faderift | i'll crawl on my belly til the sun goes down

At some point in the night—after all the binding and door-locking, but before the writhing and snarling has finished, and certainly before sunrise—the guard outside Tav's door changes hands. The Captain and the Warden deserve sleep. Or whatever they do at night. Bastien doesn't know.

But he's here regardless, with company from Forces in case things go far enough south as to require biceps. The enclosure has held long enough that he isn't worried about it somehow giving way now to unleash the ravenous killer within et cetera and so on. So he's armed, of course, but barely minutes into standing watch, he decides sitting watch would be better and sinks down onto the floor.

"Credit where it's due," he says to Abby, about Tav: "this is new."

Tav snarls at his new guests, gnashing his teeth as he pulls against the ropes binding his hands and feet together. He needs to get free, needs to kill.

"I'll rip out your eyes and string them on your sinew to make a tribute for Bhaal," Tav hisses through clenched teeth. "Or rip out your bones for an effigy."

Company from Forces is not so pleased to be up this early and is currently in the surly and silent part of the waking up process. She watches Bastien slip down to the floor, to sit. She doesn't join him (she is supposed to be on guard) but she does permit herself to kick-stand against an adjacent wall and lean.

To Tav, she says, "Okay."

And then to Bastien, "Pretty creative too." Gotta give him that. She can't remember if anybody has ever directly threatened her eyeballs before. "Is there a reason for keeping him alive?"

Edited 2024-03-17 22:49 (UTC)

"Generosity of spirit?"

A kinder answer than habit. Kinder too than proposing the primary reason Yseult or Flint, at least, haven't made an official order out of it is the possibility of mutiny if executing rifters for uncontrollable afflictions becomes organizational policy.

He rests his head against the stone wall behind him to look up at Abby. The noises emanating from inside the room are unsettling, sure, but he doesn't look particularly unsettled.

"We could kill him," he proposes, straight-faced and matter-of-fact.

The door separating them is not all that thick and Tav pulls harder still on his blood-slick bonds. Perhaps breaking a wrist will be just enough to free himself.

“I’d like to see you try,” he snaps back. “Give me even more to paint the Gallows with your innards.”

"I mean," Abby says, shifting her weight. "Is he gonna... stop?"

Doing all of that, she means. She looks at him critically up and down, watching him flex and pull against the ropes pulled tight around his arms and legs. Even if he gets out of those it's not like he can bust out of the cell without an extreme amount of effort, but he certainly seems to think that he can.

At least he can understand them.

"It would be easy," she tells him, curious now to see how he reacts to being baited. "You're stuck in there. We could put a couple of arrows through you, easy. Why shouldn't we?"

There’s a brief moment, the briefest blink-and-you-miss-it moment of clarity in between the snarling as Tav fights to surface beneath the cloud of hate. He opens his eyes and sees clearly for the first time in hours. He stops pulling and all he can taste is blood in his mouth, but he can hear the solution posed to him.

“Do it,” he murmurs, voice soft and hoarse. “Please, please kill me.”

Abby stares.

This is also not anything she hasn't heard before — dying men, bitten men asking, soft and wrecked, for a way out. There's never been a situation in which Abby hesitated to draw her gun, not after hearing something like that. The WLF had a creed Abby followed to the letter and she hasn't forgotten any of it; you don't let your own suffer.

"Bastien," she says, her voice low. She's stopped leaning into the wall now, straightened up.

Just as soon as Tav speaks clearly, he’s back to snarling like a dog and pulling at his restraints. He’s snapping his teeth, grinding them as if chewing on a meal.

"Abby," Bastien says, with the rising intonation of a question.

He doesn't move from his spot on the floor; his hands are searching his jacket for his cigarette case and his runestone fire-starter, and in the process displacing a deck of cards, a bandalore, and a small carved bird with glass eyes to set on the floor beside him.

But he's watching her, as much as—more than—he's paying attention to the writhing elf.

The entire thing isn't unlike dealing with the infected. The way Tav growls and claws at the air, trying to get them, is horribly familiar. It doesn't scare Abby as much as it gives her a kick of adrenaline and abruptly she moves, taking a couple steps to the right. Her eyes don't come off of Tav.

"I don't like this."

