thereneverwas: made by @barometz (sketch)
Obeisance Barrow ([personal profile] thereneverwas) wrote in [community profile] faderift2025-05-16 03:34 pm

[open] I'll return one day

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.

boeric: (pic#17699724)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-17 12:37 am (UTC)(link)
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.
Edited 2025-05-17 00:39 (UTC)
boeric: (pic#17699725)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-17 04:42 am (UTC)(link)
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."
boeric: (pic#17409975)

cw insensitivity about suicide and mental health stuff from here on

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-17 05:06 am (UTC)(link)
"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."
boeric: (pic#17699732)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-17 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
"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.
boeric: (pic#17492875)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-18 07:34 am (UTC)(link)
"Good," A starting point — "So you live. It is good to live."

Altogether different from surviving.
laruetheday: only idiots recommend that. (110% is impossible.)

training yard

[personal profile] laruetheday 2025-05-20 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
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?"
cozen: (pic#15812106)

loose noose.

[personal profile] cozen 2025-05-20 04:02 am (UTC)(link)
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.
cozen: (o012)

[personal profile] cozen 2025-05-20 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
"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."
cozen: (o001)

[personal profile] cozen 2025-05-21 04:42 am (UTC)(link)
"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.
brennvin: (pic#16933810)

training yard

[personal profile] brennvin 2025-05-25 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
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.
boeric: (pic#17699732)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-25 07:43 am (UTC)(link)
"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?"
armd: (and over there?)

infirmary

[personal profile] armd 2025-05-25 10:24 am (UTC)(link)
"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."
cozen: (n017)

[personal profile] cozen 2025-05-26 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yes, you were," Bastien says. "Don't lie to me. I cannot stand a liar."
boeric: (pic#17699736)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-28 07:56 am (UTC)(link)
Her palm props on chin, half a mirror. She's always dwarfed in sleeves, and one falls now to inked wrist, all diamonds and lines.

"Say it," She isn't looking for words. He doesn't breathe like a man who has words — "What you want to remember. Use your voice."

As infants do.
boeric: (pic#17492874)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-05-29 07:56 am (UTC)(link)
"Yes." Pleasantly surprised, for all the unshifting flint of her voice. "Your people. As you are theirs."

His people. Their life. Alone, they make the emptiness real,

"They remember too."
brennvin: (pic#16933780)

[personal profile] brennvin 2025-05-31 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
“You do,” she concludes with a quick nod, and presses a pair of small blades into his hands, asking: “You any good with throwing knives?”
laruetheday: i find that relaxes me. (i'm just gonna stay angry.)

[personal profile] laruetheday 2025-06-02 02:21 am (UTC)(link)
"Could you move this target back over there?"

Clarisse is gesturing to one of the roughly human-looking dummies that are scattered around, indicating that she wants it back on the other side of the yard. Could she just move it herself? Yeah, obviously. But she feels like maybe Barrow wants to get back to Just Being Normal, and what's more normal than being asked to do stupid manual labor around the Gallows?
boeric: (pic#17492873)

[personal profile] boeric 2025-06-03 10:56 pm (UTC)(link)
The grey man by the door shifts uneasily, but Sennara lurks a shadow behind. Words pass between them at the door, foreign syllables to state the plain:

It's a long walk to the docks. He won't make it alone.

The usual crowd hang about outside. Smoke and laughter, marinated in evening nausea. Someone clutches their face, rocks back and forth on the cobbles and moans. In this part of town, this time of night, eyes follow Barrow; track the wobble of his step. Few men are dangerous unconscious.

From the corner of her eye, she watches a shadow peel free.
brennvin: (pic#16945233)

[personal profile] brennvin 2025-06-07 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Astrid considers the limitation, the stiffness in his fingers, but then seems to decide it’ll be good enough anyway.

“Hmm. It’s alright, you won’t need to actually hit the targets or anything. Mostly it’s just having the movement, ‘cos I want to focus on the catching.”

The catching?

She’s passed him the two blades (runes stamped on their hilts) and then moved sideways across the sparring ground until they’re facing the same direction, looking at the row of targets. She twists the enchanted gauntlet on her wrist, and then holds it up for Barrow to see: “This makes ’em fly back into the gauntlet so they can be thrown again. I’ve practiced a bit but it’s hard to do both throwing and catching when I’m, like, afraid it’s gonna fucking fly back in my face, so I was thinking, if I get someone else to do the throwing then I can prioritise and make sure I’ve got the other part down pat first.”
armd: (pack)

[personal profile] armd 2025-06-12 02:48 am (UTC)(link)
Look, even as somebody who is currently on Strange's good side (probably) there are times that Abby doesn't want to be in his hair for any longer than she has to be either. So they can commiserate on this. She plants her feet and takes the jamb without a word, lifting it with a grunt.

Easy.

"How much more do you have to do?"