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

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.

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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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?”

Loki's arms are up on his knees because that's just the only option he's got aside from putting his feet all over her cushions and taking up entirely too many of them to be polite. You can take the boy out of the court but you can't take the knowledge of how to be a good and pleasant guest or host out of the boy, or however that saying goes. When he hears the cat he raises his eyebrows and tilts a little to see if he can spot it before he's distracted by her speaking to him again, but... no dice.

No cat yet.

"I do, yes," he confirms, nodding, before taking a breath to weigh his answers to Gwenaëlle's query. "I've signed up with Research. I know that's unlikely to cover the breadth of your question, but... there is a war on, here. Still. And I care much less for the idea of attempting to convince anyone of anything about me. I'd like to be useful for as long as I'm alive here, and my body demands I sleep most of the time otherwise." He shrugs. He's tired, that much Gwenaëlle can probably spot; there are shadows under his eyes and he seems less possessed of manic energy overall than she might remember.

"That's about all I'm doing with myself."

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

the boat.

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