thecapitol | And that is why you remain a novice

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And that is why you remain a novice

Who| Altaïr ibn La-Ahad and anyone vaguely interested in drawing
What| DRAWING/teaching drawing if asked
Where| Central Commons, maybe also D11 floor or the roof
When| may 11-14 perhaps?
Warnings/Notes| Assassins drawing flowers

He was reluctant to demonstrate even the most unassuming skill in front of these "cameras" he'd been warned about, especially since he promised someone he'd draw something else of a much more rebellious nature. But there were new drawing tools in this strange land, and he felt obligated to at least try them out in his downtime. Even an overachiever like him knew he couldn't leap across roofs tracking Peacekeeper patrol routes with no rest for his limbs. In a few hours he might sleep or scout the city again.

He procured some pieces of paper and idly drew lines in various types of pens. Ballpoint didn't do justice to the curling forms of the birds or plants he made. But that was why he purchased some ink and a few dried reeds from a flower-arranging shop. He cut them into flat-nibbed pens with knives in the kitchen (and reluctantly put the knives back).

With calloused hands he sketched and inked without intent, which was unlike him. He always did things with a purpose, but at least this was better than sitting in a corner lamenting his captivity. He drew animals, plants, and random decorative motifs. He very carefully avoided drawing people, fearing the faces of those he knew at home might show up in them.

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Bayard comes to the roof once a day, ostensibly to "get some fresh air" but really because every morning when he wakes up he wants to believe that people really make buildings so tall, that he didn't just imagine this accomplishment of mankind in a fitful dream. He'll pace around the sides of the roof, staying far away from the edge, looking out over the city with a broad grin that makes his face round and bubbly, thinking that if he must be taken so far from home at least he's been taken to a place that provides wonders to him.

Today he carries looseleaf papers for his 'homework', a drawing for President Snow, and a fistful of markers. He's trying to lay them out without letting the wind catch them, and that means taking rocks from the roof garden to pin down the corners. He's got a few of his canvases pinned down when he notices Altair, and more importantly, notices that Altair is drawing.

He walks over, hands in his pockets and clenched around those markers as if they're about to fly away too, posture otherwise open and guileless and not seeing Altair as a threat at all. "Pardon, sir, but where did you come across proper ink?"

He'd avoided jumping straight into drawing the buildings, wondering he he'd be suspected of trying to memorize their facades for easier climbing. Perhaps after this next flower.... There was a young (presumably European) boy fiddling with papers nearby, but Altaïr ignored him until he approached. He had already occupied the table in this corner of the garden, and it hadn't occurred to him to share.

His accent was strange, different than the native citizens of this city, but Altaïr paid that about as much mind as he did all the other languages and customs he could encounter back home, even within a single city; he noted it, then filed it away as simple fact, and not something to ogle or point out. The tawny man met Europeans on pilgrimages or (unfortunately) Crusades, and even learned three of their languages. That helped him listen in on their conversations.

"They sell them in stores around the city, though mostly just to artists and craftsmen. The ink is different than the ones I remember. Otherwise, it seems everyone prefers to write with the kind that stays in the pen."

He pointed to one of the ballpoints with his free hand to show him. There was no getting around the fact that his missing finger was more noticeable here, trapped in a building full of people he was forced to see again and again. This sort of situation had him questioning the Brotherhood's tradition of removing it for the use of the hidden blade. If the blade's design could be altered.... But that was a problem for another time.

"I am neither an artist nor a craftsman, but I do enjoy the hobby."

Edited 2015-05-16 08:21 (UTC)

"You're a right sight at it," Bayard says, glancing only briefly to the ballpoints and instead finding himself absorbed with the sketches of buildings and flowers Altair has across his pages. "At drawing, I mean. If you didn't just tell me otherwise, I'd reckon you were a craftsmen or an artist for the press."

It's the sort of practiced skill Bayard would expect from a lady who had time to curate her techniques in the parlor in times of peace, making herself marriageable by playing the dulcimer or singing - but Altair looks anything but a soft, marriageable lady like his cousin Melisandre. He has the air of a man who doesn't work very hard at things most men would find too hard to attempt.

Bayard notices the missing finger. He doesn't say anything about it. He has learned from his father not to question a man's wounds, to let him speak about them if he wants but never to invoke them himself.

"I didn't understand those pens when I came here. I thought they were reeds and tried dipping them to make them work and I gummed them up, I'm afraid."

"I watched someone writing with them, and saw that they already had the ink inside. A simple enough concept, if one has the tools to craft such a thing. Most questions can be answered simply by watching others."

If Bayard was a grown man, Altaïr would have carried a tone of superiority. But children he gave the benefit of the doubt. It didn't make sense to lord himself over someone several years his junior.

"This as a profession would not suit me. I like to be out and about." As evidenced by hardly keeping to his living quarters at all. "I am only resting now. And you? What were you working on?"

"I probably ought to do that more. I just get carried away by the excitement of it all." He unfolds some of his papers and displays the clumsy, crude drawings to Altair.

"Only pictures. I like to draw horses and battles, like Father's in." Bayard's face glows with an enraptured reverence when he speaks of his father, and thinks of the good Colonel protecting the women and children of Jefferson against the might of the Yankees with only his wit and his horse and a handful of rejects from the army proper. "What profession are you, sir, if you ain't an artist?"

...Oh Bayard. You tried so hard.

"I grew up in a scholar's library," he answered evasively, voice smooth with practice. "I was taught to write and speak in different languages from a young age. I visit other scholars in the cities and bring them information." He neglected to say that he visited Assassins posing as potters and cartigraphers in addition to actual scholars.

He picked up one of Bayard's papers. "You would like to draw what you've seen, yes? I have not seen a horse here since I arrived. It might be difficult to find a suitable subject.... If you do, remember that the eye sees truly, but the mind plays tricks, and so guides your hand wrongly." He wasn't going to mince words. The drawings needed some work. "The first step is always to see clearly. Do not trust in what you think to be true, only what you see. Unless the horses in your land are different, you've forgotten a few bones." He pointed with the other end of his pen to the relevant spots on their legs.

"Your father is a soldier?"

"Great God." He looks exhilarated by the idea of a world so different than his own; he has never been raised in Father's library, only being allowed in once an evening for a goodnight story, if that. It's the realm of men, not boys.

Bayard may not make much of a good artist, but he is an ardent student, and responds to Altair's instructions with nothing short of rapt attention. When Altair points out the missing bones, Bayard leans in to look at his drawing, squinting and not taking it a bit personally, surfacing with a guileless smile to say "I reckon you're right about that. Lord knows I been around horses enough, I don't know how I thought their legs looked like that."

He takes a seat on one of the stone benches next to Altair.

"He's a Colonel, sir." Bayard beams with such pride that one might mistake him for being the bearer of such a title.

"I am not familiar with that word. A title?"

He was talking to the son of a military commander, if his hunch was right. Not really the type of people Altaïr liked to work with, since he found himself mostly outside of the law and purposefully avoiding any side of a war. Soldiers and guards had the red aura of an enemy in his second sight. He guarded his expression.

"You must be very proud," he stated the obvious. "I took my father's profession as soon as I was old enough. Do you plan to do the same?"

"Yes. In the military, although he was voted out of it, so now he just runs his own group of irregulars, he calls them. Protecting the women and children of the Yoknapatawpha territories."

He nods eagerly. "If there's still a war to be fought, I'll be registering in a few years. You're supposed to be sixteen but I don't reckon anyone will stop me if I do it a few months before. And you? When were you old enough?"

His father was not so bound to the rules as he thought. Interesting. Altaïr wondered more and more about this soldier's son.

"As soon as I learned what it meant to wield a blade," he said, still evasive as ever. "Any attempt to lay it down since then has failed. My cause is peace and the protection of innocents. Even without the Crusaders, my home has been surrounded by states vying for succession and power. Every noble believes himself a king, every king believes himself or his faith wrongly attacked, and they will drag their people into battle with them whether they will it or not."

His voice grew harder than he intended. He'd seen the battlefields of the Crusade and the bodies still being picked at by crows in Acre. With Adha, maybe, he might have stopped fighting and embraced a life of peace. But that dream died with her.

"You should wait until you are of age. You will miss having your hands free once you put a sword in them."

"They sound like Yankees." Bayard's been drinking the Confederate kool-aid since before the war even began, being not only a native Mississippian but the son of white landowner, a white slaveowner, one who is willing to lay down his belief in blood for his right to own another living man or woman without the encumbrances of a federal government. Bayard neither knows nor has opinions of any nuance about the government, but he believes with all his heart in a cause which, to him, is still awkward-shaped and grand and undetailed.

"It don't matter what I'll miss, sir. It matters what protects us and our way of life best. If I ought to lay down my life for Mississippi, or even just for Jefferson, I will with pride."

Being an Assassin was the only life he knew. While he questioned Al Mualim incessantly, he still only had his guidance and the Creed to go on—as well as what he saw with his own eyes. Increasingly, he was beginning to see things were not so simple as he thought. He thought of Garnier de Naplouse's dying words. He had seemed so sane and so sure of his cause. Yet, his horrific work on kidnapped slaves spoke otherwise.

"I do not know what those people or places are—or your way of life, for that matter. But you spoke of protecting innocents. Never forget to do that."

The first part of the Assassins' Creed ordered them to stay their blades from innocents. Altaïr had broken that rule, among others, when he skirted the fine line between killing a possible snitch or finding another path around him. Al Mualim had everything taken from him and made him start over in rank, but Altaïr still had enough pride to continue fighting for ideals he was more sure about. Those who could not defend themselves against corrupt guards or tyrants had an ally in him. It made him friends among common folk and vigilantes, but it also made him enemies.

"It will set you apart," he warned. "You may even be persecuted for it."

