antivanleather | Sixth jump - you should know, you should know that [Action/Written]

Sixth jump - you should know, you should know that [Action/Written]

[Action, locked to Isaac]

[This is not how Zevran imagined the first few hours of his freedom would be. The wine and the feasting and the drinking the day before, certainly. But the first morning after he had finished collecting his effects and bidding farewell to the Warden he intended to spend on the road. Leaving Ferelden for warmer climes. He did not intend to wake in a cell.

And yet, here he is, despite the best intentions. He wakes slowly arms flexing against his restraints and he keeps his head for the first few moments. Just manacles. Just a cold, dark cave like many that the Crows preferred to use for their longer imprisonments. But were this the Crows he would be dead, that went without saying. No, no. This is a personal vendetta- which leaves Zevran free to consider who it is he pissed off this time to earn such attentions while he works at attempting to lean just enough so that he might pull a pick from his hair. That he has none is worrying.

That there is no manner in which the manacles might be removed is of a greater concern. But when he finds that they actually constrict when he attempts to twist his thumb enough to pop it out of place and holds him all the tighter- then. Then he panics.

Crows are terrible. Nobles are worse. Mages, those that yet live and wish him dead? Horrify him and he used to be better at fighting down the swell of cold fear and the anxious ratcheting of his heart. Used to be able to laugh through it, to grin and smile and shrug off torment such as sensory deprivation and capture. It is cold. It is dark. He is alone. He is held by a mage he cannot recall at the moment and after all that he witness at the final battle in Denerim that is what makes him shift in earnest, rattle his chains and lash out with a foot to find purchase- he finds that his feet are bare and the wall is solid, little more. Brasca.]

[Action, Open]

[Later, when he is freed and his personal effects returned, when he realizes where he is in earnest and is armored and armed and less out of sorts Zev ducks into the Coffee Shop for a cup of something hot and bitter, leaving a rather short note in the journal for whoever might have missed him, though save a bare handful he cannot imagine it would be many. He does not even know if they yet remain.]

While I am pleased to have found my way back to this delightful village, I think awaking in a random bed might have been the better introduction. At least it was warm.

Fondest regards,

Zevran

[After some time spent reacquainting himself with the village's map he, warily, makes his way to House 51.]

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[For several minutes, Jack only reads and rereads the latest post that's gone out across the journals, feeling a heavy lump stick in his throat and slowly swell until it's lodged there tight and painful. He supposes, maybe, he's glad he didn't call for Eugene the second he saw the figure in the picture. Because the note itself is more than he can entirely wrap his head around, and he's left letting his eyes trace and retrace it, searching for some kind interpretation of it.

But no, Zev's back. He's back, and he remembers, and . . . that seems to be it. Not even a few words of a quick note or a call, let alone a visit. Just a flippant little post about cruising the town, shooed off into the world at large before he goes off to do . . . whatever he's doing, now that he's back in Luceti.

Well.

Dull shock turns to seething after the third or fourth or seventeenth run-through, and Jack wedges his journal firmly into the pocket of his sweatshirt, pacing for the kitchen with the intent to grab a water bottle. His trainers and W.G. are right by the door, and the Battle Dome sounds like the only bearable place right now.]

[Despite his rather illuminating conversation with Isaac earlier- bits are still missing. Everything of his previous stay here is muzzed over by time, chill, or exhaustion. All he remembers of this house is that it has some significance, that when he walked upon the path proper there was a dull ache in his gut a little like lonliness and a lot like regret. But whatever might he have to regret?

He could try the door like a normal person- but he does not know who lives here. Does not trust himself to this strange place with it's strange lives and so he opts for the least conspicuous window. It's a kitchen- and whoever lived here before had some healthy sense of paranoia. There are several tripwires he has to avoid connected to surprisingly delicate spring loaded mechanisms that release needles, powder, or vapor and were he not so concerned with keeping himself from being a victim of these devices he might recognize the handiwork.

As it stands it only leaves him ever more wary of sliding inside. But when the last trap is disarmed and he can, and does, slide the window up- he enters all the same. Slips in and shuts the window behind him silent as anything- lean and dark and covered in drakeskin leather armor, knives and swords strapped to him- he makes a proper interloper should he be seen.

