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

[justice_is_blond]

Nodding, Anders plops down on the sand.

"I don't mind lack of excitement," he says. "The quiet is distinctly overrated." It would be nice to have some peace and quiet for a stretch, he thinks. But at the same time there's also a high chance that he'd need to find an outlet before long. Joining with Justice had opened his eyes to how widespread the wrongs of Thedas were, and made him care about more than his own freedom.

With a gesture he calls a wisp and the little thing flits around his head as he opens up his notebook to go over what he'd researched today. For a while he's quiet until finally he breaks the stillness.

"Are you reading anything interesting?"

[foundmyselfagain]

Gareth is already taking breaks from reading to glance at the wisp--he's seen plenty, especially with Kostos, but he still likes watching them. Something so relatively harmless and almost...cute? From the Fade itself. It's worth a few peeks. Then Anders asks him a question, and he blinks, turning back to the book in his hand.

"Yes. I think so, at least. It's a book that theorizes on lyrium, and magical energy. Lyrium gives mages magical energy, and mages--who know the spells, obviously--can convert that into energy for their nonmagical allies. Give them bursts of strength, or a second wind. The book is a series of essays contemplating if this means that mages can basically use lyrium like plants do the sun, or if it's something we can do on our own, the lyrium just makes up for the energy that we give away, etc." He flips a few pages, a thoughtful look on his face.

"There's one essay by someone who was sure that if he could get enough lyrium, he could stop eating altogether. There's also an addendum that the man in question drank too much lyrium, claimed that he had become a god, and died."