faderift | [ closed ] my past has tasted bitter for years now

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[ closed ] my past has tasted bitter for years now

WHO: Martel Leblanc + Cassandra Pentaghast.
WHAT: A nice evening in.
WHEN: Early Harvestmere.
WHERE: Skyhold; Martel's private room.
NOTES: His hair's still white, currently. No I'm still not photoshopping that.

What surprises him isn't that it's different.

Of course it is; he'd dropped revelations on her like a rock into a pond and watched the way they rippled behind her eyes. He could see the moment when he shifted from her handsome daydream to something else, and it felt right, but it had still ached. No; that she looks at him with new wariness, that she hesitates where before she hadn't, that she studies him when his vague past had seemed not to bother her before, these things don't surprise him.

What surprises him, when she's settled at his side - up enough, by now, that his linens can be changed regularly enough not to make this a sweat-soaked mess - is that it isn't more changed. That she hasn't (yet) cut her losses, that his mistakes might perhaps not be insurmountable. That he can still put his fingers in her hair when he isn't turning a page, and she still hasn't hit him with the book yet for raising his eyebrows at her over it when reading aloud a particularly salacious paragraph.

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Things are different, of course. They cannot go back, now, to what they were before. She can no longer view him quite as she did - her own personal romance hero, the tall, handsome stranger from another land, perhaps sent to her - who could prove otherwise? - by the Maker himself.

He is not that. He is as human as she, and as fallible, and that had been a blow in itself. She had felt betrayed, somehow - and yet by whom? Martel had never claimed to be perfect. He had never claimed to be anything. She had concocted the fantasy herself, allowed herself to be carried away by her own foolishness.

But none of that, she had finally managed to convince herself, had to mean the end of things. It is not as if he had confessed some horrific crime, some terrible defect of character. She, too, has done things she is not proud of.

He is still the same man he had been the day before, and the day before that. She simply...knows him better now.

So she tells herself, as she curls lazily against his side, hand resting on his chest, a small smile on her face as he reads aloud pages she knows by heart. The fact that she knows what's coming doesn't detract from his dramatic recital at all - it only makes it easier to prepare for his own reaction, to be ready with an exaggerated eyeroll or a disgusted noise (accompanied, always, by a coy blush and a happy wriggling of her toes) whenever he nears the more explicit passages and slows, clearly savoring the words - or at least, their effect on her.

For the most part, he contains his editorial remarks - although he does at one point break off, laughing, "That is physically improbable, Cassandra, even were they half their age and twice as limber," - and merely reads it to her, a habit begun in Orlais and carried back to Skyhold. A bit of continuity between the before-and-after of some of his truths; still there's this. It's not nothing.

And he improves, daily; he walks a little, now, although he's probably going to have to swallow his pride and accept a temporary cane if he wants to go much further than his room. He doesn't tire so easily as he did when she first came to see him here, doesn't have to hide winces when he shifts or when she does.

"I'm going to lose a bet with myself if there's not a hidden room in the castle in the next chapter," he informs her.

Cassandra merely shushes him when he laughs, unwilling to risk a playful shove while he still recovers, but rolling her eyes with a smile and drawing his attention back to the page as soon as she can.

She bites her lip to hold back her grin; there is, in fact, a hidden room - what kind of castle would it be if there was not? - but she's hardly going to tell him that.

"You will merely have to read on, and see," she tells him smugly, and arches an eyebrow in thought. "What do you stand to lose, betting against yourself?"

"The satisfaction of having been correct," he says, promptly, thumbing the page over. "And a certain sense of amusement at the ways in which people are, indeed, all simply people."

This would sell as well in Thalesia as it does here in Ferelden, he's sure. He's fairly sure he's read something rather like it, before, for all that he might not readily volunteer his indiscriminate reading habits on the road to souls other than Cassandra. It wasn't so much a preference for cheap romances and cheaper thrillers - but they were available in abundance, and they passed his time. Read enough of anything and probably develop a fondness, sooner or later. If nothing else, they make him a bit nostalgic.

Not every single moment of his life in exile was horrific. Nothing ever is, really. Some things are just mundane. Some are boring. Some days are even good. Life is complicated, in that way.

"You will be correct, either way," she points out, pragmatically - or pedantically. "If you truly wish to gamble, it must be against an outside party."

But she leaves it at that, settling back against his chest as he turns the page. If he chooses to pursue that line of conversation, she'll happily continue it. If he chooses instead to read on, closer to what is, secretly, Cassandra's favorite chapter of the book - well, she has no complaints there, either. No more than she has complaints about any of this: the rare luxury of lazing in bed (without guilt - she is, as Leliana had put it, doing very important work here in aiding Martel's recovery), his arm around her shoulders, the book and the rich baritone of his voice as he reads it aloud.

"It must, must it," in an amused rumble that, resting against him as she is, she'll feel as much as hear.

