player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.

Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.

Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.

Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.

Comments

Julius

[overharrowed]

OTA

[overharrowed]

I. Granitefell

The rescue team will find Julius ready to help — insistent on it — but he's visibly a mess, dirty and exhausted and very slightly limping. Blood has dried on his left forearm, and he's done his best to clean his hands but it is more or less a lost cause before the reinforcements arrive.

He's aware he may get approached with questions, and while he clearly defers to Yseult when appropriate, he seems to still be taking his duties of keeping the company informed seriously. He also may give the impression of a man somewhat sleepwalking, but he's resistant to any insistence that he rest or stand aside while they're preparing to move.

II. Gallows

For once, Julius feels like he doesn't have enough work to do. Of course, that's an illusion; there's more than enough, especially given how much they've all lost. But it's not enough to keep his mind as occupied as he'd like. He helps out with Diplomacy, down a leader, and takes on whatever anyone will give him. It means he can be found in his office as much or more than usual, sorting through correspondence and reports. Or, sometimes, staring out the window.

He can't help wandering, though, noticing how empty the Gallows feels. Not only his heavy personal loss but the quiet of the training yard, the muted conversations in the dining hall, the free seats at the tables in the library. The way it reminds him of Kinloch Hold turns his stomach; he's eating noticeably less, though enough to keep moving forward.

Julius fills his time because he doesn't know what else to do. But the way it's ripped him open is visible even to those who don't know him well.

III. Wildcard

[I'm doing a few bespoke starters, but please hit me up OOCly if you'd like to discuss setting up something more specific than the above will allow and we haven't already talked about it.]

For Tsenka

[overharrowed]

Julius meant to go see Tsenka almost as soon as he returned to the Gallows, but the return itself is a strange combination of chaos and solemnity. He is immediately bundled off, still clutching both his own staff and Marcus's, to have his minor wounds seen to and the road dirt cleaned from him.

(As much as he'd been among those raising the point it made more sense to burn their dead back at Granitefell, in Kirkwall he's surprised at the feeling of new loss that comes from leaving Marcus's corpse on the wagon. Perhaps it's just that it's a new step away from a world where Marcus was still alive.)

Still. Tsenka deserves the chance to ask him about what happened if she wants to, and a hand extended in sympathy regardless. It just feels difficult to gauge the right time until he and Petrana come across Marcus's will. That, finally, gives him a concrete errand; something she needs to be aware of, a natural moment to seek her out.

He's not limping anymore after a few day's rest, but he looks distinctly older than he did a week ago.

the last will & testament.

[ipseite]

Pain can always wait.

When Julius and Marcus had been missing, and none had been able to reassure her of their safe return, it had been a terrible stillness— Petrana folded up like a fan, waiting, her gaze fixed and her hands still, not rejecting kindnesses offered her so much as refusing even to acknowledge them. When she had wished to pace she had sat at (his) desk and found work and waited, in an agony that she did not name.

Brokenhearted, furious, there is nothing more to wait for — the bodies returned, the news grim, the doubts silenced. Julius has returned to her but Marcus has not, and the ugliness of her own anger is breathtaking, the way it chokes her. Julius, upon whom she can rely, and Marcus—

and Marcus—

“We will have to see to his affairs,” she is saying, brisk, jerking open this drawer and that, smoothing her hand within and biting back a stronger word than is her wont at a splinter of wood snagged in her finger, drawing it back along with a sheaf of papers. “He must keep his invoices somewhere — I'll not be surprised by a bill for a coat coming due—”

The words are not loud enough to be, truly, intended for Julius; the uncharacteristic speed of them, the undercurrent of irritation. She is surrounded by his frivolous things and not him and she is so

so

so angry.

Closed to Flint

[overharrowed]

There's no taking time off in a war.

It's a blessing, in some ways. Julius has been thinking, the last day or two, of Kinloch Hold in the aftermath of Uldred, how the Blight gave them all an urgent reason to keep moving forward. He's aware that in a larger organization, or in peacetime, it's likely someone would insist he stop. He's truly not sure how he would avoid going mad, if they did.

There are, of course, some things to attend to related to Marcus and Granitefell. But generally, he is clinging to his routine with both hands. And so, without advance discussion, he shows up for his regular check-in with the commander at the normal time, notes under one arm. If he's a bit ashen, well, none of them are well. (Julius is the one who found what was left of John Silver.) His expression isn't forced into false cheer, but he's found a businesslike neutral and seems committed to following through on it.

Bastien

[cozen]

[altusimperius]

[while this is occurring]

The chatter from the crystal has become deafening and nonsensical, enough to make Benedict flee the office entirely, hurry downstairs and find something, anything that he can do to occupy his mind: in this case it's making coffee, which he does with his thoughts millions of miles away, and it's only when he returns to the Diplomacy office door that he realizes with a heart-shuddering jolt that he's made two cups.
But the recipient isn't here. Won't ever be here. Unless there's been a mistake? They'll all turn up still, surely.

Rather than go all the way back downstairs to dump it out, he shoulders his way back into the office and pauses, his heart skipping a full beat at the sight of a dark-haired, mustachioed figure sitting on the floor with Whiskey.
"Fuck," he gasps, coffee sloshing from both mugs onto the stone floor, and then he falls entirely silent, staring at Bastien with a lost expression.

