Rain poured like sheets of ink that left no stain. The mud-gutter streets of the Harbor were barren this late, or this early – had the road's lone wanderer been blessed with a watch to read, the spindly dials would have said 'four oh seven'. The sun would rise in a few hours and drip foggy light through his curtains to remind him that he hadn't slept. The Loshis rain had made his job perilous, weakening the soil and causing the grave sides to melt, to ooze past the support boards and swallow up men like bog sand. The night had been long and a cold sheen of stress sweat stippled his skin. Carmine just wanted to go home.

'Home' was a dark little room out past Angler's Alley, more like a shoebox than a flat. The Wharf Rat, a ramshackle stack of all these soggy little shoe boxes. But his little shoebox was special. It was filled with his sticky mattress and a real working sink and all his empty whiskey bottles standing the windowsill bristling with weed-flowers. There was a mange-riddled cat he sometimes let sleep there and a bloodstained dress he found in an alley, too. Nice things.

So he stumbled his bleary way down the winding streets, sloshing through ankle deep puddles without seeming to notice. All was black and his vision was fuzzy-soft, but Carmine had learned years ago how to feel his way around by only the hazy suggestion of things. His pistol was wrapped up in a dancer girl's stockings and tucked under his shirt, muzzle nestled against his ribs. His hands were too numb to hold the flask he kept raising to his lips – trying to raise. They trembled in the wetness. A thick rime of mud and silt covered him like a sloppy paint job. He dragged a shovel behind him, the metal going clank-clank on the cobblestones.

The walk from the boneyard to the Rat wasn't a long one. Soon enough, Carmine was stumbling up a cock-eyed staircase, clinging to the slick iron banister like a life line. He shambled to his flat number by muscle memory alone. The same old motions of pocket rummaging and key fitting and knob turning--

And knob turning again. And again. And again. After a few more fruitless turns, after slamming his shoulder against the door, one fact became sparkling clear. The door – his door -- was locked. Leaning heavily against the frame, his eyes finally drifted to a stained scrap of parchment tacked on the rotten wood, the words smeary with damp:


Carmine stared. His brows furrowed. His eyes squinted. His lips curved around the words, trembly and unsure. Words like 'rent' and 'pay' and 'go away' made him dizzy. And the final recognition of his landlord's name scrawled at the bottom snapped the smoky haze he'd been drifting in. It sparked up embers. No, hell no – it lit him on fire.

“OPEN THE FUCK UP!” His voice was like a hammer to the night's glassy silence. Splintering, shattering. The last word was punctuated by a vicious kick to the door, enough to cause the hinges to rattle. Again. And again. And again. Almost like a heartbeat, just with more groaning wood involved.

The door opened abruptly between bursts. Just a crack, but it was open; he could see a sliver of a harrowed man's face nearly at the top of the door jamb. Apparently, he was a rather tall man.

It had been a long night-- he and his family had been kicked out of their rooms over a shop some weeks ago when he lost his job there. He had only just found a job elsewhere and had spent the afternoon moving their meager belongings into the tiny flat.

"What the hell do you want?" he asked in gruff tones.

Carmine’s lips curled back into a silent snarl, baring flinty teeth. He tore the eviction notice off the door, crumbling it in a shaky fist. His blood was hot and he could just -- His eyes stung suddenly, feeling hot and watery as they had been all night. He blinked the sensation away. Oh Alioe, oh anyone who’d listen – it had been a long night, and it was about to get longer. Much.

Brittle eyes glowered up to the top of the doorframe, not seeming to register (though more likely not caring) that the man on the other side was much bigger than him. Size had never made him bat an eyelash before – and now he was soaked in whiskey, a fact quite plain from his flushed cheeks and sour reek. He felt like a giant.

“I want my godsdamn house back!” he barked, shoving the sticky note up towards the man’s eye-level, almost like an accusation. “What the fuck did ye do with my shit? What’d ye do with mah cat?!”

Before the last bit of the sentence was even past his lips, his boot hiked back and he kicked the door again, savage as he could. He hoped the doorframe would hit the man in the face. Hard.

The man was quick on his feet, and Carmine was slowed by the drink, so when his foot connected with the door, it bashed into the man's shoulder. He released an "Unf!" as a scream and the sound of crying children erupted behind him. The man glanced back behind him, alarmed, then turned back to Carmine with a scowl. He eased through the door and closed it behind him.

Poking a broad finger into Carmine's chest, he spoke in sharp tones, "I dunno where the hell you come off, but this flat's ours now. We c'n pay, and you didn't. I dunno what he did with your shit or your damned cat, but it sure as hells isn't in here."

