[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!

Comments

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.

[armd]

Yeah... Abby figured she couldn't very well go in with Obi considering the way Barrow reacted to it the one time she let slip — funny, to think she could also have sat down and said 'Pru'.

"We work together. In the same division I mean — he's saved my ass a couple times."

You know, from various things. He also broke her nose recently and Abby's still wearing the evidence of that in the form of two (admittedly yellowing as they fade out) bruises underneath of her eyes.

[thereneverwas]

Prudence's smile is sad, but curious. How very military of all of it.

"What division is that?" Her gaze goes damningly to the bruises on Abby's face, but she waits to be told, rather to infer.

[armd]

"The one where we all punch each other in the face over and over to test our strength," she deadpans, when Prudence's attention goes so obviously to her bruises.

"Also known as the forces division. First name was too long."

[thereneverwas]

Prudence's smile is reproachful but nonetheless amused; clearly that can't be the whole story, but at least there's a sense of humor involved, and that's a welcome respite from the worry that tugs at her heart.
When someone has as many children as she does, bruises stop meaning anything on their own.

"I see," she says, "and were you satisfied by your results?"

[armd]

"Sure."

Let's go with that. Probably shouldn't veer in ratting Barrow out to his own sister, not while he's mostly unconscious in a hospital bed right now. "This your first time at the Gallows?"

[thereneverwas]

"First time in Kirkwall," Prudence clarifies, her eyes wandering out over the courtyard for a moment before she looks back to Abby.
"First time out of Crestwood, actually."

She can't help but glance at the green glint in Abby's hand: this isn't the first one she's seen since arriving, obviously, but they're still not something one gets used to in a hurry.

[armd]

"... I'd say congratulations but," Abby jokes, trailing off as Prudence gazes out toward the courtyard. She looks like Barrow in lots of little ways, their relationship is very obvious. When Prudence turns back she catches her looking and Abby's gaze drops to her own hands.

The people who live outside of these walls really have no idea what goes on inside them. It's not like Abby forgets about this — it's hard to, in Kirkwall, when she goes outside and people stare at her — but she's never really considered it from the point of view of an outsider before, not until Prudence. She says, "Do you... have any questions, or anything?"

[thereneverwas]

Prudence blinks, eyes widening in mild surprise-- but after a pause, she nods, redirecting her gaze to Abby's shard.

"Is it... painful?"

[armd]

"What," Abby says, doing a double-take at her hand because she assumed Prudence was referencing some other bruise she hadn't noticed, "This?"

The shard? "No. It — if we get too far away from other people with shards it starts to hurt. But not here."

[thereneverwas]

Prudence nods, looking abashed in the face of Abby's surprise-- is it a faux pas to wonder? But she relaxes some when the answer comes honestly.

"How strange," she remarks, "and that's why there are so many of you here." One can almost see the pieces coming together in her mind.

"I saw the rifts over Crestwood before they were closed. There was..." She pauses, in the way of one uncertain of whether to proceed, but powers through: "...there was one under the lake."

[armd]

Abby nods. It makes it sound terrible — and maybe it is, in a way, that they all more or less have to stay exactly where they are unless they venture out together. To certain people it would sound awful but there's safety in numbers. They are at war.

"Oh, shit. Which lake?"

They should look into it. Fix that.

(Would they have to go underwater?)

[thereneverwas]

“Crestwood,” Prudence says, with a weak little twitch of a smile—- same as the town that resides upon it. “It was… some years ago. The Inquisition* drained it to close the rift.”

She looks away, breathes a small sigh as she rubs a hand up and down one of her arms.
“There were… bodies had come back. The dead. Wandering, attacking anyone who got too near.”

Not that Abby would know anything about that.

*ok it might’ve been Riftwatch by that point I don’t remember