Lend me your eyes

[peacefullywreathed]

Characters: Solomon Wreath and others
Date: Month of September, 2015 (2016 in-game).
Location: Apartment, Healer’s Guild, other places
Situation: Catch-all post! Random shenanigans including a letter from the future (???)
Warnings/Rating: None as yet.

A; THE APARTMENT; OPEN
Though Solomon and Raine didn’t have a tendency to invite people over, their address wasn’t exactly a secret. Solomon didn’t exactly appreciate visitors dropping by unannounced, but since he did have a few kedanese clients who came to him, they weren’t exactly a surprise.

Either way, it was hit or miss on whether he would be there—he kept to no schedule as to whether he worked from home or from elsewhere. He kept his investigations at the apartment, but his magical research at the Guild, and made it a point not to make it known which he was going to work on. It made things interesting.

That being said, he can fairly reliably be found at home during the late afternoon/early evening on most days.


B; THE HEALER’S GUILD; OPEN
It was maybe predictable that, since Raine spent so much time here, Solomon as her significant other would wind up doing the same. Anyone who pointed that out to Solomon would only get the response that they obvious didn’t know him very well, and it was the safest place for his laboratory.

Nevertheless, it was one of the places he was most readily available, even if he could be a little difficult to find owing to the fact that his laboratory didn’t look much like a laboratory. It was through an archway, for one, and although there was a door in it, it was an arched door standing by the side of the courtyard with no apparent attachment to a room, let alone a building.

Sometimes he helped out with the daily Guild affairs, though that was usually a case of using his shadows as makeshift stretchers, bandages or splints until someone arrived who was actually qualified to do anything about it.

Sometimes he commandeered a corpse that hadn’t been claimed, with the result that there was a little cemetery down a lane behind the laboratory archway. What? He didn’t usually need them for long, and he wasn’t a barbarian.

The only notable thing is that he had a tendency to avoid passing by any rooms which housed a fair number of books.


C; THE DOJO; OPEN
Attendance at the dojo was a new thing. Thursdays were the only regularity, Solomon having made arrangements with Enjolras for some mutual training with foils. It was good elegant practice, if nothing else, and while closer to a sport than a defence, it was helping to hone Solomon’s senses while in the middle of activity.

Any other physical self-defence was handled by Bakura, and far more likely to leave Solomon wryly bruised. He really hadn’t used a proper sword in far too long, though he did prefer the smaller, concealable blades. He was the subtle sort, after all.

The only surprise on his part was that he found this kind of activity genuinely relaxing. He wouldn’t have expected it of himself. Still, there it was, so bruises or not, there he went.


D; THE NOTE; 10TH ONWARD; OPEN
From about the tenth onward Solomon can be found in various cafes listening with a frown to a message on his handset. It had appeared one day. It was an audio message, in his voice, apparently to himself; but he had no idea what it meant, and whenever the puzzle got to be of size and he happened to be near a console, he would sit and listen to it again, trying to parse any background noises behind the words.

“Don’t leap out of the shadows.”

They were, annoyingly, cryptic. He’d always known how annoying that was, but it was especially annoying that he was doing it to himself.


E; ANYWHERE ELSE; OPEN
Otherwise, Solomon can be found in various places in the city, chasing up with kedanese clients or pursuing leads on his various missing-persons cases.

Comments

A; early September.

[insertdadjoke]

A lot of things had moved to the wayside or been shuffled around since Cain had arrived. There was a lot to catch up on, to find and settle, and he'd been concerned for the first time in a long while about actually earning his keep. Not that it was hard, but it did take some more finagling than his usual rerouting of old bank accounts to stay comfortable. It was like an all new life he'd unintentionally made and had to deal with until his old one could resume. Which meant he lost track of time and before he knew it, it had been a few weeks and he'd yet to speak with Solomon as he'd intended. There were a couple questions he still had, not the least to do with the necromancer's sight, his magical focus and the magic itself now that Malicant was gone.

Cain wasn't too worried, seeing as things had been stable last he saw. It never hurt to check in, however, and he wanted to see for himself. Morbid curiosity. One couldn't help but develop an affinity for it after thousands of years surrounded by human nature. He didn't want to laugh, of course, but that was besides the point. It brought back memories, memories that had nothing to do with that note that had tucked itself away in his brain. He'd been avoiding looking at it head-on for a while, hoping it would resolve while he wasn't paying attention.

So far, that plan was a bust.

Here he was, then, at the apartment and hoping he'd caught the right time for when Solomon would be in. He knocked, stepped back, waited.

[peacefullywreathed]

It usually took a little while to be able to parse one soul from another, if he didn't know them well. Kane's was different. For one thing, it was supple around his senses; not because it wasn't there, but because some elements of it were inverted to his magic. It was unique in a way most others weren't.

For another, Solomon had met him in the relative recent past for reasons other than their missed appointment on Kane's arrival.

For several minutes Solomon debated not answering the door. For all that he had tendered the invitation, Solomon didn't particularly want to see Kane anymore. Skulduggery had wound up declining his kind invitation, but he'd still died. Even expecting Skulduggery to come back, he'd still died. After all Solomon had insisted that he give his friends all due time to find his soul-gem, they'd failed.

Solomon really didn't need one of the few people on the turtle older than him to be lording it over him. Even at this late stage, when it no longer mattered.

But he had tendered the invitation, so in the end Solomon sighed and waved a hand to make a shadow open the door. "Come in."

[insertdadjoke]

It wasn't that Cain had forgotten his own involvement in the events after Skulduggery's soul gem had gone missing. It wasn't as if Cain had forgotten how Solomon and Skulduggery were from the same world, likely drawn closer by the fact that they were so few in a place like Keeliai. It wasn't like he expected anyone to just accept his offer to Skulduggery and move on once it had been vetoed.

It just really hadn't occurred to him that Solomon would not want him around for a while yet.

He found it curious considering Solomon was a dabbler in death and arts related to it. Cain wasn't going to claim any kind of proficiency in what all that involved with a system of magic he didn't understand at all, but it did make it hard to predict or fully understand the reactions of the people around him, and he realized as he stepped inside that maybe this visit would have to be a bit more than a meet, greet and catch-up. "You can direct them without seeing where they go?" he asked as he looked around the apartment to locate Solomon proper.

[peacefullywreathed]

"They direct themselves," Solomon said shortly from where he stood in a corner, laying his violin in its case. He'd been practicing before Cain arrived, and paused when he felt someone turn onto their floor. "After a fashion, at least."

Shadows didn't think, but they could be quite literal. Could perform their function in the most straight-forward way possible. It did mean an extra element of control was needed to make sure they didn't accidentally do something unintended in the course of things. The interesting thing about all that was that before Solomon had come to Keeliai he hadn't needed nearly as much fine control to make the same things happen. Of course, that meant there were limitations on some truly finely detailed maneuvers, too.

"What do you want?"

[insertdadjoke]

Well, that wasn't worrying at all. Shadowy beings that used some sort of their own judgment to carry out tasks given to them without direct control being exerted. Cain made a face to himself in confidence that Solomon wouldn't see it, and filed that away for later. Solomon's magic still didn't sit well with Cain and he was going to have to get a deeper grasp of understanding at some point even if it only led further down the rabbit hole.

"You didn't call me," Cain said, watching Solomon's body language and listening to his tone of voice, "but I thought it was about time to take that rain check from when I arrived anyway. About your alternative?"

[peacefullywreathed]

"You didn't seem to need the explanation," Solomon said noncommittally as he closed the lid of his violin case. It wasn't much of a response and he knew it. It hadn't been much of an appointment, and with one thing or another he'd let himself be distracted, and forget.

Solomon had relied on Cain, back when they were fighting Malicant. But there was something about the way he'd treated death when Skulduggery had been on the edge of it that had rubbed Solomon the wrong way. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to mention anything about his ka now. "You don't need to worry about my going in sane and killing everybody anymore, let me put it that way."

[insertdadjoke]

There was definitely something here, between the greeting when Cain had arrived to now when he'd come by once again to meet Solomon one-on-one. Those weren't the only two times he'd been in contact with Solomon since he return to the turtle, however, and Cain was becoming more and more certain that the incident with Skulduggery's lost soul gem was at the heart of this cool reception. It surprised Cain, he would admit, mostly because he'd think a necromancer would be fine in the face of death.

He would also be the first to admit that he still didn't know anything, really, about what genuine necromancy from another universe might involve. Or what kind of person Solomon was at the core, either.

"Do you want to talk about this?" he said, less of a question than it really sounded like. He appreciated the actual responses Solomon was giving him, but now that he was beginning to form an idea of what could be wrong, he wanted to see where it would lead. After a momentary pause, he shifted tracks and said, "Let me rephrase. We should talk about this. What happened with Skulduggery, am I right?"

[peacefullywreathed]

Do I have a choice? would have been next thing Solomon said, except that Cain, annoyingly, pre-empted the retort.

"I don't particularly want to talk about this," he said flatly. He was half tempted to pull the violin out again, if only because it was a mite difficult to hold a conversation when one half of it was playing an instrument. After a moment, he did--flipping the lid back open and pulling out the violin to tune it with unnecessary focus.

[insertdadjoke]

Seeing Solomon take action to block him out, Cain moved and sat himself down nearby. Not close enough to be in his space, but enough that he would know Cain intended to stick this out. It wasn't going to be so simple to get Cain off the trail.

"Wanting to isn't really the issue here," he said. His tone wasn't forceful or condemning, more contemplative than anything. He wasn't here to judge, just to figure this new puzzle out. "If only because it isn't helping you at all to let it sit. My own guess is there's something you don't understand or didn't approve of, but don't let me psychoanalyze you. What is it, Solomon?"

[peacefullywreathed]

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Of course. Damn idiotic hero-types who felt their righteous desire to 'clear the air' was greater than the comfort of the people who didn't want to discuss the subject, anyway. "I'm perfectly fine with leaving the subject as-is," Solomon said flatly. "If you have an issue with it, that's your problem."

He finished tuning and started playing, something which required enough focus that ignoring Cain was much easier. It would have almost been to the point of forgetting he was there, except for Cain's slippery soul.