[OPEN] this guy is out now

[minrathousian]

WHO: Atticus Vedici, the Division Heads, Wren, Myr + OPEN
WHAT: Someone is free-ish from prison, finally.
WHEN: Early December.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: In Benedict's thread, CW for Fade torture awfulness.

I. THE AGREEMENT (Closed to the Division Heads, Wren, and Myr)


Atticus has no choice but to submit to this condition of his freedom, even if in doing so he exchanges one set of shackles for another.

Tight-lipped and silent as he follows Ser Coupe into the private chamber to be utilized for this process, he schools his face into a neutral expression that only just succeeds in masking his outrage. Yet in this he knows he has no leverage, no trump card to play that would not in turn be played against him, too.

He stops in the centre of the room and waits. At this stage, there is little else he can do.



II. THE GALLOWS COURTYARD (OPEN)


It is exceptionally pleasant to step outdoors into a brisk autumn morning and not feel the looming presence of a Templar guard at his back, nor suffer the weight of the runed shackles around his wrists. Atticus examines the reddened flesh on his hands pensively, gives his fingers a tentative flex first this way, then that way; there appears to be no permanent damage, nor any adverse effects of his limited exposure to the lyrium within the runed cuffs.

In short, nothing truly worth remarking upon to distract him from his cursory, near feline exploration of the Gallows that are now laid out before him.

The courtyard isn’t his destination so much as a stop along the way; already he’s encountered a number of locked or warded doors that his better judgment refrained him from investigating further. The mess hall, at the early hour when he chose to rise, only had a scattered few individuals in it having their breakfast; curiously, none of them seemed interested in eating with him. So it has been during most of the interminable hours he’s passed this morning, though he can find little to complain over in having one of the communal baths exclusively to himself.

Likely he cuts an odd figure standing alone in the courtyard admiring this first unobscured view of the cloudy sky that he’s enjoyed in months, but that’s not reason enough for him to change his behaviour.



III. DREAMING (Closed to Benedict)


On some night--which one doesn’t especially matter, only that it is a still one, peaceable and quiet--Atticus lets his fadewalking lead him towards the outskirts of Benedict’s dreaming mind. It’s less that he intrudes, and more that he finds for himself some way to interweave himself into the world of the dream, and to search through it with vague interest for some sign of his former apprentice’s consciousness.



IV. IN THE LIBRARY (OPEN)


His freedom from the Gallows prison is accompanied by certain expectations, chief among them that Atticus will put his keen intellect and insight into the activity of the Venatori to good use and work.

So that is what he is doing now--or at the very least, he is perusing range after range of books upon aging shelves, withdrawing them at his leisure, bringing down volumes as they strike him as relevant, replacing those that don’t. He has acquired a small work station for himself in the corner, and returns to it occasionally to work.
 


V. PETRANA'S OFFICE (CLOSED)


If little else can be said for the quality of his character, let it at least be said that Atticus Vedici is punctual.

At the prescribed time he arrives outside Petrana's office door, but does not yet knock. An unexpected compulsion sees him taking a moment to straighten the sleeves and collar of the simple black robe he's acquired since being freed from the prisoner's tunic required of him in the jail cell. The fabric of the robe would never pass muster in Minrathous society; that alone makes him inexplicably satisfied by it.

He straightens and lifts his hand, hesitates only a moment, and then raps his knuckles against the door. "Madame de Cedoux," he says (never her given name, not so casually, not here).


VI. THRANDUIL'S OFFICE (CLOSED)

(OOC: This thread takes place shortly after the phylactery thread.)


Shortly after the phylactery ritual is completed, Atticus is summoned to a private meeting with the head of the Research Division. Well, that didn't take long.

He's given some time to himself to bathe first, wash his hair, shave the growth of stubble on his chin, and change out of his prisoner's tunic into something more fitting for one who is no longer meant to look like a prisoner. (He still is, he knows; as long as that phylactery exists. But that is a problem to be dealt with in the future.)

Now, dressed and clean, Atticus approaches Thranduil's office door and knocks.

Comments

[laurenande]

There is a moment, when the chasm of what power she has spent opens before her, where Galadriel almost sways with the rush of exhaustion that floods her. She keeps her feet, she has had much practice in this, especially in Thedas, but her distraction bleeds into their conversation. She stares at him blankly, as if waiting on the rest of his question, before she realizes that he is done.

Of course, he would not know what it means.

"Ah, it is Sindarin," she answers, "Elvish...one of the languages that qualifies. It means my friend.

"I hope you do not object to the familiarity?"

[minrathousian]

"No," Atticus responds, realizes a moment later that his words could be read as a refusal of the thing she has offered to him, and clarifies with an idle hand gesture. "No, indeed not."

Friendship and its peculiarities are not alien concepts to him. They litter his boyhood memories--the names and faces of other children and adolescents whose company he kept while learning magic from his mother... and teaching himself the art of deception, of how to keep his abilities shrouded in secret while still enabling himself to explore the Fade through another's eyes. That had been part of the thrill of it, the excitement: he delighted and tormented his fellows in their sleep, only to rush up to them in the waking world to witness how their dreams preoccupied them, or their nightmares hounded them. More often than not the results disappointed, for the thinking mind is a startlingly resilient thing. Often it required two or three such visits to his friends' dreams to render them truly haggard from night terrors, or glowing with light from the inside, in the waking world.

Such familiarity breeds unfortunate associations; his childhood and adolescent friends either grew to want too little--or too much--from their relationships. So they became short-lived things out of necessity; to use a sleeping mind too often, too consistently, is to leave a path through the subconscious that leads back to the dreamwalker himself. He did not, as a rule, court familiarity. (Indeed, he'd killed men for demonstrating too much of it--and for far less.)

Nevertheless here he stood, confronting the most recent in an alarming number of faces who proved themselves to be exceptions to that rule. And this face the most alarming of all, for she extended unselfish familiarity to him and called it 'friendship' for no discernible purpose other than the knowledge that he could ease her sleeping mind.

In short, she knew his secret. And she would keep it.

He's let the silence drag on for too long. He clears his throat. "My apologies," he says, "I think the fence has left my mind in a fog."

That's one way to put it, surely.

[laurenande]

"Yes, it is a feature of that art," Galadriel acknowledges--she, herself is more given to long silences during conversation, it comes part and parcel with immortality, and thinks little of it. Her own distraction bleeds heavily into her parsing of the situation, but she is not so far gone that she does not recognize that it is her turn to speak.

"It shall fade, in time. Even those caught upon the borders of it are not affected indefinitely." Though, depending on how long they lingered on the edges of the spell, they could suffer mortal consequences that were not directly linked to it.

The sounds of the courtyard are much greater than during their previous conversation. Perhaps it is the time of day, or the strangely inclement weather, but there are many more bodies this time around and Galadriel is increasingly uncomfortable with the din of them. She draws her cloak about herself and lifts her hood again. The effect of it is not instantaneous but something in her becomes less interesting as she is fully covered.

"Enjoy the snow, if you will, but I think I shall not linger out here; you of all people know why I am less than fond of cold."

[minrathousian]

As she grows more keenly aware of the other people that litter the nearby courtyard, so does Atticus--and he notes with keen interest the peculiar effect of the cloak she draws around her shoulders. The magic meant to encourage his eye to wander elsewhere works, but his mind, still shrewd, makes a note to enquire about it later.

At her words, he chuckles. It's a short sound, mostly lacking in humour. "In that, you and I are in agreement," he says, regards the nearby hanging icicle with clear disdain, and steps away from the wall. Before they go their separate ways, however, he pauses to meet her eyes again.

"Take care, Galadriel," he says. It may be the first time he's spoken the words aloud and meant them.