[at some point, she wanders out to the dorm rooms after party games. instinctively, she goes to harrow's room - but harrow won't be there, so what actually happens is gideon just sits down in front of the room and dozes, like a true college student.
thancred can probably find her snoring lightly as she sits against the door, sitting up, arms crossed across her chest.]
and then i was late because i fell asleep but oh well
[Thancred, fortunately, is no stranger to several key attributes of the evening, including: 1) making it look like he's drinking a lot while keeping his faculties about him, 2) stumbling back to his inn room after a long night of drinking anyway, 3) dealing with people who've randomly decided to fall asleep in all manner of weird places.
(if this is all a hallucination born of Y'shtola tossing him into the aetherial sea again, he's — damn, he misses Y'shtola.)
But regardless, there is a Teen™ propped against his door, and he's not getting in without doing something about it, so he simply nudges her with the toe of his boot in an attempt to try to wake her up without being dumb enough to hunker down and put himself into her proximity, just in case she starts and attacks on reflex.
It's a natural assumption. He would, if their positions were reversed.]
[How many times have they done this by now — Thancred coming back to his Harrow's room, Nav pacing the hallway like a restless coeurl? One more, evidently.]
I was hoping I might find you somewhere about.
[His eyes are dark, his expression withdrawn. No pleasantries today.]
[it is pretty decently late on tuesday when gideon knocks on the dorm room door. hopefully thancred is there - she's honestly looking for either of the residents. we'll just pretend harrow isn't here for this one. but she does knock and even the knock sounds tired.]
[Surprise! He's here — though from the looks of him, potentially not for long, given the way he's dressed and how quickly he responds to the knock at the door. Possibly he was just gearing up to head out?
Not that he's going anywhere now, once he sees who's on the other side.]
Nav? Are you looking f—
[He begins, as a wholeass skeleton tips over and falls on him, prompting him to reflexively yeet it into the wall and shatter it into a whole mess of scattered bones.]
[it's a little bit after the execution, and gideon's had... at least a few minutes to calm down. there's still something rough and gritty in her chest that she doesn't know how to get rid of, and even worse, there's a ball of guilt and shame because she isn't quite sure what it is that's making her feel this way. the kids, maybe. two hundred, or two, or however many, begging for help that she couldn't give.
or maybe it was just a reminder of a parent. of someone who loves you, openly and without reservation. something she's never had, not really.
she's not thinking about it. instead, she chases people down. there are people who could use something from her, and that is the easiest way to not dwell, so she just goes.
thancred first. she'd seen him leave around the same time as her. when she wanders to the gym, that's where she finds him, and the tangled ball of - bad, that loosens a little.]
There's so much about what they all just witnessed that should bother him. The cannibalism should bother him. The grotesque nature of the murders should bother him. The age of the culprit should bother him — gods, they've all been so young, and it's not that he even thinks that youth is a mitigation of murder but it's like trying to imagine Alphinaud or Alisaie being pushed to that brink and —
It's not even that, strangely, that gets to him.
It wasn't the familiarity of the phrase i picked you up from the trash. It wasn't save me, save me, save me in the wake of shadows that coil and writhe like the onset of dynamis. It wasn't the carnage, the horror, the suspense, the trepidation. It should've been, but it wasn't.
It's just that —]
What is it, Nav?
[The funny thing is that he and Gideon Nav are the same in so many ways, and this is one of them. That he works his body to its brink like it's going to offer a release for the emotions he's smothering inside. That it's so easy to go from a wallowing mood to all business at the very prospect that he might be needed. That's his job. That's what he's supposed to do.
He's shirtless, sweating, red-knuckled. A punching bag is still swaying, which offers environmental storytelling about just how hard he must've been hitting it. The red cat plush tucked in his lap, between his spread legs, is incongruous with the rest of him. He doesn't seem to notice.
Because it's just that he'd realized something, near the end of that execution, and there's no amount of violence that's going to exorcise it from his thoughts.]
[okay, well, you know how it's loss week? she has lost one big thing and that's the little voice in her brain that tells her not to do things the second she thinks of them.
which is why when she sees thancred alive on this fine friday, she moves right up to him and bear hugs him. hopefully he doesn't stab her out of instinct, though that would be very funny.]
[yeah and guess where she finds him: in the fucking convenience store replacing all the food he dispensed the night before
Fortunately, what he'd said the night before was altogether true: she is not even the slightest bit sneaky, and even if she were, having a ph.d. in sneak comes with its fringe benefits. So he does see her coming, and allows this.]
If you're getting into position for a suplex, I have to advise you that your form is all wrong.
[where is thancred, because Bad Decisions are being made here in the house of gideon, and she's laying on the floor somewhere getting drunk. this is a hell of a toplevel.]
[the museum feels like a fun place for all of this to happen, so here's gideon, standing in front of a portrait with a frown. the portrait is of a very pointy fence. sure.
[Hey, so this museum? It sucks. Whoever thought that display after display of sweet-faced blond girls was the makings of fine art should be relieved of their post — if not shot. At least there's one landscape amidst the lot of them. It's...kind of abstract? Interesting colors.
That's technically a portrait too, but. You know.
Anyway, here's Thancred, armed with his bag as usual as he drifts around looking at the museum exhibits. Trailing behind him at a difference is a nutkin, poised and ready to ensure any modesty he may be required to preserve on a moment's notice.]
[The indoor ocean is always a pretty reliable place to look for Thancred these days, and probably safer for Gideon to be on, thanks to the notable lack of HAMSTERS MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS IN LITTLE BOATS OUT AT SEA and also lava. It helps that the ocean here is not made of lava.
Anyway, what might draw Gideon his way before she even sees him is the sound of...some kind of musical notes being plucked on strings? Weird.]
she does wander her way out to the beach, and the music catches her attention. she grins a little, following it. that's fun. she has no idea what it's from, but it's neat.]
[Well, for one thing, area man is not — for what is probably the first time in like four weeks of Superhell minus the times when he was wearing a bathing suit to swim — wearing his gunbreaker whites with black bodysuit underneath. He is instead, regrettably, wearing this.
Gideon will also find him sitting in one of the little rooms off the onsen itself, perched on one of the little beds, manspreading like crazy. His mandolin is propped up against one of the walls, near enough to him that he could reach it without sliding over, and next to him on the cushion is his hellphone.]
Hello. I don't want to hear a word out of you, understood?
[So guess who's a terrible surrogate father and didn't curfew with his lesbian daughters for the first time in this entire game: THIS GUY. Anyway, he's kind of stiff and limping today when he makes his way down to the ballpit bar, but also that's probably to be expected on account of flagrantly ignoring his own personal health in favor of Tank Behavior™ yesterday.
As usual, he's armed with his bag and he's back in his gunbreaker gear for the first time in a wholeass week, but he's still just kind of teetering on the edge of the ballpit trying to figure out how it is he's going to...do this, considering he has to go through the thing to get into the bar to begin with.]
[well, gideon can help with this! she's not particularly stealthy, as is well established, but that's fine. the instinct here is to come up behind him and just push him into the ball pit.
[eventually gideon can be found in the dorms! she's actually on her way out of akira and scaramouche's room, looking exhausted and kind of red-eyed. sad. like, sympathetically, mostly, that's not hard to tell.
she kind of just stands in the dorm kitchen and rubs at her face for a bit. her face paint is gone! she has a fading bruise over her eye.]
[This is not, strictly speaking, a conversation he's looking forward to having, but also he's not a coward and has historically learned his lesson about dick moves against redheaded lesbian daughters, so.]
[good morning it's murder day, and we're still in the home biome! i don't know whose home it is today but hopefully it's not the ninth.
everybody else has gone off to do things so it's just the two of them - gideon looked at the announcement, attempted to get up, and her body quit immediately so she's just here, curled up on the couch like a bug.
she hasn't said anything because she's not sure if thancred is awake, but. she's here!]
[Whose biome is it today? Funny you should wonder about something like that. Goodbye, Bixing's apartment couches; hello, the marble benches of Sharlayan's outdoor study nooks. At least they're still cushioned, in a thankful nod to how uncomfortable Thancred knows the real things are to sleep on. Small favors.
Awfully pretty, isn't it? Especially at night. Quiet and relaxing and home.]
[gideon is out in the cold, today. she's got on appropriately warm clothes, at least, with her aviators pushed up to the top of her head. she's taken the bandages off her face, for today, but her left eye is sort of cloudy and less bright yellow than usual. everything else is still bandaged, but it doesn't seem like it's bleeding now so that's good.
anyway, she's at the bottom of the mountain, peering up the trail. there's a drink in her hand, with steam coming up out of it. how terrible is this trail going to be, she wonders.]
[It's not even that Thancred is altogether surprised, really, that there would be a place like this in hell. After all, he's been to Garlemald, which was about as close to said infernal realms as one could possibly hope to get, for a while there. Fortunately, he's no stranger to cold-weather climes, and finds neither the lake, rivers, nor overall snowscape particularly daunting.
