cozen | fade rift

He's caught her off-guard, sidling up as the crowd exiting the ferry begins to disperse. That her surprise is obvious is a decent clue she's out of sorts, an uncharacteristic beat required to rearrange her face into a friendly smile and stop hunching into the turned-up collar of her coat with her gaze fixed firmly on the fog-damp cobbles. She sidesteps his question about where she was headed, but is easily persuaded to join him instead.

Which sees them settling in to a high-backed booth at an advantageous angle toward the back of the mid-range sort of establishment that is neither showily expensive enough for the Inquisition's Hightown contingent nor grimy enough for those still intent on imagining themselves characters in a Tethras novel. The crowd is lively without being rowdy, the games of chance in progress seem good-natured, and as Bastien returns with a bottle of wine and two glasses Yseult lifts her chin back toward the bar, and a young woman with curly dark hair who is just turning away with an expression of disappointment as she sees his destination. "You have an admirer."

"I have seven admirers—

He doesn't turn to look, while he's depositing his offering and taking his seat. He knows who she's talking about, first of all, and second, if he looks now, and doesn't do anything, it will be that much harder to approach the woman later and act like he's only just noticed her, if he decides to be in the mood for that. Third, he's made a habit of undivided attention, the sort that makes people feel like they're the most important people in the room even when they aren't, though in this case—fourth, and last of all—Yseult really is.

"—and only one and a half friends."

Important, see.

The bottle's already mostly uncorked, courtesy of the bar staff, but he hands it to Yseult to finish the job.

She exhales a laugh, and looses the cork from the bottle, politely pouring a generous measure into his glass before her own. She doesn't wait to drink, though, and deeply, enough to immediately top up her cup again as she asks,

"Am I the one or the half? Or are we each three-quarters friend?"

"Perhaps you are the one and the half."

He's gentler on his glass than she is, watchful while he drinks, with his usual cheer darkened a little around the eyes by concern he doesn't try to hide. She isn't really the one and the half, of course—

"I will give you your missing quarter," he says, putting his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand to look at her, "if you tell me what is wrong."

She thinks about lying--there's a moment where she gets the bemused smile and the denial ready, and for that moment it looks completely genuine--but she stops, and instead rolls her head on her neck, side to side and back round in a circle and lets out a breath.

"It's nothing," she says with a shake of her head. Half a lie. She'll get there. "Personal. Stupid. I'm letting myself be distracted and I need to put an end to it."

He hums around a mouthful of wine. It's a skeptical sound, but once he's swallowed he smiles.

"Some wounds need air to heal, no?" he says. Wound may be melodramatic, but it's better suited to table talk with a relatively refined woman than the spoiled-meat-is-better-out-than-in analogy. "And who better to confide in than someone whose life you could so easily ruin?"

"Ah, is that the quarter?" A shift of mouth and brows that's a little sharp, a little dry, and then she lapses into a silence that is plainly considering. The wineglass is turned between her fingertips and stared into and sipped from, long and slow, before finally sat down, hands folded around its base.

"If I tell you, we'll be even in that. My employers can never know." She watches him, observing but mostly hesitating. She presses a thumb into the edge where cup meets table until the nail goes white.

"There's a man. I broke things off months ago, but he won't fix it or let it die."

Edited (ugh use contractions ever) 2019-02-19 05:28 (UTC)

"Ah," Bastien says, with intentionally arranged sympathy over real amused interest over deeper, more genuine sympathy—three layers, like a cake, and he doesn't take any pains to ensure Yseult won't be privy to each of them. "there is always a man. Unless there is a woman."

Who are her employers, exactly? He doesn't know. He doesn't ask. He might die of curiosity, but that's the third best thing to die of, after old age and an unseen blow to the head.

He's only being a little conniving when he adds, "Have you tried throwing his letters in the fire?"

Because that must be how they are communicating.

"I've tried keeping him at arm's length," she replies, her tone and her timing making it sound more like yes than the vague side-step it is while she decides how she feels about that sympathy and how far she trusts it. But the answer is she's already trusting it this far, and the effort of coming up with a way to continue with this half-lie without lapsing into all lies abruptly no longer feels quite worth it.

"He's here. He stumbled on me here and stayed." She keeps going, quick, before she has time to examine or think beyond the relief of spitting out the problem she's been gnawing on for half a year. "But he doesn't care about the Inquisition or its mission or its war. Corypheus could burn all Orlais tomorrow and it would make no difference to him."

Edited 2019-03-01 06:29 (UTC)

"Wait."

He's lowering his wine glass. There's a hint there, one he'll follow up on—the fact that not caring about the Inquisition's mission is something worth her complaint—but there's also a wide spectrum of men who won't go away, from sweet and too dumb to take a hint (Bastien has been on that end of the spectrum himself, unfortunately) to controlling stalker. The last is unlikely, as Yseult seems perfectly capable of disposing of anyone who legitimately threatens her, but romance can make anyone a pacifist.

"Is this an annoyance, or a danger?"

She blinks once, confused. She has been wrestling with all of this for so long—years, if she's honest, not just the last few months since he arrived—that it's difficult to imagine how it must sound from the outside, to someone who doesn't know every stupid, painful detail. But she catches his meaning and immediately shakes her head, fingers uncurled from around the base of her wine glass to stretch toward him, forestalling.

"No, no, it's not like that. It's—" she flounders there, and says finally, with a rueful little laugh and another shake of her head, "It's much worse. If he were a problem like that I would know what to do."

He suspected as much. It's still a relief, and one that requires another question—

"Then you do not want him gone?" Bastien leans closer over the table, conspiratory. "Because I know a dozen seasoned kidnappers. They would not have to hurt him."

She laughs, soft and wry, and shakes her head, stopping only to lift her wine glass again. "No, I don't want him gone. I want him to not be so damned selfish, but he can't seem to manage that."

There's a fairly long pause, while Bastien looks at her with the squinting concentration of a man trying to solve a puzzle or understand someone's indecipherable accent.

"He is here—for you?" No one seems to be making any great prophet here. In Skyhold, maybe. "A man is fighting a war for you? And this is a problem. Am I following?"

She bears the scrutiny, brows sliding together as the squinting continues, and then further as his take on the situation hangs a moment, and she squints at it in turn.

"Yes." Slowly. "And yes. It's not-- he's only here for me. He doesn't understand why I want to be here. He thinks it's stupid to risk myself for any of this. How can I be with a man like that? Who can see suffering or even cause it and not care?"

Well. That's potentially different. He swirls the wine in his glass and tries to weigh potential sociopathy against all that devotion.

"At all?"

Her head tips, side to side, thumbing her wine glass. "He can be kind, and generous. But he was at Ghislain. He saw what the enemy is and what they'll do. And after, he told me it would be fine if we were selfish because others in the Inquisition are. He's been here half a year and he hasn't learned anything from it. He'd go back to being a pirate tomorrow if he didn't know I'd never speak to him again."

He's listening. It's a dilemma. He's forty percent scoundrel himself, only well-dressed, so perhaps not quite as much of a dilemma for him as it should be, but he does sympathize, genuinely, until she says pirate and that's all briefly shoved out of the way by his inner sea-shanty-singing twelve-year-old boy.

"Go back to being a what?"

"A pirate."

She's looking at him warily, ready for either the how on earth or the does he have a parrot or any combination of the two. He's got that light in his eye like it's going to be the latter.

"Attacking and robbing innocent people. Killing them if they try to avoid being robbed. And he thinks that's no worse than what I do."

Edited 2019-03-09 05:21 (UTC)

He could snap back into serious, sincere sympathy—and he considers it, less because it would be believable than because he’s a bit of a show off—but they’re friends, aren’t they? They’ve just decided they are. And he isn’t of a mind to ruin that by making a show out of how easily he could fake it. So the eager curiosity only dampens, rather than vanishing altogether, and he takes his time with a chastened drink of his wine.

“I can see how that would be a problem,” he says, setting the glass back down. “But it isn’t the least surmountable one I’ve ever heard of.”

"How?" She spreads a hand up and lets it drop. Somewhere in some internal ledger he gets a point for tamping down his interest without pretending it never was. "It's been eight months and he hasn't come around. I can't just give in. He'll think that means he's right, and he isn't. And how can I--." It only takes a second, but she stops, pulls back the rise in her voice, marshals her expression, folds her arms neatly on the table in front of her and starts again.

"I can't just give in now, after all of this. How can I live with myself if I go back to pretending I don't see the harm in what he does?"

"I'm sure you couldn't."

Not really. He doesn't know her well enough, really, to be sure of what she can and can't live with. But that means erring on the side of whatever she insists, especially when she's so worked up—relatively speaking, so far as he's ever seen her—about it.

"And I wouldn't tell you that you should. Love is bullshit, anyway, nineteen times out of twenty."

She laughs, quick and sharp, and washes it down with the rest of the wine in her cup. But she can tell--and would've noticed a while ago, normally--that he's kind of just telling her what she seems to want to hear. What else can he do, anyway? She pours him a refill before her own, mouth tilting off-center, wry, self-conscious.

"Is that so? I'm not sure I would have taken you for a cynic."

"It comes and goes," Bastien says, trading honesty for honesty, "depending on whether or not I think I've found the one in twenty. But not a single unmarried poet has written me so much as a couplet in years. At this point I would take a married one. I think that may be the litmus test."

"Poet is a requirement?" Her head tilts, thoughtful and a little amused, too. The curve of her mouth matches it, humor tucked up in one corner. "Do they have to be skilled, or is any poetry sufficient?"

"Enough skill that I can introduce them to my friends without apologizing," he says, without pausing, because he's thought of where to draw the line already. Very careful consideration. Unless—"unless it is too late, when I learn the poetry is garbage, and I am already in the non-bullshit sort of love. Then I suppose I will have to pretend to like it."

"Pretend even to your friends? Forever? That is love." Probably? She assumes. "Is poetry your main criteria? You seem to've put a great deal of thought into this."

Bastien smiles, and drinks. Twice.

"Some of us have not have the opportunity to do much more than think of it," he says, "which is why we are not really talking about me. Which pirate is he?"

"Does it matter?" She shrugs, after a pause just long enough to make clear that she sees this blatant deflection. "A pirate is a pirate, and love is bullshit." But she adds after a drink: "Not any of the Tevinters."

"Then it is not as bad as it could be."

Fuck Tevinter.

And perhaps left to his own devices he'll figure it out, eventually, with the clues that he has, but there are so many pirates, at the moment attempting to catalog them seems like a waste of time, and one that would require him to be quiet long enough for Yseult to know he was trying to work through the problem in his head. Seems rude.

"But if you tell me which one, I can tell you he is not handsome enough to be worth the trouble," he adds. "If I said so now you would know I was only saying so."

Yseult hums in response, thoughtful, skeptical. He is handsome enough, unfortunately. But she comes to the same conclusion Bastien already has.

"His name is Darras. He goes by Darras Rivain, captain of the Fancy."

"Ah."

We've met, says that ah, quite clearly.

"I see. In that case, I have some bad news for you."

"I know," she says, exaggerated, almost a sigh, as if she is well aware of the bad news and how very bad it is.

She lifts both hands, helpless, and then shakes her head. "Forget it. There's nothing to be done. Eventually he will either change or he'll leave."

She drinks, and then nudges the subject, if not entirely changing it. "You've met?"

Edited (sorry) 2019-04-08 05:14 (UTC)

"Briefly," Bastien says, "when the spirits—spirited. He loaned me a knife."

"Mmm." Musing, not thrilled. "He was not exactly himself, then. Bad memories. He's usually more--" it takes her a professionally-unacceptable length of time to choose a word, "Charming."

"It was a bad day," he says, agreeably. No intention to hold anyone accountable for anything they did or said that day, here. "And he was very charitable. You know, with his knives."

She laughs, a little, quick. "That's something." After a quiet minute, playing with her cup, leaning her jaw on her fist, she asks, "How did you decide to retire?"

He straightens up, already lit up with pleasure at the opportunity, and opens his mouth to tell her a story. One where he was waiting behind a door to catch and strangle a man, but he could hear him playing with his daughter and felt the weight of his decisions pressing down until he snapped, all at once, and left his mask and his knives behind on the floor when he ran; one that isn’t true, but might be satisfying.

And then he catches himself, about to ruin Honesty Hour like a tool, and closes his mouth, and deflates just a little while he takes a drink.

“I was tired,” he says. “I wasn’t going to climb any higher. I could afford it. My partner—Ines, you met her—we’d spent all day arguing about slant rhyme, and she was being insufferable.” Jenin was there, too, but that’s not just his bit of honesty to dispense. “It was horribly hot, and the masks make it worse.”

"It took a full month for my skin to recover from those two weeks in a mask in summer," Yseult recalls darkly. "They ought to make the job easier but I would have quit years ago."

She's joking, kind of, but lets it fade into a more serious silence, considering his honest answer. "And now? If it weren't for the invasion, would you have come back to it? Or were you happy for an excuse?"

[ When Bastien wakes, he’ll find that he’s received a terribly mysterious invitation to meet with a Hightown bookseller.

She’s come into possession of a number of rare maps that claim to reference graves and other monuments to figures from history and folklore, and she’d like to ask Bastien’s assistance in determining whether these could be of any value to the Inquisition. Unknown to him, a stranger (terrible, mysterious) may already be waiting.

The invitation is beautifully calligraphed, and includes a white rose for Bastien to wear, to signal that he should be allowed into the back rooms. Bastien doesn't actually have to accept the invitation. Not intentionally. Should he ignore or otherwise attempt to circumvent its summons, a chain of coincidences (terrible, mysterious, you get it by now) and well-timed accidents will conspire to see him there.

There are some maps, though they're nearly all the work of fantasy, and include multiple statues to dogs supposedly 'anointed' by the Chantry. There's also a bottle of wine, the sort of imported fruit that runs from expensive to baffling in winter, and a conspicuous deal of privacy given two strangers left with the valuable stock. (Don't worry, they'll be frisked on the way out by a very surly dwarf.)

OOC Note: Ilias is played by Jenni. Feel free to play out a thread, handwave things, or ignore it entirely, but check with each other first! ❤ ]

Edited 2019-02-26 00:41 (UTC)

[ not a whisper but a low tone, even for Yseult. like she's trying to seem normal but also not to be overheard ]

Where are you right now?

Edited 2019-08-08 01:34 (UTC)

In the diplomacy offices, working diligently enough to warrant a raise.

[ Bad time? Or best time? ]

Feeding a cat.

[And a little suspicious of that tone, and then also a little surprised to realize she's contacted both him and Bastien, but Bastien is cool, so.]

Likely not going to earn me a raise, but it's important. And where're you, then?

In the library.

[ she hesitates a moment longer, then sighs and bites the bullet (or bolt, or whatever the pseudo-medieval saying might be) ]

I need your assistance with one of the candidates for head of Diplomacy.

Maker.

[ Makeur, with his accent. He will have to return to the matter of the cat later, and also examine how he feels about being included in a conversation with her pirate. He might feel like he has ??? a friend????

But right now he is busy feeling impressed by how difficult this boringness process has become. ]

Has another one fainted?

Another one?

[This is the point in the conversation where, if the three of them were immediately together, Darras would turn to look with a kind of are-you-serious incredulity at Bastien. With great comedic time, and all.]

Are they making a habit of fainting? I've kept out of it. Didn't know there were such dramatics.

No.

[ Yseult is getting ready to roll her eyes, perhaps they can hear it even in just that one word. ]

She must be convinced to leave the library and then the Gallows and not return. I'm sure you two are capable of making that happen. Whether or not it involves fainting.

May we— [ you know, him and his new partner, Darras Rivain ] —ask why?

—and who? Precisely.

Yeah, 'cos convincing someone to leave the Gallows won't be hard, will it. Just remind them they're at the Gallows and they'll likely clear off.

But knowing the why and the who'd help us t' do it quicker. Probably.

If you head toward the back of the library on the western side, there are a few small study rooms and storage closets. She is at one of the tables in front of them. Pale hair, purple scarf. Viana Velez of Kaiten.

[ Those are the only questions they asked, right ]

What, really? I like that one.

I'm afraid she would not be a good fit.

She would not be a good fit... because....

[Slowly, trying to give her plenty of time to break in with a proper explanation.]

I mean, you heard Bastien. He likes her.

[ A sigh. This is inevitable, but that doesn't mean she has to make it too easy. ]

She'll recognize me as someone else, and it will go badly.

[He's not thick, so: that's nearly enough for Darras, who has heard enough of Yseult's stories (or parts of stories) to guess at where she might have been someone else to be recognized.

(It helps, also, that he would do anything for Yseult. Still.)

Still.]

Have wine waiting for us after, then. And the story, if it's one that can be told.

[To Bastien--]

D'you do all right with improvising?

[ Have wine, the pirate says, and Bastien is primed to protest. It is not enough for him. But then Darras makes a request for the story—and is in a better position, probably, to insist—and the protest is immediately forgotten. ]

My friend.

[ Does he do all right with improvising. ]

I will meet you outside the main doors.

If you could be quick, I would appreciate it.

[ is sort-of thanks and no sort of promise (yet) that she'll explain ]

I'm late for a meeting as it is.

Wouldn't have called on us if you didn't know we'd be quick about it.

[Like, please.]

Main doors it is, mate. Yseult, darling-- [is it unprofessional to use darling in this context, well too bad] --stay hidden. You'll know when it's all clear. And you'll make that meeting of yours, swear it on--what's a good thing to swear on?

[ It is unprofessional in this context, but it's not as bad as other contexts and she'd like to not be stuck hiding in a stifling closet any longer than necessary, so Yseult lets it slide this once. ]

I don't require swearing, just doing.

[ They will find Madame Velez where Yseult said she'd be, fair hair and purple scarf easily picked out in the otherwise sparsely-occupied library. She is polite but reluctant to leave, and after some hesitation will ask whether there is a librarian working here named Katrine with dark hair and spectacles. No? But she could have sworn.... ]

—honor, [ Bastien offers, not over Yseult, but after her, in a whisper, as if to sneak the suggestion (intentional in its irony, a little, but there is honor among some thieves) past her demurral.

And then he is shortly afterwards standing beside Darras in the library and frowning at Velez with perfectly-pitched sympathy mixed with concern, the sort that might be aimed at an overworked someone who claims to have seen a dragon through the window when no one else saw a thing. ]

This was a Circle before we were here, of course. [ Everyone knows that. ] The Veil is very thin—so many died, so horribly. It is very common to see things that are not here. Just last week something pretending to be my grandfather joined me for breakfast.

[Honor.

Darras takes this to heart, as easily as he takes the position of second to Bastien's concerned sympathizer. Here as an agent of Riftwatch, he listens with patience--and nods, gravely, at the end.]

The funny bit is, his grandfather is still alive.

[He shoots Velez a smile--charming, a little teasing. More amused than concerned, the sot of man who would listen to an overworked someone claiming to have seen an otherwise invisible dragon and tell all his mates about it later.]

He's right all the same. Who is this Katrine, when she's at home? An old colleague? A friend? That might help us work out why you'd be seeing her, in this place. Not that it's her. Could be any old thing or grandfather.

[Velez hesitates, clearly uncertain. She looks between the two men before her, both of who have been so charming. Swallows, somewhat nervously.

I suppose, she allows, with grace, I might have been mistaken. Katrine was-- a friend.

There is a valley of a pause there. A chasm. One that any manner of speculation might fall into, or drawn out of, even. Darras feels his eyebrows raise.]

Edited (editing to npc ) 2019-09-01 21:45 (UTC)

[ Velez doesn't quite blush, she has been in politics too long not to have developed a thicker skin than that, but she does glance away, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. And bemused by this situation as a whole. She'd always heard the Gallows was a strange place, and certainly there have been stories about Riftwatch--and the Inquisition before it--but...huh.

Odd as they may be, she is coaxed to rise, and is not opposed to exiting, though the escort is not entirely welcomed. Once outside she gives herself a little shake, and heads for the ferry, if not convinced by their excuses then certainly convinced that she would be better off not being in charge of these people.

Later, Yseult is as good as her word, or at least as much of her word as agreed to provide them with wine in exchange for this assistance. Decent wine, even, judging by the label as she pours for them. ]

[ Still flattering, to be included, but not remotely uncomfortable. He's very good at being a third wheel. He can do it while running two cons, while having one desperate and unrequited feeling, while juggling. He sits at the right distance for it, with the right earnest interest in fixing the straps on one of his boots before he has wine to be interested in instead.

But now that he has the wine, and it can't be withheld if he's a little impertinent, he lifts it as if to toast. ]

Katrine was— [ the accent isn't right, especially to a native Marcher's ears, but the expression is perfect, the inflection and cadence close to, the voice pitched high enough to suggest Velez's without achieving mimicry, and the pause here equally gaping as the one it is imitating ] —a friend.

[Darras--sorry, Yseult--snorts. Too amused.]

Now, that's unkind.

[But he raises his glass all the same, once Yseult has poured out.]

Everyone's got-- [and this one's slightly shorter pause, a chasm that's more a crack, just for the sake of time] --friends. It's just that everyone's friends don't get tapped for head of Diplomacy for Riftwatch, and it's only a few whose friends would show up and see someone who's now become someone else. Bad luck is really the one to blame here.

[ Yseult waits until she has set wine glasses in their hands and is taking her seat before she rolls her eyes, to make sure they don't miss it. ]

It was work, [ she says, as if this should be obvious. Probably it should. ] We suspected she and her husband were involved in something and I was tasked to get close and find out. She proved the easier target. After several months, I had the information we needed, so we staged Katrine's death.

[ Terrible luck, Bastien agrees with a nod, and drinks through most of the unsurprising explanation. ]

Was she involved in something? Or did you break her heart for nothing?

[ He needs to know how bad to feel for her, and how sorry to be that they've lost an otherwise promising candidate. ]

[If she was involved in something, chances are, she wouldn't have been around to be a candidate.

--This is what Darras thinks, and does not say. He's not about to insult Yseult, or give her away, if she's kept some bits back. And that's not even to have implied that Velez would have been killed. She might have simply been arrested, dragged off somewhere, depending on her crime. But she still wouldn't have been around, is the point.

Instead of saying any of that, Darras takes a drink and waits, patiently, for Yseult to answer the question.]

[ The only reason Yseult isn't rolling her eyes again already is because it seems too soon to do it again, on principle. ]

Her husband was. She didn't seem to be.

[ After a moment she adds, dry: ] I didn't break her heart.

Edited 2019-10-30 05:08 (UTC)

She was very, ah—wistful, for someone whose heart had not been broken. [ To Darras, ] Is wistful the right word?

I'd go for wistful, yeah. Or something like nostalgic.

[Thoughtfully, Darras takes another sip of wine. Gestures, with the glass.]

I s'ppose that depends on the answer to the next question I have, which is: if you didn't break her heart, what did you break of hers? Sense of romance, perhaps? 'Cos nothing could ever be better?

Maker. I did nothing! [ a beat ] Well.

[ She shrugs. ] I hadn't counted on such a quick attachment. [ To Bastien, she adds: ] I'm sure you've done the same.

[ Turnabout is fair play, obviously—he’s Orlesian, everything is fair play—and obvious, too, he supposes, that Darras is allowed to know these sorts of things. He doesn’t bat an eye. ]

If you ever meet anyone who is still looking into the distance like that over me, years later, you must tell me at once, so I can drop everything and marry her.

[Darras hasn't quite stopped laughing at Yseult's quick shift--indignation to admission in less then a minute's time.]

Oh, you don't want to get married, mate. You'll end up with a Yseult. Perfect. And then you'll be happy for the rest of your days--it's hard to be an artist and be happy, I imagine--what d'you sing about? Honestly, [this bit is to Yseult, obviously,] it's no wonder your paramour developed that quick attachment. Didn't I fall for the same. It was luck for me that it was reciprocated, that's all. If my luck hadn't been with me, sure and it would be me staring off into the distance. Asking everyone where that librarian had gotten to.

[ Yseult looks away with a lift of her wine glass and drinks, deeply. Very deeply. Continuously until they are done speaking. ]

You are both ridiculous. She was a lonely woman with a neglectful husband and a stressful occupation. Any amateur could have seduced her.

And she has money.

[ Thoughtfully now. But not too thoughtfully. He isn’t serious. And it isn’t that much money. ]

Maybe I should go after her. She cannot have gone far.

[Darras clicks his tongue, exaggerated disapproval.]

Oh, now. Mercenary. And this while we're talking about love, or something like it, anyways.

We're talking about work.

[ A dry look at Darras. To Bastien: ]

And I'm afraid she doesn't like men.

[ A heavy sigh into his glass, but then he tips it at Darras, who did have a point. ]

At least I have my art.

Your art.

I bet that's what Viana Velez said, while she was holding the pieces of her broken heart together in her hands. Maybe we've got your role wrong, Bastien.

[ He laughs, ninety-nine parts amused and one part bruised. ]

Sûrement. When I need to end things with someone, I ask them to run away with me, and they spend the rest of their lives feeling very pleased about how gently they let me down. [ But, to Yseult: ] That would never work for you.

It has! Not often. [ This much, Yseult can agree with. ]

More often they ask me to run away with them, and I agree, and then stage a tragic carriage collision or an accident at sea or something, like with Velez. It's much more work.

[Darras huffs an incredulous sort of laugh.]

This talk. Monsters, both of you. I can't believe I like you both as much as I do. Yseult a little more, of course-- [Wife, he acknowledges this silently by tipping his wine glass in her direction in a sort of salute.] --but even so. Got to be watching my back with you. Her for a staged accident and you for plans to be running away together.

Just break their hearts normally. What's wrong with that.

[ He winks, at plans to be running away together, with shamelessness rooted in certainty he won’t be taken seriously and forced to fight Yseult. ]

Breaking hearts normally takes time, to be convincing. Going from devotion to desertion overnight—half of them will think it is something they can fix if they follow you.

[ He pauses with his wine at his mouth. ]

Perhaps you could think of it as emotional plunder.

[ Logical analogy? No, not really. But they’re all monsters here, is the point. Attractive ones. ]

You understand what is going on in Nevarra.

[Please confirm.]

I—perhaps. More or less. Nevarrans are very strange, you know, but I have kept up with things lately.

[She had hoped a statement would easily become an explanation from him unbidden. Perhaps she has spent too much time around Matthias.]

Please explain it.

All of it?

Yes.

All right. Well—the bottom line is that there are two very large and very old families who both believe their heirs should rule Nevarra. The Pentaghasts have ruled it for a long time, but the Van Markhams did once, as well, for a little while. Now that the king is on his death bed without a clear heir, both families have someone they would like to take the throne when he dies.

[Laura listens closely, determined to understand it entirely--not just the little weedy bits and pieces she's picked up--and jumps in when she can contribute.]

Gaelan is one.

The Van Markham’s favored son, yes. And the Pentaghasts had both the king’s brother and Aurelia Pentaghast to offer—that is where all of the trouble has come from, I think. If they had rallied behind a single person they would not have had so much trouble repelling the Van Markhams’ ambition.

[A long pause. This makes more sense than anything else she's been told thus far.]

Which one should be king?

I could not say. Whichever one can keep the country from collapsing to Corypheus for now, ideally, and if after the war they are a tyrant, someone can kill them then. But determining which of them would best prevent collapse is above me.

[A fortunate thing: she does not have to ask who Corypheus is.]

How do we find out which is best?

We could lock them in a room together with a single sword.

Where do we find them?

[ Careful, Bastien, that sounds reasonable to her. ]

Nevarra, I imagine—but that was a joke. I do not know how we would determine the best one. They all seem fairly terrible in their own ways.

How familiar are you with the rifter Kitty Jones?

She was useful but not very charming when we were dead together—unreasonably disinterested in perfectly entertaining anecdotes for a woman her age, I think—and she once came very close to calling me a coward.

And I have seen her around. Of course.

I'd forgotten she died with you.

[ It sounds like this has thrown a wrench into whatever she'd had in mind. ]

I need Jones followed. What about Jenin?

I do not know if she is familiar, but I am sure she would be delighted.

Is everything all right?

[ Left anonymously by Bastien's door: a package of very nice Antivan coffee.

Never let it be said that By isn't a bit of a friend. ]

[ What a mysterious mystery.

And another: Byerly gets anonymously grabbed by the shoulders and given an anonymous coffee-scented smacking kiss on the cheek the next time an anonymous someone anonymously passes him in some anonymous corridor, then unhanded and abandoned without explanation.

The world may never know why. ]

You're friendly with Athessa, aren't you?

She is a darling.

She's a liability.

Since you're so fond, would you be willing to train her?

[ A darling liability. ]

On anything in particular?

How to be a more useful Scouting agent? Or at least how to think before she acts or speaks.

Are you sure you do not want mandatory classes for everyone?

I would if I thought it would be effective. But she could be useful, if she could be trusted. An elf woman who doesn't appear particularly bright can easily pass unnoticed.

[ He would consider protesting if he didn't understand that it was at least mostly not an insult. Instead: ]

That is true. All right. I will see what I can do.

Thank you.

I do have thoughts about mandatory training for the rest. Snatch them unawares, lock them up, and see how they react, who can get themselves free. A test.

You might need to do something to ensure the mages do not kill their snatchers.

True, they'll need to be drugged. Easily arranged for the few in Scouting. If they're tested first, they can then help handle the others. That will be good practice for them, too.

They might be offended. But I do not mean you should not do it, just that you should have some elfroot leaves ready.

I may need to begin carrying it at all times, as long as I hold this position.

So lonely at the top—but less lonely now, ouais?

[ His voice conveys sly eyebrows pretty well. ]

[ His sly eyebrows get an exhaled half-laugh. He can imagine the dry look she is mentally slanting back. ]

Ouais, ouais, bien sûr. Que ferais-je sans toi?

[ Delightful. And he continues in Orlesian indefinitely, because he likes it, and why not. ]

You must let me know if I can help.

[ She doesn't mind; good practice. Maybe they'll speak only Orlesian from now on. Her accent is upper-middle-class Val Royeaux, and just the slightest bit rusty to a trained ear. ]

Do you think we should give them a class on picking locks and cuffs before we test them? The ones who aren't part of Scouting.

[ He hops a step or two up the socioeconomic ladder to match where she's aiming without pausing, for at least as long as the rust lingers. ]

Not a bad idea. It's demoralizing, you know, getting thrown into something you do not even know how to begin to approach. Give them a class after and they might not be in very good moods.

When are they ever? They might be more motivated to take it seriously.

[ A perennial problem he might have noticed from his own attempts at training them in useful skills. ]

But I suppose it's a better test if we give them at least some knowledge. And then we may know better how to adapt the test to their level of skill.

And punish everyone who did not pay attention.

Alright, you've convinced me. We'll have to make arrangements.

There's another idea I'd also like your help with, if you agree.

Agreeable is my middle name.

—that would work better if I had a surname.

We should both have chosen surnames before we came here.

[ alas ]

I've been thinking about the Black Fox. How in his stories he causes all sorts of trouble for cruel lords and magisters and makes tyrants look foolish despite all their power. It would be useful to be able to do that to our enemies now.

Wait one moment. I may need to sit down.

[ Because of how many DREAMS are currently COMING TRUE. ]

In Tevinter?

[ He may or may not guess despite the crystal that she grins. ]

In occupied Orlais. All of Orlais could use the morale. And in Tevinter. The Anderfels. It might need to be different characters tailored to suit. It seemed like a project you might enjoy.

Edited 2020-01-24 03:17 (UTC)

Sweet Andraste. [ Bienheureuse Andraste, in Orlesian, that’s important. ] You have justified my entire existence. Every moment of my life makes sense, if it has led to this.

[ He’s, like, half joking. ]

So yes. Of course. [ And before his head runs off too far— ] Do you think it is easier for a woman to pretend to be a man, than a man to be a woman?

I am glad to be of service.

It depends. But generally, no, unless she can pretend to be a very young man. Why?

The more people who can carry off the same role, the easier it would be.

Ah. Of course. For the sort of work we'll want done, they'll generally want men's clothing.

But if the hero is known to work in disguise anyway, does it matter what they really are? And the Black Fox had his companions.

[ Ilias is distracted. It's not his usual way-- they have not had so many lessons yet as to establish a norm, but he tends to be considerate of other people's time, and of Bastien's especially. (The intricacies of Orlesian court decorum are not his finest subject; an exchange of Nevarran pronunciation can only cover so many sins.) So he isn't late, nor inattentive precisely, but his polite smile comes with stress lines today, his pauses stretch a touch too long, and when things begin to wind down into a more conversational direction, he twists, ]

Do they not find it exhausting? To be forever circling the point. To never simply say what is in one's heart.

[ If Bastien notices the distraction, the only sign is that he’s a slower talker than normal, trying to keep a pace that even divided attention can match. But the question makes him pause entirely, for a moment, smiling in a thoughtful sort of way.

The easy answer is no people is a monolith. The pointed answer is what’s troubling you. Instead of either: ]

There was a poet in the Blessed Age—Lord Crépin Volant. He published forty-six sonnets. Beautiful, intricate things. They outlined the shape of the woman he was in love with in such careful detail, without ever naming her, that everyone knew it must be the Vicomtesse Mesmin. It could be no one else.

[ The impending tragedy is obvious. He pauses for a drink to let it loom. ]

But it was. It was the Lady Bonaventure, who had been keeping other suitors at bay and waiting for him to say something to her. When she was told of his sonnets for Mesmin, she married one of her other prospects within the fortnight.

Somehow he convinced someone to publish his next work—it was just her name, over and over again for fifty pages. It is probably the rarest book I have ever owned. His family destroyed as many as they could and found pressing responsibilities for him in the country.

—so yes. Sometimes they find it exhausting.

Spoken like a man quite adept at it, all the same.

[ An answer outlined, clearer than one spoken. It softens the line of his brow in the telling. There had been a reason so circuitous a nature had once drawn him, and Bastien's now serves a pleasant reminder. ]

One sketches the shape of one's heart only in verse, then, or song, or flowers pressed into letters or books. And there is some exquisite joy in being known by another from so scant an offering. But at the risk of an incomplete understanding. Of never being known at all.

[ Of tragedy. ]

Or one chooses a love that speaks what it is. Is that truer, do you think?

Truer?

[ Said with a smiling sort of skepticism, as if Ilias had just used some charming Nevarran idiom. He’s joking, a little, but not so much that he doesn’t really want elaboration. ]

Truer, [ he repeats with his own rolled R, as if it might be a new word for Bastien, he knows. ]

More real. Lady Bonaventure, for instance-- if her other suitor had been a man she'd known all her life. If he had long ago learned to crack open her ribcage and crawl inside -- and perhaps was not always kind there, nor she to him, but there was an honesty between them. A depth of intimacy, at least.

Might that not mean as much as Lord Volant's beautiful sonnets?

Ah.

[ A satisfied ah, to accompany a question coming further into focus, but then he leans in a bit, teasingly confiding: ]

I think you have put poor Volant at a disadvantage, Monsieur, if he must compete with someone who is already so intimate a companion.

[ Wilting, ] Not on purpose.

[ If he were the type to recline dramatically onto a fainting couch, this might be the moment; his eyebrows do their best instead. ]

You are not wrong, it is not a fair thing to compare -- but what is there for it? If only neither choice had any bearing on the other.

We are not being philosophical, then.

[ It isn't quite a question, and he doesn't wait for an answer. He finds cigarettes instead (rolled himself, but in advance) and plucks out one that's already half-gone and charred at one end before offering the tin toward Ilias. ]

Have you considered being less handsome? You might find you have fewer difficult choices.

I did very well for myself living in a crypt and only coming up to the surface once every full moon.

[ Maybe he'll go back to that, but he accepts a cigarette gratefully, offering a light in turn. ]

You are a fair sight more charming that I, have you never had to make such a choice?

Never.

[ He will take that light, and he will keep any commentary about Nevarra hiding its heartbreakers underground unspoken, because Circles are a touchy topic with the mages and Nevarra is currently on metaphorical fire and it altogether seems like needlessly dangerous ground for a joke. ]

I was blessed with a stupid heart. It can only hold one thought at a time. Frequently a foolish thought, but merci au Créateur, just the one.

[ He finds a scrap of unnecessary paper to serve as an ashtray and puts it on the table. ]

So—you have someone living in your ribcage, and someone writing you sonnets.

More or less.

[ An incomplete metaphor, perhaps, but this feels indiscreet enough already. He takes a drag from his cigarette, gesturing with it as he continues, ]

Please understand, I don't wish to start gossip -- and I do not go around collecting hearts to break. I left him, the one in my ribs. I thought him dead.

[ At start gossip, Bastien waves a hand, dismissing an outlandish possibility. ]

You were moving on, [ he prompts to check his understanding, with some genuine empathy possibly mixed in with the compassion, ] and thought you had a new way forward?

Yes. [ said with something strangely tremulous and fragile pulling at the corner of his lips. It's hidden swiftly, in the duck and turn of a head, but not elegantly. Not skilled at hiding, only accustomed to it. ]

It sounds quite silly now, but I needed to know if I could. If I could feel anything, really. [ A flourish of the hand, anxious to wave away any more serious consideration of that statement. ] But I could, and I did.

Only he wasn't dead, and now we are here. Three hearts in a knot.

Edited 2020-02-03 07:20 (UTC)

[ He sighs. It's the sympathetic sort of sigh owed to the end of a sad story, nothing weary or aggrieved. ]

Had it been a very long time?

Four years. He gave me another to decide, once I knew he was alive, but I am afraid I imagined it a simpler choice than it is.

[ His mouth flattens, Ah well, and he spares a glance up to Bastien, grateful for the offered ear. ]

Would you never go back? To someone you had loved and left behind.

[ He's quiet for a few seconds, head shifting in time with unspoken thoughts, before he settles on: ]

Perhaps.

[ Very helpful. Very based on no actual experience. ]

I have never lost anyone to death. Only to life. Incompatibilities, arguments, other people. Problems that would still be lying in wait for us on a second attempt. But if something outside of us severed a thing that was otherwise good— [ That's what they're talking about here, right. ] —then maybe I would.

[ He tilts his head and smiles a little, prompting. ]

But you love your poet, too.

[ The funny sort of stillness in his eyes for a beat, there and gone again, says Yes, definitely, that's what they're talking about. What else could it be.

But it melts away easily at the return to his poet, lost in an uncomplicated smile. ]

I do. It is different-- he is very different, but also it is a newer sort of intimacy. Different fears, different potential.

[ Uh-huh.

The smile is sweet, though. ]

And neither one makes you happier than the other?

[ His eyebrows do a sort of twist, like he hadn't considered-- And anyway, ]

It is not a fair thing to compare. Love is not-- [ well. ] Sometimes it is happy, yes, but just as often it is excruciating, and one does not balk from it just for that.

Well—no. [ Conceding, fairly lightly. ] Maybe not just for that. Sometimes you have to work through pain to reach something at the end of it. But there should be an end to it, no?

There was an end because I ended it. [ is how we're describing that event. ] I do not mean to say I did not have happy moments with him, the one in my ribs — some of the happiest in my life, only some of the hardest as well.

But that is the way of it, yes? To love and be loved, one must open one's heart, and what could be easier to wound than that?

Edited (wording!!) 2020-02-23 06:30 (UTC)

[ Prettily put. It makes his smile a little wistful—which is to say, he allows it to make his smile a little wistful—even if put in plainer words it wouldn’t sound nearly so appealing. ]

I am sure some bruising is inevitable.

[ Again: that’s what they're talking about here, right? ]

What do you suppose love should look like? [ A genuine question, not a prelude to an answer of his own. ] Not the feeling. The act. On its own, when it is disentangled from lust and fear. What do you think it should inspire someone to do?

[ Ilias's brows knit, focus bleeding into memory — stars glimpsed through skylights; sunlight through a veil of pine and the season's last flowers; words sparking to life beneath both. Love. ]

To challenge one another, [ he decides, finally. ] To know and accept and protect the other, yes, but more than that, to help each other grow.

[ You know that if you had to, you would break it. (To give it a stronger shape.)

A bare touch sharper, ] In the ways one chooses, I mean to say; not in the ways anyone else might want.

[ Falling in stride beside him as he's walking...somewhere. ]

Monsieur Moustache, I have my two-week report see voo play.

[ Very serious business, this. ]

Excellent. Begin with something that you can admire.

[ Wait, what? ]

Ummm okay...he's... [ ???? ]

Generous, if you're his friend. And he seems to like kids, so long as they're human.

[ He nods, considering this vital intel. ]

Do they like him back?

Some do, but I think it's because they know he'll give them stuff if they're friendly. Others are shy around him.

Do you have any opinions on trust exercises?

Trust exercises?

Something like games, catching people as they fall backwards or directing them around blind-folded. I've heard they can be very beneficial to increasing the efficiency of an organization.

[ or destroying it, maybe ]

That sounds—well. I suppose it could not hurt. Unless everyone is dropped on their heads and walked into the harbor.

Perhaps we do it in a contained space to prevent dunkings. I should think that's the only safety measure we'd need.

That and supervision. But it could be fun. If it does not make anyone truly trust each other, it might at least help us identify who cannot even bother to pretend.

My thoughts exactly.

[ mostly ]

I propose we try to arrange for it in that hall where you trapped everyone into dancing and using silverware.

Coucy Hall, [ he's going to make fetch happen just you wait, ] where I tried to make sure everyone knew how to tread water and noted down the strong swimmers for later, yes. Sounds perfect.

The goals of this are much the same.

[ when you trap a bunch of people together and note who can work well together and who can't. ]

I'll find an appropriate moment in the coming weeks.

It's astonishing how things grow here. The fungus, the moss, and everything else on one's face. I don't know that I anticipated ink —

On your face?

Perhaps not, but I will take suggestions for the Speaker's. I think him unlikely to wake.

[ A quiet, surprised laugh. Is this a mage courtship ritual?? Regardless: it's great. ]

That bored, Monsieur?

[ Rhetorical. ]

You could write a random word. Bumpy, or... revenue. Let people ask him about it when he wakes up and never admit to it or explain it. Take it to your pyre and leave him with the mystery.

Or you could draw something obscene.

Revenue. As a businessman, Monsieur, is that more or less obscene than taxes?

They are in fact the same obscenity. But it is pronounced revenue when gasped to a lover and taxes when spit in the street.

Ah, to say both at once — très difficile. This must explain the Kirkwall accent.

[ He laughs, in a quiet way that's respectful of possible sleepers. ]

If anything can.

Do you miss Orlais, monsieur? It seems mages might have a different experience with it. With anywhere.

Better a cell in Val Royeaux, than a palace in the Imperium —

[ dismissively route (orlesian, obviously). it's a fair question; he continues, more contemplative: ]

— You know. But a Circle isn't a cell, and I'd not seen the city until a year past. I might ask whether you miss the Marshes.

[ as an urban, uh, "printer" ]

I would take the Marshes.

[ He wouldn’t. Or like, maybe now. Over the jungle. But not over Kirkwall. ]

The White Spire was beautiful from the outside, at least—but that is not where you were.

Montsimmard kept vines, [ flowering, climbing; never quite so high as to grasp. ] Lovely in spring. But I would not say that I knew the place.

Do you suppose that we know Kirkwall?

[ Athessa's voice is soft, as is the accompanying sound of pen and parchment in the background, the audible flicker of flame on a low wick, an owl outside. It's late. ]

Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or forgetful?

[ There. The silliest way she can imagine to pose that question, so that anyone who might have overheard will think she's penning a letter to a lover or writing in a diary. ]

Edited 2020-07-24 01:29 (UTC)

Mm.

[ He matches her volume—common courtesy, even if they weren't in enemy territory. ]

Both. [ He could elaborate, and probably will whether she asks him to or not, but first: ] Are you all right?

Just...ruminating. [ She should be sleeping, knowing full well that every moment she spends not doing so will result in a little more exhaustion tomorrow. But she justifies the dark circles as getting into character. Or cementing it, as she's already in it. Delphine is a harried servant, after all. ]

Thinking too much about things beyond my control, that's all. And about that vacation we said we'd take. Une diversion, n'est-ce pas?

Tu ne peux pas t'inquiéter sur la plage.

[ He folds his arms behind his head on his terrible bed. The man he's pretending to be is important enough to have a room, but not a good one. ]

I think the heart grows fonder because it forgets. And when it forgets, the imperfections and the annoyances go first. Or maybe memory turns them into something charming the way it could not if you were still enduring them. Like polishing a stone. It becomes smoother and more perfect. And smaller. And less real.

Hmm. [ She doesn't know that Orlesian, so she'll just have to take his word on it. ]

I was afraid you'd say that. Unrequited love always ends in lasting heartbreak, eh?

[ He’s quiet for a moment—a moment for thinking, now that he knows more specifically what they’re talking about, and for feeling odd and distant. ]

I suppose.

[ Another beat. ]

I have never liked that word.

Which one?

Heartbreak. It is not broken, it is—working as intended.

[ But he knows that sounds cheap and quibbly, even if he doesn’t mean it that way. ]

Do you want to tell me about it? You don’t have to.

[ Oh, how she loves Bastien. Irreparably so, she thinks. ]

Did I ever tell you about Ciara?

[ With most people he’d say maybe, or claim a fuzzy recollection at best. But for Athessa, who either knows better or ought to: ]

You said... thirteen years ago. Brothel. She knew you as Tessa. You left—for Rivain, I assume?—but aside from that she might remember you fondly.

That is all you told me. Was there more?

[ The pause that follows says yes, there was more. ]

I asked her to come with me, back then. Begged her. She was the one who picked up the pieces and put me back together after... what happened.

[ With Devigny, she means. Bastien's mind being what it is, she trusts that he knows where these puzzle pieces go. ]

I loved her. And thought she loved me.

[ He buries the impulse to be reassuring—the general sort of reassuring, the kind that doesn’t fully understand why someone is hurting and just wants them to stop so everyone can move on—because he actually gives a shit. ]

When you asked her to go, what did she say?

That she could never love me, and that what we had wasn't real.

[ What she leaves out is just the questions Ciara asked beforehand. Where would we go? What would we do? Why would I go with you? But even if the words hurt, Athessa has carried them with her long enough that they don't constrict her throat or prick at her eyes anymore.

It's just a dull ache below where her heart bleeds now for Derrica. ]

I still don't know whether she was just lying to make me leave, or if she really felt that way.

Ah, well—fuck her.

[ He knows that isn’t his line. His line is something more like: She was probably afraid. She probably did love you. She probably wanted what was best for you.

But to the limited extent he ever gets angry, he is. Indignant, at least, on Athessa’s behalf. ]

Especially if she was trying to do it for your own good. That was not her choice to make for you. Not by making you feel unwanted or foolish.

Edited (oh the vulgarity) 2020-07-24 20:02 (UTC)

[ Athessa chuckles, softly, appreciative of the sentiment. The smile that translates through her voice isn't for the memory she speaks of, but for Bastien. Because she's telling it to him. ]

I've found myself thinking about her a lot lately. Mostly about how I felt back then, and how I feel now. Wondering if it's always gonna hurt. [ She's been thinking about that old flame of his, too, wondering if Bastien is hurting the same as she. But she keeps that to herself. ] Not that I can remember what it's like not to.

[ The chair creaks as she sits back and rubs at her eyes. She can feel her body begging for her to just turn in already, get some rest before the new day. If she didn't have to worry about hiding the crystal, she'd happily fall asleep talking to Baz. ]

I dunno why I'm thinking about this now, either.

Memory is a funny thing.

[ Maybe it’s Deimos—he doesn’t know about Derrica—or maybe it’s the wind being the same temperature and speed as it was once on a night with Ciara, maybe she passed someone who smelled the same. ]

What was she like?

Allowing for whatever fondness or forgetfulness that time hath bestowed?

[ Hath. Who talks like that? ]

Back then, she seemed to have everything figured out. Reckon it's just 'cos she was there longer than I ever was, but she looked out for me. Even when people treated her like shit she was kind. She had this way of making everything else seem less important just by holding your hand or touching your cheek.

[ In retrospect, Ciara was probably planning to teach Athessa how to have the same qualities. Grooming to survive a brothel outside Guild oversight. ]

[ At a normal hour for sleeping, which is not an hour at which anyone around here actually sleeps. ]

D'you think I should cut my hair?

No.

[ But then— ]

How short?

Hmmm...

[ Rustle, rustle... She's pulling her hair in front of her face to see how much she might chop off. ]

Maybeeee this short.

Mm? How short is this short?

This — oh.

[ She giggles, realizing the folly. ]

I thought you were here!

[ He laughs a little. Not a giggle. ]

Are you drunk? Or high?

Nooooo.

[ Yeeees. ]

Isaac gave me something to help me sleep n' I'm waiting for it to work.

In your bed in the Gallows?

[ Just confirming he doesn't need to come get her somewhere. Like, obviously she wouldn't take it in Lowtown somewhere. But just to be sure. ]

Oh shit, lemme check.

[ Hmm...yep. This is definitely her room. ]

Yes, unless my room sprouted feet.

I think we can safely assume it has not.

[ Is it unfair to ask potentially personal questions when she is like this? Yes. Is he going to do it anyway? Yes. At least the odds are good she'll answer with nonsense anyway. ]

Why do you need help sleeping?

But what if it did? Like an aravel with bird legs instead of wheels...

[ A long enough pause that she's clearly thinking about it more than it warrants. ]

I dunno, maybe there's just not enough...sky in here.

Not enough sky in your room?

[ Hmm. ]

You slept well in the jungle.

You're right. There wasn't enough sky there, either.

[ A kitten has joined the discussion, trampling on her and getting annoyingly close to the crystal. Loud purring and a mrep. ]

Maybe it's the trees. Percy, is it the trees? [ Myaaawn. ] I think that was a yes.

[ Aw, kitty. ]

Maybe we could experiment, when you have not already taken something. While it’s warm. Sleep in the garden. I could come with you—not forever, I am too old to sleep on the ground much if I don’t have to.

[ Aw! Bastien! ]

That's a great idea! I'll make you a feather mattress for your not-old bones.

My hero.

[ They can also just carry an existing mattress out, but he’s not gonna harsh her groove right now. ]

Don’t cut your hair. Not now. If you still want it to cut it in the morning, we can talk.

[ Her put-upon sigh is all play-acting. ]

Ugh, fine. I don't have shears anyway.

[ Squints. ]

Don't cut your hair, either.

Maybe I will grow it out as long as yours.

[ An awed whisper as she imagines it: wooow. ]

You'd be too powerful. The world isn't ready.

Next year, then. When they are ready. But you will have to teach me to braid.

Hm. Hm.

[ A noise that accompanies exactly two nods of agreement. ]

But I can only do threes and sixes. You'll have to ask someone else for the complicatored ones.

I don’t know. I am not sure I could trust anyone but you with my beautiful long hair.

Not even someone with my enders-ment?

Even then. It is more than knowing how to braid, you know? It is about trusting someone to hold your head in their hands.