Tav pushes off the wall even harder than usual and there’s a snapping sound of him almost breaking free of his bindings. Blood spits onto the floor as Tav grinds his jaw again.

“I will sacrifice his friends,” Tav growls. “Let him forever mourn your loss like the bard. “I will carve out your heart and bathe in your blood.”

"Of course you will, mon cher enragé," Bastien says mildly, without looking away from Abby.

His search for the cigarettes has stalled, hands still deep in his pockets but still. I don't like this might mean anything, from traumatized terror to finding it mildly unpleasant, so for starter—

"Do you want me to see if someone else can come take your place?"

"No."

She's fine, but. She levels Bastien with a stare, arms folded. "We can't leave him like this." Bound and clawing, kicking and snarling to get loose. It makes Abby think of the Rattlers, how they used to bolt clickers into the ground and then throw shit at them just to make them lunge forward endlessly under the hot sun. They did it for entertainment.

She clears her throat. "It's irresponsible."

“Free me and I’ll show you what I’m capable of,” Tav growls at both of them.

He’s nearly free, his blood-slicked bonds allowing him inch by inch to slide out of one his hand binds. So close. Oh so close. And them there’s a pop as Tav dislocates his thumb and slides the rest of the way out of one of his bonds. He surges forward, oblivious to the pain, but still can’t quite reach the door. He growls in anger as he reaches again, bloody fingers barely brushing the door.

"Shhh, no one is freeing you," Bastien says, not particularly bothered by the single free hand. There's still the locked and reenforced door to contend with if he manages the second, and the Guard Captain and all of his magic will be easy enough to summon back to help if it goes that far.

Less concerned that Abby might be in significant distress, he resumes digging for a smoke and is promptly successful.

"We could try to sedate him." No one's going to be going inside to try to make him drink anything at this point, obviously, but, "Some of the mages might have spells for that."

All she really feels is twitchy and ready for a fight; she flinches at the audible pop of bone and moves again, another couple steps to the right, then circling back. Pacing. If he manages the locked and reinforced door, Abby will throw her arm around his neck and squeeze until it breaks.

"And do what," she points out. "Keep sedating him until he stops acting like this? Can you fix it? Or is he like this forever?"

Tav continues to squirm and fight his bonds, not turning his energy to untying anything at this point.

“Do not deprive me the opportunity of stripping your skin inch my inch while you scream for a mercy that will never come!”

But then Tav seems to sense something changing, and the fight against his bond is renewed, like a wild animal struggling for freedom.

"Can I fix it? No," Bastien says, around lighting his cigarette. "But this part, I think, it comes and goes? We only have to wait for it to—" a gesture "—go."

Look, he's not an expert. Abby might be, though. He eyes her a moment longer, then tucks his curiosity away for a time his questions won't prompt gory threats from a third party.

"Right," says Abby, "And those are the orders? To stand here and watch him until 'it goes'."

She's well aware that Bastien has already asked her if she'd like to go, implying that it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's not like she wants somebody else to have to come here and keep watch either. She stops pacing, backing up until her shoulders press against the wall opposite the holding cell. The stone digs into her back and feels kinda good.

She huffs.

"I was with him during those stupid interviews and he slipped up about killing somebody. He came to talk to me, he was freaking out about it." This must be why.

Tav continues to pull and gnash his teeth until the first rays of dawn begin to break somewhere just above the horizon. His fighting suddenly stops and he drops to the floor in sheer exhaustion.

Breathing in slow, measured breaths is nearly impossible, but he attempts to anyway as he takes stock of what he can remember. He told the captain an episode was coming, he and another met him in his room with rope, and then darkness. There’s something sticky all over his hands and he desperately hopes it’s his own blood.

Then he remembers he’s supposed to have guards and calls out with a ragged, abused voice, “Hello?”

Bastien answers Abby with a tell me about it widening of his eyes.

He hadn't been joking, when he suggested they could kill Tav. It would be easy to make it look self-inflicted, with his rabid fury as a cover—choked himself twisting in his own bindings, maybe–or like self-defense during a close call. But he'd expected Abby to be, if not opposed, less enthusiastic about the idea, and that's been distracting enough to delay them to this point, here, where perhaps it's too late for it to feel so simple.

