faderift | [OPEN] i've never seen such high hopes

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[OPEN] i've never seen such high hopes

WHO: Simon Ashlock and OPEN
WHAT: NO IT'S COOL I'LL JUST WALK IT OFF. FOREVER
WHEN: Over the course of the next week and a half
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Illness, etc.

Early Stage

"Why don't we talk more?"

A question like that could be redolent of sarcasm, could drip with irony--but Simon looks nothing but absolutely earnest as he asks it.

"We're all Inquisition, aren't we? Isn't that what counts?"

Intermediate Stage

Never again, he'd told himself, after escaping the drudgery of the Ansburg laundry rooms. It had only taken a full-scale uprising to free him from that miserable duty, and he's never yet seen a reason to go back to it of his own accord.

But what else is he supposed to do right now? There are only so many model ships a man can hole up in his room and build, and that task is now verging on impossible when every surface in his room is strewn with bits and bobs and nuts and bolts and gears--these last from a half-baked idea on how to improve the wooden frames, pursued a third of the way to its logical conclusion and then forgotten. The room is no longer big enough to pace around, and too many of the pieces he'd need are now crushed beneath his feet.

Hauling and boiling and stirring keeps him well enough occupied for a while, but when they set him to folding, it's too much to ask focus of him. Half-realizing, mind seething like the great vats of bleached water, he carries the basket right out of the room, folding one-handed as he goes.

Is that your shirt? Why does he have your shirt?

Later Stage

How long Simon's been out in the frozen training yard is probably difficult to discern. Five hours, perhaps, or six, oblivious to anyone who might have occasion to notice or worry. It feels like feeding a hunger, like shoveling food into a bottomless maw; it's not enough, can never be enough, but he can push harder and harder and harder and it feels almost like it will make a dent if he just tries that little bit more.

Does frantic pacing and jogging count as a warmup, if one has been doing it for two straight and sleepless days? It wouldn't seem to, if the degree to which he's favoring his right leg is any indication, but even that hasn't slowed him and isn't going to.

He hasn't registered the color of his skin as cause for concern. That's what happens when you're out in the cold, isn't it? Not that it feels cold; he never really feels cold, he thinks, but not now, especially not now, when even stripping down to his shirtsleeves in the frosty air hadn't helped, when the sweat drenching his shirt has iced over and he still feels like he's boiling out of his skin. He has only the most distant idea that his perception of the temperature could be anything other than accurate. Recognizing the cognitive dissonance is beyond him.

Wildcard

Just come up to him at any point during this whole roller-coaster ride, I'm down for anything!

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"--no, mate, listen, you haven't tried cake at all until you've had this kind that's made of cheese. It's got cheese and bay leaves and some Vint name; it's amazing and I won't hear a word about any other kind."

Does any kind of cake merit this kind of impassioned defense? It does now, Cade. Good luck shutting him up.

Cade is an agreeable soul. He's quiet and shy and rolls over easily, except, apparently, when the conversation is about cake.

"I've had it, of course I've had it," he says with a twitch in his brow, a strange, intense look in his eyes, "I just didn't like it that much, Simon, because cake is meant to be spongey and not made like cheese. That's not even a cake anymore." Simon is being unreasonable and anyone with sense should be able to see that.

"How is it not cake?" he demands, seemingly unaware at the moment of the rarity of Cade's display of spine, despite having spent the better part of a year in his close company. Then again, Cade has always been more willing to challenge him than most.

"It's sweet and you bake it. What else does a thing need in order to be a cake? And--it's better than the spongey kind, anyway. The spongey kind gets stale. This kind can't go stale."

When Cade talks at full volume it's a reminder to everyone of how raspy his voice can be, either from misuse or just... that's how it sounds, and he speaks so quietly most of the time that it's like a different person.
"What else does it--" He shakes his head like this is the stupidest thing he's ever heard. "Icing? Anything, anything at all that identifies it as a cake and not a cheese tart?" He is downright disgusted by his friend's ignorance, and is starting to get a little red in the face. "Real cake doesn't go stale if you eat it in time, which is the idea. Of cake. Not to see how long it'll last, Maker, it's not a survival trial."

"Oh, it's about icing now? Something's not a cake unless it's got icing?" Why he now feels compelled to defend the honor of icingless cake, he couldn't explain if he tried, but it's a thing to do.

