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Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Printable Version

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RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-10-2019

That… didn't sound right. That sounded like something had gone wrong. "I wasn't supposed to be in me," he said. "My body should have been fine. It's always fine." As far as he knew, it had always been fine. As fine as it ever was. The extent to which it was not fine was determined by external factors, his body acted upon by outside forces. Lying on the floor and not being interfered with… he should have been fine.

Gareth looked at the bottle, and then at her. His mind worked slowly, trying to catch up and process what he was being told. "You went to get me," he repeated. "You… did you… die? Did you kill yourself?"

That didn't make any sense. That wasn't how it worked! That wasn't how anything worked! She could have died! She should have died. If he were dying, the appropriate response was not suicide by any stretch of the imagination.

He tried to calm down. Mostly because the reality of the situation was making him feel dizzy again. They were both alive now, weren't they? That meant it was fine. Everything had turned out fine. He'd just have to do what he did with every terrible thing that had ever happened: not think about it.

"Okay," he said, smoothing out his breathing. "I'm not going to yell at you. We'll… we'll talk about this later. Okay? We have… there's enough to worry about. Without trying to puzzle this out. We can figure it out later. For now we'll just. Both agree to… leave our souls in our bodies. And try to get some rest. Normally. Normal rest."


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-10-2019

"Your body ain't fine though!" Ren tried to yell, but her voice cracked. "You have a hole in you, you fuckin' idiot! Even if it's normally fine, this ain't normal! None of this is normal! You! Were! Stabbed! Through! Yer! Heart! Yer only alive because of weird demon bullshit, an' you didn't think that maybe, if neither of us understood what was happenin', it wasn't the time to go ejectin' yer magic demon soul out of yer barely alive body, you fuckin'!"

She was crying again. God fucking damnit.

"Only a little. I'm here, ain't I?" she asked stubbornly. "If you didn't die, then I couldn't possibly have died. I just briefly left my body fer a lil jaunt, found you drownin' in some nightmare astral lake an' pulled you out." It sounded completely insane when said out loud. She didn't have the words to describe what she saw.

He was right though. She didn't want to fight.

She felt better, in some ways, now that she'd thrown up. She was still cold, but she was starting to register it more as being cold, instead of just a numb lack of sensation. The pain was present, but the muscle cramps were less intense. Some of it, clearly, had been her body trying to cope with copious amounts of poison. That was fair. That was completely fair of her body. She crawled back over the floor to Gareth, slowly but with less random spasms then before. She collapsed against his side, relishing in his warmth. She needed him to never be anything but warm, ever again, forever.

"Yer right. We'll figure it out." She just kept yelling at him, like it was the only way she knew how to express emotion. Mostly because it was. But she didn't have the privilege to ignore the situation she'd created. There were dead rats. Everywhere. And she only had one solution to the issue, if she didn't want to tell Gareth about it, which she absolutely didn't. Apologetic and flinching, she reached out to Byron and Phoebe.

The rats that remained needed to take care of the dead. Slowly, one at a time, the ones that were still alive would have to drag the bodies of the deceased outside. They couldn't go far, not in this storm, so Gareth would probably still have mounds of dead rats to deal with when the snow thawed, but. They could... deal with it later, like he said. They just needed to not be inside, in this warmth. They would start to decay.

It wasn't a natural thing, for a rat to drag a rat corpse anywhere. The other rats might have been fine, but Phoebe and Byron had the presence of mind to comprehend the horror of the situation. There weren't many rats left, but in the end, she couldn't make them do it. She called them both to her, to crawl up under the blankets with her and Gareth, and try to give them what little comfort she could. She had no idea how to make this right. Any of it.

