inagutterson | ic/ooc: inbox/plot with/contact post

[A knock to Yngvi's door, some evening once they've had some time to... process. Whatever processing looks like.]

Yngvi? [he calls, voice muffled by the wood.] It's Kit. You in?

[How easy would it be to just lie here. Ignore the knocking. Pretend he wasn't in or that he was asleep when Kit knocked. But it's Kit.

Kit deserves better than Yngvi's excuses so he rolls himself out of his bed where he hasn't been asleep, a crease from the bedding down one cheek, nugs nudged out of the way to let him get the door open.]

Hey. [Distractions and jokes aside, Yngvi doesn't look like he's really left the room outisde of the essentials.] Come in, s'just a bed.

[The desk is Wren's, he feels funny sitting at it.]

[Kit doesn't look much better. Well, he's clearly gone out a bit, but there's dark circles under his dark eyes that have nothing to do with his skin, or the black tattoos sprawling across his face.

Still, he puts on a tired smile for Yngvi when he opens the door, then edges in to avoid letting the nugs escape--]

See you got some roommates, [he says, smirking a little, and drops down to give one of the excitable little guy's a scratch under the chin. Easier to talk about nugs than it is to talk about what brought him over here, of course. Still, he glances Yngvi's way, trying to get an idea of his state in as discreet a glance as he can manage.]

[From the corner a goose honks. The newest addition.] That's Foie Gras. A gift. [Across the way is Preudame, Wren's not his, a head raised but back to ignoring the newcomer in the shared room as the nugs are escorted back to where they're meant to go except the ones being petted.] Not about to trust them free range out on their own without me near, people think they're sausages with legs y'know? Maybe when Foie Gras won't flap off they can guard 'em.

[No Yngvi is not going to tip a goose and figure out if it's a boy or a girl, seen the sharp bits in that beak?]

Need me for somethin'? [A little uptick in his voice, a please say no because he's not fit for public consumption at present. The stubble might tip into beard growth at this point.]

[Kit has scooped one of the wriggling nugs up to prevent it from darting out into the corridor to become dinner for someone else--hound or man, hardly matters. He glances Yngvi’s way; probably best not to make mention of how often he had nug as a meal when he was a duster kid.]

Need me for somethin’? [Yngvi asks, and that snaps him back to himself.]

Oh, [he starts, cracks a hesitant grin, and ambles further into the room, to put the squirming nug back down with the rest of his companions. Straightening, he chafes a hand against the closely cropped fuzz of hair starting to grow across the crown of his head. Time to shave that back.] Just wanted to swing by, check on you. You know. [He gives Yngvi a brief, meaningful look, then takes an interest in Foie Gras in the corner.]

[Nah, Wren's dog is good with the nugs. Nugs were here first and honestly Yngvi was the bigges pain in the arse about a dog coming to stay given his Doglords are The Worstᴛᴍ deal.

Trotters and Kirkwall Broil are happy for the attention right now, snuffling their faces into Kit.] Caught up with my reading - Avvar-Orlesian relations in popular fiction y'know, load of racy tripe but folk liked havin' a giggle. Oh, yeah, so that's Foie Gras, stable said I had to come pick it up and it's definitely my goose, reckon I'll know what I've got if there's an egg one day. Just-- y'know first time I've been away from all of 'em that long. Traps to catch up with. How's things with you? D'you go rubbing elbows with the upper crust?

Edited 2017-11-17 23:07 (UTC)

[It's gonna be like this, then. All right; Kit can understand that.]

Rubbed some elbows, probably ruffled some feathers, the way me and Vandelin rolled in-- [He stops himself from Going There, because he can't, not anymore, and takes a moment to get that unexpected rush of feeling under control. That's not why he's here. That's not why he came here.]

...actually, [he starts, takes a breath, searches for a place to look that seems natural, like he's not all angles and edges himself lately,] it's been--rough. Since coming back. [A pause, then,] Really bad, salroka. For me, anyway. [The look he gives Yngvi encourages, allows him to share that pain, if he needs to. Kit isn't selfish, he isn't blind. A bit deaf, sure, but he knows the sound of pain, even if it's well disguised.]

Hope he knows what a dance is better than what counts for a ladder. [A distinct undercurrent of what a tit in ya boy's voice at that.] That whole...thing okay?

[Thranduil basically being his stepfather somehow through his lady is all about the relationship Yngvi's honestly equipped for but he'll try. For Kit.]

