faderift | boy with a heart like a mosaic, shattered pieces glinting golden in the sunlight

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boy with a heart like a mosaic, shattered pieces glinting golden in the sunlight

WHO: Martel Leblanc + Cassandra Pentaghast
WHAT: A meet-cute.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: You snooze, you lose, Varric & Obi-Wan.

Returned - temporarily, probably - from the Western Approach to attend to matters in Skyhold, Martel's routine has resumed with only a few additions, most of them involving what the Leblanc attache requires of him to finalize and formalize his absorption into Orlais. There are papers requiring his signature, information that they wish to have - the familiarity of it is a strange and unfamiliar ache that he isn't entirely prepared for. He'd walked away from much, all those years ago, and carried more of it still with him, but - always he has thought back to Demos, to the Pandion motherhouse, to the knighthood deservedly stripped from him. Francois, long-suffering and determined, is an unexpected reminder of a part of his life he had more readily taken for granted.

He is unsurprised by the implication of new expectation - it is his mother's voice, speculating every time he might be sent further afield than Cimmura if he might not bring a bride home with him - and he is neither particularly distressed by it nor terribly enthused, much as then, but it is not without some relief that he loses his Orlesian shadow to spend his morning pushing himself in sparring matches with the soldiers. Sparring matches that have a tendency, when they lack challenge, to become impromptu lessons; innovations he brought to swordwork himself or techniques learned in his mercenary years regurgitated to give an edge to the men and women he now works alongside.

"Next time," he says, pulling his sweat-soaked shirt over his head and dunking his hair in a barrel of water that might or might not have been originally intended for use by the warriors, "I might get tired for some reason besides my age," as a cheerful parting shot.

"--my lady."

Didn't see Cassandra there.

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It is not a sight she had expected to find in the courtyard on the way to the training dummies - a man stripped to the waist, water trailing down his chest as he shakes droplets from dark hair. She finds her gaze lingering on the defined muscles of his chest and arms, wet skin glistening in the sun...

Her eyes snap guiltily back to his face as he addresses her. A faint blush stains her cheeks, and she ducks her head in a nod of acknowledgement. "Ser Martel."

If Martel politely ignores the blush, it - well, only aloud. He fails to pretend not to see it, pausing momentarily; decides that he is flattered, slinging his shirt over his shoulder to be dealt with shortly rather than put back on, wet as he is and as badly as it now needs laundering. He doesn't straighten unnecessarily, but probably only because he always holds himself this way, at his best angle.

It is perhaps not unrelated to deciding to engage her, rather than take the nod and go - a glance follows her path from here to the training dummies, and he raises an eyebrow when he tilts back to her, smiling, just slightly. "You prefer training alone? Or you're going to oversee?"

Oh, he's noticed. Cassandra's blush deepens, and she keeps her eyes fixed firmly on his face, rather than letting them trail back down to his (still bare, still wet) chest.

But he doesn't comment, or offer a knowing smirk as some might have, and she's grateful enough for that that she returns the smile, in relief if nothing else.

"I only hoped to get in a few moments of practice," she explains. "It seems it is all I have time for these days, alone or otherwise."

He takes great pains that there is nothing of that absent knowing smile even hinted in his expression when he says -

"I'm not so worn yet I couldn't provide you with a slightly worthier opponent than our wooden friends," very pleasantly. "If it pleases my lady."

(On occasion, he remembers the manners he was taught and uses them at the same time.)

Cassandra huffs lightly, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose.

"Please do not call me that. I feel like I am at court." But she can't hold it against him, not when he's so obviously sincere - not when the formal title is clearly borne of his own manners, and not some perceived, tiresome obligation to address the Lady Cassandra Pentaghast with the respect and deference due someone of her birth. How could it be? He is not even of Thedas, after all, and so is one of the rare few who may see her as a person first, and not a Pentaghast.

Hopefully no one has told him.

She smiles, mostly at the prospect of a real sparring partner, and raises an eyebrow in quiet amusement. Actually teasing. "Are you certain? I would not wish to tire out an old man."

"Cassandra," he concedes, easily, taking the inch of her failure to specify an alternative (like 'Seeker Pentaghast', for instance) and presuming such intimacy as they do not in fact have to use her given name, instead. She might correct him on that, as well, but he will have said it this once already, in his particular way.

It's the little things in life - like the huff of amusement when she teases back. Good.

"I'd be delighted to have you try."

She doesn't correct him. She blinks, instead, surprised at how nice it sounds, her name in his voice.

And then she smiles again, wider, and nods towards the sparring ring. "In that case. If you are ready, Ser Martel?"

He could correct her, there, and he's sure the Comtesse's attache would prefer he did; there are a slew of papers asserting his right to the courtesy styling of Lord Leblanc and if she prefers to stand on ceremony, he -

Prefers not. He says, "I rather think you can just call me Martel if we're getting in the ring," terribly mildly, dropping his shirt down outside of it and raising one of the practise swords, testing the weight in his hands.

It is tempting to suggest a wager, or perhaps a less blunted weapon - to play a little. Perhaps to suggest she not fuck up his pretty face, while she's at it, which is funny both because he is nothing if not willing to make himself the punchline of his own jokes but equally because he is terribly good looking and quite possibly the vainest creature in the hold bar only Dorian Pavus. He decides, slightly regretfully, to behave himself.

(It is not a 'behaving himself' smile that he favours her with.)

Just as well that he doesn't make the request. Cassandra is far from vain, and has long since come to terms with her own scars, but even she might have become embarrassed and self-conscious of her less-than-unmarked face if he had mentioned his own. (At least Martel's scar can be hidden by a shirt if he so chooses - but looking at him now, the mark bared for all to see, she feels it does not detract at all from - well. He is very attractive, isn't he? Objectively.)

She follows him readily into the ring to pick out a blunted blade of her own, an eagerness to her movements that is not often seen lately. She has had little to look forward to in recent months, little to divert her from her own problems and the Inquisition's. A sparring match with a new partner, one who knows how to be civil without being too deferential, with a dry sense of humor to match her own -

It's enough, and the smile she turns on him in return is just as wicked as she moves into position and raises the practice sword.

She doesn't ask a second time if he's ready, doesn't waste time waiting for him to make a move - she waits just long enough to be certain that she won't catch him too soon and then moves, lunging forward and attacking, hard and swift.

Thedas has asked a lot of him in the time he's been here, time he's sometimes surprised to recollect is less than a full year. Ferelden has expected him to accustom himself to a great deal that is wholly unlike anything he might have struck in Elenia, or Lamorkand, or Rendor - not least of which being 'women on the battlefield'. Not following behind it in dresses they'd perhaps not wear through a town under ordinary circumstances but leading from the front, sword in hand...he isn't such a child that he can brace himself before a demon and throw his sword down in fright at the sight of a woman wielding it, but it had been. An adjustment.

"Bloody hell," he laughs, rueful, when her lunge connects and he's obliged to roll with it to soften the blow; it's his own stupid fault, he knows, knows he'd have reacted faster if he didn't still have to push past the voice in his head (it sounds like Vanion) telling him not to raise his hand to a woman.

(He won't soon forget Krager's drunken, mocking smile whenever Martel drew back from one of his lines in the sand, as if he hadn't done worse, as if refraining from particular sins his gentility did not allow him to commit made it any better that he'd committed acts gentility had never even thought of to frown upon; Annias' incredulousness at his refusal to hear Sephrenia derided in his presence. Did he think it made him a better man to rise when a lady entered the room, even as he drove another to protect her soul by taking her life? No one knows better than he does the lie that is 'gentleman'.)

"Forgive me the grave insult," he adds, because his skill in this arena is no secret in Skyhold; when he spins on his heel and parries her back, he doesn't pull his strength a second time.

It isn't often that Cassandra is underestimated on the battlefield; even when her reputation doesn't precede her, her Seeker of Truth armor is usually enough to put her opponents on their guard. When Martel rolls away, making no attempt to deflect her blade, she nearly hesitates. Is he injured? Unready? She's seen him training, heard the soldiers speaking of his skill; even disregarding their likely exaggerations, he should certainly be more of a match for her than this.

So she smiles, half relief and half anticipation, when he apologizes and moves to drive her back. She steps back, keeping her eyes on him even as she frees her blade from his and attacks smoothly with a quick riposte.

"Do not apologize," she tells him, bearing down, and takes a beat to meet his gaze.

"Just do not do it again."

She wants a challenge, not an easy victory.

Well.

What the lady wants, etc. Martel, after all, has rarely been one to repeat his mistakes (not when he could instead make exciting new ones), and beyond that there is the not irrelevant matter of his pride. (His arrogance, it's been said; irritatingly, the things he's wrong about tend not to include his own capacity.) It bothers him now as it awfully amused him in the moment, the way he and Sparhawk hammered at each other at the end -

He is graceful, when he sees her sword before her sex and stops holding back.

Nothing of his foreign practise of magic to it, only the terrible elegance of someone who has had a sword in his hand since he could hold it steady, who proved gifted in the things done so other men might not have to. He wears no armor to weary him, now, fights as if it might have been the first bout and not the - third? Fourth? When it seems they've sufficiently worked for their breakfast, Martel's smile is the edge of a well-honed blade, his practise sword to hers;

"I have half a mind to throw this," he says, very conversationally, "and insist my wounded dignity will have nothing less than your company at dinner. But I think you'd be insulted I let you win."

A tilt of his head, a twist and a lunge--

"You should have dinner with me, regardless."

She'd expected him to be competent, but all the same, the challenge he offers is a pleasant surprise. He's a match for her, despite the fact that he'd been training - perhaps all morning - and she had come in rested and energetic.

She returns the smile when he stops her blade with his own, invigorated and already more than satisfied with the bout. She's ready when he lunges, stepping back deftly and blocking him - and then she falters, freezing in place as her eyes go comically wide. Even with his comment a few seconds before, the suggestion - is it a suggestion? A request? - catches her off guard in a way that none of his maneuvers had.

"I should?"

Rather than take advantage of the opportunity presented by her hesitation, Martel drives the point of the blunted weapon in his hands into the earth and goes on smiling as if she hasn't just looked at him as if he's broken out a set of fans and begun performing some sort of saucy dance.

"If it would please you," he says, immediately, gracious as you like. "I wouldn't force my company on a - woman."

The pause is no more than his course-correcting to avoid 'lady' at the last moment.

"But I flatter myself it isn't poor."

If anyone happens to be watching them, they're getting quite a show. Cassandra remains frozen where she is, her blade still suspended in midair - not, thankfully, pointed at his throat, but held up between them in a decidedly offensive posture.

After a moment, her brain manages to finally catch up to everything that's happening, and she lowers her own blade as her cheeks flush. How long has it been? Not since Galyan, and she had been so much younger then.

"My own might be," she says bluntly. Small talk, dinner dates, anything that isn't action is not her strength, and she knows it. She peers at him - civil but not simpering, good with a blade yet without acting as though he has something to prove - and tries valiantly to ignore the fact that he still isn't wearing a shirt. "Are you," and here her voice catches despite herself, "sure?"

Martel's eyes follow the point of her sword down; he looks back to her, his expression warmly wry. Thedas does do things differently, though come to the thought, Petrana might have been very fetching at the other end of a rapier's blade. She also likely would have been more prepared to prick him with it, even in play, so all things considered perhaps it's best Thedas is Thedas and Eosia is Eosia.

"Quite," he assures her, in answer to the question. "I presume nothing but a meal."

The quality of company and where it might lead -

He shrugs.

"If we find we've nothing to talk about, we'll have been well-fed."

The idea is surprisingly reassuring. No presumptions, no expectations, simply dinner. And if she does find herself at a loss for anything to talk about, or manage to put her foot in her mouth and mortify herself - well, Skyhold is large, and more crowded every day. It should be easy enough to avoid one man. Possibly until the Inquisition itself has served its purpose and disbanded.

Even so, perhaps she would not always have been so quick to accept, but the fact is that she has been terribly lonely lately. Evelyn is gone, and her friendship with Leliana has never quite been the same since Galadriel. Even Cullen has been distant. And of course, Cassandra has proved as unskilled as ever in making new friends to make up for the loss or withdrawal of old ones. Much less anything more than friends.

This - a charming, attractive man, interested not in her name or her title but in her company - this is, perhaps not unprecedented, but certainly rare enough to seem so. It's a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach at the invitation. Nervousness, yes, but also excitement. Anticipation. Perhaps it will be a silent, uncomfortable, and ultimately miserable evening. But perhaps not. Just the possibility of something more, of - of this leading to something -

Well, it's far too early to even consider such things. But she finds herself smiling, all the same, trying not quite successfully to suppress a giddiness she has not felt in years.

"All right," she says, too eager by half, and immediately tries to compensate by going too far the other way, the smile vanishing as she pulls her shoulders back and dips her chin in a formal nod. "I would be glad of your company at dinner, Ser Martel."

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boy with a heart like a mosaic, shattered pieces glinting golden in the sunlight

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