open + closed;

[grindset]

WHO: Viktor + Abby + Bastien + Edgard + Ellis + Mobius + Richard + Stephen + Tony
WHAT: catch-all for November
WHEN: now, kind of, but also whenever
WHERE: around the Gallows, particularly the library and Research division workroom
NOTES: Open to all/any, wildcards and tweaks welcome. Will match tag format. Content warning for terminal illness in some threads; will avoid on request. Also!! Hit me up if you want to share a job.

Nighttime cracks an eye to gloaming dawn, to a fog moving at a steady crawl between the Gallows and Kirkwall proper, like it's a huge vessel passing by, like it's going somewhere. Fleeing the sun, maybe. A futile effort.

Viktor likewise cracks an eye, two eyes, squints through a fog receding. He raises his head, wipes his mouth, drags a little reading glass on a chain into the gutter and shuts the book around it. On Astrariums, the cover says. Has he ever put his head down 'just to rest' and not ended up warping at least one page with biological humidity?


Since no one's kicked him out of it—or at least had any success to date, should they have tried—this single side room on the lowest floor of the library has fully evolved into a combination office and living space. From it Viktor emerges with crazy hair and an armful of other books, squinting and snuffling and stiff, taps over to the return cart stationed nearby, and adds them to his prior deposits. He then leaves with the cart; his crutch, leaned out of the way, stays behind.

From there he moves slowly between aisles, stopping here and there to slide a book into place, or to leave it out conspicuously so someone who climbs ladders can put it back where it lives. Once in a while he'll pause with a hand on the shelf to yield to a coughing fit, or else to wait for some other silent thing to pass, before moving on.

No one asks him to do this, he just does it.

Other times, he may be found on any library floor, or back in his ('his') little side room, either busy at the table, or asleep on the settee. (Or asleep at the table. Again.) The door is often open, sometimes left unlatched and open a crack.

On rare occasions he may be found on the library's stone balcony, either sitting alone on a bench (also stone), or leaning on the balustrade (is anything not made of stone here) to look out over the sea, nursing some private melancholy.


Later, when the tower begins to sound like it's waking up, Viktor makes the climb to the seventh floor and assumes his spot in the Research workroom. Settles his bony backside on the stool. Spins a dry pen around his thumb while he thinks.

It looks like he's pondering some deep mystery; what he's thinking, really, is that it's annoying that no one exists here who can check his work on this page or the pages beneath it. (Annoying, upsetting, a constant low ache.) No one needs to check that half of his work. It's fine. He knows it's fine. Still—

Should any be present, he might ask of someone he knows has worked with local runes,

"Can I run something past you?"

Or, of a rifter, or else anyone he's hardly spoken to,

"How well versed are you in the native runic system?"

Or it's any other day and he's just toiling away in here like anyone else might be. Coworkers will have found he tends to respond at least lukewarmly to working chatter, and that if he doesn't want to be interrupted, they won't have to guess—they'll know.


The sound of coughing follows him everywhere: a herald of his arrival, a sign of his otherwise quiet presence, a dry barking down the hall.

Comments

for dick;

[grindset]

No sound of coughing precedes him to the infirmary; a metallic tapping serves that purpose well enough. Something in the foot of his crutch needs to be adjusted, the components checked over and cleaned. Viktor is thinking of this, funnelling his nervous attention into worrying what he'll do when the spring wears out, if he'll be able to fashion a new one to the necessary specs, remembering how punishing the jolting was before they added a shock absorber, that it's still not good now, but it's better.

He's thinking of this, of his armpit specifically, as he arrives. It doesn't hurt any more than usual. He won't mention it.

He comes in around one side of the doorframe like a cat slinking in, hunched and wary, not happy to be entering this room but curious of its features all the same. He's been here only once before, months ago, in a shape not much worse than he is now, to look at him—though he'd briefly passed out on the carriage ride in, and had a bloody nose when he arrived. So thin, and so, so pale, wheezing dry coughs. Bad, in any healer's eyes. Worse than bad. But more than anything, he was afraid.

