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

[tadpoled]

WHO: Tav, Captain Marcus Rowntree
WHAT: Tav has an 'episode'
WHEN: Late Guardian, evening through dawn
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Warning for Tav talking about wanting to do terrible gorey things.

[Tav feels the first warning when he's finishing his dinner and stands to return to the Gallows. His stomach squirms, bile threatens to crawl up the back of his throat, and fatigue hits him like hammer. He sends to warning message to the Captain before picking up speed, nearly tumbling down stairs and hitting walls as he goes. The sweat dripping into his eyes certainly doesn't help in helping him find where he needs to go.

However, he makes it, even as his vision clouds and his legs threaten to give out on him. Tav staggers the last few steps up into the Gallows, looking the portrait of miserable. He doesn't know how much time he has left, but he needs to be locked up now.]

Comments

[cozen]

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."

[tadpoled]

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.”

[armd]

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?"

[tadpoled]

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.

[cozen]

"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.

[tadpoled]

“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.

[cozen]

"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.

[tadpoled]

“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.”

[armd]

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?

he been drinkin all that milk

[tadpoled]

"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."

[luaithre]

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.

[cozen]

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."

[tadpoled]

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?

[armd]

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."

[luaithre]

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.

oops sorry hi

[cozen]

"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.