i guess time is my enemy

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

His gaze follows the lines of her face as she explains what happened. And half of him doesn’t expect her to go so deeply into it, but appreciates the amount of trust given in telling him it regardless. And he nods along as she explains, another nod as she tells him all it takes is the guard to fall for a hair of a second (after all, hadn’t that happened with him and the dragon? Hadn’t he lost Peter and Adam much the same way?)

It isn’t until she’s done speaking that the frown crosses his face and he looks up to her with a nod of understanding, a slight tilt of his head, reaching into the pack of smokes to lift a cigarette to his lips, light it, before passing it off to her if she wants it, hand lingering by hers briefly. “You’re both incredibly strong.” He offers, a soft rumble of sound leaving his lips, accented perhaps a bit thicker with the rawness of the memories that swirl around the bar.

But he picks up a bottle on the edge of the bar, pouring it into her glass and his, lifting it to toast against hers with a small half smile. “To strength and survival in the places that always try to tear you down.” A tilt of his head, a small smile given to her, before he takes a sip of it.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

She takes another cigarette with a grateful nod, lighting it with her magic before taking a long, rather needed drag. That’s not a day she likes to visit, and she does it infrequently. When she does, she does not usually give so many details. But he had trusted her with quite a lot, and she doesn't mind trusting him with her story in return. ”What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?” she says, something rueful in the tone. What a cliche, and yet, it was rather true.

This time he pours, and she lifts her glass to his toast, taking a sip as well. She leans across the bar again, her posture almost lazy, arms sphinx-like to hold herself up. There’s something right about it, the sight of her behind the bar, as if she has always belonged here and had just been waiting patiently for her time. ”So how is Torchline treating you?” she asks, switching the subject. They could both use a break from the deep and dark for a minute, she suspected.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

His gaze flickers up toward hers, a hum of amusement slipping from him as he nods and drags from the cigarette a bit longer, letting it settle in his lungs before he exhales slowly and quietly. “Right.” An easy agreement – because they were strong. There wasn’t a way that he could or would want to deny it. So instead, he focuses on pouring a bit more into her glass and then his own. He takes a sip from it, forearms braced on the bar top.

Her question is met with another quiet drag from the cigarette, head tilting to the side as he considers her, rolling the glass between his hands. “It’s good. Helped save Haulani from the volcano eruption… Became a part of the government.” A huff of a laugh at that and a shake of his head. Because what are timelines, really. “And how’s the Kraai? Everything you wanted it to be?” He teases her, offering a small smile and a wink.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

The topic drifts to Torchline, to the Kraai, to lighter things that are important without being heavy. She takes another drags of the cigarette, feeling content and lazy in that moment, warmed by the fire and the booze coursing through her veins. ”You cannot keep yourself out of trouble, can you?” she says, voice deep, amused, herself in so many ways. ”And what is it you will be doing for Torchline’s government?”

At his teasing, she winks back, letting go of the glass to gesture vaguely at herself and then around the place. ”You tell me,” she says, tone playful. She looks at home, though. The place feels like home. It is designed to feel like everything you want in a tavern of Snowcloak. It is warm and cozy, dark and secret. It is the type of place that lures you in and keeps you there, or at least, keeps you coming back for more. ”Thank you,” she adds, a bit more seriously.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Her question is met with a rogue grin and a shake of his head. “I’ve heard it’s my middle name more times than I can count.” He teases her lightly, amused by the question as well. But he hums quietly to himself after her question for the government position, head tilting to the side as his gaze lingers on her face – a recollection of the past he’d just shared, dampering the mood ever so slightly because perhaps he does regret the title a small amount.

“The Arbiter.” He rumbles, a bit quieter.

But the emotion fades when he shakes his head, swallowing back another sip of the alcohol before watching as she gestures to herself and the bar, picking up that almost masked look across his face as he keeps his gaze on her face, a bit more intensely, puffing out a bit of smoke from the cigarette in his lips. “You look like it’s what you’ve needed for a while.” He offers with a light smirk, an incline of his head.

