faderift | open.

Entry tags:

open.

WHO: Marcus Rowntree and you
WHAT: We don't talk about fight club, or poor coping mechanisms.
WHEN: Throughout fantasy-August
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: A series of open prompts regarding violences and also just normal drinking, and a place for closed stuff as you like!

There are a few incidents that take place after Marcus misses the ferry back to the Gallows (only the first time by accident).

He joins a card game, once, nearly barred from doing so when he arrives and sets down the mage staff by his seat. He hasn't a lot of coin on him, but without much thought, he undoes the clasps of his jewel-set cufflinks and drops them among the gold, and later, the silver pin that holds his tie. Maybe it's a miscalculation, on his part: being a mage, and a man who dresses as he does at this little low-stakes corner of Lowtown, gambling with people's working wages and his finery, but he ignores the slow building of resentment as he continues to drink and continues to win, until he has no more spare funds with which he can raise, or with which to buy more whiskey.

It only goes awry when he goes to buy himself out, a hand catching his sleeve as he rises. Accusations of cheating, perhaps with magic, who the fuck could know. There's a world where he finds a means of deescalation, but in this one, he simply shoves this man hard enough to upend the table. And falls on him, furious.

The most he wins is blood and bruises. Perhaps you're there to break it up, or later, when he leaves the tavern, hands empty.

The next few times there's a scrap, he starts it. It doesn't often take much. Just one civilian whose eye snags on him long enough to be asked if he has something he'd like to say, or a snarl in the direction of a body brushing too closely past him. Marcus is not a seasoned brawler (although you could make the argument that he's getting in some practice), and loses just as much as he succeeds, if success is what you could call hitting someone harder than they care to themselves.

Find him standing up over whatever poor random drunkard caught the brunt of a temper that had little to do with him, or Marcus sinking still when the next blow catches him across the temple, splitting his vision into double. Or in the midst of it, the grim tangle of blows in a tavern full of yelled encouragement.

Once, a fight that doesn't get far. The tangle of fists, elbows, and snarling is dispersed with the ill-advised summoning of smoke and embers, catching both Marcus and his attacker (his target) in a gust of magical but nevertheless firepit-filthy smog that has the latter shove away the former.

He is very efficiently ejected from the tavern, this time, when two barflies just fearless enough manage to get involved and shove him out into the street, and toss his staff out after him, which clatters loudly on the stone. You could find him at that very moment, off-balance and moving to collect it, or a few minutes later, throwing up his dinner in a side-alley, only just avoiding his boots.

Not every evening spent late ends in violence, however. Most of them, even. There's one little Lowtown den that tolerates his presence, where he sits at the edge of a bar and pushes silvers across it to keep a steady supply of ale flowing in his direction.

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There's no sense of satisfaction from Marcus at the news or the reminder of this disfigurement. Looks away, even, and then raises his cup to drink from it in a long determined pull. Not quite enough to finish, that welling sense of bitterness forcing him to set it back down.

And consider the question. Is he intending to take the ferry back tonight.

He thinks first of the ferry, the uneasy wobble of its journey across the black waters, only barely tolerable when he is sober. He thinks of the room awaiting him, the likely little flickers of, what, concern? In the expressions of those he lives with. Perhaps worse. Irritation, exasperation at his state. A shared glance.

He stops that train of thought before it can become even more maudlin, as he is currently not drinking alone. Plenty of time for that later.

"No," Marcus answers, now fishing his purse out of his pocket to check what coin he has. "I'll find a room somewhere."

A beat of quiet. Just considering the answer, knowing that Marcus certainly has people waiting for him in the Gallows. And certainly needs no reminders of, so John instead offers—

"Can I make a suggestion?"

Difficult to say whether or not Marcus will be inclined to accept any input on the conclusion of his evening's activities.

The click of coins in leather is not excessive, nor is it destitute. He is not quick to empty it of further funds for further drinking, curling his fingers back around it as Silver's question pulls his attention.