There's nothing that strikes him offhand of this place other than a staggering sense of familiarity. He knows this room. Has dreamt of it- but they were nothing more than dreams. Lost in this fugue he doesn't pick up on the patter of footsteps until he has no time whatsoever to hide, no time to find a shadow, so he turns, guiltily, hands cradled around a silver mug that he swears he knows the feel of while warm. Antivan in design and he knows that knotwork, knows the intricate lay of lines etched into it- something he did often enough idly on his own armor. Supposed runes of good health and protection as made by the Dalish.

Why is this here?]

Edited 2013-11-14 23:58 (UTC)

[As much as it is possible for an emotion to do so, Jack's anger trips. Zevran standing there, in his kitchen, is rough enough terrain. But seeing him in unfamiliar armour, looking so utterly lost, is enough to send his outrage tumbling head over metaphorical heels, snagging on and picking up bits of all sorts of other feelings he doesn't want in there. Confusion, happiness, hurt, disbelief - his anger is coated in all of them by the time it rolls to a stop, leaving him still in the doorway, still staring right back, feeling every single one of his blood vessels going dully electric from his scalp down.]

I, uh. [His voice comes almost unintentionally, and he licks his lips, looking at Zevran uncertainly.] I'd gotten the impression you weren't coming back.

[Lost and older, leaner, sharper than when they'd last met. The remaining months during the campaign had not been entirely unkind to the Antivan, but they had not been restful. What softness there might have been was burned out of him in the deep roads, carved from him in the last weeks before Denerim. Is he broader, perhaps? Are there thin lines of new scars light along his jaw, a knotch in his eyebrow? One cannot say without coming closer- and as much as Zevran wishes to flee with this cup from this man he's utterly struck.

This. This is the face he saw in his dreams. The voice that haunted him.]

You...I. I know you.

[It is said without any of his usual bravado, without even the shadow of jest in his eyes. The cup's set aside in favor of approaching on silent feet- something Zev had given up within a week of living with Jack and Eugene and Max at their request but now he doesn't remember that arrangement. All he remembers are faces, sensations.]

[It's too strange for Jack to even start riddling out, Zev remembering the town but not remembering him or Eugene or any of this, Zev being back and in his kitchen and not making coffee or smiling at him or even trying to avoid his eyes. He closes the distance the rest of the way silently, expression melting into a worried frown as he reaches up for one of those new scuffs to cup his hand against it.]

Christ, Zev. What happened to you?

[He locks up on instinct, twitching away from the touch initially at first brush. Then the sensation slots into place, palm to skin, a crackle of laughter, eyes wide and bright and brimming with mirth, flicker flashes of memory too quick for him to hold onto. He tilts his head into that touch tentatively, trying to place it. Place this.]

I fought a war. You are...

[Gold skitters from point to point on this man's face, trying to place the details, trying to make sense of it when he sees the ring. That earring- one hand slides to a pouch on his belt and, oddly enough, it is empty. That has his expression shuttering, has him stepping away for some room to breathe.]

Who gave you- how did you?

[Jack has no idea what Zev is talking about for a handful of seconds, until he puts together Zev patting at a belt-pouch and not quite looking at his eyes anymore, more off to the right and . . . oh. He reaches up, feeling the familiar shape of the earring, the little trinket of silver and gem he'd stubbornly left in his ear even after Zev had disappeared. And something happens when his fingertips remind him of the shape, because he remembers more than the present moment, more than the confusion and hurt and worry. He remembers everything else, every sleepless night and lazy afternoon and numberless moments of tumbling full-throated laughter. And it becomes unforgivable, then, that Zevran be returned to him like this.

So against all of his better judgement, against sense, he follows him. A step for a step, the tensest dance they've ever spun across this floor, the almost-smile ghosting across his expression that means determination rather than any kind of joy.]

You did. Zevran, it's me: Jack, Argento . . . bloody Gazza, come on, you can't give me all these names and not remember even a little of it-

Edited 2013-11-15 01:32 (UTC)

I would never-

[But he would if, and only if, he cared enough. He'd toyed with the idea when it came to Rinna. Had been tempted on more than one occasion to offer the trinket- but she was a Crow. Material possessions meant nothing. Freedom and sentiment, that. That had been everything.

