008 | open

[shri]

WHO: Lakshmi & You
WHAT: If Lakshmi was a room, she would be a very neatly organised library with expensive parchments and a series of precariously placed oil lamps on the edges of tables. Aka, someone just knocked them all over.
WHEN: The Answer Lies At The Bottom of the Bottle
WHERE: A shady bar in Kirkwall.
NOTES: cw: probably some brutal talk about sieges and battles, people getting eaten by monsters, swearing in multiple languages, drinking in the sense that Lakshmi is a light weight and probably can't make it through five drinks total. She's in a wonderfully bad place, it'll be great fun. also: punching.

I ) drinkin'

It has a comfortable sort of inevitably, finding herself in the back wall, a table by herself. A place where she can be comfortable no one, and she wonders if this was the sort of spiral Galahad had felt staring himself down. Maybe it's that she's looking for him as if, if she applied the rules of what had transpired in the Fade, of places that were the same, but reflected differently. If she found this place if she found the same miserable shithole of a place, she would find them there by that same virtue she saw in the fade. Close enough and not, and at least - at least that would be something to stave it off. Galahad's dry voice quipping an observation, Devi's exasperation in just a shift of her stance, Tesla's quick and clever eyes.

But it does not come, but she is left with another close enough but not. Of stupid, stupid choices. Of shouting herself hoarse and no one listening save where it was not enough, too little to make a difference.

It's paralysing, more so than realising she could not go home. What was losing that? She has done it more than once, now.

But knowing, so surely, and completely, knowing what will come of this.

It numbs her mindless all the way down. Oh what was all this fighting for, Sir Bors?

And what else was there to do with it? Take a leaf from Galahad's book. She sits hunched over, soundless, drinking the piss-water tasting ale in steady mouthfuls. Foul as it comes. One, and then another. Silent, unmoving as a block of stone and as minimal in her movements. At least - until some poor unfortunate wretch bumps her. Her eyes redlined, stares him down. Or rather, he stares back and mutters something about the strange folk in Kirkwall.

Any other time, she would wave it off, but this evening? This evening in particular? Didn't matter what the man said. "Strange? Ha? Khar too kharé! Is that clearer? Nothing I say seems to matter - Na, baba! Ekach bhasha kadhich pureshi nasate, so let me say it again, waat lag gayi! - this Inquisition is done."

Whatever sense she's making to herself, she isn't to the man, and he's desperately looking for a way out.

II ) fightin'

There was an inevitably to Lakshmi, of course, especially Lakshmi who couldn't make it through two drinks without being affected very soundly, Lakshmi who had twice that and not a drop of Blackwater who does not bother to curb her tongue even slightly. ( The difference being she lectured an absent Commander Coupe in Hindi to herself, was that when she was trying, she gave space for another to speak, not that she held her tongue. )

The unfortunate another end of that was eventually someone was going to get sick of listening to her. Muttering darkly to herself in the corner, when she stands, gets another drink, and she's bumped into, spilling her drink. That the other man looks at her, where he stares down his nose at her from a decent foot on her, and she stares straight back. It has an almost practised pattern of two people looking for a fight.

"Replace it."

"Fuck you I will - "

It really wasn't his fault that of all colours, he was wearing an old, red stained coat.

She doesn't have to do a proper measure of the shot this close, when she drops her tankard, and grabs him by the collar and in one fierce shout, smashes their foreheads together. Hard enough to split their skin, and to send him reeling as she jumps, to drag him down so she could lay into him, and - Thank God - him to hit her right back.

It's all hands for themselves to get out of the way, after that. There is nothing glamorous or powerful being partaken in. It is fist against flesh. Teeth that cut the inside of cheek as whoever happens to get caught in the crossfire of blows cut themselves on blunt forces. People who know better than to punch someone in the face because of how it hurts, forgoing that it is satisfying to split a lip, bruise a cheek. Since she cannot be spoken and listen to, since she must wallow in her own mistakes, she finds that the only thing that will do. Finding whoever is fighting and dragging them down to the floor with her on top of them, smashing down with her elbow, and paying for it in the return of a knee to her stomach. Hard enough to spit up a mouthful of blood.

Comments

II

[doneisdone]

Teren is That Shady Figure in every pub after a large political revelation has come, sitting hooded in the corner and nursing a drink, listening, holding her silence. She's kept an eye on Lakshmi for a time now, smirking faintly to herself in a mixture of admiration and pity-- the poor thing is wallowing in pity, thinks herself capable of changing the very fabric of Thedas that keeps it spinning endlessly into the void.
Not that nihilism is the answer, but the truth has always been behind every rebellion. The bad ones always win, it just takes time.

But perhaps Lakshmi doesn't have to die so immediately.

She's scruffed from behind by a bony hand, dragging her back as an empty bottle shatters over the head of her current assailant-- stunned, they crumple to the floor, and Teren tosses the remaining broken bottle neck to one side.
She's prepared for the possibility of Lakshmi turning on her next, but a good scrap never went astray in her experience.