faderift | OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

The effort of rebuilding Skyhold has paid off tremendously. Where there were holes and gaps where snow and sunlight might have streamed in, it's solid walls and solid roofs. The battlements aren't the kindest in the midst of winter, where those unsteady might slip on ice or be blown by the wind, but inside the towers it's servicable, if a little empty. Bookshelves mostly bare save for the occasional text from the library someone forgot to return. A table, though only one lone chair sitting in a corner, forgotten. (He can see where the light might hit that spot just right through the windows for reading. Clever.)

Malcolm does not give himself to pacing. When he's anxious, nervous, his stillness takes over. Oftentimes he's noticed this difference when arguing with Cassandra, whose passions and emotions have her going back and forth and gesturing. He merely sucks in a cold, deep breath and waits for the Templar.

The name is mildly familiar from some Orlesian song. It'd be funny if the circumstances weren't so dire. He's given Dairsmuid much thought since the mission Araceli gathered there, the vicious fight against Templars, the captured mage who recognized him, forgave him. It will always weigh heavily on his mind, on his conscience, but though the idea of discussing it, with a stranger no less, is mortifying, it still seems doable. Had this been before that fateful mission? He probably would have shut her down immediately.

Templars are hardly his favourite group of people, but at the end of the day, they were given orders, and orders were followed. It's all anyone can do to try and make up for those sins.

There are those who wear their affiliation like a second layer of armor. They wrap themselves in colours and title, march everywhere in rigid parade step.

That's well enough, if the point's to be noticed. Every army needs soldiers, every wall, its guard. But that's never been her particular way. When Wren arrives it's devoid of arms or symbol (no point, when she's made both clear already), an understated presence that allows her to slip more quietly through the fortress, wrapped bundle beneath her arm.

She could be any other soldier, were it not for the faint air of burning.

"Seeker," She lingers in the doorway, allows time between address and entry. "I must thank you for the quick response. I am aware of your duties to the Lady Seeker, and to the Inquisition's forces."

Calmly. It would be fruitless to attempt casualness, would only ring false. Still, as she glances over him (didn't know they made Seekers that short), she eases her own shoulders down, dips her head faintly to the side.

An old instinct, the stance she's used to adopting around a wary mule. It doesn't take any conscious deliberation to keep her hands in full view as she sets the parcel on the table.

"This journal was recovered from a Red Templar encampment." She withdraws a pair of gloves, offers one out. "The exposure is likely negligible, but it does not pay to be incautious."

Edited (word choice) 2017-01-22 23:47 (UTC)

In the winter months, outside of battle, outside of trips beyond the walls, there's little reason to bear the full Seeker armour. In this sense, at least, they're on even ground.

Damn, though, she is...very big, for a human woman. He wonders if she gets off-colour jokes about her parentage often. He wonders if those people still retain their tongues. This is...all very beside the point, of course. The point is this is the Templar who contacted him, and she's brought the evidence.

Easy, in the face of this, rather than his demons (literal, figurative) to slip further into the veneer of stern stoicism. Put the work first. There's a man's life at stake. He takes a glove with a nod of thanks, tugging it on. An overabundance of caution he can live with.

"Where from?" He'll let her find whatever passage is relevant, rather than bullheadedly flip through himself. "We've been driving back pockets of them, but it's never, apparently, enough." The attack on the Winter Palace showed that all too well.

"Ghislain, close to the Nevarran border. We believe this was an expeditionary force, using the civil war as cover to search out or seed new mines."

She shakes her head, pages gently through. The words devolve as they progress: From neat uniform script to a thick scrawl, and at last only a series of abstract stains.

"Difficult to say for certain. None were captured alive, and the writing is... distracted." A glance up, assessing, before she continues. "It refers several times to a Ser Bergher. A common name, among farmers, but few of us join with the Order. Fewer still would have arrived from the North."

She smooths a warped page, perhaps halfway into the volume. A series of doodles, crudely-done, of various figures. There's a black sense of comedy to the depictions. One sprouts a a horn of crystal from his forehead, not unlike a unicorn, while another, bearded, attempts to count sheep.

"Bergier's family were shepherds, before the Blight. It's little to go on, but the face reoccurs." On the edges of margins, to varying degrees of recognizability. "Our artist may have been sketching the camp."

