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

[justice_is_blond]

He looks at the position of the moon in the sky as he approaches the Gallows, frowning. It's late. Darktown had kept him for longer than he'd wanted, and now he's hoping it's not too late for him to check on Casimir. Any worries about waking up the man are dashed away at the sight of the man already partly out the window. He freezes, breath catching as he tries to figure out what to say as he reaches for the staff on his back, wondering if he has enough energy to cast enough ice to keep Casimir from falling to his death.

"Casimir?" His voice is higher-pitched than usual; he's a little afraid. It's a long fall down and reasons to step out are everywhere in Thedas. "Can you take a step back? I'm here to talk, or be quiet company, whatever you'd like."

[aestivation]

The danger's not immediate: Confines too narrow to work his way through by anything less than intent (shoulders unused to their own width). Wind whips about the battlements, frigid this close to cloud. He doesn't seem to have noticed.

His head's sluggish to turn, and when it does: Eyes unfocused, distant as a man asleep.

"Don't fall in," He mumbles, not entirely to Anders. "You're too close."

[justice_is_blond]

Not suicidal as he'd feared, then. Sleep-walking? Confused? His hand eases back from his staff and he straightens.

"Too close to what, where? I can't see it." Casimir can't be drunk. The watchers are too vigilant for that. But there are any other number of causes for seeing things that aren't there. "It's chilly, would you like to come back to your rooms and share some tea?"

There's a contradiction there, offering something he thinks Casimir likes (tea) while trying to pull him back to something no one likes (being stuck in a room.) Anders isn't entirely comfortable with keeping Casimir confined, but there's a threat to the man that's greater than his discomfort. This is temporary, meant to be a step toward giving Casimir back a freedom he's not had while other mages have enjoyed it. It's... acceptable in this context. He thinks. Time will tell as to whether or not Casimir shares the same opinion, but at least he'll be able to have an opinion.

[aestivation]

"The door," Dreamlike — "You know where it is."

His chin dips, drifts in stupor. Breath heaves; he doesn't move further. Looks for a moment quite still. With sudden clarity:

"You've done it before."

That (probably) isn't about the tea.

[justice_is_blond]

He's lost. What has he done before? Unless they're talking about Karl, and then he'd only blindly cracked open the door, not known where it was and helped to fling it open.

"I don't know." Casimir appears to be more present, at least, so Anders stops trying to shepherd him for the moment. "What are you asking?"