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Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Printable Version

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RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-20-2019

"He will be well," the King said. Not immediately, not the way the King would have preferred, for reasons he barely understood. But eventually. The doctor had not behaved as if his life were in any serious danger.

He narrowed his eyes a little. "Gareth told me not to look for you," he said. "He did not say more."

Not that Gareth was ever talkative in the air.

He had no tail to twitch, no wings to flare. He itched to burst out of his skin.

He tilted his head. "I already ate Colin. Did he hurt you?"


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-20-2019

Ren let out a held breath at the news that Gareth was alright. Would be alright. Would be fine, would be better, could one day put this whole thing behind him and not think about it anymore.

The rest of the news was... mixed.

He'd said not to look for her? Of course he would. That was the whole point, to believe she ran. She nodded, hollowly. That would make the whole thing easier, if things went bad. He'd think Avi had done him a favor, letting her escape, and he wouldn't have to know. Wouldn't have that hanging over their heads.

"...Yeah," she said, quietly. She'd told herself she'd be bold as brass, announce everything to the King and just face whatever happened head on. But in the face of actually saying it out loud, she found herself unable to make eye contact. She didn't want to see his reaction, either way. "A lot. For a long time. He..." She took a deep breath, and plunged in. "When I first arrived in th' King's Guard, he was the one who did my introduction or whatever y'wanna call it. I can't... I can't read very well. So he read the... the contract to me. He told me how things were gonna be. But it wasn't... he jus' made shit up. Told me I was a prisoner, that Gareth was my work manager and he was my manager th' rest of the time. I didn't... I didn't have any reason t'think he was lyin'. It sounded right. I'd jus' been dragged off of death row, fer fuck's sake, it sounded exactly right. An' so fer the last year, he's been... he was," she corrected. Because he was dead, and he was gone and he couldn't do it anymore.

She ticked them off hollowly on her fingers, like if it was a list of facts, it couldn't hurt her. "Nothin' in my room. You saw it. Locked in there from six t' six every day. Never got to go outside. Limited meals, sometimes none at all, no breakfast or dinner, jus' lunch with Gareth. Wh. W... Corporal punishment," she finally forced out between clenched teeth. "I thought it was normal. It made sense, with what I was hearin' from everyone else. Which was limited cause, y'know, locked away in my room, couldn't talk t' people."

She was pacing again, frantic, anxious steps in a small path back and forth. "That's why I ran th' first time. I couldn't take it. An' that's why I ran this time. He told me..." She swallowed. "He told me you'd told Gareth to take a week off, and then summoned me. I figured... Well, I figured... Y'got bored after all." A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye, and she wiped it away furiously. "So I ran again. That was his plan, I'm pretty sure. I'd run an' he'd pin Gareth's death on me. He didn't expect me to go straight to Gareth's place."

She took a breath, or tried to; her lungs felt cramped and deflated in her chest. She risked a glance up at the King, to gauge his reaction. There was more, there was everything that happened after she got to Gareth's, but... She couldn't help finding his reaction to her reasons for running more pressing, at the moment.

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-20-2019

He frowned as he watched her, her metaphorical tail between her legs. And as he listened, he became… frustrated.

He'd already eaten Colin. What else could she want from him, to come back just to tell him all this?

"He hid this from Gareth?" he asked. It was difficult to believe. He barely saw Gareth every few months, now, but he'd thought of him as more attentive than that. Attentive enough to notice if his charge were injured, bruised by anything but his own fingers. Didn't he see her every day?

His frustration grew as she got all… weepy. It was easier with hatchlings, whose tears came with demands. Older humans were annoying, just feeling at him and expecting him to know what to do with it. He could try to ignore that, to treat it the way he might a petition, perhaps. He'd already eaten Colin, but there was still something of a script there. His shoulders rolled back as he summoned up regality.

"That should not have happened," he said. "I apologize for the oversight. If anyone else has assisted him in this, let me know, and they will be dealt with. It will not happen again."


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-20-2019

Ren nodded, wordlessly. She didn't want to explain the ways she'd helped hide it without really realizing what she was doing. And she definitely didn't want to mention the ways he helped hide it, either, if he weren't actively threatening her. "I think he suspected in a few places, kinda like how you did," she admitted. "But he figured if somethin' happened, I'd tell him, an' I figured there was nothin' happenin' he didn't already know about, an' well, we're both dumbasses I guess."

She was trying to keep it together. She knew the King didn't like crying. He'd gotten annoyed every time, and she needed him as unannoyed as possible. In the hundreds of different ways she'd imagined this conversation going, however, she couldn't have imagined what happened next.

"You... apologize?" she asked, dumbfounded. Could Kings apologize? No, fuck that, forget Kings, Avi could apologize?! He was sorry? Sorry for the... oversight? Sorry for what happened to her? Why was he-- but he was supposed to-- but she thought he'd--

Her eyes were very wet, and it was mostly force of will keeping her from the kind of exaggerated bawling she'd gotten into with Gareth. She could cry later. And she rather thought she would, at length, for a lot of confusing reasons she didn't understand and a lot of very straightforward ones she did.

"...Yer not mad?" she asked, her voice cracking despite her strain at keeping it together. "I ran away. I filled yer castle with rats an' made a huge mess an' I ran away, you said, you said if I ran away again..."

"You always think I'm going to kill you."

Well. Right he was, so she did.

She sank down onto the bed as her knees went weak, mostly because it was less dramatic than sinking to the floor, and she'd had more than enough drama for the day. "Oh, thank fuck," she wheezed out, leaning against the bed post. "Thank fuck, I'm still fuckin' terrible at predicting anythin' you do."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-21-2019

He was relieved that it seemed to have worked—at least in that the situation had not gotten worse—but he was also a bit indignant. "Yes, I apologize," he said with a furrow of his brows. "I am more than capable of apologizing, when the situation calls for it. It's only that it usually doesn't." It wasn't his fault if most things weren't his fault.

His mouth tilted in confusion. "Mad about what?" he asked. "I suppose that would have been inconvenient, if I'd actually been planning to eat you. But I wasn't, and you were only running to Gareth, anyway. Which worked out for the best, I think we can all agree. You even sent me that little bird construct. I think it had brain damage, I had to put it in a box." He paused. "Were the rats on purpose?" he asked. "At first I assumed Colin had actually killed you, and it broke all the rats. I hadn't thought about it much after that."

He watched her palpable relief as she sank onto the comforter. "That's because you always predict I'm going to eat you," he said. "Which I had thought was because you're prey, but which I now think is because I kept telling you I'd eat you for misbehaving, and Colin kept telling you that you were misbehaving. Yes?"


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-21-2019

"I... I just, uh..." She couldn't think of anything on the subject of him apologizing or not that wouldn't be terribly rude. "I guess I jus' didn't expect it," she admitted. "Because I'm not used to authority figures--or anyone, actually, now that I think about it--doin' that." She rubbed her head, actually managing to look a bit sheepish. "I thought a lot o' things were a certain way, an' I've only jus' learned they're not, an' it's takin' me a lot of catchin' up."

She decided, right then, that some secrets were fine to keep, and that she wouldn't be informing the King she'd actually been on her way out of the country, her trip to Gareth's the result of a persistent, nagging desire to think the best of him. No point dwelling on how things could have been different, whether it was on the subject of her orphaning or on the subject of what might have happened if she hadn't been there to pull the sword out of Gareth. She was going to have enough nightmares as it was.

"The rats were on purpose," she apologized. "I thought you were plannin' on eatin' me, thanks to Colin, so I was hopin' to cause as much of a distraction as I could. That makes sense though. The rats proly would freak out if I died, especially if Tim or Phoebe were still around," she mused. "That's not important," she decided. Well, it wasn't important yet, anyway. "I'm glad the bird got here. I can fix it, it's just set to follow you th' fuck around right now, since I didn't wanna risk it gettin' lost or intercepted. That was actually supposed to be tribute," she added with a snort. "Remember, I mentioned I'd been workin' on tribute, before? That's th' lil bugger. I made it for you. It needs sunlight, though, it'll wind down if y'leave it in a box. Originally, it was jus' supposed to be pretty--flitter around 'n' sing birdsong--it'll learn new songs if y'leave it out in th' garden around other birds by the way--an' that kinda shit. I jus' had to modify it to hone in since I thought Colin was interceptin' Gareth's pigeons, hence th--I'm ramblin'. Sorry. Long day."

His last words gave her pause. Long, thoughtful pause. "...Yeah," she said, finally, eyes a bit distant and narrowed as she worked this out for herself for, apparently, the first time. "He told me I was hopeless an' Gareth said I acted like I wanted to hang, though I jus' recently learned he meant he thought I wanted to invoke th' friggin' suicide clause that's in th' contract I never knew about, an' you said I was almost hopeless, but..." She placed her face firmly in her hands. "That. Was because I was actin' like a shithead, right, despite supposedly bein' dragged away from certain death an' then given what was supposed t'be a warm house an' plenty o' food an' stimulation." With a groan, she flopped back onto the bed. "I. Fuckin'. Hate. Colin. So. Much. I'm so fuckin' glad you ate him. I bet he tasted fuckin' terrible. I don't even have any fuckin' candy on me."

She rubbed her face again. She should sit up, but she didn't want to. A lot of tension was draining out of her all at once, and she found she wanted absolutely nothing else more than she wanted a nap. It could wait, however. Instead, she forced herself to sit up. "So y'don't wanna eat me," she said again, to be absolutely sure. "In th' literal sense, anyway. In the other sense..." She tiled her head to the side, considering. "Before, y'said y'wanted me because I'd been given to you. It was th' principle of th' thing. Is that it?" She was sure this seemed like a rather petulant question, but its poignancy would make itself known soon enough. "If it turned out I'd never been given t'you in th' first place, would that be the end o' that?"

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-25-2019

"Hmm." He considered this explanation with suspicion. He decided to be magnanimous and accept it, despite his certainty that she'd been insulting him.

He tried to recall the little bird she'd apparently made as tribute, but he'd been distracted at the time. There was a lot going on. He'd gotten irritated and stuck it in a box. She made it sound much more impressive than he'd noticed. "When you have fixed it," he said, "I will take a better look at it."

He mulled over the question. "I don't think that I do," he said, "but I don't really know you very well." The possibility that he would change his mind about whether someone should die was always there. He preferred not to make promises he couldn't keep. If someone were surprised when he turned on them, let it be their own fault for forgetting.

"You are mine," he said. "I keep what's mine. If you aren't mine, I have no right to keep you." His eyes narrowed as he considered where this line of inquiry might be going. Colin had, they'd already established, fucked up a great many things. "Boldheart," he warned. "You are aware that the power of a succubus is fueled by intimacy? You are aware that he is alone?"

If she didn't want to be his, that was her problem. He had no shortage of people to soothe his ego on that front—and he was a delight, regardless. She should have been begging for the privilege. But possibly Colin had left her too traumatized to appreciate him. That could be understandable.

Leaving when Gareth's heart needed all the fuel it could get was another matter entirely.


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-25-2019

Okay, uncertainty she could take. Uncertainty on the subject of whether or not he wanted to kill her was honestly probably better than most people, who met her once or even just heard the premise of "rats, but like, a person" and made up their mind right then and there. And technically, she was a criminal, and clearly had shown a marked tendency towards chaos. This was fine. This was an acceptable level of wanted dead and genuinely a lot lower than she'd expected walking into this plan. She could work with this.

What he said next, however, derailed her entirely.

"He's what?!" she said, shooting upright. Her legs wobbled and her head throbbed but she somehow stayed standing. "No, I didn't know that! Well, I knew th' first part! But how would I know that? He don't talk t'me! No one talks t'me! This whole situation is powered by th' fact Gareth an' I clearly have major communication issues!" She rushed towards the door, but the King was in it. "He was sleepin' jus' fine when I left, an' I thought--if you were here I assumed he was fine, he was stable--Why are we here if he needs us t'be there!" This was important, but it could wait. She'd just assumed, if the King had left his side, that meant Gareth had to be perfectly fine. Otherwise, he wouldn't have left.

"I do need t'talk t'you," she insisted, despite being ready to maybe crawl under his legs to get out the door if necessary. "An' Gareth can't be there, there's stuff he... don't need to know, stuff that happened while he was hurt. But if he needs us there, why are we here?!"

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-27-2019

"He is stable," he said. "He asked that I leave. If he knew that you were here, and had not run, I think that he would want you with him." He paused. "Even if he didn't," he said, "I think it would help. My point is that, regardless of whether you are mine, it has little bearing on whether you are his."

Her eagerness to get back to Gareth at least reassured him that she wouldn't be fleeing the castle immediately. Eventually, maybe. He wasn't much concerned about eventualities.

He cocked his head. "More secrets?"


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-27-2019

The King wasn't moving out of the doorway, which was a bit scary and a lot annoying. If she needed to be with Gareth, then she ought to be with Gareth, not talking over her future with the King. Why was he--

Oh. Oh, right, it would sort of sound like that, wouldn't it. And who would blame her? Her situation was clearly fucked enough that even the King thought it was worth apologizing for. It felt weird, actually, to realize suddenly that she could probably just leave, just walk right out the gates and no one would stop her. Suddenly free of her chains, she found herself feeling bound anyway.

Didn't feel as bad when it was her choice, though.

"I'm not... I didn't come back here just to quit," Ren said with a sigh, taking a step backwards away from the door. "I snuck off because I was worried about somethin' happenin' while you were out of th' castle, an' so that if y' were plannin' on killin' me, Gareth could think I'd just run off an' he wouldn't have to know."

"Yeah, yeah," she sighed again, running a hand through her hair. "More secrets. For now. I might... I might tell him later. After y' hear, if you think he should know, I'll tell him, but I think yer gonna agree with me that he don't need this shit right now, on top of everythin' else."

Her mind glazed over the details, why would Gareth want her there if not the King, it didn't matter. If he did want her, then she should be there. That part made sense, even to her pounding mind. She'd do this quick, like ripping off adhesive, so that she could be with Gareth without having to dart between the King's legs or something.

"You saw what Colin did. Right through the chest with an iron sword. I pulled it out, an' me an' Nighthoof managed to get him inside, but he was still... in bad shape. I'm not... I'm not a medic, an' he uses fuckin' pigeons to communicate with th' castle, an' so he was stuck with jus' me, an' that wasn't good enough. He got worse, an' he started... I didn't think he was gonna make it."

That was a very kind way to phrase 'he used mysterious demon magic to eject his own soul and died,' but. Gareth's secrets were his own to tell Avi. For now, anyway.

"Ever since... ever since the, uh, incident after th' fair, with th' poison, things've been weird fer me. I saw stuff while I was unconscious, an'... look, th' why isn't really important, but yesterday I drank some fuckin' poison, chased Gareth's soul down in a weird shadow realm, dragged it back to his body, an' in the process I think I drained the life out like eighty rats. They're all dead an' Gareth is alive an' I have no idea how I did it or what I am an' I'm freakin' the fuck out, Avi!"

"I was hopin'--I am hopin'... I'm worried I'm gonna hurt someone, an' yer... yer a dragon. Y'can help, right? You've, you've heard of this, y'know what I am or someone who can help, or... somethin'! Colin fucked it up somethin' fierce an' I'm not King's Guard right now, but. I'll join th' King's Guard, proper this time, an' be yers, proper this time, if y'can help me figure this out, keep me safe an' also everyone else safe from me. If you actually can do better with me than I can, I'll show you jus' how useful I am when I wanna be. I swear."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-28-2019

Her willingness to die quietly to avoid troubling Gareth with it improved his estimation of her.

That was a lot to process, and he was getting hung up on multiple points. Such as the implication, intended or not, that Gareth had actually died. That she had died? Or possibly traded rats for Gareth? No, that couldn't be right. Eighty rats couldn't be enough for that.

She was also offering to stay, which he would appreciate more if there weren't so much else going on here.

He had a lot of questions, but he stuck with his first point of confusion. "Incident after the fair," he repeated slowly, "with the poison."


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-28-2019

Ren squinted at the King. Out of all the things she'd just said... It was the nightshade poisoning he was asking about? That was months ago! Surely he'd been fully briefed of the situation. Grilka, if no one else, would definitely have told him about it.

"Y-yeah?" she said, clearly uncertain what exactly he was asking about "Remember, y'took me out on a date, I tried to run away, there was menacin', then mind-blowin' sex?" Surely he hadn't forgotten that quickly... "Then you dumped me in another cell--those are cells by th' way, they lock from th' outside, I feel like you maybe don't know that--instead of takin' me somewhere else?" She probably could have phrased that in a less bitchy way. Whatever, she had a headache and it was still a sore memory for her.

"Then I accidentally drank poison, failed to die, an' that was th' first time I... I dunno what it was! I was hopin' you would! Like a weird out o' body experience. I thought it mighta been a dream but it's happened twice, and Gareth was there the second time."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-28-2019

"I remember the fair," he said carefully. He hadn't thought of it as a date, at the time, but that was cute so he didn't protest the characterization. "You didn't want to go back to your room, because it was terrible, so I put you in Gareth's. The one with the window. Though I suppose it didn't solve the Colin problem, which I imagine was what you actually wanted to get away from." It wasn't as if she'd said anything to that effect. He just thought she was agreeing about the terrible room. "I was told the locks didn't really matter."

In this very room, in fact.

"How do you accidentally drink poison?" His brow furrowed before his expression abruptly cleared. "Was it chocolate?" he asked. That would explain a lot. "I've seen that happen before, with chocolate. She just got all sick, though, she didn't die. Which it sounds like you did. Unless I'm misunderstanding, and you just did something that sounds a great deal like dying."


RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - SolitareLee - 12-28-2019

Ren rubbed her face. Her legs were tired. Her everything was tired. Instead of going back over to the bed, she just sort of... sat down on the floor. It wasn't like she had to crane her neck any more or less, he was already so much goddamn taller than her.

"Yeah, I was hopin' for a place that wasn't th' King's Guard barracks. Like th' tower you mentioned before. Which I proly should have clarified. An' which I'm gonna clarify now real quick: please do not make me live anywhere in that fuckin' place if I rejoin the King's Guard. Especially not that wing." If anyone even tried to put her anywhere near it, she would set it on fire. "The locks do matter, to me. I think I'm gonna have a complex about locked fuckin' doors for th' rest of my damned life. If a lock is on the outside of a door, it's a cage, not a room."

She couldn't believe no one had told him. According to him, she'd maybe died, from the sound of it, like actually died and just gotten better somehow, and no one had told him?! She huffed, offended at the concept that she could just die and it wouldn't even be on a form the King, who ostensibly owned her, would have to look over at some point.

"I didn't know it was poison! I thought it was just--"

Alcohol. Alcohol hidden in the room she was put in. Alcohol hidden in the room she was put in, which was Gareth's. Gareth's poisoned alcohol, hidden in his room.

She clenched her teeth, suddenly very aware of why the King hadn't been told. She was at once very furious and very guilty. She didn't want to tell the King things that should be Gareth's to tell. She wanted to give him a chance to come clean about all these things, to be honest, to heal in his own way. But it had involved her! How could he just... keep it secret, sweep it under the rug, when twice now, it had indirectly led to her dying, or doing something that sounded a great deal like it? Now the King didn't know about something important, and she was the one forced to either lie or tell someone else's secrets, and it wasn't fair! She wasn't even a good liar!

"It happened a couple o' times," she said, stretching for a technical truth. "Colin liked to leave poisoned food out where th' rats might find it and bring it back to me. Because, y'know, I was starvin', so I kept stealin' food. This one was just... worse. I dunno if I died. Does it sound like I died?" She flopped back onto the floor, looking up at him. "If I died, I've done it twice now. Does this mean I've technically fulfilled the death penalty? That's not important. Wait, yes it is actually, but not right now. I'm more concerned about th' fact I can do it at all, and also th' idea that I might accidentally murder th' things around me en masse."

RE: Beg Forgiveness [Closed] - Tindome - 12-28-2019

Dragons couldn't actually sense lies.

But Ren had a moment, a very obvious moment, where she stopped herself from saying something to say another thing instead. He crouched down, eyes narrowing. "What aren't you telling me?" It didn't make sense that no one would have told him about this, unless it was another of Colin's secrets. Or had they thought it beneath his concern? It might have been, a little. Still, it seemed like Gareth should have tried to give him a lecture if he thought someone he'd clearly fucked senseless had been injured. Even if the injury were unrelated.

"Describe it to me," he said. "This place you went to find Gareth. Shadowy, you said?"

He might have an inkling of an idea, but better to get more information, first.