[open]

[altusimperius]

WHO: Bene and you
WHAT: He's free! ...ish.
WHEN: Haring
WHERE: A room in the former Templar tower, always guarded.
NOTES: anyone who wants to see him will need clearance, and there will always be a Templar present!

Though technically Benedict is able to leave his newly-assigned room in the Gallows, he doesn't. Won't, rather, which is a strange decision considering that his formal incarceration has ended, and there's no reason he should have to stay hidden away in one small space indefinitely.

But he does. For reasons that are his own, Bene seems reluctant to go anywhere or be seen by anyone, preferring instead to sit by his window for hours, book on his lap, and watch the courtyard below.
Receiving all meals at his chambers, the opportunity to bathe is the only way to get him out the door. It's one he takes often, as often as he can, perhaps in an effort to make up for lost time. He even gets to shave, once a week, with supervision.

Benedict may not be in the dungeon anymore, but he cannot and will not forget that he is still a prisoner. A prisoner whose life has been threatened more than once, from both without and within the Inquisition. It's a step up, but a step up from a cesspit is still mud.

Comments

[altusimperius]

For a variety of reasons, Benedict is still very much afraid of Simon. If only he'd borne witness to the Templar's rescue of him, he might feel differently, but as it stands the last time he saw him was right before the near-fatal injury was dealt.
So when he hears Simon's voice, Bene's first instinct is just to freeze. Though he was writing, he goes completely still, even restricting his breath so as not to be too loud. It's a classical animal response: if he doesn't know I'm here, he can't hunt me. There's no logic in moments like these.

[paladingus]

Simon, in his Simon way, is genuinely oblivious to the extent of Benedict's terror of him. As far as he's aware, he's never given the kid a reason for it--though even he couldn't have avoided noticing the way Bene had reacted in the infirmary. Still, there had been a whole host of other reasons for distress just then, and Simon had written it off mostly as a combination of those.

He assumes this to be more along the lines of the open disdain Bene had expressed when Simon had first come to visit him after the Horror incident, and his sympathy begins to tick away by increments. He turns to ask the other templar to go fetch the prisoner out--but the man is gone already, unwilling to stay on duty a second longer than obligation demands. Simon sighs, and opens the door himself.

"Or you could just not have one. It's no skin off my back; I'd just as soon stay here."

[altusimperius]

Remaining still even when the door opens, Benedict watches Simon nervously, like a cat preparing to bolt if a dog lunges for it. He shakes his head, his fear manifesting as ornery. He bathes enough now that he can sacrifice one opportunity if it means he can spend as little time with Ashlock as possible.

[paladingus]

Not even Simon, stubbornly unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt as he is, can read anything but fear into that expression. Were he still able to convince himself it was smugness or insolence, he would, but even if he tries, he can't tell himself nothing is amiss. He's genuinely taken aback.

"What's the matter?"

[altusimperius]

At least Benedict never stops being himself. Simon's question yields an incredulous look as he goes from Frightening Power Holder to Frightening Idiot in mere moments.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," Bene says, on the defensive. He's still on magebane until he can prove he deserves a little more freedom outside the dungeon, so he's not about to do any dangerous magic, but he has that look in his eye like he would if provoked.

[paladingus]

Ever-sensitive to the fear of being thought an idiot, Simon bristles, quiet and mostly internal, at that look. What is the brat's problem with him? He's only ever done his job, nothing more or worse. He does not think the answer to this question is as self-evident as Benedict thinks it is.

"Don't, then. D'you care to explain why?" If he gets to be spoken to like a child, then so does Bene.

[altusimperius]

To be fair, Bene thinks most people are idiots. But Simon is high up there on his list.

"No," he snaps back, watching the Templar carefully, "the fact you don't know is evidence in itself, unless you're toying with me. Either way, I want no part of it. I want someone else."

[paladingus]

"You don't get anyone else," he says curtly. "We don't have an endless fountain of templars so you can pick and choose the ones you don't have strange little grudges against like you're ordering off a menu. Take the bath or leave it, but I'm bound to stand here regardless until the next guard comes to relieve me, and there's nothing either of us gets to do about it."

He'll take up position outside the door again, arms folded and quietly seething. Surely, he thinks, surely none of the other templars here have done anything to Bene that he hasn't, anything he wouldn't have. Defending himself and his commander from magical attack, in the only split-second way he knew how to--was he supposed to do otherwise?

Perhaps, in the eyes of the prisoner and the Inquisition, he was. Just as Cade was.

[altusimperius]

None of the Templars have been especially gentle with him, but Simon and Wren both stick out in Bene's memory, alongside Captain Norrington, for being among the first to leave an impression. ... a bad one.

"I'll leave it," he decides, "stay out." He doesn't want the big oaf in here staring at him any more than he wants to be naked in front of him.