A Chance Meeting (John Wolf & Sumar)

John wolf stood on the bluffs above the sea, watching the waves below crash and hiss against the shores of Auridon. He leaned against the thick bark of a gnarled tree that clung there despite the weather that twisted it's thick trunk, and waited. A sea breeze ruffled his hair and made him squint out over the cliff edge.

For anyone who followed the Sellsword regularly, it was a favorite haunt and an easy place to locate him should they be in the mood to do so.

Sumar picked his way past a sunbaked slab of stone, and across a narrow ridge where, for a tiny instant, only the toes of his boots separated him from a dreadful drop into the sea below. He marveled at the opposite ledge and the obvious scrape of horse shoes upon rock, across that narrow chasm. Someone visiting this place was a far greater horseman than he.

He moved away from the drop, slipping into the cool grass which began and grew taller beneath the weathered tree. And seeing John at his normal roost, the Dunmer approached from a wider arc, allowing the man to see his approach, as the sound of it was completely lost to the roar of the sea.

The shadow of a visitor moved along the edge of John's peripheral vision and he turned his head. He breathed in, placing his palm flat against the trunk. Had Sumar been the one John was waiting for, that hand would have pushed John to his feet. Yet there it remained, splayed against the rough bark and the fighter tilted his head at the familiar face.

"Sumar. Eh...I wasn't...I thought you were someone else. Did I miss another meeting?" Wolf was well known for being unfashionably late to most Company functions.

The Dunmer slowed, and moved away from the edge of the cliff so anyone would have had to cross the chasm in order to see him up there at all. When he came to a stop, he had afforded John a comfortable distance without being awkward. He dipped his head in a respectful greeting and smiled, “Have no fear, your secret meeting place is safe. I just had need to find you alone.”

The corner of John's mouth pulled upward in amusement. "Well, that's good. I'd hate to have to find a different hidey-hole. Most of them are taken." Lifting his hand off the tree, he casually brushed off the grit. "What is it you need? Is this about the ship? Everyone's been wanting to talk to me about that."

Sumar made a little face, “You are lucky to have found such a place. Far be it for me to spoil that for anyone.” The face relaxed toward something more neutral, but just the way he folded his arms left him appearing awkward and unsettled for his normally cool character.

He studied John with a faint cant to his head. “No. I believe I have heard quite enough about that foolishness. This is a personal visit, and as such, feel free to tell me to get lost. But it is concerning the end of a conversation you had been having, when last we met. It left me thinking.”

John's blue eyes lowered, darting back and forth across the rough sea grasses as he tried to recall what conversation Sumar might be referring to. "You'll have to refresh my memory, sorry. What was the conversation about?" He hadn't told Sumar to get lost, which could be considered encouraging.

“You were speaking of the Curse,” Sumar reminded him with empathy. “And that first kill. The feelings which followed it. Your words fell upon deaf ears with the afflicted woman, but I was listening.”

A bit of color drained from John's face then. "Oh." He swallowed and ran his fingers through his hair, mussing the short blonde strands. This job was bad for keeping secrets. "I was drinking, and should have kept my mouth shut. I, uh, I'm not a parasite." He shut up, realizing he was sounding defensive and paranoid.

"Well, I'm glad someone was. Listening, I mean."

“I imagine it is not something you enjoy speaking of. As I said, the conversation remained with me these last many days. I have thought upon it often. I do have business, however, which should prove to be a safer topic should you prefer.”

"I've never been the type for safe conversations." He moved to sit on a swollen, gnarled root that lifted from the ground like a woody leviathan, facing Sumar. "To be honest, I'd appreciate just talking about what's on your mind."

When John settled, Sumar moved a little further from the open vista before them. He also found a spot to sit, one in the grass not so far away. He rested his arm upon a raised knee and spent a little time collecting his thoughts. “I do not do this sort of thing often, you should know.”

“I also live with a curse, though it is far different than your own. Mine, by comparison, likely would seem a trifle to most anyone who heard of it. In fact, it began as a blessing.”

Meanwhile, he knew perfectly well there was a tense and troublesome meeting about to happen in Skywatch, and he was entirely delaying John from being present.

"Daedric?" John asked. He wasn't entirely thick-headed; the shadows that clung like a second skin to the mer were unnatural.

“That is…” he answered slowly, a pensive look crossing his features. John had surprised him. “Not something many would guess at. Then again, you have spent these last months hunting Daedra. I should not find myself surprised.”

“Nor would I refer to that as the trifle. It is an extension of that which… has bothered me. My name cannot be written, or at least it does not remain when someone tries.”

John cocked his head, thinking about that for a minute. He didn't disbelieve Sumar, not entirely. As one might expect him to do, he leaned down to scratch the Dunmer's name in the dirt. The very moment John finished the final letter, the name began to fade, filling in as though the fighter never wrote it at all. He frowned. "That's irritating."

Sumar lowered his chin, pale white eyes following the motion of John’s finger as he plowed a small rift in the soil with familiar shapes. Shapes which did not last. “You would think that would be all it was: irritating.”

“In fact, it is a blessing for one such as myself. My name shall never remain in damning documents, and thus one can never trace this one’s history through that means.”

“Yet, with each passing day I feel it a reflection of something deeper. You hate your curse, you felt the blood of another and looked upon it with powerful regret. This,” he leaned forward and spread his dark nails across the smoothed soil, “Is all that I feel. I never felt to question this, until your words."

John followed the motion of Sumar's hand, not saying anything while he thought. It was these silences, the long stretches of blank-faced staring that made the foolish think he was dull-witted. "Have you ever thought of changing your name?"

The Dunmer slowly retracted his hand, slipping the pads his fingers across the soil with the same delicate touch as a lover upon skin before palming his long dark nails. He stared at the back of this hand. The dark skin smooth, but not as elastic as he remembered it. The bone and vein beneath that skin showing through a bit more than it once did. Age just beginning to rear its inexorable face.

“No,” Sumar said quietly. “I have never considered it.”

Wolf didn't push. Sumar was a thinker, he would think about it. "What about me talking about my failings made you think of loaded gifts from Daedra? Are you regretting them?"

“Forgive my unintentional vagueness, I wish I had something more definitive to tell you.” He sighed quietly. “I have felt nothing for a very long time. I felt something when you spoke.”

“I saw things,” his eyes even now roved distant memories. “I relived something in the span of your single, parting sentence. And I understood.”

John leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "What did you understand?"

The Dunmer drew back to sit straighter. He turned his hands to peer at the palms, long nails like black talons. “The blood,” he said. “A life taken. The… shock… of having done so.”

John remembered. He rubbed his hands together, as though the action could remove the feeling. "Your first?"

“Perhaps,” he said quietly and relaxed his hands. He frowned into the memory, “I believe so. It has been many years, a lifetime ago, and at least as long since I have looked… back with question. I have always looked forward.”

John breathed deeply. "Interesting. I always look back."

"With... regret?" Sumar formed that tentative word, and studied John's face.

Heavy brows came together and John's lips pursed slightly as he thought about it. "Sometimes. Going feral, I regret. I regret that a lot. But," he laced his fingers, "most of it I don't. I just learn from it, you know? Stuff I did that I liked, I'd do again. Stupid things, I try not to repeat."

John’s words turned Sumar’s face thoughtful. “You were a free man, without master or one to answer to?”

"Not always. My mother is, was, a prostitute. I'm not sure if she's still alive." John waved his hand dismissively, it wasn't important. "Anyway, I belonged to her pimp. And when I got older and knew enough to leave, I belonged to a company a lot like Blue Skooma. Same type of people, similar product, but a lot more organized. They were harder to break away from; people who quit became liabilities."

“Forgive all of the questions, I just… did you find someone there you wanted to please, to work for, or was it fear and necessity only?”

John just smiled a little at the apology. "I may be an unfriendly bastard to most, but I don't mind a plainly spoken question. I found someone like that, twice. The first one was actually a prisoner. A portion of the business I was in was the slave trade. Like the Companions, but less...voluntary. Delgar's one of the only people I've ever given a damn about. The other guy was a mercenary, I think. People called him Shot, but I don't think that was his name. He was a weaponmaster who worked for a Nord mercenary captain. Drank too much and had the most abrasive way of dealing with people. He taught me how to fight."

Sumar smiled some. He even relaxed a little in listening to these things. “I am pleased then, to have been able to assist in your reunion. I know what it is like to have found such an individual, only to lose them.”

John nodded. "The war?" he asked.

“They flayed the flesh from his bones.” Sumar spoke the words quietly without inflection, without emotion entering into them. “He believed he died protecting me.”

"That's hard." The complete lack of tone in the Dunmer's voice was more telling than anything Sumar could have said. "Is that why you're in the Dominion?"

“I serve the Company, who took me in despite all. Now a few individuals seek to tear it apart, and I am once again uncertain who I serve. I have chosen to preserve you.”

John looked up at Sumar, at once both puzzled and paranoid. "Preserve?"

“A meeting was called. It began shortly after my arrival here, and you are very late. If my instincts have served well, you may come to thank me for this delay. Skywatch is not safe, as I have said many times.”

John breathed deeply, thinking quickly about what might be happening in Skywatch. "The Inspector," he said and rubbed at his face. "You're right, I am thankful. How pissed do you think Ri'sari is?"

“It is difficult to say.” The Dunmer looked downward, toward the disturbed soil once again. “And neither of us are currently there to find out.”

"That is probably for the best."

The fighter looked out at the sea, the tide coming in, and the wreckage of a beached ship on the coast far below. "How long did you know I've been coming out here?"

Sumar only briefly followed his gaze before he again lowered it away from that wide vista. He leaned a little closer to his raised knee. “To be honest, not long at all. Only after you confessed you may require some assistance, did I take more effort to learn where you frequented.”

"I confessed? I must have been really drunk." John chuckled. "That has been happening too often lately."

He picked at the bark of the tree with his fingernail, spinning the flat bits over the edge of the bluff with a flick of the wrist.

“Quite drunk, but also quite honest. Happening a lot since… all that went down?”

John nodded as another piece of outer bark sailed over the edge to bounce it's way into the sea. "More often than I would like people to know about. Delgar's fine, by the way. A little banged up but he recovered; I managed to get there in time thanks to your map." Pick, peel, flick of the wrist, watch it go. "His partner left him to go scouting on his own, she didn't watch his back and he got his ass handed to him. I know Delgar. He's one of the best, short of a Bosmer. Maybe even better. He doesn't get caught. Yet she showed up in Skywatch, all apologies and 'are you alright', just as we arrived. I thought it was rather convenient." The fighter scoffed.

Sumar smiled a little as he heard the man’s lover was on the mend. It seemed quite genuine before the smile faded. Something dark flickered behind his eyes. There was a lengthy silence before he attempted to cover it with a simple, “You are welcome.”

As hard as Sumar tried to hide it, there was a flatness to his voice that made John look at him, forsaking the view of the sea to study the Dunmer's face. "Sorry. Probably more than you wanted to know...What?"

Sumar glanced about, as if he expected to suddenly find someone listening in to their conversation. He turned to John again. “Without your lover’s partner, you never would have had a map.”

John sat up, his stomach turning. He furrowed his brows and frowned, attempting to piece together the events that nearly cost him the life of his beloved. "She knew where he was?"

"No," Sumar said firmly. "Because she was involved, I chose to be involved." He shifted to rise slowly.

John leaned his shoulder against the trunk. "Now it makes sense," he said, nodding slowly. A weight seemed to lift from his shoulders as things suddenly fit together in a way he could understand. "That's slick. I had no idea. She must like you; her story made no sense, but then again I'm not a mage."

He sighed deeply. "That," he began, "It's easy for me to be paranoid on Delgar's behalf; we've had a few bad things happen, most often when dealing with a woman. I feel better knowing I don't have to be, when it comes to her. Thank you."

“She knows nothing of this. Nor does anyone else. It will remain that way,” he said in a tone which brooked no argument. “You say you are paranoid for Delgar. I think you then understand my position.”

John pointed up at the outstretched branches, loaded heavily with blossoms. He didn't know how the Altmer of Auridon managed to do it, but the ancient boughs seemed perpetually covered in blossoms. "What happens under the tree, stays under the tree," he said.

"Does she know you care that much?"

The Dunmer remained standing, and folded his arms to force back the anxious energy. “Those I care about end up dead John. She knows that.”

"I can't say I'd do differently, in your position." John stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders. Looking around on the ground, he picked up a backpack that had been tucked in among the roots and put it on. Full, and with a thick blanket rolled up and strapped to the top, one could assume that he had been prepared to stay out here for days. But the man he had sat under the twisted tree to wait for wasn't coming, not today.

“Do you have a plan, John?”

John rubbed his chin and thought. "Try not to get myself killed is a good start," he joked. "I do. Not a good one, but something of one. I'm going to go check out the meeting and see what's happened. I'm usually late anyway, I don't think anyone will notice. If I get a bad feeling or hear Ri'sari's hunting down the people that were on that trading expedition, I'll jump ship. If not, I'll try to figure out where people stand and make my decisions then."

Sumar released his arms and relaxed them by his sides. Following that motion he gave John a soft, partial bow. “That decision is completely your own. I will make no recommendations in either direction. I will, however, watch from the shadows at least as far as the warehouse. Should you draw some heat I have one more card up my sleeve – but – should blades be drawn, it is on you to get yourself out of there.