The Days That Bind Us 2: Still Bound

[exequy]

WHO: Mages, anyone else who cares
WHAT: Give us liberty or give us potatoes, or: a most noble strike for a most noble purpose, or: pissy mage babies throw a tantrum
WHEN: 14-19 Cloudreach 9:44
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This is for consolidating RP regarding the strike. Your character doesn't have to be striking themselves to top-level or tag around, as long as it's tangentially related.

The morning of Cloudreach 14, with minimal fanfare, a significant fraction of the Circle mages working with the Inquisition across Thedas stops showing up for work. On the other hand, a significant fraction doesn't stop. But the not-working fraction is significant enough to cause problems, and for the Inquisition to not delay or prolong the discussions already set to take place at Skyhold with a few representatives of the aggrieved mages and a number of Templar and Chantry representatives.

In the Gallows, most of the mages who are refusing to work relocate—voluntarily, unless being scowled at by Kostos Averesch qualifies as being forced against one's will—to the dusty recruits' quarters in the former Templar tower for an indefinite, politicized slumber party, featuring uncomfortable bunk beds and a lot of unseasoned starches. For a cause.

ooc | Remember that striking characters are generally losing access to confidential information, Inquisition equipment or materials, and any amenities, comforts, or privileges beyond the "plain potatoes for dinner" and "not thrown out into the streets" level.

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

"Lunch."

There's a rueful laugh behind the word; he recognizes what he's done out of a misplaced soft-hearted impulse. But once done, it can't be taken back so easily. "And reading material. I'd heard you were short both." So, fix the problem.

This is why he wouldn't have been any good at striking.

[exequy]

Unseen, Kostos' eyes narrow. He's realizing he doesn't know whether or not Myrobalan fought in the war. The blindfold would have stood out—but there were thousands of them, at Andoral's Reach, and many more elsewhere, and either way perhaps the blindfold came later.

He doesn't ask.

He says, "I have been much shorter, for much longer," extending the edge of the books forward to touch the elf's chest. Keep them. Them, and any sense that gestures mean a damn thing, when the Inquisition is getting a solid look at what it can accomplish with only half of its mages while it decides if the rest of them are worth the trouble.

[faithlikeaseed]

Well. There's that.

It's not unexpected--and not the worst way Myr'd had spontaneous kindness (however unwanted) thrown back in his face. (One can't be related to Vandelin Elris and not get skewered for putting a foot wrong, once in a while.) It isn't unexpected and he takes the books back--and finds himself standing there at an awkward loss for words.

"Thank you, then. For that--and this." He doesn't know why Kostos was out there to go without, though he suspects, from the company the Nevarran keeps, from what he'd said and done on the way to Ansburg and back. "I--"

No, better to quit while he's ahead. He cuts the rest of the thought short. "Maker walk with you, enchanter." For his part--and he's far less lofty company--Myr's going the other way. (Mercifully.)

[exequy]

Everything about this is Kostos' fault.

The physical act of throwing the roll, obviously. That's a choice—the same kind of choice that's led him, in the past, to find out what happens when you punch a metal helmet with a bare fist, an impulsive moment of fury that would horrify him if it found an outlet via magic instead of his arms, but a choice nonetheless. The fact that it doesn't find an outlet via magic is evidence in itself. He's still in that much control.

There's also the fact that the roll is in his hands to begin with, when it should have been on the books. That's his oversight, noticed too late, with a movement to add it awkwardly aborted because Myr is turning away and can't see an indication that he should wait.

And there's the fury itself. The resentment it's rooted in isn't specific to Myr. It isn't even specific to the mages refusing to strike. It's much older than that, sparked the first day he realized if we fight, we fight as one was a promise not everyone meant to keep, and stoked every time someone who kept their hands clean exercises freedom he's bent and close to breaking from trying to protect, when he didn't even want it, either. And now it's a shadow over everything, capable of shading in someone's attempt to walk away from hostility as haughty maintenance of the high ground, or a perfectly kind word of parting as dismissal.

He doesn't have to see it that way. He could take a breath and count to ten, or whatever.

But he's still holding that roll, until he quite suddenly isn't, because the roll has been aimed with precision he wouldn't have been able to manage if he were actually thinking about it and loosed directly at the back of Myr's head, which—

Maybe it's a little better, throwing things at someone who's blind, if someone who isn't blind also wouldn't have been able to see it coming? Arguably?

[faithlikeaseed]

Arguably.

The roll strikes its hapless target, bouncing off the back of Myr's head and sending him stumbling--not from the negligible force of the impact but sheer surprise. He recovers with a knight-enchanter's poise, thinking: What was that?--realizing a moment later he's crushed his books against his chest quite without meaning to, and there's something missing from the stack. (Thankfully. For his robes' sake.)

