heaven, a gateway, a hope

[byblow]

WHO: Grey Wardens & You
WHAT: A daring and not at all ragtag group of Grey Wardens has walked all the way across Orlais to inform the Inquisition--just in case it hadn't already realized on its own--that everything is terrible.
WHEN: Harvestmere 22
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: This post has: (1) A single group "we just got here, we're freezing, who is in charge, what do you mean you haven't decided yet" starter that we'd like to keep to one chronological thread. (2) Open starters for individual Wardens set later in the day/week.

OOC Note: Regarding the first starter--threadjack away! Anyone is welcome to wander onto the scene to see what's going on and wander back out at their leisure, to fall silent for a while, etc. No tagging order. But let slower taggers get a word in edgewise!

Comments

scipio (guest appearance by rafael) || OTA || whatever format, whatever!!

[bunko]

Scipio reenters the world only after his toes have thawed and he's stretched all twenty-one of his socks out by a fire to dry. Only then is he ready to deem everything pleasant.

Well, nearly everything. True pleasant sets in after he has found his way to the tavern and a mug of hot spiced wine, which lends everything a warm glow. No directions were required for him to reach this spot. He's been whiling away free hours in taverns for years and years and years. "And years," he's saying, to someone sat at the bar, "half a year, once. Sleeping under the bar. Well, we had to, you know. It was that, or risk capture, or worse. Price on our heads-- Rafa can tell you all about it, it was his idea-- Rafa!"

He turns to summon his friend, and slams his elbow into a tray born by a passing barmaid. She stumbles sideways into a portly patron; the tray falls to the floor with a clatter, and the mugs-- do not fall, because Scipio has caught them. One mug in the palm of his hand, thumb and forefinger shoved into the top of the other two, pinching them together by the rims, and not even a drop spilled. Impossibilities of impossibilities. Sheepishly, charmingly, modestly: he smiles, and flips the tray up with the toe of his foot, catches it neatly between elbow and hip.

"Sorry."

She takes the tray, he reloads it, minus one mug, which he hands to the fat guy and refills from his own mug, with a flourish. Chuckles all around. The man drinks, the barmaid goes on her way, and when Scipio turns around again, he's got a coin between his fingers, plucked right out from under the man's nose. Just for fun. A good slight of hand that no one--hopefully--saw, except for maybe Rafael.

Later, he wanders. This is a sad and paltry sort of freedom, but it's better than what he was going to be faced with. Life can be enough, breathing clean (cold) air, looking at interesting sights, and meeting interesting people. He talks to anyone he comes across, restored to health by food and drink and good music at the tavern. Still wrapped in two cloaks, with his lute still strapped to his back and his better dagger tucked into his belt, he climbs up to a decent vantage point so he can laugh at it all. Appreciative laughter.

Oh, yes, it's all very monochrome compared to Antiva City, but it's something. Enough to keep him walking about. A rugged tumble-down castle, like something out of a story. Scipio examines architecture and chips off loose stone with his thumbnail and strolls battlements, looking out across a landscape more robust than picturesque. He hums, and when he isn't humming he's whistling, and he only stops to blow on his fingers every once and awhile. Not half as often as he did while on the road.

"Good views, though," he remarks, cheerfully, to no one. Or to Skyhold at large. He's friendly like that.

Tavern

[ombranera]

It's another easy night in the tavern, picking at his lute in the corner, minding the mood. Since the little spat with Merrick things seem to have cooled down just enough for the spirits to be high. The arrival of Grey wardens would do much- especially with a hero in tow. No reason not to use that and spin a few tales, stir up a little pleasant emotion. He'd told snippets throughout the past few weeks here but now? He spun it in full with musical accompaniment. It's a thrilling story, after all, and rife with artistic embellishment.

He's taking a break between Redcliffe and the Circle tower when he hears an oddly familiar voice.

But they had been in...

