open.

[luaithre]

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.

Comments

[hornswoggle]

"I do."

What does it cost John to offer this?

Nothing, perhaps. Of course he has been the object of pity. The one-legged creature, hobbling along about his business. John knows how that image can stick, regardless of all that he has done to dispel it.

"When the leg was taken from me," comes slowly, words measured out against some internal guidance. "The crew meant to tend to me. They put the idea to me as a kindness, but I found it unbearable. I imagine the better comfort would have been for no one to have said anything at all."

Easier to reconcile himself to their regard when it came on his own terms, something to which he contributed equally, rather than received as alms. The scorn had been easier to weather, though John had been just as unable to let it stand.

But they aren't talking about him, are they?

"Do you imagine yourself to be the object of pity at present moment?"

[luaithre]

Maybe they are talking about John.

At least halfway. Marcus listens with an interest that hedges out from the fog of whatever private misery he's been enjoying. Perhaps a little wolfish, scent of blood and everything, but not completely that, either. Some of that edge recedes, almost visible the way that pressure eases off in posture, expression, subtle nuance.

By the time they aren't any longer, Marcus has conveniently remembered his cigarette embering away between his fingers, flicking the gathered ash aside. "I don't wish to be," sounds like an amendment of a thing he didn't say, grudging.

If it's keeping John here, presently, at this bar. If it's keeping him overseeing what it is Marcus does or knows, in general.

[hornswoggle]

"You aren't."

Not as far as John's concerned.

He has never been given to it. Pity. That twinge of feeling comes and goes, never finding purchase. It is easy to let pass. What use is pity?

"If you find yourself concerned as to where my interests lie, I can assure you of that."

Simple. John is here because he wants to be. No pity roots him to this spot, sipping at the dregs of his cup.

[luaithre]

He can puzzle together some pieces of what John has said, the way he has said it. A killing injury and a necessary amputation, perhaps, that is how such things usually go. Charity, where the only thing that can't be given is freedom. And a crew, of course, still a pirate at the time and not, say, a soldier, or some other thing. It's not nothing, this information.

Put away, for now, along with more ale, stomach immediately turning on impact but managing to only wince a little. Maybe later, there will be more externalised regrets.

There is a difference between professional concern, and worry, and sympathy, and pity, all distinct. A few nights from now, he's going to frustrate one or even both of his partners at his refusing to separate them. For now, well, he'll be assured.

"I'll rule it out."