closed.

[exequy]

WHO: Ilias, Isaac, Kostos, Leander
WHAT: Four mages stuck in a library (a bottle episode)
WHEN: Early Solace
WHERE: Outside Starkhaven
NOTES: Probably some violence at some point

Comments

[libratus]

Time will dull this. That is how it is supposed to work, isn't it? One can lose one's mother tongue for lack of exposure, surely the lines of a face will not always be strung to memory.

(Is that what he wants? To forget? Or just--)

Still too soon to have unlearned these. The softening of his jaw is slight in turn, cast against to the drop of his gaze. The explanation isn't much consolation; it matters to him more than it has any right to, now.

"He should not have done that," —unnecessary at this point, perhaps, but he hadn't said it before. He says it now the way one turns the latches on the door at the end of the night. Neat, orderly, one, two. Everything in its place.

"I have asked him to leave you be, in the future.”

[wythersake]

He should be grateful for that. Should leave this be.

"Have you been knighted?" Bubbles out, despite himself. A pivot from sincerity; too close to the fight they're not having. The one they're not going to have here. "Are you his keeper?"

That the purpose of the fucking phylactery, the scar across his chest? Leander shouldn't have done it. Ilias shouldn't have had to ask.

(And Isaac, Isaac should leave this be. The door's shut. No sense in pressing eye to keyhole — what happens will happen. Someone could get hurt in there. It won't be him. He should be grateful for that.)

[libratus]

A nerve glanced, shows itself in the tendons of a hand round a cigarette case. Not the first time the question has been raised; his answer hasn't gotten any better.

"He listens to me." He doesn't listen to anyone else. (Ilias doesn't know what happens if he stops.) Better explanations exist, simmer near the surface, but not the sort to be risked on Averesch's ears. He turns a tight glance to the window instead, shaking his head.

"Would you have me do nothing?"

Like you?

[wythersake]

A season ago Ilias had looked so frightened. A season ago, and now he and Leander whisper like children.

"I'd have you be honest with one of us," Isaac. Himself. "About what you're doing."

[libratus]

One of them.

It isn't ineffective. It doesn't not bring that flicker of openness to his eyes, the cautious consideration that's always come before a question posed, a hypothetical teased out between them, a position subtly shifted. Only there isn't anything else, this time. There isn't a them. Ilias takes a last pull of his cigarette; stamps it against the window sill.

"If you do not want to be part of this, then don't."

[wythersake]

He turns aside. Smokes.

"Don't forget the striker."

[libratus]

He doesn't. Manages not to throw it anyone either. After all, they're not fighting.