faderift | CLOSED | one minute you say we're a team

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CLOSED | one minute you say we're a team

WHO: Darras & Yseult
WHAT: A random courier mission
WHEN: Before news from Tevinter
WHERE: A road into the Vinmarks
NOTES: Pirate language probable. Maybe giant spiders. Who knows.

[ It's not exactly a glamorous mission, which is fine. The problem--Yseult thinks to herself but does not say when she is handed the assignment--is that it's also not a good use of her skills. Yes, the agent needs to be met in the pass midway from Wildervale, the message needs to be collected and delivered the rest of the way to Kirkwall. But surely they could send someone else, like an actual messenger, or anyone with two legs and a brain, and not a highly-trained spy? At first she'd thought perhaps there must be some other dimension to this, some suspicion about the courier, or some potential threat. But no. This is the Inquisition, and as it turns out their rumored egalitarian leanings are both very much true and also seem extend even to their internal assignment structures. It's all very different than she's used to.

So her horse is not the only one champing at the bit to get going and get this over with as she waits just outside Kirkwall's northern gate. Even this early, the road toward Wildervale is busy, merchants and farmers coming and going, wagon traffic stirring up dust to make the already-sweltering day even less pleasant. Her horse is a big grey mare who immediately ate every green thing in reach and has now taken to snorting impatiently, head tossed as much as the reins tied to a tree branch will allow her. Yseult leans against the trunk out of biting range, arms crossed, squinting at the gate. "Someone from Forces will meet you," she was told at the last second, over her protests (not in so many words) that sending two skilled agents was even worse than wasting one. But it seems there have been reports of animal attacks, and they are taking no chances.

She doesn't expect to see Darras, and even shades her eyes with a hand to be sure (as if she could mistake him). She doesn't expect him to come towards her, either. What are the chances, after all, that out of everyone in Forces, his name was pulled? And that he actually turned up to do the work? Slim, but here they are. She pushes off the trunk and lifts her hand in a little (awkward, ill-advised) wave. ]

Good morning.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Should've kept that sealed letter up your sleeve, held it for an actually useful time. You went and wasted it right up front.

[Mind, Darras isn't complaining that he wasn't carefully vetted. Nor would he complain that the Inquisition seems perfectly fine with actual pirates, fine enough that Darras could tell the truth, and he'd not likely be stuffed in a cell. A whole ship of pirates comes sailing in to the harbor, and the Inquisition lets them take up housing. It's nothing he'll be raising with Yseult, but she can't have missed that particular arrival.

Better to keep all that to himself. He takes two brisk bites, with a little smirk at the content of her complaint.]

And what is it, that would be more worthwhile, in your mind?

[ All of those pirates are certainly who Yseult has in mind when she complains about lax vetting standards; if they're allowed to just walk in openly, who all is the Inquisition unwittingly accepting? It's worked out in Darras's case, but it's not what she'd expected the Inquisition to be. Very little of it is, so far. But she doesn't want to steer this conversation there and risk giving him ammunition to renew the argument that they should both just go. ]

Intelligence-gathering. Determining which side suspected enemy sympathizers are on. Stealing correspondence between enemy agents, finding out about their meetings and spying on them, mapping their network. Feeding bad intel to those we can use, eliminating those we can't. [ She shrugs, and tucks the bite of pear she's just taken into one cheek to add ] Choosing the missions is over my head, but something that makes use of my actual skills. What do they have you doing?

[He spreads his hands out, in a small gesture of presentation.]

This. So you're not alone in being undervalued. S'ppose I can't blame them, really. They can only make assignments based on what they know, and I was less than honest about my true line of work.

[Three more bites, and he's done with his pear. An overhand throw sends it rolling away into the underbrush, and he wipes the back of his hand over his mouth, clearing some of the juice.]

Now, if I was to be honest with them, d'you think it would forever ruin your chances of ever getting to do work worthy of your talents?

[ Good question. And good that he's asking it to begin with. Yseult's still got a few bites left to go, and she takes one as she considers. ]

No, I don't expect that it would. All we told them is that you were a contact of mine enlisted to help in that attempt, we never said you weren't also a pirate. The Commander at least may be more suspicious of me for concealing it, but they can hardly blame us. [ And apparently they've no problem with pirates. ] You should tell them if you want to.