Oh— [ A soft moue and she claps her hand over her heart. Bas. ]

Maybe I can learn to do them by then. You dessert the compelling braids.

Yes, I do. Thank you.

You're wylcome. I'll make a spice cake and then she'll teach me.

Who?

Derrica. She's great at braids.

Ah.

[ Hesitating. But he doesn't tell her that she doesn't need to do that, because the whole premise of him needing someone to braid his waist-length curls next year is ridiculous to begin with, so of course she doesn't need to do it. ]

Is everything all right, with you and her?

[ She's not in a state to think terribly deep thoughts, so the soft hum that Athessa makes is more sleepy than thoughtful. ]

I don't think now is, but maybe it'll someday. 'S a lot.

[ Then, more quietly, more sleepily: ]

I might...wanna go home soon.

Home?

[ Could be several places, as far as he knows. ]

Oaken staff and... cedar branch...

[ She's mumbling now, because she finally closed her eyes instead of fighting to keep them open. ]

We can bring your... ravens... feather bed...

[ Ah.

Aw. ]

Oh course.

Are you sleeping now?

Nuh-uh.

[ She is. ]

Mmnh.

[ Or is she? ]

[ Quietly, just in case she’s close enough to sleep that he’d be dragging her away from it, ]

Do you want me to tell you a story?

[ She would be dragged willingly to hear stories from him, whether from sleep or across coals, for the drama of an analogy. ]

Yes please, [ is a generous translation of what really is just more mumbling. ]

[ He hums, thoughtful, and then launches into the first leg of an Orlesian version of Hans in Luck—more because it’s one he likes himself than because he thinks she would. She won’t remember anyway, and he only makes it part way through before he pauses and waits in silence to see if she’s awake to protest stopping. ]

[ No protest, just a slight stir that doesn't seem likely to stick. She is out. ]

Edited (mj is a good writer) 2020-08-21 05:12 (UTC)

[ He’s reminded—not for the first time, but the first time that it truly twinges—that Athessa is Eliya’s age, if Eliya is even alive. He told her bedtime stories, a long time ago, on the odd night he was home to do it. ]

Good night, Athessa.

[ Even if she can’t hear him. Saying her name helps, like an anchor to the present, and he closes the crystalS’ connection and falls asleep not long after. ]

I'm afraid I need to ask a favor.

Ah, Monsieur Warden, do not be afraid. I have not bitten anyone for asking me to do something since I was very small.

[ momentary pause while ellis has second thoughts about this whole venture, but. ]

Are you a good dancer, Bastien?

[ let's just verify a few things before this goes any further ]

[ No second thoughts, only first thoughts, they’re always the best ones. ]

Usually, yes. There are better, of course—if you need a superb dancer, I can make recommendations.

I need a teacher.

[ bracing for the response ]

Oh, then I am exactly who you need. If someone is too wonderful a dancer, they cannot understand why it might be difficult for anyone else—but I had to work at it. So.

[ Trapped now. ]

Is there a particular dance you need to learn?

Good.

[ the tone there is a little ambiguous. this is what he wanted but now that he has it, he's not sure about it. ]

I have a book. A pamphlet. [ there's some rustling, then a sigh. ] They're Orlesian dances. I assume it's what's in style at court.

Better and better. It will be fun.

And, [ generously, ] we can practice somewhere no one else will see.

Thank you.

[ truly, a relief. ]

If there is something I can do for you in return, I'd be happy to make myself of use.

I like to dance, so you are already doing me a favor, giving me a good reason. But thank you.

Alright. We can start whenever is convenient for you. There's some time before Satinalia.

Let's try this week. If you have it perfect straight away you can relax, and if not we will know how much time we need.

Smart.

[ in the spirit of full disclosure— ]

I'm not very light on my feet, so we'll need the time.

It would feel a little unfair, to me, if you were.

[ So brawn. ]

You are a swordsman, non?

I use a mace. It's not as much about finesse as a sword, more about planting your feet and making yourself difficult to knock over.

[ maybe something useful in there for dancing?? ]

I see. Interesting.

[ Not falling is good at least. ]

Are you busy Thursday?

Thursday evening would be alright. I trade off my watch duty and haven't committed to anything else.

Wonderful. I will find the empty room with the least furniture before then, and you can bring your pamphlet.

Alright. And thank you, again.

[ partly for the lessons but more so for conducting the lessons in private without being asked. ]

[ This knock is more decisive than the one that heralded Alexandrie the last time she happened by. She matches it, buttoned as she is into a dress far simpler and sturdier than her regular flouncy affairs, hair in a simple pinned up braid.

The smile is buttoned a little sturdier as well. ]

Monsieur l'imprimerie. I thought it only fair that this time I should leave the country.

[ Bastien smiles back and doesn't do her the discourtesy of pretending to be confused as to what she's referring to, since he's already done her the discourtesy of answering the door in shirtsleeves. ]

Not for a decade, I hope.

[ Solemnly: ] At least two.

[ a pregnant pause, and then: ] Weeks.

But truly, however long it takes me to complete both my business and a painting of the Rialto Bay, which I have been told I must go and see. [ Her smile returns, small and impish. ] A small one, or it shall be a decade.

As small as you can stand, [ he says as his snickering laugh at her feint dies out. ] And then you must come straight back, because—

[ He steps back into the room, sweeping a hand out toward the second bed on the generally-unused side. Normally it is empty. Now it is occupied by a cello case. ]

[ She hadn't intended to stay— at least, not longer than it would take to say I am going, and I am sorry, and take care of him— but the pause and illustrative sweep of Bastien's hand is dramatic enough that not looking would be rendered unforgivable injury, and so she comes to the doorway and leans obediently to see.

The resultant delight is unfeigned. Alexandrie claps her hands together with a glad cry, and her smile is wide and brilliant when she looks back at him. ]

Tu l'as trouvé! Le violoncelle aventureux!

The very one.

[ He doesn’t retreat any further into the room. Of course he would step aside if she wanted to come in—never mind the shirtsleeves, the bare feet, the mild disarray. But absent that desire, Bastien is happy enough to keep Alexandrie in the hallway, where he hasn’t been staring at the ceiling and thinking about Byerly’s terrible jungle breath. ]

When you come back I will tell you the story—not before—and we will play. So you must not be gone any longer than necessary.

But not any shorter than necessary, either. The story is not that exciting.

You must think of a terribly exciting version and promise to tell me that one then, or I shall never be enticed home and stay there forever. [ She tilts an imaginary glass in her hand, lifting it slightly in a toast. ] Wine on the beach into eternity. Souffrance extrême.

But no, the music would be enough.

[ A moment, and then she looks apologetic. ]

I am forever ruining things, it seems. Now I have done it with falsehood and honesty. [ She laughs, small and soft and rueful. ] Such endless talent I have.

[ more softly: ] I do not need to ask, for I know you will, but I should like to hear you say you shall take care of him in any case.

[ To say it feels like an intrusion is not quite right. To say he resents it is entirely wrong. But there’s still, in his chest, a protective curl—a hand around something fragile in a jostling crowd, or a writer over an early draft before it’s ready for anyone else’s scrutiny.

On his face there’s only a smile, faint and sympathetic. ]

As well as I can.

[ A piece of your soul, carved off of you, out in the world and vulnerable to hurt—that’s what Byerly said it meant to love someone. ]

You know, I don’t think anything is ever ruined. [ A little hyperbolic, but he’s that sort of creature. ] Nothing is the end of the world except the end of the world. Everything else is repaired or becomes something new.

But I know it does not feel that way from the middle of it.

[ He holds a hand out for hers. ]

No. [ Agreement. ] In the middle of it is the feeling of wishing desperately to be the needle and thread, and finding myself only ever what makes the rents such repair is needed for.

[ This to the floor: ] All last night I have spent in telling myself that my travel now is kindness, a space to breathe so I do not choke him like a clinging vine. And all night I have replied with unstinting venom that all I do is leave.

[ Finally she reaches to take the offered hand, although it is with a lady's light genteel touch rather than a clasp, looking back up at him as she does. ]

You have been always close, when you are together. Will you tell me?

[ A breath, and a pained smile. ]

If he is happier, when I am gone.

[ There’s a space between seconds when her late, light hold on his hand feels like being put in his place. But he has a knack for knowing when things aren’t about him, maybe even takes it to a fault sometimes, so the feeling can’t settle and disappears the next moment. She’s hurt. She’s doing a hard thing because she believes it’s right for someone else, and she’s holding herself together.

He curls his hand to squeeze hers tighter for the both of them.

He could say yes. It’d be an easy promise to make and break as necessary, without witnesses or fallout. ]

I can’t promise.

[ Her mask is, if not off, at least askew, and he knows she has the strength to have avoided that. So: a return favor, however much saying this matters to me is an Orlesian invitation to destroy it. ]

It means a lot to me to have his trust, you know. [ And Byerly is already cross with Athessa for meddling. ] But I’ll do what I can for both of you.

[ The squeeze of his hand around hers is the very contact she had been trying to avoid. Closeness means warmth and warmth means kindness and her body's response to kindness when she hurts like this is tears, and more than anything she had not wanted tears.

Tears beg for pity. Little matter if that pity is for her pain or for her weakness or for someone else for needing to bear such a woman as she, so fragile that the closeness of a hand-press begins to crumble her.

Athessa had bought them, but it is different between women. Bastien is a man, and a Bard, and had said "all the happiness he would have if it were our choice" with a kind of gentleness that had tasted different and sent her to think into the darkness of her bedroom later, carding her fingers through memories to see if she could find other bits like it.

And so Bastien cannot see them now. He is become a piece on the board whose placement and movement she doesn't know, and he cannot see her tears. Not when she does not know whether or not he has his own.

(On the outside it just looks like smoothing. A body less ragged so that things like clasped hands and friendship and sympathy can't snag upon it. She tilts her head and smiles and squeezes back.) ]

May I take word to anyone in Antiva City for you?

No, no. I don’t know anyone there. I’ve never been.

[ He considered it once, not long ago. Sitting on the steps, not long after Vincent’s execution. Bastien said, I was in love with him for a long time. Where does someone go to escape that? Antiva? And Byerly said, Well, Antiva is where I went. After Alexandrie.

She gathers into herself, and he lets go of her hand, accepting his place—not beneath her, but at a remove. ]

But you may bring me back a song, if you have time to look for one. One the people are singing.

[ He lets go, and she pulls hers back to her waist to join with her other; relaxing back to softness once it's there. Separated, it can be genuine again when she says ]

I will bring you two, [ with a little smile. ]

One they sing for joy, and one for sorrow.

Edited (i can't read) 2020-08-30 23:05 (UTC)

Ever more generous than expected or truly reasonable, Madame.

[ His bow is as small as her smile—something that could be sardonic, in another context, but here just a gesture of gratitude over the distance they’ve established. His eyes are warm. ]

Be safe.

[ there’s something about that ”be safe” that makes her pause. She had tried to be. Safe. Safe and untouchable, invulnerable, and in the end that sort of safety—the one she had even now just retreated to—had bought her all the turmoil and grief and regret she had hoped to avoid in the first place.

And so she hesitates for a moment, and then pushes through to the full opposite of her instinctive withdrawal to fold him into a hug; a loose one first. An eminently escapable question. ]

[ Apropos of nothing what so ever.... ]

Hey. You should tell Byerly he's a nice person.

Byerly... Rutyer?

[ Obviously. He'd just like her to explain herself. ]

Yeah, unless we got another Byerly hangin' around. And if we do, fuck that guy, he's Second-erly, I'm only investing in one Fereldan noble at a time.

They do require a lot of time and attention.

Has he done something nice?

Right? Fuckin' nobility, man.

Anyway, it's not the doing nice shit, it's more like he's just a nice, good person who doesn't think he is.

[ A little more seriously, ]

He is. But I am not sure being told so will do the trick.

[huh. ]

Okay, fair, but also I maaaaaay have been doing that already.

[ He laughs a little. ]

Me, too. I don’t think it does any harm, either. It’s just, ah... You know, if someone told me I was the best cellist in the world, I would think they were full of shit. Even if they told me every day and seemed to really mean it.

I guess. [ She sighs, wildly aggrieved. ] Okay, no, I do know. Like I went to enough therapy to know that shit at least, I'm like self aware.

I just. Want him to know there's a difference between being an asshole sometimes and being a literal piece of shit, which he seems real convinced he is.

Mm. Ouais. I hate it too.

[ And he’ll get back on topic in a moment, because it’s an important topic, but first: ]

What is therapy?

Aside from being the thing literally all of us need? It's where you go and talk about the shit that's happened in your life with a professional and they help you like... Be less traumatized or whatever.

Oh. [ A moment to process the idea of the world where that’s an actual job. ] How?

Talking, mostly?

Hm.

[ Interesting. Sounds fake, but interesting. ]

Well... I think it is kind of you to want better for him. I do, too. And I think being treated like he’s a good person will have to sink in someday, even if telling him so won’t.

[ Byerly's voice, over the crystal, is rather too casual and pleasant. ]

My dear Bastien. A drink?

[ Courteously pretending it’s the right amount of casual and pleasant, ]

Sounds lovely. Where?

The Hanged Man? If you're as desperate as I am to get out of the Gallows for an evening.

I’m sure I’m not. They let me out so much more often than you. I am in Hightown as we speak. But after I drop this letter off I can walk that way and hold a table.

Ooh, in Hightown. I like Lowtown so much more - don't you?

Oh, infinitely. I cannot be up here for anything without feeling like I am working. And at least Lowtown as a reasonable excuse for everything being so grey.

And stinking, and vulgar. Agreed.

Get the first round? I'll get the second.

Deal. I will see you there.

[ With the drinks already ordered and the promised table defended from rowdy off-duty guardsmen and miners, as promised. ]

[ He comes in not late, not already drunk, not hung over, not stinking, well-shaven and well-dressed. On his best behavior, it seems. ]

Dear Bastien.

[ He claps Bastien on the upper arm before coming around to sit across from him. ]

How was Hightown?

Dull.

[ He doesn’t hide the quizzical quality to his look. Did they have important guests today? Is he about to be asked a favor?

He pushes Byerly his drink. ]

Oh, but: I am supposed to tell you that you are a good person and occasionally being an asshole does not make you a literal piece of shit.

—which is obvious, now that I am saying it. You cannot be the asshole and the shit, if we are being literal.

[ That - Catches him off-guard. And it lights a fire of worry in him. He stops with the glass halfway to his mouth, saying: ]

Who said that?

[ Bastien inclines his head a little. ]

Jenny Lou. She seems very fond of you.

[ His lips thin, but he finishes the motion of glass to mouth. Once he drinks, he says, gruffly: ]

She is a vulgar and graceless child.

That’s true. But I like her.

[ Maybe Byerly is possessed. That’s something that happens to non-mages in Kirkwall, sometimes, right? He heard. Because of the Veil. ]

[ He lets out a breath, and says, reluctantly: ]

I do as well. I just hope she's only saying these sorts of things to you.

We could make her swear an oath, [ Bastien suggests over his drink. ] Hand on a statue of Andraste.

That would be about as effective, methinks, as making Gwenaelle Baudin swear over a portrait of the Empress.

Maybe I don’t want it to be effective.

Edited 2020-09-02 01:47 (UTC)

[ Which would normally be accepted with, if not grace, then a little squirmy feeling inside him that makes him feel like maybe things are going to be all right. But tonight - Tonight, it feels desolate.

He sets down the drink. ]

Bastien - look. I need to - speak with you about something.

[ His mind starts making lists of worst case scenarios—and maybe the right one is on there—but his face is just patient raised eyebrows. ]

You know about Alexandrie's offer to me. Request.

[ Whatever it was. He takes a breath, and stretches his mouth out into a smile, and tries to look happy. Because, Maker, he is happy; truly he is. But it feels like there's some sort of betrayal that he's committed. ]

Well, I said to her that we might give it a try.

[ There’s no hesitation in Bastien’s smile, which is a perfectly calibrated and convincing grin. For anyone to know there was something amiss about it, they would have to know it from other contexts where he needs to buy a moment to control his face. When he shuts his finger in a cabinet, when he’s turned his ankle and has to dance on it anyway, when someone has said something unexpectedly unkind. When Vincent said he was sorry, but—

This is easier than that. Bastien has learned better. Little birds can get fucked, like he said, and Byerly said he loved her. He’d known. ]

Maker, By. I thought you were firing me or something.

[ Which is why he needs a long gulp of terrible ale, obviously, and not because the effort visible in Byerly’s expression—this whole set-up, really—is making him feel pitied and transparent and small. ]

That’s good—right? You feel good about it? [ He gestures with his drink to Byerly’s general sober, well-shaven person. ] You look good.

I always look good.

[ His smile is rather weak, though, and his voice not dreadfully convincing. He can put on a better show than this, to be sure; if he put in any effort, he could put on a better show than this. But - it would be so astonishingly painful to try to. And it would be so cruel. ]

I feel - anxious about it. The last time I agreed to something with Alexandrie, after all, I ended up penniless in Antiva. She is a different woman now, but the burned hand doesn't forget fire.

She is different. And so are you. If it does go badly, you won’t be penniless in Antiva, you will be here with a job and a lot of people who care about you.

[ He thinks: he is a man with a great deal of self-preservational instinct and barely any heart to break, so how does he keep doing this to himself?

And then he takes another drink, and after he swallows his smile is different, smaller, not something out of a bag of tricks. ]

But maybe it won’t. So you should relax and try to enjoy it, ouais?

[ His instinct, as ever, is to list off each of those people and explain why they are wrong, or why their care will fade, or so on and so forth. But Bastien has spent too fucking long dealing with his self-pity, and really doesn't need to do more of that, and so he swallows the impulse. ]

Yes. Perhaps.

[ A breath in. He toys with his cup. He pretends for a moment that it's artifice, and that it's not real awkwardness that's driving him to these hesitations and twitches. He pretends he's playing a part. It wouldn't look so different, would it, if he were just playacting at shyness? He'd be making the same gestures, avoiding glances in the same way. He wishes he could convince himself he's just playacting. ]

I imagine you will not want to - continue as we have been, in light of that, will you?

[ Because Bastien had his heart broken, didn't he. Because Bastien should not, and could not, trust a man like him. What a terrible echo it would be of the cruelty that Bastien suffered. ]

[ Bastien isn’t surprised by the implication of question, exactly—of course Byerly and Alexandrie wouldn’t be sleeping only with each other, that’s absurd for multiple reasons—so much as the timing, and the asking. Out loud and everything. So he raises his eyebrows again, mid-drink, and takes his time with the swallow.

His thoughts don’t have to start from scratch. He’s been over it already, in his room. Byerly loves Alexandrie. Presented with the possibility that someone could love two people, Byerly said he wasn’t sure he was even strong enough to love one. Ergo. Bastien knew the score when he climbed into bed with him. All that’s been extinguished today was a stupid little hope that shouldn’t have existed.

So would he want to continue?

He tries to imagine it, in the fraction of a second he has for imagining anything before the pause gets long and awkward. Being in a room with them, someday—maybe playing, maybe talking, the way they used to when they were younger, but this time hoping for Byerly to look past her, with her laugh like the songs that pour out of the windows in Val Royeaux, to smile at him.

It’s— ]

Will you?

[ Casual, free hand coming up to hold his chin on the table. It’s not usually his way to turn questions back on people, instead of talking to keep them comfortable. But he needs a moment. ]

Edited (proper question echo) 2020-09-02 04:09 (UTC)

Maker, Bastien, why do you think I'm asking? Sounding like a damned fool while doing it.

[ That comes out a little easier, and it's followed by a laugh - a choked, awkward thing. There's no reading Bastien. What's in his face? It's as tranquil as any other look that Bastien gives. For a moment, By wishes he could turn back time and throttle the Bards that trained Bastien. It's a foolish impulse, because without that training, Bastien would never have come into Byerly's orbit; he'd have been a decent fellow tucked away in the sticks, By fancies, a schoolteacher for a local village, quietly engendering in them a love of reading and music. No adventures, but less pain, as well. A lovely and lamentable thing.

Will you. If By is reaching out to Alexandrie, all danger, then he feels like he needs Bastien, too. And By doesn't know what Bastien feels, if this is casual fun, or self-destruction, or self-flagellation, sleeping with someone like Byerly - or if there's some real sentiment to it. But if he is going to maintain stability, he needs his friend. And he cannot stand the thought of asking that friend to sit and listen and support him after having been shut out of Byerly's life. ]

I would. It's merely - a rather cockeyed request.

You think so?

[ This time it’s rhetorical, with his foot nudging By’s. A friendly little kick, nothing lingering, because they were friends yesterday, and they’ll be friends tomorrow, and he doesn’t take any pleasure in making Byerly fumble around for solid footing on the other side of the table. ]

I suppose it could be, if you mean exactly as we have been. That is a lot to ask of a man. Some occasional arguing and retching would be fine, and the bootlaces might have had potential under other circumstances, but...

[ Still buying time. Would he want to continue? Something is better than nothing, as they say, until something is a decaying rope bridge over a canyon that doesn’t hold after all, when you could have just taken the long way around, or a wounded limb rotting and taking the whole body with it when it might have just been amputated.

He tilts his head, where it’s balanced in his head, to give Byerly a look, bewildered and warm. He’s not trying to make him squirm for sport. ]

Did you dress up for this?

Edited 2020-09-02 14:56 (UTC)

I -

[ His hand goes to his chest, his fingers brushing against the fine weave of his second-best linen shirt, then catching the neck of his leather jerkin - fastened at the waist, in dandyish style, to show off his silhouette. It is an agonizing confession, but: he cannot bring himself to lie. ]

I cleaned up a bit.

[ He feels as vulnerable as a fresh burn. ]

[ Bastien smiles wider—touched, not amused—and nods a little. The reality of the situation is seeping in. Byerly didn’t bring him to a neutral location to put him off gently, embarrassed he took advantage of an obvious crush. He’s asking, and he’s uncertain, and he dressed up.

He keeps the hope smothered. It’s still stupid. But he doesn’t have it in him to keep letting Byerly sit there while he tries to decide what he can bear, so he says, ]

It meant something to me. [ This sounds casual, too, mostly, but it’s a close call. He looks down at his drink to make it easier. ] If we keep on, it will mean something to me.

[ It’s partly fear that keeps him talking, instead of leaving that there on the table in need of an answer, but mostly fair play. Recompense. Vulnerability for vulnerability. It’s a lot to give away, but he’s sure Byerly must already suspect, on some level, to think that Alexandrie would make a difference. ]

So, ah. Can I think about it? You, too. I’m sure you thought about it before you called me, Monsieur le Cercle Vicieux, but Alexandrie isn’t here, and you’re anxious. When things have settled, maybe you will find that is as much Orlesian as one Fereldan can handle.

As one half-Fereldan.

[ That's - better than By expected. And so he tries to crack a joke: ]

I think my Orlesian half would do better with her, but my Fereldan half would do better with you. Needed for balance.

[ Needed for balance. Is that what this is? It's part of it, at least. If By is going to be with Alexandrie, he needs Bastien as well. He needs that level-headed good humor, that casual warmth. Alexandrie is all fire and passion and high emotion; Bastien, whimsical practicality. But to want that - is it selfish? Is it evil? To want to take from both of them? Is he just using them? ]

But - yes; Maker, yes. Take all the time you want. [ A hesitation, and then, earnestly - ] I will not become a Vincent. I - If I see you, I only wish to see you happy.

[ And then, with a desperate sort of humor: ] Andraste's tits, it's hard to talk like this while sober.

[ That makes Bastien laugh, and laughing sweeps away his half-formed plans to defend Vincent. ]

It is the worst. But you’re doing a pretty good job, I think.

[ He takes a long drink, because he was promised a second round and he intends to have it, then sets it down with a decisive little clunk. ]

D’accord. I’ll think. Not for too long, I promise. Just give me until she has been back for a few weeks.

[ To decide what he can stand, and to see if there’s a change, if there’s still space, if it would feel like trying to plant a garden in the middle of a hurricane. ]

And I—when I said you were my closest friend— [ if Byerly even remembers, drunk as he was ] —I meant it. So whatever else happens, don’t worry about that. I would not sacrifice being able to talk the way we do for the best cock in Thedas.

[ That is a massive relief. Tension drains from him - a long breath out from his nose, his hands less stiff on the cup. He is content enough to joke: ]

Which is, of course, sitting across from you.

[ And then, after a moment, he finds that he is content enough to admit: ]

I do believe that you are mine, as well.

[ At the first part, Bastien raises his eyebrows and does a wobbly contemplative nod, willing to at least consider the possibility of letting Byerly make that claim.

At the second, he grins. If not for the table between them and the room full of Kirkwall roughnecks, he might have kissed Byerly on the cheek for that—and it would have been like hitting a briefly-forgotten bruise on a sharp corner, so thank Andraste for the table and the roughnecks.

Instead: ]

I will make us matching bracelets.

[ A threat. ]

[ That pulls out a real laugh from him. ]

Diamond-encrusted or it's going straight into the harbor.

Ooh, don’t tempt me. I am trying to behave.

[ Because diamonds would come from nowhere legal, of course, and be very fun to acquire until he had to be rescued from the city guard and then explain himself to the other three Division Heads.

He finishes off his drink. ]

One last, mm... Do you know if it would bother Alexandrie? I know she might not have much right to mind, with— [ a gesture, in lieu of saying her Northern maleficar in a crowded tavern. ] But feelings don’t care about rights, and it could be—odd, when we are all friends.

[ And even without prying or being privy to the fallout, he’s noticed her jealousy elsewhere. Maybe he wouldn’t care about her feelings, if it came down to it; he has an underdeveloped sense of obligation at the best of times. Certainly not one strong enough to think he owes a duty to a married woman to keep his hands off her lover, if he decides he’d prefer not to. But she hugged him, before she left. ]

I - have not spoken with her about it. I wanted to ask you first.

[ He frowns a bit. Now that he's thinking about it, that was probably the wrong order to do it in, wasn't it. ]

But she has said specifically that she's been bothered by seeing me with women. Which is a bit of an oddity, to be fair, but... [ A one-shouldered shrug. ]

Hm. I have seen that, in Orlais, but I always assumed it was about not wanting bastards on their doorsteps.

[ Not relevant here, obviously. ]

We'd make a beautiful baby.

[ His laugh is real, startled, and a little horrified, and he moves his empty cup closer to Byerly on the table. ]

That is your cue to get me another drink.

My eyes and your chin?

[ He clucks as he stands, grabbing both cups. And, as he goes off to the bar - ]

Magnificent.

[ When he returns, it's with stronger spirits than ale. ]

[ Bastien laughs through a grimace and waits until Byerly is at the bar to take a few slow, deep, bracing breaths. By the time he's returned, Bastien has produced a deck of cards to wiggle invitingly.

Meanwhile: ]

Her husband will not come after you, will he? Do you need a Templar guard? Barrow seems nice.

D'you think she'd finally leave him if he did? It'd be a properly romantic end to the story if that was how it went. [ He tips back his head and intones: ] Ensnared by a foul Northern apostate, only the death of her strapping Fereldan lover was enough to set the dainty lady free...

[ Then he spreads his hands in clear assent to the cards. ]

What are we playing?

Chanson d'Argent.

[ Not a simpler game than Wicked Grace, on its face, but one that involves much less lying and cheating. He starts dealing. ]

It would be a better story if you did not die. How about charmingly maimed? A nice facial scar.

Ah, one of the ones that goes over one eye? [ He uses the side of his hand to describe the path of the potential scar before picking up his cards. ] I like that idea. Then people will approach me, and think, ah, a dangerous rogue. But it will turn out that, all along, it was a noble wound, taken out of love.

[ He arranges the cards, and says - ]

Barrow does seem nice. It's funny, living with all these mages, how you almost start to believe that templars are all beasts.

[ Bastien frowns a bit at his hand, which is mediocre, then glances up and smiles. ]

I am sure sheep have nothing kind to say of sheepdogs, either. All that barking and nipping. [ But a second thought, while he begins the process of drawing and trading— ] Do not tell them I compared them to sheep.

Your words are locked inside my heart.

[ A small, seated bow, particularly constrained by the fact that he's holding these cards. ]

How do you feel about the whole business? All those mages.

Ah, you know me. I like the ones I know. And I can feel sorry for anyone. I think it is an awful thing for someone's life to be decided for them by something they have no say in.

But most people's lives are decided for them, not just theirs. And most people will not kill all of their neighbors if they have a bad enough dream.

[ He shrugs. ]

Mostly I think it is over my head.

[ A grunt of agreement. ]

It was one of the first questions put to me when I first took up my post - Ambassador, where do you stand on the mage question? [ A shake of his head as he lays down a card - ] Where I stand is blindfolded in a darkened room with a confused cacophony ringing in my ears.

[ He lays down a card, wrinkling his nose at the mediocrity of the play. ]

Maker knows the Circles weren't working like they were supposed to. That much is for certain. But then again, that fellow likely wouldn't have burned down our dining hall if he'd been in a Circle.

No.

[ He had trouble sleeping for a few nights, and he looks at Byerly now—his arm, his side, hidden by his good clothes and the table—without trying to hide it. But he doesn’t ask, either. ]

I wonder what it feels like. So many of them seem to not be able to help themselves. Or they’re offended at the idea of being restrained from magic somehow. I don’t know if many of them here would agree to give it up, if there was a good way to do it, if that was the way to go free.

[ A swap, a better play. ]

Maybe it feels like music. Would you rather sing and dance in a tower, or try to reach for a melody or a rhythm and find nothing, forever?

[ A shrug; fair enough. But: ]

Most musicians would not kill all of their neighbors if they have a bad enough dream.

[ A cluck of his tongue as he lays down his cards and invites Bastien to do the same with a lift of his eyebrow. ]

Speak for yourself—

[ His face gives it away before he lays his hand out—a loss, though a near one. ]

This is a terrible game.

[ Perfectly cheerful, and already gathering the cards to shuffle again. ]

I'm finding it delightful.

[ A rakish grin. Then: ]

Let's say you were born in the North. Or that there were no Circles. Would you want it? Magic?

[ Bastien hums and thinks about it—and about other things, in little starts and flashes on the peripheral edges of his focus. It takes most of the time he needs to shuffle and deal to come to a decision. ]

I don’t know. I am not very good at being good, you know—I don’t have any instinct for it. No leash. If la bonne chose à faire wants something from me it has to have cream and know where to scratch. [ Spreading his cards in his hand, ] I would be demon bait for sure.

[ He sounds pretty cheerful about that, too. ]

But on the other hand, it would be much easier to light a cigarette, so... [ Case in point, for not always doing the right thing. ] Maybe.

Would you?

No.

[ No hesitation there. Clearly something he's already meditated on. ]

I certainly wouldn't want to be a mage in the South. And all the Northern mages seem to be some degree of bastard. I'm bastard enough having grown up powerless and spat-upon.

[ He straightens his cards. They make a convenient metaphor for: ]

A fellow who always has a good hand never even realizes that there are shitty cards. [ And then he pulls a face, communicating and here they are, the shitty cards. ]

[ Bastien grins at that face, and then at his cards, which are better this time. And it’s harder than it looks, but it’s not that hard. ]

Perhaps we just attract bastards here, and the rest stay home.

I'd protest that I'd seen the same pattern in places such as Val Royeaux and Antiva, but I suppose that both of those places also attract bastards, no?

[ Bastien opens his mouth, sighs through it, shuts it, and then says, ]

I need you to learn to think better of yourself, By. So I can say things like they attracted you, when you open the door that way, and know that you will not take me too seriously.

[ There's a flicker of uncertainty in his face. Then - ]

Don't be dramatic, Bastien. You know I find jokes like that to be perfectly riotous.

Yes, but you're sensitive tonight.

[ He glances up, friendly mischief, and resumes playing. ]

What if you had been raised with power but a family that did not treat you like shit? Would that have just gone to your head?

[ He is decidedly less comfortable with this line of discussion, but determined not to seem so. ]

Oh, yes, I'd have been a dreadful thing, don't you think? Like one of those chevaliers, terrorizing the countryside but pretending righteousness.

Mm, no. I don't think so. Or at least it is very hard for me to imagine. But I suppose it is the precise opposite of protecting the countryside while pretending degeneracy.

Well, how about you? [ He draws a card, wrinkles his nose, and immediately discards it. ] What would Bastien of wealth-and-privilege have been like?

I don't know.

[ He draws and considers his options for longer than necessary, since he's also thinking about the question. ]

Maybe if I had a library and a ballroom and my own bed I would have been content. I could have stayed home and written bad poetry. And everyone would have to tell me was brilliant, because I was paying for their wine.

Or maybe I would have been the same beast with a wider reach and sharper claws.

[ An arched eyebrow. ]

Do you really think yourself a beast?

Oh, you know.

[ He makes his trade, then lays out his hand without ceremony, smile a little cheeky. ]

Not in a bad way. A fox is a beast.

[ By clucks his tongue as he loses. Badly. He gathers up the cards and takes a turn as dealer. ]

Rather few of your behaviors strike me as particularly foxlike. Unless you are referring to the fact that you're foxy.

[ A very lame line. Fortunately, deliberately so. ]

[ A better line might have panged. This one's perfect. He laughs—a delighted little titter—and smooths his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. ]

You lost. You have to tell me a secret.

Those weren't the rules.

[ The protest is surpassingly mild, and immediately followed by: ]

What genre of secret?

Small and harmless. Funny or odd. No broken oaths. Unless you would prefer big and personal if you win the next hand. Then you have to set the precedent now.

[ He shuffles the cards meditatively a moment. Then, apparently deciding: ]

Last month I picked up a book to read. Of the sort you're quite fond of. A Wind Across the Waking Sea. I finished it, even.

[ His face was already plenty bright, but it lights up further. ]

Did you really? Did you hate it?

I did not. [ An answer to the second question, not the first. ] The plot was a little contrived, but it was still quite gripping.

[ He doesn't ask if it was because of him, because he doesn't know what he would do with a yes. Or, no, he does know. He'd feed it to the hope he's trying to starve. So instead: ]

Can I borrow it?

Of course.

[ He draws a card. ]

You can have it to keep.

Ah, ouais, you would not want to be caught with something like that. People might talk.

[ He hasn't even looked at his cards yet, but he does now, and they're either good enough or bad enough that he laughs. ]

Just so. It would do my devil-may-care image no favors to be seen putting time and effort into something. If I kept it, I'd have to carve out the middle and hide a bottle of liquor in it.

Ha. If you ever need a book for that, I can find you one that deserves it.

What! I thought you loved all books.

Oh, no. Just the other day I gave up on one because it was— [ an emphatic gesture while trading cards ] —shockingly racist. Even for Orlais.

Such sensitivities. Spending too much time with elves, Bastien?

Only Athessa, lately.

I suppose she counts.

Do you have sympathy for them, then? Elves?

Don’t you?

[ But—perhaps as apology for that earlier will you—it’s rhetorical. ]

I grew up near the alienage in Val Royeaux. Everyone liked to say, You could do worse! [ Chipper, with the rough edge of an uneducated accent and the rote intonation of a worn-out old joke. ] By being an elf. And we—the children, I mean—we threw rocks at the gates.

[ He takes a card, then discards it without trading. ]

After I was done thinking I was better than them, I spent some time thinking we were the same. But now no one knows what I’ve come from unless I tell them. With elves, everyone always knows.

Your ears are surpassingly cute.

[ A card drawn. And then, finally - ]

And I do. Yes. Don't get me wrong, they're a bit creepy - those eyes, you know - but if one were to stab me and every other human in the heart for what we'd done, I'd consider it a fair cop.

[ It's impossible not to think about the cabin in the mountains, and Byerly complimenting his earlobes, but he keeps it to a minimum. No dwelling. ]

Make sure not to repeat that where Sabine can hear you. She might take you up on it.

[ He lays out his cards, which are very bad, but it's not completely impossible to do worse. ]

[ Byerly wins with ease. ]

A secret from you, now.

Hmm.

[ He sweeps the cards back to himself on the table to reorganize and shuffle. ]

I am afraid of storms. Not horribly. I can deal with it. They wake me up, I go back to sleep, it is fine. But whenever there is thunder, I am, you know. [ He raises one of his hands to indicate a slight elevation of anxiety. ] A little nervous.

Really.

[ By smiles, his expression fond. ]

Do you know why?

Uhh, because they are scary?

[ Obviously. He's joking. Half joking. ]

I think it is probably because of the canals in the city. [ Deep, with their edges providing walkways and shelter for vagrants and les gamins—a category he fell into, even though he wasn't an orphan. ] They flood very quickly sometimes. I was never caught in it, or I would probably be afraid of the water instead. But peopled drowned often enough, so when it stormed everyone would start scrambling and panicking. I suppose it rubbed off.

[ He thinks about that as he deals. ]

What a misery it was for you, then. That month of rain.

[ After the execution. ]

I had a bag packed.

[ Another secret. Two for the price of one. He scoops up his cards and shoots a smile up at Byerly while he considers them. ]

But I unpacked it. [ Fanning his cards, ] Are you one of those who likes storms? Because they are dramatic?

[ A little gesture of his hand. Got it in one. ]

Storms are excellent for making one feel as though one is larger than one's true size. To yell at thunder - you might be a giant.

Is that what you do? Words, or just [ quietly ] ahhhh?

Depends on your mood. Have you never tried it?

No, never. I have told it to fuck off, but that was more of a grumble. Leave me alone, [ hissed, as he draws and trades, ] into my pillow. That sort of thing.

[ That does it. By throws back the last of his wine with a grin, and says: ]

Put away the cards. I'll settle up. We need to go somewhere.

[ Bastien grins back and doesn't demand an explanation. He enjoys going somewheres and surprises both, so he gathers the cards into a pile to stack and tie, finishes his drink, and meets Byerly at the door. ]

[ The walk is one of medium length - this is neither a destination around the corner, nor one that's an overly demanding distance. It's made in a mixture of companionable silence and idle chatter - not long enough to create a remarkable amount of either.

Their destination is a theater, apparently. By leads Bastien around the side, and thumps on the door until a caretaker pushes it open. The caretaker knows Byerly, apparently, greeting him affably and letting them both in. ]

Come on.

[ By leads Bastien in with a cheerful grin over his shoulder. ]

[ That grin—and all of this, really—only compounds his problem, but he'll worry about it later. ]

What are we doing? The Heir of Verchiel? Death in the Mansion? I want to be Blanche, the Chambermaid.

I respect your urge, but you haven't the hips for Blanche, dear Bastien. I am truly sorry to hear a dream unfulfilled.

[ There are only a few lanterns around illuminating the stage, giving it a rather ghostly feeling. But it's all empty, devoid of any tripping hazards, making it safe to move freely in that dim light - ]

Between shows, at the moment.

[ But the heaviest instruments, the ones that cannot be moved, sit still in the orchestra pit. The harp, the pianoforte - and there, the snare drums. By grins, and hops down, taking his place before them, giving a few experimental thumps. They produce a deep, resonant boom. ]

Prepare yourself for what you want to shout into the thunder.

[ Previously busy looking down at his hips on the stage, hands flattening his clothes over them in consideration of their width, Bastien looks up–or looks slightly less down, anyway, at Byerly in the pit below—at the first sound of the drum.

He's never been much for shouting. Playing a role, it's fine; he can be Alardus Bombelles, who shouts when his soup is not the correct temperature, or Guillot the Ferrier, who was once kicked in the head and now shouts every word. For his own sake, though, he's quiet. And between that thunder-evoking booming and the eerie cavern of the theater, shouting seems like it could invite something to come closer, unheard and unseen in the noisy dark.

But it's the sort of nervousness that's just to the left of thrilled. And he trusts Byerly, both in general and specifically not to make a fool of him intentionally, or to only tease him as much as he deserves, no more or less, if he makes one of himself.

So he thinks for a moment, and then he nods, braced and taking a preparatory deep breath. ]

Edited 2020-09-07 04:19 (UTC)

[ It's precisely that quiet, that restraint, that gave By this impulse. Bastien is always so controlled, in his own way. Always so friendly and affable. When pain is shown, it's shown only to a trusted few, and even then the display is quite cautious.

In Byerly's messy, sloppy, excessive opinion, there is something incredibly valuable in - sometimes - being loud and egregious and unrestrained. He's not entirely confident that this'll do it for his friend, but maybe it'll help. Perhaps. Maker, he hopes so.

The drumsticks are raised. And then By brings them down, putting all his strength into it, starting a deafening tattoo that drowns out any and all noise in the theater. Even bellowing would make itself audible only to the person doing the yelling, and even then only faintly. ]

Edited 2020-09-07 14:45 (UTC)

TU N’ES RIEN D’AUTRE QUE DU BRUIT.

[ That’s what he’d planned. But the words disappear into the cacophony, and the cacophony continues around and beyond them, and his there’s a catching sensation in his chest, the same as when Marcoulf’s griffon first dove off the tower with them on her back.

So he sucks in another lungful of air and improvises. ]

YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE ANY FEET.

[ Childish, for a childish fear. And another breath—but this time he’s quieter than a bellow, not quite trusting the cover of the drums, with his head tipped back to face the ceiling as much to hide his mouth from any lip-reading as to enjoy the gesture of shouting toward the sky: ]

I am so fucking tired of not being good enough.

[ But even as he shouts it, he doesn’t quite feel it. Not in the moment. Byerly was right—with the fake thunder vibrating in his chest and throat and his words disappearing into it, it nearly feels like the drumbeats are his voice instead, translating his shouts into something rawer, filling up the theater. Enormous.

He stops there, but it’s to laugh. A little self-conscious, a little giddy, and covering his ears to signal that he’s had enough. ]

[ And Byerly stops, with three slow resonant beats on the drum - like this was something ceremonial, like this is the dismissal of the spirits they've summoned. Perhaps it was something rather ceremonial. Voice and drum - some believe that was all it took to summon the Maker, no? That Andraste's holy work required nothing more than the vibration of air.

Those vibrations taper off into nothing. The space feels enormous, almost boundless, in the absence of noise; it feels like there's some music in that silence, like nothingness is playing some sort of coda. He smiles at it.

And then he scrambles out of the orchestra pit (ten years ago, it would have been a daring leap; this is more of an awkward hop-and-roll onto the stage) and joins Bastien on the stage. ]

There's a cello down there.

[ No questions about what he shouted. No cheeky congratulations on a job well done. If Bastien got anything out of it, found anything freeing, the way that Byerly does in a storm, that's between him and the noise. ]

[ Bastien looks in that direction, but his air is a little distracted—even with a cello in play—while he's still settling back onto the ground and into his skin in the relative quiet.

Yesterday he might have let the exhilaration sweep him forward and hauled Byerly in by the collar. Today he drifts closer more like a leaf, on his way to the edge of the stage. He catches By's arm for a moment when he's close enough. Holds it, for a passing moment, and rocks sideways to knock his cheek to his shoulder. He's done it before, now and then–the impulse behind a hug, satisfied without any arm-winding or body-pressing.

Then he steps further away to lean over the pit, not quite committed to the idea of jumping down into it, yet, and having to climb back out, but certainly considering it. ]

Do you come here a lot? The man at the door likes you.

[ He confirms this with a little hum. ]

One of the stage managers is a friend of mine. We knew each other back in Denerim, before the Blight - he came here as a refugee. Ran into each other by chance last year, and he introduced me to the whole troupe. I've filled in in the orchestra a time or two.

[ An arm comes out to wrap around Bastien's neck. ]

'Twas the playing of the fiddle some months ago that led to an introduction between me and a certain Antivan merchant who was convinced, through the application of some Fereldan whiskey, to bear hence a packet of coffee which later found its way into your very belly.

That was very good coffee.

[ The best he'd had, or has had, in a while, at least at first, before he stretched it out too long and thin in an attempt to make it last forever and the last beans went rancid. Maybe there's a lesson he should be learning there.

Anyway, Bastien leans into that arm a bit, same as he would have before he wanted to lean further. He'd told him the night of Eshal's drinking competition—when Byerly put his mouth on the glass just where Bastien's had been, and he'd thought that's interesting, all curiosity and no investment—that he'd blame Byerly if they slept together and it ruined their friendship. So fuck if he's going to let it be his fault now. ]

Worth what I'm sure was a great hardship, for you to play for those audiences and befriend those musicians. [ Later, another day, he'll try to extract a promise that Byerly will inform him the next time he's filling in anywhere, so he can attend the performances while the music is at its best. But for now, ] Did you ever think about just changing your name and joining them? Before you found your calling.

Every day.

[ But. By smiles, the emotion maybe wry or maybe sad, and mimes the tugging of a leash attached to his throat. It's become a dreadfully convenient shorthand, Bastien's metaphor. Easier to reference than it is to give these feelings a name. ]

What a loss for the arts. [ A little mournful, too. But he pats Byerly’s shirt front—near the collar but not quite high enough, because as previously mentioned, the man is unfairly tall—and brightens a bit. ] But a gain for everyone else. I am very proud to know you, you know.

[ Not I’m proud of you, because that feels like something he doesn’t quite have a claim to. And then, to save Byerly from having to actually respond to that, he hops down into the pit. ]

What would you like to play? I will even let you have the cello.

[ I am proud to know you is so completely fucking unexpected. It is - staggering. He doesn't know what to do with himself, or with that sentiment, and so he stands there silent and scrabbling as Bastien hops down and - ]

I, ah -

[ I am proud to know you. ]

Yes. I wouldn't want...Maybe I'll take the pianoforte.

[ He swallows and tries to recover. A breath. He steadies himself. He puts a smile on his face, and clambers down after. ]

Feel like playing anything in particular? Or just improvising?

[ If he notices the prolonged recovery time (and he does, obviously), he has the mercy not to acknowledge it, busy helping himself to the cello before Byerly has even agreed not to take it from him—he’d still want to have a look at it regardless—and testing the tuning as soon as he does. ]

Let’s start with “Un Sourire sous un Masque”— [ a simple staple of a waltz ] —and see where we wind up.

A lovely choice.

[ He seats himself, stretches his hands, and starts to play. The playing is soft and unornamented, more percussive than anything else; By's intent is to give Bastien a chance to really take up the musical line, show off a little if he wants to. ]

[ He needs a few bars to settle in. And it isn't false modesty, when he professes to have limitations: workmanlike technique that isn't enough to dazzle on its own, and not enough artistry to stand out in a crowd of hypothetical cellists. He knows how to have fun, though, and how to collaborate. So when he realizes Byerly isn't going to run away with things, he gets a little more daring. A bit of flair here and there. A playful staccato stutter where it doesn't belong, a sliding swoop on a low note.

They're barely halfway through the song when he gives into the siren call of improvisation, but he leaves his short little deviations from the melody unresolved, like questions demanding an answer, or the set-up for a punchline. ]

[ Well, if Bastien insists. When given leeway, By will often really get flashy - but he's on the piano, which is less familiar than the violin, and also he doesn't want to turn this into a solo.

So instead, he only does little improvisations when Bastien initiates: an unresolved melody gets a little echo with the last chord resolved; the set-ups get answered with their punchlines. He lets Bastien lead, but he answers every question. ]

[ Several minutes after they’ve wandered away from the waltz’s beaten path, the question does occur to him. If all of this is Byerly not loving him—his face against Bastien’s neck, his bashfulness and flattering sash, kissing him despite swampy jungle mouth and blowing him through a hangover, the honesty and attention, coffee and jaw harps, knowing just the thing and just the place to make Bastien feel capable of something monumental—then who gives a shit about the semantics? Who cares what By does or doesn’t think his heart has the strength for? When it comes to awareness of his own abilities, Byerly is frequently, with all due affection, a fucking idiot.

But the answer is: Bastien cares. Or if he doesn’t quite care tonight, he will later. When Alexandrie returns from Antiva, and time and attention—finite resources even at the best of times, however boundless someone’s heart—are in shorter supply. When Byerly is joking again about noble wounds taken for love. When he’s tender or troubled and needs someone to talk to about what it means for him to be with her.

It also occurs to Bastien that he could just, like, ask. To be sure. It’s what he’d tell someone else to do.

But he’s done that before, and it sucked. And it would be a waste right now anyway, with Alexandrie in Antiva and everything that might change on her return held in suspense.

So. ]

We are geniuses, [ as he winds down. They aren’t—or he isn’t, anyway—but he’s pleased enough to pretend. ] When the war is over and there is no more wrongdoing or pain anywhere in Thedas for you to worry about, we must go on tour. Or we can tour to where the pain is. It’s funny, I think there is a word—some profession, I’ve heard, for people who use music as a cover for other endeavors—

Birds. [ Byerly asserts that with full confidence, not even winking. Then he tips his hand cheerfully towards Bastien. ]

A virtuosic performance, my dear Bastien. You really are talented. And don't blush or demur; it is true, and when you say otherwise I want to shave off your mustache in spite.

Really?

[ He sets the cello aside with all the careful respect it deserves. ]

would you truly want to start down that path? It could only end one way. [ He joins Byerly on the piano bench, nudging as necessary, and dramatically plonks down a single low, dramatic chord—incorrectly first. He adjusts a finger to the correct key and plonks it again. ] Both of us shaven clean, head to toe. You, mourning your eyebrows—how will anyone know how skeptical you are being without them? And me, devastated by the loss of my chest hair. It would not be pretty.

Ah!

[ By, in return, sets his hand upon the keyboard and plays a high, fluttering, arpeggio, evocative of a bird in a trap. ]

Maker have mercy! Would I at least get to keep my eyelashes?

[ Bastien thinks about that for a moment, hand lifting with a contemplative curl, then balls it into a fist that he drop onto the keys and drags down to the lowest octave. ]

No. No mercy. No survivors.

Monster.

[ His voice is a high, thready gasp. And yet, he concludes: ]

But it will be worth it.

[ He walks his fingers back up the keys—like little marching legs, not with anything resembling proper finger placement. Pianos are a little difficult to carry on one's back, so everything he knows about the piano he learned from periodically fooling around, much like this. The extent of his actual two-handed song-playing ability would be the Thedosian equivalent of "Mary Had A Little Lamb." ]

What, to make me agree that I have talent? Or do you long for a glimpse of my...

[ He taps the hair-obscured cleft beneath his nose. ]

What is this called?

[ Solemn and earnest: ]

Facial perineum.

[ There are no elegant words for the laugh that earns, which is probably fitting, because it's not an elegant laugh. Let's go with guffaw. Once he's collected himself, he says—with a few halting pauses to think, not too fluently— ]

Byerly Rutyer, that rascal and cad—there’s nothing that he’d shy away from. So he strode to the Empress, compelled by a dare, and kissed her right on her facial perineum.

[ A cackle in return. ]

Flawless meter. You're a poet beyond compare, my cabbage.

I'm—

[ All right, he might have said, for silly couplets. But he thinks better, and shields his mustache from spiteful shaving with his hand. ]

—very good.

[ And he cautiously lowers his hand. ]

Do you want me to do the drums for you?

[ By reaches out and tugs lightly on the mustache - just in warning. Then he hums thoughtfully. ]

No. I think I've emptied out my soul lately. Nothing bottled up that needs release.

Good.

[ He resumes picking at the piano keys, trying to remember some less basic chords. Softly, so it doesn't drown him out. ]

How happy was she? No details, I'm sure they are private, but on a scale one to ten. I would put money on... a twelve?

Ha.

[ He looks down and plays a chord - C major, modulated into C minor, resolved to C major once more. ]

She looked like I'd given her a gift. It was terrifying.

[ Bastien takes it as a demonstration and copies him, while he makes a gentle sort of scoffing sound. ]

She knows you, doesn’t she? If it is a gift, it is one she chose. She went to the market and turned you this way and that, and she said yes, I want this one.

Hah.

[ In a passable imitation of a dwarven accent: ]

No, no, madam, we told you when you made your purchase before that we don't do returns or refunds here at the Indelible Shitstain stand. So we're sorry, but - What's that? You don't want a refund? Instead, you want another one? Well, all right...

[ He laughs, because it’s funny, but he also sways sideways for a chiding shoulder-knock. ]

Now whose mustache needs to be shaved?

It's all I have.

[ He covers it up with both hands, trying to make this out as a joke. ]

Please. It is not even your fifteenth best feature.

[ He hits one key with repetitive rhythm, unable/unwilling to resist the temptation to make a little noise with a noisemaker right in front of him, but also not paying enough attention to do something more complex than that. ]

She’s lucky to have you. Especially if her husband is as awful as you say.

Or curséd. Only time will tell.

[ Some sudden, strange, obscure desire leads him to reach out to take Bastien's hand. It stops that music; he compensates by taking up the noisemaking, using his free hand to tap out a high quavering note. ]

No—

[ Byerly takes his hand. For a moment he thinks his repetitive plinking is just obnoxious, and he puts up no resistance. ]

No. I have already told. Time can get fucked.

[ All cheekily serious authority.

Byerly still has his hand. Bastien glances at his profile, then grips back, in a settling-in way, fingers shifting and getting comfortable, like it’s nothing. It shouldn’t be anything.

After that pause, his tone mellows to more measured optimism. ]

Even if it goes wrong, it will not be because you are some hideous blight on her life. It will be because you are a person, and she is a person, and sometimes that it how it goes. And afterwards both of you will be all right.

[ By is quiet a moment, finger resting on the highest F. He plays it, then says, softly: ]

Maker, I don't want to pressure you. But I hope that you will say yes.

[ To the query. To the desire to continue. ]

[ And that–being the caretaker of a hope that Byerly needs to speak that softly—makes him feel—what?

Touched. Gutted. Tempted to say yes now, because what was the point of waiting again, or at least to put the whole thinking plan on hold for the night and start again in the morning.

Bastien settles for tightening his grip on Byerly's hand, and on second thought gathering his whole arm a little closer, and leaning his head against his shoulder. Another second and he pivots his cheek against said shoulder to be a little closer to his ear and whispers, like it's a scandalous little secret, ] Me, too.

[ A light, soft laugh. He butts his head very lightly against Bastien's, and for a moment just enjoys that closeness, that intimacy.

Then, a breath in. ]

Should we call it a night? Or do you want to keep carousing?

[ Bastien doesn't relinquish his hold and shoulder, quite yet, but: ]

We should go. If we miss the last ferry we will have to find a place to stay, and tavern rooms make me really slutty.

Be fair, Bastien; private rooms make you really slutty, too.

[ A kiss to the crown of his head. Then By stands, and hauls himself from the orchestra pit - ]

Ahhh, I feel old.

[ Quiet stifled laughter at that fair and correct observation bleeds directly into a sympathetic aw. He hauls himself up, too, and then lies on the stage for a moment to recuperate before getting the rest of the way to his feet.

Despite that: ]

I don't.

[ Tonight. ]

This was great, By. All of it. [ It could have been a very shitty night. ] Thank you.

[ There'd been some aspects of it that were trying to soften the blow, perhaps. It's a strange and uncomfortable thing that he cannot consider directly, why there is a blow involved, but: there is, and so some of this had been an attempt to gentle it. But the bulk of this had just been because it was fun. Because Bastien is fun. ]

Thank you, dear - What is it Athessa calls you? Baz?

Heh. Ouais. I am not sure I like it from you though—say it again.

Baz?

[ Magnanimously: ] D'accord. Acceptable.

Burrz.

[ His back goes up like he's been pet in the wrong direction, but he laughs a little, too, and counter-threatens: ]

Boh—no.

[ That won't work, given it's pronounced Beau, and if Byerly is calling him Burrz he's not going to call him Handsome. That's not comeuppance at all. ]

Bah.

Burrz and Bah. We sound like a comedy troupe.

Ohh, Thedas would not be able to handle that. They are not prepared.

The war would end. Nations would dissolve their borders.

When you put it like that...

[ He does whatever medieval fantasy dance step would evoke the medieval fantasy equivalent of Vaudeville humor. ]

We can start tomorrow.

[ And By hums some medieval fantasy Scott Joplin - Scott du Jopêlin - and does a little two step as well. ]

It'll be fun.

And if we are ending the war, Riftwatch will have to give us a costume budget. It is only fair.

[ He links his arm into By's for a couple steps, but then also to tug him in an off-stage, exit-y direction. Ferry. ]

[ They're in the prayer garden, either finishing up their respective lunches or finishing up some tedious busywork that is made less onerous by the change in scenery. ]

I have a hypothetical question.

[ She tips her head back to rest against the seat of the bench, because being who she is she never sits on the benches. She sits on the ground in front of them. But anyway she tips her head back and looks at Bastien, then at the sky. ]

And I mean an actual hypothetical, not the I've already done the thing and I'm unsubtly asking if it was a bad idea kind.

[ Bastien is multitasking—lunch and tedious busywork—with his bread and cheese and stack of paper on the bench, which he's sitting on the other side of and using like a desk, with his legs stretched and crossed near Athessa on the other side.

He doesn't pause writing. He says, ] I think we probably could use the griffons to make the clouds into funny shapes, [ in answer to the hypothetical question he's just invented for her. ]

[ Athessa takes a breath to say no, no, I was gonna say— but then the actually thinks about his invented hypothetical. ]

Hmm. Now there's an idea...

[ She's already finished her lunch, so it's just busywork on her lap that she's neglecting for the sake of hypotheticals. ]

Dicks, [ he offers, crossing the Ts and dotting the Is on a long word. ]

Propaganda, [ she counters, redacting things from the top page on her lap with broad strokes. ]

[ Very seriously: ] Propagandicks.

[ After one second of serious reflection: ] Cockaganda.

[ He laughs, in a quiet huffy way, and nudges her with his leg. It's a forfeit. Can't top that. ]

What was your real question?

Oh, right. [ Hard to resist getting caught up in the moment when she gets one up on Baz. She twists a bit and rests her forearm on the bench. ]

Hypothetically speaking, at what point does sobriety become more of a liability than inebriation? Like...you know how I am. And maybe one day I'll be able to calm myself down with [ a little finger wiggle like woo ] Techniques. But say someone is worse than me, would it be less of a liability for them to be stoned in the field, or prone to panic and impulse?

[ She was telling the truth when she said it was a real hypothetical; nothing about her body language or manner of speaking says she's thinking about this with any shame or embarrassment or whatever else one might be influenced by if they were, say, considering getting high in the midst of battle. Athessa's taking her job seriously, moreso every day, and she just seems genuinely curious. ]

[ It's an interesting question. One with a lot of variables, obviously, like: ]

I think it would depend a lot on what they were meant to be doing. Soldiers who only have to march and stab on command could get away with more than, you know.

[ Spies. ]

Hm. Yeah, I guess it'd be harder for, you know — [ Spies. ] — whose whole job is talking, and keeping track of moving pieces. But there's a point of panic where you're no more able to keep track of all that than you would be in a fitful state.

Someone who expects to be that panicked, far enough in advance to get stoned in anticipation—they should probably have a different assignment.

[ That said, ]

I used to work high sometimes. It’s a good way to get people talking, you know, and they will be suspicious if you don’t participate. As long as everything went as planned it was fine. A little hairier with they didn’t, but I’m obviously not dead, so...

If it’s just jitters they probably wouldn’t need so much.

[ That's fair, the tip of her head says. ]

I guess people can build up a tolerance, too, right? So they can handle more.

[ Hm. What if Athessa could build up a tolerance to her feelings? Isn't that what she's missing, anyway? Fourteen years without drinking would turn anyone teetotaler. ]

We should smoke together when we go on that vacation. I bet getting high on a beach is really nice.

That sounds nice. Add it to the list.

[ The imaginary list, you know, called ATHESSA & BASTIEN’S RIVAINI DREAM VACATION.

He stops writing his letter, starts folding and sealing. ]

What is making you think of this? Is someone panicking?

[ She mimes adding GET HIGH ON A BEACH to that imaginary list. ]

Not that I know of, no. I was just thinking about the times I've panicked about silly things and smoked to calm down, and wondered what if.

[ The closest she's come to panicking while on a mission was after that Maleficar took control, but clearly she kept it together long enough to escape, shove the fear aside, and seek comfort in Derrica's bed. (It's why she has a nervous tic, now, one she's been trying to hide since Bastien started training her.) 🙃 ]

[ sweetie :c ]

Mm. I wonder if an apothecary could come up with something. Something that would not last as long, just interrupt it for a moment. Like when people scream or slap someone to make them focus and then they are a bit better.

[ it's fine she just over-corrects little involuntary finger twitches by flexing her hand it's fiiiine ]

Maybe. [ She thinks on it for a moment, then decides to add a little reassurance, just in case. ] Until then I'm going to continue only smoking when I'm not working.

[ He laughs a little, like it’s a joke, because he wasn’t worried. ]

We could try some training exercises that way, if you want. See how you feel about it. But, ah—

[ He glances up at the back/side of her head. ]

Are you doing all right?

[ She turns her head to look at him, as if she might see what, specifically, he means. He knows she's a mess and the various factors playing into that. It's unlikely he doesn't know that she's pretending to be fine for the sake of getting through each day without collapsing, because she's nowhere near as good a pretender as he. So Athessa looks at him, determines that she doesn't know which specific contributor he's asking after, and shrugs. ]

Am I not hiding it well?

No, no. You have a very good brave face.

[ He stops writing to lean forward over the bench, one arm folded to pillow his chin, pen hand prodding her cheek with the inkless end in an aimless, gentle way that’s only intended to be slightly obnoxious. ]

Ouaip. No cracks at all.

[ Of course he succeeds at gentle-but-slightly-obnoxious, which is in itself charming and coaxes a laugh out of her even as she fends off the pen with her own. En garde. ]

Bon, merci, then I am as alright as I need to be right now.

If you like.

[ He keeps the pen fighting up while he talks, in a lazy way. ]

But you can still talk to me when you are not falling apart, you know. And you not have to talk about something once and then consider it be over forever. Talking is good for you.

I do want to talk to you when I'm not falling apart,

[ She swivels, draping her legs over his (if they're sticking out under the bench) and taking care not to crush his knees or anything. The idea that she only talks to people when she's troubled about something or falling apart is one that has been weighing on her lately, which has contributed to her not talking to people she cares about, which doesn't really help anything. ]

But I also don't want to keep talking about myself right now. I wanna talk about...ya know. Happier things.

[ Bastien thinks about it for a moment, then says, ]

D'accord.

[ He'd still like her to talk about things that bother her before she's crying about them, but he can certainly respect wanting to focus on something positive. So. ]

Have you heard any interesting gossip lately?

No, not really, just a lot of exceedingly dull rumors, [ she's clearly feigning boredom because she knows that this particular rumor would hold his interest. ]

Apparently someone's working on making a new puppet show based on some old Orlesian stories. What were they called...? Blue Dog? Brown Falcon? Something like that.

What?

[ He's briefly too excited to be offended by the transparently fake name-forgetting. ]

Who? When? –and if you call him the Blue Dog again, [ now he can be offended, ] I will cry.

[ Her half-hearted pen duel is quickly lost so she can force his hand in her own defeat, pretending to be grievously injured in the shoulder the way heroes always are. ]

I'll— I'll never tell! Augh!

[ He holds his pen to her throat. ]

Is this really what you want to die for? A puppet show?

Do your worst—

[ She fake-spits off to one side, tilting her chin up for a cleaner target. ]

I will never betray the Black Fox's secret!

[ He presses the pen just a little harder, then pulls it back. ]

Good. You have passed the first test.

Phew. Glad to hear it. [ What a relief. Now she can get back to redacting things from this paperwork.

And continue not divulging anything about any rumored Black Fox puppet shows. ]

Maybe we should add pen dueling to our training, since you're clearly far more proficient in it than I am.

Oh, s'il te plait. You let me win.

[ He eats more bread. He's not given up on the puppet show, but he isn't going to talk with his mouth full. ]

Only because you took it easy on me.

[ After a swallow, ]

I did no such thing. [ And back to the important things: ] Is the show happening in Kirkwall?

[ Gee whiz, this work just got so interesting! She must peer closer at this page — ]

Hm? Oh, probably. Eventually. Who knows, really?

You are the worst gossiper I have ever known.

Thank you!

[ Look it's hard to gossip after committing to a secretive bit. But she snaps out of it to fold her arms on the bench and divulge, because it's Bastien and he loves the Black Fox. ]

So I don't know when, but I have it on good authority that a guy called Guillory is adapting the stories.

Ah-ha. And now you have failed the second test. Willing to sacrifice your life, but not to be insulted—tsk.

Augh!

[ She presses her face into her forearms, truly an image of dismay. ]

Damn it!

On the other hand,

[ Momentously. ]

the Black Fox was known for nothing so much as he was known for friendship—for befriending his enemy, for forgiving his betrayer. And perhaps it was not the insult that moved you, but kindness toward your friend?

[ She looks up at him with big sparkly doe eyes and nods. ]

Yes, exactly that, I was moved to show kindness because friendship is the most important thing in life.

[ Such eyes. ]

Then you have passed the third test. Two out of three. Not bad.

Guillory. I will find him, and I will make sure he is giving the Black Fox his due.

[ He won’t, of course. He has work to do. ]

The Dalish must have their heroes too. Was there a story you loved when you were small?

[ Test passed, she puts away that sparkle and lets her eyes just be normal eyes again. ]

Hmmm...I liked the story of Ghilan'nain and the First Halla, and anything to do with the Emerald Knights, though the one about Elandrin and Adelene was my favorite.

[ Those might be telling, but who knows. ]

I have heard of Ghilan'nain, [ pronounced with some hesitation, ] but not in any detail. And nothing about the others.

Ghilan'nain is Mother of the Halla, but before that she was Andruil's beloved. Andruil being Goddess of the Hunt, 'course.

[ A little wave to accentuate that 'course, because it's a given and she assumes Bastien will play along. ]

One day, while hunting in the forest, Ghilan'nain came across a hunter. At his feet lay a hawk, shot through the heart by an arrow. Ghilan'nain was filled with rage, for the hawk and the hare are creatures much loved by Andruil. Ghilan'nain demanded that the hunter make an offering to Andruil, in exchange for taking the life of one of her creatures. The hunter refused, and Ghilan'nain called upon the goddess to curse him, so that he could never again hunt and kill a living creature.

Ghilan'nain's curse took hold, and the hunter found that he was unable to hunt. His prey would dart out of sight and his arrows would fly astray. His friends and family began to mock him for his impotence, for what use is a hunter who cannot hunt? Ashamed, the hunter swore he would find Ghilan'nain and repay her for what she had done to him.

[ He's listening closely enough that he doesn't try to write at the same time, just eats more cheese, in a thoughtful and slow way. He's swallowed in time to say, during her pause, ]

Men are terrible.

[ No arguments there, the tip of Athessa's head says. ]

He found Ghilan'nain while she was out on a hunt with her sisters, and lured her away from them. He told her he'd learned his lesson and begged her to come with him, so she could teach him to make a proper offering to Andruil. Moved by his plea, Ghilan'nain followed the hunter, and when they were away from all of her sisters, the hunter turned on her. He blinded her, then bound her as one would bind a fresh kill from the hunt. But because he was cursed, the hunter could not kill her. Instead he left her for dead in the forest.

Ghilan'nain prayed to the gods for help. She prayed to Elgar'nan for vengeance, to Mother Mythal to protect her, but with all her heart she prayed to Andruil. Andruil sent her hares to Ghilan'nain and they chewed through the ropes that bound her, but Ghilan'nain was still wounded and blind, and couldn't find her way home. So Andruil turned her into a beautiful white deer, and Ghilan'nain found her way back to her sisters, and led them to the hunter, who was brought to justice.

[ For the ending, she adopts a wizened accent, like that of the elder of her clan: ]

Since then, the halla have guided our People, and have never led us astray, for they listen to the voice of Ghilan'nain.

[ He's a reactive listener—frowning at the deception, wincing at the blinding and binding, then transitioning into a melancholy sort of relief at the conclusion, before ultimately smiling at her old person act. ]

I like that. I'm glad she was rescued. But did she remain a halla forever? Do you think she was happy?

The way the Keeper always told it, she stayed a halla forever, and though Andruil still loved her, they could never be together. When we have to bury our dead, [ Which he should know, since he'll have to be witness to such things, ] we sacrifice a halla in Andruil's name so Ghilan'nain's spirit can guide our souls to the Beyond, and afterwards be reunited with her beloved.

[ Athessa shrugs, gesturing with her pen. ]

There's a lot left to interpretation, though.

[ He thinks about asking if that's what she intends to do when they go. Half with interest—how will she find one? Does she know how? And half with trepidation, because he's fond of animals, and watching one die for a ritual would be difficult.

But she wanted to talk about happy things, so he doesn't ask, and his face doesn't change in any way that would suggest he was considering it. ]

Do the Dalish have an—an afterwards? Like how the Chantry says someday the Maker will return and make everything perfect. Is there a time coming when they would be together forever?

[ Athessa herself is fond of animals, and though she's a decent hunter there is still a difference between killing for food and killing for ritual. Not that the halla will go to waste; she'll have to make sure that the animal doesn't suffer, and use ever part of it to honor its sacrifice.

But it's still nerve-wracking. What if she does it wrong? ]

Supposedly when we die, our spirits walk the paths in the Beyond until they reach the Eternal City, where they'll live forever among the gods and receive the answers to life's mysteries.

[ It's one of those things where the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. She laughs, rueful. ]

I wish I'd paid more attention to the stories the Keeper told us, now.

Have you ever thought about finding another clan?

[ Redacting more line items on the papers in her lap is a perfect stalling tactic while she tries to work out how to word her fears in that respect. ]

Once or twice, but...I dunno. I always figured, best case scenario I'd get treated like a child because I don't have the tattoos. Or get turned away for the same reason I never wound up in the Alienage here. She's not one of ours.

[ If the best case scenarios bother her, she doesn't show it. This is bitterness that she's carried around long enough to be used to it. ]

Well, now you are one of ours, so they cannot keep you.

[ A little bit of a joke. Athessa can be kept by whoever she’d like, obviously, if anyone at all. ]

But maybe someone could teach you?

[ She laughs, though the idea of being kept feels overly confining. ]

Maybe, if I can find another clan, and they can get past the lack of a vallaslin, and all the affronts to elfdom I'm guilty of, and don't require me to stay with them forever, or expect me to make elf babies.

[ Should be easy to find a clan that'll forgive all that, right? Piece of cake. Walk in the park. ]

Ohh, but your elf babies would be so cute. And I would be an amazing uncle. I can juggle.

[ That’s what makes a good uncle, right? He wouldn’t know, he’s never had one. ]

You definitely would be. I bet elf babies would love to be juggled.

[ She shrugs again, unless that's too many shrugs in too little time in which case she doesn't. ]

I dunno if I'd be an amazing mother, though. Or if I even want babies. I'm definitely nowhere near ready to settle down.

Well, I am hardly in a position to judge anyone for that. But I think you would be a good mother, if you ever wanted to be.

[ Will she be a good mom? The world may never know. ]

What would be the ideal settling-down scenario for you, Baz? If there is one.

Mm. A wealthy widow—or widower—

[ He’s flexible. He’s also not serious. The real answer, right now, would be melancholy, and he doesn’t even think about it long enough to decide not to say it. He thinks around it, neatly as stepping over an uneven cobblestone. ]

—in need of a tutor for their eleven unruly children, each won over by a different song, until at the end of the line the widow-or-widower says, Bastien, we cannot imagine life without you here, please stay forever and read all of my books. And they kiss very well.

[ Such a settling would have to begin with a bunch of nuns singing How Do You Solve A Problem Like Bastien or something.

Athessa whistles appreciatively. ]

Eleven children? Sounds like this widow-widower does more than just kiss very well.

[ Exactly. And— ]

Mmmmhm.

[ With an abbreviated eyebrow wiggle, just once up and down. ]

What about you?

[ She purses her lips and hums thoughtfully. Her real answer would also be somewhat bleak, so what she comes up with is as much a fabrication as his. ]

Maybe after some aging noble takes a shine to me for my singing and my refreshing honesty, she'll leave me her estate and there'll be enough room for me and all my many petit amies without anyone feeling tied down or stifled.

[ He laughs a little. ]

Would there be a schedule posted outside your bedroom? Or a queue? First come, first served?

Only on the very rare occasion that everyone is home at the same time and they all want my company at the same time.

[ A schedule, then, since a first-come-first-serve queue smacks too much of what she left behind with Ciara. ]

Otherwise I expect most of them to be out in the world doing what pleases them, same as me. Because this is an ideal scenario, of course, there wouldn't be a war to fight after this one, and the world would be a nicer place, so everyone would be free to do as they wish.

What if what pleased someone was to be with you? Would you feel tied down and stifled?

Hmm...

[ There's a moment where something cuts through the veneer of daydreaming, when she actually has to think about what it'd be like for someone to simply want to be with her for more than a few hours, a night, a day. A novel concept, really. Then the introspection is smoothed over again. ]

I guess that depends on if they'll come with me when I wander, or if they'd want me to stay put.

They will want to come with you, of course. Ideal scenarios.

Ideal, right. So, they'd come with me, and I wouldn't feel trapped, and when we're tired we could share a bed and actually sleep.

[ Instead of laying awake with nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat in the dark. ]

What books would your widow-widower have for you to read?

Oh, nonsense and rubbish. Whole shelves of mysteries and adventures—and a hidden trove of romances that stretch the boundaries of good taste, where the eleven children could not find them. Or where we could all pretend they had not found them. Of course they would. Children are clever.

[ Barely paying attention to what he's saying, because share a bed and actually sleep is such a simple thing to want. And he sympathizes.

But they're talking about happy things. ]

And once I had finished them all, a new crate every month.

Would you come visit me?

You wouldn't be able to keep me away!

I'd visit often, and whenever you tired of a book I'd take it and read it and the next we visited I'd tell you about my favorite parts and purposefully mispronounce your favorite character's name.

[ It's the simplest wants that break her, time and time again. She doesn't want much, and yet it always seems to be too much. ]

Eugh.

[ Preemptive, good-natured. ]

Never mind. You are not invited.

[ A playful scoff, mock-offended. ]

And to think I gave you a key to my estate!

[ He laughs—not much to argue, there, when it's all hypothetical—and pokes her head with his pen again. ]

[ A lethal blow! Athessa hams it up, letting her head fall back and her body slump slowly towards the ground. For the drama, she reaches up past the edge of the bench, clasping at nothing before her arm falls with a soft paff when her wrist hits grass. And thus, she dies. ]

Death rattle. [ Because it's funnier to say death rattle than to just make one. ]

[ The laughter doesn't really stop, during that entire performance, but it spikes at death rattle. ]

She died as she lived, [ he says to no one, since Athessa is dead; ] ridiculous and endearing.

[Appearing in his post box (if his was fortunate enough to escape being destroyed by the abomination), or with other mail destined for him, or simply slipped under the door of whatever room he might be call his own, is a cream colored envelope with a simple pale pink seal. The paper inside is rather fine, and the handwriting exceptional. It reads—]

Monsieur,

I am writing to extend my unalloyed best wishes for the fall season to you and yours, and to cordially issue an invitation to join myself and a few other select members of Riftwatch for an evening of dinner, dancing, and entertainment at the close of Kingsway.

This event has been arranged as a means to raise funds for the benefit of Riftwatch. Though a member of the Research Division and acting Assistant to the Seneschal, I have organized this benefit purely independently in the hopes of soliciting the good will of individuals who may, for whatever reason, typically not feel disposed to offer contributions to the organization. Nonetheless, I would be most grateful for your participation and engagement in this endeavor; indeed, your presence is vital to the evening's success.

If you are bold enough to accept this invitation, you will be rewarded handsomely with an excellent meal and very fine company shared in the setting of one of Kirkwall's finest estates, and will be required to perform no work more taxing than pleasant conversation (to whatever degree you find most appealing).

Please respond at your earliest convenience. Festivities will begin promptly at sundown on the selected date. All guests are encouraged to dress to their best advantage.

With Thanks,
Miss Wysteria A. Poppell
Research Division
Assistant to the Seneschal
Project Felandaris

P.S. Have you recovered your cello since Lady Barra's party? I inquire purely out of good-natured curiosity.

Miss Poppell!

[ Cheerful, and in motion, from the sound of it. ]

I received your invitation, but I am on my way out of the city and I don't have time to answer it in writing. Can you forgive me?

[Just as cheerfully, however decidedly not in motion.]

Monsieur! It is no trouble at all. Indeed, my poor hand is so cramped that I would prefer not to arrange any further correspondence for quite some time.

I can imagine, with penmanship like yours.

[ The legibility of his handwriting, when it exists, does not come cheap. ]

And I would delighted to come to your event, and I do have my cello back. It is kind of you to ask after it.

Most excellent, on all accounts. —Save perhaps the compliment, which is appreciated but I can hardly call most excellent without sounding rather vain.

When you have the opportunity, might I trouble you for two or three sentences about yourself? Where you are from, and what you do for Riftwatch and if there are any hobbies you enjoy best and so on. I would like to be certain that I can play host appropriately when it comes to introductions.

Have I not mentioned I am from Val Royeaux?

Perhaps in passing, but certainly never to me directly. Is it very lovely?

The loveliest in Thedas. There is color everywhere. And music! A song on every street. If you ever have the chance to go, you must let me know so I can tell you where to visit.

I will of course report to you at once should the opportunity arise.

[She's smiling; it's very obvious from the sound of her voice.]

Unfortunately however, even the loveliest of descriptions and most steadfast advice are unlikely to allow you to escape the requirement of those two or three sentences, Monsieur.

Of course, of course.

[ A little caught out. But he doesn't really mind. ]

When I have a moment to sit, I will write them down for you, ouais? In the book. So you may continue to rest your hands.

How wonderfully thoughtful. I look forward to reading them.

[Oh, but--]

While I have you Monsieur, would you mind terribly if I took the opportunity to propose a second rather more incidental scheme to you?

Not at all!

First you must take an oath of secrecy and swear that no word of this will travel beyond the two of us. Agreed?

I swear on my mother's pyre.

[ She's not dead, that he knows of, but you know. ]

I'm very sorry to hear it. [But let's not linger on dead parents; there are far more pleasant things to discuss!] Are you much for parties on Satinalia? I have great hopes that we will have no reason to go fighting our way through Nevarran cities this year, and so there might be a little something organized in the Gallows proper. In which case, what would you estimate the likelihood that you might play at such an affair, and at what rate might you be bribed for a particular sort of tune or two if such a coincidence were to come to pass?

I am much for parties any day, and if there is to be music, I am confident I can elbow my way in. As for bribery—I suppose it depends. What songs were you thinking?

Truthfully, the particular song matters less than the meter for the dances in question. Forgive me - I know it must be awful to say such a thing to a musician. But my designs are entirely to do with the dancing in questions, and I have my eye on one those dreadfully dull slow things where the only point is to turn slowly in a circle, and a saltarello.

[ Two and two, together. ]

I see. Delightful. And I don't think that will be very difficult to arrange, so for bribery... if I think of something else for Satinalia, a game or a gift exchange—can I ask you to help me arrange it?

That should be no trouble whatsoever. We have an agreement, Monsieur.

My dear Bastien—

I did not quite make it to the boat as planned. Or, I have now, but before I made it to the harbour I found myself running back to the Gallows with impulsive abandon to address something that was needling at me in the letter I had left him.

And now I have found myself leaving under different circumstances.

We have decided to... 'give it a try'— his words— although I think neither he nor I know what precisely that will mean.

I am writing to you of this because I thought perhaps you might find it preferable to be surprised by me than by him. I know there are times I cannot bear surprises well, although I think you are better at it than I.

And perhaps you will raise an eyebrow at those last lines and write 'Alexandrie what do you mean by any of that, I am only happy for you both', but if it is also something else... let us simply say that I have written because some kinds of secrets have taken enough from me, and I do not desire that our amiable friendship suffer for my silence. Of course, it may now suffer for my lack of it, but I find these days my heart is made more calm in that sufferance than the other.

(And if he is made cross that I have told you, then I shall apologize with great profusion and we all shall have learned something.)

—A

[ He discovers her letter late, and responds even later, copying into the empty space beneath hers—with painstakingly respectable penmanship—a clean replica of a third draft. The first draft was full of lies, and the second full of honesty. Both were full of spelling errors. This one, in its relative brevity, has only a little of each. ]

I have traveled to Deauville since you left. I borrowed a horse named Robert, which is the worst name I have ever heard for a horse. He doesn’t seem to know it, though. He’s very friendly. So are the people here. Most of them have lost someone, or something, or everyone and everything. They gossip and tease anyway. Sometimes someone gets a distant look or has to leave in a hurry to collect themselves; then they come back. Coming back from a livelihood burning or a son hanging—can you imagine? But people manage it. And things go on. I would say they would scoff at my life’s little problems, if I spoke of them, but really I think they would be kind.

I hope your journey was interesting only in ways that make for good stories, and I hope Antiva rewards you handsomely for what I must assume was a great deal of self-control, for you to have boarded that ship. And I am happy for you both.

I would still like my two songs! But make both of them for joy.

[ Spelling errors not (intentionally) depicted, because I am lazy. ]

Edited (don’t look at meeee) 2020-09-04 11:56 (UTC)

[ It is not said, directly, but here and there. That even mention comes up little and late, despite it being the whole of her letter to him. That it began with other thoughts. That he writes of loss but good spirits despite it, his small problems alongside. "I am happy for you both" without the 'only' of her example.

And so she thinks it is true. And then she thinks for another day, and drapes a veil over her reply as well. ]

B—

Despite the pain there, which I am sure your ready smile is helping to alleviate, I might be envious that you are travelling in Orlais save that I am having a lovely time on this ship.

I once kept company with another landscape artist who loved to paint the sea. Not even where it touches the land, only water upon water. 'How can you paint so?' I would exclaim. 'There is nothing!' It has taken me until now, watching it as I do each day, to find I was wrong— there is everything; it was simply that I did not know how to see it beyond my thoughts of what was missing.

Whilst I was learning, it made me cross to see other ships on the horizon. Even only their sails in the distance got in the way of my contemplation! Of course I knew we could not be the only ship on the sea, that would be terribly silly. After all there is trade that must be done, pleasure jaunts to be had, but even so, I was not sure yet, of the sea. What were they seeing, from those other ships? Things I could not? Unbearable.

But time passed; and one night, when I could barely see the horizon, and I felt I was alone with it, we came to a sort of accord. Now, even in the light I find I can love the sea with a sort of breathless freedom, and I think, perhaps, it has loved me back all the while. I find I can be glad of other ships, others who might be standing at the rail loving it too.

Perhaps one of them is my old friend! It pleases me greatly to think so. There is enough sea for us both, and I need not worry about which of us is painting it better. My paintings shall never be the same as his, for I think the sea is different for each of us, and it should be silly to compare our work. Perhaps together, with enough care and dedication, he and I might manage to paint a more complete picture; as it deserves.

And it is nice to think someone will always be painting it. After all, as you know, the land is a great love of mine and I shall never abandon it. I cannot give all my brushstrokes to the sea, and when I am elsewhere it would grieve me to think there is no-one looking at it with love. I should never wish it lonely.

Per your request, I will bring you two songs of joy; one they sing alone, and one together.

—A

Edited 2020-09-04 18:28 (UTC)

p.s. I wonder what the sea thinks of such a thing; perhaps I am being terribly presumptuous.

[ Just beneath her post script, with handwriting slightly less respectable and slightly more scrawled: ]

I’m sure the sea thinks itself vast, limitless, eternal, and entirely deserving of adoration from the tiny people skimming around on top of it. Or perhaps it thinks: rudders tickle, and someone make the fish stop squirming, and everyone please stop pissing in me.

[ The limitations of metaphor.

The rest is on the next page, and back to being neatly written. Her meaning didn’t escape him; it’s tucked into a pocket, also metaphorically, for if/when he reaches a juncture in his arguments with himself where her good grace matters. ]

You have a generous heart, Alexandrie. Of course it can multitask well. But I would not have you devote even a sliver of it to worrying about me right now. You can worry about me later; I will signal you when it is time.

You must also not worry about Byerly being cross with you. He told me before I saw you had written.

If you must worry about something, I recommend pirates, storms, and Antivan Crows. I have heard recently, too, of an Antivan opera singer who caused someone’s ears to bleed. Almost certainly nonsense, but you might carry beeswax in case.

B.

Perhaps I shall worry about my parasol, which was snatched up by the wind to-day and is even now being conveyed to parts unknown.

[ Next to the words, a small drawing of a very small parasol among a few fluffy clouds. ]

Although there is little I can do about a playfully pilfered parasol and I try to only worry about things I might have the power to affect, and whether or not affecting them should be good to do. When I see a storm, or a pirate ship, or a Crow, or my parasol again, or hear the first notes of "Ah! Le frecce volano" [ a famed and perniciously shrill aria from the end of L'Elfo e la Fanciulla, written back when it was popular to stretch out other country's folk ballads interminably. (Since he'd 'sung' her Girl From Red Crossing.) ] I shall commence fretting.

(Of course, if the Crow is come to kill me and I see them with enough time to worry before they make attempt, I will fret a little less as they are not a very good Crow.)

This to say that since I have done, now, what I may, I shall not worry after you until such time as I receive your signal...

Which I humbly request not be the first notes of "Ah! Le frecce volano".

—A

[ There’s no answer forthcoming. He’s busy, he’s lonely, he’s thinking. But he does come back after several days to add to her parasol drawing: a little misshapen fleck of ink, with spread wings, so a tiny little bird has caught it in the sky. ]

[ It is eminently missable, but if Bastien should happen to look the next morning—or any time thereafter—he will find that the bird has gained an equally tiny companion in the sky nearby. ]

There's a knock at Bastien's door one evening. Colin is standing there with a small framed painting turned toward him, obscuring the design. There's also a box cradled in his other arm.

"I, um. Hello."

Edited 2020-09-05 02:56 (UTC)

“Hello,” Bastien echoes, still in the process of unrolling his sleeves, which had only been rolled to protect them from ink and which are now only being unrolled because of manners.

"I, um." He said that before. He's doing terribly already. "I just wanted to tell you you've been very kind to me? And I haven't exactly acted grateful to you. So I, um, made you a couple of things? I wasn't sure which one you'd like better, so--yes."

He offers the box first. "It's, um, I did a bit of reading about Orlesian food, and I made you a clay-pot tarte tatin because I thought, I thought it might be familiar. And Athessa said you'd like it if I painted something."

If Bastien takes the box, Colin will flip the small frame to reveal a watercolor painting.

Bastien does take the box, looking faintly bewildered. Not in a what's the matter with you, you socially incompetent madman way, though. Just the way of someone who wasn't expecting a gift and is on the verge of saying it wasn't necessary.

Instead, when Colin turns the frame, he breaks into a smile and leans closer to peer at it.

"That's beautiful. It reminds me of the west." He stops just short of touching a rock formation. "Did you do all of those stars one by one, or—?"

Socially incompetent madman is about how Colin feels most of the time, but he's visibly relieved when Bastien likes the painting.

"Not all of them. I liked...I liked it looking sort of accidental. It took practice, though. The paint can't be too thin or thick."

“It turned out well,” Bastien says. Obviously he’s not an expert, but he knows what he likes. “I love it. Thank you. Can you, ah—here.”

He sets the box on his desk, then comes back for the painting, so he can take it instead.

“Is it somewhere you’ve been?”

"Just a bit of the coastline I can see from my flat. I added the stars, though."

Kirkwall isn't great for seeing the stars, with all the smoke and light pollution from the foundries.

“Reality, improved upon. That’s perfect.”

He walks it to the shelves over his desk, which are scattered with a few haphazardly stacked books lying on their sides but otherwise very bare, and gives it a place in the center.

“You didn’t need to do anything for me at all, but I like it too much to let you have to back now.”

That makes Colin relax a bit, though he doesn't walk into the room, as he hasn't been invited. Is he supposed to walk in? Is the invitation implicit? How does he know?

"I know. I..." He glances into the hallway and finally walks in, since the discussion is about to get personal, shutting the door behind him. "I just, I realized all you probably know about me is one of the worst things that's ever happened to me, and I know almost nothing about you, and there's only one way to fix that."

“Stealing my correspondence?” Bastien suggests, still smiling at the painting. But he turns the smile on Colin a moment later. He’s joking.

And Colin’s presence in the room is welcome. He picks up the desk chair to carry closer to the armchair.

“I am from Val Royeaux,” he says on the way, “and I was a bard,” since he’s given up hiding that from colleagues, “and then I was a printer, and now I am here, and very excited about your tarte tatin. And you were a mage in Kinloch Hold, and your mother is from Antiva, and you like to paint and cook.”

A real smile dawns on a previously nervous face.

"And I had chickens," he reminds him with a soft chuckle as he sits down. "And I know you're the sort of man who hears something someone's always scared of getting out, and asks how he can help."

The tarte tatin is beautifully baked with a flaky, puffy crust. Fortunately it doesn't require too much sugar.

"I lived in Denerim before the Circle. Three older sisters, one younger. A little one-room house in the market district near the alienage. My father worked at the docks, my mother had a food stall, and between them, we all got fed. After the Circle, I got a job as a ship's purser. Did you, um, did you have a family?"

Edited 2020-09-06 03:28 (UTC)

He nods, smile turning a little more subdued, though not quite rueful. No one’s asked about his family in any detail in a long time, except maybe Byerly and Yseult, who both keep secrets well and let him be reticent if he wants to be. But he doesn’t want to brush Colin off and reignite the nervousness. And he doesn’t want to lie, because Colin and Athessa talk, so any lie he tells Colin he might also have to tell Athessa. So—

“We had a room near the alienage, too. But my father was sick all the time, and it was... I mostly fed myself, after I was seven or so.” Perhaps Denerim had his species of child, too. Not parentless, but very poorly supervised, going wherever they liked until someone thought to come track them down and make sure they hadn’t died. “And I came and went—mostly went—until there was nothing to come back to anymore. I was—I don’t know. Thirteen or fourteen.”

There. All true. And while talking, he’s been cutting the tarte tatin—he has a knife at least, always—and putting a slice of it into the box’s lid to pass over to Colin. Surely he wants to eat his own handiwork. Sorry that he has to do it with his hands.

“Maybe I should have gone to sea. Did you like it?”

Edited (his OTHER spy friend) 2020-09-06 04:38 (UTC)

"No." He didn't bake the tarte to eat it himself, but this is the perfect use of it: bonding with someone over it, sharing food as well as a conversation they would not otherwise have had. It's why he loves to cook. "I really didn't. It felt like getting trapped in yet another tower. But being on the move the whole time was the best way I could think of to avoid templars. Phylacteries aren't much use at sea, not that they were wasting their time hunting down individual mages, but you couldn't be too careful."

He breaks off a bit of pastry with apple on it. "Though sometimes, when I felt too trapped, I'd climb up the shrouds as high as I could. Find some place to perch and feel like I could really breathe. Sometimes I do that now, on the roof, or I take Sunbeam out flying."

Bastien smiles, but he has to chew and swallow before he can talk, and then when he can talk the first thing he has to say is, “This is amazing,” about the pastry.

But after that: “I love the griffons. I rode with Marcoulf once, and it was—“

He can only gesture.

“Is that why you have a flat? So you don’t have to stay here?”

A brief grin at the compliment. He pops his own bite into his mouth, and has to finish it before answering the question.

"Yes. Well. More 'cause this used to be a Circle, and how thin the Veil is. Sometimes it's hard just to work here."

"I see," Bastien says, but he means it in the polite way. Of course he doesn't fully understand. For example: "What does that feel like? The Veil being thin, for you. Is it even possible to analogize?"

“Well. When you’re a mage, there’s already a sort of opening of the Veil you take wherever you go. Sometimes you feel spirits or even hear them, and your dreams are very vivid, from what I understand. Sometimes I realize I’m dreaming and it’s just as real as when I’m awake. Um. Anyway. When the Veil’s thin, that gets...louder. More vivid, more intense. More encounters with spirits, especially in your sleep. You ignore them, it’s the best thing to do, but you’re still aware.”

Edited 2020-09-06 22:03 (UTC)

Bastien listens, frowning a little. It's just thought, though, not judgment. "And the Veil is thin here because—because of the violence during the rebellion? Or was it always?"

“It started out a place they kept Tevinter slaves. This place was built to break the spirit. People died of violence and disease in a world that wanted it to happen so their neighbors might be subdued. Then it was one of the most brutal Circles in the world, under Meredith. Tranquility happened as a first resort for punishment, even when it was illegal, because the Grand Cleric let it happen. Mages were tortured here, murdered, raped, with no consequence for the Templars who did it. There was so much death and suffering here before the rebellion that what came after was superfluous.”

He nods a bit at the beginning—he knows why it was built, he's complained himself about the architecture being designed to make people miserable—but stops nodding as Colin goes on, because he doesn't want to seem like he's trying to make him stop.

"So—" What he was trying to ask, really. "—the mages here before were dealing with the Veil being thin the whole time?"

“Yes. Made abominations more common, when combined with all the suffering and despair.”

"Well, that's bullshit," Bastien says. "If they intended to keep mages from being possessed, they should not have set them up to fail that way."

But after a moment, hand on his slice of tarte tatin, he adds, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you talk about something so troubling. We can change the subject if you like."

A little shrug.

“It’s a reality I face every day. It doesn’t go away just because I’m not talking about it.”

"Of course." He pauses for a moment, but still doesn't take a bite, because that would be leaving, probably, and awkward silence for Colin to fill. So first: "The rest of Kirkwall is bearable?"

“It’s all thin here, but at least I’m not actually living in a former Circle, being reminded of everything.”

Bastien nods again.

"Would you have a better time if we got out of here?"

That’s not a consideration he expected. Having to turn his thoughts inward, examining his own comfort, is somehow more uncomfortable than just staying in the room having a conversation. Yet, it feels like he’s been pushing aside his own well-being for so long, turning away the consideration of others, that sooner or later he has to either change or break again.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I’m all right for now. Usually it’s sleeping here that’s hardest. Some other day it might be better to be somewhere else.”

"Well I meant, ah," Bastien says, sitting up a little straighter, "if you and I left, right now. To talk somewhere else. I need to go into the city anyway, and we could give the ferryman a piece of this on the way. It is so good, it deserves to be shared."

“I know what you meant,” Colin says quietly, half-swallowing it with some concern to sounding rude.

“If you need to anyway,” he says, oddly relieved at the choice being made for him. “We can go.”

Bastien might have hesitated. It's not really an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea.

But he really would prefer to leave. He's been privately miserable for the last few days—for reasons he definitely won't be bringing up—and he doesn't quite have the energy reserves necessary for discussing this sort of thing at length, alone in his room, with someone he doesn't know well enough to relax around, staring at each other over sweets. It'll be easier in the open air, in sight of people going about their lives.

So they're going. He smiles with the casual gratitude of someone who's just had their errands made easier and stands up, first to fuss with the pastry and cut off the promised slice for the ferryman.

"It's good that you have your flat."

“It’s Lexie’s. She just doesn’t live there.” He quickly finishes up his slice of tarte and rinses his hands in whatever basin there is before opening the door for Bastien.

"Oh!" Bastien says, heading out with a grateful little semi-bow for the door opening, with tarte in one hand and the package he needs to deliver ashore in the other. "That's wonderful. I think I knew the two of you were friends, but I suppose I did not realize how close."

It's not the flat that makes him say so. Bastien's never called her Lexie in his life, not even when they were younger. Though Athessa calls her Lexie as well—so maybe that's just Bastien, being Orlesian about it.

It’s not just Bastien. Athessa is just that casual, and it took Colin about two years to be comfortable with calling her that in public, due entirely to her insistence on him treating her just like any other friend. Still, he blushes a bit at being called out.

“I didn’t mean to be improper.”

"I didn't think you had been," says Bastien, who didn't mean it as a rebuke at all. Just an observation. He matches Colin's pace—easy, when they're nearly of a height—on the way to the stairs. "The Veil being so thin here, is that something we could do something about, do you think?"

"You'd have to ask someone else." Colin looks slightly apologetic. "I was barely Harrowed when the Circles fell."

Bastien nods to himself, storing the question for later–it'd be diplomatic! Look, Provisional Viscount, at what good and helpful guests they are!—and moving on.

"Were you able to paint and bake in the Circle? Or are they things you have started more recently?"

"Painting, I started more recently. When I first arrived here, I met this elf named Cyril who started me drawing, then Lady Alexandrie taught me painting. My mother taught me how to cook, though. I was able to do that in the Circle, the Tranquil didn't really mind. Got me through some hard times."

He doesn't need to ask what the hard times were, at least. Not that he would either way. Tell me about your misery isn't generally how he goes about making friends, when that misery isn't handed to him in a letter.

"I would not have guessed you started so recently." Painting, obviously. "I asked Benedict Artemaeus to help me add some color to the dining hall—maybe you could help, too? If he wouldn't mind. I think he wants to do a mural, but we could hang up some things, too, so you could paint without having to be here for it."

"...I'd actually love that," Colin says with a shy smile. "Especially if it was a mural. It would be...reclaiming it. Even though I wasn't kept here, I'd be a Circle mage doing that."

"Great. I will talk to him and see what he thinks. But even if he already has everything planned and does not want to collaborate, it is a big room. I am sure there is space for both of you."

"Oh, we, um. Get along. We're friends. I'd take his lead anyway, he's the real artist. And we sometimes paint together already. So it's. We'll see."

"Ah, that is perfect, then."

Down the stairs, out into the daylight, to the extent Kirkwall's hazy skies can ever count as daylight. (They count. He's just a sky snob.)

"I'm glad he has friends. I know we are at war and he's been a bit of an idiot about it, but it must be hard to give up your people and family this way."

"It is." That much is plain to see. It's not far from here to the ferry. "I was there the night he thought he was going to be executed. They didn't tell him he wouldn't be until morning. I couldn't just...let him spend that time alone. Hardly anyone cares about him, and no one important likes that I care, even when it's my job. So I can't help but...just...want to make up for all the lack of caring he's always had, and not just here."

"That's very kind of you," Bastien says, and breaks to talk for a moment with the ferryman, who's been milling around.

Of course he's delighted to receive a snack—in a gruff old rower sort of way—and Bastien makes sure Colin gets all the credit he's due for it before they're settled in the rowboat.

"You are a healer, right? Did you choose it? Or is what you were best at so you—you know." A gesture meant to stand in for the concept of falling into a profession without much choice.

It takes Colin a second to understand.

"I ssssort of fell into it," he allows, "but now I'd choose it. Cooking's an art, it's how I express myself, it's how I show people I care, but healing's more sacred than that. It's like a calling. If I did it to the end of my days, my only regret would be that I didn't start sooner."

Bastien pauses smiling at the water beside the boat to smile more directly at Colin. Charming.

“Who was your first patient?”

Colin's face lights up. "A woman in Darktown with a baby being born arse-first. That baby is now two years old and the parents have gotten out of Darktown."

“Aw, you are still in touch?”

Maybe that isn’t uncommon. He doesn’t know.

"Not since they got out, no. But the baby would be two by now."

"Ah, well. That is very sweet. And good for them that you could help. Maybe when the baby is older, they will tell stories about you."

"How many stories do you know about whoever delivered you?" Colin asks skeptically.

“He was my father,” Bastien says, “so one or two. But d’accord—maybe they will tell one story, singular, especially if it was a dramatic birth? Mothers like to tell children about that. Remind them what they went through to get them here.”

Colin shifts, looking embarrassed.

"I don't, um, I don't like thinking about that. I get nervous when people talk about me. I get nervous talking about myself."

Bastien leans over the edge of the boat to look at the water and doesn’t say you’ve been doing a fine job so far, because he has a weird feeling that would just make the lad self-conscious.

“I am sure you will be a minor character, in the background behind the mother’s labor pains and the father’s panic—but a good one. And the baby will grow up knowing a mage was good to them—perhaps? It was magic, yes?”

That seems to put him more at ease.

"There was some, yes. The people of Darktown are pretty used to mage healers at this point. That clinic's been open for about fifteen years now, always staffed by a mage. They don't really ask questions once they've seen you save a life."

Colin doesn't say the name of the mage who opened it, who trained him and left the clinic in his hands. Doesn't seem like a good idea.

“That’s a long time. That’s interesting. What is it like? A typical day, I mean—would you be there alone? Do a lot of people come?”

"Sister Sara helps! Sometimes Lady Rutyer, too. A lot of people come because everyone's always sick, with the chokedamp and poverty combined. You know, this is the most I've ever talked about myself in a single conversation."

“Really? Have you always been shy?” Bastien asks, but this time with a little smile—it’s a joke.

Sort of.

He’d still take an answer.

"Yes. ...But Athessa told me if I want to make more friends than I lose, I have to talk about myself."

Who knew?

Edited 2020-09-11 05:25 (UTC)

“It does help,” Bastien says.

"Usually I just do what you're doing and get them to talk about themselves. Most people prefer it."

“People like to talk about their areas of expertise,” Bastien says, “and they are usually experts on themselves. Once I asked the late Marquis of Alyons about his childhood and he talked for three hours without needing any further questions or input from me—which was nice. I needed the break.”

“I can understand that,” Colin says with a weak chuckle. “And, I don’t know. Talking about myself, I feel put on the spot. And I’m not good at it. I’ve lost friends.”

Bastien leans sideways to let his fingers cut through the water, but he isn’t leaning so far he isn’t still mostly paying attention to Colin.

“By not talking about yourself?”

“By talking about myself.”

There’s no outward sign. He’s a professional. But inwardly, Bastien considers realigning his understanding of the situation. Gifts, advice from Athessa. Colin not liking to talk about himself but doing so for a fairly long period of time anyway, without making or taking any opportunity to change the subject.

Altogether, it’s within the realm of possibility—not a certainty, especially when they aren’t in Orlais, but a reasonable chance—that Colin wants something. Something other than getting to know each other.

Which would be fine. Bastien would prefer to be told outright what it is and maybe paid for it, all things equal, and if Athessa knows he might have liked a warning, but he’s not offended by the possibility. People usually want something.

He dips his hand deeper into the water, waves rolling over high enough to wet the cuff on his shirt sleeve, and says, “That is always hard.”

If Bastien were to ask, he might find he is neither wrong nor right, exactly. But my friend told me to make friends with you before she has a funeral for her clan isn't a great conversation starter.

Colin's eyes are on the water as it forms like gathered silk at the edges of the boat.

"That's happened to you?"

Bastien inhales deeply, as if preparing to confess something somber, then says: “No, not really.”

He doesn’t usually have many friends, first of all, and secondly, he generally proceeds with telling people anything serious about himself like someone walking on ice, listening, careful not to put too much weight where it might cause a crack. But I was just being polite would probably not be the best thing to say to someone this skittish, however good-humored the delivery. So.

“I have seen it, though. I once saw a poor man exiled from his entire social circle for overestimating how much they were prepared to know about his marital problems.”

A chuckle.

"This wasn't over anything you don't already know. I don't just...talk forever. Unless it's about food."

He hesitates.

"Athessa says you're coming to the funeral."

"Unless she uninvites me," Bastien says. It's news to him that Colin is coming, but he doesn't act like it, in case it might insult him not to have been mentioned yet. "I am trying to wait until she's worked everything out to start panicking about what I should wear. Hopefully she will tell us."

"I'm sure she will." So far, she's only made one request of him, and he's in the middle of seeing to it right now.

"So. You know I paint and cook. Do you have an art? A discipline?"

"I was a bard," he says—repeats, actually, but he says it like it's new—"so: music. Now it is a hobby instead of a profession. I think I like it better that way." The ferry is nearing the docks, so he starts gathering himself to climb out of it, straightening up and checking around the bench to make sure nothing's fallen out of his pockets. "Have you ever sold your art or your food?"

"My food, yeah." A quick smile. "When we went to the Grand Tourney, I put up a booth and sold churros."

"Ah, how fun," Bastien says.

He has to pause there—for the ropes and the rowboat sliding wood-on-wood against the slip, for thanking the ferryman and sending well-wishes to his family, for climbing up onto the pier and giving a quick but enthusiastic hello and how are you to a familiar dockworker on his way past.

With with that all out of the way, he says to Colin, "Perhaps if things go well for everyone in the end, you can be a healer and churro salesman, ouais? Ailments cured and snacks provided, all in one."

"When you put it that way, I sound pretty boring."

And it sort of does, even to him. Occasionally he wonders if he really wants as peaceful a life as he strives for.

"I think you sound charming," Bastien says, "but perhaps you could also solve crimes."

That gets a wide grin, and his shoulders relax a bit as they walk together.

"I might do that," he says with a chuckle. "So do you play an instrument?"

"The cello and the lute. First the lute and then the cello, but now the cello is my favorite. And every now and then someone will let me borrow something else and make a fool of myself—in a fun way, you know."

He mimes holding up a flute, as best he can without dropping the package he's carrying under his arm, and whistles sharply to evoke making it shriek. It earns them a few glances from passersby, which he answers by smiling apologetically and dropping his hands.

"I am putting myself in charge of the music if we manage to have a Satinalia party this year, so if you have a favorite dance, you should let me know."

He likes Bastien, he decides.

"I haven't learned any dances," he admits. "Though I suppose I could learn something before then. I'm not usually one for crowds, but I'm trying a whole new 'facing my fears' thing, so."

“Commendable,” Bastien says. “Do you know what about crowds bothers you? Or is it one of those vague senseless fears?”

"I mean I've never liked them." A shrug. "It got really out of hand after some things happened at the Circle. Then it got worse again after Lutair. Places and crowds just...don't feel safe. So I spend most of my time outside work in my flat. Not, um, not great for making friends. Which is why I'm trying to be better about it."

Bastien nods a little at the explanation. Understandable.

"Well, if we do manage to have a party, I hope you come. Do you know what might help you if you did? We could try to make sure there is a separate room set aside for talking if people want to get away from the dancing and the noise, or... Do you have any conversation games you like, for making friends?"

"If I did, I probably wouldn't be in this mess." He glances away as he thinks for a moment. "Have some of the party in the garden or the courtyard. That sounds like it'd be lovely anyway."

It does. He thunks his hand against his chest in a salute.

A little grin.

"You know, before you and Athessa, I don't think I've ever had anyone ask me something like that. At the Circle it was sort of...after Uldred, absolutely everyone was a mess, and it's hard to accommodate about two hundred peoples' simultaneous and completely unique messes. So I kind of just had to make do."

“Well, I am happy to help,” Bastien says.

Which isn’t really untrue. Being helpful is a pastime. But happy might be overstating things a little, at the moment, given that maintaining his good face is already taking more effort than usual, and he feels like he’s carrying this conversation on his back through a swamp full of traumatic sinkholes, and he still isn’t sure Colin doesn’t want something.

But that’s why they left his room. They’re walking past a few fish stalls, now, and one of the vendors has a large conch set next to the fish. Bastien stops in his tracks and secures permission to pick it up with a look and a gesture. He rubs the pearly interior and then holds it to his ear for a moment, listening to the resonance—the sea, they say.

It’s not meant as a permanent interruption or subject change. It just cheers him up, a sustaining little bit.

He holds it out to Colin in case he’d like a try.

“That was during the Blight, wasn’t it? You must not have been very old.”

"Yeah." A shrug. He doesn't go into detail, just takes the sea shell and holds it to his ear like Bastien did.

"It sounds...like air?"

“The sea,” Bastien says, like it’s a fact. “A little bit of it caught inside.”

A little smile spreads over Colin's face. He spends a moment longer listening before taking it away from his ear to admire the natural beauty of the shell--something it wouldn't have occurred to him to do, without Bastien.

"Athessa told me about the tree seeds. It's such a beautiful thing to say to someone. You have a gift. Oh! She told me to ask you about the Black Fox."

“Oh-ho, did she?” Bastien says. “Handing out the keys to my heart like it is nothing!”

But he’s smiling, while he takes the conch back and returns it to its owner.

“Do you know anything about the Black Fox already, or are we starting from scratch?”

"From scratch."

"From scratch! Oh," a little despairing, "I have a decent amount of respect for Ferelden—don't tell anyone—but these gaps in your education. It is unforgivable. Let me see..."

And he launches into an animated explanation of Lord Remi Vascal, emphasizing the anti-establishment traits that made him a hero to commoners, that's still in its early stages when they reach the Lowtown market.

"—and Servana de Montfort was a Circle mage—" Supposedly; perhaps it's a myth. "—but there are different explanations for how they managed that. I like the ones with daring rescues, but the De Montforts have been influential since the Exalted Age. Perhaps it did not take that much work for her to be able to run around with him. Perhaps someone just asked nicely."

[ A rap on Bastien's door. When he opens it, he'll find By with, shockingly, something that is not a bottle of alcohol. Instead: it's a thermos of something. ]

Let me in.

[ Bastien’s hand on his hip means his elbow blocks most of the way through the door—beyond which the room is in its usual semi-disarray, saved from outright messiness by the fact that there isn’t much to mess. ]

Say please.

[ He looks faintly confused. ]

Ploose?

[ Tilting his head back to demonstrate the movement of his mouth and tongue as clearly as possible— ]

Pleaaaaaase.

[ Hesitantly, like a child trying a new word - ]

Puh. Liz.

Très bien, [ Bastien says, with enthusiasm, and carries on speaking Orlesian as he drops his blocking elbow and moves out of the doorway to allow entry: ] We will have you fluent in Trade in no time at all, my lord Ambassador, just you wait.

[ Going on in Orlesian: ]

Thank you, my most honored teacher.

[ He comes into the room, shaking the thermos very lightly. ]

Glasses?

[ Bastien hums, turns a circle to survey the room, and—after a detour to toss some stale old water out of his narrow window—holds up a glass in one hand and a mug in the other.

The best he can do. He has the decency to look sheepish. ]

[ The fact that he looks sheepish, like By hasn't licked stale lager out of an unwashed tankard, like he has standards, is beyond charming.

Out of the thermos: hot chocolate. Pleasingly, it's the proper stuff, the sort you get in the eastern parts of Orlais, that goes well with fried dainties. He doesn't have any of those, but he does have the drink. ]

Oh.

[ The surprise and delight in that syllable are genuine, and only after a pause followed by exaggeration: a hand on his heart, another on Byerly’s arm for stability lest the scent make him faint dead away etc. ]

Where did it come from? Are we being bribed? —am I being bribed?

I'm being bribed. You're reaping the benefits.

[ Worth it, too. A little gift, thrown in to sway the Ambassador; By took the gift, and will decide later about how swayed he is. ]

I couldn't possibly drink it all myself, not and maintain my trim maidenly figure.

Bound to a desk as you are.

[ Bastien squeezes By’s arm—testing for body fat, see—before he releases it and goes to drag the chair he previously agreed to be tied to over to join the less comfortable one at the desk. ]

Will drinking it oblige you to do anything terrible?

[ He hums thoughtfully. ]

Sometimes milk makes me gassy. So perhaps fart.

[ His laugh comes mostly through his nose. ]

What horror! If the people learn, reputation might never recover.

[ He takes the less comfortable chair but the larger portion of hot chocolate, without apology. For By’s figure. ]

So I will of course write a song about it.

Ah.

[ A sigh. ]

So this is why Bards are truly feared.

Exactly so. The rest is only a distraction from fart songs.

[ He takes a sip and goes limp in the chair, turned to a sweets-loving puddle. ]

Maker.

[ By lifts his hand to hide his smile, but it crinkles the corners of his eyes. ]

The perks of corruption.

[ He thinks he could watch Bastien drinking hot chocolate all day. ]

[ What a coincidence! He could watch Byerly fail to hide smiles all day. But not drink hot chocolate. There’s a limit. He’d get sick. ]

I think I can taste the wickedness, [ after a considering second sip. ] And notes of malfeasance. It’s very good.

Adds a hint of spice.

[ He smiles. Then the smile grows a little bit less broad, and he says - ]

The other day, I had the most absurd experience.

Yeah? [ Still slumped half-bonelessly in his chair, he puts his feet up on the arm of Byerly's. ] Good absurd or bad absurd?

Dreadful absurd.

[ He reaches up and, if Bastien is wearing boots, starts unlacing them. And if he is not wearing boots, By starts rubbing his feet. ]

I felt awkward. At a party.

[ The statement promptly distracts Bastien from trying to decide how to argue, to himself, silently, that foot rubs are platonic. ]

You?

Was it being hosted by Chantry Mothers?

I've actually been to festivities hosted by Chantry Mothers. I did all right.

The Qun, then. Assigned a party role when you walk in the door, death if you deviate, and they decided your role was demure wallflower.

[ Hm. ]

That actually sounds a bit erotic, doesn't it?

[ weird boners. ]

Mm. Perhaps for a night.

[ He swallows a few anecdotes about this or that Orlesian secretly into role playing and the possibility that he and Alexandrie will, someday, time and war permitting, have a party where everyone must come as someone else and stay that way. Instead he wiggles a toe. ]

Okay. I am done being silly. What happened?

Imagine this.

[ A droll smile. ]

You're invited to a party. And then when you show up, it's only three other people: Artemaeus, Athessa, and Colin. And you. In a very silly hat.

Ohh.

[ A sympathetic oh, this time, rather than a delighted one, and accompanied by a wince. ]

Which of them invited you? They didn't tell you it would be so small?

[ Obviously not, but he's asking anyway. ]

Artemaeus.

[ His smile is light and ironic, even as he delivers this agonizing twist in the story: ]

Athessa and Colin didn't know I was coming until I showed up.

[ He sighs in a quiet little burst. ]

Honestly. And he is nobility. What are they teaching people in Tevinter?

I'm honestly considering firing the boy over it.

[ A shrug. ]

It was either deliberate or accidental. If it was accidental, then he is too thick to be worth keeping; if it was deliberate, he is too malicious.

I would not think it malicious. He seems eager to please, whenever I see him. Or eager to fit in. Maybe he was trying to impress you somehow. Or maybe all that time in the dungeon rotted whichever part of his head stores his etiquette.

How silly was the hat?

Not dreadfully so. Three-pointed, brocade, with a mid-length plume. Something I'd have been proud to be wearing if any of the others had been wearing hats. As, again, I had been led to believe they would.

Maker, have you ever had those moments where you feel as though you're eighteen years old and knobby-kneed once again?

[ Bastien opens his mouth to say of course, yes, certainly. Habit. But he stops himself, and instead says, ]

I was never eighteen and knobby-kneed,

[ as an airy, braggy, but honest stand-in for a longer and potentially derailing explanation that by then he'd had any genuine clumsiness ironed out. ]

But I think I know what you mean. I do feel awkward sometimes here—it's horrible. It might be a symptom of actually caring what some people think.

Mm.

[ Right. For Bastien, it would have been - what - thirteen and knobby-kneed? By feels a strange little pang at the thought. The teenaged years weren't good, certainly, but they were necessary in many ways. By had started to figure out who he was in those years. It couldn't possibly be easy, to spend them pretending to be a series of others. ]

I think that's true. If it had been a combination of different people, or even of strangers, I think I'd have found it quite funny, actually.

[ It’s easy to imagine Byerly swanning into a gathering that didn’t expect him, oddly dressed for the occasion, and making it everyone else’s problem instead of his. But it’s also not very difficult to imagine him awkward, now that Bastien’s witnessed it a time or two.

Imagining both now makes his smile a little muted, but fond. ]

Why do you care what they think?

[ Asked with genuine curiosity, no damn people’s opinions of you rebellion. ]

Because you need to be taken more seriously? And Athessa and Colin—I suppose they’ve both seen some of who you are at your heart, when you helped them.

Well, for the record, I certainly do not care what Artemaeus thinks of me. Eager to please or not, the boy blows wherever the wind takes him. A true traitor, at least, would have the courage of his convictions.

[ He's a decent enough assistant, to be fair. But what little respect Byerly had built up for him as a person has certainly been stomped down again by this incident. ]

Colin and Athessa, though. That's more fraught. [ A shrug. ] You like Athessa; Alexandrie likes Colin.

[ Bastien considers that. He’s still considering it—how he can’t honestly say he doesn’t care what Athessa thinks of Byerly, and vice versa—while he stalls for a moment by gesturing to the mostly-bare shelves over the desk, now somewhat less bare for the addition of a painting of the night sky over a bit of harbor. ]

Colin gave that to me recently. He came by because he’d decided we should get to know each other better. It was strange—his favorite subjects seem to be how mages have suffered and how little he likes talking about himself.

[ A little mean to say. But what’s better for feeling awkward than knowing the people who made you feel that way aren’t any better? ]

But unless it turns out he wants something, later, it was sweet that he was trying so hard.

[ There is nothing better than someone saying something mean about someone you feel awkward around. It's better than the finest wines in Antiva. By thinks that this is part of his problem - there are so few bitchy people here that he can gossip with. ]

Oh, yes, the boy is sweet. No question of that. And also, in the way of so many sweet people, quite remarkably judgmental.

Is he?

[ He drinks his hot chocolate and raises his eyebrows. Go on. ]

[ A little shrug. Breezily: ]

Oh, you know. After all that - [ The arrangement and manipulation of the trial that saw Colin's tormentor punished - ] I offered the young fellow a place in Rutyer lands. With, of course, the caveat that he'd need to help ensure that my dear cousin Richars wasn't the Bann if he wanted the land habitable. I'll allow that I did not propose this in the most graceful way, but immediately the assumption was one of manipulation and ill intent.

[ And the record has certainly shown just how much that destroys Byerly. ]

Ah. Well—I feel less guilty for thinking he must want something from me, then.

[ He wouldn't feel guilty regardless. Not about Colin. Guilt doesn't happen to him easily, and nearly everyone wants something, so it isn't really an insult to think they must. But he does feel a little pang, unfocused in the background and in need of further examination, about what he's doing with Byerly. The hovering and waiting, anticipating discovering that he's been used, however unintentionally and forgivably, and that By doesn't really mean what he's said. Maybe it's not dissimilar. Maybe Byerly's earned better than that from him.

But staying on topic: ]

That would have been a long time ago, no? Do you think he still thinks that of you?

Oh, he apologized after. Baked me quite a grand cake as an act of contrition, or to show off his skills, or a bit of both. It ended in another fight, though.

[ He thinks of Colin. Thinks of Athessa. ]

I do not know if it will ever be otherwise. I wonder if there are some things which, once broken, can never be repaired.

I think most things can be put back together, but putting the same pieces back into the same shape, it is never really the same. There will be cracks. Points of weakness where you can never put too much pressure again. You have to add something new to strengthen them, or remake them into a new shape that uses the pieces as they are instead of as they were—

[ He stops, sighs at himself. ]

Metaphors. Do you want it to be otherwise?

[ Fondly: ]

Metaphors.

[ He gives a little swirl to the chocolate in his cup, looking down at it pensively. ]

I suppose, also...Well. As you identified, the things he wants to talk about are painful things. Mage suffering, other suffering, his suffering. The heartstrings can only be tugged so much until they snap, and I was never a man with strong heartstrings. And they're under rather a lot of pressure of late.

So I wish peace with the boy. Why would I not? As you said, he's sweet. But.

[ Bastien watches him, then looks back at the painting on his shelf. ]

Perhaps he talks so much of suffering because it is what he knows best. I said something like it to him, even: people love to talk about their areas of expertise. Especially when they feel awkward or uncertain, they retreat back into what is familiar to them.

But it is not wrong for you to be unable to hold everything everyone holds out to you.

According to Athessa, it is.

[ He smiles, but it's rather flat. Either a measure of his misery or his comfort with Bastien, that he expends less energy to posture. ]

She thinks I am a coward and should be ashamed of myself for giving up on him. By the by, I am fully aware of the irony of coming to you to complain about someone who complains too much.

That is different.

[ So easily it might be mistaken for courteous dismissal, so he follows up, balancing his hot chocolate on his lap so he can use his hands for an illustrated metaphor: both hands held up vertical and flat, tilting in unison to make a point, both literally and figuratively. ]

You lean, I lean. [ He wobbles his illustration a little. ] No one falls over.

[ And a demonstration of falling over, too, with one hand straightening up and then being pressed over backwards by the weight of the other. Then his hands return to the important business of hot chocolate. ]

You are not a coward.

[ He lifts the chocolate in a toast to: ]

Metaphors.

[ He hopes that Bastien isn't just being kind. It feels like the pain that By brings far outweighs the pain that Bastien brings. Thank the Maker, he thinks, that he caught Bastien that afternoon in the rain, and heard his story. Any other moment, and Bastien likely wouldn't have permitted that vulnerability - but having been brought in, By now knows. Leaning against each other. ]

I'm a bit of a coward. I spent quite a long time running away from Alexandrie.

[ Matter-of-factly. ]

But...This doesn't quite feel like cowardice. Not like that.

[ Bastien nods and thinks while he drinks. ]

I think he is not good at seeing how much is too much for someone. Where the line is. Like a fish–fuck.

[ Now he'll notice them all. But he continues, resigned: ]

—a fish thinks everyone is fine being wet. Except who fucking knows what fish think. [ Another drink. ] But maybe you could be friendly without being that sort of friend. If you wanted to be. You do not have to be friends with everyone. Even Athessa, as long as you don't hate each other.

That's the torture of being here, I think. I used to be the undisputed master of being friendly without being a friend. [ A little gesture towards Bastien; him as well, no? ] But everyone here is just so fucking full of feelings.

[ Unlike them, of course; they are chill.

A slight pivot: ]

Why do you like Athessa?

[ It's not asked cruelly; rather, it's genuine curiosity. ]

[ Super chill.

He hums, thoughtful. Why does he like Athessa. It seems like a question not properly answered by rattling off positive qualities. He could do that for anyone. ]

The first time we really talked, she told me she left her clan because she was recruited as a secret agent. It was actually something sad, of course—it is always something sad. But the urge to tell it as something better...

[ A shrug. He relates. ]

She makes me laugh. She is having a hard time right now, but usually we have a similar rhythm—not taking things too seriously until we do, and then not taking them too seriously again to shake it off. And I wouldn't tell her everything I tell you, but when I do want to tell her something, she listens, and when I am done wanting to tell her things, she lets me stop.

And she trusts me. It is nice to be trusted—really trusted, by someone who even knows the reasons why they perhaps should not. And, [ speaking of shaking off seriousness, ] she is taking me to Rivain on a griffon someday.

[ He pulls a face - not at Bastien's fondness, but at the thought of going anywhere on a griffon. Nothing wrong with griffons, just quite a lot wrong with going up that high. ]

And why do you want us to get along?

Because if I die and you ruin my funeral by sulking at one another, I will have to become a restless spirit and haunt you.

[ For starters. ]

[ A little tilt of his hand and bob of his head like - yes, naturally, that didn't even have to be stated because it was so obvious. ]

[ Bastien laughs a little. ]

Why don't you get along? You can tell me. I will try to pretend you are talking about someone I don't care about—and anyway, I don't care about her because I think she is perfect. No one is.

If I had an answer, I'd give it to you.

[ A breath out. Then a shrug. ]

Similar to Colin, I fancy. Starting off by doing me the injury of seeing me incorrectly. And then taking no time to find lenses to correct her vision. [ Another shrug. ] I told her of my peculiar little vocation, and she told me I was a liar. I think. Or maybe she does believe me, and simply gives no shits, because not a single question was asked. And she tells me it's my fault, because I am a liar.

I suspect, truthfully, that she may simply want me to solve her problems for her. Which I'm all right with, in truth; I simply would prefer her to be honest about that, rather than trying to veil it with I want to be your friend.

Edited 2020-09-19 19:37 (UTC)

Mm.

[ Thoughtful. Despite his promise to pretend, it's obviously hard not to think of the Athessa Byerly is talking about as the one who recently listened to his troubles and kissed his forehead goodnight. But he tries. ]

You know, she did the same thing with me. Not all of it, I mean, but when I told her I was a bard. No when or why or how, then or in all the time I have been training her. Which is fine with me. I don't particularly want to tell her. But I expected to have to at least do some evasion, and no. I think it is just how she is.

[ A lifted eyebrow. ]

Indifferent? [ A shake of his head. ] She was demanding to know why I was such a liar, and when I told her, she barely even acknowledged I'd given her an answer. Blacksmith, why are your hands so rough? No, that makes no sense, give me the real answer.

You should have made it about your childhood. Once you told the truth to a Chantry Sister and she switched you for it, so you learned it was best to lie, and now whenever you begin to speak the truth you see that willow branch.

[ A snort. A fond snort, though. ]

Alas, dear Bastien, not all of us have hearts that can be satisfied by telling a tale like that.

[ He smiles, but then he’s more serious again. ]

I think—

I don’t know. Perhaps some of it is indifference. She has been frustrated with you lately, so I’m sure she isn’t approaching everything with an open and generous heart.

But I think she is also—different, than we are. She shares herself easily. I think she expects other people to do it, too. Like—

[ Damn it. Another. ]

—how some people think an open door is an invitation to walk inside and sit down, and others will stand outside waiting to be invited. We need the invitation, but she might think we are the strange ones for standing outside the door.

I am not sure the Dalish even have doors.

[ Another toast to: ]

Metaphors.

[ Then a sigh. ]

All of that is fine, I should say. But - [ Well. ] I suppose my mind just always goes back to that moment when she thought I was asking something truly awful of her. How easily she came to that conclusion. And how inevitable it seems that she will find her way there again.

I’m sorry.

[ He’s already provided the only explanation for that he can think of—that life is hard for women, etc.—so he doesn’t repeat it. ]

The only thing she has said to me about you recently is that she doesn’t think badly of you, and she finds it frustrating that you think badly of yourself, and she hoped if I told you she doesn’t think you’re wretched you might believe it.

But I know it is not that easy.

[ He takes a breath, then lets it out. ]

Maker, I'm sorry. I'm just sitting here and speaking badly a friend of yours. At length. A bit of an asshole move.

I told you that you could. [ He nudges Byerly’s arm with his foot, where it’s still propped on the arm of his chair. ] And you can.

Anyway, she is not only my friend. I am supposed to be training her. I think she might have even told me about—that incident, when she said that about your wife? The first day we agreed to work together. She told me she had said something to upset you and wanted advice on how to repair it, but she didn’t know why or remember what she had said to cause it.

We are working on it. So it is good for me to know.

[ By plays with Bastien's toes, wriggling them in turn like they're doing a kick-line. ]

What, going to teach her to only be hurtful intentionally? I think that'd be a good lesson.

I suppose. If I can.

[ There’s a bit of regret to it, but it’s hard to look rueful when one’s toes are being wiggled. ]

Or if Alexandrie can—we are splitting the task. I was not confident in my ability to teach feminine wiles.

A baby does need two parents.

[ He laughs. ]

Did you know she and Alexandrie are the same age? It took me some time—I knew how old both of them were, but it still somehow did not seem to me that it was the same number.

[ An incredulous scoff. ]

That can't be right.

Give or take some months, and allowing for the the possibility one of them— [ Athessa ] —has her math wrong? I swear it.

There has to be ten years between them.

[ A serene head shake. ]

They will both be thirty next year.

You know, I think I did know that abstractly. But still.

Still, [ Bastien agrees.

It's absurd.

Anyway. ]

Do you want me to talk to her? I won't say a word if you don't want me to.

Do you have anything to say, if you were to do so? Seems foolish to order you into a siege that failed once already.

That it is difficult for you to be comfortable with someone again once they have accused you of something awful, that you were telling the truth about your job, that it was significant for you to tell her about it at all and you felt brushed off by her response.

[ He finishes not-quite-all of the hot chocolate—some can be cold chocolate in a few more minutes, also good—and sets it aside to retrieve some already-rolled cigarettes from his desk. ]

She asked me for advice on getting people to talk about themselves more recently. You could be good practice.

I have told her all of that before. [ Well - ] At least the latter two things.

[ But... ]

But I suppose it might come better from you. Don't go out of your way, though. I've no doubt that you've better things to do with your time than wrestling donkeys.

[ He holds out a hand for a cigarette. ]

No, not really.

[ He hands one over, followed by holding out the convenient and hitherto unmentioned candle already lit on his desk, and belatedly asks: ]

Wrestling donkeys—a Fereldan pastime?

[ A laugh. ]

This is a brand-new, never-before-heard metaphor. Though maybe I could get it started.

Kirkwall might like it. You could sell tickets.

Unfortunately, there are too many Fereldans here to sell it as some traditional Fereldan feat of strength. Maybe I'll pretend it's Chasind.

Or Avvar. You could ask those two we have hanging around now to help. They seem helpful.

[ They do not seem helpful.

Bastien tries and fails to blow a smoke ring—for lack of recent practice. He might get the next one. ]

Do you still have the hat?

[ By blows a perfect smoke ring and grins smugly at Bastien. ]

I do.

Good. Keep it.

[ Perhaps there will be hats at his birthday, to make sure his is properly appreciated before it falls out of style. But he doesn't explain, because he'll have to confer with the committee, and now he's busy watching the smoke ring ascend until it falls apart. ]

Show-off.

[ For his next trick: he lets smoke out through his mouth and then sucks it in through his nose, creating a closed loop. ]

Edited 2020-09-19 23:48 (UTC)

[ After a moment of observation, Bastien leans over from his chair to squeeze his nose shut for him. ]

[ By sputters a laugh, slapping at Bastien's hands in delight. ]

Ha, you bastard -

Yep.

[ Ouaip, really, of course. Much more sophisticated. He gives the tip of Byerly's nose a parting wiggle, slapped or not, before he lets go.

But karma is swift: when he makes an attempt at the same trick, he winds up sort of snorting and sort of coughing and definitely not closing any loops. ]

—I have always found smoking best enjoyed simply. [ Primly, in his Nobleman Voice. ] Gimmicks and tricks only distract, and this tobacco is [ average at best ] too fine to waste on nonsense.

[ Affecting the insufferable accent of the absolute upper crust of Val Royeaux citizenry - ]

Don't be absurd, Berz. There's always more where that came from.

On the contrary, [ interrupted by a better but imperfect smoke ring, ] this tobacco was watered with wine and raised in weather so perfect it will be another age before we have its equal.

Ah -

[ And now the affected tones of a haughty university student. ]

But pleasures, they are so transient. So what is the point of them?

[ Another tic mark for the tally of moments in this experiment that have required self-control—in this case, not to take transient pleasures and run. ]

They are the only point, my good Bah. It is everything else that lacks one.

[ A couple of days after her return, without preamble: ]

Where are you? [ Irrelevant. ] For a miracle it is sunny and only a little chill and if you do not come to this cafe and sit outside and eat pastries with me, it is an affront to the Maker.

I do hate to disappoint Him.

[ Beyond his voice are other voices. The murmur of a market. ]

I'm in Lowtown—are you above me?

And slightly north-west, I think. [ A thoughtful hum. ] I can never remember the name of this place, but it is the one where the hanging sign has a truly unnecessary amount of gilding which I suffer through for the view of the sea.

Tell me when you are nearly at the top of the stairs, and I shall order you something— do you enjoy the little bitter Antivan style coffees? And do you better affect strawberry or chocolate?

Chocolate, please, and an enthusiastic yes to the Antivan coffee.

[ He starts walking. Considers saying good-bye for the time being, because there are so many stairs! Conversing won't allow him to conserve his breath! But he's in better shape than he was a few months ago, so perhaps he won't huff and puff to death. ]

I think I know the place you mean. That illegible ornate script for the name, ouais? And the waiter who always looks like someone has just stepped on his toes and he is trying not to cry.

[ A small scuffle, a muffled giggle, silence for a while, and then she responds in a stage-whisper: ]

The very place; and if he is trying not to cry this time it is because he may have heard you.

Oh, no.

[ He thinks about calling out his apologies, then thinks better and whispers instead: ]

We will have to flirt with him.

[ still whispered: ]

Oh, yes. That is the only thing for it.

He has a lovely mouth. And his—oh, I will talk to you again at the top of the stairs.

[ Because he’s catching up behind a local he recognizes and needs to touch base with, nothing important. A few minutes later his voice is back. ]

There. [ Slight huff, slight puff. ] His hair! Lovely.

[ she’s not responding; waiting for something, ]

Do not say he has lovely hair, say wondrous. Do you think the sea is the only view I come here for? I invited you entirely so you might see and I might have cause to continue to speak to—

[ abruptly she makes a sort of shushing noise with the sort of dramatic abandon that means— ]

Ah! Two Antivan coffees if you will, one of those late season strawberry tarts, and one of those wonderful little chocolate ones. Oui! With the cream and the little shavings.

[ back to the very inefficacious “whisper”: ]

How can I come to this cafe anymore, now he knows I am looking!

[ With an audible grin, ]

You will have to change your name and dye your hair. It is the only thing.

When you get here, we can see which one of us he tries hardest not to look at.

[ Speaking of when he gets there; Alexandrie is, as usual, a beacon of white and copper (featuring the return of shawls against the crispness of the air) at the table she's chosen out in the sun (with an umbrella, of course). She waves a handkerchief when she spots him, having been keeping watch. ]

[ Bastien, dressed greys and a little blue and the muted style that lets him not particularly stand out no matter what level of the city he’s in, smiles when he sees her.

He would smile whether he meant it or not, of course, but he does. (There’s a weight, not a pain, and he can feel more than one thing at a time.) Before he sits he stops alongside her chair to hold out a hand for hers—to kiss the back, if she’ll play along, with a friendly peck that’s not a nearly so daring as a hug. ]

It will be you, [ he says, mindful of the volume this time. ] Even if we were not embarrassing him. It is like looking into the sun.

[ You look nice is for Marchers. ]

Edited (clarity. maybe. ) 2020-09-24 18:15 (UTC)

[ The hand is duly offered, as is the requisite entirely false fluttering modesty at his flattery. She gestures grandly to the seat across from her, and their new favourite waiter will appear shortly thereafter. He still looks a bit melancholic, but given the way his step has a bit more verve and the placement of the coffees and sweets accomplished with somewhat more flourishing ceremony than absolutely necessary, that may simply be his face. A small crisp bow— including a "surreptitious" look at the lady which she "surreptitiously" returns and then quickly looks away from— and off he goes.

She presses her lips together and gives Bastien the international "I'm not going to laugh but—" look while daintily retrieving her drink, blowing into the steam to amuse herself with its shifting. ]

You know, I absolutely abhorred this style of coffee once.

Abhorred?

[ He takes a deep breath of his own steam, for the scent, with contentment that’s half for the coffee and half for their having soothed Serah Sadface’s hurt feelings. ]

Did you acquire the taste with practice or come to your senses all at once?

[ She lifts a shoulder and smiles despite the gusty sigh that issues forth. ]

My lord favors it, and so acquiring the taste was rendered necessary.

[ Or post-coffee morning kisses would have been forever awful.

A few things flit across her face: fondness, her own light melancholy, the re-establishment of the smile. ]

But it is still a little bitter for my tastes without something sweet to accompany it.

[ Bastien smiles and gives a wobbly half-agreeing sort of nod. He loves it alone, but it certainly isn’t harmed by contrast with something sweeter. ]

I hope he is doing well, [ he says, instead of asking whether he is, to leave her the option of keeping quiet without lying. ] And your journey back was calm?

[ She hopes so too. Very much. And so she will take the offered escape and smile as if it were a casual rhetorical well-wishing, and moves on. ]

It was, save that it began to rain a day before we made port and it was disagreeable and did not stop as it ought have to allow me to be like the sun instead of wrapped up in a travelling cloak.

I am sure you were able to make it work for you.

[ He’s waited as long as he’s willing to for the coffee to cool, which is fortunately long enough. It doesn’t scald. ]

Thank you for this. You are right, it is a perfect day. And this looks amazing.

[ The pastry, he means, which he prods but doesn’t yet taste. Instead he asks a few more questions—about Antiva, the state of things there, the mood in the street, opinions on the war, nothing exciting—before arriving at more important business. ]

So. Our project, which is unfortunately not secret. Although I did refuse to name you—of course he knows anyway, but you could get away with being coy about it if you like.

Edited (being less useless and progression, SORRY) 2020-09-24 21:49 (UTC)

[ A flip of her hand for "making it work" that could either mean of course I did or it was terrible and I don't want to talk about it ever again. ]

Perhaps I will be coy and see if he lets me.

[ Her sip is shortly followed by a small bite of strawberry tart, which serves to both improve the coffee and give her a little time to think before she responds. ]

I admit, I have little experience planning intimate affairs that are not, shall we say, intimate affairs.

[ Raised eyebrows over another sip that chases after the remaining taste of sugared fruit. Small quiet gatherings had been for subterfuge until she had made her first true friends, and after that if she wished quiet she had preferred to meet with people alone, each relationship in a little separate box; parcels of curated truth. ]

Perhaps a guest list, first?

[ Bastien nods and has to swallow (slowly, savoring) before he says, ]

Yes, that sounds clever. So we know who are working with.

[ He might have brought something to write with, if he'd planned to be here, doing this, but it would have only been for show, so he could play the fussy secretary. He'll remember without one. Alexandrie surely will too. ]

Us, of course. Lady Barra. And his wife.

My thoughts as well.

[ A pause then, as she looks down to offer her plate a small smile. To chase a crumb around it with the tip of a tine, careful not to let the fork touch the porcelain. After ushering it in a careful circle: ]

I think you have been a far better friend to him than I have these years.

[ She turns the smile on Bastien and dips her chin in acknowledgement of that pride of place; a little seated curtsy. ]

I do not know if he keeps other truly amiable company. Is there anyone else you know of?

[ Bastien wrinkles his nose a little at the acknowledgment—in a friendly, what can you do sort of way—and then hums. ]

That is everyone I know he keeps comfortable company with, without watching his step so much.

[ As of now. Alexandrie is obviously a new addition to the list—he assumes. Perhaps Byerly still watches his step with her. As of this moment in the timeline, Bastien hasn’t seen them together. But he’s comfortable making the assumption. ]

Perhaps not everyone he might have a good time with. [ He cuts into his pastry, finally, with the bite balanced on his fork instead of eating it. ] Jenny Lou, for example. She adores him, and she would probably love the chance to participate, but I think he is—you know. Careful.

We could always do more than one thing. Invite a bigger list for just a drink, or something that will not drag on all night, and then a more private dinner.

[ A considering hum for that. Her forehead wrinkles; a tiny line of thought. ]

What think you of the few of us meeting wherever it is we meet for 'something that will not drag on all night' slightly earlier than those on the larger list? Then we shall all be comfortable to begin with, with an expected return to—

[ She cuts herself off with an interjection that's as much aggrieved huff as word, ]

Alors, je me prends pour qui— it is less than a month and I mantle wings over him and hiss and snap at... [ Exasperated with herself, she picks up her fork and gestures emphatically with it, ] shadows of shadows.

[ Thinning her lips, she wiggles a strawberry back and forth until it is free from the crust and then lets it sit and stick itself back down with a quiet sigh. ]

He is not a child, and I have little right.

[ A smile for that, while he chews his long-delayed chocolate. It's a little smaller than his usual, but fonder for it. As she wrote: they know one true thing of each other. ]

No, [ he says once he's swallowed, ] I think you are right. Not that either of us have to right to fuss over him like he is a child, but he asked for something quiet. We know he would not be shy about saying so if he wanted something loud. So quiet is what he should have. Honestly, I cannot think of a better gift for anyone than a room of people they do not have to pretend for.

[ Having not received outside aid in chiding herself for being overbearing— not that Bastien would have shown it, even if he had thought her so— Alexandrie slicks her ruffled feathers back into place and nods. ]

A rare gift indeed.

[ For anyone, really. She reacquires the strawberry she'd been fussing with and eats it, thinking again. ]

Does Lady Rutyer play an instrument? She is well-born, she must, no?

You know, I have no idea. She seems very focused on her work. And she is Nevarran—perhaps they have skeletons play their instruments for them.

[ He likes Sidony, Nevarran or not. ]

And Lady Barra does not. I bought her a flute to try to learn, but I'm not sure if she has made any progress with it.

I shall ask Lady Barra if she has, and you may ask...

[ s i g h ]

I ought to ask Lady Rutyer. It would perhaps be...

[ Her glance to the heavens is more of a glance to the umbrella. Its fringe wafts innocently in the breeze, unworried by things like the interpersonal relationships between immensely-flirtatious-apparently-lesbian-wives and envious-former-lovers-who-refuse-to-admit-that's-why-they're-being-catty. ]

genteel of me to make an effort to...

Elle me casse le fan! [ Immediately illustrated by the swift displeased snap of Alexandrie's fan opening to flutter crossly for a moment before she thwacks it shut again against her hand. ] If I go to make peace between us she is going to be smug at me and I shall have to endure it patiently.

Edited (needs hyphens) 2020-09-27 04:45 (UTC)

[ Bastien—whose absent surname is perhaps Endurance, but middle name certainly not Patient—grins for a moment, sympathetic and charmed. And close-mouthed, because he’s swallowing some pastry. ]

—worth it, though, don’t you think?

[ For Byerly.

Still: ]

We could ask them both together if you’d prefer. Use the crystals so you can do whatever you like with your face.

Ah, he is kind to me.

[ It is, really. Kind. She had tried, at the beginning, to make of Sidony an amiable acquaintance— she had not had friends, then— but she had begun to soften, and the Lady Venaras had stayed sharp and careless and, unforgivably, would not deign to caretake Alexandrie's tentative new fragility at all. And then she had been Lady Rutyer, and so deeply and obviously important to Byerly that the very sound of her voice had made Alexandrie want to grind glass with her teeth.

They had stopped seeking each other's company.

She picks up her coffee cup just to have something to hold and presses her lips together, looking mildly miserable. ]

I do not like to pretend that things do not matter to me anymore, when they do.

[ For a moment—it isn't resentment. Just a moment of grim humor, an unspoken comment on the irony, that he's found himself talking to Alexandrie about how to handle someone whose place in Byerly Rutyer's life she might envy.

It passes. ]

Perhaps if you are forthright about that, she will take it well. She is Nevarran. But—I do not know her very well. Byerly might have advice for you, now that you're in a better position to ask him.

Perhaps.

[ Alexandrie smiles wryly into her coffee and sips it, letting it be bitter and unmitigated on her tongue. Raises eyebrows and shoulders and then drops them. ]

But I do not like to tell the truth about the things that matter to me either. Not to anyone who I do not think will hold it softly.

[ And then she is examining him curiously over the rim of the cup with the hawkish interest she has when people do something that makes her want to pick them up and turn them around in her hands to see if she can figure out how they work. ]

Have you always listened like an heirloom trunk in the attic, or were you taught?

I have never had an heirloom trunk. Or an attic.

[ Not to be too difficult. There's good humor in his eyes, not feigned confusion about her meaning, while he sticks his fork into his pastry carefully enough that it can stand straight up without being held.

Hand thus free for a careless little gesture, he answers honestly: ] I don't know. Some of both. Perhaps you could say cultivated.

[ She mimics the little gesture, fork in pastry and all. ]

A box you find secreted beneath the floorboards by the last tenant of the room you rented, then, filled with their memories.

[ Her fork falls down, and she laughs quietly; the strawberries are not so good at holding as the chocolate.

Then: ]

Do you think it curse or blessing to have been so cultivated?

[ He laughs, too, and if his answer is evasive, it's a very friendly-toned of evasion: ]

I think it is a blessing to be alive.

[ And perhaps it's only tangentially related, but he pauses before he takes another drink of his coffee—all curiosity, no skepticism or expectations for her answer— ]

Can you separate what you are from what you were taught? Put it on and take it off?

[ Evasion acknowledged with a brief raise of an eyebrow, quirk of her smile, and allowed. ]

Some of it. Enough of it that it would be easy to be cocky enough to think I can.

[ She shrugs and turns her cup in its saucer with a finger. ]

But some of it is like breathing, no? It has to be.

Mm. Or like being asked to forget how to walk. You can try to be bad at it and drag your feet and stumble around, or you can lie down and refuse. But that is deliberate. You can’t really forget.

[ He cuts a bite of pastry, then looks over his shoulder to locate the waiter, without any subtly. (Deliberate.) The fellow is watching them, of course—watching Alexandrie—and for a moment he seems eager to take Bastien’s look as an invitation to come check on them. But Bastien winks, rather than waving him over, and leaves him to blush and become suddenly busy arranging cups. ]

—music, you think? We should play? I think that is a fantastic idea. If the ladies cannot accompany us, they can sing or dance or lounge.

[ She laughs softly again at the display, and then nods. ]

It is the only thing I could think of that he loves and is proud of that casts no bitter shadows.

[ Or, if it does, she thinks it casts the least. ]

Does he play solo for anyone outside of taverns and dances? I should love dearly to play all of us together, but I think he deserves a chance to show off as well, no? If he wishes? Something besides jigs and lively waltzes.

[ It's awfully tender, that small smile. She looks down to attempt a minor reconstruction of the mess she'd made of her tart. ]

And, selfishly, I should like to hear it.

[ There’s a Byerly Rutyer Solo Performance stored on the crystal in Bastien’s pocket. A ballad in incomprehensible Antivan—gruesome, probably, if he could understand any of it, but still a bit of brightness for nights when wind assaults the walls and windows and there’s thunder in the distance.

But that was only the once, and not really what she means, so Bastien says, ]

He doesn’t, that I know of. If we made little programs, do you think he would be charmed or think we were silly? [ Poised with pastry ready to eat, he answers his own question. ] Both.

Edited (htfml) 2020-10-02 21:15 (UTC)

And so.

[ She gestures her agreement, and taps the fork lightly on her lower lip. ]

We shall ask the Ladies if they should like to present something, and make a little programme? If you print them, I shall illustrate them.

If they should like to they may, and then you shall play, and I shall play, and we shall have him play whatever he should like to play for us, and once we have embarrassed him entirely with our effusive praise, we shall all play something sprightly together. Then out to dinner to join one or two others you think meet there, and back afterwards to only ourselves for a nightcap?

[ The tilt of Alexandrie's head suggests that whom, precisely, "only ourselves" means is a separate question. ]

[ Bastien smiles through her plan, and continues smiling through her head tilt, and leaves the unspoken question unanswered for now. ]

We do not have to have a larger dinner. We can, if you think we should. I think there are people who would like to do something for him, and maybe it would be nice for him to see that.

But there are other ways to include them. We could send them up to him one at a time during the day with a message divided into pieces, or organize them to decorate a private page in the books for him. It would turn into winged phalluses, I’m sure, immediately. But he likes those, so...

[ Unanswered is answered enough in that it is not 'no'.

Well, answered enough for her. The stake she has in it is borrowed from the two of them. She shakes her head slightly. ]

I have little attachment to the idea of a larger dinner, but I do think it might perhaps be nice to change locations for a bit. I think there is something fine in becoming a little group and then venturing companionably out into the evening together.

[ A smile then, as she places her fork down so she can flutter little wings with her hands. ]

Who is it who draws those? We once had a merry little cooperative effort.

I could not say. By the time I see them they usually look like a few different people have contributed.

[ Including Alexandrie, apparently. Cute. ]

Going out would be nice. There are a lot of Fereldans here—maybe Lady Sonia knows of a place we could have a good Fereldan dinner.

A proper pork pie might be in order, yes.

[ Even if she looks lightly amused at having said “proper” as a modifier for “pork pie”. ]

Shall we call them, then?

[ Bastien nods with enthusiasm, but then— ]

May I ask you something first? [ Presumably yes, so there’s only a very short pause before he does. ] What gave me away?

[ Friendly, light curiosity, as if he hasn’t lost even a little sleep trying to figure it out. ]

'Give to one all the happiness he would have if it were our choice, and to the other all the happiness he would have if it were his.'

[ Alexandrie smiles, small and soft, and tilts her head. ]

It was a different 'we', than 'you and I, his friends'. A different care for the 'he' who thinks himself deserving of his own ill thoughts than 'he, my friend'.

[ Hands settling in her lap, she lifts a shoulder. ]

I did not know, right away, but it stayed in me long enough that it sent me looking through my memories under a different lens.

[ Bastien winces, in a playful way, as if someone’s caught him sneaking somewhere he shouldn’t be but also won’t be in any real trouble over.

Beneath it, relief. That it’s only Alexandrie’s keen instincts. That it’s something he could have plausibly denied, if he’d been of a mind to, and something that begins and ends with her. Not what he’d worried it might have been—those reckless, indulgent minutes spent with his head on Byerly’s chest in the firelit dark of camp, spotted in the jungle and carried back to Alexandrie in Kirkwall along a chain of whispers that he’d now have to feel foolish and ineffective for failing to hear.

Still, ]

Mince alors, I am slipping. But I suppose it is fine, this once, since things have worked out as they have and you will not be breaking glasses or sending assassins.

[ There’s more he’d like to know, if he could know anything he liked. But even if it wouldn’t be needy and pathetic—has he said anything, eugh—he wouldn’t ask her, because if their positions were reversed he wouldn’t answer.

So instead he finishes his little coffee and settles forward in his chair, ready to share her crystal if she’s ready to use it. ]

You must not feel too poorly— perhaps you are not slipping; perhaps I am getting better.

[ Exaggeratedly batted eyelashes, her self-satisfaction every bit as playful as his wince.

But he is right. She is neither breaking glasses nor sending assassins, and so if it were anything it would be much as a sparring match between friends.

And he is right, too, that she wouldn't answer. Those thoughts are Byerly's to speak... and hers to unrelentingly stick Bastien in the back like an uncomfortable chair over until he gets up to find out for himself.

So instead, the crystal. A quick twist, and to it: ]

On— Lady Alexandrie de la Fontaine, [ pause, ] Lady Sonia Barra, Lady Sidony Venaras.

[ She looks at him, mirthfully aggrieved. ]

Really the sending crystals have a shameful disrespect for the bonds of marriage—

( continued here )

Bastien,

[spoken formally, and in Orlesian,]

there's someone I'd like you to meet.

Edited 2020-11-12 08:11 (UTC)

[ With matching formality, ]

Oh?

[ It’s a very formal syllable, okay. ]

If you'd like to stop by my chamber sometime today, I can introduce you properly.

Of course. After lunch?

[Decisively,]

after lunch.

[ He shows up as promised, knocks on her door, and waits. In silence. Usually he might announce it's him, or sing something obnoxious, but without any idea who he's meeting—maybe she's seeing someone! maybe she's being held hostage!—erring on the side of professionalism seems best. ]

[His knock is immediately followed by a skittering of claws on the stone floor, then the door. Fifi's voice inside laughs, and she cracks the door open, peeking out of it accompanied by a second little face, one that's a fuzzy cream-and-white with little brown spots over the eyes.]

Bastien! Come in.

[ He doesn't come in, because coming in would require walking several steps before dropping down to look at the puppy, and he's doing that instead. ]

Who is this?

[The puppy tries to wriggle through the crack in the door to lick Bastien's face, but Fifi scoops her up to open it the rest of the way and allow Bastien a little space to interact as he will.

In Orlesian:]

This is Satina, my new helper.

[ Orlesian it is. ]

I love her.

[ Instantly. And since he’s already dropped down and is too old to be getting up and down and up and down*, he scoots into the room on his knees and holds his arms up for her.

* No he isn’t. ]

[Fifi obliges him, lowering the wiggling puppy into his arms. Satina proceeds to voraciously lick at his face and writhe about in the manner of baby dogs who can't decide what they want to do, so they do all of it at once.]

It would seem she shares the sentiment. If she goes missing, I shall know right where to look.

[ Byerly's voice is clipped. He speaks without preamble. ]

Have you spoken with Athessa since her return from her latest mission?

Nnno.

[ Hesitation born of trying to decipher his tone. But the current frontrunner for plausible explanations is that they bickered again, not that anyone was tortured. ]

Seek her out.

[ Nothing more than that is forthcoming, unfortunately. ]

[ There's shuffling and drawer-shutting that indicates he's putting things away to go do that right now, but in the meantime: ]

Are you all right?

What?

[ The question takes him by surprise. ]

Yes. I am.

[ His silence is as long as the doubting sound he isn’t making out loud. He lets it go, though. At least for now. ]

But Athessa’s not. D’accord. I’ll go find her.

[ Just a nod and no commentary from Byerly. Signal enough that he's in a state, if he's this terse. ]

fade rift | inbox

stomps on brand new inbox

like virgin snow

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

a very late mysterious invitation

group chat!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

95 years later you guys can ignore this if you want i just saw it while looking for something else

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject