open

[acreage]

WHO: Holden, you!
WHAT: A catch-all for the month(?)
WHEN: After Satinalia and onwards
WHERE: Kirkwall, Gallows
NOTES: There'll be post-murderhaus stuff in here, so there may be references to some of the horror movie occurrences!

Starters will be in the comments! I'm sorry, I'll write a real log one day.

Comments

infirmary

[muckspout]

Holden has been here much longer than the rest of them. He will have noticed various items turning up next to his bed every day: maybe a rock, maybe a nice leaf, but no sign of the person leaving them.

After a nap, Edgard will be standing over him, cupping his hands. He looks away, shifting his eyes.

"I-I finally found this for you, but I don't know what to do with them."

[acreage]

The first time, he'd thought it was an accident. Might or might not have annoyed someone working here by assuming it was a misplaced medical...thing.

("What would we do with a rock?" he'd been asked scornfully. Which, fair, but it could be magic or it could be something like the leeches, what does he know.)

By the fourth time, he started to wonder if it was a prank. After a while, he started to decide it probably was deliberate, even if it wasn't clear what the goal was. Still, he doesn't throw any of them away; there starts to be a nice little pile of rocks and things at his bedside. Reminds him a little bit of being a very small boy, bringing rocks and beetles to show Mother Tamara or Mother Elise or Father Tom.

Today, he thinks he was foolish not to consider Edgard earlier. He blinks quizzically, pushing himself into a sitting position and motioning for Edgard to sit.

"What is it?"

[muckspout]

Edgard immediately looks pained when Holden sits up and hisses air through his teeth.

"No, no, do not hurt yourself, I didn't mean to make you move."

He perches next to him, glancing briefly at his wound and then looking away. He brings his hands close to him and inside are coffee beans.

"Not from the ground. A tree!" Edgard cracks a smile and then his face falls back to being etched with worry.

[acreage]

He holds up a hand, palm towards Edgard; the other is momentarily occupied pushing him the rest of the way up.

"Please, just laying down all the time is exhausting. You're doing me a favor."

He leans over a little to better see the beans, expression first mildly confused and then brightening as he looks from them to Edgard.

"A tree! Really?"

The look doesn't go unnoticed, but he doesn't bring it up just now.

[muckspout]

Edgard nods, his lips thinning into a subdued smile.

"Yes, I asked around and finally found someone who--" He moves the beans to one hand and waves his hand in the air, trying to cut to the chase.

"It comes from inside a fruit on a tree, they're seeds and then you cook them." He shakes his head disbelievingly. "And then you do something to them that makes them into a drink. It is all very complicated."

[acreage]

It's been such a long time since he devoted thought to the growing of things. He mostly left Prax alone with his green panel modifications for the Roci; the botanist knew what he was doing, and Holden had been preoccupied with other things.

Plus, he really does love coffee. So he's, actually, fascinated!

"Huh. I had no idea they came from fruit. Where did you find the tree?"

[muckspout]

"There's a farm not far off. I asked someone in a shop to show me. It was a little ways away. They actually did this." He shrugs at the beans. "But, I was there. They had put so much trouble into it, I didn't want to tell them I didn't know how to make the drink."

He then becomes very quiet and looks away.

"I thought you might like it."

[acreage]

There's something in his expression that softens over the course of the full explanation. How much thought, effort went into this task, the remembering that he likes coffee, and what he'd said about it. The work that went into the gesture is more of a gift than the end result.

"Don't worry," he says, "I know how to make coffee from the beans."

Has been brewing his own coffee most days, thanks to guidance from Athessa. There's a rustling of bedsheets, as he carefully repositions himself to better reach out a hand and lay it on Edgard's arm.

"I do. Thank you."

[muckspout]

Edgard doesn't move away from the hand, but it makes him feel dreadful. All he wanted was to bring Holden something familiar, a drink he likes, and instead he won't be able to have it until, if--

Edgard sets the beans down on an unoccupied stool near them, watching carefully, trying to make sure none spill to the floor. With his eyes still on the beans,

"How are you?" His tone is low and soft.

[acreage]

He drops his hand, settles back on the bed.

"Would you believe me," he says, "if I said I've been worse?"

This is, actually, completely true. The last convalescence was harder, the aftereffects farther-reaching. This'll just be a scar and some bad memories.

"I'm going to be fine. They're saying I won't have to stay here much longer."

[muckspout]

Edgard looks Holden in the face now trying to judge if he is simply telling him what he needs to hear. Edgard knows better than any that someone can be fine, say they're fine, and the next--

"I tend to take people at their word." He lies, smiling gently.

"I am sorry that this happened to you." This one is quite sincere. Edgard immediately breaks eye contact after it is spoken.

[acreage]

"Hey."

What he's hoping for, before he goes on, is eye contact — though he'll at least take some kind of acknowledgment.

"This happened to all of us. There isn't a single person who got off easier than anyone else. We were all the mercy of a psychopath, and we were all lucky to make it out in one piece." Some more than others, but you know. "That goes for you as much as it goes for me."

[muckspout]

He does meet his eyes then.

"I had him. I had him several times and he just kept--it kept happening. And everyone got hurt and I could've stopped it."

That last point comes out louder than expected and Edgard is surprised he's voiced it at all.

As always, all he can see in reflection are all the ways in which he should've seen something, should've acted differently. If he acts on instinct, he messes up, if he thinks too hard, he misses the moment. No matter what he does, it is always the wrong thing, and people just keep dying.

[acreage]

Oh, he knows where Edgard is. It's Naomi's we saved a few; we should've saved more. It's Alex's we lost 25 people because I made that choice. It's his own I opened those gates. So I'm responsible if anything comes through them.

He knows where Edgard is. He lives here.

"He got the better of all of us. We all made our own choices, and we all did our parts. It took three of you take him down in the end. No one of us could've done it alone."

Even though, again, the dude was a spindly human raisin. Details.

"And, no offense," he adds more lightly, "but tough as you are? You aren't tougher than every single one of the rest of us who were there, or all of his past victims. Stopping him was never on you."

Naomi has reminded him, more than once, the accidental arrogance of this kind of thinking. It's helped him a little, is worth trying.

[muckspout]

Edgard blinks a little and intakes some air.

"I don't think I'm tougher." He says wondering. He's not thought of it like that before. "I'm just always making mistakes."

He's surprised at Holden. He's not angry or telling him he did something wrong. (Although he did, he always does.) Instead, he's reassuring him and making some solid points. It reminds him of his brothers in the Invisible Hands, but that acknowledgement is also acknowledgement of a deeper ache so he shoves it down.

"Thank you." He says in the same wondering tone. "You're a good man, Holden." And he means it. Edgard trusts few and himself less, but on this he does not doubt.

[acreage]

That just earns a smile, a friendly shoulder-clap.

"I'll be feeling better soon," he says, like a promise, and, "I hope you will be too."