He's seen what Red Templars dissolve into, the incoherent beasts, and knows that they were all once men. Good or bad men, it hardly makes a difference, as no one deserves a fate like that. His hate for Samson hardens his gaze, sets his jaw. And he's proud of what he's accomplished, all for his hate of the Chantry?

His finger traces along what script their is, then flips a few pages past, back again, to see some of the...scribbled sketches. A crease of though forms on his brow.

"You know what this means, then. That even if Bergier made it out alive, he'd be with the Red Templars now. Even if you could find him, you'd have to kill him." She didn't beat around the bush with him; he'll give her the same respect. It's the plain truth of it. "And that's if you could track down this specific group, assuming he isn't already dead or with another at this point."

"Bergier was weak." Her teeth grind, involuntary. A moment: She lets it pass. "He wanted too badly to be liked. Fieldwork was not an option. And the Spire —"

Her brothers, all trusted. All respected, after a fashion. And yet so many traitors in the end.

"— The Spire was leading him astray." It would be too easy to remember the man without his failings. "Rivain seemed the kindest response, but I know now it was weakness of my own. Had I been there,"

She shakes her head. She can't allow this to become solely a matter of guilt. Guilt is a selfish little thing, it worms into the bones, eats from within. Guilt doesn't get anything done.

"If he lives he is dead already, drunk on poison. But perhaps there remains some honourable purpose for that borrowed time." A beat. "They are loyal, we know this, they do not often turn. Often. If the sickness is not so far-gone — I trained him. I know how to press him. We may recover intelligence of greater use."

"If. A heavy word to lean on. If he disappeared after--" He doesn't need to say what after. That was, after all, the way she introduced the topic. "--then he was likely pulled into this not long since. That's two years to fester. If you find him, he may be nothing more than a crystallized husk of what used to be a man."

And once again, the other if it hangs on: if he's still out there.

"I want to help," and that's the truth, Templar or no, "but with the odds so stacked, you understand how this can seem like a fool's errand."

"I do. It is why I have not asked the Mothers to commit any resources directly." She considers the book again. "But I would be remiss to consider the trail cold. His younger brother is a scout with the Inquisition. He's been ducking my attempts to meet — I hope to learn why."

Surely it's not her winning personality.

"It's possible they've been in contact, or were for a while." Carefully, she tucks the journal back into its wrapping. "They were raised by the Chantry. Such is atypical of defectors. And until the Annulment —"

There it is again.

"— If there was any single catalyst, I can only guess its origins lie in Dairsmuid."

He pulls back sharply. "You suggest there's a traitor in the Inquisition." A serious accusation, and one that can't be overlooked. "If it helps your investigation, I will suggest to Leliana to hold this scout immediately."

Even straight away if it'll keep them from having this conversation, but he won't run from this, not this time. "As for defection, as for this catalyst, you know how it can be. How difficult it is to always do as we are ordered. I can certainly understand why he might have lost his way, and the sway of the Red Templars seems to stem from power." She admitted herself to the missing Templar's weakness.

Malcolm slides the glove from his hand, tossing it to the table. Forgiveness comes from the Maker. Andraste will guide him to the Maker's side. He blinks away a prayer forming at the surface of his mind. "Ask your questions."

"A traitor, or perhaps something more grey. Siblings will keep much from each other, and he has little reason to love the one who sent his brother away."

"But it bears investigation. I would be thankful for the intervention; my attempts to intercept him have been fruitless."

A mental note, to forward his information. She does not move immediately to collect the glove, instead lingers removing her own, asks:

"At what point did you first suspect the Right would be invoked?"

If at all. Her absence at the Spire perhaps betrays itself. Tensions had been hot for months, and yet she'd never have expected they boil over so. It's a hammer of a question, however gently-asked — and so she doesn't bother to soften it much.

He might yet protect himself in technicalities. "I like to envision as many outcomes to a scenario as I am able to prepare for. Despite the...relative rarity of an annulment, I knew it was a possibility when I was given my assignment. Upon seeing the state of the Circle, it seemed inevitable. And yet, to actually hear the order given?"

Malcolm shakes his head. This is all something left unspoken. He doesn't even speak to Cassandra of it, had refrained from talking about it to Aleron. He replants his feet in a solid stance, hands behind his back, pulls his head, and thus his gaze, up. "While we are all technically prepared and trained for it, one does not--did not--anticipate being involved in one's lifetime."

He garbs himself in structure, she notes, whenever the topic draws near. Not such an unusual response, from anyone taught to hold duty as a shield — but a useful thing to remember.

The flask in her jacket will remain unoffered, untouched. Reed is evidently not one to find comfort in impropriety. Some cling to blankets, others the sword.

"Did any resist?" The seekers, the templars. To ask such a question of the mages would be foolish. She meets his eyes steady. "Either before, or during the assault?"

"That," he starts with a wry, humourless smirk, "entirely depends upon your definition of resistance."

He knows that he did, though in his mind it's never enough. Despite knowing it would have gotten him ostracized, tied up, banned from the order, even killed, he wishes he'd done more to resist, to speak up, to refrain. But he did not kill, and he reported rooms and buildings empty that were not. He had attempted to persuade the Knight-Commander, even his Seeker fellows, only to be ignored, only to be reminded that their duty is clear. There was no Grand Cleric within Dairsmuid, certainly not one who would have allowed the hedge witches to act so. They could have taken the time to get in contact with another, but despite the time that would have taken, the end would still surely have been the same.

"I noticed little apparent dissent when the Right was invoked, although who would really have wanted to argue with their superior on a matter so clear cut?" Also, those Templar helms really do quite a bit to hide subtle emotional responses. "During? I can only hope that I wasn't alone in my attempts to curtail the damage. There had been...perhaps two Templars in all that I had personally witnessed having difficulty fulfilling their task."

The Templars are trained well, after all. And mages are never to be trusted, of course. They were all taught this. Dangerous magic is to be neutralized without exception, and what was the loss of one mage or ten or a hundred if it meant not one abomination could wreak havoc? This is the Chantry way.

Who would want to argue? Someone, she thinks, with a conscience.

But she knows how cruel a judgment that is, how unfair. She’s spent too many nights of her own awake in question, wondering what would have happened had they been called back, what it was she might have done.

She knows how stupid a judgment it is, too, because in the end she always comes to the same conclusion: You don’t help anyone by rotting in a cell.

Pragmatism saves more lives than a loud mouth. Even now.

"A stroke of luck that you were watching." Cruelty there, too — and honest for it. Wren would wish an Annulment on no one, but if Reed speaks truthfully, then matters might have been worse without his presence. For the mages, and for his men. Wren has only once witnessed a seeker’s powers in action, but she hopes never to again. "And in the aftermath?"

"Rest assured, their superiors were quick to comment on their actions and correct their mistakes." There are always the Templars that are all too quick to fall into the party line without a second thought, those devoted to every line of the Chant and every order they are given to the letter, and those who barely see mages as people if at all. "If there were those who joined in quieter dissent, I would be unable to say."

After all, no one dared double check the work or question the word of a Seeker of Truth, even if they were disliked.

"After..." He had not described directly any actions or details during; that made it more bearable. The aftermath, then, seemed more difficult to articulate. His hands squeeze behind his back, eyes drawn back down in memory and consideration. It had hardly been his first battle with many dead. Hardly his first fight against mages. But the first time he thought, truly thought that his opponent didn't deserve to be an opponent. Though his first commander had been exiled, he'd imparted advice and teachings to Malcolm that he kept close to heart.

The Chantry is not always right. The people within the Chantry are still just people, and people are flawed. Even the Divine was once a woman with a name.

They had sought to destroy everything, just as the Templars who went back that Araceli heard tales of had sought to do. And it was wrong. By all teachings, it was right, and what those people were doing--it was dangerous. And yet, they had lived, survived, thrived despite it. To slaughter the people, burn their books, to take joy in kicking the doors in and destroying possessions, how did that seem right? Would Andraste have agreed? Would the Maker approve? Had they gotten it wrong all along?

In the aftermath, with blood enough spilled to turn parts of the ground to mud, with smoke stinging, he had never felt more empty, rarely more afraid. The urge to run and disappear from these brutes who did not join him in argument, who raised their weapons without hesitation, had been dizzying.

It was a long pause between words. Malcolm scarcely spoke without a very good idea of what to say, and words seemed so far away. "There was cleaning, burning, a message sent to the nearest Grand Cleric and another sent straight to Val Royeaux. The others...had mixed feelings, it seemed." Difficult to remember the individuals, so wrapped up in his own horror and trying so hard not to show it. "Some had never seen battle of this scale, too fresh. Shouldn't have been there. Some celebrated the well-earned victory. Others still acted as if this were just another day. Perhaps to them it was. We count our dead, we pack up, we ship off."

