faderift | [OPEN] you don't have to catch on, lay it out and be gone

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[OPEN] you don't have to catch on, lay it out and be gone

WHO: Simon Ashlock
WHAT: Catchall post.
WHEN: Throughout Kingsway.
WHERE: Various places.
NOTES: Starters for Cade, Kattrin and Myr, and open prompts for everyone else!

CADE

Simon should probably have come to visit sooner. Either after the first night of Callum's visit, or after the bar fight he'd heard rumors of, or...really, at any point before now, but better later-than-ideal than never. He's heard snippets through the grapevine about how Cade's doing, but it's still no substitute for checking in on him in person.

Only as he's being shown up to Cade's room at the inn does he wonder if he should have brought some kind of peace offering, or small token, or...something. He's never quite sure how Cade's going to feel about seeing him.

KATTRIN

Even without the intervention of the spirits, Kattrin's herbal salve had done wonders for Simon's shoulder strain, and he hasn't needed anything further in the way of healing since then--though Simon could be missing three quarters of his limbs and still insist on trying to walk it off, so this does not say a great deal. On the rare occasions when their paths have intersected since, he's never had time for more than a friendly greeting, but today, he'd found himself scraping the bottom of the liniment jar and he has the afternoon free to do something about that.

It takes some searching to find her, but another healer eventually recalls where she'd last seen Kattrin and directs Simon that way (after offering to help him herself, which he politely declines.) He sets off, scanning the ground for the fennec along the way.

MYR

It has somehow not occurred to Simon that Myr has a very good reason to want to stay Gallows-side and avoid too much wandering around by the ferry dock. It's only on the day they've arranged to begin Phase One of their card-sharking plan, when he's about to send a crystal message and suggest they meet up, that he realizes his friend might perhaps like some accompaniment to the city proper.

The mage quarters aren't foreign to him, exactly--he can remember patrolling them as a fresh recruit, years ago. But he hasn't had reason to set foot in them since his return to Kirkwall with the Inquisition, and his memories of them are not ones he would like to dredge up. He hastens to follow the trail of glyphs and knock on Myr's door.

*****

I. BATHS

Simon is a man of few creature comforts, and he has accustomed himself, after long years of communal living, to bathing in cold water. Privacy has always been a rarer and more precious commodity than a hot bath.

Since Cade moved out, though, he's had more of that than he knows what to do with, and today has been a long day of extensive physical exertion. Maybe he can deal with the evening hot water rush tonight, if he comes in near the tail end of it when people will be mostly done.

Of course, if everyone else has that same idea, then he's no better off. But he'll just have to make do.

II. FOREST

How much longer the forest is going to be here, Simon doesn't know. He's well aware of the talks in progress about cutting it down, and more than a little dismayed about them even if he shouldn't be, but...he's found himself too often in opposition to his fellow templars and Chantry liaisons lately. He's got to pick his battles, and he can't afford for this to be one.

The best he can do is enjoy the little bit of nature within the city walls while he can, and maybe if people see a templar basking in the shade of an apple tree along its borders and eating one just tinged with the beauty of approaching autumn, they'll see that it doesn't have to be an act of blasphemy.

III. LIBRARY

Guarding one prisoner is easier than guarding two, and Simon appreciates this. As tasks go, he doesn't particularly mind standing around while Vedici conducts his research, not least because Simon's pretty sure by now that the man's not going to try anything stupid. There's always the possibility that he's simply trying to lull them all into complacency, thus the need for continued templar presence, and Simon can't let himself get too distracted--

--but still, as the time wears on, there's only so much meditative prayer and light daydreaming he can do. He casts a longing eye toward the nearest bookshelf, wishing he could get away with keeping one eye on a book and one eye on the prisoner.

He can't, he knows, even if nobody's looking, but he reaches discreetly for one nonetheless just to peek inside the cover and see what it's about.

IV. WILDCARD

Make my day.

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The cluster of mages in question don't look particularly hostile; really, they're just a bunch of scared kids who don't know what they're doing any better than Fern does, which can understandably bring out the worst in anyone. Given a little time, they should grow out of it. ...Not that Fern grasps that, or would care much even if she did, and at his ringing endorsement of the values of the Inquisition, she mumbles,"Yeah," and stuffs her spoon back into her bowl of stew to stir it. "Whatever."

That said, though, she does keep listening to him. "We do if we need muscle for anything. My sword's bigger than you are."

She snorts disbelievingly. "No it's not," she retorts, because being an apostate mage makes her an expert on this stuff, clearly. A pause... before she tries to lean around to see if there's a sword strapped to Simon's back.

He will not complain about that meriting a 'whatever.' His memories of being eighteen are a little hazy, twelve lyrium-soaked years later, but he remembers a lot of things being 'whatever' then too. He gives her a wry look and returns to his own stew, but when she not-so-discreetly tries to look for his greatsword, he can't help but snort with laughter into his bowl.

"I don't have it with me," he says, trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin. "It's five and a half feet long; you think I just drag it into the mess hall with me for laughs? In case we've got to fight some demons for second helpings?"

"I don't know, you're the Templar," Fern fires back, but much though she hates to admit it, Simon's grin sparks a tiny, answering one at the corners of her mouth. Then, lifting her chin, she adds, "I can fight with a sword too, you know." Like... not well, but she can mostly hit what she's aiming for.

Edited 2017-09-05 15:17 (UTC)

"Oh, can you?" He sounds skeptical, but it's more teasing in response to that hint of a smile than genuine disbelief. His immediate thought is that perhaps she means a spirit blade; she might be a little young to start knight-enchanter training, but maybe she's learned some of the basics.

"Where'd you pick that up, then?"

"My aunt," she replies, spoons a mouthful of the bland stew into her mouth, and then stirs it a bit more to get it to cool down. Ouch. Swallowing with mild discomfort, she waves a hand and chats away. "She said it would be better for me than just using my magic. Better for me to reach for a sword first instead of magic, just in case--" A pause, and a cautious look at Simon, as though it's only just occurred to her to remember who it is she's discussing her apostasy with so casually. "...in case Templars showed up."

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. ...he can't drag her in for it now, can he? Where would he take her anyway? There aren't even any Circles anymore.

"Aha." He had wondered. He's got quite a bit more insight now into why she hadn't been welcome among the other mages, if nothing else.

There's something still almost the faintest bit amusing about the way her mouth runs so easily ahead of her brain, forgetting entirely who and what he is, but it's the kind of amusement he turns to because he's got nothing else right now. Gallows humor in more ways than one, as it were. He is powerless to do anything but nod and shrug and let it be. If the pendulum swings back someday, so be it, but for now, it is what it is.

"It's sound enough advice. I never did have a mage try to swing a sword at me. I'd probably have been quite surprised." He takes another bite of stew.

But mages had attacked him, Fern supposes, and watches him in worried silence as he finishes the rest of his lunch. She twists her spoon nervously between her fingers, then sets it down.

"Have you--" she starts, realizes her voice is a little loud, clears her throat, and speaks more quietly. Her eyes dart uncomfortable to the side, then back to his face. "...Have you killed--have you killed many mages before?" A pause. "Apostates?" The more she speaks, the quieter, the meeker she sounds.

She doesn't know how the Circle works. And there are benefits, he knows, to keeping apostates unaware of what templars really do, living constantly in fear, making them think they'd be better off surrendering than continuing to run from the inevitable. Fear leads to mistakes, and exposure. It's only surprising to him that both she and this aunt of hers had stayed successfully hidden for so long.

But there's a difference between the relatively abstract knowledge that keeping apostates in the dark is beneficial to your cause, and the stark reality of having a young and frightened girl ask you to your face if you'd have killed her if you'd met her three years ago. The old rules don't apply so consistently now that he can't answer her truthfully.

