As indirectly as you can, you ask what I remember [Closed]

[overharrowed]

WHO: Julius and Petrana
WHAT: Post-mortem of meeting the family
WHEN: Slightly backdated to after the trip to Ferelden
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: It could have gone worse? (warnings tba if necessary)

Julius hasn't been distant since Ferelden. Not exactly. He's busy -- they're all busy -- but he sees about the same amount of Petrana as he had before. They continue to spend nights in one another's quarters more often than not, and he's always pleased to see her when she arrives someplace he is.

And yet, if she was wondering when he might bring up the very real possibility that he could, if he liked, eventually claim a castle and a title in Ferelden... it is becoming apparent than left to his own devices, the answer will be "never." He hadn't sworn the inheritance off, exactly, for all he'd promised without promising that Bann Selwyn had nothing to worry about. He'd done what the Inquisition needed him to do to put the nuisance fire out.

But the way he steps around the topic even after their return to Kirkwall, while outwardly casual, seems increasingly deliberate the longer it goes. It's habit, but it's not only that.

Comments

[ipseite]

He would, she thinks, be content to behave as if it hadn't happened at all. And were there no strings there left to tug, she might let him do it—but it is so marked in part because of that. Because if it were someone else's business, or were it not what quiets him, she knows Julius of all people would have much to say on the matter. His grasp of the subtleties of maneuvering has always impressed her; he adapts fast, outside of the Circle. He'll suit, if he does make the leap to diplomacy's division, and there is no conflict in doing it with her no longer at the helm—

He would speak, had they gone to Lady Vivas' family, and not his own.

“I think the Bann did not notice,” she says, in the process of letting her hair down for bed, corset loosened but not unlaced, “that you failed to explicitly give him his wish.”

But she did.

[overharrowed]

He looks up from the basin where he's been washing his face, reaching for a towel before he turns properly to her. "It seemed to me that he would trust less too strong a dismissal. He would have thought it a show, transparent dissembling. He patently doesn't understand that Thomas is discontent to be the heir, because he can't understand why anyone would want anything he sees as less than that."

Face dry, he runs a hand through his hair as he comes to sit on a setee near her.

"I thought it the smartest play. And it helped that you so charmed Lady Selwyn, I could tell she took a liking."

[ipseite]

Half-turning where she sits to face him, she considers that, and him. The shape of what he says and does not, and what he had not said—

“She struck me as a most capable woman.”

Shackled to a most incapable man, which hardly seemed something in need of being said aloud.

“Quite—aware. It was an opportunity for them that I think she wished to make use of.”

[overharrowed]

"Yes, it seems so. She's as aware as the rest of us that whatever happens next in the world, the Inquisition will have a large hand in shaping it. I suspect she prefers to be on the right side of that change, regardless of the bann's views on the matter." He didn't know if they could do much for the Inquisition, at present, but he knows the Inquisition doesn't have a habit of dismissing potential assets, either.

"I wrote a report, I did mention that." Mildly, but conceding that he knows she's tending to something. He's not shutting it down, at least so far.

[ipseite]

The approach is as much the purpose; feeling around the edges of his particular silence, to better understand it. To decide what to do about it, decide if indeed anything needs to be done. It feels wrong, somehow, to simply let it pass—

not only for her various ulterior motives. It had worn on him, she knows.

“I daresay that I have not included all of my thoughts, in all the reports I have filed.”

The bann's view of the matter. And: Lady Selwyn.

[overharrowed]

That gets a small laugh from him, almost despite himself. "I daresay. I sometimes wonder if the Forces reports are a bit more straightforward. 'Marched to uncomfortable destination and slew exactly 18 Venatori. Marched back.'"

He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it, then smooths it again, one habitual and absent motion. "I imagine the Inquisition won't suffer much from our restraint on editorializing, except inasmuch as the reports might otherwise be a bit more colorful."

[ipseite]

“A good half of our present division heads have heard all I expect they care to hear of my opinions, of late,” she says, wryly, setting her hair-pins aside and sweeping her hair over her shoulder beneath her comb. (Not that either Thranduil or Coupe are likely to have her reports submitted to them—nevertheless.)

The Ferelden visit had been productive—professionally. Personally...she's inclined to tug it out of him, but he's opaque at the best of times, and their ease together is still new. New enough that the best ways are not instinctive.

