[open] I feel calamity whisper

[altusimperius]

WHO: Benedict & you
WHAT: livin' that wartime life back on the home front
WHEN: Solace, over the course of the modplot
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: feel free to request specific prompts if what's here doesn't suit you!

I. Diplomacy office

Receiving, sorting, answering correspondence; following up on important dates, of which there are seemingly countless these days; making and delivering coffee; taking dictation, recording meetings, making lists; cross-referencing names and locations as requested, labeling markers on a map; there's hardly time to breathe.
It's been some days now since Benedict has had a proper sleep or sit-down, spending his days and nights scrambling after Byerly, seeing to the many minuscule needs of a Diplomacy office when its Forces and Scouting counterparts have fallen off the face of the world.
He doesn't begrudge Byerly-- in fact, for the first time since starting to work for him, Benedict is as quick to snap to his needs as a seasoned valet.
When not hunched over his desk in the office itself, he can frequently be found scurrying to and fro with this or that missive, list, or directive, if not just the latest pot of coffee.

He'll stop for a few moments to chat, but only if it's important.

Ia. for Byerly

With the Diplomacy office's activity having thinned out for the day, the room looks like a hurricane hit it-- this likely includes its denizens, although one of them has stepped out to retrieve more coffee, despite the darkened sky and the guttering candles.
It's an automatic motion, setting the cup on Byerly's desk, but Benedict actually looks at him for the first time in a while, and furrows his brow.

"...how long have you been here, today?"



II. The Off Hours

Going to bed just isn't cutting it anymore. Benedict can lie facedown on his mattress for the hours he's able to take to himself, but amidst the racing thoughts and the day's anxieties, sleep just isn't happening.

It's at these times that he drags himself out of bed and ascends the tower to the room where his hookah lives, long abandoned by either Athessa or Colin, but he can't let himself think about that. He smokes, and lies there staring at the ceiling, and sometimes he sleeps.

After a while, he can be found there nearly every night, either unconscious or trying to be amidst the haze of elfroot smoke.


III. Wildcard

Comments

[altusimperius]

"Well," Benedict answers, delicately tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, and lowering his voice so as not to alert the entire dining hall of his former indiscretions, "...the last time, they wanted to know about Rifters. And shards. How the power works, how to harness it."

His eyes go distant for a moment, but then he rises, gathering his things with him.
"I imagine they'll want to know what I know about our leaders, our movements. If they're still foolish enough to think I'm a double agent, which... I doubt, they'll get what knowledge they can of Riftwatch's inner workings."
He sneers.
"It worked once, after all. For what it was."

He beckons lightly to Gabranth, leading him out of the dining hall.

[archademode]

Gabranth follows, merely a step or two behind, committing it to memory as though it were a military briefing held within the halls of Archades itself.

"And you do not believe your familial ties will safeguard you, this time?"

[altusimperius]

"Only to the extent that my prison will be familiar to me." He'd explain the whole situation with the shared dream, the odd feeling that it's closer to becoming the truth than anyone is comfortable admitting, but it's easier to simply state what has happened.

"When I went back the first time, my mother put me under house arrest until she felt it was time to send me back. She called in favors so that she could be the one to control my fate."
He glances over his shoulder at Gabranth. "To expect the same clemency from the Magisterium a second time would be... well. Careless. Idiotic."

He leads him out into the courtyard of the former Mage Tower, and stops in front of a dirty old door in the back, rusted from disuse. He regards it for a moment, as though steeling himself.

[archademode]

He is afforded that time. Whatever of it he requires: this is a false trial, not a true one— there would only be cruelty in rushing it. More harm to be found than good.

"Consider, then, to lend yourself to what they do not suspect from you. Loyalty. Forthrightness. Fear."

[altusimperius]

A deep breath in, then out. Benedict squeezes his eyes closed and wrenches the door open, revealing stone stairs leading down into a dingy hallway, gloomy light spilling in from the barred cell windows cut into the outside wall.

It still being the daytime, the dungeon isn't as dark as it could be; however, Benedict still snaps a flame into his hand to light a sconce, which he unhooks from its brace on the wall to lead the way forward.
The flame flickers with his shaking hand.

