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[cozen]

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[keenly]

"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.

[cozen]

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—?"

[keenly]

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."

[cozen]

“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?”

[keenly]

"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.

[cozen]

“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.”

[keenly]

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."

[cozen]

“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.”

[keenly]

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?"

[cozen]

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?”

[keenly]

"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."

[cozen]

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?”

[keenly]

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."

[cozen]

"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?"

[keenly]

“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.”

[cozen]

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?"

[keenly]

“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.”

[cozen]

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?"

[keenly]

“Yes. Made abominations more common, when combined with all the suffering and despair.”

[cozen]

"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."

[keenly]

A little shrug.

“It’s a reality I face every day. It doesn’t go away just because I’m not talking about it.”

[cozen]

"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?"

[keenly]

“It’s all thin here, but at least I’m not actually living in a former Circle, being reminded of everything.”

[cozen]

Bastien nods again.

"Would you have a better time if we got out of here?"

[keenly]

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.”