open. “Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”

[delphian]

WHO: Tsenka Abendroth + YOU?
WHAT: Tsenka takes a bath. A lot.
WHEN: After the skeleton wars.
WHERE: The heated baths in the former Templar tower.
NOTES: Nudity, discussion of trauma, the uzh.

Against all of the odds stacked heavily out of her favour, Tsenka Abendroth is alive. She has survived her first, unlikely rescue; she has endured time in the infirmary, ensuring that having made it to the Gallows she wouldn't simply collapse with all of the foundations of her taken away. She has survived, again, the attack on the Gallows itself by what Riftwatch left behind in Nevarra City—it feels like a thread pulling tight, somehow, her Nevarran name buying her freedom and the Nevarran dead coming to take it away from her again—

she is alive. She is with Riftwatch because she has chosen to be, and not for any other reason. If she decided the choice didn't suit her any longer, she could leave. She has been released from the infirmary under her own power, and she can choose any unused room she wishes,

but right now, she has decided to choose the baths. Tsenka is not, typically, given to overindulgence in luxurious hygiene, but it's been actual years since she's had the leisure to do or not do at her own inclination. Bathing, during captivity, had been...nonexistent, if one were not to stretch the definition to include the occasional bucket of cold water thrown on her if she seemed like she might be sleeping easy. There had certainly not been any soap involved. At liberty to do as she pleases until she can commit to doing something useful to anyone else, it pleases her to set up camp in a corner of the heated baths with a clean robe and towels, a platter of food she'd gathered from mealtimes and the occasional application of large, sad eyes. A bottle of cheap wine, easier to drink from directly with hot, wet hands than fuss about with cups or glasses—some incense that she'd found, and had set up to burn where the ash would fall directly into the water, making it much easier to clean up after.

A few books, though she hasn't figured out the best way to read them without getting them wet, yet. Her crystal. Scissors, because even wet it's obvious that about half her hair is a good several inches different from the rest.

She will be here for some time.

Comments

[acreage]

The first surprise is the funny collection of things — open bottle of wine, the food and books, the unexpected smell of incense. The second is the face surrounded by uneven hair, unfamiliar. New arrivals aren't altogether rare around the Gallows, and a part of him wonders whether she's another who got spat out of a rift, or a local to Thedas. Hard to say without seeing her hands.

His own are in gloves despite the location. It's cold out, though, and he's had to dress for the walk as much as bring bathing implements, a clean change of clothes.

"Enjoying yourself?"

— is asked with a kind of indulgent amusement, not unkind. He's not sure how amenable she really is to interruption, and so it's a sort of quick question asked before he goes to undress, himself, and probably take up (briefer) residence at another pool of warm water.

[delphian]

“It is a simple pleasure,” is the answer she decides on, and if he looks back to see her give it then he'll get a good look at her unmarred hands in the process of lighting a pipe, filling her corner of the baths with a second source of pungent smoke; she shakes out the lit match when she's done with it and relaxes luxuriantly against the edge, her arms spread out either side of her to hold herself there.

“I am accepting suggestions for more complex ones.”

[acreage]

He does look back when she answers; and while his smile had always been sincere, some real humor warms it now.

"You don't look like you need the help."

He sets his things down, kneels so he can work at the laces on his shoes.

[delphian]

It's polite, when someone's undressing in communal bathing, not to regard them do it quite so frankly. Or at all. Tsenka can probably ride the excuse of having been out of polite society long enough to lose the familiarity of the rules for at least a while longer; it's not even as if it isn't true.

(It's just that she was like this before, too.)

“No?” She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Maybe. Do you?”

[acreage]

If he notices her attention, he does a stellar job of not showing it. He isn't precious about privacy, is the thing. Barracks and tight quarters on various ships. The room he sleeps in now, when he does, is disconcertingly spacious; the choice had made more sense with Amos next door, when he'd briefly had cause to share.

"Do you ask everyone who comes in here, or am I just special?"

The look on his face, when he glances towards her, suggests he does know the answer to that.

Boots and socks done, he straightens to shuck off his coat, and then the gloves, a tell-tale green shimmer appearing at his palm.

[poleaxed]

The baths are good, because everyone generally minds their own business. Even Jone, generally outgoing to a literal fault, can appreciate some quiet. She just prefers to be alone in company. A form of rolling muscle, old scars and red hair makes its way into the bathing area, and Jone sits calmly, expression stoney.

She's usually not prone to such stoicism, but the clearly new scar through her upper lip inspires something like calm, lest she pop a stitch and make it worse. She is trying not to focus too much on vanity-- she isn't pretty enough to be vain-- and think instead on the fact that if this doesn't heal right, she won't be able to talk right.

Fucking pain in the mouth, aye?

She makes a coughing sound, catching a laugh at her own stupid joke before it can escape.

She notices the elf, because she's a fighter and it befuckinghooves her to notice everyone else in a room she enters. The elf doesn't really register-- most don't-- until she sees the scissors, and Jone is a woman who has cut her own hair several times. It's always a kick in the dick.

She holds up one too-large, utterly human hand and gestures to the shears. Her words are slow and careful, spoken around the sutures holding the upper half of her fucking mouth together. "Need a trim?"

Say what you will about Jone's looks (and many have), but her hair is always neat and orderly.

[delphian]

The elf in question is already looking at Jone with placid interest when she's noticed—it's probable she's sort of looking at everybody that comes in and out while she's in here, because whatever else is happening in all of this indulgence she doesn't carry herself like someone in the habit of presuming her surroundings to be safe. Stitches around the mouth do look like a ball ache and no mistake, the twist of her own in sympathy a subtler expression than the boldly drawn, lazy way she's lounging,

but it's the offer that takes her off-guard, not unpleasantly. Her staff is not in immediate evidence, which might contribute generally to more inclination to offer help to perfect strangers, but then it's her understanding that Riftwatch is where bleeding hearts go to punch knives into less understanding sorts. So it's entirely possible she'd have offered even if it were, actually.

People have been kind to her, here, so far. At some point, she'll consider trusting it.

“My brother is coming down to do it,” she says, touching the shorter side; it's been long enough since they hacked it off on the road that even the shorter pieces hang below her collarbone, and she's still weighing up exactly how much she wants him to chop. Her instinct had been to take it back to her jaw, but they're not in quite the same straits. For a start, she can wash it. “When he's finished for the day. Has a more pressing schedule than I, presently.”

And mostly people do mind their business in the baths, but apparently opening conversation is as good as inviting Tsenka not to do that because she shifts forward to continue it— “The undead?” with a querying gesture at her own mouth.

[poleaxed]

Jone shrugs it off. It's not her concern who cuts hair-- and honestly, if the elf wants to hack her own locks off blessings be to her-- but it's nice to know somebody new already has someone looking out for them. It'd been different for Jone, and she is able to reckognize that now, how terribly lost she was, at the beginning of things, and how terribly vicious she was because of it.

Oh, well. Good that it's over, as the hangman said to the squire.

Jone sees the interest in the scar, and realizes this is about to be her new life. Where'd you get it? Eventually, she'll have to come up with an amusing enough lie, though right now no one will believe anything but the truth.

(It were dragons.)

She nods. "Dead now, they are," she says after a moment spent double checking... No, none of those words, blessedly, use anything other than teeth and tongue.

[delphian]

More than anything, it is a very direct interest in Jone now that she has put herself in Tsenka's view, and she is stymied momentarily by the obvious realization that it's going to be fucking difficult to make conversation with a woman whose mouth is in the process of healing such a wound. Probably it'd have been easier to get closer acquainted if she'd accepted the assistance — she thinks for a moment that she should — but a half idle attempt to get into a stranger's pants is slightly less pressing than the soothing symmetry of reunion.

Fixing something they'd broken together. Making it neat again. Here I am, not dead.

“He thought I was, too,” she says. She taps her fingers against the edge of the bath, then— “You don't want soap slipping in,” touching the corner of her own mouth, “you want help, washing yours?”

The slight lean that lifts half a breast out the water is not not an invitation, but the offer of assistance, in turn, is sincere even if the flirtation gets shot down.

[poleaxed]

Well, there's something for the old self esteem. Jone has spent time enough in Orlais to have plenty of tangled feelings about elvenkind, but seeing as Jone's got no tangible benefit she can provide this new elf, she doesn't think it's that. Quaint, in a way. She'd smile, if she could. Instead, she tilts her head, not quite accustomed to emoting without her fucking mouth.

"Dead charmed, I am," spoken, again, carefully. "Can manage myself."

That fucking Mmm in manage is a killer. The entire affair is making her come off more stone-faced and placid than she usually prefers... or, you know, is.

