faderift | open | my mother told me don't get in trouble

WHO: Deimos + You!
WHAT: An Arrival Log of One (1) Jerk No One Wanted, But He Is Here Now, We Guess
WHEN: He considers time beneath him as a construct, obviously
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nothing overt, but in general warnings for Deimos being a mouthy asshole at the best of times.

i. closed | eshal
No one had wanted to talk to him for very long. Not if they could help it. One word of his accent, his appearance, his general bearings and that glint of green on his palm, they'd given him directions and promptly hurried on as he tried to figure out where it was he was supposed to be sending himself to do this properly and not get killed on behalf of the green burning ember. More magic than he had ever been willingly been around in his life and nothing about his current circumstances was endearing him to it any time soon.

But at least he was here, even if his mood was bad. Knocking on her door waiting to be let in.

ii. open | the gallows
He's got his orders to mind himself, he's no one's friend, and nor does he intend to change that much. Being left here - he's exposed. Trying to decide what to do, where to go, there isn't a fight to be had and nothing about him that he wants to ingratiate himself with particularly. Which is just as well, when he stands a foot over most of them, it's easy to just march on by like he knows what he wants.

Supposing, maybe, he has money, and so he understands it, that is how you get a decent drink. He doesn't seem to really get what the bartender wants from him when it comes to the little golden things he had been given as part of his pay. Chrysis and the other Tama had not taught him these things, always handling it - telling him where he went, what he wanted to get with which piece of metal.

He understands they all have different values - and now understands why so many of his brothers opt simply not to speak than look a fool. He holds up the coins of different types to the barkeeper and grunts and points to a drink then offers the money up for him to take the right piece he wants. Easy to affect a furious scowl like he might know if the man is ripping him off. He's been told that is something he must watch out for. Not that Deimos has the slightest hope of knowing what that might entail, but where understanding doesn't always happen, anger and the fear inspired afterwards would certainly do the trick for communication.

And gets a huge tankard of ale in return. Ha. This Bas money business wasn't so hard. What did they all go on about?

So smug in his minor victory, mutters to himself with it: "Bas aren't so strange." He takes a sip of his drink like he's won a great battle.

Unknowing that he just paid way - way too much for that drink.

iii. open | quarters
He doesn't particularly know what to do with himself when he isn't drinking or training or whoring whilst waiting for orders. But orders don't seem to be coming as quick as he likes, and inactivity suits him ill. So with his door open, utterly transparent as he could be to anyone spying on him as it was, he sits for a while, just in his chair, one leg stretched out in front of him, oversized to everything about him, not really sure what to do with himself.

So he decides he doesn't like how this room is set up. His room, one by himself, thank the Prophet that someone else had decided that before he kicked someone about it. The furniture is laughably little next to him, as it was. So it's nothing to pick up the bed, the desk, the chair, and push it over to the other side. Mindless grunt work that at least feels useful. His palms itching that simple frustration.

Then look at it again. ( It's painfully uncreative, quite literally just the room but reversed ).

And decide that in turn, he liked it where it was the first time. Pick it all up, and start again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was just something to do, he means to say. But then again, it doesn't really matter, any more than the fact he had arranged it in the first place. So he does what he usually does, and says nothing he does not want to. Fixing his features to what does -

Rather the question that he'd rather not answer, but that too, he supposes he doesn't have to do that either.

All he must do is raise his hand. The green burning ember embedded in his skin, bright and pulsating with painful light. "This."

That is so far from the answer she expected, or the one she suspected, that she nearly forgets that fear in the back of her mind.

She also forgets herself and closes the distance between them, wide-eyed and reaching for that hand to get a closer look. She doesn't know many of the Rifters, doesn't spend much time with anyone that caught a shard, so other than that incident with Bartimaeus, this is the closest she's come to being able to indulge her curiosity.

"Wow," she whispers, her fingers feather-light on the skin of his palm.

He ought to have expected it - she was always over-eager, always getting into things that she shouldn't, and he tugged his hand free momentarily. "Don't touch it."

Like he was sick, like it was a disease. Far be it for him to show concern over another but magic was not to be toyed with, for either of their sakes. If he was not what he was, did not hold some hope of removing the damn thing, he might seek to remove the hand permanently.

But then he truly would be without use.

"I cannot predict what it might do." It's at least easy to lift his fingers out of her reach and away for the time being.

She takes a half-step back when he takes his hand away, and she realizes that perhaps she was being too familiar, too...much. Too eager to touch him when she's not even sure if he wants anything to do with her.

But she doesn't apologize. Instead, she shrugs as if it suits her fine, and tucks a stray curl behind her ear. "It doesn't just do what you will it to do? I thought that was how it worked." She chuckles to herself, and at herself. "I also thought it'd feel different, but it just feels like a hand."

A hand that she didn't want to let go of, but she ignores that.

"Do I look like a mage? Of course, it doesn't. If I had any say in the matter, it would be gone - " It's muttered, that barely ever kept fury. But something else below it.

No, he doesn't look like a mage. For one thing, he still has his eyes. He is not forced to wear a mask. He is still Antaam. Sten. The body of the Quen. Not a creature of illusion. Not someone who is meant to have this in his destiny. He knows his destiny. It is to once and all, destroy Tevinter and return to the land of his birth, showing the true way.

" - and I would not be here."

She doesn't point out that there are plenty of rifters and shard-havers that aren't mages but still use their anchors, instead just shrugging again.

"Well, asit tal-eb or whatever, right? It is what it is?" Her memory of the qunlat words is better than that of their meaning, but since she heard the phrase only a few times close to three years ago, she would argue that she's done pretty good applying it.

"There are worse things than you being here, after all." This she says while turning away from him, taking in the room. Definitely not suited for him, comically undersized for a Qunari.

He is more bemused - pleased, even - that she remembered it at all, than he can be irritated that she would dare apply it over this mark on his hand. But, the reminder is good. Trust in the Qun, it would make sense of itself with time. Even if his purpose had changed massively.

Because it's too easy as she speaks to lean back on a reflex response when she leaves it wide open.

"Getting bored of them, were you?" He lets her look around the room as he finishes sliding the chair back into place. Pushing it under the desk. He won't be using it, it'd be easier to just sit on the floor and use the bed as a desk once he found a decent plank of wood to put on it.

She gives him a look, all doe-eyed innocence as she trails her fingers along the footboard of the bed. He's got himself a much nicer setup here than she does down in group quarters, no matter how comfortable she's made herself there. Sometimes being around others while you sleep is soothing, feels safe, and other nights it's like there's no quiet to be had, and no sleep either.

"I dunno what you mean," she says lightly, in that teasing tone that worked so well in the past.

The first smile in days begins to pull in the corner of his mouth. That self-satisfied smirk that leads him to turn, heading for the door as she plays against the bed. Catching the wood between his fingers and flicking it to swing shut, a click of it closing heavily.

Then locks it for good measure.

Because she can feign innocence all she likes. He knows that look, that look clear in her eyes, where perhaps other details are blurred. That way she says one thing, but does another.

"Don't you?"

The steps towards her are slow, drawn-out in so much they both know he could cross the room far quicker for the length of his stride. But he had always denied her the things she wanted straight away.

Her first instinct is to run to him, but she denies herself much in the way he's always denied her. She keeps herself in place with fingers curling into the footboard as she leans back against it, watching his advance. The grin on her face dims with concerted effort, lips pressing together as if to contain something battling to be let out.

Athessa looks down, looks back up without lifting her head. Coy, looking at him through her dark lashes. "Maybe...I might need a reminder."

He stops in front of her, feet planted flat as he rolls his shoulders roll backwards. An easy stretch as he looks her over. Eyes roaming from her legs to her face in a slow drag, taking his time as he did it. His hand lifting, catching under her jaw with the crook his fingers, tilting her face towards his.

"That bad here, is it?"

"No," she says, the vowel hanging on like it knows a but is soon to follow. Her smile fades briefly, looking at him, but then her mouth quirks and she scoffs at her own foolishness. "It's just--"

He frowns, as she hovers, waiting, watching. For what that just is. She'd never had a problem using her words before for the things she wanted. Even when it hadn't been in her best interest. His fingers shift, coaxing, sliding around her neck to brace there, thumb against the back of her ear, so little against the width of his hand. That, that he remembered well.

"It's just...?"

Her expression paints a picture of sheepish embarrassment at thinking something so obviously wrong, something so wide of the mark.

"It's just I wasn't sure you'd still...want me..." And it sounds so stupid to say aloud that she rolls her eyes at herself and resigns herself to however he might respond. If positive, she worried for nothing. If negative, she probably deserves it.

open | my mother told me don't get in trouble

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