[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

[misdirection_hex]

No, he never could help himself--not with Vandelin, not with Chuck, not with anyone else in Thedas who might need the slightest bit of help, no matter the cost. It's exactly what has held Van in awe of him since the moment they met. It hasn't ceased to, not really.

The stoic, automatic response is on the tip of his tongue, the same nonchalant never better anyone else would get, trying to force convincing breeziness out of exhaustion so deep he's past his second wind and onto something like his sixth. Encircled by ever-deepening shadows, his eyes take up even more of his drawn face than they usually do, until it's a wonder any face is left--but he's fine, and nobody who asks will get any other answer from him. He's fine. He's glad to do his part. He welcomes the challenge. He's grateful for the opportunity to prove himself.

Kit knows him better than that. And Kit won't judge.

"Could use a nap," he confesses, beginning to work his way through the folder. "For about a week. And I don't want to touch anything else that has to do with those fucking Vints. The free ones, not the prisoners."

He sets one order aside for further review, and looks back up. "You?"

[ragweed]

"...those fucking vints..."

"We've got new ones? Shit, news to me," Kit adds, scratching idly at his beard, "I have been out of it."

He watches with too attentive eyes as Vandelin sets the orders aside and watches as his eyes look up again. Exhaustion beyond anything one night of sleep will fix looks back at him, creating dark shadows that hadn't been there before. Or maybe they had been--how would Kit know? He's been taking every opportunity presented to him that would mean this chance to look into those eyes wouldn't be put in front of him again.

(All he wants, he knows, is to smooth a palm over that cheek, brush the dark hair out of Vandelin's eyes--put him to bed, watch him sleep--)

"You?" Vandelin asks, and reminds him that he needs to speak.

Kit takes a breath and lets it out, the sound almost like a laugh but a little too weak. "I don't know," he allows himself to admit, candid as he's been with anyone. "A little bit useless, maybe. This isn't a problem I've got the skillset to sort out, salroka--last thing anyone suffering from this illness needs is some dwarf to come hit them with an axe."

It's meant as a joke, and a little smile accompanies it. But it fades some, and he looks away. The feeling of uselessness, it lingers.

[misdirection_hex]

"I should've let you stay blissfully unaware." It's the sort of affectionate joke he'd have made months ago, with a hint of its usual matching just-for-Kit smile in turn, weary though it is now. It's there for a split second, and then schooled into breezy neutrality again. Whether it was deliberate or simply a moment of unguarded forgetfulness, even Vandelin isn't quite certain.

It would be so easy, he thinks, to let things fall back into their old patterns.

It doesn't make his chest tighten any less with unbidden sympathy (still with the faintest hint of resentment, too, but tempered as always with admiration) at Kit's futile need to fix things, to be everything to everyone who might conceivably need it. How must it be eating at him to have no solution to this?

"I don't know about that," he says. "From all I've heard, healing just makes it worse. Maybe the cure is an axe to the head, against all established medical theory. You could be our savior yet."

[ragweed]

A split second is long enough for Kit to see it, for his own lopsided smile to quirk with affection that has never truly faded. It lingers longer than Vandelin's does, before melancholy has Kit looking aside. His heart aches.

It would be so easy.

"...You could be our savior yet."

He chuckles grimly and lifts up a hand to scratch at his beard, then the side of his neck. "I don't know about that," he says, looks back to Vandelin, and then adds quietly, "I think I'd end up doing more harm than good, going that way, you know?"

It's hard to know, in that moment, whether he's really talking about helping the Inquisition anymore, or his way of doing things more broadly. For a moment he looks at Vandelin like he wants to say something more; it's clear in his eyes, even if he can't get the words to form right in his head. They feel all a-jumble, more a mess of feeling than anything approaching coherent thought. It would be easier, better for everyone, to just let this fool notion pass him by without acting on impulse.

But he can't help himself.

"Listen, Vandelin," he starts, and once he's begun he can't back out, "I was wondering if--once this mess is over..." He trails off leadingly.

[misdirection_hex]

Kit tells him to listen, and he listens, with rapter attention than he would want to be displaying if he could see himself. This, he knows now, is why he's taken such pains to stay out of Kit's orbit. There are few lengths to which Vandelin won't go to ensure he doesn't have to admit he's made a mistake, or changed his mind--and when doing so would come packaged with the potential for rejection, there's nothing that would haunt his nightmares more.

But he still hasn't been able to convince himself that he wouldn't ask for another chance if he spent too long talking to Kit, let alone take one if it was freely offered. Nothing has changed; nothing that made him leave is any different now than it was, except that he's come to miss Kit enough to wonder if he could live with it. Whatever willpower Van possesses, and he's always been proud of it, it can't hold up under that shy and anxious look in Kit's eyes, nor the effect of that lingering smile.

"Come find me," he says. "Or I'll find you. I know where you live." And so does all the rest of Lowtown--his wan smile resurfaces again at the memory of Kit having to walk Chuck out the door before they could be alone together. He misses even that.

[ragweed]

"Come find me. Or I'll find you. I know where you live."

He spreads his hands a little to either side, gives his head an equivocal kind of nod. "Still the same address," he tells him, chuckling. His arms drop back down to his sides, and he realizes now that he's just buying time by lingering now. Just a few more moments to look into his eyes, to be warmed by that smile. Ancestors, he's missed him, so much--

"All right, well, I should get out of your hair." He chafes a hand across his beard once more and takes a couple of half-steps backwards towards the office door. On the threshold he pauses, looks to Vandelin again, and says, "Take care of yourself, salroka. I'll see you again soon."