therookery | crystal; open

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Yngvi
RECIPIENT: Open
WHAT: If you had the chance to change your fate...
WHEN: Backdated to closer to the start of the year (life why are you like this)
WHERE: Gallows
NOTES: Likely to get into some Carta things as well as discussion of less than ideal childhoods and mercy killings. Hit me up if you have concerns/want to skirt around things.

How d'you leave a thing if a thing was always you? [Not the best opening line, he needs to back up a bit. Compared to last time on the crystals where it was putting on an old pair of boots that don't fit right now, it's not as bad as before. Less sharp. Just someone deflated as if they've been trying to climb a thing only to consider their stamina for the venture.] Like say you grew up with a story taught in the cold, dark, damp but it was all yours in your bones same as that thing so even if it was full of knives those are your knives, and you're not some soft thing. And the story was about some siblings who go out one day by the docks. One get gets caught in a rope and the other one ties themselves to it to haul the other in but they both drown. They get called sentiment and hope.

[Carta bedtime stories aren't like your typical bedtime stories. Yngvi is aware of that, thanks, the embarrassed almost laugh gives it away.]

So say that was your bedtime story, and you-- you were complicit in big things but you grew up that way so you were a kid, and you ate all your siblings because otherwise they ate you... how do you leave? I mean can you? Or do things grind you up to dust and swallow you down instead?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[If Yngvi had been drinking or doing what his lady has said he'd done before, about himself, their teeth, amusement, then he'd snap. But he's very sober, and tired, instead just sighing from behind a hand.]

Right well that was 'bout as illuminating as your hand I reckon. Like I left, physically, for nearly ten years, but I was still part of it. That's what this is about. The actual thing itself and deserving. Things you've done, you're been part of, if getting out means you're washing your hands or trying to say it wasn't me.

[ Even though she doesn't know he's talking of the Carta, it's what she's thinking of here, because she can only relate by applying this to herself. Drawing her knees towards her chest, she stares down at her illuminated hand. ]

Don't think you can ever say it wasn't you, even when you were a kid. Doesn't mean you wanted that life. People tell you who to be for so long that once you're away from them...

[ She trails off. This is getting too personal. ]

Point is, when people got their hold on you like that, I guess you either got to replace them with new people -- better people -- or learn who you want to be now. And that's how you really leave. It ain't just putting one foot in front of the other. It's putting your head there too.

[ She stops to reevaluate what she's said. It's easier said than done, and she hasn't even tried yet. She's still wondering if Harik and the other bigwigs will punish her when she gets back; not picturing a life where she doesn't go back. ]

[Thing is, he had ten years or near as made little difference away from Kirkwall, away from the the direct influence of the Carta on his life. On the road with the Boneflayers to almost every known corner of Thedas someone might conceivably send a mercenary to open they eyes of a dwarven boy who'd known the gutters but little else beyond that.

He wasn't meant to come back. They didn't come back to Kirkwall because the Chantry happened but it had been an unspoken thing same as avoiding Rivain as far as possible for Nasir's sake.]

You get away for that long and get most of Thedas under your boots, you don't think about it unless something makes you think about it, and even then you just don't think about it. Because you aren't there. It's there, you're not, you don't. You have a life. [Except who you are at what's fifteen or sixteen because no one thinks to tell you when you were born in his particular branch isn't who you are years down the line.]

Some people don't get replaced. [Not so cold as he could make it but what world is this where you can just casually say that? It isn't how it works.] If you were a name in a ledger and knew your worth, it's hard not to wonder how much coin other people would weigh against your name even if you know they never would.

[ It's how it works for her. Nice for him that some people aren't replaceable. She's never had that. Never cared about anyone and no one's sure as shit ever cared about her. She's been replaced as courier already; she knows that. They'd be stupid not to. Doesn't mean they won't spend a moment beating her ass when she gets back for daring not to return on schedule. ]

They would where I'm from. That's just facts. [ She knows she's so useless that she'd have been killed long ago if she couldn't run like the wind. ] Whether they would or not where you're from, well, you're thinking about it, which says a lot.

[ It says more than he's willing to admit, she reckons. ]

I dunno. Don't really have an answer for it all, but if someone comes along and explains it all proper to you, maybe pass it along. Might need it for someday. Not sure yet.

[ It's just a seed planted in her head by others here: those who have said "You don't have to go back to that life." But the seed hasn't been watered and there's no sun shining down on it. Not yet. ]

Just wanted to say... you know, you're not the only one wondering this sorta thing. If you felt... [ alone? ] weird about asking. Or something.

[Watch a friend rot from the inside out when he was getting better then give him to his gods. Watch another one years ago scream herself out when everyone was dead then spend a month silent as a tomb with everyone keeping some unspoken pact to stay up with her at all hours. Or stand vigil outside the door of your lady when she's so sad you don't know why, but you're as scared as you've ever been because there aren't words, there won't be words, and she won't say, you can't ask, you can only guard her door until one day she comes out.

Comes out different but at least she comes out.]

Books have to be balanced. You don't talk like someone who went into things without a debt somewhere, and they keep track of it. You can think it, but even if you were shit at what you did, they want to be in the black, not the red. If you're in the red, well—[Well everyone was in the Deep Roads, and Yngvi has it under his nails.]

Some things it doesn't matter if they explained it to you, you can have it explained a hundred times or a thousand. It's in the execution. There's a lot to consider. [Which he's been mulling over a long time now, only in pieces. This is getting it there without getting into a fight on the way.]

Guess so.

[ Not really. The more he rambles, the less she has any idea what he's talking about. Maybe if she knew the exact situation, she would get it.

Probably not, though. She's not what one would call "smart." ]

Good luck with it all, with the considering and getting it all straightened out.

crystal; open

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