faderift | open | then in the pounding of my heart

Entry tags:

open | then in the pounding of my heart

WHO: Myr & you!
WHAT: new eyes who dis
WHEN: Throughout Harvestmere, backdated to the team's return from the Abbey on the White Cliffs.
WHERE: The Gallows & Kirkwall
NOTES: potential cautionary cw for trauma & gore mentions

Their return was no triumphant one. What had started hopeful for alliance and aid from the Abbey on the White Cliffs had collapsed under the weight of the horror there and taken so many lives with it. One of the Inquisition's own is dead. A potential ally is lost. And a power from beyond the rifts has warped the world past bearing, making plain once more the awful danger rifters themselves could be.

As for Myr, subject to a miracle hidden in the heart of the whole thing--

He doesn't hide from his friends in the Inquisition, exactly. Doesn't shirk his duty or vanish into his quarters. But while he's often there in body there's some part of him missing in spirit, curled in on itself to reflect on what had happened.

i.

He spends his first full day back in the Gallows undoing his locator glyphs, one by one.

They could simply be unsnarled all at once without him walking the halls; he could have done it the moment he set foot on the Gallows' docks. But he has not seen the ugly place in person but for flashes granted by the Provost; he doesn't know the look of the halls, only how the glyphs stand in relation to one another and the sound of their chiming. Their removal, but for a handful, is a chance to learn his home of the past year by sight.

He pauses often, especially by inhabited rooms; he listens to echoes and sometimes stares concerningly long at a doorframe or a wall or a bit of tapestry. Sometimes it's with a look of puzzlement; sometimes with no look at all, his mind occupied with other troubles. He's surely run into someone in all that distraction.

ii. a.

The commission to head up the Chantry Relations project had been waiting for him on his return, piled up among his other correspondence. He'd not ever seen the seal on it before but it was different from the others in the pile and so he broke it open to read, in a halting way.

It took him three re-readings to fully comprehend the letter and set it gently back down atop the pile of its fellows.

"So that's why," he remarks to the air (or anyone outside the open door). "That's why You put me there."

From the first to the very awful last of it, miracle included. He makes a small helpless noise that might be a laugh or a sob.

b. (for Cade)

Of course, he began packing immediately--what there was to pack; much of what he'd kept in the Rifts and the Veil office was proper to that project and not his at all. There are Procedures and Forms to these things, though for the life of him they're all out of order in his head right now and all that remains is he needs to occupy the space allotted him.

He did remember at least to send a message to Cade--that he was back in the Gallows, that they'd be in a new office now--though somehow it slipped his mind to mention he didn't need help urgently for the move, being quite able to find his way between rooms with laden arms now.

iii.

It isn't all for sorrow. Whatever the cost of it, he'd been given a gift he couldn't not use; and slowly, as Harvestmere wears on, he grows into the joy of seeing again.

One morning is better than the others: He rises before dawn and goes for a run about the Gallows, flat out in a way he's not been able to for years. In no fit shape for it but game to push himself, he manages a lap at that pace and a second at a slower, before settling on the stairs down to the docks to watch the light break over the windless water.

"Good morning," he greets the first person who walks near him, smile bright. "D'you know, I didn't think the sea could be that still. It never feels it, riding across."

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"And the Maker walked beside Andraste," Myr retorts lightly, "but we don't take that bit of the Chant quite literally since He'd have left a trail of blinded, stricken mortals in His wake if He'd been seen."

And probably prevented all the sorrow that came after since there's few things to compel belief like the actual presence of the Source of All, but leave that aside. The point's made: They're coming from different frames, and it's not first nature for Myr to think of divinity that way. Still, he listens politely--more than polite, attentive and curious--to the answer he asked for.

"I suppose I am," he says to Sorrel's final question, thoughtfully. "But also--if a powerful mage were to come among you, claiming she was one of the Creators returned," Mythal, say, to use no example in particular, relevant to nothing whatsoever, "what would you look for to measure the truth of that claim?"

There's a breath of a pause, not really quite enough to wedge a word into, before he adds, "Because the way we'd know the Maker and Andraste are back among us on Thedas is this world ends for the next one. Which the Dread Wolf's already done, hasn't he?"

Not in a way that worked out nearly so well for his People as the Maker's return was supposed to, but a world had ended all the same.

"You're talking about someone specific now," Sorrel notes, and nods to acknowledge the wrinkle it puts in his argument. Ashabellanar adds wrinkles to every bloody thing though, and it is seemingly her function in the world to do so, "If you're asking me to tell you some foolproof way of knowing the difference between a god in hiding and a talented charlatan, then you're looking for a way to make the world always do what's expected of it, and fit into easy little lists. That's not how reality works, that's a fairytale for children. The only real way to know if someone is what they say they are, is to watch and see how they act."

People, even really good liars, eventually break the lie, because they are lying for a reason. If someone was claiming to be a god, they would have to back up that lie with some form of reality, and if a mage had enough power to truly transcend death, to command the power over creation, to forge the world anew and control the very veil...

...What is a god? If the form and function fit, then who cares about the origin?

"What the Dread Wolf did was a betrayal. The world didn't end, if you notice the last ten thousand-odd years having happened: it changed. For us it was for the worst, but for the shems it was a blessing. You ought to think more outside yourself, if you want to know what I think."

"Not at all. I'm asking what it is you'd look for to convince yourself one way or another--how would one of the Creators act? What marks a god apart?"

There are two scones left. Myr considers them both before picking up the smaller of the pair and industriously reducing it to bite-sized pieces. Sorrel's last comment wins a snort of amusement from him. "You're being disagreeable for the sake of it," he points out, mildly. "The world won't be annihilated at the Maker's return, either, but it won't be the world we knew. That's an ending. Especially for those who throve off injustice."

Speaking of shems. He sets the last chunk of scone down atop the pile of its fellows and studies Sorrel thoughtfully. "You make it sound as if the shems owe the Dread Wolf a debt of gratitude," he continues. "That the Creators wouldn't've let them grow into themselves at all, let alone what they've done to us."

"And if a leader turns against his people like that, and brings them to ruin, then he ought not to complain when they still call it a betrayal."

Sorrel stops himself short, and leaves it at that; there's danger enough in all this than to invite the wrath, however superstitious, of the Dread Wolf. He still has two whole scones in front of him, in addition Myr's one and half, so he puts them back. It was fun enough, being greedy for the joke of it, but he isn't truly hungry anymore.

"It's only I thought you came in here to learn something, and this is starting to sound like you actually came to make a few sharp points about something," Sorrel tells him, quietly, pulling his hands back and away. It's not a conscious pose of threat, but it is rather wary, as if to be cautious of a biting creature, and to get one's fingers out of the way, "I don't know where you come from, Myrobalan, but ever since the fall of Arlathan, my ancestors have always been told that if they didn't roll over and agree with whatever god someone else wanted to follow, they'd just as soon be left to die. Or more likely killed."

His pronunciation is soft, crisp, and very calm so that the only real sign of his emotion is the thickening of his accent. But Sorrel isn't smiling any longer, and this isn't a children's story to him. The fairy tales about dread wolves and lost cities are fanciful indeed, but he cannot ever really forget just how many people have died to preserve them. Sorrel has no words to explain to Myr that their reality is immaterial, because the blood spilt in their preservation is enough to warrant the genocide of a people, in some eyes. In human eyes. And the scar on Sorrel's face is testament to his own experience with that.

"So you'll have to forgive me if I interpret that as something of an attack, being as traditionally, it is one."

He does not know what he's done, nor exactly what foot he's set wrong, but nevertheless Myr reads the warning in Sorrel's tone and posture clear as a darkening in the sky before a sandstorm. His own hands still--then he turns them face-up on the desk, empty-palmed, I have brought no weapon here and mean you no threat.

"Forgive me," he says very quietly, "in my zeal. I did come to understand, not judge. But now I think we're talking past each other as I've gotten fixed on something that doesn't matter.