He still got up and left when no one was paying attention. Hasn't been back since.

Until,

"It's not an emergency," he says, instead of hello. "If you're busy, I can come back later."

Or never.

[nonvenomous]

There is a haze hanging around the infirmary ceiling, freshly stirred by the head healer straightening to turn back to the door at the sound of tapping. His left hand is affixed wide over the wrinkled pink rear of a nug on the exam table, pinning it (gently) in place. The right wields a pair of long tweezers.

Mr. Dickerson is tall, lean, and ginger in a jerkin and scorched leather gloves, already measuring Viktor as a matter of curiosity as much as he is an interruption. He’s been told under no uncertain terms not to trifle with new Rifters.

And yet.

“Not at all,” he says. A matter of course, as he looks down to return to his work.

The nug is shivering, white at the corners of his eyes. A number of long purple quills have buried themselves into its quivering snout; the animal scrabbles and brays as Richard applies the tweezers to twist one such spine free at the base.

A few have already been drawn out and reside in a blood-spattered tray at Dickerson’s elbow. The lit stub of a joint occupies the same tray.

“What seems to be the problem?”

[grindset]

Dickerson turns, opening like a door on the scene, and Viktor visibly stalls.

The nug's presence is unexpected, its conformation still unusual to him. Familiar pieces in a new arrangement. The squirming, the fear in the eyes, the man so casually administering its cause for some benefit it doesn't comprehend—even the colours—these are an echo.

"I," am being interrupted by the grunting of a tiny body.

Familiar pieces, new arrangement. Never mind the problem for a minute,

"Could you not have sedated it first?"

Maybe not the wisest third full sentence ever to say to the doctor he's here to see, and he is aware of that; call it an insomnia-based degradation of giving a shit. But beneath the heavy brow and the critical edge is a genuine query. He does actually want to know if there's a reason for it.

(Surely it doesn't count as trifling if they come to you.)

[nonvenomous]

Richard’s pause is made all the more distinct by the delayed clink of quill to tray upon its release, his balding head still stooped to the task at hand. There’s a snip missing from one of his ears, carved out along the same track that marks his cheek. Dueling scars track up the back of his arm between the flare of his glove and the roll of his sleeve past his elbow.

“I can’t recall ever being sedated for a procedure in Riftwatch’s employ,” he says. Sleeping draughts are expensive.

The next quill comes out easier, with only a wrestling snap of nuggy teeth after his tweezers and a puff of sparks huffed from the snout when he presses the creature flat to the table in answer.

“Perhaps after this he’ll have learned to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Clink.

for tony, christmaween edition;

[grindset]

The same metallic tapping—and that distant cough, maybe, depending on how well it travels—announces Viktor's arrival on the eighth floor. This is precisely the opposite of where he should be going, according to today's tower traffic trends, but there's no need to prepare for something he isn't attending. So.

The break in sound while he stops in the hall to catch his breath is obvious to anyone listening. Ten, fifteen, thirty seconds of quiet before the tapping resumes.

Office door's open; he knocks anyway, a few raps with the top of his knuckle. It's somewhat less crisp than it would be were all his attention not immediately sucked in by the singularity of absurdity sitting on the Provost's head.

"Suddenly I feel underdressed."

But he has, for the record, made himself presentable for the visit. While he is a touch sweaty from the stairs, and the unhinged postgrad vibe lingers in the creases, he does at least appear markedly less feral than in prior judgments.

shows up with pumpkin spice lattes

[propulsion]

Well, that's becoming a little familiar.

Enough that Tony isn't compelled to get up and go investigate, anyway, curiousity easily sated by putting two and two together and figuring the guy on the other side could use the breather. He stays where he is, parked at his desk and flipping through the series of pages in front of him that contain information that even Satinalia can't make less important.