[overharrowed]

Someone setting up camp in the bathrooms is unusual, but not unheard of, especially as it gets colder outside. What gives Julius pause, instead, is that the woman who has done so looks familiar. He can't immediately place why, but the familiarity is still a tug that's hard to ignore.

Instead of just guessing, he decides to take the risk and simply ask. He comes over, robed and likely coming to rather than from a bath (or, at least, his hair is dry). "I'm so sorry to bother you. Have we met before?"

[delphian]

After Richard introduced himself as—well, Richard, Tsenka is slightly better prepared to meet the dreamers whose minds she touched without immediately tipping her hand. It isn't actually a yes or a no, precisely, when she casts an admiring gaze from his feet up to his hair—

“I'm sure I'd remember.”

She tips a hand toward the open space in the heated water, her pipe loosely held between her fingers and trailing smoke: “You can join me if you'd like to try and jog my memory.” Stud.

(How is she supposed to know Marcus is banging the arse off the cat guy.)

[overharrowed]

He'd been so focused on his question that the tone of her response takes him off guard. It translates merely into him raising his eyebrows and considering a moment. But he does want know.

(He has the brief thought that he is sure Petrana would understand leaning on a perceived attraction for information, but he isn't sure where Marcus stands on it: a conversation they should probably have later.)

Still, for now, he takes her invitation. "It wasn't a line, for what it's worth. You really do look familiar, but I can't quite place it."

[delphian]

Uncorking her wine bottle again with her teeth, she takes a drink before offering it to him—

“There's still time, should you like to try one.” A line, she means, perfectly aware of what about her must have drawn his attention but equally willing to see if she can hold it with something else, while she's here. Getting into the water isn't demurring, after all. And some people like to be flirted with, a bit.

She leans back against the solid stone behind her. Says, “My name is Tsenka,” as if she thinks that might be what he recognizes.

[overharrowed]

He looks, perhaps unexpectedly, started. "...not Marcus's Tsenka?" That wouldn't be how he'd know her face, even if it were true. But it certainly shifts the interaction in an unanticipated direction.

(He can't help the brief, rueful thought that the last time he'd met some of Marcus's family, at least he'd been fully dressed.)

[luaithre]

Marcus remembers distinctly, the question: is it safe.

And he had affirmed that it was, and then, in short order, it wasn't. This isn't anything he is concerning himself with too terribly—he still believes in the Gallows as a haven, a fortress, a place worthy of guarding and protecting—but it's worth acknowledging that safe is not correct, even before the invasion of red lyrium riddled skeletons. He'd already drafted up procedures around evacuating and defense by the time Tsenka had reached for him, the lines on the maps are shifting closer, and it's worth saying out loud: they're at active war.

But. They, too, have skewed perceptions of safety. Was there ever a time they were in the Gallows, back then, that they weren't simply waiting for the next bad thing? That, at least for Marcus, feels a world away, especially now as they sit in the bath house, the air warm and damp from the latest rise of hot water. He has brought down some things for her, a robe to retain her warmth and soak up excess water. He is dressed informally, himself, shoes and coat left at the door.

And the comfortable silence is puncture with the snk of scissors as he painstakingly evens out sections of her hair, trying to remember if it had been her own sawing blade that had made this mess, or his own.

"There are places even in Lowtown," he's saying, instead of about dragons or skeletons or army movements, "that will clean you up well for only a few silver."

There is, actually, quite a lot to say that he hasn't, but not out of avoidance. Simply, it seems vital to also recommend her to salons, and speak of her wages, and ensure she has good boots and clean linens and knows who to ask for more food, if she's hungry, and on and on.

[delphian]

The first time, it had been his. She remembers it well — Marcus apologetic at every loud, aggrieved ow, and stoically enduring her gleeful, unrepentant turnabout — but after that some things run together. Maybe it had been Bede; maybe she'd done it herself, that last time, snatching the knife out of hands she was still in an argument with. Is it a tie, if you vanish angry and never speak again?

“You're doing it for free,” she observes, holding onto the towel placed around her shoulders to catch falling snips of hair before it reaches her robe. The Gallows do not feel safe, not when so many of the people within them are walking around like rung bells, but she is aware of feeling — peaceful. Here, specifically, sitting cross-legged in front of Marcus and looking at nothing in particular.

It's warm, and her belly is full, and her family is here. Someone will ask her to fight for those things. It feels right. She is ready not to begrudge it.

“Does Julius go to the place in Lowtown?”

