[closed]

[ophidia]

WHO: Richard Gecko, Loxley, Gwenaëlle Baudin, Seth Gecko, Richard Dickerson
WHAT: Richie and Loxley are trailing the same guy, shit goes sideways for both of them
WHEN: Time is a social construct
WHERE: Kirkwall -> Gallows
NOTES: Blood, violence

It's a clinical pragmatism and cool acceptance of what he is that has Richard calling this hunting. He could easily pretend otherwise - it wasn't like tailing a mark was a practice he'd only learnt on being turned, after all. But it's the result that makes it different. A job would end with a score. A hunt ends with a kill. There's no hiding from the reality of that.

The skills are the same though. Recon first, hanging around the various taverns, blending in with the usual patrons while he watches and listens. Chooses the mark. Tails them for a couple of nights, learns their patterns and habits. Then, it's location.

He'd had it down to a fine art long before Kisa, and long before Kirkwall. Sure, it had needed some adaptation here, but now it's been three months. He's ironed out the kinks. Has it down smooth as silk. And Seth hasn't needed to get involved once.

So he'll argue it's confidence, not complacency that has him failing to notice this particular slaver has another tail. Quickening his pace to bear down on him as he takes a left into Richard's chosen alley, not seeing that there's another shadow following in both their wakes.

Comments

[charmoffensive]

Blood everywhere, more than Loxley anticipated when he's come up from behind, feeling at once less like he is trying to wrestle one man off of another and more as though he has a wolf by the scruff. Boots scuffle on gritty stone floor as he is shoved backwards, still keeping a determined grasp on the man's shoulder even as he withdraws the blade, and,

the unmistakable sound of a quick shivving, the wet impact of it. Loxley bares his teeth and hauls this man back, pushing him aside.

"Gods," uttered, at the mess.

The slaver's friend, as Loxley has been cast, is wide-eyed and tense, a leanly built qunari with horns that curl like a ram's. Near-gold eyes catch the light in flat nocturnal discs as he looks this stranger over, brain going into overdrive as he tries to comprehend what he's seeing and what it means. Red blood like a half-mask. A mouth full of sharp teeth.

And meanwhile, Quileni is choking, dying, sliding to the alleyway floor.

[ophidia]

The slaver's strength fails, bled out of him, and the last stab is shallower than the others. Shoved aside, Richard stumbles with the knife still half buried in his belly, shoulder knocking hard into the wall, breathing heavily. Pain isn't something that his being turned eradicated, and in the moment it eclipses all else. The alleyway becomes a fog of half glimpses, mind blurring with the memories he'd just shared: the slaver slumped on the floor, a wooden door, the would-be rescuer's panicked face, an argument, the curl of horns.

Qunari, a distant part of Richard's brain supplies. He'd read about them. And if he didn't get his shit together, this one was going to do him some serious damage, if not maybe get lucky on killing him.

He fumbles for the knife in his stomach, pulling it free with a pained grunt, but it seems like it might have been one effort too many. His head swims, and he staggers, falling hard to his knees. The scales melt back from his face, eyes sliding blue, teeth human. He clutches his belly, wet with too much blood, and for a second he's back at The Twister, gunshot blasting through his back. Dying.

"Fuck," is hissed out, knife clattering on the floor as it drops from his slackening hand. Seth is going to kill him.

[charmoffensive]

"Fuck," echoed from Loxley.

Eyes still locked on this man's face, watching it transform, knowing instinctively that this is a rifter on that basis alone, too strange and too out of place to be anything else. He tears off the glove on his left hand, palm raised in what is already a gesture of peace if not further communicated by the glimmer of green light nested in the meat below his thumb.

Even while doing so, a foot goes out to snag the dropped knife under his boot toe, and scrape it aside, out of reach. Quileni, now, is forgotten, left to sputter and choke and die on the ground.

Richard falls to his knees; Loxley crouches down, at a cautious distance, hands hovered, now empty. "My name's Loxley," he says, tentative. "And you're going to die, probably, unless you let me help. I'm a rifter too. I can get you somewhere—"

That's just so much blood.

"Somewhere safe."

[ophidia]

Rifter. That changes things, though in the moment all Richard's mind can muster is absolute incredulous confusion.

"The fuck are you doing helping him?" Accusative as much as questioning, pain lancing sharp edges through his words. He'd hunted the guy, checked and double checked what he was involved in before he went for the kill. He always did. Either this Loxley was working with slavers, or he'd followed Richard, and if the latter, offering him help now also didn't make any fucking sense.

[charmoffensive]

"I was tracking him."

Better to just give answers than bicker about what they have time to talk about, and besides, if this rifter is lively enough to bitch—Loxley will take that as a positive sign. He keeps poised as is in his crouch, hands empty. A horned, gleaming-eyed figure in the dark, the flash of a pointed canine under his lip.