But at least his hat is good. There is something about its presence in this specific scene setting that my resonate with someone with this frame of reference as a person wearing a reindeer headband while stuck in their cubicle for another four hours.

Tony tips his chin up so he can see Viktor properly beneath the curving brim of his hat. "Well, you should," he states, regardless of decreased levels of feral. "But I think only I got a party hat, so I can overlook it this one time. Take a seat."

delicate sip with moth proboscis

[grindset]

"The festive clemency is much appreciated."

Viktor's never met an office cubicle—while Piltover has its faults, it is not, at least, a corporate hellscape—but the spirit translates well nonetheless. He glances up to the corner of the door as he closes it just shy of engaging the latch.

"This won't take long," he says, and sits anyway, because. Doesn't take up any more than the front half of the seat, holds his crutch at his side like an enchanter's staff. "I've had some intriguing discussions with Madame de Foncé, lately, in regards to the lyrium trials she's been orchestrating."

balcony!

[cozen]

"Oh. Sorry."

Bastien isn't surprised to find someone else here. It's a lovely spot, and one he visits it rarely enough that he has no claim to it, no awareness of who might be a regular balcony-sitter.

No one would come sit out here alone hoping for conversation. Bastien wasn't looking for one, either. There's a book in his hand, finger holding his place. But this is one of the newer rifters, so he doesn't shuffle immediately back out the way he came.

"I'll," he says, gesturing back with his shoulder to indicate what he'll do is leave. Eventually. First: "Viktor, right?"

[grindset]

He too has a book, closed on his lap, and a finger holding his place. The blanket folded under him prevents the stone from leaching away his heat, and his coat denies the same of the air. He didn't have a coat when he arrived. This one doesn't quite fit him the way it should; either he hasn't gotten around to having it tailored to his narrow frame or he doesn't intend to bother. His leg's braced in steel shanks and leather straps and his crutch is leaning beside him like a crooked staff.

His head turns. Thin neck, sharp jaw, hair projecting in brown sickles behind his ears. Yellow eyes.

"Yes." The ghost of gift exchanges past. He begins to stir. "Here—take my spot. I should go in, anyway."

[cozen]

"No," Bastien says, and, "no no nonono," for good measure. "I have an office."

This gesture is larger, whole arm and the book at the end of it gesturing up the tower, where his private office is, windows and everything, if only he'll be less lazy about climbing the stairs.

"You stay. Or don't, of course, but I'm not taking your spot. I just, uh—the gift you made. It was really lovely. The Scoutmaster wound up with it. I think everyone was too afraid of her to try to take it."

did somebody order a jock

[armd]

The librarian's assistant is that very person putting all the abandoned books back one by one but eventually she follows the breadcrumb trail of them, straight to the perpetrator. This may be a task given to her off-hand by Mobius (who can no longer feel his, and drops things more often than he'd like) but it feels like good library etiquette to generally clean up after oneself. Perhaps this person has forgotten.

She approaches Viktor, his head down, and clears her throat. She is holding two of his books in one hand.

"Excuse me."

[grindset]

Viktor, his head down,

"Yes?"

He doesn't raise it—not until he's finished nudging the shelved books into an opposite lean, gently pushing this one into the gap, and setting them all even again. Long, bony fingers, conspicuous knob at the wrist. He returns his hand to the cart's handle and then lifts his face to see. Maybe she's already talking, maybe not. He takes his time either way.

[armd]

Confused by the careful allocation of the books he chooses to return, she takes advantage of his quick reply to place the two he's 'forgotten' back upon the cart. "You left these behind."

Amongst others, already back in their proper places. Pointedly, "I don't mind shelving them, but there is a returns table."

side room

[muckspout]

Edgard steps from the library into a side room he's never seen before only to find Viktor lying facedown at a table. He curses.

"Don't be dead." He mutters under his breath, shaking the man violently.

[grindset]

"Huhh!"

—is the sound of a man being shaken out of a dead sleep by the hands of a stranger. His arm snaps out from beneath him, creases papers, knocks a book and two pens off the edge.

