faderift | CLOSED | Far too many notes for my taste

Entry tags:

CLOSED | Far too many notes for my taste

WHO: Teren and Nathaniel, plus Anders for fallout purposes
WHAT: Teren's mastery of passive aggression reaches a new height.
WHEN: Late Cloudreach
WHERE: Kirkwall - warehouse
NOTES: Hahahahahaha. Notes.

Nathaniel has set up a cramped little pseudo-office in the corner of his bedroom--some boards on a couple of empty barrels and a camp stool, but it works. He has a sign on the door saying messages and parcels directed to him may be left there during the day.

It starts off a fairly dull setup; not a great deal of mail comes to the Wardens besides desperate letters of relatives hoping to reach a loved one. Nathaniel passes them on or redirects them as seems appropriate, but then he starts getting other things. Business Teren has as the Warden liaison to the Inquisition, specifically. Letters, memos, notes. Since a new liaison hasn't been set up, Nathaniel forwards them to her.

They get returned. Nathaniel didn't even know you could return a return.

Well, fine, if it's going to be a run-around until things settle down here in Kirkwall, he decides he'll do some of Teren's job for her. All of them are recent--since the move to Kirkwall--so there aren't many, and they can't wait to be addressed. But more keep coming. There never seems to be a lad in the docks who knows they're to go anywhere but Nathaniel's office, no matter how many times he tries forwarding them.

Late in the month, the last of the ships with the Inquisition's people come in. Early the next morning, Nathaniel answers a knock on his door.

Two burly sailors barge in, slam a crate on his desk, and barge back out.

Nathaniel approaches the monster with some trepidation. Probably some of his things, shipped from Skyhold. Only he doesn't remember having that many things. Probably a mix-up then. He finds a bar and opens it.

It's full of every note, every requisition letter, every damned piece of paperwork that accumulated on the desk of one Teren Skraedder, quartermaster and Warden liaison to the Inquisition, since he demanded she step down as Senior Warden. To the day.

There is silence outside his office. The Hero of Purrelden has stopped scratching underneath the door to be let in, and is instead napping peacefully just outside it. The door slams open so hard it richochets off the wall, and the Cat goes from asleep to fleeing through the air with no time lapse whatsoever. Nathaniel stands in the doorway, seething.

"Terennnnnn!" he roars.

She's not there. No, she's not even in her tent by the docks. When he asks (much more quietly and with respect) several people if they've seen her, they point to the Gallows. Because of course she is going to make him get in a damned boat and get ferried to a damn island just to yell at her. And he's gonna do it.

Of course by the time he finds her on that stone island of despair and human sacrifice, he doesn't have another Terennnnnn! left in him. He has, however, brought a couple of young paid hirelings with him, and they set the crate on the tarpaulin she is repairing where it pools on the ground in front of her. And so, he crosses his arms and waits for her to be unable to pretend not to notice any longer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She always knew this day would come.
In fact, she's been banking on it. Teren can't even be too indignant about her work getting interrupted, because the look on Nate's face is well and beyond worth it.

"What can I do for you," she asks, smiling audaciously, blinking with as much innocence as she's ever had. Which is to say... none, but she might fool a stranger.

Nathaniel's eyes narrow. She is so smug, she really must think she pulled one over on him.

"Your job," he answers lowly, in a hiss. "As quartermaster and liaison."

Teren tilts her head pleasantly. "But I am, Warden Howe," she replies, her voice silky, "unless you mean the positions of which I was relieved not long ago." Her hands move automatically, stitching through the heavy canvas.
"Should I not be helping with the cleanup effort, ser?" As innocuously as she says the word, 'ser' is still somehow a joke, and she has to fight to keep from smirking.

A slow blink. He doesn't know why, he just knows Anders' cat does it and it always freaks him out.

"You were not relieved. You were requested to step down as Senior Warden and you complied, and there has been no transition that has been able to take place regarding your formal positions, least of all with the Inquisition, with whom any change of personnel must be mutually agreed-upon. I'm willing to pay both these strapping young folk here to aid in Gallows clean-up to free you for sorting out this mess."

"Oh dear," she continues, with a small, theatrical sigh. "You see, having learned the error of my ways, and with His Lordship being rather unspecific at the time, I've done my very best to stay out of his way. In as much as I am capable."
It seems impossible that Teren could ever look frail, but she hunches slightly as she frowns, clearly intending to play up her age. "Will His Lordship be requiring anything else of me?"

No, don't. Don't do this, Teren. Don't look all frail older woman. You are well younger than many who have served in the military, well younger than his father was when he was at his most...active, we'll call it. But it plays to Nathaniel's innate sense of chivalric guilt. He feels bad for making this witch do her job.

"Yes," he seethes, "that is exactly why you hoarded all your paperwork for nearly two months now only to ship it to me in a crate from Skyhold. Please don't tell me I'm about to be saddled with a bill for that, by the by, because my stipend is not actually greater than yours."

Aha, she can see his resolve starting to crack. Ideal.
"I'm shocked His Lordship would make such accusations," she breathes, resting a hand on her chest in theatrical affront, "I'm certain I don't know what you mean."

Her eyes are fixed on his despite her apparent distress. Do it, they're saying. Lose your temper, make my day.

Now that is pure theatre, and so damn patronizing that the fight comes right back into Nathaniel. His Lordship. Does she have no idea how low a blow that is, how you don't just bring up something like that on a professional disagreement?

"You have till the count of three to agree, or you're paying for these young peoples' time helping on this island instead of me. One...two..."

Of course she knows. If there is a low blow to be made, Teren will reliably find it and use it. In fact, there's a certain satisfaction to bending it against someone in the nobility, who, even if he isn't anymore, still bears so many of the trappings and hypocrisies of the people she used to serve. Well. "Serve".

She continues to sew, not even bothering to change her posture as she angles her head, watching him count as though she were an errant child. Even when he's through, she doesn't move, and barely acknowledges that he gave any order whatsoever. Stitch stitch stitch.

Fine. She thinks herself a member of the working class, she can be responsible for them not getting paid.

"One sovereign in advance," he says, turning around to the young people who carried the cart. "Three sovereigns--each--at the end of the day. As agreed."

And, because he doesn't trust her, he pays them each their sovereign in advance. Also because of chivalric guilt. And genetic guilt. And general guilt, for bringing them into a professional fight. He turns and walks back to the ferry without another word.

It's almost too rich. She's actually about to say something to the workers, but then Nate... pays them, and Teren is left staring in abject amazement. He just... he just gave them the money he's demanding she give them. He just showed her that he won't stand by what he demands.

How exquisite.

She shakes her head slightly as she watches him go, smiling bemusedly at how easy that was. It's almost enough to make her feel guilty, if she had any sort of guilt reserve for tormenting aristocrats.

Naturally, if any other Warden asks her to pick it back up again, she'll gladly liaise and quartermaster and all that. She will, in the end, even see that the workers get paid, because this isn't their fight. But Nate won't know about it. Poncey blowhard.

Somewhere in the general vicinity of the argument, safely tucked away behind a couple crates, Kaisa watches Nathaniel and Teren throw down, and then Teren manage to crush Nathaniel. She blinks, takes another mouthful of popped corn kernels from the bowl tucked in her arm, then offers the bowl to her companion.

"Told you so. Can't believe he paid them, though. Does he get paid more than us?"

"Not more than me," Alistair says, which is a joke, because if there were ever differences in stipends between Senior Wardens and Non, which there may not have been, surely that's something they'd have abolished in the name of austerity by now. Anyway, he doesn't complain before fishing out a coin and holding it toward her.

He hates the Gallows. He hates that he's having to come here on the one day he should be free of it, but the love of his life is struggling and he's got to help where he can.

By the time he's sitting down next to her, Anders is a little tense with the atmosphere of the place closing in on him.

"Teren," he says with a sigh. "I'm not a mediator. But I need to figure something out because you're toying with my husband and it's stressing him out which means it's stressing me out as well."

At the very least, she's not going to bullshit Anders. Teren is still working on sewing canvas, and it's been a long day with a lot going on.

"I'm not talking about this with you," she says, far less brusquely than she could, "you're not impartial and I don't expect you to be." She knots the thread and bites it off, putting the needle in the side of her mouth as she shifts the canvas to start on another section.
"If Nathaniel wants to have a conversation that doesn't consist of barging in on whatever I'm doing to shout at me, he's welcome to it, and that, my dear, is the long and short of it."

"Does it help if he doesn't know I'm here and he didn't ask me to do this? I can ask him to cut back on the shouting... but from what I gathered you angled for that. I mean, yes. I'm not impartial. But you're also not innocent here."

He exhales as she continues sewing, watching her. "If you could agree to not deliberately provoke him in the future, then I could drop this. And if I could get half his coin back. I'll give him the rest from my own pocket; Maker knows I've experience with making low funds work. But please, Teren."

"No, Anders," Teren sharply insists, a hint of warning in the words and in the glance she casts him. "I have my reasons, and they're not for you to hear. I'll not have you running between us like an errand boy." Stitch, stitch. "I admit it does somewhat raise him in my estimation that he didn't send you, but all the more reason for you to keep out of it."

She pauses, falling briefly silent to tug out a stitch that's gone at a bad angle. Distractedly, "and no, he's not getting his coin back unless he takes it up with the workers. He chose to pay them in advance for a job they never did."

For several moments he's quiet, contemplating the warning. He could push... but the chance of getting anything other than her anger are slim. At least he's done something to raise Nate in Teren's estimation.

Anders rubs his temples before shaking his head. "Can you point out the workers to me, or describe them?" He'll just have to ask Nate to tell him the next time Teren baits Nate, see if there's a better way to deal with it than the honorable one that will get Nate frustrated and further stressed.

It's fortunate Anders keeps that to himself, as Teren might take issue with Nate's previous approach being referred to as in any way 'honorable', but she's no expert on the subject and, after all, is hardly claiming innocence.

She is, however, peeved about the involvement of the workers-- who were hired under the belief that they'd be paid, without the knowledge or consent of the person who was to pay them-- and narrows her eyes a bit when Anders asks after them.

"No," she says again, "if he wants his money back, he should come take it from them himself."

"If they didn't do the job, why should they have it?" That doesn't make any sense to him, honestly. "They took the coin and you said they never did the work for it. That's hardly a precedent we want to set here, paying for no results."

"A reasonable question," Teren agrees with a shrug of one shoulder, "but seeing as Nathaniel gave it to them freely, I believe that's his to consider."

She had paused her sewing, but she goes back to it. "I'm not in the business of setting precedents. I scarcely need to tell you that." It's not a dig at Anders, but, perhaps uncharacteristically, at herself. She said she didn't want him involved, that doesn't mean she's free of blame.

"I know you're not. All the same, we need... something. Some place the line is set and drawn. Selfishly, I'd like that set before everyone clues in to the fact that I'm here and some people come down to demand I be handed over or kicked out or whatever they're feeling at that moment."

There's safety in things being certain. In the Wardens not being known from the start as people who just give.

"I'll be safer if our particular branch of the Wardens isn't known as a group of pushovers. ...Or their leaders being known as pushovers either." He hadn't come down here with that particular thought, but now it's there. Anders holds up his hands. "I'm not trying to reopen the topic, simply saying that there is benefit to people having an idea of what to expect from the Wardens here."

Though Teren has relented the tiniest bit, and is allowing Anders to state his case without shutting him down, she still doesn't appear terribly receptive.
She waits until he's finished speaking, then asks, somewhat bluntly, "is that all?" She'll reserve an actual response for Nathaniel, if he indeed decides to not be a pushover.

He sighs.

"Yes. That's all." He hadn't accomplished anything, really, but it's... not the rarest outcome for him, truth be told. At least he's tried to help Nate out, to support his husband like he's been supported. That's one thing in this favor.

Anders gets up and gives her a nod. There's no goodbye, she's pretty clearly done with him taking up her time and he'll move on his way.

A couple of days after he blew up at her, Alistair talked to him. And Nathaniel went straight from him to Teren.

She's at the Gallows, as expected. In a public space, as before. Ser Rodolphe's voice is nagging at him in the back of his head, telling him that if he shamed her in public, he apologizes in public. Fucking chevaliers.

He stops in front of her and raises both hands briefly before dropping them to his sides.

"Ser Teren," he says respectfully, then backpedals. "Ma'am," he corrects himself, "I have been an ass. I am here to apologize on a few levels, if you will hear me."

As soon as she sees him in her periphery, Teren braces herself for another lecture or less respectable chewing-out. Instead... this happens, and by the time Nate has finished speaking, she looks highly unnerved, glancing furtively about as if wondering where the goons are with their knives.

"...hello," she says with uncertainty. Nobody does this, it has to be a trick.

"Hello," Nathaniel replies lamely. And then realizes he sounds uncool. But that's not the point, the point is the opposite of that. His eyes dart to one side as he recalls the beginning of what he was going to say. After he finds the beginning, he can track through the rest easily enough.

"I'm afraid I could lead the Wardens who follow me down the same path my father led his people. I'm afraid of risking it, even in the little things. I was afraid that if I went easy on you, I would risk it. I know that's foolish. I'm sorry I dragged you into that. And I'm sorry I demanded your resignation. That was at least as much a breach of power as what you did. And I'm sorry Anders came to you when I should have, but you have to understand that from his experience, any manner of confrontation is dangerous and he was only trying to protect me."

Edited 2017-04-18 02:57 (UTC)

Heartfelt apologies, confessions, anything of that nature aren't really Teren's thing, and are in fact often cause for her to flee the scene. She continues to watch Nathaniel as though he's raving like a lunatic, her posture stiffly upright and her expression visibly unsettled.
"...no harm done," she says, in the same tone as before. It's different from when Anders or Alistair or Kaisa gets all emotional, because they're always emotional and she can tell them to stop being stupid. This is like a dog walking on its hind legs and wearing a nice hat. Maybe he's snapped.

What Teren probably means is this is freaky can we get it over with asap please thank you.

What Nathaniel hears is I will sound like I might have forgiven you but I will leave you in doubt indefinitely, until I bring it up again and throw it in your face for fun.

But he's aware that this woman is not, in fact, Orlesian in any capacity. So while he briefly glowers, he checks himself before he loses his temper again.

"Then you accept my apology?" he says, trying to seal the deal. No more doubt, no more passive aggression.

The former is more or less what she means, but the latter isn't entirely off the mark. Leaving people in doubt is sort of... what Teren does, at least when she isn't overtly stabbing them in the back. Or. Being nice to them. In her way. But we'll pretend that never happens.

Squinting at Nate, she purses her lips a moment, deliberating. Finally, after making a stitch or two, she gives a hesitant "all right." Despite Nate's honorable intentions, Teren is by nature a suspicious person, and nobody, in her experience, makes a turn this abrupt. However, in time she may come to believe him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

CLOSED | Far too many notes for my taste

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

A few hours later

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject