[open] I could just hear them now, 'how could you let us down?'

[icasm]

WHO: Loki and anyone who is around
WHAT: Loki arrives and connects, reconnects, sleeps, causes problems, etc.
WHEN: last two weeks of Firstfall, first two weeks of
WHERE: The Gallows & Kirkwall
NOTES: nothing yet, will update as needed

∞ : an arrival, more or less : open to all : the Gallows infirmary

The return to Thedas is wholly unpleasant, as far as returns that don't involve time-skipping go.

Instead of returning as he'd left, or as he was, back in whatever reality his consciousness was split(‽) from only to spit him newly out of the Fade and smack dab on his ass, surrounded by demons, in the nearby wilds of the Planasene Forest, Loki reacquired consciousness dressed as he had been the first time the Loom fell and the TVA with it — including his TVA work suit, peacoat, and a copy of OB's "bestseller" The TVA Handbook in his pocket.

He did not arrive armed at all, and an attempt to summon his daggers, a sword, anything only had him frowning at his empty hands as volunteers from Riftwatch fan out in a half circle around him. Someone tosses him a short sword with a yell that he'll have to help defend the group; of course he will, what else would be expected? That he would just cry, curl in on himself, give up?

As appealing as that short list of options was? No.

The short sword will do, for now.

He falls asleep in the cart taking him back to the Gallows more than once. Is only woken up each time when someone grasps his shoulder and shakes roughly - no amount of calling his name or gentle treatment appears to make it through the heavy fog of intermittent narcoleptic catching up to massive amounts of sleep debt. He spends the next five days more or less asleep on a bed in a corner of the infirmary until he manages to remain awake through an entire meal... without anyone speaking to him directly the entire time.

For, you see, the moment anyone turns their back to him or isn't engaging him in conversation, he tends to doze off nearly immediately. But at least he is given clearance to leave the infirmary and take up room elsewhere in the Gallows, seeing as how he's apparently not actively ill or appears a health and safety risk to others; he's just, as he keeps telling whomever may ask, rather tired.



[ Individual & localized starters in comments, feel free to wildcard to your ♥ content | I will match your format ]

Comments

∞ time to re-experience the world around you : open : around Kirkwall

[icasm]

the docks, the ferry, & various public & commercial spaces in Kirkwall | open to all

There's a strong sense of nostalgia that seizes at Loki's chest while he's at the docks. Staring at the boats, trying and sometimes succeeding at determining which building has been repaired or replaced since he last stood here.

Not counting the time he was recently brought to the Gallows, of course, seeing as how he was mostly asleep for that. Plus it was dark. Plus he just... wasn't paying much attention when he was awake.

Loki can be found wandering about, dressed in fairly common clothes easily recognizable as part of whatever Riftwatch has available to new arrivals and recruits. Plus his heavy peacoat from the TVA, because there is no reason not to have a coat in this weather.

Is that houseboat a new acquisition of someone's? Someone from Riftwatch? It looks like a wholly chaotic mess to Loki from the outside: a barge that was built up, presumably over time, into a several-story abode with little rhyme or reason toward the architectural standard. Who would even live directly on the water... especially in winter? Even when Loki actively ignores how cold it is, he can't imagine going quite that far and wrinkles his nose at the thought. Doesn't help that he's peering through one of the exterior windows, attempting to get a sense of the resident(s), as he does so.

Surely, someone is going to spot him.

The ferryman is new, to him, Loki thinks, or at least his scowling and untrusting countenance isn't incredibly familiar; either way, he gives the man quite the wide berth, which is either a great idea or an incredibly bad one, considering that Loki falls asleep while waiting for and riding the ferry to Kirkwall. Feel free to rouse him from either activity, seeing as how the ferryman is disinclined towards any of that.

