open + closed | mistakes have been made

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow + you
WHAT: catch-all
WHEN: the general Firstfall/Haring vicinity
WHERE: around the Gallows
NOTES: lots of Templar-relevant navelgazing. starters in comments, holler if you'd like one

Comments

[atonally]

The premature cancellation of his solitude is heralded by scrape of rock against rock, a stray pebble from the debris scraped between boot and stone walkway. Redvers himself follows shortly behind the sound, longbow in hand. (He's a swordsman. But sometimes it's better not to get that close.)

"Morning," he says to Barrow, and nothing else just yet. He picks a target, sets down his quiver—the kind that's meant for that. For planting on the earth and holding ground.

It's only then that he pays any attention to what Barrow is actually doing here. Or not doing here, as it may be.

"Need help?"

[thereneverwas]

It takes a moment for Barrow to realize the question is for him, and he starts to alertness as he looks for its source. Redvers-- not the person he most wants to see right now, to be certain.

"I'm all right," he grunts back, taking a quick glance over at the intended activity-- got to make sure it's functional-- before he returns to what he was doing.

"Just got new straw," he adds, with a nod toward the target, "shouldn't fall apart anymore."

[atonally]

"For a while," Redvers says, agreeing and not.

Everything begins to fall apart eventually. Everything's reliant on someone coming along to patch the tears and bolster the defenses before it crumbles entirely. There's a useful metaphor here, but he's not a speechmaker.

He draws the bowstring without an arrow, back and forth, to warm his arms up.

"What are you going to do about the Order?"

[thereneverwas]

The irritated glance Barrow sends Redvers might constitute a microexpression, just enough that he has the satisfaction of having made the face without broadcasting his displeasure too clearly.

"I dunno," he sighs, in a sing-song voice, "crawl back on my belly and beg forgiveness, maybe. Set myself right in the eyes of the Maker and his righteous army."