faderift | [closed] I waited for you but I never told you where I was

Entry tags:

[closed] I waited for you but I never told you where I was

WHO: Julius and Petrana
WHAT: Airing of grievances, inadvertently
WHEN: Slightly forward-dated to sometime after the end of the phylactery discussion
WHERE: Petrana's office
NOTES: No warnings for now

Julius is no stranger to handling a variety of unpleasant events quietly and privately. It's what he prefers, generally, and if it's been a rough few months for him... it's been a rough few months for a lot of people. He hasn't made any particular connection between the stress he's been through and why the results of the discussion over what to request of the Inquisition in regards to the phylacteries rankled him so deeply. It was nothing particularly worse than the discussions that had led up to the rebellion, the arguments almost predictable in their content, if not always in their sources.

In point of fact, Julius hadn't been planning to discuss it, or himself, at all. He'd been hoping to see Petrana back to herself after more time had passed since her recovery. He'd thought dinner might be pleasant, and wine to go with it. (If she wanted to talk business instead, there was plenty of business to go around.)

And yet, despite all his good intentions, he found himself several glasses in and saying, "Of course I don't want to derail the Inqusition's work, anyone who wants that would have left already. Being here in the first place is proof of good faith for more or less any mage who doesn't have an anchor shard, but the people who will see that are probably the people who won't need convincing to smash the things."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This, too, is business after a fashion—and perhaps not how she'd envisioned finding out what was made of her gesture. Probably, she should be informing her colleagues of the possibility of an impending mass strike action on the part of the Inquisition mages; instead, she refills Julius's glass as he speaks, nodding, sympathetic, easy to talk to in the warmth of firelight and alcohol.

“That it should even be a question,” she sighs, her dissatisfaction plain in it as she tops up her own glass (only a little less than his, judiciously), sitting back in her seat and not quite slouching where corset bones simply will not allow it. An elbow on the arm of her chair, her fist against the corner of her mouth, wine-glass dangling in the fingers of her other hand— “Of course I understand the frustration. It is a thing that should have been simple enough to resolve—you were threatened! Shall we not neutralize that threat?”

"Precisely," Julius said. "And, as more than one person has pointed out, the Inquisition was happy enough to work with us without having access to our phylacteries until now. It is... it is a return to the status quo, with the added benefit of bolstering the Inquisition's best selling point if Skyhold doesn't squander the chance at it." He's not entirely conscious of being over-frank, though he will be later. He's as prone as most native mages to the trap he's spent his whole life learning, especially when he's tired; despite disagreements within camps, the world is divided into mages and nonmages, and it is easy to think of her as the former.

"It's a gift if they play it right, and surely there's someone at the top who can see that."

If not, she thinks—

She thinks they will be shown.

He has yet to question only circle mages having been informed; it occurs to her in a distant way that this is an accomplishment in itself, that former circle mages might have come to a position within the Inquisition where they might take for granted having information so important to them personally being shared with them. They ought to know.

The disappointment of the truth is coming, but it can wait. She presses her free hand over his, encouraging: “It is an opportunity, no? The Inquisition has led the way, so far, in respecting the independence of mages. In benefiting from that independence most extensively—circumstances have conspired that they need not take a strong position. One might still look up to Skyhold, and see what one wishes to see.”

She sits back. Sips her wine.

“I would like to see them clarify that, for my part.”

"Yes -- it's suddenly a more direct choice than it was." Julius looks down at his wine, frowning a bit absently. He's not truly drunk, for all he's less guarded than she (or, probably, anyone in Kirkwall) is accustomed to seeing him. "I know as well as anyone why people are afraid. I've seen mages become abominations, and not just in self-defense when pushed too far. But this isn't the answer, and I can't entirely blame my fellow mages for worrying that the Inquisition will let fear get the better of their judgment. I would like to think they will know better, but..."

A shrug. But he's lived in Thedas all his life, and he can't, with a straight face, tell other mages that they have no reason to worry.

“But if the question were so easy to answer,” she says, neatly picking up the thread of his thought, “then already we would have that answer.”

And not this interminable waiting, while the phylacteries of so many mages gather dust in a locked vault within the Gallows. It chafes at her to sit here so still, to tolerate this forced patience and not know the outcome; not for the first time, lately, she misses the days when—Marius aside—her every request was understood to be an order.

If the phylacteries are ordered to Skyhold, what then?

