The Widow’s Walk would have been the wise choice, really. No matter how far Tristaan had wandered, it was closer. And warmer. And cleaner. But it was also right across the way from Tristaan’s house, and that provided too much of a chance for the other man to up and go home. Things like homes and beds and very gentle-tempered whores and/or wives had a way of making men remember their common sense. Carmine wanted to drag him far away from that nice bit of the Harbor, with its painted shutters and storm doors and faint whiff of propriety. No, no – off to a place he knew much better.

He was more familiar with the wood grains in the Black Dove’s floor and the mortar bricks in their back alley than he should be. It was not miles away from clear thought and common sense, but it was a damn long walk.

Not that he wanted the other man to stay. Not that he cared.

Rain fell. He didn’t much bother with cringing and huddling anymore. He’d just stay wrapped with all those little raindrops, ‘cause they really weren’t all that different. He’d be here and gone, lost among the multitude, without anyone batting an eyelash. Was that the course of their fate? He just stared up at the sky like a stupefied turkey, drowning in a drizzle even as his feet kept mechanically dragging him onward.

Cloudy blues eyes leered up to the other man through the hiss of rain. Would he get washed away down the gutters, too? If he kept getting his face smashed by harbor scum and stomping around in the rain every time he had a fight with his lady, Carmine certainly thought so. And he was the master of getting washed away.

“Did you know you can drown in a cuppa water? It really don’t take much!” he piped up above the rain, sounding almost cheery and purely informative. It was closest way he could say ‘I hope you choke’ without saying ‘I hope you choke’. This man seemed like what his mum would’ve thought of as an overwhelmingly Nice Guy who seemed to be making a lot Bad Decisions. Carmine was filled to the brim with those. It was about time some else started making some. The murky bottoms of gutters were lonely, dark, and deep after all.

The whole rotten-wood, sea-salt, wood-shavings-garnishing-vomit smell that permeated from the Black Dove calmed him down a little. He hated that dirty place, hated it even more than ever before, but it was indeed a gutter. And it was absolutely over-flowing with lonely little raindrops no one cared about. Little raindrops like Charlie the ‘What the Fuck, Ladies and Gents, Your Eyes Do Not Deceive You’ golly. Or Hedwig the ‘Ne Macha, You Ent All That Bad’ wick. He hoped Charlie would drown in that gutter, like Hedwig did.

But the warmth and dryness of it was delicious, that much he couldn’t deny. Carmine made no move to sit, just wove in place amid his own warm bath of firelight, looking very damp and very small and very orange. His gaze flickered lazily up to the other man – or where he hoped the other man was. He assumed he’d been followed.

“Ye sure yer arright with this place? Wouldn’t want no more ‘arbor scum smashing the other side o’ that face.”

Tristaan had followed, enduring Carmine's banter without response, complaint, or much change in expression. He'd walked willingly, aware of the distance he was putting between himself and home, between himself and any chance at peaceful resolution for the evening. It didn't matter if this gravedigger had invited him; he would've been walking anyway, wandering through the flooded streets. At least, perhaps this way he would stay out of too much trouble, he would keep from finding some excuse to be smeared across barnacled dock with more blood and broken bones.

Not that such at thought was at all unappealing at the moment. He might have ached for more of a beating, regardless of the state of his face.

Still, he sloshed on wordlessly, numb and soaked to what felt like his very bones. He knew the Dove well enough without seeing the sign, but he had no reason to protest. He just drifted, feeling distant and detached, stealing the occasional one-eyed glance at his grimy, feral, and unlikely companion. The smaller, uglier thing that had probably once been quite the proper galdori boy, all ginger curls and bright straight-toothed smiles. He'd marred himself on purpose, that much was clear, as if that damning smear of ink they shared wasn't enough of a scar.

It wasn't.

It was never enough.

Not for the gollies who called their own children broken and cursed. Not for the humans who resented their heritage. Not for the wicks who couldn't understand a world without kinship.

Had Tristaan been capable of really thinking, he might have been able to understand what he thought he saw in the other passive. He'd just been handed a different path and accepted it reluctantly, though at times it certainly felt no less painful.

Inside was dry. Noisy, restless, full of alcohol and smoke, but warm. And dry.

The swordsman hovered, Carmine's words washing over him and taking several moments to filter through the numbness of so much wet cold and hurt. He blinked, swollen side of his face protesting the flickering of muscle, looking past the gravedigger to search out an empty seat. Or two. If it mattered.

"Ent like it matters, does it?" He grunted reluctantly, one hand straying to his tied-back wet hair, "I'm not in th'mood t'be pickin' a fight anymore this evenin' anyway."

He didn't feel like he'd ever want to fight again. It felt wrong.

"Though, I prolly can't say th'same for you." Tristaan smirked, hoarse and almost bordering on humor despite the darkness he thought he would just give up and drown under. He shifted soggily, beginning to drift toward a table, ignoring the rowdy game of cards nearby and the practically drooling drunkards who made up their opposite.

He didn't sit right away, fingers curling around the back of the chair as if he objected to plunking down in it, "I gotta feelin' you care less 'bout my face than even your own."

Carmine perceived the hesitance as grudging politeness.

He flopped bonelessly into the (seemingly) offered seat.

“Well ent you just a peach.” He chuckled – tried to chuckle. It was a forced, hollow sound, fitting for the weak stab at humor. His smile was like a ripple of water, there and gone again. Dark clouds loomed. Smoke coils, wreathing all the grimy phosphor lamps. They cast light, illuminating nothing.

“An' I can't say tha's possible,” he snorted, drawing his nails up to scrape down the fine bone of a freckled cheek. “Ye 'ave got somebody t'impress, ma-cha. I don't. I ent looked t'impress nobody in a long while. It's ne'er worth it, ye'll see.”

An almost regal roll of battered eyes, the wise flicker of lashes. He spoke with the weary gravity of a brothel matron many years his senior, the barest hint of condescension ghosting the words.

Love was a many reviled thing, and all the sweet words and soft hands that went with it. The past few days had only spoiled it more. Romance, to Carmine, was wormwood. It was crawling with maggots.

A hand raised to beckon the nearest barmaid with a lazy tilt of the hand, and growled for two whatever, he didn't care just so long as it would sink him fast. Cost really wasn't an object when you weren't spending your own money. The rain, the darkness, the Dove. It all just seemed to suck the life and color out of him. Carmine guessed he'd be turning grey soon. Pale eyes squinted under their fan of lashes, carving a path up Tristaan's battered cheek.

“Honest. Wha' sweet thing could ye 'ave been doin' fer 'er that'd get ye clocked in the face?”

While the swordsman hadn't been offering a chair, he didn't particularly care if the other passive took it. It was too difficult to muster up annoyance at the very thing that had revived so much anger in the first place, but he just couldn't bring himself to figure out why. Without complaint, Tristaan all but crumpled in the opposite seat.

His numb expression hardly flickered at the grimy red-head's mocking use of Tek nor his snide remark about his apparent relationship. Sure, he could've argued; he did consider things worthwhile, even when they were difficult, painful. It was still so much better than being alone. If there was anything he'd learned from the Crows, it was that acceptance was an amazing thing, even with the hurt.

"Ent right for some other man t'be promisin' t'step in on somethin' good when he's got no idea what he's walkin' in on. Damn blacksmith obviously thought himself better'n'me, an' it jus' wasn't th'night t'be pullin' that on me. I wasn't in th'mood." Tristaan answered without a second thought, though he knew that his anger ran deeper than that. He stared at the pock-marked, scarred tabletop, bruised knuckles still cracked and sore even as he traced the lines in the wood,

"Not that I ent used t'folks thinkin' they're better'n'me, but that doesn't make it truth." The quiet words were said with a sneer, marred as it was by the forge-hardened fist-smashed bruise that Carmine was staring at anyway.

He mostly believed what he'd said. He'd at least begun to believe in it more lately ... or had. The gravedigger's words had only reminded him of just how fragile his enjoyment really was.

"So, you gotta name or did you get that beat outta you, too?" He might as well pretend to be friendly, regardless of just how unsure he was that it would ever be worth his time. What else was there to do? Tristaan didn't have any fight left. He was most likely going to get drunk. His tone implied a surrender, but it was coarse and hesitant.

“Blaaacksmith?” All the vowels stretched like elastic, turning the word into something almost sing-song. “Ye mean the old plowfoot thing? The one wit’ th’ wee bitty girl? Tha’ was tryin’ to mack on yer lady?” he snorted with laughter, the sound clouding up the last few words. “I don’t see what’cha was worried about, shit.”

Carmine already had the feeling he was going to roll his eyes straight out of his head, if the other man kept this up.

“I mean, nothin’ against blacksmiths. I knew one back in the City who – “ he trailed off with a snort and a dismissive shake of the head, and started fiddling with the sleeve of his over-sized sweater. Knew one in the city who would kiss the top of his head and make him sandwiches and give him his sweaters even though they were fathoms too big, all with enough bitching and moaning on Carmine’s part.

That was one of the few things he missed about being small and sweet to the mouth: people just up and gave you things, if you just plumped your lip and asked. Not without expecting something in return, he learned quick enough, but still. He missed getting favors. Just a bit.

“And...uh.” He tilted his gaze down and way, pretending to be absorbed in the greasy wood grain and the bruises painting the man’s knuckles. The letters weighted down his tongue like tufts of feathers, effervescent and barely there. Blue eyes flickered up into a grey, a chagrin smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Carmine Lisette,” he spoke with softness, bizarre softness, as if he were worried his teeth would bruise the name. From the sudden anxious fluttering, it clearly wasn’t something he gave out lightly. But it had been protection from detection, really – no human gravedigger would have been graced by such a lilting title. The other man already knew the worst of it, the passive wound to him, so there couldn’t be much more harm.