[archademode]

It is a familiar sort of ruin, this place. It reminds him of Ivalice, in a strange way. Of the stony walkways he once would tread thousands of lifetimes ago. Even the smell of it evokes memory— a familiar fondness, rather than fear.

But he cannot miss those trembling fingers, those shaking shoulders.

"If you are not ready," he interjects, his voice low, "then we need not do this."

[altusimperius]

"I'll never be ready," Benedict admits, and stops walking. He ducks his head with a wince, avoiding letting his gaze wander to the cell just to his right: on its walls are a series of little drawings, runny and faded from weather and wear, but still (if one should look closely) in a hand that Gabranth may recognize from the piece he was given before departing.

"I haven't been ready for anything," he adds miserably, turning to look into the slot where he knows Gabranth's eyes to be, his own expression imploring. "I don't know what to do."

[archademode]

He does not recognize it. Not for lack of comprehension, but for attention: his own is fixed entirely on Benedict alone, even in the grim shadows of this place. He does not care to mark stone or steel or iron where it surrounds them— he did not come here for that.

“Life does not come with leylines to be read like a map, Lord Artemaeus. There are no poor choices, only careless ones. Selfish ones, versus the selfless sense of sacrifice.”

[altusimperius]

"Which is this?" Benedict asks, his voice soft and weary, his face open. "I know a place where we won't be heard. But will it matter in the long run? If what I fear comes to pass, is there actually any way to prepare for it?"

He's working himself up, in the manner of a lad who has had too many worries and too little sleep of late.

[archademode]

“I cannot be the one to tell you. Did you make this decision to protect those around you— ”

It is not Gabranth’s place to fall headlong into sympathy. He has already offered the full wellspring of it before to Benedict in private over past transgressions— he has poured it out to Jone, in the shadow of her origins. There is much he feels, even now. But feeling is not always what is needed.

Clarity. Clarity is what must live between them now. For Benedict’s sake, more than anything else.

“—Or to protect yourself?”

[altusimperius]

"I don't know," he admits, his voice shaking-- already doing great at the questioning part, Benedict savagely thinks, but doesn't voice it. Instead, he falls still for a moment, actually reflecting on the question.

"...both," he decides, staring somewhere past Gabranth's shoulder.

[archademode]

“Then it is a tarnished decision.” Is the answer that comes drifting to the surface, one hand rising unbidden to pull away the confines of his own helm.

He will not speak of this as a suit of armor.

[altusimperius]

Hanging his head, Benedict is abruptly on the verge of tears. He holds himself back, but wonders feverishly why he ever thought it would be a good idea to come down here, as if it would make him stronger instead of just further crumbling what resolve he's managed to build.

He puts a hand over his face to shield Gabranth from its weakness, feeling his gaze all the more acutely now that the helmet's off.

"Maybe I should just go south," he murmurs, barely above a whisper.

[archademode]

"To what end?"

To run? To lap his wounds in misery and false comfort? Gabranth is hard-hearted, yet not cut from stone, he is not immune to the anguish that rests before him— it does not miss in its own striking potency— that does not make this any less of an interrogation.

Perhaps not the one Benedict had come expecting, however. The digging beneath surface thought, in order to bleed out truth.

[altusimperius]

Upon consideration, the truth is even bleaker:

"To get out of the way."

Benedict can only assume this is what Byerly meant by the notion-- if he's not nearby, he can't be taken, can't be a liability to everyone in Riftwatch, least of all the department in which he's been working for... has it been nearly a year now?

[archademode]

There is more here, lingering within Benedict's response, aside from the obvious fear. The uneasy dread of what might be, and the far more nightmarish product of a mind left to weigh an unspoken tangle of factors— Gabranth is no keen tactician or diplomat, yet he can perceive it all the same.

And as he'd said once before, no wound can be left to rot.

Thus he withdraws there, abandoning the initial purpose of this exercise in favor stepping away to a less confined portion of that dismal space, gesturing for Benedict to follow.

"Tell me what has transpired in my absence. Truly."

[altusimperius]

It requires going back up the stairs to do so, and Benedict is positively wretched about it, his bold gesture having gotten the better of him.

"Byerly and I have been..." He sighs, shaking his head, "...well with the Commander and the Scoutmaster gone, he has so much more on his plate, and I'm trying to support him, and..."

He trails off with a frown. He's tired. They're both-- all-- so tired.

"...well he said that if the Venatori take Starkhaven, I should go south. Because if they take Starkhaven, they can take Kirkwall."
He looks at his feet. "I'm trying to come up with a reason that wouldn't be a good idea."

[archademode]

"You've not been sleeping." Gabranth concludes, an assumption borne only from supposition without fact. From the poor flicker of Benedict's oscillating determination, to the dark circles beneath his eyes. He cannot be blamed for it— no man would fare better under such trials— but it is a dangerous mindset, exhaustion.

It makes even the wisest of tacticians, the fairest of kings, into unhappy fools.

"Why do you not wish to leave? The suggestion does indeed hold merit. Byerly does not steer you wrong."

As is usual for Byerly Rutyer, no matter what some within Riftwatch might think of him; he proves it now, enduring strain without end by Benedict's own testament.

[altusimperius]

"Because..."
He knows. Of all the rotten things to know about Byerly, one of them is that the man does have his best interest in mind, and cares a lot more than he'll ever let on.
It's the worst.

"...because my people are here."

Benedict sighs heavily and his shoulders droop, nervous energy leaving him on the wings of the spoken truth. "If I'm-- if I have to start over again, I'm afraid I'll... go back."

He's not about to deny that his entire evolution from spoiled brat to Whatever This Is has been a direct result of peer influence.

[archademode]

"It is not an unfounded fear, for some."

How simple it is to be kind in paradise, compared to hell. Torment turns sentiment to bitter ash, fear cast in iron chain. Yet there are those capable of resisting it all to the last— his own brother amongst them, for Gabranth's cruelties had been endless, and yet...

He shakes his head, dismissing the concept as soon as it blooms between them.

"I do not believe it would be so simple a thing for you to turn your heart to venomous stone. To forget."

[altusimperius]

A little hiss through his teeth, and Benedict looks away, his face hard and his posture stiff. Perhaps it wouldn't be simple-- but loneliness is, he has learned through experience, a hardship against which he has little defense.

It's all too ironic that he's basically asked to be put through the wringer, then, when the most difficult option of all is just to accept what's likely best for all of them.

So he nods, pinching the bridge of his nose. Leave it to Gabranth to talk proper sense into him, as much as he hates to hear it.

[archademode]

“Let us refrain from this for now. Come with me to your quarters, and I shall sit with you while you rest. Fully.” His arm is extended in formal offering, a gesture towards the path they've already tread, knowing full well the walk back will feel more akin to regression than progress.

But that is the nature of all things, cyclical, knotted, tangled as the emotion that no doubt clings tight within Benedict's chest.

“No harm shall come to you, or this place, or those you hold dear while I stand watch.” He cannot think if he is too wearied. He cannot compose himself, nor fight, nor study his own grief, his own fear— he needs rest.

“You have my word.”

[altusimperius]

Though he takes a breath as though to protest, Benedict feels all the more like a petulant child throwing a tantrum and being put down for a nap-- it's perhaps more dignified to just let it happen, rather than insist he isn't exhausted.
He finds himself missing Micaela acutely, but would never admit such a thing in front of someone he's trying to impress.

"Fine," he murmurs, "...but the hookah room. My quarters is full of people." He doesn't want to deal with any snickering or commentary about it.

[archademode]

“As you will it.”

A fair compromise, as far as Gabranth is concerned. The solitude will suit them both in the wake of such taxing endeavors as the ones they’ve both endured— though between the two of them, it is Benedict that fares worse for his troubles. The slouch in his posture speaking of much.

For it, Gabranth stays close. Diligent in his guarding presence, his steadied walk.

Not an escort, but a bulwark.

[altusimperius]

There's agitated silence as they make their way back to the tower, and then up, Benedict's brow set in a restless furrow as his thoughts venture miles away. He's ashamed of himself, but can't immediately define why: it's something to do with cowardice, or being foolhardy perhaps, always a step behind the more seasoned members of Riftwatch.
It's difficult to climb out of being a joke to them when he's a joke to himself, but maybe that's the fatigue speaking-- if only he could go back to basing his worth on fashion and hair products.

When they arrive in the hookah room, he flops down onto his favorite cluster of pillows, kicking a few into place and gesturing to them so Gabranth can sit down as well, if he pleases.