"The goal isn't to kill apostates," he says. "When we caught them, we brought them to the Circle. That was the point. I heard of templars elsewhere who got into bad kill-or-be-killed situations, but it never happened to me when I was in Kirkwall and it never happened at all in Ansburg. The worst I ever had to do--until the war--was tie one up with some twine because he wouldn't quit kicking me on the way back to the tower. And that was only for a few hours."

He's not going to elaborate on 'until the war' unless she presses.

She doesn't press. She knows what the war has been like, enough to know that she doesn't want to know more than that. Somehow the battlefields the Grey Wardens fought on in the stories she heard as a young child never seemed quite as gruesome and bloody as the ones she and Rooster passed by as they made their way through the Free Marches. The fighting was long done by then, but the sight of it--

"Oh," she replies, voice a little unsteady, but forces herself to nod and find some reassurance in that. So he was a good Templar. ...Then she catches on one little detail from his explanation and gives him a more curious look. "...I lived outside Ansburg, too." Her accent is ostensibly Fereldan, but she wouldn't be the first refugee child from Ferelden to grow up in the Free Marches after the Fifth Blight.

...That is a detail worth latching onto, indeed. That makes Simon look up at her and hold her gaze, quiet and appraising and clearly not quite sure what to make of this.

"Did you, now." He'd had a self-satisfied sort of running thought at the back of his mind that the templars who'd let a couple of apostates live and practice right under their noses must not have been very good at their jobs, bless their hearts. How did we manage to miss you? he knows better than to say, and yet can't help but think it.

Finally, he looks away. "Nothing much ever happened there, did it." Markham's backwater sister city, lazy and unremarkable, everything inside the Circle tower and out pretty uneventful. If two apostates kept to themselves and didn't use magic much at all, and nothing ever came of it, it doesn't have to reflect so badly on the templars of the tower for not noticing them. Does it?

Fern doesn't know quite what to do with the look Simon has fixed on her all of a sudden, and seems torn between shrinking under his gaze, or puffing herself up like a blowfish. She settles for hunching her shoulders a little, but frowning sternly at him as she does so. you cut it out.

Then he says, "Nothing much ever happened there, did it," and her frown shifts into a scowl that is most certainly directed at her boring, backwater little country life, and not at him.

"We were too far out in the country even for the county fair," she grouses and sticks her spoon back into her stew again. "What's the point of living in the country if you can't even go to the fair?"

"I know," he says, having felt that same frustration all too keenly indeed, and glad enough to change the subject besides.

"I do remember getting to see it once or twice in Starkhaven as a lad, but it was too out-of-the-way for my da to leave the forge for that long. And you could for sure forget about it in Ansburg. Nothing but wheat and cows for miles around anything; it's enough to drive anyone mad."

He does, at length, feel bad about the criticism. Ansburg had been good to him, and if nothing else, it's something of a refuge. He shakes his head. "I'd still take it over Kirkwall any day, though. Or at least, over the way Kirkwall was."

Edited 2017-09-06 11:10 (UTC)

This is weird, Fern decides. She should not be having such a nice conversation with a human, and a human Templar to boot. Who does this guy is, thinking they can chat like friends--

"We mostly had sheep," she finds herself saying grudgingly anyway. "So many sheep. And the lambs used to get separated from the ewes all the time, and they almost always ended up down by the river." Maybe Simon recognizes the farm she's speaking of by her description of the landscape; Farmer Heinrich always was an infamously irascible sort, but he treated the elves in his employ well enough. (It's even possible that Simon might have glimpsed her on Rooster, time to time.)

"I'd still take it over Kirkwall any day, though. Or at least, over the way Kirkwall was."

As if on cue, her heart gives a painful pang of homesickness. She drops her eyes back to her stew again and stirs it in a melancholic fashion. "Yeah," she agrees quietly.

He's trying to imagine it now, recalling the farmland he'd passed through on the rare occasions when he got to leave the tower. None of it in particular stands out vibrantly in his memory, but her description does call up a good strong sense of the place as a whole. He might well have seen her riding around every now and then, but he wouldn't remember now.

