Post #2522578 in The City of Chains, a roleplay on RPG

At the behest of Nostariel, Lucien had at last left the Keep, albeit only temporarily. She needed a few more things from her clinic, not least among them fresh clothing, because trying to heal in someone else’s too-loose garments was apparently not the best of ideas. He certainly didn’t mind going to fetch things for her, especially considering the fact that Sophia was now stable and out of immediate danger. It had been about a week and a half in total since the Qunari attack, and in that time, Kirkwall had descended into utter chaos, then found itself slowly pulled out, mostly by Templar effort, as they had taken to using the power that usually belonged to the Viscount. Given that there currently wasn’t one, and Sophia’s recovery was still largely an uncertain quantity, he supposed someone had to.

He’d stopped by his own house first, for much the same reason as he was going by the clinic. He’d asked Rilien to check on his guests of course, but it was still a relief to see for himself that the three of them were unharmed. He trusted his friend to recognize physical injuries immediately, but wasn’t sure how well Ril would read into their psychological states. Or more accurately, how relevant he would find anything abnormal there to be. But the three of them were fine—the house had in fact remained untouched by the Qunari themselves, though there had been a visit by looters, in which Desne and her children had used the hidden room as instructed.

Lucien was unsurprised to find that his coat of arms and several of his spare weapons were missing, but thankfully they seemed to have left most everything else intact. He doubted anyone would see the value in old books and drawings, and none had taken the time to destroy much just for the sake of destroying it, either. Probably they’d simply decided to leave for better pickings elsewhere. Retreating to his room for a moment, he retrieved enough coin to compensate the three what they’d personally lost and then some, pointing out that it might be a while yet before he was back to stay, and directing them to a former client of his who made a very sturdy lock. It seemed to assuage any remaining concern, and with a small rucksack, mostly empty, he headed down to the clinic.

He was returning downstairs from Nostariel’s rooms and picking through the potions on her shelf—the clinic was remarkably free of signs of theft—when he heard the front door open on his blind side, and turned his head so as to see the newcomer.

Kirkwall's lapse into chaos had shaken, rightfully so, all of its citizens. Whether it was the scrummy vagrants hunkered down in Darktown, or the equally grimy denizens of Lowtown—all the way to the prim and proper nobles of Hightown, picking through ravaged homes and grimly peeking out through broken windows and doors that appeared as if they had been up and stolen away. To their credit, everyone was all too eager to return to some semblance of normalcy. Buildings were being repaired, as well as anything else that had been destroyed. People were actually working together, and while it might have taken awhile to gain what they had lost, even Sparrow could appreciate the efforts that were being made. She, too, had walked away affected by everything that had happened. As surprising as it was, even to her, Kirkwall had become something of a home. Admittedly, without everyone inside of Kirkwall, it would be just another place she was passing through. She no longer wandered, and cared far more about people, and what they thought of her, than she'd care to admit.

And so came her self-entitled mission to corner Lucien into having a conversation with her. That wasn't to say that she hadn't seen him, as he was staying at the Keep round-the-clock, and she had been dropping by to bolster the chamber with flowers. She hadn't, however, allowed any moments where they might be in the same room together, alone. She scurried out as soon as she appeared, leaving petals and bandaged fingers in her wake. This time, this time, she would set things straight. If it hadn't been for Lucien, she never would have known the truth. And she would have never been able to confront Rilien, at all. Even if Rilien didn't understand the importance of knowing what he had given up, because as he said, it was done, it would always be important to her. Lucien had shed away layers of Rilien she hadn't noticed before. Layers that she wasn't ready to notice. He'd peeled back some of hers, as well. Screaming at him, and then ignoring him as she'd done before, was unfair.

She followed him to his own home, keeping to the shadows. Fear told her that that was not the right time to make herself known, so she pressed her shoulder to the building and waited for him to reappear, only to tail him towards Darktown. Ah—the clinic. Again, Sparrow hesitated approaching him, until he entered the clinic itself. She hopped down the steps and pushed open the door just in as Lucien swung his gaze over, causing her to pause mid-step. She was half tempted to turn tail and slam the door behind her. Instead, she took a breath, stepped inside and closed it behind her. “Ah, Lucien—fancy meeting you here,” she greeted shamelessly. Small talk, somehow, seemed inappropriate. Bringing up Sophia, and her health, even more so. She understood the gravity of her situation as well as anyone else did, and it wasn't a comfortable topic to bring about. She shuffled her feet and scratched the back of her head, focusing on the ground in front of her.

