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

[nonvenomous]

Who ever said anything about being candid?

“Thot,” he reminds, easily, because it is easy, while he looks back into her dark eyes and realizes there is very little he knows about Miss Fitcher’s politics, beyond that it was very easy to tell her about his when they were getting naked. Her scars, he supposes, speak for themselves.

He thinks rather than descend directly into it, with the air of one who’s seldom been asked to explain. Surely a careful kind of framework is necessary for easy understanding of the alien arcane.

“My abilities here are -- limited.” For lack of a less inflammatory word. “The Fade is a poor substitute for the aether I’m accustomed to. It runs thin. And I recognize nothing of the methods used by native mages to interact with it.”

1 out of 5 stars, is the sentiment. QUITE candid.

“Are there any recorded instances of Rifters falling prey to demonic influence?”

His interest is too coolly diagnostic to read as coy. This inquiring mind would very much like to know.

[unshut]

The question gives her visible pause—not a hesitation, just thinking. Turning the thought over like the carefully weighing of a foreign coin in a trading house.

"I don't know," is a tentative confession. The truth.

"But I suspect if there were you would know. As divided as the Inquisition and as leaderless as the Chantry was, I can't imagine they would have permitted to treat you as anything more than demons of the Fade if such a thing were possible. If a Rifter working on behalf of them were to be possessed in the field—They would have looked to enforce training to safeguard again the possibility, at the very least. It would have been made part of your—" Hm. "Orientation."

[nonvenomous]

There’s truth in the resignation that grips in grim beneath his whiskers, distaste tinted with understanding tight in crow’s feet. Her concerns are neither unfounded or unfair, be they business or personal.

It was kind of her to allow him to wake up all the way before catching him flat-footed.

The process of him deciding as much is easy to read in a glance down, and back up again.

"It’s an ugly fate. But not one I live in fear of."

[unshut]

Be that as it may—

"There are ways a whole mage with a mind untouched by a demon might still consciously choose to abuse."

Is not an implication. It is merely unwavering fact.

[nonvenomous]

“I am capable of causing harm,” comes as an easier counter, fact for fact. “Nothing a bolt through the eye wouldn’t accomplish with greater efficiency.”

He narrows one of his in a less amicable rest easy.

[unshut]

She narrows one of hers right back. It's a brief flash of cheek, a dog testing its teeth to be sure of its own strength— And then Fitcher straightens, and the direct line of her attention lapses. Adjusting her seat in the chair, seemingly satisfied with the answer (or unwilling to press in a direction which might raise return questions in kind), she allows her gaze to shift from him down to the letters.

One of those long hands moves, spidering out with the intention of slipping one of the back pages free from the stack in Silas' care.

"I would prefer if you didn't ever touch me with it."

[nonvenomous]

Silas follows her with his eyes through the switch, the pulled page from his stack, one cat watching another from the window sill, just shy of rousing to hackle.

But just shy is still shy.

With invisible care, he slowly folds away his wracked memory of who’s seen what, and what has he said to who. He recalls instead that this stack of papers is not his stack of papers actually, and takes care to gently square the pages that remain, lingering unease soothed into pointless housekeeping.

“If I’m directed to kill you, I pledge to do it through mundane means.”

He knows what she meant, less flippant assurance imparted in a look, if she cares to field it.

“Should I assume this preference carries over to the cat?”

[unshut]

"I suppose that depends. Would you say your magic cat is capable of harming me?"

Is all of this not a stretch of her confidence in two directions at once? She could not ask; it would be more succinct to simply say no. And if she didn't trust him to be true, what good would the asking do?

They are not his papers, and yet here she is.

[nonvenomous]

“Mm.”

That’s an affirmative, timed to coincide with him pushing the remaining pages neatly across the table to her.

This boundary gives him more pause than the last, while he thinks about puffy white fangs and old injuries ripping Rowntree off his feet. It’s a valid precaution.

“Magestoffelees would be disappointed.”

[unshut]

That is a very stupid joke. It pleases her immensely. As does--

"He's a far cleverer chat than I."

Accepting the papers with a quiet rustle and a most crooked grin, Fitcher folds them once before drawing them off the table entirely. They're tucked under her broad belt and crinkle as they go.

