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[OPEN] a dwarf making bad decisions
WHO: Kit + you?? (starters for the Medicine Seller, Simon, Anders, and Cyril)
WHAT: The best way to deal with your problems is to act like you don't have any, right??
WHEN: The latter half of November.
WHERE: Kirkwall and the surrounding area.
NOTES: None immediately come to mind, will update as needed.
WHAT: The best way to deal with your problems is to act like you don't have any, right??
WHEN: The latter half of November.
WHERE: Kirkwall and the surrounding area.
NOTES: None immediately come to mind, will update as needed.
I. DARKTOWN (THE MEDICINE SELLER)
Killing demons is far from tedious work, but for Kit it’s frankly a nice respite from having to think about the low-key disaster the rest of his life is swiftly en route to becoming.
It also leaves him cagey; magic and magickery in general set his teeth on edge in a way he finds difficult to articulate, even to the peculiar elf (the “Painted Blade,” Melys, really?) who has become his friend. Perhaps especially because they are friends. Possibly this explains why, as they meander back down the poorly lit Darktown streets back to Kit’s house, he’s a little rougher than usual when he drags a couple of Coterie thugs back from hassling a pair of frightened dwarf kids.
The end of the encounter--the street fight, more like--leaves his knuckles bruised and bloody, but he wins, which is all that matters!! A bit roughed up, and keyed up, he’s in the middle of snapping, “--yeah, piss off back to your rat holes--” to the backs of their retreating figures, when he realizes that he’s frightened the children off, too.
That realization seems to take the wind from his sails. He stares at the spot under a bit of rotting lumber where they’d been hiding, rubs a hand along his jaw, then glances uncomfortably towards the Medicine Seller. He spits some blood out into the dirt. “..well.”
II. TRAINING GROUNDS (SIMON + OPEN)
(OOC: The thread with Simon is closed, but other characters should feel free to approach Kit after training/sparring on another day!)
He’s off his game.
It’s not the recruits’ fault that they’re still wet behind the ears and don’t know the difference between a parry and a riposte, and on a good day, their inexperience would trigger his patience, his understanding, the part of him that has always made him good with stubborn kids and loose cannons alike. Today it just makes him cold.
(The bruises on his knuckles and what looks like a split lip probably don’t help much.)
Once they’ve cleared out of the training grounds, Kit directs his attention towards putting up the last of the training weapons, then retreats to the pier to light himself a cigarette, squint at the early morning light coming across the water, and try not to feel anything.
III. NEAR THE DEEP ROADS (ANDERS)
The door sealing off a section of the Deep Roads from the surface isn’t that far below ground; sunlight still reaches the stone floor of the ancient roads from what time has turned into a ravine, far above. The worst that they’ve had to tangle with so far were a couple of ranging deepstalkers who tested their luck against a Legionnaire and a Grey Warden mage one too many times. Kit’s now wiping a bit of viscera off of one of his axes.
A Grey Warden and a Legionnaire down near the dark shouldn’t be unusual, but it is, given the two in question. Did Kit invite Anders on this trek seemingly out of nowhere? Probably. Has he been his normal chatty self for most of the trip? Nope.
“I’ll check the map, but I think we’re close,” he says at length, expression distant and neutral.
IV. THE OTHER POWERS OFFICE (CYRIL + OPEN)
(OOC: The thread with Cyril is closed, but other characters should feel free to pop by the office on another day!)
It’s taken about a month for Kit to wrangle the office into some semblance of control, or to sort out the previous project leader’s archaic filing system (translation, there was no filing system)--but he’s in the perfect mindset to perform mind-numbingly dull labour at present, and so cobbles together order out of chaos with remarkable speed.
This is where he spends his early mornings--and a handful of very late evenings--when he isn’t on the training ground with the recruits… or covertly killing demons in Darktown with the Medicine Seller.
