faderift | there is beauty in surviving,

WHO: long john silver & YOU
WHAT: casual catch-all for the month.
WHEN: throughout guardian, post-ghosts, but very flexible
WHERE: kirkwall
NOTES: Content warnings, OOC notes, links to other relevant posts, etc.

( i. the library )

Setting foot in this library still carries an air of transgression. John is aware of what he is. His very presence at one time or another would have been forbidden. Or at least, heavily monitored. It would have come with strings and chains. John lingers in the arch of the entryway for a long moment, considering the implications and the necessity of what he's concealing, and weighing it against the research he intends to do.

He is not a learned man. John's education has been haphazard and snatched at intervals; it comes with large gaps and secondhand. He seeks instruction on the use of what beats in his blood, but he knows that instructional texts are likely under lock and key. He's grasping at straws, trying to understand something that has been instinct since the earliest days he's know it. But still, John has never been one to ignore his own curiosity or pass up an opportunity that stands available to him.

So he spends his time here, picking through the collection of books at a leisurely pace. Circulating through the shelves, the quiet tap of his crutch against stone marking his progress. He can be found in the library in the evenings, though there's no rhyme or reason to which days he appears.

( ii. tavern )

During the day, John conducts his business from a scummy tavern in Lowtown. This is familiar terrain. Regardless of the current need to appear respectable, old habits guide him inevitable towards one of the very few places within Kirkwall he can find some familiarity.

And gossip. His current role is so very far from the way he'd carved out a place for himself within the crew. But there's pleasure to be found in listening to loudly traded barbs, even if they are of little value in the moment. With a tankard at his elbow and a few stray pieces of parchment in front of him, half-scratching out notes and half simply listening and absorbing the atmosphere, John holds court. Walrus crewmen circle in and out of his orbit. John always makes it his business to be approachable, but this is perhaps the best moment to seek his attention.

( iii. wildcard )

[ hit me up @ pogonophile or just drop whatever you want in here, i'll roll with it. ]

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"Are you, ah," The question stutters out, midway through routine. Casimir’s fingers curl at the edge of a shelf, still half-empty, its pages still turned about by the past days' haunting. "Can I help you find something?"

The rest of it muddles out too fast. He’s asked it a hundred times before, to as many faces. Not quite like this. His eyes linger on his stump longer than courteous; expression tight and distant, and at odds with floundering words.

"It may, that is, this may take a while." A gesture to the disarray. "To browse."

Ah, that expression. John's fingers shift on his crutch, eyebrows raising. Whatever discomfort inevitably stirs at being the object of such a look, John recognizes the usefulness of the diversion. Deciding whether or not to solicit assistance, however flustered the offering, feels like assessing a gamble. He certainly can't very well ask in explicit terms for books on magical theory without raising a few eyebrows.

"Would you believe I've spent very little time in a proper library?" John queries, before his gaze drops to the indicated disarray. "I can assure you, I hardly know what I'm looking for, mess or not."

But sooner or later, he'll have to decide how much it's worth to him to better understand his magic and grow stronger.

"Was nowhere in Kirkwall spared by our ghostly visitors?"

"Ah, everywhere." On abruptly firmer ground, for the sound of it. "Everywhere beyond the island. Difficult to say how far the effects extended. The water,"

But that's not the point. A welcome distraction, and a distraction the same. It's an unwieldy business to climb from the ladder and take up a spine, fingers pried loose only when contact with the wood becomes at last impossible to keep.

This isn't the section, though there is a section (the cobbled remains of the Gallows' collection, and the Inquisition's limited budget) — what he's holding, instead, something by Genitivi.

"They're wonderful, aren't they?"

Books. Evidently, prefers to look to those, instead of John. What he'd believe may go unvoiced.

Edited (double icon orz) 2019-02-04 00:49 (UTC)

Maybe it wasn't the longest time away in the world - no one even moved into his room, just gave it a once-over and that was that - but slip out the back door when folks go off to war and you need to get familiar with it all again.

No one is stupidly using a stool as a ladder today, disappointing to be sure but you move on with your life. Or you do whatever it is when moving forwards means coming back to Kirkwall. Again.

A library is space more than anything else, quiet space, papers sprawling out about him from an untidy sprawl on the floor where he's settled legs-in-a-basket, oversized book perched in his lap and attempting to pull back a paper before it's stepped on.

"Oi, 'scuse me, I'm working down here what you about?" Because the floor is of course the place you do work as opposed to the tables off yonder.

There's something to be said for the presence of a six foot woman in a tavern looking more like she's about to walk into battle. She's not dressed in her battle armour, at least, but the tension in her shoulders and the discomfort she's showing is more than enough to make it seem as though she might snap at the barest slight against her person - enough that not even the most daring of Lowtown drunkards seems to want to bother her, even if their gaze flicks up and down.

There's one person she's looking for; she knows where to find him. She works for him, after all.

Spotting John, she makes her way across the bar and ignores the man pouring and serving ale, ignoring the knots in her stomach, and instead goes to sit down. In her light shirt and trousers she looks too casual, too soft, but there's still the strap of a sword at her hip - not her usual greatsword, but enough to protect her if the need arises.

"I would like to speak with you."

She can't look John in the eye.

Kirkwall's scummy taverns are a return to form for Krem too, after he has spent so long camped out in Skyhold's one major watering hole (terribly reputable by comparison, honestly) during most of his Mercenary company's employment by the Inquisition, and he can likewise be found casually listening in on the grumble and buzz of lowtown's finest drunken gossip.

But it isn't, as John already discovered, very productive and so Krem instead finds himself watching the revolving crew stopping by John's table even without putting an effort to listen in. During a fairly prolonged lull in traffic and when the man doesn't look too busy with his notes, Krem turns to him from his nearby table and asks curiously: "You got one of the ships in the harbor?

Though Krem is no real sea-farer himself, it's actually quite hard to mistake sailors in groups for anything else. The hair, the beards, the salt-caked clothing and sun-touched skin, it paints a fairly specific picture.

John is good at recognizing people who are angling for a fight. He's spent most of his life cultivating that very necessary skill. Six is well armed and intimidating, but his first glance doesn't give him the impression she's come to lop his head off.

Not that he'd have blamed her for the attempt. He knows what he'd seen that night, and he'd known even in the moment that it wasn't information she'd ever meant to share with him. Perhaps he should have closed the door on it, and yet—

Well, not being able to help himself has been what landed John on this path. It's a character defect he hasn't been able to excise.

"I'm listening," John answers after a moment, shuffling the letters he'd been writing to the side, flipping over the top-most sheet. "I think I can guess what it's about."

Can he be light-hearted about this? We'll find out.

Being in this place gives her so much anxiety she can barely breathe and she's sure it shows on her face; she doesn't know what to do with herself, with the smell of the ale and alcohol and the wine hanging around her. It might take her weeks to get the smell out of her clothes, to undo the damage of the reminder of all this, but she has to do it. She has to do it because she needs to speak with John, and if this is where he is then...

The lump in her throat feels like it might suffocate her completely, and she has to take a few deep breaths to calm herself down before she lifts her head and looks at him. Whatever anxiety she feels can be ignored, at least for now, because she has to apologise.

She has to. What he saw was something that no one ought to have ever seen.

"I came to give you my - my apologies," her hands are clenched, tight, nails digging into her skin. "You should not have had to see what you did, and it was not right for you to be burdened with it."

Six looks like she might cry.

Oh. No.

Immediately, he reaches a hand across the table to rest on top of hers, even while he still scrambles to come up with some more vocal attempt at comfort. The idea of Six crying is supremely uncomfortable, particularly in such a public venue. How long has this weighed on her? John should have approached her, he thinks. This was mishandled in more ways than one on his part.

"Please, don't apologize. There's only one person who should, and he isn't here to do so."

And thank all the gods for that.

"It's not your fault," John presses. "I could have closed the door."

Maybe in another time, another place, he would have. But things have changed.

Her hand twitches as soon as his fingers brush over it.

She's not used to anyone attempting to comfort her; this part of her heritage, of her life, is something she had never shared with anyone. Even Adrian had only ever heard the whispers, echos from her dreams and the memories she shared with him. It's clear that she is desperate for this conversation to be over; it's been the same for each and every single time this has come up in Thedas, people stealing her secrets from her without of her control.

"It was still... Something that ought not be seen, by anyone."

Somehow this is worse than her conversation with Isaac. At least he had not borne witness to any of it; he had just seen the effects, had just felt the clash of her gauntlet against his cheek. John had seen the worst of her memories painted in front of him.

"It is still something to apologise for." She shakes her head. "And I am sorry for it."

there is beauty in surviving,

i

no subject

no subject

i;

tavern.

ii

unearths a shameful, crusty tag

slams into this immediately

retreats immediately.

8(