"It happened before," she told him quietly, even though he said he wanted to rest. "I wasn't jus'..." She was. She was just. She was just scared and desperate enough to risk it because if they both died, that was still preferable to the alternative where he did and she didn't. "I had to. I'm not sorry." She shivered, and tried to press even closer against him. "...We gotta start cuddlin' under better circumstances," she said with a hoarse, somewhat forced laugh. "This is gettin' ridiculous."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-11-2019

"I mean. It doesn't usually get worse. It's never… I didn't seem… significantly more dead. When I started. Than usual." This wasn't a very good explanation, but he thought it was important she understand why it had seemed like a good idea. And that he hadn't been trying to kill himself. "I guess I don't usually have heart trouble. That's… that's probably it." Right? Right. Obviously he had some kind of weird heart condition. Where his heart was on fire.

"I. Okay." Leaving her body was obviously a very different thing from killing herself. He knew that better than anyone. It was, he had always felt, an important distinction. "I didn't know you could do that." He didn't know she had anything but weird rat powers. "There was a lake?" Weird. He hadn't known there was anything. Just nothingness, time missing between when he left his body and came back to it.

Gareth held her close, making sure that the blanket was covering them both, keeping them warm and secure. He didn't mind the rats. He rubbed at her back. "I'll work on cuddling you more," he said, "if you let me."


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-11-2019

"Yer an idiot," she repeated, tiredly. But she was an idiot too, so she wasn't sure how much she could hold that against him. She didn't know how to forgive him for nearly dying, but supposed she had him beat in quantity. She'd never done it through her own stupidity, though! Wait no that was patently untrue, she'd tried to escape a dragon multiple times and drank poison twice, once on purpose. Those all had extenuating circumstances but they were probably at least fifteen percent her fault. "An idiot who has t'stop astral projecting away from his problems."

But she wasn't an idiot. Embroidered pillows. The same pattern on the floor. If she'd been able to read that journal before it had been taken away, she might have realized sooner. But she knew now, even if she didn't know what to do with the knowledge.

Not every prisoner had a Gareth to make it less bad, and there had been a lot of times, with Colin, she would have liked not being in her body for whatever was happening. There were a lot of reasons a fourteen year old boy, trapped as a prisoner in a castle full of xenophobes and racists who thought his father was a traitor... to want to escape his body. To want to have poison on hand. She held him tighter, and didn't say anything more about it.

"T'be fair," she admitted sourly. "I didn't know I could do it before th' last time. I thought it might've been a dream, before, but I guess not. There's this... nothingness, an a lake. Or an ocean. I'm not sure; I've never seen th' ocean. S'got waves, so I thought of the Great Lake." Where she grew up. For a limited definition of the words grew and up. "When I first showed up, it was just nothin', so I guess that's why yer not aware of it," she reasoned. "But I figured it out. There's... other senses." In fact, she was tired now, but she thought that later she might even be able to use them while in her body, if she could just figure out how to get the five she already had to quiet down. "Sounds really dumb," she said with a sigh. I wish we knew what I was."

She opened her mouth to make a joke about how 'let' had never been part of their relationship, but realized that to him, it might have been. From his point of view, maybe their dynamic had been totally different. Because he hadn't known what she thought, how she felt, or... well, anything, really. She closed her mouth, wondering.

Now was probably not the time for a serious talk about their relationship. She didn't know if they'd ever have a good time for that. Their future, both independently and together, seemed incredibly uncertain at the moment.

"It'd be easier," she said, instead of any of the questions she had, "if we ever saw each other outside a work environment."

It was almost as unfair as the questions had been. Obviously they never did, she was a prisoner, or prisoner adjacent, he was also her boss, he also spent all of his free time escaping the castle and it's various torments--her included--to go to his beautiful cabin on the lake where a myriad of girlfriends would suck his dick with a lot less fussing, and cook him bad vegan dinners. But the times he stayed after work or even stopped work to take her for a walk...

Greedy. She could hear the King's voice in her head. She was always greedy.

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-11-2019

"A dream," he repeated. But if she'd thought it was a dream, then—

He was resting. He wasn't going to think about it. He would think about it later. He would ask about it later. They would figure out what she was and why this was okay later, when he had time and energy and the ability to form words into sentences that wouldn't upset her. That wouldn't sound accusatory. That wouldn't make him sound upset.

Later. Not now.

"Maybe," he said, because personally he thought there were a lot of times when they could have been cuddling at work. There were plenty of jobs she could do sitting in his lap, if she were willing. She'd generally been more partial to trying to headbutt him.

Maybe that was Colin's fault. Maybe she'd be perfectly well-behaved, now. Cuddly and following orders.

He was going to feel really fucking bad if she was.

"I don't think I'd ever call you easy."


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-11-2019

Ren snorted at that. She couldn't help smiling, pressing her face against him and feeling warm. Rats were moving rats and she had a terrible, pressing responsibility, to them and to everyone. But Gareth was so, so warm, maybe despite himself and maybe because of her and she had a responsibility to him, too. She'd had so few responsibilities for so long, answering only to herself, and then all of her choices bound up like arms behind her back. Now, the world was wide open, and suddenly, her actions seemed to matter.

"Yeah, that's fair," she said with a laugh. "I'm a hellion."

She was; she really, really was, which was why she liked it when he could get her to just sit down and shut up and do something they'd both enjoy, without her having to admit she actually wanted to do it. But before that, she suspected she had a lot of other things she'd have to do first. To make it right.

"D'you think yer gonna be able to sleep?" she asked. She wanted nothing more than to sleep herself, even though in the presence of his warmth and the absence of the poison, she was slowly feeling less pain. "I'll stay right here," she promised him. "I'm not goin' anywhere."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-11-2019

Gareth stroked her hair thoughtfully. He still hurt—he'd be worried if he didn't—but he didn't think it was as bad as it had been. Or else he didn't mind it as much as he had. Maybe having her beside him distracted him just enough.

"I can try," he said, wishing he could hold her properly, arms around her and nestled in his lap. He wasn't going to risk it, and so this would have to do. "Things are going to be different when we go back. I promise." He bent to kiss the top of her head. "I won't let anything happen to you. I love you."

He settled in, shutting his eyes and focusing on the feel of her breathing. He felt exhausted, down to his bones, but he still wasn't convinced he'd be able to sleep. Not when he was so worried about her, not when everything hurt.

His conviction didn't keep him from falling asleep anyway.


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-12-2019

His sleepy admission set her soul on fire.

He loved her.

Things would be different.

He loved her.

He wouldn't let anything happen to her. Not even the King.

He loved her.

She didn't know if she believed him, believed it wasn't just delirium or the heat of the moment. Wasn't sure what it meant if he was telling the truth. Wasn't even sure what love was, really, not after her fight with the King. But she knew for sure that she loved him. If she looked at it from that angle, love made sense. Love was something that made the world so cold without someone that you'd swallow poison to escape that cruel reality. Love was something that would make you risk your life to save something dear to you. Love could make you kill, without even realizing.

She wasn't sure she wanted Gareth to be compromised like that because of her. What if he did something foolish, with the King, and got himself killed? Trying to protect her? Trying to avoid that cold, cold reality?

So many responsibilities. Too many. But her body was tired and sore and still not convinced she was still in it. Cradled against Gareth's warmth against the cold outside and in, she followed him to sleep.


Ren didn't know how long she'd been out, only that when she awoke, it was dark outside, and the fires were dangerously low. Gareth was, mercifully, still asleep. She halfway expected him to wake as she stirred, but he did not. Her body still ached, but it was an echo of her earlier pains.

This wasn't right. She had been in much worse shape than this before, and that time she'd had near-immediate medical attention. She could stretch out her senses immediately, whereas before, it had taken half a day for her abilities to come back. If anything, it felt easier. And she could feel things other than rats, the pigeons upstairs, Gareth, right next to her, beautiful sleeping Gareth with his soul firmly in his body.

It wasn't that something was wrong with her, per se. It was that she had no idea what was happening to her. She reconsidered the words she'd heard daily for the last year. Dangerous. A menace to society. Incapable of even knowing what to do with her own life.

... She had a lot to do and a little time to do it in.

First things first, she stoked the fires back up again, painstakingly. She stacked them full and put more wood directly next to them, just in case. She moved the cheese and fish next to Gareth on the floor, so that he could theoretically eat them without moving.

She took her bag, settled in on his workbench, or what she'd decided would serve as such, and got to work. She didn't know how much time she'd have before he woke.


The blizzard broke around dawn. She'd expected Gareth to awaken, but his body had decided he needed a full night's sleep. Thankfully. It made this next part easier.

She climbed the stairs to his bedroom one last time, belongings in her hands. She penned two notes. The first was little more than some desperate scribbles and a smear of blood. Very ominous. Very worrying. Very vague, if, as she suspected, Gareth's pigeons were being intercepted. The blood was hers, but she was pretty sure Colin wouldn't be able to tell. The second note was short but much more descriptive.

Gareth gravely injured. In cabin, needs you. Colin dangerous. Don't let him escape. -RBH

This secondary letter went into a little pouch now wedged into the beak of her tribute. A little clockwork bird, all beautiful pearlescent white and gold. Born of memories of soaring through the sky and the beauty of being free. She'd tweaked a few things. Added some more complex programming to the base level of 'bird behavior' she'd originally laid in there. It would follow the pigeon until it got to the castle, where it's base program would take over. It would find the King, and follow him instead.

It was a good plan, she figured. Pretty foolproof, hopefully. Hopefully, it would be enough to make up for what she was about to do. As the crow flew, it wasn't even that terribly long to the castle. As the dragon flew, it was even shorter. She needed one last head start from the King.

She risked giving Gareth a very soft kiss on the lips, not even breathing for fear of waking him.

She had lied to him one last time. She wouldn't be here when he woke up.

With a nervous glance backward and his coat around her shoulders, Ren slipped out into the thick, fallen snow.

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-12-2019

Gareth slept like the dead.

Which was probably fair.

He woke to a horrible sound, jolting him awake and into a body wracked with pain. Every muscle was sore, the hole in his chest too obviously what it was. He had to fight to breathe, trying to get his bearings.

Ren wasn't beside him any longer.

He recognized the noise the second time: a roar.

Adrenaline helped him roll onto his knees, pulling himself upward until he could stand, one hand braced against his kitchen counter. Fortunately, Ren hadn't managed to get him very far inside to begin with. That made it easy to push the door open and stagger onto his porch, the cold air a shock to his system. He hadn't thought to put a shirt on.

The King had landed outside his house, whipping up snow with the furious lashing of his tail, his wings flared up aggressively. If he became less aggressive when he saw Gareth, it wasn't by much.

"Is Ren with you?" Gareth asked hopefully.

The King narrowed his eyes. "Why would she not be with you?"

Right. She'd left, then. It was possible that she was in the stable, or checking on the coop, or upstairs in the tower, or...

But he felt very sure that she wasn't. A dragon had been roaring at his door, and she hadn't come running to put herself between them. Had it been the roaring that had done it? Sent her fleeing into the woods? He didn't know. He didn't know if he wanted to know.

He should have known better than the think she'd want to go back. Not if she saw her chance.

"Colin," Gareth began.

"Yes," the King agreed. "He tried to tell me she'd killed you."

"Yeah." Gareth's skin was starting to hurt from the cold, turning numb underneath. "We thought he might." He gripped the railing of his porch. "Did you kill him?"

The King raised his front arm, opening his claws to reveal the man inside them. Gareth felt sick just looking at him. Colin, battered and bruised but still clearly the man he'd always been. The man who'd been hurting Ren the entire time. The man he'd let hurt her the entire time. Who could, in theory, have been hurting others as well.

"If you were dead," the King explained, "I was going to eat him."

"He's not," Colin croaked. "He's not dead."

"We're going to match," Gareth said to the King, touching the spot on his bandages above the wound. "Ran me through. Irony, I guess." He dropped his hands, shivering against the cold. "Why?" Gareth asked, because he could think of no more eloquent way to phrase the simple question.