"Quite so. And it creates a hierarchy of sorts based on pure chance. As far as I've heard, no one is publicly calling for the creation of phylacteries for mages whose originals were destroyed, or who never had them to begin with. But if they keep these long enough, eventually someone will point out that there's no assurance anyone who goes rouge will simply happen to be among the subset of us they've decided to leash."

A moment, then:

"I came back, in part, because the Inquisition argued that the threat of Corypheus supersedes any fight over mages' future in Thedas. If they play this wrong, they can never credibly argue that again. Certainly not to any native mages."

Julius laughs, then, ruefully and without real humor. "Maker, listen to me, you'd almost mistake me for a rebel in truth. I fear I'm becoming tiresome."

“Not at all,” she protests, tilting her glass slightly toward him as if to underscore the point— “It cannot be forgotten that ceasefire and peace treaty are two entirely different things. The war has had no resolution, simply a tabling of hostilities in the face of a greater enemy; if the Inquisition implicitly throws its weight behind one force, how can they continue to work with both? How could they then argue that to join the Inquisition is not, for all mages, an implicit surrender to an eventual return to the status quo?”

She sits forward, following her own gesture, not raising her voice but impassioned in her quiet way: “Enjoy running about now, tolerated while you are useful, but expect neither gratitude nor respect. That is that message. Isn't it?”

"Exactly," he agrees, a bit more heated though no louder. "And even those mages who believe that some form of Circle -- reformed, self-governed, or otherwise -- will be forced to choose whether we will stand that implicit decision in favor of the templars, or at least in favor of the status quo, or whether we will be forced to support those we find extreme because we're given no viable alternative. Again. And compared to a temporary work stoppage, that truly would disrupt the Inqusition's progress toward its goal."

Julius initially seems as if he is winding down, but then: "And what does it say to Rifters? Elves? Qunari? It undercuts any rhetoric about creating alliances on anything like an equal footing." What then.

“Rifters who would be surprised have not been paying attention,” she sighs, more weary with the thought than angered by it; not her place nor her responsibility to devote time to ensuring that those who arrived in her manner don't miss the forest for the trees, but she is not unsympathetic to the reasons why so many might.

(Despite how much more difficult it can make her job—marching about Thedas like bulls surrounded by tea service. Her efforts on that front have been limited by her position, her priorities, but given the opportunity she does try to speak reason. If she had one wish, she thinks, it would be to persuade more that 'compromise' is not a dirty word.)

“The fate of the world ought to come first, of course, but what world do we ask be saved?”

Is the Inquisition's world one that mages will wish saved?

"One needn't ally with the Inquisition to fight red templars and Venatori," he says, leaning back a bit in his chair. "But doing it at cross purposes serves no one, makes everyone less effective. I never thought our leaders altruistic," not because they'd been particularly untrustworthy by Thedas' standards, especially, but because Julius doesn't believe anyone altruistic can seize and hold power for that length of time, "but I thought they were reasonably intelligent. But I cannot truthfully look at other mages and say we have no reason to worry."

And he would like to. He worries that some of the harsher voices might come to the fore, that pushing too hard too fast might incline the Inquisition to dig in their heels in defiance of good sense.

"What do you think? How would you approach it in our place?"

“I would approach it diplomatically, first.” Her small smile is wry; says the diplomat, yes, says Kirkwall's Inquisitorial ambassador. It's unlikely Julius was expecting her to say she'd shoot first and ask questions later. “I would make these arguments; I would treat in good faith with the Inquisition as an organisation of reasonable people with whom I am able to have a discussion.”

And in a perfect world, it would be enough. Maybe even in just a slightly better world.

“I'd decide before I sat down at that table what I felt was both necessary and within my capacity to achieve, what I would do in the event that I rose from it without resolution. I would...” A small laugh, a private thing. “Hope for the very best. Plan for it, plan how I would handle the resolution, how I would express myself, whether I felt gratitude appropriate or not...but plan for the worst, as well. Be as sure as I might that when I stand up from that discussion, regardless of in whose favor it had turned, I would have a next move.”

"It's much as I would do," he says, running his thumb along the outer curve of his glass. "I've noticed a distinct lack of diplomats in our number, though, and I don't know who is going to present the idea. Voss, maybe, if we're lucky. How it gets done will matter, and that's largely out of my hands; we're not organized enough to have a vote on it."

Yet.