“I wanted to catch you before you headed back to the Keep.”

Considering that the last few times he’d seen her, she’d fairly well avoided him, Lucien could not say that he was expecting Sparrow. The sensation of being watched, of being followed, had definitely hit him along the path he’d taken, ingrained as it was by years of just waiting to find a dagger in his back one day, but he’d passed it off as unimportant. Hardly anyone here would have a reason to kill him; it was probably just someone trying to keep away from him in case he was a looter. He wouldn’t even put it beyond people to be actively trying to protect the clinic. Nostariel did good work, and asked nothing for it—surely even the most hardscrabble people would not want to bring harm to the same person that healed up their cuts and bruises and set their broken limbs. He was firmly a believer in the idea that criminals were not themselves without hearts—or at the very least without enough intelligence to know when they were being so obviously counterproductive. No, surely nobody who lived here in this community in Lowtown would let the clinic go up in flames. He may have simply run afoul of one of its many protectors.

So when it was Sparrow, he wasn’t immediately able to reply, and it took him a few seconds before he got a handle on his tongue. His brow furrowed a bit—while far from unhappy to see her, he did hope she didn’t plan to take that much time. He wasn’t too keen on being far from the Keep for long. Nostariel needed these supplies, and Lucien needed… well, he needed to be back there shortly. “Well,” he said, remembering his manners and managing half a smile, “you have indeed caught me. What can I do for you, Sparrow?”

Even as she entered the clinic, Sparrow hesitated and took a few step backwards, eyes flicking down to the bundle Lucien held. Of course, he was probably heading back to the Keep, and visiting Nostariel's clinic meant that there were some sort of healing goodies he wanted to bring there, as well. She pulled the doorknob and held the door open, sweeping her hand in front of her, “We can talk as we walk. I'll be your escort today.” Not like he truly needed one. Pity the poor soul that decided to try and wrangle those goods away from him. Either way, it was another excuse to delay the inevitable. She wasn't entirely sure where Nostariel was either, though she'd rather keep the audience to the minimum of two should she resort to grovelling and pouting. Apologies came as naturally to her as trying to breathe underwater. Once they were out of the clinic, and on their merry way down the hobbled alleys, Sparrow twined her fingers together and settled them at the nape of her neck. It wouldn't get any easier the more they walked, she understood that much.

“I wanted to—,” she began, sifting air through her clenched teeth, “Forget it. I'm sorry.” She continued walking slightly ahead of him, tangling and untangling her fingers. Neither she, nor Rilien, had even admitted that Lucien had been the one to confess the specifics of his actions. He'd opened a door for her; one that Rilien would have kept firmly shut for her benefit. How many things had he neglected to tell her because he was shielding her from something he believed too harsh for her to face? If she never learned to hold her own shield, what did that say of her strength? Strike hard enough and she would shatter. If they saw her as little more than smoke and mirrors, incapable of defending herself from harsh realities, then she would thicken her skin. Sparrow was a storm, but she would stop sinking them.

“I've never been good at apologizing.” Truly. Anyone would know—Amalia would, specifically. She never apologized because she always believed her actions were justified. For reasons that continued to elude her, she was beginning to question herself. All of her motives, once tangled in freedom and worldly enjoyment, shivered away at the thought of losing what she now saw as important. Most of all, she feared losing her companions and being left alone. They were not expendable. She would fight for them, even when the obstacles were of her own making. “But I hope that you can suffer me awhile longer.”

It honestly took Lucien a while to decide what she would need to apologize for. The past few weeks had been murder on his ordinary sensibilities about such things—he lived now in a very narrow world, where he waited for something he hoped was not impossible, and everything else simply faded. His company, his plans, even his friends—for these weeks, they were there, and his thoughts occasionally wandered to them, but they were far from the center of his attention, as perhaps they would have been at other times. He liked being able to do that, in some senses, to shift his focus such that he was wholly invested in whatever people brought before him. He thought it suited him to be that way, to want to solve problems and give them everything he had—it certainly felt right. He’d never found it to be a troubling balancing act, keeping all of those concerns, those people, at the fore, but right now he simply couldn’t manage it.

