faderift | [closed-ish] where the sun don't ever shine

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[closed-ish] where the sun don't ever shine

WHO: Fitcher & Barrow + anyone who feels like dropping in
WHAT: old farts play cards
WHEN: the night of the wedding
WHERE: the Riftwatch dining hall
NOTES: waves hands around

Barrow isn't often stricken with melancholy, but tonight is one of those nights. It was his choice to stay back from the wedding, his need for comfort and silence outweighing any desire to get wasted and make poor decisions, but he's doing a bit of wallowing nonetheless.

With a blanket spread beneath him, he lies on his back atop one of the tables in the empty, cavernous dining hall, smoke drifting toward the ceiling from a blunt he holds in one hand. In the other is a bottle of whiskey, from which he occasionally lifts his head to take a gulp and then lowers it back with a thunk and a groan.
It's not the worst way to spend an evening, and with most of the Gallows deserted, his picnic is almost guaranteed to go undisturbed.
Almost.

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"It's a shocking waste of coal if you ask me. All these lights with practically no one to see by them."

It's a cheerful enough greeting from the woman making her way down the long length of the hall. She has a book with a series of papers tucked under one arm, a pen and quill in the other. Her pipe sits tucked at her ear and there is a general whiff of that sweet, chestnutty smoke about her which suggests she has only recently stopped smoking it.

"I'm amazed anyone even bothered to put the braziers on, given how few of us are left to haunt the place."

(This will be an excellent joke in retrospect.)

Barrow recognizes the voice, but still has to raise his head to see Fitcher approach, straining upward as though the whole motion might be conveyed by the might of his raising eyebrows.

Once he's propped on an elbow, and can see the woman over the rise of his midsection and bent knee, he raises the bottle to her in greeting.

"Lamplighters still got to make their coin," he reasons warmly.

"Salvio must prefer keeping to keep them happy and the place marginally less foreboding over saving the silver. And I can hardly blame him. Cutthroat bastards, those coal merchants."

And can you imagine how dreary this place would be with only every other light?

Clearly in no great hurry, Fitcher meanders along closing the distance to where he lies.

"Have you forgotten the way to your bed, or is your mattress to soft for those old bones?"

"Change of scenery," Barrow muses amiably, beginning to sit all the way up with the occasional pop of a joint and grunt in response. Seated on the table, he props his feet on the bench below with a sleepy smile at Fitcher.

"Rooms're different, when there's no one else in them. Like a great cavern, this one." He gestures upward with his cigarette, the smoke trailing a wisping path behind it.

"How poetic you are, Barrow."

The book and its associated papers are set amicably on the table, as are the pen and quill. It's an easy thing to signal her intention to crash his ceiling gazing.

"Should've been a bard," he affirms, the corners of his eyes creasing in a smile when he sees that Fitcher's settling in.

"Though I s'pose subtlety's never been my strong point." He extends the bottle toward her in offering.

The vague gesture of her hand translates as a polite refusal before she hoists the edge of her skirts and moves to take a seat on the bench.

"As far as I'm aware, only one type of bard requires any of that. In which case, true. I do suspect you'd make a dreadful assassin, Ser."

Her smile is a scrunched, crooked thing--poking fun as she arranged the book and papers and writing instruments before her.

Withdrawing the bottle, Barrow takes a pull from it before lowering himself entirely, not wanting to take up table space when it's clear she wants to use it.

"I'd be efficient," he replies in his own defense, "walk in, swing sword, done. The challenge would be in getting to my target, I suppose."

He's a little tipsy, but not so much that it'll be a problem. "Ah, well, another grand ambition fallen to the wayside."

"Nonsense. You need only commit yourself to the study of the thing. I believe we have plenty of stately old birds in Antiva."

Birds. Crows. Get it? Anyway.

"Why aren't you off carousing in the Vinmark foothills right now?"

Barrow snorts. "Commitment," he mutters, takes another swig, and leaves it at that.

He sets the bottle on the table where he was sitting before, making himself comfortable on the bench beside Fitcher.
"I can't keep up with the carousing these kids do," he admits, "...especially not without a real bed at the end of it. My days of passing out on the ground are past." As of... about seven months ago, but technicalities.

"Why aren't you?"

"For similar reasons. I don't sleep on the ground."

And it's true; when has she ever been on a mission for Riftwatch which involved her lying flat on on the earth? Never, that's when. Even when she and Bastien had gone off to fetch that Crow out of the wood, they'd made a point to make their camp at a grubby little crossroads inn. Even a mediocre straw mattress is better than the cold ground.

That she has made a point of it without suffering the encouragement of a rack is a vital distinction of personality only.

"Then may life always grant you a feather bed." He lifts the bottle in a little one-sided toast and drinks from it.

"Up for a round of Wicked Grace to pass the time?"

That brings her attention up from the papers, the task of fussing with the things which had been tucked under her arm and are now scattered across the table top before her.

"You scoundrel." There is a twinkle in those dark eyes. "You know I can't resist a game of cards. I don't suppose you've a deck on you. Mine's all the way upstairs."

"Not playing for money, mind," Barrow chuckles, digging around in his belt pouch for a deck of cards secured by a tightly-wrapped thong of leather, which he withdraws and tosses onto the table for Fitcher to deal.

"If I had an estate, I'd already have lost it to you. But one little game for the fun of it won't hurt anyone, eh?"

"What fun is playing if there are no stakes?" Is an amicable joke, if the motions she makes toward clearing the table space before her is any indication.

"But very well. I'll allow it this one time."

Taking up the cards into her long hands, Fitcher makes admirably quick work of the deck. She shuffles and deals with confidence rather than much flair—the thoughtless motions of a habitual gambler so practiced that the semantics of the thing have grown pleasurably rote. What's left of the deck after they both have their hands is jauntily squared and then set between them before she takes up her cards and casually reorders them.

"You are too generous, my lady."

Barrow settles easily into the routine, flipping up his own hand to have a look, his expression sleepy and benign as ever.

"Should you be up for a wager after all," he says pleasantly, "perhaps we might deal in something other than coin." Looking up over his cards at her, there's a mischievous glint in his eye-- perhaps it's a terrible poker face, or perhaps he simply doesn't care who wins.
"Nothing untoward, of course." Not without enthusiastic consent, at least.

Up go her eyebrows, all faux astonishment. 'Why Barrow, you scoundrel,' and so on and so forth. The look lasts for all of an instant before it morphs into something more canny by half, her mouth slanting into a lopsided smile.

She has finished arranging her hand, but delays actually beginning the game.

"Whatever could you be implying, Ser?"

"We play for truth," Barrow replies, his eyebrows raising to mirror Fitcher's.
"If I win, I ask a question, and you must answer it honestly. And vice versa."

Edited 2021-06-22 18:03 (UTC)

"Oh, is that all."

It's breezy like the tip of a head or the easy turn of a wrist dealing cards. And why shouldn't it be? She is very good at telling the truth.

"Very well. Truth it is."

And with that, Fitcher signals the start of play.

Edited 2021-06-22 18:38 (UTC)

A quick hand, and Barrow gasps in delight to see that he's won.

"So be it," he says cheerfully, "what's your first name?"

"I lost it in a card game," she returns cheerfully, so instantly that it's clearly a practiced line. Or the truth? Both, maybe.

She shoots him a twinkling look as she swiftly deals out a new round.

A quick inhale and a sigh out as Barrow casts her a reproachful look. That's not fair, his eyes say, even if his mouth doesn't.

And then he loses.

No, it isn't. Maybe that's why she submits such an easy question in turn:

"What's your honest opinion on dogs?"

"Delightful creatures." That's easy. "Too much work to get right, though, and probably too smart for me."

He flips a card, and wins again. "What was it before you lost it?"

"My brothers all called me Sera. But obviously that's too close to our resident Sister, and besides—" Here she lowers her voice to a confidential volume as she deals again. "I never much cared for it. Don't tell the aforementioned young lady. I shouldn't want to offend her."

Another hand, another round. Fitcher clucks her tongue when she loses again.

"You're not cheating, are you?"

A pleasant nod, and Barrow lets the subject drop-- then chuckles imperiously when he wins again.

"Madam, I haven't a cheating bone in my body." It's true; his specialty is helping other people cheat.
"How many brothers?"

"Five, give or take. You know how babies are."

They have a way of slipping away before anyone knows them, don't they?

Another round means another lost hand for her. Rather than deal right away again, Fitcher pauses to reach into her coat and fetch her pipe and tobacco tin. Though she tips her head to indicate Barrow may take over if he likes.

Closing his eyes in brief, serious acknowledgment, Barrow refrains from commenting on the fact. Sometimes it's like that.

"Were you close to any of them?" He deals again.

"Oh, all of them I suppose. It was that sort of house."

She is slow to pick up her cards, glancing at them once briefly as she opens the tobacco tin. A pause, then, to sort through them, and then play continues at a more sedate stopping and starting pace as she arranges to fill the pipe's bowl.

His smile twitches with the beginnings of frustration, but he can hardly fault her for non-answers when he's known to be just as evasive.

It's just, you know, different when it's someone else.

And then, flipping his cards again, Barrow loses the hand.

Here, she pauses ostensibly to sort through her pockets. A small length of loose reed is produced and Fitcher gestures to the little bowl lamp off the side—"Pass that along, would you?"—so she might light it from the flame flickering low there.

It in combination with a few puffs encourages the tobacco to begin to burn. The match is shaken out. The burnt end is snapped off and discarded; the rest returns to her pocket.

"How old were you when you joined the Templars?"

The question actually gives Barrow pause, and he looks up-- not at her, but to gaze into the middle distance as he attempts to recall.

"...bout... sixteen, seventeen, I imagine," he muses, "it was that or stay on the farm, find a girl and get married."

"Do you recall if there was a particular reason you didn't care to farm and marry? I've met a number of truly delightful farmers wives during my travels, you knkw."

It is, technically speaking, breaking the rules of the game. But she has been a very good sport about not cheating otherwise, and so clearly is entitled this much wiggle room.

Right?

He might have called her on it, but when the next hand puts Barrow at a loss once again, he simply gives a little sigh and takes a sip from the bottle.

"Never been the settling down type," he decides after a moment's pause, "I always wanted to see what else was out there."
And, you know, avoid getting tied to any one place that might force responsibility on him, but that answer requires a level of self-awareness that has long been shut away.

"And you chose to do so by resigning yourself to a tower?"

It is not all that Templars do. True; some do travel. But Templars are meant to go where mages do, and by and large that is meant to mean one thing, isn't it?

(She is patient about dealing the next hand, puffing leisurely away on her pipe.)

"Well."

She has a point, and it's cause enough for him to chuckle-- "I s'pose I never thought about it that way. ...and Mother never would've let me hear the end of it, if I'd gone out for the Wardens instead."

He plays his hand, barely reacting to the win apart from:

"Where'd you learn to shoot a crossbow?"

"From my husband," she says around the pipe's stem. The cards are swept up, though before dealing the next hand Fitcher pauses to remove the pipe from between her teeth so she might add, "But the practice came from traveling. A young lady ought to know how to defend herself if she means to be on the road alone."

The whisk whisk of the cards grant her a win.

"Is your mother still alive?"

The topic of her husband is one that warrants more questions, but not with the hands he's been playing.

"No," Barrow answers quietly, and follows it with a sigh through his nose as he loses again.

"And your sister. Prudence. Have you reconsidered writing her at all since last we spoke on the subject?"

In a little restaurant in Kirkwall, where the nominally Antivan food had all stuck together as if it had been made with paste.

Fitcher, wreathed in chestnut scented smoke across from him, seems to consider it perfectly fair line of questioning for all that she doesn't hesitate at all over the asking of it. She even goes so far as to deal the next hand.

Edited 2021-07-06 03:30 (UTC)

At once Barrow feels as though he's being pursued, but instead of in the charming, cat-and-mouse sort of way, it's rather more like an elk who can hear the hounds closing in.
He raises his gaze to meet Fitcher's, blandly and perhaps stupidly surprised at her forwardness-- he should have known, going into this, that he'd have to take as well as he dishes out.

He should always have known, and yet.

"Prudence is alive, as far as I know," he replies with muted politeness, "and I have not written to her."

He turns his hand and grimaces at the sight of it.

It is not an act of mercy that instead of interrogating him further, she says, "You should. I didn't write my brothers much and I've always regretted it."

Some of the fun has gone out of the mood now, but the game isn't beyond salvaging.
"Maybe I will," Barrow sighs with a grudging smirk up at Fitcher, dropping his losing cards on the table.

"I don't know why I thought you wouldn't smoke me."

"It was a little foolish. You know that I'm practically a professional at this," she says with a winning, fox-like smile, though she has restrained herself admirably from cheating.

Hasn't she? Who can say.

But she has one truth left to get out of him, and so: "What's your favorite color?"

See, she can play very nicely.

"Practically," Barrow patiently repeats, but with good humor. And then, chuckling with that last question, he narrows his eyes at her in a way one might describe as vengeful.

"I don't know. Red."

If there is any part of that answer which she ought to take umbrage with, Fitcher seems not to realize it. Instead, she smiles about the stem of the pipe as she gathers up the cards and says,

"What a coincidence. Red is my favorite too."

With a whisk-rasp of the cardstock, she shuffles. Squares the deck, and then sets it between them without cutting or dealing.

"Would you like to play a different game, or for different stakes? I can't help but get the sense that you've been disappointed with this particular arrangement."

"Disappointed? Never." His smile is genuine, though he begins to rise, cracking the joints in his knuckles and wrists as he goes.
"It's been a pleasure, my lady, but I ought to take this opportunity to wallow properly in my disgrace. Which is to say, in a comfy bed. Covered in cats."

Her smile is a crooked thing, which must mean it's real. Though why wouldn't it be?

"I suppose I should make some attempt at being responsible," she defers with a nod to the assortment of paperwork she'd brought in tow. The deck of cards is shifted farther to his side of the table so that he might easily fetch them back. "Enjoy the company of your cats, dear."

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[closed-ish] where the sun don't ever shine

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cw: uuuuhh medieval fantasy infant mortality??

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