He turns, blinking at the blond brigand as he flips up the tray and flourishes a coin. He knows that trick. He used that trick ON them in Antiva City. It wasn't a coin he'd been palming at the time but a ladle but-

The point is-

"YOU!" His voice cracks through spaces between conversations and heedless of what is actually on the nearest table, Zevran hopped up to have a clear view of his target and the door. And his partner, he had a partner somewhere.

[bunko]

The voice comes before the bright crash of fallen cutlery and mugs, which means that Scipio's reaction comes before the crash too. His hand seizes on the coin, closes into a fist, and the coin bites in, and he does not turn around to see who is yelling at him. So really: not much of a reaction.

In the thud of boots on table, plates on floor, he tries to think: the voice. Does he know the voice? What is he owning up to, or wriggling out of? Because that's what you means, in that tone. You can be called you lovingly, or hatefully, but there is a special arrangement of tone to YOU, recognized-and-accused.

Then he remembers that they're in Icehold (Cloudhold? Skyhold, these chilly names, all the same), where they're more likely to be called out for being Wardens (ha) than for Scipio and Rafael, Terrors of Antiva City. Which means mistaken identity, which means he can safely turn around and--

And.




And.

He turns around, and there, standing on the table, is--

He raises his hand, and points, and, in a tone of a man who has just seen a ghost--probably a ghost that was last spotted doused in spirits of a more alcoholic variety, with bits of chicken feathers stuck to his chin and a steaming heap of noodles soaking into a plush expensive carpet--so, in short, a tone of mingled horror and awe--he gasps out: "The Noodle Stranger!"

[ombranera]

"Brigante di Pasta!!" It's not much of a battle cry- but it IS a battle cry none the less. Zevran makes short work of closing the distance, leaping from table to table before jumping at the formerly pink hair'd lay sister in a sexy frock that was NOT a lay sister at all (not that he minded, he is in fact quite open minded at that but the principle remains). He and his partner needed to be brought to justice.

Or at least wrestled to the ground until answers were given.

PRIDE was on the line here.

[bunko]

"Yi--"

Scipio drops his drink and throws one arm over bartop. With his grip as a lever, he hoists himself up, and over, arse polishing a brief clean streak, boots sweeping a tankard or two onto the floor as he goes--and just in time, too, because the Noodle Stranger is right behind him.

On the floor, he scrambles toward the end of the bar where Rafael had been. From way down here, he can't see his friend, but he's there--somewhere--unless he's distracted, or wandered away--in this hour of need? He can't have, not with the Noodle Stranger waiting to wrack vengeance-- "Rafa-- Rafael! It's him! Rafa--"

He shoves past the bartender's legs, which gets him a kick. He goes down, hard, hits his chin on the sticky floor with an oof--and shoves himself up, determined not to be caught--

[ombranera]

Zevran lands in the space previously vacated, boots heavy on the floorboards. He'd meant to land on that blond fool and he'd meant for it to hurt, not having the squishy target of a vulnerable underbelly staggers him for the half second it takes his prey to vault up and over, backwards. Snarling he hauls himself onto the bar proper, stalking down the length of worn wood, heedless of the tankards he knocks over or the arms and shoulders he has to weave around. At one point he steps on a drunkard's back to push himself to the end of the bar with a solid leap.

"Ho intenzione di tagliare fuori gli occhi e dar loro da mangiare per Te!" Where is his partner? He needs to catch them both. All that trouble they put him through, the job they ruined, the coin he lost.

[bunko]

Occhi? Occhi, Maker-- Under the bar, Scipio slaps one hand over his eyes. Wine-sticky fingers momentarily blind him, and he sucks in a breath. Ow.

What kind of a dangerous madman is the Noodle Stranger, anyways? In review of his role in nearly ruining one of the great successes of their careers, Scipio and Rafael have speculated, idly, on the identity of the Noodle Stranger. And while passions had been high that night, all that paint smeared on the wall, and Rafael with half an eyebrow missing, grabbing Scipio around the neck to drag him out of the goat's way, and all that shouting--never, never would Scipio have suspected that they had crossed paths with insanity itself. Why else would he be walking on the bar? One has only one excuse for bar-walking, and that's during a rousing song. This is just destructive.

And why the eyes?

Think, he tells himself. Think think think. The end of the bar is just there, and there's the hinged part of the counter-top, that the bartender can swing up so he can duck out--the perfect space to crawl out from, and Scipio does so, with the stomping footsteps of the Noodle Stranger echoing loudly behind him, and he grabs hold of a nearby leg to hoist himself up.

The leg is familiar. He looks up, wide-eyed, panicked, arms wrapped tightly around Rafael's leg, like a drowning man.

"Rafa! It's HIM--"

[paperwing]

He's not the only one on the battlements. Sabriel stands, arms folded, mind preoccupied, for once not with the voices in her head. There's something about Skyhold, something that's been nagging at her since she got here, something amiss - like a door that will always squeak no matter how much you grease it, or a book that seems unfinished. She's just about summed it up as her sensitivity to death, given the age of the place, but it's not really that, either. Just... something.

She hears Scipio before she sees him and has already turned to glance in his direction but she really registers he's there. She almost doesn't move, goes the other way - but either she's a glutton for punishment or she cares or she wants to help or she's actually charmed, or all of the above, so she approaches instead.

"How are you feeling?" Silly question. She continues, "With the weather. How many socks was it last?"

[bunko]

Silly question or no, he smiles when he hears it, and speeds up his step to draw closer to her. Free of shivering, free of whining, full and relatively returned to happiness, all of the color has come back to his face. Some of that color, admittedly, might be thanks to the wine.

"Me? I'm feeling great. And it's twenty-one," he adds, as he shifts his weight so he can stick out one foot and wiggle his toes inside his boot."But only two right now. Do you know how many times I've heard that it's warmer here? Yet I don't feel it at all."

But he's not whining about it. With a sigh, he flops down just beside her, elbows and forearms on the edge of the battlements so he can look out at the wide world beyond. "It's awful," he says, almost happily. "Isn't it."

[paperwing]

How he managed to scrounge up twenty-one socks between the five of them, she'll never know, and perhaps doesn't want to know - the amusements of camping were slim and for a set of three bored rogues had deteriorated to stealing more and more nonsensical items except for no reason than that they could. Her belongings had been saved by the meager fact they either did not exist or held no sentimental value to her.

"I thought you would have added to them."

His answers make her eyebrows raise a fraction in what might be surprise. It almost seems like contentment, or, well, as content as could be, not being in Antiva or just about anywhere else of his choosing. She couldn't quite get a read on him; though to be fair, for almost the entirety of the time she had known Scipio it had involved a lot of whining and colder and colder nights out in the snow. Right now, though, she could almost see where the charm comes from.

Or not, because she was not, by any stretch, charmed.

"I'm not certain what I was expecting. More than what it is, or just safer walls?" It's rhetoric, but she shrugs lightly, all the same. "I'm not sure what to think."

[bunko]

There is always time to add to the sock collection. The longer that he stands here, close to a cold stone wall, with cold seeping in through the soles of his boots, the more that he wishes he was wearing twenty-four socks right now.

"It's falling apart." He kicks the side of the wall, and feeling prickles back into his foot even as a few bits of stone fall off. "I don't know that these walls are very strong. But it's quite far, and I suppose it's been used for a very long time as a stronghold, so there must be something to it--and anyways, there's something really wonderful about it, isn't there? Like something out of a tale."

A beat; and then he has to add, a man confessing: "It could stand to be a little warmer." This is a familiar statement, one he's made several dozen times on the road. In Antiva, it's always warm, like sitting in a warm bath. This time, he turns to her to ask, "Where are you from?"

[paperwing]

With the bustle of Skyhold, at least he has more potential targets for sock theft.

"It's old, and it still stands. It's more than just how it was built, or what with, but where." The outer appearance is, as demonstrated, crumbling on sight (or kick), but it seems so much older than it should be, and it just feels different. Mage intuition; there's a lot of magic as well as stonework in all of this. "It could easily be any fortress of any of the stories I heard or read." She seems enthused, pondering. Tales always fascinated her, of any kind, adventure and romance and the heroine saving the day and marrying her prince. "Knights and kings, Elven whispers in the night. Maybe it really was in one of them."

Or will be, if the Inquisition grows, recovers, and shapes itself.

In all of the times he's made the statement, she's never outright disagreed, because she does actually agree with it. It's a familiar sentiment, now, and in relative safety she almost smiles before catching herself. But still, no disagreements. "Nevarra," she says after a moment. "North of Hunter Fell, along the river. But I've only ever been there the once."

[bunko]

Where, for certain. Scipio thinks of their lengthy trek, all that rough terrain and cold, and thinks that if he were in the business of besieging keeps and strongholds, he'd come for Skyhold last. Dragging along an army behind you could only make it worse. HOw do demons and darkspawn care for cold?

Cavalier thought is quickly tempered by the little itch at the back of his head, and the prickle on the back of his neck. But even the brief thought of demons isn't enough to kill his mood. Scipio brightens once more at Sabriel's reference to tales, tales. He loves tales of all sorts, and he's just about to tell her this, and name off some storied keeps--but her answer, true-given, distracts him. See, Rafael, he thinks to himself, she's not that bad. He'll find Rafa and tell him so, later.

"Nevarra," he repeats, appreciatively. "I have heard tales from Nevarra--and tales of Nevarra, too. Plenty of heroes. What kept you away?"

[amygdalae]

[The Wardens may be here now, but work hasn't changed much at all for Bruce. He continues with his usual duties of caring for the refugees and sometimes the soldiers, even as a good number of them were whispering and wondering around the presence of not one but five Grey Wardens within the Inquisition. Some of them asked Bruce about it too, but he didn't give any answers. Why the Wardens were here Bruce did not want to claim anything, but from the little he had discerned...

He supposed if they were to know, they would be informed eventually.

So he maintains his usual work, never stopping, only finally managing a break around dinner time. The refugees and such all gathered in their usual spots with food and drink, but Bruce himself was settled far away from the general crowd, sitting by himself as he slowly ate the meagre meal of stew and bread. It wasn't much, but it was enough - and enough was all that Bruce needed.]

[bunko]

[Scipio might have eaten at the tavern, and then had a few bites here and there in between then and now, but that doesn't stop him from getting a bowl of stew.

Which, he realizes, as he walks around slurping broth, was a little unfair of him to do. There are people truly in need here, people who didn't have three meals today already. Then again, it's very good stew, and he's very cold, and the sun is going down.

He still offers the bowl to a few of the refugees, in case they want it--as seconds, maybe?--but everyone declines. And so Scipio sits down, bowl still in hand, and slurps, loudly, off of his spoon.

Then he turns to Bruce, and holds up his half-filled bowl.]

Do you know who made this?

[amygdalae]

[Bruce blinks in surprise at the inquiry, not really expecting having been spoken too -- and well he hadn't quite noticed the presence of this particular Warden.

At least, he's pretty certain he's a Warden.]

Someone from the kitchens, I assume. [He replies after a pause.] Why, did you like it?

[Today's stew had been especially sweet - although its not much of Bruce's taste - but he can see people liking it.]

[bunko]

Yes, it's quite good. Don't you think?

[He slurps again, happily, and dunks his spoon back into his bowl.]

It could stand to be spicier than as sweet as it is, I think--even if the spice was only black pepper, to heat it. If the weather is going to insist on being so cold, pepper is the least they could do. Then again, it was free, and it was given to me, so--

[He shrugs, and slurps another spoonful.]

No complaints. You?

[amygdalae]

[...if Bruce didn't know better, that almost sounded exactly like complaining to him.

But of course, he's not going to say that.]

It is a bit sweet for me. [Bruce says instead, trying to be as amiable as possible.] But that's really my own personal preference.

[bunko]

[He nods in agreement, even as he takes yet another bite.]

Spicy, then. [A guess. If food is not sweet, then it is spicy. Who has time for anything in between? This is now a kinship between them, and so there will be no protest to his proposal:] That makes two of us. And surely there are more out there--so we'll suggest spice. Or ask for it, if they're wary of angering those who do prefer it sweet. Black pepper, if it can be spared.

