Open

[in_death_sacrifice]

WHO: Kain and OPEN
WHAT: The return to Kirkwall
WHEN: After they return and onward into the earlier parts of the month
WHERE: Kirkwall/Gallows
NOTES: Talk of violence and death.

Infirmary

With that neck injury, Kain has been ordered to stay in bed for a little while, to be certain he'll properly heal. He's not exactly thrilled about this, even if he's struggling to behave as much as possible. Though with each day that passes, he gets more and more restless. He tries to occupy himself with books and has already amassed a sizable stack on the nearby table. When he sees someone else who seems like they might be up for it, he waves a deck of cards with his right arm.

"Care for a couple of rounds of something?"

Garden

Eventually, Kain is allowed to take short walks and move around some more. Short, careful walks being the order, not that he's good at obeying it. With his neck in a brace and his left arm in a sling, he definitely still looks quite beaten. But at least the scary part is over, and it seems that the extent of the neck injury wasn't as debilitating as they'd feared it could be. It's still serious and the broken bones need time to fully mend, but they've started to by now.

Today, though, as he's walking around the area, Kain has an especially somber expression on his face. He's gotten some terrible news from home, as now the names of casualties are beginning to come in... He's clutching a letter and envelope in his good hand, so hard the paper is getting all crumpled up. As he walks, he accidentally drops the envelope unnoticed. All he can do right now is keep pacing around, going in a circle, faster and faster as his terrible mood appears to worsen.

Library

At some point, Kain manages to get himself put on light duties. He can't go back to his usual training at the moment, or do anything requiring physical exertion, but he hates being inactive, feeling useless. So he gets to do some boring paperwork for a little while, and there sure is a lot of it. He takes it all to the library, finding a good place to settle and work.

Except he hadn't anticipated how difficult it would be to do this with his "off" hand. The left is still all slung up to prevent the shoulder- the actual broken part- from moving. So he's kind of stuck. He struggles, dipping the quill into ink, then tries to write, pretty sloppily. He gets increasingly frustrated until... whoops!... his hand accidentally knocks the ink, spilling it all over.

"Maker damn it!!" He pounds his right fist on the table in frustration.

Training Area

Of course, he sneaks out to the training area eventually anyway, it's inevitable once he's allowed to get up and move around. He stands aside brooding as he watches others train. When the area clears out and he's pretty sure he's alone, he goes over to pick up a light, one handed sword in his good hand. He takes a couple of experimental swings with it. All he wants right now is to know he can defend himself if, for some reason, he needs to...

Comments

library

[cozen]

"You must be more specific," says a voice from the stacks, Orlesian accented and belonging to a man who's not yet turned around from the book spines he's scanning, "in case this is the moment He decides to act, and you have cursed some undefined it to an eternity of darkness. The table?"

The table was the target of the pounding sound, he's fairly sure, but he has to turn around to look at the rest of the scene to keep speculating.

"The ink? Or the entire library, perhaps, with me in it—the Maker is more discerning than that, we hope, but there is nothing to stop a god from being irrational if that is what He wants to do."

None of this is helpful, probably. But it is delivered kindly enough, quiet and thoughtful rather than too pointed in its teasing, and in the meantime he comes closer to help in earnest, producing a handkerchief for the table and lifting one of the ink-splattered bits of paper to get a better view of the damage.

[in_death_sacrifice]

Kain sighs heavily, clearly frustrated by what's happened, but he soon enough realizes that it's not meant as anything more than a slight jest. No terrible harm is actually done, anyway, from what he can tell. Not to anything particularly valuable, at any rate, though that stain on the table may be difficult to fully get out.

"As much as I'd like to blame the ink itself, it's not the one at fault. I picked the wrong side to injure." He frowns, looking at the sling his left arm is currently stuck in. He starts picking up some of the papers as well, examining them, setting aside what's salvageable. "Thank you, by the way."

[cozen]

"De rien," Bastien says easily, setting aside the papers in his hands so he can produce a handkerchief—one already spotted with blue-black and gray stains where previous ink stains have been washed out of it—and catch the larger pools of ink so they don't spread or catch any sleeves. When it's done mopping up what it can of this mess, maybe it will be a gray handkerchief with a few white spots instead of the other way around.

In the meantime he cuts a glance at the man, at the arm, and at the work set aside.

"Did they ask you which arm, before they did it?"

[in_death_sacrifice]

Kain is grateful for the help, given that it's quite a bit of ink that's gotten spilled. At least the damage... isn't as bad as he'd initially feared, he's noticing as he continues going through what can be saved, and what can't be. He won't have to start all over from the beginning, which is good, because he's been here for a good few hours at this point.

He gives a wry smirk that turns soon enough to a grimace when he recalls the events of that injury. "I doubt there's an opponent on any world who would be so accommodating. I'd still have preferred it not to have happened at all, but it is what it is." He doesn't regret saving someone in the process, though, but he'd just not planned on it ending up like this.