That had been their downfall.

So to think of this place, of all his mismatched dreams of blood and pain and frustration, of soft skin and sharp smiles and too kind eyes. Of kind voices murmuring his name- of being held and cared for- to have all that wrapped around the truth of that one little gem set into this man's ear. Jack, Argento, Gazza- these names mean nothing and everything to him.]

Keep your distance.

[Crackling over a voice that does not quite waver even as he steps away- and Jack continues to follow. He needs this distance, needs this space to breathe and sort himself out, needs time that he is not being given- one step too many and his back is to a counter and yet Jack still advances. The man means him no harm but habit has a blade in his hand before he can think. Not attacking, just. Present. Held out in front of him in a defensive position.]

I said stay back.

[Even Karla needs a break from her rather...sparse routine every now and then. So today, she's found herself in the Coffee Shop to try a little something different. A cup of coffee of her own.]

[As she stirs her drink, she spots a head of blonde hair across the room that somehow seems to nag at her memory. She doesn't recall meeting him...but she must have if he's nudging her bells like this. So she'll do something that she doesn't normally do – approach.]

[She stands, picking up her cup and makes her way across the room, standing right in front of him. She pauses, looking him over carefully, trying to connect with her own memory. Only a moment later does it dawn on her that she should probably say something.]

Um...hello...

[It's all she could think of at the moment.]

The sounds of a struggle are impossible for a predator to miss, less when they break the tomb-like silence so constant and familiar to him, it has almost become a comfort. With a weapon at his back and a devil at his side, Isaac moves in in a quiet, sure-footed way, lead by jangling chains to the dungeon’s entrance. It’s too dark within for even his keenly accustomed eyes to make out more than a silhouette on the other side of the door through the barred window, but that he catches a faint whiff of magic opposite of where he knows the shackles to be only piques his interest further.

A trap, perhaps. The Malnosso are capable of many surprises.

He rests his palm lightly against the door, the Forgemaster’s seal turning visible and shimmering before it seeming vanishes behind his hand. Then the bolts budge, and the door gives with a creak, but it’s not Isaac who enters first.

With a leathery snap of its wings and a roar, Abel plunges in and comes to an abrupt stop a foot short of the prisoner, growling low in its throat as it then hovers restlessly around the perimeter of the room. Searching the darkness for other living threats. But Isaac steps in, advancing with calm confidence and the smooth roll of his hips, and the creature beelines to Zevran as if begging permission to rip him apart.

He takes his time crossing the room, past the iron nails and pincers, the hammers and scrapers and the coiled whip. Tools his cursed self had thought valuable to have and his enduring sadism and sense of practicality refused to let him throw away. And as he draws closer and details come into focus little by little, one by one, he remembers the times he had been forced down into Dracula’s dungeons far more than once to watch the punishments doled as ordered to the traitorous, to the defiant, and to the enemy. And he had been afraid, once, of hearing gristle and bone snapping and watching punctured eyes dribbling down faces like the runny whites of an egg. But he had shed that fear quickly, because there had been no other choice. Violence in many forms had simply been the daily reality of all things living and undead under the castle’s roof. It had been the reality of life in darkness itself, where humans were few and beasts were many, restlessly hungry and whimsical, free to do as they pleased within the castle with their master’s often laissez-faire approach when it came to conflict resolution among his lesser allies. So long as Dracula’s will and authority were respected, as was the chain of command, what humans and beasts did and didn’t do in that house of hell didn’t matter. The freedom was more often terrifying than anything else. But from blood and suffering and stress, leaders had been forged and ranks decided, and Isaac has stood a vicious, wary, proud man on his growing mountain of corpses. But even from up high, he never saw his own downfall coming.

He knows who it is before a flame bursts from his palm, shedding a soft glow on the prisoner’s face. He knows because he feels a low throb in his chest despite himself – and there’s a twitch at the corner of his lips. The beginnings of a sardonic smirk less at Zevran himself than fate that forces them together and won’t stop prodding something more than half-dead to life. And for just that little moment before there’s light flickering between them, Isaac closes his eyes. To ready himself. To let the memory of jokes and clinking classes echo through his mind and wash over him, because he has no choice with this either.

