[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

[ragweed]

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?"

Comments

[onlyhymns]

Surprisingly enough, Kit's answer actually merits the tiniest of smirks from Cade, with a snort that's almost like a laugh. Yes, oh shit. He appreciates that the dwarf isn't addressing him like a criminal or an errant child, a factor he'd never have noticed was a thing until someone didn't do it. Like now.
"Um... fight in the pub," he says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck, "...I think." Mistakes were made.

[ragweed]

"'You think'?" Kit echoes him, cracking a incredulous grin of his own, and a little laugh. "Well did you win?"

Maybe not the question one should be asking a new friend after discovering he's been involved in a violent altercation, but to Kit's eye it doesn't look like Cade very often gets the chance to have someone talk him up a bit. Might as well give him a little bit of an ego; would probably do him good anyway.

[onlyhymns]

Again, Cade finds Kit's smile contagious, and he doesn't even notice that it broadens his own. "Um," he says faintly, and then, quite uncharacteristically, dares to be sarcastic.
"..does it look like it?"

[ragweed]

"You're supposed to say, 'you should see the other guy.'" But Kit's still smiling even as he makes the suggestion, chuckles, and then looks around, as though searching for some indication of what brought Cade out into this part of Lowtown in the first place.

"Where are you headed anyway?" he asks, then adds, "I'll sod off if you don't want the company." It's not that noticeable, really, but a keen eye (or ear) might discern that perhaps Kit isn't too keen to be on his own right now.

[onlyhymns]

Cade gives a small, uncertain laugh, and hunches his shoulders self-consciously. "Well I, um. ...wouldn't be able to describe them." There is absolutely a shame in this, and his face-- the parts of it that aren't bruised, anyway-- goes a bit red from it. Maybe it's a little bit funny, but he still got in a barfight and wound up in the drunk tank, and...
Just like that, the smile is gone, his brow furrowed and his posture withdrawn. "No, it's fine, um. I'm... going to Hightown." Because reasons. The problem with Kirkwall is that, when you live in Lowtown, you have to walk in Lowtown to get anywhere.

[ragweed]

Lowtown is kind of a step up for Kit, truth be told, but the place does have that certain air of beleaguered hunger cleaving to it that makes spending too much time there trying.

He reads the expressions on Cade's face in a glance. "Want some company?" he offers, and one gets the impression that he means it.

[onlyhymns]

Cade isn't especially familiar with the feeling of someone wanting to be around him, with the exception of Beleth (but Beleth is weird) and occasionally Simon (Simon is also weird), so the question throws him off at first.
He seems uncomfortable at first, but then shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck as he glances back down at Kit. "Sure," he says quietly, with an unasked 'why' halted on his tongue. He is not, on the whole, a person people want to spend time with. But then... Kit barely knows him.