OPEN

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Dick
WHAT: Dick.
WHEN: Guardian
WHERE: The Gallows/Kirkwall
NOTES: Brackets or prose ok, wildcard ok. Other starters maybe later who knows what could happen.

The Gallows

A sharp intake of breath, pupils blown out in freefall panic that quickly pins into blearier confusion, Richard Dickerson jolts awake where he’s sat. Sometimes he reaches for his hip, sometimes he flinches blind to jostle an empty glass, or knocks the book at his knee to the floor.

In the library, in the chantry, in the baths, in any seldom-used nook or cranny between the towers after hours, he might be found dozing and nudged or shaken or spooked by instinct at the proximity of another living creature’s presence.


Lowtown

In a Lowtown tavern, he’s being hefted off a table by the shoulder, levered to his feet to have his satchel shoved into his arms.

A gossamer thread of drool keeps him tied to the surface for a moment after he’s upright. There might be blood spindling through it if his nap was unscheduled at the end of a sucker punch at some smart remark. Or maybe it’s clear -- maybe it’s just past closing time and he doesn’t have to go home, but he can’t stay here.

Regardless, he cuts a distinct figure at a distance -- long legs and beak and beard and the shaggy ruff of his cloak, which will serve him well in the snow outside.


Kirkwall/The Gallows

On business in the streets of Kirkwall, or in the hallways between spaces within the Gallows, his reluctance to engage in anything but the most cursory of conversation is clear: he keeps odd hours and waits behind blind corners for approaching footsteps to carry on past.

This is especially true of ferry trips and mealtimes, when he must watch from afar to see that the boat is likely to stay empty, or snake in and skim off the scraps left over -- cold eggs, lukewarm dregs of stew. He’s not picky, so long as he doesn’t have to make small talk.

He’s always been this way, but now more than ever, there’s a clockwork regularity to his comings and goings that makes him easier to find than he’d like for anyone who’s looking.


Wildcard

Choose your own adventure -- check in w/me about meetings arranged or requested IC, as he is likely to be rude or otherwise strange about them for the foreseeable future.

Comments

Lowtown

[thereneverwas]

"Ah. Shit."

It's a familiar Wall Of Man that obstructs Dick's vision of the street beyond, smelling of tobacco and elfroot and whiskey, if such olfactory cues can be differentiated from the rest of the world in one's drunken haze.
Barrow's been in his own cups, that much is evident, but he's not nearly so sore a sight as this poor wretch.

"C'mon mate, up you get." The words are brusque and slurred, but the touch comparatively gentle as Barrow stoops to heft Dick's arm over his broad shoulders.

[nonvenomous]

The waft of elfroot Barrow leads with makes it easy to catch Richard looking, dull senses slow to recognize the voice in his ear, and slower register the shifting of his arm up around broad shoulders. By the time everything has locked into place, he’s caught -- loose-boned and long as a drugged wildcat held up under the arms, and with the same impotently simmering threat of violence should this go on for any longer than he cares to tolerate it.

“I’m not your mate.” He is likewise inarticulate. His boot toes drag out of step. He smells like the table he was just hauled off of.

Whatever else he has to say on the subject comes out at a slurring slant of sibilants, muttered as he’s maneuvered.

[thereneverwas]

"Yeah, yeah, I know," comes the gruff response from someone who is, at least, not enjoying this any more than Richard is. Hooking the man's thin arm around his own neck, Barrow stumbles forward down the street, the cold air forming a vapor that puffs from his nose like the breath of an angry bull.

"You got a death wish, drinking alone around here?" he grumbles after a minute or so of silent effort, a slow plod in the direction of the ferry, "lying out in the street like that. That's how a fellow loses organs."

The Gallows

[okayimin]

The cot in the rectory office is too large for Sawbones, the way most things on the surface are. That isn't why she's stopped sleeping in it, rather she's just stopped sleeping entierly. When sleep does finally catch up to her, it's similar to Richard's.

Though her preferred alcoves are a bit different from his and that's why Richard will have to deal with his foot being knocked as Sawbones crawls out from under one of the back pews. She squints up at him, "What're you doin'?"

[nonvenomous]

His next breath hisses through his sinuses at a milder slant -- he diverts the hand he’d raised in defense to feel over the bones of his face instead. His eyes ache in their sockets. Sore vertebrae twinge in protest when he leans to check that his satchel is still beside him, and he stiffens upright to nudge it with his near foot instead.

“Praying,” he says. Obviously. He looks at the rest of the bench laid out empty next to him. Measuring, speculative.

“What are you doing?”

[okayimin]

She does not call him a liar, but the look she gives him is a speaking one. She hauls herself up onto the pew next to him, stretching herself as she does.

"Sleeping," Sawbones says, "Got a few hours before the evening round of faithful show up to say their prayers." In so much as what faithful in Riftwatch bothered with regular prayer, or used the chapel for that matter.

lowtown.

[tender]

"Wait," is pitched from some distance back, a little breathless but carrying all the same. Derrica's flushed and a little unsteady with drink, layers of densely knit shawl hanging loose and fluttering as she hurries from the warm threshold of a tavern towards Richard.

She's quick, but Richard is tall and leggy, and she can only move so quickly in the snow to catch up.

But clearly she means to catch up. Even if it means skidding along on snowy stonework, keeping her balance mostly by chance. Two years of winter and it's still an affront to Derrica that snow and ice continues to happen to her.

[nonvenomous]

The balding spot at the back of Richard’s dome is a target at a distance -- he’s still fumbling with the inside-out flaps of a furred hat when Derrica’s wait catches him mid-step. The streets are scarcely occupied. Maybe he left something behind.

What he sees when he stops to look back, hat in his gloved hands, is a familiar mage Tokyo drifting after him over ice and snow.

His sigh is as distinct as his silhouette, steam rolling out heavy into the night.

But he waits for her, hat turned over and pulled on, flaps tugged down over his ears.

[tender]

Her arrival is heralded by a spray of snow and a flailing hand that snags Richard's forearm as she slips her way into his radius. Derrica comes up almost-laughing, the way anyone does when they're a little tipsy and on their feet when they nearly weren't.

"Are you going to the ferry?" is not why she'd hastened to chase him down, but feels like a good place to start.

Almost: Where's your cat?

Except Derrica knows objectively that the cat is maybe not anything outside of a dream, so it's potentially best not to inquire after it right away.

The Gallows

[muckspout]

Edgard is wandering down what he thought was an empty aisle, deep in the stacks at the library. He jumps and twirls around when the book hits the ground and alerts him to Dick's presence. Edgard holds his hands up, palms facing. The joint he was just about to light flies into the air.

"Easy!" He says. "Didn't see you there."

[nonvenomous]

Edgard’s whirl sees Richard gripping at the armrests of his chair, a shock of defensive tension locked in stiff until recognition dials back the shrill violin stroke of fight or flight at his nervous system. This recognition is not only of Edgard, but of the wrap of the joint as it goes careening away into the library gloom.

He breathes, indignant. And then indignant and suspicious, his brow pinched in delayed, muddled accusation.

“Have you been smoking in here?”

[muckspout]

Edgard looks slowly from Richard, full of accusation, to the abyss where the joint flew. He raises his eyebrows, opens his mouth to speak, and pauses. He then hmmms quietly and points a finger up.

"No." He finally responds.

the gallows

[unshut]

Likely, it is the sound of the chair scuffing against the floor as its drawn out from the opposite side of the small reading table which wakes him. There can be little other reason for it. The hour is late; the library is hushed in the way it only can be when occupation is low; this remote back corner he's worked so hard to secret himself in isn't exactly bustling with foot traffic. Mostly though, Fitcher isn't yet looking at him as if she's expecting an answer so he can't have missed an opening question.

While his nerves settle (or rabbit harder; who can say?), the dark haired Antivan woman tucks herself into the chair. She places the marker ribbon in his languishing open book, then shuts and and moves it aside in favor of methodically spreading out a series of papers between them. They are right side up to his side of the table, reading--'...and so with news of the affair, I regret to say there has been a great shift in the mood here in Cumberland. Poor Lord Bayros has--'

Fitcher folds her long hands over the letters. Her attention on him is quite direct, all dark eyes and candlelit. Keen as a waiting mongoose.

"I thought you might help me with something."

[nonvenomous]

There are alarm clocks with puzzle-working elements that must be solved through before the ringing stops. So Richard finds himself hauled up from the Fade and sat down before a series of minor shocks to his system to make sense of: the location, the presence of Fitcher’s hands folding his book away, placing papers out onto the table, news of the affair.

Panic sublimates after the initial adrenaline spasm of awareness, processing clogged instead by his struggle to recall some context. Was this a scheduled meeting? How long has it been since the ordeal with the dream? Days? Weeks?

Who is Lord Bayros?

He nods, breathing in to steady himself, shifting to sit up straighter in his chair.

Yes, of course, this is all fine and above board and he is definitely qualified to help in some way.

[unshut]

She waits for him to acclimate; while not a patient creature by nature, it is one of a series of trades Fitcher has forced herself to learn. While Richard unfolds his crumpled accordion self, she withdraws her hands from the letters and tucks her chin into one upturned palm.

Eventually, when she senses the room has stopped spinning, she explains, "I've been tasked to keep up correspondence with a contact among the Nevarran court. I recall you having a rather deft pen and thought you might have some advice for me."

And then, lest he settle comfortably beside the faint possibility that they will avoid the dragon in the room completely--

"Would you prefer me to call you Richard or Silas?"

gallows, ferry.

[poleaxed]

Jone is not the cleverest or most keen, and she'll tell you that loudly and with great enthusiasm, given the opportunity. It's relatively always true; Jone is no genius, but a blunt and bullheaded seeker of, at the best of times, basic information. Once she has a subject, she'll pursue it.

This is all to say that she's been watching Si for the last few days, and isn't fucking thrilled. When she sees the opportunity to get a minute alone with him (in her mind, the word cornered flashes up, unbidden), she takes it. He's on the boat, it's sailing away, but before it can get too far, Jone makes a long-legged jump over the water.

She makes it in, of course, but not without a literal fucking splash.

[nonvenomous]

Dick is on his feet at the surge of motion that is Jone in his periphery, viper quick, one hand already at his belt -- paused in bafflement upon recognition.

???

Then she hits the boat.

He is dumped backwards over the bench he’d been seated on, into the meltwater and salt sloshing dark around the ferry floor. Scrambling upright again is a necessary struggle, lest he suffocate in the wet and cold -- he folds over himself, elbows and knees and a gloved hand clawing him back up onto the bench seat. He is (as yet) too dumb with shock to be cross.

[poleaxed]

Nothing in Jone's sociological makeup exists to keep her from cackling when someone falls down.

She reaches down to drag Si up, neither gentle nor particularly rough. She doesn't mean to be rough, so she isn't, but gentleness isn't a default, nor something she's particularly fluent in to begin with. She wipes some of the worst smudges of dirt from his face, or tries to, with the edge of an over-long sleeve.

"Andraste Almighty, Si, the sea does not love you."

flagrant invasions of privacy.

[propulsion]

When Richard returns to his room, the door will be locked, just as he left it. When he opens the door, there's first the slight flicker of lamplight that tells him he has company.

And when he opens it all the way, he sees there is a man at his desk. His feet are up and crossed at the corner of it, slouched way back in his chair. Tony Stark has some loose pieces of paper in his hands that he's perusing, not immediately looking up when he is caught red-handed. He is bundled up warm in a heavy fur coat that bristles thick off his shoulders, sleeves slipping a little from his wrists.

(There's a wall that Tony continues to hit every now and then since he arrived in Thedas: if you wanna know stuff about somebody, you gotta do the work. It's not so easy as plugging in someone's name or a second of grainy security cam footage into a supercomputer and bringing up their criminal history, where they went to school, their dog's instagram. No, you have to keep tabs, observe, ask around—heck, even talk to them.

Or this. What he's doing now. Which is not not talking to someone.)

"Hey," Tony says, tipping a look up. "Come in, take a seat."

[nonvenomous]

The door pauses partway open, an effectively muppety rendering of confusion from the other side.

He pushes it in the rest of the way with just his fingertips, slow with suspicion.

Richard Dickerson is also in fur, the cloak piled black on his shoulders bristled with salt-stiff spines, coat and trou beneath still streaked with grit and mud indicative of an earlier tumble. It occurs to him that he could raise Jone via crystal upon marking Stark kicked up on his chair, temptation baleful in the glitter of his eyes -- narrowed into the viper bright slivers of a cat cornered by an especially rancorous (but beloved) family dog.

Nasty.

He steps the rest of the way in instead, and closes the door behind him.

Only Dick’s side of the room shows evidence of being lived in: the desk, busy with papers in Trade and Abyssal, books and bottles and an unmade bed. He takes his keys to the table, hooks his satchel over the back of the wooden chair he turns to face Tony.

He just can’t quite force himself to sit in it.

[propulsion]

"Been trying to crack your code over here," Tony says, attention back to the pages in hand once the door is closed. Unconcerned for his safety enough to not keep obvious tabs on Richard's movement around the room.

(He hears: the click of keys on he table, the shuffle of bag set down, feet scuffing the ground, the chair.)

He turns out a page on which Abyssal makes flowing lines of script. The green light from his shard casts ill-looking illumination across it. "Homeworld stuff, I take it. I do the same thing. You know, in case of snoops. Also you gotta sit, I slept weird and my neck's all—"

The chatter breaks off, Tony looking across at him mid-gesture of describing how is neck is all dot dot dot. There is a carefully laid sharpness in there that acknowledges he's being naughty, but surely he's allowed a free pass just this once.

[pittance]

Glass shatters.

"Easy," He's half a step into recoil when Richard wakes. Some slow inch of expression settles for it: No recognition. He stoops to collect the fallen book, picks a stubborn shard from the spine. "Hey, you're alright."

Call the Gallows what you will, places with mages are full of little alcoves, abandoned nooks. Someone might've studied here, once. These days it's just a closet with aspirations.

"Didn't realize no one was in here."

[nonvenomous]

Richard’s recognition is delayed by adrenaline, the passing shadow of suspicion it entails separate and distinct from his instinctive fear upon waking.

Handsome dwarf.

Rolled onto his back in the blood-dyed snow, pockets still warm for rifling through by the light of fuel burning over ice. Dick scrubs the image from the back of his mind’s eye with a hard pass of his palm over his face, anchor hand uncurled for him to check the shard. The sigh he lets off upon marking the universe (Thedas) and year (9:46? 47?) reeks of wine.

The word he mutters after it is distinctly a swear, just not one in Trade.

gallows

[acreage]

Some might say that the time of night where it's unclear whether it's late or early is a strange time to be at the baths.

Less so, though, for habitual insomniacs; and even less so, lately, for anyone in Riftwatch. Sleep and dreams haven't been especially safe as of late, and it'll probably be some time before everybody's done feeling jumpy about them. He hadn't noticed anything on arriving; but it's on the way out, wearing something fresh and old things balled up under an arm, hair damp and curling, that he notices a shape in a corner.

It's been months, but a part of his mind still thinks Miller, looks for that stupid hat as he approaches, crouching to get a better look. And then the man startles awake, and it's obvious who he's looking at.

" — what the hell are you doing here?"

[nonvenomous]

Human beings are famously adept at answering to interrogation upon being jolted out of a dead sleep: the betrayal and accusation flashed up in the defensive flinch of alarm from Dick is his corner of the pool is proportional to him having been walked in on in his own quarters.

It’s hard to say how long he’s been here. There are still drifts of steam. The water is still warm, if not hot.

“What does it look like?” Idiot.

Water scooped up and scrubbed over his own face does little to clear disorientation; Ribbon has lifted her head from the flop of one of his abandoned boots at the sound of his voice, mlem mlem mlem. His spent clothes reek of ale.