Loki will find the two of them waiting very patiently at the entrance to the tower, Abby trying to keep the puppy seated dutifully. He does it when asked but won't stay– there's too much going on around him, and he's clearly excited by the presence of other people. He has a bad habit of lunging toward those in passing. She'll train him out of it eventually; for now, it's difficult to tell him off for anything for too long. He's so adorable.
It's... more tempting than it really should be to let him loose at Loki just to see what will happen. Abby strongly suspects he'd knock him down like skittles and the mental image is fantastic.
She refrains.
"Be nice," she tells Wags, very sternly; he looks back at her with big, puppy dog eyes. His stumpy little tail is going absolutely wild as Loki approaches them, and there's no way he isn't going to jump up in greeting.
Goodness, but that is a large dog considering its age; Loki blinks in their direction, pausing his approach briefly before he returns to it. He stops, a little in front of them, before squatting down and putting his hand out for the dog to sniff. He...somewhat remembers how dogs are.
It hasn't occurred to him that this puts his face in a prime licking position in relation to the mabari.
"What's his name?" He asks from his position (nearly) on the ground.
Wags is all over him in a flash. Really, the hand out is the invitation, the explicit permission to get right up in his face and give him slobbery kisses. Abby drags him back, reigning him in firmly so he sits at her feet, but- well, she definitely let him get a bit of love in first.
"Sorry," she says, but there's too much laughter in it for it to sound sincere, "He's excited, he's just a baby-" To the dog, "Wags. Behave."
Abby ducks down to get his attention, and gets him focused on her, his eyes wide and understanding. Tail going all the while.
"This is Loki." She explains. "We like him. Okay?"
Wags' ears perk at the name. He looks like he's taking everything that Abby says deeply seriously. "Okay," Abby confirms, and ruffles him up happily. "Good boy."
Loki makes a hgrk sort of noise when the puppy starts licking his face, because augh that doesn't feel...any sort of clean, really, as much as Loki is inclined to like the animal otherwise. Abby's barely contained laughter doesn't do much to smooth his inherent ruffled-ness afterward either, but he does manage to reach out and pat the dog on the head as he's pulled away.
Gonna stand up now, thanks. And make a small face at how his skin feels.
"His name is Wags?" Please tell him that's short for something. Loki puts his hands in his pockets. "He seems very intelligent."
"His name's Wagner," Abby explains, and even though she's already paying him attention, he perks up immediately at the sound of his own name, and barks once. "He's very smart, aren't you? Aren't you..."
Her voice trails off into low murmurs of affection as she gives Wags a very good rub down. Feels so good to have a dog back in her life. She had no idea that she'd been missing Alice until she got him, really.
"Apparently he's going to be huge." And as she sounds satisfied by this, that doesn't appear to be a problem.
"I've seen a full-grown Mabari once or twice; their size is nothing to laugh at." Not exactly like some wolves he knows (of), but not everyone needs something large enough to take a bite out of the Bifrost, really.
At the thought, Loki gives a little shudder. Anyway. "Wagner is a good name. Should we start walking?" He gestures towards the rest of the island. "Have you had dogs before?"
"I know." She is very smug. She's going to train him how to fight with her, and the pair of them are going to be unstoppable.
But until then? Walkies.
She stashes her hands into her pockets of her coat as she straightens up, and Wags falls into step beside her. He is learning to heel, but the world around him is very interesting; he veers away from her as a horse passes, and Abby has to call him back sharply.
At least he recognises the sound of his own name?
"Sort of. My old faction owned a lot. They came out into the field with us all the time, everybody looked after them." She grins, almost sheepishly. "Haven't ever done it by myself before, so. Kinda winging it."
Loki tracks the movement of the dog with his eyes, raising eyebrows as Wagner immediately comes back at the sound of his own name. This dog is going to be terrifyingly smart to go along with what is bound to be a very imposing size.
Good. Abby has enemies, or at least one of them; she'll need someone to watch her back.
"So far I'd say you're doing pretty well, but I've never raised a dog."
A mabari feels a little like easy mode, but that's fine with her. Gives her enough room to consider where exactly she's going to house Wags as he starts to grow up...
"Good to see you," she adds, nudging him affectionately with her elbow. She would have worn the peacoat that he got her for Satinalia just to show him how handsome it looks, but when training a puppy it's best to keep the things you'd rather remained slobber-free hidden deep in your wardrobe... please understand. "Thanks for the presents. Felt kinda spoiled."
He doesn't feel at all bad about her not wearing the coat; at least she has another. "If it helps at all I've had...relatively few people upon which to bequeath gifts throughout my life." A shrug, but he feels some kind of way about it, clearly. "So I may have gone overboard when I drew your name."
Besides, friends of his? Deserve to feel spoiled. "Did you get anything else good?" Is he semi-avoiding the supposed topic of conversation? Yes.
"You got me for the gift exchange?" Oh, that makes it even better: she's ridiculously pleased. And, silently, touched that he would consider her somebody worthy of spoiling. That knowledge is better than everything that he got her, truly.
"Jone gave me a mace." Something she's very taken with, considering it's the first to be mentioned, "I got some great books, too." Tacked on, as if an after-thought: "Margaery got me a comb, for my hair." The way her gaze darts away from him and out into the middle distance is just as unsubtle.
"You?" She knows exactly what he's doing, but she'll let him play his little game for a minute longer.
"I did." Loki grins at Abby; he'd been more than pleased when he'd gotten the name off someone he knew and likes.
He taps a finger against his lip. "Jone is the redheaded woman who does weapons training?" Fitting, that she'd get Abby a weapon. He also catches that glance Abby, and chuckles about it.
"How are things with the lady?" Last they talked about Margaery, Abby was questioning how to know if she was liked.
Abby admires her, an emotion that has taken some time for her to formally name. Jone is a very capable person, an incredible fighter; she got Abby out of more than one tight spot back during the skeleton ambush. She needs to think of a way to repay her for watching her back. Saving her ass.
"Good," she answers, automatically. She isn't going to tack on an I think? or give Loki an inch, because she's decided that she's impatient, actually.
There's a humming noise of consideration and raised eyebrows before Loki ducks his head for a moment, takes a breath, and looks toward the sky.
"It's good, I think. Complicated. But good." He rubs at his jaw a little. "I care about her a lot and I'm half certain that is going to bite me in the ass rather directly any moment now, but...good."
Bashful is a great look on him. Abby grins in response, glances down, and finds the puppy trailing them at a lazy distance: he's called back, for a second time, to her heel. He got into something back there while she was distracted... his paws and legs are all muddy. His face is too, from where he obviously shoved his nose into the smell. Damnit.
"Wags," she protests, but he only grins at his own name. Dogs.
To Loki, "What makes you think that? You're a catch."
"Goodness, Wagner," is said to the puppy. "Please keep your rather filthy but still impressive paws well away from me and my clothes, will you?"
Ever so politely.
"I'm not a catch; I'm a person with a monstrous past, didn't you know?" He shakes his head a little. "Something will go sideways. I don't know what I'm doing, really; she's married to the native variant of me, which, I don't know. I tell myself it's the same as what I would do, but is it? Would it be? We aren't the same; he left her here, to investigate something or another and cause trouble."
Huffing out a laugh that has no mirth to it. "I don't think I could do that. And that should terrify me." A beat. "It doesn't. That does terrify me. Inevitably something will go wrong. Things go wrong all the time, especially here."
Abby swallows a laugh when Wags tilts his head from side to side at the sound of Loki's voice, staring intently at him- he immediately darts off, as they start to hit more open and empty space, longing for a good run. She lets him go this time, he'll come back if she shouts.
Besides, this deserves her full attention.
And he's told her off for being self-deprecating. Abby's smile slips. "I do know," she says, after a beat. "S'why I like you." People with monstrous pasts should stick together. Remind each other not to make the same mistakes.
She isn't sure if he wants her advice, or her ear, but he's getting the former. He'll always have the latter anyway. "Kinda sounds like you're trying to talk yourself out of it. Why do you think you're going to fuck it up?"
Honest question. Gonna... circle back to this 'native variant' thing.
You ever wonder if people like us deserve good things is on the tip of his tongue before Loki manages to bite it back. If she said that, he would argue with her. And he doesn't exactly want to argue.
He's not sure what he wants. Someone to listen. Someone to tell him he's catastrophizing. Someone he can trust to be real and honest with him.
Abby suits that need.
Having thus reassured himself that he's not gone off and started a conversation he can't possibly see through, he turns her question over in his head for a moment. "Because I fuck up...everything." A shrug. "I get people killed, or plots unravel and people stop trusting me, so I've tried not...plotting anything, and I suppose that's going fine, but I don't really know how to tell?" He watches Wagner tear across the earth, chasing birds that hang out near the docks. "It's only been six months, more or less. I'm mortal now, so, a year matters, half a year matters." Another shrug, and he blinks, shaking his head. "Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?"
What he says hurts in more ways than one: he's a friend, most importantly. She cares about him, and it's sad that feels this way about himself, but those exact things could have come from her mouth and rung just as true. I fuck everything up. I get people killed. People stop trusting me.
She looks at the dog running down seagulls, his ears flapping madly in the wind.
Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?
You're a piece of shit, Abby. You always have been.
"I get it."
She really does, is the thing. More than he knows. "But other people pick up on stuff like that. Sometimes it can get really obvious. If you think it's going to happen that much, you could end up... engineering it." If that makes sense. Abby's pushed enough people away with her bullshit, she should know. "You owe yourself a better shot at it than that. This is important to you. Don't sabotage it now."
Loki puffs out his cheeks and sighs loudly, turning his gaze to the horizon. "We've talked about it, Alexandrie and I. About my propensity to sabotage the important things and my fears about it." He flares his nose, hands in his pockets. "And it's not terrible, when we talk about it. Not entirely, anyway. But the fears remain, and the feeling that if I don't sabotage it myself something worse will come along and take it from me anyway also remains."
It's that central fear he doesn't know what to do with. He knows that fear can undermine even the best laid plans and his plans aren't often the best laid, by experience.
"I'm trying very hard not to sabotage it, I think." It's hard to tell. It feels like work, anyway; difficult and uncomfortable. "But what happens if that doesn't matter, if it all falls apart anyway?"
Abby's lip curls a little. It isn't humourous, but rueful. The scenario he's describing has already happened to her, and she can attest to it hurting. Thedas took Lev away from her when she was trying so very hard to keep him. She wanted to learn how to be somebody he could count on and that opportunity is gone, forever. The injustice of it sits on her chest, like a weight pressing the air out of her lungs. It's so terrible, and unfair.
"If it does fall apart, it won't be because of you." She's twisting her hands together, her gaze momentarily flickering to him. His expression is unfathomable to her, but she can guess at the tangle inside of him. "So all you can really do about that is stay with her." Present, and there, not lost to what ifs. Easier said than done, but Abby believes in him. He's stronger than he thinks he is.
"She knows that you care, you know that she cares. If something does happen, you'll fight like hell to keep it."
Her arm nudges up against him, a tiny bit of affection, "I'm not gonna say it'll be fine and nothing will ever go wrong, cuz I don't wanna jinx it." A slight huff, before she adds, "But if it does, I'm here for you, you know. You won't have to deal with it by yourself."
His nostrils flare a little as she glances at him, but Loki holds his tongue in order to keep listening to Abby's advice. Which is what he's here for, isn't it? Someone to listen, and someone to be honest with him. Even though it terrifies him from all directions: having friends. Listening to advice. Someone being honest with him.
The possibility that he could do everything 'right' and still lose Alexandrie.
Terrifying, truly. It settles in his chest like an ice cube in his veins, settled in his heart.
"I will fight for it, no matter what happens." Unless Alexandrie asks him not to, which seems unlikely? Somehow? Even though in the back of his mind he expects it will happen, eventually. Her husband will come back and she'll realize it's too difficult to juggle two of them. She'll come to her senses, somehow. Abby brushes against his arm breaks him out of his spiraling thoughts, and so he takes his hand out of his pocket, wrapping his arm around both of her broad shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
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[ In her place he'd be a bit tickled too, so he understands. The tone gives this away. ]
Yes, definitely. What times do you walk him? I'll come by today.
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You can tell me more about Alexandrie while we walk. (she wants the hot goss ☕)
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It's a plan.
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It's... more tempting than it really should be to let him loose at Loki just to see what will happen. Abby strongly suspects he'd knock him down like skittles and the mental image is fantastic.
She refrains.
"Be nice," she tells Wags, very sternly; he looks back at her with big, puppy dog eyes. His stumpy little tail is going absolutely wild as Loki approaches them, and there's no way he isn't going to jump up in greeting.
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It hasn't occurred to him that this puts his face in a prime licking position in relation to the mabari.
"What's his name?" He asks from his position (nearly) on the ground.
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Wags is all over him in a flash. Really, the hand out is the invitation, the explicit permission to get right up in his face and give him slobbery kisses. Abby drags him back, reigning him in firmly so he sits at her feet, but- well, she definitely let him get a bit of love in first.
"Sorry," she says, but there's too much laughter in it for it to sound sincere, "He's excited, he's just a baby-" To the dog, "Wags. Behave."
Abby ducks down to get his attention, and gets him focused on her, his eyes wide and understanding. Tail going all the while.
"This is Loki." She explains. "We like him. Okay?"
Wags' ears perk at the name. He looks like he's taking everything that Abby says deeply seriously. "Okay," Abby confirms, and ruffles him up happily. "Good boy."
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Gonna stand up now, thanks. And make a small face at how his skin feels.
"His name is Wags?" Please tell him that's short for something. Loki puts his hands in his pockets. "He seems very intelligent."
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Her voice trails off into low murmurs of affection as she gives Wags a very good rub down. Feels so good to have a dog back in her life. She had no idea that she'd been missing Alice until she got him, really.
"Apparently he's going to be huge." And as she sounds satisfied by this, that doesn't appear to be a problem.
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At the thought, Loki gives a little shudder. Anyway. "Wagner is a good name. Should we start walking?" He gestures towards the rest of the island. "Have you had dogs before?"
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But until then? Walkies.
She stashes her hands into her pockets of her coat as she straightens up, and Wags falls into step beside her. He is learning to heel, but the world around him is very interesting; he veers away from her as a horse passes, and Abby has to call him back sharply.
At least he recognises the sound of his own name?
"Sort of. My old faction owned a lot. They came out into the field with us all the time, everybody looked after them." She grins, almost sheepishly. "Haven't ever done it by myself before, so. Kinda winging it."
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Good. Abby has enemies, or at least one of them; she'll need someone to watch her back.
"So far I'd say you're doing pretty well, but I've never raised a dog."
A shrug.
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A mabari feels a little like easy mode, but that's fine with her. Gives her enough room to consider where exactly she's going to house Wags as he starts to grow up...
"Good to see you," she adds, nudging him affectionately with her elbow. She would have worn the peacoat that he got her for Satinalia just to show him how handsome it looks, but when training a puppy it's best to keep the things you'd rather remained slobber-free hidden deep in your wardrobe... please understand. "Thanks for the presents. Felt kinda spoiled."
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Besides, friends of his? Deserve to feel spoiled. "Did you get anything else good?" Is he semi-avoiding the supposed topic of conversation? Yes.
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"Jone gave me a mace." Something she's very taken with, considering it's the first to be mentioned, "I got some great books, too." Tacked on, as if an after-thought: "Margaery got me a comb, for my hair." The way her gaze darts away from him and out into the middle distance is just as unsubtle.
"You?" She knows exactly what he's doing, but she'll let him play his little game for a minute longer.
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He taps a finger against his lip. "Jone is the redheaded woman who does weapons training?" Fitting, that she'd get Abby a weapon. He also catches that glance Abby, and chuckles about it.
"How are things with the lady?" Last they talked about Margaery, Abby was questioning how to know if she was liked.
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Abby admires her, an emotion that has taken some time for her to formally name. Jone is a very capable person, an incredible fighter; she got Abby out of more than one tight spot back during the skeleton ambush. She needs to think of a way to repay her for watching her back. Saving her ass.
"Good," she answers, automatically. She isn't going to tack on an I think? or give Loki an inch, because she's decided that she's impatient, actually.
"And yours?"
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"It's good, I think. Complicated. But good." He rubs at his jaw a little. "I care about her a lot and I'm half certain that is going to bite me in the ass rather directly any moment now, but...good."
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"Wags," she protests, but he only grins at his own name. Dogs.
To Loki, "What makes you think that? You're a catch."
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Ever so politely.
"I'm not a catch; I'm a person with a monstrous past, didn't you know?" He shakes his head a little. "Something will go sideways. I don't know what I'm doing, really; she's married to the native variant of me, which, I don't know. I tell myself it's the same as what I would do, but is it? Would it be? We aren't the same; he left her here, to investigate something or another and cause trouble."
Huffing out a laugh that has no mirth to it. "I don't think I could do that. And that should terrify me." A beat. "It doesn't. That does terrify me. Inevitably something will go wrong. Things go wrong all the time, especially here."
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Besides, this deserves her full attention.
And he's told her off for being self-deprecating. Abby's smile slips. "I do know," she says, after a beat. "S'why I like you." People with monstrous pasts should stick together. Remind each other not to make the same mistakes.
She isn't sure if he wants her advice, or her ear, but he's getting the former. He'll always have the latter anyway. "Kinda sounds like you're trying to talk yourself out of it. Why do you think you're going to fuck it up?"
Honest question. Gonna... circle back to this 'native variant' thing.
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He's not sure what he wants. Someone to listen. Someone to tell him he's catastrophizing. Someone he can trust to be real and honest with him.
Abby suits that need.
Having thus reassured himself that he's not gone off and started a conversation he can't possibly see through, he turns her question over in his head for a moment. "Because I fuck up...everything." A shrug. "I get people killed, or plots unravel and people stop trusting me, so I've tried not...plotting anything, and I suppose that's going fine, but I don't really know how to tell?" He watches Wagner tear across the earth, chasing birds that hang out near the docks. "It's only been six months, more or less. I'm mortal now, so, a year matters, half a year matters." Another shrug, and he blinks, shaking his head. "Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?"
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What he says hurts in more ways than one: he's a friend, most importantly. She cares about him, and it's sad that feels this way about himself, but those exact things could have come from her mouth and rung just as true. I fuck everything up. I get people killed. People stop trusting me.
She looks at the dog running down seagulls, his ears flapping madly in the wind.
Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?
You're a piece of shit, Abby. You always have been.
"I get it."
She really does, is the thing. More than he knows. "But other people pick up on stuff like that. Sometimes it can get really obvious. If you think it's going to happen that much, you could end up... engineering it." If that makes sense. Abby's pushed enough people away with her bullshit, she should know. "You owe yourself a better shot at it than that. This is important to you. Don't sabotage it now."
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It's that central fear he doesn't know what to do with. He knows that fear can undermine even the best laid plans and his plans aren't often the best laid, by experience.
"I'm trying very hard not to sabotage it, I think." It's hard to tell. It feels like work, anyway; difficult and uncomfortable. "But what happens if that doesn't matter, if it all falls apart anyway?"
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"If it does fall apart, it won't be because of you." She's twisting her hands together, her gaze momentarily flickering to him. His expression is unfathomable to her, but she can guess at the tangle inside of him. "So all you can really do about that is stay with her." Present, and there, not lost to what ifs. Easier said than done, but Abby believes in him. He's stronger than he thinks he is.
"She knows that you care, you know that she cares. If something does happen, you'll fight like hell to keep it."
Her arm nudges up against him, a tiny bit of affection, "I'm not gonna say it'll be fine and nothing will ever go wrong, cuz I don't wanna jinx it." A slight huff, before she adds, "But if it does, I'm here for you, you know. You won't have to deal with it by yourself."
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The possibility that he could do everything 'right' and still lose Alexandrie.
Terrifying, truly. It settles in his chest like an ice cube in his veins, settled in his heart.
"I will fight for it, no matter what happens." Unless Alexandrie asks him not to, which seems unlikely? Somehow? Even though in the back of his mind he expects it will happen, eventually. Her husband will come back and she'll realize it's too difficult to juggle two of them. She'll come to her senses, somehow. Abby brushes against his arm breaks him out of his spiraling thoughts, and so he takes his hand out of his pocket, wrapping his arm around both of her broad shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
It helps to be tall.
"Thanks, Abby; you're a good friend."
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/covers this timestamp my god
i see no timestamp
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