OTA

[cozen]

i. work.

Beginning from the early hours of the morning when the announcement is made, Bastien haunts the Diplomacy office and workroom, helping to organize documents and making sure the various half-completed efforts don't fall through the sudden, massive cracks. He does some delegation. He makes some decisions, when they fall into his lap and can't wait and aren't worth bothering the remaining Division Heads about.

But Byerly's directive to Benedict to make sure Bastien wasn't saddled the job was both entirely correct, in its estimation of what it would do to him—especially under the circumstances—and entirely unnecessary. There is very little room for it to seem like it is even somewhere on a long list of possibilities. Bastien never sits down in the Diplomacy office at all, let alone at the desk. He drags work out by the armful to his desk in the workroom. The clarifying notes he puts into some of the files are not for his own reference. Decisions that can wait are set aside for someone else, once there is someone else. Whenever he goes downstairs, he takes an armful of his or Byerly's things with him to his own room—where, privately, he is deciding what to keep and what to leave behind. He is moving out, not moving in.

But while that's a work in progress, the central tower is still the easiest place to find him during those first few days, letting cigarettes burn down while he scribbles notes and then scratches them out to try again, more slowly and carefully, so anyone else might actually be able to read them someday.

ii. post-rites.

“How do you decide,” he says to someone not long after the body burns—“the ashes.”

He is not trying to have this conversation with the ashes in hand. They’re in an urn. A bit of pottery serving as an urn. In his room, not here. He is trying to have this conversation while sitting in the dining hall and staring at a potato that he knows he needs to eat, sooner or later.

A moment to collect the words to actually put that thought into full sentences.

“If you don’t know what they wanted. Do you think it matters what they wanted? If I were a ghost watching someone throw dust of me around I think I would find it a little funny.”

iii. departure attempt (maybe) (maybe actual departure, tbd).

With different priorities, he would already be gone. The day after the body burned he would have packed a bag so small no one would look at it twice, taken the ferry ashore as if on an errand with the dog along for some exercise, and never been heard from again.

But he has, despite his better judgment, acquired things. A cello. Byerly's violin—a gift, he knows, but if anyone living has a claim to it they will have to catch him. Books from Byerly and from Ellis that he can't bring himself to leave behind. Sentimental clothing, of all things.

An urn.

Even leaving the printing press behind with a note attached to say it should belong to Madame de Foncé after the war, if she wants it, and otherwise might be sold—even so he requires a cart to move what he is taking from the tower to the ferry, and the cart clatters on the stone walkways, and Whiskey mopes along behind him and requires several pauses to wait for her to catch up.

But he does it in the early morning hours, just before sunrise, in a faint nod toward the concept of stealing away unseen.

viewing and visitation ota.

[tender]

The majority of the work to cleanse the worst of the battle's brutality from those who return toted by
wagons happens in the infirmary, halved between Stephen Strange and Derrica. It is quietly rendered, done to the best of both their ability.

And when they have done what they can, the last care they can bestow, between them they transport the dead from the silence of the infirmary to the hall set aside for those they have been tending.

Stephen and Derrica shroud them in white linen. Derrica draws the cold runes, careful sweeps of her fingers locking the magic into place before Stephen lays the dead down to rest, to be claimed and farewelled by those closest to them. They lay candles beside each of the fallen, so no one need linger in the dark.

It doesn't happen all at once. But by and by, all those escorted back to the Gallows from the devastation of Granitefell are returned to their colleagues, to be taken to pyre or burial, or whatever form of resting place they might have desired.

[ OOC / Consider this a general setting prompt open to everyone to use as a catch-all space. Please feel free to use it as a starter space for solo, contemplative threads, for threads with Derrica or Strange or both of them, as a space for starters for other characters, or whatever other content your heart so desires. ]

solo contemplative thread (sct)

[cozen]

Bastien visits the body out of necessity. To make sure he wouldn't be embarrassed by how he looks on such an important occasion. To tuck a thin envelope into his burial shroud, just in case there is some magic in a pyre that carries things into the Fade. To let Whiskey sniff the linen in hopes it makes her understand and stop searching for him. Through all of this he avoids touching the skin—not out of squeamishness around the dead, but because he has a good memory, and his fingers would never forget the cold.

And because this isn’t Byerly. The sliver of visible eyes are vacant, with none of the misery or merriment that marked By in turns. The mouth has nothing glib nor shockingly raw to say anymore. His posture where he lies is not elegant like By was when awake or ungainly and sprawling like when he was asleep.

It’s a shed skin. It would be like caressing a clipped toenail.

Bastien does fix his hair. Or unfixes it, more accurately, to add a rakish tousle over his forehead. His hair feels the same in a way his skin would not.

When he talks, standing beside this husk of what he loved and a bewildered, bereft dog, it isn’t to the body. It’s to the air, where he imagines the Veil to be. Where a loosed soul might be pressed against the other side to try to tell him it’s alright, or he’s terribly sorry, or a dozen other things Bastien would not want to hear right now.

"That’s it? You make me believe it is all possible and then you take off? Fuck you."

