[PM to Join] Tristaanian Greymoore was Here

[Tristaanian Greymoore]

6th of Hamis, 2719
BRUNNHOLD | WELL PAST THE LAST HOUSE

Miss Madeleine Gosselin stared at him as though he were simply a painting askew on a wall or a sofa nudged too far out of place, the look of somewhat distant concern hardly one of emotional involvement even if Tristaan had already given her a reason to be afraid of him. She seemed confused by his knowledge, but he chose not to expand on how he knew what he knew. She seemed content enough to dismiss his specific understanding as a fluke and he was content to let her.

Slowly, like some timid hingle, the girl approached again, stepping from behind the wall into the hallway, just out of reach. He felt the brush of her field, however—she was close enough to remind him of that.

"I'm in th' wrong wing, then." He grunted, softly, just attempting to get a word into her ramblings as if he didn't know what else to do with her. She wasn't really talking to him so much as talking at him, talking through him. He might as well have been deaf or mute, grey eyes watching her work through their situation without at all needing his input and giving family details he didn't need to know nor remember. She had a brother. He, too, was someone's brother, but he didn't need to tell her because she didn't need to remember that, either.

"I usually don't—uh—work on this part of Campus." Was that even the right turn of phrase? How was he supposed to know? He swallowed any other excuses he might have come up with, tense-shouldered with his heart hot against his throat. Calloused fingers curled tighter around the familiar silver pocket watch hidden from view, pressing its engraved surface against his palm, imagining the faded spectograph inside with his boyish smile and Navinia's warm grin.

"Thank you."

He was capable of proper Estuan, he really was, whispering those words too as if he was afraid speaking too loud would send the girl scrambling off again into the dark, for good this time. Leaving him lost and alone. He didn't much like being alone here, but he wasn't sure being seen in the company of a young student was really much more comforting.

She seemed to have made up her mind, regardless of all her chatter about names on boards that sounded a lot like the docks of the Harbor where he'd find the names of ships he'd been expected to unload for the day or a lot like the task lists in the textile factory of his youth that outlined the chores the resident boys like himself were responsible for on top of long hours on the machines. Miss Gosselin even smiled at him, and, truth be told, the dark-haired passive didn't know what to do with the expression, a little worried that smiling back would be rude or unexpected.

Just a flicker of warmth appeared on his well-hewn features, the wrinkling at the edges of his eyes and the way his nose scrunched just-so making the old faded scar on his face just a little more visible. Grey eyes darted away from Madeleine's face for fear of lingering too long, just a handful of days in Brunnhold having turned an otherwise charming, confident creature into some kind of skittish, nervous animal. He loathed the reminder of all he'd ached and bled not to be anymore, but all it took was one child's face to remind him that his magicless birthright was still, would always be, inescapable.

"Is this what you're studyin', Miss Gosselin? Static?" He didn't need to ask. It was pointless to even seem interested, but Tristaan didn't clocking know how far their walk was, not like he knew where his knife was or he knew how far the Harbor was. He didn't know where they were going and he couldn't bear the thought of making it in silence. His sister'd once said she'd thought she'd enjoy static conversation, especially knowing it was one of the more used conversations among the ranks of the Seventen.

His jaw clenched and he might've apologized, but he didn't. He even chanced a grey-eyed glance back in the girl's direction, following at a respectable just-out-of-reach distance from her small form, eyes drifting to her bag,

"Did you—" He bit his lip, harder than he should have, but continued, quietly, "—I can, ye—you know, make m'self useful."

"Sometimes we are born with the keys
to doors we were not meant to open."
— Passive Proverb

[Madeleine Gosselin]

Very Late, 6 Hamis, 2719
A Tunnel Between the Static and Quantitative Wings

He thanked her, and Madeleine smiled encouragingly at him. She was a bit wide-eyed, her heart beating very fast in her chest, and she thought there was still something funny about the way he said it, although she wasn’t sure what. But she was helping him, even if it was her duty, and it was proper manners to thank her for it, maybe the first she’d seen from him – from Tristaan, Madeleine thought, a little unsure why it seemed strange to use his name – all night.

He didn’t really smile back, but Madeleine supposed that was asking too much. It was hard to keep smiling when he wasn’t, though.

“Oh,” Madeleine blinked at him, uncertain. Perhaps she wasn’t supposed to talk about it? She’d talked about much more than that to Fionn, though, so Madeleine supposed… without being sure why, she put Fionn in a very different category from Tristaan. Fionn was – well – not a galdor, of course, but he was smart. He had good manners, when he wanted to, anyway, and he was Niamh’s brother, but that wasn’t his fault. Madeleine felt rather a confusing mix on the subject.

“Yes,” Madeleine said after a moment. “But mostly physical,” she told him. It was a bit uncertain; she didn’t really think he’d understand the difference between them. She wouldn’t’ve, if she hadn’t come to Brunnhold. Of course he was at Brunnhold, but not – at Brunnhold. Madeleine’s face drew together in a little frown. She didn’t know if she ought to explain; she wasn’t sure if he’d understand anyway. She didn’t say anything, in the end.

