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

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[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?"

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(OOC: Continued from here.)

It's late enough in the evening when Kit arrives at their predetermined meeting place in the library stacks that most of the other apprentices and researchers have left for dinner, and to find other things to occupy themselves for the rest of the night. Only a few die-hard stragglers remain--including that creepy magister, though thankfully he's on the opposite end of the library from where Kit loiters now. To give his hands something to occupy themselves with (as he can't very well light up a cigarette here), he reviews the dossiers he'd brought with him as his pretence for speaking to Vandelin, alone.

This is all, of course, strictly professional. He's here to give his diplomatic opinion on some profiles and show off his (rusty and largely irrelevant outside of academia) skills in Tevene. After all, he's sure Kit wouldn't really have it any other way, and that's for the best.

But all the same, he's glad their corner of the library is deserted, if only because it means fewer people around to see any vulnerability he might display.

"Good to see you," he says, when he arrives, but his tone gives the phrase the distinct impression of a business pleasantry, something he'd have said to anyone. It doesn't convey the actual, underlying sincerity of how glad he actually is to lay eyes on Kit, even if it's only been a few weeks since he last did. But the way his gaze lingers tells another story.

Edited 2017-09-11 15:50 (UTC)

"Good to see you."

"Yeah--you, too," Kit answers, the corner of his mouth quirking lopsidedly, even if Vandelin's tone is anything but warm. His eyes linger, too, and it's impossible to keep his thoughts from wandering to an inn room not that long ago. Abruptly he recalls himself to the present and looks down at the dossiers in his grasp, then offers them out.

"Slim pickings, I'm afraid," he says wryly, "but Durfort-Lacapalette apparently managed to make it all the way to Par Vollen before she was forced to retreat, so might be a person worth reaching out to." Once he's able to do the same, that is.

That done, he chafes his hands together once in lieu of having anything else to occupy them with, then tucks them into his pockets, stilling them. Already he's got words he wants to speak on the tip of his tongue, but can't seem to find the right way to phrase any of them.

"Wow. Well, the pickings don't sound that slim." Perhaps that just sounds like a more impressive feat than usual to a man who's not accustomed to being able to travel. It's going to stick with him for a long time, what Madame de Cedoux had said about his 'cloistered background' and the concerns it raises. He needs to learn how to sound less sheltered about these things and he needs to learn fast.

The fact that he would let his mouth run ahead of him enough to give his honest first impression of that dossier without carefully checking his words says something, and he doesn't want to admit that the something is a reflexive trust that Kit won't judge or ridicule him for it or share it with anyone who would. He looks away.

"What else have you got?"

In this, at least, his trust isn't misplaced. Kit wouldn't think to use his honesty or inexperience against him; perhaps someone else, in an opponent's shoes, would exploit them both. But here, for now, they're safe.

"What else have you got?"

"That's it," Kit answers, along with an uncomfortable chuckle, and gestures to the other dossier he handed to Vandelin. "Just realized before you got here that Fenris is already part of your project, so I expect you've got a better handle on his strengths than I do--or at least your division head does, I suppose." He gives his shoulders a tired shrug. "I'm still trying to keep all the bureaucratic stuff straight in my head."

They could suffer through this dreary attempt at professional small-talk for a little bit longer, and it won't make the weight of what transpired between them any easier to carry. Kit at least has the sense to ignore the tiny voice in the back of his mind advising him to run, to put this stupid dream to bed once and for all, because he knows if he runs again, he won't get a second chance. This is it.

"It's been tough," he says quietly, abruptly, "keeping much of anything straight. Since the Wilds, I mean." He chews the corner of his mouth, eyes on Vandelin's face, and tries to find the right words to follow that statement. Nervous habit makes him finger the paragon figurine that is a constant, reassuring presence in his pocket. "You ever hear something that just--gets under your skin and stays there, no matter how you try to keep it from sticking around?"

If not for Myr, Vandelin might never have been inclined to offer a second chance at all. For all his concern, before Kit left, that something might happen to him and he could be lost to them--he'd expected that to be literal, not this nebulous metaphorical disappearance of the man Vandelin had grown fond of. It wouldn't have occurred to him that something could have happened out there in the Wilds to upset him or subdue him or change his mind, not until he'd compared notes with Myr and realized that Kit's withdrawing could be something other than romantic cold feet.

