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[ He doesn't sit up. Instead, he stays laying there in the water, nothing but the odd stray bubble rising from his nose. ]

[ For a moment she simply watches him float there bemusedly, and then, when he does not surface, reaches down into the water to pinch his nose in the idle hope of releasing a further bubble and then to gently wave his head back and forth by it.]

[ Which he just allows to happen. He's utterly boneless under the water, his eyes hooded. ]

[ She was planning to stay amused and wait for him to sit up and berate her for her callousness, but then there's something about the way his head lolls on his neck in the water when she lets go, the way the movement is distorted by the shifting surface, that snatches her out of herself and leaves cold mindless horror in its place.

too-sudden steel, too red, too warm on her face, the curve her neck makes: too far, too forward, her body too loose to be a body, gone, just like that, gone, and the sound, the sound --

At some point, the part of Alexandrie that is still in the fountain shoots a hand out to fist hard in his shirt and haul upwards with the sort of force one can only access in extremity, all light playfulness replaced by wide pinprick-pupiled eyes staring hauntedly from a face suddenly white and drawn. ]

[ What is perhaps ironic is that, in that desperate attempt to save him, she actually does rather more damage. The jerk sends water shooting up his nose, and he chokes on it as he surfaces; coughing and spluttering to rid his throat of the water, he struggles to draw breath appropriately. He curls up so he's sitting upright and spits it up, gasping to catch a proper breath.

Once he does, though, he looks over, casting a narrow-eyed glance at her and her sudden panic. ]

[ He splutters and she breathes like she is coming out of water, sudden and sharp. It will be another numb moment before she realizes her hand is still fastened white-knuckled in his shirtfront and another before she can figure out how to let go. ]

[ Who has done this to you? The Alexandrie Byerly had known before was not fearless, to be sure. But she did not ever show terror of this sort. They'd played games like this before, him motionless as though in death, pantomiming destruction of soul and body, and she'd done nothing worse than slapping him lightly on the shoulder. So who has given her this wound? This scar?

He suspects he knows. He suspects it's the selfsame entity that restored softness to her heart. The selfsame entity who is, according to rumor, a practitioner of blood magic. And isn't it funny, truly isn't it funny, how blood magic is (they say) capable of melting even the hardest of hearts? No, he doesn't think this is natural. He doesn't think it's any more natural than her newfound lovesick state.

But - he clears his throat. Smiles. Plants a soppy wet kiss on her cheek. Nothing more than that. ]

[ There seems a conciliatory thread in there somewhere, in the quiet beneath the insouciant bravado of smiles and damp kisses that she barely registers over the aching clench in her jaw, that allows for the draining of her sudden tension rather than its violent expulsion. Even so, she pushes him weakly when he leans to kiss her and turns her face farther away. Covers her mouth for a moment with a visibly trembling hand. ]

What brought you here [ she says it with perhaps surprising evenness, and quietly, even though the closest souls are some thirty paces away and engaged in the retrieval of her supplies, ] I have seen it now, and I can no longer play so with such things.

[ Death has proven too real for cheap mirrors. ]

Is that so?

[ He lets her go, of course. He's never forced a kiss or a caress upon any woman, no matter what his rakish reputation might suggest. He'd cut off his hands before he'd touch her when it was unwelcome. Which - yes, well done, Byerly, you're not a complete villain - but her words seem to suggest some wicked intent of that sort. ]

And tell me - what brought me here?

Blood on your hands, or so you said.

[ it is a feeling unlike any other. ]

Ah.

[ Here to the Inquisition. Not here to this fountain with her. All right. ]

Did you anticipate seeing none of it when you came here, dear Lexie?

[ she laughs, but it is short and humorless as she settles her hands in her lap. ]

I did. In the way one anticipates the very first time they are laid down by a lover, or somesuch other that is incomprehensible before its advent.

[ one hand picks idly at the other's palm. ]

The ballads do justice to neither.

[ A fluid shrug. ]

Bards are liars by profession.

[ He leans back, sprawling out casually, resting his elbow on the fountain's edge. ]

You'll see more before this war is through. And it will be people you love, people to whom you are indifferent, people you hate...And you will find how curious it is, to keenly feel the loss of those you hate. Things are taking a turn for the worse, you know. It's going to get much, much worse.

I know.

[ She looks up at the trees and finds them foreign and separate of a sudden. Watches the breeze in the leaves with the idle curiosity of an outsider. ]

We are so used to the cycle. The land receives, it blooms, it yields, it sleeps; wakens to receive again, to bloom. This, each day. This, each year. Every year. Some harder than others, some kinder. It is difficult to imagine that instead, perhaps soon, there may be no such thing.

[ She leans back, thumbing a thoughtless pattern of wetness onto the stone. ]

Instead there will be only blood and churned up mud in the lavender fields of my home. The people of Perendale will cry to an absent Maker to cease the growth of the corruption that drives Corypheus's armies within them and helplessly fuel the grinding march and murder of their countrymen.

And the same thing, perhaps, will happen to all homes.

[ A wryly raised eyebrow. ]

But Gwenaëlle says I must not be so melancholic, for it is tantamount to inviting such losses.

Do not ever take advice from Gwenaelle, dear Lexie. At least not now. The poor girl is lost and wandering through the woods.

[ And then, with his signature lightness of tone, even amidst the darkness of the topic: ]

When the darkspawn came to my home, in the midst of the Fifth Blight, I had thought there'd be no end to it. That everything I'd known would be trampled under their feet. But it wasn't. We lived to kill and abuse each other another day.

[ He'd tried to seek his own end out there. But he was, perhaps, the lone person who had trouble figuring out how to die in the Blight. By the time he'd found his way to the battlefield, it was over. What a fool. ]

Perhaps we'll get through this, too. To wreck each other again. All for the cycle of abuse and hatred to begin once more.

[ Listening is different now that she cares about things again. The bits and pieces of feeling that wash up on the shore like sea-glass are not things to be collected and held for ransom, but to simply be held.

His tone is light, but... ]

There is lavender in there as well, mon bouffon triste.

[ Arrayed as they are, it is simple for her to lean over to kiss his forehead; it is done as lightly as one can and still have the gesture retain such a distinction. She sighs quietly through her nose as she withdraws, smiling again as she lifts her feet from the water to turn and place them in the grass. ]

Come out of the fountain. You shall catch cold, and I do not wish to be blamed for it.

Lavender has always made me sneeze, ma belle fleur.

[ He flutters his eyelashes at her. He makes play like he doesn't understand why she's kissing him so gently. He makes play like it doesn't twist something in him. Where was this kindness when he was young and broken to pieces? - But no; it was there, then, too. He mustn't pretend that, merely because the end of the affair was so cruel, the beginning was as well. ]

Shall I carry you back?

[ she pauses for a moment, still as a doe in the wood, then: ]

No.

[ Not now. Not when it would not be only laughter and game layered upon game to be in his arms again. It is too short a step from there to "I cannot have you standing soaked on my doorstep," to "Marceau, find him a robe," to slowly spreading her fingers over the map of his skin in the warm flicker of candlelight to see what time had changed. Or, at least, to wanting to.

Would such a thing be so bad? The thought that it would fits strangely in her, but it is there nevertheless.

And so, gently repeated as she stands: ]

No. If things are to become worse, I must practice being able to endure and triumph over such terrible things as walking through Hightown with squishing slippers.

[ He doesn't drag himself from the water quite yet. Instead, he lowers his chin to rest upon his arm - the angle such that he'd be able to look up her skirt if it weren't clinging quite so firmly to her legs. It has the added advantage of being awfully flattering for him, emphasizing the length of his eyelashes and the beauty of his eyes. ]

It does occur to me that being able to triumph over death and destruction and being able to triumph over wet slippers might be independent of one another.

Does it?

[ He is lovely in a way that nearly hurts, and his eyes are in a way that does; she hasn't a single shred of doubt that whatever time they passed in dalliance would be brilliant (albeit perhaps calamitous). But she has already decided, at least tonight, and even if everything else has changed—in the world, in them—Alexandrie remains an unyieldingly stubborn woman.

She takes a step towards the servants, then turns back to look at him with a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. ]

I think them inexorably linked. I suppose time will tell which of us is correct.

Perhaps you're right. I fear both, after all. Ah, well.

[ He wriggles just a little bit closer to her, close enough that he can kiss her feet, one after the other. Then he finally exerts himself to rise, pushing himself from the fountain and stepping out. Then he bows to her, one hand behind his back, the other extended to her to take to steady herself as she steps forward. ]

Ma cherie.

[ The kissing of her feet is greeted with an indulgent roll of her eyes, the very formal extension of his hand with the equally formal receipt of it. She takes his offer of steadiness with light delicacy and poise, stepping as gracefully as if she descended from a carriage drawn up to the gates of Celene's Winter Palace rather than out of a fountain in Kirkwall.

Perhaps she lets the moment linger a bit too long, after. ]

I am— [ "pleased to have seen you again", she is going to say, or "pleased you are here". Neither is quite right though, there isn't anything quite right, and so she finishes with nothing at all save a simple farewell. ]

Bonne soirée, Byerly.

Edited 2018-09-24 20:50 (UTC)

So you are.

[ His eyes crinkle in a smile. And he straightens up as she passes. ]

May the stars shine brighter for your return home, milady, as their fiercest competitor retires for the night.

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i went to tevinter and all i got was this stupid ptsd

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