“You knew this was going to happen”
He doesn’t look up.
It is, in most aspect, like he has just been pulled from the Seraph prison block again, ragged and dirty but this time they caught him at the docks, away from the other members of the guild. From his friends, and dare he say it —
He shifts again, his hat brim crushed in his hand.
“If you cannot abide by your probation, Ironwood, they you can’t–”
“I’m only doing what–”
“Yes, yes what you think is best for Tyria”
The Exemplar slams a small tin a papers in front of him, letters and statements. Observations. He doesn’t dare glance over the words, because he knows what they all say, what — what he’s done. Five years of this, of trying only to be upended, uprooted by a single sylvari, and a necromancer..
And now the Vanguard. And now this.
Exemplar Soha sighs. She rubs her face with a gauntleted palm. “Jesse, you are half a step away from being swung by a yardarm, you deliberately disregard any protection we have in place to keep you from being snatched up by whatever port will see that threat through” she sighs, her face, nor her voice softening with the beratement. “The Vanguard keeps encouraging you to step away and out of the bounds of your probation, so we are consigning you to containment within the city until the case can be reviewed by the Master Exemplar–”
The words burn at his ears, his palm sweats with the rise of bile in his throat, the way the heat of a good fight raises hackles on the back of a wolf’s neck. A mirror image.
Right where you started.
“– you can retrieve your things under supervision”
“You shouldn’t come in”
“Given the fragile nature of things in Maguuma right now, we’ll be standing by, I’ll be your handling officer until further notice, Jesse”
A mask of grim acceptance, he begins to stand and to pull on his coat, his hat. Soha stands at the ready.
“Then let’s go”
She doesn’t interfere when she watches him approach the barkeep, she watches patiently from a hidden cove above the gathering place, and how he finally gives up and lays down. It’s pathetic, in her mind, it’s a sign of weakness — she’s not one to complain btu he should have never been given this chance to begin with.
She’d be a yardarm if she needs to, and she watches this… crew gather and mingle until the Captain wanders Eastward. He disappears into one of the gilded towers, only to emerge with nothing more to weigh him down, and a heavy sadness.
“Let’s go”
Comments (2)