OPEN | you ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alright.

[poleaxed]

WHO: Jone & u
WHAT: Jone's intro log.
WHEN: Nowish.
WHERE: Kirkwall.
NOTES: Violence and strong language. Will update if things get w...orse.....

a. LOWTOWN.

Whenever you show up anyplace, you have to make some coin. If you've no contract, there are ways to do it, but they're messy methods.

Jone, standing at a few inches over six feet, long hair a muddy tangle in the middle of a fighting ring walled by bodies yelling for their bet, does not seem to mind messy.

Her opponent is a human of similar stature, moves to punch her square in the stomach, and Jone takes it. Hurts like fuckall, but that never matters much to a Reaver. Anyway, she needs it to grab him, her hands a vicegrip on his arm. He can't pull away, and ends up dragging Jone a few feet in either direction, attempting to dislodge her. She's too close, now, and it's too easy to knee him in the bollocks, adding to the gesture with a solid bite at his neck. She doesn't break the skin enough to really hurt him, but it's a scary thing to see, and she wants the reputation as much as the coin.

Her opponent goes down, and the crowd cheers. Blood in her mouth, she cheers back: "Next!"

b. HIGHTOWN.

Jone knows where her money comes from, so she knows how to look. She's not pristine, walking the streets of Hightown, but her hair is clean enough to see it's red, pulled back and way from a face no longer covered in blood and muck. Wearing a worn but workable enough suit of armor, she's holding a piece of parchment, reading it while moving her lips. She looks up, looks down, reading it again.

The door she goes to knock on-- maybe you know it? Maybe you're familiar enough with Kirkwall to know this is a prank? Maybe you're also thinking about taking a mercenary contract? Maybe the noble within is someone to be avoided? Help a girl out-- or don't.

c. THE GALLOWS.

She's only been here a day, but she's a little bored. No real reputation yet, but you gotta start small. Little things first. Late night arm wrestling. She's one two out of three so far, and the pot is growing.

She reaches forward for her next opponent, and her sleeve falls down to reveal the glowing green just above her elbow.

She shrugs. "Believe me, mate, this made me stronger, I wouldn't be fighting you with it."

d. WILDCARD.

go 4 it i believe in u.

Comments

[poleaxed]

Fuck, fuck, fuck. She was never prepared for this. She could have been, but it was never supposed to happen. Fuck, where did she fuck up. She should have kept better tabs on him.

She reviews his words while trying to keep tears from falling-- she can't rub at her face in fucking gauntlets, Andraste Almighty-- and there's something to pick at. Deserve. Same old everything.

"No," she says, turning to glare. If her eyes are watery, so what. Fuck him. "Life's not fair, Luc. I don't gotta explain shit."

[coeurdulyon]

It's hard to keep tabs on a dead man. They both know this well enough. If Lucien had been able to track Jone, he would have. He never would have given up, either, oaths be damned.

Maybe that's his disillusionment talking. Maybe it's the truth.

"If you did not want to marry me you could have just said."

[poleaxed]

Her head whips around, eyes blazing. "You shouldn't bloody want to! Don't you know me? I couldn't fucking- I couldn't do that to you."

She presses a hand to her face-- gauntleted, painful, but that may be the point. Comfort is beyond her. She doesn't deserve it.

[coeurdulyon]

"I know well enough what I shouldn't fucking do or want!" He steps closer, though surprised a little at his own outburst. At least it isn't how he reacted in Ghislain. You forget your place. Knowing that she'll just try to push him away, pull herself away, attack out of some misplaced (or well-placed) anger, he reaches for her again to grip her arms, to try and keep her in place and upright.

"Couldn't do what to me, Jone? I thought you were dead. How is that better than being my wife?"

[poleaxed]

It all comes out, and when it does, thank the Holy Lady Andraste, Ever-Loving and Soft-Singing, it comes out angry.

"Couldn't drag you through the fucking mud! Is that what you wanna do to yourself? Your duty, your honor, your word, all of it worth shit? I live that! You don't, you dumb twat. Let me the fuck go!"

She could break his hold if she tried. Maybe she could. She doesn't want to find out. She could hurt him.

[coeurdulyon]

"Since when did you care about any of that?"

She's always been the one undercutting the importance of things like duty, honor, a man's word, all of it. The one keeping Lucien honest.

Perhaps that's the reason everything fell apart when she left.

He doesn't let go. "You expect me to believe that after all your talk about what utter bollocks honor is, you'd leave to protect mine? Bullshit."