"Hello," Bastien answers with pleasant wariness.

Only a few moments ago, Tav switched from the snarling threats to begging to be killed. This could be a ploy too.

"Bastien," Tav breathes out his name, recognizing the voice despite the burning pain in his head.

He doesn't remember Bastien arriving to watch him. Hells, he doesn't recall anything past the arrival of the captain.

Which is never good.

"Did I hurt anyone?" he asks, voice trembling from fear and exhaustion alike.

Abby is silent, untrusting of the sudden change that came about the moment she questioned standing here and watching him — it's too convenient. She folds her arms across her chest, frowning as she looks at Bastien.

... It feels like it wouldn't even be very fun to tell him 'yes, you did' to see how he would react to that, if it would make him break character and turn back into that snarling, clawing thing. He's acting like he knew it happened, like he was aware of it but could not control it.

The thought makes her frown.

Bastien looks back at Abby–not quite frowning, but not smiling, either, which for him is essentially a frown.

"No," he tells Tav. "Not aside from yourself."

Tav breathes out a shaky sigh of relief. He’d rather be debriefing with Gale or Astarion, but Bastien and Abby will have to suffice for now. He slowly sits up, trying to search his memory for anything past being tied up.

“I don’t remember anything past being tied up,” his voice is quiet, subdued, defeated. “I understand if this changes your opinion of me.”

Abby finds her voice at last, pushing off the wall, arms still tight across her chest like she's holding herself back.

"Do you remember telling us to kill you?"

Tav scans his memory, but he can’t find anything there regarding begging someone to kill him. Is the Urge now able to fake sympathy in order to try to get someone to open the door?

Shuddering, “No, I don’t remember that at all.”

He looks down at the floor, shame rolling through him as bile threatens to surface. What if he hadn’t been tied up? What if he’d broken free?

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs low.

"It is fairly clear," Bastien says mildly, "that it is not something you can help."

Or else Tav is a much better actor than he is—and if that's the case, Bastien really does need to kill him.* It can't stand.

He hoists himself off the ground to stand, too, though he gives Abby a little more space than he might in another situation. He's shorter than she is; he can't see through the barred window in the door.

Silently, Bastien is less worried about what might have happened if Tav had broken free; that's why he and Abby were here, neither of them helpless, both able to call for back-up long before someone freshly free of bindings could then claw their way through a heavy locked door.

More worried about other things.

"Try to make yourself comfortable where you are," he says. "We are not coming in or letting you out until the Captain clears it."

* Not really.

“I understand,” Tav replies as he carefully sits up, easing the pull on his remaining bound wrist. The other hand looks a disaster with the dialocated digit.

How did he get free? Did he pull so hard that he dislocated his thumb?

What did he say to Abby and Bastien? Do they hate him now?

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs again.

"Not your fault," Bastien reiterates before he steps away from the door and pulls his sending crystal and its leather string out of his jacket to notify Rowntree that he's needed back.

When he turns back to the door, he looks at it for a moment, then at Abby, and shrugs with his eyebrows. They've had rifters—and natives—who were unmanageable or otherwise risks before. What's new is one who can't help it.

"Do you remember what you were doing just before this started?" he asks, while they're waiting. The memory has to be as fresh now as it's ever going to get, and if there's something that set him off—a word, an object, a feeling, anything—that'd be something, at least.

“I got the warning: my stomach began to churn, I began to sweat profusely and it felt as if I was about to lose control,” Tav explains. “I contacted the Captain to meet me at my room.”

He sighs and leans against the wall, sweat dripping down his neck.

“After that I woke up like this,” he finishes. “Talking with you.”

How long does it take to start, after you feel it coming? A normal question someone who is genuinely curious might have asked, but Abby finds she flat isn't. She's faintly disturbed by the whole display, still more than a little suspicious. Unsure how to act in the face of this seemingly genuine remorse, the way that Tav sags and leans against the wall, checking himself, finding his dislocated thumb with what does seem like dismay.

She interjects bluntly, "Do you still want us to kill you?"

It had to have been him. This Tav, the sane and aware one. Why would the other version of him ask for something like that?