In a Lowtown tavern there are any number of drinks that can be purchased, along with otherwise empty corners to tuck oneself up in, and given the temperatures outside and the rapidly dwindling daylight, Loki's gloves do not immediately out him as a Rifter. He sticks to mead and whiskey, and alternates at least one evening between being incredibly drunk, occasionally singing along with whatever poor minstrel is working there for likely not enough coin, and abruptly falling asleep at said corner seat.

Speaking of Lowtown, the market district is also somewhere Loki can be found, occasionally asking questions of various vendors to try and better understand the limitations the current war efforts are putting on common goods and trade. Also just to poke around at items available for purchase. He doesn't currently possess enough coin to buy anything of much note, and he's just missed the gifting of this year's Satinalia, but he does manage to get his hands on a quantity of elfroot. For personal use, obviously.

⋉ picking up where we left off (more or less a wreck) : closed to Benedict

[icasm]

[ continued from here ]

"Ah," Loki responds, and then someone does spot Benedict's request for another and Loki's adjoining nod - they're served new tankards within moments. "Too much is happening, is it?"

[altusimperius]

Being more of a wine person himself, but fully of the recognition that beggars (that is, people in slummy pubs) can't be choosers, Benedict takes a cautious sniff of the tankard's contents and then sips. The face he makes indicates that the result is not favorable, but he doesn't complain, continuing to hold it in his hand with every intention of drinking again.

"Always," he confirms drily, and shrugs. "But that's not a bad thing, considering the circumstances." You know, the whole Being At War thing, "some are just better suited to it than others. I guess."

Perhaps it's his already advanced state of inebriation, the presence of a familiar face that had seemed lost, or just the futility of having a full drink he doesn't like but is going to finish anyway, but the moment yields an unusual candor: "Sometimes it's just. Being in a crowded room, surrounded by people, but you're still completely alone."
He drinks again, and makes a face again.

[icasm]

Ok the sniff, taste, make a face bit is very familiar, and also a little amusing; Loki finds himself smirking and adjusting his position in his seat to be a little more upright. Which is good, because the final thing that Benedict says - or admits to, as the case may be - is more than a little familiar, and a great deal heartbreaking all familiarity aside.

Alternatively, even moreso, as Loki knows exactly what that feels like.

He takes a heavy swallow of his own refreshed drink (it's swill, but it's definitely fermented swill, so it will do the job thank you very much), setting the tankard down on the table and tilting his head at Benedict as he folds his hands over his lap.

"You should find someone." He puts a hand up, certain that Bene will protest at the very least or take grave offense at the worst, and attempting to cut any of that off before he finishes. "Hear me out. Beyond the obvious reasons: that distraction in the aspect of forging a new path in regards to any relationship would be a welcome addition to whatever is happening for you, emotionally right now, and the fact that anyone worth their salt would do well to dispel the feeling of alienation at play..." Loki puts his hand down and leans back a little. "There is something to be said for rediscovering oneself through the eyes of another. And finding reason for yourself when you are for someone else."

[altusimperius]

As Loki speaks, Benedict watches him with an expression that starts off in the realm of exasperated amusement and gradually sinks to a wan and weary desolation; his loneliness, drowned and suffocated and stamped out by booze and smoke and keeping too busy, is suddenly visible in sharp relief.

It's not that he doesn't agree.

"Easier said than done," he says in a low tone, shame radiating off him, "and easy to squander the chance when it's there." It's difficult not to think of Colin, the person who no doubt came closest to loving him and being loved; a resource he wasted, for lack of knowing how to use it.

"Besides. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say there are few in this company who would have me. And outside the company, it's best not to be too upfront about what I am. ...or where I'm from."

[icasm]

"Of course." All of that is true. That it is easier said than done, easier squandered than chances seized to their fullest advantage. It's difficult, especially for Bene, he imagines as he takes another drink. Because he's from Tevinter, during a rather long, drawn-out war with that nation. Because he comes from a family that holds quite a bit of money and power in that society.

Because he's a mage, in a world where mages are only seen as the possibility of all the terrible things they could become, accidentally or otherwise. Because a great deal of his early history with Riftwach is troubled, to say the least.

