[open] I'll return one day

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow + you
WHAT: catch-all
WHEN: post lyrium detox
WHERE: mostly the Gallows and surrounding areas
NOTES: open starters are in the post body and bespoke ones are in the comments, hmu if you want one, etc

out & about, OTA

One could be forgiven for thinking nothing has changed. Not long after his time in the infirmary ended, Barrow had made his return to the training yard in the mornings: he busies himself there, offering training and maintaining the weapons and being something adjacent to his usual self. The distance is, however, noticeable at times, when his banter is a bit delayed. Or maybe his smile doesn't meet his eyes, or he stares out at the horizon for a little too long in the middle of a drill.

Nearly every evening now he's in the Loose Noose, nursing an ale for hours as though he's periodically forgotten about it. When once he might have played solitaire, lately he just sits and stares at nothing. Sometimes he smokes, letting the cigarette burn all the way down to his lips before he thinks to ash it.

infirmary, OTA

There's work to be done in the wake of his time in the infirmary, and Barrow finally dredges up the courage to address it. He arrives one day with his toolbox and, without offering much conversation, proceeds to go about mending... everything. He starts with the worst of it: the door to the private room, the bed that took the brunt of his and Lazar's altercation, then makes his way down to smaller details, things he may have left unfinished in his initial restless busyness when he'd first gone off the lyrium.

If spoken to, he speaks, and is even friendly, but his overall bearing is awkward. Uncomfortable. Apologetic, if one squints. Maybe he shouldn't be here, but he wants to make it right.

Comments

for Sennara

[thereneverwas]

Whether it was on Byerly's advice or just a particularly bad day, Barrow resolved at some point hours ago to get falling down drunk. Circumspect enough to find a pub where he wasn't likely to run into any peers, and being large enough that most people have the good instinct not to bother him when he looks like this, he has only partially managed to fall down-- in this case, with his head buried in his arms on the table where he sits alone.
Why does this ever seem like a good idea? It's never a good idea. But here he is, all his limbs like lead, and he may as well enjoy how his mind has quieted for the time being.

[boeric]

The Qunari left Kirkwall. Everyone knows it.

Everyone knows, too, that they didn't really go. The war party sailed off, and others stayed, quiet for the fear of their neighbors. There are still Qunari here, and tal-vashoth too, and the distinction rarely so clear as Par Vollen would like.

So when the grey man taps her shoulder, she follows. He's taller than Barrow, but half as broad; works the door on nights he isn't studying Qunlat.

"Thank you," This bar is far from Riftwatch, and that's more reason to know their faces. "Go now."

He does. She considers Barrow across the little table: Looks like shit lately, when he looks like anything at all. She knows the place that his eyes go, Ashaad dwelt there often in those final days.

Barrow's back heaves. Still alive, still here. Sennara lifts a tankard to sniff — nose wrinkling — and pours the dregs over his head.

[thereneverwas]

It registers as an unpleasant dampness before Barrow realizes what's happening, and he raises his head in a sluggish heft to squint at the source of this foul precipitation. Even in his state, he knows the woman, remembers how she rappelled off the battlements like it was nothing. One doesn't just forget the only other person over forty in the entire organization.

"Oh," he grunts, in greeting. Hello. What can I do for you.

[boeric]

She's braced for him to rise, and maybe to rise swinging — written in the tension of an elbow, the way she keeps the chair between them. He doesn't rise. He doesn't swing. Hardly manages a word, and the swell of disgust,

Isn't his to own. Mug clanks down, and so does she.

"Enough of this," This isn't the kind of place that gives out napkins, so there's no rag to toss or wipe his eyes. It's just them, and the soggy table, and a crowd ready to pretend blindness. "This ends tonight."

[thereneverwas]

In the absence of a rag, he tugs down one of his rolled-up sleeves, draws it across his eyes-- it doesn't do much, but he's not in a very proactive mood.

"What," he says dully, "you gonna kill me?" Is that hope? It couldn't be: more like the ever-present desire for the easy way out, whatever will stop the cycle of misery and, maybe, finally quiet his mind.

He died in Granitefell, didn't he? It didn't take. Wouldn't that have been better than what's in store?

cw insensitivity about suicide and mental health stuff from here on

[boeric]

"You want this?" He's close; this slow, ugly wasteage isn't living. She looks in the second mug: Less left in this one. Not enough to throw. Her hand snakes out instead, to grip his chin. "Then do it yourself."

[thereneverwas]

For a moment, she has him. Barrow's eyes meet squarely with Sennara's, startled by her forthright question, simultaneously a little bit cowed by it-- he's drunk, he doesn't have the faculties to have this conversation with anything but blunt sincerity. With that comes shame, but then, he didn't invite her here,

"What's it you want," he slurs wearily, making no move to extract himself from her grip-- what are you even doing here and how is it your concern, he'd ask if he had his wits about him, but for the moment it seems she simply appeared out of the aether to get in his face.

[boeric]

"Asit tal-eb," She says, and know he won't mark its meaning, won't even remember it tomorrow — so what purpose in explanation? A finger taps jaw. "What do you want? Death or life? Choose."

A starting point.

[thereneverwas]

The words in Qunlat are meaningful only in her tone, which Barrow grasps. He won’t remember it, certainly, but he’s also not here to fight, or even to talk— or at least he wasn’t. Her finger taps on his jaw and he finds himself breaking a little; how long has it been since someone touched his face?

“Life,” he says, breathlessly. Can’t she see, can’t anyone see it’s all he fucking wants?

[boeric]

"Good," A starting point — "So you live. It is good to live."

Altogether different from surviving.

[thereneverwas]

A faint nod, still in her grip, though his gaze drops; it's hard to maintain in his current state, and even harder to imagine how to climb out of this and live properly. He wants to sleep. For a long time, maybe, but not forever.

"I'm going to lose my mind," he breathes, and can't control how his face contorts from the despair of it. "Forget everyone, forget myself."

[boeric]

"So does old man, dead man. Drunk man." Her hand falls flat to the table. "Drunk man faster than most."

Ashaad doesn't know her face, his old name. Doesn't own despair.

"What do you want to remember?"

training yard

[laruetheday]

The early morning is the perfect time to train, and Clarisse is there almost every day. Seeing Barrow return to his normal routine is good, but she doesn't comment on it. Clarisse hasn't brought up anything that happened in the infirmary at all, in fact. She'd like to keep it that way if possible. As far as she's concerned, it's water under the bridge.

She's there this morning training with her spear, and gives him a nod of acknowledgement when she sees him organizing the weapons.

"Do me a favor?"

[thereneverwas]

"Ey? What's that?"

Even if he doesn't smile, it's a somewhat tender look Barrow reserves for Clarisse as he looks at her over his shoulder, pausing in his work for the moment.

loose noose.

[cozen]

Bastien arrives a good hour after he spotted Barrow disappearing into the tavern — he had some things to finish up — and unsurprised to find him there still. Bastien has never been much of a drinker; all but entirely giving it up for Byerly was no hardship. But he drops a coin into the collection and pours himself a tankard anyway, for sociability's sake, before he crosses to Barrow's corner.

"Barrow," in greeting.

He takes a seat, not at Barrow's table, but on top of the table adjacent to it, feet on the chair and mug on his knees. He's less animated than he often is. His attention is steadier. He is doing little to disguise the fact that he's here to be serious,

eventually.

"I witnessed a murder today," he offers first, because they don't have to leap directly into it.

[thereneverwas]

"Bastien," he dully replies, but glances over at the man long enough to offer a single, tired quirk of his mouth in greeting. It's not a smile, but it briefly tried to be.

"Yeah? Lots of blood?"

[cozen]

"Oh, buckets," Bastien says. "They got him right in the neck where it squirts everywhere, you know? Somehow in the flailing he'd managed to draw a heart on the wall with it. Or maybe it was on purpose. Maybe they were in love."

[thereneverwas]

This actually elicits a faint chuckle, and Barrow shakes his head. "Very Antivan," he remarks.

[cozen]

"You would think, but the guards say the man was an Ander, of all things. Have you ever met a romantic Ander? —do not say Lazar."

He'll stop soon. Probably. If he doesn't, it's Barrow's fault for rewarding bad behavior with a chuckle.

[thereneverwas]

If there's one thing Barrow loves rewarding, it's bad behavior. He chuckles again, but shakes his head.

"I wasn't going to," he admits-- he's begun to relax a little bit, ever comforted by the art of bullshitting.

[cozen]

"Yes, you were," Bastien says. "Don't lie to me. I cannot stand a liar."

training yard

[brennvin]

It’s not like they’ve really spoken in detail about what he was in the infirmary for — to the contrary, he had been adamant about keeping friends away — but you don’t have to be a genius to realise that something feels off, afterward.

Barrow’s back but he’s not really back. He seems distant and distracted, not really here. He barely even notices when Astrid’s next to him in the yard until she elbows him in the side, sharp.

“You wanna help me practice something cool?” she asks, readjusting the enchanted gauntlet on her left wrist.

infirmary

[armd]

"Need a hand?"

She understands why he's here, and that he probably wants to do all the chores himself and self flagellate the entire time but facts are facts: many hands make light work. Plus he owes Abby, in a way. To try and put a stop to any protests before they start she adds, "C'mon. Sooner it's done sooner you're out of Strange's hair."