PLAYER PLOT | Forgetti Catchall, now in the right comm

[wythersake]

WHO: Ennaris Tavane, Julius, Bastien, Viktor, Clarisse La Rue + OTA
WHAT: Strangers arrive at the Gallows.
WHEN: A week in Haring.
WHERE: The Gallows / elsewhere
NOTES: Check out this OOC Post for details.

This is a catchall post for threads with or about the forgotten characters plot. Feel free to thread about it elsewhere as well!

• OOC Info
• Rookery Post

 

Comments

fifi.

[cozen]

Something is wrong, and Bastien is moving through the street like something is wrong—so like nothing is wrong. The same way he's walked away dozens of times before, unhurried and nondescript, like he has somewhere to be but isn't in a particular rush to get there, politely interested in the wares of the market stalls he passes but not lingering long enough to register.

Until he sees Fifi, carrying her basket through the market like nothing is amiss.

Whatever is wrong, odds are good it's wrong with her, too. He shouldn't show his hand. He knows that. But the difference between this and all the times he's strolled casually away from the scenes of swiped valuables or split skulls is that he's afraid. He's pinching the flesh inside his mouth between his teeth hard enough it's going to leave welts. He's falling into step beside her with a white-knuckled hope that he can trick things into being fine, like pulling a tablecloth out fast enough the tableware stays put.

"If it is going to be this cold, it should snow," he says. "It is only fair. Right? Right now it is all the misery, none of the charm... Can I help you carry that?"

[untiltheyarent]

It takes a moment for Fifi to realize it's her the man is addressing, and, as she knows to do from years of experience, she offers him a pleasant little smile and a small, deferent incline of her head.

"Very kind of you, Messere, but I think I can manage," she reassures him, and a keen eye (much like Bastien's) might note the way she takes stock of his posture, his expression, the look in his eyes. Her face remains pleasant, relaxed, ready to defuse. She has no idea who he is.

[cozen]

Messere hits wronger than any of it. He'd never put up with her talking like he's a superior—not without her tongue in her cheek. He doesn't miss a step, even feeling like cracking glass, but he adds a couple, enough to step ahead of her and turn around to walk backwards in front of her.

That's a more precarious endeavor than it used to be, with his hearing the way it is. He might run into someone, if anyone behind him is looking down and fails to swerve to make room. But he does it anyway.

"Fifi," he says, smile nearly slipping off his face for a moment before being pinned up by its edges. "Come on. Look at me—can you try to remember?"

[untiltheyarent]

The slight tension under her still-smiling eyes betrays Fifi's discomfort with the situation: he's in front of her now, blocking her path. He has used a name only known to those most familiar to her, which means either that he has been watching her in some capacity, or that he has known of her for quite a long time.

Her stomach turns; a patron of the club would have said Vulpesse. Perhaps he remembers her from her other profession of the time, and those patrons don't like to be forgotten.

"Forgive me," she says, her smile artfully remaining, "I can't quite recall your name." She has stopped walking, adopted a guise of pausing to chat, all the while toying with the crystal at her neck.

[cozen]

"We had lunch last week."

He stops as well. His eyes don't dart to the crystal, intent on her face, but he's watching that, too. She's nervous. She doesn't remember him. But she has to. He slips into Orlesian, a Royan accent that's not exactly rough but a little tattered around the edges—the one that's most his own.

"We had bread and soup and I traded you some of my butter for some of your peas."

[untiltheyarent]

Fear lurches in Fifi's chest. She did trade peas for butter last week, but not with him. With her mind racing like it is, she can't seem to recall with whom, but the dawning truth of the matter is that that was an intimate moment with a trusted friend and this man knows about it. Just as he knows her nickname.

His Orlesian confirms that he's from Val Royeaux: a jilted patron? Maker only knows how long he's been after her. This is bad.

"..I," she stammers, taking a step back, still clutching the crystal, "I'm sorry, Messere." What she's sorry for is open-ended by necessity: sorry I don't remember you, sorry for whatever I did, sorry I'm about to flee. She checks behind her-- is there space to run? If he caught her, would anyone stop him?

[cozen]

As if to answer her question, a passerby cranes his head on his way past them, taking stock of their respective postures and expressions, and pauses in place to ask, "Everything alright?"

He isn't asking Fifi, though. He's asking Bastien, and not the pointed tone meant to encourage someone behaving badly in public to look at themselves and shape the fuck up. More the did this elf steal from you tone. Human-human camaraderie, instantly recognizable.

The upside is that it snaps Bastien out of it—out of the shattered-glass way he's looking at Fifi, into something put together and mildly dismissive. "Yes. Thank you." The interloper nods, dismissal hitting its target well enough he's started walking away again, even though Bastien's still half talking to him: "It's my mistake."

His attention goes back to Fifi, her face, the crystal, and he nods. She doesn't remember. He puts his hands up in a half-hearted gesture of surrender and takes a half-step back. What can he say to patch this over like nothing was ever wrong? Nothing, so he abandons that idea for a simple, "I'm sorry I upset you. If it comes back to you later, I'll be—I don't know where I'll be."

[untiltheyarent]

The manner of the question is noted, the fear in Fifi's face blossoming into terror while her cheeks pinken with humiliation; a glance toward Bastien carries outrage at one stranger's ability to turn a perfectly pleasant shopping trip into This.

She's already halfway to crying when he steps back, and she turns fully to keep her meltdown as private as possible before walking away into the crowd at a hasty clip. If he tries to follow her, he'll have a time of it.