faderift | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

WHO: Gavin and OPEN
WHAT: Gavin getting his bearings of Skyhold as the Inquisition reels from its loss.
WHEN: Beginning of game timeline, aka, nowish?
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: He's a derp, don't say I didn't warn you. Also, as I mentioned in his app, he's spent a long time wandering Thedas - so if you'd like to have it so they've already met previous to the conclave, and want to hash out some back history, let me know.

He hadn't expected to feel such a weight of helpless loss. After all, he hadn't even met her, despite being in Haven at the time. Despite somehow surviving the mess than ensued. He'd seen her, sure, but she was something high above him and they never actually crossed paths. Which was why, when her death hit him so hard, he was surprised.

It wasn't even the hopelessness that the situation was prone to give birth to. It was honestly for her - for the individual, rather than the Mark on her hand. But how could you mourn a person you never really knew?

Mostly, it turned out, by throwing himself into absolutely anything else. (At least this sort of running from his problems was productive. Mostly.) Luckily, Skyhold was hardly without things to do. The place was a shambles - an absolute mess - so he mostly tried to tag onto whatever work group was currently working. He sort of forgot to sleep, but that wasn't strange in of itself. Nor was the fact that he wasn't actually making himself very useful. He kept getting distracted. It wasn't his fault that everything in this place was fascinating. And fascinating things were much, much better than grief.

Which was why, anyone who happened to be in Skyhold, could find him in some very peculiar places. He'd managed to nearly plummet to his death from the rookery, get tangled in cobwebs in the hidden library in the basement, climb through the hole in Cullen's roof to get distracted by a bird instead of trying to fix it, and even had spent thirty minutes trying to get to know one of the horses. Also he kept not watching where he was going - physically running into people, or backing up into them, letting out a hasty apology and a lopsided, shameful grin.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Of course they would run into each other eventually. Pel is glad it happens now, when she's still not sure if he survived Haven or not. She can just be happy to see him alive instead of pissed that he left.

She sees him and maybe it's the last thing he expects, but she darts forward to fling her arms around him. First things first, after all.

At some point, he would probably run into Ellana, who was offering help to the stonemason and his crew rebuilding a walkway from the rotunda to the Commander's office on the battlements. With her magic, she carefully energized a large stone and moved it up into place. Thankfully Gavin didn't bump into her until the stone was safely up there, or he would have broken her concentration and that would have spelled disaster. As it was, she let out an "Oof," sound and just managed to keep her footing.

"Gavin! Is something wrong?" Her eyes darted over him, wondering if he was in a hurry for some reason.

He hadn't even had a second to register his surprise upon seeing her - or at least thinking that he saw her - before suddenly she was there and her arms were clasped tight around him. He coughed - the hug nearly knocking the wind out of him.

"Pel?" he asked, absolutely confused. "Pel- what are you doing here?"

He kind of did a strange little dance to keep himself from falling down, and almost ignored her completely and kept on - but with a sigh he realised that the bird he had been trying to chase down was now long gone, and turned to look back at Ellana with an apologetic look.

"No- no, nothing. Just- I thought I saw - Well, it hardly matters now." He raised a hand to rub his own hair, looking sheepish. "Sorry. We keep getting more people-- Hard to remember I have to be more careful. Are you alright?"

"Joining the Inquisition." She sounds calmer than she is, relieved to see him alive. None of their baggage matters in this moment. She pulls away after one last hard squeeze and releases him.

"Joining the..." His voice trailed off, his face an expression of confusion so deep that she might as well have told him that she was training to become a fish.

"You're joining the Inquisition?" He asked, finally getting the words out. "Why? I thought-- I thought for sure, the Keeper--"

"Please remember. I could have dropped the stone." And the last thing she wanted was others thinking Dalish mages were poorly trained when the same probably would have happened to anyone knocked off balance in the middle of energizing something.

"I'm fine. Have you been keeping busy?" There was a myriad of tasks he could involve himself in, but she worried that he might have gotten bored of all of them already.

"Sorry," he apologized again, the embarrassment making the ends of his ears tint red.

"Ah- yes. Trying to, at least. I'm not as helpful as, ah-" he waved his hand at her staff vaguely. "You know. I'm doing what I can, at least until I get sent out on patrol again." Patrol was different than running away.

At least that's what he told himself.

"You've been settling in alright?"

"I suppose so. I'm trying to help where I can, but there's so much I want to explore." Her gaze lifted to take in the grand, if dilapidated stronghold. If there weren't so many here reeling after the loss of Haven, she would probably be rushing through, hair flying behind her as she got into everything. As it was, she was trying to be more respectful of the Inquisition's recent loss and had set herself up to help wherever she could.

"Do you know where things are yet? You could show me so I don't get lost." And it would keep him occupied for a little while.

Eyebrows go up. That scolding he was expecting? This sounds more like that.

"Not your problem, or your decision. She has Sorrel and he is more than capable of being First."

Woops. Well, that had been the wrong thing to say. He tried to look apologetic, but he was still mostly just really confused.

"That's not -- Of course it isn't my decision, Pel, but I mean, you're here, of course I have something to do with it. Not the decision, but the being - You know what I mean. I'm just surprised, that's all."

"I've gotten a pretty good idea, I think," He said. He was pretty damn good about hiding his own grief (from himself, and from others), but it wasn't a completely iron clad thing. He managed to look a little lost as he looked back at the castle, unable to help thinking of Haven.

