“I told you simply to make the game more interesting; but it is clear to me now that everyone in this camp-- bar myself-- is teetering upon the brink of being brain-dead.”

Rois gave an overexaggerated sigh, his callous words quite flippant, unknowing of how close he was to a slight truth in Asher’s case alone. Missing the odd licking motion the other spared his now moister wrist, the red-head lamented throwing the waistcoat across the room, for now he had to wander over to retrieve his pipe, all the while rambling aloud,

“I came to this camp and said I was a fighter, yet I do not have a weapon. I’m dressed as a rich man, wandering about in bandit territory with coin on me, yet I have no guards. The mere fact I’m not adorning cheap steel and ragged cloth like you all is suspicious enough alone, and yet, I waltzed right into a stronghold in the middle of a rebellion… honestly, it astounds me.”

He had been a moron once. Bitter memories of taking any job that dared to stray near his hungry claws, courier, farmhand, salesboy, wall scrubber, kitchen cleaner, latrine emptier, water fetcher, the faded mental lashings of a scribe that taught the boy the beginnings of reading so that he could follow road signs and addresses that were gallant enough to have signage. One hundred jobs, one hundred experiences, and even in periods of unemployment even begging had lessons to learn; the floating words of rich men and women appalled by lowly markets, the way their voices sounded like bird-song amidst the grunting of lesser beings. When the world was filled with so much to learn, why did so many go through their lives with the simplicity of farm animals awaiting the prod from lordlings and ladies on high? Were they not hungry for more, to engage themselves in even a smidge of critical thought in their day to day lives…?

The room was beginning to become lightly hazed with the smoke from the now lit pipe, its stagnant odor curling up to the ceiling in endless, pretty spirals as he dragged upon the dredges and prepared to fill it once again. Yes, it had taken him over half of his life to speak like someone, to earn money like someone, to be someone in a world bursting at its seams with humanoid shaped sheep endlessly drifting by, but all that pain and suffering had been worth it. Now upon a podium, it gave Rois the ability to look down upon most others, a position that was very much beloved by the man himself as he looked both metaphorically and physically down upon a now smiling Asher,

“It says, ‘the chimney does not smoke from love alone.’ A truth. Unless you work, you will find yourself down-and-out before long.” … And he did not know why Asher was smiling or why he was being kind to him. For all his smarts, it made no logical sense to turn any kind of positive emotion on to a beast that had openly threatened and taken sharp nails to skin-- this strange boy and his mangled skull had to be a special kind of stupid, the kind shop keepers sometimes kept in pet-like scenarios behind the scenes to do menial work that they could never mess up. Mayhaps that head wound was not just a wound, maybe he was actually missing half his brain and somehow still possessed the spirit to exist.

No matter. Morons could be useful, too.

“... I’ll return the tin after it’s empty; some tradesman could pay a penny for it. In the meantime, it’d probably do you some good to learn what the rest of these statements say.” And because he did not understand Asher’s kindness, Rois’s expression had become ‘bothered’, contemplative, but in a darker sort of way as his gaze veered off to the side.

“Though, if you feel like helping me just as much as the kitchen wench, I suppose I could offer you some silver… if you’d be so kind as to fetch me some meat from said kitchen.”

The red eyes rolled back to stare upon the others crown, the half-fiend himself could not enter the space himself without doing something noticeably criminal (devouring everything and anything in the pantry), but this poor little peasant boy… the beginnings of a smile climbed upon Rois’s face, but unlike Asher’s, it was more of a smirk than anything.

“What I mean to say is, take whatever you can however you can. Raw is fine. And the more you bring, the more I give you in return. To me, that sounds like a smart trade-off, right?”
 
Asher was paying attention to what the other man said. He really was. But there was something about the second pipeful of tobacco that was bothering him. His brow furrowed as he watched the retrieval of the pipe, the pinch of leaf and press of thumb to pack the bowl. And it wasn’t the stink, either, although that was already cloying its way onto every surface in the room, including his spare clothes still scattered across the floor.

“...fetch me some meat from said kitchen.”​

Ah, that’s right. People smoked tobacco when they didn’t want to feel something else. Aches and pains, stress, boredom. Hunger. All of it could be stifled with the buzz of smoke. It was the last piece of a puzzle which slotted into place in Asher’s mind and created the image of a man who was trying very hard not to eat anyone.

“What I mean to say is, take whatever you can however you can. Raw is fine. And the more you bring, the more I give you in return. To me, that sounds like a smart trade-off, right?”​

“There’s a latch,” Asher said in non-response. He gestured somewhat halfheartedly at the window on the far side of the room. “At the bottom. Please open the window when you smoke.”

He turned and began to duck his head under the low-beamed doorway. Caught the top of the doorway with his hand and twisted round to give Rois one last look. Flat white eyes didn’t reveal much one way or the other.

“I’ll be back soon with something to eat,” he said, and then let go of the door frame. Made his exit with unceremonious steps through the dark warehouse.


The kitchen had a wide back door, which Nell had propped open. She was working outside, her sleeves rolled up and cheeks flushed from labor. There was a woodshed and several axes hung up on hooks along the wall, and a lot of freshly chopped logs lying around. One of the hooks was empty and one of the axes was in Nell's hands. She was starting to stack the wood she'd just chopped.

“Miss Nell, if I help you with the firewood, can I take a bit of butter from the larder?”

“Depends. How much are we talking?”

Asher held up a palm and dragged his other finger across the length of it to indicate about that much. Miss Nell ended up agreeing as long as he took his thumb out of the equation, since she didn’t know the next time she’d be able to go to town for more. In no time at all, Asher had stacked thirty-eight pieces of cordwood into the shed in exchange for four finger-widths of butter.

He followed Nell into the kitchen to collect his prize, and saw about what he’d figured he’d see: A whole lot of empty space on the pantry shelves. Outposts kept low stock on purpose to dissuade bandits. The lord’s entourage coming tomorrow would be traveling with their own supplies, and none of the guards posted here were high ranking enough to justify feeding them meat.

Asher thanked Nell, told her which direction he was going (because it was good to tell folk when you were going into the woods), and then snuck out a gap in the rotting palisade wall.

The place he went was a wide bend in the river where the water spread shallow between trees and tufts of reeds. Underneath the muddy surface, there were deep, cool, quiet places where monsters buried themselves and slumbered. On the bank of the river, Asher took his shirt off, and his boots, and the sword strapped to his side. He waded out to a place where the branches swaying overhead blocked the sunlight. Took a gasp of a breath, and slipped beneath the water’s surface.


Asher came back through the front gate. He was dripping wet and hunched over heavy-footed from the glossy dark body tied with rope and slung across his back. A massive fish, as tall as Asher himself, its whiskered mouth gaping half-ajar in demise. Mandy, ever diligent in his singular duty of watching the gate, whistled at the sight of it.

“Shit, that’s a big ‘un,” the guardsman called out. Asher only grunted in response, because the beast was heavy, and he wanted it off his back. Luckily, Mandy got the message and scrambled for a hook and a place to hang the thing up. Together, they hoisted it over a cross beam and secured the big fish. Tied by its tail, it swung in the air like a banner, if banners weighed twenty stone.

The fish wasn’t the only thing Asher had brought. He’d also lifted a wicker basket from one of the junk piles, and inside was a bundle of young lotus shoots, stinging nettle, and one shy of a dozen duck eggs. It was unclear if eggs counted as meat or not, but Asher was sure Nell would take them if they went untouched. He set it all down nearby.

Putting his hands on his hips, Mandy took a step back and admired the big fish. “How’d you even catch it, without a spear?”

Asher held his arm out, and waggled his fingers. “You let it bite,” he said. A ring of raw red lined his bicep, where the catfish had latched on with dull teeth. “And then you grab it by the gills and pull it up.”

