faderift | OPEN | Looking Down on Empty Streets

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OPEN | Looking Down on Empty Streets

WHO: Lexie, Evie, Loki, Thor, Fifi, Gwen, anyone else who wants to deal with this actual mess of a woman (special shout out to anyone who has a four letter (nick)name apparently)
WHAT: Late nights, early mornings, a bunch of processing the horrible things that happened!
WHEN: Post return from Tevinter (so... mid-month?)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: cw: a nice violent nightmare, general mental trauma. hmu if you want something special, will do brackets or prose as desired.

I. The Apartments (Day)

When Alexandrie is home, much of her time is spent laying on the chaise out on the balcony staring into nothing and hardly seeming to care about the oppressive heat that so irked her the month before. Her hair, if it is styled at all, is woven into a simple braid and pinned up, a far cry from the way she used to wear it. Sometimes she is a fury of diplomatic paperwork, sometimes she is repetitively and grimly throwing a knife into a target that is a new fixture in the area. Sometimes she will, all of a sudden, snap into the light and cheerful woman she was, although her laughter is harder to come by. Whichever it is, she is still welcoming of callers.

II. Hightown (Night)

She haunts the streets like a ghost; all loose hair and pale wan skin and simple white dress, dressing gown layered over it against the slight chill that still manages to cover Kirkwall by second or third bell despite the heat of the day. Often, she is in the memorial garden, sitting and watching the fountain or pacing the paths repetitively. Sometimes she makes her way to wherever the sea can be best seen. Like a spectre, too, she is gone by the time the sky begins to lighten.

Anyone else out and about in the dark hours?

III. Loki/Evie:

Smell. Noise. There's so much of it. The screams of panic, the mortal ones unlike any other, some far too high to have issued from fully grown throats. The ozone of magic ripping the air mixing with the choking char of burning stalls, the metallic smell of blood. Blood. Far too much of it. How can there be so much. The visceral nigh-unbelievable revulsion at how thickly it drips. It clings to her hands, sliding, sticking. The wink of sunlight on silver. The noise he makes around it is so desperately wrong: liquid, bubbling. The same thing, then, on a far slenderer throat. Sudden. Silver again, but streaked with red. Silver where it doesn't belong. Cannot belong. Disbelief. Overwhelming horror that grips so hard she is frozen and the sound, the sound that comes from them.

She never quite screams. While there is noise that accompanies Alexandrie's gasping terrified surges to consciousness, the shriek in her throat never truly makes it past the hands that fly reflexively to cover her mouth to fiercely stifle it as her knees shoot to her chest, her heart pounding like something is trying to fight its way outside of her. Sometimes they are clapped flat against her face; sometimes it's the side of her hand between her teeth, her jaw clenching hard enough to bruise, even to draw blood, although that is more rare. Always it is a desperate bid to prevent her horrified shuddering panic from waking her bedmate.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not.

IV. Thor/Fifi:

There is a small disturbance in the kitchens. The pour of water, the clink of metal, of china, rummaging through dry goods. Investigating will reveal Alexandrie, wrapped in a white silk dressing gown, her hair finger-combed and tied around itself in a simple knot, quietly looking through the selection of tea as the glyphs on the kettle do their work of setting the water to boil.

She looks tired and subdued—she often looks so, recently—but she manages a small smile all the same.

“Pardonnez-moi. Did I wake you?”

V. Gwenaëlle:

[ she has come looking for Gwenaëlle for a reason she can't really fathom. Perhaps it is because there is precious little in Kirkwall that is familiar and they had walked the same streets and halls, seen much of the same art, known many of the same faces, have the same mother tongue. Perhaps it is because Gwen too had been abruptly thrown from that world into one that so immediately included brutal violence and death that stood close enough to feel the hot splatter of it. Perhaps it is both things.

Whatever the reason, Alexandrie is knocking now on the door to the Provost's rooms in hopes of finding the small, concentrated, dark-haired woman, wearing a simple summer dress with her hair pinned up just as simply, the neck of a bottle containing something substantially stronger than the wine she'd offered at the Tourney in her fist. ]

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"With the resources tied into the war it has been difficult even to be sure of timely letters between Val Royeaux and Kirkwall," Alexandrie muses, flicking her gaze briefly to Fifi and nodding slightly—she's fine too. "The way Tevinter has been so embroiled, I cannot imagine you have been much in contact with Lord Asgard."

She wonders if Odin even knows. How horrible. He must know. She curves her thumb to run her nail along the delicate porcelain of the cup's handle as something else occurs to her suddenly about Tevinter being so embroiled. "Will you stay with the Inquisition's efforts, or will the House call for its sons?"

Are you leaving? (Is he?)

It is unusual, to be sure, but this is something that Lexie had on occasion shared with Emile. There is both comfort and hurt in such an occurrence now; both wine and company help with the latter. Being left alone after having been briefly joined would have been so much worse than simply remaining by herself as she so often is during her near-nightly wandering.

After a few sips, though, she realizes that she has very little in the way of things to say to Fifi. She could not be as familiar with her as she could with the woman who had been as nearly inseparable from her as her shadow. Could not ask advice, could not unburden herself. Well, she could, but it was all too likely to receive a perfunctory and guarded response. After all, she was as much a stranger to Fifi as Fifi was to her. She idly dips a finger into the wine, uses the liquid on her finger to make the crystal sing. Stops and sighs instead when she realizes it's the middle of the night and the sweeping acoustics of the mansion will carry the sound.

"Tell me..." Lexie begins, gesturing vaguely, "...anything. Your favourite pastry. If you like the colour of the sea better here or in Val Royeaux. If you have ever been in love." An entirely Orlesian set of questions.

You mean because I'd be roughly as charming in Celene's court as the Grand Duke's headless corpse?

( it's dry, unoffended. gwenaëlle has always been perfectly aware of her shortcomings, where the orlesian court is concerned; she had survived it through a combination of her father's far superior skill and her own ability to sleight of hand moodiness into mystery that was never too mysterious. the appearance of a mystery likely easy enough to solve, and thus never meriting the stir to do it. no accident that so many thought they had her measure; that she was able to keep her private affairs private, because she wasn't worth the hassle of the pursuit. someone else always shined brighter, and if she did not thrive in their shadow, she survived long enough to find somewhere that suited her better.

a swig and a shrug, one more elegant than the other— )

I'd no intention of going back. Even before the bitch took my title.

( that is, perhaps, a little too unguarded in her feelings on the matter of who survived the civil war, crown intact. )

I'd have always been waiting for that shoe to drop, you know? I knew. Of course I knew. Imagine if I'd married, if—what that scandal would have looked like. In Orlais, instead of here.

( with all the knives and none of the allies. )

I don't have the subtlety to maneuver Orlais on a knife edge. I'd have made an excellent dowager duchess, but I'd never have lasted long enough to get there. And then I came to the Inquisition, and the things I said mattered, and I could make my own place, and make it to suit me. When this is over, why would I do anything but keep doing that?

He forgets about Fifi as quickly as she'd come in once Alexandrie's expressed no need of her, turning his attention to what she's saying and asking and not quite saying and asking.

"We pledged to help the Inquisition. We will not turn and run when it costs us. Even if I do not have confidence in the person who leads my division, now, and even if my Father does not see it the same way." There's a noise, something that might have been a snort if he had more energy or was in a better mood. Instead his voice is bitter. "It is not as if he has other heirs with which to replace me."

Frigga must be avenged. The way to do that is not to hold Marnas Pell, but to take on Corypheus, and the Inquisition is the base to do it from. His mother had loved him as he had loved her, and he's not going to blindly follow Odin when Odin is wrong.

"It's a free clinic," he replies with a little amusement. "Anyone who needs to be a patient is welcome, no apology needed. "

Anders picks up his own mug and leans back against the desk, sipping slowly. "On top of that this means I'm taking a short break from working and hearing that will make my husband happy. Old habits of overworking are hard to break."

Old habits of being possessed by a spirit intent on working every second possible, more like, but he really doesn't need to be reminding people that happened. Instead he can embrace the downtime and give her time to recover, so long as no rush from a new fight down here comes in.

"I have to admit I'm curious to know why you came to Darktown to ask your question rather than seek me out in the Gallows infirmary."

An honestly good question, but one for which Alexandrie has a ready answer.

“When I thought of asking, this is where I was told you would be.” It is matter-of-fact. “With the possibility of alleviating any anguish hanging in the air, sitting and waiting for your return to the Gallows seemed akin to cruelty.”

She will be on her way back to Hightown as soon as she can trust her legs again. As soon as she does not give off the scent of a wounded creature easily picked from the herd.

[ She shakes her head. ]

I just sort of grabbed everything I could. And I haven't had a chance to look at them yet.

[ What with all the rescuing and all that. ]

Still fighting the fatigue, Fifi nonetheless enjoys the wine-- it's far finer than anything she's used to drinking, and if it takes being awake in the middle of the night to partake, then so be it. Without moving her head much, she shifts her gaze to Lexie when the woman makes her glass sing, a small smirk twitching onto the elf's face. Cute.

"Well," she says quietly, "I'm fond of meat pies, though they're not a pastry in the dessert sense. And I mostly saw the sea in Val Royeaux at night, so I suppose I prefer it here. Blue instead of black." She leaves the question of love unanswered, for now. It's too close still, too much of her heart to disclose to an employer.

[ alexandrie widens her eyes to affect the doe-like and frivolously excited look she'd worn a few months ago at the Tourney with a tone of voice to match. ]

You do not think the Grand Duke's headless corpse would look charmingly festive at court? [ a little thoughtful pout, ] Although I suppose his epaulets would be the highest point on him, which would be terribly gauche.

[ while lexie briefly arches her brows, little mention is made of the new title gwenaëlle has granted the empress of orlais-- another manner in which she and evie differ. while celene's reign has been quite excellent for the de la fontaine fortunes given their root in what the empress has been so encouraging in the development of, lexie has never had the national spirit of her twin. believing orlais to be a superior country in nearly all respects does not necessarily grant special reverence for its monarch.

(the bottle is here reacquired and partaken of with a rather grimly satisfied expression at its burn.) ]

Will there be a 'when this is over', do you think?

[ the dragon, the casual raise of the palace, the sudden holistic takeover of both capital and countryside of the only empire that might rival their own--which was currently under increasingly successful siege--were all rather convincing arguments to the contrary. she gestures with the bottle and then holds it back out towards gwen. ]

One in which we are not slaves, fugitives, or corpses, I mean.

The lack of answer of the last is noted, but left unpursued. It might not have been in years past, but Alexandrie is no longer a woman interested in casually digging into what may very well be graves.

"The pastry dough here is atrocious no matter what it is wrapped around," she responds with a brief raise of her gaze towards the heavens and a small shake of her head as she takes a rather generous mouthful of wine. Despite the quality, she is not in the business of savoring tonight. "As far as the sea," she continues a bit more wistfully, leaning her head on a hand curled much as Fifi's was and swirling the glass to in part mimic its waves, "it has more of the ocean in it here. A hint of wildness. It is a fine blue, but the ocean brings some of its darkness with its tides. I mourn that you were largely unable to see the colour of it at home."

Lexie says the word easily enough, but home is a more complicated concept these days.

It will be rather like prying open oysters in the hope of pearls, then.

[ or, you know, as far as she's heard, having never done it. she has little concept of the work that had been done for even the comparatively short strand of them around her neck.

she furrows her brow in frustration of a sudden and tsks. ]

Merde. I did not bring any of my writing supplies. Think you the library will have paper and ink with which I might transcribe?

Odin does in fact have another heir with which to replace Thor; one whose bed she had left as quietly as she had been able once it had become obvious that sleep was not to be had. The casual--and, she thinks, without malice--way in which Loki is unthought of makes Alexandrie arch a brow that is lowered as quickly as it had twitched upwards. Even so, the greater opportunity for vengeance against Corypheus and the Venatori who had murdered Frigga that the Inquisition affords is very likely a greater lure now than even what approval could be gleaned from Odin.

It is as reassuring as such a thing can ever be. She blows on her tea to aid in cooling it and watches the ripples.

"It must be a difficult thing for someone accustomed to command to serve beneath another," she murmurs. "More now, that your faith in her has been dealt a blow."

Lexie's observation on pastry merits a small, amused smirk from Fifi. U rite tho.
"I suppose... some wild things are best left alone," she muses, sipping from her own glass, "wild or not. I hear the sea in Kirkwall has seen its share of sorrow."

Edited 2018-08-31 07:18 (UTC)

"I wonder how it is allotted," Alexandrie muses into her glass.

This is not usually the sort of conversation a Comte's daughter would think prudent to have with a servant. Especially an elven one. But it is the middle of the night, she's exhausted, and now she's halfway through a sizable glass of wine.

It makes sense. It's sensible, even, something Anders doesn't usually expect from nobility. ...Not that most nobles would be so concerned by someone dying they would come down to ask if they could have been saved. She's not acting the way he expected.

"And there's no telling when I'd come up, as there could have been an emergency, of course."

He looks around. There aren't any patients left, the classes have wrapped, and what isn't done he can done during lunch tomorrow if he brings food down. Anders shrugs and washes his hands in the basin.

"Would you like company on the way back up, when you're ready?"

He sees the arch of her eyebrow and shakes his head, having a feeling he knows who she's thinking about.

