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?"
"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."
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.
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?"
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.
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."
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?"
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."
"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?"
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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."
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"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."
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"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?"
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"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."
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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.
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"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."
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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?"
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"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."
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"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."
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"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?"
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"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?"
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"At all?"
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"Go back to being a what?"
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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."
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“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.”
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"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?"
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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."
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"Is that so? I'm not sure I would have taken you for a cynic."
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"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?"
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