“Huh,” Mandy said. He shook his head. “I think you might be crazy. That's a maneater right there, kid. It could have dragged you down.”

Asher hummed in a way that might have been confirmation, and pulled his knife out. It was a good knife, and it remembered where to cut. Just shy of the spine, angled round the curve of wide-swallowing jaw and into ribs, but not too deep – nick the guts and whatever rancid thing the monster had eaten would spill out and spoil the meat.
 

And he obeyed, because he had no reason not to.

Roi’s flicked the latch of the window and let it swing open to deliver a river of rolling smoke out and upwards into the air, watching from the corner of his eyes as Asher disappeared upon his little side quest. He didn’t expect much. Such places-- holds possessed of some noticeable level of despair-- were always beholden to the universal rules of warfare that saw stocks were low, always, when you naturally discounted the truly ‘sentient’ living and breathing things wandering around cluelessly of course… but people were not on the menu, not just yet. Whilst the other worked outside he saw fit to begin ‘work’ inside of the shed, pointless and menial work to all and everyone that lived beyond the threshold of the mans own skull, who could not understand that things needed to be in their place and if they weren’t, well, it was simply a matter of lunacy. After a long moment of candid smoking Rois relieved himself of his shirt lest it get sticky with the threat of oncoming sweat, reluctantly patted out the pipes burning core with a single thumb, stretched large arms high in a cat-like fashion … and got to work.

One of the dingy, depressed sacks from the room beyond was taken and pressed upon tiptoes into cobwebbed corners to steal them away, for heavily did they hang from the old wooden beams. This too was extended to the fluff of the window, where dust had collected against the cracking seams in speckles of black, catching upon the cob-web laden cloth in light, repetitive strokes. When the area looked less abandoned at its walls he turned his attention to the straw matresses and began to methodically poke stray strands back into the loose meshing they peered outwards, calloused hands making sure to also gather those hay pieces who had leapt to their freedom to find reprieve from the masses on the cold stone floor. The floor itself wasn’t terrible, insects oft preferred height, so ‘sweeping’ was just a matter of taking a boot to the soiled rag and running it against the walls edges… good. The room looked decent, there was no fixing the cracks in stone and aged plaster, but it felt less… desperate. Compared to the actual shed, it was a safe-haven, in fact.

The damned mess next door gave Rois a sort of anxiety that only ever came when he was alone. It was unexplained, couldn’t be reasoned with, a pressing urge to do something because things were not right, and it wasn’t a matter of caring what people thought-- it was a matter of effort. But Asher was leaving with what looked like a sort of muted determination (and some sort of small box), and aside from snoozing, what else could be done…? The thought of interacting with those simpletons afar made him visibly cringe with the bridge of his nose wrinkling, no no, it would have to be done, laying there staring at a ceiling with the ambient noise of wind creeping through the sheds numerous holes would be testament to the sin of sloth itself; and so with a groan (at his own mind-numbing impulses) Rois wandered into the darkness of the muddled room with the intent to fully haunt it as nought but a pair of glowing red eyes when not captured by the setting sun’s dying beams.

It wasn’t too bad. Big pieces of wood dragged to meet splinters, metal with metal, four corners, fabrics in another and the last would be for things that did not quite meet the invisible, nonsensical idealisations conjured by the newly formed caretaker. Rois was strong, but it was not his ‘affliction’ that made him so; the man was simply built like a work-horse and moved like one, dragging, pushing and hauling with purpose with a thin film of heated sweat beginning to bead against well-used muscles… and there was a reward for all of this 'organization'. It came in the form of rats fleeing in a daze from the sudden lack of cover, and for each one found, they would meticulously be back-broken, gutted and peeled with naught but claws and teeth. He ate the flesh and bones like snacking upon dried meat, leaving tails, guts and shredded pelts for the ‘bad’ corner.

“I wish you were all… naked, like how the babies are. I really hate your fur, you know.” A wistful sigh floating down to cupped hands. Curled in a pulsing ball with the ferocity of its racing heart and terrified breaths, a field mouse gazed glassily up at its captor with no tangible expression. “‘Gets stuck between my teeth.”

Its head was unceremoniously crushed by thick fangs and dragged unempathetically from its spine in a series of mute clicks, leading to an explosion of richness in his mouth that never really happened with rats. The taste was different, someone as seasoned as him knew that difference well. After letting its tail and tiny amount of guts fall noiselessly to the floor with a slitting of the belly, Rois began to chew on its furred corpse with red eyes turning downwards to what had been a small ball of interwoven weeds and glasses all cemented by pieces of mottled wood chewed down to shavings… seven huddled bodies, small and pink, mindlessly and gently writhing against each other with unseeing eyes bulging with every swipe of a siblings clawless paw. The warmth of his palm claimed four, they curled there neatly in a ball in relative comfort, unaware that the sudden heat was not the soft embrace of their mother.

“... Such is the cruelty of life.”

They were about to be met with a softer landing, an open maw, hot breath and jaws about to claim them as the butcher tipped his head back slightly and prepared for the delight of newborn sweetness… when, voices. The man paused. Put the babies back in the nest, placed its top slanted upon them, and wagged a finger,

“You’re safe… for now.”

Asher was back, and God’s above, that fish, oh how it ripped his attention right away from the killing and consuming of littler lives with a dirtied hands rubbing at his blood flecked mouth and he scuttled over eagerly to the gossiping humans with a newly formed glint in his eye.

“Catfish…!”

And it was hilarious, because when the young hunter had left, Rois had been a snarky and snide and plotting, but now before the grand catch, topless and dust-sweat covered in direct contradiction to how the man had first presented himself, the male seemed gleeful. A totally different person. It was the magic of the ‘release’ of working, the gift of alone time… and a non-empty belly that the business man very much hoped would be even less full within those next thirty minutes. Like a master to a favourited dog Asher’s head was patted despite the fact the lad was actively working,

“Great work.” Purred-- and then suddenly, a tone shift. A dire one. Another turn face, back to the usual moodiness if only for a brief moment, it came about as a sort of hiss as words were spat out at poor Nell and Mandy,

“And you two can go away. This is ours and ours alone, you’re not having any.”
 
His hair was tousled again, and again Asher flinched at the raised hand -- but this time, he had a knife. Half-cut filet hung off the catfish as Asher spun round on Rois, a flash of panic in his eyes. He came to his senses and stopped the blade with plenty of distance still between. But the threat hung there for half a heartbeat, before Asher fully shook it away.

"Sorry," he muttered, lowering the knife and returning to his work. Brows furrowed, wrinkling the scar along his temple even more. For a moment he looked like he might make more of the apology, but he kept quiet and focused on the fish.

There was an ugly, imperfect chunk cut out of the flesh where he'd jumped, but otherwise it came off the bone clean. Both massive fillets of the catfish were laid atop the nearest clean surface, a heavy wooden table set out under a covered porch. Asher went back to the hanging carcass and prodded around its belly, feeling out the shape of the offal within. He cut a precise line and pulled out twin sacs of roe. Inside each would be hundreds of cloudy amber orbs, little gems of life that would never grow to see the river.

He was still holding the roe when Rois turned venomous.

"And you two can go away. This is ours and ours alone, you’re not having any."
​
"There should be enough, I'm not going to have any," Asher said simply. "I don't eat meat."

Mandy was baffled enough by the statement that he forgot to get riled up by Rois' earlier disrespect. "Whatdyamean you don't eat meat?"

"I don't like it." Asher went back to the table and laid the roe out in a shallow wooden bowl.

He would have elaborated, but there were certain things Asher hadn't figured out how to say yet. Like how, sometimes, he could see himself standing in that woodshed while the healer put his head back together. Watching his own body from some unseen vantage point. Butchery in reverse. And how since then, every kind of meat reeked of that memory.
 

A flash of silver--

Rois stepped back, but the reaction was slow, entirely caught off guard by the youths moment of alarm… and if Asher hadn’t stopped himself, it would have drawn blood for definite. Ah.

Ah.

He understood.

It clicked, loudly, poignantly, oh, the others grey grey eyes like a sky clouded over had spared him an emotion driven deep, deep down in the recesses of his heart. And Rois could not know for definite that the mottled skin upon the others head was the reason, but the two of them shared a similar affliction, stood at the branching paths of madness and had taken different turns. The red-head was quite knowing of the insanity that writhed in his skull, and he understood why it existed. Trauma did terrible things to the mind. He never excused himself or apologized for his strangeness like Asher did however, because it wasn’t ever his fault that he did things he shouldn’t upon impulses and urges and everyone else should just adapt or be gone. And so firstly, as flat eyes suddenly devoid of the inkling of light followed the other moving to the table and back, he is pissed off because reflected in the others diligent form came a memory from the past when ‘sorry’ had been the word most often tumbling from his lips.

The memory hurts.​

‘Sorry’, every waking up in the middle of a street, onlookers had flipped him heavily onto his side and avoided the unfocused nature of his eyes, ‘Sorry’, to Ma, when they overlooked the pot and all that was within was boiled lambskin and a couple of meager slices of carrots, ‘Sorry’ when dismissed from the promising start of a new job, dropped the broom, forgot the timing, left something behind, sorry sorry sorry, Rois grinded thick fangs together as a dark shadow overcame his face all of a sudden like the coming of night beneath his bangs, suddenly, somehow, fighting over the fish did not matter. He would simply take it from them-- what were they going to do about it?!-- what mattered more was that small moment where a knife had been raised to him with lightning forking across startled eyes, memories, the butcher doesn’t need to say ‘sorry’ ever again, never again.

And he liked Asher, when he had been obedient.

But that move had not been obedient.

From behind, all of a sudden, the scarred male would be welcomed to a burst of pain as a foot came to harshly kick him against his lower leg in a semi-sweep, semi-punt, the weight of the motion shoved Asher hard enough against the table that it squealed violently aloud, scraping backwards against stone, cutlery clashing against the ground in a melody of screaming steel and creaking wood--

“I told you not to do that!!”

Please do not try to harm me again, by the way. I’ve been very nice to you.​

And it all clicked because the reason that Asher had turned his knife towards him in that critical moment but moments prior… is because that was Asher, and this was Asher, and Rois knew very well what it meant to be you and then to be you. Liar. Deceiver. Con-man. Yes, just like Asher he hid who he really was all the time…!! It was just like that, the others kindness towards him had been so confusing and nonsensical before, but now it allll made sense-- he was part of the ruse!! He was being fooled!! No, no-one was ever kind to him without wanting something-- he WOULDN’T be laughed at, would NOT be the end of a sick joke, those two humans-- Mandy, Nell-- they’d start giggling any minute. Start howling their heads of with foul laughter because it was just so hilarious that he’d actually gone to pet the other out of niceness just to be repaid by a knife and he was so pathetic and stupid and Rois did not like this feeling in his chest, this sinking, aching feeling… shame. Embarrassment. And it would be clear as day that the other was overcome quite suddenly and savagely with some kind of madness. It span like rings in ruby eyes encircling tiny, piercing pupils, shaking fists, thoughts span like an erratic carousel in his head, tongue dancing about the tall mans teeth as if he was ready to bite, and the voice came like thunder snarled from above--

“Who… are you, really??”



Note: Rois has absolutely no clue Asher has lost his memories, he literally thinks the other is just pretending to be nice and affable and then suddenly violent because thats how he himself is! He really is wholeheartedly like 'Asher is secretly an assassin and was being nice to me to take all my things or murder me wow it all makes sense now thats why he keeps suddenly pointing sharp things at me I actually liked him damn I got tricked' LMAO
 
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