It’s the kind of conversational fuck you that might answer a low blow of a joke or a particularly unexpected win at cards. He’s only a little angry. Angry enough to refuse, from behind the shutters that slammed shut as soon as Byerly's name was left off the list of survivors, to make a scene crying over the body. But no more than that.

"You promised to jump the fence for me when I get there. Remember. If you get distracted by His radiance and make me sneak in after you, I’ll be really cross about it, so—don’t forget."

That’s all. They left so little unsaid, after all, once they'd warmed up to saying it.

Whiskey, stubborn and lazy even when she isn’t confused and whining beside her unmoving unbreathing wrong-smelling master, does not want to follow him out. In the end, a little too desperate to escape the room to be patient about it, he has to crouch and heft up all eighty of her pounds and carry her.

visitation. closed to stephen strange.

[propulsion]

Loitering about the entrance of the hall that's been set aside for viewing, Tony thinks about how—the air smells weird. Not like you'd expect. Candle wax, something like fresh snow, something sharp and herbal.

He's not a wreck, to look at him. Neatly dressed, neatly groomed, sunglasses hanging off his collar rather than disguising his eyes, which do not in fact need it—bright, sharp. His energy is restless even while standing in place, a shift of his weight between his feet, hands in jacket pockets, a roving casting around of a look that absorbs the sight of sixteen shrouded bodies, and then flicks to where he spies Stephen Strange.

Incongruous, he hails him with a raised hand. When Stephen gets nearer—

"Some party."

Flint

[katabasis]

[Bespoke starters only; hmu on plurk or disco and I can scrape something together for us, or just wildcard me.]

► Yseult

[katabasis]

Dispatching hands to Granitefell to assist with whatever constitutes as cleanup; over land travel into and back out of the interior Marches spotted with Imperium patrols and outriders (and ravaging dracolisk cavalry); the brusque rearrangement of rota duties and communiques to see that what few hands are left in the Gallows can see it made secure should some follow up attack come here to Kirkwall—

These things take time. Energy. Paper, and the lists written on them. A great deal of thought, and planning, and something that looks like the meticulous patience. If these things had a sound, it might be easily mistaken for the ticking of a carefully tuned dwarven clock, and not the tinny sound of a hammer striking a chisel reverberating through a large, hollowed space.

At some point in those intervening hours, Flint had distantly considered the possibility that this would be the last straw for the Walrus men. Having delivered the news of their Quartermaster's demise, he would wake up one day, and look out into the harbor to see that the ship has slipped her moorings and made off into the night. It would have been prudent to take precautions against this possibility. Commandeered what now will make up a small fortune in unpaid Riftwatch wages and reallocated it to the ship's crew, maybe. Beaten them to the impulse to carry off with an ordered that they make directly for Antiva to link up with their partners there. Instead, he'd simply seen to other business. There's enough of it. Had been. Will be. And there still lies the dark shape of the Walrus tugging gently at her anchor chains in the harbor.

Stood here on the Gallows' ferry slip, Flint finds himself studying the ship rather than the smaller boat presently hacking its way across the dark water toward this landing, or any of the drawn and exhausted faces of the latter's passengers.

Ellie

[notathreat]

Granitefell & The Gallows: OTA

[notathreat]

I. Granitefell

Ellie knows she should scout the area and make sure it's free of threats, but when Vanya offers to do it she sees it for the kindness that it is. She lets him.

She keeps going over the checklist in her mind during the approach, during the aftermath, making sure she's done everything she can, everything she was supposed to do.

Ellie disappears for a time into the ashes and wreckage of the village. When she comes back she's clutching Maimer in one hand, holding it like it might try to leap free of her fingers. In the other she's carrying Viktor's thaumoscope. There is dried blood all down her front and crusted on her hands, none of it hers, but she doesn't seem to notice.

With singleminded purpose, she tracks down each and every one of the fallen with an anchor shard, calling back through the crystals to report locations of bodies and too-familiar names. At some point she is joined by Ruadh, Ellis' red-coated Mabari, who follows her from horror to horror.

She keeps going, doggedly moving. Makes sure every one of those twenty-one names is accounted for. She helps move corpses, both strangers and the people she loves. Her eyes are dry, but Ellie's not exactly there.

II. Gallows

Back at the Gallows, Ellie throws herself singularly into her work. It's obsessive, and obviously so. She barely remembers to eat, definitely doesn't remember to sleep. She might if she's reminded, but only then.

Before the services, she throws open the door of her room to air out the smell of paint, and her room's a wreck too, everything left where it's fallen and undisturbed since then.

There's a blood-smeared funeral shroud in the works, minimal and messy embroidery because she can't sew worth shit. Her hands are good for stitching skin and not much else. Instead there are painted chariots ringing the edges. They are meticulous until they aren't, until the paint smears together in unrecognizable smudges.


III. Wildcard

Kitchens OTA - even I thought I was joking

[wearyallalone]

Vanya has dealt with enough loss to realize that nothing in particular is going to help right now, and likely for some time to come. He carries the names of those lost, some heavier than others, just like everyone around him is doing. There's no way out but through.