“You did most of the work, I just helped give you the avenue.” He explains, reaching over to tap her hand as if it made the point a bit more true. “It’s yours, Weaver. You just let me put a Korofi name on it.” Another wink before he withdraws to remove the cigarette from his lip.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

She chuckles at that. ”Well, I wasn’t going to say it was your middle name,” she says with a grin. The phrase is one Weaver has heard plenty as well, though the word that was her middle name had changed somewhat frequently. Trouble, terror, wild child. All those descriptors were true, so she can’t even fault them. Though with the loss of her family came the loss of that particular tease. Korbin didn’t use it really.

As he gives his title, she nods. In any other situation, it might have been funny. If he hadn’t just recounted his story, all its gory and painful details, it would have been. She would have laughed. Not now though, instead just shaking her head slightly. ”Funny, how fate has a way of finding us.” Death too, would find her. It was simply a matter of when.

She smiles and nods to his next statement though, her grin growing wider as the topic becomes at least a bit lighter. ”It is a welcome change. Well, it is to me. My brother would vastly disagree.” Her tone stays mostly light, though there’s a sour edge to it. So many fights over this place, over Sunjata.

Though as he taps her hand, she focuses on him, on the way he says yours, and she believes him. He only wants a base of operations here if they need it, the secrets that pass through the doors. She takes a drag of her cigarette, exhaling the smoke as she looks at him with a question in her eyes. ”So what is it you hope you learn from the secrets of Halo?” He’d answered this question once before, but only to tell her he wanted to open more portals. She wasn’t sure the information she’d get here would help with that. Was there more?

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“What would you say is my middle name, if not that?” He asks with a quiet chuckle, a plume of smoke leaving his lips with the smile that arises there after. But the tone grows a bit more somber, and he’s focusing on Wessex and the alcohol, on the title he’d agreed to with Remi’s help, because he was supposed to make a difference, and perhaps wherever his father ended up, he might see that Sunjata had indeed become an Arbiter of sorts… just, different.

He hopes he rolls in his grave, if he’s not already there.

So he focuses instead on Weaver’s comment of the bar, taking a moment to look around at the red interior, marked with ravenesque additions, a smaller teasing smirk crossing his face when his steel gaze lands back on Weaver. “I’m afraid I didn’t make the best impression on your brother when I met him.” An avian tilt of his head to that, a small hum leaving him that’s similar to a laugh without much north behind it.

As for what he hopes to find out in Halo? Well, a variety of things really. “Mm, well, currently… Any palace updates the other lands might be interested in. Info on the Eirachi might be beneficial.” He offers, scanning Weaver’s face but not quite seeing her.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

”Whatever you middle name actually is, if you have one,” she says back, teasing and playful. She wasn’t going to assign him a fake middle name, wasn’t going to peg him as being one thing or another. Perhaps he was good at getting into trouble. Perhaps he simply was trouble. Trouble, determined, entrepreneurial, a friend. He was too many things for one name, and she was only just getting to know him.

Weaver chuckles at that. ”You could have bent over backward to please him, and I think he still would have disliked you.” She suspected it wasn’t necessarily Sunjata that Korbin disliked, but rather, the fact he’d given Weaver something that Korbin couldn’t. It had always been just them for so long that her brother did not like that someone else was now involved in her life. ”Though please, do tell me what happened. He hasn’t given me that story.”

He gives her a list of things he’s interested in, his mind clearly on that list, his eyes staring past her. She listens, ticking them off, taking a sip of her drink as she does. They are not things she tends to be very privy to, though perhaps that would change here. Though perhaps not. Reliable information is not all that likely to pass through these doors. Rumors and hearsay, drunken tall tales from that day's hunt. ”What have you heard of the Eirachi?” she asks, curious. Until Neron, Weaver hadn’t even thought the lady of ice existed.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

A bark of a laugh leaves his throat, accompanied with the brief pause to take another drag off the cigarette as he focuses on her. “I don’t have one.” He pauses to grin to her, before shaking his head lightly. “So I guess you get to pick what it is.” Another amusing huff of a laugh leaves his throat. But it sobers some at the mention of Korbin, his brow lifting slightly as he watches her explain, lips curling into a light smirk.

She didn’t know the story… And well, there certainly was a story with that one.

“I just got this done and came to check on the progress and the shipments sent over.” He pauses, gesturing with the hand the cigarette sits in, to the tattooed arm before his gaze flickers back up to hers. “And the little shit snuck up behind me, surprised me… And, well, I might’ve reacted a bit poorly.” Though the slight lilt in his smirk seems to suggest he’d reacted relatively well. “I might’ve put my dagger to his neck.” A rise and fall of his shoulders.

What else could she expect with a story starting like that? Especially with a man such as he with his hands in everything?

So he focuses instead on the question she brings, of what he wants to get out of the Kraai. And her question is met with a bit more of a focused look, a brow lifting as he considers it. “Not much. Goddess of Deepfrost, I think is what I’ve been told.” He offers with a wave of his hand before drawing from the smoke again. “That and I helped Wessex get an ingredient for a shrine for her.” A raise of his brow to that, waiting to see what Weaver has to say about it.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

She sips at her drink, a smirk visible above around her glass. ”Well then, I will have to come up with the perfect middle name for you.” She doesn’t have a middle name either. Silly, pointless things, used for sentimental value and little else. Stick a parents name in there all you want, it gets lost anyway. Clearly, her mother had been more interested in unusual names than sentimental value. Erebor, Weaver. Apparently by Korbin she was getting less creative. ”I’m sure the right one will present itself,” she drawls, with her usual cocksure patience.

He pauses and she nods, speaking around the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. ”Mmm, makes me want another,” she says, eyeing the sleeve in a catlike fashion. Weaver chuckles as he continues though, taking the cigarette from her mouth and exhaling the smoke toward the ceiling. ”He probably deserved it, though I’m impressed he actually snuck up on you.” He could do all the things she could, though he often did not. Granted, he’d been someone different than the brother she’d grown up with lately. ”I’m sure that did not help his overall impression of you. Though you could have showered him in sunshine and rainbows and he would still dislike you.” Her tone is casual, and she rolls a shoulder in a shrug.

Ah, Wessex. She seems to have her hands in quite a lot of pots as well, not unlike Sunjata. ”That is not overly surprising. You both have similar goals, when it comes to the portals. Though I admit, I am surprised she is in the guild.” There’s a question in her eyes, though she does not ask it. It is his to answer or not.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

A smirk crosses his face as she agrees – spying the smirk lingering on her face as well. His head tilts a small amount when he goes to take a drag from the cigarette, before bobbing his head in agreement toward her, fingers tapping lightly against the bar as he sets the glass back down. “I can’t wait.” Somehow, a part of him really can’t, not with the prospect of the names she might come up with.

But he’s explaining the tattoo and meeting with Korbin now, and at her mention of wanting another one his smirk shifts to something a bit more feline. “Well, you can come with when I get the other arm done if you want. You did recommend him, after all.” A raise of his brow to that before he’s explaining what occurred, and there’s light laughter that accompanies it. “Yeah, well, I think he must have been in his shift before hand and got the ball on me.” A shrug follows her own. “I’m used to that.” He offers with a quiet bob of his head.

Used to being disliked, distrusted. It was what often accompanied the Senzaok name, after all.

At the mention of Wessex and the shrine to the Deepfrost goddess, he can’t help but to let the smoke drift from his lips as he considers her again. “She’s mostly the reason. I agreed to it to find the ocean. Little did I know it’d be the next one.” He rumbles, moving to flick the ash into the dish Weaver had left out. “But, an agreement is an agreement. And so here I am.” His hands open a bit wider, as if to gesture that he’s there, doing all he can for it.

“What makes you so surprised?” A considering question, gaze flickering up to catch her own again.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

Well, he might have to wait. These are the sort of things one does not rush. No, the name will present itself one day. Some situation will occur or he will say something, and voila, there will be his middle name. That is how all the best things happen, after all, how all the best names come around. ”Well, you will have to. It will take time to determine who you truly are.” Straia would say that her children named themselves, that they earned their name as tiny little children. Weaver doesn’t know how true this is, but she does know her mother did not name any of them right away. It was days or weeks or even months after their birth before they became more than ‘girl’ or ‘boy’. Though this is not all that surprising, for many in Halo wait to make sure their children will survive before bothering with a name.

She smirks at that. ”Why wait?” she says with a mischievous grin. ”I have never once actually gotten a tattoo done at his shop.” She has been in the shop, but it was always late in the evening when she’d gotten the tattoos done. When there was liquor on her lips and a hole in her heart, but no tears on her face, she’d knock on his door and he’d oblige. How do you say no to a grieving girl?

Nodding at the mention of Korbin’s shift, she takes another sip of her drink. ”Ah yes. When he was a child, he used to sit in rooms behind closed doors as a raven and wait for someone to walk through to scare us. It worked rather well. He still does it, except now in his brooding, melancholy way, rather than as a joke.” Perhaps that was his secret to tell, and not hers, but she doesn’t really care. Besides, it was her childhood too.

”Is your agreement indefinite? Now that you have what you want, what else is in it for you?” She’s not entirely sure he will answer this question, but it’s worth asking. Why keep going, if he has found his home here? Unless he is looking for a way out of Caido. Though given his story, would he really want to leave? It was not ideal here, but it was not that bad either. ”Honestly? I just imagined she’d be busy with other things. I have no good reason to be surprised, I suppose.” Which is true. Wessex was her own woman, after all. Why not join a guild that could with her goals?

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

“Ack, alright mother.” He snorts, teasing her lightly with a face that seems to wrinkle a small amount, crossing over the freckles that are stark against bronze skin from spending so much time in Torchline. But he focuses on the idea of it instead, imagining that it would make more sense to have something stick at some point rather than something not fitting just to have the instant gratification of it. So alright, fair enough.

The mention of tattoos, however, has his gaze flickering up to meet hers again, a brow raising ever so slightly. “No?” He asks with a hum of amusement, wondering how she’d managed that but not asking. She’d tell him if she wanted him to know. But it still seemed like a good idea… Wondering how long he could get away with it. But alas, he has some work to be done back in Torchline. And he’s still quite a bit drunk, as he pins her with a raise of his brow, a glance. “Mmm, maybe next time. I’m not sure I could walk the way there.” He jests to her, gesturing toward the empty glass that had been refilled a few too many times.

Not like he was complaining. He could just pass out in the Advocates room in the back, after all. Nobody would be any the wiser.

At Korbin, however, he wants to laugh upon the first comment, but it grows a bit sadder at the end and he nods his head instead. “I spent a lot of time in my room as well.” A bit of an offering. That things had been hard to deal with, and when he’d murdered his way through his Trial he had spent months within the wing he’d lived in, in an empty white walled room, occasional visits from his sister and his mother before his mother had broken him down enough to get him to at least try.

So his gaze flickers back toward Weaver with the comment of Wessex and portals, a purse of his lips thoughtfully as he goes to drag from the cigarette again. “Sort of yeah, I agreed I’d still help her if I could even after the ocean came around.” A shrug to that. “But, more lands means more branches like this one. We might get lucky with something nice out of it.” At least that’s what he’s hoping for. “She is busy with other things… She’s more of an offhand member. We’re not the priority, but I’m here for her when she needs me to be. Nate too, I assume since he’s Ascended.” Though he doesn’t really know what their relationship is, now that he thinks on it.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

She laughs, loud and clearly amused. ”No one ever calls me mother,” she says, still chuckling. Though unoffended, the term simply does not fit her. Weaver is not the motherly type, not really. Even if she’d played that role for Korbin sometimes, she was not motherly. Then again, neither had her mother actually been motherly. She’d cared for them, protected them, and simultaneously let them learn how to kiss their own boo boos all better.

”No,” she confirms. ”I got each one after a family member died. I was usually mildly drunk, it was always late, and I just knocked on the door of his house.” It helps when you are friends with the tattoo artist, after all. It also helps to be a sad, grieving, attractive woman. She chuckles at the comment though, looking at the empty glass but figuring it probably doesn’t need to be refilled. Besides, the bottle is on the table if she is wrong. ”Well luckily for you, we have rooms.” Not that he doesn’t know that, but still, she can tease him all the same.

Weaver can only nod at his comment, finding it not quite the same but knowing that her brother was going through something. What Sunjata had been forced to do was hardly comparable to the few deaths either Korbin or she had dealt with, and yet, the number doesn’t really matter. It isn’t easier because it’s three rather than ten. Each one hurts all the same. It did not help that he'd had to kill a cannibal, someone he’d once known. Korbin was never made for killing.

He explains more, and she listens, nodding slightly. ”This is Caido. Things only ever get so nice.” Not that she really knows what to expect. There’s some gossip about other areas, but she has no idea how much of it is true, how much of it is old stories, or how much is simply make believe. Only time will give them the truth. ”Though I suppose all that makes sense.” After all, who was not in guild for a little back scratching?

Weaver