[ Yseult finishes off the last of her fruit and wipes her fingers on the grass, and then her pants. She looks up as she's doing it, and flashes Darras a quick little smile before finding a reason to look away again, picking dirt from beneath her nail. ]

Thank you for asking first.

Yeah, well. Despite first impressions, I'm not actively seeking your failure.

[He says it lightly, means it as a joke. It's true, though, and as he admits it, Darras remembers, again, that night in the tower, stood face to face with a woman he'd assumed dead. Relief and disbelief, a flood of feeling that took his breath from him, left him gutted and weak. And then angry, when she'd not stayed in that moment with him.

She's still here, alive. Complicated, a puzzle Darras had thought he understood, before turning it over and finding another new facet, cripplingly complex. He looks over at Yseult, lovely in the shade of the forest.]

If you're here because you believe they're doing good, I'm not here to stand in the way of that. Never was. That's what I wanted for you, anyways-- [More or less, and his shrug denotes that, as he drops his eyes.] If you think you'll not get punished. Then I might as well tell them. The Commander, [with some sarcasm.]

[ Yseult smiles, as warm and true as he's seen in months. But it hangs a little too long--not changing, but the moment changing around it as it lingers past its natural lifespan without the expected follow-up. There's still these couple feet between them, and everything else besides, and even Yseult gets wrongfooted by that, the tangle of competing impulses.

Her eyes drop first, smile turning self-consciously crooked, and then she looks away altogether, brushing her hands together unnecessarily and pushing to her feet. ]

We should get back on the road.

[He's smiling back, without meaning to. The expression comes over him in answer to hers, and then it sticks, because hers is sticking too. He thinks for a moment about saying something, when she doesn't. How to fill that silence that falls between them. It isn't entirely empty. That's part of what stops him. There's something to it, a charge like what comes before a thunderstorm.

Yseult breaks that silence before it breaks itself, and Darras lets his gaze linger on her face a moment longer as she hauls herself to her feet. Then he grabs for the sack, still weighted with uneaten fruit.]

And here I was getting to just like the forest.

[He shoots another half-grin at her, and then all at once, his expression drops. There's a shadow, over her shoulder. It wasn't there before. Hulking, seething--moving almost soundless, closer, only now he can hear the whisper of it against the dry leaves--]

Yseult.

[She'll have heard it by now, if he's seen it. His hand has gone to a sword that isn't there. The falchion wasn't anything to ride with. It's back on Horse. And he's got a sack of food, and there's a bloody giant spider.]

[ She senses it in the same moment Darras sees it, the sudden absence of his smile in time with the prickling at the back of her neck. She turns just her head, far enough to make a rough guess at distance and determine she's got space enough to move swiftly back to Darras's side.

There's no blade at her hip either, but there are a few little ones tucked here and there, and she bends to produce the longest of them from her boot and hand it over, in case he hasn't got his own. The next she keeps for herself, fitting into her grip as she eyes the creature skittering menacingly toward them. ]

Even with eight legs it can't fight us both at once if we separate [ she says, voice low. As if might overhear. ] I'll draw it off, you circle around and hack off a leg. When it turns its attention to you, I'll take another. Good?

[Trust Yseult to have extra knives. Darras was just thinking longingly of his own when she produces one for him. He accepts, with a half-second grateful glance, unwilling to take his eyes from the spider for too long, lest it leap suddenly forward.

It doesn't. Content to approach, slow, with a hiss that raises the hair on his arms.]

Good, [he agrees.] Except for the bit where you didn't tell me to be watching out for bloody spiders. Bears, Dalish... no spiders.

[She'll move, as lithe and as graceful as the sidestep that put her at his side again. She'll draw it off, keeping well clear of it. Darras tightens his grip on Yseult's knife.]

You owe me, after this. For not giving the proper warning.

I didn't know there were spiders! [ Yseult replies, and there's a laugh in there, threaded through the tone of her protest, but already it's fading out as she shifts her focus to the task ahead.

The spider is still approaching, but slowly, by fits and starts, although it seems to be realizing that it's lost the element of surprise, and so scurries suddenly closer. Yseult darts ahead of Darras, makes herself noticeable with a lunging slash toward the beast, and then quickly circles and back out of range, moving into a wider space between the trees at Darras's 10 o'clock, hoping the spider will follow and leave its back exposed. ]

[Like clockwork, the spider follows, turning with surprising agility. The weight of its abdomen swings almost pendulum-like, forelegs raised off the ground, first, a menacing pose--one that doesn't last long. Darting forward, eyes glittering with a black malevolence--

And then Darras darts forward right after it, clean as clockwork himself. The knife is short--of course it's short, it's a bloody knife, but he's used to the sword, and he's got to get in close to hack at a leg--which he does, gamely, with a broad stoke.

