abraxaslogs | Open Log

Entry tags:

Open Log

Who: Jon Sims and YOU
Where: A few places in Thorne Castle
When: Before the Festival
What: Getting Acquaint (Let me know if you want to continue a TDM thread, and we can link it here and go on)
Warnings: N/A, will probably add.

Room 7

The first day, Jon just can't let himself just stop moving. He's already done everything he can to try to get the apprentices to give him more information, and they just keep assuring him that he'll know everything he needs to when he needs to. Which he interprets as; when they want him to. But they've also promised his powers will return, whether he wants them to or not, so there's that.

A bunk in a shared dorm doesn't shout 'honored guest' to him. He spends a few minutes stripping his bed, checking it minutely, and then making it again, using the activity of his hands to try to still his thoughts a little. To try not to worry about Martin. And the statement he can only hope he left entirely behind. When he's done that, he takes a moment, leaning on the bedpost to stare out the window beside it.

It's unsettlingly soothing, how little he can see from here.

Upstairs

Jon would have found the library even without it having been on that first rapid tour. He doesn't even intend to find himself there until he's there, looking down the rows of shelves. He prides himself on his research skills, but here he doesn't bother to look for something specific. Instead, he walks down one aisle at random, then another, keeping his hands folded behind his back until the distant, nagging feeling in the back of the head selects one volume, then another, then another.

He does check the flyleafs carefully, however.

In the study hall, he steers wide of those trying to learn to summon flames – Jon's not having anything to do with that, and the observant can guess why – one hand is already so scarred by burns that it doesn't move fluidly. And maybe that's why he's pulled to the young mage demonstrating a spell that heals small wounds.

Downstairs

He follows the dark stairs and rumors down with some anxiety, but it's no Panopticon down here. Only too-cramped cells, and conditions that would seem unrealistic in a movie. He eyes the guards, but doesn't like what he sees, and so keeps his distance as he moves along the cells. He's looking for someone in particular, but he won't find him. Instead, when the guards are out of earshot, he pauses.

“Do you know if there are more prisoners? Anywhere else?”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Majima had taken to leaning casually against the right wall of his cell as best to get first glimpses of people heading further into the dungeon from the stairwell leading outside. So long as the footsteps approaching didn't match the weight and gait of a guard, he kept to this position. (If he heard a guard approaching he swiftly but discreetly made his way to the back of his cell, into a shadowy corner with the rest of his cellmates avoiding guard contact as much as possible, and refrained from making eye contact of any sort.) Jon's footsteps weren't familiar so he stayed to watch the man approach.

At the question, Majima was pretty confident in the assumption that this guy was one of the welcomed guests. There wasn't any other reason for it. Unless, of course, it was some sort of trick. He ran with it anyway.

"Well, there's solitary confinement. But that's here in the dungeon. Who're you looking for?"

Another assumption but it seemed a safe one. Maybe he could ask around when they were at recreation or something. Not that Majima really had high hopes of finding whoever this guy was looking for if he couldn't find the person. Seemed like it would be easier for him than it would be for Majima.

The tunic is a giveaway - Jon is still wearing just what he's been given. And he too is keeping an eye out for the guards, as well as looking past Majima deeper into the cell.

"A man named Martin Blackwood. English accent, about this tall, might be wearing a tunic with the same symbol as you."

Might not, but it's a place to start.

"I'll keep my eye out for him just in case," Majima replied. He'd recently been gifted an eye patch by one of the constant benefactors down here--one Kiryu Kazuma of the honored guests--so the fact that he only had one eye was fairly obvious. Before it'd been questionable if it'd just been swollen shut from the abuse of the guards.

"You have reason to believe he's here? Or you just checkin' to see if he got pulled here and wound up down here instead of up there?"

Jon shakes his head, with a deep frown. "Nothing concrete. But we were together just a few minutes before I was pulled in." And he hopes that whatever interested the powers here in him, would also have caught up Martin. Or he thinks he hopes so. It's complicated.