"You think I don't know?" Colin said with a sneer. "You think we don't all know?"

Gareth wrapped his arms around himself. Like they'd thought, then. Or something like they'd thought. Enough like what they'd thought that he didn't want to press further for details. He knew enough. "Right," he said. "You're an idiot."

"There was blood on your sword," Colin hissed, which was enough to give Gareth pause. "You think I didn't notice? You think I'm fucking stupid? I spent years on Ranulf, years, and you came in with a fucking dragon to ruin it all. You think I don't know what it looks like, to be the brains pretending that you're nothing?"

His sword. Had he really let them see his sword, still soaked in blood? He had to admit that it sounded like something he'd do. He'd been planning to die, at the time. He made a lot of bad decisions. Teenagers did that. "If you were the brains," Gareth said, "that explains a lot."

"Fuck you. Our kingdom is a laughingstock, we're weak and falling into ruin, and we know exactly whose fault it is."

"Who the fuck is we?"

"You'll find out soon enough." Colin looked quite pleased with himself for a man being held by a dragon who'd only just threatened to eat him.

"What was your plan," Gareth asked the King, "for if I was alive?"

The King regarded him. "I was going to ask you if you would like me to kill him," he said. "I thought you would like the opportunity to be the better man, and say no."

Gareth looked at the King, who was now almost serene in his stillness, a part of the snow. Colin, already laid low in his claws.

"Would you like me to kill him?" the King prompted.

Gareth's eyes met Colin's impassively. "No," he said finally, flat.

The King bit Colin's head off.

Just like Gareth knew he would.

Gareth got to be the good guy. The King got to be the bad guy. Everything the way it was supposed to be, and everyone got what they wanted. Or something like it.

"I will take you to the castle," the King decided, once he'd finished crunching the last of Colin's bones.

"Heard you have a rat problem," Gareth said.

"Grilka is taking care of it," the King said with a flick of his tail. "Ey has many snakes."

Of course they'd filled the castle with snakes to get rid of the castle full of rats. "I think there's a children's book about why that's a bad idea."

"It is fine," the King said. "I will have Boldheart take care of it, when I have found her."

"Don't."

"Come here."

"Can't." Gareth shook his head. "Need to feed the animals."

The King looked around the area, all blanketed with snow. Carefully, he opened the door to the stable. Then he found the sailcloth covering the bales of hay, and threw an entire bale inside.

This was not how feeding the animals worked.

"Avi," Gareth said, teeth starting to chatter.

"I am tending to matters," the King said. He cracked a frozen pumpkin in half, and opened the coop to throw it inside. "Matters have been tended to," he decided.

"That's not how that works."

"I will have Bridget come," the King added.

Gareth found this much more reassuring. Bridget knew how to care for animals, even if she scared the shit out of them. Farm, and all. "Will you?"

"I will," the King said.

"I'll... get a blanket." Gareth went back into the house, forcing motion into stiff limbs. Trying not to look at the detritus Ren had left behind. Food left on the floor so he could reach it. Trying to be considerate even as she'd left. Because she'd said from the start that she wanted him to run away with her, and he shouldn't have been surprised when she didn't want to go back with him instead. Even if he'd said things would be different. He'd been saying from the start the way things were supposed to be, and she didn't have much more reason to believe him now than she had then.

He grabbed two different blankets to wrap around himself, shuffling back out the door and closing it behind him. Avi picked him up carefully from the porch, holding him in a bundle of blankets with both hands.

"I will take care of you," the King promised.

Gareth curled into his blankets, and said nothing.


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-12-2019

Ren, in her limited defense, had a plan.

She wouldn't go so far as to say it was a good plan, or that she'd thought it all the way through. Frankly, even right up as she was slicing her wrist open to soak the paper through, she had been considering genuinely running. She didn't know the King's plans for her. She didn't know how much goodwill the situation would earn her when it had been her decision to never, not once, just fucking talk to Gareth plainly about what was happening. She'd made the decision not to tell the King that she was being starved, even when she had reason to believe he might care. Yes, he'd told her that instinct was a good one, but she also had no reason to think he'd take that into consideration, either. Also, she had filled his castle with rats.

