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Who| Roland Deschain and Firo Prochainezo
What| talking about sad things
Where| the detainment center
When| late february
Warnings/Notes| nothing really, mostly talk of death and war, etc

When he's not trying to keep his body in good condition - and there's something insulting about the fact that he has to, that becoming withered and weak and no longer being able to count on his body, the one thing which, through everything, he has always been able to depend on, is even a danger here, on top of everything else - Roland is trying to keep busy. Not much way to do that, in this place, but it's all he has. He sits in this prison's open rooms, where at least other prisoners can come and go, where there are people.

He doesn't pay much attention to them. Everyone he'd care to pay attention to is gone. Nearly everyone. He only needs them to be there, needs the guards to be there, too, a reminder. Something to keep him still.

Signless is still out there, somewhere. Alain is still out there. Alive and fighting. They might be, anyway. Doesn't help as much as he needs it to.

He takes apart those two mechanical fingers, sometimes, sets all the pieces out very neatly, cleans them, puts them back. The first time he'd taken them apart in this place with the dull, sorry excuses for tools which are all the guards will let him use, Signless had just returned. He'd needed the other man's hands to keep his own steady. Roland's hands are very steady, now.

Other times he sews. He doesn't need to. Roland hadn't thought, back before this Panem's rot had broken into real war, that he could give less of a shit about clothes than he did then. But the guards will let him use a needle, they will let him have thread, and so when the cogs and gears of those two fingers are as shining and clean as they are going to get he sews useless loops around the edges of the collar and sleeves and every edge he can find. Something to do.

Something to keep him busy, and he does it all with singleminded focus, with the sort of look about him that tends to make anyone passing take a second look at whatever's in his hand, trying to figure out what it is that's so important about thread or needle or splayed out metal bits of him. He pays no mind.

This does not mean he is not aware, of course. If he has nothing else, he has his instincts. He has always had those, and it would take more than even this long, slow sink into this mire of isolation and grief to convince him to abandon them. A part of him is aware of anyone entering whichever room he's in, will note it on the rare occasion that it is someone he cares to know. He'll look up, watch with an intent, steady focus, and if they pass by he will look back down at his hands and start them moving again. Something to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Firo had been looking carefully at the tabletop, resisting the urge to glance around and make sure no one was watching. It's not that he's ashamed of Roland, but. Well. People see things and make assumptions and then they try to kill you because of those assumptions.

Luckily, Roland startles him out of those wary thoughts, and Firo doesn't move but looks straight up at him. "What? No, I just--" Crap, is this part of the promise? Being all touchy-feely in both physical and emotional ways? What the hell is he getting into? He trails off; shouting may just draw attention. "I just thought it'd help..."

He did say he was upset. They still need to solve all that, even if it's starting small. "Is it more questions about your people you want? To make you feel less... you know." Afraid and grieving, to be specific, and Firo won't forget that any time soon.

'You know'. Not terribly specific, especially since there are quite a few things Roland has been feeling, trapped in this place. But he's pushed Firo enough; this one thing he'll let pass. "I wouldn't mind telling you of my home. I wouldn't mind that at all. But Firo, so long as you don't avoid those parts of me out of fear, I'll be alright."

And, hey, lucky you, Firo, unless you try to move off Roland is just going to keep his arm around your shoulders, maybe even rubbing that shoulder a little and hardly realizing he's doing it. It's habit.

He shakes his head. "I won't. I wouldn't ask you to tell me about the things you said you won't talk about... but I'd like to know about the rest of it. What all your friends were like, what you did together."

Oh dear. Roland may not notice it, but Firo certainly does. He stiffens just a little but doesn't move away an inch--he's going to see this through, for his friend. He supposes he's suffered through worse things for people; far back in the private corners of his mind, he admits that this isn't so bad.

"What they were like." It wouldn't be accurate to say Roland doesn't notice Firo's discomfort. His training wouldn't allow him to miss a detail like that. But he doesn't think of it. The closeness itself is something Firo isn't used to, Roland knows that. "That's too much to cover in one evening. Cuthbert was a pain in the ass. Alain was patient. Jamie was thoughtful. Can that tell you the whole of them, without a great deal more telling? When we were children, Cuthbert and I, we'd gather up bugs and run up to the battlements, and drop 'em on the heads of the lords and ladies passing by below. When we got a little older the four of us would sneak near the beekeeper's hives and steal their honey. We'd dare each other to spend nights near the graves, too - those were back in the days when we could still argue over ghosts, whether they were anything more than legend."

"That time was very far from this one. Very far from everything, it seems like, sometimes. But mostly, we were boys. We used our time as all boys do, more or less. Your world must be different from mine, but surely not so different in that way?"

“Too much for now, but… we can always do this again.” Not that Firo’s hopeful or anything. Just putting it out there. He stares straight ahead, (not) totally nonchalant.