He leaned across the table and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper, pale gaze wide. “It means song bird. I went all this time thinkin’ it was a li’l red flower, but it ent. It’s jus’ a color of a flower. It can’t even wilt. All carmine kin do is fade.” A quiet scoff, though it clearly wasn’t as self-assured as the others. It was like weak child’s play-acting. Telling his name felt like gutting himself open, letting his insides get peeked at.

“An’ yers? I can't call ye macha forever.” It was only fair if they were both up for being splayed open.

Tristaan hadn't heard such a rambling form of an introduction in a long time, or at least not since Surwood, crawling as the place was with wicks eager to sell something impressive and useless. He smirked, some hint of amusement behind the stubble, under the bruise, and beneath the frustration that still seemed so set in stone on his weathered, aristocratic features. He understood the tone, knew quite well the kind of offering a name was among their kind. If it was their real name, well, then it was old. It was just another mark in some ways.

His own had softened a bit, lost the sharp edges against his tongue somewhere along the road with the Red Crow. It was less of a scar, if only because memories had faded underneath the blur of dusty kint wheels and caojas.

"Tristaan Greymoor." It was at least better than having Carmine call him macha. Definitely.

"An' if it means anythin', I never bothered t'pay attention." The swordsman added with a smirk, opening his mouth to add something else only to be interrupted by the waitress and their mostly clean mugs of something frothy and alcoholic.

Once the woman had left, Tristaan didn't seem to entirely remember whatever quip he had, so he returned to the original subject. It was easier than staring at insides for the moment. No one needed to see too many of those at once, did they?

"An' not Ue, but his assistant. Or somethin'. Though, I ent sure I'd be surprised t'see other Harbor kovs like Viktor crawl out from th'tide pools an' from under th'piers jus' t'say they've got a better shot at Sarinah than I do. Ent like I don't expect it sometimes, even if I shouldn't."

He sneered at that, unsure if he believed his own words. Everything else had endings, after all, but some part of him fought them every time. Maybe this one was worth winning.

Tristaan stared into his mug as if it suddenly held the answers to all his questions.

"Not that I'm from th'Harbor t'know better."

“Bells and chimes, Tristaan. Tha’ sure is a dahling name,” he spoke in a nasally drawl, voice clipping in mincing mockery over the distinctly golly speech. “Wot wot.”

He snickered a knocked back a long draw of his sharply alcoholic...whatever this was. He drank deep as a fish who feared the shore.

“Blacksmith,” he said again, though the word held a different weight than before, rolled on his tongue as if it were some tasty fruit he rarely sank his teeth in to. “Real big motherfucker? Arms like trees? Tha’ cleaned your clock?” Carmine wolf-whistled through a jagged gap in his front teeth.

Poking through the foggy annals of his memory, he supposed he’d seen the assistant blacksmith before, when he first came to the Rose a year or two back. When it got too cold he’d huddle inside the smithy to roast in the forge light – and if and when he got chased out for loitering, he’d nuzzle up against the wood outside to maybe catch a lick of warmth. Whoever this Vik fellow was, he was a blur of big arms and dark hair and hot coals. Carmine peered down into the dark depths of his glass, his lips hitching into a baleful smile.

“Fine, fine. Tha’ could be worryin’, I guess. I ent never really kept up wif a girl before. But...what, she easy or summat? I don’t care how damn pretty a bitch – I mean...” his tongue folded in on itself, probing the backs of his teeth for some semblance of politeness. “—pretty a girl is. If it’s hard to get at, I don’t see why boys’d be linin’ up at yer door t’snatch at ‘er.” He spoke as if this was knowledge everyone but Tristaan seemed to have.

“She’s a wick or somefin’, right? Tha’s why ye talk all stupid?” he added after a brow-beetling silence. “Are ye...loik...married to ‘er? Tha’ why yer gettin’ all in a fuss?”

Tristaan focused more on his drink—fiery, probably too-strong, and certainly not tasteful—than on Carmine's ramblings. The other passive was a disorienting mix of insult and interest, spitfire and vacancy. It was annoyingly confusing, but something the swordsman attempted to console with the alcohol in his hands.

His expression soured slowly as the gravedigger kept talking, grey eyes hardening at the other man's slightly misguided words. Easy? N-not that he was aware of, regardless of her line of work. Talking stupid? Because galdori fine society surely spoke better than nomadic wicks. Married? That ...

... that drew a slow, sardonic chuckle. Uncomfortable. Hurt.

