faderift | OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

Samson's slow grin, the way it grows from a hint on one side to a crooked thing spread wide enough to draw creases, will no doubt telegraph exactly what he's thinking. He's from Kirkwall. He knows. And the fleeting glint of mischief in his eye, that's a rare thing these days; it's not often the red general takes genuine pleasure, without guilt's shadow creeping in at the edges, in anything at all.

"Tell you what. Pass that flask through the bars, knight-lieutenant, and you can do all the prodding you like."

Son of a bitch. Yes, she knows that look.

Wren takes a swig, regards him for a long moment.

"If you find a way to break out with this," She warns, lifting her eyebrows. But they both know why she’s bothered to bring it, and there’s no use in playing coy with a bribe. "I will be very upset."

And kind of impressed. The liquid smells like varnish, gotten off a vashoth, and reserved for this purpose. Far stronger than anything in the Herald's Rest stores.

She chances an arm through the bars to pass it over — contact must be something of a rarity here, and it costs her little enough to offer. If she uses her left to do it, that’s only common sense reminding her which hand she values most.

"And rightly so."

Samson leans toward the bars, still unwilling to leave the bedroll and willing to stretch absurdly to make up for it. It's close enough, but only just. He's reaching, reaching, bumping the flask with his fingertips, one little rock back and forward again, lazy, and then he's got it. Their hands probably touch, although not in any meaningful way. The dry chill of his fingers, however, may be meaningful in itself. Other signs are there, too: the tremor, the pallor, the faint lustre of sweat. Pain, his most constant companion, creeping in around the edges of every expression, smile and frown alike.

"But what a story that'd be. Might make a good song," he says, and winks, and lifts the flask to his lips. It's a wink that suggests this may, in fact, be the extent of the ribbing she must endure.

Cold hands, lean times. The unlucky and the disgraced... and the foolish few who try to quit.

(Eyes from an alleyway, better for everyone if you don’t stop to talk.)

He holds himself together well enough for it. It helps to own a reputation already so wretched; standards to cling to would only make that which lacks more evident. If you put enough work into looking like an asshole, people start to assume that's just your baseline.

How long are they waiting it out? Past a certain point the returns diminish. Secrets he might own will already be considered compromised — and should it continue long enough, nothing he says will be reliable. Or do they only want to know how long it takes?

"You’ll forgive me if I don’t strike the first chorus. Dreadful acoustics."

And there’s a small joke of its own, isn’t it nice how we can joke about the singing rocks that are slowly killing us. The corner of her mouth twitches aside in brief acknowledgment, and she rocks back down to sit, knees folded. Wren considers a moment before asking:

"Do you ever find it? That missing note?"

She allows herself to look away, as though in briefest discomfort. There's no lie in the gesture, but typically, she hides such tells of weakness. She’s been about red lyrium, has felt that — pull, that strange, discordant absence. Deep, much too deep to catch. An echo in a well.

Joking about the singing rocks of death is nice, as a matter of fact. Gallows humour (heh, Gallows) is an old standby, well used and worn around the edges, and still always sharp enough to cut a smile. And now his smile is, perhaps, cut more sharply than before.

As though drawn toward her bodily by the insinuation of his greatest love and worst enemy into their conversation, Samson unseats himself from his comparatively cozy spot on the bedroll and performs a sort of crab-walk, employing one hand, both heels, and his backside, in succession, until he reaches the very front of the cell. Once settled, he helps himself to another swig from Coupe's flask, then offers it back to her between the bars, no absurd stretching required.
(She may be relieved to note that, at present, he does not smell much worse than the average masculine body.)

"Sometimes." Now he can speak more quietly, too, and this lower timbre of his voice flows like gritty smoke. "Sometimes, in the dark, I can hear it. Whispering. Might just be wishful thinking, though."

This is a man deep in withdrawal, a man whose eyes are often glassy with pain, and yet his spirits seem in decent shape—delirium, perhaps?

Truly a feat of gymnastic prowess. Cue the applause.

Wren takes the flask back, caps it neatly once more. She’s going to boil the damn thing before putting it anywhere near her face. Samson smells like any other man, but another man would perhaps not have spent several years marinating himself in liquid death.

He's dry now. Who can say what that really means?

"I had wondered," Wren glances back. Wishful thinking, indeed. A surprise that he isn’t hearing more than whispers by now. "My men that went to you,"

And there it is, what she really wants. Her voice holds: quiet, contemplative. It's not easy.

