04 | CLOSED

[shri]

WHO: Lakshmi Bai & Wren, Herian, Thranduil, Araceli, Ioverth, Kitty, Solas and Teren - ( Also: Flint & Vane )
WHAT: Telling Some Whole Truths.
WHEN: Post-Fade Adventures, some time after her house arrest.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Probably really extra.

She sends them just the one note:

I require your presence, together this evening, for a matter of serious urgency in regards to the Inquisition.

महारानी,
Lakshmi Bai

Comments

BIG GROUP

[shri]

— Which she supposes is an ominous enough note in regards to the whole situation that they should come. Completely unhelpful as it was otherwise. The rest... well, that is just a matter of waiting for them, for her to explain, and her self-enforced seclusion to be over with.

She sits on the edge of her bed as they arrive, the door open for them. Simply waiting. But even for indoors, even for a situation like this, she is withdrawn. The orange veils that fall down to her elbows over her head. The skirts hiding her body tucked underneath her. If there is anything off to notice to start with, it's the faint sound of her breathing is laboured, each inhale seems to hurt and draw out longer then it should.

And the hands, sat in her lap, are certainly her hands. They are the same scars, the same bend in her fingers, the white of her nails, always well-taken care of. But they are not the hands of before. The skin pulls tight and thin, to expose the shape of lines. The wrinkles and callouses on them not that of a fighter, but what happens to any set of hands that age, see the weathering of the sun and rain. The little dappling of sunspots on the thin, fair parts, the predictable swelling in any fighter, of arthritis on her knuckles. If there is more, it is hidden firmly away, those veils as ever, serving their purposes.

The indication of each person arriving is given with a silent nod of her head. The veils swaying with the movement. Until they're all there and the last person comes through the door and at last she speaks: "Shut the door."

Her voice, still her voice, clear, but pained on the breath it requires her to take.

[rowancrowned]

He suspects an apology, perhaps one different from the one already given, when he receives the note, but that dwindles as he sees who else is assembled in the room (and, markedly, who is not). He closes the door at her request, and drifts over to stand by Iorveth on his bad side, the two of them in one another's blind spots, which suits him very well. No chairs, and the room is tight for a gathering of this size.

If not an apology, then...? The note was too cryptic by half, and the situation strange no matter what excuses or explanations he lets his mind conjure up. Best to wait, and see what Lakshmi does when she has the time and her whole audience.

[rathercommon]

Yeah, this group is - mysterious to her, as well. Some of the people who'd tumbled into the Fade behind Lakshmi, but not all of them - and some people who hadn't. She supposes that perhaps these are the people Lakshmi considers friends. Perhaps.

Kitty blows out a breath. Given the dramatic way in which Lakshmi summoned them, and the dramatic way in which she's dressed, it's probably too much to hope for that this is a meeting to organize some sort of surprise birthday party for someone or something.

So she just gives a little nod, and sinks cross-legged down on the floor, leaving the chair for someone more in need of it than her.

[doneisdone]

This ought to be good. Anyone who invites Teren specifically to speak of manners of the Inquisition usually either doesn't know what they're doing, or knows all too well, and it's time to be off a-murdering again.
What she doesn't expect is to walk into a room with Kitty and Thranduil and Lakshmi sitting on her bed, and by the quick dart of Teren's eyes it's clear she's immediately on-edge. "What's this," she asks, not even entirely in the door yet. (DO THEY KNOW ABOUT JANG, FUCK YOU SOLAS YOU RAT)

[limier]

"A question I am certain Mme. Bai to answer,"

Hello, Teren. Goodbye, convenient exit: there's an oversized person in it. Oversized, and armed — a rarity within the Gallows, but cryptic messages from the recently-confined being what they are —

The door shuts again. A glance to the others (Iorveth is one of the last she wants present upon a sensitive matter, but there's no pretending he wouldn't hear).

"With urgency."