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Inside the office, there's the sound of some papers being shuffled around and a chair dragging across the floor. Then Kit (and a cigarette, naturally), approach, and he reaches out a hand to lightly touch Myr's arm, to help orient him. (He shouldn't be grateful that Myr can't see him, or read the lines of stress and unhappiness on his face, in his eyes, now that he knows how that blindness came to be.)
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"Nice place," he remarks, mustering a reasonable facsimile of his usual sunny smile. "Guessing it's covered in paperwork the other fellow never bothered to file, though. How've you been settling into it?"
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"Oh." He clears his throat, makes a sound like a chuckle appear, and leads his friend over to a chair, just in case he should choose to take a seat. "Well, it was," he admits, "I've wrangled it a bit under control--" and reaches out to pick up a box full of records, and shoves it onto a shelf already crammed full of other boxes full of records that are probably long past their required retention periods. (Time to send those suckers to off-site storage. Does the Inquisition have off-site storage? It should.)
"What brings you by, anyhow?" This asked in a tone he endeavours to keep light, but part of him dreads that Myr already knows, that he's come to offer his condolences, or worse, to suggest that Vandelin might change his mind.
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But he's really not here to make smalltalk about the difficulties of organizing an office. "I'd wanted to see how you were getting on in the new office," he replies as lightly. "Since I hadn't. And--apologize for the other night. Didn't mean to wake you both up with--that."
He doesn't know.
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"...And--apologize for the other night. Didn't mean to wake you both up with--that."
...okay, that answers that question.
He shouldn't let his silence be the first response, but he doesn't have practice at navigating this brand of emotional turbulence, especially not on his own. On instinct he reaches for his cigarette, still burning on the lip of his ash tray, and takes a drag from it. He exhales the smoke. "It's fine," he says, a little quietly. "Don't worry about it."
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This time--
His nerves are stretched too tight by recent events, by the thought someone else knew about Hasmal's uprising, in more and more raw detail than anything else he'd heretofore given. That someone as dear to them both as Kit might have learned about it from his drunken, uncontrolled ramblings, upstaging anything that Van might've said on the matter (he would never have said anything; be realistic about your cousin, Myrobalan, he never would have owned it)--
"It wasn't his intent," and anyway I forgive him, except he hadn't actually said the words aloud, had he? (Though he scarcely remembers now if he had or not; it's enough that it's implicit, isn't it?) "He'll go to any lengths for what he believes in but he's not a violent man by nature."
He checks himself before he can get further, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. Why had he-- "Sorry. He's told you all that at length, I'm sure." Because if there's one thing Vandelin needed in his life--the way Myr needed his faith--it's to know people thought of him exactly as he'd have them think of him.
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"I know that," Kit assures him, kindly as he can, but something lurches in his heart when Myr goes on--
"Sorry. He's told you all that at length, I'm sure."
And he can't, he realizes quite suddenly. He can't keep talking about this, pretending that nothing has changed. He feels a spike of anger in his gut; why did Vandelin leave the work of sharing this news with Myr to him? This is his cousin, his family--or, more likely, maybe he's just avoided the issue entirely. Looks like he learned something from Kit after all, in their time together.
"He didn't, actually." The words come out with difficulty, but he makes himself say them anyway, staring at his cigarette. He takes a breath. "...he, um. He left me." Up comes the cigarette for another drag, before he blows out the smoke and looks out the window. "It's over."
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Myr's voice pitches up on the word--incredulous, aghast. What did you do, Van?
It's almost impossible to believe, so hard on Vandelin's heartfelt declaration that freedom meant family. That he'd run--and fought, and bled, and killed--all so mages would have the chance to be with those they loved. So they could each find someone who meant to them as much as Kit had to Van-- And then, apparently, have the freedom to fuck it all up, too.
"Sweet Andraste singing, Kit. I--" Can't make any excuses for what had happened. Can't offer an explanation. He doesn't know this part of Vandelin, doesn't know what dark impulse would make his cousin throw away something he'd longed for so ardently. (Something that--Myr can admit to himself now, ugly as the thought is--he'd envied; he'd been jealous of Van's success and now that's another cause for regret.)