Madeleine blinked at Tristaan when he offered to make himself useful. She had to stop and look back over her shoulder to do so, because he was trailing after her – like a shadow or a dog or something – and she wasn’t sure what he meant. His gaze went down; hers went down too. “Oh,” Madeleine said, looking at her bag. “No, that’s all right.” It was a bit heavy, but she wasn’t sure she wanted him to hold her pointe shoes. He might not know how to carry them properly, or how important and fragile they were.

They kept going; Madeleine found she wasn’t as lost as she thought she was, even if she was still, well, a bit lost. She found the staircase down, and then, to her delight, she found one of the tunnels that led between buildings, with the words Quantitative Wing printed on a sign at the side, and an arrow and everything.

“This way,” Madeleine turned and smiled at Tristaan, brightly. It dimmed, after a moment, because it was really rather awful smiling at someone who didn’t smile back at all.

Madeleine pushed open the doors between the buildings, and started down into the tunnel.

It was, she realized uneasily, very dark. She hadn’t realized how much light there was from outside before until there wasn’t any. There weren’t even any proper phosphor lights down here, just one lantern to the next, soft pools of light with big swaths of darkness between.

One of them was out, and Madeleine stopped, uncertain, at the edge of the light. She wasn’t afraid of the dark – she wasn’t a baby – but she didn’t like it either. She thought that was allowed, even for someone who was practically sixteen. After a moment, and a deep breath, Madeleine kept going. She wasn’t sure if having Tristaan there made it more or less frightening. He wasn’t a man, after all – she couldn’t be alone in the dark with a man, that would be terribly scandalous – but he wasn’t… not a man, exactly, either. She wasn’t sure quite how to sort it out. There was a lot to feel.

“It’ll be light again soon,” Madeleine said, her voice higher than usual. Maybe he was scared of the dark too – not that she was, she wasn’t a baby. But he was a passive, after all, so she thought she ought to reassure him, just to be safe.

[Tristaanian Greymoore]

6th of Hamis, 2719
BRUNNHOLD | WELL PAST THE LAST HOUSE

He only knew about what conversations the galdori he'd been around chose to talk about. He understood what was necessary for mending broken bones (or for breaking them), what was needed to fly an airship, and what kind of magic could see across long distances. He didn't always know the names for them all, often finding that galdorkind preferred to wear those words close to their chests as if it mattered. He'd read a bit here and there over the years, but, really, his knowledge was so shallow that the disciplines were just abstract concepts—all of them out of his reach, anyway.

He wasn't magical, after all.

Except for that one time he was.

He didn't know if his diablerie fell into any of the conversation categories or if it was just a terrible, dangerous abomination. He didn't know if a galdor could tell the difference in the middle of his uncontrollable, horrifying monic explosion or if it just felt like a disgusting mix of all of them. All he remembered were the sensation of it through his body, the sudden awakening of something inside and around him that he couldn't even stop no matter how much he'd wanted to and, of course, the aftermath of it all. That part he'd never forget. All of it he hoped he'd never experience again, even if it'd saved his life. Just that once. And at the expense of another's.

She refused his offer of help, and honestly, he couldn't blame her. He looked away at her no, clearing his throat.

"My sister was interested in Static, but she graduated years ago now—six, maybe? Seven. I don't remember. Probably why I ended up here." He didn't need to say that. It just spilled out, watching Miss Gosselin frown, feeling the ripple of discomfort even from the distance he kept. She didn't know what to do with him, feeling sorry for the pathetic creature he must've cut here in this uniform, here in this place where his kind were hardly even looked upon as anything but unwanted children, as anything but misplaced furniture.

Still, he followed, trailing a little further, not entirely comfortable with the idea of being accidentally seen too close, with feeling the weight of her field—even the bochi were so strong here!—or with the idea of not having enough room to run should he need it. He blinked when she smiled at him, too slow to smile back, too wary to fully express his gratitude to someone who didn't even seem sure she was convinced he was a person.

He knew he was, but just a handful of days here and he was already questioning that truth.

Glancing at the sign and the arrows, Tristaan nodded, drawing closer when she opened the door to hold it for her, grey eyes adjusting to the dark beyond them while he hovered in the threshold. Then, she was walking again, leading the way because all of this was just so natural to her, the sharp angles of hallways, the windows, the manicured lawns. The world outside Brunnhold's walls must've been the unknown for her, scarier and stranger, than the long stretches of darkness between low phosphor lights in the hall of the Quantitative Wing.

They entered a very underlit tunnel, and the passive realized he wasn't sure if he should walk closer or farther from Madeleine. He didn't want to be imposing—he'd already proven himself dangerous enough, honestly, even if he'd not meant to. She couldn't understand. She didn't know. He was sure the child's fears were grounded in fantasy and imagination, not in the pain of the harsh reality he knew.

The passive'd once been afraid of the dark as a child, he remembered. He remembered Navinia teasing him, but he also remembered crawling into her bed and telling stories together about slaying monsters and riding chroven until they both fell back asleep. He'd learned, since then, that the dark was hardly anything to be feared in comparison to the sorts of things that happened in it, in comparison to the types of people who often walked about in broad daylight instead. He'd learned there were worse things than imaginary monsters because horrors were real and he'd lived a few of them, often at the hands of beasts very much shaped like people, very much with faces like his own.