He had to cast his mind back to their last conversation, and the details were slow in emerging through his distraction. Once they did however, he understood that she must be referring to her hasty exit last time they had spoken. “Then I suppose it’s fortunate that none is required,” he said, shifting the burden in his hands slightly such that it was tucked under one arm. He used the other to pull back the thick strands of dark brown hair that had fallen into his face. It really needed to be cut, but that was another thing that could wait. He favored Rilien’s cohabitator with a smile, though it was a melancholy thing, and unlike him. “I understand why you needed to leave, Sparrow. It was not exactly easy tidings I was giving.”

He’d been told he was patient with people, and supposed that to an extent that was true. But most of the time, he didn’t think patience was the right word for what he did. It seemed to imply that the things he was being patient about vexed him somehow, that he needed to exercise some superhuman capacity for tolerating them. Lucien thought that rather than that, he was simply not a man easily vexed. Sparrow leaving had not been an annoyance to him, merely a reaction he understood in the context of the revelation she’d received. He had no idea how he would have reacted if he’d been told Rilien had given up a chance to divest himself of his Tranquility for him—but that was a matter complicated by the fact that Ril being Tranquil had never bothered him in the first place. There were nuances to their situation that Lucien was not privy to, and he did not expect that she would stay and linger for light conversation having heard what she had.

They approached the Keep, now, and he turned to Sparrow at the bottom of the stairs, an indication that this was where he thought it best to part. “I wanted to say… I know that being friends with Ril has its challenges, and perhaps more for you than I. But… in his way, he holds you very dear, Sparrow, and I’ve never known him to do anything without a reason. So, whatever you did to produce that reaction in him… thank you. I think you’ve done him good.”

Silence had always bothered her. And while Lucien had good reason to be reflecting on more important matters, like keeping Kirkwall from collapsing in on itself and tending to Sophia while she recovered, Sparrow still wrung her hands together behind her head, anticipating unreasonable outcomes. Dread curled rings in her stomach. She expected much from people, and assumed they thought the same of her. Instead of standing tall as they did, she bent under the strain and lashed out like a cornered animal, scratching and biting and spitting. Apologies—those were new developments. Surely, by their influence, she had changed. Tiny steps were still progress, and perhaps, she would learn to quell her volcanic tendencies and voice how she felt. She hoped so. Rilien hadn't even suggested apologizing to Lucien. His suggestions had become fewer and fewer the more she ventured out on her own, driven by her single-minded determination to do better.

She occasionally flicked her eyes over her shoulder to read the expression on his face, but found herself unable to read anything at all. To her, Lucien looked as if he were always contemplating something. Vexed by matters that went far beyond her. Backwater politics or Kirkwall's state of disrepair and its recent dalliance with petty crime, and who knows what else. His plate, as well as anyone else involved with the Viscountess and leading lords and ladies, were full. While she might have had brief glints of envy when thinking of had comfortable it might have been living in such a grand home, surrounded by nobles and knights who bowed and saluted as you passed, Sparrow had spent enough time around them to know that she would have hated it. Gaudy garments aside, there were certain responsibilities she did not envy. She doubted Lucien had any less, and of his own volition. Alongside Sophia, she doubted he'd care if his duties tripled, quadrupled.

None? She blinked, caught in mid-glance. The look on his face... was somber, exhausted. And still, he managed to smile and say things she hadn't expected. Sparrow's hands slowly dropped away from her neck and drifted back to her sides. Being understood was strange. Stranger still that her behavior needed no apology in the first place. It struck her as odd, perhaps, because she had never had conversations like this before. Living among the Qun, she apologized to no one, even if she had done something wrong. She did as she pleased and expected those she cared about to simply accept her as she was, and if they did not, she behaved as if they did. Explaining herself to those she wished to keep close continued to be an experience she was not familiar with. However, she did not dislikeit—this, being understood and being forgiven.

Soon enough, they stood in front of the Keep. Sparrow's expression walked a fine line between bewilderment and serene. She bobbed her head and turned to leave as Lucien halted on the stairs, turning to face her. She paused and swung back around, about to chirp her goodbyes. With her escort services complete, and her secret mission annulled, she had planned a hasty retreat, but as she feared, Lucien had more to say. He was thanking her. She garbled unintelligibly and ruffled a hand through her hair, shouting louder than she'd intended, “I—you, you, as well! Thank you!” The goodbye was strangled, and clipped, but she managed to sputter that she'd be around later to drop off more flowers. Her heels, in full-flight, flagged her retreat.

Snippet #2522578

located in Kirkwall, a part of The City of Chains, one of the many universes on RPG.

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