"Did I ask for...?" Tav looks up ever so slightly, frowning. He doesn't remember it, but he doesn't doubt Abby's reporting of his words. However, it's still alarming that the Urge seems to be learning. Of course, the Urge has always been cruel and exacting, but Tav thought that was restricted to its violence.

He thinks back to Alfira, how memories of her murder never came back. To Isobel and how he fought the Urge to kill her, only find himself struggling the night after. He remembers more from his attempt on Gale, but still not nearly enough to put the pieces together.

Shutting his eyes, Tav tries to force himself to remember anything from the night before, despite his exhaustion. And all that comes up is the same wide blank space in his memory. He sinks lower against the wall, considering all the efforts being put forward by the Captain, by what few friends he can hold onto. Wouldn't it be better to free them of these obligations?

"I have to finish the garden first," he replies, "Then, please. I'd have no one else complete the job."

So often is Marcus preceded by the sound of his own thumping footfalls, and the rhythm of these ones coming up the stairs implies more impatience than urgency, this time. He has the look of a man who has only just awoken after a handful of hours asleep, hair dragged less neatly than usual into efficient ponytail, a coat thrown over a tucked in shirt and trousers, but no added frippery of necktie or jewelry, save for he ring he always wears. He's yet to shave, which means he has yet to get access to coffee, which means he hasn't started on his cigarette case, which means he is already irritated.

And he doesn't meaningful slow as he turns into the corridor, making for the door. Nods to Abby and Bastien as he sees them, fishing keys out of his pocket.

"Any trouble?" is very much pointed to them, rather than the man in question. Keys jangle, though he waits for an answer.

However irritable the energy Rowntree brings with him when he arrives, it's an improvement on having to decide what to say about Tav's conscious, clear-eyed (more or less) request to be killed after finishing the garden.

It was years ago he stood with Fitcher in a quiet corridor, throwing knives, trying to decide whether it was better for someone to see the arrow coming—to have that moment of clarity, to put some kind of punctuation mark on their lives—or to be taken unaware. Good arguments for the former, but Bastien was always more comfortable with the latter. Watching people begin to understand that they were about to die and that he was the one to do it—

Cowardly, in his own way.

He says, "I think he hurt himself trying to get free," instead of any of this, of course. "And it was—he had what sounded like a moment of clarity. Of being himself. He was begging us to kill him instead of threatening us. We're not sure if it was his mind resurfacing for a moment or an attempt to trick us."

Tav opens his mouth to respond regarding his own experience when he realizes he’s not being talked to. He sinks further against the wall and waits, trying to massage his thumb back into place while he does so.

Why does he get the feeling he’s in deathly serious trouble?

Abby decides to fill in the little gaps. "He wasn't trying to get free to be free," is what she says first, looking at Marcus and Bastien, still not looking at Tav. With the Captain here now, seemingly grumpy, it is making her feel better about also being tired and grumpy. "He was trying to get out so he could — pull out our spines, or something, I don't remember. He said a lot of shit."

It was spines, at last count.

She adds, after a moment's pause, "And he mentioned wanting to sacrifice us in tribute to some god, I think."

The news that Tav has caused himself injury is unsurprising, if disappointing, something only barely read in his expression. Marcus had doubted the efficacy of simply tying the man up and leaving him to his own devices, but, more or less, found merit in doing things Tav's way, if he insisted.

Clearly they would not be doing so, going forward.

A darker flicker of something like annoyance as the pair of them continue, describe the gambit being attempted, while Marcus minimally fidgets with the keys, his back to the door. Niggling urgency demands he go in there. He stops himself. One thing at a time.

Nods to Abby—that, also, is not surprising. "And how was he after?" Brisk, rather than unhurried.

"Normal," in the most basic sense—"normal rate of speech, normal inflection. Not panicked or disoriented aside from not remembering the evening. Worried he might have hurt someone, worried about our opinion of him, but he has been calm."

It's unfortunate and a bit rude, to have to talk about someone this way while they're sitting in earshot, and here and there Bastien's tone dips toward hesitation and apology. But it's also necessary. A required report to (in this specific situation) the man in charge.

i'll crawl on my belly til the sun goes down

good morning.

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Power slides in hurriedly

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cw murder thoughts? (I love irony)

lmao

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he been drinkin all that milk

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oops sorry hi