He’s grateful Zevran never saw what destruction his absence had wrought. It had been one matter to check and recheck the list of contacts in the journal, endlessly contemplating the place the elf’s name used to take on the page in the same irresistible way a tongue poked at the gap a pulled tooth left. But it had been entirely different when the things Isaac had crafted for him and the things left for Isaac had been held out for him to take as he stared and fiercely at Jack, as if he had gall to have come all this way to his door and bring this upon him. The weight of the sketchbook and dagger and traps and letter in his hands had given his loss a leaden, ugly sense of finality -- and then something snapped and he had begun laugh and laugh. Because he had been so certain and fixated on the idea that Jack and Eugene would keep his only friend from him that he had forgotten for just long enough that the Malnosso could do it and more quickly and effectively than they could ever manage together.

The week that followed was lost in a fog. Many days of raising glasses of wine in a joyless salute and tossing them down his throat, and nights lying wide-awake over a bed of his own notes scattered in wild disarray and thinking that a true friend would never let one finish a bottle of wine alone.

Zevran’s letter had never been read a second time. He had stowed away along with everything to do with him in a chest sealed by locks and magic and hidden in a place he hoped to one day forget about. The sketchbook had been tossed into the fireplace, failing to keep him warm for long.

“It has been a very long time since this chamber has seen use,” He says in a wry, dimly amused way, light and shadow playing his lean features, his heavy lids. Eye contact isn’t made – not yet. His gaze pans across the ceiling instead, his memory of the castle’s dungeons filling empty space with imaginary chains and dangling meat hooks.

Edited 2013-11-15 03:55 (UTC)

[Jack stops, right at where his intuition tells him is the edge of where he can step, where one inch closer will put that blade into motion. He swallows, but he doesn't flinch, certain that backing away isn't an option. There's no stopping Zev from running off, but he can at least make it harder for him, keep pushing the truth in his face until something clicks.

. . . god, he hopes something will click.]

You did - both me and Eugene. Put the needle through my ear yourself.

[But why. That is the one question his mind continues to hinge on. Why. Why would he give those, why would he bury himself in sentiment- he remembers blood and desperation, remembers pale eyes and red hair and dying. Remembers burying himself in this man and next to this man and someone so warm and sweet the thought of it has his free hand trembling.]

...Amora? [A beat.] Moca. Nodo. This is. This is my home?

...

[Flipping through the journal and all the information therein is somewhat illuminating. Somewhat. There are maps and names and voices and flickers of memory that come and go and are more confounding than they are useful. The sensation of being watched pricks his senses soon enough and he ignores who it is aside from marking the individual in his peripheral vision.

Then they approach.

And stare.]

...Can I help you?

[Help her? No...it wouldn't be the right appoach...]

Oh...I'm sorry to disturb. I just can't help the feeling that we've...spoken before.

[It wouldn't be accurate to say that they actually met before.]

The door creaks- and Zevran goes still. Too late to pretend he isn't awake, that he isn't sucking in shallow breaths and failing to calm himself. Too late to feign sleep or illness or delirium. There'd been light- a seal, he's held by a mage. A mage with monsters and now he knows why he cannot remember arriving. This is no true prison. He's trapped in the Fade once more. Lost to the mercy of a demon. He struggles to his feet, chains rattling despite his best efforts. Ringing in his head and around his wrists with a cold finality because this time there is no Warden to save him. This time not even the kindness of the memory of the Crows holds him. No. This time it's steel and claw and the monster that roars out into the shadows where Zevran was so content to live for decades.

It's a familiar monster- at least that may register once the initial wave of panic subsides. Eaten. Devoured. Turned and twisted into something else and he can't, he won't, he would rather death be swift and easy and real with a knife between his ribs or venom in his veins. Not drawn out into eternity like this. Not mauled and remade over and over in some small segment of damnation.

Perhaps he died. Killed in his sleep and this is all that is left for him. This cell, this monster, this twisted mage that waits with fire in his hand. Unable to steady his breathing or school his features Zevran locks up tight against the wall, eyes wide and searching through the shadows. Nothing in him says recognition. Nothing in him spells joy. There is only fear and resignation.

