open | wherever we go, we'll never be lost

[supersonic]

WHO: Pietro Maximoff & YOU
WHAT: Arriving, complaining, settling in, poking his nose into things, etc.
WHEN: Anytime in April
WHERE: The Gallows, around Kirkwall
NOTES: Feel free to toss your own starter at this post! Gimme anything and I'll find a reason for Pietro to be there.

Arriving;

As accommodations go, the Gallows is one Pietro doubts he'll soon forget. After a long day of travel, longer still from Skyhold and the Brotherhood's latest camp beyond, watching those great white walls rise higher and higher from the approaching ferry, he's surprised he doesn't get a crick in his neck by the time they dock. When he finally comes to be standing on its front steps, feeling approximately the size of a pebble, he's started to wonder if all this was really such a great idea. Leaving. Pledging his loyalty to an organization he doesn't yet know if he trusts. Going to Kirkwall, of all places.

At least it's something different.

"Is all Tevinter architecture so oppressive?" he gripes under his breath as he starts up. "And spiky?" This seems like an unnecessary number of spikes. He's just saying.

—The garish pink birds milling about do help lighten the mood, he'll admit.

Group Quarters;

Inside the mages' tower, the long open rooms and rows of bunks are a little less intimidating, if no more welcome. It's been years since he's slept in an apprentice's hall, his sister tucked into the bunk above him, seeing who could whisper quietest as they fell asleep — or how silently she could toss a pillow at him for whispering something rude, often as not. Nostalgia isn't the right word for the memory of a time you wouldn't repeat, for the particular closeness that comes from living in shared fear, but it's heavy on his limbs the same way.

Still, this is the prudent choice. The choice their father would tell him to make. Best to have reason to linger within earshot of his fellow recruits. He wastes little time finding an unoccupied bed, dropping his travel pack and staff onto it with a resigned whumph.

"Just like old times," is wry.

Only the doors to this cage aren't locked anymore. One hopes. (He checks, actually, just a quick brush of his fingers over the mechanism, a glance for fresh wear on his way to the bath. Just in case.)

The Gallows;

Once he's had a chance to clean the dust and smell of hay and travel from himself, Pietro sets about getting the lay of the land. A new lean elf can be found surveying the training grounds with a close eye, not necessarily looking to participate but— appreciating. Magnus's training had been thorough, but he hadn't had anything so permanent to offer.

The herb garden and adjoining alchemy rooms earn a passing-through too, but it's the library that sees him pulled in for a longer visit. Careful fingers ghost over the spines of the books there, reading each title before pausing to pull one or two from their shelves with a sort of uncertain side-glance and a lift of the chin, as if daring anyone to question his right to them. If he is to work on behalf of this Inquisition, he ought to get something out of it. A history, perhaps, or a particularly esoteric-looking tome on magic, or even a book of myths might earn his attention, and a spot on the nearby reading table he's temporarily claimed.

Ostensibly, he ought to be looking for the proper office to report his arrival to, but — well, he doesn't seem to be in any hurry.

Wildcard;

[[Feel free to run into Pietro somewhere else in the Gallows or around Kirkwall, e.g. running errands or loitering in pubs in Lowtown, hanging around the alienage when he gets tired of shemlen, or plurk ping me for a closed starter, I just ran out of steam for more general starters tonight... x_x ]]

Comments

[elegiaque]

“My mother,”

a breath, and—

she wants to defend herself, because of course she does, because she's a soft stupid mortal thing with feelings and the only thing she's ever known to do is lash out (preferably first, preferably harder), but if that were all then she wouldn't, she thinks, because Maker, he might as well think whatever he wants of her. What she did was small and cruel and if they had never seen each other again, then that would be all she was to him; that could still be all she is to him.

It's just,

“My mothers, they—I was the worst fucking thing that ever happened to them. Do you think it was bad, what I did?”

Yes. Because it was.

“It was nothing. It was stupid. We were children. Here is what mattered: my father drained the life out of two women he did not deserve and they put everything into me, into what I was supposed to be, and I was not supposed to throw it away on some fucking runaway elf nobody because it was not mine to give away. My mama didn't spend my entire life yes my lord and no my lording that selfish, worthless, spineless—”

(even then there had been ice between them, Gwenaëlle and her doting, determined papa)

“She didn't do that and give me to him when he asked, like a Comte has ever 'asked' an elf for anything. For that. For this. And now she's dead and none of it matters at all, so that's brilliant, anyway, I might as well have been an embarrassment then for all the fucking difference it'd have made. What if I'd had a baby? Chain you to me, like he did. Honestly,” in the tone of someone about to say something incredibly inflammatory, “I did you a favour.”

[supersonic]

"A favour?"

It is dizzying, listening to her, when he can so clearly imagine the lifetime of small, terrible acquiescences that had gone into keeping her reputation intact. He may never have been much for my lording anyone, Maker knows he's never had a talent for balancing anyone's good opinion on a dining table let alone a knife's edge, but he hasn't survived this long without learning to cut pieces from himself to become more palatable to the wolves at his door, and it is not difficult to picture Gueniévre doing the same with far more efficient resolve. The thought of a life spent and lost that way makes him– feel a little ill.

It does not, however, make what happened between the two of them nothing, Gwen, Maker's breath—

"You made me believe I wasn't worth the mud scraped off your boot, Gwenaëlle," as if she'd been the only one, the root instead of just the tipping point. "That everyone else in the world was right about me, about what little an elf would ever matter to anyone, and I'd been a bloody idiot to even dream of—"

Not of bedding her. If she hadn't noticed what sort of boy he'd been all those years ago, if there hadn't been time to say then what he won't say now, perhaps the fact that he won't, that even nearly giving voice to something so painfully naive is enough to make him bite back the words in shame — perhaps that is a clue. (She needn't have had a baby, to chain him to her.)

"Is that what you imagine your mother worked so hard for you to do?"

—is probably not a fair question, all things considered. Maybe later, that will matter to him.

[elegiaque]

A hundred different things want to happen all at once, namely: that she barrel forward and knock him clear into the heated water, hands fisted around his throat so he can never, ever say anything to her like that ever—

when she takes an unsteady step backwards, she looks as if she's been struck. She wants, quite badly, to strike him. The voice in her head that murmurs really, that's how you're going to make them proud, now, is it sounds like Alix, and her hands ball into fists and she

turns. Straightens her shoulders. Calmly, and deliberately: flees.