(third stake) video ✧ unseelie only

[herotypical]

[ bless her, she comes from a time before the selfie was adequately popularized. and yet buffy summers seems to have an instinctive knack for propped her locket up on her palm and holding it just so -- capturing her own ennui-stamped face in one corner and (over her shoulder) introducing the world to pretty little winter-blanketed river scene. one might assume she's in the vicinity of land carved out for his baronliness archer's spire and forts. hah. spire and forts. hello, innuendo.

anyway. she exhales with a puff of her cheeks and stares down the locket. you'd almost think there was no war at all by how little attention she pays it. purposefully, buffy seems to be ignoring the court drama as best she can. running away -- sour, perhaps, for a number of reasons. ] Some of you might've met-chatted-made-buddies with a girl named Dawn. She's gone. Sorry about that. [ and presumably that's why buffy looks like she's been mainlining angst straight into her veins.

otherwise: ] I need hammers. And...probably nails. Power drills will also be appreciated but I hear that might be a bit of a pipe-dream. We could also probably use pipes. I think.

See. This is why you gotta hate a war economy.

Oh! Those really really really big iron bar things. You know, the ones with the thin middles and the wide edges. The ones that co-star in all the wacky old school cool photoshoots hanging over city skylines...

[ but at least she's still bothering to help build unseelie fortifications. she's not ready to sally forth and kill, yet.

buffy's rambling. she tries to stop. except-- ] Wait! A few more things. Which one of you mooks is Professor Spaniard? The rest of you...I dunno -- be careful out there.
[ she went there. ]

Comments

[impathy]

[She looked nothing like the sort of woman who could use a hammer. But then she spoke nothing like what she looked like.]

For the war, no doubt. Perhaps you should be looking for hammers from those otherwise less involved.

[herotypical]

Black market neutrality hammers? I see. How very unAmerican of you.

[ ennui seeps out of every syllable. it's difficult to imagine she's taking any of this seriously. ]

[impathy]

I am unseelie, after all. I imagine that must make me un-many things.

[Though he did not know what it meant to be American at all.]

[herotypical]

Welcome to the club.

[ the club she so desperately wants not to be in. and yet the other guys don't look so hot either. ]

In fact, I'll make you secretary of the club if you find me some of those sweet sweet freedom hammers.

[ as opposed to those...french hammers. just roll with it. ]

[impathy]

Only a secretary? It seems something of a step down from my last appointment. Though perhaps inevitable.

[Hand of the King to Master of Coin to Hammer Fetcher. Would that he could see any potential at all in that spire she had shown him.]

[herotypical]

Look, mister. We all gotta take our lumps. You think I was anything even remotely close to a construction worker before I came here?

[ ... ] Well. Okay. Maybe once.

[impathy]

[And what do you have to start with now? Nothing. Not even a single gold coin. Only your wits, you fool. Use them.]

Once is more than none. You are not the master of that misshapen tower... so who is?

[herotypical]

[ the grossest human known to all humans ever-- ]

Archer. His name is Archer. And he's an ass. But he's an ass with a spire so -- yay for him?

[impathy]

It is most often asses who have things of use. [And the more of an ass he is, the more he can be used.] May I ask what he's done to gain your loyalty?

[herotypical]

[ oh. this shouldn't be so much of a stumper. thing is...archer hasn't earned jack shit from her -- barring perhaps an unfulfilled slap and maybe some laughter. but she turns up here all the same. there is a strange comfort to the guy's brazen and unapologetic attitude.

she'd rather be around people whom she could trust to be awful rather than the ones who were more...duplicitous. but she can't just say so.

so in a fairly obvious bid to let this guy know he should mind his own beeswax: ] You should really see his eyes. Those are good eyes to have. One look and I was like -- sure, where do I sign up?

[ better to be the california girl than the slaymaster general. she's not ready to be that hero yet. ]

[impathy]

Is that all? Would that I had more charming eyes, I'd have lived a more productive life.

[Though he scarcely believes her. She spoke too flippantly of this Archer to truly feel any devotion to him. Not unless she was his whore, which was entirely possible.]

[herotypical]

You know what they say about eyes, right?

[ at some point the locket's been dropped unceremoniously onto a squared-off stone. and buffy, eager to be just a little productive, has begun sorting nails by size and...utility. some of these old hand-made things were just awful. really misshapen. oh, what she wouldn't give for an industrial revolution. ]

[impathy]

To keep them well away from ravens?

[herotypical]

Pragmatic, sure. But bzzt -- wrong answer.

They're the windows to the soul. [ ...and she likes to think she can look a person in their eyes and determine whether they even have one, these days. ] You can see a lot in someone else's eyes.

[ and she sees all she needs to see in archer's: childishness; recklessness; chaos; disaster. none of it hidden. none of it lied about. she could use that level of honesty in her career right now. ]

[impathy]

Another woman once told me something not so different. [ A whore learns to see the man, not his garb, or she turns up dead in an alley.]

I do hope it's not true, however. I would hate for my eyes to speak of all my sinful pleasures.

[herotypical]

[ she pauses -- fistful of nails in play -- and stares at the locket like she's staring through it. ]

Crap. You too? Jeeze.

[ is she wearing some kind of giant sign that says chronic oversharers about your sins and your pleasures, come talk to me! or something like that? ]

[impathy]

All men, to be true. Perhaps we would be all better off to let the ravens have our eyes and our secrets with them.

[He is being equally flippant, however.]

[herotypical]

As long as Daniel Craig gets to keep his.

[ whatever. she goes back to plunking nails in a pail. to be honest, she hasn't had a proper look a the locket yet. not really. not enough to comment at least.

but she makes a bare introduction at long last: ] Buffy. Buffy Summers. And you are?

[impathy]

[Summers, he considers the name. It sounded like a bastard name if he ever heard one and so deepened his suspicions.]

Tyrion of House Lannister. Not that I expect it means as much here as it does at home.

[herotypical]

Does it? Mean much...back home? Back in your home?

[ because he's right -- it means nothing to her. ]

[impathy]

Oh, quite a lot, as it happens. "As rich as a Lannister" is a common enough phrase. My own nephew was a king, before I killed him.

[There is something wicked in his grin, but it does not reflect in his eyes.]

[herotypical]

Where I come from, that's not really something we like to brag about.

[ there is a mild note of alarm in her voice. ]

[impathy]

Falsely accused. You'll forgive me for neglecting to mention that. Most people do.

[herotypical]

Slow down, OJ. [ huff. wow. someone could use a side of sweet with all that bitter. ] It's still kind of a third-conversation topic. You know what I'm saying?

[ and yet curiousity gets the better of her: ] Who really did it?

[impathy]

A spider's bite, perhaps. Or a prick of a thorny rose. Or perhaps a bird shat in his pie. It could have been a wolf that savaged him, though I have also heard that lions are known to kill their own. Who could say? Not I.

What sort of land does your Lord Archer possess? [He suddenly felt no more need to talk of Joffrey anymore.]