"You came through the well as well?" He'll make a little face at the homophone.

Majima, contrarily, smirked slightly at the word play. He was quite fond of puns. However, had it been in his native tongue it probably wouldn't have worked anyway. Speaking the local language was a sore point but whatever worked to keep everyone on the same page.

"Didn't we all?" He scoffed lightly. "All of us 'guests'. The honored ones up top and those of us less fortunate down below." He made a thoughtful sound before continuing. "Dunno if proximity would matter so much with however they're pulling us. If so, half my staff would probably be here as well."

"I'm not optimistic about finding him here," he says honestly. "But I can't not look.

"What were you doing, when you were brought?"

Majima nodded in acknowledgement. That was fair. He wouldn't blame the man for trying.

"At work. I manage a cabaret. I'd give you my card but," he held out his empty hands, palms up, and shrugged, "they didn't make it here as you can imagine."

He's yet to find any pattern regarding who is upstairs and who down, but he adds that to the mental spreadsheet.

"You arrive here with that?" he asks, with a little gesture to the bruise he can see around the edge of that eyepatch.

Majima smiled a thin, humorless smile. "Got it from one of you generous lot. It's not like we get individual care packages down here. But it helps," he said as he touched the patch briefly with a fingertip.

Was he purposefully ignoring the possibility that the man was probably not referring directly to the eyepatch itself? Oh, yes he was. But it was a much better conversation topic than the bruises surrounding it or the story of the missing eye itself.

He gets it. From the look of Jon's face, someone tried to relieve him of one eye relatively recently too, and he's not interested in talking about that either.

"Anything else you need, currently?"

"Hm, you lot really are generous." He glanced back into the cell briefly, eye passing over his cellmates. He didn't let it linger on any of them but one in particular might have been in mind as he made a small request. "You think you could get a few more blankets down here? Or... a set of warmer clothes?"

"I think I can. I know who to ask, anyway. Think of it less as generosity than prudence - I don't know why I'm on this side of the bars and you're there. And I don't trust it not to change."

"Hmm. Seems like no one's willin' to answer that question of why we're here and others are up top. Dunno why you'd end up down here but consider it a deal. I like to repay my dues. Just... don't try to end up here too hard. Likin' all you generous folks out there." He said with a wry smile.

Jon makes a dismissive gesture at the idea of dues. "For all I know yet, they flipped a coin. But they haven't even bothered to invent a story why they've locked half of us up. So I don't know that keeping my head down would do any good."

"Fair point. But it can't hurt from what I've experienced." At least if he kept his head down the guards might not take an interest in him. Half of those bastards were real pieces of work and Majima wouldn't put it past them to try and make life miserable for more than just the prisoners. Or maybe he just felt that way, being one of the prisoners.

"I appreciate the advice." He's sincere, even if he absolutely doesn't intend to follow it.

"If you want to repay me for some blankets, just keep an ear out for Martin? Anyone by that name."

"I intend to. I can ask around once we're let into the yard for daily exercise. Don't know if anyone's heard about someone goin' missing or anything but... well, you never know, he might show up later, too. You know, he might take better to hearin' yer lookin' for him. What's yer name?" And because it was the polite thing to do, he introduced himself first after a brief pause. "I'm Majima."

"Jon Sims."

Through the bar, he offers his hand. There's a guard down the corridor now, but he doesn't care if he sees it. It's his right, the badly scarred one, but they aren't fresh. And they wrap around Jon's hand in exactly the pattern Majima's hand will, if he shakes.

"A pleasure, circumstances notwithstanding."

"Yeah, nice to meet ya, Sims-san."

Majima hesitated for a long enough moment over the handshake for it to possibly be realized that it wasn't a common factor in his culture. Or perhaps he was wary while locked inside this cage. Either way eventually he did take the hand in a firm grip of his own and give it a shake. He did not linger on the touch.

"I'll keep my eye out. And thanks for helping us out down here."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Open Log

Downstairs

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject