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[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
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
β : 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(β½) 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 β 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 ]
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Slightly taken aback, Benedict realizes his mistake.
"...well, no. I thought you meant," and he gestures vaguely, adding with a sheepish smirk, "among them." As in, the people he'd listed.
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Setting the mug down, he drums his fingers against it once. "...or is just. Pathetic. Or would be pathetic if I did it."
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Loki takes another drink. "For another, you smiled a little thinking of the possibility, it seemed, and I have no reason not to encourage that sort of behavior."
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"What if they are here?" he asks, perhaps just to be contrarian (or perhaps because he knows something Loki doesn't), but lets the conversation move on.
"The difference between indiscriminate fucking and trying to find someone who will love me," he muses, his words slurring gently with inebriation, "is that I know fucking is something I'm at least capable of. There's no guesswork. If my partner doesn't like me personally," which, if his tone is any indication, he believes they usually don't, "they can just close their eyes. Or never learn my name."
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"Everyone is capable of love and being changed by it. Regardless of lack of ease. You're entirely too handsome to believe the worst of yourself at all times in this way."
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A few people look their way, perhaps hoping for more violence now that the other fight has died down, but they're quickly disappointed to see that it's just one person drinking poorly.
"It's not--" he rasps, thumping once or twice on his chest, "--that I don't believe you, it's just," and he pauses to think, clearing his throat before concluding, "...no, maybe I don't believe you."
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"When do you feel good about yourself? Regardless of whether or not you think you should, or deserve, or it's basis in any number of realities. Not numb, or neutral. Good."
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"Um," he stalls, clearing his throat again, and he looks at Loki, then past him, his eyes unfocusing into a glassy-eyed stare. Processing request...
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He gives Benedict the opportunity to fix on a memory or perhaps give up on the endeavor, dismissing several trains of idea in the time elapsed. Pushing will not solve this and becoming the consumption of loneliness will cause both of them more problems than solutions.
Benedict needs someone who would look at him and only him, and Loki is not equipped for the weight of that or the cost of its inevitable failure.
"How do you pick?" A change of direction, possibly just as Bene opens his mouth to answer the earlier question, "Who you sleep with? Is it random?" He doesn't think Bene was doing much sleeping around before, and that is... a movement toward improvement if not simply used in a self-destructive way.
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"...sort of," he admits, with a churlish shrug of one shoulder, "whoever seems up for it."
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"Next time, find someone who smiles when he looks at you." Loki's tone is zero percent suggestion, oddly enough. He's not being gentle with this imperative. "And not in a way that makes you shudder in an unpleasant way, you know the sort."
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His shoulders hunch defeatedly.
"D'you think they'll keep smiling when they find out what I am?" He toys with the mug on the table, giving it a break; his stomach is starting to sour from the conversation, and tempting fate seems unwise.
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Loki taps his fingers on the table in a staccato before he pulls out several coins from his pockets and makes to stand. "Come on; I think clearer air will do us both some good."
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At least he's well familiar with how to conduct himself when much too drunk to be sensible.
They make their way outside and Loki leans back against the low stone fence separating the building from those around it, taking several steadying breaths before he straightens up.
"When was the last time Riftwatch threw a dance or something like it?"
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He comes to lean beside him, giving a little shiver as the cold permeates his cloak; it's of decent make, but even after all these years, he'll never get used to Southern winters.
"Satinalia," he answers with a little bob of the head, "usually. It was a little disappointing this year, but a lot of things went wrong recently."
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"Might be worth it throw several smaller events, as things permit." He shrugs. "Rarely hurts."
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At this Benedict sighs, a bone-weary sound as he looks out over the dark street and its rough inhabitants.
"We're all so tired," he admits, a grimness creeping into his eyes, "between the nightmares, the encroaching enemy, all the deaths..." Even if they were reversed in the end, the living felt them acutely-- he doesn't even like to imagine how the formerly dead feel about it.
"I don't know that there's much merriment to be made. We need all the energy we've got just to get through the day."
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He knows there is a war on. Impossible to miss. But he hadn't quite realized that everyone's depression wasn't just his own dark sunglasses of emotional filter working overtime.
"I suppose you've a good point." Not that he likes to admit it.
I guess this thread is officially backdated to before the mod plot
"...maybe once we figure out why everyone's dreams are so fucked."
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Looks at Benedict.
Mutters.
"No one has figured that out yet?"
lol
lmao I love them