faderift | [open-ish] make my own rules

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[open-ish] make my own rules

WHO: Teren, Wren, Alistair at some point, anyone else who wants to join
WHAT: People who don't ever get drunk getting drunk
WHEN: Arrival to Kirkwall-ish
WHERE: The Hanged Man
NOTES: Please feel free to jump in even if you didn't talk about this with us, anyone can be in the Hanged Man doing whatever they want at the time.

It's been a shit year thus far, and Teren is alone in Kirkwall, having spent the day perusing the market and avoiding the other Wardens, and now she is at a table in the Hanged Man fitting right in with the rest of the unsavory populace. There's nothing untoward about a shady middle-aged woman in combat leathers with a mug of ale and way too many knives brooding in the corner of this kind of establishment, and she finds relief in the opportunity to just be herself in a roomful of like-minded individuals.

It's the perfect kind of evening to while away in the safety of grungy anonymity, and Teren is oddly thankful for it.

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Taverns are useful.

If you want to know the tenor of a place, go listen a while in its tavern. Order a drink, order two (drink one, find ways to pour the other out), and listen. You’ll learn plenty. Even if that’s only who’s paying too much attention to you, to the fact you aren’t drinking.

Yngvi's got her worried. She planned to keep ears out, she planned to keep sober.

That plan's gone a little awry tonight. Three drinks in, and Wren's aware this would be a good point to put the brakes on. But Teren's here — like a great angry pile of firewood — and that bears investigation.

Wren wasn’t so dim to come here flashing the sword of mercy, so as sarcastic giants go she cuts an unobtrusive figure. She could be any other soldier, if it weren’t for the faint whiff of ozone.

"We must stop meeting in such decadent locales," Eyebrows lifted, a short gesture to the table; she doesn’t wait for any actual permission before slipping into place. "People will talk."

Edited 2017-04-11 09:29 (UTC)

Teren watches her sit without offering permission, and doesn't seem bothered by Wren taking the liberty; it's a load off her back if she doesn't have to field stupid questions like 'can I sit here'. She raises her mug slightly, dark eyes skimming up and down the Templar, who appears substantially less put-together than she did before.
"Let them," she says idly, "drinks can't be undrunk, but tongues can be cut out."

"Messy," She tips her own cup in answer. It's empty. "And tedious."

Probably harder if the cow's not already dead; harder still if it's not a cow at all. Let's not discuss work tonight, a joke she doesn't know Teren so well as to make.

Wren leans back in her chair,

"Buy you a round?"

That, too, doesn't delay for an answer — she's already waving someone over. Her pockets aren't deep, but they'll serve.

Though Teren opens her mouth to answer, Wren handles it for her. She raises her eyebrows, a little impressed-- usually people aren't this ballsy around her, but she doesn't mind it.
"So be it," she concedes, "what are we drinking?" She sets aside her mug for now.

"Does it quite matter?" No one comes to Kirkwall for the sommeliers.

Welcome to three-drink Wren: Not drunk, not yet ready to arm-wrestle a bear (oh we'll get there) — but definitely thinning on the usual confidence filters. She eyes the server, who rolls his eyes in response, mumbles something about the house special before vanishing.

It's probably not too poisonous, but it could also probably cure leather. Two are on the table soon enough.

"On the bright side," She begins, considering. "It is not the Anderfels."

Ringing endorsement, that.

She's got a point. Teren smirks and shrugs one shoulder. Guess it doesn't!
Normally she has somewhat more distinguishing taste, but it has been that bad of a week, tempered only very briefly by Nathaniel's tantrum in the Gallows. Even that fiasco is hilarious only in theory, no doubt to become a bigger headache later, if not with the other Wardens then with the nonce himself.
She'll try not to concern herself with it now.

"Look at it this way," Teren rejoins, "we could be in Kirkwall. Ah, bollocks." With the drink now provided to her, she clinks it against Wren's (whether this is desired or not) and tosses it back, immediately grimacing and clutching at her throat.
"It's--- bloody--- seawater," she wheezes, opening her now-watery eyes just long enough to stare accusingly at the Templar. She's been drinking this?

An undignified snort at that.

Wren toasts obligingly — a crooked smile to match — throws back her own own. Her eyes shut briefly, the hard grind of her jaw smoothes somehow easier.

(Downing lyrium on the regular may not inure one to drink, but it sure gets you used to the burn. It’ll do, it'll help her through until it's morning once more.)

"Teeth and all," She agrees, tips her head to the side in the picture of innocence. The degree of Teren's reaction is unexpected, and that only makes it more gratifying, "If you suppose that it is too strong for you..."

If that sounds like a challenge, that’s almost certainly because it is. Setting the pry bar to the hinges, as it were.

To be fair, Teren isn't used to liquor! But she will be, now that she's caught Wren's glance and is ready to throw down.
"I beg your pardon," she snaps, but smirks, and pours herself another before tossing it back. This time she's able to down it without a sound, but she does scrunch up her face and pound her fist once on the table, because it's still like drinking a lava flume.
She exhales with relief when the ordeal is over, and cuts her eyes back to the Templar, as if to say 'try me again'.
"I'm warning you now," she points out, "you won't win this." Which is ideal, really, because Teren has every intention of proceeding. But she has the Warden metabolism and Wren doesn't, so despite her stature, Teren can drink most people under the table.
...should she want to, anyway. Of course she never would.
Of course.

What’s there to know of wardens? No children, check. Short lifespans, check. Habits of mysteriously disappearing at inopportune times — check, check, check. Wren’s heard the stories.

She has not heard the ones about this.

"Such certainty," Mildly. Teren’s all angles. There’s no reason that this shouldn’t be easy. Right? "Were my honour not at stake, I should quail."

There you have it, two jokes in one. Another shot, a loose, looping gesture of her pinky.

"Perhaps we might lay stakes upon it."

Words most often spoken by someone who will regret it the morning.

Teren's heard her share of stories about Templars: an uptight bunch who, if Anders is to believed, subsist on their own power and the suffering of those within it. There's definitely a... perhaps not arrogance, but something near it, to Wren, but Teren finds her quite tolerable, all things considered.
Especially now.

"Go on," she prompts, picking up her ale again to sip at it. Can't let it go to waste.

Wren deliberates a moment, decides:

"A favour of one’s choice," You may call upon me, should you require it, she’d promised. However glibly-delivered, she’d meant it.

But there’s a substantial degree of difference between that and this. This, she’s perfectly content to renege on.

"To be redeemed at a later date. Does this suit?"

This could go in any direction, really. And although Teren is barely feeling the effects of what she's already drunk, she has begun to mellow slightly, and she finds that just buzzed enough to be game for it.

"Done," she replies, lifting her empty cup, then sets it down to pour again. "I hope you're ready for a thrashing." She shoots the liquid back and winces again, but less so. Now she's in it to win it.

The real trick of drinking contests, of course, is to down as much possible before you actually begin to feel it. So they're perhaps two more in before,

Well. If she looked less-than-composed before, at least she also looked a little less like she'd been hit by an charging bull.

"Horseshit how bloody young this place is." Wren lifts the pitcher to stare at it a moment, as though willing her hand steady, "Look at us. Hardly old at all —"

Outside their respective professions, at least.

"— But all these children about, who can tell. Slopping about with their tempers and ideals,"

Certainly she's not slopping anything now. Never mind the slight bit of spill (words and drink alike) as she pours another.

Teren is good at holding her liquor, and she's even better at pretending she's holding it. She hasn't drunk heavily in quite a long time, so even with the ultra-special Warden constitution and her being a bit behind Wren, she is beginning to gradually catch up.

"The rest our age had the good sense to bloody die," she points out, pleasantly enough. "Got out before it became unfashionable and their knees started to go. That's the smart thing."

"Can’t damn well go about it now. They would only assume we were faking. Oh, give it five years, they'll be back."

The real danger of time travel: Setting a precedent.

"We have slain demons," She mulls over the glass. "Darkspawn,"

That's for you, babe.

"And what of it? Paperwork and dramatics, and joints to predict rain."

Teren laughs unexpectedly, an abrupt bark of a sound that she quickly follows with another swig.

"All of the above," she confirms, "not to mention whelps a few decades your junior waving their pricks around like it'll mean something." She snorts derisively.

"Any of these little shits start something, I can tell you how it will end."

In nonviolent passive-aggression. Let's be realistic.

"At least there are fewer poles up the asses of yours, I expect." And then she remembers Anders and Kain, and makes a face. "I do take that back."

A snort, a smirk, and another pull from her drink. Teren is beginning to feel some tingles, but of course won't acknowledge it. She doesn't get drunk.
"You ought to," she agrees, "though in place of Andraste's holy ways we've got the overwrought sense of duty and penitence." Another sip.

"Much the same," A much longer pull. It's a little hard to remember why she was slowing down. "Tell a bunch of sad, sorry-minded fucks they've a higher calling and sins to atone for."

"How is this atonement? Who gives a damn for penitence, if the work gets done? Questions we are not paid to ask."

"At least there's pay," Teren muses, and grins. She finishes her drink and starts the next, with an air that seems almost vengeful. Wardens. "Paid to die young and horribly. At least my ship's already sailed." Gulp. "S'pose there's still horrible, though." Whatever kills her will regret it, as far as she's concerned.

"Is there any death that is not? There is quick, and there is slow — and in the end, they all shit themselves the same."

Deep. Wren squints. She's beginning to slur.

"You cannot be so much older than I."

"Can't I?"
Perhaps it wasn't meant to be a challenge, but Teren has decided it is anyway. She sips haughtily from her drink, at least in a fashion that she believes is haughty and not verging on wobbly.
"How old were you when the Fifth Blight began?"

Her eyes narrow, as though this is a trick. From Teren's general air of wavery smugness, it can't be anything else.

"Fuck, it has been — how long? I think: Thirty-two. No. Three. Two? Three," She finally decides. It sounds. Right-ish. "As of this month, I would have been. Thirty-three."

A hand slaps the table in victory. Nailed it. Maybe. Sort of. She thinks.

Math is hard, Teren.

Edited 2017-05-09 07:03 (UTC)

"Well then, little girl," Teren intones with a smirk, and taps Wren on the nose. BOOP

"A lady never tells her age. But you were still playing with dollies by the time I was in prison." She's about to take another drink, but pauses, her brow furrowed. Did she just say that out loud? ...why would she say that out loud

Wren blinks. And stares. And then sneezes —

What's happening. What in the void just happened. Where is her beautiful car, where is her beautiful wife,

"You are telling me," Breezing past whatever just happened to her face, what happened there, "There were no dolls in prison?"

It's really not such a surprise that Teren's been. She's a warden, and she's not licking the balls of honour and duty: Puts her as likely as any other to have been scraped off the floor of some oubliette. Add in her particular set of skills, and, well. If the noose fits,

"Hope they got you for something bloody good."

Wouldn't be worth it to go, otherwise. Because that's obviously how prison works.

Though she's momentarily frozen in the stupidity of what she just did, Teren's anguish is ever so briefly heightened and then immediately lessened by Wren's question. She laughs, almost as much in surprise as in amusement.
"Well," she muses with a roll of her eyes that one might even call flirtatious, "not the kind little girls play with."
Because this seems like as good a time as any to forget that ridiculous gaffe, Teren takes a few good swigs of her drink, which is... very much hitting her now.

"I should think so," she scoffs, "killed a Crow."

"They jail you for that these days?"

That's a public service, that. It also sounds like the kind of lie one tells when well into her cups — but she rather doubts that's the case here.

Wren reaches out to fiddle with the edge of Teren's cup.

"And what do you play with — ?"

Terrible idea train has left the station. Beep beep. Coming through.

"It's fucking Orlais," Teren snorts, "of course they do." She'd effectively ruined someone's exciting twist in The Game, and had the gall to be a servant while doing it.
Anger is beginning to boil in her at the memory, but it is thankfully dissuaded by the interesting and at least somewhat unexpected appearance of the Templar's finger on her cup. Was that a siren call? If Teren had her wits better about her she'd think this through, but it's far too late for that.
"Chance," she decides off the top of her head, not even entirely sure herself what it means, but the point here is to look cool and mysterious and not, you know, like a drunken old bat hitting on chivalry incarnate. She pins Wren with her gaze, intense and, in its way, demanding.
"Why do you ask?" she says, in the manner of a teacher guiding a student to the obvious answer.

Chivalry incarnate is three sheets to the wind, or she might consider whether it's ethical for a templar to bone a witch.

Teren's still enough an unknown. A premise that begs exploration. There's no baggage in this, there doesn't have to be. The prospect's as blissfully uncomplicated as it is a prospect at all; as it is someone here, someone warm and fine and intriguing and,

Perhaps she doesn't need to think this through. Wren leans close, tips her chin up in the shadow of a challenge,

"I aim to try my luck,"

If only Teren knew she was being thought of as a witch, she'd probably be delighted. Or furious. Maybe both.
But in the meantime, there's been a tug on the line and she'd be a fool not to reel it in. She curls her hand forward to take Wren's chin, firmly but with a lenient enough grip in case the Templar thinks twice. "Do you," she intones, drawing her face nearer, eyes flitting over it in appraisal.
"It's been a while, but I imagine I've a game or two."

then they totally made out

yooooooooo

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[open-ish] make my own rules

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i cringed writing this line OOC yw

ty ty

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