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

[propulsion]

Tony is prepared to take Viktor's word for it, that the conversation he braved eight flights of stairs for on not-Christmas will be a quickie, but then he mentions that, and—

Well, the hat comes off, first, Tony setting it to one side. He might need to be taken seriously, at some point, scrubbing his hand over his head to muss his hair properly as he says, "I'll give them 'intriguing', sure. Sufficiently ambiguous. What about 'em?"

Next prop: a metal coffee pot that he lifts to check its fullness, deciding there isn't enough to offer Viktor any, and rediverting his focus to his own cup.

[grindset]

Viktor sees ambiguity in these few actions, too, and adjusts his conversational tack. He's watching the coffee flow—not enviously, but in the simple fascination with flowing liquids that comes naturally to any human being—as he replies,

"The potential benefits. The indisputable risks." Front-loading that one, since it's going to come up, and it's better that he bring it up first. By now he's raised his eyes. "As you know, since my appointment to your division, I've been studying lyrium closely, including its historical and ongoing uses as a destructive agent. What she's proposing is an opportunity to direct it to a better purpose."

[propulsion]

There's a twinge in Tony's expression, around indisputable risks, of a sort of 'you're telling me' nature that could imply agreement with the potentiality of danger. It could also be knowing.

It's probably knowing. He was only ever good at poker due to all the money he didn't care about losing.

He flickers his focus back up from his coffee, a little less scrutable as he listens. When he gets to the end, he gives a flicker of a smile, and says, "You'll be shocked to know that most times when people raise de Foncé's research with me, it's to tell me that it's bad and should be stopped and why won't I. No one I have to listen to, so," is murmured echoey into his coffee cup.

It goes clik as he sets it back down. "But you've got a sunnier outlook."

presents you with wonky taxidermy of this thread

[grindset]

"Chronically so."

It's funny because he's not smiling at all. (He is aware of this.) It is, in addition, entirely true—and Viktor doesn't even have to work at it. Optimism comes as naturally to him as the will to take things apart and put them back together. The will to improve the world around him. The will to survive.

"Given the divisive nature of magic even at baseline existence, let alone testing its known applications, I would be shocked had no one complained. Fear shrinks the mind," he says, and while a shrug would not go amiss with his tone, his shoulders don't budge.

By no means is this the first time Viktor has come up against the opinions of other people. It's written all over him, wrought in the angles of his ailing body: every good thing he's ever done has been in defiance of something.

makes it into a second, sillier hat

[propulsion]

It is funny because of that, shown in a twinge of expression as he lifts his cup up to drink from.

Comes back again after Viktor is done, one shoulder bouncing a shrug. "Pre-Enlightenment superstition, church propaganda," Tony says, in that tone that would probably make Byerly Rutyer make a face and mark a notch in a tally somewhere. "Mostly. Direct experience with abuses of power, other times. Tevinter are big experimenters and they're not exactly super popular right now."

He is thinking of Fenris, and Tony's own unique brand of empathy that is too prickled over with impatience to sound very kind.

"But hey, it's whatever. I can handle a pitchfork or two. You want in on the project?"

extremely slow zoom on hat's eyes pointing in different directions

[grindset]

This particular pattern of minute eye movements, blinks, and a minor lift in his perennially poor posture, says that was surprisingly easy. Wysteria had spoken of the need to request in such a way that he was expecting to be grilled—lightly sautéed, at the least. The bailing appears to be good now, or about to become thus, so he should probably clam up and angle for dismissal—

But he likes Tony. He likes that Tony was wearing a funny hat while all alone in his office. And it's—whatever they call it here. Satin holiday. Not really the time for cagey opportunism. Instead, shedding a further layer of rigidity, he says,

"I do."

And then, instead of the thing that next congeals on his tongue, he adds,

"So long as any participants are strictly voluntary, with full understanding of the risks. I think the study shows real promise. It could be... transformative."

[propulsion]

"Participants are voluntary," Tony says, a hand raising to tick off fingers. "Every individual test is subject to approval, which can be petitioned through written report. Volunteers have to be three months old out of a rift at least and have full understanding of risks," a break to gesture at Viktor, acknowledging the echo," and ramifications. Each procedure needs a definitive purpose and projected outcome and a follow up report."

His hands drop back down, slouchy in his chair. So, not exactly blanket permission to go hog wild in the way he might look aside for machine-making.

"Dickerson has oversight as our head healer, I'll probably insist on at least one medical professional in the room at any given time. Seems responsible, right?"

[grindset]

"Agreed. Responsible and necessary," he says, and means it, but it is also clearly a stepping stone to what he wants to say next.

The burden of written requests and reports will be negligible. Viktor can write all manner of laboratory documents in his sleep—legibly, even, when he cares to—though if charged with the task, he will miss having access to a typewriter—and he doesn't doubt that between Wysteria and himself, all manner of convincing purpose and projection may be conceived in service of their interests. On the other hand, neither does he doubt that Tony's bullshit detector operates on a molecular level. Besides, they don't want to insult him. No, the idea of paperwork is fine and good and reasonable—

"Regarding the petitions... what would you say the average turnaround time might be? Approximately."

—and, in his professional opinion as a guy whose respect for regulations may be described as whimsical, a fairly inconsequential thing to disregard if need be.

[propulsion]

That question earns Viktor some raised eyebrows, a quirk of amusement.

"Well," Viktor Lastname, "that depends on what I'm doing that day, did a dragon just attack the nearest city, am I recently transitioning back off keto, and so on. So approximately is, uh, when I feel like it."

Tony leans back in his chair, a loose wristed gesture at where they're at. "But I'm currently shuffling paperwork across my desk on a government holiday, so stay optimistic."

[grindset]

The casual ease with which Stark delivers this shoves it far too close to apathy by Viktor's interpretation. How wretchedly inexplicit. At least being brushed off for a decade of careful research provided a timeline, if a completely preposterous one; this is like being teased. Maybe he is teasing—maybe every request will be immediately fired back. But that may not be so. Viktor doesn't know nearly enough about this man or how he works or deals with people to guess at it, or whether pressing the issue will have an opposite effect to the one intended—

As his dry lips part for a preparatory inhale, the soft rush of air across them highlights in his awareness the new, shallow crack that developed just this morning. This pause, the shortest little pause, is a clear self-check; he says something else instead.

"Should there be cause to expedite, especially in the case of, of precipitate developments—would you grant such a request?"

[propulsion]

Mostly Tony doesn't love committing to a deadline.

But there's a moment to push past the kneejerk and evaluate the guy on the other side of the desk, an open and overt attempt to read past the question for the real questions lurking underneath it, which he senses there like shadows.

"Precipitate like how?" isn't laden with suspicion or implicit accusation; it's a short, prompting kind of question. A sense of: use your words, even if they're less impressive, and are intended to be delivered in tiny font at the bottom of the page.

[grindset]

If only he were concerned with looking impressive—that, at least, is a self-imposed burden. That which compels him to squirm his way through this conversation is not something he can shed with just a little personal growth.

"Like... if a trial were to have some completely unforeseen result," is so obviously just a different version of what he just said, it might be less insulting if he'd actually pulled out a thesaurus to rework it. He is just as obviously aware of that. Course correction, precariously close to what he actually means: "If— if the subject were to take a turn for the worse, in a way not so easily corrected by a healing spell."

If they fuck it up. That's what he wants it to sound like.

[propulsion]

"And in the course of shit hitting the fan, you'd want to use hitherto unapproved mad science to counteract?"

Just to be clear.

[grindset]

"It's not... mad science, it's—"

It's real frustration that now bubbles up. If Viktor weren't already perched at the edge, he would be sitting forward in this chair. A restless nudge in his posture, a resetting of his grip on the crutch's neck, has similar effect.

"If it came down to it, if I thought it could work, yes." There's a certain fragility to this conviction; he wants very badly to be understood, and can't bring himself to make it any more explicit. "Wouldn't you?"

[propulsion]

Tony flicks his hand a little, dismissing objection to mad science. It's a term of endearment; don't worry about it.

Listens. Places a hand on the desk, fingertips only, thinking through the thing he wants to say and how he wants to say it. Finally, "In the course of experimentation in which we're working with living test subjects, and their care is our responsibility,"

premise established, his hand relocates a few inches aside,

"if anyone makes a decision that is needlessly reckless and dangerously, wildly outside of the parameters of that experiment, a little bit of extra paperwork isn't going to do anything for me. Or them. Or you," brighter, while we're listing people involved in this hypothetical.

Turns his hand, a little beseeching. "Call me. Or do what you have to according to your best judgment, and see what happens." No threat there, it just is what it is. They're all adults.

[grindset]

Perhaps it's that very flick that inspires the moment of restlessness, a faint and fleeting annoyance that nonetheless relieves some modicum of pressure, like a well-timed clap on the back, physicality removed. From there the hypothetical sweeps him along. Premise established, reason explained, and there ought to be more coming, a warning, a preemptive jerk on the reins; he is prepared to hear it. No such thing arrives. Do what you have to, see what happens, and that's all.

It's surprising, how surprising it is, that he can sidle up so closely to laying bare his intentions and still receive what appears to be faith in return. He is earnest when he nods, and quiet when he says—without pause for recalibration—

"I will."

He will use his judgment. He will do what he must, and see what comes of it. It doesn't take a tremendous leap of logic to surmise that them and you might be the same man; he can only hope he hasn't made it too obvious simply by showing some preemptive investment. (This worry is not founded in total awareness of how intense he can get when engaging any of his interests.)

"Thank you," he adds, and means it.

This time, when he rocks gently in the seat, it's to gather momentum to stand.