Whatever the place's faults, though, it was clearly home to her, and homesickness can't be wrestled into submission just by reminding it of the things you didn't like. He doesn't know whether her agreement with his antipathy toward Kirkwall is because of its history or simply because it's not Ansburg, but it doesn't matter so much right now.

"So what was it that made you leave?" he asks. "I mean, I know why you're here now--" He doesn't need to gesture vaguely at the shard, but he does anyway. "But what made you set out in the first place? Just the whole seeking-your-fortune kind of deal?"

Self-consciously, Fern tucks her gloved hand underneath the table; the glow isn't so obvious all the time, but it can't be completely masked, either. "...what made you set out in the first place? Just the whole seeking-your-fortune kind of deal?"

...It sounds so childish when he puts it like that. She frowns at her stew and takes one last bite from it, before pushing it aside; damn stuff is cold now anyway. "I going to join the Grey Wardens," she tells him, with a look of defiance in her expression just daring him to tell her she can't.

He hadn't meant it to, and doesn't think it does. It's exactly the sort of thing he would have liked to do himself, if he hadn't committed to the templar thing from such an early age. Traveling the countryside, letting the road do the guidance, hoping there would eventually come a place to stop where everything felt right--

--or he could have had a much more concrete goal in mind, like that. Fern's preemptive glowering is not entirely unmerited; were Simon drinking anything just then, he might have choked on it. He coughs away, surprised, and then promptly feels bad about it.

"Hell of a career goal," he says. "You've come to the right place, at least; there's no shortage of 'em around here. I guess you can take your pick of which one to bother."

"You've come to the right place, at least; there's no shortage of 'em around here. I guess you can take your pick of which one to bother."

'Bother.' Hmph. He can try to hide it all he wants, but she still knows when she's being laughed at. Fern fixes him with a black look. "You don't think I can do it, can you," she accuses him, with all the hypersensitivity of a teenager who believes they have everything to prove, and everything to lose if they fail, too.

Fern is not the only small elf mage Simon has lately offended with his tendency to be flippant without thinking, and he is, as before, very contrite about it.

"I did not say that," he protests. "And I'm not saying it now, either. There's lots of Warden mages. There's no reason you can't be one of them. I wouldn't envy you the job at all, but there's no denying it's a noble one. You could talk to Inessa, if you've met her." He doesn't know Inessa except in passing, but, well, she's proof that small elf mages can make fine Wardens, so she seems like a place to start.

Fern maintains her defensive, doubtful frown, at least until Simon mentions Inessa. Then, Fern is quick to smile a little and lean against the table. "Oh, she's very nice," she all but gushes, "and have you met her dog? We never had a mabari on my family's farm, but I used to see them from time to time back in Ferelden. I always wanted one." She sighs with some longing and grows quiet.

It's just like a Fereldan to go into raptures when talking about a mabari, he thinks, ignoring the fact that he'd been no less distracted by the prospect of petting and playing with Garahel even when there had been red templars to investigate. And there is something awfully endearing about Fern's excitement.

"I'd ask around about that," he suggests. "The mabari thing. I could swear I read something somewhere about mabari puppies. Someone had some recently. I know you can't just go pick one up as you please, even if they would hand one out to a fresh recruit, but the Inquisition's got channels for that is what I'm saying."

"Oh, I couldn't," she sighs, sounding gutted, "Rooster's more than enough work for me. Mabari are so smart, it wouldn't be fair to the pup to take him on when I've already got one bossy fellow to look after." Simon can probably recall for himself the labour involved in getting Rooster to cooperate long enough to get out of the water; the saying 'stubborn as a mule' exists for a reason.

"Anyway, I should go." With her lunch finished and mention of Rooster reminding her of her responsibilities, it's apparently time for her to take her leave. Still, she hesitates at the table and eyes Simon with an expression on her face that is somehow both wary and also... well, a little bit grateful. "I suppose," she starts uncertainly, "I'll... see you around, then."

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[OPEN] you don't have to catch on, lay it out and be gone

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