On the bad days it can be more of a gurgle - his mood shorter, his answers terse and distant, a hand rubbing against an older wound than any he's trying to heal from now. Near to a year has passed since Adelaide healed it as well as anyone could have done, and still sometimes he jerks awake in the night to the phantom sensation of metal sliding through his torso, of drowning in his own blood. His time with the Venatori did not greatly improve this tendency toward nightmares of his own memories -

but this is not that, and what it is he's grateful for.

Since he'll never know one way or another on the subject of secret rooms if he doesn't read on, he picks up the thread of it smoothly without further editorial remarks, besides a huff of laughter and a kiss pressed to her temple when it even has a secret passageway to get there.

Cassandra smiles, pleased both at Martel's obvious delight with the story and at the reward of the kiss to her temple. She curls a bit closer, letting her gaze unfocus and the sound of his voice roll over her as he continues. It is warm, and comfortable, and like this, she can almost forget her worries, and pretend that all is well.

Only when he sets the book down does she raise her head again, meeting his eyes.

"Thank you." It seems only right to reward him with a kiss in return, and so she does. "For indulging me so."

"I'd be hard pressed indeed to find better company," he tells her, the harsher lines of his face softened by easy warmth; he is not without his charms, for all he likes to discuss in detail how few of them there could possibly be.

(Charms independent of his not insignificant ability to play most people around him like fine instruments. It is a challenge, sometimes, to ignore the instincts of manipulation that he's taught himself over the years to rely on; to be present, instead of a step back, observing, tailoring his answers. The first part had been using those skills for something other than torment - the next is occasionally letting himself ignore them entirely.)

After a moment, "I used to read Thalesian paperbacks on the road. They were easy come by, and passed the time. More ghosts," reflectively.

Cassandra, meanwhile, is entirely present, and without any effort at all. With her doubts and worries temporarily banished from her mind, with Martel safe at her side and healthier every day, it's all too easy to relax into the moment, her leg sliding lazily against his as she props herself up on one elbow to better see his face.

"Paperbacks?" It's a new word to her, and she frowns, confused but curious. "Stories on...the backs of old letters?" It's the best she can suggest, and she does so tentatively, not at all certain that her conclusion is correct.

"Ordinary paper," he says, light in his assurance. "Books bound without covers to be made and sold cheaply - they've become popular elsewhere, but they got their start in Thalesia and I daresay most of them are still published there. There's nothing quite like a snow-covered mountain full of trolls to make a fellow reconsider the wisdom of an outdoors occupation."

He can't imagine the authors make more than a pittance for their work, all things considered, but they aren't exactly works of high art, either.

She's intrigued, both by the idea of coverless books - it sounds like a terrible idea, the pages fluttering unprotected in the wind, and yet easily produced, cheap books are something to consider - and by the way he speaks of Thalesia. Or rather, that he had offered up any information about it at all.

The last time she had asked him of his home, pleaded for a happy memory, his response had not been comforting. Now, she tilts her head curiously, settling a hand on his chest as she rests at his side.

"Tell me more of Thalesia," she requests quietly. "There must be something that you miss, besides your coverless books."

"Northerners are a strange lot," he pronounces, in his first and most immediate response to what is the most relevant thing to be said about Thalesia and Thalesians. "True enough here, too, as I understand it, but Thalesia is all snow, bears and helmets with horns. They're an Elene country, as well - they've a knighthood. Genidian. Who do things a bit smarter than the rest of us, frankly."

He drags his fingertips idly up and down her arm as he speaks, his head resting against the headboard, tilted back. "When it comes to choosing a Lord Preceptor, the knighthoods send the names of candidates to the Patriarchs in Chyrellos, and they choose from these. Genidians only ever send one name. I imagine they work matters out amongst themselves, beforehand."

An exhalation -

"I visited once, years ago. Business."

Edited 2016-10-28 07:52 (UTC)

"Business?"

A part of her hesitates to ask, afraid of another dark secret...but if there is a dark secret to share, isn't it better that she know? All the same, her intention is not to pry or to force uncomfortable truths out of him - not today. All she wants is to speak with him, to feel that she can ask him of his past and know that he will speak of it freely. That they can converse with the feeling of walking over thin and treacherous ice, fearful that the veneer of intimacy and connection might collapse at any moment.

She keeps her tone light, tracing patterns on his chest with her fingertips as she gives him a playful look. "Not pleasure?"

His low laugh carries no darker edge than amusement; his answering glance is wry as he says, "A little of both," in a tone of concession. "It's not a terrible place, Thalesia, if an impractical one to spend to much time in plate armor."

He did not, during his visit; conformed to the local preferences. (Being 'chain mail' and 'not drowning in every second fucking river'.)

"As good as leisure, for all I achieved there, really. But it wasn't Lamorkand."

After a moment,

"Profitable little country for the right sort of business, but a ridiculous place. The rest of the continent drew up agreements years ago not to bother getting involved in Lamork civil wars, lest they plunge every nation around them into bitter warfare over, essentially, absolute bollocks."