That said, there are some things that can make it worse, and it occurs to him in the early morning hour on Sunday that one of them will shortly be clear to everyone. He'd only really spoken to Jude recently, but the rifter had been impossible to miss, invested as he was in everyone around him and their well-being. And the first Sunday without him will sting.

Vanya is aware he isn't much of a cook, and that he may be sent away for turning up in the kitchens before breakfast at all. Maybe he'll try to work the method out and fail to produce anything edible. (Or, maybe, someone else with better skills will have the same idea and he can just offer to help with things like cracking eggs or stirring.) But it feels like it's at least worth trying. Given everything. He wants to try.

[tender]

It stalls Derrica, entering the kitchens still damp from the baths, not expecting to find anyone but perhaps the support staff who wouldn't mind her brewing a cup of tea.

The moment of uncertain confusion resolves itself as Derrica recalls the day, observes the ingredients laid out across the table, the routine she had skirted the periphery of but never quite participated in regularly enough to be expected. Others though—

Jude had such a presence, a way of creating ease where he went. The pancakes may be the most tangible part of his absence, but the wound his death creates feels like a crater, a great gulf of open space amplified by the fifteen who went with him. Even the cooks will miss him, she thinks. Derrica wonders if they had realized Jude is gone, if they laid the ingredients on the table or if Vanya collected them himself.

"Are you expecting others?" is posed very carefully, not meant to create offense or frighten him off whatever he is about to begin here.

derrica

[tender]

[ bespoke content only, holler if you want something/wildcard if the spirit moves you. ]

loxley.

[tender]

Loxley is such a welcome shape, standing in the doorway of the infirmary. Derrica, crystal swinging from its chain at her throat, pauses with her hands full of bandages meant to cushion the potions packed with extreme haste into the crate alongside her on the table to look at him. The relief at his presence here, safe and whole, is so intense that she struggles to breathe around it for a minute before she simply dumps the bandages into the crate and crosses to him.

Takes his hands first, squeezing tightly, as she looks into his face and says, "There's something I need to tell you, before we go."

A terrible thing. Something she can't protect him from any other way but this.

Benedict OTA

[altusimperius]

Ia. In the Diplomacy Office

He spends all his time there now, even taking meals up the long flights of stairs to eat them in solitude, sitting folded into the chair at his desk while the Ambassador's office sits dark and quiet behind him. He only goes into it during the day, when the sunlight makes it look normal, like he's just waiting for Byerly to wake up or to come in from this or that engagement, and it continues like this for several days until he finally runs out of work to do.

Ib. After Finding the Letter

It was a choice between leaving finding more to do or leaving (and therefore abandoning?) the office entirely, and Benedict knew which one would end up thrusting him more quickly into a world of perilous uncertainty, so he's opted for the former.
What he found has stopped him dead, and he sits on the floor in front of Byerly's desk for what eventually turns into hours, holding the parchment and staring at nothing.

II. Outside Abby & Clarisse's Door

Rifters vanish. It's what they do. Unless they don't.
Late at night, when the hall is silent, and still wearing the same clothes he had on days ago, Benedict comes to kneel in front of the chamber door. He presses a rune to the ground, placing over it a black-waxed candle, up from which he curls his hand to draw a flame: an Andrastian sendoff, in the Tevinter style. Without intervention the flame won't go out, even after the candle is a puddle of wax.

Office

[sprent]

She knows he's been spending a lot of time in there. All of them, suddenly adrift without a division head, have been silently haunting various parts of the office each. Gela finds she has to have things to do or she'll sit and think for hours about everything and everyone, even people who aren't here and have nothing to do with what happened, her father, Pavia, Iona, whom she owes a letter.

At some point she wonders painfully about what Jude would do, if he were in this situation, and decides he'd probably try to feed everybody.

So she quietly leaves the office. When she comes back it's with warm bread rolls that she didn't bake, but she thinks it will be okay. It's a little nerve-wracking to try to approach anybody else and risk pulling them momentarily from their own personal fog of grief, but she tries, with Benedict. She brings the basket to his desk.

Pushing it across the wood toward him, she tells him simply, "Have one."

petrana de cedoux. ota.

[ipseite]

i. her office.

The work does not stop.

Of course— the blow to their manpower is, beyond any individual and unimaginable grief, quantifiably significant. If they were stretched thin before, papering over the workload with camaraderie, then they are at a breaking point now. She had thought, at first, that her office would be a reprieve from the oppressive closeness of her quarters — that she might think of anything but the myriad of small ways that Marcus had left his mark on her space and herself by burying herself in her work.

Still there are translations to do, reports to finish, proposals to draft and reexamine. The visit to the University of Orlais had been productive, of course, she had taken the opportunity to speak with linguists there and she would like to build upon those relationships,

she dabs the page in front of her with a cloth, fetched perhaps ten minutes earlier for the purpose, and presses the back of her knuckles beneath her eyes as she takes a breath and watches her ink dry a third time. She had forgotten, of course, that it is John's office, too.

His desk has always been empty more than it isn't. She sets the cloth aside and begins again.

i. marcus's office.