"It's bigger. A lot bigger. But yes, of course I can show you around."

"Good." She checked quickly with the stonemason to see if she could take a break, and she was released without much fuss. Then she turned to Gavin, gesturing with a hand. "Wherever you'd like to lead. You can tell me what's been going on too. I never got to see the Herald, I'm afraid."

"I have as many reasons to be here as you do." She presses her lips together briefly, then breathes out and lets it go. "They've treated you well?"

She will fucking end them if they haven't.

For her part, Korrin was trying to keep her focus on what can be done rather than what's lost. She was in Haven as well, that last night firmly etched in her mind, but dwelling on it did little except give her a desire to hit things. And while there was a use for that, there was more use for people helping out and getting Skyhold into shape. A 'qunari', especially a mage who could energize debris and move it away without any fuss, had uses here.

Eventually taking a break to get some water and explore, Korrin found herself in the rotunda. Arching an eyebrow, she stared upward through the floors, tempted to see what else is up there. Everywhere she turned, there was always something new to see, a new unexplored corner of the castle.

"Just how much more is there to Skyhold....?"

He winced - waiting for the tongue lashing that was bound to come next - only to get the question instead. He relaxed, slightly, then offered her a small, if sad, smile.

"You really think I would have stayed otherwise?" He said, and then as soon as it was out of his mouth, realised it was absolutely the wrong thing to say. So he cleared his throat. "... They're fine. A few knife-ear, comments, of course, and some assorted slurs, but so far to be honest I've just been treated like anyone else." His face fell a little. "... I'm glad you've only come now, Pel. We - Haven cost us a lot of lives."

A lot of people he'd been coming to know as friends.

She doesn't scold without cause. Not everything in their lives is about their history together.

"When we heard, I feared the worst. I'm glad you're safe."

That's way more important than history, however ugly.

The name makes his ears droop - just a little - a flash of expression that he covers up just as quickly.

"I think the others could fill you in better than I could," he deflected, leading her down the stairs to the courtyard. "Mostly all I remember is a lot of noise, and then it was very, very cold for a few days. This place is huge, but there's something for everyone - a library, a cellar, what I am pretty sure is a prison--"

Peter was torn. On one hand he recognized, in an objective way, that the rats in the kitchen and stronghold in general were a bad thing that took from the supplies he ate from and needed to be dealt with. On the other, he could sympathize with their plight. They'd been here first, making the castle their own, and suddenly some entitled humans were here and bringing in fresh food then attacking them.

It was a moral conundrum.

So rather than helping get rid of the rats as he'd been tasked to do, Peter tosses another chunk of his bread towards the scouting rodent in the dank basement library beneath Skyhold. He sits along one side of the hall, back against the cold stone, focused entirely on his rat. He only looks away from his rodent friend when an elf suddenly entering the area makes the rat scurry away and Peter's attention jerk to the source of sound- freezing, actually, in a very rodent like way himself.

"They- they sent support troops?"

All he'd been trying to do was feed the Raven. He liked the ravens - supremely intelligent, and yet were generally nice to him - mostly because he kept stealing them little scraps of meat. So he had been leaning off the edge of the rookery, stretching out to push the meat through the bars of the bird's cage - when all of a sudden the earth moved and he was no longer attached to the floor.

In fact, save for a foot that managed to hook around the railing somehow, he had fallen straight into the pit - dangling by his boot - the piece of meat having fell before him, plummeting toward the Qunari below.

He swore in Dalish, twisting to try to get his hand on the railing -

When that, also, came lose, and he was falling very quickly after the bird's wasted dinner.

"The library would be good. There must be books from all over." Ellana didn't catch his quick expression change, but at least she moved on to speak of this place as opposed to the Herald.

"And I suppose a prison is understandable. Surely whoever once lived here was powerful and had enemies. All powerful people do, don't they?"

The Dalish swearing snared Korrin's attention just as she was trying to decide which route to take, and she glanced sharply upward. Her eyes widened upon seeing the spectacle, but she didn't have time to react before that railing came loose just above her. Because of course it did.

"Vashedan!" With little time to brace herself, let alone properly, Korrin had the wind knocked out of her lungs as the falling elf slammed into her, and she lost her footing, tumbling to the ground. For a moment, the only thing in her vision were dancing white spots.

He'd just come down to get another look at the creepy library, and hadn't been expecting to run into anyone - let alone have a rat almost run right over his toes and disappear into a wall.

"They have?" He asked, somewhat startled, because the last troops he recalled had been Corypheus', and that's exactly where his mind jumped now. He twisted around to look behind him, but there was no one there, so he looked back at Peter, frowning. "Sorry, I mean - No. No, I don't think so. Are you alright?"

"J-just fine."

He didn't know what Peter was supposed to be doing. That's good. That means he's not going to run off and tell the...Peter didn't even know his name, he was just the soldier that had sighed and sent him along do something useful. Maybe the elf hadn't even noticed him feeding the rat- though he'd always been told their eyes were sharped than humans and-

He shoves the rest of the bread behind his back as if he could retroactively make it unseeable with that thought. Or as if that wasn't a sign of guilt.

"Need something?"

He's just well used to giving plenty of cause.

"Sorry," He said, this time the word was soft, the smile tilting lopsided. "If it's any consolation, I feared the worst, too. But here I am. And here you are." As bizarre as that was.

He didn't even think to ask if she came alone. "The clan? They'll be alright? Not having me around is one thing, but you--"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 9

(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

Enter one falling target?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject