exsiliumlogs | [OPEN] Picking up pieces, gathering threads

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Picking up pieces, gathering threads

Date & Time: Oct. 4-11 Any time
Location: Various
Characters: Duncan and anyone who wants to run into him for the week
Summary: Duncan emerges from the tunnels, helps with clean up, and seeks to follow through with a few planned meetings.
Warnings: None anticipated

((OOC: This is a catch all post for meeting Duncan, open to those I plotted with recently and those I didn't, with one closed thread for his roommates. Please just specific place and a rough date and time in your subject line. Duncan will be in the apartment building, training rooms, exploring the streets near the compound, or helping with clean up efforts. He's not sleeping much, so days or nights are available.

Action or prose are equally welcome.))

It seemed almost too good to be true, the sudden announcement that the bombardment was over and that they could come out again. What convinced Duncan more than anything else was the fact that the devices they had been given seemed more functional. He took in several deep breaths when he emerged from the claustrophobic depths that reminded him a little too much of certain aspects of home that he never wished to think of again and turned a critical eye to all of the rubble.

Yes, welcome, he thought a little sourly. Enjoy your bombardment and cleaning up the mess. He had no faith that the people responsible for his presence there would have much interest in making things more comfortable topside. It would probably be up to the survivors.

Difficulty brought with it opportunity. In addition to checking on the people he had met recently, he intended to use the time to meet others and test the waters for how open to Fiona's ideas they might be. He had given his word and was going to honor it. It was time to see how difficult that might be.

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Duncan had almost forgotten about the slip of paper bearing his quarters assignment in all of the confusion and the bombardment. Thanks to Elissa, he knew roughly where the transports were housed. It wasn't until he was exhausted from working that he thought to try to find where he would be living now.

There was rubble in the hallways and dust everywhere. The interior of the building looked a sight better than much of what he had seen in the streets. He had no idea what to expect or who lived with him. He recalled what Alistair had said about someone living with him and Queen Anora trying to kill her. He hoped he wouldn't find himself in a similar situation.

He was a little heartened to find the door intact. Squaring his shoulders and taking in a breath, he unlocked the door and stepped inside. "Hello?" he called out immediately. "Is anyone here? I've been assigned to these quarters. My name is Duncan."

Similar to Duncan, Ico only returned to the housing unit after he had helped repairs elsewhere in the city. Although he was tired, he stayed awake to clean the apartment. The unit was mostly intact, but the window in the main room was broken and the furniture was damaged. By the time Duncan arrived, Ico already boarded up the window and disposed of the glass.

He was carrying a broken chair when Duncan came in. It had been so long since Thane and Miranda left that he was surprised to hear someone come through the door.

“Duncan?”

"Ico." He smiled briefly and locked the door behind him. "I wasn't expecting to find anyone I had met here. This is a pleasant surprise." He looked around, pleased to see the place was more intact than he had imagined it would be.

"Here, let me help you with that." He moved to take the other side of it. "Where are we taking it? Does anyone else live here?"

“Over there,” Ico said and he tipped his horns. There was a small pile near the door consisting of a broken coffee table and two desk lamps. “I’ll take it out later.”

While that was the last of the broken furniture, there was still more work to do. A cabinet had fallen over, intact, but most of the glasses and flatware had shattered.

“I haven’t seen anyone else come in yet.” He shook his head; he should have known sooner that the Initiative would not leave the rooms empty.

He nodded and helped him toss it into the pile. He saw the fallen cabinet and headed in that direction to wrestle it back up into place. "I'm pleasantly surprised things aren't worse in here." His boots crunched broken glass.

"Where you living here alone, then?" He realized he didn't know enough about the place that he should find that a surprising concept. If they brought children, why would they not also expect them to fend for themselves? He had been on his own from very early in life, himself.

“Not always,” Ico said. He walked by Duncan and kicked aside the glass. “There were two others before, Thane and Miranda, but the Initiative returned them.”

He crouched low to get a strong grip on cabinet and he helped Duncan lift it up. While he was strong enough to manage the task on his own, with both of them it would be easy to move it back in place.

"I wonder if we have anyone else. I suppose we'll find out soon enough." The boy's strength was unexpected. He supposed that he shouldn't make any assumptions, as different people from different worlds could have any number of abilities he'd never consider possible in a Thedosian. He shuffled his feet carefully until the cabinet was back where it belonged and didn't move his hands far until he could tell it was stable.

"Why don't you give me a quick tour, and then we can get to work on the rest of the mess? You can also tell me a little about what you like and don't like in someone living with you." He didn't want to give the impression of coming in and taking over. A place of one's own was an important component of stability, more so in a place where they had so little control of everything else.

The kitchen was nearest to them so he walked toward the appliances in there. However, he did not start the tour yet, instead he looked confused. He was puzzled over this amount of consideration from someone that was his elder.

“I didn’t think about it before,” Ico said and he placed his hand under his chin. “Only Thane and Miranda were here and we didn’t see each other much. I’ll just tell you if something bothers me, okay?”

"That works," he said with a nod. "When I was your age- I think. Ages are harder to tell here. I didn't have a place to live, nowhere stable. I moved around all the time, so when I did find somewhere I could hole up for a while, I was very protective of it. If you weren't, somebody bigger and stronger than you would come in and take it. I want to make it clear that just because I've been assigned to these quarters with you, that's not my attitude or intention. I'm not here to take anything."

He looked around at the unfamiliar equipment, his brows lifting. "I will need some explanation of how some of this works. I don't want to break anything, either."

Duncan must have lived a hard life. He wanted to ask him more but he did not know if it would upset him to bring up the past. He decided to drop the subject and start the tour.

“This is where the food is kept.” Ico stood before the refrigerator. “It has two doors, one for cold and another for ice.” He opened the doors and the inside was nearly bare. A portion of the food did not last by the time he came back. “As long as you don’t leave the doors open after you’re done, it’ll keep the inside cold.”

He silently made note of how bare the larder was. He didn't know a better term for it. Sticking his hand inside, he felt first the bottom part then the top and nodded. He didn't understand the technology. The concept, however, was simple enough. He closed both doors and eyed the seals, content to see that they were flush. "I'll keep that in mind." It was more convenient than a root cellar by far.

"I don't see a hearth. Where do we cook?"

“Over here,” Ico placed his hand on the stove. “When you turn it on, these spots get hot. There isn’t a fire but it can burn you so be careful.”

Ico demonstrated by turning it on and he placed a frying pan over it. “This light tells you when it’s on. There’s an oven here, too, and this dial makes the inside hot.”

He watched Duncan to see what he would do. “I don’t know what all of it is called.”

"That's all right. What it's called is less important than what it does." He held his hand close to the pan until he could feel faint heat radiating then twisted the dial until the light went out. Pulling the handle at the front, he opened the stove to have a look inside, closed it, and straightened.

"I think we'll have some adventures trying to figure this out, hmm? Maybe I can find someone to show me how to use it properly and cook a good meal. Is there anything else in here I should know about?" He glanced around. Some of it looked more straightforward, the counter tops and cupboards, the basin. He imagined that water came through the pipe hanging over it, although he couldn't see where to pump it.

“Madoka said she’ll start a cooking club. She’ll know how and she said she’ll teach how to cook. But that was before the bombs. She’s around my age and she has pink hair tied up in ribbons.”

Ico had seen water pipes before so he assumed Duncan would know about it as well. He began walking through the apartment and opened the doors to the empty rooms. The damage there was minimal because there was barely anything inside to break. There was only a fallen shelf and the bed was out of place. The next room’s window was cracked but it had not shattered.

“These were the rooms Thane and Miranda were in. I haven’t seen anyone else stay here so I guess it’s okay to choose the one you like.”

Edited 2012-10-07 20:25 (UTC)

"Are there many here close to your age?" He still wondered the purpose behind that. Did the Initiative intend to use the children as warriors? Where they there to keep their fellow Transports in line as leverage? As much as he'd work to keep a child safe, he wasn't above leaving them as lost causes. He didn't think he was the only one with a hardened view. He kept the darker thoughts to himself and out of his expression as he followed him on the tour.

"I believe I'll take this one." He chose the door leading to the room with the fully intact window. "We'll want to get that window repaired, whether we have ourselves another boarder or not. When it gets colder, it could crack the rest of the way and leave us a mess."

Ico only nodded. He found no comfort that others his age were brought for battle.

“I understand. I’ll help you whenever you’re ready.”

“This is my room,” Ico waved his hand. It was clean and similarly bare except for a few traces of belongings. He cleaned his room first because he did not expect anyone else coming. There was no reason he saw to discuss anything about it so he moved on.

“And this is a toilet. It’s like a chamber pot but that handle flushes the water inside so you don’t have to empty it at all.” He opened another door. “This is the shower. It’s for bathing. The water comes from up there. You can control how hot the water gets.”

"I'm sure we'll be able to find materials with everything else that's being repaired right now." His father was a carpenter. The memories might be distant, but he believed he knew enough to shim a window. He added it to the internal list he was compiling of things they'd need.

He nodded when shown Ico's room, and like him saw no reason to comment on it specifically. The bathroom was a different matter. Immediately, he walked over to the toilet and pressed the lever. "Huh." When he looked back up, he seemed a little bemused at the oddity.

He left it for the shower, placing his hand on the spigot without turning or pressing it. It was obvious enough that if he did, the water would come down on his arm or head if he leaned in too far. "This is probably the most useful thing I've seen since arriving here. We have nothing like this where I come from. The closest to such achievements are by the dwarves of Orzammar."

Stepping back he gestured for him to leave the room ahead of him. "If you'll show me where the broom is, I'll get started on all that broken glass and crockery in the kitchen."

It made Ico smile when he saw the puzzled look on Duncan’s face. He laughed although not in a derisive manner.

As he led him to the cleaning supplies, Ico asked, “Dwarves?”

He gave Duncan a broom while he took a dustpan and brush. On the way back to the kitchen, he stifled a yawn. He began sweeping up the glass from one corner.

He didn't seem to mind the laughter, shooting him an amused look. "Yes, there are several sentient races in my world, dwarves, elves, humans, and even a horned people called the Qunari. They're giants in comparison to the rest of us. The dwarves are cunning builders. They have technology that seems centuries ahead of most of Thedas. They'd find much of what they have here fascinating but would probably try to take everything apart," he said as they headed back to the kitchen.

He took the broom and started sweeping from the other side so that they could gather it all into the middle.

Ico raised his head up when he heard Duncan mentioned horned people. He had forgotten that he was supposed to be sweeping.

“Giants?” he asked. So they were not like Sacrifices. He could only focus on one subject. Although dwarves sounded interesting, he preferred to know more about Qunari.

“What are the Qunari like?”

"Yes, about this tall." Duncan held his hand up to around eight feet. "They have bronze skin and purple eyes, white hair. Some have horns, and some don't. They sweep back over their heads, much like a goat's. As for what they're like, that's a little hard to answer. They're- different. They live by a code or a way called the Qun. They care more about the needs of society than individuals, and they seek to spread this way to others, sometimes by force.

"We don't know where they originally came from, only that they're not native to Thedas, our land. We think they came from across the sea. I wish I could be more specific. They're not quick to speak to or deal with outsiders." He had paused in his sweeping to answer the question and started it up again.

“I wonder why some of them don’t have horns.” Ico began sweeping again.

“There’s no one like that where I’m from. We don’t have dwarves and elves either.” He swept the glass to the middle of the kitchen and then gathered as much as he could in the dustpan.

“What about blood elves? Are they from your world, too?”

"I don't know. I doubt I'd get a straight answer if I asked," he said with a shrug. "They keep most things to themselves."

He nodded thoughtfully. "What about the other people in your world? Does everyone there have horns?"

He continued sweeping toward the pile and went to go back over the area for the finer pieces. "I've never heard of blood elves. All of our elves are the same, except that some live in the cities and some live in the wilderness. Those who choose to stay in the wilderness call themselves the Dalish. Are there blood elves here?"

“Koltira is a blood elf. He’s my friend.”

After emptying the dustpan a few times, the glass was gone. He leaned over the counter.

“Only Sacrifices have horns. We’re born once every generation. I’ve never seen my birth parents, but I know they don’t have horns.”

"Sacrifices?" He arched a brow, heading over to put the broom away. He didn't much like the sound of that but was reserving judgment until he heard more. He began putting the few things that had managed not to break or only chip a little back on the shelves.

"Does this have to do with the queen you mentioned the day we met in the market?"

“Yes.”

Ico put away the dustpan and brush. There was not much left to store so he left Duncan to handle that. Instead, he prepared to mop the floors and returned with a bucket full of water. He started in a corner far away from Duncan to give him enough time to clean up.

“For generations, children born with horns are taken to the Castle in the Mist. They put us in stone coffins to keep the Queen trapped in time. But it wasn’t just us. Her daughter, Yorda, she was trapped there, too. She said I could leave with Yorda, but she turned her into stone. She killed her own daughter.”

His voice was downcast, but he was feeling better than he was when they first met. He did not cry and he continued cleaning.

Edited 2012-10-13 11:47 (UTC)

"That's what you were attempting to put a stop to?" he asked. It seemed like a terrible thing to put upon a child's shoulders, any child, and yet cruel things were often the way of the world with kindness and good luck the exceptions to the rule. "To defeat her so that others would not have to suffer such a fate again?"

When he finished putting up the few pieces left, he stepped out of the kitchen and lingered in the doorway so that they could continue speaking while Ico mopped.

“It’s more than that,” he said. “She tricked everyone. The empire thinks we’re safe as long as she’s trapped, but she’s isn’t. She’s just waiting until the next eclipse. If she’s not stopped before then, she’ll summon the Dark God and the world will be in danger.”

"Let us hope we can get you home before such a thing happens. I don't know if it will be possible or not. I intend to try. To get as many home who want to go. It will likely take some time." As for what would happen to him, he supposed he could either die here in the attempt or perhaps stay on to try to ensure no one else was kidnapped.

“Thank you, Duncan. I’ll help you, too. I’m sure a lot of us want to return home. I heard that time stops in our worlds when we’re gone. Everyone else should be safe for now but I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to fight.” Ico finished cleaning the kitchen and then he moved onto the main room.

“What about you? Did the Initiative take you away from something important?”

"Hopefully you won't be too old to fight for a very long time to come," he said with a smile. "I'm pretty old, and I'm not too old to fight."

He held a hand out for the mop, willing to take the next room. "They did. They took me out of a battle. But I've heard in the end things worked out. Some people from a few years ahead in my world told me. A great evil had arisen. It was defeated."

He gave Duncan the mop. However, his smile disappeared.

“A few years ahead? So time didn’t stop when you were taken?”

A pang of dread ran through him. “Did they notice you were gone?”

"It's strange, and it's hard to explain," he said as he began to push the mop across the floor.

"As for me-" He hesitated a moment, deciding whether he wanted to tell him the truth about him. "They didn't, because I died in the battle."

He tightened his grip on the mop slightly. "However, another friend of mine came from a time in the past to some of her friends, and they never noticed that she was gone. It's almost as though we're plucked from moments and put back in them, but they can reach ahead from our times." That wasn't touching upon how some people seemed to remember things differently from others.

“What?”

It was a lot to sort out. Ico was quiet for much longer than he thought. It explained why it seemed as if time stopped while they were gone. However, that was not what he was focusing on.

“So, when the Initiative returns you, you’ll die?”

The sound of the mop swishing across the floor and the splashes in the bucket when he dipped it to wring it filled the long silence. He glanced over at him for the question and nodded. "I believe that's true, yes. I haven't met anyone from my future who didn't know of my demise."

He was gaping at Duncan, his fingers curled over his lips. He was speechless, but thinking. Slowly his mouth began to close as he came closer to an answer.

“Maybe it will be different this time. Now you’ll know what to look out for. Did your friends tell you how you died?”

"Perhaps." He didn't believe it, but he didn't want to be upsetting in arguing a point that neither of them could prove or disprove.

"They said I died in the battle. I'm fairly certain I know how." He remembered the arc of the blade as it came down very clearly. "If I can avoid it, I certainly will."

It was not hollow words he spoke. Although he was limited in helping Duncan in his own world, Ico was determined to find some way to save him.

“In battle,” he murmured. “Then you should train. I’ll ask Koltira if he’ll help you. Do you know how you can avoid what killed you?”

"It wasn't lack of training. We were overwhelmed, and the people who were supposed to flank the enemy quit the field. We were fighting creatures called darkspawn. They came from underground, controlled by something called an Archdemon. I'll have to engage if I'm sent back, but perhaps there will be enough time to get a better position." He wasn't sure that would make a difference, surrounded on all sides by nothing but dying men and the enemy.

He wasn't as disturbed by it as he might have been at a younger age. Few Wardens lived past middle age, none who had joined as young as he. Falling in battle was preferable to the alternative. He continued mopping. "Don't worry about it too much, if you can help it. I do intend to continue training while here, but I'm not going to let this knowledge interfere with my life. Knowing these sorts of things only has the power we give it."

“But this is a second chance,” he said, sounding distracted.

Ico had absorbed every word. His eyes were downcast but not from worry or sorrow. He still held hope that there was a way Duncan would survive. All he needed was a solution. Some of his thoughts and ideas were going by so quickly that he himself could not grasp them all before he began on another. He assumed darkspawn was a sort of demon. That made it complicated because he knew little about them outside of the stories his mother told him.

“Do these darkspawn have any weaknesses? Where was the Archdemon during the battle?”

"Yes, this is a second chance, one I don't intend to squander." When every day was a day he wouldn't have had before, it was difficult to feel too bad about it. He didn't like this situation, no, but he could appreciate the chance given.

"They're not individually intelligent creatures, but they have strength in numbers and a hive mind. They are powerful in combat, and when they are under the direction of an Archdemon, they are particularly dangerous. To my knowledge, she was not there. She controls them through a psychic link that cannot be broken without her death. I'm told she was later defeated. My order is dedicated to the destruction of these creatures and the end of Blights. That's what we call it when they find an Archdemon and surface."

That narrowed down a few options but he still had a lot of ideas left.

“Are any of your friends here from before you died? Maybe they can help, too.”

Ico rubbed his eye and he yawned. He was already tired before Duncan arrived and it was becoming progressively more difficult to ignore sleep.

"There are a few, yes," he said, nodding. They were people he didn't wish to burden with his problems, but he had a feeling they were all going to be more involved with one another and their issues than they would wish before all was said and done.

He noticed that the boy looked tired. He was pretty tired himself. He finished with the last of his cleaning and moved to set everything back in its proper place. "I think it would be a good idea if we get some rest. It's going to be a long next few days trying to get all of this cleaned up."

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[OPEN] Picking up pieces, gathering threads

[closed to Roommates]

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