(He doesn't often use terms more colourful than the occasional 'damn', but really, Lamorkand, what the fuck.)

She smiles, charmed by his colorful descriptions - even if they aren't, in the end, all that descriptive. What is wrong with plate armor, after all - for nearly every occasion, in Cassandra's opinion? But he sounds cheerful enough as he reminisces, and that is good enough.

"But you said they, and not we," she presses him. "Are you not Thalesian yourself?" Had he ever said differently? Perhaps so, at their first meeting, but the names he had given her would have meant nothing to her then. And it had been so long ago. So much has changed.

"Me? No. There's not gold enough in Orlais to persuade me to spend my life in troll-country." He doesn't, off the top of his head, recall if he ever told her; presumes that he might well have done, but if anything was memorable about her interview with him when they were less...personally entangled, it was probably that he asserted himself as an Inquisition agent above all else and that part where he very nearly took his shirt off.

"Though I share a background with them. I'm an Elene by way of Elenia, further south. Vardenais, where I was born, is a port city - but our lands were further inland. And I left it young for the Pandion motherhouse and the knighthood, in any case."

There's still some sweetness in those memories, whatever else there is now. Bittersweetness, to be sure, but not nothing. Every day it gets a little easier in some ways, and a little harder in others.

"There are four Elene countries," since he'd prefer a history lesson to a specific rehashing of his own history. "Elenia, Thalesia, Arcium and Deira. My mother was from Arcium. I've a little of the accent." The slight lilt to his voice that sounded, to Thedosian ears, like someone with the very slightest touch of Orlais.

Cassandra remembers the shirt. Specifically, how he had opened it in the middle of their interview, entirely without warning. Though she had seen him entirely shirtless - entirely unclothed - many times since, she will always remember that first time.

Perhaps it was the Maker who sent you to us, she had said then.

Or...perhaps not. But still, she is able to smile, imagining his port city, his family's lands, and all he describes.

"My own childhood was similar," she says. "I was twelve when my uncle sent me to the Seekers. I have avoided Nevarra ever since."

Probably, he could have stood to have warned her, but in this as in most things in his life Martel is nothing if not unnecessarily dramatic. (He might say, aware of his impact - and he is that, too.)

"I don't miss Elenia," he observes, an implicit and intentional opportunity for that lack of desire to return home to be something they share, or something she confides in him they don't. "Queen Ehlana has, I gather, made great strides in unraveling the harm done by her father's rule, but I am myself a product of Aldreas's Elenia and it is nothing I care to revisit."

He curves his hand around her arm, settling, fingers still. "She married my brother. Prince-Consort Sparhawk, Champion of the Pandion Order and interim Preceptor. As well as he who is called Anakha, the man without destiny, before whose footsteps gods tremble, waiting to see what the big plodding Elene who thinks he's funny is going to do next. Develop a terrible case of the headache, in all likelihood, wearing that many hats. No, I leave all that to those better men, I think."

There is a trace of regret in it, of falsehood; he would like nothing more than to be the man wearing the hat marked 'Lord Preceptor of the Pandion Order', to serve at Sparhawk's side instead of with a blade to his throat, to swear his allegiance to a sovereign worth the oath.

He'd give anything, he said once, to be a man like Sparhawk. Knowing that he'd thrown it away with his own hands is a bitter thing to swallow, but there's little else for it. His life is here, now, for better or worse, and the only thing left for him to be in Elenia is a cautionary tale.

It is something that they share, that absence of love for their respective homelands, but Cassandra does not comment on it. She is listening too closely to what he does not say, her brow furrowed faintly in concern.

I am myself a product...and it is nothing I care to revisit.

I leave all that to those better men.

She lifts her hand, cradling his cheek gently, fingers caressing his jaw.

"You are so hard on yourself," she murmurs sorrowfully. "But there is wisdom, I think, in recognizing when it is best to seek a different path. And...and goodness, in turning away from power that is not yours to have." She smiles at him, encouragingly, her expression full of affection and pride.

"Perhaps you are a better man than you think."

She wants so badly to believe it.

If he could - God, if he could.

Martel presses a kiss to her temple and stays there, the affection and gratitude in the gesture as real as the ache in the pit of his stomach at being looked at that way, a hard thing to bear after so long. So unfamiliar, and will it ever not feel undeserved?

"What I believe," he says, finally, quieter, "is that I can be."

A better man. He has to believe that, or the only worthwhile thing left for him to do is die, and -

Well, he goes back and forth on that.

Cassandra studies him for a moment. She can feel his melancholy, even if he doesn't put words to it, and she can't help but be affected by it as well.

She sighs quietly, lowering her head to rest on his chest and curling close and warm around him. Really, there doesn't seem much else to say.

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[ closed ] my past has tasted bitter for years now

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