The walls here are high, though, Tristaan thought to say, red stone and thick, blocking out the tenderest, earliest light of dawn from reaching in.

He followed a little closer than he had, hands in his pockets, calloused fingers curled around the watch that no longer ticked, the smashed face of it some kind of clocking useless metaphor for his shattered childhood. He didn't stand too close, however, just out of arm's reach, just far enough away like some skittish animal only he was the one who didn't want her to be afraid of his touch. He didn't say anything, either, practically holding his breath out of fear of spooking his young, skittish guide, warranted though that fear probably was. He was left to the nervous flutter of his pulse in his ears and the anxious writhing of too many memories in his mind.

The tunnel was just a connection, he realized, and eventually, there was another set of doors with another sign. He hesitated to hold the doors open a second time, but only for a moment, quite capable of doing what was expected of him when not startled out of his wits.

He caught a glimpse of the main office for the Quantitative Wing from that next doorway, unable to miss the receptionist's desk which was, of course, empty and unlit. Next to it, however, was a large sign with a series of placards engraved with names and room numbers as well as a placard with arrows indicating where each of those series of numbers could be found. The dark-haired passive in his distracted haste and nervous worry didn't think anything of stepping ahead of the young galdor to walk toward the sign, still somehow managing to skirt around her at a respectable distance.

Moving close to it in the dark, it wasn't difficult for him to recognize his surname among the other names—Greymoore stuck out to him like a candle in the dark.

Helena Greymoore, Professor of Quantitative Theory

"Room 643." He read, again without hesitation in his ignorance, even pointing, before he realized what he was doing. He didn't read his mother's full name, he couldn't, but he saw it and his chest tightened, words thick against the back of his mouth all of a sudden both in chagrin at revealing his literacy and in hurt at seeing the name of the woman who'd birthed him only to abandon him,

"I mean, I think—"

"Sometimes we are born with the keys
to doors we were not meant to open."
— Passive Proverb

[Madeleine Gosselin]

Very Late, 6 Hamis, 2719
The Quantitative Conversation Wing

Madeleine didn’t understand what Tristaan meant at all, when he talked about his sister. He ended up here because she studied static? She wasn’t sure whether he was confused or not. You ended up here because you’re a passive, she thought of saying. It wasn’t your sister’s fault. She almost said it, too, but then she thought – he did probably know that he was a passive. If he blamed his sister for it, it was probably some sort of a delusion, and, thinking of how he had grabbed her arm earlier, Madeleine didn’t want to argue with him about that. Everyone knew that people who weren’t well could be very frightening and violent.

Or, the student thought, somewhat confused, it might be that he was just confused. Then she ought to correct him, she thought. It was all very hard to think about; she wasn’t in the least sure what the etiquette was for this sort of situation. In the end she didn’t say anything because she supposed that was the safest sort of option.

He didn’t say anything when she told him that they’d be out of the tunnel soon, but Madeleine thought he came a little closer to her, and she was glad she had reassured him. She did wish to take her duty of care seriously, and she felt she was off to a very good and proper start. Well – good, at least. She wasn’t sure yet if it was proper; she had a sinking suspicion it wasn’t. How was one supposed to sort out such things? Did propriety matter more than duty? Madeleine didn’t know how it all worked, how it fit together; nobody had ever told her.

It was a very big relief when they came to the doors, and Madeleine went through with a little sigh. There were more lights out here, although it was still night and all rather dark and spooky. Tristaan had held the door, and then he sort of darted ahead of her, and Madeleine stopped, uncertainly, for a moment, but he kept going, and so she kept going too.

He read the room number aloud, and Madeleine nodded. “That’s right,” she said, reassuringly. She hadn’t been sure if passives could read, generally; she knew Fionn could, as she had asked him and he’d told her so. She knew that they weren’t really supposed to. There was something funny about that, because of course she had been able to read before ten – Vespasian had read loads and loads of books before ten.

Of course, they weren’t passives, so maybe it made sense. Except, Madeleine thought, finding herself confused once more, nobody would have known he was a passive or Fionn was, before. She frowned, trying to think about it, and not in the least sure how to make sense of it all. Anyway, he could read, clearly, even if he seemed a little frightened about it. Madeleine wasn’t sure whether it was because he knew it wasn’t allowed and he didn’t like to break the rules, or because he was embarrassed that he wasn’t very good at it.

Anyway, she had thought it best to be encouraging, just in case. Madeleine knew a lot about how it was to be bad at something, and it never, ever helped when people pointed out how bad you were at it. Encouragement was much nicer. Even if you were good at something, encouragement was much nicer; it was always really nice when someone told her she had done well at confisalto.

“We can take the stairs up here,” Madeleine said, smiling at him once more, although just for a moment, because it was really awful to have someone staring at you like that, even if they were only a passive. She went over towards the stairs, adjusting her bag to her other shoulder – circle but her pointe shoes were so heavy, she’d never, ever realized – and began, steadily, to climb.