Vysvolod does not come when called, and cannot be found in any of the places she expects, and her heart is in her throat as she ascends the stairs of the central tower to the office floor—

a last resort, and surely unlikely, but there he is. He sits patiently, waiting at the closed door of the office for the captain of the guard, his paws folded over and his great heavy jaw resting upon them — at the susurration of her skirts, coming around the corner, he lumbers to his feet with what she might ascribe to him as uncharacteristic disappointment to see her, or at least, to see only her.

“Come away,” she says, snapping her fingers and pointing at the stone floor beside her.

Vysvolod, gazing up at her and then casting a longing look to the closed door, lumbers back down, unmoving.

Petrana swallows, standing in the hallway, conscious of how mad she might appear if she were to start shouting at her hound.

i. the harbour's edge.

Nearly a full week, and nearly the end of her tether.

Each morning she has jerked Marcus's clothes aside in their shared wardrobe, she has tripped over his boots, she has looked at the cup he left on the table beside their bed and thought that she truly must return it to the kitchen. Each morning, she has woken beside Julius, disoriented to find Vysvolod most often in the bed that Marcus had insisted upon for him, and Marcus still absent.

She has been sitting alone at the edge of their bed, unmoving, for nearly half an hour when she surges forward and blindly sweeps an armful of ornate tailoring from the shelves, that green coat of which he was so infuriatingly proud, spending all of his month's pin money on the stupid thing. She forgets her amusement, the warmth of his hands, the way Julius had folded and how pleasant that had been — she sees only this nonsense thing, a waste of money, that is still in her wardrobe, without him.

By the time she reaches the water's edge, away from where the ferry slip lands, the weight of embroidered brocades has left her arms aching. She stands at the edge after she's tossed them into the sea, finding Marcus's brass case in the reticule sewn into her skirts and she watches as some sink and others float limp and misshapen at the surface, lighting one of the last cigarettes he'd rolled with his own hands with a flame licked off the end of her thumb.

That stupid coat does not sink.

i. wildcard.

( petrana is having a quiet, sustained grief tantrum. surprise me! or hmu on plurk or disco to wrangle something specific. )

marcus' office

[tender]

It had occurred to her, in that first flurry of desperate activity, that she should have stopped to see Petrana before leaving the Gallows.

Derrica had thought maybe Julius would ask it of her. But he hadn't. And Derrica hadn't.

She would have come apart if she had, maybe. It is hard to be near Petrana or Julius, and recognize something near to the twin of her own grief in them.

It is hard to say if she thought she'd find this particular tableau playing out in front of Marcus' office. (It will not be his anymore, she thinks, and some hot, brittle emotion seizes in her chest to consider the whole of that knowledge.) Derrica had meant to open the door. Sit at his desk. Fish a cigarette from one of the drawers, if she is lucky.

Instead—

"Madame de Cedoux," and then, softer, "Petrana."

A small plea, a request for her attention.

Nina, OTA

[prelest]

i. Granitefell
Nina comes to help. At the start, she cuts a rather strange figure on the battlefield: her lovely clothes and feminine manner make her into a rose amongst the rubble. But there's no flinching, for all that; when blood soaks her hems, when she touches dead flesh, when she crouches over a rotting stinking wound, she is steady-handed and certain.

She's here to heal when needed. And, when needed, she's here to grab an ankle or a wrist and lift the body onto the cart. So by the time the work is done, she's sweating and dirty, hair coming loose, dirty as any others. But she's here.

ii. The Gallows
She has the advantage of not knowing well any of the dead. And so she does what anyone with a bit of emotional remove would do in this situation: she tends to those who have been wounded, physically and spiritually. Healing wounds, of course. But also bringing food and water to those sitting vigil. Bringing wine. And, in extraordinary circumstances, calming the truly distraught - using a bit of her power to slow their breath, to ease panic or paroxysms of grief.

iii. Wildcard
[ you know how this works ]

ii & some light handwaving

[portalling]

This is the silver lining of being rifters who are not from here — who haven’t been here for years — who haven’t inextricably sewn themselves into the fabric of the Gallows yet. The pain is less. Strange is feeling wrung-out and exhausted from his grim work, but it’s not the same as what’s currently happening in the entrance hall. He hasn’t lost a best friend, a spouse, a sibling.

The sorcerer occasionally speaks quietly to a visitor, guides them to the right blanket-wrapped body. Then he makes himself scarce, moving away as quickly and discreetly as he can, so he’s not intruding on these private moments between mourner and mourned.

He stands just outside the entrance hall instead, a kind of vigil himself. When Nina passes by and hands over some wine, he gives a grateful nod. After their conversation on the crystals, earmarking her as a healer, he had noted her contributions at Granitefell. Had re-introduced himself then, although they hadn’t had much opportunity to speak between all the… well. Everything.

“I didn’t mean,” he says, “for that request for your assistance to become so relevant so soon.”

yseult | open

[hassaran]

I. Granitefell

Yseult is as streaked with blood and soot as any of the living, dull smears across her face (as if she's tried to wipe it clean with a dirty sleeve) cut through by a single vibrant red trickle of dried blood from hairline to jaw. One sleeve has been rent by dracolisk acid, the edges of the holes bleached grey-white beneath later stains, glimpses of burnt skin beneath. At times she may be caught moving gingerly, favoring a hip, but she doesn't go looking for treatment.

When the others arrive, the pyres for the villagers' dead are already burning. Yseult is where she would be expected to be: in the center of things, delegating tasks as simply as possible, helping surviving villagers load the wagon that will take them on to a safer town, collecting what supplies and personal belongings can be salvaged from the remains of the camp. Though this latest round of smoke has reduced her voice to a painfully hoarse crackle, she will direct the reinforcements, too—whether that is to the location of a particular body or to a task, though the to-do list is the shorter of the two.

II. The Gallows

If anyone had been asked to guess what form Yseult's grief might take, the answer would likely have been: quiet, contained, buried beneath work. And so it is. There is light beneath her office door at nearly all hours, but there always has been. She is often found at her desk, neatly dressed, hair braided, a report before her, a pen in hand, as always. Sometimes it looks as if nothing has changed. Other days she may be caught: with eyes too red and shadowed to be fully cosmeticked away even by her powers of disguise, or even, once or twice, asleep at her desk with head pillowed on arms or curled up on the sofa by the window, a gray tabby cat by her shins.

She eats in the dining hall, never without a report to read as she consumes whatever is on offer. She works on the training grounds, throwing knives by the dozen into a target or hitting a dummy with a sword until she can't lift her arms. She visits the eyrie to tend to Pockets and Hugo, she collects the mail in her pigeonhole, she leads the division's biweekly meeting and remains in the workroom to address any questions or concerns, all the normal steps in her routine carried out as expected. Sometimes, on hot nights, she can be found up on the ramparts or the roof of a tower, laid back on the stones with her feet dangling and her face turned to the sea breeze.

She has always maintained a professional reserve—she is polite, approachable but not chatty, and she remains that now. Her office door is open more often than not, she is responsive to agents by crystal, will discuss reports and plan missions and answer questions. She plays the role of Scoutmaster as well as ever, and she has always been difficult to read. But despite that, despite the insistence on business as usual, it's not hard, actually, to see the difference in her. Being inscrutable requires the presence of something hidden beneath the surface, hinted at but held, tantalizingly, just out of reach. Whatever that was is gone, a personality made conspicuous only now by its absence.

II, office

[untiltheyarent]

Part of Fifi's morning routine involves coming in to give the Scouting Head office its standard sweeping/polishing/wipedown, and generally when Yseult is in, this might also include a quiet briefing on any gossip or other significant details she'd heard in the previous day.

Today is no different, and Fifi arrives exactly on time as always, her footsteps silent and her presence announced only by the light rap on the door as she opens it. Once inside, she pauses at the sight of Yseult's (presumably) sleeping form curled over her desk, and, after a moment's decision, closes the door behind herself anyway.
They can talk later, or not. But she still needs to clean, and she begins to go about this as quietly as possible.

florent vascarelle. ota.

[deuselfmachina]

GRANITEFELL;

When aid comes, Florent is no longer sitting in his half-collapse by his friend's unmoving mauled body, in his nightshirt.

No, he is dressed, now, his hair tied back away from his face where dirt and worse still clings at the edges where he didn't clean up properly. Rust-red cakes a pointed elf ear, catching in the edge of his eyebrow, mingles with dust and sweat at his throat. He is dirty and pale and, apparently, unharmed, and he isn't being of very much use to anyone. Occasionally, an instruction or a request for assistance comes. His obedience is borderline malicious compliance, and in between, he's been unusually unexpressive, but also without need. If he cannot make himself useful, at least he asks for nothing.

Find him with his back turned to where bodies are being loaded on the wagons, cross-legged and pressing his thumbnail against that little sliver of green light in his palm. Or, earlier, picking through the remains of the camp, in search of useful items to fetch back to where supplies are being gathered, his mouth drawn into a tight line and his eyes distant.

Or, later, the road back is long. He walks towards the back of the caravan, and lingers back all the more when he feels awful, clenching sorrow catch in his chest.

THE GALLOWS;

He does not want to go into the room with all of the bodies.

But Florent does linger outside of it. Sits a little ways off from its entrance, one afternoon. The dulcimer balanced on his knees is a fine instrument, and his fingers working over it are a little unpracticed. He is no natural musician, not even close, but he had taken up some hobbies since his pseudo-imprisonment. His shackling to this awful place.

Still, the sounds coming from it are not unpleasant. Simple, not too cheerful. Occasionally, the edge of a finger slips, hits a wrong sounding note, but there is no looping back to correct it.

Granitefell

[sprent]

Gela cannot look at the dead. In Granitefell she deals with the people who are alive instead, trying to stretch that work out because there is very little of it to do. There is a pale shock about her, evident in her wide eyes, the slight tremble in her body. Upset children keep her hands mercifully full.

When she comes away from them for a break, and to drift toward the ruined village out of a detached, morbid curiousity, she finds him there, fossicking around in the wreckage.

Gela, drawing closer, raises her voice to him before she can fully reach him. He looks a million miles away.

"Any toys, in there, d'you think?" It would be good to have some distraction on hand.

mobius - ota

[favoriteanalyst]

library
He sets to work, between the knowing and the return of their people, the bodies. Because there's no use in fretting and hemming and hawing in wait.