"--shit." He gets up, so carefully, crosses to where Kit's standing and reaches out a hesitant hand to him--hovering just shy of resting on his friend's arm. Circle discipline teaches you not to touch, not openly, not where it might be misunderstood, but that doesn't mean he hadn't learned the value of it. Bereft as he is of words-- "What can I do?"
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"What can I do?" Myr starts to say, to offer with such earnest and demonstrative sincerity, that Kit thinks for one bitter, black moment that he pursued the wrong cousin. Myr doesn't have the same sharp edges that Vandelin does... but, unfair as it is, maybe those edges, and a desire to soften them, were what had drawn Kit to him in the first place.
He takes a small step backward away from the threat of touch, not wanting it, rejecting with a distance that he knows he should rethink, but just can't, not now. "Nothing," he says quickly, shaking his head, and turns to chafe a hand across the crown of his head, sliding it to rest against the back of his neck, and exhales roughly. "This isn't your fault, it's just the way things are--best to just forget about it and move on, all right?" A quick drag from the cigarette to give his nervous energy a minor outlet. "He's made up his mind."
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There's something--a young impulse, three years old and eyeless and ashamed--that wants to cringe back when Kit steps away, rejecting contact. Myr strangles it; not now.
His own fucking self-pity might have gotten them into this; that's reason enough never to indulge it again.
"If you need a distraction--another excuse to get out of Kirkwall or someone to cover for you if you have to get away from this," a rare illustrative gesture at the office around them, tightly contained as pulled blow, "--or, fuck, someone to listen or to put in a good word for you with the Maker," a crying shoulder, a friend, "whatever it is that will let you get through this. Forgetting's not fast, Kit."
Not that they both don't know that already-- Myr bites his tongue before he can dig himself further into a hole with it, but doesn't take his hand back.
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He clenches and unclenches his jaw, staring at the window, then turns to look back at Myr. Myr, his friend, who hasn't done anything to deserve any of the mess that has landed in his lap--not the blindness, not an emotionally inaccessible cousin, and certainly not a dwarf who's more flake than friend. It's got to be exhausting, he thinks, over-extending himself like that, every sodding day.
"You're right," he says at length, puts out his cigarette, and leans against his desk with his head bowed. He squeezes his eyes shut. More quietly, "You're right. ...Ancestors, I wish it were faster."
He's never had his heart broken before. (Not a fun experience at all, 10/10 Kits do not recommend.)
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It didn't used to be so hard to balance things. The world didn't used to be so cruel. But then, Circle mages are sheltered...
He lets his hand fall back to his side, face still turned toward Kit, expression full of worry and compassion alike. "I'm sorry it's not," he replies, gently. "Sorry that I can't make it any faster," though he knows it'd do no good in the end; that's not what they're made for, "--but you don't have to go through it alone."
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He doesn't finish asking that question. Why did he do it? Why wasn't he good enough? Does he really want to know the answers to those questions? Probably not--not without a lot of alcohol first, but the thought of getting hammered alone just makes him feel shameful and weak.
He forces himself to stand up straight, bouncing on his heels once. "...I'll be all right," he says, hesitates, then takes a few steps over to Myr and places a hand on his shoulder. "But it's good to know you're around, if I need something."
There, Kit. Was that so hard?
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He's got inklings, already. His mind works fast, works relentless, not letting a mystery so awful sit unexplored and unexamined. But to pull together all the pieces of this particular puzzle might require asking questions better not asked, like poking fingers into wounds still fresh--
Maybe better not. He'd only just kept things from disintegrating with Van, and Kit hasn't run yet; prying might shatter both those fragile pieces of good fortune. So instead--he lays his hand over Kit's on his shoulder, brief and fond. "Sure. You're--still like family, you know. Whatever's happened."
It surprises him a little to hear himself say it so openly, so easily, about someone he hasn't known more than a few months-- But it's true, and more importantly, it's right. He gives Kit's hand a pat before taking his own away again. "--So. Come see me when the office is finally wrangled, maybe?" When you're ready.
He's learning, too.