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?"
"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."
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."
"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?"
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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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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."
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"His name is Darras. He goes by Darras Rivain, captain of the Fancy."
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We've met, says that ah, quite clearly.
"I see. In that case, I have some bad news for you."
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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?"
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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.”
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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?"