open/closed ][ I should not be left to my own devices

[bealufull]

Who: Kaz Brekker & open
When: March
Where: Cadens & Horizon
What: catch all for post event stress, open posts in comments
Warnings: violence, bar fights, the damage of such fights, gambling, likely excessive drinking, talk of body horror, vicious mockery including taunting others about weight and looks





𝐈'𝐦 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐥

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[philancer]

He resists the urge to reach out and steady the other man, because he'd been very clear in what he was comfortable with. Sylvain's not sure if it's a matter of pride or something worse. So he keeps his hands to himself, even if the tighten into fists a moment to hold himself back before he purposefully tucks them away into his pockets so he doesn't forget himself out of instinct.

Falling into step besides Kaz, he keeps the pace slow and leisurely, wondering if he offered to heal him, if it would be accepted or prompt that same visceral response as before?

He makes a face at the question, however, and can't help a quiet laugh that holds the faintest hint of bitterness he can't quite hide all the way.

"I'm still figuring that part out. It's novel enough to be figuring out who I am, when I've never really been allowed to be just that before. But I'm afraid it's taking a bit of trial and error." His lips quirk faintly, sardonic. "Some habits are really hard to leave behind when they're as ingrained as breathing."

[bealufull]

Kaz pulls himself together in increments, an almost visible change coming over him as he does. Straightening to his full height, craftily using the cane to keep himself steady but not letting it seem he's using it at all, and schooling his expression to hardened and judgmental as if he's not swollen and bruised.

Kaz doesn't think he's the same but is it any different if everything and everyone you think you are was formed through trauma when you were nine and it was do this or die on the streets? He doesn't think of that thought, glad to focus on the other rather than himself.

"What habits do you want to leave behind? Who did you think about growing up to be? Or did you never even have a child's fantasies?"

[philancer]

He watches out of the corner of his eyes as Kaz draws his persona around him like a cloak, until there's almost no hint of the man he'd found hurt in that alley. He'd marvel at the impressiveness of that, if he didn't know exactly what it took to be able to do that so flawlessly. The amount of pain one had to hide, that one had to endure, to be able to mask it without so much as a flinch. To appear unyielding and unbending, when it was taking every bit of strength you had not to fall apart.

He knows how much it takes all too well. It's all too easy to see just as much of himself reflected in Kaz as he'd seen in Jesper - if in a completely different way. Although, he supposes, Jesper had been the mask he'd drawn around himself the same way Kaz now clutched his cane and drew himself upright.

He gives Kaz's question a serious moment of thought. Although when he asks him of a child's fantasies, all he can see is Miklan's face looming in his memory. When they were children, always pitted against one another, from the moment Sylvain drew his first breath. When they were older, with his brother's blood staining the lance that had been the root of every moment of hatred between them.

It felt silly, to admit that his biggest fantasy as a child, had been to not have Miklan look at him that way. To be brothers, like he'd watched Glenn and Felix be. It had been just as impossible a dream as any other he'd had over the years. Faerghus wasn't a place that was kind to naive dreams.

"I suppose I had some," he says instead, relieved when his voice comes out sounding normal. "Don't we all? I remember at one point wanting to be a famous wandering knight, riding throughout the lands and slaying monsters and bandits, rescuing damsels in distress. And there was definitely one summer when I wanted to run away and become a pirate, which seems really at odds with my knightly ambitions, looking back. For some reason, they'd struck me as more dashing. They certainly had a lesser reputation for sticks up their asses, that's for sure."

It's perhaps an evasive answer, but Sylvain has always been an expert at those. People rarely wanted to see ugly truths and much preferred the prettier alternative. Another one of those habits that comes to him as naturally as breathing. Give them what they want to see and everyone will be happier for it.