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

[archademode]

For a time, he seems just as inclined to continue leaving her efforts where they lie: the fact remains he is entirely capable of— and strangely comfortable in— sleeping in the bare minimum of his magesterial kit. Tireless discipline, a willingness to endure the odd press of leather here or there in favor of a stern defense when they're far from figurative home and hearth.

But she speaks of worry, and for how close she keeps the drawstrings of her own emotions kept tight...

There's a narrow exhale let out through his nose, a slow lull in conversation, lasting until he reaches up to tug the compressed knit of his shirt over his own head— setting it aside and beginning the intricate process of undoing every last fastener holding in place the reinforced leather protector kept tucked beneath— until all that remains is the map of his own shirtless musculature: a testament to a life of spent service, without so much as a drop of softness to spare in those corded contours.

And with that, he returns to his meal— and their earlier subject of conversation.

"Be cautious in your approach with her. Offer her no coin until she demands it."

[poleaxed]

Jone does her best not to leer, and ends up having to turn her head entirely to avoid it. Focusing on her food, she thinks, may help her to seem like she isn't crowing over the victory. That wouldn't be any good for either of them.

"Know how to drive a bargain, I do. Used to run errands, in- well." She's lost taste for discussing her childhood, even the good parts. Maybe later. Maybe never. "Try not to scare the young lad. Talk about the future and honor and all that, you're good for that."

A bit of silence on her end, thinking. Now that she knows his self-imposed rigors, she wonders, back in Kirkwall, how he'll bathe? Will he always have to take food to his rooms, and eat alone? She doesn't like the idea, and a frown colors her expression.

"We'll talk to both of them. Right. Right..."

[archademode]

"I would not treat him as I did Lord Artemaeus." He is, after all, fairly certain Emmett won’t behave even remotely as Benedict did in turn.

Still, she stays silent for too long once her wording trails off. Her expression tight, her stare unfocused enough that he knows there is more lurking beneath the surface.

So naturally, he presses. A tentative guess as to what might be troubling her, related to all her warnings and caution.

“...he is fine, is he not?”

[poleaxed]

"Our Ben?" Her head pops up. "He's fine. He'll shake himself out of his funk."

She looks back at her food, which is now just a small pile of crumbs and an empty cup. She stands, placing the tray just outside the door for a servant to pick up.

She dithers a bit before sitting back down. Finally, she realizes her true hesitance is a fear of rejection, and that simplifies things. All fears should be run at head on, breaking as many bones as possible in the process. She doesn't get to quake and fear.

"Gab, mate," she sits down. "There're rooms in the tower that have their own baths. High up enough, there's space for proper washing tubs and tables to eat at. But they're too big for one person."

And she strongly suspects he won't take up that much room for his own sake.

[archademode]

He watches her move as he works to clear his own meal, more careful about it than any man in their situation need be. As is the case with everything else: it's a matter of practiced habit, rather than the finery— or lack thereof— that surrounds them.

Had she only asked about sharing board, his answer would have been a definitive, immediate refusal— but the way she puts it, much like her worry over his dress, is an argument made up of heartfelt concern, transparent enough in its sincerity that even he knows this isn’t a game to her.

His eyes sink for a moment, lidding beneath dark lashes as he considers the merits of what she offers.

She cannot grasp its full depth, after all: the importance of utter privacy. Much like the armor he so often hides in, there’s something beyond comforting in controlling some small part of this world so completely. To have a space in it without anyone else at his side.

He’s lived too long that way to want differently, even if it is a misery of its own for all the trials of it.

“...and you would speak of this to me, why.”

He knows why, but for the sake of consideration, he must hear it for himself.

[poleaxed]

She flashes a momentarily sharp look, as if to say that she knows that he knows. He's not an idiot, not even a little.

So she takes a deep breath, sits on the bed, and makes her proposal.

"I'd bring you your food, and I'd not be in the room we shared much anyway." Half the time, she passes out in a stable, often drunk. No, he doesn't need to know about that. "You'd have less strain placed on you, if it were the two of us. And-"

A long sigh.

"Fuck. I like spending time with you, alright? I like seeing you." He makes things better.

[archademode]

He would spare her the sting of that confession were he a truly decent man— but he is not, and she ought to know this by now.

'I like spending time with you', she says, and his lips thin into something narrower, his own posture shifting as if he were the picture of that horse from the Gallows— Moira— uncomfortable with the weight of it, and attempting to find equilibrium. He can’t be someone else. No matter how he tries to wear the fit of it: the dignity, the honor— the face of his own brother— it is only so very paper thin, that guise. The more it’s worn, the more it wears.

But....

“You do not know what you ask for.”

[poleaxed]

She sees that shift in posture, knows she's hit some nerve, and like a dog, refuses to stop gnashing her teeth over it.

"You don't know what I've lived through," she says, "if it's really so bloody terrible, getting to help you and see you most days."

[archademode]

He can feel it creeping in like a deadly premonition, the rise in tension there, promising if he carries on— or if she carries on— they’ll argue once more, snapping and snarling at one another till something gives way. Normally he would welcome the rush of anger, the build and snap of adrenaline in his veins, relieving whatever strain has managed to work its way into muscle and mind alike.

This time, however, whether it's due to the memory of mud-soaked trenches or the sight of her worrying at her lip, he finds he hasn't the stomach for it.

“This is nothing to do with you, Jone.”

[poleaxed]

That's a familiar refrain. She nods, not willing to reach farther and risk the delicate truce they've hammered out. She's weathered bloodier defeats than this. She will again.

"Alright, alright," she says, lying back on the bed once more. "Now you know, at least, if you've ever get through your bloody-mindedness to ask for help, I will."

But it's said without much heat as she lies back, eyes closing.

[archademode]

Should it gnaw at him, the small victory attained in forcing them both to reach a stalemate?

He finishes his meal in silence, sips one final touch of ale to wash the dryness from his tongue before lifting the tray and setting it beside her own just outside the doorway. Silent as the night is at this hour, his own bare footsteps feel too heavy across wooden flooring, his quiet breathing as audible as the wind outside. He sits along the mattress edge once more, ankle to opposite knee, elbow slung across it where he slouches forward in dim light.

She might well be asleep by now, when he finally speaks again:

"If you take such a room for yourself, know that I would visit for my own necessities."

[poleaxed]

She is drifting off to sleep, but his voice wakes her immediately. A lifetime of quick waking doesn't fail her now.

But it takes a moment for her to smile, a cocky little quirk of her lip. "Glad I didn't pitch a fit, now," she admits. "Considering it, I were."

[archademode]

“I’d expect nothing less.” He murmurs, settling back to lie atop the covers of his mattress, fitting his arms beneath his head.

“To sleep with you, Daughter of Denerim.”

[poleaxed]

Jone allows herself one long look, studying the shape of Gabranth's body in the half-light. Then she yawns, eyes shut, and gets comfortable. "Back at you, Son of Nowhere."

[archademode]

“Do not...” he whispers, his voice taken on a different quality, like something close to shattering.

She means well, he knows. She only jests, but—

[poleaxed]

She's not sure what that quality in Gabranth's voice means, but she can tell it means something. It's a simple request, too. She doesn't quite feel bad-- it's the normal manner of breaking people, not meaning to but watching the cracks scatter. This is just how she is.

"Right, mate," she says, "no more nicknames."

('Gab', of course, doesn't count.)

[archademode]

“There is nothing left of my home.”

The words are threaded through with the slow exhale of unsteady breath. As quiet a divulgence as given to any kiltias within sacred halls. He does not want to confess this— but he cannot expect her to understand the nature of his demand if she doesn’t know. It isn’t, after all, so simple as the matter of ‘no more nicknames’.

“I’d told you my brother fled when our homeland was destroyed, when we were hardly more than children— but I failed to mention the extent of that damage.” His own fault and folly, and he keeps his focused fixed on the rough-cleft beams slung just overhead, breathing slow and even. An effort. One to be calm. “There is nothing, Jone. So little in land and living spared the very name itself was forgotten, erased completely from all aggregate knowledge. And in the wake of that destruction then did I join the ranks of the Empire that took everything from me, to become a Judge Magister. A hound to the very Emperor who had ordered us scattered as dust.”

“I am a Son of Nowhere, as you so suggest.

...But I cannot stand to hear it.”

[poleaxed]

So Jone sits in the flickering darkness as the candle sputters out, unwilling to move and somehow spook whatever aspect of fate has given her this moment. It isn't that she savors it, hearing Gabranth's pain. She's just not enough of a fool to miss the unspoken tenderness of that moment, and distrusts her ability to allow it without breaking it.

Hearing that he joined the empire that buckled his home lends her thoughts to drift of haunted dreams, when she was a Venatori lapdog, when she was a toothless Orlesian wife. Both were horrors and crimes, in their own way. She just wasn't comitted.

It isn't, she knows now, in Gabranth's nature to do anything in half measures.

But what does she say to that? And the answer is nothing. No one wants her paltry comforts. None but a lad who isn't here, who makes her bones itch when he asks for such kindness from a monster.

"You won't hear it again," is all she can promise. "That's..." terrible, horrible, would make her rage if Gabranth wasn't clearly trying so hard to be calm... "not something even I can joke at."

[archademode]

“...thank you.”

For not rushing to comfort him in the dark, for not saying much beyond simply avoiding those fractured pieces of his past as if they were scattered bits of broken glass on the floor between them; likely and more than willing to cut.

He shifts, then, rolling onto his side to set his own back to her. A sign he’ll say no more.