Gideon's red hair, against the blue-white of the snow, sticks out like a sore thumb. Or a sore back. Or all the other parts of him that are still sore, besides — like his left ear, which stings in a laughably minor but still persistently noticeable way, still unused to the small silver hoop pierced through the lobe.
He doesn't — he doesn't want to approach her, exactly, but he also doesn't not want to approach her, and after a while the latter wins out, so he shuffles over in a way that makes comparatively a lot of noise in the otherwise quiet and still snowy setting, breaking a path with idle kicks of his boots.]
[At some point throughout the day, Gideon may discover that one of her pockets suddenly and unexpectedly feels a little bit heavier and clunkier than it did a few minutes before. Almost like something's been deposited in it...
Which is exactly the case, because if she happens to investigate this oddity, she'll find that a paper-wrapped package has been slipped into her pocket; upon opening it, she'll discover a pendant made of what seems like a colorful ocean-polished stone, bound in netting of sailor's knots tied with soft cord.
Engraved painstakingly on its surface (with a tool that was probably a daggerpoint) is a mark. There is no note otherwise.]
[there will be a small skull-patterned pouch on thancred's bed at some point later - when he opens it, he'll find a necklace. it has a secret compartment in it that's difficult to accidentally open, too, though there's nothing in it. there is an IX carved into the metal on the inside, though.
[thancred gets a picture at some point after execution! it's a picture of both of gideon's hands - the right one is bandaged around the palm and part of the knuckles, but what's more important is that all ten fingers are there.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
w0; SUNDAY
Nonagesimus! Open up, you horrid goblin!
no subject
Anyway look who's opening the door. It's not Harrow.]
Do lay off the pounding, you're liable to take the door clear o— ah. Nav. Fancy meeting you here.
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w0; WEDNESDAY
thancred can probably find her snoring lightly as she sits against the door, sitting up, arms crossed across her chest.]
and then i was late because i fell asleep but oh well
(if this is all a hallucination born of Y'shtola tossing him into the aetherial sea again, he's — damn, he misses Y'shtola.)
But regardless, there is a Teen™ propped against his door, and he's not getting in without doing something about it, so he simply nudges her with the toe of his boot in an attempt to try to wake her up without being dumb enough to hunker down and put himself into her proximity, just in case she starts and attacks on reflex.
It's a natural assumption. He would, if their positions were reversed.]
Good evening, sleepyhead.
sdfsk your sleep!!
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w0; SATURDAY
she doesn't look up, but her hands keep flexing and unflexing, like she wishes she had something in them. it'd be nice to break something right now.]
no subject
hisHarrow's room, Nav pacing the hallway like a restless coeurl? One more, evidently.]I was hoping I might find you somewhere about.
[His eyes are dark, his expression withdrawn. No pleasantries today.]
Inside.
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w1; TUESDAY
no subject
Not that he's going anywhere now, once he sees who's on the other side.]
Nav? Are you looking f—
[He begins, as a wholeass skeleton tips over and falls on him, prompting him to reflexively yeet it into the wall and shatter it into a whole mess of scattered bones.]
Thal's balls, the blasted — fuck!
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w1, saturday
Nav. Tired of adventure yet, or have you still got a little left in you?
no subject
she's got a to-go cup full of booze. can't feel things when you're drunk! but she gives him a shitty little salute.]
Aye aye, captain. What've you got?
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w1; SUNDAY
or maybe it was just a reminder of a parent. of someone who loves you, openly and without reservation. something she's never had, not really.
she's not thinking about it. instead, she chases people down. there are people who could use something from her, and that is the easiest way to not dwell, so she just goes.
thancred first. she'd seen him leave around the same time as her. when she wanders to the gym, that's where she finds him, and the tangled ball of - bad, that loosens a little.]
... Not a fan of these either, huh.
no subject
There's so much about what they all just witnessed that should bother him. The cannibalism should bother him. The grotesque nature of the murders should bother him. The age of the culprit should bother him — gods, they've all been so young, and it's not that he even thinks that youth is a mitigation of murder but it's like trying to imagine Alphinaud or Alisaie being pushed to that brink and —
It's not even that, strangely, that gets to him.
It wasn't the familiarity of the phrase i picked you up from the trash. It wasn't save me, save me, save me in the wake of shadows that coil and writhe like the onset of dynamis. It wasn't the carnage, the horror, the suspense, the trepidation. It should've been, but it wasn't.
It's just that —]
What is it, Nav?
[The funny thing is that he and Gideon Nav are the same in so many ways, and this is one of them. That he works his body to its brink like it's going to offer a release for the emotions he's smothering inside. That it's so easy to go from a wallowing mood to all business at the very prospect that he might be needed. That's his job. That's what he's supposed to do.
He's shirtless, sweating, red-knuckled. A punching bag is still swaying, which offers environmental storytelling about just how hard he must've been hitting it. The red cat plush tucked in his lap, between his spread legs, is incongruous with the rest of him. He doesn't seem to notice.
Because it's just that he'd realized something, near the end of that execution, and there's no amount of violence that's going to exorcise it from his thoughts.]
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w2; FRIDAY
which is why when she sees thancred alive on this fine friday, she moves right up to him and bear hugs him. hopefully he doesn't stab her out of instinct, though that would be very funny.]
no subject
Fortunately, what he'd said the night before was altogether true: she is not even the slightest bit sneaky, and even if she were, having a ph.d. in sneak comes with its fringe benefits. So he does see her coming, and allows this.]
If you're getting into position for a suplex, I have to advise you that your form is all wrong.
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w2; SATURDAY
no subject
anyway we're in the ballpit bar then because the idea of gideon letting the ballpit balls consume her while drunk is just funny.]
...Do you suppose Harrow moved the skeleton from in there?
(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)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w3; MONDAY
i hope nutkin is around. love that guy.]
no subject
That's technically a portrait too, but. You know.
Anyway, here's Thancred, armed with his bag as usual as he drifts around looking at the museum exhibits. Trailing behind him at a difference is a nutkin, poised and ready to ensure any modesty he may be required to preserve on a moment's notice.]
Ah, there you are.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w3, sunday, post-execution
Anyway, what might draw Gideon his way before she even sees him is the sound of...some kind of musical notes being plucked on strings? Weird.]
no subject
she does wander her way out to the beach, and the music catches her attention. she grins a little, following it. that's fun. she has no idea what it's from, but it's neat.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w4; TUESDAY
no subject
Gideon will also find him sitting in one of the little rooms off the onsen itself, perched on one of the little beds, manspreading like crazy. His mandolin is propped up against one of the walls, near enough to him that he could reach it without sliding over, and next to him on the cushion is his hellphone.]
Hello. I don't want to hear a word out of you, understood?
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w4, friday, post-death announcement
As usual, he's armed with his bag and he's back in his gunbreaker gear for the first time in a wholeass week, but he's still just kind of teetering on the edge of the ballpit trying to figure out how it is he's going to...do this, considering he has to go through the thing to get into the bar to begin with.]
no subject
goodbye, dad, see you in ball hell]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w4; SATURDAY
she kind of just stands in the dorm kitchen and rubs at her face for a bit. her face paint is gone! she has a fading bruise over her eye.]
no subject
...Looking for something to eat?
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w5; FRIDAY
everybody else has gone off to do things so it's just the two of them - gideon looked at the announcement, attempted to get up, and her body quit immediately so she's just here, curled up on the couch like a bug.
she hasn't said anything because she's not sure if thancred is awake, but. she's here!]
no subject
Awfully pretty, isn't it? Especially at night. Quiet and relaxing and home.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w6; MONDAY
anyway, she's at the bottom of the mountain, peering up the trail. there's a drink in her hand, with steam coming up out of it. how terrible is this trail going to be, she wonders.]
no subject
Gideon's red hair, against the blue-white of the snow, sticks out like a sore thumb. Or a sore back. Or all the other parts of him that are still sore, besides — like his left ear, which stings in a laughably minor but still persistently noticeable way, still unused to the small silver hoop pierced through the lobe.
He doesn't — he doesn't want to approach her, exactly, but he also doesn't not want to approach her, and after a while the latter wins out, so he shuffles over in a way that makes comparatively a lot of noise in the otherwise quiet and still snowy setting, breaking a path with idle kicks of his boots.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
w6, wednesday
Which is exactly the case, because if she happens to investigate this oddity, she'll find that a paper-wrapped package has been slipped into her pocket; upon opening it, she'll discover a pendant made of what seems like a colorful ocean-polished stone, bound in netting of sailor's knots tied with soft cord.
Engraved painstakingly on its surface (with a tool that was probably a daggerpoint) is a mark. There is no note otherwise.]
no subject
the pouch will vanish after a few hours.]
w6; SUNDAY
a text accompanies it:]
So you'll stop brooding
Where are you
no subject
how
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...