i’ve been waiting on the fault line | OTA

[limier]

WHO: Wren Coupe, Melys, Casimir Lyov, Finch Wicker + YOU
WHAT: Catchall for the month
WHEN: Mid- whatever this month is i give up
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Will edit as appropriate

 

Editing these in as I go, if you’d like a specific starter please hmu on plurk or discord (oeste#8807). ♥

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[aestivation]

"That's kind of you."

He doesn't look up.

It's not due Vandelin so much as the work between his hands: An unfamiliar pattern, a delicate moment. The pick pulls free, the vial's stoppered, and he turns before it's quite set aside; regards him from a stare grown still and shiny as glass. He hasn't given a true answer, but then, it wasn't a true question.

(Casuistry, that, and there's a joke in there he's forgotten how to tell.)

"How have you found the Inquisition?"

I thought you were dead. He's certain he's remarked as much, during one of those rare moments the elf slips in and out of picture, uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps that's what kept him from settling into view, out from a fog of absence that began some years ago. The name, the face, the words recede until needed; a ghost recalled its attic, a skeleton in the wardrobe.

We all thought you were dead, But that isn't true either, is it? Jokes elude, but the cloth between his hands, wrapped over twin, hollow dark — that's always been easy to find.

[misdirection_hex]

It sounds like the kind of sarcasm Van wouldn't have known the Tranquil capable of--he might have pondered that further, might have debated within himself if it really was, were it not for that far-too-even stare. That seems to answer without words the question of whether Casimir still has the capacity for jokes or banter.

Ironic, he thinks, with just enough good sense to hold back a snort of laughter, that a question like that is more relevant now than it ever was back in Hasmal. He would have had to ask Myr then, who could certainly have waxed lengthily poetic about Casimir's sense of humor or lack thereof, whichever it was. There must have been something Van was never privy to. (There was a lot that Van was never privy to.)

"I loved him, and I betrayed his trust, and he suffered for it--"

It can't have been the betrayal alone that would prompt Myr to dive headlong into the abyss without the barest thought for his own flesh and blood.

"Useful." That's the heart of it, and there's no need for embellishment. Given enough acclimation to the reason why, it's freeing. "I couldn't have dreamed of resources like this anywhere else. I'm sure the researchers feel much the same."

Figuratively, when applicable.

[aestivation]

"To what end?"

Resources, usefulness — if the Rebellion's always been a distant creature, he hasn't been struck deaf, knows well the unrest yet about. People say all manner of things in front of him, when they choose to say anything at all.

Stopping Corypheus is, he's been told, a necessity. But where does Vandelin imagine it will take them? What will it leave?

(It will leave him behind; that much is foregone conclusion.)