northclifflogs | Nothing ever comes without a consequence or cost [Aftermath

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Nothing ever comes without a consequence or cost [Aftermath | Closed and open]

WHO: Lorne, Dain, Tuo and and you! Closed and open prompts
WHAT: Lorne is recovering and receiving some visitors
WHEN: After these events
WHERE: The magistrate's house
NOTES: CW for mentions of corporal punishment and resulting injuries, will add more as needed

A | Dain and Tuo | Closed

After being tended to by Finian and watched over by Colin at the guardhouse, Lorne was able to make it back to the house before too long. His legs are just fine. The only part about walking that's truly painful is the need for clothing when he's outside, so as soon as he's home again the shirt is abandoned. Fortunately and very much thanks to Lance, Lorne has far more welts than cuts, and those will all heal in time.

A nap might be in order, if laying on his stomach weren't uncomfortable, so he settles for dozing and trying to ignore how everything aches.

B | Open

Lorne is going to be home resting for the next few days or more - probably more, if Colin and Finian and the rest of his family have anything to say about it. Lorne is wise enough to know he should listen, even if he can see extraordinary boredom on the horizon. He can't reach enough of his own back to take care of most of the welts, in any case, so he's relying on the assistance of others. It's going to become frustrating without a little distraction, so conversations are welcome where he can get them.

He sneaks out after about a week just to stretch his legs and shake off some of the stir-craziness. Any and all soldiers are avoided.

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Tuo, who had moments ago been savouring Lorne's bemusement over the gift like the cat who got into the cream, freezes in the middle of neatly folding his headscarf. His eyes dart from Lorne to Dain, and whatever it is that his sustained eye contact with his old friend communicates, it seems at least one thing is clear: the jig is up.

Under other circumstances, and in other company, he'd be frightened. Instead, the pressure to maintain this particular performance lifts from his shoulders and leaves him feeling light enough to float, should he feel like jumping to his feet and capering about. (He doesn't.)

"Well," he sighs, heavily and resignedly, and tosses his scarf onto the table. "I suppose it was only a matter of time before this came up. You're right, of course, we do know each other." He settles back in his seat and crosses one leg over the other, considering first Lorne and then Dain with his pale, secretive eyes. The silence settles amongst them closely, like the walls and window dressings and furniture are eavesdropping, too.

Then Tuo gestures idly at Dain. "He is my betrothed."

Dain uses the silence to finish and pass out the teacups, avoiding Lorne's gaze and trying to work out what to say. He's relieved that Tuo seems happy to take up the initial explanation, but he can't expect that burden to fall entirely on his friend's shoulders, and his thoughts still move far too slowly for his liking. He likes Lorne, of course he does, but he likes plenty of people who would easily be first in line to report his transgressions to the church. Having something hot and sweet to drink is a welcome distraction --

He is my betrothed.

-- until it becomes a choking hazard.

"Do you ever break anything gently?" Dain asks, resigned, once he's able to swallow and use his voice again.

The cup is halfway to Lorne's lips when Tuo says he is my betrothed. He holds it mid-air, staring at Tuo with his mouth hanging open while Dain tries not to choke.

What.

That was nowhere in the continent of what he was expecting, and it simultaneously clarifies Dain and Tuo's relationship and makes things a hundred times more confusing. He lowers the tea carefully onto the table.

Lorne has... very little idea what to make of this revelation. His concept of betrothals and marriages is limited to couples who can produce children, which doesn't exclude the possibility of other relationships, but-- what. Dain and Tuo have been pretending in public that they're relative strangers, which says much on its own. Whether or not Tuo is simply trying to shock Lorne, Tuo is still choosing to entrust this secret to him. He'll at least try to understand.

"You've met him," he replies to Dain, a bit distantly. Lorne clears his throat, gropes around for more words, and comes up with: "How? That-- doesn't explain almost anything."

"Do you ever break anything gently?"

"My nose," comes his smart reply--which, come to think of it, does look a bit less swollen and crooked than it did a few days ago. He leans nearer to Dain so that his dazed beloved can take a closer look for himself. "What do you think? Will it do?"

It's probably best not to answer that.

Helpfully, Tuo picks up his teacup and takes a sip from it, leaving both Dain and Lorne to flounder while he enjoys the warmth and sweetness for a moment. Is he smiling behind that teacup? Yes, he definitely is. Yet even so, it's with an air of some seriousness that he waves a hand as though to dismiss their shock and confusion, or at the very least to get it out of his way.

"It explains plenty," he replies to Lorne, his eyebrows arching high towards his hairline. He gestures at Dain with his teacup and narrowly avoids sloshing some of it directly onto his coat. "This revelation, it is strange to you, isn't it? It is unexpected? As though you've stepped mid-stream into a story that follows foreign principles, and all the plot threads and motifs and characters are--" There he pauses for just a moment and artfully mimes the flitting of small fish through water with his free hand, "--skimming past you, keeping apace with the tale. How can I summarize that tale for you?"

Abruptly, he stops his elaborate metaphor and instead leans against the table, resting his chin in his hand. He smiles a little. "I can't possibly explain..." and here, he turns Lorne's own words and gestures back on him, motioning between himself and Dain again. "...this. Not in a minute, or in an hour, or in any way that will make sense of what has happened." A pause, and he drops his eyes to his tea again. "To you, or to me."

Life be like that sometimes.

Dain decides to stop drinking his tea for the foreseeable future. It's clearly not working out very well for him.

He doesn't dignify Tuo's reply with an answer, though his expression does soften a little as he studies Tuo's face. It's healing, as they all knew it would, but you can still tell something happened to it. The wounds on Lorne's back seem a poor recompense for an injury no one outside the three of them has even noticed -- not that there's anything those wounds would be adequate recompense for. Life is not and never has been fair. That just feels particularly stark right now.

If Lorne is hoping for Dain to clarify anything Tuo says next, he's going to be disappointed. What Dain says instead is directed at Tuo: "He's right. That doesn't explain almost anything. You have a gift for explaining everything but what needs explaining."

From where Lorne is sitting, staring, they're both correct: it explains nothing and everything. Tuo's wandering metaphor speaks to the complexities of two lifetimes Lorne has almost no context for. The fact that he does not - or cannot? - begin by simply saying that tells Lorne he must tread carefully. By making his armor visible, Tuo also shows him there is something vulnerable underneath. Lorne is not so addled by his injuries nor so arrogant by nature to assume he's earned the whole of that tale by the circumstances that carried them into this room.

He takes a careful breath and exhales slowly, gathering his thoughts to order. "A Shepherd who is not so Shepherd-ly in his duty, and a traveling storyteller and puppeteer from a foreign land, secretly betrothed." The corner of Lorne's mouth twitches up, studying them both. "You might forgive me any shock; I have lived through no such story, as you say. Mine is rather dull by comparison." Dryly. Most of his life has passed by in or near this very village. He's seen his own share of heartache and convoluted relationships, but not ones so unique as Tuo implies. His is a tale shared by many who live in these mountains.

He spreads his hands to the side of the mug, palms up. "So this is where our stories intersect. I am not asking for some epic recitation." What is he asking for? Lorne isn't sure, and he's rather too tired to dig that deeply anyway."You've trusted me with this much, intentionally or otherwise. Will you trust me with more, if not now then someday?"

There are worse places to begin than requesting permission to speak of their pasts. Let him try to be more than a fish in a stream.

"...Will you trust me with more, if not now then someday?"

"I suppose that very much depends on you, Mr. Guardsman." Tuo tilts his head thoughtfully to one side as though contemplating the answer, even though his wry little smile makes it clear enough he's made up his mind. Now is not the time, not with those welts and ridges of raised flesh still healing on Lorne's back. But someday, yes. (If he's still alive.)

A beat, and then he leans in towards Dain again though his eyes remain on Lorne. "I like this one," he confides in a stage whisper that conceals absolutely nothing. "He likes my stories." See, Dain? Tuo is only mostly incomprehensible.

"That gives you a permanent audience of one, then," Dain says back, slipping into Saaristomeri for the purposes of the fond cultural idiom, before he sighs and rests his face in one hand. "I don't know how I'm meant to go back home after this."

He looks quite a bit more exhausted than he usually does, good cheer still present, but filtered through years of militant caution slipping out of his grasp. How is it possible to be so careful, for so long, and then in the space of two months do this much damage to his cover? But even more importantly than that, Dain is hardly the only person in the village with no sense of caution or subterfuge, and the more people who know the truth, the more danger everyone is in. Vervain, Detlef, and now Lorne -- gods, he needs to find a way to make sure no one else from the church stays in Northcliff Pass longer than two weeks. Or, at the very least, that he and Tuo are not around when they do.

Tuo has the right of it, but: "It's not a matter of whether or not we want to," Dain explains further, this time in the right language. "It's more a matter of... safety. Someday, I hope."

Now that he's not in danger of coughing it back up, Lorne finally takes a sip of his tea. There's clear amusement at Tuo's stage whisper in his eyes as he drinks. An eyebrow rises marginally at the language shift, but he'll let that be unless they both start speaking in something he doesn't understand for an extended period.

The amusement fades the longer he looks at Dain, and he nods. Safety. Dain's life depends on his secrets being kept, Lorne knows that with grim certainty. Tuo's may also for reasons unknown. But neither of them are refusing, simply being cautious. Absently Lorne wonders when the last time was they didn't need to be.

He glances around the kitchen, quiet now that it is filled only with adults and not the numerous children both blood and not whom he grew up with, and helped raise. The house will rarely be so empty as it is today, but: "Well, you know where to find me," Lorne says, gesturing to the room and the house at large. "I can't guarantee this level of privacy, but you're welcome here. Even just for tea," he adds more wryly, taking another sip. "Though you'll have to be prepared for my sister. She's a spitfire."

"'Home' is where you are," Tuo says to Dain quietly in their language. The last few weeks--perhaps even months--of Dain's stay here in Northcliff Pass have undoubtedly taken their toll on his seemingly inexhaustible supply of kindness, generosity and compassion. Those virtues are the armour he wears to endure the life he's had to lead, and to glimpse cracks in it now makes Tuo's heart ache. Their privacy here is limited, but it is safe, and so he reaches out a hand to gently thread some loose strands of Dain's hair behind his ear. His touch lingers there tenderly before it falls to rest on his back.

"I shall take care not to be singed," Tuo answers Lorne in Glennich, his smile warming at the kindness in his offer. Then he scoffs softly, a touch chagrined, and goes on, "But I came here to see how you are fairing after--" a pause, "--what happened. It would not have happened, had you not intervened for me." There is the guilt again, unable to be stifled for long; an apology seems inadequate, and so instead he offers, "Will you be all right?"

Home is where you are is an easy thing to say when you carry your entire home with you wherever you go -- but Dain doesn't point this out. He's more interested in the sentiment behind it, and in Tuo's lingering gentle touch. Even in relative safety, he doesn't return the gesture, but his eyes close for a few seconds in grateful acknowledgement while the others speak.

It's doubtful that Lorne's extended family would all agree a Shepherd is welcome, but, again, Dain doesn't point this out. It's a familiar, well-worn, and completely understandable reticence, and Dain would rather let the offer hang in the air as though there are no strings attached. It's a generous offer to make.

"It would have happened," Dain disagrees quietly. "To someone else, or in a different manner, but it would have happened."

It's certainly true that Lorne's family would be less comfortable with a Shepherd here, particularly Colin, and Tuo's additional presence would merely heighten the chaos. But Lorne at least knows now that Colin is safe from Dain, so perhaps there might be a chance to prove that he's safe around Dain in the future, somehow.

Those tender intimacies on display are surprisingly easy, like the truth being aired dissolved the thin boundary of distance between Dain and Tuo. They mustn't be able to spend much time alone.

