at least the dark don't hide it; OTA

[wythersake]

WHO: Isaac + OTA
WHAT: Dream aftermath
WHEN: First day or so after everyone wakes up
WHERE: Gallows
NOTES: Probable vague discussion of torture, will edit as appropriate.

 

Comments

OTA

[wythersake]

The bedroom lock turns easily, by force or key. Isaac doesn't return the first evening, or the next. His things remain, amid smaller signs of habitation. Anything worth hiding is already gone.


INFIRMARY

It's night. He's quiet.

Each drawer of Isaac's desk has been pulled in turn, its typical sprawl defoliated into neat lines. A box of bandage, a line of empty vials: What can stay, what will go. He isn't dressed to travel. No cloak, no pack. He wears a certain grim attention all the same — those entering will not catch him unaware.

"You're awake."

A joke. Not a funny one.


ACQUISITIONS OFFICE

The door is propped open.

Barely — a sliver of light that knifes into the hall beyond. Enough to catch the shadow of a footfall: Spare warning for the man dozing inside. Isaac's head nods over the staked page of a map, Ferelden, the northeast reaches (soil hardly worth the plough). An abandoned cup of coffee leaks a slow brown ring into the Waking Sea.

(So this is where his coat went.)


WILDCARD

[ Go ahead with whatever, and I'll roll with it. HMU on plurk or discord (shambolism #8807) if you want a custom starter. ]

Infirmary

[okayimin]

She blinks and pauses, eyebrows raising at the figure. Even if it's dark, she can see him clearly.

"Can't say sleep appeals much at the moment," she says, walking in the rest of the way, "Surprised the rest aren't in here." The rest of the infirmary staff. Not necessarily close knit, but people she'd come to rely on.

[wythersake]

"Give it time," The appeal. Their colleagues. "Some of them don't sleep alone."

He hefts a box.

"Was this your first dream?"

[okayimin]

She hums idly and sits herself down on a stool. If that stool happens to be in the way of the door... Well. She's not actually expecting to stop him.

"My second," she says, "The first happened last year. Reckon I was lucky this time around. Had a nice little dream about delivering babies in an Orlesian village before I found myself on the road to Skyhaven." She's refusing to recall the name out of spite at this point.

[wythersake]

"Can't say that I envy you," Bottles rattle. He slips the crate into an empty square of shelf: Common supplies. "Orlesian children are loud. Always with the oui, oui, oui,"

[okayimin]

"All babies sound the same when they're born," she says, "And it's better than the alternative. It's how I knew it was a dream. I couldn't remember the ones who didn't come out crying."

She watches him a moment, then adds, "You turned, didn't you."

infirmary

[venenifer]

It's not unusual for Gideon to encounter strangers in the infirmary-- he's one himself, after all, though he isn't accustomed to being addressed thus by someone he hasn't even met.

"Hello," he says in a light scoff, "yes, I certainly am."

[wythersake]

"You'd be surprised," A flourish: A pair of shears, dropped inelegant into the box before him. "I knew a man who could recite the Chant in his sleep."

(There hasn't been time to organize a response. They would have sent a templar. There won't be a response — not a public one, they can't afford it,)

"Are you looking for the Sister?"

[venenifer]

"No, I--" He shakes his head, bewildered. Who is this man?

"--I couldn't sleep. I came to drive myself to torpor with busywork."

A twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and he comes forwad.

"...Brother Gideon. I'm the new healer. Not a mage. Sister Sawbones is my colleague, but I don't answer to her."

[wythersake]

"I bid you the swiftest fortune in telling her so." In exchange: "Isaac."

This is not a day that he cares to advertise Enchanter.

"Have they set you up with a station yet?"

[venenifer]

A small chuckle follows-- he's already met Sawbones, and the joke isn't lost on him.

"I didn't realize there were stations specific to individuals. Personally, I'm an apothecary and physician, and have already found no shortage of work to be done."

ACQUISITIONS OFFICE

[sulahnan]

That sliver of light spreads into a wedge as the door opens further, swinging slowly after one slight nudge. Bare feet make little noise padding across the stone floor, skirting the edges of the table on which the map sits so that deft fingers might pluck the cup of coffee off of the map and replace it with a clean cloth.

What does he think, that maps grow on trees?

Athessa glances over the familiar sight of northern Ferelden and sets the cup somewhere that won't be ruined by coffee rings, then puts a hand on Isaac's shoulder and speaks softly to rouse him from his doze.

"Isaac."

[wythersake]

He is dreaming of a path. There's a monster in every labyrinth, if you wind the string long enough; through the deep places and high tower halls. A palm to his shoulder, a whisper. Isaac's head lurches up. He recoils as if struck.

His hand finds his chest, presses, reflex beating down a heart. It's a long moment — is it very long at all? — before he finds the words:

"Fuck." Swipes his palm up, over a scratchy chin.