This face.

This is a face he knows, a face he's dreamnt of. Horrifying things of blood and lips and wine. Of pain shared and laid upon one another with a laugh. Echos of camaraderie and then. Death. He'd died. Hadn't he? This is death. This is the specter of this man come to claim him for whatever wrongs he has caused. This is his familiar hell.

"...all the better for a crow condemned to die, yes?" That has to be it. Some sort of vision of his own end. Perhaps his mother had some talent, perhaps it had been that first stint in the Fade that dragged this moment back to him during the campaign.

I cannot say if we have or not.

[He quirks a brow, waiting for...some manner of statement of intent. If this woman wished him dead, she would say so or act in a hostile manner. If she wished his company- she'd be sweeter.]

[Jack's breath trembles out of him in a reluctant, unsteady tumble that ends in an almost-laugh of pure relief, shoulders slumping as the familiar nicknames escape him. He remembers something, at least. Whatever's happened to him in his own world or at the Malnosso's hands, he's not so far gone that he's forgotten everything. He nods, smile broadening experimentally.]

Yours, mine, Gene's, Max's - yeah. It's home. [He holds out an open hand, half beckoning and half invitation to take it - and perhaps more than anything a show of trust, with Zevran's blade still hovering between them.] Come on, let's find a seat. I'll just- I'll call Gene and we can figure this all out together, how's that?

[He shouldn't trust this. Nothing so good, nothing so warm and kind could possibly be his. Those were just dreams. Fade dreams made from a lonely mind and a heart that missed a woman he'd murdered. But it's here, it's real, and...he'd forgotten.

He'd forgotten everything- he gave Jack this ring and it meant something, he knows what it would mean and that clicking into place has him shuddering with self loathing, the knife sliding back into a sheath somewhere on his wrist. threatening someone that cared for him, that made a home with him, someone he couldn't even remember properly. Even with the knife gone he's tense, wrecked and so very lost.]

...I do no remember much. It is all very- I'm sorry.

What-? No. Come on. Don't make that oh-god-I'm-awful face.

[Stubbornly, Jack bulls through the chill those words send through him, shaking his head and taking Zevran's hand himself to press a firm press into the familiar soft leather of his glove, looking up at him with that same game, encouraging little smile.]

You're in a bad state is all. It happens.

Edited 2013-11-15 05:26 (UTC)

I thought this was just a dream.

[Low and soft, a confession cut from him by the press of that hand.]

Something I came up with in the Fade when sleeping alone was too much to bear. When the days were long and the reek of blood was cloying. This couldn't- I didn't dare think this could be...

[It doesn't feel right, sliding that hand along Jack's cheek. He needs something more, though, more than the inside of his own glove. He tugs his hand back long enough to peel them both off before reaching out again. Tentative.]

May I?

He blinks and his gaze drifts back to Zevran at last, searching his face for a long moment and with a cool, clinical sort of interest. Every familiar and unfamiliar detail absorbed and catalogued.

Whether this is some manner of dry quip to meet his own or honest confusion, he can’t tell. But his mind is quick to latch onto the former as it’s the most familiar, the most fitting of the nebulous, ever-changing thing they have. A thing, because it has evaded all attempts at being labeled, and because relationship and bond feel much too strong, too constant, too sentimental for to ascribe to it, and for him to accept today.

Had this reunion come months earlier he knows he'd have been rawer and near-sick with fury and close to strangling the man for toying with him by simply existing in the same space. But the fiercest of his emotions have had time to run their course, surging and cooling like layers of igneous rock, stilled but never forgotten. More than anything, he’s tired. Tired of being the eternal plaything of the Malnosso, of living, of having this conversation when he already knows how it’ll end.

There is no joyous reunion. Today, it’s only another obstacle to overcome.

“We cannot all have what it is we want.” He coos patiently with a mocking little toss of his head. “You must learn to live with disappointment.”

Confusion or wit, he meets it all the same, offering Zevran the words he himself had been given after rising from the dead. Because a small part of him never stopped waiting for the chance to toss it back his way and make it hurt, the same part of him that’s reluctant to give the man the satisfaction of feeling he had been sorely missed. He'd be given all the attention he could ever want and more once the shackles would come free and they’d part ways. But these words have much less bite than they should, perhaps.