Tristaan scowled, attempting to hedge away from further violence, despite the incensed flush that Carmine's words seemed to crawl up his spine, "Ent married, ne." He briefly wondered just how much emphasis he could place on Tek to make his words more difficult to understand, but refrained, "Ent quite clockin' legal for me. Though, I'm sure if I stayed a spoke with th'Crows, it wouldn't really matter. Wick life ent so concerned with rules."

Maybe he did miss spoke life after all.

The passive sighed, looking up from his drink with something of a distant, restrained expression, "I ent so pissed o'er that." It seemed to take effort to admit such a thing, "There's jus' one of me, an' I ent always sure I count anyways."

That was it, really. He lived a life anticipating the inevitable, always assuming that eventually he'd be discarded again and again. Why should that change? He just fought it every time. This time, he felt it was worth it.

Illegal. Right, right. Some people still adhered to those dusty old laws set in place to chain them to the ground. Why any soul in the right state would bother doing that in a place like Old Rose, however, quite thoroughly broke open something in Carmine’s brain.

He stared at Tristaan with one of those brow-beetled, fuzzy looks people often gave you when they were bleeding out the ears.

“Right. Uh. Y’know...things are only illegal if there’s somebody ‘round teh enforce it, right? Ent nothin’ illegal here, ‘less it’s got somethin’ to with tha’ wick pouf and his pretty birds. There ent no gollies who’ll give ye two shakes fer miles.” Pinky finger swirled in the dark liquid, fingernail dirt getting in the alcohol and alcohol getting in under his fingernails. Vapid puzzlement faded to wooden concern, scowling down at the table top.

Was there some great social martyrdom he wasn’t apart of here? Did all that ink hold enough weight? Should he carve off that patch of skin and string it on a stretch of wire, let it hang heavy as stone around his neck? Carmine never thought of himself as passive. Not even when Brunnhold held him. He was distinctly explosive. Not wick, nor human, nor golly. He was a special little flower all his own, of absent white field and slender limbs and curls the color of blood. Not blue, not green. Red was his color. He didn’t want wilting blossoms like Tristaan to spread their choking roots in his garden.

“Them wicks...they’ll...they’ll marry anybody t’ anybody.” Growled, but meek beneath. “You’ll count as much as ye want to. I damn well know that I count for nothin’ not ‘cause of some godsdamn tattoo, but ‘cause I put meself here. Ent nothin’ stoppin’ ye from marryin’ her but yer own damn self.”

More drink swallowed, more stinging heat in his mouththroatbelly. He wanted to crawl to the bottom the glass.

“I mean. I...I...shucked off Br—“ he paused, the letters tripping on his teeth as if the word scalded his tongue. “Brunnhold like a caterpillar out of a wet sack. Can’t say I turned into butterfly, but shit. I ent a worm no more.” Too much forced conviction there. Every syllable felt like it was curdling in his mouth. Blue eyes found grey again.

“Really.”

The words burned. The alcohol burned. Both unquenchable fires in their own way. Tristaan's expression seemed to melt, a tide washing everything away in an inescapable undertow. He had nothing to say right away, diverting his gaze from Carmine's to stare past the other passive, watching the crowd.

No, there weren't many here in the Harbor who'd even give him a second glance, let alone a first. No, there weren't any Seventen here, and most of the gollies that made Old Rose their home didn't move to the sea for just the clocking view. Still, his hesitance, his fear, his curse in not so few words wasn't about them; it hadn't been about them in a long time.

Somewhere inside, unspoken and unconfronted, the withered, dark core of the issue was most certainly him.

"Ent a worm, eh?" His words were thick and slow—molasses in winter. Not accusing. Deflecting, Tristaan brought his eyes back to Carmine, studying the evidence of brokenness on his face, "Judgin' by your own choices, you don't seem t'be wantin' wings, either."

Brunnhold. He never had to wear green, his childhood a blur of grey, black, and red. Somewhere along the way, that smear of ink had made him something else, but he'd never wanted it.

Illegal was just an excuse.

But for what?

Slumping into his seat, any breath of wind left his sails and he lost his voice for a long while somewhere in the bottom of the dark sludge of his drink. Resurfacing somewhere far away, Tristaan didn't look back up from his bruised knuckles around the mug, "Never did time there, not that I can quiet remember how I got off th'streets of Muffy an' into th'Soot District of Vienda, neither."

Sure, it was changing the subject ... but ... what was he going to say to anything else? He knew his freedoms, but didn't feel them as his own. Not yet.

If ever.

He didn't want to swallow those other words.

“Muffey?”

A soft word, that. He didn’t like that all of this fluff was insinuating itself back into his thoughts again. Dust bunnies, nice shaped clouds, the fluff crowning a dandelion – that’s all the smooth curves of these vowels in names were, all these dainty things. Tristaan. It was like sugar floss. He didn’t have a taste for sweet, things not any more.

He curled into himself, mud slickened boot treads hooking on the lip of his seat, knees hugging to his chest. He didn’t like dealing with feelings, his own or anyone else’s. Especially not anyone else’s. The cringing aside, the news that about Brunnhold cleared the guarded walls hemming his tongue. The university was still a black pall on the horizon of memory, but no one else could fathom a guess as to why.

“I remember Muffey.” Pale eyes slivered in scrutiny, as if trying to puzzle out some elaborate trap. Muffey with its old wine smell and hat shops that smelled like dust decades older than himself. “I remember...hats. Big big moa feathers in ‘em...or...really little hats, the littlest hats you ever did see. The ones that were so little the only thing they did was make people talk about how damn little they was.”

Carmine could hazard a guess that all that dust clinging to those tophats would be there long after he was gone.

“My...moth-er?” A stiff word, wreathed around a throat and pinned with starchy lace. It felt wrong on his tongue, coming out quirked in uncertainty. “She had lots and lots of hats.” A nessecary statement. He buried his nose in the cleft of his knees, a futile attempt to warm it. Hazy fingers scraped at the air, a call for more booze.

He propped his chin up on a boney knee, peering intently up at Tristaan. Not at him, really – at the bruise mottling his face.

“An’...an’ poke fun all you want. I don’t miss not havin’ wings no more. Nothin’ good ever becomes of butterflies, shit. Pretty things get spread and pinned and trapped in glass. Wings never helped me one fuckin’ bit.” A quiet growl laced with the dull heat of old embers, coaxed to glowing.

The swordsman's bruised knuckles tightened around his drink as the other passive spoke of his birthplace—his—with such disquieting and obvious familiarity ... a familiarity he no longer harbored and hardly seemed capable of kindling anymore. Muffey was so distant. The comforts of his childhood were long-since buried beneath soot and blood and broken bones. If it weren't for the pocket watch spectrograph, he probably wouldn't even remember his parents' faces ... or maybe he would. He felt Carmine looking at him, but he had no real interest in looking up at a man who might as well have been his clocking neighbor. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek for a while, not answering, not responding, not remembering. His mug was empty, but his mind was not.

Mothers. Hats. Muffey.

Eventually, Tristaan dragged out some words. Hesitant, quiet, and guarded, he barely looked up. Like spooking a fox across the yard, the dark-haired passive's grey eyes were elusive as he spoke, "Ent much I remember 'bout there. Shoes'n'hats'n'th'back yard's all. I was eight, not ten, when my folks thought it best t'leave me on th'streets than let Brunnhold know I was a passive."

He scowled at this, knowing full well that both his parents were professors. They obviously had reasons ...

Tristaan sniffed, a bit of fire returning, burning in his chest like the terrible, cheap alcohol that he'd finished, "B'ah. I don't want wings, I want a life that's mine—"

That sentence stopped in his throat, grating to a halt behind his teeth with a lopsided scowl. He had his own life, but it sure as the Circle was round didn't feel like it most of the time. He'd been making choices on his own for years, but ...

"My sister went t'that godsbedamned school."

Vulnerability and all sorts of small and creeping things. Soft emotions moving like honey-slow ants, pricking at his throat and the corners of his eyes. He suddenly wished they weren’t in some racous public place that smelled of vomit and beer. It seemed too sharp a place to speaking of such delicate things. It was almost like raking a length of silk over jagged nails. But all at once, he couldn’t stand the thought of being alone anywhere with Tristaan, either. That spoke of closeness, and Carmine didn’t want to be close to anything, not even three glasses into some rancid liquor.

The tiny grains of openness were coaxing his tongue to unfurl, added by another deep drink.

He tried keeping his eyes set on Tristaan’s even as they swiveled away. Don’t move, don’t pull back, not now, not yet – he was clutching at the strings of something he’d almost forgotten. If the other man pulled out now, he didn’t think he’d be able to keep a firm grip. All the threads would slip out of grasp again.

“My brother does...” he paused, counting on his fingers. Twenty-seven. Gods above and below, gimpy little Hyacinth was twenty-seven. “Did. M’brother did. Graduated...s-seven years back. Hyacinth. Fuckin’ shit...” he hissed. He dragged the heel of his hand over his eyes, cringing down into his seat. “I don’t ‘member much about ‘im, club foot havin’, spine twisted, cold-blooded cock-sucker.”

He rubbed his hands together briskly, as if trying to chase away a sudden chill.

“ I...I remember our backyard, too.” He started in slowly, tentative, testing the waters of memory on the tip of his tongue. We’d...like...play in down by this stream that went into the river? Thrownin’ sticks an’ shit into the water, y’know? An’ there was this l’il kid who done disappeared when I was a real bitty thing, an’ I heard that he done got ate up by the water, y’know, ‘cause the stream gets really fast and fat when the rains come hard? Like. He drowned or somethin’, had to of, ‘cause nobody could find this damn ol’ kid. And fuckin’...fuckin’ Hyacinth...” his brows kinked into lightning bolts above his nose, bright blue eyes brittle. “Fuckin’ hit me in the fuckin’ mouth with ‘is fuckin’ cane!" he snarled.