The spider's scream, all rage and pain, almost makes Darras leap back again. He digs instead, hacks again--broad, brutal--and feels the leg give under the blade. Like chopping wood, but warmer, more alive--more angry, as the spider wheels around to seethe toward him instead.]

[ The spider's scream is horrible, almost enough to throw Yseult back a step or two. The beast wheels around to confront Darras and lunges toward him, front legs raised and fangs dripping, all the cautious build-up now abandoned.

The stump of the leg Darras has hacked off nearly whacks Yseult as the spider spins, and she does jump back then to avoid getting hit with what's left of the lower leg, still dangling. She leaves it, already made useless, and attacks the leg beside it. Her first attempt to chop through the leg as Darras did sticks in the spider's flesh and is nearly jerked back out of her hands. But it comes free and she re-sets her grip and steps in even closer to the spider, arm raised to stab repeatedly at the leg joint itself.

She's totally focused while she's doing it, the need to stab in the right area to incapacitate this second leg meaning that it takes her a while before she calls over to check: ]

All right?

[The rush wrongfoots Darras almost more than the agility. The hairy abdomen swings, again--another screech, this one worse than before, and he's practically against a tree as it lunges for him. The fangs, the mandibles, whatever they are, they're close enough that he gets an eyeful of their glisten. With a steady hand, he raises the dagger to stab. Suddenly it seems too small in his hand.

And then the spider's scream transforms into pain again, and the hair on Darras arms stand up. He can see Yseult just beyond, the effort of hacking at the leg already loosing some strands of hair.]

All right-- [he calls back, in the wake of the spider's scream. It's turned its attention back toward Yseult again, snapping its jaws in gnashing pain and anger. Its remaining legs scrabble in the dirt as it tries to turn itself again, and Darras makes good with the blow that he'd readied, jumps forward and gets another strike in on one of the remaining legs. A good hard cut, severing the leg. The spider's scream fills the woods.]

Been better. Still feeling a little betrayed, not having been told about the spiders. You?

Again with the-- [ Yseult's cut off for a moment by the spider's scream and the effort required to dive out of the way of its flailing and roll into a crouch a few yards away, stabbing upwards into the abdomen-- ] the whining about challenging surprises. Are you sure you're a pirate?

[ Her knife suddenly gets stuck, caught in the edge of the exoskeleton and jerked out of her hand the next time the spider moves. She grabs for it, catching the handle on the second try, but it's already slick with goo and the spider rears up wildly, jaws gnashing, and Yseult's forced to retreat. ]

I've lost my knife [ she calls, sounding calm despite the spider hobbling angrily after her ] Distract it a moment. [ while she...whatever. finds a stick? ]

Pirates-- [pointed, with that narrow patience that comes in times of trial] --don't have to fight giant spiders.

[There's challenging surprises and then there's challenging surprises. But Darras is no coward, truly, and when the spider rears back, he darts in again, slashing this time at the exposed underbelly. No need to leap backwards to avoid retaliation: the spider turns on Yseult instead.]

Lost your knife where-- [But he sees it as soon as he's asked, protruding grotesquely from the spider's side. With a string of swearwords, Darras moves forward again with a wide double slash. The spider's shriek is angrier still, and it rounds on him.]

Sure you don't want this knife? I'll not be using it in a moment here. When my arm's off-- [He slashes again, more to buy himself distance as the spider lunges forward, unsteady with its injuries. Bantering needs to stop for the moment.]

But you've no problem with a giant squid? That doesn't make any sense.

[ Yseult has managed to retrieve a large stick in the moments that Darras is slashing and being lunged and shrieked at. The noise isn't getting any less horrible. It must be on its last legs (literally), and rather than attempt to whirl back toward Yseult again it remains focused on Darras, even as she swings her newly-acquired club and hammers at the creature's remaining back legs.

She's focused, but after a moment realizes the complaining as stopped. Unable to see him around the spider or spare a moment to move and go look, she calls ]

Darras?

Keep hitting it--

[Thin, strained, from somewhere on the ground.]

