[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

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."