Tis the season...for a lot of boxes? [Presents!]

[turned_to_steel]

WHO: Sansa Stark
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: December 20th
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: Will update if needed
STATUS: OPEN

Sansa had her jaw clenched and her hands buried deep in her pockets, hurrying towards the Inn as quickly as she could make herself go without running. It was tempting to run but she didn't trust the snow that clung to the ground and the fact that there could possibly be ice patches somewhere underneath. She didn't relish the idea of possibly slipping and hurting herself when she was supposed to be going to the Inn to get her first lesson in cooking breakfast.

So she was more than grateful for the heat she felt when she reached the front door and pushed it open to let herself inside the nice, warm building. Stomping her feet, she shut the door and looked up to see if she could spot Kate anywhere. What she found instead was enough to have her eyes going wide and her lips parting in surprise at the sight of boxes stacked everywhere in the main room. It didn't matter where she looked, there seemed to be a new stack of varying heights and sizes. So many of them that she wasn't even sure she could count them all.

It wasn't like the box she had found on her front step, though. These boxes were wrapped in pretty paper of different colors and designs, and all with a tag sitting on top of each one.

Unbuttoning her jacket, she moved to the closest stack of boxes and took a peek at the first tag that was visible to her. She recognized both names and found herself blinking in confusion while she glanced at the second tag. Had everyone else found a way to get presents to give to someone else and she had missed it? She wondered briefly if maybe it was something that had been planned from before she had arrived but why hadn't her brothers mentioned it to her? It was something she was still puzzling over until she found a tag that was intended for someone else but had her name on it as well.

A quick search at another stack had her finding a present that was intended for her.

Still curious and wanting answers, Sansa set her jacket aside and went back to the first stack of boxes. Plucking the first box off the top, she set it to the side and moved the second box to another area. By the time someone came downstairs or came inside, Sansa was making new piles sorted by the name of who the presents were meant for. She thought it would be easier for people to find their presents rather than everyone stomping around poking through every stack and reading every tag.

[ooc: This is a mingle post for people to find their presents if they are located at the Inn! If you wish to, please feel free to have your character find their stack of presents already sorted.]

Comments

[3ofswords]

"I don't know half the people these are from," he says, hand free to gesture at his own pile next to him. "I barely know the other half." He isn't unfazed by the fact, innocuous as the items seem, but it won't help to wallow in the feeling with the apparent Kylo Ren.

"As far as I can tell, someone or something else put them here, tagged with our names. I have no idea what's in this box, I didn't even know your name. I've just seen you skulk around with wood in the morning." Lifting his chin, he indicates the box in his hands: "Why don't you just open it? Nothing's blown up in my face so far."

[andrend]

For a moment Ren considers choking him with the force just because he feels like maybe he actually could right now. Instead, he rips away the paper and opens one end of the box, staring at the edge of the plush monstrosity he can see with a look like he might consider smothering Kira with it.

He tugs the stuffed animal in the form of a Wookiee with a tiny head free of the box. There's a moment of silence where he just stares at the thing, and the look he gives Kira after is filled with suspicion and a rising anger. So far, everyone has claimed to not know of the war, few acknowledge space travel, and none that he has spoken to know of the many species of the galaxy, of the Jedi, of the Empire or of the Republic. And yet in his hands is inexplicably a stuffed animal meant to represent a Wookiee, however terrible of a representation it may be.

He focuses on the force, attempting to dig or press his way into Kira's mind and fixing him with an intense, murderous stare.

"You have never seen this before?" He holds up the plush, tossing the box aside.

[3ofswords]

The immediate laugh that barks from Kira's throat cuts and trails--not because of the anger that radiates from Ren like a fire starting to chap the skin, but something stranger. Something Kira has honestly never felt before, even in the throes of prophetic nightmare.

It starts at the back of his neck, like a breath, then the brush of a finger. He shivers once, distracted from the question and it's inexplicable hostility--

The finger presses, hard enough that he sits forward and swats a hand to the back of his head. Everything has been softer, more subtle since the fountain--just because it doesn't hurt now, doesn't mean it hasn't the potential or intent. When it digs again, he makes the latest in a series of mistakes: lashing out at Ren's shin with his foot, hoping to startle him out of-- "What are you doing?"

[andrend]

Ren digs in sharper as a result of the kick and shoves Kira against the nearest wall, this time with his hands on the young man's shoulders. The fact that something about the gift has deeply unsettled Ren is obvious enough, and far from startling him, the kick seems to have just made his focus sharper.

"Answer the question." Ren is enough on edge by the disruption and the village in general that this glimmer, faint though it is, of some kind of connection to the galaxy everyone else seems not to know sets him off. There's a faint pressure at Kira's throat, uncomfortable, like a turtleneck that doesn't quite fit and Ren doesn't seem to be backing off just yet.

[3ofswords]

"Or what," he asks, genuine curiosity lifting his tone. He swallows against the faint itch around his throat, more concerned with being shoved into a wall--though only just. "You're going to beat it out of me in a crowded room?"

Ren has him pinned, and there isn't a blow he could land on his best and brightest day that would change that. But someone here could. He swallows again, and it registers that this too feels like the work of some invisible force, something that radiates from Ren and takes shape, perhaps an advanced case of the shadow around Credence.

It doesn't excuse pitching a fit over a toy. "Put me down and ask like a civil human being, and I'll tell you. Or keep making a scene until Miss Kate has you put out in the cold, I don't really care."

[andrend]

The weakness of his connection to the Force in the village has had one benefit. The pull of both the light and the dark side was muted, barely present. Neither tempted him into action or whispered in the back of his mind loud enough to distract him. Had they been in his world, he would have killed Kira with little further thought beyond the whisper in the back of his mind that told him to give in to his rage. In the village, he suffers the necessity of allies and a lack of the autonomy he otherwise had for making decisions and reacting to the world around him.

It is only after the mention of Kate that the pressure around Kira's throat and in his head relents. Ren does not immediately set him down. He stares Kira down with eyes narrowed, suspicion and anger at war in him. Trapped in the village, Ren is a powder keg, ready to let his anger consume him. He's held back only by the logic of needing the cooperation of these other people for now to survive. He drops Kira after a moment. The plush and the box are both forgotten where he dropped them on the floor.

"I have no need to beat anything out of you." He responds, a threat lingering in his tone, and lets go of Kira entirely, letting him right himself and stepping back.

[3ofswords]

His feet settle on the ground, his skin feels like his own, untouched, untested, and the threat steps back. This is where he should abandon his pile and his pride and make for the kitchen, for Kate herself, and make sure there are people around to intervene if Ren changes his mind.

Instead, he looks at the toy on the ground, its dull plastic eyes behind thick fur. If Ren did ask or beat it out of him--he isn't sure what he'd say.

It's a wookiee. It's--it's from--

It isn't even on the tip of his tongue. It's a word he doesn't know, it's the sound of his father speaking to his own mother--it's Japanese, but the word is very old, or very new, or the name of a place Kira's never been. A ceremony they don't perform anymore. For a moment, he wonders if the pressure did sink in, if Ren doesn't have to beat the answer out of him because he took it, in a permanent way.

But Ren neither looks nor feels like he's gotten away with something. Rather like he's holding something back, and it's to Kira's benefit. Swallowing against the nauseating sense of loss, Kira brushes the wrinkles out of his dark shirt and tilts his head, defying the feeling and man both: "It's a lot less bad ass when I just said that."

[andrend]

Ren considers pointing out what Kira actually said but decides it isn't worth the effort. He leaves the toy where it is and steps away. He reasons that he isn't backing down, that this is a strategic choice only being made because it helps his longer term goals, and inwardly he can feel the lingering tendrils of the dark side of the force rebelling and furious with him for letting Kira live and walk away unscathed when the force wants him to squeeze it around his throat until his lips turn blue and his eyes go wide and panicked.

What may have been an easy to follow demand from the force becomes a poor and illogical choice and he fixes Kira with a glare that could cut like daggers, not lifting his hand against him again.

"You keep it." His tone is far from kind of generous. Cold and hard with a venomous edge, like a poisoned blade at someone's throat. He knows how irrational it is to let such a small thing effect him so greatly but then the memory of Chewbacca's angry shout comes flashing back, bringing with it the spreading white hot fire and lancing pain of the shot to his side that burns phantom pains through his nerves; and the eyes of the disappointment of a man by the name of Han Solo, wide with surprise, confusion, and most deplorable of all forgiveness before they were gone.

"I have no use for such a thing."

He doesn't wait for Kira to make another remark that would only tempt Ren to follow through and suffocate that voice, stop it in his throat and hold it there until he choked on it. He turns about on his heels like a military man and heads through the mess of boxes, intent on putting distance between them.