[nonvenomous]

The papers fold away out of sight, and Silas looks to the table, swept clean of distractions. His book is still there, closed over, but it doesn’t hold attention for long.

Grinning back at her feels foolhardy. He has been honest but not thorough, measuring more directly in the quiet around crinkled pages.

“I’d still like to know your name.”

[unshut]

It's a visible thing—how the tilted wide corner of her mouth falters, and something lively in Fitcher's expression stills. When it's revived in the next best, it is all at once a beast both far more quiet and easy. She smiles at him.

It's kind. A little less practiced.

"No you don't," she assures him in that gravel low timbre. "Though the sentiment is appreciated."

[nonvenomous]

His brow hoods dense at the falter, osprey intensity caught just short of open inquiry.

Ultimately he nods rather than dispute dismissal, acceptance thrown like a rug over lingering uncertainty. Haphazard, a little lumpy over the thing beneath, but already recovering.

“Alright,” he says, and it sounds like fair enough. It was a leap, after open interrogation. He no-scopes the book, far hand flattened over it to bring it close to the table’s edge while he weighs the need for an apology.

[unshut]

Alright.

The table is cleared. He has his book slid back over. This is the point where she rises from her chair, says she will give the letters some thought and consult him with a draft. It is better to leave the matter a little off-footed so it may settle on its own with no further questions. Is that not how to best narrow the scope of a person's curiosity? To square this into an easily managed shape like rearranging a hard of cards from a deck whose backs she all has memorized.

Instead, she reaches out across the narrow reading table and sets her fingertips gently at the edge of his book.

"Really. The interest isn't unwelcome, only complicated."

[nonvenomous]

Secret scales, sexual orientation, a man’s attachment to his magical cat. It’s always something.

He seems to understand against uphill reluctance, but his face is harder to read, privacy blinds closed clean over his examination of a pang he’s tentatively identified as a desire to break something, just present enough to watch her more closely at her reach. So she’s saying there’s a chance.

Not squaring it might be a mistake.

It’s hard to say. He nods again, more graciously this time, and breaks eye contact away to smooth his whiskers, the very picture of composure where she found him asleep and stinking in a cubby hole.

“You’ll contact me about the letters?” He offers the first tap of the deck.

[unshut]

The set of Fitcher's fingertips at the very edge of the book waits there, delicate not tentative.

"I will keep you informed about our mutual friend, yes."

That much is simply done. Now take him up on the offer to close the matter and retrieve your hand intact from the mouth of the thing.

"I realize it's possible that you don't agree and so do with it as you will, but you should know that I think much of what you did while dreaming was admirable. I hope there are others who aren't too blind to grant you some credit for it."

And then she does retract her fingers and move to draw back her hand.

[nonvenomous]

The veil slips; knuckling down into a harder frown does little to distract from a direct hit upon a nest of composting anxiety. Not buckling, or tearful. Just unhappy. It goes on for a beat before self-deprecation can rise to the fore, seconds picked away in silence. She’s asking a lot of him, and when he looks up again, it’s to catch her eye in earnest request that she forgive his fragility.

And never mention it to anyone else.

He also nods. A third time. A steep intake of breath centers him, wherever he was. Just leaving. Or waiting for her to leave first.

“It’s nice to hear,” he says, and means it. “Thank you.”

He’s low enough to appreciate a little extra kindness.

[unshut]

She must either be satisfied by or sympathetic to that gentle sense of buckling, for she says nothing and instead simply tips her head in assent and allows her eyes to slide away—She saw nothing—before slipping up from the chair.

And then she is all smiles and breezy demeanor again as if mood is a thing which might be donned like a fresh shirt.

"I'll leave you to your work then," is the a charitably dispassionate substitute for a more delicate goodbye. When she touches him, it's for little more than a sturdy pat to his shoulder.

With a swish of dark skirts and the faint crinkle of papers, Fitcher sees herself away.

[nonvenomous]

He crooks half a smile after the pat, bolstered, or at the very least a good sport.

This is fine.

A late look back to watch her go lingers after she’s gone. Eventually, he’ll stand and walk-of-shame his way back up to his quarters. Until then, he has plenty to think about and a sliver of crystal to watch the snake up his sleeve hork out greasy into his palm.

The standard step 1 for anyone looking to rejoin civilized society after a bender.