And the third option, in which he lays here forever while Flint touches him that way, is too absurd to truly argue in favour of, but not so much that he can't steal a few more seconds of it as he breathes, swallows dryly around nothing. Gives another panted out sound, dry and rough-edged, formless protest. No carts, no thank you.
So, alright. He rolls a look back up at Flint, a renewed kind of clarity of a clearer sort than even the half-dazed focus he'd managed here and there before. Expressive enough to register some amount of non-serious complaint, alongside the hand he has latched to the man's arm giving an assenting squeeze.
Accepts help to get to his feet, to balance once he is there. A moment, taking in his surroundings at this better angle, assessing the spread of now cold damage under open moonlight, dispassionate. Then to Monster, brought forwards. Marcus is well practiced in projecting intention and feeling into his mounts, reading ready sympathy and apology in the tilting up of craggy grey beak and transmitting assurance when he leaves off a hand from Flint to touch her feathers.
There is something workmanlike in the slip of his arm between layers and the stiff handhold Flint asserts at the waist of Marcus' trousers under the lay of the light linen coat. A fistful of fabric, hooked and twisting into the leather belt. Not a kind touch, really, except in the fact that it is very prepared to not allow Marcus to topple over as Monster bends her thick feathered neck round to run her beak at the edge of Marcus' sleeve.
"You took the worst of it." Clearly. Flint clears back the loose harness straps. Catches the stirrup. "The Venatori's work seems to have had some range limitations. Once we were free of it, she remembered how to fly in a straight line."
And she is amenable enough to settling low again, groaning only a little as she folds her heavy limbs under herself and lowered back to the debris littered earth. Those inches are of some importance when it comes to shoving Marcus up into the saddle. The drained pale young woman from the infirmary ranks intercedes from the far side, though the prospect of her catching Marcus should he go spilling over the other side of the griffon is laughable at best. She is shivering, and not because of the cold.
'You next, Commander,' she says when they have bullied physics and gotten Marcus up. 'The air up there may be a shock and I don't want my work falling off into the harbor.'
So he clambers up behind Marcus for the second time that night. Actually hooks himself in with that passenger cable, and reaching close round Marcus' side to take the rein the healer passes to him.
Most of his energy is spent in ensuring he doesn't immediately slip over the other side or find himself half-collapsed over Monster's shoulders, and is grateful for succeeding. As the healer talks past him, Marcus slowly sorts through the tangle of harness, loops it round, tugs it through buckle, some fatigue-buzz beginning to vibrate at the back of his skull for that much alone.
He'd told Flint of a fall from his horse, once. That it was about as painful an injury he'd ever experienced. He didn't add how he'd got back onto the horse's back, because of course he did. It was barely a point of pride. What else was he supposed to do, walk?
He doesn't remember striking the ground earlier this evening, in that same way he couldn't recall what it was like when he'd been struck so severely in the face all those years back. Just like then, he finds himself, tentatively, reaching back for the possibility of that memory, but it's an excursion cut short as he looks to the healer, giving a nod to her and a scrape of eye contact that offers his gratitude, and knows a small shiver of instinctive discomfort as he finds his hands empty of reins.
Grips a tuft of stiff feathers and fur instead, and the edge of the saddle.
It's awkward. Marcus' scant advantage in height becomes significant when the saddle is added into the equation. But trusting that the griffon is as eager to return to the Gallows and he needs do little more than coax Monster up into the air, Flint steers her carefully round with an open rein in one hand. Anchors his fist with the other at Marcus' hip, ignoring for a moment the possibility of tender nerves and Maker knows what else. Better to keep him in the saddle than to preserve his comfort.
"Lean back," is brusque instruction. And to the young healer already moving back to her mount, he offers some further word— "Send a message ahead. I'll see him to the infirmary. They're not to concern themselves with sending someone to fetch him from the yard."
And then with a harsh kick—the animal being tired enough and his place on her back less than ordinary when it comes to giving direction to require it—and an encouraging whistle, Monster rocks back on her haunches. Considers a moment, then heaves upward.
The little debris scattered yard spirals briskly away, for all the griffon's fatigue. If there were any seeing the damage done to Kirkwall with the eye—and little of it would be visible even in daylight—it's swallowed utterly by the hour and the dark and the distance. Carried up and out by the warm land breeze panting out of the Vinmarks to the Waking Sea, the city that falls off below them looks more or less completely ordinary with its labyrinthine maze of unlit streets, peppered by irregular dots of fleeting lamp and torchlight. If there are fires burning, then they might easily be mistaken for the kind kept on high holidays.
Uncomfortable, maybe, that grip, but also assuring, solid, anchoring. He can already feel every muscle beginning to twinge in protest of sitting up at all, of the natural tension through his legs as Monster is steered round. A short flight, as said.
Leans back as directed. Marcus leaves off Monster's pelt and reaches back instead to grasp just above Flint's knee, a grip that twitches in reaction as Monster launches upwards.
Up in the air, sprawling Kirkwall barely captures his attention. A glance, maybe, to see if the whole world is on fire, and when it doesn't appear to be, Marcus redirects his focus more level. It's too dark to see much, no sense of horizon or the craggy line of mountains northwards, but there's the smokey texture of scant clouds, and stars, and the two moons behind them shedding some silvery illumination onto empty space. The natural chill and sudden bluster of wind is, indeed, a shock, but familiar enough as to be welcome.
Would it be right to say thank you? For finding him, for staying, for seeing him along? For not minding the healer beside them? That his sense of gratitude is so acute it aches doesn't feel connected to the impulse, and there is no real twist of anxiety to it so much as a musing as Marcus remains aware of Flint at his back, the texture of pant leg under hand.
