[OPEN] IN LIVING MEMORY

[archademode]

WHO: Gabranth celebrates the coming year in his own brooding way, which is to say it isn't a celebration at all
WHAT: sad dog sits alone in the Gallows
WHEN: now
WHERE: various places within the Gallows
NOTES: I can't sleep so what's better than doing the thing I meant to do half a month ago, right

I: ON YOUR FEET

His body refuses him.

Or that is what Noah would attest if asked, unarmored aside from a high-collared thermal-knit shirt and pitch dark leathers, his half-trimmed blond hair tucked loose around the base of his neck and temples as he swings a pair of matching swords in indirect arcs, knocking the snow and frost from wooden targets. It alternates, his method, slipping back and forth between using the blunted edge of those blades and simply letting displaced air manage it for him, without flourish of any sort.

And still, he seems— beneath the stony set of his focused exterior— displeased (with his own efforts, perhaps) to exceptionally perceptive eyes.

The tightness in his brow wound down so thoroughly that it threatens to snap.

But he does not stop.

II: OUROBOROS

He is not a drinking man. That is to say, he is not a man given to drink, nor is he one to grieve. He does not grieve now, either, though he is mournful in a sense. For the friend he’d lost. For the one that he is certain still exists, yet here no longer.

Another face laid to rest amongst the ghosts of his past.

Another life outlived, in a strange, dissonant sense.

He sits along the edge of the gardens, face downturned into sullen shadow, a bottle of Orlesian liquor at his side, both open and untouched.

The place where he’d sat so very long ago and made the simple, single choice to drink beside a fellow fighter.

III: WILDCARD

[ooc: you know the drill, I'll match format without preference; make a combo of the two toplevels or roll with something different, just keep in mind he's still coming off the heels of a bad injury so he won't be leaving the Gallows just yet or wearing his full plate— whether or not your character would recognize him without his helmet is entirely up to you.

Also he's sad. And mean. What else is new.]

Comments

[bouchonne]

"A very avant-garde way of consuming liquor," Byerly says. His voice is light, his manner easy. At his heels sits Whiskey, looking at Gabranth with her liquid, warm eyes.

"Letting it evaporate. Do you breathe in the fumes? Is it that how it works?"

III

[altusimperius]

It's between one of these times, when Gabranth is making his way to one location or another, that Benedict catches sight of him. He almost doesn't recognize him without the armor, but has seen his face enough times to clock it, and he's quick to swerve from where he himself is going to fall into step with Gabranth.

He doesn't say anything, perceptive enough to recognize the weight that hangs over his companion. But he'll walk by him, shoulder to shoulder, until he's told to go away.

i.

[justashotaway]

It feels familiar, walking toward Gabranth and his pair of blades. Her footsteps are louder now, thanks to the snow that crunches underneath, but the shape of her movements remain the same: stealth refashioned into something approaching normalcy. (She's slightly taller, too, though still dwarfed by Gabranth.)

"I will fight you." Something about him smells wrong. Like himself - like metal and leather - but also off. Laura can't quite find the words for how. "Or we can fight the targets."

iii - combo

[wythersake]

He does not, in fact, recognize the man without his helmet.

"Do you suppose it would make you more or less accurate?"

The liquor - presumably, that's what Isaac's lifting to inspect. His voice is pitched to be heard, but the grunt and clang of impact would serve excuse enough to shrug it aside. He peers into the neck of the bottle (untouched). May just walk off with the damn thing, if the stranger doesn't turn. There'll be ants at it soon.