It wasn’t that he couldn’t pay. It is just that he did not. Whiskey, gin, sterno alcohol strained through a slice of bread --anything he could dip his tongue into. It was all so much more important than having a roof over his head, staving off the onset of the shakes in his hands or gnawing in his belly. At least it had seemed that way at the time.

Maybe someone else might have cringed with sympathy at the shrill cry of the man’s babies. But not Carmine. It just darkened the storm cloud of his impending skull-splitter of a headache, coaxed a low growl from him. Godsdamned ugly plowfoot breeders, spilling out more ugly plowfoot babies than they could feed…

“That ent clock-stoppin’ fair! It ent even the end o’ the month an’ he…an’ he…” Truth be told, he hadn’t paid his rent since sometime in the middle of Bethas, so it actually was quite fair. But when you’re tired and knackered and teetering on the verge of very unmanly tears of frustration, you have a way of forgetting that. Everything was an injustice to him, somehow, from that piercing lady screaming beyond the door to the man’s finger against his chest.

He blinked down at the offending digit, then back up towards the man.

“I don’t think,” he said, words coming slow in a soft growl, “tha’ ye wanna touch me, dirt-kicker.” The last word was spat as if it left a filthy taste in his mouth.

The man's face darkened in response to Carmine's insult. He grumbled low in warning, "And I think that if you want to walk out o' here on unbroken legs you'll leave now and take it up with the landlord."

His fists were clenched, and Carmine, even in his drunken state, would not be able to miss the barely-restrained anger. There was a pummeling waiting on the tips of this man's knuckles if he wanted to push those buttons.

Carmine did want to push those buttons. Hard.

A smile flickered across his lips. Would a wiser man have just shuffled away then, cradling his aching pride in his hands? Yes. Yes he would have. But Carmine was anything but wise. That small smile broadened, quivering at the corners. It was almost meek, a child’s smile.

Water-logged work boots shuffled the small space still between them, fuzzy pale eyes blinking up him slowly. Too bright and fey to be safe. The sound of jangling metal was heard, clinking like little brass bells in the rain’s somnolent hiss. The sound of a ring of keys shifting in a shaky palm.

“Yer right. I ent got no business botherin’ ye so late, brother. I mean, ye gots babies in there,” his tone had lost its harshness, the brittle bite only noticeable if one was listening for it – it was almost jovial. “Listen, listen. Iss been a long night fer er’ybody. I guess I outer get on to lynchin’ that filthy ol’ pirate now.” He cocked his head and looked away, taking a half-step towards the rickety staircase--

Then he wrenched back his fist, the thick brass of his house key nestled betwixt his middle and index knuckles. It was a sharp uppercut, his full weight and muscle thrown behind it, aimed at the man’s face or throat. It was a bad night, and for Carmine, bad nights meant someone had to bleed. ‘Someone’ usually being himself and anyone he came across.

The man was sleepy and grumpy, not drunk. He was tense and on edge as Carmine turned away, so when he whipped back with a key-fisted punch, he had a moment to react. He jerked his head back and Carmine clipped his chin, the key breaking skin.

He grunted and stepped back, touching his fingertips to his cut. He pulled his hand away and looked at the blood, as if slightly surprised. He locked his eyes on Carmine.

He lowered his shoulder and blocked the width of the hallway before barreling forward, arms outstretched to grab at Carmine or push him back down the stairs.

Well. That didn’t exactly go as planned.

Carmine stumbled for a moment after his dismal attempt at a punch, the momentum making his legs a bit woozy. His gaze fluttered down to his hand, looking quite obviously shocked and disappointed that the key wasn’t buried somewhere in the man’s flesh right about now. He simply wavered in the middle of the hall for a moment, preoccupied with the thin dribble of blood on his hand and the lack of bruising on his knuckles. Pity.

He only returned his eyes to the man he’d just very badly not punched at the sound of his guttural grunt. A weak little yelp of surprise burst past his lips – for half a second, there was the idea just to throw his arms open and let the man bludgeon him bloody. But there was still the nasty problem of Sparkles to attend to. And being beaten unconscious wasn’t going to get his apartment back, nor find his cat. He’d save that for another night, another night when he had a place to stumble back to.

He opted for throwing himself back against the rickety walkway wall instead, flattening his slight frame against the damp wood. That was one of the only advantages to being so small in situations like these: you didn’t take up much space.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

The man had been intending that Carmine be that outside force. When he suddenly wasn't there to crash into, there was a sudden looming space as the floor dropped away into the stairwell. As his bulk tilted over, leading into an impending fall, he flailed about to get some purchase and avoid it.

His hand landed solidly on Carmine's chest.

His fingers latched into the damp material. Gravity kicked into full force, and suddenly both men were tumbling down the stairs, landing flat on the floor. The man let out a low groan. If Carmine were to get away, he'd have to brave his now damaged knee and bloodied brow before the man recuperated enough to pummel him.

Swollen wood, splinters, old nails curling up from the floorboards like ladies fingers – not to mention the bulky man’s every hard bone and angle, and the sheer force of gravity once they hit the ground below.

It was not a pleasant fall. A brief tussle of unfolding limbs, quick and scrambling as a little animal thrashing its way out of a trap. Carmine didn’t much mind the renewed ache in his muscles, or the deep burn of the laceration on his knee. Truth be told, he cherished them – they hiked his blood up, jolted him from the heavy haze the lingering whiskey and burgeoning hang-over blanketed him in. His blood was flowing lush and he was finally awake and it felt damn good.

Carmine wobbled to his feet, gingerly favoring his uninjured leg, the other dragged across the wet soil by the insole as he shuffled back to lean to against the railing. He ought to get out of here, really, while he still had the chance to get a hobbling head start on this greasy plowfoot. His breath was coming quick and shallow and it was hot, and he was hot amongst all this cold and damp. The pause had been both for him to catch his breath, assess the damages, and...remember where exactly it was that his pondscum landlord lived. Perhaps the new tenant might know?

He tilted his head down from blinking out in the night rain, peering down at the man. He reached under his shirt tugging his pistol from his belt, the other unraveling the striped stocking swathing it. He steadied the muzzle towards the man’s back, thumb cocking the pistol with an obvious clack sounding over the rain’s hiss. Carmine still wobbled on his feet, a pained smile on his face.

“Oiiii, brother. D’ya know wear ol’ Sparkles be sleepin’ tonight? Still got that hole down by the waterfront? I’mma pay him an ickle visit.”

By the time Carmine had pulled out his pistol, the man had risen to his knees. When he heard the distinct click of the hammer sliding into position he froze, turning silently, arms raised, as he turned to face Carmine.

"Yeah, he's down by the waterfront. T'ent much of a hole anymore. He's got new tenets there, too, and they've fixed it up properly," He didn't say any more, hoping he would take the information and leave without shooting anyone. Particularly himself.

Carmine leaned heavily onto his uninjured leg, cocking his head at the man and still wearing that sharky little smile. There was a mean streak in him a mile wide that wanted to drill a bullet through his shoulder, just for the hell of it. But bullets weren’t cheap and neither was gunpowder and he didn’t want to have his pretty baby out in the dampness any longer than need. He swiped a callused hand across his cheek, the blood and rain streaking his palm pink.

He stepped close enough for the pistol muzzle to graze the man’s sternum and gave him a firm clap on the shoulder. “Yer good people, brother. Ye really are.” That cheeky grin melted off his face like candlewax, his countenance going flinty and somber.

“I’ll be seein’ ya.” He spoke softly for the first time tonight, words almost a whisper. With that, Carmine shuffled away from the steps, from his apartment, back out into the rain gutter streets – he raised his pistol-wielding hand and waved goodbye goodbye without looking back.

Carmine hadn’t walked this way too many times before. It invariably led to the nice slice of the Harbor, all the places with working lights and cigarette burnt tablecloths and edible food that he couldn’t afford to visit. Well, perhaps he could afford it if he’d just – his eyes flickered up to the roofs of some of the finer brothels and quickly flickered back down to the cobble muck, a hot jolt of blood creeping into his cheeks. He shuffled by swift as he could, pistol stuffed deep into his pockets, fingers curled around the trigger.

Down the sinuous curves of the mud fattened streets, up over the long drags of rotting docks, Carmine limped until the vast blackness of the sea blotted out his vision. The heavy crash of the surf washing like ink on the sand soothed his blood. Almost. He was thick with anger.

There were the gentle eaves of that much-too-nice restaurant, the Widow’s Whatever, rickety balconies overlooking the ocean. But Carmine hobbled to the other side of the street, the loping drag of his gait slowing somewhat as he surveyed the building.

It had been a whorehouse too, once upon a time. He thought. Was it the same place at all? The windows he remembered, cracked like spiderwebs and fogged in dust, stood clean and whole in their respective wooden eye sockets. The paint looked fresh – or fresh-ish, as nothing in the Harbor could stay pure for long amidst this most sodden of months and the decaying salt air. It looked clean and pretty. Carmine hadn’t come in contact with these words in longer than he cared to remember. Whoever these new tenants were, they were comfortably off by Rose standards. His stomach soured for them already.

