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

He grunts in answer, purposefully vague so far as it matters. The other details don't matter, it is all that comes of it. "This is where they say you go when you're infected. So I came."

He goes where she points, and he still is comically oversized on all these little things, awkward shuffle to fit his legs in a way that is comfortable, his arm hooking on the arm of the couch, stretching out at the angle.

"How did you manage to get that here?"

She nods. The logic of it is perfectly Qunari. The poor man was kicked into the wilderness with nothing, wasn't he? Damn the fucking Qun.

"I'm from Kont-aar. My sires gave me over when they converted." She considers telling him she was antaam. She doesn't want to be called a man, when she's fought so hard to escape that label, even when the difference in the world outside the Qun seems so minimal. Women can fight and men can heal. She just doesn't want to be called a man again, it's been so long...

She decides to tell the truth, and hope he wont take the vulnerability and rip it to shreds. It's a gamble-- she hardly knows him-- but she has more clout. If she has to, she can make his head spin with it. She just doesn't want to make this public, and that's the hard thing.

She takes a deep breath before continuing. "I was placed in the antaam for my strength. But I was not a man, no matter how good I was with my spear."

Her soul hangs on the wall behind them, mounted in a place of honor, not the least dusty or blunt.

"I was sent to Seheron, and left amongst the chaos. You could call me Tal-Vashoth." And she tenses, readying herself for the fight, or worse, the words.

"You left?" It's disbelieving, shocked almost. "You left because you are a man and did not want to be?"

This disbelief would be shared by many, whether they were as removed from him or not. As much reflected he imagined as Par Vollen as it was in the small numbers he was grouped with. But the ways that they were different were in another direction then closer to her complaints, presently. "You put aside your soul for that?"

She could be angry. She is angry. She feels it building in her. She could rage and scream. She could, she could, she could. But sometimes anger offers you a choice. It was I can be very big and very terrible, or I can be very small and even more terrible. Eshal chooses the latter.

This is a Sten newly torn from his tama's embrace. Punching him would just make him feel at home.

"Yes," she says, calm and cool and still in Qunlat. "Because I did not agree, I rejected the Qun. And because you never disagreed, they rejected you."

She lets that settle in the space of a hearbeat, two. Her posture is straight, her shoulders settled. She is in a position of strength, and she knows it, and she wants to make sure this little Sten knows it.

In Trade, "Do you want to tell me which one of us lost more? Or do you want me to help you with your problem? Either would be just as amusing to me."

She is and he cannot stand it. Here she is - rejecting their way of life, and she is being rewarded for it. Raised up in position, with those that answer to it. A traitor. One who walked away and he was supposed to answer to her?

But what seethes, what festers under his skin: "I was not rejected." He bites it back in trade just the same, his fists curling up against his hands in a tightening of his whole being to a threat, direct or otherwise, banging his hand against the arm of the chair.

She reaches out like how she knows a tamassran would, gently taking his jaw in her hand. In Qunlat, in a gentle but firm voice, with words is has no doubt heard before, "you are being tested. Rejection is the test. A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world. You must learn to stop your suffering, as I did. It is a hard journey, but you look strong."

And then she withdraws. "Are you?"

It isn't the words he hears, it isn't the guidance she offers.

Where he stops, grits, starts again. It's the touch. The touch that makes him flinch. Then stills, ramrod straight, shoulders a stiff line, only training that prevents more so. That has she pulls away, he pushes her hand further, shoving his way back. The touch of a tama has only one end. Has only the searing sensation that follows the kindness. Because no kindness lasts. His breath shallow in his throat but silent, so silent, quiet to himself. The readiness for worse.

"Don't touch me."

And she knows exactly what to say. It's cruel, and she hates the thought that pops up after it: it's for his own good. Isn't that what every reeducator says to themselves? It must be.

But she has to make sure this man is kept in line. And she is the person most likely to hold those reigns, as much as she'll loathe the power. If she can coax it into something better... yes, she has to, that's the only way any of this is excusable.

So she says, "are you so afraid of a touch, Sten?"

"I am afraid of nothing." He spits it back, surging pulling out of the chair once he has the space to do so. It was fine when their footing was equal. But he wouldn't be questioned, over something like that. Sten he was, as he stares down over her, using the height he has.

He waits, for that blow, that pain that always follow - the way he has been taught. He strikes back first. "But I won't have a traitor put her hands over me like she has a right because some bas don't know what she's done."

Eshal notes the she. That's a win, even if this Sten doesn't realize it. Quiet, somber and knowing, her best imitation of the best sort of tamassran, Eshal looks on placidly, slowly shaking her head.

She quotes the Body Canto again. "A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world. You have been cut from your people, and now you are bringing your suffering to me, laying it at my feet like a carcass, and its stench will infest the world."

What can he say to that? She is right, and he knows it, and it is insulting to hear the Prophet's words spoken back to him in this manner by a traitor. Next she'll be telling him she all but sided with the Vints.

His teeth click shut. His mouth twisting in a furious, irritating expression that plays over his features sharp and quick.

And instead, opts to say nothing. If nothing else, this was why they needed Kosmos. This sort of thing should never be allowed, it was a corruption of the vilest sort. Clear that he likes nothing of it, to that silence, how he looks away, then back.

Rather, then, the only thing that mattered was simple. "Don't touch me again. I will serve my purpose, as a servant of the Qun or not."

"Then I won't touch you." She moves away from him on the couch, turning her back to him as she walks toward her desk. Is it an insult or trust? You couldn't hurt me, or you won't? It doesn't matter.

"What do you intend to do here? You're not cut out for Diplomacy."

He sits again, still so woefully oversized on the chair but, refused to just go because she had stepped back. Grunting as he dropped down into it heavily. Arms crossing over his chest sullenly as it ever was.

"What do you think I am here for? I am Antaam. There are stories enough even as far as I was, about how this place is a cesspit of mages and Bas ideas of diplomats. Seems you could use another Sten."

"So you will follow commander Flint's orders? He is a Vint, you know, but he hates the Imperium. This place is full of defectors. If you want to be useful, you will learn not to be so easily offended."

She sits on the edge of her desk, facing him.

"That is another sign of weakness a proper karasten would beat from you."

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

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