[open & closed] and when that day comes

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow & friends
WHAT: ye olde lyrium detox in its various stages
WHEN: vaguely Wintermarch
WHERE: the infirmary
NOTES: I'll be adding a few starters at a time since I want later developments to feel organic and make sense. please feel free to request something if you don't see it here!

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the evening before (for basterly)

[thereneverwas]

Lyrium doses are an every-few-days sort of thing, so Barrow has had a bit of lead-up to the time that he stops taking it. That day will be tomorrow, and experience has proven that it won't be awful, not immediately, but he's still considering it an official Day One. That means being in the infirmary, under observation, which is a hell of its own kind, as far as he's concerned.

So the night before, he takes himself out to the Loose Noose and proceeds to enjoy a generous portion of whiskey (of which, much like lyrium, he requires an enormous amount to even feel it). He's there alone, serenely playing solitaire by the fire, enjoying his last night of calm before the storm.

[cozen]

"Hey, Barrow," Bastien says from the door, as if he's surprised to see him.

He isn't surprised to see him. It's not game night, they have more lively hang-outs than a mostly-empty tavern full of coworkers waiting for them in Lowtown, and neither of them do any drinking to speak of these days — so there isn't anything here for them to be seeking out except Barrow's company. They wouldn't be here if they hadn't tracked him down.

"Mind if we join you?"

[thereneverwas]

Hearing his name, Barrow looks up-- and narrows his eyes slightly as he smiles at Bastien, not about to let go of their recent rivalry just because he's about to be in the shit. But his smile warms as he beckons the two over, shuffling his cards all together in one sweep.

"Haven't you lads caused enough trouble?" he asks affectionately, resting his chin on his palm.

days one and two (ota, especially infirmary staff/patients)

[thereneverwas]

When he and Seeker Hart and Astarion fell from the griffons, there were a few days Without; Barrow had tried to power through them, only to relent when it was clear rescue wasn't coming immediately. He'd asked the comparatively uninjured Tiffany to fetch his pack and administer the dose, and she'd done it, and they'd all managed without any dramatics.

Dramatics still seem far away, at this point, but the want is beginning to seep through Barrow's consciousness. He keeps busy, not wanting to shut himself away just yet: he fixes things in the infirmary, tightens joists, oils hinges, perhaps making a nuisance of himself with how single-mindedly he goes about it. His demeanor remains friendly, if a bit strained. He's thirsty, quite thirsty.

But he'll make it through, he's certain of it. Surely it won't get too terrible. He's happy to say so to anyone who asks, and even sings while he works.

[brennvin]

Word gets around the Gallows, small as it is, and since Barrow’d needed someone to feed the cats while he was indisposed, there’s a dangling loose thread which a stubborn enough sleuth could unravel. Astrid is nosy about her friends besides, and so she’d asked around, eventually unearthing the fact that her neighbour wasn’t away in the field after all —

So she stops by the infirmary on the second day, and she pokes her head in through the door at the sound of that familiar baritone voice raised in cheerful song.

“Barrow?”

[thereneverwas]

He's lying on the floor, all the better to tighten a wiggly leg on one of the infirmary beds, and Barrow looks up when he hears his name. His smile to Astrid is cheerful, if a bit manically so, and he doesn't race to get up (too much work) when just talking to her from the floor is an option.

"What can I do for you?" he asks with a grunt as he tightens a bolt.

day three (for Strange)

[thereneverwas]

"All right," comes the breathless exclamation, from a fidgety Barrow who can't seem to decide whether he wants to settle in the side room or keep pacing around the main infirmary, "maybe-- maybe I was wrong. This was a bad idea."

There's a tightness in the creases in his smile as he lingers in the side room's doorway, bracing himself against the frame and giving the faint impression he might rip it right off.

[portalling]

This part of the job isn’t exactly something Strange is accustomed to doing — narcotics detox is so wholly out of the realm of his medical expertise — but they’re making do.

“It’s only the third day,” he says, not even looking up yet from his desk, where he’s sitting and working on paperwork. “Far too early to call it. I’ve had milk in my refrigerator longer than that.”

[thereneverwas]

It's fortunate that Barrow, who also went to Stark's world, also knows what a refrigerator is: it gives him pause only for a moment, and he shakes his head like a dog flicking away water.

"Too early," he repeats, gritting his teeth, "'s late enough to know it's shit. Don't think I'm cut out for this, mate." His gaze flits from the healer to the racks of potions and medicines behind him: surely there wouldn't be any lyrium just sitting there, but what if...?

"It's a bad call."

day four (for Mobius + maybe more)

[thereneverwas]

The jitters in full swing, Barrow has been successfully confined to the infirmary's side room, where he paces like a captive lion, periodically stopping to scratch at his torso and arms. He's quick to look up when a visitor arrives, but any warmth that might normally light his expression at the sight of Mobius is replaced by a wary, animalistic stare. He doesn't speak right away-- it's difficult to do so spontaneously, with the way tremors overtake him when trying to make refined movements.

[favoriteanalyst]

Mobius has been supportive of the endeavor. Far be it for him to tell others what to do with their lyrium habits, besides don't start one to those who aren't trained to do so. His own relationship to the stuff, and to how he sees his own use with it in his system, has nothing to do with someone else wanting to be free of the shackles the Chantry put on them.

But he also knows it's a bitch and a half to go through withdrawal, and that's an understatement. He trusts Stephen to keep a close eye on Barrow, make sure whatever happens, he gets out of this alive and in one piece. But it's still a tricky thing.

This, here, is a tricky thing. Barrow in the midst of it all, the itching, the trembling, the feel of madness creeping in.

"Hey," he says, quietly, calmly. His eyes track Barrow's movements. "You might not be up for eating right now, but I brought you some pancakes anyway in case you get peckish." A proffered plate of flapjacks gets set at a small side table. They are thankfully perfectly edible with hands instead of needing the fine motion of knives and forks and spoons. "And I figured I'd see how you were holding up."

[thereneverwas]

Trying to keep himself still, Barrow lowers himself onto the bed and grips fistfuls of sheet and mattress below him. The pancakes look and smell appetizing, but being unable to keep anything down all day-- even water, fuck-- means he just regards them uneasily, vacillating between gratefulness that Mobius thought of him and a pure, unadulterated rage that Mobius is here at all.

"Not great," he manages to get out, in a clipped, anxious grunt, glancing from the pancakes to Mobius with an uncontrolled jerk of his shoulders. This isn't what he needs, it's not what he fucking needs, and Mobius of all people should know that, should have mercy,

day five (for abby, clarisse, + eventually lazar)

[thereneverwas]

Pacing, punching things, cursing to himself, and generally having an exceptionally bad time, Barrow has been making a lot of noise behind the infirmary door. Periodically he'll lose his mind completely and start battering against the door itself, usually with a few choice words for Strange; now, in the early evening, he's put his shoulder to it with a newfound drive.

[laruetheday]

It's been a slow afternoon in the infirmary, aside from Barrow occasionally hulking out in his locked room.

Clarisse has already organized the stock of bandages and has mostly been hanging around near the back of the room in case something crazy happens and Barrow needs her. But so far, aside from his raging, nothing has gone on, and she is leaning against the wall next to the door, messing around with a pair of dice. Rolling them around in her hands, trying to get them to land on the same number, then balancing them on the tops of her spread fingers.

It's uncomfortable to listen to Barrow more than anything else. "Dude," she says after a particularly hard slam from the other side of the door, "you're fine, just calm down."

HULK SMASH

[thereneverwas]

'Fine' is, perhaps, an overstatement for a man whose gentle personality has all but vanished into solid rage over the last couple days, but Barrow is still well enough to give the door one final charge--

--and slam it open off its hinges, with Clarisse acting as doorstop. He stumbles out, a bit dazed, like he can't believe it finally worked.

aftermath of day five (for lazar + eventually strange)

[thereneverwas]

Barrow had asked Lazar to help him to bed, and Lazar did, and there he has remained since. A low fever has crept in over the hours, and he lies as listlessly as it's possible to be while shivers wrack his body, curled on one side and looking at nothing while the blanket balled in his tightfisted grip threatens to shred from tension.

He hasn't spoken much. It was a an accomplishment that he said anything at all, earlier, with how his teeth chatter and his mind wanders. The room's quiet is enhanced by the early hours of morning, with little activity outside the infirmary-- anyone awake right now probably doesn't want to be.

[extortionate]

Tie me down, he'd asked. Fuck off, he'd replied.

Seen plenty of folks in a bad way. Swung the shovel a few times to end it, but that wouldn't fly here. It's quiet, even with door just leaned against frame. The girls left a while back — maybe an hour, maybe more.

Sorta lost count.

"You gotta piss?"

He asks, and doesn't expect an answer; uninterested in finding a bedpan. Just that it's the sort of thing you ask someone dying: Who do I write? Burn or bury? You gotta piss?

Lazar chews the end of an unlit cigarette. Never buys his own smokes, but the mage hides a case in his desk. Teeth grind, shred paper from tobacco. Forward. Backward.

"Sandar, that's my brother," He hasn't spoken much, either. Maybe it's the hour, sheets drenched in that funny light before dawn. "My older brother. Went like this with him."

[thereneverwas]

Though he definitely appears awake, there's no guarantee that Barrow understands or even hears what Lazar is saying-- a little twitch of his head after the question seems to imply he does, but he's both too exhausted and too unable to remain still to be able to answer in any sensible way.

So he doesn't. He listens, or daydreams, but lets Lazar continue either way.

P R U D E N C E

[thereneverwas]

There's a new face in the Gallows, however temporarily: a stout woman in her early 50's, tallish, whose drably-clothed figure suggests a lifetime of heavy farm work and having children.

None of them are about, and she looks all the lonelier for it, a stoic-if-slightly-confused presence in the halls near the infirmary. She spends most of her time within, sitting by her brother's bedside in quiet conversation; but everyone has to eat sometimes, and get fresh air, so periodically she can be found picking her way awkwardly through the dining hall or sitting outside on the courtyard steps, hands folded and gaze skyward.

She's from a completely different world, and this place, its residents, are beyond strange, but she won't shirk from a conversation. People are just people, after all.

acquisition (for Byerly)

[thereneverwas]

Crestwood is always muddy, but it's particularly muddy now, with the combined efforts of spring rains and melting snow from the mountains. It's not difficult to get there by eluvian; the difficulty comes in navigating one's way out of the little township itself and to the neighboring farms, where the roads are rougher and the villagers less helpful, especially to someone who sounds like a nobleman.

When Byerly arrives at the humble, thatch-roofed Milliner homestead, he first encounters a pair of older children working together to draw water from the well. Their direction points him to the back of the house, where the matriarch, Prudence, is taking advantage of the break in the rain to hang laundry with two of her daughters. At her feet, a little child five-or-so years old plays with wooden soldiers.

She turns at the sight of the unfamiliar figure, her expression automatically darkening. Obeisance wore his Riftwatch regalia when he visited; she knows it. Something has happened.

[bouchonne]

Byerly, for all his softness and indolence and general lack of skill at riding, was a good choice to navigate the Fereldan backwoods. When he wants to, he can sound like anyone else. Not a local to Crestwood, and not a common soldier, but he can soften his drawl enough that he can be mistaken for a petty officer of some sort. And he's picked up scars enough by this point to look the part.

But he doesn't feign with this woman. Even though it would likely smooth the way to pretend at commoner status, it feels like the wrong thing to do.

"You're Prudence?" He swings down from the saddle without waiting for her to confirm, grimacing lightly at his stiffness. There's two horses with him - the mare he rode in on, and another fitted with tack for a second rider. "Obeisance is in a bad way. I'm here to take you to him, if you'll come."

Courtyard steps

[armd]

Abby clocks her the second time she's in the infirmary and sees her again, sitting down, her body turned in toward the edge of Barrow's bed. She doesn't approach, or try to speak to her — the sibling's hushed conversation doesn't feel like something that should be interrupted.

When she's out in the courtyard, sitting on the steps, it's more like fair game.

Abby, stopping, takes a seat after a moment's pause. Not too near, but close enough to catch her attention, take it from the sky. "... You're Barrow's sister, right?"

She's seen her before, is the odd thing, in some hazy memory. She saw Prudence young and crying, arms full of wriggling kittens, her dark hair in braids. She saw it happen through the eyes of her older brother, who turned, eventually, to go.

[thereneverwas]

It takes Prudence a moment to react, in the way that it never stops being strange that people simply call him 'Barrow': that was her name too, once, and how odd it would be to be known as only that.

"Yes," she says simply, guardedly. These people are strange and their manner is as foreign as the location, across the sea from home, the first time she's ever left it. "You know him?"

This girl is young, solid, plain in a reassuring way. Maybe she'd have looked like this, Prudence thinks, had she become a soldier instead.

[dissolving]

Cedric's wary of the infirmary at the best of times: Hates the smell of a sickbed, the trap of a shut door. Lately, that's all there is. Freak accidents and fucking amputations, Abby walking about with a broken nose. Barrow's best try fallen flat.

Been too busy to visit, between covering guard shifts, and what bits of Ness' work he can manage to intercept. Between testing shelves and counting the years a man has left. Been too busy — that's his story and he's sticking to it. He'll catch them both when they're out, in the long days when visitors recede. When the hair on his own neck'll lie flat again.

When he can keep himself out of it.

"Ma'am," But new faces need minding. Can't spy an anchor, and she doesn't look the part of Riftwatch. Ordinarily, guests go to the Quartermaster. Ordinarily, the Quartermaster's not recovering from surgery. "Mind if I sit? Don't reckon we've been introduced."

[thereneverwas]

A silent nod and a gesture to the steps beside her, and Prudence is as welcoming as any, even if she doesn't smile readily. Brow still creased with worry, she offers a practiced spiel:

"My brother, Obeisance, is a member of Riftwatch. I've come to help while he recovers."