OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

[limier]

WHO: Wren, Anders, Gwen, and OTA.
WHAT: Arrivals at Skyhold & Junk.
WHEN: Post-Winter Palace. Catchall.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: I'll edit if anything comes up!

Starters in comments. If you'd like a specific starter, or to make plans for later in the month, just let me know on plurk or Discord (oeste #8807).  :)

Comments

[limier]

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."

[redinside]

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?"

[limier]

"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 ]]

[redinside]

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.

[limier]

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?"

[redinside]

"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..."

[limier]

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.