"He will not choose Loki over me." Best if that idea is quashed now. "Our..." He stops, swallows, and continues. He's all right. Or he will be. "Our mother was most of the reason he was ever even civil with my brother; there is little love lost there. And it was very telling that she dismissed the lack of magical bloodlines in your family at, at the meal."

The last meal. He should have ended it early, sent her home. There'd been something in the air and he'd ignored it, intent on enjoying his time like a fool. He'd let his instincts slip, lured into complacency, and the Inquisition threatens to continue that process.

"And I do not know why the Inquisition has a leader who is fine with attacking another nation. I heard of what happened in Nevarra, that the Inquisition denies being to blame for it, but what I saw in the Catacombs did not encourage me there. What if the priorities of the Inquisition are not simply to defeat Corypheus but to also destabilize other nations, ones who have not declared themselves in support of it?"

The problem is that he doesn't have the head for this sort of maneuvering. It's Loki who does, Loki who is is barely even looking at right now.

“I would welcome it,” Alexandrie replies, her previously brilliant smile dimmed and slightly shaken by... well, everything. Even so, it is there.

She is so very unused to being alone.

The basin, no longer in danger of being used, is set aside, and her focus redirected to retaking control of her body with the subtle—but certainly noticeable to a healer—series of exercises she had been taught long ago. Breathing, heartbeat, tense and release of musculature, shift of posture to something uncurled and straight again. She will take up the tea again after, with a long exhale, and sip at it further.

“I shall be ready in a moment, I think.”

She would inquire after what precipitated this disaffection, but with Thor being both the man he is and the favored son most like because of it, she might very well hazard a guess. After all, of his parents, it is not Odin Loki takes after.

There is a reason the Divine has a Left Hand as well as a Right, however, and the probability of Loki’s subtler talents having gone overlooked or unappreciated chafes at her far more than any obstacle to her social ambitions. In fact, to some small surprise, the latter has almost entirely ceased to be important at all.

But Thor is still talking, and Alexandrie finds herself nodding slowly at his thoughts. Especially now that she has been reminded of the Divine's Left Hand and her place in the Inquisition. She would not be surprised in the slightest if Sister Nightingale were indeed playing the Game of Nations in the way he suggests.

"I think," she says finally, "that if those are indeed the secondary priorities of the Inquisition, that they are being set higher in command than anyone in Kirkwall." She does not say, however, that he is wrong. "But that even if there are not such plans, the organization should be prepared to address that it is having such an effect and to attempt to compensate for it." She turns the cup slightly in its saucer. "It will no doubt protest, and quite convincingly, I imagine, that the power of Corypheus warrants expediency and results more than it does a plan that requires it to tiptoe around the sovereignty of the nations of Thedas. And now, having seen..." Alexandrie trails off, shaking her head slightly as she nearly feels the vibration of the ground in her feet as the Archon's palace is ripped from the earth, "I would agree with it. So. It is worthwhile to be distrusting, to continue to question, but such thoughts will not prevent me from rendering whatever service I may."

A lengthy considering pause as she turns the cup again, watches the leaves slowly resettle themselves, and then gently inquires after all.

"May I ask what transpired, to cause such ill-feeling between your brother and father?"

He nods, a little begrudgingly but he nods. There's no denying that they need the Inquisition right now. Tevinter cannot fight Corypheus off on its own. And the Inquisition cannot keep losing the way it has been, land after land. It needs them.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Thor takes a sip of the tea.

"I do not know. It seems sometimes that my father was annoyed with Loki as long as I can remember having a brother. It does not make any sense. How can one resent.. an infant..."

The question gets lost as he speaks the words. Loki did not look like like Odin in the least, and what's the one thing that could make someone resent an infant? Infidelity. But he cannot think that of his mother, he cannot.

"No," he says decisively after a pause he wishes he hadn't made. "I may be misremembering. It has been some time since we were children, and sometimes my father is prideful and angry. There must have been something that transpired, my father resented it, and it simply built over time. And I love my brother, but he can be very stubborn and dig in to get under someone's skin."

It makes sense in that children are given to mistaking often for always, in that Loki's penchant for irreverence would be more than irksome to the patriarch of a militaristic House, and in that such a set of circumstances might well over time and repetition become entrenched in a way that is nigh irreconcilable. Especially between two men who, for reasons of being stubborn, uncompromising, or in Loki's case simply contrarian, might be disinclined to yield; so she nods slowly.

