faderift | OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

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OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

WHO: Diabhall and YOU
WHAT: Catch-all - what Diabhall has been up to throughout October. The first layer of the stone mask seems to be eroding....
WHEN: Backdated to span the month of October. What is time, anyway?
WHERE: The Gallows offices and dining hall, a tavern in Kirkwall, and wherever else anyone wants him!
NOTES: Will edit with content warnings as I go - thread starters below. Please let me know if you want something custom for one of your characters!

Starters below!

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She can hear that cloying panic in his breaths, the air sticking in his chest when he tries to pull deep. Abby takes the lead without straying far, glancing once to check he's following okay on shivering legs. She guides him out of the hall, away from the noise and the clutter of people on all sides, and out.

As expected, it's much calmer out here. Quieter, as everybody else busies themselves with lunch, and outside in the cool air. Abby finds the two of them a spot off to the side where they won't be bothered, and there's a bench if he wishes to sit again, and curl up. It probably helps that the two of them are roughly the same height: means she doesn't accidentally tower over him while they're standing together, but she'll follow his lead.

"We're in the gardens," she explains, watching him. If he's in a haze, it might help to have something to concentrate on, "Can you smell the herbs?"

The cool air on his face as he follows out into the garden is an immediate relief - but still when the bench is near, he sinks onto it, grasping white-knuckled to the edge as he struggles to come back to himself. The relative quiet compared to the busy dining hall does much to soothe him, giving him the space to hear what the well-meaning young woman is saying to him.

He draws a long, rattling breath before speaking, tone vaguely accented and hoarse.

"Tá - yes. I can. I...."

A cough shakes him momentarily as his lungs catch up with him, and he wobbles a little where he sits. Still, his eyes are growing a little clearer, the red tint to the points of his ears and cheeks slowly subsiding.

"I can."

"Good."

She sits too, not beside him, not far enough away that it might seem like she's trying to keep her distance. He's doing a really good job. Abby's impressed; he already sounds like he's clawing back toward the surface, and she glances out across the courtyard, breathing in deep and slow and audibly to give him something to copy.

"What do you smell? I don't know the names of everything yet."

It has been a very, very long time since the elf has had to weather one of these attacks...it's knocked him way off balance, but with Abby's help, he's regaining it, coming back to himself. What must be himself, anyway. Taking the hint, he tries to synchronize himself with her breathing.

"...Elfroot...and...rashvine, I think...s-spindleweed...?"

The more he settles, the less prominent the accent becomes, fading away back into his customary low drone.

It's achingly normal for Abby. His panic is something she's used to seeing. She sits, and listens to him breathe with her, hears the stress of it slowly ebb as he gathers himself together. Elfroot, and rashvine, and spindleweed.

"Yeah? Which one smells like..." sniff sniff, "Aniseed..? I can't tell."

It isn't a bit, she'd love to know. She'd love to draw his mind out of the scared, animal part of his brain that wants to scream and cry and completely lose it, give it something else to chew on. A tiny problem to solve.

The tight rattle of his lungs is slowly loosening, all the more when she sets him to a task - that's what he does best, really. Solve problems. Focus on questions. His brows knit together as he drags himself together just a little bit more, just enough to finally drone -

"...I think...that's the rashvine."

Another cough tears from him, deeper as his lungs finally give way - and then Diabhall draws a couple very deep breaths, wrenching his eyes shut and reaching up to rub his temples.

"You've done this...before."

"Is it that obvious?"

She shoots him a wry smile, rubbing the back of her neck, "Have you done this before?"

Diabhall doesn't smile back - as he settles into calm, there is a nearly offputting measure of stillness washing over his features, as if he were wearing a stone mask.

"...Not for a very, very long time. Not since I was a boy. It shouldn't...it shouldn't even be happening now." Dropping his hands from his head, he rolls his shoulders, looking to her now with exhaustion, but clarity.

"Thank you. For your help."

He... looks quite a bit like Astarion now that she's thinking about less important things, though where Astarion is ever in motion, preening, flouncing, showing his teeth, this man is almost unnaturally still. If he weren't still breathing with a tiny amount of effort, Abby would never have guessed he had been panicking so badly only moments before.

She drops her gaze to her hands, clasped between her knees. Shrugs, "Shit happens." She knows that all too well. There's no 'shouldn't', here.

"Don't mention it," she adds, after a beat, rubbing her thumbs together. "What's your name?"

It's fair to say there is resemblance enough - in point of fact, if Diabhall were to spend any amount of time with Astarion, he would mark the resemblance, but more importantly, he would be reminded of someone he would rather not consider. The flouncing and preening...traits banished to somewhere else, to someone else, blown out of proportion.

No matter. He isn't here, and Astarion isn't in the garden at the moment, either.

"...Perhaps, but not to me. Not anymore. I really must see healers, something truly must have gone wrong in my coming here." There's something...strained, in the way he says this, something held at bay. Thoughts best left unpondered for the moment.

Drawing another steady breath, he turns a little where he sits, offering the hand shimmering faintly with his anchor shard. "Diabhall Minett. Recently in Research Division. And you?"

"There's nothing wrong with you." She understands the reluctance to identify a problem, truly, but it's imperative to her that he knows this. If he hasn't had a panic attack since he was a child, perhaps he thinks he's back-sliding; it's not the case.

Still, she takes his hand when he offers it, registering that this is the first time somebody has greeted her like this here. It's almost funny, the seriousness of his expression, the firmness of his handshake.

"Abby Anderson." Since they're doing full names, "Forces. Good to know you."

The reassurance lands...strangely upon him, something in his carriage hitching. Diabhall takes a moment to try and puzzle out why, shaking himself only once he realizes he may appear less than enthusiastic about her introduction. He clears his throat, straightening back up and looking her in the eye alongside the handshake.

"The pleasure is all mine," he returns, politely - before finally pulling back, words slow as he carefully picks them out, navigating the complexity of what he wants to communicate.

"I...appreciate the reassurance. But don't misunderstand - that...shouldn't have been possible. I have undergone a procedure to remove all emotional response from my person. I haven't experienced a...a panic attack...in something around two hundred years."

Well.

Abby's clasped her hands between her knees, fingers fiddling together, but she pauses abruptly at this piece of information. She looks at him. She can't help it.

"What– kind of procedure," is what she thinks to ask first. "Brain surgery?"

Even that doesn't really make sense though. You wouldn't be able to cut that much of the brain out without everything else going completely to shit. Surely.

Diabhall more or less expected that reaction - his expression betrays no trace of irritation...or really, now that he's mentioned it, no trace of anything else, really. He simply shakes his head patiently, his tone adopting his more ordinary arched drone. This is something he knows by rote, something he can explain.

Much easier to explain than what has just happened.

"No, not surgery. It was...I suppose you would call it a ritual. Magic. If it helps for you to think of it in different terms, imagine a sieve. I passed through, and my emotions - save for the finest grains necessary for my being to have substance and self-preservation - were removed."

The sieve analogy does help, but it doesn't make it any less fucking weird. Abby finds it vaguely uncomfortable to look at him because she has no way of knowing what he's thinking. He doesn't give himself away with any furrowing of his brow, or minute shifting of his upper lip. His eyes don't crease at the corners. It's strange. He's so still.

"Why did you do that?"

Is it helpful?

Her reaction isn't uncommon. Most can't fathom it, the way he lives his life, even back in his own world. Briefly, he bows his head in thought, bright eyes fixing upon an errant weed on the ground between his boots.

"...It was necessary. For me to keep working, for me to make the difference I needed to. I would have died otherwise."

The stillness carries through his speech, even with the nature of the words. How dour they are.

"Of what," she jokes, because the thought of there being an actual answer to this is insane to her, "A broken heart?"

How else could emotion possibly kill you... doesn't make any sense.

Diabhall looks up, meeting Abby's eyes with his own rosy ones...and he just...stares.

Silent confirmation, the stillness broadcasting the pure depth of the old wound more than any expression ever could.

...

"Oh," Abby says, clearly stunned, "Shit."

Well. There you go. What else could she possibly say, save for, "Sorry."

And is it an asshole move to immediately think that at least she literally can't hurt his feelings, or,

It's not an asshole move at all, really. He doesn't look hurt, and he shrugs a little at the apology.

"You didn't know. Besides, it is more complicated that only that - where I came from, I was in a pact for my magic. If I had ceased, my soul would have been devoured. I needed to keep going. I couldn't have done that as I was."

He rattles all this off as if it is pure sense, as even and droning as if he were explaining how rain wets the ground.

Yeah, it's– fairly unnerving, actually. It makes Abby wonder if she's nuts for thinking it sounds so horrible when, from the tone of his voice, they could be discussing the weather.

"Is that normal?" She can't help being blunt, a side-effect of her confusion, "Where you came here from, I mean. Or is that an extreme situation."

The bluntness matters little to Diabhall - of course she is bound to have questions. The questions are...well, they're biting a little more deeply than usual, but no matter. The slight twitch of his eye is an aberration.

"Do you mean what I did, or the terms of the pact? If it's the former...no. I know of no one else who has done what I have done. But the latter - it varies. It depends on the entity one is dealing with."

She meant the former, but it is nice to have an extra thread of information. It still doesn't make much sense to Abby; what does it feel like? To have your emotions ripped away?

Well. Presumably like nothing, right.

She huffs, and shakes her head. "Have you felt anything else since you got here? Or was that a... big first for you just now."

What a rotten way to kick all that off again.

The question is a fair one - he sets his jaw for a moment, thinking.

"...There have been...anomalies. Moments. But this had magnitude I haven't felt in years. I don't..." Briefly, there is a flutter of wariness, of worry in the steady drone of his voice. He doesn't care for it.

"I don't like what this may mean."

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OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

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