If it's clipped, they're all on a schedule. Her eyes sketch briefly over Lakshmi's hands; a ripple of false memory, the flash of a furious crone. Resents the blur, the way the Fade ever fucks with sense; resents the veils now, their own bright echoes of Salzklippe.

[shri]

It's rather too tempting to bite back on that look - debate is no doubt up whether she's ever been truly polite or friendly. But now, there under her fingers as they touch against each other is the rough grain wood that she has cut back, yet to be sanded. Her eyes sliding behind her veils from Wren as she moves in, Araceli who enters afterwards. Her voice withering, low. Flicking her up and down from behind it with a short sharp gaze.

"Commander, is that all for me?" It's not a good joke, to anyone who knows the truth of it, but oh how she finds it amusing. But whilst she is having this grand entertainment on her own behalf: "As long as you don't make me repeat myself, I am sure we can be quite quick." She laughs, shoulders hunching, body twisting over it. A laugh that turns to a wretched, hacking cough but a moment later. Sick, she must be catching something - of course she would be. As if this could be more unpleasant. No wonder Galahad looked the way he had, and she had not even borne his torture. Every wound seemed intent on repeating itself for the time it was denied, it felt like.

[rowancrowned]

"Well, then," Thranduil says, pleasantly. "What is it?"

She has a bent for the theatrical like he does, giving situations a certain weight by staging and arrangement, not that he'd ever admit it outside his own thoughts.

He looks to Coupe, cocks a brow; whatever this is, they'll be having a conversation about it, after.

[dashing]

Herian has been watching with silence, standing and facing the corner, though she turns as the others continue to speak. Her gaze flickers between the Commander and the Provost, before settling on her fellow diplomat. Urgency rarely accompanied good news, and the group here is eclectic to say the least.

There seems little necessity in urging her on further, with multiple prompts already in place. She simply stands, posture rigidly correct, countenance equal parts inscrutable and severe.

[shri]

With them settled, she rises, the steps slow, shuffling as she goes to the door. Not that she did not trust them - but that she did not trust anyone. Each step shuffling on the slow limp of her steps. Her feet bare in her rooms, as always. That faint chime of anklets that pronounce the off timing to it.

The lock slides heavy, the heavy thunk of metal against wood. She presses fingertips against it for balance. Taking the slow breath in, in, in, the shot, the bite, the pained out. Easy, now, it's been a while, and at least there was no mirror to look at herself for it.

Do mages cast spells to silence rooms so others could not hear within it? It would be the first thing she learned to do if she had their abilities, and was stuck in their predicament. No matter, no matter. Shuffling back, she takes up her seat on the edge of the bed once more. Smoothing her hands out against her legs, dusting herself neat unnecessarily. "I would prefer to show you, first - you can ask me your questions after."

Which, it doesn't matter, it's what she's doing. She fishes the edge of her veil, and with the one movement lifts it to lay it across the crown of her head, settling against the flat gold disc and chain on her brow and in her hair. Her, certainly, below it, but, well, old. The long black hair streaked with grey from the temples down. The fall of skin as only time does to human bodies. The dig and weathering of sun and cold and war wounds. Scars that sit raised on the skin, white lines that pull, lines that dug in deeply. Her body twisted with its own weight and actions. She perhaps isn't even that old at all, but it is the life she has lived that carves her skin, her bones, her body hollowed out. Finally, finally, those eyes sit in the face they're supposed to.

Gives the one minute to take it in, old and tired and exhaustedly so. Her hand lifts to her belt knife, tucked in at her side, unsheathing it in a quick flick. Before there is a single thing to be said about it, her head tilts back, the blade rises and: she slits her own throat open in an upwards diagonal with an unerring accuracy. Not deep, but enough to make the point she wants. ( No - Wren, you are not rid of her just yet. )

The little silver phial, that was etched too purposefully to merely be decoration, of a snake that twists around itself to eat its own tail ( never taken off, always beneath her clothes ) is drawn out by the chain. The pause only in how her hand shakes faintly in tremors. The flick of the cap off with her thumb is too familiar to be anything else that she does often before she puts it to her lip. One harsh swig - and the effect is immediate. The cut begins to heal, and her body - to loses its age. Falling away, pulling back, her years retreating. It isn't painless, for why shouldn't be? It wasn't painless becoming this, after all. Though she makes no noise, her eyes scrunched tightly shut, her breathing coming quick, high, sharp. As her body healed itself, took back the time like it never happened at all.

Until, like a half-mad dream it might never have happened at all, almost, except for the very faint, white line left behind on her neck. Young, not more than mid-twenties, exactly as she'd first arrived. Clearing her voice with a sharp gasp of the breath she was holding, she settles back. Absently touching her fingers to her throat to pat the blood away. Smudging it between her fingers. Turning her face away briefly as she tucks the silver phial back below her neckline.

Lets that sit, taking the time to get her breath back from the pain of it until she's as settled as she ever will be before she goes on to speak. The explanation is broken down to its parts, what mattered to them, here and now. But, brief as it is, when her gaze meets Kitty's and determinedly flicks it back up. "We call it the blackwater. They say it was... a holy liquid, from God. Brought back by Knights on a holy crusade to save mankind. It is nothing, so I understand, to many of the things you have in this place. Nor do I possess any particular magic beyond this, before you worry on that account. I am no mage." And no doubt, they all could breathe a sigh of relief over that. "The reason it matters to you is that I may when I wish to, share how it is done and make anyone in this room the same. So, no doubt, could this Corypheus if he was ever to find out about it. I am sure I don't need to elaborate what Corypheus might do with turning his men to nigh on immortal soldiers that can heal near to fatal wounds in seconds that never age, how long he could make this war. Or what a... particularly thoughtful... blood mage, is it? Might do with myself should I be captured."

There. Laid out. The rest was - "I kept it from you as I found no reason to trust most of this place until I was absolutely sure what I should do." And her first plan, obvious by her sitting here in this state, had not worked. "For those who drink the blackwater, it is a duty, one we are bound to until death seems fit to take us, to protect those against impossible forces. But..." Well, she's trapped here, isn't she? And she is selfish, short-sighted, too hopeful, determined in her silence and unable to ask for help when she should, but not that sort of idiot. She wouldn't damn them just for her pride.

Rather, she takes up her blade - the long fine flat metal whip. Magni's work, fine as anything, carefully held. Placing it between her hands as she strides, right up to the middle of Wren, Thranduil and Herian, meeting each of their eyes, equally, bluntly. "... It is not for me to decide that fate, and even if I might become clouded to all else, I know my duty and I swear it to you. This is your homes, your fight. I submit myself to that. If my life is what you'd ask in order to protect that, I will give it gladly. You need only say the word. But you also have my assurance that should capture come to me, I will gladly strike myself down. To know I protect others, I would meet my own fate a thousand times. That is the oath I took."

No, she would give no apology like that - she holds so little value to them, save when they mean everything. But... Too many cowards had tainted that too long ago. Too much blood, too much pain. What good was it to something as solid as an action? She had already done one thing that could not be taken back, the only payment could be another.

And with it all said and done, carefully, she places the weapon - so very particularly - at Wren's feet, touches the ground in front of her, the once by the brush of fingertips, then up to her own brow. A reverence to the motion that could not be mistaken, and too much herself to be false humility. Her and her loyalty, all of it given over to right now. With it done, she steps back, raises herself up, back straight and proud to it. The rest - the rest was for them to ask, them to decide. Whatever else followed, she had said all that mattered right now.

VANE

[shri]

She sits perched on the rail of Vane's ship, sometime near dawn. Arrived too early for when she sent the runner to him ( for when he'd both gotten back in from their hither and thither - sailors ), but what else was there to do? She never did like to stew alone. Been stuck in the Gallows far too long to not baulk at the first reason to leave the walls of the fortress. Leave looking at the mess she'd made of too many things that even when they shouldn't, mattered to her.

Her eyes sliding backwards and forwards over crew as they moved around their shift. One foot pressed toes down, heel up, bobbing in an absent twitch of movement up and down. Still and moving, all at once. As she waits for morning to crawl to a respectable time that she doesn't feel she might be bothering most some dreadful hangover.

Bangs the once with the side of her fist, a call to follow it - "It's Lakshmi."

slinks in, hi there

[sclavus]

The hangover isn't quite dreadful, and Vane's at least learned some tricks to see himself through them, so the bang at the door is only slightly irritating, rather than murderous to his aching skull. Even still, he's still laid out in the thin bed set into the smaller ship's captains' quarters, and he has no interest in moving from it. Sorry, Lakshmi, this is what happens when you arrive earlier than Charles Vane feels like functioning.

"Come in." He calls the mattress, half muffled by the pillow.

At least he's dressed, though, as he apparently just spent last night drinking without the extra activities that often come along with it. No other bodies sharing the space either. Just Vane, with his rumbled shirt, and his boots kicked off, and his hair in a slight mess. And, he makes a mild effort to lift his head up when she walks in. Give him a minute to work up to actual sitting.

"There a reason you're coming around this early?"

Bats eyelashes at

[shri]

"We need to talk, and it needs to be done before the rest of your crew are in and out for the day."

She walks into the room, not like she owns the place, but with that flat direction that sees certain things about her through.

But at least, she likes Vane, genuinely enjoys his company for what it is. Straight forward. Reminds her of the boys down the back end of the Muses', drinking, laugh, prone to fight each other, certainly, over a bad set of cards or a suspicious dice roll. But not, unsure of themselves either. Comfortable with themselves as they were a gun in their hand, and never a need to be more than that.

So she looks around the room briefly, looking for a cup - something, wine from last night maybe, and from her own flask she tips water into it.

Not just water sweet. Honey. Roses. Then thrusts it at him. "It will help with the head."

With that, she goes about doing a check haphazard of the cabin. Making sure the door was locked, no one was peaking in through the corners of windows.

uguuuu

[sclavus]

Lakshmi’s a bright, fierce soul, the kind you see leaders made of, and enchanting just as well. An interest to be around, a lively conversation partner, and with much of a world far different from his own to share in stories and rhetoric. Vane’s never been one to be overly fond of many people, but he does like her. Enjoys her company, maybe even considers her trustworthy.

But now she’s scraping around his cabin like looking for spies, and he watches her over the rim of the goblet he brings to his lips, hesitating to drink.

“Makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be drinking this, you looking around for witnesses like that.”

The comment’s more just for letting her know she’s acting fucking weird than anything else, as he takes his sip right after - first something small, then a larger gulp to toss the rest of it back.

“Skip the pleasantries. What is it my crew can’t hear or see?”

[shri]

It draws her back, heels grinding hard, flat, into the wooden boards, braced shoulder width apart, arms tense, crooked, a snapped sharp line in her shoulders that offset against to how she rolls forward towards him, in one long stride that smooths itself out.

On another creature, she might be moving after something she means to eat, to hunt and stalk and bring down. On her, it is just that same way she approaches everything. Direct, mean in the mouth and hard in the eyes. Not so much a threat as who she is when the pretence is stripped, gloriously, back, and she doesn't have to sit on ceremony in his company.

What relief he was.

"I'm immortal. In a matter quite different to your Corypheus. I can still die. But mortal wounds will not kill me. I can heal... in seconds. Nor, do I age."

[sclavus]

Charles Vane never stands on pretenses, partly because he doesn't really understand what they are, never was within the station of society to be allotted those, can't see the point of them from where he is, and would probably look weird as hell trying to fake it.

So it's nothing that feels particularly threatening to him when she approaches, just looks like Lakshmi being Lakshmi. When she says what she came for, his head does tilt, and his eyes do narrow, more because he's trying to wrap his head around the thought of it, as well as... wondering why the fuck she's telling him.

"Sounds like it's nice to be you."

He wouldn't mind having those powers. He doubts any man would. But then again, all Thedas outside of Nascere likes to pretend they dislike power, while secretly craving and crawling for it at every opportunity.

"Why tell me now?"

[shri]

"I'm sure many would think so. They're wrong. Until death takes me, I am doomed to watch everyone, and everything, die."

She will have that clear - she will not have some fool go chasing her and her life for hopes of something grand, some promise, no doubt to the same vein of Corypheus and his delusions.

"Because I'm stuck here, despite my best attempts, I cannot leave to go back to where I am needed. I had to... make choices. Our... commanders here had to know lest it be used by Corypheus against us. But I do not trust them, or the Chantry, beyond the purpose of the Inquisition. I will not go into their Tower. I will not be bound by their fear to helplessness."

[sclavus]

Vane's brows lift, and he's sure some people might be completely fine with that - the world dying around them and deciding how long you feel like watching it. At least, he's assuming she retains the ability to commit suicide when she's had enough.

That point of the discussions's neither here nor there, and Vane assumes, hardly part of what she came here to talk to him about, so he gives her a vague shrug, agreeing to disagree on immorality for the time being, and listens to the rest aptly. Not going back to where you're needed, yeah, he could sympathize with that. Half the time Vane spends sleeping on this ship, he's thinking of just sailing it out in the night, going back to hunt for Jack and Anne. But he'd given his word, so here he is.

"Good. Make them fight you for it." Their stupid ass towers. What complete bullshit. "And you, what, want help should it come to that?"

Still on the 'why are you telling me this' part.

FLINT

[shri]

The bang on his window is late in the night. Very late in the night. Probably later then it had to be for it but, well, she had to creep away from most people's sight and that wasn't exactly easy when she had so thoroughly displeased everything that counted as her higher-ups, and then some.

But if she sailed under Vane, stood to reason that - eventually, she sailed under Flint too, the two were close at least in legend, if not in practicality. But better to place two bets down in the race, and this was all a gamble. She was not going into the chantry circles, no matter what they told her. She could not think of anything more idiotic for her, even if they didn't want to accept it right now.

Nor would she ever accept it. Not for what they were selling it as. Too similar. Too similar to having her legs shot out from underneath her and being told she was being done a favour.

Meant, now that it was truly unavoidable a notion - she was stuck here - she had to start to make these plans. One day, one day, one day. It sits flat to the roof of her mouth as she stays crouched in the half dark of the back balcony of the Walrus. Didn't know his men like she knew Vane's to just go traipsing through and she didn't want to cause more of a fuss then she had to with his crew. A familiar bent to this that she hadn't had seen arriving, half bent in the dark, watching the slide of shapes, making plans.

[katabasis]

At once, he's awake. A beat follows in which his subconscious struggles to inform the rest of him as to why. Something against the window, he thinks, and is upright a moment later in the dark cabin with a bare knife in hand. He waits, listening in the dark, attention fixed on the warped glass of the stern windows. The panes aren't so flawless as to present anything like a clear picture in the daylight and here, just barely past two bells, the world past them is one of shadow and outlines - darker marks against the light flecked black of the smudged backdrop of Kirkwall's docks.

The Walrus murmurs at anchor. She shifts, flexing as an animal breathes. His hand finds the latch, pops it. In one smooth motion, Flint snatches the figure from the stern balcony and hauls it into the pitch dark of the cabin - drives them back to the paper strewn table and pins them there. The knife sets to the dark throat and--

Flint balks as he makes out the woman's face in the streaked moonlight.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

[shri]

She locks hard with it, her body bracing against the impact of bones to wood. She wants to talk to him, she remembers, but the rest is an instinct - as he grabs, she braces, gets arms inside his to press closed fists and forearms against in a cross against his chest. Just in case, old fighters, always the same: he's just as likely to get the blade in her throat out of sheer instinct as not.

Which leaves her, breath driven out of her lungs, hooking a leg around the back of his that isn't an enticement, only a promise to jerk his knee out from underneath him before he gets that far. A lock that won't hurt, even hanging on as hard as she is. Tense, sharp, but she pushes no more than that, she had startled him, after all. One reaps as one sews. But rather than ire, she laughs. Easing herself down little by little ( ow, was that a pen knife digging in her back? ). Face tilting up in the half-light so he can get a good look at her and know it is her. How it suits her maybe, making each little thing pointed for him to read the intent of it.

"Captain. A pleasure. Looking for you, of course." And because she simply cannot help herself, she supposes: "Quite the... greeting."

[katabasis]

(It's absolutely a pen knife.)

His hand fisted in her clothes and pinning her to the desk doesn't relent, though it's clear now he knows her face and is fully aware of the heel at the back of his knee. It's a strong grip, arm all sinew and corded muscle ungiving even in the face of her laughter. But the knife edge has tilted up at least. By only the barest degree, but it's not kissing her throat anymore and that must count for something because what the fuck kind of answer is that meant to be in the middle of the night? And after he's ripped her off the stern ledge and put a knife nearly in her--

"At this hour?" Snapped out, boggled.

But he releases her, though there's no missing that the knife remains bared and well in hand even as he extricates himself from the loop of her leg. For fuck's sake. He rounds the table, leaving her to collect herself as he strikes a match to light the lamp hanging from the hook overhead. As if it weren't clear already, in the resultant wobbling light it's obvious she's woken him. His shirt's all undone, long hem loose about him, and he's barefoot.

"Is there something wrong with the morning?" He shakes out the smoking match, killing the ember.

[shri]

Once he moves, she pushes a hand underneath her. Digging about blindly to find the blasted thing sticking in her back. Once it's free, she drops it unceremoniously beside her. Ugh.

Not that she moves to get off the desk for the time being. Watching him half dressed move around the room. Odd sight - there is a thing to meeting those they tell stories about. Here as much as home, but even that. Flint was a man always so well put together, in his way. It wasn't... quite what she expected if she were honest. But this was a different sort of off, him half asleep in his smalls.

It doesn't matter.

"I am currently not at easy liberty. I would prefer our talking to be private. I've already done too much to damage my own reputation of late."

[katabasis]

"So I've heard."

In the close quarters of the cabin and the swaying lamplight, he sounds flat and unimpressed. Of course. Because slipping away in the middle of the night, taking a boat from the Gallows (or wherever she might have been expected to sleep) and taking it here to scale her way up the aft of a ship all but confirmed to belong to pirates could certainly do no harm.

The knife is still in his hand.

[shri]

"Ah," Her eyes slide from his face, down the blade in his hands.

But that begs the question, Kitty? No, no that doesn't really matter. Her eyebrows lift her head turns in a brief nod, acknowledgement of. Because the greater question is: "How much do you know?" Had he been told the rest, by way of Araceli or another?

Lakshmi hops down, boots heavy on the land, trailing her fingers around the desk. Smooth, light. A particularness to it. Making sure to keep each thing smooth, rolling, an inconstancy to keep still. Reading on the jump.

[katabasis]

"I somehow doubt it's everything." Gwenaëlle hadn't said much about their trio into the Fade, really. Only that it had happened, that it had been idiotic.

For a span of seconds, he regards her there as if trying to either cut her from the room or paste her against some ill-fitting backdrop and isn't certain which. Then he turns, sets the unsheathed knife on a built in shelf within easy reach, and apparently opts to simply make do with whatever the fuck this is in favor of at least getting as far as tucking his shirt back in.

"Sit down." Stop prowling about the room.