But siblings are different. Any similar difficulty does not seem to have calcified between the two brothers, and although they had been anywhere from cool to downright cruel to each other at times during their shared walk across Tevinter, Thor still now says he loves him. And so:

"You are both exhausted," she says, reaching to very lightly rest her fingers on Thor's forearm for emphasis, "and both far from home, and both grieving terribly. It is of a certainty not my place to suggest, and I know well it is not customary, but... what think you of sharing your vigil? Of standing it together?"

Perhaps she shall be chided by one or the both of them for her impertinence, and perhaps it would precipitate strife rather than any hint of reunion, but perhaps neither of those things. It seems an acceptable risk to take in the pursuit of whatever peace can be had.

If we stop believing that, why would we get up in the morning?

( it's not a rhetorical question. it's frank—hope is a necessity. if they're not working for anything, what's the fucking point? there has to be the possibility of a when this is over, they have to believe that this is worthwhile, that it's for something. )

If we all believe, in our hearts, that ultimately everything we do is pointless, we're going to make that much effort. Not enough. We'll make it true through our own sense of inevitability. We won't try as hard. We won't work as smart. And we'll kill ourselves.

Certainly, this outpost is primarily staffed by the incompetent and the insane, where it is fucking staffed at all,

( ah, that old chestnut, )

but if the only future we contemplate is the one in which we've failed, we're never going to fight hard enough to succeed.

[ dryly, with the lazy drawl born of whiskey: ] We would get up in the hope of being a fugitive rather than slave or corpse, I imagine.

[ alexandrie drops her wry look for a more contemplative one, as she considers the bottle, the liquor's liquid shine. ]

You are right, of course. I am simply not sure I am quite finished indulging in my bleak mood. [ she sighs through her nose, plucks idly at the fabric of her dress. ] Truly I am not sure I can be finished, indulgence or not. At least if I pretend I do so purposefully it seems within my control.

[ then, after a pause: ]

You are still on friendly terms, yes?

[ she pulls her knees to her chest and clasps her arms loosely around them, bare toes sticking out from beneath the hem of her skirt. as abrupt a non sequitur it is, lexie imagines gwen will know who she means. ]

Go and see him, if you have not. His mother died in his arms.

Edited 2018-09-06 19:32 (UTC)

For the elven servant's part, she'll have a conversation with whomever she pleases, but is also quite exhausted still. When Lexie makes a remark and then lapses into silence, so does Fifi, taking a healthy drink of her own glass. Waste not want not.

( the pause is long, and the drink she takes more deep, and finally what she settles on is— )

In my experience, that's something one prefers to handle alone. He knows where I am; what I did.

( she hadn't guessed it was for his mother, but it explains a great deal about those terse exchanges. )

I'll let him come to me when he's ready to.

( it's not just for his benefit. gwenaëlle isn't sure she could handle the roughest edges of such a familiar grief, not when her own is—

too close, still. and she would have wanted it to be on her own terms; did want it to be on her own terms. the thought of pushing where she would not have wanted to be pushed is a discomforting, unpleasant one. )

[ there's something in there that's enraging. she's not sure what it is yet, only that it has hot spiteful fingers in her spine and makes her hear gwenaëlle's too-calm words without absorbing what they really mean. of an instant, lexie's speech is clipped, the loose drape of her arms turning hard and tight. ]

I suppose if that is what is best you are a better woman than I to provide it, for I cannot much longer stand any such waiting.

[ oh. that's what it is. it's jealousy, bright and savage, that has its claws in her. jealousy of the space of separation that lets gwen have such patience to offer, and simultaneous repudiation of the bare idea of finding such space to grant herself the ability to sit apart and wait. the thought that the very love she bears him renders her somehow less fit to care for him in this is an agonizing one.

(that, and, perhaps selfishly, letting him handle it alone means that she will continue to be left alone in her fearful grieving.)

she has dug the heels of her hands into her eyes angrily, as if through main force she could stop what stung her eyes from emerging.

why the fuck was it she'd let herself feel things again? ]

It is so fucking lonely, Gigi. Lying next to him is agonizing. Neither of us can sleep, we can barely speak around it, he will not let me lay the lightest touch on even his shoulder without shifting from it, and yet somehow being away is worse, and all the while Emile is missing and may well be dead and I may never ever know what has become of her and I cannot stop dreaming about the man I killed and I should have stayed in Val Fontaine and drunk wine and remained ignorant of all of this and let my parents marry me off to someone I should not have let myself love at all.

[ beat ]

Or become a Chantry Sister.

[ she puts her face in her knees with an aggrieved noise and holds her hand out blindly for the bottle. ]

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OPEN | Looking Down on Empty Streets

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