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

As soon as Diabhall is assigned a desk and given tasks, you would be hard pressed not to find him with his nose in a book, fingers wrapped around quill or charcoal.

Day and night, from dawn until dusk and sometimes beyond, the stoic elf is writing, researching, drafting and drawing - ushering papers back and forth, transcribing, translating, duplicating...endlessly, endlessly toiling over this and that.

Maybe you catch him at his desk itself, or maybe going in and out of the library, but he has become a constant sort of fixture around the Research offices, always on task, scarcely looking up, hardly talking to anyone unless he must.

You would be forgiven for thinking he is overworking himself to avoid something, but plainly that cannot be the case. The dark circles, the occasional wobble where he sits, the fumbling to take books down from shelves...those are all simply because he is trying to sustain focus.

...Right?

Usually, Diabhall prefers to take his meals at odd hours. During those times, the dining hall is relatively empty, and he can very simply get in, eat, get out and back to his work. This time, he has ventured down during the apex of lunch hours - and at first, the bustle is little more than a nuisance to him. He moves to wade through the crowd with his usual preferred meal of simple bread, fruit, and cheese, head held high and expression blank.

Until someone comes a bit too close, knocking into his shoulder and surprising him. A knife clatters to the floor from his plate, and when he stoops to get it, he struggles to find a break in the flow of people, figures pressing in, looming, crushing on both sides -

Giving up on the knife, he stands, jaw clenched and breathing hard through his nose as he makes for the nearest empty place, unceremoniously dropping the plate onto the table and sinking into the seat.

All at once, he folds inwards upon himself, head lowering towards the table as he cradles it in both hands, covering his swiftly-reddening ears. The sounds of the bustle around him feel insurmountably loud now, head swimming - the eagle eyed might even catch a tremble wracking his slender shoulders.

He can’t comprehend what is happening to him, can’t quite pull himself together enough to logic through it...and so there he sits.

To the rest of the world, the panic attack is as plain as day.

The new ring shines on his left thumb, and he stares down at it where his hand rests upon the tabletop. He had saved a bit of coin to have it done with relative skill, and it’s been done well, he thinks. A study band of iron, simple, etched only with a pair of crescent moons on either side of the chunk of brilliant pink crystal set in the center. The only other embellishment to it is hidden inside the band, something secret, something private.

It looks...out of place on Diabhall, a man who wears only blacks and greys, who keeps ornamentation to a minimum. In fact, it feels alien for him even to wear, and he just keeps staring at it, usually sharp red-pink eyes bleary.

Maybe it’s the fourth glass of wine he’s working on, but something in his chest feels...tight, as he regards it. As he thinks about where he got the crystal, what the crystal is, what it was. Pale fingers toy with it, twisting it around and around.

But if the sensation in his chest is the fault of the wine, what is to blame for the drinking itself? Or the way that his eyes shimmer in the dim light of the tavern?

He sighs heavily, draining the glass, and orders a fifth, cheeks and ears rosy, usually-ramrod-straight carriage drooping.

"Honestly," someone sighs out of seemingly nowhere, "much more of this and I will begin to think I should not be the only member of this division with eyes on them."

A gloved hand reaches out to steady the book Diabhall's nearly dropped while fetching it from the shelves-- and then just plucks it up. Emet-Selch casually examines the cover, but holds on to the tome for the moment, not bothering to hand it back over. "Are you even going to be capable of reading it right now, or will you be skimming the same pair of pages until something sinks in?"

It takes the usually-razor-sharp elf a moment to realize he is being spoken to - he turns to regard Emet-Selch with his customarily stony expression, but there is a faint edge to his tone not typically present. Irritation? No, couldn't be. Impatience, perhaps, but even that seems...peculiar, compared to how he has been since his arrival.

Of course, he had heard what was said about the man before him. How could he not have, being in the same division especially? But he does not flinch away, nor is his brusqueness related to any crimes in another time and place.

It is only because the man is holding the book he needs.

His opinions otherwise he keeps to himself, for now.

"I will be quite capable, thank you. And I'm not certain what you mean. There's hardly anything wrong with being devoted to the work, is there?"

But there is certainly something wrong with Diabhall himself, something he is refusing adamantly to acknowledge - eyes bloodshot so as to compete with the pink of his irises, dark circles obvious on his porcelain-pale skin.

It is, and this isn't the first time Abby has seen somebody go to pieces in a mess hall either. She notices the abrupt withdrawal from everybody else for what it is and angles her footsteps toward where he sits without even thinking about it; this is something she has her own experiences with.

The stranger is tall and slender, and he curls in on himself like a pill bug as Abby takes the seat opposite him. He's shielding himself from the noise of the room, so Abby leans over the table, not to touch, but to gently catch his attention.

Once she has it, she'll point toward the double doors leading out, making as if to stand again. Her meaning could not be more clear: let's go.

Diabhall's heart is pounding hard in his ears, and for a long moment, he shuts his eyes tightly, trying to still himself, to control his breathing, to get a grip on SOMETHING - but it doesn't seem to be working. People must be staring. This must look dreadful. A new surge of fear pulses through him and makes him slit his eyes back open...and that's when he notices a stranger, looking at him with purpose.

For a moment, feeling his fears were coming true, he reels back a little...until he realizes that she is beckoning. She wants to help.

Swallowing hard, he nods once, pink eyes bright as he stands to follow. It's hard to breathe, and his knees shake beneath him; the food is abandoned without question.

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, of course there is."

Said as if it's the most obvious answer, before he adds, "...whenever one takes it too far. The quality of the work suffers, further increases the time spent upon it to redo what was poorly done... a wasteful thing, really."

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."

If Diabhall were capable of anger, he may have bristled at this. His pride in his work being called into question, his efficiency.

But he isn't capable of anger, of course. Any edge that had traced his words vanishes as quickly as it had come on, the hand outstretched to take the book from the other man dropping to his side.

He's just tired.

"...Am I so obviously doing that poorly?" Spoken like a man who knows the truth already.

"To anyone with half a mind to pay attention-- which, in this division, could certainly go either way, but if you were counting on us all being too engrossed in our own work to notice... then I am afraid you are not so lucky."

A one-shouldered shrug accompanies that answer, and he glances down, looking through the book's pages himself. It's an idle effort, just something to occupy himself with.

"Don't tell me you aren't used to needing to maintain your own health. Or do-- I suppose it would be as good a reason as any other, if not a better one."

"No, truthfully, I was hardly trying to hide anything. It seems as though I'm falling into some old habits."

For a long moment, he does not respond to the latter half of what Emet has to say...but as he stands there, watching him flip pages, he heaves a low sigh. There is hesitance in his tone now. It makes his own voice sound alien to him, and he finds himself wanting to wince at it.

That's an issue of its own.

"I'm very used to it. Before I performed my emotional truncation ritual, I tended to bury myself in things to avoid...." Diabhall trails off, gaze wandering briefly away before landing back on the other man again.

"You can tell me no, if you would rather not sully your own mind with the concerns of another...but if you have a moment, perhaps talking it out a bit would help me organize my thoughts."

OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

Working at the Gallows Offices - OPEN

Gallows Dining Hall - OPEN

Kirkwall Tavern - OPEN

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject