run boy run

[foundmyselfagain]

WHO: Gareth and YOU
WHAT: Gareth adjusting to being back from his surprise extended stay in Tevinter
WHEN: The week or so after the rescue
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: Probably gonna be talk about trauma and how not to deal with it, gareth being gareth, etc etc

i. work

Gareth is a ghost.

He is, however, a ghost with a job, and while his superiors (Salvio? Thranduil? Whatever) would probably be willing to give him a few days off to get over the whole...captive thing, he would prefer to have something to do. Something to occupy his mind, his hands. He's had plenty of time to sit around in a small room.

So he idles around the library, or more accurately, lurks, fidgeting with books in the background, rearranging them, making sure everything is where it should be. He stays away from anyone else, stays silent, and close to the shelves, as though he can make himself invisible simply by not speaking or getting too close to anyone.

When not at the library, he's in one of the vaults, or poking around at one of the old, dusty corners of the cellars of the Gallows, inventorying and tidying. There usually isn't much company in these places, which means anyone who comes here will probably be trying to seek him out to speak.

ii. night

He doesn't sleep much. Dreams provide little comfort, and there's always an unpleasant lurch when he first opens his eyes, wondering if that cell will greet him again.

So, he makes his way to the shore, book in hand. Because, if you're not going to be doing something for a few hours, you might as well read. If the moon doesn't provide enough light to read by, he simply raises the hand with the anchor shard in it, soft green light spilling over the pages.

iii. break
[[ooc note: closed to close cr only!]]

At some point, something in him snaps. Something that had been repressed since he was first captured, waiting to come out, snarling and angry and hurting. He doesn't wait for the Gallows to fall again to let it out, and takes his staff into the training room, hoping to burn that energy on something constructive.

But it isn't enough. Each time his staff makes contact with the training dummy, he imagines a new face, the Venatori, Corypheus, even the ones who broke him in the first place. Templars, Meredith, even Orsino, and it's not enough, he has to hurt them more, give them that yawning pain that he had to live through, that he had to relive, that seems to never leave him.

Fire and thunder break out, sizzling across his staff at first, and then growing stronger as he lashes out with all the mana he can muster, until it runs out and Gareth, with one final swing to the now rather singed dummy, falls to his knees, panting. It doesn't feel better. Not like hurting the Templars did, during the war. Like seeing the people who sought to strike him down fall to their own comrades sword. But he's supposed to be better now.

He doesn't feel better.

Comments

[wythersake]

Wood knocks against stone; the staff's down. If Isaac had his way, he'd toss it out entire (the dummy's wrecked, the door is open). But there are limits.

It's like reassembling a puzzle to find the pieces have shifted, and he's forgotten the fit. So Isaac sets down the bag — look, we've both disarmed — takes the excuse to shift closer and squint. The quaking's not good, but it isn't unusual in someone pushed.

"Did mine too short," Trimmed to the quick. He extends his palm in invitation to take. Skin wears with the hairline cracks of frequent washing, healed over again without thought. A waxy sheen from the bag; beneath the char, it smells like bread. "Can't pick anything up."

The heat of the summer has begun to recede, and the breeze from outside carries the rattle of teeth. His eyes fix steady in place. Gareth's paying attention now, no sense in pretense:

"What do you hear?"

When are you?

[foundmyselfagain]

Gareth accepts the hand offered, examining the nails therein. He studies the nail beds, and the barely visible cracks like a spiders web across hands that obviously belong to a healer. Maybe if he were better at healing, better at doing anything besides raining destruction down around him, he could do more to help. As it stands, nagging is the only tool he can bring to bare.

"You need to be more careful. You could get sick if your skin breaks while you’re working. I can bring you some lotion, later."

Not that he’s much better, but at least he has an excuse. The Venatori, it turns out, aren’t big on allowing their prisoners to maintain skincare regimes.

But then pretense is gone, and Gareth is brought back to the situation. He lets go of Isaac’s hand with just enough care to not just drop it, and sighs. It would help if he knew how he wanted to deal with this, how he wanted others to. Give him space, or distract him, tell him jokes, or maybe just give him a damn hug. What’s the right way? Which is the one that makes him better?

“I hear the wind. The ocean, maybe. It’s cold. The cells are probably flooded by now."

[wythersake]

He doesn't get sick, not often, not any way he can't fix. Certainly doesn't want or need a gift —

But kneejerk rejection is only that, and Gareth is only Gareth. Pallid, and dishevelled, and present after his own fashion. They're both here. Fingers fall away, and Isaac's lower for stone. It's a start.

"Pigeons," He adds. "In the eaves, I think."

Not the point. Asks a question he knows the answer to:

"Which cells?"

Let him talk.

[foundmyselfagain]

Gareth glances up despite himself, as if he expected a great many pigeons to fall upon him at their mention. They do not, and Gareth is left with Isaac, and his awkward questions. Maybe they're good questions. Maybe answering them will help?

"The Venatori cells. The tides would come and go, and there was this little area you had to squat in when the tides rose, or you'd get damp, and then you could get cold." A minor thing ordinarily, to a healthy person who wasn't being imprisoned. But Gareth's health is lacking, and the Venatori probably weren't going to offer a blanket because he was chilly.

"They had magical suppression on the cells. But not for blood magic." He's talking too fast and too much, and he doubts Isaac really cares about the anatomy of Venatori prison cells. "I thought, occasionally--but there were others. Others they didn't care as much about. That they could punish. And I didn't know where I was, and--" He frowns, shakes his head. Trying to clear out the lingering doubts.

"One of the others already saw, when I fought. When I tried to keep them from capturing me--us." One more possible witness, one more liability. Even if he'd managed to get them all out, they would all know. Then he'd be just as dead as if the Venatori had executed him. Worse, because the people close to him would have to be very convincing that they didn't know.

[wythersake]

It's clever, isn't it? Lost rest, another barrier to escape; salt sores, given time. Of course it's clever, it's the Vint royal palace. He can hold himself at a distance, compose a clinical list — 

"It sounds," — But one finger never bends the way it used to. "Like shit."

He doesn't curse. Not often, not really.

"Have you seen the others?"

After, since.

[foundmyselfagain]

"...No. But I heard one of them was making a fool out of himself on the crystals."

Smooth move, Kain. At least no one would blame Gareth now, if people started chopping their limbs off. It's been enough time since he posed that question, and there were people who've been trying it more recently.

The idea makes him laugh a little. A quiet, breathless thing.

"I guess I should...talk to them? See how they're doing? They were people I'd never really interacted with, before that. I was afraid seeing them again..." When your memory of a person is associated so strongly with an unpleasant situation, is it out of place to worry that seeing them will remind you of the situation? It's a cowardly thing, but. He's done it, all the same.

"I guess if I ignored everyone after we underwent unpleasant things, I'd never get to hang out with you, huh."

[wythersake]

Dispassionately:

"More than one."

Making a fool of themselves. An unkindness to clear distress — but Isaac wouldn't have been help, and neither was raised as the two of them have been. To vent one's melancholy, one's hurt in such open forum,

Well. People vanish, in Circles. If Gareth's hidden from them, that's not good, but it's better than a reckless alternative. It's similar dispassion that insists upon the next question, and not some softer counsel:

"Which one saw you?"

That one, at least, he need see again. Needs to manage. There's a shade of smile for the quip; if he has a follow-up, it lingers waiting upon a name. Priorities.