faderift | OPEN, sort of

WHO: Gavin, a few specific people, but also OPEN
WHAT: Gavin returns from his adventure in the Mire, and has a few things he has to follow up on.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Gavin should come with his own warning but otherwise, CW for discussion of suicidal thoughts/tendencies (it's all in point number 2, so you can skip that if you want)

On the long march back to Skyhold, Gavin had decided on at least something of a plan of action. Well. Plan of action was probably giving him too much credit. He had a plan. And plan was also probably somewhat more organized than what he actually had: which was a vague idea of people and conversations he should probably have.

A vague idea of things he should probably do.

Because there were a few truths, that were becoming apparent to him, and they were these:

1. He was not likely to survive this war. This wasn't a huge surprise (he never did have a good sense of self preservation), but it was still something he had to acknowledge. This wasn't the kind of thing he could fuck up and then make up for later by smiling sheepishly with presents. Or bribes, as Zevran so eloquently put it. So. If he fucked up, he was dead. Worse - if he fucked up, he likely also made sure other people were dead. Which brought him to point number two.

2. He wanted to survive this war. This was a surprise, as half of his plan in coming to the Inquisition had involved gallant death, and meant that number 1 was proving to be a bigger problem than it would have been otherwise. Part of it was that he had found people here that he wanted to make sure survived it themselves. But another part, perhaps, came from having a back up plan. Maybe it was strange, to find some sort of odd peace by planning in detail one's eventual death if it was necessary. And as long as Zevran was alive, he had that back up plan. So surviving in the meantime was okay - because if it ever wasn't okay, he had a way out.

3. If he was going to survive the war and have anything left to survive it for, he had to stop running. Somehow. This had already been drummed into him by a few people, but it had never really taken. It wasn't until - ironically - he'd been talking to Alistair about throwing his life away by joining the Wardens that he'd actually started to think any deeper about what he was going to do after the Inquisition. Even what he was doing in the Inquisition. Harding would kill him if he ran away again, and that probably wasn't entirely an exaggeration. If 1 was destined to happen, then at the very least, it should be by Corypheus's hand and not his own.

All this meant that he had to be better, and he had to be better now. Not an indeterminate time later, when the stars aligned, but now. While he had time. While they all had time. While it would still mean something, and make a difference.

Maxwell and Pel. That was where to start, but they weren't the only ones. Merrick. Harding. Maria. So many of his friends.... There were a lot of apologies and the couldn't come with presents. Bribes. They couldn't even really be apologies, because he knew how hollow those sounded, from him, these days. He needed to make an actual effort.

So he sought out each one, wherever they were.

[HOW THIS WILL WORK: Basically if you want to have a chat with Gavin and already know him, tag in wherever you are and he will come find you. If you have not met Gavin but want to, hit me up on plurk or PM and I'll start up a different thread starter for you. Basically I just wanted a catch all for a bunch of different threads for him and then the description got out of hand.]

Threaded | Flat

[ His fever has cleared up, or else he'd be even less tolerant of Gavin than usual. ]

Back from Ferelden, with the Lord Kildarn ruckus settled as happily as they could, and with no immediate return missions planned for him, Maxwell found himself with some free time on his hands. And he knew exactly what to do with it.

The curl of copper-colored hair in his pocket, he settled himself in the library in the basement of Skyhold with whatever texts he could find on the properties of the various stones and metals of Thedas - with particular interest in those native to the Fallow Mire. It would have been faster to simply go and ask the Undercroft, or maybe even to talk to Sam, but Maxwell enjoyed the whole process. That moment of a-ha! when he discovered the perfect element.

Relaxing into a chair, the propped his feet up on the table and leaned back against the stacks, a book open on his thighs, the candlelight playing across the pages.

Pel is asleep in the hayloft, but wakes the moment Gavin comes to the top of the stairs. She sits upright suddenly with a gasp, eyes barely managing to open and process the new potential threat. No. It's Gavin. Gavin?

Why is Gavin here?

She squints at him, wary. Why did he come here?

Varric was, by all counts, not exactly cheerful following his return from the Fallow Mire, but he was drier and that counted for a lot. The hearth by his table burned a little more intensely than usual and, despite his abrupt shift in attire (He really hated the grey, sleeve-less tunic he had on and the striped pants made him look like a tiny, subtle version of Iron Bull, but those other clothes had to be burned. There was nothing for it.), Varric was well within the bounds of 'toasty' and 'warm'. It was hard to be cranky when you were both toasty and warm.

He'd had an idea on the long march back from the Mire, one of the kind that felt like potential brilliance and/or an inevitable catastrophe, but it wasn't quite fully formed yet. So, as he spent the day turning it over in his head, finally thawing out (insofar as one could in Skyhold), he decided to disassemble, clean, and tune Bianca.

It took a while, doing this much precision work, and his table was covered in a carefully arranged array of tiny to medium sized parts, curious mechanical tools, and better than a dozen implements to wipe, polish, or otherwise scrub all the residual swamp out of his beloved portable siege weapon. He could do this all in his sleep, of course, and that gave him plenty of time to think and, to a lesser extent, people watch.

Skyhold was always full of strange people and eavesdropping was an art that Varric excelled at, but the person who kept catching Varric's attention was Gavin. It wasn't odd to see the elf running through the Great Hall, but he usually didn't have quite so determined or grim an expression plastered on his face. Whether he was coming or going, four or five times now, he looked like he had steeled himself to face down a rabid dragon.

By the time Varric had moved to oiling and polishing Bianca's wooden stock, he decided to interrupt Gavin's little crusade and try to cheer the kid up. It was the least he could do, given that they were friends, and he was a little curious about what had managed to put a serious expression on the elf's face. So, casually as anything, he snagged Gavin before he could march off to whatever other task he had to attend.

"Hey Lucky," Varric called as Gavin entered the hall on the garden side. "Come here, I got a question or two for you."

It was pure chance that brought Isabela across Gavin's path, but considering the company he kept, it would only have been a matter of time. Several of her friends were also his, and every single one of them had at least one colorful tale about their time in the company of the pirate queen. Some more than others.

But yet, this was her first time running into him and she raised an eyebrow at his demeanor.

"Mmm. You look like a man in dire need of a distraction," she remarked.

Merrick's Smoking Spot

Little Library

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