He knows how it looks. He rocks forward to rest a knee on the ground, hands still signalling surrender. "He's a shithead, but works for worse shitheads. I needed information. What were you doing to him? Just now, what the fuck was that."

[ophidia]

Questions beget questions, and maybe if Richard had space for a thought in his head he would've realised that before he mouthed off. Taken the offer of help before he had to reveal he was a monster. There's no room to deflect or even refuse to answer. The mess of his stomach wouldn't kill him, but it was looking likely it was going to have him passed out in this alley with the dead body of a murdered slaver for any interested party to find.

And, as the seconds ticked by and more blood spilt past his fingers, his certainty that it wouldn't kill him was slowly starting to fissure and crack.

"Eating," he says. Flat, blunt. No pride in it, just a basic necessity of life, like anyone. "I need blood, so I hunt shitheads."

[charmoffensive]

Loxley huffs out a breath. Absorbs that as not the craziest thing he's heard, if still pretty wild. Alright.

"What a terrible misunderstanding," has an edge of hysterical humour, fancy affect to his voice deliberately discordant with their surroundings of a corpse, several gut wounds, Darktown miasma, and really, Loxley's whole deal. He isn't panicked, however, only processing. Worried, now.

The more they delay, the more the prospect of this man getting out of this place alive slips away. "Come on," he says, now going so far as to reach out, gripping above the other man's elbow. "I can't help you, but I know people who can. Let me get you to them."

[ophidia]

Richard's all for adaptation, but how easily Loxley seems to take in the situation feels unreal. Just a simple comment of misunderstanding, like it was a social faux pas in one of those regency romance movies, and not him accidentally tracking the same guy as a literal bloodsucker.

Or maybe it's more the threads of real panic starting to leech into the back of Richard's mind that are making him tip into paranoia. There's too much blood under his hands, head starting to feel light, and he'd just fed. He should be healing.

He can't refuse help. But he doesn't know Loxley, and he doesn't know who Loxley knows, and he hasn't felt this for a long time: the sense of absolutely any control slipping completely out of his reach.

"Gallows," he says, a little blurted. "My brother, Seth. Seth Gecko. Just help me get to him."

[charmoffensive]

"The Gallows, yes."

As far as Loxley knows, Seth Gecko could be a figment of this fully dying man's imagination, but at least they have a common direction. He is still thinking about eating, I need blood as his remaining eye flicks a last look over the countenance of Firstname Gecko, before—

Fuck it. In for a penny, and all that. Loxley pulls him to his feet with about as much mind for the mess of injury in the other man's midsection as he can afford to pay, which isn't very much, and wrangles an arm around his shoulders for him. They're mostly of a height, Loxley bending to make the ordeal a little easier as he begins to walk them out of the alleyway, into the tunnel-roads of Darktown, strange fogs whirling around their feet.

To the nearest exit, which will at least bring them not so far from the docks above. There isn't a lot of conversation until they find the narrow switchback stairs that lead up.

"Lean there," Loxley says, not actually removing Gecko from the grasp they share so much as keeping him upright between damp brick and his shoulder, freeing up one hand to get out his crystal. "What's your name, anyway?"

[ophidia]

"Rich," is all he manages at first. It's an effort to talk, a fact only just noticed now with the question. The walk through Darktown had been silent, all of Richard's limited, fraying attention focussed on trying to keep his feet moving. Helpful or not, he doubts even a qunari will be able to - or want - to drag him far. But he doesn't know how much further he'll be able to manage it. Without Loxley keeping him leant against the wall, he'd have dropped again already.

He tries again: "Richard." Then, disbelieving, "Fuck." Ironic, downright stupid in the circumstances, but even this stranger who was carting his dying ass along had known his brother's name first.

[charmoffensive]

"Nice to meet you."

Something funny about all these men who only appear to be human called Dick, but not so much that Loxley pauses to ask Rich Richard if that really is his real name. His sending crystal twitched out from under his collar, twisted like so that it glows a dull gleam between greasily bloodied fingers—

Muttering his own name to activate, he more clearly states Gwenaëlle Baudin, before he says, "Change of plans. I've an injured rifter with me who needs healing.

"Catch your breath," is more to Richard, Loxley keeping him half-pinned to the wall with a hand clenching his collar, braced there.

[elegiaque]

“What—?”

No, not helpful, she reorients before she can pester him for an explanation that presumably she'll get in more detail when no one's in danger of bleeding out.

“How bad is it? I can bring my bag and stabilise him,” and it sounds like she's moving, already. “At least a bit. Does he need a mage right now or—?”