Sorry. [Croaked out, almost lost in the shame of dragging people in, of dragging Kit into this to see the dead because oh you can always salvage the Carta, you can always get Yngvi's lot out. They couldn't look at him when they were out. Not a word since they got back to Kirkwall save Einar's praise. It fills up the rotten hollow places.

Sometimes you'll drink foul water and eat spoiled meat because for a little while you're not hungry.] Stupid, it was- should've said no, hired people, waited for them to get here if I'd said they'd be here and--

[His chest is tight. Einar wouldn't have said well done my boy if he hadn't. Curling forward doesn't disguise the angry red of his ears.]

Yeah, [Kit lies through a pained smile when Yngvi asks about Vandelin, because this isn't about his broken relationship--it's about Yngvi.] Yeah it's--it's fine.

[He's never been a good liar, but he hopes that the plea in his eyes to just let it alone for now will be heeded. And then Yngvi reveals, just in one word, how very not okay he is--]

Hey. Hey, c'mon. [Kit steps forward without thinking about it and reaches out, hesitates, then rests a hand on Yngvi's shoulder. It's a light touch; the young man could pull away without any trouble, if he wanted to, but Kit hopes he won't, hopes he'll accept the comfort from a friend who cares, even if that friend isn't so great about accepting care in return.] Don't talk like that--you didn't-- [Ancestors, what are the right words?]

This wasn't your fault, Yngvi.

'M sorry, you...you're a handsome bloke y'know? [Kit has more going for him than handsome but since when was he trained on what you're meant to say when someone parts ways with someone? You pick them up. You don't tell them they've got a great personality. (You probably should. It'd work wonders.)

The thing is that it's not easy to pull himself away from Kit. It'd be easy to just stay where he is. Maybe not the easiest thing to just go along with accepting things he doesn't think he needs or deserves - even drunk as he was, an unexpected bath from an elven lass and her gentle hands undid him in horrible ways he can't touch - but it's what he knows. Asher would've manhandled him to get it out but this is older than Yngvi is. Complicit is a word lived with long before he knew the meaning, knew the feeling of it.] Brought it to everyone's lap and it's my family. The whole mess is my family. In some shape.

[His family greasing wheels in Orzammar to go unremarked upon. His family the Casteless turn to. His family in the Carta. His family watched by the people mining the red lyrium. His family who brought Yngvi into the world, his family, his family; elves have their trees but Yngvi has a knotted mess that goes so deep he wouldn't know where you started hacking off bits of it.]

[The fumbling attempt at comfort both warms and stings; give it a few months, and Kit will look back on the effort with affection. For now, it's like a glancing blow, something he wants to retreat from lest he make himself more vulnerable. But he can't leave, not now, not when Yngvi needs him--

It's always easier to stay when he's needed. And this much, at least, he can give.]

You're not them. You hear me? [He shifts his weight, angles his head to try to catch Yngvi's eye, hoping the boy will just look at him, look at him and hear the words. He needs to hear them as much as Kit needed to hear them when he was just a dead-eyed duster kid learning to be more than he was in the Deep Roads, with the Legion's ink still settling into his skin.]

You're better than a million of them.

[Maybe he should've just packed up the nugs, the goose, Wren's dog, taken his key and gone to his lady's. No one would be there since there's that whole 'we're in Nevarra' thing going on just now and he wouldn't have other people able to find him, wouldn't be making a mess of things this way that has him too hot. Sickly. Squirming.

Truffles squeaks imperiously. Yngvi unfurls his body enough to deposit the nug in his lap so the little paw-fingers can scurry around to get comfortable with the face most of the way up his sleeve.]

When it was a year since-- since Asher died, I put out meat and mead. I sat with m'lady and her hound, we waited for him to come down to us. She said I was still one of Asher's boys. Nothing and no one can ever undo that. [It's the very best thing in the world that you can be," his lady had said. "Loved. We are. And he was. And he knew that he was." It makes him feel very small somehow, these things he's remembering now that he's sort of talked to Kit about.] Y'know when we first spoke when I was [like this, again, it's like I'm falling backwards: What I know is without dwarves, I'd be poorer for the lack of something extremely valuable to me. And later, tearing himself to pieces for an audience: You've always a place here if you need it, Yngvi.

He doesn't finish it, he can't. Quite frankly he's too ashamed. He can't even look at Kit.]

Wren and I talked before about three obligations, and me only having two hands. It's funny, the things you remember. That it will not get better. Not for everyone. [Bhelen, the Casteless, Orzammar, all the agreements in place where 'trade happens' as if there aren't hands involved, coin, bodies, goods exchanged as if all things are equal (they aren't, bodies are worth the least at the end of the day and how well the two of them know it.)] The way things are, it won't last. It's just that all of this is because I'm Carta and that's how that is. Everything is that.

