[open]

[doneisdone]

WHO: Teren, Barrow, and Benedict, and YOU
WHAT: catch-all
WHEN: Haring
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: shirtless dilf enclosed

Teren

She crashed a dragon into a tower. And though she lived, Teren was flung from the beast and came to land somewhere in the rubble below, where an aptly remembered healing potion was enough to keep her from expiring on the spot, but moving her body in any meaningful way has been a struggle since then.
Incredibly fortunate to have had no significant internal damage (at least that the potion didn't handle), and with any broken bones splinted and healing, Teren is simply far too sore to move from her bed. After all her big talk about the Wardens not getting into any situations that couldn't be solved without Anders or Inessa...
...here she is.
A captive audience, if perhaps not a happy one.

Barrow

The air is brisk, the day is fine, and Barrow is swinging a hammer around in the sparring range. He's been learning to use it since first arriving in Kirkwall, rather liking the idea more than the usual boring old sword and shield, but having never had the opportunity to play with one until now.
He cuts quite a figure in doing so, and should be approached with caution unless alerted first. He's also only wearing a shirt about half the time, since even in the Haring chill, physical exertion takes its toll.

Benedict

I. (open) There's a certain anxious industriousness to Benedict these days, and if the growing pile of writing-filled parchment he keeps carefully resting on the bench is any indication, he's got a project.
He's also made some pretty decent headway with in weaving a screen for the window with straw from the cell floor, which both prevents the cold wind from coming in and bathes the little room in a pleasant sepia light. It's clearly the work of an amateur, but one can almost mark how much his skill has improved from the start to where his progress currently lies.

He can often be found working on either project, or perhaps painting or reading, swathed in both of his blankets for warmth and powered by nervous energy.

II. (one thread please, first come first serve) On the night of the strange dreams that grip the denizens of Riftwatch, there comes a cry of abject panic from Benedict's cell, followed by the sounds of someone in terrible emotional distress.

Comments

[keenly]

"Yes." And it hurts, in light of everything he's seen in the Fade. Spirits enacting could-have-beens with a terrible eye for accuracy. He knows what Benedict is going to ask next.

"She loved me. At least, she loved me until I manifested. I..." His gaze goes distant. "I think she considered me dead. Or maybe erased. But she loved me at first. So have some others, just...not enough to withstand the first bump in the road."

[altusimperius]

On that, at least, they have common ground: love lost over bumpy roads, even if the reasons differed.

Benedict looks down, perhaps sorry he asked, or at least sorry in the capacity that Colin had to speak about something unpleasant. It feels wrong now, to continue the conversation.
"...well," he says faintly, "at least you don't do that."

[keenly]

It would be extremely easy to damage this fragile new person with his next words. He has thought the conversation about one very particular and relevant case of abandonment should at least wait until Benedict got out of that cell. It really still should. But the temptation to murmur but you do is significant. But it makes sense. Benedict has never been loved. No parent showed him what that looks like, not even temporarily. How is he supposed to know how to form lasting connections if connections are to him, by nature, transient? It's a real question, one Colin would like an answer to for his own sake.

"I didn't mean to make you feel bad," he says quietly.

[altusimperius]

"You didn't," Bene assures him, his mouth twitching nearly into a smile of the placating sort, "I mean, I-- I already felt bad." He didn't need Colin's help.
With a little sigh and yet another shiver, he shifts again where he sits. "...I think Athessa probably hates me now, though."

[keenly]

Colin shakes his head. "You have to know she didn't just get angry with Leander on the spot. She was angry for you. The results weren't ideal, but she certainly wasn't angry on her own behalf."

[altusimperius]

The truth of it makes him squirm a little. He doesn't want to believe it, doesn't like the implications of someone being willing to do something for him when he can't see them doing it, didn't ask them to, might...
...not... do it for them.

But how can one even know, when he can't leave the room?

"...maybe," he grunts evasively. It's easier to imagine that she's cut him off forever, like his parents, like Kitty, like probably most other people.

[keenly]

"Did something happen?"

Of course something happened. Benedict was a mess when Colin came in. If Athessa got to him before Colin, she wasn't exactly going to defuse the situation.

