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]

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.