"I was six, that motherfucker. I didn’t know no better. So what if some stupid boy done and drowned? Ent no reason to be goin’ around hittin’ me with shit. I broke my ankle for ‘im once! Jus’ jumped off the back patio roof to see what it was like, so I could hobble around like him but he jus’ gave me them cold fuckin’ eyes o’ his didn’t say a godsdamn thing. Seen me hobblin’ around the Stacks er’y fuckin’ day an’ he only thought to gimme a throwndown of some o’ his godsdamn golly money after I’d been --- fer months, I was jus’! –“

All through the rant, his cracked voice was gaining momentum and fury, building up to the edge of a shout. But it broke. The water from the floodgates had slowed to a trickle. No word could hitch itself up on his lips. His tongue seemed a bit too tired to even try. A hot flush pinkened his cheeks that had nothing to do with alcohol. A hint of shame darkened him, pried his gaze away from Tristaan and pinned it to the floor. It was like breaking open a dam. After being pent up for so long, there was no opening a little bit. All or nothing. Something in him knew he’d probably never get another chance.

The hints of softness playing about his features hardened into flinty anger, the more familiar mask. Carmine slumped in his chair, raking his paws through his drying curls, smoothing them out against his neck. Chagrin.

“Sorry. Right. Sorry,” he growled, voice strangely quiet in the wake of his near-shouting.

That surprised him, too.

Tristaan wasn't sure which was more uncomfortable: the other passive's disjointed memories or his disquieting willingness to share them. Alcohol wasn't helping, blurring the rough edges of his frustration, flooding cracks in the swordsman's calloused exterior with an unwilling sympathy. There was a reason he didn't like meeting others who shared his birthright; the overlaps in their histories were always so godsbedamned—

Buried.

He finished his drink without responding, the sting of Carmine's vulnerability unassuaged by whatever fiery sludge was in his mug. Grey eyes watched the gravedigger shrink away from his own words, smirking with a lopsided hint of shy apology. He didn't like digging through dusty old bones very often, either ... and yet ...

"Your brother would've graduated with my sister, if I'm countin' right." He didn't know anymore. He had a hard enough time keeping up with his own age after months blurred into endless sweaty years in that factory, "We were goin' t'be Seventen, her'n'I."

Tristaan's expression tightened slightly, but he didn't look away from the other passive's grimy, marred features, trying to put Carmine's words together into something coherent,

"You've seen your family since ...?"

Leaving? Being left? Escaping? What words could possibly fill in the emptiness, the pause that stopped his words against his teeth in awkward unknowing. He sure as hell didn't know.

“Since I was gated?”

He nodded slowly, fingers twining in his damp curls. His gaze darted around the room, cautious. No one was looking their way. On one side the men were still loudly engrossed in their cards, on the other side of them he guessed the drunkards were both so thick behind their pall of booze they weren’t hearing much of anything.

“Yeah. On’y my brother.” He paused, shifted. Pale eyes met the table top. He and the table were becoming good friends. “On’y once.”

Carmine smiled a little, a small hitch at the corner of his mouth. This wasn’t a night for keeping things to himself. Carmine wanted to spill like bile. Not pretty, not pleasant – in fact it’d be choking and burn his throat, but he’d be that much less sick once it was over.

“Me an’ this friend – we was only sixteen, seventeen, somethin’ -- got this idea. We was gonna bust outta the Br-Brunnhold t’gether. Creep outta the Stacks, run down to the river, get a ferry to take us to the city – fuck if I know how we thought we could do tha’ all in one night, but hell. Only problem we saw was the damn boat. We didn’t have no godsdamn money fer the ferryman. So I jus’...thought up an...ah...” he trailed off, the low growl of a humorless chuckle flooding his mouth. “...enterprisin’ way o’ gettin’ some.” He faltered and averted his eyes.

“Y’know, I’d love t’tell ye I busted out on my own wits an’ courage but -- nah. I godsdamn tumbled m’way outta slavery. ‘magine tha’.”

Too much to tell? Yeah. He carefully avoided looking anywhere near Tristaan’s face, busying himself instead with digging through his bag for Charlie’s lifted spurs. Once retrieved, he perched one on his lip, chewing the tip thoughtfully. The acrid burnt leaves taste of the tobacco quieted his head a bit. He glowered down at the endless jagged lines carved into the table top, fingertips memorizing them. Thoughtful. That’s what he looked like. He hadn’t looked thoughtful in a long time.

After a dark stretch of silence, he lifted the unlit spur from his lips and his eyes from the tabletop.

“M’brother was still in school when I was...gettin’ around, ye see. It took months to get anywhere near what we needed.”

Anxious hands. Swishing the dregs of his drink in the flagon, rolling the spur in his fingers.

“So I jus’ kept with it. Even after I’d ‘nough for me to take tha’ damn boat, I kept doin’ it. Fer m’friend. So, word of it got to those ugly little things in green. Hyacinth’s godsdamn reputation musta already been fucked up as-is jus’ fer me existin’, but to know somethin’ tha’ shared his blood was crawlin’ around at night? ...well.” He snorted.

“He’d never be able to talk at none o’ his peers ever again without gettin’ a funny eye. So...he jus’...found me crawlin’ in some Stacks bar one night an’ took me out back. His field was buzzin’ all over the place an’ I nearly fuckin’ pissed myself, ‘cause I was so sure he was gonna blow me up or somethin’ but...:” Carmine shrugged. “Jus’ gave me a sackful of coin and told me to get the fuck outta Brunnhold. I was a godsdamn embarrassment.” He glowered down into the black depths of his drink, eyes narrowed to cool slits.

When he spoke again, the words were even more quiet.

“It was nearly fuckin’ double o’ every shill I made in half a fuckin’ year. I...I was happy but...I jus’. I guess wonder why th’ fuck it took 'im so long.”

More tabletop. The hard lines of his scowl were etched deep as the scars in the wood. His gaze hovered up to the other man at last, flat blue eyes clinching grey.

"Ye got a light?"

(( OMFG. Look I posted. Don't die. ))

Tristaan's expression could've been one of surprise or distaste or worse. Maybe some curl of his lip was expected, anticipated, desired. Instead, however, there was the faintest hint of amusement underneath the swollen ugliness of one side and all the weeks of unshaven stubble. Some glimpse of affirmation instead of judgment. Some distant glimmer of the same fiery rebelliousness that kept him from being completely broken in the factory as a boy. It seemed as though every one of their kind had to sell something of themselves in order to play at freedom, whatever those parts ended up being.

The gravedigger's choices weren't ones the swordsman necessarily felt capable of, but he found himself incapable of passing any sort of sentence on another passive, especially not one who'd actually seen inside those red stone walls he knew nothing about.

Alcohol and thoughtfulness slowed his reactions, and it took several moments of silence for Tristaan to realize he'd been asked a question at the end of Carmine's revealing testimony. One eye blinked slowly, the other refusing to catch up,

"Er, uh, ne. I ent got anythin'." He finally managed, hands moving helplessly over his still slightly damp person for emphasis before returning to his drink. He chewed his lip and attempted to slow down the turning of his thoughts over the other man's story. The thought of tarnishing someone else's reputation like that was strangely chilling in a good way—it was an opportunity Tristaan never had. His parents had tested him early and turned him out on the streets on clocking purpose. Two Brunnhold professors certainly couldn't have their own magicless son wandering the halls cleaning out their trash cans, could they?

Still, he understood the insult of being paid off, too. Would his sister do such a thing?

He couldn't imagine. He could hardly remember her, some days.

"It's a bit of a change from tumblin' t'diggin' holes in th'ground, ent it? Sorta?" Tristaan smirked, not necessarily interested in totally derailing the conversation so much as suddenly self-conscious of his own choices. Grey eyes strayed from his drink to the crowds and back to Carmine's face with a deliberate slowness, chagrined.

A slow smile twisted Carmine’s lips, slow like honey, as if he rued it being there at all. A soft sound bubbled up from his lips. A quick, lilting little laugh that seemed too silver-bell polished to have come from his battered chest at all. Bit his lip, stifling the melodious peal, grimy fingers fluttering up to his lips to cover that he was smiling in the first place.

Ah, well. Tell a man about being a whore, but still too flinty to let him see you smile.

His paw lowered from his face, curling into a fist his chest.

“You’re none too bright, are ye?” Sour sounding words, but the tone was joking enough. “...’course it ent the same.” After a moment: “Both ‘em involve holes, I guess, but nah. Not th’ same at all.” He looked down, away. “I mean...like. It wasn’t bad. I mean...I mean it was, but it wasn’t...real bad. Nobody ever tried to cott me or nothin’. Slapped me ‘round a bit sometimes, but it ent nothin’ ye can’t used to. I choked a bastard with a pair o’ stockins once. An’ th’ girls always wanted t’play spoons or somethin’ afterwards so it was nice an’ distractin’. But...yeah. It was bad, but it wasn’ like...bad bad.”

Crushed the tip of the spur under his teeth, tasting sour earth and acrid things.

Three years distance can really soften some things. The recollections were not too brittle around the edges anymore, they didn’t make him wince and growl and hide the subject under blustering. He glowered out one of the cramped, grimy windows.