Because it is never easy.

It's not like Loki knows how that feels, either, is it?

"Who are your friends? In Kirkwall, now, I mean." Might as well start there, hm?

[altusimperius]

Bene mirrors the drink, makes the face again and doesn't seem to notice-- it's just what he's doing now-- and, sensing where the conversation is going, winces.

"...Abby," he lists, "Byerly. Bas--" He stops, mid-word, unsure; is Bastien his friend? Has he ever been?

No time to dwell on it now. "Ellie and I smoke sometimes." He hunches his shoulders. "Edgard is. ...friendly. And Matthias. We talk occasionally."

After an awkward pause, he adds, "...there, um, used to be more. I think."

[icasm]

Okay, okay. Loki can shake the cobwebs from his inebriated memory and make some connections. Taking a deep breath.

Abby, easy. Ellie, also easy. He knows them. Matthias he... knows. Of. He thinks? He's young.

He remembers Edgard.

He makes a face behind his drink after he picks it up again. Look. It's been so long since he has been... allowed himself to be drunk. No one could possibly understand.

"That is a very limited... group." Heavy on the lesbians. And otherwise inaccessible.

"Who is interesting?"

[altusimperius]

Benedict has been in his cups for a while already, so it takes him a moment to grok what interesting means. When he does, he sits up straight as though pinched, his eyes widening.

"NO," is all he says, looking to be halfway between crying and laughing.

⋉ all the things we left behind, forgotten, unsaid : closed to Alexandrie

[icasm]

Loki takes the stairs... as in walks up all of them... to Hightown from Lowtown.

He could, certainly, have acquired the means to travel by carriage up to the household where Alexandrie formerly resided (as far as he knows) but it gives him time to think, and a chance to be irritated at how easy it is to become winded on the ostentatiously long and steep pathway. If the guards look at him askance, well. It's not that he doesn't belong, exactly.

He knows the address of where he's headed.

The De La Fontaine apartments appear as he remembers them, with delicate and decorative stonework employed in stark contrast to its immediate neighbors in Hightown.

He stands at the threshold for some time, simply staring and not managing to muster the strength of will to knock. He imagines he knows how this will go: Mssr. Renaud will answer the door, and look wholly unimpressed, and Loki will ask if his things happen to still be in storage here, and if so, could he collect them?

And could he still pass along letters that he wished to reach Mme. Asgard in Orlais?

Loki does not imagine it appropriate for him to simply take up living there again... not when there's been such a great span of time in between his abrupt leaving of Thedas and his return. Not when he hasn't had a chance to speak to Alexandrie directly about it, either via letter or some other means.

Eventually, he collects his wits and nerves and whatever else is required to knock at the door.

If he's lucky, someone might even answer.

[coquettish_trees]

As with much of his recent experience, this too does not go as Loki imagines.

What opens is, rather than the door, a window on the second floor. And what comes out is not Mssr. Renaud, but the rather chic oval rug that ornaments the floor near one of the hall’s side tables. Then comes the dust from its violent shaking, shortly followed by the entire rug and a shriek of alarm as the maid shaking it loses her grip and tosses it into the small front garden below. The woman leans out and stares at it, looks back into the room, and then bursts into laughter. A laughter quickly twinned by the bright familiar peals belonging to the lady of the house.

And then there she is, leaning out the window alongside the maid to search it out, the flame of her hair shining in the crisp light of autumn’s mid-morning. Disappearing again. The laughter, and some discourse in muffled Orlesian, comes down the stairs, and when the door finally opens it is Alexandrie. She’s looking back up the stairs, giving a last light direction to the maid above about not throwing anything else out the window unless it is the vase the marquis got her for her birthday this year, the apartments behind her full of bustle and movement. Then she turns and walks full face into Loki’s chest.

“Oh!”

Summer sky eyes turn up to him, dancing with irrepressible mirth and a charming plea for forbearance, her mouth full of laughter and apology and… stunned silence. Her whole body goes still, rug forgotten.