Carmine eased back against the wide doorframe, pausing for a moment to consider just what he was going to do once that door swung open. He knew not what he wanted more – a home, or retribution? The revolver was full. Its weight was like a stone against his thigh. He slid it out and spun it and the click-click-click made his insides spark. This was no roulette, there would be no second spins. Carmine’s pretty hand cannon was heavy with lead.

His fist slammed against the door once, twice, more of a punch than a knock. He then limped back from the doorway and stashed his pistol before shouting up towards the vaulting roof and wide windows.

“Sparkles?! Sparkles m’dear! I needa talk at ya, sweetheart!”

Sound asleep in a comfortable, warm tangle of limbs of skin with the rain against the windows and in a bed too soft and too large for any passive to ever deserve, Tristaan didn't really hear the knocking right away. When the angry slamming and the loud shouting finally drifted into his fading dreams of home, he reluctantly woke. The sounds were muffled upstairs behind closed doors and thick curtains, and it was too dark to even guess the hour. He let the knocking continue for a while, groggily hoping it was just a lost drunk from the Walk, arms still contently wrapped around the lovely witch in his (ne, their) bed.

The indeterminate yelling didn't go away like it had before, and neither did the pounding. The swordsman groaned and forced himself awake, thoughts shifting toward a concern about something more dangerous. Reluctantly sliding away, mumbling frustratedly about drunkards and the Harbor—even if he'd come to enjoy living close to the sea already—Tristaan fumbled in the dark for something resembling clothing, slowly rousing himself from enjoyable sleep to protective wakefulness.

Discovering his pants in the rain-heavy darkness, he tugged them on without bothering to continuing to search for his shirt. Hardly imposing half undressed, unfortunately, but the passive was still counting on some lost, angry drunk. He managed to find his firearm, though he knew his blade was still in the coatroom downstairs. Tucking the pistol behind him, he paused to lean over Sarinah,

"Got another drunk t'night, macha. Stay here."

Stumbling out of the bedroom, closing the door, and down the stairs in the dark, the passive scowled once he realized the shouting was for Sparkles. Who the clock would be looking for that old, gnarled pirate at this hour? Gods, surely someone looking for him would be far from trouble ... but there was something about the edge of the voice above the rain that told Tristaan a different story.

He paused by the door, watching it shake, not saying a word in response while he slipped into the coatroom and snatched his sword from the rack, tucking it just within reach.

"Shut your head already!" He finally growled, one hand on the door, other loose and ready for either his sword or the pistol against the scarred curve of his lower back. With a shift in his stance, he swung the door open to the rain and the breeze, scruffy and still flushed from sleep, tense and uncaring about the tattoo unhidden on his left bicep.

Tristaan glared at the wet, bleeding, scrawny man in front of him, his tone firm like the set of his currently hairy jaw, "Whatever th'clock y'want with Sparkles, I have a feelin' it's best you wait 'til mornin'. If y'ent lost, I suggest you go home, mujo ma."

He just had to say it. Stupid cream-skinned cozy bastard.

A soft snort of disgust crawled up his throat unbidden. Something hot, something he could only pin as envy, thrashed hard in his chest. This twat had been asleep in some cozy feather bed and now he was hissing like a woman – for what? Because he’d been making too much noise? Disturbed his sleep? It hardly concerned him, anyhow. Very little at all seemed to be concerning him within the past hour. No house, no cat, no money, no nothing. Who gave a shit if this man was bigger and healthier and well-rested and not limping across half the harbor on a split knee with a hangover to beat the band? Carmine didn’t. He didn’t have much more to lose save for maybe a few more teeth. And he was never that attached to them, anyway.

So. What do you do when you don’t care? You laugh, of course.

Carmine had taken one look at the man in the doorway before a sharp, barking laugh burst up past his lips. And he didn’t stop. It was a harsh, deep sound called up from the belly – frustrated, spiteful, perhaps with a dash of mooniness for extra zing. Long fingers knotted in his gingery waves, giving the scalp a sharp tug. The slight sting of pain was a good thing, another pierce through the thick fog of emotion. Take it easy. He went to wipe the fresh blood bubbling at the corner of his lip and his teeth caught his flesh. Bit down, hard, just for a second. Don’t crash...

He limped close to the other man, some horrid inbred between a smile and grimace plastered on his face. “Listen,” he growled – there was an air of frayed gentility in his voice, unnerving to anyone willing to listen – “listen, brother. Y’know, I’d clock stoppin’ love to go home. But I – ahaha! – I can’t! An’ do ya wanna know why?”

He lurched forward another step.

“’Course ya do!” he crowed before the other man even had a moment to speak. “Because of that greedy fuck yer harborin’ there threw me out on my ass. I go to the damn boneyard to fuckin’ work and I come home t’night jus’ to find he’s gone and shoved some other poor fucks up in my flat. So!” His smile broadened, tongue running across pink-stained teeth. “Yer gonna be a dear and fetch ‘im for me. Innit tha’ right?” ...and that smile quivered, faded. Carmine's expression was wooden. Carmine's eyes were dead.

“Right?”

The drunk, bleeding, underfed excuse for a human was a noisy thing for something so obviously scrawny when wet. Tristaan leaned his right shoulder against the door frame, listening to Carmine curse and complain, keeping his other hand loose but ready at his side. By the looks of him, unfortunately, the swordsman could understand how he'd have ended up on the street.

He'd rather have felt threatened, he really would've, but instead he just frowned. This angry man was unsafe, obviously unkempt and wild, but it was a momentary struggle for Tristaan to remain cautious. He'd lived on the streets. He knew how things were. He'd been handed plenty of unfairness from a world that considered him dangerous and broken. It certainly didn't look like it from here, oh gods no, not with this building the passive was standing in, was sweating over, was being called partner for. No, while memories still clung in the dark places of his thoughts, such things were hardly visible from the outside anymore.

"Ne, it ent right. Not t'night." He replied firmly, grey eyes narrowing on Carmine, finally letting a hint of threat linger in the undertone of his quiet voice. He'd try something reasonable first, though he wasn't sure the sopping, seething man was going to change his train of thought. This wasn't anything he'd never seen before, wasn't anything he was unprepared for, "It's mant late an' I ent sure you're in th'state for conversin' with anyone, let alone Sparkles over missed rent an' your flat. I think you should find a room for a night somewhere an' come back in th'mornin' when you've cooled off. Ye chen?"

He considered offering coins if he had to, but it just wasn't that point of the conversation yet. The swordsman was unsure if they'd even get to that part of the conversation, left hand listless knowing his pistol was within reach just in case.

“Nah. I damn well ent chen.”

His voice was brittle and quiet. Carmine slit his eyes up at the other man in the dark, a soft disquiet slipping through his stomach as the dusty tek lexicon sleeping in the back of his mind unearthed itself again. His memory left these metaphorical pages faded or torn out entirely, but there were still snippets he could understand. Not that he wanted to. Not that he’d ever admit it.

“Ya think I ‘aven’t thought o’ tha’? Ya think I like bein’ out here spittin’ in the rain? Nah! Ya think I carry much ging on me iff’n I’m gonna be wanderin’ home out by the Alley in the cusp o’ darkness? Nah! I ent brilliant, but I ent stupid.” He spoke as if this was something anyone who’s anybody would already know. The night was ink and the sea was sighing and breathing away, completely oblivious to his frustrations.

“All of my shit was in that flat when I left it at sundown. All my clothes, money, everythin’. I come back, an’ there’s not a trace of it nowheres, not even my godsdamn cat. Had I shill on me at the mo’ teh pay fer a room, I wouldn’t be out ‘ere barkin’ at yer toffin erse.”

He saw anyone even slightly more refined than himself as little more than a perfumed fop, worthy of nothing but bared teeth and disdain. The man before him, owning a very nice house, easily fell into Carmine’s vast category of ‘uppity twats’.

“I came to talk at Sparkles and find out what his haggard erse did with me worldly possessions. I ent gonna ‘cause no trouble.” But the way his voice hitched over the last word, the quick flash of gritted sharp teeth, suggested otherwise. “And I ent leavin’,” he added in the softest of growls, arm reaching up to grasp the doorframe, “‘til I gets a word or two with ‘im.”

The Hingle wasn't open for business yet and it appeared that Tristaan was just going to have to start his job early ... although, it was a little difficult to claim that this was an act of kicking someone out when he hadn't even been let entirely in. While it was true that the passive had little personal regard for Sparkles, he was the disgusting old man's tenant, he paid the man rent and fixed up this former hole of a building with his own two, calloused hands. His sweat was in the floorboards now, so it meant something ... somewhere.

Carmine hardly meant no harm, and it was obvious the dirty thing was more than enough trouble on a good day, let alone this rather sour and bad one. Had everything been presented with less vehemence, less alcohol and more sincerity, more remorse, Tristaan might have felt pity for the grave digger. Had he recognized the bleeding man as a passive instead of a grimy human, he might have thought differently. Neither being the case, he could only impatiently listen and understand that this other man was a threat, that this other man was unfortunately not just another lost drunk from across the road.

"You can sleep on th'foyer; it's dry an' safe enough. I'd offer you a room an' a bed, but I ent sure I can trust you 'til mornin'. When th'sun's up an' y'ent so clocking guttered, then you an' Sparkles can work things out." That was the last reasonable piece Tristaan was willing to speak, however. He stood up from the doorframe, arms still crossed over his bare, scarred chest, still unconcerned about the passive tattoo that was unhidden and unmarred.

"But if you think you're comin' in tonight, you're wrong. You'd best rethink your plan, kov." The swordsman added firmly, finally scowling. Sure, part of him did cringe at the bleeding, soaked thing's story—it really did—but how was he to know Carmine didn't make the choices that led him here, homeless on his own? How'd he even know this man was telling the truth?

He didn't.

Handing this one coins would only be handing him more alcohol, by the smell of things now that he was disturbingly close. Setting his nearly-bearded, aristocratic jaw and carefully shifting his stance, Tristaan growled his last sentence with a tone of finality, of decision,

"I ent too happy on' addin' injury t'insult in your evenin', but if y'ent gonna leave, I ent bothered by makin' you."

“Really now? Fuckin’ rip me apart, then. I ent gonna sleep on no...no damn foyer,” the word was said with languid sarcasm, stretched out like a rubber band, “like somebody’s little pet osta or whatever.”

Sleeping on the streets like a stray dog wasn’t a good idea either, but at this point it was a matter of pride. He’d rather curl into his own ribs and sleep behind some fabric store faster than he’d take up someone’s reluctantly offered charity. If you could even call it charity. Carmine saw it as philanthropy, as condescension – or he would have, had he known what those words meant.

“I mean fuck me sideways, ye ain’t even tryin’ to help!” he snarled, drawing up his meager height as far as it could go, squaring his shoulders like cinderblocks. “Yer jes’ tellin’ me to scoot without even – I mean couldn’t ye -- yer just – yer just a –“ Bruised hands curled into fists, eyes glowering razorblades into the man’s face before grazing down across his chest, looking for an open target to strike—

His chest. His arms were crossed over his –
His arms.
His arm.
Carmine’s eyes were riveted like fishhooks to the patch of inked skin.
The flesh was clean and unmarred with scarring, unlike the other swathes of the man’s skin.
It was a black swirl, a suggestion of an too familiar shape winking out at him admidst the darkness.

He took a slight half-step back from the doorway – no, not even a step. Just rocked back in his heel for a moment, clenched his eyes shut. That stylized little shadow of pigment in the man’s flesh was tattooed on the insides of his eyelids.

Tattoo.

“...yer just a...”

Impossibly big, impossibly blue eyes tore away from that marking – they swiveled up to the man’s face. He shuffled even closer, close enough to make his own skin stipple with nerves, foot breaching the doorway somewhat. The movements were no longer threatening, merely cautious and hazy. A drunkard trying to be delicate. Carmine squinted up at him in the gray striations of moonlight, lingering on the high curves of his cheek bones and the fine thinness through his jaw. And those eyes. Too pale, too sharp for human eyes.

Carmine’s throat was sandpaper. Something small and mortified and seventeen in him wanted to run, but his feet were stones.

“...a godsdamn scrap.” He finally stammered. It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t damning. It was a whisper, barely existent. It was thick with disbelief. It came out jagged, brittle and delicate, as if he’d choked up a piece of glass.

He might as well have. It felt like something in him was starting to bleed.

"If I let every wet, bleedin' drunk that wandered by come in, or toss 'em some coins, what good would it do? Y'ent here for clockin' charity—" Tristaan began to growl a response before Carmine was even finished speaking, frustrated by the drunk man's oscillation between anger and helplessness.

He hadn't come knocking at some ungodly hour for a roof over his head so much as blood on his hands.

That much was clocking clear.

The man wasn't looking for a bed to sleep in, he was looking for Sparkles to see if he could knock out a few more of that grizzled old pirate's yellowed teeth. He didn't want a towel or a bath, and as far as the passive could tell, any extra coins wouldn't go to a room so much as another drink. Any kindness Tristaan would normally offer felt like it would end up as nothing but a waste of time, like more water down the storm pipes of the streets in Loshis.

He wasn't about to contribute to someone's self-inflicted misfortune; if Carmine had actually wanted assistance instead of—



—that stopped Tristaan's words with a hiss through his teeth.

It was a chiv in the dark, a blow that found the soft places of unhealed wounds, a quick word that sliced through every possible hint of kindness that might have even been preparing to blossom in the passive's thought process and left them to wither and brown on the ground. Nipped in the bud was an offering of a roof or of coins for a night's stay ... all with a phrase that brought back memories drowning in the hum and whir of textile machines, the stench of sweat and packed bodies, and the stains of unappreciated blood.

Scrap.

Like the fabric that had been somehow misshapen on the loom, unusable and unwanted, the word was used instead to refer to a breathing lump of flesh genetically malformed in the womb, non-magical and just as unwanted, branded and marked for all to see.

Shifting slightly, Tristaan shot an arm out, fingers reaching to curl into the grimy, soaked collar of Carmine's shirt, digging into the cloth until knuckles rested firmly against clammy skin. Instead of tugging and dragging the bleeding other man across the distance between them, he simply stepped forward, close enough in the watery dark that the faded scar that bent his aristocratic nose just so belied the comfort he'd somehow managed to fall into,

"Y'ent gettin' any help by insultin' anyone, neither." He managed to even out the tone in his voice, dragging it across the bones of old, broken memories. He'd learned to let the word roll over him, but still, it felt as though it'd been ages since he'd heard the word directed at himself.

Close enough to confirm that Carmine was far from sober (and surprisingly ... small ... for a human, almost too small, though his own features were a bit more marred and Tristaan a bit too unfocused to particularly pay attention to what might as well have been a dirty mirror glaring back at him), the passive scowled, grip on the other man's shirt revealing strength that took advantage of his narrower frame."I'll say it again: I think it's in your best int'rest t'sleep this all off an' come back in th'mornin'. Y'ent worth wakin' Sparkles for in th'stat you're in, an' y'ent worth any ging from my pockets if you're jus' gonna call me names."

Tristaan didn't loosen his grip, however, expecting continued resistance ... or inviting it. For the moment, it was hard to tell.

Maybe it was the whiskey. He’d told himself that on too many different occasions, to justify something or someone, anything stupid and ugly he liked to think he’d never do otherwise. A heavy panic was thick in his chest, not blossoming, but bursting open like a nose against a brick wall. It flowed, and flowed, and flowed. The panic was sticky and hot and got all over everything. Something in him was snapping like cords of cartilage.

Carmine twisted his head away from the man’s gaze, heavy lids squeezing over eyes he thought too damning to be safe. He didn’t want to be close. He didn’t want this man to see his thin little nose or slender jaw or any of that forgotten nonsense. Break that nose. Smash that jaw. Blacken those eyes. Make that pretty golly boy face a wreck of what it once was so that no one can see. Cover it up, carve it off. No ink shall own you, no genetic blessing will sweeten you. So close, the litany of scars painting this man’s – this passive’s – face became all too clear when viewed through a fan of eyelashes.

Cover it up. Carve it off.

The buried strength in the man’s arms made his breath hitch. Knuckle bones rasped across his skin. His skin was like the thinnest tissue paper, nerves standing tense, on the verge of tearing just from the force of existing here in this moment. This would hurt. He wanted those knuckles wedged somewhere in his back teeth.

He knew there were others. Had to be. But they were hidden and silent creatures, betrayed only by a shock of crimson hair or a flash of damning yellow eyes, by small limbs and slender faces. They’d looked like children, bodies so lithe yet weighted with human rags. Like little kids playing dress-up -- but perhaps that’s all they ever were, the lost ones, the escaped ones. All the ghosts of galdori children playing stupid ugly plowfoot, hoping no one could see past the method acting.

The Carmine that once was, sweet Little Red, was no more. His bluebell eyes and candy apple curls were buried in a grave so deep not even the worms could nibble at him. He didn’t need some other Brunnhold refugee glimpsing a memory of that face and digging up that little corpse.

This was not about rent or pirates or cats anymore. The man was right. Those things were just that: things. They could wait until morning. Carmine would flee into anonymity or be beaten beyond recognition. That was all he wanted, now.

“I ent callin’ ye nothin’. Jus’ sayin’ what ye are.” A low rasp of words breathed up through broken teeth. He almost looked beatific.

Trembling fingertips tiptoed up to his hip. They caressed the leather pommel of a knife.

“Scrap.”

Unsheathed in a hiss, arced up in a slash towards the expanse of Tristaanian’s side and ribcage. This would not be deep. It less of an attempted stab, more of a request:

Let me go, it said, or put me in my place.