[altusimperius]

In context with how Colin reacted when Benedict confronted him about seeking out the box, Benedict can see now that perhaps, just maybe, he was overreacting or didn't have the entire story. That would have been nice to have figured out before he and Athessa had a shouting match, but that ship has long sailed.

He opens his mouth, closes it again, and shrugs uselessly. It's an odd time to go into a sulk, but when one considers the damning information he's withholding, it makes a little more sense.

[keenly]

Colin's head bobs. It's disappointing, no doubt, but not altogether surprising.

"In that case," he says quietly, "make sure you don't let her go at the first bump in the road."

[altusimperius]

Benedict looks up at him, surprised. It had, of course, never occurred to him that the same flaw might apply to himself-- in fact, he's never had any reason to think about it that way before.
He's almost too shocked to respond, but his mind is clearly going, trying to think of something to say that won't incriminate himself as exactly what Colin is implying.

[keenly]

Colin's brows tic up, a minor expression of a much deeper surge of irritation. "Yes. You do it, too. Isn't that why you're in there and not in the chamberlain's office?"

He hesitates, and when he speaks again, his face doesn't change, but his voice is quieter.

"It's why I kept wondering if...I kept wondering if I'd done something bad to you the night we were together that made you leave."

[altusimperius]

When Benedict goes on the defensive, he tends toward a rather salt-the-earth strategy in the absence of charm or playing the victim; he at least has enough respect for Colin that he doesn't try either of those, knowing full well he'll be seen right through and pinned with so little effort it'll be embarrassing. But that doesn't make it any easier to hear the words, least of all the invocation of his former position. It's a harshness he didn't expect, and though he's grown in leaps and bounds, certain aspects of his emotional maturity are still lacking.

"What?" he says, incredulous, "that-- it wasn't about you, Colin." Though the words might be reassuring by themselves, something in them suggests Colin was foolish for assuming anything has ever been about him.
Not that that's what's truly intended by it, but, well, Bene has a way with words.

[keenly]

A smile that's rather like a grimace, an uptick in his irritation that borders on anger. "It doesn't have to be about me to hurt. A lot. If you want to change, if you want to have friends and be a better person, you can't just bludgeon yourself against these bars. You have to know that when you leave this cell, you have a world outside to deal with that will have expected you to have learned what you needed to be trusted again. It's not enough to tell the people upstairs that treason is bad. You knew that all along. Your mother is a nightmare, but you made that decision. Do you even know why?"

[altusimperius]

"Who says I'm leaving it!" Bene snaps back, clearly not in the right frame of mind to introspect that deeply, to really interrogate the parts of himself that know damn well why, and what admitting it would take.
"The only one who really gives a shit is you, and that's-- what, because you're in love with me? Because you're mad I left you behind to do something important, and never took the time to write you any poetry while I was a prisoner in my own house?"
As soon as the words have left his mouth-- likely even before that-- he regrets them, knows he's going too far. But backing down now, conceding that he's wrong and being a shit? Might as well write up a public declaration of his own spinelessness.

[keenly]

Benedict's words burn over his arms, his ears, his cheeks. They drive the breath from him. Quickly, Colin is on his feet, collecting his pride as best he can, and he walks away without looking back or giving response.

Is this what people would have experienced if they'd tried to help him, as an angry and hurting boy on the cusp of Tranquility? There's no way to know for certain, but he suspects he wouldn't have been very receptive to kindness. But Benedict is in that cell because of what he did, and Colin has visited him every day anyway, thinking mere kindness could turn him around. And Colin's own delusion led him to think he may be rewarded with...what? Someone too deeply indebted to him to abandon him?

No. What Benedict needs is to go to that place that led Colin to build his own rescue. What Colin needs is to be away for a while. He can't keep bringing bath water and food as if Benedict can't get those things for himself. It's taken a toll on them both now. He's done with it.

The daily visits, for now, quietly cease, and Colin isn't sure when they'll begin again.

[altusimperius]

The spinelessness is going to happen anyway, it turns out.
Benedict manages to wait until Colin has left his sight before he can't keep still anymore; he leaps to his feet to grip the bars, angling his head to see out as best he can, however little that is.
"Colin wait," he calls, fear pressing command into his tone, for all the good it does. "COLIN!" he shouts louder, but quickly gathers that the man is already gone, and even if he weren't, he's not about to turn around.

"Fuck."