With an attempted government overthrow, the King would have his claws full for a while. She could definitely get to Buck and get the fuck out of Aeris. That way, Gareth would be safe from all of her bullshit and the bad luck she brought everywhere she went. He would be safe from his love for her, if love it was, getting him hurt.

But the fact of the matter was, Gareth was an idiot all on his own, as evidenced by the events of the last day. If she hadn't been there, he would have been dead twice over. He was a man in a dangerous position. And she didn't believe that Colin had been acting on his own. No, she didn't believe that for a second. She'd thought about it at great length while Gareth was asleep, while she'd been making preparations. There had been too many people involved, even just in what was done to her. Guards, multiple guards, members of the King's Guard. Maybe even other keepers. For all she knew, a sizable chunk of the King's Guard was part of this. Which meant a sizable chunk of the castle could be, and she'd just caused mass chaos and sent the King out of the castle. She'd unwittingly made the perfect set up for Colin and whoever he was working with to make whatever moves they were planning on making. She didn't think that running Gareth through with an iron sword was the whole plan.

She had to make this right. She couldn't run from Aeris, because this stupid country and its stupid people and stupid Gareth and stupid Avi might need her to keep them from getting hurt. And really, all she'd ever wanted was to do was save lives. It might not have been her fault, but she was certainly involved now, and couldn't absolve herself of the mistakes she made even if she really, really fucking wanted to.

Unfortunately, she'd severely underestimated what snow did to an area, having lived in a major city her entire life. The blizzard had stopped, but there was. So much. Snow. Everywhere. Her plan had been to get to the road and then get on the first cart she saw heading towards the capital--there were always carts heading towards the capital--but there was easily a foot of fresh snow on the ground. Walking through it was slow and exhausting, and who even knew if the roads would be clear? At this rate, the birds would arrive, the King would fly overhead on the way to Gareth's, and just fucking see her, walking to town like a fucking idiot. At that point she might as well have just stayed with Gareth!

She tripped, and went sprawling into a solid foot of fresh powder. With a groan that creaked out of her like a death rattle, she rolled over, contemplating staying there in the snow and accepting death. That was when she noticed that she wasn't alone.

In her defense, it took her so long to notice because one didn't expect a massive elk with horns entwined with winter pansies and lenten rose to not fucking leave tracks.

Nighthoof leaned over her, a huff of breath making steam in front of his nose. She stared up at him blankly. He appeared to be standing on top of the snow.

She was really gonna have to ask Gareth some more questions about his weird pet deer.

"Did Byron send you?" she asked hoarsely, because it seemed as likely as anything else. "You better not be here to drag me back," she warned him. "I got fuckin' places to be."

Nighthoof snorted in response, then reached down into the snow and bit the collar of Gareth's jacket, still as oversized on her as ever. He pulled her out of the snow pile effortlessly, and carried her over to a boulder that jutted out of the snow, setting her down on it. He stood next to it, in front of her, pointedly.

"A'right! I get it!" she snapped. "But we're goin' to the castle, okay? Y'know, where Gareth works? This is important. An' stick to th' woods. Last thing I fuckin' need is the King seein' us and deciding to stop in for a mid-flight snack."

She scrambled up onto Nighthoof's back, wishing for a saddle. Remembering the experience of riding the King's bull, she dug her hands into the fur around his neck and held on for dear life.


It was really way too easy to get into the city and up to the castle. They relied too much on the fact that their King was a dragon and their castle was full of monsters and genuinely, no one wanted to deal with that shit. It probably helped that she clearly knew where she was going, but Ren just felt that, given how hard it had been to get out of, getting into the castle should have been at least as hard, if not harder.

Of course, on the average day, it wouldn't be full of rats, so there was also that to take into consideration. The average person was not currently running towards the castle. And on the average day, she wouldn't be on the back of a giant magical elk who everyone saw coming and going every single day.