Nothing, now. He thinks if he summoned the breath needed to speak over the wind, he might swoon, but they are spiralling for the Gallows' yard, and normalcy will slowly ease its hooks back into everything.
At his back, Flint offers no conversation. But he is warm in the night air, and the effort to see across Marcus in the saddle and into the smarting wind puts his breathing against the other man's neck though in too brief an intervals to qualify as anything more than a stirring of movement before it's ripped away by the atmosphere. Wind in the ears. The shiver of working muscle and sinew to force the occasional wing beat. He is thinking of what will happen when they strike the Gallows' yard. The rest will just be what it is.
Normal is not it. When Monster comes dropping out of the sky and scrapes the paving stones of the fortress's central courtyard, it is immediately evident that the night has taken some rough turn. The whole yard is ablaze on brazier light; a temporary picket of griffons is tethered on one end, likely to enable riders to move to and from the Gallows at speed rather than bothering with racing up various stairwells to the eyrie. Racks and crates of materials have been shifted to the covered walks where they might be easily snatched to hand, and there is a profound and bizarre silence that suggests the majority of the already thin population must be elsewhere despite these various preparations.
Then the door to the main hall of the left tower bursts open, and two member of the company come running down the stairs toward the griffon picket line. One of them is shockingly filthy, chalk white under a dark speckling of gore hastily scrubbed free of face and hands.
Flint promptly unclips the passenger tether and tosses away the reins as Monster coils down onto her belly. She sighs a hot exhale, and Flint pushes Marcus' hand from his knee in favor of the saddle's pommel.
Getting Marcus down of the the saddle without spilling him in the paving stones might be a funny game of juggling were there less urgency prickling in the air. But once various harness buckles have been unbuckled, and Flint has kicked his own leg over and slid to the ground, they go about it as briskly as can be accomplished.
"There should be a bed waiting," he says, lacing his grip tight again at the waist of Marcus' trousers. Steering them in the direction of the hall where those two members of Riftwatch had come. They are not actually going to the infirmary, all things of a serious nature diverted to this more immediate central room. "If there isn't yet, there will be a chair."
There is no room for rankled pride in accepting help out of the saddle, or for the slight stumble that needs correcting, and in finding a handhold on Flint's coat or allowing himself to be steered for those open doors. For nodding at the assurance of a bed, a chair. He'd take the floor, if needs must.
No, what rankles is the rest. Marcus is quiet as they move, absorbing the changed atmosphere of the Gallows. Marking the two making their urgent way for the griffons. It's disorienting—or reorienting. Having gone from what felt like the centre of the universe, pain burning like a star in formless darkness and drawing Flint, that healer, his griffon in as if by gravity, and now to be one of many, one of those in need of care at the height of catastrophe.
When he shouldn't be. He should be taking orders, should be racing out into the yard, hauling himself into his saddle to answer some call. Should be tired and aching and, as dawn paints the sky through his window, lowering himself onto his narrow bed with a private sense of satisfaction. To not have drained all of a mage's power in keeping him alive. Perhaps not to have taken all of Flint's time, although this is something less easily surrendered.
Either way, it's an unexpected knife twist of a feeling and held quietly like a hidden wound, only tense in his expression. They move for the central room, and their presence sees one and then two honing in on them. Marcus keeps his fist closed at Flint's coat when there's a path made for a bed, keeps it as a hinge as he moves to sit. Loosens, then.
"I'm alright," is said beneath some dialogue passing overhead, then at Flint. "I'm alright now."
By the time they get that far, there is no disguising the restless prickle needling at his senses. If the tenor of the Gallows has rankled at Marcus' senses, then it's nipped at Flint's too—a sharp, galvanizing strike driving the point through the barrier of that numbing concern that has seen them this far. He has other places to be, and staying here is the definition of useless. The clarity of that fact is written there in his face as his attention shifts from the brief exchange he is sharing with the threadbare infirmary staff across Marcus down to the man himself.
And there, also: a snag of unreasonable hesitation. Given the choice—
There isn't one. Flint straightens, the last vestiges of connection between them slipping free as he shifts up and the sleeve skates out of loosened fingers.
"Get some rest."
For an instant his hand flicks forward as if to seek out Marcus' shoulder, but the impulse is deferred. Recalling the sharp noise made under the ministrations of the healer. Instead his hand opens, closes, opens again—rings glinting on dirty fingers—and then his attention divides harshly away, skates up from Marcus and back to one of the men gathered in about them. Hooks hard there, and fishes him away with a jerk of the temple. And then he and Flint are moving away, already snapping up some matter in need of debate, and Marcus is left behind to the camp bed with its worn linens.
'I'll have an elfroot tonic to you,' says the young man still in his company—explicitly not a member of Riftwatch, unless they have suddenly picked up new recruits in the last hours; rather, he looks suspiciously like one of the boys who might ordinarily be caught sweeping the courtyard or a repairing a hinge, pressed now into more grisly service. And then he too is off, fleeting away in too heavy boots.
The tonic is accepted, as are the virtues of a bed. Marcus manages his dirty coat off before laying down, boots and all, and that rush of hopelessness is swallowed by an ocean of exhaustion that finally has its way in dragging him under. It is not a deep and peaceful sleep, though, a kind of slipping in and out through the waves. An abnormally noisy set of foot steps, a frazzled order barked across the room, or an unhappy yelp from some jostled injury tug him out of the black and into hazy grey before submerging once again.
There is some miserable pre-dawn moment that he fetches his crystal out of a pocket, aglow in his hand before it empties itself of the cluster of cross-company messaging. Listening, keenly at first, and then dully, and then not at all as the patter vanishes past the horizon.