[poleaxed]

So she rips her arms free of his, and uses them to hit him-- not hard. If she wanted, she could hurt him properly. Just them, all she wants to do is beat impotently at his chest and wail like a fishwife. It's what she's always been afraid of happening. It's what she deserves.

"I don't fucking care! I never cared! You care! And I- I couldn't..." There is a sob, even as she struggles to keep it back, "I couldn't fucking watch that rip you apart. Watch you start fucking hating me. You're too fucking good, and you don't even know it."

[coeurdulyon]

Lucien just stands there and lets her hit him, hands shaken off but hovering as if to steady her. That sob wrenches at him, and for some stupid reason he feels the urge to apologize.

Apologize. For what? For loving her? For thinking love alone could be enough for her? Those tears are my fault.

"Sacre Créateur, Jone! Look at me," he spreads his arms wide. "Even now, when I have every reason to, I cannot hate you! I could never."

[poleaxed]

"Bullshit!" She pushes him, again without enough strength to truly hurt him. "Bullshit, I would've dragged you down. I drag everyone down. Just call me a fucking- a harridan bitch and get it over with. Everyone can hate me."

She's letting too much show. It barely occurs to her, in the midst of this loss, that it might be obvious, for the first time, that she does not quite thrive on hatred as she once pretended.

[coeurdulyon]

Even without strength enough behind it, Lucien is shoved back a step.

"No," he says. Time was, he'd protest that he isn't everyone, that who he is exempts him from her declaration. But he was wrong to think that. He is everyone; no better than anyone else.

"I cannot. And you would not have dragged me anywhere I did not go willingly."

[poleaxed]

As soon as he moves away, she stops still. Hurting him is always incidental. It happens, it always does, but it's never her intention. Not really. At least, she hopes not.

"You know what I mean," she says, and tears are falling now, through demon blood and matted hair, "It's not about what you want. For once. I'm not sorry. It was for your own fucking good."

[coeurdulyon]

So death is for his own good. Her death brought him to his knees, stopped his heart though his body kept moving. And when it came time to die himself, he was passed over.

Surely he could have engineered it, could have forced the Venatori's hands or taken matters into his own, but instead he suffered. Suffered, because it was better than feeling nothing. Because it was what he deserved.

Maybe it was for his own good. He reaches for her, to wipe the tears from her blood-stained cheeks and brush the hair from her face. He expects she won't let him, but he has to try.

"Jone..."

[poleaxed]

She lets him, because she doesn't know what to do. What's the point of anything, now? All that she gave up, and he doesn't even have the decency to loathe her for it. She can't move forward from this.

She asks the question, though she suspects she knows the answer, and fears it. "Why can't you just hate me? Everybody else does."

[coeurdulyon]

"Because," he says, holding her face in his hands and brushing his thumbs over her cheeks. Surely, surely she knows the answer. How could she not? Does she think he had other designs when he asked her to be his wife?

He looks for some flicker of what he feels for her in her eyes, some sign that she might give in to it. "Because I love you, Jone."

[poleaxed]

She drops her gaze immediately, trying to hide, to save what little face she has left. This is intolerable. Unconditional love is fucking mythological. Yet all evidence points to it being right there, in her hands. A place where she could always be safe.

"I don't know what to do."

Admitting it feels a little like dying, and she certainly deserves that, too.

[coeurdulyon]

"The answer is simple, if you feel the same way."

[poleaxed]

Jone doesn't walk back from demons, but this? She takes a step back, unsteady in the sand. "I ain't marrying you."

[coeurdulyon]

Jone steps away, and Lucien stays in place, hands slack at his sides without her to hold onto.

"You don't have to," he says, though it pains him. What does he have to offer her now, anyway? No lands, no money, his material possessions sold off. All he has is his horse, his name, and the reputation of a dead man.

"It won't change how I feel."

[poleaxed]

"After everything I done t'you," she says, voice trailing off. She loves him, she knows she loves him, that's the worst part of it. She doesn't think things can go back the way they were, but... some part of her wants to try.

It's the soft part she generally ignores.

"Needs time," she says. She just doesn't have enough energy to ruin it completely. She's not sure she could do it twice. "Both of us. I'm not rushing in again."

[coeurdulyon]

“D’accord. Fine,” he relents, even offering that translation because he knows how little she cares for deciphering Orlesian. “If you need time, you shall have it.”

But he doesn’t step any further away, all too aware of the exhaustion she is showing. It isn’t like her to be so diminished after a fight, one that has not incurred any significant losses. But then again, never before had she been burdened with a rift shard. Lucien breathes out a frustrated sigh.

“Will you at least let me help you?”