CLOSED | one minute you say we're a team

[hassaran]

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.

Comments

[hassaran]

[ 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.

[staysail]

[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?

[hassaran]

[ 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. ]

[staysail]

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.

[hassaran]

It's a waste of time.

[ 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.

[staysail]

But you'd delay them having a picnic with me in the forest. You kissed me, back there. Remember that? It lasted about a second. You let us get this close, and then you decide you don't want to argue about--

[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?

[hassaran]

[ There's no stream. The ground slopes down and then just flattens out, no bank in sight. Yseult is not, after all, this kind of scout; having spent more time in the woods than Darras is a very low bar. She's loathe to admit it and doesn't have the space to come up with a lie or even how to say it, not with Darras talking at her and frustration crowding up her mind, not with him taking the last half-hour and turning it against her, like wanting to linger here with him smiling at her has all been some cruel tease instead of just a nice moment of peace between them.

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.

[staysail]

[He catches the water skin when she shoves it at him, abruptly abandoning their quest for water and turning her back on him anew. There's a little water left, in the skin. It gives a belated slosh, and Darras feels the shift of its contents.

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.]

[hassaran]

[ Her fist clenches in the air at her side and she turns, a quick about-face to confront him. She doesn't raise her voice, but her jaw is tight and her voice, too. ]

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. ]

[staysail]

I'm here because of you! I'm giving them this chance because of you! I told you that--

[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.

[hassaran]

I don't need you to prove that you care about me, Darras. I know that you do. The problem is that you don't care about anyone else.

[ 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.

[staysail]

It was enough for you before.

[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.

[hassaran]

The plan was a future, a whole life, not just a few weeks here and there like we've had. That was a holiday, we could ignore anything through that if we tried, and we did.

[ 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.

[staysail]

[He makes a noise of disgust--or disappointment, perhaps--or something between the two, but whatever its motivation, he turns away from her, pushes a hand over his mouth, as if to shut himself up.

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.

[hassaran]

Because your way is wrong! [ Yseult bursts out, a rare raising of her voice, anger spilling over. They're not hidden away in a cabin now nor a room in the Gallows, no one listening at the door. She reins herself in anyway, volume immediately lowered again, even if the intensity remains, tilting her forward, jerking an arm out of their cross to stab a finger at the ground. ]

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.

[staysail]

Because of men like me?

[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?

[hassaran]

[ That's the question, isn't it? The one she wrestles with still, the one that keeps her up at night. The worst of it is there's no answer that she doesn't feel sick thinking. ]

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.

[staysail]

[Across the brief space that separates them--the hard-packed earth of the road, scattered with leaves and fallen twigs, the debris of the forest--Darras looks at Yseult.

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.

[hassaran]

[ She doesn't roll her eyes, but the swing of her head, the sigh, suggest it a little bit. She shuts them instead, just for a moment, at the end of her rope. ]

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. ]

[staysail]

[It is the point. It's always been the point. Love, the winning hand, over everything else that would keep them apart. Romantic, like something out of a story. He ought to be more jaded to it, but she's spoiled him, all these years.

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.]

[hassaran]

[ She doesn't look back for a while, until long after he's made his way back onto the road and begun plodding along in her wake. There's relief in seeing him there, but not enough.

The road slopes up from here, gently at first but growing steeper by the mile as the head up into the mountains in earnest. The pace necessarily slows, the horses taxed by the ascent. After an hour or two they reach a sort of peak, though really it's a flat section between the peaks, mountains blocking much of the sky around them, though they grow even taller off in the distance. Rock walls begin to close in the road on one side, further off on the other, across a sort of high valley. There's a village here, little more than a waystation and trading post, a few shepherds, but that's where their message will be waiting, and Yseult turns off, pulling up in front of the shop/tavern. ]

[staysail]

[It seems almost unbelievable now, that they ever shared pleasant conversation on this trip. If their fight hadn't stolen back over them like a bloody ghost, he might have told her about what he thought of the mountains, from this close angle, riding into them like a pawn pushed across the face of a map. About how riding the downward slope of the hills makes him think of the worst waves during a storm, the swell and then the sudden pitch, as the world drops out from beneath. The purple flowers that grow on the roadside, as the trees begin to thin out. Tough, weedy stems that stretch long beneath the nodding heads. Something like them used to hang, dried, in bunches, at the little apothecary in the village.

Dull, and sentimental. Darras glares at the flowers in particular each time he sees them, as if to wither them with a look, for daring to exist. He keeps after Yseult all the same.

In the village, he has no choice but to pull his horse alongside Yseult's. Wordless, and still clumsy, he swings himself down. Nearly gets his boot trapped in the stirrup, but saves himself, in the end. His little huff of breath is almost a laugh, as he stumbles. It's the closest they've come to conversation since she ended their argument.]

[hassaran]

[ Still not that close, as Yseult doesn't say anything. She's waiting in the narrow strip of shade created by the overhang of the roof, but steps out of it once Darras is off his horse and heads inside. She assumes he'll follow, and assumes also that he was given the same information she was about where and how to collect the message.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust as they step into the dim interior, shadows heavy except where the series of small windows cast stark bright squares of sunlight onto the floor. Yseult lingers, blinking, for a moment before heading to the table the instructions described, in the corner between a window and a pile of sacks of feed, and waits for the barman to come take their order. ]

[staysail]

[Darras does follow her, because he's got no choice but to follow her. His eyes are quick to adjust, accustomed to coming up to white sunlight after being belowdecks, or down in the hold in the stinking dark, when he was younger. This isn't even that bad.

The table has two chairs. Cozy, like. Darras thinks about sitting elsewhere, maybe standing up at the bar until the business is concluded. But perhaps there's meant to be two of them. Perhaps if it's just Yseult, alone, the message will never come.

So he sits with her, too. Because he has to. It's like existing in an echo, a simple stupid action he's done thousands of times, and nearly half with her.

The barkeep ambles over, a towel thrown over his shoulder. He's bald and clean-shaven, but sports a pair of thick muttonchops like broom bristles affixed to his face.

What'll it be, he says, expectantly.

Darras holds his tongue and looks at Yseult instead. Expectant.]

[hassaran]

[ He sits and doesn't say anything, which is really the best Yseult can hope for at this point. The barkeep's muttonchops are unmistakable, so she says do you have any Hasmali red? It's perfect for this weather even though it really is not at all, and the barkeep's eyes widen slightly but he replies no, but there's a fresh barrel of Rialto white and Yseult shakes her head and says we'll just have lager and they both manage to look--if not natural, on his end, then at least entirely serious the whole time as if they're not speaking secret coded passphrases that seem silly and unnecessary in the middle of the day in an empty, well-lit room.

The barkeep heads off to collect the message (and possibly also the beer? who knows) and Yseult looks out the window and says nothing, fingers knit together on the table in front of her. ]