"It would have," Lorne agrees with Dain. "And better me than someone else. I have a chain of command on my side." He's not sure Brickenden would have even waited or gone to see Lance if it had been someone else, and his father may not have much pull if another incident happens, either. "I'll be alright, yes. It'll probably take a few weeks to fully heal, but I've a small flock of friends and family taking care of me." His gaze on Tuo is steady. "This is not your fault. It's my responsibility to protect the people in this village; you did not ask to be harassed."

~~Don't read his thoughts, Lorne, it's very rude.~~

"...you did not ask to be harassed."

"I try not to make a habit of it, no," Tuo demurs with a droll smile and an incorrigible sparkle in his eye, clearly incapable of not injecting some levity into their conversation, and lifts his teacup for another sip. His free hand, which still rests on Dain's back, gently smooths across the fabric of his shirt before at last falling away. (With some hesitation, as though reluctant to lose that bit of physical contact between them.) Then, with more sincerity, "But I am very grateful that you were there, when it happened."

He peers at his tea, now mostly finished, and sets the cup down with a sigh. "As I still owe old Widow Lacy a third of a saga's recitation in exchange for firewood, I should be going."

Dain looks surprised, then grateful. He didn't think he'd find someone else so easily able to see through what Tuo says, to know that Tuo blames himself for what happened. It's especially helpful given Dain suspects that, with his and Tuo's history and all that hangs between them, hearing this is not your fault from the only man with any right to assign blame means much more than it would coming from Dain.

For that same reason, he doesn't thank Lorne out loud.

He shifts in his seat when Tuo's hand falls away, like he has to remind himself that's for the best; and he also has to remind himself to drink his tea, as Tuo's nearly finished and Dain hasn't touched his for several minutes, so he's caught in the middle of drinking when Tuo makes a bid to start leaving. By the time he puts his cup down, he's smiling again. "You didn't finish the first time around?"

There are far more appropriate people to blame than Tuo. He was, after all, a victim as well. Lorne has seen enough misplaced guilt in this household, in this town, to want to nip this in the bud before it can turn into a poisonous vine. He'd do it again, even knowing how it turns out.

"Sagas can take days, can't they? I hope she's giving you sufficient firewood in compensation," he says lightly. It's clear enough Tuo is thinking of leaving, which may be for the best for both his visitors. Colin will be back eventually, and the matter of safety is not a fleeting one. He sips further at his own tea. "Especially in this weather. It'd be a shame for you to lose your voice."

"It is a very long saga," Tuo replies to both of them, smiling wryly back at Dain, and then reaches out to collect his head scarf from where he'd haphazardly tossed it to the tabletop earlier. "I would not be surprised if I have not reached Stig's second conquest in the Fjords before the spring thaw arrives."

It takes him very little time to wrangle his hair back beneath it, though with none of the intricate folds that he would have managed had he been dressing himself at home. "Shall I let myself out?" he suggests as he rises to his feet. "I am perfectly capable of opening and closing a door on my own, after all, and you are injured." His eyes drift to Dain, and then away again, not wanting to presume that they will be leaving together.

Tuo very nearly lost more than his voice, before he started singing for firewood. But that's a story to tell for when enough time has passed to lend it the filter of humour.

"I don't know," Dain considers aloud. "I'm not convinced losing his voice wouldn't be an improvement." He's still smiling, if not quite at his earlier levels of good cheer, to make it clear he's joking. He's glad, that Lorne knows; glad that Tuo saw fit to be himself.

It might be wise to avoid leaving together, but it would be equally unwise to stay here for very much longer -- and, if Dain is honest with himself, he's losing the energy to navigate that social caution. A few moments of safety seems to have sapped all of it. So he stirs, and rises to his feet. "I have it," he assures them both. "Is the door unlocked deliberately, Lorne?"

Lorne gives a huff of amusement at the joke and sees to finishing off the rest of his tea, since his guests are readying to depart.

"It is; makes it easier to ensure any visitors don't freeze while I hobble downstairs or down the hall," Lorne answers dryly. He would normally be a good host and see them out, but standing and walking and generally moving is still quite challenging. "My foster brother will be home around nightfall, he'll lock up then."

