CLOSED | a shadow crossed the sky,

[poleaxed]

WHO: scarlett johansson poleaxed & chris evans archademode
WHAT: Dirty jobs done dirt cheap.
WHEN: Mid-Cloudreach.
WHERE: Denerim.
NOTES: Discussions of past child abuse are highly likely.

Long travel after long travel, Jone only wants rest; unfortunately, there is none for wickedness. Taoran Hawkwind always struck Jone as a small minded mercenary. She's never met the man, of course, but they've mutual friends. He always sounded a little thick, and his camp, just outside Denerim's walls, proves it. Jone talks shop with him anyway, joking that her 'armed guard' is actually a qunari, and this far south? Everybody believes it.

Taoran is doing grunt work, trying to get a rich merchant out of taxes. Not terribly clever, especially since he's going through the Brecilian to do it. Then again, Jone's always had a bias against Gwaren and Amaranthine and does she just hate Fereldan nobles? No, not interrogating that night now.

She agrees to go with him, lying that they could use the cash. Half pay up front is bargained for, and Jone immediately uses it getting them a respectable room at a respectable inn. Within the walls of Denerim, a thatch-roofed city stacked with as many pickpockets as rich men (and more that like to slum, besides) The Wailing Willow doesn't double as a brothel, as far as Jone can tell, so she hopes Gabranth won't pitch too much of a fit.

They can only afford one room with the coin Jone's scraped together, though Jone requests a divider, explaining in her poshest accent that they're not yet married.

The innkeeper rolls her eyes, but gets the divider.

As soon as the door is closed, Jone collapses on the bed nearest the window, luxuriating in sleeping on tightly bound rope and straw mattress. She's slept on better. She doesn't care.

"Ah, this is the life, innit. Going off to do something pointlessly dangerous on the morrow, but after sleeping on a bed."

No one they've encountered in Denerim has Jone's accent, because they've steered clear of the part of the city Jone's from. She hopes Gabranth hasn't noticed.

"What d'you think of Hawkwind, Gab? Besides that bloody name. It ain't his fault; his Da picked it out of a hat."

Comments

[poleaxed]

"I think so," she whispers, and while she does not quite sound unsure, the prospect of her success seems not to have heartened her. She begins her way back where they came from, as though each stride taxes her.

Jone has forgotten Gabranth's discomfort-- an unforgivable thing, by her own personal rubric-- and is lost entirely in her own contemplation. She doesn't say much more, only hurries away, effort seemingly locked in keeping her from a full gallop.

"Fuck this place," she whispers to herself. "Couldn't it stay burnt down?"

[archademode]

“You despise it so...”

Yet she would ask for mercy for these people. For their ragged existence, and the sunken pit of their meager means. He keeps pace with her as much as can be managed, though her strides are naturally longer, and her mind distracted with the drag of the past that surrounds them in altered form.

[poleaxed]

"It's fucking despicable." She realizes she's shouted when someone in some dark corner of this cursed city tells her to shove it. She can't see who, doesn't care. All her energy is being spent on not shouting obscenities back. Under her breath, she hisses, "makes monsters."

Even Bede was not a kind man, that was evident even at twelve. He may be kinder now. She doubts it. She may one day find out, and that makes her feel a deep unease.

With her walking as she is, shoulders stiff and eyes downcast, it's a miracle they don't turn the wrong corner and end up lost. Somehow, the layout of this city is engraved in her mind, after twenty years absence.

The inn is not far away.

[archademode]

He might ask her if she wants it gone. Scrubbed clean by a cruel hand, were he he man of his own past misdeeds. Instead, so endlessly pained and yet so taken with the worry of his own twin’s wellbeing, he knows better than to offer. Understands what it is to despise some part of yourself, and want to preserve the wounded fragility of it all the same.

Yet instead, trapped between a desire to ask after her, and the knowledge it would be too much an intrusion, he only follows.

“Tell me what it is you uncovered.”

[poleaxed]

Jone stops, steels herself for his judgement. The prospect is encouraging, the tantalizing possibility of being scoured in disapproval. It will hurt, being mocked for such a small, stupid thing, but pain has only ever made her stronger.

She stops, and holds out a flimsy piece of wood and bark, clearly carved from the dead tree it was found inside. Squinting, it's possible to see something carved into the wood, or are those just careworn cracks born of age?

"I can't tell, it's too dark, but-" she holds it up to him, cradling the old wood carefully, "Bede and I used to leave messages this way."

[archademode]

Whatever she remains braced for does not come. Only the sight of that helm narrowing its given focal point in moonlight, before:

“It must be dried with care. A day or two of treatment might lend legibility.”

That and a little light, of course— but the wood looks to be in poor condition, and he worries it may not last if they do nothing to preserve its state.

[poleaxed]

Jone nods, cradling the message close. It leaves a stain on her clothes to be discovered in daylight, something she looks forward to. It will be their job to fight, stand tall, and render the world simple in the tones of implied violence. When you're the one with the sword, everything flattens out.

She hasn't got a sword now, or any weapon, and her wit's never been any good. She looks nervously over at Gabranth-- at the metal face he wears for others-- and wonders if she'd be more comfortable with a steel plate between her and the world.

"Maybe," she says, heading toward the inn. "We'd best sleep. Nothing to be done for it, now, is there."

[archademode]

“On your way, then.”

The words are softer as he trudges onward in her shadow, laced with a mild temperament compared to all his usual brusqueness. She isn’t hurried along for his sake, only for her own: the greater the distance between her and those mired pits, the better she’ll rest tonight, he hopes.

If nothing else, she has a trophy to sleep by now.