“Oh.” A breath. A hesitant hand reaching its gloved fingers up to hover, not quite touching his cheek. Her eyes dart down to take in the clothing, are back up in an instant. Then, as quiet as the breath, “…min kjære?”

It is not what Alexandrie had imagined behind the door either.

[icasm]

There's an open window, then a carpet, a maid, the carpet again, a shriek. The gentle thud of the rug landed in the garden close enough that he could hop the fence to retrieve it. But Loki doesn't consider that, not when the maid begins laughing, and then...

His knee-jerk thought, upon hearing her voice, her laugh, that he has well and truly gone and lost his mind. What could be the likelihood, that they should both find themselves in Kirkwall? Now, especially? After he vanished and reappeared?

He is dreaming.

He's been dreaming all along. Clearly, and most certainly. What else could be true? Loki takes in a sharp, dismayed breath.

But then he sees her, just before he manages to shut his eyes against the idea of unreality (or whatever that would even mean in this situation), and the two senses combined are enough for him to rethink his immediate determination that it wasn't real. He sees her; she's laughing, then she's gone again, yet he can still hear her voice and person moving through the interior of the apartment, and then before Loki realizes that all of this commotion means it is unlikely anyone is aware he's standing there waiting, Alexandrie Lucette Seraphine Arienne d'Asgard strides directly into him.

Loki's hand is at her elbow as soon as she reaches for him; he swallows, and, foolish as he has ever been, tilts his head so that her fingers brush against his cheek. "Hello again, Alexandrie. I did not know you had returned from Orlais."

Well. There's a lot he doesn't know, all things considered.

[coquettish_trees]

If Loki was anyone's dream, he was hers.

Alexandrie had thought it once before, during conversation about the Rifters. It is hard to think it anything else now, with his feet on her doorstep the very day after she returned to Kirkwall. Her elbow tingles where he touches it. The sweetness of the light pressure of his cheek against her fingers makes longing to feel its warmth catch in her throat. Is he thinner? More spare even than he had been, coiled whipcord energy that he was when she last saw him stride like a keen edged knife through the world? Where had he gone? What had happened to him?

"I did not know you had returned from..." She is gently stroking Loki's cheek with the tip of her forefinger, the only part of her body save her lips that seems able to move. Eyes wide and full of him, she huffs a tiny helpless wisp of a laugh. "I still do not understand how this works."

[icasm]

"It is one of those things where I am not sure understanding would cause any sort of enlightenment," he admits, voice amused but eyes tired. He closes them, and leans into the gentle touch just a bit more.

What could he even say? That he was dreaming and then came to be, here, exactly as she remembered yet irrevocably changed through his own remembering? That the Fade is like a black hole pulling in light from around it and shifting it impossibly as it passes through?

That he's afraid of what the timing will mean for him, having completed his own entire story elsewhere, that her being here in Kirkwall, aware of him, around him, with him, will force Loki to actually live this available life as opposed to simply passing time existing for a while?

Frightening, in a way, knowing that will be true. Terrifying to reckon with. Yet. Simultaneously thrilling.

Loki opens his eyes to her, the look of worry on Alexandrie's face. He'd forgotten somehow, that in being known and loved he would also been seen, observed, understood in the unspoken.

His own thumb had begun mirroring the movement of her finger against his cheek unconsciously. Loki huffs out a laugh, sheepish, and drops his head. "This is not how I expected this conversation would go."

[coquettish_trees]

"It is not how I—" Something about the small movement of his thumb and the colour of his eyes catches in her throat, filling it until the only thing that can get past is whisper. "I did not expect there to be one at all."

The letters had stopped, and eventually the news had come that he had gone the way that rifters sometimes do, and she had stared out over the gardens and felt a heaviness in her chest. A quiet one, a still one, a resigned one. The deep knowing that sits like a stone inside her: Alexandrie de la Fontaine doesn't get love that she can keep. She can borrow it from the world for a little while, but there will always come a time when the world comes again to empty her hands.