So he determines that what is needed is more complete knowledge. To combat this in the future. So, at first, a few vaguer and broader topics involving mounted combat and strategies, dracolisk anatomy, what he can find on the history of Tevinter battle plans.

But there's more. He doesn't know enough about medicine, he realizes. Surely if he can find just the right old tome in some ancient elven tongue regarding dracolisk poison, there might be help. Methods of dealing with acids and chemical burns. Yes, that's a start. And he doesn't know enough about armor and the making thereof. They should revamp the standard armor sets, some thicker layers of material best suited to stave off the point of an arrow, yes, but also the slash of a sword. He doesn't know enough about the funerary rites of other religions, just the basics of some. The texts he can dig out regarding those are more difficult, not in locating, but simply difficult for the subject matter. He doesn't know enough about--

He doesn't know enough. Every now and then he forgets himself, making a motion to someone who isn't there as he scours the library. "Abby, can you find me the--" And then he remembers. Takes a moment to rest his head on a rung of the ladder he's balanced on and breathe through the wave of guilt and pain.

The amount of books that take up tables in the vicinity of the desk are too much for any one person to do more than a brief flip through, but he's gathering up as much as he thinks could be useful. It might not actually be useful.

chapel
Mobius normally prays quietly, off to the side, out of the way, hands in his lap and head bowed.

Today it seems like he's made of electricity, something within him on absolute fire, the way he storms in, no heed to anyone else taking their time to grieve or comfort. He chucks a book (Death, and the Fade: Musings on the Hereafter) at the Andrastian altar up front and stares up at--Andraste, or the Maker, or whatever might be listening.

"You're an asshole!" He ignores any scandalized gasps and throws his arms out desperately. "You chose some of these people; they did as asked. And then You take them away in one fell swoop? Is this some kind of joke?" His gestures are emphatic, sharp and rude. "They're all here to make the world better and safer out of the hands of one of Your biggest enemies. Is that not good enough? What, would You rather we all let the world burn? Cuz that's what's gonna happen! I'm starting to think You pick people just to dick around with them out of spite."

Maybe he needs to not do this in a public place.

wildcard
[hit meeeee in the before the bodies come in and the after]

chapel

[heartstumbles]

Peter doesn't consider himself religious, here or back home, but he has learned a little of the Andrastian faith from the time he's spent in the library and his work for the Research division. He has glimpsed into a chapel or two briefly, just to get an idea of what they look like, but, otherwise, he usually avoids religious spaces here in the Gallows and Kirkwall generally.

He's trying to keep busy himself, his own grief hot and raw like an exposed nerve; he's either in the library or out in the training yard, throwing himself into work or training. Today finds him walking past a chapel, just in time to hear Mobius' rant. His eyes widen as he listens. Not that he necessarily disagrees but given what he knows of religion and tension back home, insulting the Maker and Andraste, at a time when other people are trying to pray and seek their own comfort, seems like a Bad Idea with a capital B.

Without thinking, Peter rushes in, and tries to diffuse the situation. He approaches Mobius intently but cautiously.

"Hey, hi! Um, maybe we should take a walk outside? I hear yelling is a lot more effective when it echoes back at you," Peter suggests.

tony stark.

[propulsion]

hightown house. closed to wysteria.

[propulsion]

It's been a minute since he became Provost and stopped frequenting the Hightown house so—frequently. He remembers when it had felt a little like a naughty kids' clubhouse, this haunted ass rundown mansion. They might have made a sign: no Thandruils, keep out.

Or anyone, outside of this weird little arrangement, outside of three extremely different people who, nevertheless, had more than their fair share in common. Here, the table in the kitchen, talking rapidfire over Ellis' head while he patiently listened, maybe sometimes did that little brow-curl thing when he caught something he thought maybe he should allow to sink in. There, a card game and a losing hand, and then in that room, bringing in some coffee as the hour pushed later and later and they were spending lamp oil on a conversation over something—

They did that a lot. A lot of talking past, over, around.

Tony lets his hand drop to Ruadh's dense head, ruffling his ears in a reflexive sort of way, like it'll ease the catch that hooks in his chest. And it does, actually. Paused here in the hallway in his pursuit of seeking out Wysteria. It isn't lost on him that the usual traffic through this house has thinned way out, in the way that it's not lost on him that he is being stubborn whenever he sticks to calling her Poppell.

Knocks on a wall, adjacent to the room he hears shuffling.

Peter Parker | OTA

[heartstumbles]

I. Granitefell

Peter keeps as busy as he can while they wait for assistance. After patrolling with Julius, he works on being as useful as he can, helping gather wood for funeral pyres (and trying not to look at just how many bodies are waiting for their turn on the pyres), assisting with basic first aid where and when he can, and just generally trying to support people who need it. He pivots and walks in the other direction when he catches a flash of long, brown hair streaked with ash and blood, May still echoing in his mind. He sits with some of the surviving children and tries to distract them with stories and making gestures with his body and hands.

When he gets a quiet moment to himself, Peter sneaks away to a corner away from the rest of the survivors and weeps.