“Not that different at all. Take out the lords, make the honey almost anything else, and it'd be exactly the same.” He grins, remembering those times with his friends. Ghost stories, stealing, generally being menaces. For all the clouds that hung over them, it wasn’t all bad. “I just can’t imagine you doin’ anything like that—botherin’ the lords, stealin’.”

Roland makes an amused noise, aiming a faint but real smile down at Firo, and then thinks over the rest of his words. "'This'?" It takes him a moment to realize what Firo means, because for him 'this' is nothing out of the ordinary. Or, if they were anywhere else but here, anyone else but prisoners, it wouldn't be.

"Aye. I'd like this again. And we knew what to steal and what not to, of course, although I think Cuthbert sometimes forgot. We knew what we could get away with. Mostly. Why, Firo? What sort of child would you have taken me for?" If Roland looks amused, well, that's because he is. He thinks he has a sense already of Firo's answer.

Firo beams to hear the agreement, but quickly tries to master his face and keep it down.

Picturing Roland as a child is hard, in the first place. But if he has to try... "Not one that'd have any hobbies in common with me and my friends. I woulda' bet you were just as quiet and as much of a goody-two-shoes when you were a kid as you are now. Probably still a know-it-all, too."

He doesn't say those things without affection; he's grinning again, playfully.

"A goody two-shoes? Well, you're not wrong on those others, but that one, ah..." Roland pauses, eyebrows furrowed, digging through some mental boxes. Language, the slang of this world, so like the slang in that other world which he knows not to think too hard on. Quite a lot before he came to Panem that Roland can not think too hard on, but language itself should be safe. "Ah, here it is: a brown-noser, or suck up? Have I caught your meaning there?"

Roland has a very impressive command of slang. “Close. I wouldn’t say you’re a suck-up, exactly—you’re probably the one guys suck up to.” He taps his chin as he thinks on it a little more, “Stuck up, maybe. Like a kid who’d whistle for the cops if he saw somebody snatch a wallet.”

An outright sin.

"Again, parts of that aren't terribly far off. Being one of this world's tributes never did throw me quite as much as it did some, and that's why. There will always be those who try and cozen men of position and men of blood, thinking to trick them into granting some kind of power. The fans of this world are far stranger, but the rest of it's not so different from life in Gilead, in its day. As to the rest-"

Roland shakes his head and focuses on Firo again instead of on his memories, the skin beside his eyes crinkling up and his voice taking on a dry, teasing tone. "Firo, what have I ever done, that you think so lowly of me?"

Wow. He's dropped hints before, but Firo never really had such an illustration of what kind of position Roland occupied back home.

Definitely not the kind of kid Firo and his friends would've hung out with. Not unless they were trying to scam him out of his allowance.

"I don't think lowly of you. I woulda' called you a rat or a snitch if that's what I thought." It doesn't come to him consciously, but this is one of the first times that he's divorced collaboration with the law in general from those words and their stigma. Maybe people can still be okay if they're that kind of person. But those are thoughts for another say. And Roland's always been an exception anyway.

"It's just that you're different from us. Like the opposite." Having clarified his position a moment ago, Firo relaxes enough to try teasing right back. "Nobody I know would call themself a man of blood."

"Would they not? It only means a man's line is threaded true, and that the thread stretches back some ways. In the case of my old friends and myself, to a man named Arthur and his - well, they weren't called gunslingers back then. It hardly matters now. I don't know whether this world has any similar legends, anyway. Does that make us opposites? You don't feel so opposite to me. Not because of that, at least."

Firo laughs and waves his hand--this just proves his point, he thinks. "Yeah, none of that makes sense to me." Sounds rather too fancy for a couple of immigrant kids.

"Not in a bad way or anything." That he truly means. He won't hold the circumstances of Roland's birth against him. He laughs, "Then because of what?"

They're definitely opposites, in Firo's mind, which still isn't a bad thing. At least, not for Roland.

He shrugs, then thinks about it. "You're young, for one thing. Very young. Suppose I was too, once, but that was very long ago. I could try to explain the rest a little further if you like, but I mostly meant that circumstances of birth - whatever yours may be - are the least of our differences. Do you really not see those differences, Firo? Or did you only want to see which ones I'd point out?"

“Mostly just curious what you'd say.” He smirks, “It was nicer than I expected.”

He clears his throat; he's still nestled right in Roland's side, but he straightens his back. “For your information, I’m not that young--I'm 22. Actually, probably older, by now.” He’s even been on his own as an adult since before he was 10. Besides, isn’t he mature for his age anyway?

"Oh, aye, how could I have missed it?" The 'it' in question is Firo's hair, which he picks up a hank of and lets fall. "More grey in your hair than mine. Cry your deepest pardons, grandfather." Roland's eyebrows rise and his head dips, the closest to a bow he can get without moving from Firo's side, which he does not intend to do. He has some sense that sitting like this is maybe a single-use offer, or at least, a rare one.

