[OPEN] I have never known peace

[ragweed]

WHO: Kit + you??
WHAT: Kit does what he can to help out the Inquisition during blue flu season, and reconnects with some friends (and lovers) along the way.
WHEN: Throughout February.
WHERE: Gallows + Kirkwall
NOTES:This will be Kit's last log before he goes out in a blaze of glory at the end of the month, so if you'd like one last thread with him, ping me @ ragweed on plurk or on discord and we can make it happen. Starters will be in the comments as I write them up. CW for death and violence in Kit's thread w/ the Medicine Seller.

I have never known hunger
Like these insects that feast on me

Comments

[ragweed]

Friends who worm their way into your heart whether you're ready to welcome them in or not--yes. The thought is going to require further exploration at some point, but not now; not while he's got the burn of the drink making its way down his throat, leaving him comfortably mellow for a while. He listens to her describe Cade as a black cherry tree and... yes, he decides, he can definitely see it.

"Tell me about Vandelin?"

A short, wistful chuckle, his eyes turned to his glass. Yeah, he should've seen that one coming, shouldn't he. "...he's like granite," he replies after a pause; he knows nothing about trees, but you can't be a dwarf from Orzammar and not know a thing or two about stone, even if you're casteless. "Molten to start with, liable to burn anything that comes too close. It turns solid under pressure, you know," he adds this like of course she knows, of course a Dalish elf would know this. "Solid, beautiful. You ever seen a sheet of polished white granite before? I got a glimpse of it just the once when I was working a job in the Diamond Quarter when I was still just knee high to a nug and--Ancestors." A low whistle, and a shake of his head. "I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life, back then."

A spell of quiet follows in which his dark eyes have gone distant. Then he swills the contents of his glass again, looking down into it. "So... yeah. Granite. Solid, beautiful, and unyielding."

The last said with a touch of tired sadness, and he takes another swallow from the glass. Then, chuckling some, he adds, "Frankly though, I bet he'd say the same about me. The unyielding part, that is."

[nadasharillen]

Granite. She'd seen some of it during the reconstruction, mostly in Hightown. It was beautiful--especially when cut and polished with care. None of it white, but she could imagine it, the reflective flakes scattered through it. Brilliant and breathtaking, like glittering plains of new snow that would remain unbroken forever. She thought about it for a bit, about what kind of person that would make. Perhaps the kind that would make someone say they'd seen something more beautiful since the stone.

Nari nods into her own glass, fuzzy enough to enjoy looking at how the liquid it contains catches the light more than tasting it and fuzzy enough to ask questions she didn't deserve answers to. "Did you crash into each other, then?" she murmurs, "Some way you couldn't move around?"

[ragweed]

Maybe that's one way to describe what drove them apart--a difference that drove them together too many times, but not the coming together of lovers. It was too fractious for that.

"He..." Kit starts, then pauses, seems lost in the thoughts, and the pain, surrounding that last conversation between them. He closes his eyes. "...he figured out sooner than anyone else that I'm a dead man walking. He did what was right for him." He brings up the glass and drinks from it again, a slow, deep drag, before setting it down again with an exhale. Staring at the empty glass, he says quietly, "Dead men don't make great partners."

A kinder way to voice his real thought: I'm no good for anyone, and I never was.

[nadasharillen]

"You're not dead, though," she replies, dipping a finger in the whiskey and then running it around the edge of the glass to see if it will sing. It creaks instead, so she stops. "You walk, you care, your heart beats, and you love. The dead don't do that. You're alive, whether you acknowledge it or not.

"We're all dead walking, Kit. Life is fragile. Even moreso now that rifts can split open and spill demons into the streets. Now that we're fighting an implacable enemy who won't stop until he kills us all. Sina--" Nari paused for a moment, closed her eyes to ride the tide of anguish she'd become used to whenever she said her clansister's name, and then opened them again to look at Kit. "Sina was dying. She was dying for a long time. By the last few months, everyone knew it, no matter who would say it. But she... she deserved love. She deserved someone who loved her. Who stayed."

She leans back, scoots her legs in closer to her body. "I don't know Vandelin, but if you loved him... you see things in people. Good things. I think your heart shoots true as any arrow Andruil ever shot. We all carry our own weights, and it may be that that weight was too much for him. Maybe he loved you too much, and he was afraid. I can't judge him for that," she chuckles ruefully. "I'm afraid. But you--" Nari frowns, having forgotten what she was trying to say. Also having forgotten about the bottle, she reaches out to carefully share what remained in her glass between the two of them.

"I guess what I mean is... Falon'din has his hand on all of us. Knowing that makes us better partners, not worse. We know what time is worth. We know what one moment of holding, of being held; touching, or being touched, is worth." It's everything. She knows he knows that. The elf casts a look around the room, her gaze lingering on the bits and pieces of the Medicine Seller that have integrated themselves into the space long enough for Kit to follow what she's doing. "There are other people who know that too."

[ragweed]

What heart wouldn't break even the tiniest fraction at the way Nari speaks of Sina? Kit's heart, always worn on his sleeve despite his best efforts to keep it covered by his Legionnaire's armour, cracks a little for her. He barely knew the girl, but she'd left an impression, and knowing that she isn't around anymore, that she's gone for good and won't ever brighten another stranger's morning with her gentle smile, leaves a painful tightness in his chest. She was so young. No one should have to bury someone so young.

"Maybe he loved you too much, and he was afraid."

"Maybe," Kit agrees, though doubt shows in the shadows of his face. There's a bit of hope there, too; hope that the love he'd felt had been, in some small measure, reciprocated, even if the toll it took on Vandelin was too much for him. "Maybe," he adds a moment later, sounding a little more sure of himself.

He does note the way Nari's eyes wander around his small hovel, resting on the Medicine Seller's coat, his nest of blankets near the woodstove, bits of a tea set waiting for him to return to tend to them. Kit scratches absently at his beard, smiling wistfully. "What," he asks her, chuckling wryly, "you think he could be the one?" Insofar as anyone could ever be 'the one' to anyone else.

[nadasharillen]

Nari spreads her hands, "Like I said, I don't know about Vandelin, but... I can't imagine the thought of you being gone would tear someone up enough to need to leave without it being because the feeling was too big and too hard to hold. That's something more than just friendship."

As far as the Medicine Seller? She smiles her quirked gentle smile, pleased he'd noticed what she was doing, "I don't know about the one," she says, echoing his thought, "but with the skills he has and the wares he sells, he must have spent time with death and grief. Probably a lot of time. People like him have learned to hold those things well enough that they don't have to walk away. They've carved room into themselves to hold the fears and worries of others without breaking."

Whether it's advisable or not, she pauses to finish the rest of her glass. "And you made room for him too. You can hold the things he's seen and done." As far as she knows, anyway. "Holding someone you can hold all of is special. As is being held in all your broken trampled glory."

Nari frowns thoughtfully, talking into her empty glass, "Don't wait too long, Kit. Our lives aren't fair or just, and things happen. Be with him, if he'll let you. Live now. You can die when you die."

[ragweed]

"Don't wait too long, Kit. Our lives aren't fair or just, and things happen. Be with him, if he'll let you. Live now. You can die when you die."

There's still something left in that bottle of wicked liquor that Nari brought with her, so Kit reaches out for it and finishes off the contents of it in both their glasses. "That," he says knowingly (and perhaps a little drunkenly), "sounds like something to drink to, in my opinion."

He lifts the glass to Nari, smiling at her lopsidedly. "To living now."

And dying when they die.

[nadasharillen]

She smiles back, her own just as lopsided, and lifts the glass to Kit.

"To living now."

And dying when they die.