"Maker, I'd hate to run again." As much as being with the Inquisition hasn't been restful, he's better at this. It's let him use the full range of his skills openly and mostly without apology, if nothing else. He tilts his head back and, briefly, looks pre-emptively tired at the thought. "I'd say I shouldn't have told you I might, but I respect your intelligence too much to think you wouldn't have worked that out for yourself."

“Voss strikes me as a woman most prepared,” Petra observes, and while calculating is not the same as diplomatic, it's nevertheless both admirable and useful. In diplomacy there is room for—even need of—a streak of ruthlessness, and while she doesn't know Voss well...

She has approved of what she's seen. An intelligent, considered, proactive woman; the Inquisition needs more of those. It ought to be grateful for those it has.

“As you strike me a most sensible man. I should think less of you, Julius, did I believe the thought would never occur.”

"I should've made more connections sooner," he says, frankly. "The people who know me from before the Inquisition may like me personally," at least some of them, "but on the whole know they disagree with my politics. Foolish to think I'd have more time to build new alliances, I suppose, but here we are. Here I am," he corrects. "You have plenty of problems of your own, but at least not this one directly."

As part of her work, of course. The Inquisition's choice would make it harder or easier for her to do her job. But no one had her blood in a vial.

(Nor his, he thinks guilty and uneasily, but he still hasn't decided what to do about that news.)

"My point, inasmuch as I did have one, is that anyone who stops to think for a moment will see that if all the mages agree on anything, it's an unusual day. We didn't even all agree on the rebellion." And while they don't all agree on the strike, he hasn't heard any of them advocating the position that the Inquisition should keep the phylacteries.

Her gaze falls for a moment on her wedding ring, perfect stone and broken spell; remembers Anders' offer to help her destroy it, and the way her fingers had curled tight under her palm, reluctant. No. The rifts had made short work of that problem, for her—

it does not merit speaking of, this moment. She sips her wine and thinks because there's no need to divert conversation down a dead end and not, because she has no immediate desire to remind Julius she wears a wedding band.

“It may not be my problem,” after a moment, “but it is one very near to my heart, all the same. I have very high hopes of the Inquisition. I would be most disappointed to find them wanting in this.”

"And here I am, berating myself for having enough faith to be broken," Julius observes with a rueful smile. "That said, no one would be more relieved than I if they simply did the right thing the first time and all this anxiety turns out to be unnecessary."

He doesn't know if he'd leave, if they try the work stoppage and it doesn't change anything. He hopes he'll know before it comes to that.

"You are very good to allow me to spend your time venting my frustration this way, regardless."

The tight way she smiles into her glass—

Yes, wouldn't that be lovely. She talks a good game, hoping, but if they were going to capitulate so easily then all of this would look different, wouldn't it? She wouldn't be going around her colleagues, Skyhold wouldn't need nearly so long to think on what they might yet do, mages wouldn't have to dig their heels in to be heard...

Sometimes that war of theirs feels closer than others. Of all the dogs snapping at their heels, she thinks perhaps she fears that bite the most; that the Inquisition will lose its credibility when it needs it most, that they will come apart at the seams entirely and this world will burn because they couldn't pull together long enough to put it out. Perhaps it should twinge differently in her conscience that she did not simply do as was counselled and allow the decision that is not hers to make be made, a fait accompli; what part will she have played, if the worst happens?

She looks up from the wine at Julius, whose faith does not look so very broken from where she sits, and thinks: I have acted within my conscience, very firmly. And she makes no decisions, no demands, only determines that Kirkwall's mages ought not be caught off-guard. It is a matter, surely, of respect.

“I consider you a friend,” she says, mirroring his smile. “I'd not turn away a friend in his trial.”

Julius' faith isn't broken yet, and that strikes him as worse than the alternative. He'd originally thought the Inquisition simply the best of several bad options, the most likely way to fight an undeniably growing thread while earning himself some social capital to leverage in whatever came after. An organization that had places for everyone from Anders to Loghain Mac Tir was one that he was fairly confident would not turn him away.

But the reminder that, for all their rhetoric, their leaders may see many of them as tools rather than allies is an unexpectedly bitter one when he intellectually knows he shouldn't have expected otherwise.

Instead of saying any of that, though, he softens slightly. "I consider you a friend as well," he says, "and in the unlikely event you ever feel the need for so much candor about something irritating you, I would gladly return the favor." He doubts she's going to be so frank with him any time soon, no matter how much she likes him, but it's a well-meant offer nonetheless.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[closed] I waited for you but I never told you where I was

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

no subject

no subject