It wasn't really his style to beat ignorance out of the masses, wasn't his preference to perpetuate the kind of violence that seemed to surround his birthright with so much casual distaste. There'd been a time he'd been angry enough to do so, angry enough to hate and resent the very people who'd offered him kindness for the first few years of his freedom. Patience, time, and discipline had sweat and bled it out of him with the edge of a blade and a calm, even-handed old wick, but that didn't mean all the old wounds had healed.

No, there were plenty still left to drain and bleed.

That clocking word still stung, still implied he was unwanted, unnecessary, unfavorable. Meant to be discarded on that street corner in Muffey. Meant to be used as a thinking, breathing little machine in a factory full of other machines. Meant to be beaten and used. Broken.

Somehow, however, every time that word was breathed in his presence, even as a scrawny street child, even as a scarred, angry youth, and even as a calloused, cautious man, it rang hollow and false. Tristaan felt the shift in Carmine's body underneath his grip, caught the uncomfortable undertone in his quiet, rough words. He might have even caught a glimpse of something delicate beneath the grime and the bruises ... something familiar enough to give him pause, but only for a moment, blinking in the dark and the rain.

What would hurt more—the glint of metal that caught in the glow of phosphor street lamps or a godsbedamned word that lied?

Attempting to twist from the swing, the swordsman shifted his grip on the other man, shoving him away towards the wall. Hesitant to reach for the pistol tucked into the back of his pants, he brought his free arm, close-fisted, up toward Carmine's gut. Tristaan didn't really want to start something, but since it was started for him, he would finish it if he could. He may have been too near to entirely escape the knife, but he wasn't defenseless.

Sarinah was warm, comfortable and asleep. She frowned, eyes shut, as Tristaan left the warm cocoon they had created, hearing something about a drunk and the faint sound of bashing on the door. Drifting back to sleep, she was jerked awake by the yelling. Sitting up, she scrambled out of bed, throwing on the red short dress she'd bought in Surwood and pushing her hair out of her face.

Leaving the bedroom, she walked to the top of the stairs, looking down at Tristaan and an unknown bloody stranger in the doorway. He was loud and rude and complaining about something altogether too closely to the passive. Worried, she stepped down slowly, stopping in the middle of the staircase as she watched them.

As she watched, the men exchanged growled words, and quite suddenly, Tristaan's hand shot out and grasped the stranger by the shirt. The dancer felt her heart race, this wasn't right. Tristaan didn't get mad, not like that. Something very bad had been said..who was this man? There was movement, a glint of metal in the moonlight, swung at the wick-raised passive.

"No!" The brunette cried, running down the stairs towards the fighting men, drawing in her faint field. She stopped only a short distance from them, remembering what had happened in Vienda when Tristaan had been attacked last time. In the grogginess of sleep, she had left her sai upstairs.

"Stop it!" Sarinah yelled, unsure of what to do.

The blade, hastily drawn but angrily played, traced a thin, shallow line through Tristaan's torso. It was a broad nick really; a scratch compared to the words. But It was first blood.

Tristaan's shove knocked Carmine into the wall, jolting a lantern there and knocking its globe loose. The hurricane glass hit the floor and shattered into hundreds of tiny fragments in an instant, sole-slicing bits scattering far and wide across the wooden floor. Those barefoot in the tavern would have to be wary where they stepped.

The punch to the gut connected solidly, and with no give of air space behind the drunken passive to cushion the blow Carmine had the wind knocked solidly from him. His diaphragm convulsed mere moments in reaction, reactivating the flow of oxygen.

Carmine was happy.

The cords of muscle on his stomach were aching deep, pretty insides clenching and crushing the air out of his lungs. The collision was exquisite, the shattering glass was exquisite – his knees buckled from the sudden momentum, the crashing impact, and he would have crumbled to the floor had he not thought to steady himself against the wall. Carmine was used to getting hurtled around, be it down into the muck of an alley walk, against a brick wall or a metal lattice. The familiarity was a comfort.

There was a flash of bile in his throat, a stippling of glass in his arms. Bile swallowed, glass met with a hiss. A few shuddery breaths drawn – beneath all the scraggled damp of cherry curls, the sick quiver of a smile was forming, broad and bristling. It stayed on those lips, riveted. Not contrived. Merely happy.

Somewhere among the soft rise of whitenoise roar that was rising in his ears, he heard a woman screaming. Screaming something, screaming...

The second breath was forced back into his lungs, Carmine lurched forward again, knife at the ready. No coy slash this time – he was lunging in for a full on skewering.