A shuttered blink, a nod of his head. Go on. Only faintly wary, when the suggestion comes with the request for his consent to it.

"There's a tavern, not so far from here. The owner will give you the back room if you pass along my name."

If Marcus is determined to avoid returning to his own bed, he may as well have a room reasonably safe and without bed bugs.

"The Red Lantern," John prompts. "Emlyn is the one to speak with."

"Valuable name."

Free back rooms. Free ales, slid across the counter. Who knows what else.

At the news of this, though, Marcus takes this as the universe giving him permission to shake out a few more coins into his hand. In no hurry to trade it in for another drink, still nursing his current one, but they're set down on the bar top anyway.

"Does it wear out?"

"If you take a fist to any of her customers, it might."

Fair warning.

It occurs to John he might need to make amends to Emlyn, if Marcus were a less than pleasant occupant of said backroom. But he's choosing to remain optimistic about Marcus' ability to comport himself, even in his present condition.

"I'm considering asking what's prompting all this," John says, conversational, as he lifts his own cup. Not a question yet. Just testing the waters.

There is, maybe, a slightly displeased bristling for Silver's first rejoinder. Marcus' objection isn't such that he puts words to it. What would his defense be, that the random violences that have reached John's ear were asked for? Maybe. But no material defense is offered as he fidgets coins under his fingers.

I'm considering asking gets a reaction, a quick exhale that isn't really a laugh.

It's not a question, so there's no answer offered. The water, when tested, is murky, and Marcus lifts his cup to finish its contents. Pushes the tankard in front of him, along with the correct coinage that summons barkeeps for refills without having to ask.

"You're considering asking," he repeats, accent lazily thick. "Only you?"

And not, say, 'we'.

Edited 2022-08-16 08:31 (UTC)

"Yes. Only me."

Julius and Petrana can ask for themselves, John presumes. But he invokes neither name. That is prying too far, and John's curiosity has limits.

"So I might decide how concerned I should be as to your well-being."

A week ago, John wouldn't have expected this particular string of actions from Marcus. Even in the dream, which is it's own sort of outlier, the anger there had felt controlled. This iteration of Marcus doesn't align with John's summation of him, and that's worth the question.

Or circling the question, at least.

A frank and honest answer to what had, admittedly, been a snippier kind of question than Marcus would normally make, seems to have its effect. His attention sinks back across the bar.

Perhaps he should say something like, I was accused of being a cheat, but there's a stupid dishonesty to it that prevents him from letting it escape. Is the other thing, the more personal and honest thing, the kind of thing he tells someone like John Silver? The question is almost articulated just like that in his mind, enough that he makes a sound like a half-laugh, quiet, rusty.

"I can handle a few drunkards," he says, "without doing anything stupid." No volcanoes have erupted in Lowtown. Silver would have heard. "But you mean that different."

Caution is not unearned. John is who he is, and the friendly overtures they have been passing back and forth between them are new. Made complex by what came before it, dream or no. By John's secret, and the tension he perceives in Marcus for the decision to keep it.

But still. John is present. He could have left this conversation at the invocation of Emlyn's back room.

"I have no doubts as to your ability to manage in the face of handful of overconfident drunks."

Which means, yes. He does mean something different.

Marcus' self-control is not in question.

"Thank you," droll.

There's a break when the barkeep is drawn in by the glint of coin placed on the bar, dutifully refilling the tankard once currency has been pocketed. Marcus scrapes it back towards him as this silent transaction completes, and they are again left alone. John had asked him a question.

No, John had not asked him a question. Dependent on concern, which is as yet undecided.

"You hated me in that dream," Marcus says, because it is usually not far from his mind when he speaks to Silver. Less and less, the more they talk of the present, of alternate futures, of the past, but not never. "I remember not truly hating you, but knowing I needed to bear it. To let it stand, to get what I wanted. What I don't remember is if I trusted you, and whether that's why it happened that way."

He tips the tankard a little on its way up to his mouth. "Perhaps we were friends, before. Wouldn't that make sense?"

An unexpected turn of conversation.

They have never discussed this aspect of the dream. They had discussed what need be kept secret, concealed, but not the series of events in which John's nature had been dragged into the open. Or examined why it was John who had been summoned, and not Julius, to hand off Petrana.

Were they friends? John remembers the camaraderie he had felt for Julius, who had been an unknown of a sort then too, and the familiarity of their conversation. There is some reason in the idea that all John's disdain was rooted not simply in the betrayal to Petrana and Julius and the fragmented remains of Riftwatch, but perhaps also—

"It could have been so," John agrees slowly. He might have said yes and all would be easier, but he is not here to talk Marcus around to anything. Not tonight.

"There might have been something in my mind, unconscious or not, that justified the risk I took then."

It had been a dream, but John was not a careless man. He rode out alone to meet Marcus against better judgement. Where had the certainty that he would not be harmed come from?

"Do you imagine that grew out of some potential we have yet to realize?"

"I don't know," is truthful.

A pull from his refilled tankard, not done with any particular relish. It's set down quicker than the last, but he keeps a hand spidered over top of it. Could have, might have, does he imagine. "Suppose we might need to square then with the likelihood of my turning Venatori," is probably too casual a thing to say in, like, some bar, but Marcus does not seem to mind, and he is naturally quiet.

It's a joke, anyway, even if there is nothing about his tone, expression, or inflection that separates it from being not a joke. Context cues will have to do.

"I'll be alright," he says, finally, on the matter of his well-being more so than his loyalty.

"I don't doubt that either."

Marcus' loyalties. Whether or not Marcus will be alright.

For a given definition of alright.

John has some experience in the concept of being alright when very much otherwise. He cannot discern the extent to which this is Marcus' situation.

"Why did you ask me that question?" is a shift, a more pointed application of John's attention. He has sipped but once from his drink. The only pretense of joining Marcus in imbibing is John's fingers hooked loosely at the cracked handle of the glass.

"Which," is not intended as deflection or insolence, despite slightly blunt delivery. There's been a few, traded and circled around.

"Whether or not we had been friends."

In a dream, which culminated when they'd made a very serious attempt at killing each other.

But the question has been raised. It's a thread John is compelled to pull on, just as he is compelled to try and understand what has seen Marcus into his present state.

A gesture, Marcus' hand peeling back off his tankard to turn outward, then resettling. They are, at least, left in relative peace at the end of the bar. This establishment at this late hour is not so crowded, and perhaps those present know better than to close in on any conversation that John Silver might commit any time to.

"Because perhaps those men who had been friends spoke of personal matters in a tavern," he says, "presently." It's a little whimsical, this line of conversation, a crooked bent to the rare half-smile that shows teeth, canine, as he lifts his tankard.

There had been much to wake up to. Petrana's strike to his mouth had drawn blood. How cold Julius' voice had been. Derrica's cry of pain, raw, heard through his own pulse. He had hurt only those he'd drawn closer to, after, and also still remembers the odd shiver of two magical forces locked in tension as his ribcage cracked.

The cup set back down. "You haven't had any of your drink."

It's a funny thought to unravel. How much of what they dreamed was meant to be instructive? Had the Herald meant to nudge them in more directions than the very broad warnings that had been delivered?

John isn't a philosopher. But he has some space for the concept.

And lifts his cup, when prompted. Swigs a generous sip from it while he allows the possibility to settle.

"We might make an attempt," he says, without fully lowering the cup. Keeping it hooked in one hand as he continues, "Seeing as we are here now. And bear a passing resemblance to those men."

Well, at least he is officially no longer drinking alone.

The next exhale has the sharpness of a laugh to it, even if it never resolves into a proper one. Amusement rolls over, leaves behind the bleakness he'd been indulging in before John's arrival, idly turning his cup in place.

"We played a lot of cards in Starkhaven," he says. "Gambling with them was discouraged, you know. Unbecoming. Not barred, though, as long as it was only play. We'd barter meaningless things, tokens, in place of coin. I remember once a disagreement over cheating became heated, between a couple of apprentices—that none of it was real didn't matter. And so, cards was banned for the rest of the season after that."

