dumbshow | was i ever truly off my bullshit

was i ever truly off my bullshit

[When Kirin Jindosh's house falls into the sea, he almost doesn't realize it's happening. No alarms have been activated, no sensors in his floors alert him to the presence of an intruder; even the mechanisms of his house are silent as the grave, on this completely ordinary day. Were there anything amiss in his house, he would know... and nothing appears to be wrong.

He hasn't eaten in two days. It's unimportant, but he's pushed his hunger to the point of distraction and now needs to put something in his body before he starts to slip in his work. It's this that gets him out of his lab and skulking directly down to the kitchens instead of waiting around for someone to bring him food in the dining area; the cooks aren't pleased to see him in their space (it isn't theirs), but they never are, and Jindosh can eat a pear in peace for five minutes thanks to their studiously avoiding his gaze.

His cooks are among the best of his staff, all things considered. But so it happens that he is not in the high, ocean-overlooking part of his home when it begins to fall. He feels a faint rumble beneath the floor and pauses, head tilted to listen. Somewhere, something creaks. And then something tears.

All at once his perfect home becomes a place of chaos: guards abandoning posts, staff and servants running in every direction, the clockworks not knowing what to do with themselves in the absence of an enemy to put down. Jindosh himself moves like a spectre, the shock of his home's demise too great to spur him into doing something like moving more quickly. Against all odds it's a maid (he knows her face, Maybe if he had a family, but that kind of thing doesn't even occur to him, his home remembers) who sees the master of the house staring dully out of a window as it splinters and does something about it, grabbing his hand and taking off at a run before he can find his voice to object.

The house crumbles. Glass shatters, wood splinters and stone all but dissolves as if it were never the marvel of engineering it was built to be. Metal screams and snaps as it bends in ways it was never intended to and Jindosh has no words for the feeling he experiences as his life's work, years of work and decades of research, slip into the sea like they were never there. How? he wonders. How, how, how? No answer comes to him; his greatest defeat is this, and though he can see no enemy that caused this, he knows: his house is flawless, and if it falls then his enemy has bested him without ever appearing before him.

A worthy opponent, despite the consequences.

Outside the carriage is somehow still working, but it throws itself off its track when a chunk of his waiting room wall lands on the station behind it. Jindosh and the maid are tossed limply into the grass, and the maid scrambles to her feet to continue running while Jindosh sits up to watch his house fall to rubble and dust. He thinks he can see his silvergraph lenses glinting in the afternoon sunlight as they fall, but perhaps he imagined it.

He's still sitting there watching when the dust has settled. When a dark-clothed figure covering her face stalks toward him, says nothing to him as he looks up into the eyes of his own destruction, the Empress, says nothing as she tosses the cracked shell of a clockwork soldier's head into his lap and walks away.

He's still sitting there when the sun begins to set, on the hill, on everything. She may as well have just killed him, he thinks as he finally rises to go pick through his own rubble. It would have been more merciful than this.]

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[Paolo... learn now that it's better not to ask questions when he asks for things. There's always something. He makes a noise like yes, of course he's sure, sliding all of those handy things over closer to himself before he quite literally cracks his own hand open. The prosthetic, anyway; evidently he built this thing with a thumb that bends all the way back, revealing a little bowl inside in between the two fingers.

He proceeds to casually load up his own fucking hand like a completely normal tobacco pipe, light it, and shake the match out before taking a drag off his own thumb.

He's sure........]

[What... what the fuck? Paolo doesn't even light his cigar during this process, just standing there holding it while staring at Jindosh the whole time. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it.

Then he slowly slides the wine bottle back over to himself. Okay, this is fine. This is great. Love it. There's not a million questions running through his head, no, he's drinking them all away.]

Seems pretty [You did this. He smiles.] handy.

[For that, Jindosh blows smoke in his face. This is not a joke, he really does that. It's at least in his direction, since Paolo is small.]

Comedian and criminal. A jack of all trades, aren't you?

