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Entry tags:
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.
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.
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[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.]
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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?
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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.]
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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. ]
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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.]
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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.
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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?
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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. ]
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[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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[ Yseult does not turn back to look at him, pushing on toward the stream that ought to exist up ahead. She's not as sure about it as the path she's striking suggests, but she thought she heard something, and the land is sloping downward as if approaching something, so she continues on. ]
We have things to do, and I'm not going to delay them so that we can have the same argument yet again.
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[It, the same argument, the one they started in Llomerryn--but really, it was started before that, that day on Dragon's Breath, and they've been having it all along. Putting it off, putting it in a corner, belowdecks somewhere, where they don't have to look at it, where it's festered and rotted.
Darras doesn't do anything so presumptuous as to grab hold of Yseult. He keeps his glare on her back instead, letting that keep her in place.]
It can't be both ways. You can't let me think we'll be carrying on and then stop me from this part of it. It's between us, Yseult. It's going to stay there. Those men, and women, that you killed-- And you want that? Or d'you want me to walk away?
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So she turns suddenly on her heel and slaps the slack water skin into his arms, giving up, turning back toward the road. ]
I'm not doing this again. I've already heard everything you have to say on this subject, and I've told you where I stand. There's nothing to be gained in saying it all again.
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He turns to follow her again--a quicker stride this time, to catch her up.]
So we say nothing. And what? We finish this, whatever idiotic errand we've been sent on--we go back, to the Gallows--and maybe I see you in corridors, or from afar, and we never speak again until you decide you want to be sweet to me again, for an hour, maybe two--but only when it's convenient--right up until the day I get back aboard my ship and sail away from here. For good. This isn't my work, this is yours, and I'm here because of you, so the least you can bloody well do is look at me, now.
[--And what? Say that she loves him? Say that she'd have poisoned him along with the rest? Say that she'll give him up to her masters--that she's changed her mind--that she doesn't care what he's done, ask him not to care what she's done--she's right, and he knows it. This leads them nowhere. But he can't leave it, now that it's come back. Like an old wound, seeping rot back in.]
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Then just go, Darras. If all you're doing here is marking time and hoping I'll give in without you making any real change, then there's no point. I thought you agreeing to this errand meant you were giving the Inquisition a chance, that's why--. [ Why she was sweet, or at least part of it. Why she let them push all this down for a while and think it was progress. Her jaw works, lips pressed thin. ] I've told you what I need from you. When you've something new to say about it, we can talk, but until then I'm not going to keep fighting in circles.
[ And she's not going to wait to let him keep trying anyway, turning her back to continue on towards the road once again. ]
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[He follows after her, crashing through the underbrush without looking where he's going. The wound from the spider has settled into a dull ache. It's not helped by the hard pace he's set for himself. He doesn't care.
Back at the road, the horses are where they've left them. The pastoral scene is disturbed by their reentry; both beasts lift their heads, startled, ears turning like oversized loom shuttles twisting in the wind. Even Darras, knowing nothing of horses, can read their uncertainty. But it's Yseult he's after.]
You told me what you want and I accepted it. But it won't be lasting forever. It can't. 'Cos eventually, your masters are going to grow tired of you whiling away your time here, wasting your talents--and they'll ship you off elsewhere--and I'll not be staying forever, I can't stay forever-- We'll end up back here, always.
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[ Yseult's hands rise, as if to push them into her hair or over her face, but they're covered in spider guts and she stops short, disgusted, and with an exhale heavy with irritation wipes them on her pants, back and forth until they're closer to clean. It will be hell on the laundry later, but what else is there to do. She's shaking her head all the while, and never once looks at him. ]
I didn't ask you to stay just to stay, I asked you to stay and try to understand what the Inquisition is doing and why, and why I want to be here, even if it means I spend some time wasting myself on errands like this. If you can't learn to set aside your selfishness and care that half the world is on fire then I can't be with you. It's as simple as that.
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[Stubbornly, he stands opposite of her, glaring across the short distance that separates them.]
Or you said it was, at least. The cottage. Living with me. That was the plan, remember? That was always the plan. That was what you wanted, you said. That's not the world. That's not anything but the two of us--which means that you and I, we want the same thing.
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[ Yseult crosses her arms tightly, hands hopefully clean enough now, or anyway beyond help. She shakes her head again, eyes on the dirt beneath her boots, the hair come loose from her braid now falling around her face. ]
I don't need you to save the world, Darras, but I need you to care that it needs saving. It isn't enough to retire if you still believe everything you've done was perfectly justified and everything I do is a stupid waste. It would always be between us. I can't be dancing around this fight with you forever.
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The motivation to stay shut up does not last long, not after what she's said.]
And why is it my way that's got to be the wrong one. Why is it I have to be judged by your standards, by your morals, and-- If I start to believe in saving the world, do I have to turn my back on everything I care about? My ship, my crew--none of them are anything compared to you, none of them have ever been anything--but they've seen me through, they've saved my arse as often as I've saved theirs. And so what. They can just die, for what they are? They can be hanged, poisoned, imprisoned--and I'll learn to be all right with that, because nothing I've done can be justified, nothing they've done, can be--
You think you know it all. You think the world fits in to your narrow definitions. All those rules, all those standards--well, it doesn't. It doesn't. People do things, because they have to do things. You are who you are because of the things that you've done. Are you proud of them all? I'll never know, 'cos you pull a sheet over it all and call it justified. You kill people, but you've got backers, so it's all right.
It's fucked. And the next time you console yourself with that, remember that you were tipping poison into the wine of people I knew. Real people. Some of them I even gave a shit about. Some of them were decent--by my standards, yeah--but all of them deserved a better end than that.
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I am who I am, Darras, because of men like you. I exist because you exist. If it weren't for you and your precious crew and your 'decent' pirates and all the other men like you who think you can go about taking whatever you like from this world no matter who you injure in the process, I wouldn't need to be what I am. I wouldn't need to do what I do. No one would. If you want me to stop then you stop first.
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[He raises his chin, as she snaps at him. Holds his ground, not a single sign of a flinch about him. There's a kind of bravery to it, hearing what she says, what she thinks of him, and not showing the wound, even if he feels it. It's like any injury. You feel it once, it's never so bad the second time.]
But you know me. Not a pirate. You know me. Am I so bad?
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Yes. [ That one definitely feels worst, but she says it firmly, like it doesn't hurt her just as much. ] Yes, you are. I didn't want to see it, because I know how good you can be. And I thought that the way you cared for me meant that you couldn't truly be as selfish as you seemed. I thought it was a part you were playing, like Nina, something you put on because you felt you must but hated the way I hated being her. But it isn't. That's real, that's something you are, and something you will keep being even if you give up the Fancy. And I can't look past it anymore.
[ She begins to scuff a toe in the ground but stops herself and straightens, arms folded, looking him straight in the eye. ]
You can either decide to be a better man, or we're finished. For good. That's all there is.
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That one hurts. And it's harder to pretend it doesn't, even if he's nearly heard it before from her. She's said, it parts and pieces. They've been here before. They'll be here again.
Unless she means it. The thought flickers, unbidden. Darras goes on looking at her.]
But you'd still love me.
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That's not the point.
[ Yseult drops her arms and turns away, heading back to her horse and untying the reins from the branch, stepping back into the saddle. She stops before heading back to the road, not quite looking at him. ]
I'll hand in my notice to my employers. If you'd really try, I'd give up working for them. The Inquisition is different, or I could freelance. Choose the jobs myself. But if you're never really going to change, if you'd just go through the motions and keep bringing us back here, please just go now. I can't keep doing this.
[ She doesn't wait for a reply, giving her horse a little kick and riding off, back to the road. ]
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Only she doesn't give him time to make that point, not with what comes next. It's a version of what they've talked about. The Inquisition, an unwelcome bedfellow, yeah, and Darras would still say, will they let you hand it in, would she be allowed to quit--but that's more of the same. She'll not like that any better than the rest of it.
And he cares. Maker damn him for a fool, but he cares. The road goes back the other way, back to Kirkwall, to the harbor. He could get out a message, call back the Fancy and be on her decks in the next fortnight. Why should he change, when he's the man she fell in love with? Why shackle himself to something he doesn't care about, and what woman would ask that of him?
But he loves her. It's no less true now. Tempered, maybe, complicated and brackish and shot through with pain. Still love.
Angry, Darras grabs the reins of Horse and undoes them from where the beast is lashed. He's clumsy again, in mounting up, but he gets it in time. Perhaps not as quickly as Yseult might have expected, so she might be left twisting in the wind for a few moments, riding alone. Then he's behind her on the road, but keeping his distance, his pace deliberately slow.]
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