[The worst part of all of this, for Kit, is all of the familiar feelings this dredges up--familiar in a way that he hasn't had to think of in decades, that reaches back through the years of his life and places him in front of Beraht and Jarvia again as a young boy. He was Carta then, too.

...No. The worst part, he decides, is not knowing what to say.

He pushes a hand over the very fine growth of hair dusting the top of his head and grimaces; the silence stretches between them, though he doesn't mean to let it. Eventually, he sinks himself down atop whatever available surface there is for sitting and braces his weight on his knees.]

...what can I do, salroka? [he asks softly at length, almost pained by the asking of it.]

[How many times have people outside what Yngvi chooses to call family which is to say Gunnar, the Boneflayers, Aura Hardie, have ever asked him a question like that. What do you do with this sort of gentleness when it wasn't taught to you?

Where did Kit learn it? It's what gets him looking up sharply, his face pinched in and the colour of curdled milk except where it's not, where instead it's red splotches of what might be shame, embarrassment, upset.]

I'm going to fuck up. [Best get that out of the way as if Yngvi doesn't do that three times before breakfast, as if that isn't a consequence of his nature, his existence.] I just-- I'm going to fuck up and I'm sorry when I do, I don't know how to do--

You left. How did you-- no I-- shit. Forget I asked, no, you're here I shouldn't be asking not after that. [Keep pushing when your grubby fingers already did enough and it'll be your own fault he's gone.]

[He deserves to know. He deserves to know for certain that if either of them ought to feel less than gangue, it should be Kit, not Yngvi.]

I killed someone.

[Soft enough to be a whisper, tight as a bowstring. Kit clenches and unclenches his jaw, holds Yngvi's gaze long enough to get the words out, to let out another breath, then looks away. He presses his mouth against his fingers, quiet.] A friend, [he clarifies quietly, because the shame of it won't let him raise his voice.] I killed my best friend. That's... that's why I'm out, now.

[Now the Stone will never have him.]

[If Kit meant to have Yngvi looking up, it worked. Same as a wild thing does when a careless boot comes down heavily on loose grit, dry leaves, a branch, his head snaps up sharp. He doesn't want to look at the goose with flat webbed feet slap-slap-slapping across the floor when it herds the stray nugs back to where it thinks they should be, just staring at Kit.

Instead he tries swallowing, chokes, starts coughing hard enough his eyes water but he gets through it.

Who hasn't and haven't we all he might've tried except it's Kit who y'know saved his backside when he was a child, who's been more of a friend to him since stepping back into his life than people Yngvi thought were friends, who willingly walked back into Orzammar with him where they--

His mind slams a door shut, and the door is very red. The door is always red. The door has never not been red.]

I'm sorry. [He means that, scoots forward to tap Kit to say 'hi, yes, I'm here' since he's not been very present for parts of this but he can make the effort.] There's a joke about eating your siblings I tell people, but, um, yeah. When I say that it's...it's that. It's killing them. [Which is just saying that he understands and that-- that it's complicated. That things happen. Bad things. To people. Especially--] You were Legion, and Casteless, and fighting Darkspawn and-- and you're a really good person, one of the best it's...bad things happen.

...bad things happen, [Yngvi says. Kit smiles down at the floor, but it's a painful-looking expression. Like making his lips turn that way goes against the grain suddenly.]

He's making it worse now, he's got to turn it back around. It's not about him really, is it? He only needs to look into Yngvi's eyes and see the ghosts forming there to know that much is true.] Shit, [he swears quietly,] I came in here to check on you, you know, see how you're handling things, and I'm making such a mess of it. I'm sorry, Yngvi. I think-- [He stops himself to swallow hard and rub at his eyebrows, grimacing. It's so difficult to speak, suddenly, like a great weight has knotted itself in his gut and is dragging him down.] I think I'm the bad thing that happens to folks. I think it's me, that makes it bad.

[For a long time Yngvi has to sit. It's not as if he's ever had some rose-tinted view of the world though if he could stop being surprised when he's hurt or let down or disappointed by people or things that are terrible even when some part of him expects it then that might be somewhere approaching nice. Or not nice but less like his legs are being swept out from under him while someone drives a mailed fist hard into his gut.