"I'd die before I forgot," Bayard says, with all that purity of someone who hasn't really considered the prospect but has devoted themselves to it too far to back out even if they did.

He sits down and starts to draw a bit more, trying to imitate the beautiful designs Altair has been working on.

"I don't care if I'm persecuted. Jesus Christ was persecuted too, I hear, and he saved all of mankind. At least, that's what my Granny tells me."

"And do you also intend to save all of mankind? That is a heavy burden."

He made no mention of his own goals, to fight for that until he could no longer. Altaïr was still young enough to think that if he just tried hard enough, problems would be solved. He could not understand an older man's wish to retire and lay down their sword because they thought they'd done enough. Altaïr had left off his drawing now, too distracted by thoughts he had a hard time putting into words. He spoke haltingly,

"I was taught it is better to live for others than to die, to escape danger to fight another day. But I was also taught not to fear death and the rewards it brings... Even now I am not sure of the reward, but I have always been more concerned with how I carve my mark on this world than the next."

Haruto had been more withdrawn than he might have otherwise been for a variety of reasons. It was only lately, though, that he had noticed this. Confined to the Tribute center for his misdeeds and having to ease up on his training regimen to recover from the lumps he took while engaging in them, he couldn't run anywhere near as far from his troubles. Nor could he ignore that there were new people on his floor.

Like this guy here, sitting around and drawing. Hadn't he thrown a chair on his first day? That was the kind of thing he could sympathize with. Chair-throwing sounded positively therapeutic right now. Realizing that he's both overdue to say hello to the guy and curious as to just what he's drawing, Haruto strolls casually on up, a cup of coffee in his hand. And he watches quietly for a few moments before commenting.

"...you're pretty good."

He had, thankfully, been prevented in throwing the chair. However, people liked to talk as if he did that habitually and would waste no time doing it again. Fools. He knew about the cameras, he wasn't that dense.

And since he knew about cameras, he no longer minded that another resident was openly staring at him. He felt as though eyes were on him at all times, anyway. It wasn't as if he was doing anything wrong at the moment. Part of why he drew was to relieve some of the anxiety the thought of cameras brought him. He did not look up until spoken to.

"A hobby is soothing to—What are you drinking?" he interrupted himself.

It smelled familiar, perhaps some far-flung scent he once spied a merchant carrying. Coffee had yet to become insanely popular in the Holy Land, and he did not identify it right away. Many things in Panem—clothing, buildings, even the yoğurt that once belonged to places like Kustantiniyyah—were the same to him, but so very, very different.

It seemed like it was going to be a normal conversation for all of five seconds... and then Haruto found himself sharply reminded of his first time meeting Aragorn. The coffee had caught him off his guard, too. It brings a smile to his face.

"Coffee. I just brewed a pot. I can get you a cup, if you want?" Because it's not that far from here to the kitchen. Because it's a nice thing to do. Because asking an avox to do it is the last damn thing he wants to do. And he's had good luck in his life thus far, making friends over coffee.

The more he learned about this place and its customs, the more easily he could blend in. Normally he didn't accept drinks from strangers, but he saw no reason anyone would want to poison him here. If the rulers of the Capitol wanted him killed, they would simply arrest him and do it, not waste good poison on a captive.

"Yes. I'm curious. It smells like something familiar."

"A lot of people say that." He grins, nods, and starts back to the kitchen. "I'll just be a moment."

It's more like a little under a minute, for he's gone to the trouble of not just filling a mug with coffee but tossing a few little packets of chilled cream and the sugar bowl and a spoon onto a tray. It's that he brings back out and sets upon the table, and he then retreats to a nearby chair to sip at his own coffee. "Some people like it black, but I think it's better with some sugar." It's up to him what he does with his. It's very good coffee, whatever the case. The Capitol spares little expense.

Altaïr sniffed the fresh coffee curiously.

"I have definitely seen this before. A bean roasted.... Why would anyone put sugar in it?" he wondered more to himself than to Haruto. If he recalled correctly, coffee was ground, put in water, and taken black. "Sugar is so costly..."

Honey was the usual sweetener where he came from, since sugarcane required so much water and labor-intensive processing. He left the packets untouched and took a sip. He did not have a refined taste for coffee, it being somewhat rare. It tasted more bitter and burnt than it smelled.

"Interesting. You drink it regularly?"

"It's pretty bitter if you don't." The talk of sugar being costly, of all things, strikes him as odd, too. But didn't it used to be that way, years and years and years ago? He shrugs, his own cup of coffee lifted partway to his lips. "A lot of things that you'd think were costly are easy to get, here." Welcome to the lap of luxury, where the real price is that you're expected to suffer and die for it every so often.

He takes another swig of his own coffee, and nods. "Maybe a little too regularly. It's addictive. You miss it when you can't get a cup. One of the worst parts about the arenas." He grins as he says it, and stifles something of a laugh. The pain and the suffering and the dying are the actual worst parts, but you're not supposed to admit these things too loudly.

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And that is why you remain a novice

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super old, feel free to drop this if you want

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