[ Bastien slides his hand into Byerly’s hair to keep him where he is, and he huffs; it’s half a laugh, half a sigh, because he should have realized he was setting himself up to admit hypocrisy. ]
No. I don’t even know if they’re there. And I.
[ An explanation squirms around in his chest, but it’s another feeling he doesn’t have words for. What comes out instead is an adjacent anecdote: ]
I heard my father. In that castle, with the spirits. I didn’t see him, I just—that’s how it happened for real, too, the last time. I heard him talking, so I hid until he was gone. He told my friends to tell me to go home, because they were leaving, and they weren’t going to wait.
But he’d been saying we were going to leave for years, and we never had, so I thought– [ with a voice like an eye roll ] —sure, alright.
Your wife, and Barrow. But he was speaking his shitty Orlesian.
[ There’s fondness in that descriptor. And regret. It embarrassed him when he was a child—he would jump in to talk for his father, to the locals, impatient and humiliated when when he struggled with conjugation and declension—but hearing it again felt like a hand wrapping directly around his heart. ]
They didn’t understand. I acted like I didn’t know what it was.
[ A small nod. That was the heart of the question: how did you react? When it came down to it, what was the story you needed to tell? And the answer is, apparently: to deny it, to silence it.
[ Bastien catches Byerly’s hand on his face and holds it there, a moment of perplexity at the question segueing into a grateful little smile when he realizes By’s trying to help him work through it. ]
I missed him. I didn’t think I did, but I do. But I was—
[ He has to circle it. ]
I don’t blame them. I left first. I hadn’t been home in months. The last time I saw my sister in the market, I told her I was never going back. And I was a third of their income, at least. They probably couldn’t afford to live for long without me.
[ All true. But this is why he’s afraid to be difficult, to make demands, to ever require patience from anyone he doesn’t want to lose. This lesson that he would. That if he was hard to love then even the people most obligated to love him wouldn’t be able to keep doing it.
But Byerly said he was difficult. Tricky, and worth it. That’s enough of a solid foundation for him to stand on, to reach the kernel of anger at the center of the tangle and say, ]
It’s only, they could have waited a little longer.
[ Oh, my Bastien. Byerly's hand tightens on Bastien's a moment, tightens nearly to the point of pain for a moment before Byerly makes himself relax. But the emotion still shines through on his face - a glimmer of grief he can't suppress before it shows up. ]
A child - tries things out. Runs away and reappears. Says they'll disappear forever and then slinks back home.
Parents don't have that right. They owe you more.
[ Then, roughly: ]
I think they were bastards. I've thought they were bastards since you first told me anything about what they did.
[ There’s part of him that wants to explain: he was a teenager, old enough to better. They were younger than he is now, too young to know better. They had four other children to worry about. They’d spent so long trying their awful bests. They were nothing like Byerly’s father.
But if Byerly, with a bastard-to-end-all-bastards for a father and a mother who abandoned him day after day without even leaving—if Byerly says they were wrong, even accounting for his obvious pro-Bastien bias, it has to be a little true. ]
Yeah.
[ Simple, quiet. But revelatory, after twenty-five years of insisting it was his own choice, to have permission to be angry.
He squeezes By’s hand in answer, not quite so hard. ]
But I do want to see them. [ It’s easier to be sure, with that nugget of squirming misery labeled something more specific than ??? bad feeling, do not touch. ] If they’re alive. And my brothers and sisters—they probably have children. I’ll look into it. I will.
[ That simple yeah is nice. For a moment, By is almost suspicious of it - shouldn't there be more argument? More resistance? More emotional torment? But that's Bastien's way. In contrast to Byerly's high-key drama, Bastien is steady, thoughtful, and decisive. That would be his way of thinking through such a cruel and heart wrenching thing. ]
Of course.
[ His manner is soft. He gives another squeeze in return, gentler still. ]
[ That makes a grin break through his pensive frown. There’s a flare of certainty that he will find them, and they’ll be alive and well and happy to see him, and they’ll have a half-dozen children among them, each one more enraptured than the last with this tall, impossibly handsome Fereldan, drawling jokes that go over their heads and a little awkward with the littlest ones but still unmistakably kind. He can see it, clear as day. Curly-headed kids swarming him like a litter of kittens at mealtime. ]
Uncle By.
[ And he would be—Uncle Laith, probably, which is where his clarity and certainty crumbles. If he were someone else it might panic him. But he only puts it aside, a bridge to cross when he comes to it. None of them will call him anything if he can’t find them.
Threatening. Like you threaten me with coffee and chocolate?
[ His attempt at incredulous offense is ruined by laughter of his own, which tapers off slowly. In its wake he’s quiet for a stretch, smiling at the ceiling and clearly thinking, while he lets it sink in: they left him, and they shouldn’t have, but he’s going to find them, and even if it turns out that he can’t he’ll still have Byerly, who’s as much Bastien’s as Bastien is his, who wants to be Uncle Byerly, and they’ll have Whiskey, and that’s not a bad family at all. That’s a great one.
When he feels a little more settled, he reaches an arm out from where he’s lying to grasp around for one last piece of bread. ]
Nadine has children?
[ Byerly mentioned them—but only in the context of fear, of thinking she might not let him ever be alone with them. Maybe they were only hypothetical children. ]
[ Given his separation from his sister, one might expect him to not be totally current with the details of her life - except that it's Byerly. He answers at once. ]
Three. All boys.
[ The faint wrinkle of his nose reveals what he thinks about that situation. What a nightmare. ]
[ No nose wrinkle, on Bastien's end. Pure delight. Of course Nadine's husband might look like anything, might have the sort of strong blood that overrides anyone else's influence, all of that. But until he has information to the contrary, he'll be imagining them as three small Byerlys in different sizes, like nesting dolls. He's on the verge of tentatively imagining himself as an Uncle Bastien, too, but he has to pause first for, ]
I suppose she must have known about your Chantry Brothers. [ Shorthand for boys you kissed. ] And she didn't mind.
[ Not a question. With everything Byerly has said about her, her kindness and affection for him—then no matter what the rest of his family and the rest of Ferelden is like, it would be stupid for Bastien to worry about being an unwelcome surprise. But causing a problem between Byerly and his sister would be his personal nightmare. So he'd like to hear that he won't. If it's true. ]
[ That's said with a faintly questioning tone; he does not, at first, fully understand why Bastien is talking about that. A testament either to Nadine's open and loving heart, or a testament to how natural being with Bastien feels to By - or, perhaps, a testament to how anxiety-inducing the other sources of uncertainty are - that it doesn't even occur to By to be afraid of judgment over something as lovely as his mustachioed paramour. ]
- Ah. I see. No. [ A little wryly: ] If anything, she preferred when I took up with lads. Just out of worry over the logistics of caring for a bastard. We didn't have the wealth to properly support an unanticipated Little Byerly.
[ Without the work Byerly’s done on him—whether he realizes he has or not—Bastien might have found new causes for doubt. Dug for them. It’s not so uncommon for parents and spouses and perhaps siblings, too, to not mind this sort of thing as an outlet, but also consider it less real. It’d be easy to concoct a scenario where he was considered a prolonged dalliance and Byerly’s nephews, if he ever met them at all, would only ever know him as their uncle’s old friend. Easy to accept it as good enough, the same way he was ready to be Byerly’s beneficial friend and watch him love Alexandrie, or go to Denerim to live on separate streets, and be happy and call it optimism.
But By has done a great deal of repair and renforcement, so he doesn’t. He imagines the best. He mouths it to himself—Uncle Bastien. Not subtly. He isn’t going to make Byerly go on talking about it, when he’s anxious and nothing is certain, but Bastien wants him to know that he’s thrilled.
He marinates in it for a second, then tucks it away for later, for after Byerly hears something from Nadine, and looks a bit sly instead. ]
That was very responsible of her. You know, if you had a twenty-year-old child now—I bet they’d have a crush on Benedict.
[ Byerly moans that like it's giving him physical agony. Perhaps it is. Benedict. Benedict. He hooks clawing fingers into Bastien's collar, and begs - ]
Don't say it. Absolutely not. A child of mine would have a crush on someone proper. Not someone so - gormless.
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No. I don’t even know if they’re there. And I.
[ An explanation squirms around in his chest, but it’s another feeling he doesn’t have words for. What comes out instead is an adjacent anecdote: ]
I heard my father. In that castle, with the spirits. I didn’t see him, I just—that’s how it happened for real, too, the last time. I heard him talking, so I hid until he was gone. He told my friends to tell me to go home, because they were leaving, and they weren’t going to wait.
But he’d been saying we were going to leave for years, and we never had, so I thought– [ with a voice like an eye roll ] —sure, alright.
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Did anyone see this memory? Anyone besides you?
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[ There’s fondness in that descriptor. And regret. It embarrassed him when he was a child—he would jump in to talk for his father, to the locals, impatient and humiliated when when he struggled with conjugation and declension—but hearing it again felt like a hand wrapping directly around his heart. ]
They didn’t understand. I acted like I didn’t know what it was.
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He strokes the side of Bastien's face. ]
What was it like for you? Hearing it?
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I missed him. I didn’t think I did, but I do. But I was—
[ He has to circle it. ]
I don’t blame them. I left first. I hadn’t been home in months. The last time I saw my sister in the market, I told her I was never going back. And I was a third of their income, at least. They probably couldn’t afford to live for long without me.
[ All true. But this is why he’s afraid to be difficult, to make demands, to ever require patience from anyone he doesn’t want to lose. This lesson that he would. That if he was hard to love then even the people most obligated to love him wouldn’t be able to keep doing it.
But Byerly said he was difficult. Tricky, and worth it. That’s enough of a solid foundation for him to stand on, to reach the kernel of anger at the center of the tangle and say, ]
It’s only, they could have waited a little longer.
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A child - tries things out. Runs away and reappears. Says they'll disappear forever and then slinks back home.
Parents don't have that right. They owe you more.
[ Then, roughly: ]
I think they were bastards. I've thought they were bastards since you first told me anything about what they did.
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But if Byerly, with a bastard-to-end-all-bastards for a father and a mother who abandoned him day after day without even leaving—if Byerly says they were wrong, even accounting for his obvious pro-Bastien bias, it has to be a little true. ]
Yeah.
[ Simple, quiet. But revelatory, after twenty-five years of insisting it was his own choice, to have permission to be angry.
He squeezes By’s hand in answer, not quite so hard. ]
But I do want to see them. [ It’s easier to be sure, with that nugget of squirming misery labeled something more specific than ??? bad feeling, do not touch. ] If they’re alive. And my brothers and sisters—they probably have children. I’ll look into it. I will.
If I find them, you have to come with me.
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Of course.
[ His manner is soft. He gives another squeeze in return, gentler still. ]
Though I demand to be called Uncle Byerly.
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Uncle By.
[ And he would be—Uncle Laith, probably, which is where his clarity and certainty crumbles. If he were someone else it might panic him. But he only puts it aside, a bridge to cross when he comes to it. None of them will call him anything if he can’t find them.
Anyway, more importantly: ]
Cousin Whiskey.
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[ Delighted: ]
They will adore her. She doesn't mind it one bit when we tug on her ears - she'll be so patient with them.
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[ His bent legs are falling asleep, so he collapses over to the side to lie down and stretch them out. ]
Like a mother with her puppies. She’d be good at that, too, but we would have to be ready to keep every one of them.
[ Not really.
Maybe not really. ]
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Don't tempt me. Orlesians threatening Fereldans with puppies was banned in the peace accords signed after the Occupation, you know.
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[ His attempt at incredulous offense is ruined by laughter of his own, which tapers off slowly. In its wake he’s quiet for a stretch, smiling at the ceiling and clearly thinking, while he lets it sink in: they left him, and they shouldn’t have, but he’s going to find them, and even if it turns out that he can’t he’ll still have Byerly, who’s as much Bastien’s as Bastien is his, who wants to be Uncle Byerly, and they’ll have Whiskey, and that’s not a bad family at all. That’s a great one.
When he feels a little more settled, he reaches an arm out from where he’s lying to grasp around for one last piece of bread. ]
Nadine has children?
[ Byerly mentioned them—but only in the context of fear, of thinking she might not let him ever be alone with them. Maybe they were only hypothetical children. ]
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Three. All boys.
[ The faint wrinkle of his nose reveals what he thinks about that situation. What a nightmare. ]
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[ No nose wrinkle, on Bastien's end. Pure delight. Of course Nadine's husband might look like anything, might have the sort of strong blood that overrides anyone else's influence, all of that. But until he has information to the contrary, he'll be imagining them as three small Byerlys in different sizes, like nesting dolls. He's on the verge of tentatively imagining himself as an Uncle Bastien, too, but he has to pause first for, ]
I suppose she must have known about your Chantry Brothers. [ Shorthand for boys you kissed. ] And she didn't mind.
[ Not a question. With everything Byerly has said about her, her kindness and affection for him—then no matter what the rest of his family and the rest of Ferelden is like, it would be stupid for Bastien to worry about being an unwelcome surprise. But causing a problem between Byerly and his sister would be his personal nightmare. So he'd like to hear that he won't. If it's true. ]
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[ That's said with a faintly questioning tone; he does not, at first, fully understand why Bastien is talking about that. A testament either to Nadine's open and loving heart, or a testament to how natural being with Bastien feels to By - or, perhaps, a testament to how anxiety-inducing the other sources of uncertainty are - that it doesn't even occur to By to be afraid of judgment over something as lovely as his mustachioed paramour. ]
- Ah. I see. No. [ A little wryly: ] If anything, she preferred when I took up with lads. Just out of worry over the logistics of caring for a bastard. We didn't have the wealth to properly support an unanticipated Little Byerly.
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But By has done a great deal of repair and renforcement, so he doesn’t. He imagines the best. He mouths it to himself—Uncle Bastien. Not subtly. He isn’t going to make Byerly go on talking about it, when he’s anxious and nothing is certain, but Bastien wants him to know that he’s thrilled.
He marinates in it for a second, then tucks it away for later, for after Byerly hears something from Nadine, and looks a bit sly instead. ]
That was very responsible of her. You know, if you had a twenty-year-old child now—I bet they’d have a crush on Benedict.
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[ Byerly moans that like it's giving him physical agony. Perhaps it is. Benedict. Benedict. He hooks clawing fingers into Bastien's collar, and begs - ]
Don't say it. Absolutely not. A child of mine would have a crush on someone proper. Not someone so - gormless.
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Benedict.
—or Madame de Foncé, who might have become Lady Rutyer instead. Those are the only possible options.
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Stoooooooooop.
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I am afraid you will have to come down here and make me.
[ Because otherwise, ]
Oh, and what would the grandchildren be like?
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[ He gives a theatrical shudder. ]
Well, imagine any children you had. They'd all be in love with me.
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And if they were twenty or so, they would all have rich mothers. I’d be doomed.
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All of them?
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One or two could have mothers who were rich women’s servants.
I was very dedicated to my work.
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