Keep hitting it, now--

[The spider registers the blow and tries to wheel around to Yseult again. Some of its remaining legs fold, weakly--some stay upright--and the spider's bulk dips, lifts again, as it struggles to keep itself up.

Darras gets a momentary glimpse of Yseult, in that second--and she of him, backed up into the treeline, with a gash on his arm. Just as he'd said, the spider had gone for his arm, and frothy drool still mingles with the blood--but he's still got the knife, and as the spider gives up on Yseult for the moment and turns back to him, scrambling forward with a scream, Darras rakes the blade across its face. The scream changes again, high and pained. Dark blood leaks down its face, blue and deep like the middle of the ocean at dark. Blind, the spider flails forward, remaining legs tapping crazily at the ground, and rearing toward the sky.

Yseult will need no urging. She still has the stick in her hands. He can see her, pink in the cheeks from the sun and her hair half-escaped from her braid, making a halo over her head. She looks drawn and focused, a woman prepared. He loves her. It's a bad time to think it, but he does.]

[ She doesn't see him right off, though, not in that moment when he's replying, not a hint of teasing in his voice or of complaint, just tension and urgency from somewhere on the ground. Yseult's already focused and determined, but that unfamiliar tone from him sends a spike of adrenaline through her, something closer to real fear than she almost ever feels in a fight anymore. It's like that moment on the Dragon's Breath, the sword swung fit to cleave him in two, except now she's not at his side and can't fling her blade in between them. Now she's just got a stick, and a desperate, furious spider in the way of it.

But it's no time to panic and so she doesn't, even if that chill clutches at her insides, just raising her weapon and smashing it down on the spider's remaining limbs, doing her best to shatter joints and unbalance it, knock it back, maybe force it to turn and grapple with her. She aims the blows as best she can despite the beast's movement, none of her time or energy wasted on wild angry strikes. Finally, the last leg holding the spider up in its rear is smashed and the spider topples, rolled first onto its side and then flopping onto its back, abruptly helpless.

Yseult heads quickly around it, death throes ignored. It's already clear that Darras is likely fine--she can see him more clearly now and that the wound is just on his arm, not bleeding enough to be dangerous. Probably. She eyes that drying froth. ]

I don't think these are poisonous, but we ought to wash that out. Do you feel at all ill, or-- strange? Dizzy?

Edited (nit picking) 2018-08-23 14:08 (UTC)

[The chaos of the moment clears when Yseult steps around the collapsed spider. The creature is not dead--but it will be, crippled beyond any ability to right itself, or defend itself, never mind feed itself. Seeking shelter while wounds mend is equally beyond it. The hissing is now panicked, pained.

Despite this great distraction, Darras isn't looking at the spider. He's looking at Yseult. Only when she makes reference to the wound does he look down at it. Right. And there's the pain of it, bearable, certainly not pleasant.]

No. Nothing yet. Still some water left, yeah? That'll do--

[With a deep intake of breath, he pushes to his feet. There's twigs and leaves stuck to him. Arm held awkwardly, he wipes the flat of her knife against his shirt--one side, then the other, clearing off the deep blue blood.]

Are we killing it outright, or leaving it to die?

[Not at all what he truly wants to say. He meets Yseult's eye as he holds the knife out for her to take back, hilt first. There is more truth in his gaze than in even the tone or pitch of his words, more that burns there.]

[ Yseult's focus remains, just shifted from the matter of defending against the spider to handling Darras's wound. It may not be serious, but the threat of poison or infection remains, and he can't go around still bleeding all day in any event. ]

We should kill it. And I want my other knife back, [ she says, as she looks around for the bag he was carrying when the spider appeared, locating it back beside a tree and collecting the water skin. She holds his wrist as she pours with the other hand, liberally rinsing the cut. There's a cloth in the bag as well, formerly used to wrap the bread, and she shakes it out with a couple brisk snaps in the air before tying it into as neat a bandage as she can. ]

You need to pay attention to how you feel for the next hour or so at least, [ she tells him, finally looking up, very serious ] If you feel anything off at all, tell me right away. You don't want to wait, with poison.

[ Only once all of that is done and her warning delivered does she seem to switch off, something finally relaxing in the tight sternness of her expression. She leans forward suddenly to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, brief but firm. He scared her for a minute there. ]

[The water has a peculiar sting to it, when it hits his arm. Darras' wince is very small, and does nothing to change the smile he's got fixed on Yseult.]

And what is it that you'll be doing, if I start falling sick from spider poison. Suck it out of my arm?

[It's easy to joke with her when she's tying a bandage around his arm. It feels like it ought to, like somehow a giant spider assaulted him at the cottage instead of a forest in the Free Marches. Her matter-of-fact movement, her crispness--and then the way she looks up at him once it's all done, serious before she softens. It changes the moment, charges it differently.

And the kiss, small though it is, makes even the spider feel very far away. It's the first he's had from her since Llomerryn. He'd kissed her, after their embrace on the way to the commander's office--a kiss to the top of her head, brief, almost chaste, hardly counts. This is different. He takes her hand before she can pull away.]

Feeling a little off right now, actually.

[Another joke. They should take care. And the spider is still writhing behind them, weaker now, but Darras is looking at Yseult, and only Yseult.]

[ He jokes and she can't help but smile, even though it's dumb and he's smirking, and his eyes have forgotten all about where things stand between them. It's incredibly easy to forget. She very nearly leans in again, weight even shifting to the balls of her feet like she'd rock back into his space, letting that grip on her hand reel her in. She comes near enough to raise his hopes, and then draws herself back. Her hand, freed from his, pats his chest. ]

Don't push your luck. There may be more spiders.

[ She flashes him a smile and steps away, over to the dying creature. Her knife is relatively easy to remove now, if disgustingly coated in spider innards. She wraps a hand around the hilt with a grimace, and plunges the blade into the spider's head, twice, three times, until it goes still. ]

I think I heard a stream this way. [ she says, beginning to lead without question. They'll need water for the rest of the trip, and this knife is not going back in her boot like this. ] And if you were poisoned, [ she circles back ] I'd take you to a farm if we were near, and make an antidote. It's easier to just purchase them but I know how to handle poisons if I must.

[The brief warmth of Yseuelt's hand against his chest lingers--or else he imagines that it does, as he follows after her. She dispatches the spider with brisk efficiency, and Darras gives a kick to one of the legs as he passes. It makes a soft thud against the toe of his boot. No different than kicking an arm, really.

Poisons. Perhaps it's because her back is to him that Darras feels a sudden twinge at the word. Separated from the spider's bite, poisons because something different. It becomes a long room in Llomerryn. Tables, crowded with the dead. Darras feels a knife of cold slip in to his chest.

Part of him wants to keep up the banter, make a joke. Pretend she didn't say what she said, pretend he isn't thinking of goblets smeared with poison. But the wind has blown them a different way. And the cold is in his head now, deading his tongue. And the warm touch that Yseult had left him with is gone, faded away, and he remembers, then, what she is. What he is. He remembers the little room in the inn, standing across from Yseult, with the dark behind him.]

Yeah. [Heavy, it comes out without him meaning to say anything at all. His boot crunches on a twig, snaps it in half. Darras looks down at it, so he can stop looking at Yseult, at the back of her head. He knows it so well. He doesn't know her at all.] Is that why he chose you, then?

[ She doesn't understand right away. She turns to look back at him and it's clear in the pull of her brows, and tilt of her chin that she's confused. But it's only a second, before his tone and his words make sense together, and Yseult turns away, knuckles going momentarily white around the strap of the bag.

She doesn't answer for a couple yards, and then says only: ]

I'm not starting this again.

[ Perhaps she might as well; it's already out there, in the foreground again between them now instead of fading off into the brush, a thing they could squint and look past without seeing. It took time for it to get there after their last fight, and angry as she is at him for disturbing that (and at herself for carelessly creating the opportunity), she's not ready to start that process over again. Even if refusing to engage now leaves him sullen and frustrating for the rest of the trip it's still better than the alternative. They've got hours to go yet. ]

Oh, aye?

[He'd left the silence unbroken, sullen and stewing behind her as they'd walked through the forest together. Not properly together, really, with Darras a few steps behind, keeping up but never pulling ahead to walk beside her. The path toward the stream--if there is one, Darras can't see it, but Yseult walks as if she knows where she is going--it's a narrow way, between trees grown close together. Branches brush at their shoulders as they pass.

When she does answer, she answers with refusal. Anger is a kind of poison, too, moving swift. The cold knife Darras had felt was dipped in it.]

And why not? You'll have a good reason for it. You don't do anything by halves.

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