waiting for the front door to splinter | OTA

[aestivation]

WHO: Casimir + Open.
WHAT: Feels.
WHEN: Post-Ghislain.
WHERE: The Gallows, Research offices.
NOTES: General CW bad brains, specific stuff will be tagged. If your character visits, probably someone on the team took note.

i. not fine

To wake is to rise underwater, head broken between one moment and the next. The surface disturbed, ripples before a hand of terrible light. Remembers thinking with sudden clarity: Petty,

It's been a day since the candles were blown out, and the water poured away. A few days, more; time stretches strange about seven years' memory and so many watching eyes. His skin crawls with it, the very stones do. There’s a sense of life so vivid in the walls —

A plate smashes into one, sends sharp shards of pottery spraying beside your head.



ii. more fine

This room is an intermittent mess — what's picked up, placed away, simply refuses to stay put. He's given up moving the toppled books and bits of crockery. Sits in the middle of the dull little bed with its well-intentioned blankets, and knows that down the hall are waiting clever little people with intentions of their own, and,

The door isn't locked. But he doesn't intend to leave.

He doesn’t look well, but he looks different; the changes as obvious as they’re impromptu, cheap. Curls soaked down in the vain effort to smooth a scar, grey robes traded for some Inquisition tunic (too tight about the shoulders), eyes that search the corners for pattern. He hasn’t shaved.

Upon a visitor, his expression flickers. Tries to still itself only to pull again in abrupt dismay.

"It isn’t you,"

He begins, before anything’s quite begun.



iii. probably that's fine


He doesn’t sleep.

Not since he’d first awoken, nerves pooling slick as lamp oil. He doesn’t sleep, but he eats — ravenously — and asks after tea, coffee, anything to keep awake.

It can't last.

His friends are attentive, if that's what he ought to call them (attentive, friends). But the hour's late, and the Central Tower swells with shadow. He's made it to one of the windows by the stair, hand lingering in the hollow where bars once stood. Reaches out, farther, until his arm's through, his shoulder —

His eyes are open, slack; expression dead as ever before.



iii. wildcardDDD

[[ hmu on plurk if you have any questions about limitations or specific prompts u want ]]
 

Comments

iii

[rowancrowned]

“Casimir.”

Here was the list of things Casimir was not: a plant, a pet, a bird with a broken wing. Thranduil had always struggled with the idea of tranquility, had snagged on what he might do to put the man at ease, but he had faced similar things with other men, all of whom were unknowable and foreign to him simple for being men, and had padded along anyway. And it had worked, splendidly, until those who had known Casimir before had wanted him back, and now here they were, with Casimir both himself—

and, also, inconveniently, yet another slap in the face to the Chantry.

Head cocked just-so, in his sleeping robes bundled tight about his face to keep out the cold, venturing out of his rooms in the middle of the night for— elfy nefarious things, probably.

“Did you misplace something?”

[aestivation]

"I can't reach it."

A reply — if not an answer, and not one given Thranduil. He turns his head to speak to the wall, words drifting with dazed urgency. Not the empty attention he's given most often, or the muddled distress of these past few days. Something,

Else.

He twists his head, too large to fit through the frame; hand scrabbling over bare stone outside.

[rowancrowned]

"What is it?"

He's thankful for the small windows, that he needn't immediately set himself to trying to pull Casimir away from them for fear he'll do anything worse than wrench his shoulder (or, in the very worst case, attract the griffons above) which means he's allowed to stand, and wait, hands tucked into his sleeves, and see if Casimir cannot simply snap himself out of whatever this particular fit is, or explain enough that Thranduil can catch on and indulge.

He has the sneaking suspicion they will need more time than however much they manage to steal.

[aestivation]

"The door."

A pause in the contortions. A long one, unmoving; his chin drifts lower, breaths slow. Weight slumps itself in place; once again recognizably asleep.

Save the mumbled pronouncement:

"You could open it."

[rowancrowned]

There is a question in this for Solas. How does sleepwalking affect one’s Fade experience? He should absolutely stop peppering the other elf with questions, but—and he supposes this as he steps closer—Solas is the only one with a half-empty cup of the truth over a half-full one.

He brings his hands together, the clap echoing through the halls, supposes it better than shaking Casimir awake and risking him dislocating his shoulder or, Andraste forbid (needs to get in the habit of saying that) yelling and risking waking the other Division heads.

Snap him out of it indeed.

[aestivation]

He jolts, slams his chin into the side of the stones.

A moment’s startled breath, before he glances Thranduil, jaw working into a wince. Awake, he looks at once uncertain of his presence (the glint of something else, nearer fear). It’s a bit of work to unwind himself from the window, brushing the water from one wet sleeve. He doesn’t find Thranduil’s eyes. Doesn’t say anything, just massages his arm, opens and shuts his mouth.

Finally,

"Good evening."

Sure, those are words.

[rowancrowned]

“Are you injured?” he says, brushing away Casimir’s former state, a hand at the other man’s jaw to tip his head and inspect his chin. At the absence of blood, he withdraws, and steps back, hem dragging against the stone floor.

If Coupe suffers from insomnia, she does not wander the halls, and he could spin a story enough to keep anyone else who might be about discrete.

Still, it is not good for Casimir to be about.

“Perhaps a drink, to help you sleep?” Thranduil gestures back towards his office.

[aestivation]

I don't — Almost leaves his mouth, doesn't; dutiful to the tilt of Thranduil's hand as a dozen others times and faces. But the frown that curls his mouth can't be so easily-kept, reflex twisting muscles unused to the effort. Tears loose as soon as Thranduil does, back to the wall. Something bristles feral at his neck. Couldn't, for the life of him, name why.

"A drink," He agrees, after a moment too long. "Thank you."

He doesn't make to move first.

[rowancrowned]

Casimir gets his back, the slim train of the gown as it drags back along the stone towards his office. He can have his dignity in Thranduil's bland ignorance of the emotions, like ice melting come spring, Thranduil supposes.

Unavoidable.

In his office, it is quiet. A nug sleeps near the fire, there's only a single candle burning (beeswax) though the mirrored sconce catches the light and throws it generously.

In the room beyond, his wife sleeps.

Thranduil fusses with something on his desk, then asks, "Tea? Wine?"