There were black moods that Asher had sometimes, usually if they had to stop by his family, days when he'd just wrap himself up then go sullen, snappish, hit the bottle or stare sightlessly ahead until something broke. Then the words came out of him. Words like that.

So it's not as if Yngvi is naive, you can't grow up in Kirkwall and still be naive. You can't grow up in the Carta and still be naive.

But there's Kit who saved him as a kid, Kit who makes time out of his life for him, Kit who doesn't expect Yngvi to be anything other than what Yngvi is in that particular moment. So it's tricky. To know what to say here. To do.]

You're not bad though. You're not. You try. And there's a lot who talk and talk and talk like they're doing all this good or they say 'well I've had it hard' but I mean lots of us have and we haven't done what some people have done in the past however long it's been y'know? Shit happens when you're trying to live, what's the difference between a mercenary and a soldier, you still kill people for coin to get by, just one of you is more honest about it. [This is a lot of talking for Yngvi in the place he's in now but the dam has broken, the words are tumbling out not quite easily but he doesn't screw up his face, seems relatively at peace with the way it's going so he let's it happen, feels the knot in his chest restrict just a little.] How d'you think you make it bad? You're here going to bad places to help when you don't need to and you're doing a shit job no one'll thank you for, and-- and you're here. Didn't let me or my brother die when lots of people would've just walked on by.

[It's a lot for anyone to say, and to say with such conviction and sincerity. Kit looks up from the floor to watch Yngvi speak, hearing him clearly even with only one functioning ear... and it's the last bit that really digs into his skin and pulls at him in a way nothing else has. No, he didn't walk away, did he? Not then, and rather miraculously considering his track record, he hasn't walked away now, either.

Is that just because Yngvi still needs him, still needs support that no one else is giving him, or because Kit himself is past his need to run? He rather doubts it's the latter--certainly Vandelin hadn't believed him capable of staying, or else he'd have--

No. Not now.

He reaches across the space between them and clasps Yngvi's shoulder kindly; when he smiles, it's a pained expression, but it's sincerely meant.] ..thank you, [is all he manages to say, a little hoarsely.] Thank you, salroka, for saying those things. I...

[Ancestors, he's a wreck, isn't he?]

I've always got your back, Yngvi. I promise.

F'fuck's sake. [Not an angry mutter but it comes out on an exhale as Yngvi attempts to do what he does sometimes. Haul himself up from wherever he's been.

Sometimes he can. Sometimes it's not so bad and he can go about things until he trips himself flat. Sometimes it's hanging there by the edge of his fingers. Sometimes just the hauling himself up is all he can do then there he is, lying there flat and wondering what he's meant to do then.

It's tiring to keep doing it but one day he'll-- well he thinks one day he'll probably manage to get past this crevasse, you always do in the end it's just a big one.] Come here. [Two words, not the usual c'mere. A proper sort of command thing of open arms and look how much of a tit I'll feel sitting here with a nug in my lap and my arms open because he doesn't know what to say to that, even in the Boneflayers things weren't always said it was just a nudge, an arm, someone filling up your waterskins when you couldn't or warming your blanket by the fire, shoving you into bed then lying there next to you.]

Ah, shit-- [said with a chuckle, warm and sheepish and embarrassed and tremendously relieved all at once. He leans in to hook his arm around Yngvi's shoulders and hug him, mindful of the nug in his lap of course. Two things could (or probably should) be readily apparent: Kit gives great hugs, while simultaneously seeming like closeness is something that doesn't belong to him. Like he's giving something away with it.

When he draws back, he's smiling crookedly, and squeezes Yngvi's shoulder again.] You want to come out for a pint? [he invites him at last--might be nice to drink, play some cards, talk a bit of nonsense shit for a while.]

[So really Kit should give more hugs and Yngvi should probably get back into doing this thing since he has someone where it wouldn't be as odd to be as physical with him (his lady is his lady, Thranduil is mostly robes with a suggestion of elf and a glowing hand, Wren is too tall and a Templar and could snap him like a wishbone had she the mind to) but yeah, wouldn't be as bad with Kit. Who for as friendly as he comes off--

Well Yngvi needs to turn this over again. Later. Possibly ask someone without naming a name what you call that because he doesn't know the words for it but it slots into his head.]

A pint. I'll pace myself. [More like he doesn't trust himself at this point to not go bad places but he's learning. Trying. Doing his best here.] Anywhere that isn't the Hanged Man or the Blooming Rose? Realise that's a whole world of difference there but y'know, somethin' to aim for.

ic/ooc: inbox/plot with/contact post

in-person visit after the return from Orzammar;

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