“Godsdamn safer than diggin’ holes in fuckin’ weather like this, I‘ll give it tha',” he growled after a moment’s consternation. “Nobody ever fuckin’ drowned suckin’ on a riff, y’know?” Propped an elbow on the table, propped his chin in his palm. Brows beetled for a moment, and another peal of laughter sparked up unbidden.

“Well, I s’pose ye wouldn’t know. ...would ye?” Genuine puzzlement in that cocked head, those slitted blue eyes. Peering at Tristaan as if trying to shove a particularly tricky puzzle together, weary amusement shadowing his every feature.

"Ne, not 'bout tumblin' or diggin' holes ... much." Tristaan offered without hesitation, something that might have been a chuckle not quite making its way past his throat before he did so. He was bright enough. He'd gotten by just fine between the sheets without any ging involved. He'd helped bury a few Crow as a spoke,

"But I ent one for safe work."

Sanding floors and repainting bannisters were probably the safest things Tristaan had done in terms of employment for years ... even willingly, recklessly inviting a blacksmith to bruise his face up in his moments of selfish insecurity paled in comparison to crawling underneath textile machines cleaning scraps as a child or hiring out his sword arm to whoever felt like they needed one for money.

The passive sighed, calloused fingers relinquishing his empty glass with a tired roll of his shoulders. Everything was still damp, but he was definitely warmer now. Not fiery, not like before, but warm—the burning in his throat having slowly settled into something comfortable throughout his insides.

"Factory work in th'Soot District ent a party in th'pants, that's for clockin' sure." The swordsman laughed, almost coyly, "Alioe, seein' my bed may've always been the most satisfyin' part of th'day, but after fourteen hours, it ent like it mattered t'sleep. Might as well have been out tumblin' ... I bet th'clockin' ging's better without worryin' about losin' fingers or arms while you're at it."

Tristaan didn't entirely mean that. There were some things he'd never considered, even while hungry on the streets. Despite the rough dangers of factory life, he'd still somehow been sheltered from the world, trapped behind brick walls in front of humming, hungry machines.

"Even after gettin' out, I s'pose I still looked for ways t'lose a limb or two ... 'cept for maybe while I lived as a spoke." Gray eyes strayed from Carmine's face to the crowd as he said that, something in his tone ringing hollow.

Did he miss it?

He left on his own. He didn't have to.

Surwood lingered like a taste of something ... something like home.

Shifting in his seat, the passive blinked and brushed off the nostalgia that flooded his senses, "Puttin' holes in folks ent quite like diggin' 'em in th'ground, but it ent any less safe, I'd say."

“You’d be surprised, I guess,” Carmine offered helpfully. “…’bout the losin’ fingers an’ arms bit. This one fucker once, he—“ halted those words behind his teeth, bared in hazy smile. “I guess it don’t matter. Talkin’ about scars an’ things don’t matter. Never a good story t’go with ‘em. Ent nothin' safe nowhere.”

One glance at his naked back could tell a thousand stories, the whole trunk of him scrimshawed with twists of little knives and dappled skin from bad healings and cigar burns bursting up along his shoulders and neck like a field of pink poppies. White cat stripes of a whip criss-crossing his back like some drunken cartographer had scrawled the path to nowhere in particular all over him.

Carmine didn’t know how much longer he could bear to stick around. Soft and stupid things, laughing and smiling and trading tiny truths across a table. He wanted to pick the pieces of himself off the table, shove them back inside, pretend they’d never been laid out for the lazy inspection of some stranger. Bits and pieces were still deep in the dark, he guessed. That was comforting. So leave, before all this stupid booze makes him any softer.

“A hired sword, huh? How fuckin’ romantic. Like somethin’ outta a little girl’s wondertale book, ye are.” There. That was better. The kind, strong, handsome swordsman having adventures and vanquishing bad things, all that. Something his little sister would read and swoon over. Something that one-legged tumble witch must swoon over too, he guessed.

“I guess I was, once. Somethin’ pretty all locked up in a cage. But that’s more like a pretty bird than any kinda hero. What happened to me happens to l’il birds all the time. Or…butterflies…pinned up an’ -- Whatever.” The funny remnants of humor clung on him like dregs at the bottom of a bottle. All the good stuff was gone, only the sticky bits left that you couldn’t get out left. Well, good. The whiskey from his flask and the black swill in these fat mugs was doing a number on his words.

Big pale eyes blinked up from their place at the bottom of the flagon. Could only look at him for two damn seconds before closing those eyes, tilting his head down and away. Carmine’s voice was small, twinged with the taste of an uneasy smile.

“Oh…yeah. An’…yeah. ‘bout…tha’ word an’ shit? Right. M’sorry ‘bout…uh. That. Or somethin’.”

Or something. This was certainly something. Carmine didn’t like uncertain little somethings.

(( EoT, if ya want? ))