[Let him thumb smoke!! He adds, like it a) needs to be said, or b) defends his choices at all,] I made this.

[It's too late, he can't ruin his great joke. Paolo only laughs, raising a hand to wave the smoke from his face before he proceeds to light his own cigar. Logic.]

Yeah? I couldn't tell. You always feel the need to tell people everything you know, or am I just lucky?

[He's cursed, no wonder he turns into rats. Jindosh reclaims the wine, again.]

You have questions but you don't ask them. [A shrug; also, he's an asshole? It's a number of things.] Perhaps one of these days, you will.

[But UNTIL THEN... Jindosh trivia.]

Maybe I don't care enough to have them answered. [He waves out his match, then finally sits back in his chair. He was standing all this time, so he didn't have to look up at Jindosh that much.] Or I don't have questions that someone else can't answer for me.

[No, he's thinking about it. Hmmmm...] What do you do besides make those things? Take pictures? Listen to the sound of your own voice?

["I don't have questions," Paolo says before he asks goddamn questions. That's such a Jindosh move he just pulled? He's not getting this wine back.]

Were you listening when I told you I designed the bank's security system? I've improved nearly every Anton Sokolov invention from the past several decades in half the time, I've revolutionized engineering... You've invested in the greatest mind in Serkonos, Paolo. Remember that.

[He does take pictures of himself, but still. He did all this other cool stuff, too.]

[No, give him his wine... It's his turn to blow smoke in his direction. Tall asshole.]

So you don't do anything for fun. Sounds about right.

[Boring? Nerd? He's leaning back far enough to put his own feet up.] No music? No dances? No... y'know, not something in a lab?

[He can't reach this high!!!!! No, Jindosh just leans out of the way some, whatever. Gross. He gives Paolo another one of those looks like he doesn't understand why the hell he should be interested in that stuff.]

I have no use for dancing or other trivial pursuits. Should dancing one day become vital to the unraveling of some intricate problem I have yet to solve, then I will reconsider. [he's a big nerd]

What about the intricate problem of not being just like one of your clockworks, then? You figure that out?

[Paolo shrugs, then holds his hand out for the bottle expectantly. Give it back.]

You can have a good time without using your brain, you know. Come down sometime when we're having a party.

[The clockworks literally have his voice. His actual voice. He's pretty close, all things considered.

He does not give the bottle back, and instead lifts it to take another generous sip. No. Jindosh property, effective immediately.]

I've grown weary of parties after being forced to abide by the Duke's demands that I attend each and every one. How can yours be any different?

[People in a room who don't like him - tell him why he should give a shit about this concept.]

[That's literally his property? It's his bar? Paolo just keeps looking at him, holding his hand out, waiting...]

I don't make demands, for one. It's a suggestion. [He's not desperate for him to come put a damper on the mood... He's extending a kindness to make it work. Accept it.] No one's going to be fucking on every surface, either. I'd say that's already a sizable improvement.

[Wow... good point... And yet he's still keeping the wine.]

Your people look at me like they'd prefer my head on a pike, Paolo. [Which he's not upset about, but it'd be tiring to deal with for more than a couple minutes. So!!] We shall see how I feel after I've had time to take a look at your weapons.

[He needs to build something to chill out, he means.]

That's fair enough. They wouldn't do anything I don't tell 'em, though.

[Paolo sighs, finally dropping his hand. He sits in silence for a moment, taking another drag from his cigar and watching how the smoke billows from Jindosh's hand. What a weirdo...

But eventually he sets it down on an ashtray, leaning forward in his seat to pull off his jacket. There's three bonecharms sewn on the inside of it, singing the second they're revealed to the open air, but his attention is going to undoing the wristbow strapped to his arm.]

You can have a look, ahead of time. Have it back to me before I wake up tomorrow.

[He's enjoying his wine, thanks... He's had enough of this wine to not completely blow off Paolo's strange invitation, but he's still not convinced. On the other hand, now he has something to look at and there are bonecharms distracting him with their singing.

He takes the wristbow, certainly, but his gaze keeps darting to the jacket. Hmm.]

It has a bend here, [he says, like, immediately after looking at this bow once. Nerd.] It's probably misfiring one in ten of your shots.

[Bonecharms...... let him play in the Void.]

I don't miss. [He says, confidently, but immediately betrays himself by glancing towards the bend. He's definitely lying, but spare him. He didn't even realize, using the thing daily...] ... Usually.

[He sets it on the desk and leans back, not even going to disguise the fact he's waiting for him to put the bottle down.] These things- [they're his charms, no touch] -make me lucky, but they can't make them travel as far as I need them. Especially if you don't want me killing anybody at the bank.

[Let him touch? Pay him in Void toys.]

I can fix that. [Of course he can fix that. He's like 100x the effectiveness of those crappy black market sellers hammering weapons together clumsily in their back rooms. Not that he's very interested in making this bow better, when the persistent singing of the bonecharms is taking up all of his attention...]

Lucky. [explain,]

[As much as he'd like to just... not explain, leave Jindosh wondering, he's in too much of a good mood to be whined at. He sighs, drawing his coat out from behind him to carefully pull the charms out one by one. Don't want to ruin the thread in his very high class jacket, you know.

It's filthy. They're filthy. One of them still has blood on them from before he disappeared into rats, once.] They make you hit harder. You ever fight with these things on, you'll stay on your feet. Things that are just supposed to graze your enemies hit arteries. It just kind of pulls you in that direction, makes you better. And it feels great when it does. [void junkie, Outsider pls call him]

[Hit harder and stay on your feet? Not very impressive, but the way the bones seem to shimmer in the light is. The Void is another puzzle for Jindosh to take apart; Delilah had told him no, to leave it alone and not try to understand it—but Delilah is a useless narcissist playing pretend in Dunwall. The bonecharms Paolo pulls out of his jacket are real, in front of him.

He thinks of the one sitting in his vault in the very same bank they're planning to rob; he has no idea what it's supposed to do, but he's never had an opportunity to investigate it. Perhaps Paolo can tell him what it's actually for.]

Did you carve them yourself? [he wants! to see!]

Some of them. My grandfather's a fisherman, so he used to swipe bones from the whalers. [He holds up one of the smaller charms, its shape cruder than the rest.] I carved this one when I was a kid. I wanted to wind the Blade Verbena, bring home something I earned... A big lug knocked me out of the ring, ended up junior officer.

[So don't talk about his little guy complex, he's handing it over.] Nana carved another one after that... she was bitter about me losing. The other one's fucked up - it's what happens when you try and put broken ones together. Hurt when you use 'em, like the Void's punishing you for it. It probably wouldn't like you experimenting much.

[A charm!! Thank god Paolo hands him the charm when he does, or he'd start talking about his clockwork soldiers being so good at swords again. Paolo's life story isn't nearly as interesting as the piece of bone humming in his hand... He puts the wine down now, finally, holding the charm in one hand and running his fingers over it with the other.]

Hmm. I'm sure it wouldn't. But perhaps...

[maybe, he will do it anyway,]

[Hell yeah. Now Jindosh is the one who's never getting this bottle back, thanks. It's probably nearing its end with all the back and forth they've been doing... he's going to drink the last of it.]

I didn't bring you here so you could wind up dead playing with black magic, boy.

[Wow? Maybe he won't give Paolo the charm in his vault, with that attitude.]

Don't call me boy. And please, don't embarrass yourself thinking I am that careless.

[he is missing two fingers but that is different?]

Then don't act like one. You know something is hot, yet you still wanna get burned.

[He raises his brows, lifting his hand to wiggle his in tact thumb and index finger. Looks like... he still has those... unlike somebody...]

And uh... that's debatable, isn't it?

[Don't make him blow smoke in your face again, Paolo. He's sorely tempted.

But, fine. Look at his self control: he's putting the charm back down on the desk, possibly a little harder than necessary.]

Fine. I'll spend all of my time tinkering with your little weapons instead.

[he whine]

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