Yes, she can begin to see now, how easy the prey would have been.

Take green recruits, ones used to routine, to a glorified guard duty. Add the horror of just following orders, of watching those around them revel in the same.

Tell them they weren’t wrong to follow, that their brothers weren't wrong to act. Tell them they only chose the wrong master.

Yes, she can begin now to see. Wren's hands fold neatly behind her back, a small mirroring of posture — all the better to disguise the nails dug in her palm. They've written Corypheus' propaganda for him.

Expediency, a synonym for pound of flesh. Some days it seems they’ll never cease repaying it.

But this isn’t the time or the place for her anger. It’s impossible to miss the distance of Reed’s words, their clinical phrasing. She can't think he's had to explain this often, or he might be quicker to summon that detachment, to don it like the rest of his rigidity.

This is a rare view, and one she dares not push farther. There is more she might pull from this, questions she doubts there will be opportunity to ask again. But the returns diminish, and the risks grow quickly. She cannot afford to wholly alienate her first (her only) ally in the search.

"It’s done." Quietly. "You are here now."

"I didn't do enough." His eyes snap back to hers, surprised at her momentary softness, ashamed of his emotions (to a stranger, no less), guilty--and guilty for feeling guilty. He did all that he could do, and he repaid at least some of the blood debt. "One gladly dies for their beliefs, yes? What would have been one more body? I'd have given them," his brothers and sisters in arms, people he trusted to have his back and people he trusted to do their jobs, people who were just like him in so many ways, "a damned good fight for it."

But he snaps his mouth shut, as if that might too snap shut the door to the memories, or at least to the flood of emotions they rile up in him. He knows what he did and had good reasons why he did it. It never eases the pain. Steady breath. Calm. Placid.

Fake it 'til he makes it.

His tone loses the sharpened edge when he next speaks. "A group of us in the Inquisition returned last year. Some Templars had returned to finish what was started. Rounded up survivors and their friends, family, their allies. Kept them locked up and harmed. We went to set them free and offer them a place under our protection. And thankfully for the mages, we were successful."

It's something, and he must always remind himself of that. He must always remind himself that the Maker put him in a position to be forgiven by those he had thought he harmed.

She doesn’t flinch, only tips her head to the side, softens the line of her jaw. This isn’t a matter of debate, not an argument in which she can engage. He’s lashing out but it’s reflexive. A stung knee.

Breathe. As though the command might somehow leap the gap between them. A wishful fancy. Slowly, she forces her hands open, brings them back around to settle flat against the tabletop. Thankfully for the mages. Of course, for them.

Thankfully, she thinks, for yourself.

"We die for our beliefs," Slowly. As neutrally as she might: "If we do not live for them."

A well-oiled machine, the Chantry. And tightly-wound.

"Malcolm," A certain breach of etiquette, but he must have been a Malcolm before he was ever a Reed. "Will you pray with me?"

She doesn't pray. But the quiet moment, the darkness of one's own eyes — if he will take it, it might do him some good.

Had she explained her breach, he might have laughed. First and foremost a Reed since birth. He had to work his way to being a Malcolm. But that is another issue for hopefully never; her brazen informality coupled with her offer is enough to throw him off.

There's the paranoid thought that the Knight-Lieutenant is distracting him deliberately. That she's trying and succeeding to get under the skin of not only a Seeker, but a confidante of an Advisor to the Inquisition. He knows nothing of her save for half-remembered songs and what she's mentioned of the Spire. The well worn alarm of danger in his head when things don't go as planned, when he can't foresee the outcome, when someone is getting too close. She's Orlesian and a Templar; she'll secret all his fears away in a little box until the time to blackmail or ruin him comes.

A smaller, more hopeful voice suggests this may be a small manner of apology for her. That she has upset him so with something she understands to be painful and thus would care to ease it in whatever small and formal way she knows how.

(It's Despair hovering over his shoulder and Hope by the other as they discuss their time following him around. Wonders, on rare occasion, if they've always been drawn to him, or if the events of his life have culminated in one, and later, the other.)

"Ser Coupe," not sharp in the least yet passive admonishment for being so--not casual, and for the topic at hand, even informal doesn't sound right. She suggests to pray with her. In it together. He knows nothing of where she stands on the religion, nor she him, though given their positions he finds it's a fair bet that they both at least used to believe, most ardently. Just because he questions faith doesn't mean he disbelieves. He wets his lips in nervous habit, sorting through his feelings as quickly as possible to come to the conclusion: "I accept your invitation."

There's a chapel off the courtyard, small but serving its purpose, but there's no sense in waiting. Prayer can be for any time in any place. Still, he lowers himself to his knees, shuts his eyes, breathes deeply. This is, in some sense, ridiculous, and yet if she somehow has intentions against him, if she would want to take full advantage to slice him open, he might welcome it. It would be fitting for his folly.

But if it's folly to take her at her word in this moment, filling himself with the well-worn words of Transfigurations, then it's a folly he'll gladly cop to.

"Thank you."

Reserved, but sincere. She kneels beside him, her own eyes slipping closed.

It's a moment that she's learned to take as it may, a small ritual of recommitment, of devotion to the task at hand. It allows her to think, and to blend in among her own. There's an old comfort in the act, an intimacy that she used to find uneasy.

Perhaps it's easier now that she's certain no one's listening.

Wren breathes, and centers herself, and strains through the silence to focus on the body next to hers. The true difficulty of this conversation will come in its disengagement. She has Reed's promise, but she also has the advantage of him now. He will not be blind to it. She means him no harm, but they both know that one's intent matters little beside their capacity.

It's far too late to play dumb; that would have been a lost cause from the beginning. They don't set harmless idiots to this work. Honesty, it is and must remain — at least, so far as such is safe.

Silently, her lips form the shapes of the words. She can’t sing any longer, but she doesn’t need to. The melody's in every vein.

The last he truly sang any of it, he had stood side by side with Aleron as the ruthless dregs of humanity that were the Templars remaining at Dairsmuid burnt. That there had been a long moment of hesitation, of consideration, of wondering if they even deserved it, had been almost a revelation in its own right. Was it wrong to judge anyone beneath the usual rites afforded to every dead as the religion allows, or was he losing focus, losing faith?

That he had been in that damned place again, had crossed the sea and walked the land so familiar in his nightmares, had been present to help mages--people--in need, surely it had been a sign from the Maker, even if in some small and coincidental way. That he had been forgiven by one, one who had been spared by his deliberate oversight, surely that was the spark of the Maker's absolution given form in flesh and mortality.

Or he had just been in the right place at the right time around the right people. The Maker's will had better things to influence than his self-flagellation.

Here, he does not sing. That the words are in his head in a canter etched deep into the soft tissue of his brain is enough. He must breathe, deep, exhale, calm. Pray that he may someday find forgiveness in himself; pray that the Templar next to him is a friend and, should she not be, that he will see it in time to protect himself; pray that he will continue to be able to do his duty to the Inquisition, to restore the world to peace, to restore the name of the Seekers of Truth, to restore the Sunburst Throne to understanding and glory.

To save the world. And perhaps that should be done one person at a time. He hasn't any hope that this old friend? mentee? apprentice? is still himself, and little that he's even still alive. But if finding him brings closure to the matter, may even find something of wider use than that, then so be it. He has to acknowledge that for as dangerous as this is to himself, she has also taken a risk in meeting him in the first place. He could have accused her of collaborating with a Red Templar. Or any number of nasty endings to the meeting. Templars, after all, rarely see the Seekers in good light. They overrule Templars, and they show up when doubt is cast. They are, so his father had claimed, powerhungry sycophants and a scourge to the Templar Order.

It had been a Seeker, as the highest authority in technicality, who had ordered the annulment. And a Seeker who split from the Chantry, who allowed a needless war to go raged unchecked. And in defiance, Cassandra had kept the title, as did he, as did Aleron, to uphold the Divine's final wishes.

As everyone in the Inquisition has been learning, titles of the past hold little water these days. They are all working together. They must, united against the darkness. They must help one another, and he doesn't need a religion to tell him that much. The time in prayer seems to settle him more. His body always remains a taut line, ready, (over)prepared, but he can allow the memories to ebb away, gathering distance.

Gathering, too, a bare thread of trust with Ser Coupe.

OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

you know who and you know where-ish

no i don't what the hell is a skyhold

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