"Aged and worldly as you are, you must have insight I lack. Would you be so kind as to share it with one as young and foolish as I? Just what should I have said of our differences, if I hadn't spoken so nice?"

Edited (icon) 2016-05-19 20:42 (UTC)

For a moment, Firo stares at Roland as if he's gone crazy when he starts messing with his hair. "H-hey!" He gets it when his friend speaks more--he knows when he's being teased. But Roland? Seriously? "You know what I meant!"

"A-and just... Well, you know a lotta things." He bobs his head, conceding, "And you're quieter." If pressed, Firo would have to admit that Roland is, essentially probably older and wiser (well, definitely older).

"Quieter, mm, I'll give you that. But you'll 'know things' one day too, Firo. That's only age speaking up again."

Firo doubts that; Luck's about as smart as Roland and he can't be more than a few months older than Firo. He shakes his head, laughing. "I don't know about that. I know some things, though. I could teach you how to pick a pocket sometime."

Roland's taught him so much. It's only fair that Firo teach him something in return.

That sounds like that old familiar habit, habit of prisoners, of soldiers, of those in situations which some deep part of them does not expect to come out from. Making plans. Building somedays between one another, as Roland has done before. In this very building, too.

Well. Maybe Roland's still got one or two somedays left in him.

"Will you? Very kind. Maybe then you'll let me finish teaching you how to make a stitch." And here Roland casts his eyes at Firo's 'work' with Roland's shirt, expression dry. There's a shirt he may not be wearing any time soon.

"Besides, what makes you so quick to assume I don't already know?"

Firo follows his eyes and sighs at the sight of his own work. Well, he tried, didn't he? "...Fine, yeah. But I thought you weren't gonna give me the answers?"

Hang on, though--the next thing Roland says is more interesting than being pouty. Firo blinks; something like childish glee spreads over his face, and he jostles Roland's side. "Come on, you? Are you serious?"

This is great. Maybe Roland isn't such a stick in the mud.

"Been a while, of course, I've let the skill lie fallow a long time. Maybe too long. Probably couldn't do it with these fingers."

He wiggles the fingers of his right hand, watching the two metal ones move, but not feeling them. No sensation there. That'd make things harder.

"Why not me?" Again, Roland recognizes that they've hit one of those spaces where he isn't sure how Firo sees him. He doesn't mind, really. But it's interesting.

"Don't get me wrong, mostly I just don't think about how you're a cop." Isn't he gracious, forgiving Roland his sins? He shrugs, still grinning at this revelation. "But you are, and I thought you were the straight arrow type."

Like Edward and Victor but not terrible. They're not the best of company, in Firo's opinion, which is why he tends to put Roland in his own category. An exception.

"Besides, based on what you said just now, I wouldn't think a guy who just stole stuff like honey would need to know how to pickpocket."

"I've needed to know a great many things, in my time. But your cops, Firo." Roland straightens a little, turning toward Firo. This may be a silly little conversation, mostly without point, but it may be exactly what Roland needs. He's not thinking of anything much, right now. He's thinking of Firo, his friend warm and close beside him. He's thinking of Firo's world, his cops which are so like, and maybe so unlike, the old gunslingers of his own world. Compare him to the Roland of perhaps a quarter of an hour ago and he's much changed: his posture's easier, his expression lighter. The sorrow's there, that trapped feeling, that restlessness, but he isn't thinking on it just now, and it almost doesn't show.

What shows is curiosity, focus. This is another world, another culture, the home of a man he loves. That makes it important. "Are there some skills they're forbidden from learning? I may be like them, but I'm not of them, exactly. Haven't asked you much about them, either, have I? Perhaps I should have."

Firo's never sure what's going to be important with Roland, so he takes note of the straightening, the sudden change in his expression. There's a lot he just can't understand about his friend, but he can at least use those scraps of information to guide him to what he hopes is the best thing.

That's why, as well, he puts a finger to his chin and gives the question much more thought than he otherwise would. "I don't think so, not really. They can pretty much do whatever they want--Edward even used me to catch a murderer once and took all the credit." He folds his arms. Maybe elbowing Roland a bit, but he figures it's more important to be close than to avoid that.

"A guy on his beat--that's the area they patrol--does whatever. They can pinch stuff from shops, get free drinks, anything. I don't think they really bother with pickpocketing. A lotta guys don't, even guys in my Family or other... well, you know. People like me. With the cops, I guess they never have to be that sneaky."

He looks back at Roland, carefully watching his expression.

Edited 2016-05-28 05:16 (UTC)

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Roland is the the dinh of dorks

beef jerky stork dork

What more could you want in a friend?

and he comes with bonus fainting acton!

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some parts may be missing, discount price $19.19

A+

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