"Who says a cheese tart can't be a kind of cake? Why's the definition of cake got to be so narrow? And who eats an entire cake so fast it hasn't the time to get stale at all?" Simon would, and has, and will happily do so in future, but he's arguing on behalf of all cake-eaters now. It's the principle of the thing.

"You don't have to be such a knob about it. 'Survival trial.' Andraste's underthings."

"The fact that it's called a tart! A cheese tart!" This is just asinine. Pushing his hair back out of his face, Cade is becoming visibly agitated and apparently feeling a little called-out. Maybe... someone... he knows would eat an entire cake in a sitting. And then run for three hours after. How dare you come for him like this.
"I'm not being a knob!" he retorts, suddenly outraged, the Rich Boy bleeding through as it does only in the strangest moments.

"I'm not actually Inquisition if we want to get technical."

Because she certainly won't forget sleeping in tents on a literal mountain of ice. Frankly, Ciri is still surprised they even got rooms in Kirkwall and weren't thrown into the middle of the harbor but that isn't now because now is kinda weird. She stares at the Templar with furrowed brows from where she's been resting after her daily practice.

"Folk typically introduce themselves first too," she says with a shrug. "Typically, anyway."

For once in his life, Simon does not particularly want to get technical, and waves this distinction off with a too-breezy hand.

"I suppose there's some business that matters for, but as long as you're allowed into the Gallows, you count well enough for my purposes." These mysterious 'purposes,' ominous as they might sound, are along the lines of 'would buy a drink for, might possibly challenge to sparring match.'

"--but you've got me there. You've been around least as long as I have, too; you must think my manners are dreadful. Call me Simon." He sticks out a cheerful hand. The 'Ser' seems unimportant, at the moment.

This is a shame because for once in her life, Ciri feels the need to be technical.

"Purposes." She repeats lightly, brows furrowing more if possible and possibly considering escape routes if needed. If not she did have her flasks on her belt though she doubts fire is hardly proper for first meetings but this doesn't quite fit her norm as it were.

"You're lucky, Simon. I find lots of things dreadful so your manners or lack thereof have gone unnoticed," she says taking his hand. "I'm Ciri."

“I don't know,” Galatea says, ingenuously, smiling up at him—quite a long way up—and breaks the over-sized chunk of bread in her hands into two pieces, offering him one of them and the soup bowl in front of her. Plain, hearty fare suitable for keeping a small or big body warm in the dead of winter, which this most certainly is, although he doesn't look quite as bothered by it as some.

“I'd like to think it is; I spoke to Coupe,” not quite familiar enough to call her Wren, but casual with her name like maybe Kirkwall isn't where she learned it, “about just that thing.”

Her smile brightens. Sharpens. Something. She can be difficult to focus on, sharp from all angles—

“My name is Galatea.”

He accepts it gladly. He has felt even hungrier still than his usual eat-the-kitchen-staff-out-of-house-and-home habits, these past couple days. When ordinarily he might attempt to be chivalrous and turn the offer down, it feels, at the moment, like a welcome overture of friendship indeed.

(He remembers the last tiny elven woman who'd offered him food when he was new here; he remembers the unexpected tenderness in the way she'd leaned on him, as if to soften the sword-shattering blow of her questions. Perhaps he'd only wanted to read the tenderness into it--but she'd let him, and that was a kindness in itself. It is not often that anyone touches a templar without violent intent, and that only recently. It's another thing to starve for.)

"Simon," he offers back, with a smile not quite so pointed, but neither is it guileless--not when Wren is being invoked quite like that, in a way that makes his mind reach to draw parallels and think of who exactly else refers to her that way. It's an address he saves for when he's angry at her, but then, his circumstances are odd. He'll simply file it away.

"Did you, now?" He tears off a piece of bread, dips it delicately into the soup. "Are we colleagues in Forces?"

I did not think us to suit you in turn.

No?

Whatever blade she is, the edge of it turns not towards Simon; she dips bread in soup, too, and that makes them—if only in this moment—friends. (A heartbreakingly simplistic definition, fleeting in a matter of fact way.) She smiles, shakes her head: “No, I scout. Or I will! I'll learn.”

The Inquisition doesn't have need of her particular skills, but a pair of hands that have known discipline is not unwelcome, and...

They don't need them now. She wonders, sometimes, if that will always be the case. If a door will close and someone will quietly and out of sight ask the question; if the voice at her elbow will be Coupe's own. If she would be bold enough to ask. If she would ask at all, if she might for any number of reasons that Galatea can imagine decry the asking—she wonders what the question would be, and in turn, her own answer.

She says, “She and I were colleagues, though, before the war.”

(Galatea looks like she might have been a child, 'before the war'.)

“I said to her,” leaning forward on her elbows, conspiratorial, “I think asking anyone to save the world, that's very big. But you and I, maybe between us, we could save some people, no? And then, if everyone here, if we save a few people...if we all do a little, together. The Maker would smile on that, I think.”

There's obviously something very strange going on within the Gallows, and as the fog of Fern's grief over Sina and anxiety over Finch begins to reach something approaching an equilibrium, she's... noticing things. Maybe it began with the odd girl hunkered down in the dried herb store room in the herb gardens; maybe it was Maedhros' behaviour over the sending crystal that set everything off. The one thing that is guaranteed to make her frightened, however, is witnessing the way Simon is currently conducting himself on the training grounds.

Wrapped up in a warm coat and scarf, Fern makes her way down the icy steps to approach him, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. "Simon?" she calls out, and fishes a wrapped meat pastry out of the folds of her coat. "Simon, why don't you stop a bit and have something to eat?"

Fern's voice doesn't immediately filter through that curtain of steely determination. Only when she's close enough to appear in his peripheral vision does he register that she's there, startling a little at the approach. It's difficult to tell whether his hair or his eyes are wilder, his lips even bluer than the rest of him, all whiskered over with ten days' completely untended growth of beard.

"Oh--"

He is starving. He can't pretend he's not; he feels like he's been gnawingly hungry for days. But the prospect of standing still long enough to eat anything feels unbearable--and still, he doesn't quite connect the strangeness of the sensation with the heartbreakingly worried look on her face. What could have happened to make her look at him like that? Has he done something?

"That would be splendid, really it would, it's very kind of you, I just--I wasn't finished, but--all right, I could try to set it aside just for a few moments, not too long, just enough to--" To what? He's forgotten the train of thought.

To eat something, yes, that was it. He's trying to stand still long enough to hold the conversation politely, and it's maddening.

"Is everything all right? Are you?"

"Am I all right?" Baffled, Fern steps closer to Simon, though she still keeps her arms folded snugly over her chest. (Holy buckets, but it's cold out here--)

"Look at you!" she exclaims and comes close enough to give his sweaty and disheveled arm a little poke. (Just a little one. She still likes him.) "When was the last time you slept? You're turning blue."

Her needling tone aside, there's real worry for him in her large, expressive blue eyes. Fern reaches out again to touch his arm. "Please, come inside, won't you?"

He flinches away from the poke, more of a twitchy reflex than an expression of pain, sore though his muscles are when he stops moving them for a second. (If he had the time or clarity to think about it, he'd wonder at how he could manage to swing a greatsword around for this long and still have feeling in his arms at all.)

"The last time I slept?" It seems an odd question, until he actually tries to remember and realizes with some bafflement that he can't. "It wasn't last night, and I don't think it was the night before..." What he's thinking of as 'last night' was, in fact, the night before last. He shakes his head, losing that train of thought as well once it doesn't come to a definitive conclusion.

It still tugs right at his heartstrings to see how concerned she looks, even if he's not fully cognizant of the reason for it, and he reaches up with his other hand to pat the one she lays on his arm and give it a reassuring squeeze with fingers so cold they ought to be immovable.

"I will," he says, "if it'll make you feel better, but--only for a bit, all right? It's too warm in there; I've been sweating like mad every time I'm shut up in a room. And the walls just feel--too small, do you notice it too? Is that just me? Are all the rooms really as big as they were before?"

Edited 2018-01-25 08:41 (UTC)

"...And the walls just feel--too small, do you notice it too? Is that just me? Are all the rooms really as big as they were before?"

This is really quite out of her pay grade, or ability to manage--but Fern still has the warm meat pastry in one hand and is determined to make Simon sit still long enough to eat it. "Well--let's just... let's just sit near the door, then. Out of the wind." It's a compromise, right?

As gently as she can, she takes hold of one of his very large arms and tries to coax him away from the training grounds, holding the meat pastry out a bit like a carrot in front of a mule. ...okay, this is the only way she knows how to make stubborn creatures cooperate, please don't take it personally Simon.

Why does Simon have his shirt? A very good question. The folding as he goes seems terribly inefficient, and Malcolm's starting to get agitated with this bloody upbeat mood that seems to have settled over the Inquisition as of late, for one reason or another.

"I'll be taking that," he says, yoinking his shirt from Simon's grasp. "I didn't think you'd been assigned laundry duty. Did something happen?"

Simon blinks, not having seen Malcolm approach or noticed his presence until the shirt disappears from his hands. Undaunted, he plucks a new one out of the basket, recognizes it as belonging to Kostos, tosses it over his shoulder onto the floor, and starts folding a third.

"Oh, I haven't been," he says. "I'm just volunteering. There's nothing needs guarding or patrolling, I already asked--" About the patrolling, anyway; guarding is more unbearable by the second and he positively dreads the next time he's expected to stand still and keep watch over the Venatori brat.

"You've got to do something to keep busy, haven't you? Building things or fixing things--but everyone's got that covered, it seems--and I was the laundry bloke back in Ansburg, so I know how it all works and I thought I'd just offer--"

He is not, as Malcolm has observed, being much help at it. The basket is half full of sloppily-folded shirts burying the ones that still need folding. Simon doesn't seem to have noticed the problem.

Mr. Needs Shit To Be Clean definitely has noticed, though he can't entirely say he knows Simon's habits well enough to know his habits, how tidy or disorganized he might be. But he's definitely frowning. And picking up the discarded shirt. How careless.

"That's very..." What's a good word that may not be entirely true? "Noble of you." Nailed it. "But perhaps you could leave the folding and organizing and distribution of the washed items to someone else?"

Colin looks puzzled and soon reaches out to place his palm against Simon's forehead.

"You have a fever. Wait here." He comes out from around the counter to browse through vials on a shelf. "Do you have any other symptoms? Coughing, listlessness?"

It has not occurred to Simon, anchorless and unfocused as his mind has been these past several days, to wonder why every room he walks into has felt so uncomfortably warm. He has vaguely assumed, without actually examining the theory, that everyone's just been putting more fuel on the braziers.

All he knows is that he's starving, and the food in here smells better than anything he's tasted in ages, and it's nice to see a friendly face, even if he doesn't understand why Colin's fussing. "Do I?" he says. "I don't think I do. And there's nothing else wrong at all; I've been getting all sorts of things done that I don't usually. I'm great. I don't know what it is--maybe it's just getting up earlier that's done it?"

He's speaking just a little faster than before, his tone audibly more upbeat than the slightly deadpan humor of their first encounter, but he certainly isn't coughing or listless. His eyes are a little too bright.

"You're not sleeping as long?" Colin immediately chooses a particular vial and returns to him with it. "Take this and lie down for a bit. It ought to put you right out and bring that fever down. Make sure to sleep for as long as you can, and let me know how you feel, all right?"

"No, but--it's not a bad thing, honest, it's only because I haven't been tired. Not a bit. I'm still not." His voice might lend him some credibility here, cheerful and totally lacking in weariness as it is, but the unkempt stubble and the deepening shadows under his eyes tell another story.

"I'll keep it on hand for when I do need a bit of help getting to sleep," he promises. There are always nights like that, and not so few and far between now as they once were. He knows it'll come in handy. "How much do I owe you for it?"

"With the Inquisition discount and the friends and family discount, seven silver."

"Oh, that's not bad at all." It's only as he's fishing through his coin purse for exact change that the rest of it filters through, and he looks up with a little smile.

"'Friends and family,' eh? Is that the secret buttering-up discount for everyone?" He'd like to hope not.

Edited 2018-01-28 09:22 (UTC)

"A regular discount does just fine for that," Colin says with a smile. "Friends-and-family get extra off the potions if they're sick. This one I've made specially for fever--elfroot for pain, willowbark to balance the humors, brandy to help you sleep, and embrium for nausea. Tastes vile, but it works."

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[OPEN] i've never seen such high hopes

CADE

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early stage.

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later stage

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intermediate

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