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]

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.