:')

[rathercommon]

Kitty has certain advantages in life, and certain disadvantages. An advantage: at this height, you only have to worry about hips and waists bumping into the trays you're carrying, not hands and elbows. And hips and waists tend to be far less chaotic and unpredictable, and they tend to be smaller weapons (especially here, in the Inquisition, where nearly everyone is either trimly athletic or struggling to come back from starvation). So her tray wasn't the one that had gotten flipped by the smug-looking Warden: even if she'd been in range, she'd have been able to save the drinks herself, thank-you-very-much. Helped along by another advantage, natural dexterity, and the powers of observation that would keep her from getting in the range of that tow-headed raconteur.

And now a disadvantage: the name she's chosen for herself, Kitty, is very easy to chant over and over again. Her birth name, Khalena, which has not been uttered since she was cast out, doesn't lend itself to repetition in the same way. Too many syllables, and topsiders can't ever get the kh right; it always trips them up. Kitty, though, is easy to just do in a loop, Kittykittykittykittykittykittykittykittyplease-please-please, over and over again, until finally Kitty hisses "Fine" at Drea and sets down the tankard she's cleaning with a heavy sigh.

She makes her way over to the blond Warden, her hands on her hips, annoyance written on her face. And without any preamble, she says to him, "What's your name?"

:')))))))))))

[bunko]

Scipio is polishing off the last of his wine when the barmaid comes over and stops in front of him with her hands on her hips. Still gulping down his drink, he raises his eyebrows a little, and gives her a once-over.

Interesting. Usually when people look at him like that, he's done something to them.

But the question is an easy one. A quick last gulp, and he wipes the back of his wrist over his mouth, and sets down his empty mug, puts his elbows and forearms on the bartop, and leans closer to her. The first name that comes to mind is not actually his own, but that can't be helped. Old habits.

"Scipio." He smiles at her. It's a nice smile. "Yours?"

[rathercommon]

"Doesn't matter." Her answer is brisk. She turns and, with phenomenal efficiency, points at the precise angle and trajectory to indicate Drea, who is not making things easy by trying her hardest to look uninterested and inconspicuous. "Her name is Drea. You flipped over her tray earlier. She thinks your eyes are nice. You ought to - "

"Kitty!" comes a wail from behind the bar. Drea, in spite of her studious attempts to look like she wasn't listening, was listening. Intently. Big surprise.

So Kitty raises her voice just a little. "She ought to be brave enough to talk to you herself, but she's not, so I'm here. So please go and kiss her and be terrible at it so this ordeal can end."

[bunko]

He follows where she indicates, and gives Drea a smile, as indulgent as it is charming. This is a routine that he's familiar with, even if his demeanor suggests nothing but pleasant flattered surprise.

"I didn't mean to flip her tray," he tells Kitty, genuinely. He does not lean back off of the bartop just yet. "It truly was an accident. But I'm afraid I won't be able to kiss her terribly."

[rathercommon]

Kitty gives a firm, distinctly pronounced, "Ugh" in response.

"Let me guess," she says. "You're just too good at it. You have a natural talent that can't be suppressed. Of course you can be terrible. Terrible kissing is easy. Suck on a clove of garlic while you do it. Or spend the whole time humming a jig. Or use your hands but have them be really weird and limp." She holds up her hands in demonstration, making weird little pawing motions at roughly face level. (Ribcage-level for him.) "Very simple."

[bunko]

Ugh?

But Scipio laughs, despite himself. He doesn't mind a challenge, a little verbal spar--and thanks to the Maker, for unfreezing his wits enough to allow him the chance.

"Diamine! Who have you been kissing?" His laugh is a nice laugh, by the way, one that carries even over the din of the tavern. He shoots Drea another glance for good measure, lest she grow to feel displaced or otherwise jealous. She blushes, prettily, and starts scrubbing at a spot on the bar. "You were far too ready with those examples. It's worrying."