Wide-eyed and only half-comprehending, he looks up. Another paper slides off the table after the rest. Who the f—

[muckspout]

Edgard shrieks in response to the presumed dead man awaking and books falling to the ground. He quickly runs around to the other side to face him.

"Alright? Thought you were--"

He puts a hand to his chest to take a breath.

"You were so still."

side room

[favoriteanalyst]

Listen. He does not sic Abby on people. Abby sics herself on people. Just so that's settled.

Mobius doesn't mind the company that keeps to himself. Maker knows he's spent nights in the library rather than in bed, keeps blankets and pillows stashed away for himself or others that might seek refuge here. Strange and Viktor are not the only regulars that haunt the library, though the wiry man with the cough is the only one that's seen fit to apparently just live here.

No harm done. Few people use the rooms provided. If ever there's some pressing need, then it might come to a head, but for now, it's fine. It's fun. It's curious, even. It's mid-morning when Mobius arrives at the room with a little knock on the open door. Coffee is more of a premium item as far as a wake up drink goes, but there's always tea aplenty, and a mug is offered up.

(Mugs are sturdy things that he runs little to no risk of breaking if he holds the handle particularly tightly to make sure he doesn't spill any. Semblances of normality are ones he's seeing fit to cling to.)

"What's the topic of study this morning?" he asks amicably. "Anything you want me to keep an eye out for?"

[grindset]

"Infrastructure," he says, without looking up.

His notes are identifiable as chicken-scratch even in their foreign language, with a sudden swap from ink to graphite halfway down the page. It's clear the pen was skipping and he made a hasty swap to sustain momentum.

Presently, he lifts his head.

"Oh— just, eh... put it down," hastily clearing a space, "here. Thank you."

Back to his notes, "Specifically, I'm looking into Kirkwall's infrastructural past as it relates to water and waste management, and the adaptation of old systems into new. Improvement, maintenance, deterioration... sustainability throughout the ages."

This room is one of the smaller ones, and situated such that anyone not in the library habit is likely unaware of it, chosen for this reason plus the uncommon presence of a chaise and a window. The chaise is dressed in spare bedding of a quality others might resent for its shabby age. The window is a panel of coloured glass cut in a pleasing symmetrical design, recently polished to maximum translucency, its frame and hinges restored to fine operable state (not unlike the seventh floor hardware, incidentally). Not a master work, but a treasure nonetheless. At the moment it's tilted open to let a little air in.

Which is good, because otherwise the warm organic closeness of the air would be stifling. There's a definite aura of lived-in bedding in here. One may also note this man does not appear to have washed his hair in several days.

[favoriteanalyst]

Mobius is polite enough not to wrinkle his nose, though he is certainly staring at Viktor when he carefully sets the mug down. (Or as carefully as he can anyway.) He's listening, for sure, finds the fact that that's the topic fascinating even if he himself doesn't fine the topic itself fascinating. City planner, in this young man's other life? Structural engineer of some kind? Someone has to plan out cities, in a fashion.

"Looking to improve the city? Going to petition the Viscount on some alterations?" Or maybe just taking historical cues to figure something else out. There's plenty on the history of Kirkwall as a whole, less so about the city on a physical level though.

But speaking of water and waste management. Mobius calmly sips his tea. Some people just have naturally greasy and unkempt hair. Some people don't care to wash with any regularity. Still. Trying to think if he's personally seen the man leave the library at all save perhaps for a spot of food and a piss as needed.

"I'm considering dumping a bucket of water over your head. When's the last time you've taken good care of yourself?" The key word here is 'good' in that sentence.

research workroom 📝

[portalling]

The last few weeks have felt, oddly, like being back in Kamar-Taj’s research rooms, surrounded by fellow studious sorcerers — except with the occasional cameo by Tony Stark, which is also bizarre. Yet not unwelcome.