He hadn't seen Kostos keep the roll back or try to return it. It's the little missing gap in the whole series--something hit him in the head, the roll's missing, Kostos kept it, why?--that he's got to leap over and land on the wrong conclusion: This was all planned from the instant he made the offer. Kostos took his lunch with intent to backstab--backroll?--him with it. The sheer pettiness of it takes Myr's breath away, and he's a long, long moment standing there as his erstwhile lunch rolls (ha!) a little way down the hall and fetches up sadly against the wall.

"What," Maker and Your Bride give me patience to endure and grace to forgive, "did I do to deserve that?"

He's very precise about the words. Very careful. Hadn't known until now his own anger over all of it, the whole monstrous shape of the last four years, was so close to the surface.

[exequy]

In another mood he might be able to make some sort of halting, stumbling speech, about how many mages they have lost to even temporarily secure a world where Myrobalan can carry on with Templars—in whatever capacity—as an equal, about how tenuous their hold on that world is, about how all of the metaphorical and theoretical potential of a leash to save an animal from harm still leaves one party to that metaphor an animal, not a friend, not a colleague—

He is not in that mood. He is in this mood, one that accompanies throwing food at blind elves.

"I am certain you have not done a damned thing," he bites out, with the kind of teeth-gritting civility that frequently serves as a last warning before a fist fight. It's the most he can manage. But he probably won't hit anyone, in this particular situation, given the givens. That would be even more too far than normal.

[faithlikeaseed]

So why, he nearly starts, before the point of it catches him, barbed and recurved for tearing flesh and drawing blood. He sucks in a breath for the sting of it, holds it for a slow count of five (Loyalist traitors will burn with the Chantry!), lets it go. The anger does not go with it--he wishes it would--but it's at enough of a remove now he can place it back on the shelf where it belongs. Deal with it later. For now--

A mad, bitter impulse tempts him toward a joke: I'm doing quite a lot; isn't that the issue, during a strike? But that's the sort of thing that gets punches thrown, the sort of idiot provocation he grew out of years ago. Philomela did not train fools who'd lightly disregard a warning; a fight between allies (friends?) to prove a point was an unforgivable waste of resources.

Other words, though, words to de-escalate and defray--don't come ready to mind, not after another breath and five-count, not after turning back to face Kostos' direction as if he would say something. His jaw works soundlessly a moment before he gives up on it, gives the other mage a nod--heard, acknowledged--and steps across the hallway only to drop to one knee, stacking the books beside him and reaching toward the wall with a careful hand.

He's trying to find the roll. Alienage habit: You don't waste food even if it's got your hair in it, even if it's fallen on the floor--it might be all you're getting, that day or the next. Pity it took an odd angle off his head, ending up much nearer to Kostos than he suspected; pity he's starting all the way over here, leaving Kostos ample room to not hit anyone in.

At least focusing on something else frustrating and demeaning gets him out of focusing on the conversation. It's easier to find something to say once he's not wound up in it. Quietly, then: "That's the problem, isn't it."

Not quite an apology for inaction, for fraternizing, for any of it, but he's heard. He knows.

[exequy]

Kostos glares at him for a few seconds, silent, unsympathetic to the fact that Myr can't see the flat of course that is the fucking problem quality to the expression. But he isn't unsympathetic to the search for the roll—being something less than a monster, being actually something of an incredibly secret bleeding heart, just one that's bad at feelings and people and hardened especially toward people who make the other things his heart is already bleeding over worse.

So after those few second, he steps forward to pick up the roll, unannounced and unnarrated, and forward again to place it on top of the books, before he turns and walks the other way without comment. He's barely down the hall before his self-righteous anger sinks into a sulky and resentful shame. Completely Myr's fault he acted like a child—but he did act like a child.

Still, he doesn't turn around.

[faithlikeaseed]

He sits back on his heels as Kostos walks toward him, marking the footfalls--the pause--and a second pause and wondering only a little at it. No need to reach out and check that his lunch has been returned to him, though he does, and finding it right there back atop the books gets a murmured word of thanks out of him. Never mind Kostos had been the one to throw it in the first place; gratitude is a spinal reflex at this point.

One he's wise enough not to push, though. Books, roll, staff, self-- he picks the lot up with commendable grace, juggling everything without losing it (though the roll ends up in his mouth somewhere along the line; not enough hands) and pausing to orient himself. The nearest glyph pings quietly up ahead, which means he was going this way before--

All of that.

Brief as the interaction was, he'll be a long time thinking about it.