The pandemonium, she realized as she slid down off of Nighthoof, was only halfway attributable to her rats. The King had dealt with the problem in possibly the dumbest, most Kingly way possible. She could feel the panicked fleeing mixed with aggressive swarming as she approached. He'd fucking had Grilka release eir goddamn snakes. Into the castle. To deal with the rats.

She ran a hand over her face. This complicated things so much.

Fortunately, Timothy was still alive. He was shocked to feel her, but with his aid, it was easy to rally the rats and get them swarming towards her. This would probably bring a swarm of snakes to her location too, which meant that if this didn't work, and Grilka didn't notice that all the rats in the castle had suddenly and abruptly stood down and started swarming to one empty room, which Ren was quickly entering, she was going to be the one running and screaming her way through the castle full speed away from a swarm of fucking snakes.

Well. Grilka was the one person that Ren was one hundred percent sure wouldn't be in on any plot to depose the King. Judging from what the King had told her, ey had every reason to be as loyal to the King as Gareth was. Hopefully it would work.

And hopefully Grilka would be amicable to talking.

...Uh. Better... Better have an easy escape route out. Just... just in case.

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-13-2019

Grilka did, in fact, notice the sudden change in strategy from the rats. Insofar as they'd had a strategy to begin with, aside from avoiding snakes and causing damage. Which was sort of just how rats lived, as far as ey could tell.

Ey suggested to the snakes that they find somewhere warm to rest for a bit. Most of them were using too much energy as it was, when they couldn't even eat rats. They just liked to feel included.

Ey slithered through the halls, following the absence of rats. Their target seemed to be a single room, unimpressive and unoccupied. Grilka regarded it with suspicion before finding the nearest garter snake, coaxing it to poke its head inside.

Just a lot of rats, and one horrible little rat girl.

Ey slithered inside, regarding her with suspicion as ey smoothed eir hands over eir dress. A forked tongue darted in her direction, but ey said nothing, waiting for her to make the first move.

She could attack em with a single swarm of rats, but ey could always kill her if she tried. She'd be an easy thing to kill.


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-13-2019

Ren was never comfortable in the presence of Grilka.

Ey was a very large snake, sort of, and she was a very small rat, sort of. Some things were instinctual. Also, Ren was scared of snakes, just, in general. Where were their arms and legs?! It wasn't okay!

Still, she did her best to look neither terrified nor dangerous when Grilka came in. It was difficult, under the circumstances. She cleared her throat uncomfortably, there was a beat of truly awkward silence, and then information poured out of her in a breathless torrent.

"So. Uh. Colin, my manager who I've since learned wasn't my manager, stabbed Gareth an' is maybe part of some kinda government takeover conspiracy that almost definitely has more agents in play, possibly in th' castle, an' also has been torturin' me for the last year, which I thought was normal, an' also convinced me th' King was plannin' on eatin' me today, both o' which are why I ran away an' filled th' whole castle with rats. Sorry. Truce?"

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-13-2019

Huh.

Ey grabbed a case off eir chatelaine, and pulled out a cigarette. Ey took eir time lighting it as ey thought this over, the lighter's flame reflecting on the gold combs in eir hair.

"Fizzgigg lives?" ey asked for confirmation. Everything changed if he were dead, of course. Then they'd all need to scramble to figure out what was going to happen to their kingdom after the King burned it down and went back into the mountains to sulk.

"I know which ones," ey said, almost dismissively. "Never liked them, any of them. Giving them the benefit of the doubt. I could smell it on them. The old prince's boys. Fizzgigg was always the more forgiving one, and, well." Grilka waved their cigarette. Grilka may have been the High Keeper of the King's Guard, but that just meant ey were the one with the responsibility. It had been Gareth's pet project from the start, Gareth's vision, Gareth's dreams. While Grilka was the one making it work logistically.

Ey didn't mind it. Fizzgiggs had always been kind to em. It made the King happy. It gave em things to play with.