He'd wanted to ask. He's been wanting to ask. But not until Kit ventures a mention of the subject himself does Vandelin dare to.

"Yeah," he murmurs, thinking unbidden of silver-tongued pride demons, of disembodied voices in his dreams--how will you make sure they die first? But nothing has ever quite haunted him the way Kit seems to be suffering.

"What happened out there?" he asks, quiet.

He almost tells him--almost.

But confessing a secret like that to a stranger requires considerably less courage than confessing it to a friend... or to the man whose bed you shared, whose face you'd seen open and vulnerable, and trusting you in a way you know, deep down, you don't deserve to be trusted. Kit's expression flickers from grimace to pained smile and back again; he bites hard on the inside of his lip, and swears, "ancestors," on a little intake of breath.

He can't say it. Maybe instead, he can get just... close to the idea of it.

"...it's sodding stupid," he forces himself to admit, swallows, and looks off to the side for a moment. He needs a few seconds to clench his jaw, then unclench it, then try to speak again. "...there was this Chasind shaman we met down there while looking for Morrigan's mother. She was..." How to even begin to describe her--the unseen face shrouded behind an animal hood, the dark sockets where they eyes lurked, looking at him, through him--

She couldn't have known. But she hadn't needed to know, for her words to plunge straight into his heart, and draw blood from the wound that never quite healed. Kit takes a breath and forces the words out before he can think better of them: "Sod it--it was--it was all just mystical nonsense talk, probably, nothing that should have ridden all this way with me back to Kirkwall, but sometimes someone just says something to you, and you know they've taken your measure, you know they've seen the worst parts of you. The parts of you you forgot were even there." This last, said very softly, his voice seeming to fall away from him.

Kit squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head once. After a pause, he says, "I just--didn't want you to see it, too."

There's so little he really does know about Kit after the couple months altogether that they've been acquainted, even after that one too-intimate night that hadn't felt like too much until after Kit had taken it back. He'd only argue now that Kit doesn't deserve to be trusted because he'd gone so far as to make promises--there will be a next time, I'll miss you, we'll pick this up when I come back--and then broken them for what had seemed at the time like no reason at all.

But he'd thought, too, perhaps arrogantly, that he knew enough about Kit's past to make informed decisions. He hadn't seemed nearly so distressed as he does now when he'd spoken of his work for the Carta, which is where Vandelin's mind immediately goes. The distress had only come when the subject of his time with the Legion had reared its head, but even then, it hadn't looked like this. Not quite. What else could there be that Kit hasn't mentioned, worse than killing for the mob or leaving the Deep Roads for the surface?

"What do you think I could see that I wouldn't be able to understand?" he asks. "After everything you've already told me? We've all done things we'd take back if we could. Maker knows, I have. If we're not allowed to wipe the slate clean here, where can we?" He needs to believe that now, as much for his own sake as anyone else's.

"I don't care what you've done. I don't buy that you're not a good man."

Edited 2017-09-13 16:45 (UTC)

"I don't care what you've done. I don't buy that you're not a good man."

The words land like a glancing blow, making him flinch but not falter. He wishes he could believe them as ardently as Vandelin seems to, but Kit knows better, doesn't he. He's the one who lives day in and day out in his skin, in his own memories. He's the one who has to get out of bed every morning knowing that there's blood on his hands belonging to once person--at least one person--who didn't deserve it.

(He has no way of knowing how keenly that secret would resonate with Vandelin, too.)

"Why do you believe that about me?" he asks instead, not quite accusing, but with a note of quiet desperation in his voice as though he can't for the life of him understand why anyone would look at him the way that Vandelin is right now. He meets his friend's intense green eyes and can't look away from them; he gives his head the tiniest, incredulous shake. "I'm not--I'm not a good man, Vandelin."

Still, he's here. He's not running again. That must count for something.

It counts for more than Kit even knows, and Vandelin doesn't know what to do with his desire to reach out to him and touch him right now.

"You care about being one. Nobody who wasn't would give a shit. The fact that you're this eaten up with guilt about whatever you did is a point in your favor. I don't know if you're trying to make amends for it, or what, but...the way you jump at every possible chance to help someone, even if it could kill you, do you think everyone does that? And it's not even the big grand gestures, or else I could argue that maybe you just have some kind of death wish. It goes right down to the little everyday things, and it's just second nature to you. I don't know anyone else like that. Not even Myr."

