Open | Action | You can take the boy out of the Garrison ....

[averygoodshot]

It was one of those mornings when Aramis woke up inhaling smoke and hearing the sound of the Garrison being blown up, even as they were mourning the death of the man all the Musketeers considered their father.

Even as he flung himself to wakefulness, lungs heaving for breath, heart pounding raucously against his chest, Aramis realized that that wasn't the case. That here he and Porthos were in this strange place with a safe and sound Garrison.

It did make the idea of going back to sleep impossible.

Clad in his trousers and a loose tunic, his pistol and arquebus on the table in the courtyard of his home, first, he takes up his sword. He doesn't want to wake Porthos by firing his gun, even if that is what he's best at. Next to his pistols, too, is a little golden ball that he doesn't know nor understand. He hasn't fussed too much with it, as he knows that "gifts" from this place do not come without a price.

So, should anyone pass by the strangely rustic building in the middle of Itinere and peer into the entryway, they will see a man fencing a wooden post into submission. He thinks about Paris, his home. He thinks about Porthos, about their relationship now and what it had been here before. He thinks of friends here and there. He thinks too much, even about that golden ball on the table. If only he could keep himself from thinking.

Comments

[thefeckingmega]

"Paris! I've read about that place. City of love, supposedly. Which has always made me wonder whether there's a spell or somethin' on the city that makes people who go there fall in love. Or maybe a feckin' Unseelie's there makin' people fall in love." Her nose wrinkles a bit at the thought.

It only becomes more wrinkled when she bites off a piece of the chocolate and finds it not at all sweet. Have you ever seen an animal with peanut butter in its mouth? That's Dani for a few moments. She immediately tears off a piece of bread and shoves it into her mouth to cover up the bitter taste. Because ew, that's just not right.

"I've only ever been in Ireland... long as you don't count the Silvers." The Silvers, which had taken away five years of her life. "Dublin needs me though. It's kinda the center of the whole Unseelie problem we have right now."

[averygoodshot]

"And have you any luck finding your way back?" Aramis asks. "Porthos and I have often sought our door back to Paris and have had no luck."

This chocolate, for the record is quite sweet by Musketeer standards. The food of the day now is very salty and very sweet. Nearly overwhelmingly.

"Paris needs Porthos and I and yet, here we are."

[thefeckingmega]

"Nah. They must really want me here too though I can't tell why." Dani feels kind of useless here, really. There's only a handful of things that Dani is good at and all of them don't seem to have any use here beyond showing off and being all talk and no show. It's annoying as feck.

But, in true Dani O'Malley fashion, she turns it into a positive. Her lips pull into a cocky grin that she tosses Aramis's way. "'Sides me bein' feckin' awesome. They must want awesome people here. True heroes. I mean look at you and your friend. Me and Peter. I wonder if others are as feckin' cool as us."

[averygoodshot]

Deciphering what she says, Aramis grins. "Perhaps there is a need for us, indeed. I wonder what that purpose is, though."

His good cheer fades for a moment as he tries to imagine what it was that could take him and Porthos here when everything is falling down in Paris, when Grimaud needs to be stopped, when the Queen needs him -

He sighs.

[thefeckingmega]

"Feck if I know." Dani says with a shrug before she pushes another bite of bread into her mouth. She's used to people bigger and more powerful than her wanting to use her for their own purposes. She figures whoever brought her here will get around to letting her know why eventually. Until then, she's living life large as she always does.

She grins and looks to Aramis. "Live life large, that's what I say! Tripple L! L to the third power!" She makes an L with her index finger and thumb. "It's a good motto, yeah?"

After another bite of food, she looks around the main yard of the place. "So is this like a fortress or somethin'?" A really, really old fortress made of wood... more like a barn. But the structure itself, although it's made of wood, is laid out like a fortress, she thinks.

[averygoodshot]

It is a good motto. Aramis smiles at that before he's nodding in answer to her question. "We call it a Garrison," he tells her. "In Paris - " When it is whole - "it should hold many men, perhaps even 100 or so, with horses," he adds, pointing to the stables, "And weapons. With just Porthos and I here, we have far too much space, it can be argued."

[thefeckingmega]

A hundred men? Dani tries to imagine the place filled with a hundred men and somehow she just can't do it. She kind of likes the emptiness of it. That makes it so much easier for her to get around it without being noticed. Plus, she has her pick of squatting places. She doesn't say this though because Aramis seems kind of wistful and sad.

"Just men?" She asks him instead, with a wrinkle of her nose. "Women can use weapons too, just as good. Sometimes better!"

[averygoodshot]

"They can," he agrees readily enough. "My time is different from yours, madamoiselle. It is thought, in my time, that women are the weaker sex." And indeed, sometimes they are. "However, I know of one woman in particular," he smiles at the thought of Constance, "who is a Musketeer, as well, strong and able, though she may not wear the pauldron."

[thefeckingmega]

Dani looks personally affronted at being thought of as the weaker sex. Of course, it doesn't surprise her. In Dublin she's surrounded by Alpha males no matter where she turns: Ryodan, Barrons, Christian, V'lane - they all get what they want when they want it and sometimes, okay a lot of the time, use Dani to get it. If they weren't all so feckin' hot Dani would've ditched them a long time ago. The world needs eye candy. And deep down, she knows that if she tried to ditch they would pull her right back in.

"Well I bet Constance's better than ten men." Once again, Dani is about ninety percent bravado. "If I lived when you did, I'd be like Constance. Fight the good fight and kick bloody arse. Men wouldn't know what to do with me." Truthfully, the men in her time don't always know what to do with her either.

[averygoodshot]

"I have no doubt that you would," Aramis says with great sincerity. He won't defend or justify his time; it is what it is.

"Perhaps Constance will show up here one day and you shall meet her," he says. "Who knows, too, perhaps we'll find something to occupy ourselves in this place where we don't seem to fit."