II. The Gallows

Peter can't stay still when he returns to Kirkwall. He throws himself into volunteering picking up extra work, and he spends long hours in the library trying to find answers to questions he doesn't know he's asking.

Mostly, though, Peter can be found in and around the training grounds, focusing on honing his skills at archery, and letting out all of his feelings through working himself to the bone. He runs laps over and over again, barely feeling the sweat through his clothing or the aching in his feet. He even allows himself to indulge in some acrobatics he usually reserves for Spider-Man as he runs, tumbling, leaping, and twisting himself through the air. The more he hurts physically, the less emotionally drained he feels.

III. Wildcard

[If you want a different/custom starter, let me know here or at afaeryschild!]

[notathreat]

Ellie promised. She'd come and find him in Granitefell. Amidst the fires and the bodies of their friends, the broken husks of civilians and soldiers alike.

There is poison in the air, choking them. Only some of it is the smoke.

Ellie is shattered. She seen some pretty fucking horrible things in her life. Had some of them happen to her. Done some of them, too. This is far from her first battlefield in this war.

This is still, somehow, the worst.

There's blood all down her front, black and congealing, smeared into her hands, with tear tracks striking through it on her cheeks. They cut through the ash and blood and she's just... shell-shocked, really.

She hears the crying and thinks of a journal she found in the abandoned mall after Winston died, where he detailed a moment of overhearing a small version of Ellie crying her heart out. He'd written that he'd been too embarrassed then to approach her, unable to offer comfort. In the end, he'd hidden and waited for her to leave.

Ellie understands the impulse. But she also promised, and Peter is here and alive and hurting, and she might not know him very well but she does care.

So Ellie comes up to his side, leans down to put a hand on his shoulder, and sits down next to him. If he looks up he'll find her face, eyes glassy and too-empty.

"Hey."

Her voice breaks on that one word.

closed to matthias.

[delphian]

The offer to assist with the execution of her brother's will had been an honest one — the desire to relieve some of her own grief by relieving some of the burdens of grief from those who'd loved him, too. The knowledge that if there were no Julius and no Petrana,

well, he'd given the responsibility to whoever's running Forces, so she'd still not have had to do it, but if they'd never joined Riftwatch. When she'd been presumed dead, she supposes he must have done whatever was left to do, though she can't recall having enough to merit writing any of it down. Was that better? Worse? It isn't as if they can compare notes.

The point is. It's no easier, having volunteered, carrying the heavy, bladed staff that still feels like him somehow to hand it over to someone else. She considers, again and only briefly, getting on the ferry and going to her apartment and packing it up and taking Marcus's staff and taking word of his death to their brothers and sisters and never, ever coming back. She is still mulling it over when she reaches the door of the room she's been told belongs to Matthias, and sets it aside only when she knocks.

Maybe if no one answers, she'll just leave.

[inkindled]

On the other side of the door comes an answering thud, and then a, "Hang on, hang on, hang on," and the thumping of footsteps on carpet and then flagstone and then he opens the door and there's--

"Oh," Matthias says, and then, "hi," and he shoves a handful of hair out of his eyes, which are particularly reddish. But he looks all right, otherwise. "I was only--"

He gestures over his shoulder back to his little room, which is painfully tidy but for the rumpled mess of blankets and bedsheets that lay snarled in the center of the bed, like a woven whirlpool. What he was only is not entirely clear, probably, but he hasn't got anything else to say and so he takes his gesturing hand to push his hair flat over his eyes again, a self-conscious little maneuver that comes with a hunch of his shoulders.

Truthfully he does not know Tsenka very well, if at all, except to have observed her (largely from a distance) and to know that she is firmly connected to Marcus Rowntree in a way he can't even comprehend. Imagine, Marcus Rowntree, an apprentice, at some point. Younger than. Grown close to other apprentices-and-youngers-than. Living a life with them. And she's here now, and Marcus is, well, not, and Matthias pulls in a damp little breath and says, again, "Hi."

Because he's an idiot to his core.

closed to Gela

[wearyallalone]

Vanya has purposely waited until a time he thinks won't be very busy to pay his last respects to the bodies of those they'd lost. He'd met nearly all of them at least glancingly, considering how heavily Forces was represented. Some are hard in ways he mostly expects (Abby, Gwenaëlle, Ellis); others are unexpectedly complicated (Rowntree, Barrow).

But he finds himself lingering, eventually, not because of any particular individual but because of a nagging uneasiness that he tells himself is inappropriate but cannot fully dismiss.

People across Thedas burn their dead every day. But he finds himself too Nevarran in his heart to accept it easily. He should go, his respects paid, but it's hard to know that in a few days, most of those in this room will be ash. From the outside, it looks like a man standing alone in the visitation room, frowning at nothing in particular.

hops in

[sprent]

It's terrible, isn't it, how the feeling sits in your stomach like a stone. When Gela sees him lingering around she understands why, comes in at once to stand with him, her arms folded across herself. There is a solidarity, between them. She says, looking less at one of the shrouded bodies and more at the toe of her boot, "I can't stand it." Calm, and soft. "I know that's wrong. But," truthfully, "so is this."

You can't visit ash. You can't look at an urn like you might a face.

She adds, "Are you okay?"