Such a thing used to make a lashing storm inside her. Now she only looks at Loki and wonders if it is safe to be happy that he is here again. Wonders if he wonders too. After all, she knows well enough that the son of Laufey has so often found himself with empty hands.

"Would—" her eyes are shining wetly, not daring to stray for a moment. If she looks away, perhaps he will be gone.

"Would you like some tea?"

[icasm]

He too wonders, and knows also that he has never deserved the breadth of how much she loves him. Not the first time, arriving half certain that he had died and learning different later, and definitely not now, run ragged and perhaps permanently exhausted beyond reasonable belief.

In the falling they had little choice. She knew and loved a version of him that knew and loved her back, removed from her arms too soon; he could not resist the siren's call of the possibility of being seen, known, loved fully by someone else.

Remaining that way? Continuing to love after disappearance and return? Those are choices.

Choices that Loki knows he will make, again and again, for the opportunity to remain in Alexandrie's orbit for as long as possible. As long as she'll allow it.

She says without saying that she never expected to see him again and his heart breaks for her into a million sharp little shards like volcanic glass.

"I would like that." Tea. To remain in her company. "We should not forget your rug in the garden."

He has not let go; his voice is quiet and hushed just like hers.

the boat.

[elegiaque]

Even from the foreboding outside, it's clear that the interior must be much more luxe; the closer he gets, the clearer that someone has taken the time to truly raise the standard of quality, that extensive work has been undertaken to strength, smooth, soften. The consistent finish on the exterior despite the mishmash of various built-ons, the way that the deck and stairs are far more level and consistent than any other visible part.

The way that a shuttered window opens, above, and Gwenaëlle — with her hair down and dressed in a summer-weight gown, not the working wear he more usually saw her in before — leans out of it, eyebrow raised, a hand steadying herself on the sill.

“Are you back?”

—is a complicated question, though one with a simple answer. Yes, because he remembers; no, because he's a stranger anew. She doesn't seem to expect one answer or the other, especially, but rather whichever is the case will doubtless decide the shape of the rest of this conversation. Perhaps whether or not she continues having it from out a window, or how many threats it contains.

[icasm]

"Yes. Only recently."

He shades his face, trying to sort out what's odd about her gaze, and then deciding he can just accept that time passes and things change and he'll perhaps stop staring.

"This is very impressive."

It's obviously hers. Why would he assume anything else? He can't imagine Gwenaëlle tolerating a space that was not her own. "Are you interested in tea? At this moment? ...Is tea something you happen to enjoy?"

Yep, that's the order those questions go in. Sure.

[elegiaque]

Probably it doesn't bear examining, the way that it's always sort of suited her that she makes him palpably somewhat nervous. He stops staring, but her (unusual) gaze lingers, studying him until she's satisfied and the corner of her mouth twitches with unwilling amusement.

“As it happens. Come aboard,”

is an instruction almost more than an invitation as she disappears from the window-sill, presumably to find her way downstairs to the door.

[icasm]

Good. Yes. Great, even, he just... needs to locate the door since he's just been staring through a window. Windows, perhaps.

He knows how boats work; you find the places where it is connected to the dock and usually, it is just a straight shot to entry from there, correct?

Okay. Tea, with Gwenaëlle. He can learn what is important to know, and be assessed. Yes.

He takes a breath and tries the knob.

[elegiaque]

At the door, it's not Gwenaëlle herself immediately— rather, Guilfoyle, the severe steward of (as near as can be told) her entire paternal family. Of which only she is left, so here he is, his hair increasingly streaked with white and his expression unchanged for (at a conservative estimate) the past two decades. He allows Loki past him into the foyer, dominated by a portrait of an elven woman seated in an armchair. She wears the same locket that hangs at Gwenaëlle's clavicle, and only a man's shirt large and loose enough to tantalise rather than scandalise, and her inscrutable, intelligent gaze is far harder to read than—

well, it must be her daughter's.

