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Jun. 8th, 2016 08:14 pmI like to think of Jaren Ward’s comrades back at the City still keeping in touch with him during his Palamon stint via dial-up Ghost, and at first they try to be supportive of their friend as he gets overly invested in the squalid politics of badland unfortunates because, well, between Pahanin not doing great after the Vault and You-Know-Who acting increasingly off, it’s been hard on Jaren lately and he’s probably earned a mid-life crisis or two.
But weeks pass without sign of him returning, and then months, and suddenly they realise that while they weren’t looking he went and adopted an entire village of dirt-grubbing ferals and they’re just, “They barely have electricity. They don’t have plumbing, Jaren.” “Mm.” “You have to shit in a hole.” “True enough.” “Please come home.” “I’ll speak with you next moon.”
Everyone is baffled and at least one person is actually pretty offended because they have a goddamn duty that Jaren has tossed to one side in favour of babysitting people who knew what they were getting into when they chose to live outside the walls, and that’s a rift that never gets repaired because Jaren’s response to the accusation is a silence so cold it would freeze the ether in a Vandal’s veins.
But others come around enough that they enjoy hearing what little village gossip they can pry out of Jaren (the man can dead-eye the wings off a fly but story-telling, they all agree, is not his forte), and they keep Jaren abreast of City happenings in return (“Pahanin made a wordplay about cuttlefish yesterday! It was appalling. Three rookies jumped off the west tower to escape and Banshee claims he purged his memory banks so hard he lost an entire week”) and Jaren takes wry comfort from the knowledge that you can take the Hunter out of the City but the City will never stop calling the Hunter at 3am to see if Shin’s recovered from his cough yet.
But weeks pass without sign of him returning, and then months, and suddenly they realise that while they weren’t looking he went and adopted an entire village of dirt-grubbing ferals and they’re just, “They barely have electricity. They don’t have plumbing, Jaren.” “Mm.” “You have to shit in a hole.” “True enough.” “Please come home.” “I’ll speak with you next moon.”
Everyone is baffled and at least one person is actually pretty offended because they have a goddamn duty that Jaren has tossed to one side in favour of babysitting people who knew what they were getting into when they chose to live outside the walls, and that’s a rift that never gets repaired because Jaren’s response to the accusation is a silence so cold it would freeze the ether in a Vandal’s veins.
But others come around enough that they enjoy hearing what little village gossip they can pry out of Jaren (the man can dead-eye the wings off a fly but story-telling, they all agree, is not his forte), and they keep Jaren abreast of City happenings in return (“Pahanin made a wordplay about cuttlefish yesterday! It was appalling. Three rookies jumped off the west tower to escape and Banshee claims he purged his memory banks so hard he lost an entire week”) and Jaren takes wry comfort from the knowledge that you can take the Hunter out of the City but the City will never stop calling the Hunter at 3am to see if Shin’s recovered from his cough yet.
