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[keenly]

WHO: Simon and Colin
WHAT: Truths are out and spoken. Might as well address the elephant in the room.
WHEN: Shortly post-blue flu.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: I'll update if any warnings come up, but there's likely going to be something.

Colin is taking his laundry down from a line in one of the Gallows courtyards when he sees the man, and feels very strange indeed. His mind knows he is no longer a Circle prisoner, but his gaze lowers anyway, head ducking, heartbeat picking up, hands speeding on their task so he can get finished and get out. His body has not yet learned the difference between now and then, and his body must be very good at tricking even his mind. Briefly, he is back there, standing alone in an open space, vulnerable and open to attack. And for some reason, some templars really think--thought--that it was appropriate to waylay and converse with him when he had no choice, no excuse but to stand there and make small talk, during which anything he said could be used against him. Most templars don't want anything from him besides a little small talk, but not all templars are most templars. It only takes one to make a mage fear them all.

Simon doesn't seem like he's like that. Though there may be no evidence one way or the other, Colin wills himself to risk it. He has to be able to risk these things if he is going to function within the Inquisition. Even should Simon be the very worst sort of villain, this is not the Circle, and he is not alone here. And he doesn't think Simon is like that. Simon was a tall, goofy klutz to Colin before he was ever a templar of any sort. The man hasn't changed in the course of those couple of months, only the one piece of information Colin has about him. So Colin wills his hands to slow down, wills himself to remember this is the Inquisition and they are equals here.

Comments

[paladingus]

Small talk with mages had been frowned-upon in Ansburg when Simon served there, and all but forbidden in the Gallows. His defiance of orders had always been confined to private templar business, infighting among the ranks, backtalking superiors behind doors that were always closed and locked against their charges.

But the rules about conduct around mages had been sacrosanct. The definition of 'fraternization' was not nearly so fluid as some of his comrades-in-arms pretended it was, and he'd known all too well from Kirkwall how that could end. Never well. As little common ground as he'd ever found with the other templars, he never had tried to make up the difference by talking to mages in a way he oughtn't.

Not until here, and now, where everything has come full circle back to Kirkwall and the old rules have died a rough and fiery death. Not until Kattrin, and Saoirse, and Fern, and Herian, and Myr. It had startled him how easy mages could be to talk to, how quickly and warmly a bond with one could form once allowed, and he's clung to that with the eagerness of one making up for years of lost time--but for every Fern or Herian, there's a Nell or a Kostos or an Anders, an I won't share a room with a templar or an I'll thank you not to manhandle mages, if you're even capable of refraining.

It had not occurred to him that the charming shopkeeper who speaks so poetically about the wind might not have known he was a templar. It had absolutely not occurred to him that it might matter for the reasons it does. But slow on the uptake though the fever and withdrawal might have made him, not even Simon is so oblivious that he can't put two and two together and realize that only someone intimately familiar with the inside of a Circle would have told that fable that way, or known how to administer emergency lyrium nearly as well as a templar could.

But Colin had called him a friend once, before all of this, and that means something to Simon, who has never been accustomed to have many of those. He hesitates, step faltering, at the way Colin ducks away--

I've done nothing to him. Don't I deserve a chance to speak?

If he could think of anything to say, maybe.

"I meant to thank you," he says, eventually. "For your help when we were all...indisposed. I wasn't as grateful at the time as you deserved."

[keenly]

Colin makes himself look up at the tall man and there's an immediate difference. That face is the same big sweet face from before, when Colin felt safe around him. Perhaps his mind is no longer the enemy, and neither are the templars. His body, trapped in the habit of these fear responses, presents the biggest challenge now. He swallows, shoulders relaxing somewhat. The man only came to say thank-you. Which is kind, and polite, and everything Colin knows about this man. He smiles more with his eyes than with his mouth.

"You're welcome."

[paladingus]

Simon's never been adept at reading tone, or body language, but he knows fear when he sees it. (No templar could ever be unfamiliar with what that looks like.) He should leave it at that, should take the hint and show some respect--

But that smile, though modest, doesn't look forced, or not nearly as much as it could be. He stays in spite of himself, though he's afraid of looking like a fool with unpracticed words.

"I don't care that you're a mage," he says. "Honest, I don't; I wouldn't have been suited for the Inquisition if I couldn't get on well with mages. And I wasn't hiding that I was a templar. I just thought everyone knew. Bit big-headed of me, I suppose, expecting everyone to know that much..."

[keenly]

Colin realizes he is dying.

To be fair, he was dying every other time he panicked, too. Until he put together the weird heat on his face, the pressure in his chest, and the hammering of his heart and remembered he's not dying, he's just freaking out. Bizarrely, it never feels like he's freaking out. It feels like a set of symptoms, divorced from his mind entirely. Simon won't see much change to his expression. He might see the flush on Colin's cheeks under the brown tone of his skin, but that's all.

"Who told you?" he asks hesitantly.

[paladingus]

It is fortunate for them both that Simon is not someone who can pick up on those tiny details, not even the flush. Colin's expression reads neutral, nothing more--perhaps even a go-ahead, Simon thinks, if Colin isn't actively trying to shoo him away. He certainly doesn't look like a panicking man, let alone a dying one. But the question is dangerous territory to tread.

"Well--you did," he says, ever so slightly uncertain. He ought to have kept his mouth shut; he always realizes too late that he should have done that. "Not that you said it in so many words, obviously, but--"

He pauses. He owes Colin an honest answer if he's asked, but the old conditioning--don't say too much in front of them, don't give away the tricks of the trade, don't let your authority be compromised--is never so easily shed.