"I’d hoped they'd found something worth listening for."

Edited (word choice edits agh sorry) 2017-03-05 05:50 (UTC)

Those words alight upon him like ash, like embers, searing where they fall. They'd be easy enough to brush away, but instead Samson bears them patiently and, with his strangely coloured and steady gaze, studies Coupe's face for a long time. What feels like a long time.
That's the trick, isn't it: finding something, anything, to believe in. Making it work.

At length, still quiet, he asks, "What're their names?"

"Joane. Camille. Maël."

She watches him back. It’d be nice to say she didn’t blink. It’d be a lie. This hurt is no pretense. Those three, she’s had confirmation already from events at the Redoubt. So many of the Spire’s forces were among the dead.

"Bergier."

It's the last that's different. An Orlesian — but if he went red, he went by way of Rivain. Dairsmuid. There are records, a Bergher, in some journals near Ghislain. It’s not enough to know.

She needs to know.

[[ please feel free to make up any&all details as is necessary/fun, or hmu on discord with any questions ]]

Edited 2017-03-06 05:49 (UTC)

The first three names kindle no recognition in the prisoner's face—not surprising, perhaps, given the general state of him is such that his faculties can't possibly have escaped unscathed. He is all too aware these people might have slipped away through his memory, that his best hope is never to have heard of them at all. The fourth name, though, draws a frown line between his eyebrows—belying his relief—and a soft grunt of acknowledgement.

"Bergier." He pronounces the name with enough care not to butcher it. "I know of one, come down from the northeast. That ring a bell?"

In the absence of a wall near enough to lean on, he grasps one of the bars loosely with one hand and braces himself against it by his forearm.

Her expression is answer enough.

She doesn't think he's lying, but that doesn't mean it's truth. Norrington can speak as he will of the habits of command; noble intentions will not patch the holes of a porous memory. Samson is not so reliable a witness as she intends to try and sell him.

(That doesn't matter. He's alive, and she'll not believe otherwise. Alive and red — and she doesn't give a damn what she ought to take it for, she'll take it all the same,)

"Yes." Wren shifts closer. There’s no privacy of this place, and no confidentiality with preserving. It's still not a matter that begs public review. "Niles Bergier. I trained him."

And saw him transferred for the trouble. It had seemed (don't they always?) the best option of the time.

"How did he acquit himself?"

"Well enough." Unremarkably, is probably the more honest answer, otherwise he'd have more to say about it without taking some time to think first. Taking into account the average red templar's habits, however, Samson's perception of noteworthy events has probably become skewed. It's hard to compete with fellows like Wystan, or with the huge malformed shapes shambling at the outskirts of camp, breathing thick streams of mist, their eyes like coals in the dark.

Blessedly, he does not smile his crooked smile when the space between them shrinks all the more, though he does enjoy it. A flask passed through the bars is not remotely the same as slouching next to one another in the warm and thick bustle of a tavern, pints in hand, but it'll have to do.

After too long, long enough that his gaze falls away, Samson clears his throat softly. "It's been a while." Discomfort has come creeping low. Fear, too, for the state of his memory, a constant worry despite his resistance to lyrium's degradation. But the worst of them is shame—even after you drag yourself free of that mire, it clings like scum. "If you could describe him to me, I might..."

A lingering glance to her hands, then his. She's not certain she wants any more than this cursory endorsement. Doesn't want to know what depths Bergier might have sunk to,

There’s no harm in it — is there? If Samson’s alive, it’s in name only. One way or another, the Inquisition will have done with him. His own body will.

(There’s no harm in remembering. For a moment only, before what must come may. Even if you find him,)

"Twenty-five now, or thereabouts. Short for it. Sandy hair, a beard, green eyes." A beat. That won’t be so useful now. Softly, "He had green eyes."

Maker help her, she will hold her voice steady. She hasn’t spent the last two years watching them fall away only to crack that ice now, not crouched in a rotten little basement. Not speaking to the totem of their destruction.

"The horses loved him, dogs too. A good tracker. Bad singer — shit liar. Only ever tried if he was covering someone's ass. And he always tried." It was why he’d had to go; quietly to some backwater where the Spire couldn’t use him. Couldn’t chew him up and spit him back, another tool for the cunning and malign. How well that had gone. "He wanted to be liked."

Wanted to belong. A painfully average recounting; the sorry heaped story of a life.

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