"I do not want you dead. I do not want another Dalish elf to die because she wouldn't convert--or for any other contrived reason a shem might have to kill her. What happened to the Dales was an unimaginable betrayal of a people already wounded and it should be undone."

So, and so. He breathes out slowly to calm his own temper; looks down a moment as he gathers the rest of his thoughts, reminds himself--with a silent prayer for guidance--why he'd come here. "We should be allies, not at odds. And as I'd not turn from the Maker I will not ask you to turn from the Creators. But I do want to know how, and why, you come to know them. What they mean to you and what it means to honor them--but I see I've asked the wrong questions to do that. So."

He looks up once more, takes his hands back--does not quite make as if to leave, but there is something about him nevertheless that says if Sorrel tells him to go, he will.

Sorrel waits a moment, watching, gauging Myr's words. He doesn't know it, but right then, in that moment, Sorrel resembles no other living being so much as his mother. Keeper Deshana of the Clan Ashara was a woman who could curdle blood like cheese with a single glance, and who's regard seemed to sum up the whole of one's sins and judge them all silently. And then, she would speak.

Sorrel had her eyes. And now, he spoke:

"What it means to honor the Creators is to keep the memory of our own ways alive. To never let the shemlen define who we are or what we know to be true, and never submit to being ruled by anyone but ourselves, and our own," He says it carefully, because it is both an acceptance of the apology, and an answer to the question, "That's the difference between a city elf and a Dalish; we grow up saying we are the last of the elvhenan, and we do not submit, what we mean is that we will be free, living or dying. You've seen the Vallaslin?"

Sorrel motions at his face, at the long, jag-shaped scar across one cheek, and the little bird-rib curves of ink there, bone-white against his skin. There, once upon a time, something sharp and ugly had met skin with poor precision and torn Sorrel's face open from the corner of his mouth nearly all the way to one ear.

"We started all wearing them only really after the fall of the Dales, when we had to make the choice between submitting to shem rule, turning Andrastian, or taking the risk to starve on our own. And we decided then and there that if the shem wanted to take our gods, our choice, our freedom, they could come and skin it off us," The vow is delivered with uncommon fervency. The eye-contact has gone on, perhaps a bit too long, but Sorrel holds it a moment longer, then looks away and scrubs one palm across his cheek, a little embarrassed, "Do you think you could try and understand, why it's probably better not to ask something like what if a god isn't a god?"

"I do." The words are said quietly, but Myr's far from cowed; he meets Sorrel's gaze (had he seen those eyes elsewhere than in the other man's face, in a shared nightmare once?) for as long as it's on him.

There is much in him to judge in this, and much he's failed at. He's accustomed enough to dragging his own sins out into the firelight and burning them that he can let them be seen that way and admit culpability. (Were it a divine rather than mortal judge looking on him that way-- But let it bide.)

It's only when Sorrel looks away that he can register the scar and the tattoos it crosses; can wonder at both of them and whether someone did, indeed, mean to skin the marks off the other man. "It would have been better to ask, what will you do if they return? --Because I do believe they were here once and that you know them as well as anyone could."

His dispute, he realizes, lies less in whether they've a claim to godhood (because a god was what people named it; the Chant may call the Old Gods false but never gave them a name other than gods) than with whether they're worth worshipping at all. And that is not a dispute worth continuing now, knowing what that worship means.

"Are you asking what I'll do, or what The People will do?"

It's not a real question, although he's curious enough to know the answer. They are, after all, two very different questions with two equally separate answers.

"It would depend on how it happened, on what was done and proven, and what was promised. The Dalish aren't like other nations, we don't have a central leader; we might agree to something as a group, but actually doing what we've agreed to is up to individual clans, even individual elves in those clans. It's like herding cats, politically," Sorrel waves a hand sideways, an uncertain wobble.Who can say what the Dalish would do? Some would refuse to believe the Creators had returned until they had seen living evidence of a hundred years of Elven rule in a sovereign nation, and even then they might need to approve of the actions of such a nation before they'd unbend and believe it might last. Others were ruthless enough to follow anyone at all, if it meant they could make war against the humans wherever they encountered them, "Me, personally though? It would also depend on a lot. I've got obligations that I couldn't put aside for anything, even if I saw a Creator returned and they wanted my help and it seemed to me that they were legitimate enough to deserve it. And it's not like the gods coming back would erase all the time that's passed since the times when Arlathan ruled the world. Things are... very different now. And I think they'll always be, unless everybody who isn't an elf or a dwarf just keels over and dies one fine afternoon."