Isaac gaze dips lower, ever-thoughtful as he drags a gloved, long-nailed thumb down along the curve of Zevran's Adam’s apple.

“’twould be terribly easy, wouldn’t it?” Killing you. “Not unlike kicking an imp down a flight of stairs and watching it break its own neck." He draws a slow breath, sighing. "I would hear no end of it from your lovers, I am certain.”

It’s said musingly and in that matter-of-factly drawl that suggests this would be no more an inconvenience than the likes of finding only green apples at the market one day instead of the red ones he liked best.

[Someday, Jack will joke about this. He will laugh about Zevran, of all people, being so uncertain and halting. He will tease Zevran asking permission to even touch a man who's giving every cue, audible and non, that they've already touched many times in the past. It will become another of his stories, to be both dramatically spun and punctured by bursts of crowing laughter.

But right now there's nothing humorous in Zevran's hesitation. There's too much that's frightening in how he's come back, skin knitted over new scars just as his mind has been knitting over his time here, and it's all he can do to keep up that pleasant demeanour despite it all. Shifting a pace closer, he rests a palm against his chest, fingertips hooking against the thick leather of his swordbelts.]

I don't think I can actually say 'yes' emphatically enough.

[He's not certain why he thinks this will help his memory. Doesn't know what compels him to lean in and pull Jack closer still. Bare, calloused palms slide along worn cotton and warm skin, tracing a path that is familiar and utterly foreign. He stops thinking about it and just...lets them go where they want. One slides around and back, settling in a possessive grip along the small of Jack's back. The other cards up along his cheek and into his hair and oh- that's a precursor to a kiss. One he doesn't take, not just yet.

But one he leans into enough that their foreheads are resting together. He knows this. Finds himself having missed it despite never remembering it.]

I would hold you like this, yes? While we waited for something. [Something in this room, even. He can't place it and that frustrates him slightly, enough to tilt his head and let his eyes flick over the counters.] The...coffee maker? To brew.

The longer he is here the more he shifts, adjusting, considering. Trying to sort out who this might be, how long he has been out, where he is as it cannot possibly be the Fade. Magic and demon aside this was too cold, too real. There was no haze of disassociation. Magic was at work here, true, but this is not the Fade. It'd be simpler and more surreal were that the case. It eases the tension in his chest somewhat as he's more aware and better able to rationalize. Not by much but by enough that he no longer takes such sharp, panting breaths. At least until the man speaks.

Stripped down and bare the new scars are clearly visible. Pink for how fresh they are- pockmarks against his shoulder, scrapes along his ribs. Injuries mended and not yet done over in black ink. He hasn't had the time. That lithe body twists away from Isaac's touch in a flinch. No attempt at seduction. No coy teasing. Fear. Fear in it's purest form. Mages are sadistic when given cause, and he has heard a great many things of those that worked with blood.

Who better to pluck up than an elf?

His pulse jumps in his throat at the touch. Light, teasing- taunting. He hates it. "If my head is for the sword, then swing it."

Easy to manage a twisted sort of bravado, a lock jaw intensity in his eyes that fazes into confusion. "My...what? I have no lovers."

None whatsoever. Flashes of a dream, but nothing more. No one has warmed his bed since Rinna. He hasn't been able to bear it.

"...who are you? I know your face- you are a nightmare that has haunted me for months but- I know you not."

[If Karla wants him dead, it's a fair bet that he would be already, given how she knocks out her opponents in a mere stroke or two, while they can't even touch her.]

[Fortunately, she isn't one to wish someone dead. A KO would satisfy her far more than a kill. Let the opponent wake up and realize that they've lost so easily to a beautiful girl. She isn't even one to initiate random fights. She either lets the opponent make the first move, or schedules a duel with an opponent at a later time.]

[But none of that is on her agenda right now. For now, Karla studies Zevran once more. His voice definitely sounds familiar, but she still can't piece the puzzle together.]

Hmm...perhaps a name would help?

Edited 2013-11-15 13:32 (UTC)

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Sixth jump - you should know, you should know that [Action/Written]

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