And that, the back of his mind whispers, is why he looks at you like that.

"After you left, I kept thinking about that story you told," he says. "That isn't the way we tell it in Starkhaven. And it wouldn't be, of course; I'd figured the differences were just how it's done in Ferelden, but when I thought about them--ordinary folk don't talk about demons in detail like that. They don't think about drawing summoning circles to lure spirits across the Veil; they think demons are just a thing that happens to mages for complicated magic reasons. They don't joke about 'demon etiquette,' or offering them bodies to possess in exchange for what you want. That's the sort of talk that only comes second nature from spending a lot of time in a Circle."

[keenly]

Damn. Damn, damn, damn, he's right. Colin absolutely gave himself away.

"And here I thought," he says breathlessly, "I was good at hiding. No, it's--"

He stops, takes a deep breath, and holds it for a few seconds before blowing it out. He's fine. This is fine. It's fine! It's fine. It's...fine.

"Maybe I just can't hide anymore. Can't bear to keep hiding. I'm going to be a proper healer, Anders is going to teach me. I don't care if you know. I don't c--"

He's hyperventilating as he speaks. His knees go weak and he stumbles to a bench nearby and sits down hard before burying his face in his hands, breathing deep and willing himself to calm down.

[paladingus]

Not even Simon can turn a blind eye to panic as openly expressed as that. It comes as more of a shock than it ought to, collected as Colin has heretofore appeared to him, but he can't not recognize now how much distress he's caused.

It isn't unfamiliar to him. The Inquisition, with its grudging and tentative stalemate between templars and mages, has been a welcome vacation from seeing mages tremble and plead and fight for breath at the realization that they can't hide from him--but it only ever was a brief armistice, wasn't it? He'd known that going in. He'd approved.

(What happens to Fern, then? What happens to Myr?)

What good does it do anyone in the world, here and now, if he turns Colin back into an adversary, who only wanted to share his cooking with the world and pretend his magic never existed? He's Harrowed, surely; there's no reason not to put the same faith in his willpower and demon-expertise that they did in mages back in the towers--there's no reason he can't be one more name on Simon's growing list of exceptions, one more challenge to a worldview held together with twine and spit and prayer, except for that defiantly-dropped name. Simon knows damn well what Anders wants to teach, and healing is nothing but a pretense.

"Is he," he says tonelessly. The apology on his lips feels impossible to reach now, even if he knows he still owes it. "Well. I'm told we need all of those that we can get."

[keenly]

Simon doesn't approve. Colin did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, mentioning Anders. This may not be a Circle, but templars are still trusted, and Anders, however productive a member of society he is, is not. Why shouldn't Colin learn spirit healing from one of the very best there is? He hadn't considered how it could make him a target. Everything in him is screaming at him to do or say whatever it takes to end the conversation peacefully and get out, but he has to know something.

"What are you going to do?" he asks quietly. As open-minded as the Inquisition seems to be, mages still don't have rights, and templars still have a singular duty. That duty holds a knife to Colin's throat whether Simon knows he wields it or not. And lurking above it all, Simon knows Colin sells lyrium. It is as much a source of power against him as it ever was for him, as much as it made him feel safe.

[paladingus]

"What d'you mean, what am I going to do?" The question could be accusing, hostile, but it's not--the one thing it can't be, though, is genuinely baffled-sounding, much as he wishes it could. He knows what Colin means. They aren't talking about the here-and-now.

But how is he meant to know what to say about anything else? Nobody has the faintest clue where the mage rebellion will go, who the next Divine will be or what she'll decree. He's got absolutely none of this so much as analyzed yet, let alone resolved. All he has to his credit is an awareness of exactly how fraught and fragile it all is.

"It's the Inquisition, mate, not the Circle." His tone is as gentle as he can make it, when he knows what a right Colin has to be wary. "There's no reason for me to do anything regarding you at all. I'm not here to breathe down the back of your neck; I'm here because Corypheus needs killed. You can do as you like, and Maker speed you."

He had thought to qualify that 'do as you like' with an 'if it hurts no one,' but thinks better of it before the words are out. Colin hasn't earned that kind of mistrust. It doesn't have to be the baseline anymore when he talks to a mage. Even for all his dread of what Anders might teach, Simon has no reason yet to think Colin would ever want to harm a soul.

[keenly]

You can do as you like, and Maker speed you.

It is a kind sentiment, a peculiar sort of open-mindedness for a templar, but the reality is more complicated. Mages do not have total freedom, if for no other reason than the prisons of their minds. The Circle is a burden Colin carries everywhere. At night in his dreams, he can still press his hands against the cold stone wall. In the roughly foot-and-a-half of space, he had been convinced he would be found as a skeleton. It took him time to learn how to walk again after that.

He feels like he's learning to walk again now.

Simon doesn't seem like he's going to tell the Inquisition about the lyrium. The question now is what Colin is going to do. For the second time in this conversation, he looks up at Simon, meeting his gaze.

"You still have power over me," he says slowly, able to cobble together some expression of calming down. "Whether you want it or no. The Chantry has taught us both that your sword, given to you to kill my people, is righteous. Anything I say can be used against me. If you tell a lie about me, your word is worth more than mine. At any time, you can take away my ability to fight back. Not just with your powers--you might not even know you've done it. I..."

Two more deep breaths, and he is actually calming down instead of only appearing to.

"I need to think. I need time. I want to trust you, I want to stay friends, but I can...I can barely make friends who aren't prepared to kill me."