"As long as they don't have contact with the exiles, we have little to fear. They're all quite stupid. I imagine their first plan was to steal control of the King. A few still think he's Fizzgigg's familiar, last I'd heard. If that failed, they might try to kill him. They still think the Knight of the Woods slayed a dragon, so you can imagine how well that will go for them." Ey exhaled smoke out eir nose, and frowned, adjusting the lacey cuffs of eir sleeves.

"More troublesome if they try to take hostages. They've always been the type. There are a lot of children in this castle."

"Sorry about Colin," ey added as an afterthought. Not that sorry. It wasn't eir fault ey'd had to keep a distance from her, and anyway, it hadn't even been a year. She'd had Gareth. If he hadn't noticed, ey wasn't going to beat emself up over it.


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-13-2019

"He's fine," Ren confirmed firmly. "Well. Alive. He'll be fine. I headed t' his place after I got out," ey didn't need to know why, no one necessarily did, "and got there just as... it happened. I was able t' help." Somehow. The details of that, ey also didn't need to know.

She was turning out to be terrible at this honesty thing.

"Better fuckin' round them up," she said with a scowl, trying not to sound accusatory at all. It was difficult. At least she couldn't look accusatory, glaring as she was at the ground a few meters away from where Grilka was. Ey gave her the creeps. "There were at least three who knew abou' me. Colin an' two guards. Maybe more, I dunno. I jus' feel like..." She ran a stressed hand through her hair. She felt like there had to be more, had to be something that explained why no one noticed one girl being beaten and tortured and starved right under their noises, other than her own inability to talk about it. Gareth had been so shocked that there had to have been failsafes in place, ones that Colin avoided. "Talk to Jeremy," she added. "The guard. He was my temp one week and I think he was weirded out by some of the stuff he saw. Covered fer me at least once. He might know more, maybe know who all was involved."

She started to pace, in small, tight circles, stress and anxiety and raw energy seeping into her actions. "The kids are still in the castle?" You'd think they would have been evacuated. What with the rats. And the snakes. Neither were particular conducive to childhood joy. "And all the servants, obviously. An' we don't even have much in th' way of guards because our King's a dragon. How long ago did the King leave?" She had to assume the pigeon had beat her here, and he'd already left to get Gareth. She waved her hand, brushing away the naga's half-assed apology. They'd sort that out later, when they figured out how much of an oversight had really been involved. Grilka might have been in charge of the whole shebang, but Gareth had been the one sitting with her every single day. If he'd missed it, she wouldn't really have expected the snake to catch it. If anything, she had been more surprised when she'd realized Grilka couldn't possibly have been involved. Ren didn't think there was a lot of love lost between the two of them. "And where's Colin? Please tell me someone stuck him in a cage."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-14-2019

Eir forked tongue darted at her again. There were details missing in this story, great big gaping holes where explanations should have been. Ey would have liked to press the issue, but she was delicate, this one. Even Fizzgigg had trouble getting her to open up, with his expert hand. She'd practically had a fit and hurt herself, the few times Grilka'd touched her while she was conscious.

"I will speak to him," Grilka said, more to make her feel helpful than anything else. Ey doubted Jeremy would know much that ey didn't. There wasn't much ey didn't know, in eir roudabout way. There'd been a hole around Ren, but whose fault was that? "I doubt there will be too many of them," ey said. "More than a few makes it hard to keep secrets. Best to keep conspirators to as little as you can get away with. If there are more, they will not be the kind to act on their own." Ey flicked eir cigarette, ash trailing to the floor.

"We do not send things of value out of the castle at the first sign that someone has released animals into the halls," Grilka said. "Their guardians have taken them to safe places." Not all together, as that would be a liability in and of itself. "Places that should be safe," ey amended. No telling, now.

Ey took a drag of eir cigarette, and then smile, slow and sharp. "We are the guards," ey said. "We are the King's Guard."

"The King left not long ago," ey said. "He took Colin with him. I assume we won't see the man again."