Where Viktor tends to camp out in his corner, Strange is restless and fidgety: he tends to get up and pace the room to keep his thoughts moving; sometimes realises he needs additional reference material, and he’ll mutter a curse and go hiking down the stairs to fetch more books; misses having music in the background, to help himself concentrate. Where Viktor has that itch for some undefined missing limb, Strange never had the partner — he’s accustomed to stubbornly ploughing on by himself, burying himself alone in his texts. But they’re functionally both loners, both in love with magic, and so it’s surprisingly easy, actually, to fall into a working rhythm.

This morning, when he came into the offices, he saw the hideously-drawn cat now displayed on the wall. The corner of his mouth twitches; almost a smile.

Throughout the course of the day, he doesn’t remark on it. Instead, he picks up the conversational thread as if they never dropped it:

“Have you found any Theodosian runes that functionally mean the same as your own? It’s maddening to me that both of us have runic magic, but I can’t find the overlap yet. Like having to teach myself a new language, when it feels like I only just got the old one under my belt.”

slides in, reclining pose, rose in teeth

[grindset]

"I know what you mean," Viktor murmurs, more or less to the object he's holding: a certain pair of goggles. That is, most of a certain pair of goggles, which he is currently in the process of dismantling. "There appear to be similarities... perhaps even direct analogues."

He's perched on a stool, one heel hooked on the cross bar, posture terrible, attention fixed down. Another piece comes loose in his careful hand, and this he sets down alongside others in the beginnings of a knolling grid.

"But, as I understand it, even if they are functionally identical, they may not function as expected. It's impossible to say for certain without testing them."

[portalling]

“Which I suppose isn’t technically all that safe. Just jumping in and running each rune directly. It’s like pushing all the buttons to see what they do.”

Which doesn’t mean he’s saying not to do it. As far as he’s concerned, that’s a feature, not a bug; Strange has a terrible tendency of leaping before he looks where it comes to uncharted magic.

The sorcerer’s own table is meticulously organised: books in stacks by topic, and his sending crystal sitting out for dictation rather than notepaper or a blank journal. He doesn’t take notes by hand these days. As he’s poring over some of the illustrations and schematics, another question occurs to him just as quickly:

“Is there a lending library or something where we can examine those armour or weaponry runes firsthand? I got to see a bow with a frost rune the other day, but it’s not the same as looking at it myself.” There’s a wistful cast to Strange’s voice, because seriously, you can’t just dangle something that cool in front of him. The magic is tantalising, and he wants to dig around with it.

workroom.

[heorte]

The interruption comes in the form of a massive dog, sleekly muscled, spackled with scarring, who has strolled into Research offices to give it a brisk inspection, sniffing after the obvious culprit.

But seeing as the Provost is not in attendance, Raudh's snuffling circles round to Viktor's calves. A low snorting huff of breath warms the ankles, before the mabari's great squared head lifts to swing towards the door, where booted footfalls have come echoing up from the stairwell.

Hard to say if these footfalls are attached meaningfully to the beast at Viktor's feet, or simply someone passing by. Anyone's guess, surely.

[grindset]

Prelude to The Interruption is the sound of claws on stone; when the massive, square-headed dog comes trotting in on a mission, Viktor's already looking, paused with a polishing rag in one hand and a brass-ringed lens in the other. He's leaning to see where it's gone when workstations obstruct the view, listening, looking here and there. He's lifting his elbows when that snuffling wet nose reaches his legs, turning his knee in,

turning his attention back to the door more in less in unison with the dog.

They may even be wearing similar expressions.

[heorte]

Yes, there is some similarity in the pair of expressions that meet Ellis when he appears in the doorway.

A beat of quiet follows as Ellis observes them both; Viktor, who he has not seen since the temple. The glint of metal in his hand. Ruadh at his feet.

Ellis whistles softly, and Ruadh's snuffling ceases as he goes trotting back to Ellis' side.

"Is the Provost in?" isn't much of a greeting. Presumably Ruadh has managed that for them.