Whether they leave at the same time or not is up to them, of course, but he adds, "If anyone inquires, I was tired and needed more rest." It's the truth. Lorne will probably go right back to bed after this, and it'll give them a convenient excuse if anyone observes them. "And thank you both for coming. You didn't have to."

"Of course we did," Tuo counters, feigning offence. "We would be poor friends if we didn't."

And that's what they must be to each other now, after sharing harrowing experiences and intimate secrets at the dinner table. But friendship comes with certain obligations, and that is why Tuo has eschewed connections such as these for so long. His expression doesn't lose any of its lightness or characteristic whimsy, but he does hesitate just a fraction of a second too long before speaking again. Dain isn't the only one who is slipping.

"Well, let us be off before your brother returns and we startle the light out of him. Take care, Lorne," he finishes, then turns to slip past Dain and head for the front door.

Edited 2020-01-27 02:29 (UTC)

Tuo answers for them both, and Dain has nothing to add. Friendship is definitely what just happened here, for better or for worse.

He wants to offer Lorne his assistance, now or in the future, but the offer would ring hollow, and Lorne would know why. So he simply offers one last smile, one last heartfelt "Thank you" -- for the tea, for the choice Lorne made, for understanding and keeping their secrets -- and follows Tuo towards the door.

Just before they get there, just ouside of Lorne's earshot and line of sight, Dain touches Tuo lightly on the arm. "Are you all right?"

Dain's touch arrests him, as it always does these days, and Tuo pauses before touching the door latch. He smiles oddly, not meeting Dain's eyes at first. "Are you?" he counters in a soft, melancholic sort of voice.

It's an answer by itself, Tuo's characteristic misdirection and distraction. They both know Dain's answer to that question is not yes, and addressing others' pain is a good way to avoid thinking about your own.

They may both have good reasons for staying circumspect, but -- in the small circle of privacy they have by the door, Dain pulls Tuo into as much of a hug as time, space, and winter layers will allow. "Stay safe," he says, muffled into Tuo's scarf.

Tuo's fingers catch on and grasp Dain's coat, holding his friend as closely as he is held himself. It's not enough; it's not ever going to be enough, but for the span of a few precious seconds he is free to cradle the back of Dain's head with one hand and listen to the sound of his breathing.

This is not getting any easier.

At last he makes himself pull back, but his hand lingers on Dain's cheek. "You as well," he manages, smiles unsteadily, and then quickly pulls open the door and steps outside. In short order he has put enough distance between himself and the magistrate's house that Dain should be able to leave without anyone suspecting that they were there together at all.

That Dain waits that long is partly strategic, and partly arrested movement. Even if there were nothing wrong with him leaving right away, he suspects he wouldn't be able to move.

Tuo down the street, and Lorne in the kitchen behind him. In another time, another life, another country --

-- that's not going to help.

With several seconds and a very deep breath, Dain wrests some semblance of level composure from somewhere, and he steps outside, closing the door gently behind him, leaving Lorne to the kitchen and to his family.

The time between Dain and Tuo exiting the kitchen and departing the house is long enough that Lorne guesses some more private farewells were had. He remains seated until the door finally opens and closes again, not wishing to disrupt the pair and still absorbing all he's learned. Pieces of the puzzle have been added to the board, but the full picture remains well beyond him.

Dain, a Shepherd who joins snowball fights and protects a Profane. Probably many more, for only saving Detlef from execution and not others makes little sense. Tuo, a traveling puppeteer from some foreign country Lorne doesn't even know the name of. A cheerfully irreverent storyteller, sharing any tale but his own. How long have they known each other? How long have they been apart?

Decades of church sermons would have Lorne turning Dain and Detlef in, believing that they are dangerous and evil and here to corrupt anyone they can get their hooks into. Would have quashed the careful tenderness between Tuo and Dain. What the church declares to be right would end lives and annihilate joy. He's seen what it has taken from Colin and Camilla.

Lorne will take their friendship over what is 'right', any day.

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Nothing ever comes without a consequence or cost [Aftermath | Closed and open]

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