[sulahnan]

"Relax," she says, and takes her hand away. "It's only me."

Which, in retrospect, is probably not as reassuring as she'd like it to be. Over the course of that dream — a night, a month, five years — it was simultaneously something she desperately wanted to be a given and something she despised.

There's a fine line between a reassurance and a dismissal. It's only me, versus it's only Athessa.

"I was on my way up to Bastien's office to see if he had any sweets hidden in his desk and I saw the light from the hall. Working late?"

[wythersake]

"Try the Seneschal," A day — month, years — ago, that might have blurred comfort: Only a friend, "Mlle Poppell seems the sort."

A day ago, there hadn't been a knife at his throat. (The Fade, choking for hers.) There is a monster, and there is a path, and sometimes they tangle.

"I could ask the same of you."

Working late. What a euphemism that's ever been. A way to avoid the conversations worth having.

[sulahnan]

She waves the question off. "You know I don't sleep."

(Except when she does.) Many of the nights they've spent talking about this or that and almost all of the instances of her assisting him as bait or as an extra pair of hands have occurred during bouts of insomnia that weren't appeased by a heavy blanket of rootsmoke. But there's no cloud about her now despite the ever present joint behind her knife-like ear.

And Isaac doesn't seem to be taking the out she's offering.

"I hear the Herald fielded questions from everyone. Did you get to ask one?"

(Her question, had she been there and not heading north to try and fist-fight Corypheus herself after rescuing Byerly, would probably have been somewhere along the lines of: "What the fuck is your problem?!")

acquisitions!

[bouchonne]

"You're going to ruin that map."

From the door - Byerly, evidently coming in from a night spent carousing and hobnobbing, if the faint smell of wine and the slight disarray to his clothes is any indication. A wry little smile twists his lip.

[wythersake]

It wrinkles in his nose. Drifts down to cheek, to slackening jaw, before some final nerve connects. His chin jolts up.

The alarm that he fixes upon Byerly can't be more than instinct: Stairs go up. He might have shut the door. A foggy moment. At last,

"Amend it," Isaac reaches to lift his cup the same, blots page onto sleeve. "Ships have a way of wrecking."

The Leonilda, the Uccello, must have held some coffee in their stores. Kirkwall has gossip, Riftwatch has ships; Isaac has suspicions. But it's little more than buying time now, a chance to steady his gaze. He finds it difficult to hold.

[bouchonne]

"True enough," By answers, all good cheer. He moves a few steps closer, tilts his head to examine the light coffee-stain. "So," he says, "is this a new reef of some sort? Looks delicious."

realizing multiple tags in that you mixed up east and west. *northwEST

[wythersake]

His fingers tighten on the handle. The stain skates a halo about the illustration of a great serpent: Grotesque, and gone runny (some sea monster, to balk at a bit of damp —)

But closer, blue shores break onto the Storm Coast, an assortment of marks sketched in lead. They spiral south into crag, a few days' ride past the highway.

"An old one, I think." Not a reef at all. "I'd offer you a cup, but it's gone sour."

acquisitions

[hornswoggle]

Over time, John has learned to move quietly on the crutch. But he isn't trying to be very quiet now, letting the fall of his boot thud over the threshold, counting on the creaking of hinges as he nudges the door further open.

"You're going to crick your neck," by way of greeting.

It is late. The office is empty. It's as good a place as any other for a conversation that feels overdue, though John knows it's been no more than a handful of days since last they spoke.

[wythersake]

Sleep swings recent on his eyes. A hand to his cheek: Whole, pressed with the red moon-mark of nails.

"Call it practice."

(His neck, the noose; a joke he doesn't bother to complete).

Perhaps it's suggestion that sees him stretch it now. Isaac watches a moment — shakes off the fringe of Fade. A nod to the spare chair. John hardly needs the invitation.

"What did you dream of?"

[hornswoggle]

Incomplete or not, John grins briefly over the shape of the joke as he eases into the offered seat. Gallows humor seems appropriate, all things considered.

"A swamp," John says, to the tune of the fucking south. The lingering memory of so much cold and damp is easier to square with than all that accompanied it. Then, more carefully: "Nascere."

Everything contained within those locations is held to the side.

"Care to share some details in return?"

[wythersake]

What becomes of Nascere, in that other place? A wife, a home. An island. Strange catch, luminous; reeled in from the places daylight cannot touch.

"Orlais," A swamp. "None of the useful parts. Then North — I'll hazard that you know the rest."

John has a way of hearing things.

Wildcard

[untiltheyarent]

One passes the other in the hall, eyes meet. Fifi smiles faintly and inclines her head, the nearby puppy's tail begins to thump on the floor, but she holds her distance.

"How are you?" comes the gentle query.