His cousin is still his unconscious standard for 'good person,' whether he'll ever admit it to himself or not, but Kit's intrinsic kindness goes beyond even that, and it fascinates Vandelin as if it's something he could study.

Vandelin's words leave Kit speechless in front of him; for a moment, his eyes water suspiciously, but he blinks a few times to do away with it, looking down at his old worn boots. They've seen their fair share of hell; probably time to retire them, to retire the old way of doing things, of living, along with them. He doesn't know how, can only guess at how it's supposed to work--

"Well," he starts at last, and manages a weak laugh and a weaker smile, "I bet you say that to all the guys." He looks up at Vandelin again wordlessly, lifts a hand like he might reach out, stops himself.

He takes a breath. "Help me out here, salroka, I don't know what to do."

"That's me. Seducing my way through the entire Inquisition, one handsome tortured soul at a time."

It's easy to paper this all over with a layer of flippancy than to confront the way his stomach drops as Kit's eyes glisten. His own hand jerks reflexively as if to meet that cut-off gesture, and he knows, for once in his life, that his defensive air is doing neither of them any good at all.

"You forgive yourself," he says finally, "and you take a second chance when it's offered."

He darts his eyes to the Vandelin's hand, then back to his face again. He takes a small half-step closer to him, says, "I don't know about that first part, but the second--"

Wordlessly, helplessly, he reaches out to brush his fingers against Vandelin's, the touch light, like he still expects it to be rejected.

"The first part will come." He hopes to the Maker it will. Whatever Kit's done--and maybe Vandelin is naive to think it can't be that bad; maybe he's being a fool to think of Kit as the sort of man who couldn't do anything truly evil--he doesn't deserve to scourge himself over it forever, not to the point of denying himself love or friendship or any kind of intimacy at all. How could he deserve that?

He doesn't take the proffered hand, no. He bypasses it, reaches for Kit's face instead, cups his cheek in hand and slides his thumb through that still-exotic growth of beard, curves his palm around the back of Kit's neck to pull him in close.

He meets Vandelin halfway there with a hand gentle against the slope of his throat and a kiss to his mouth that manages to be both soft and urgent all at once; they're isolated here, but not alone, and he's painfully aware of the muted conversation happening on the other side of the library as researchers shuffle in and out looking for materials to support their work. There's some thrill to the idea of some horrified librarian stumbling across them as they kiss in the stacks--but it's overshadowed by the knowledge that, well, wasn't Vandelin already banned from the library once before?

Kit breaks the kiss but doesn't allow much space to grow between them. "I don't want to get you kicked out of here again," he confides wryly.

"You know I don't care," he says, his smile bright and wicked and realer than it's been in weeks. Surely Kit remembers that whispered, heated fantasy, though not even Vandelin can claim to be quite that reckless when it comes to putting promise into practice. (But oh, what a thought to entertain, if only for a moment--)

"...All right, all right." He leans on Kit as he sighs, forehead to forehead, thrilling quietly at the closeness. "I'll behave. But I'll have you know I was framed, last time. It's not fair."

Edited 2017-09-16 00:42 (UTC)

Kit's response is a deep, warm chuckle, his arms slipping around Vandelin's waist and upper back to hold him. "You're so full of shit," he teases; somehow he manages to make that a term of endearment. Somehow.

He closes his eyes and takes a breath, savouring the closeness after weeks--no, a month and a half, really--without it. Funny how all it takes is having something the one time to realize just how much you need it, once it's gone.

"Come home with me?" he asks after a moment, then adds, smiling a little, "I've got one of those now. It's, uh. Kind of a hole in the wall, but.."

He laughs at that, unbidden, and doesn't regret the impulse after he does. If he must be told that by anyone--and he must; it happens all too often--he'll take it with that warm, rich affection, half in jest, but tolerable even if it weren't. "I'll make you believe me someday," he vows, because it can't go without a challenge, even one tempered with a grin.

"You've got a house now? Your own, actual house?" It could be a literal tent in an alley for all Vandelin knows or particularly cares; that's impressive. And--well. That does open up a whole new realm of possibilities, doesn't it.

"Show me."

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[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

[CLOSED] starter for Vandelin

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