Her eyebrows aren't doing anything suspicious. If someone were to walk by them this moment, as someone well might do, nothing about Tsenka's placid expression would suggest anything at all.

[luaithre]

A breath drawn in, held, let out. Snip snip.

"I've recommended its services," Marcus says. The scissors are set aside so he can comb through her wet hair, trying to judge its evenness. He very gently pulls it all back behind her pointed ears. The scrape of scissors indicates he's found more work to do.

At some point, he's just going to have to make peace with it, before he cuts it all way too short, but there's a couple inches to go before that point.

"I'm cutting your hair for free," he adds. "Salons do more than just that. You'll have to ask them."

[delphian]

Oh, he's recommended its services, that's extremely thoughtful of him. She gazes ahead of herself at steam rising off of heated water, and listens to the scissors, and hums something that's maybe agreement,

“Mayhap I will. He said,” without a breath between the two thoughts, “that you were close, the two of you.”

[luaithre]

"Aye."

Then the rare—for him—instinct to leave it there. Not that she'd let him, of course, but for a second he labours beneath the delusion that she might and that he can successfully obfuscate from her the life he's been leading while she's been in chains. A life that isn't without its difficulties, and certainly not without its luxuries. It's a delusion he discards in the next moment, along with a sliver of hair under sharp blades.

Marcus clears his throat. "Julius and Petrana are my partners," he says. "For the better part of a year, now. The room you saw is the room we share. How short do you want this?"

arrives very late.

[tender]

"I'll help you with those, if you'll share the wine," Derrica offers, in lieu of greeting.

It comes as she sits along the edge of the bath, easing into the water. Feet first, then calves as she settles. Her hair is damp already, but she hasn't yet shrugged out of her robe.

What to say to this woman? In all the chaos of collecting her, Derrica still knows precious little of her. Marcus cares deeply about her. That is clear beyond question. But whatever else—

Derrica could ask Marcus. But Tsenka is here, and she looks contented enough, and Derrica thinks there are worse places to get familiar with someone.

opens my arms

[delphian]

Oh, it's the pretty mage.

Probably it shouldn't surprise her the second time she's asked, but it still takes Tsenka a moment to connect what Derrica says to what she herself has around her — but it doesn't take her more than a moment to understand, her expression clearing.

“I've someone for that,” she says, but she tilts the wine bottle toward Derrica anyway. “But I pinched the wine, so I won't grudge you any of it.”

Not as if it's her hard-earned money that bought it down here. She's not got any of that yet, though she's given to understand she will soon enough. Novel. She'd quite like to buy herself some clothes, she thinks.

[tender]

"That's kind."

And the offer is accepted, as Derrica loosens the belt of her robe with one hand. It's uncouth to swig from the bottle, but the passing consideration of it doesn't stop her from doing so. Were there a cup—

Well, there isn't a cup, and Derrica had asked. And so.

"Thank you," is followed by, "I'd meant to come see you. I hadn't had a chance to ask Marcus how you were settling in."

A surreal statement, in a way. How does one settle in to the Gallows? It had taken Derrica months to stop feeling a prickle of unease whenever she stood in this place. The spirits here cried out over and over in agony over what had been suffered here. They are quieter now, but never gone.

And Seer or not, any mage that stood in this place must have the same awareness. People like them had suffered here. It complicates everything. Even without knowing much of Tsenka, Derrica knows she is a mage, and knows there is much to make her arrival here difficult.

[delphian]

Is it safe,

and he had said yes. And then it wasn't, but if she's honest that had made sense—hard to blame him for it, when it remains much easier to believe than the idea that the Gallows is fit for anything but being broken down into the sea. Her experience here had been brief, comparatively; long enough not to have missed it. Not to thrill, now, to the idea of having to settle in.

“Ha, ha,” she says, dutifully, because if she has to answer how she's settling into the Gallows as if it isn't a joke she can't quite imagine it won't sound completely unhinged. “Doesn't it just show you how inexperienced the Venatori are with rescuing anyone. They're shit at it, you end up back in the same places.”

She'll be here all week.

[tender]

Ha, ha.

The belt of her robe is pulled open. She reaches to set the bottle between them before she shrugs out of the fabric and slides into the water.

"Why did he do that for you?" she asks. There's some quiet curl of suspicion, but not for Tsenka. Myron is some other thing, not quite Derrica's problem but lurking at the edges of her thoughts regardless.