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

Entry tags:

[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

Benedict's tolerance for being spoken to in this manner has grown significantly due to recent events, and though he shoots another glare Kit's way, he sullenly takes the cards and deals them back out again. Doing something and being bad at it with another person, he finds, is far preferable to doing nothing with no one.

The only response Benedict gets to that glare is a pair of skeptically raised eyebrows that seem to ask, 'got something to say?' Then, while Benedict deals the cards again, Kit rolls himself another cigarette and lights it with a match, taking an idle drag off of it to pass the time.

This time, fate seems to have given Benedict the stronger hand than Kit's, and so he is the one to gain the edge in the game pretty immediately. Kit doesn't seem to take his potential loss too terribly personally. "It's a game of chance as much as it is skill," he says, after he briefly curtails Benedict's winning streak by playing a good hand.

In response to Kit's eyebrow tricks, Benedict rolls his eyes, but it seems the moment has passed. He plays the game in relative silence, and is able to find a bit more satisfaction the second time around, though Kit's statement takes the wind out of his sails a little.
"Chance is hardly on my side lately," he mumbles, but not as pissily as before.

"Chance is hardly on my side lately."

"Wouldn't be 'chance' if it was on anyone's side," Kit says, but the look on his face is sympathetic. If anyone in the Inquisition could be said to be on Benedict's side in this clusterfuck of a situation, it would probably be Kit.

When the hand ends, he shuffles the cards to deal again, but doesn't let the silence fall between them this time. "So what did you do, back in Tevinter?" he asks, and it doesn't sound like he's asking whether or not Benedict did anything wrong. Just... a straight-forward kind of inquiry. "You studied magic, obviously. What'd you do when you weren't doing that?"

Benedict is moments from curling his lip in a sneer, but when he sees the look on Kit's face, he refrains. It wasn't meant as a slight, and he's too tired to take it as one.
"Went to parties," he murmurs, looking through his hand, "held parties. Talked to boring stuffy idiots and their idiot daughters. Read books. Rode horses." A life of leisure, for the most part, but he sounds slightly resentful of it, despite how badly he wants to go back.
"I had tutors when I was a child, and now it's..." He hesitates, his eyes darting nervously toward the hallway; he doesn't know how near or far they are from company. "....well it was just Vedici. While I wait for my mother to die so I inherit her seat in the Magisterium." That doesn't sound exceptionally thrilling either, likely because it means he'll have to actually do something.

There is a not insubstantial part of Kit that is deeply resentful of the privilege Benedict has enjoyed (and in many ways taken for granted), but his role here is as Benedict's friend and confidante. He scratches the side of his nose and masters his momentary irritation; when he looks at the boy again it's gone.

"Don't take this the wrong way, salroka," he says slowly, "but that all sounds boring as shit. Except for the riding horses part." This, added with a lopsided little grin. "Never could get up on them myself--too short."

Benedict has taken most things for granted, to be sure. He's not yet at a point where he can recognize that, though maybe someday.
"...sort of," he admits, "getting drunk makes it more interesting.

"Oh yeah? Sounds like you speak from experience." He plays his hand and motions for Benedict to play his while he waits for the rest of his story.

A snort. "What else is there to do?" He plays his own hand and frowns when he sees that it's inferior, though it doesn't bother him as much as before. "Talk to some empty-headed heiress about her slippers and her hideous little dog while she and all the rest clamor for my favor?" His sneer is pronounced. "It's pathetic."

It's encouraging to see Benedict accept the loss without letting it get under his skin quite the same way as it had before, and so Kit doesn't go quite as easy on him with the next hand. Still, he keeps the conversation going. "Say you didn't have to go to those shitty parties or--whatever else it is you've got to do," he says, takes another puff from his cigarette, and plays his hand. He raises his eyebrows, watching the boy through the smoke. "What would you want to do instead?" He waves a hand idly. "Like, what're you good at? What do you like to do?"

Edited 2017-09-15 16:20 (UTC)

Benedict makes plenty of faces when he's doing badly-- he'll have to work on that if he wants to do any serious gambling-- but that's... not likely.
He raises an eyebrow at Kit, contemplating the question. Then he shrugs. "I don't know," he mutters, "read?" He looks over his hand, unimpressed by it. "And paint. I guess."

That takes him by surprise. Kit pauses before taking another drag from his cigarette to look at Benedict with raised eyebrows. "I wouldn't have pegged you as an artist," he says, scrutinizes his cards, then looks at the young man again. "What kind of stuff do you paint?"

Like as all it'll all be the same shit to Kit, but there's a method to his particular brand of questioning, and so far, he feels like he's getting good results.

Benedict meets his gaze incredulously, but then smirks; ah, he caught him off-guard. That's fun.
"You know, whatever's in the room," he shrugs, "or out the window. Flowers, rubbish like that." He darts his gaze to the table, willing Kit to play his cards. "I painted all over my bedposts as a child, but then Mother had them replaced. So I don't do that sort of thing anymore." He sounds completely unbothered, like he was convinced that it was common sense to remove something unsightly.

It seems a weird thing for a parent to do to her child, but Kit can only make this assumption based on the (few) decent parents he's had cause to be around since coming to the surface. If his folks were the type to cover up his childish creativity, he has no memory of it... or them, frankly.

He plays his hand, and it's a particularly good one--good enough for him to grin lopsidedly in victory. Bam. "No hard feelings," he tells Benedict, smiling at him; even in triumph, he tries not to be too much of a dick.

"Dunno about scrounging up paints for you but I can see about nicking an art book from the library," he says, picking up the threads of their conversation

Benedict wrinkles his nose in a sneer at the loss, but, miraculously, it gives way to a little smirk at Kit. He's learned now that he can win and lose and it doesn't matter, that the value in their visits comes from prolonging them, from someone being here to keep the abject boredom at bay.
"You'd do that?" he asks, interest piqued by the offer of books. "...Gods, anything. Art, horticulture, I'd give anything not to stare at a bloody wall or that ugly bastard for one more minute." He nudges his head toward the Templar guard, who gives them a long-suffering look.

Kit glances over his shoulder towards the Templar, who just looks bored and like he'd rather be somewhere else. Kit looks back at Benedict with raised eyebrows. "I think you hurt his feelings." (The Templar just grunts and goes back to ignoring them.)

With the card game concluded again, Kit tucks his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and collects the cards into his hands. He shrugs. "Pretty sure no one's going to object to a couple of old books," he says, and hopes that this is a promise he can keep, now that he's said it. He looks at Benedict again, considering him as he shuffles the cards, but holds off on dealing them again.

"I want to help you get out of here," he tells him, and adds before the Templar behind them can interject, "on the up-and-up, no one's going to be digging any holes through walls with prison shivs, all right?" Calm down, Rambo. He glances Benedict's way again. "We've got to talk about your shitty mentor again for me to do that, though. Then you might have to talk about it again to folks with more clout than me. But I can hang around while you do that." This last offered seriously; if Kit's presence will make Benedict feel less afraid, and therefore more willing to talk, then he'll dig his heels in on that point with anyone who objects to it.

Bene looks briefly annoyed by the withholding of the cards, but once the reason is clear, Kit has his full attention. He watches him with an expectant anxiety, waiting for the shoe to drop even as Kit speaks.
And then Atticus comes into it, and Benedict can't help but recoil slightly.
"What about him?" he asks guardedly.

Kit gives one large shoulder the smallest of shrugs. "It's more about you than him, really," he admits, watching the young man with a look on his face that's both serious and apologetic at the same time. "Things you saw or heard, things you may have noticed about his behaviour changing, new folks you saw who may have been coming in and out of his residence."

He presses his lips together, not wanting to scare the kid anymore than he has already been scared, but wanting to impress upon him all the same how important this is. "Anything you know," he says, "anything you can tell me, is something I can use to help you. I want to help you." He won't make any promises, and can only hope that, at this point, Benedict knows he at least isn't lying.

Benedict watches Kit for a moment, and then his eyes look away, going distant as he thinks.
"He's always been a twat," he considers, "my mother apprenticed me to him because my father doesn't have time, and Vedici seemed a respectable enough sort. We weren't even supposed to leave Tevinter, but he kept pulling us southward."
Scowling, Bene hugs himself. "...when we were apprehended, he let the Inquisition kill all our men. He didn't lift a finger to stop them. I think he wanted to be caught." This is what he's been saying for weeks, fat lot of good it did.
"He wants something. Out of this. Out of that blonde woman maybe. He got angry with me for speaking against it."

Blonde woman? Madame de Cedoux? That's new. Kit files that bit away in the back of his mind for later consideration.

For now, he keeps his focus on Benedict, on the other details laid out in front of him, trying to suss out how these different puzzle pieces were meant to be ordered. Benedict might have been clueless about his mentor's affiliations, but that ignorance didn't automatically extend to his parents, especially if they were well-connected enough in Tevinter society as Benedict says they are. The politics of human high societies haven't struck him as being all that different from the way the deep lords of the Diamond Quarter comported themselves back in Orzammar. Kids of any age were bargaining chips, pawns, set up to either accept the hand their parents dealt them, or collapse. And he suspects the penalty for failure is just as steep.

The silence has gone on for a moment too long. Kit takes his cigarette and examines it, but it's already burnt too low for it to be of much use anymore. He puts it out. "You think your parents knew?" he asks levelly at length. "About him being Venatori?"

Benedict is about to answer definitively, no doubt in the negative, but he hesitates when he realizes... he actually doesn't know. This is plain on his face, as he first stares at Kit, then out at the bars.
"Well they're not idiots," he reasons, his brow creasing as he considers what that means.

"Well they're not idiots."

There it is--that thousand-yard stare, a glimpse of... something. He's got to proceed very carefully here; Benedict is cleverer than anyone has given him credit for--Benedict himself included. The pieces of the puzzle that Kit can't manage to fit together might be assembled more quickly by Benedict, if he's just given the chance to do it.

So Kit makes a noncommittal noise and watches the young man in silence. To give himself something to do while he waits, he rolls another cigarette.

"They would've told me," Benedict continues, casting a shifty look at Kit. Is this a trick? Perhaps to get information about his parents? But Kit has been kind, so... he's not in a position to assume the dwarf is an enemy.
"I'm the heir," Bene says, a bit more loudly, "I'll take over my mother's seat in the Magisterium someday. She wouldn't keep something like this from me." His tone is harsh and insistent, but all the same, he's not quite sure.

Kit fetches out a book of matches from his coat pocket, plucks one out, and lights the tip of the cigarette. He needs a second or two to get it going, then takes a drag, breathes out the smoke, and looks at Benedict again. His tone isn't unkind when he speaks, but by the same token, he doesn't mask his suspicions.

"What would you have done, if you'd known?" Would he have been complicit in his family's role in this mess? Critical of it? Perhaps his mother had known that, had been banking on entrenching Benedict in this life, this world, so deeply that by the time he wised up to what was happening, he'd have no choice but to go along with it. A cruel thing for a mother to do to her son, even one as spoilt as Benedict.

"Known what, that Atticus is a Venatori?" he sneers, "I don't know, found a way back home?" He's ruffled, but the look fades into mild self-consciousness. "...what do they even do?" The thought strikes him that perhaps he is a Venatori, and never knew it.

[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

sry for needing to talk abt my other dumb character

unacceptable you're fired

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)