The coming few days are almost as sketchily rendered. Magical healing is different from a miracle, and what he must recover from is as much from the magic he'd spent that night as the injury itself. Elfroot tonics are exchanged for doses of lyrium and meals are picked at between lengthy bouts of sleep, in the infirmary proper for one evening and his own room thereafter. He seeks out company of any kind very little while also yearning for it, and he has friends enough of the kind of disposition to ignore this first impulse.
Back to work comes with the spontaneous relieving of someone on night watch duty. All of a sudden, Marcus can be found nicely dressed and whole and as brusque as ever, now standing on the ramparts and rotating a currently unlit cigarette between his fingers, before summoning a flame to touch to its end.
This shift ends sometime after midnight. The ferry will be finished, but he has options.
By contrast, Flint has spent next to no time in his own bed these last days. Instead the days have passed in a whirlwind of activity—the abrupt assignment of a majority of the Gallows' contingent to work within the city, the short staffed rotas within the fortress, long meetings on the sixth floor of the Central tower, followed by longer ones in the offices of the Viscount, and the Guard, and the Harbormaster; less visible and potentially more vital sit downs with various merchant captains, and fingers of the Carta, and Hightown merchants keen to grasp after any guarantee to protect their necks in the future.
There are rumblings too of movement along the Minanter, and a build up of forces in southern Tevinter readying to make their way across an undefended stretch of the Imperial Highway and into Nevarra's northern reaches. There are pirates at Brandel's Reach. A major loss of an Orlesian naval ship in the Amaranthine Bay. That Kirkwall hadn't fallen was, he suspects, grit in the eye to some planned motion of the Imperium's forces; but they won't spend long on their heels. If they have mustered numbers, the momentum will eventually turn in some other direction.
Suffice to say, there has been little opportunity for uninterrupted sleep much less socializing. What nights he has not been kept late enough in Kirkwall to resort to posting up either in a let room or among the stableyard and warehouse dormitories has seen him delivered back to the Gallows late into the evening, those scant hours in his own apartments reserved for paperwork as much as they as for anything else.
Rested, no. But he is plenty safe. So they've both done as directed.
Tonight, he catches the last ferry back to the island. Preceding the brisk journey across the water is a momentary short-tempered kerfuffle—hackles rising sharp at the recognition of a member of his own division stepping off the ferry onto the Kirkwall docks who he knows for a fact should be on the wall. What the fuck do you think you're doing?s, and hurried shamefaced justifications about having traded the shift off. To who? Marcus. And something in that causes his temper to flare hotter, but also sets his jaw. Fine.
So: it's late when he arrives in the Gallows, filtering in with a cadre of equally exhausted looking members of the company too wrung out with the work in the city to bother with conversation. A blessing, he decides. As is the opportunity to spirit himself directly away to his offices and apartments, eager to see if the a pinch of tension that has spent these past days relentlessly prising in at the base of his skull finally comes unstuck enough to allow him to fall asleep quickly should he afford himself the opportunity.
One can trick themselves into thinking the world is peaceful, up here. Clear air and quiet. Watching the ocean and the sky, almost as much to note their colours as he might any suspicious shapes or lights. He's read some of the available reporting, listened to the crystal network which has, for this rare instance, remained free of foolishness, has some idea of what to be concerned about.
But Marcus would be lying if he said that his coming here wasn't significantly for the sake of feeling familiar flagstone underfoot, the more restless air, the assuring weight of his staff at his shoulder. The scent of sea water and clean smoke rather than laundry soap and his own sweat.
It's dark. A light rain has started, distributing damp dark patches about the shoulders and back of his grey jacket. A minute of standing in it, and then he is relieved of duty.
And so he's still a little damp once he gets to the landing on the floor of the division head apartments. Neatly, sensibly dressed, hair bound tidily and face shaved as early as that afternoon, and if the occurrences of the last few days have left an imprint of him, the worst of it is divested when he affords himself a minute to catch his breath at the top of the stairs and ignore the restlessness that demands he immediately cross to Flint's door.
Knocks, once there. He'd spied a cracked door with lantern light at the other corner of the floor, but there seems little point in being so quiet that Flint might miss it.
No answer comes for a long interval. It's the sort of delay which naturally breeds doubt—the occupant is otherwise engaged, he is elsewhere, something. And then some flicker of light sending a shadow creeping out from under the door. The rasp of a bolt.
When the door is pried open, the office is dark behind and about Flint. The light from the palm lamp cuts harsh shadows out of his features, and illuminates a damp gleam on his nearest cheek. There is a washing towel across his shoulder. A certain faintly irregular quality to the shape of his face which suggests—
He is partly through shaving, and has thrown clothes and boots back on with the intention of answering something pressing. Finding Marcus on the landing punctures him—tension begin to dump back out of the lines of his bearing, only to be shoveled roughly back into place. Marcus was on the wall. Marcus has been all but confined to his sick bed these last days, divided from his duties; it is entirely possible that there is work to be done.
"I'd heard you were upright."
Flint raises the edge of the cloth, scraping it roughly across his damp cheek. Takes a half step back to permit passage.
Gossip, such as it is. (He has thought, in the more alert idle hours, of which there have been plenty today, if the healer who'd attended him is the type to talk. If she'd flown in with anyone who is. He doesn't know, and he doesn't remember. He'd wondered if it would change anything. What that change would be.) Marcus steps into the room, his hand going out to press the door closed.
He has been idle. Flint has not. Intellectually an easy conclusion to reach, but he can see it in the man's bearing, his expression.
His hand goes out. The flat of his fingers laying high on Flint's neck, thumb brushing over that shaved line. As much a signal that he is not here to report some news as anything else, and what that 'anything else' might be is not easily read in his own expression. Alert, curious, prying, rather than open.
"That follows." He doesn't tilt his head away from the brush of Marcus' thumb, though he does finish wiping his chin. "There's enough happening. I'd be surprised if anyone has any of their stories straight."
He doesn't know that he does. Too many moving pieces, no moment long enough in which to stop and arrange them for observation.
But if Marcus isn't here to make a report, then fuck standing here in the darkened office portion of these rooms. Nevermind the glance that flicka quick up the line of Marcus' arm and to his face, says nothing at all save that an assessment has been made. Then Flint does draw away, boot heels clunking heavily across the floor as he makes his way back to the lit slice cut into the wall by the half open door leading into the room beyond this one.
"Bolt the door," he says. "There's a bottle in here if you need a drink."
He'd minded it some, that glance, curious about everything, including whatever inscrutable thoughts trail along the path of Flint's eyeline, the conclusions made. Which is in part why he says, "Aye," on the subject of whether he needs a drink, following along behind. Tracking the subtle shift in scent and temperature between one room and the other in contrast to the more jarring one of light and lack.
Shrugs out of his jacket as he crosses the threshold, folding it over with more care than the way he deposits it over the nearest and likeliest surface. Then, a look for this promised bottle and the necessary vessel.
"I wish I'd've been of any use," as he does so, more conversational than confessional, but not a lie either.
The room is warm thanks to a burning brazier which affordable the room most of its light and, if the nearby evidence is any indication, had heated the water currently filling Flint's basin. The bottle in question Flint catches up from the bedside table. With it comes a pewter cup which he first drains the dregs from before passing both to Marcus. Cheap rum by the smell of it, cloying in its sweetness.
"Luck of the draw," is not a consolation. It's just a fact. Marcus is a gambler. He knows how these things work.
With the assumption that Marcus will either make himself comfortable or he won't, Flint turns back toward the pedestal stand. He draws the cloth from his shoulder. Only for a fine, thread thin instant does he hesitate. Decides, bluntly, that he feels stupid with a half shaved face and that beats out the prickling sensation that comes from the reality of having Marcus in the room while he goes about this very dull business.
So: razor. Wet boar's brush through dry soap. Drawing loose his shirt's neck again. Annoying, actually, to start the whole process over.
"You should be grateful your brains are still between your ears."
The drink he pours for himself is on the generous side of a solitary helping. Once that's done, the bottle stoppered and set down, Marcus makes an assessment of the likeliest place to to sit, and chooses the end of the bed, boots still on the floor. He drinks a modest taste, and then a longer pull as if in answer to thing Flint says.
"I am," quiet, but he needn't be loud to be heard. Marks Flint arranging himself for a task normally conducted in some privacy. That Marcus lowers his focus to where he idles his hands, tracing the lip of the pewter cup with the edge of his thumbnail, is not really in respect of that. Listens, attuned to the sounds of brush bristles, water, the scrape of a razor over skin when it comes.
Attuned, also, to some inner clench of feeling, before he adds, "And that I was found when I was."
There is a rhythm to this. It slows a fraction here, razor's edge hovering over tender flesh for a split second before his hand continues its motion. The beat in which Flint doesn't respond then is so he can finish with this particular stretch of his face without talking and cutting himself. It is not a hesitation.
When the razor comes away and is rinsed in the basin, he says, "You're welcome."
He has spent the last days steeling himself against the guilt determined to worm it's way in. He should have looked sooner, it says, but that is ridiculous. He is not apologizing for putting Kirkwall over what had reasonably been the recovery of Marcus' corpse.
(Nevermind that an apology isn't what Marcus is asking for; he's almost certain.)
A soft scrape of honed metal against the basin's lip. Again, that gentle rasp of the razor on skin.
He'd been turning one fragment of memory over like a coin between his fingers, something before all of this. I want you to come find me, Flint had said, voice close to Marcus' ear even though he'd been several days ride away. Spoken in between directives on how Marcus might or might not touch himself, in the midst of the absurdity of finding a way to fuck while not even in the same room, meant to help bring him closer to that edge his own hand was working him towards.
It had been a pleasantly restless few days after, both keen to return to make Flint make good on his promise to him as well as comfortable in the knowledge that Flint would be anticipating his arrival. I'll put my hands on you then.
Marcus looks back up from his cup. A fragment of mirror offers him some view of Flint's face, but he settles his focus on the back of his head. Loose collar, slope of light. The taste of rum in his mouth, which he swallows around again before he says, "And that it was you," without dropping his focus.
Poor luck, he thinks. Had it been the first person he'd sent looking to do it, they'd have peeled Marcus off the Kirkwall pavement hours earlier. Saved them all some trouble, to say nothing of the low knot he'd carried around in his own belly during that interval. A knot that has not, despite having every reason to, particularly eased in the hours since finding Marcus miraculously not quite a corpse. Flint has chalked it up to the demands of the days. The lack of sleep. To the ache that had developed in his forearm and shoulder from being wrenched around on Monster's back. But it cinches a little tighter here in answer to that sentiment. So maybe not.
The razor slips off the edge of his cheek with the faintest ringing of the metal. He rinses it briskly, aware of a kind of self-consciousness prickling at the back of his neck. He is not at his best.
(It is possible that on hearing Marcus was no longer bound to a sick bed, that he'd some thought to sleep and a bath and a shave—a sort of theater where being in some sense presentable makes up for a number of sins; an impulse long made habitual by years pretending that a uniform and polished boots offsets the stink of being aship for months on end.)
"Your griffon did most of the work," he says, adjusting the mirror. If there is a flash of Marcus the reflection, then it's brief before Flint leans in to do the finicky work of tidying various edges. "But it was"—what?—"a relief to find you in one piece."
A glance cast back through the mirror's reflection. A slanting of the brow which says, More or less.
It would be sympathetic, if Marcus thought about it. Not so far apart from his own desire to present himself on his own two feet rather than groggily miserable on unwashed bedding, of having already made some effort to slot himself back into rotation, one guard shift under his belt. He'd remembered marking the amount of grey- and rust-stained water run off when he'd gotten around to washing up, managing not to dwell too much on what a horror he must have looked two basins ago. A little, though.
But he doesn't think about it. Instead, he watches what he can see of rinsing, of scraping the razor clean, the sound of metal against ceramic, sharp edges against skin, and the aroma of soap, and finds that he likes it.
Does catch that glance in the mirror, the corner of his mouth turning up.
"Aye, well," Marcus says, knowing something like the emotional equivalent of claws retracting from that glance alone. Their having extended to begin with less out of a prey drive and more out of the desire to give something a good and proper kneading. He adds, "My wardrobe begs to differ."
A low rumbled hum, something along the lines of Fair enough rendered wordless in deference to not taking a nick from the corner of his mouth, answers that. But after, dissatisfied with the result and straightening from it anyway, Flint gives the razor a rough rinse and adds, "Good excuse for a new one."
Captain Rowntree may not be the Gallows' most ostentatious clothes horse, but that hardly disqualifies him from the race in general.
The razor sniks closed into its case. A perfunctory rinsing away of soap, a drying of cheeks, and a squinting examination of the results follows. Some woody beard oil follows, a surreptitious scratching of fingernails against irritated cheeks. Fine, seems to be the assessment. In this light, at least.
Marcus answers with his own rumbled hum of sound. True.
He drinks as Flint finishes, down to half a sip left once an assessment has been made. A stiff helping of rum does its work quickly after a few days of picky eating and idleness, a pleasant warmth beneath the skin. Marcus tosses back the rest and then stands, moving that short distance where he'd set the bottle down.
"Here," he says as he pours a helping. If he'd had any foresight beyond impulse, he might have ferreted out a bottle of something from somewhere on his way up the stairs. Next time, perhaps. For now, he can offer the man his own liquor. "Have a drink with me."
He pulls the cloth from his shoulder, depositing it on the pedestal stand as he turns to accept the cup. His cheek stings a little from the scrape of the razor and the oil that has followed, and it is habit to run his fingertips across the smooth skin left behind or to tug absently at the edges of his beard as if to be certain they are where they should be.
A low murmur of thanks for the cup instead of some sharper, funnier thing. This doesn't count if you're trying for a do over for a shit night at a tap house, he could say and doesn't.
He knows what the rum tastes like. There is no need to sip carefully at it.
"How are you feeling?" is a better thing to say anyway.
Flint drinks, and Marcus gives his shaving job a brief zigzagging assessment with a flick of eyeline. It all looks neat, at least in this light.
"Better," he says, reinstating eye contact. "Good," is his revision, a tipping down of his chin meant to impress upon the other man the truth of this. He is better, good. Alive, and present. Nothing that need recall any past pain, nothing that requires distance. "Sober," is then added, punctuated with a tip of the bottle to top up Flint's last sip of rum. He shifts aside to set the bottle down without again stoppering it.
Ready to accept back the cup. Maybe there is something to this in the spirit of a do over, or maybe some quiet and semi-serious celebration in a shared drink, but he hadn't really had much of a plan for what happens after Flint opens his door to him. And so Marcus adds, "Foolish.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
So, alright. He rolls a look back up at Flint, a renewed kind of clarity of a clearer sort than even the half-dazed focus he'd managed here and there before. Expressive enough to register some amount of non-serious complaint, alongside the hand he has latched to the man's arm giving an assenting squeeze.
Accepts help to get to his feet, to balance once he is there. A moment, taking in his surroundings at this better angle, assessing the spread of now cold damage under open moonlight, dispassionate. Then to Monster, brought forwards. Marcus is well practiced in projecting intention and feeling into his mounts, reading ready sympathy and apology in the tilting up of craggy grey beak and transmitting assurance when he leaves off a hand from Flint to touch her feathers.
"She made it out alright?" he asks.
no subject
"You took the worst of it." Clearly. Flint clears back the loose harness straps. Catches the stirrup. "The Venatori's work seems to have had some range limitations. Once we were free of it, she remembered how to fly in a straight line."
And she is amenable enough to settling low again, groaning only a little as she folds her heavy limbs under herself and lowered back to the debris littered earth. Those inches are of some importance when it comes to shoving Marcus up into the saddle. The drained pale young woman from the infirmary ranks intercedes from the far side, though the prospect of her catching Marcus should he go spilling over the other side of the griffon is laughable at best. She is shivering, and not because of the cold.
'You next, Commander,' she says when they have bullied physics and gotten Marcus up. 'The air up there may be a shock and I don't want my work falling off into the harbor.'
So he clambers up behind Marcus for the second time that night. Actually hooks himself in with that passenger cable, and reaching close round Marcus' side to take the rein the healer passes to him.
no subject
He'd told Flint of a fall from his horse, once. That it was about as painful an injury he'd ever experienced. He didn't add how he'd got back onto the horse's back, because of course he did. It was barely a point of pride. What else was he supposed to do, walk?
He doesn't remember striking the ground earlier this evening, in that same way he couldn't recall what it was like when he'd been struck so severely in the face all those years back. Just like then, he finds himself, tentatively, reaching back for the possibility of that memory, but it's an excursion cut short as he looks to the healer, giving a nod to her and a scrape of eye contact that offers his gratitude, and knows a small shiver of instinctive discomfort as he finds his hands empty of reins.
Grips a tuft of stiff feathers and fur instead, and the edge of the saddle.
no subject
"Lean back," is brusque instruction. And to the young healer already moving back to her mount, he offers some further word— "Send a message ahead. I'll see him to the infirmary. They're not to concern themselves with sending someone to fetch him from the yard."
And then with a harsh kick—the animal being tired enough and his place on her back less than ordinary when it comes to giving direction to require it—and an encouraging whistle, Monster rocks back on her haunches. Considers a moment, then heaves upward.
The little debris scattered yard spirals briskly away, for all the griffon's fatigue. If there were any seeing the damage done to Kirkwall with the eye—and little of it would be visible even in daylight—it's swallowed utterly by the hour and the dark and the distance. Carried up and out by the warm land breeze panting out of the Vinmarks to the Waking Sea, the city that falls off below them looks more or less completely ordinary with its labyrinthine maze of unlit streets, peppered by irregular dots of fleeting lamp and torchlight. If there are fires burning, then they might easily be mistaken for the kind kept on high holidays.
no subject
Leans back as directed. Marcus leaves off Monster's pelt and reaches back instead to grasp just above Flint's knee, a grip that twitches in reaction as Monster launches upwards.
Up in the air, sprawling Kirkwall barely captures his attention. A glance, maybe, to see if the whole world is on fire, and when it doesn't appear to be, Marcus redirects his focus more level. It's too dark to see much, no sense of horizon or the craggy line of mountains northwards, but there's the smokey texture of scant clouds, and stars, and the two moons behind them shedding some silvery illumination onto empty space. The natural chill and sudden bluster of wind is, indeed, a shock, but familiar enough as to be welcome.
Would it be right to say thank you? For finding him, for staying, for seeing him along? For not minding the healer beside them? That his sense of gratitude is so acute it aches doesn't feel connected to the impulse, and there is no real twist of anxiety to it so much as a musing as Marcus remains aware of Flint at his back, the texture of pant leg under hand.
Nothing, now. He thinks if he summoned the breath needed to speak over the wind, he might swoon, but they are spiralling for the Gallows' yard, and normalcy will slowly ease its hooks back into everything.
no subject
Normal is not it. When Monster comes dropping out of the sky and scrapes the paving stones of the fortress's central courtyard, it is immediately evident that the night has taken some rough turn. The whole yard is ablaze on brazier light; a temporary picket of griffons is tethered on one end, likely to enable riders to move to and from the Gallows at speed rather than bothering with racing up various stairwells to the eyrie. Racks and crates of materials have been shifted to the covered walks where they might be easily snatched to hand, and there is a profound and bizarre silence that suggests the majority of the already thin population must be elsewhere despite these various preparations.
Then the door to the main hall of the left tower bursts open, and two member of the company come running down the stairs toward the griffon picket line. One of them is shockingly filthy, chalk white under a dark speckling of gore hastily scrubbed free of face and hands.
Flint promptly unclips the passenger tether and tosses away the reins as Monster coils down onto her belly. She sighs a hot exhale, and Flint pushes Marcus' hand from his knee in favor of the saddle's pommel.
Getting Marcus down of the the saddle without spilling him in the paving stones might be a funny game of juggling were there less urgency prickling in the air. But once various harness buckles have been unbuckled, and Flint has kicked his own leg over and slid to the ground, they go about it as briskly as can be accomplished.
"There should be a bed waiting," he says, lacing his grip tight again at the waist of Marcus' trousers. Steering them in the direction of the hall where those two members of Riftwatch had come. They are not actually going to the infirmary, all things of a serious nature diverted to this more immediate central room. "If there isn't yet, there will be a chair."
High hopes.
no subject
No, what rankles is the rest. Marcus is quiet as they move, absorbing the changed atmosphere of the Gallows. Marking the two making their urgent way for the griffons. It's disorienting—or reorienting. Having gone from what felt like the centre of the universe, pain burning like a star in formless darkness and drawing Flint, that healer, his griffon in as if by gravity, and now to be one of many, one of those in need of care at the height of catastrophe.
When he shouldn't be. He should be taking orders, should be racing out into the yard, hauling himself into his saddle to answer some call. Should be tired and aching and, as dawn paints the sky through his window, lowering himself onto his narrow bed with a private sense of satisfaction. To not have drained all of a mage's power in keeping him alive. Perhaps not to have taken all of Flint's time, although this is something less easily surrendered.
Either way, it's an unexpected knife twist of a feeling and held quietly like a hidden wound, only tense in his expression. They move for the central room, and their presence sees one and then two honing in on them. Marcus keeps his fist closed at Flint's coat when there's a path made for a bed, keeps it as a hinge as he moves to sit. Loosens, then.
"I'm alright," is said beneath some dialogue passing overhead, then at Flint. "I'm alright now."
no subject
And there, also: a snag of unreasonable hesitation. Given the choice—
There isn't one. Flint straightens, the last vestiges of connection between them slipping free as he shifts up and the sleeve skates out of loosened fingers.
"Get some rest."
For an instant his hand flicks forward as if to seek out Marcus' shoulder, but the impulse is deferred. Recalling the sharp noise made under the ministrations of the healer. Instead his hand opens, closes, opens again—rings glinting on dirty fingers—and then his attention divides harshly away, skates up from Marcus and back to one of the men gathered in about them. Hooks hard there, and fishes him away with a jerk of the temple. And then he and Flint are moving away, already snapping up some matter in need of debate, and Marcus is left behind to the camp bed with its worn linens.
'I'll have an elfroot tonic to you,' says the young man still in his company—explicitly not a member of Riftwatch, unless they have suddenly picked up new recruits in the last hours; rather, he looks suspiciously like one of the boys who might ordinarily be caught sweeping the courtyard or a repairing a hinge, pressed now into more grisly service. And then he too is off, fleeting away in too heavy boots.
no subject
The tonic is accepted, as are the virtues of a bed. Marcus manages his dirty coat off before laying down, boots and all, and that rush of hopelessness is swallowed by an ocean of exhaustion that finally has its way in dragging him under. It is not a deep and peaceful sleep, though, a kind of slipping in and out through the waves. An abnormally noisy set of foot steps, a frazzled order barked across the room, or an unhappy yelp from some jostled injury tug him out of the black and into hazy grey before submerging once again.
There is some miserable pre-dawn moment that he fetches his crystal out of a pocket, aglow in his hand before it empties itself of the cluster of cross-company messaging. Listening, keenly at first, and then dully, and then not at all as the patter vanishes past the horizon.
The coming few days are almost as sketchily rendered. Magical healing is different from a miracle, and what he must recover from is as much from the magic he'd spent that night as the injury itself. Elfroot tonics are exchanged for doses of lyrium and meals are picked at between lengthy bouts of sleep, in the infirmary proper for one evening and his own room thereafter. He seeks out company of any kind very little while also yearning for it, and he has friends enough of the kind of disposition to ignore this first impulse.
Back to work comes with the spontaneous relieving of someone on night watch duty. All of a sudden, Marcus can be found nicely dressed and whole and as brusque as ever, now standing on the ramparts and rotating a currently unlit cigarette between his fingers, before summoning a flame to touch to its end.
This shift ends sometime after midnight. The ferry will be finished, but he has options.
no subject
There are rumblings too of movement along the Minanter, and a build up of forces in southern Tevinter readying to make their way across an undefended stretch of the Imperial Highway and into Nevarra's northern reaches. There are pirates at Brandel's Reach. A major loss of an Orlesian naval ship in the Amaranthine Bay. That Kirkwall hadn't fallen was, he suspects, grit in the eye to some planned motion of the Imperium's forces; but they won't spend long on their heels. If they have mustered numbers, the momentum will eventually turn in some other direction.
Suffice to say, there has been little opportunity for uninterrupted sleep much less socializing. What nights he has not been kept late enough in Kirkwall to resort to posting up either in a let room or among the stableyard and warehouse dormitories has seen him delivered back to the Gallows late into the evening, those scant hours in his own apartments reserved for paperwork as much as they as for anything else.
Rested, no. But he is plenty safe. So they've both done as directed.
Tonight, he catches the last ferry back to the island. Preceding the brisk journey across the water is a momentary short-tempered kerfuffle—hackles rising sharp at the recognition of a member of his own division stepping off the ferry onto the Kirkwall docks who he knows for a fact should be on the wall. What the fuck do you think you're doing?s, and hurried shamefaced justifications about having traded the shift off. To who? Marcus. And something in that causes his temper to flare hotter, but also sets his jaw. Fine.
So: it's late when he arrives in the Gallows, filtering in with a cadre of equally exhausted looking members of the company too wrung out with the work in the city to bother with conversation. A blessing, he decides. As is the opportunity to spirit himself directly away to his offices and apartments, eager to see if the a pinch of tension that has spent these past days relentlessly prising in at the base of his skull finally comes unstuck enough to allow him to fall asleep quickly should he afford himself the opportunity.
no subject
But Marcus would be lying if he said that his coming here wasn't significantly for the sake of feeling familiar flagstone underfoot, the more restless air, the assuring weight of his staff at his shoulder. The scent of sea water and clean smoke rather than laundry soap and his own sweat.
It's dark. A light rain has started, distributing damp dark patches about the shoulders and back of his grey jacket. A minute of standing in it, and then he is relieved of duty.
And so he's still a little damp once he gets to the landing on the floor of the division head apartments. Neatly, sensibly dressed, hair bound tidily and face shaved as early as that afternoon, and if the occurrences of the last few days have left an imprint of him, the worst of it is divested when he affords himself a minute to catch his breath at the top of the stairs and ignore the restlessness that demands he immediately cross to Flint's door.
Knocks, once there. He'd spied a cracked door with lantern light at the other corner of the floor, but there seems little point in being so quiet that Flint might miss it.
no subject
When the door is pried open, the office is dark behind and about Flint. The light from the palm lamp cuts harsh shadows out of his features, and illuminates a damp gleam on his nearest cheek. There is a washing towel across his shoulder. A certain faintly irregular quality to the shape of his face which suggests—
He is partly through shaving, and has thrown clothes and boots back on with the intention of answering something pressing. Finding Marcus on the landing punctures him—tension begin to dump back out of the lines of his bearing, only to be shoveled roughly back into place. Marcus was on the wall. Marcus has been all but confined to his sick bed these last days, divided from his duties; it is entirely possible that there is work to be done.
"I'd heard you were upright."
Flint raises the edge of the cloth, scraping it roughly across his damp cheek. Takes a half step back to permit passage.
no subject
Gossip, such as it is. (He has thought, in the more alert idle hours, of which there have been plenty today, if the healer who'd attended him is the type to talk. If she'd flown in with anyone who is. He doesn't know, and he doesn't remember. He'd wondered if it would change anything. What that change would be.) Marcus steps into the room, his hand going out to press the door closed.
He has been idle. Flint has not. Intellectually an easy conclusion to reach, but he can see it in the man's bearing, his expression.
His hand goes out. The flat of his fingers laying high on Flint's neck, thumb brushing over that shaved line. As much a signal that he is not here to report some news as anything else, and what that 'anything else' might be is not easily read in his own expression. Alert, curious, prying, rather than open.
"I haven't heard anything," he adds.
no subject
He doesn't know that he does. Too many moving pieces, no moment long enough in which to stop and arrange them for observation.
But if Marcus isn't here to make a report, then fuck standing here in the darkened office portion of these rooms. Nevermind the glance that flicka quick up the line of Marcus' arm and to his face, says nothing at all save that an assessment has been made. Then Flint does draw away, boot heels clunking heavily across the floor as he makes his way back to the lit slice cut into the wall by the half open door leading into the room beyond this one.
"Bolt the door," he says. "There's a bottle in here if you need a drink."
no subject
He'd minded it some, that glance, curious about everything, including whatever inscrutable thoughts trail along the path of Flint's eyeline, the conclusions made. Which is in part why he says, "Aye," on the subject of whether he needs a drink, following along behind. Tracking the subtle shift in scent and temperature between one room and the other in contrast to the more jarring one of light and lack.
Shrugs out of his jacket as he crosses the threshold, folding it over with more care than the way he deposits it over the nearest and likeliest surface. Then, a look for this promised bottle and the necessary vessel.
"I wish I'd've been of any use," as he does so, more conversational than confessional, but not a lie either.
no subject
"Luck of the draw," is not a consolation. It's just a fact. Marcus is a gambler. He knows how these things work.
With the assumption that Marcus will either make himself comfortable or he won't, Flint turns back toward the pedestal stand. He draws the cloth from his shoulder. Only for a fine, thread thin instant does he hesitate. Decides, bluntly, that he feels stupid with a half shaved face and that beats out the prickling sensation that comes from the reality of having Marcus in the room while he goes about this very dull business.
So: razor. Wet boar's brush through dry soap. Drawing loose his shirt's neck again. Annoying, actually, to start the whole process over.
"You should be grateful your brains are still between your ears."
no subject
"I am," quiet, but he needn't be loud to be heard. Marks Flint arranging himself for a task normally conducted in some privacy. That Marcus lowers his focus to where he idles his hands, tracing the lip of the pewter cup with the edge of his thumbnail, is not really in respect of that. Listens, attuned to the sounds of brush bristles, water, the scrape of a razor over skin when it comes.
Attuned, also, to some inner clench of feeling, before he adds, "And that I was found when I was."
no subject
When the razor comes away and is rinsed in the basin, he says, "You're welcome."
He has spent the last days steeling himself against the guilt determined to worm it's way in. He should have looked sooner, it says, but that is ridiculous. He is not apologizing for putting Kirkwall over what had reasonably been the recovery of Marcus' corpse.
(Nevermind that an apology isn't what Marcus is asking for; he's almost certain.)
A soft scrape of honed metal against the basin's lip. Again, that gentle rasp of the razor on skin.
no subject
It had been a pleasantly restless few days after, both keen to return to make Flint make good on his promise to him as well as comfortable in the knowledge that Flint would be anticipating his arrival. I'll put my hands on you then.
Marcus looks back up from his cup. A fragment of mirror offers him some view of Flint's face, but he settles his focus on the back of his head. Loose collar, slope of light. The taste of rum in his mouth, which he swallows around again before he says, "And that it was you," without dropping his focus.
no subject
The razor slips off the edge of his cheek with the faintest ringing of the metal. He rinses it briskly, aware of a kind of self-consciousness prickling at the back of his neck. He is not at his best.
(It is possible that on hearing Marcus was no longer bound to a sick bed, that he'd some thought to sleep and a bath and a shave—a sort of theater where being in some sense presentable makes up for a number of sins; an impulse long made habitual by years pretending that a uniform and polished boots offsets the stink of being aship for months on end.)
"Your griffon did most of the work," he says, adjusting the mirror. If there is a flash of Marcus the reflection, then it's brief before Flint leans in to do the finicky work of tidying various edges. "But it was"—what?—"a relief to find you in one piece."
A glance cast back through the mirror's reflection. A slanting of the brow which says, More or less.
no subject
But he doesn't think about it. Instead, he watches what he can see of rinsing, of scraping the razor clean, the sound of metal against ceramic, sharp edges against skin, and the aroma of soap, and finds that he likes it.
Does catch that glance in the mirror, the corner of his mouth turning up.
"Aye, well," Marcus says, knowing something like the emotional equivalent of claws retracting from that glance alone. Their having extended to begin with less out of a prey drive and more out of the desire to give something a good and proper kneading. He adds, "My wardrobe begs to differ."
no subject
Captain Rowntree may not be the Gallows' most ostentatious clothes horse, but that hardly disqualifies him from the race in general.
The razor sniks closed into its case. A perfunctory rinsing away of soap, a drying of cheeks, and a squinting examination of the results follows. Some woody beard oil follows, a surreptitious scratching of fingernails against irritated cheeks. Fine, seems to be the assessment. In this light, at least.
no subject
He drinks as Flint finishes, down to half a sip left once an assessment has been made. A stiff helping of rum does its work quickly after a few days of picky eating and idleness, a pleasant warmth beneath the skin. Marcus tosses back the rest and then stands, moving that short distance where he'd set the bottle down.
"Here," he says as he pours a helping. If he'd had any foresight beyond impulse, he might have ferreted out a bottle of something from somewhere on his way up the stairs. Next time, perhaps. For now, he can offer the man his own liquor. "Have a drink with me."
no subject
A low murmur of thanks for the cup instead of some sharper, funnier thing. This doesn't count if you're trying for a do over for a shit night at a tap house, he could say and doesn't.
He knows what the rum tastes like. There is no need to sip carefully at it.
"How are you feeling?" is a better thing to say anyway.
no subject
"Better," he says, reinstating eye contact. "Good," is his revision, a tipping down of his chin meant to impress upon the other man the truth of this. He is better, good. Alive, and present. Nothing that need recall any past pain, nothing that requires distance. "Sober," is then added, punctuated with a tip of the bottle to top up Flint's last sip of rum. He shifts aside to set the bottle down without again stoppering it.
Ready to accept back the cup. Maybe there is something to this in the spirit of a do over, or maybe some quiet and semi-serious celebration in a shared drink, but he hadn't really had much of a plan for what happens after Flint opens his door to him. And so Marcus adds, "Foolish.
"You?"
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)