The resemblance is all the more marked when she appears at the top of the stairs Guenievre is displayed above, a recently-acquired skirt-hike holding the lightweight fabric out of her way as she descends, exchanging a nod with Guilfoyle that probably means refreshments are incoming, and points (somewhat imperiously) to the door that leads into the conversation gallery he'd been squinting into.

It's possible she thinks it'll be funny to watch someone as tall as he is fold himself down to floor and cushions, but to be fair, that's where she receives nearly all guests to begin with.

“You can't have been back long,” she says, as she draws closer; now it's clearer what had struck him about her gaze. Only one eye takes him in— the other, false, blank gold.

[icasm]

Loki nods at Guilfoyle, stares openly at the portrait, and still manages to startle ever so slightly when Gwenaëlle enters the space. She points; he goes, with all the inherent comedy involved with being much too tall for any of this room's requirements.

Oh, well. There's nothing to be done for it. At least he's fairly certain none of this was devised for him, specifically. Sometimes spaces are just like that. And sometimes he feels like a very gangly youth all over again, certain an errant knee or elbow will upset something delicate and cause a problem.

Loki will just have to be careful.

"No," he answers, shaking his head a bit. He does, at least, take the false gold eye in stride. Somehow she's more terrifying than Odin ever hoped to be in merely an eyepatch. "I've only just finished quarantine."

[elegiaque]

So striking as Gwenaëlle is, it's easy for Guilfoyle to fade into the background in her wake; he is gone, almost before it can be considered whether or not he's listening. She lowers herself into her preferred cushions, skirts puffing and settling around her, and she considers him for a moment of thoughtful silence.

(Somewhere in a cushion pile behind her there's a mrrow of interest or irritation, but nothing emerges.)

“I'm going to assume you remember being here, by—”

a gesture toward him. The everything about this moment. That she doesn't take it for granted is experience.

“What are you doing with yourself this time?”

lowtown tavern.

[cozen]

Bastien had heard—had made a point of hearing, keeping tabs on comings and goings from the Gallows even more carefully now that he doesn't spend as much time there—that Loki was back. Heard it, noted it. Did not seek him out because they were never particularly close before, were they? Only connected by three lines on someone's diagram of the Gallows' dalliances.

But the minstrel's name is Albree, and Bastien has promised to buy her a drink afterwards, and she promised to play—

"This one," Bastien says, sitting down next to Incredibly Drunk Loki without invitation. He joins the singing along for a single line, harmonizing quietly, and leans over to confide, "Auisia Dieudonné wrote it sometime in the nine-tens, but it was slower and it didn't have the chorus, and the king lived in the end. No one liked it. This version is mine, you know. I fixed it. Years ago."

Spoken as if he is an old man. Which he half is, these days, as long as he's not being compared to a god thousands of years old.

He looks Loki over from the corner of his eye.

"How have you been?" is perhaps too familiar in tone for how unfamiliar they were before, but unwarranted familiarity usually works fine for people who've had enough to drink.

[icasm]

Oh! He's being addressed! And joined! Yes, this is good. Socialization means that this, this thing he's doing where he's getting levels of inebriated on a weekday evening in the middle of a war that could be best characterized as... unfortunate. It means it's... better than it could be.

At least Loki has a good singing voice. "It's excellent. A vast improvement, of which I am certain.

For that matter, so does Bastien. Byerly's boyfriend. He hadn't seen him on the island. But anyway, a good voice, because bards, entertainers, musicians in this world are also assassins. Musical murderers for hire. Or. Social interaction.

It's complicated. Politics, society, etcetera.

See? He knows things. He remembers.

Loki suddenly realizes has taken entirely too long to clock the question.

"Oh." Yes. He should answer that. "Ah. It has been... a while. For me." Longer than three years. "Complicated? I have been in a complicated variety of ways. In that. Time. Span."