Quite rightly, the topics of Circle injustice are that of unfair Harrowings, cruelty and abuse, annulments and the restriction of human rights. Rarer do people speak to the more generalised humiliation of it all.

He finally fishes out his dented copper cigarette case that he only has some minor difficulty in opening when muscle memory fails, for a second or two. He pinches the end of a retrieved cigarette between his fingers, letting heat form there, twitching his hand away again when embers catch.

"It's not all of it," he says, where it is the answer to that nearly-question, "but I won't say there isn't something good about it. Being anywhere so unlike that."

This minor action, the lighting of a cigarette between fingers, still sends a ripple pooling outwards through the Fade. John is aware of it. John will always be aware of the ebb and flow of power around him, how it chimes against his own connection to what lies past the Veil.

And it illustrates the point, doesn't it? A small liberty that likely wasn't welcome in a Circle that begrudged its captives playing cards.

"I think we are more than aligned in wanting to be certain you are never returned to such a location."

This is not an abstract thing. It is well and good, talking about mages and their future as a whole. But there is something necessary about forging a specific link: no, John would not want to see Marcus dragged back to a Circle.

More necessary now, when they are both so aware that Marcus would likely be dragged somewhere far less pleasant than any Circle.

"I'll die before I do," is simply put and without dramatic flourish beyond the words themselves, no revving of fresh anger, no snarls or bitter mutters or furtive promise. Factual statement only.

Whether in battle, or because it's more likely he'd be put down, hanged or beheaded or however it is fashionable to legally execute a man for whatever wrong they'd assign him. The possibility of Tranquillity is its own spectre, haunting his mood only after he says this sure thing, but it's vanquished with another, deeper pull of ale.

"Will you tell me something?" has a slightly odd inflection to it, implying trade. Whether a trade that's yet to be struck or that John owes him some bit of knowledge is hard to divine immediately. "I've wondered about your leg. What you were before its loss."

A side-swipe of a question.

Not that John's expression betrays any particular surprise or affront. There is only a pause in which he lifts his drink, draws in a sip while he turns the question over in his mind. There is some minor pull of tension in his body.

It can't be helped. The body remembers pain, even if the mind has blunted and softened the recollection of it.

"More agile," is so glib as to be meaningless. But he is entitled to deflect away from something painful, is he not?

Maybe ~friendship~ is a thing you gnaw on like a bone until it cracks, seeking out its marrow. If there is something Marcus is looking for in asking this question, besides an actual answer (which he does not completely anticipate receiving, but why not, what else do mages have to trade but stories of injury), it goes missed by him anyway with his focus so scattered—that minor pause, that minor flex of tension.

It is a little late when he turns his regard to Silver, some curl of bleak amusement pulled fine through his expression. Still sharp, the way he looks at people, even now in all the bleariness.

"You're still agile," is wry observation. All elegant manoeuvres, all day.

"Ah, but imagine what I managed on two legs."

True and untrue.

He was a different man. He wanted to accomplish different things. Slip sideways and disappear with a fistful of gold, so thoroughly that one might forget having seen him at all.

Those days are long gone.

"I make do," diminishes, in a way. John has forged new strengths. Has made use of innate ability in a way he never would have if other avenues were open to him.

None of this is necessary for Marcus to know. Not yet, at least.

"Aye."

Don't they all.

Marcus' assessment doesn't let up, considering this answer and the man that produces it, this pinhole of I make do in all the opacity. Shockingly, unprompted questions that cleave to sources of pain do not beget answers, and it isn't really revenge, this. Silver has always been careful that way, even kind, tonight included, and anything Marcus has told him has generally been offered easily.

But he did not come to this bar to enjoy himself, and doesn't intend to start now. "I hate pity," he says. "I don't know what to do with it when it's given. Useless. And it's no better from those you love or those you hate. Maybe worse. You must have some familiarity."

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