Not impossible, of course. But then, not likely either. Stranger things have happened, maybe, but nothing quite so destructive as that; Sorrel isn't holding his breath.

"That's not much of an answer, but I also don't believe in prophecy so it's the best you'll get."

"Both," Myr replies, promptly. "Though I s'pose it's the latter that I should be most worried about."

Seeing as the whole of the Dalish people up and deciding to do something like follow after their ancient gods would be of concern to the Chantry. Though it sounds, from Sorrel's description, that that's as remote a possibility as the human and Vashoth populations winking out of existence all of a sudden. "I'd not say that's too unlike the Marches," tongue firmly in cheek, "or how they describe us elsewhere, anyway."

Though truthfully Marchers would follow the leaders of their own city without much quibble (or option not to); it's just when it came to anyone else the going got dicey... "Much of an answer or not, that does straighten things out--so thank you for it."

Things are very different now. Well--but that hadn't kept any other revenant mages with a vision of how the world should be from trying to run roughshod over it. Myr wisely does not share that thought; instead, nudges the plate and its remaining scones toward Sorrel with a finger. You can have them back.

"Whose blood-writing d'you wear, while we're on the subject of it?" He pauses once the words are out of his mouth, chagrined. "--That's not rude to ask, is it?"

"You're worried about the possibility a general Dalish uprising," Sorrel laughs, only slowly catching on when Myr says should be most worried, "And you're asking the half-exiled maybe-First for military information? You ought to be worried about more things in general. If the People decide they've finally had enough, nobody's getting advanced warning, least of all me."

Blood Writing. That was the word, truly, as Myr said it, and not for the first time Sorrel has a lurch of who before remembering Genitivi and wanting to go back and punch someone from Ralaferin for their trouble. Compassion and mercy, and this was what always come of it; not that he wasn't doing exactly the same, even now.

"Dirth'amen," Sorrel replies, shortly, ignoring the scones; to forgive is one thing, but the Dalish aren't much known for ever forgetting, "It's not rude to ask, exactly. But it is kind of personal."

There’s a luxury about having eyes that Myr had forgotten and that’s you can roll them—which he does at Sorrel’s retort, though there’s good humor in the gesture. “Most worries about of the two options I’m presented with,” he clarifies, laughingly. “If you want my real list of worries and where exactly ‘general Dalish uprising’ ranks on it we’ll be here the rest of the day.”

He looks down again at the abandoned plate of scones in the no man’s land between them, his briefly antic smile fading from his face. “Though I admit I’m more worried for you should anyone,” see: the Chantry, “get the idea that’s a possibility.”

Likely though they neither need nor want a flat-ear’s expressed concern. He folds his hands neatly before him and looks up at Sorrel once more. It is kind of personal wins an odd, sad smile out of him. “Then shall I not pursue that any further?”

Edited (mmmm reconsidered being too forward) 2018-11-20 14:09 (UTC)

"Even if something like that were to happen, they'd hardly tell a half-exiled Dalish First who's done little but act like a fool and practically sell himself to the shemlen Inquisition," Sorrel replies shortly, and tips his head sharply to punctuate the point. Not a nod, not a disagreement, only a little cock of the chin as if to say and there you have it: I'm useless to everyone, not just you, "But the burden of having to make up a conspiracy out of nothing has never stopped anyone from attacking the Dalish. More than one clan has died that way."

The Dales itself, died that way.

"It's not that I don't like you," Sorrel temporizes, although if asked outright, he didn't, "But I don't know you. And even I did, I certainly don't know you enough to go on a weird hours-long journey about my years-long religious soul-searching."

Myr's expression flattens, gone quiet and considering at Sorrel's at a half-exiled Dalish first. His look isn't a pitying one, exactly, but there's worry to it-- One mention in passing might be held at arm's length to consider the truth of; two in close succession says another thing again about Sorrel's assessment of himself.

They haven't been on the same footing this whole conversation, Myr thinks, and here he'd been playing his own unease off with humor and missing the more important subtext the while. More care's required, next time.

If there is a next time.

(Practically sell himself to the shemlen Inquisition. Maker's breath and bones, that sentiment augured ill.)

"No, it hasn't," he agrees, quietly. "But I didn't come round to speak to you for fuel for rumors. Just there's a very great deal I don't understand about the Dalish," other than from tainted sources, other than a scared kid's hopeful imaginings, "and I don't think I help anyone by remaining ignorant."

Especially not if this is anything to go on. He takes the implicit rebuke as given, not--laughing, not shrugging it off or turning up a palm to let the whole idea go, simply nodding in response. "Understood. I'd not presume to ask that of you had I known."

"No," Sorrel says shortly, in agreement. It helps no one to remain ignorant; whether or not that's preferable to what help Myr might be when armed with knowledge, and to whom, is another question. Sorrel sits quietly for a moment, considering the paper under his hands, and the angle of the light in the room. Deep breath in, hold it, and then... let it go.

"Understand I'm not mad at you, anymore," Because, and only because, he had apologized. Pride had its place, and dignity, but respect was most necessary, always, "But what you're trying to put out as innocent curiosity can get people killed. I'm sure it's best for you to learn, but I'm not so sure you won't turn around and report everything to someone else who'll care less about offending someone than getting all these filthy, diseased knife-ears away from someone's pretty estate."

A shrug, one-shouldered. Evil. You work for it, Myr, whether or not you believe that that is its true form, it's been the face of that organization since soon after its inception, from Sorrel's perspective.

"So, ask whatever you like. I'll answer if I think I can. I don't know where to begin, or what it would take to satisfy you."

There are parts of this Myr desperately wants to argue--just as he'd been--and it shows in his face. But if there is one thing one learns as a Circle mage who viewed magic as a blessing--or a southern Andrastian with a little too much Imperial in his upbringing, or a near-Loyalist who loved a Libertarian like a brother--it's when to bridle your tongue in the face of provocation.

Besides, he'd already laid out exactly how he felt about the Chantry's treatment of elves. No sense in repeating it if he wasn't taken at his word the first time.

And no sense confessing he doesn't know where to begin, either, if Sorrel's looking to him for some kind of direction under the burden of I'm useless to you for not knowing. "I need to know what I can't ask of you," Myr says carefully, "you--specifically--and you, the Dalish more generally. You've said every clan's as particular and independent as any part of the Marches, and I know it's damned unlikely those who aren't working with the Inquisition at this point will have a sudden change of heart any time soon."

Who could blame them, says something in his tone; he heard the lectures, loud and clear. "But surely there's some things you all hold sacred--things that should be respected if we want even a sliver of a chance of aid. Or to be able to offer useful aid in turn."

Sorrel opens his mouth to reply, but then has to close it again on a grimace. What was safe to tell him? What was safe to withhold? In reality, even defining the boundaries would be too much— the guardian statues, stone wolves of Fen'Harel, but then wherever you saw those you would know the Dalish camped nearby. And knowing something was sacred wouldn't mean it was off limits; true too, it would make them a target.

He was beginning to understand, now, how all the books on the Dalish came to be so skewed. The answers, like the questions, were a minefield.

"The Inquisition only helps the Dalish because of what we have made them do," He replies, because that much truth was easy to give; it was Beleth and Sorrel, Pel and Ellana, Nari and Sina, who had made the contact with the clans, and who kept it alive, "And any sensible Dalish would believe anyone will honestly give the Dalish aid before the Chantry will."

Which is to say, even if it's offered, they'd have to be truly desperate to accept.

"The truth is..." Sorrel stops himself again, thoughtful. Silence passes in the time between words, like the shadow of something ominous and large, eyes shining in the dark, "The truth. I love my People. I want to tell you everything; how we raise our children, what the Vallaslin are from, every story I know about every statue and symbol and carving. Because you... seem... like a good person. But you're working in a system of people who would be very happy to see my People dead, so even small things are too dangerous. And you don't share that risk with us. You... just don't. How can I trust you to understand, and guard our lives, when you can only ever want see them from the outside? It's not as if you're trying to actually be a Dalish."

I could, Myr doesn't suggest, though the thought flits across the back of his mind in that way all his bad ideas do. It's almost the weird fulfillment of a childhood fantasy, something Vandelin had whispered about in the apprentice quarters when they couldn't sleep for homesickness. They'd escape the Circle and go back to the alienage and take his dad, and Ben, and Van's sisters, and run away to join the Dalish, and no one would ever try to steal them away for being mages again.

Eight-year-old Myr could imagine that it would be as simple as that, and of course the Dalish would be completely accepting of these flat-ears, and of course they wouldn't mind if he didn't pray to the Creators. That's how it works when you're a kid.

Twenty-two years on-- He's got no desire for it, no matter how much he admires his Dalish friends and wonders what their kind of freedom might be like. (Freedom from as well as freedom to, and wasn't there some philosopher or other who'd made the point that total freedom meant total vulnerability, too? Babies in gutters.) But Sorrel's point is apt: He isn't the one at risk, if he says something he shouldn't or something he gives out with the best of intentions is warped to evil purposes.

"No," he concedes, "I'm not. I couldn't be if it meant walking away from the Maker." The Maker is the rock to which I cling. "Though I take your point. I s'pose," his tone is not joking, precisely, but that sort that says I don't know this can be taken seriously, but here you are, "I'd need to live with you part of the year and take on that risk myself."

What the Chantry might make of that is problematic, and then where would he get time, and there's a war on-- But it certainly wouldn't be looking in from the outside.

"You don't have to walk away from anything, any more than I am by living here in the city. But if that's a serious suggestion you're making, you should at least agree to yourself that there are other ways to walk, other Makers, and Creators, that are just as valid a path. Turn-about is fair play, isn't that the phrase?"

It was a city phrase, he was sure he hadn't heard it before coming to Kirkwall. But now it was one of his favorites, another bad influence learned from his extended association with one Adasse Agassi.

"You s'pose, do you?" Sorrel says, drawling out the pronunciation, not bothering to restrain his accent as he continues on a growing smile, "Oh, the Keeper'd love this. Mother Mythal, give us Flatears making camp, and what will the world come to?"

Edited 2019-01-07 03:35 (UTC)

Myr raises a brow at that, biting his tongue a moment as he comes up with a more appropriate reply than Do you? Eventually, he gets it: "I'll supply Nari as a reference for that one--didn't proselytize once in all the time we were rooming together."

It isn't quite a yes but it's not a no, either. There are other paths, truly, and they make good people of the ones who walk them--but better no one have to walk part of those paths through the Void on their way to the Maker.

His eyebrows go up in surprise as Sorrel actually--seems to take the suggestion on its face? Well. "Collapsed tents and burned food, probably," he says glibly, then: "If it's something you'd actually consider--there's someone I'd need to consult about it," because like hell the Dalish are letting an absolute unit of a shem templar into one of their camps--and besides, Simon's his second conscience on this kind of thing.

"But I'd be glad to learn."

"You should have come with me to Arlathvhen, Myr," Sorrel opines, blandly, "Sighted or not, you'd have seen something then."

It's the most direct reference he's made to the issue of eyes, but it has no apology in it, only a friendly sort of sneer, a joke made in the friendly way.

"Well, we'll just see then. And no harm in it, if it's only us girls out there, clan or otherwise. I could always happen to send a bunch of us Dalish and then you, for the next little scouting foray, if it comes to that; I do have a position of authority here, such as it is."

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open | then in the pounding of my heart

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finally excavates my own writing ability from the grave it died in

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because of course there's a thedosian sartre, how could there not be

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