Yet, she thinks. Optimistically.

“Will you not editorialize to me?” lightly. “Shall I believe you've nothing more to say on the matter?”

[overharrowed]

"I suppose we're going to keep not having the conversation until we have it," he said, almost resigned.

"It's not that I don't trust you," he finally settled on, after a pause. "It's... I don't know what to say. Honestly. They clearly don't see me as their son, and I don't see what's to be gained from throwing myself against those rocks when we don't even know what's to happen to mages after Corypheus' defeat yet. To what end?"

[ipseite]

“Is it such a zero sum game?”

Would she ask such a question if she thought it was? (And other mysteries of cohabitation.)

“Is that the only option before you, the only consideration?”

[overharrowed]

"I'd hoped to be First Enchanter, maybe Grand Enchanter one day. I'm prepared for that, or something like it." He visibly resisted the urge to get up, to pace. "My ambition never included taking over from a petty man who can't even notice when his peers find him ridiculous and the only son he'll acknowledge is dreading the future he's mapped out."

Perhaps Bann Selwyn had drawn blood after all, beneath Julius' careful reserve.

[ipseite]

How, she thinks, could he have not.

It's not what Julius says that Petrana is learning to read, but rather the particular shape of his silences; where he chooses not to look nor tread. He is so very deliberate, so cultivated where the circle had not allowed him to be precisely cultured, and she is adept at listening for absence.

“And if there's nothing like it? The world is shifting around you. Even Lady Selwyn sees that.”

[overharrowed]

"I haven't built a new ambition yet, not entirely." He's had some thoughts. "I think I can do better."

It doesn't sound petulant. It sounds tired.

[ipseite]

“Yes,” she agrees, which might or might not have been what he was expecting her to say. “I think you could do a great deal, given the resources with which to do it.”

And look—just there, within his grasp.

[overharrowed]

For a long moment, it seems as if he might have nothing to say to that very reasonable observation.

Then, quiet but unexpectedly heated: "It's too much like him winning, even if he wouldn't think so."

[ipseite]

“No—darling,” softer, gentler, catching his hands to clasp them between her own, no sharp edges here, only curling golden hair and a round, honest face. “Only if you were to go no further than he. And I don't believe that—you cannot believe that. Only think what you could do, how much further you could go—the space you made for yourself could be a space you made entirely. The world is changing, Julius, we must invent successes for ourselves.”

[overharrowed]

He let her catch his hands, tilting his head a bit to lean against her. "It's foolish -- I feel foolish. Your point is perfectly reasonable, and I didn't get this far by wasting opportunities, it's just..." Julius exhales, and it shakes slightly.

"They did exactly what they were supposed to do. Handed me over and did their best to forget they ever had a middle son. It sounds childish to observe that it seems they had an easy time doing it."

While they're being perfectly reasonable.

[ipseite]

It sounds observant, she thinks, shifting to accommodate him and raising one hand to his hair, featherlight.

“They are people who have ever met expectations,” she says, because it feels less cruel than frank agreement, however true the words might be. “But you are more than that—only don't spurn opportunity for their sake. Not to please or to defy them. Already you do so much more than that simple minimum they live in.”

Imagine, she urges him silently. Imagine what you could be.

[overharrowed]

"Alright. I will seriously think on it, I promise." He thinks, brief and wry, of how he was against pressing for mage inheritance at Skyhold. Somewhere, probably, Marisol was feeling triumphant without knowing why.

"I thought I was past being a little boy who wondered why his parents seemed almost relieved when he turned out to be a mage. You're very good to indulge me, regardless."

[ipseite]

“We are never too old to feel suddenly small,” she says, quiet. Remembering something else, somewhere else; another mother, another sorrow. “I only think the feeling need not be the whole of it, nor the end.”

She touches his jaw, lightly, leans in to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth and then rises to finish undressing to bed—

“Do think. We have so much yet ahead of us.”

[overharrowed]

"I hope I can return the favor, someday," he says, after a moment. "You being there to prop me up."

It's not a question, not a push. But he remembers how she sent him for Melys, that night she woke up terrified. He doesn't begrudge her that, but he dislikes the feeling of her holding him and herself together on her own.