the more committed to it now.

"Sure," he says. "You have fun with that, then."

[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

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