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

[extortionate]

No, he almost shoots back. You said this means something, so what's that something mean —

He doesn't. Squints, instead, and sure; he's read the reports on Granitefell. Weird magic, what else is it ever.

"Don't be an idiot."

Lazar's strangled enough people to know it hurts.

[thereneverwas]

The words hit home, more tenderly perhaps than planned-- Barrow glances at Lazar, sees his face, looks down again.

"You think someone wants to catch me out is gonna be thrown by a beard?" he mutters, "I'm fucking old, Lazar. I'm slow. I was shit at hiding even when I tried, it would be insulting to everyone involved if I thought I could get away with it now. And I just,"

he sinks down again, just enough to rest the back of his head on the pool's edge, "I don't want to. I'd... maybe I'm daft for it, but I like to think I've done something here. Don't want to be remembered as a stain on the company, some yellow-bellied son of a bitch who arrived when it was convenient and left when he got scared. Not again."

[extortionate]

"Shit, wouldn't make you any different from the rest."

This is not self-examination. He scoops some water in his mits, lets it fall,

"Well, if anyone shows, I never met a Barrow wasn't on wheels."

Lets it fall — specifically — over Barrow's head.

[thereneverwas]

Scrunching up his face as the water falls over it, Barrow finally opens one eye to regard Lazar.

"Thanks," he mumbles.

[extortionate]

"Any time. You get offed, next best body double's Jayce," He and Astrid gamed it out. "And between you and me, he's scrawny."

[thereneverwas]

For the first time since they started talking, that gets a laugh out of Barrow. Jayce.

"Could be mine but not yours," he decides, "...maybe twenty years ago." He'll need a prosthetic nose.

[extortionate]

"Try fifty." How old are any of them, anyway? "Works alright under a sheet. Out a window. Up close, I'm just too handsome. Gives it right away."

[thereneverwas]

"Yeah, that's your problem."