Entry tags:
04 | CLOSED
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.
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
no subject
"Sit." It really isn't an invitation. If she wants to have a conversation here, in the dead of night, she will either give him his due or live with him keeping a knife to hand for the entirety of their meeting. "You can say whatever you came to while I dress."
It's a poor hour for theatrics.
no subject
She flicks her hand - dismissively short and with that infinite ability to simply own whatever space she is in, she turns her back on him. To let him do whatever he needed to, to get dressed, and let him have some modicum of privacy to the second.
Takes the seat at least, placing one foot flat to the ground, the other lifting to hook over the opposite knee, balancing there. Lets her hands rest on it, tapping an offbeat rhythm to her waiting - taking the uninvited moment to simply look over the room, the small cabin that made up the space of the infamous Captain Flint. Over whatever was left out, whatever language she could understand on the spines of books left exposed. Delicate as vertebrae.
Holds on a breath of something feel so... passably familiar. Yet not at all.
no subject
At the very least, he keeps his thoughts to himself - a mercy, he thinks, for is own benefit more so than it is for her. He gets the feeling they might talk in circles if he opened the door to semantics.
So she's left with the company of the desk, the small stack of books there - (one must be a ledger and the other has no name on its spine and the third is called The Sermons of Divine Rosamund vol.III and matches at least one other on the shelf built into the nearby bulkhead) -, a series of papers made anonymous in the low light, the shifting shadows as the lamp swings from the overhead hook, the murmur of the harbor's black water at the Walrus' stern, and the low shuffling of clothing being traded.
Eventually, he comes back around the desk looking less human by far in a dark shirt and breeches. He sets the closed pen knife before her as he rounds to take his seat.
no subject
Or more likely, not.
She was here for business.
Once he's settled, she rises. One long step in front of another. That press open of her shoulders, proud down the back line of her that smoothes each step, predator slow, sure, so sure, that she takes up the penknife without looking. Flicks it up, over, to grasp the blade by the handle and lean forward to place her other hand flat in front of him.
( She is considerate, in her way, it isn't on a valuable piece of parchment or book or otherwise easily destroyed ).
Doesn't speak, doesn't do much more than meet his gaze, one brow lifted before she slides her eyes down in a gesture for him to follow, to watch that hand between them that supports her weight. "This stays between us, understand?"
The penknife slams down, straight through the middle of her hand. She hisses - just because worse has happened, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt and because of that, before anything else can be done. "Don't." Move, speak, call for hep. "Just watch."
And fishing below her collar, she reaches for the silver chain, the heavy phial that sits still against her beating heart. Uncapping it with the side of her thumb in a flick. Tilting her head, without taking her eyes from his face. The blood wells. Bubbles up over the side of her hand in rivulets, dark as to be black in the little light. "Pull it out, if you would."
no subject
Does the picture of them in this room look as strange and false as it feels? He imagines it more clearly than he lives in it: all bathed in speckled moonshine through the mottled glass of the stern windows, the light of a single lantern painting shifting highlights on the pommel of the pen knife and her hand where it's pinned, and something uncomprehending in his own expression as she drinks from the heavy silver phial on the chain about her neck. The air is cold thanks to the open window and the breeze whispering through it.
At her behest, he pulls the knife free.
Two thoughts: What's the fastest way to usher a lunatic out of one's cabin without drawing attention to it? And, her blood is going to stain his goddamn table top.
no subject
It heals itself clean. It heals itself - from fresh scab to scar, then - to nothing at all. An odd ripple of sound as something that should happen in months is done in seconds. It isn't painless, it isn't that kind. Her body sweats the fever of infection in seconds, the ripple of tendons knitting themselves back together makes her gasp harder than getting the injury did in the first place. A cost of pain and healing that are in all things, equal.
Equal, whatever that meant, here and now.
"I am not a mage, nor am I corrupted, before you ask. I am old, Captain Flint, older than you. But as long as I drink, time does not touch me, wounds do not kill me. I can fight harder, longer, faster, than any other man in your service and I offer myself to it, freely if you want it."
no subject
It may be the only thing he is sure of. Her hand planted there in the wet handprint of her blood and the sheen of the knife are simple enough. Even the knitting muscle and flesh and bone are-- a large enough question to be displaced from the immediacy of the room. But the rest-- there, she has him. If not for that pledge, it would be easy to find some reason to usher her right back out that window, off the back of the Walrus and be done with it. But.
It begs questions, doesn't it?
"That sounds like a generous offer." He lays the penknife on the table, though his hand lingers over it. She's no mage, she isn't corrupted - both easy things to say, the inverse of which speaks to some ingrained, self-preserving caution. Who believes the first thing someone tells them about magic and blood? Certainly no one from the North. "Is there a reason you're giving it to me?"
Allow him to say it again in a more genteel fashion: What the fuck are you doing here, Lakshmi Bai? What do you want?
no subject
It isn't impassioned, but with her hands dug into the wood, she means it, hopes it, must do more than dream it. That lock of muscles, that tenseness that is less to do with running away, but the want to fight something, anything, honestly and directly without scraping to rules she either did not understand or did not care for.
"I can tell you of a time, a world, where those things, the things you have fought for, are realised or have begun to take form. I can promise you, that to my last breath, I will fight for them here too. It has been the only thing I have fought for. Until God deems me fit me to be taken and I will never ask for a single thing in return other than a chance to fight for it as you do."
surprise
Which is no surprise. They have been these many months in Kirkwall harbor, the crew of the Walrus allowed their liberty as he frankly has no option but to give it. He should be glad that this is the version of events that has propagated far enough for it to catch her ear. These are people with good intentions, those rumors say. It's better by far that 'Captain Flint will appear in the middle of the night, slit your throat and steal your children.' It's far preferable to the death knell murmurings of, 'We've come all this way, and for what?' that he might reasonably have feared.
The question then becomes-- "Who else knows about this?"
no subject
"Which part?"
She's at ease, now, in a way she hasn't been since she arrived. There is something to airing what she thinks, feels, who and what she is, and making no repentance for any of it that lets her stretch out inside of her own skin. That fills her up like water in a cup to almost over flowing.
no subject
"Who else have you told."
The rest is-- not something he needs to hear from her. Questions will need to be asked along the wharf and in Kirkwall's taverns - What have you heard of the ship in the harbor? What has its men been saying about what they came from? How discontent are they really? -, but not of her and not out of his mouth directly. Appearing unconcerned is a necessary part of keeping control of the situation.
no subject
Her distaste is plain, she has no fondness for it, never has. So few getting the choice for so many. "They disagreed, but it was too late anyway."
Isn't that just her way? And she knows it too. That little twitch of cruel mirth in the corner of her mouth that is part disgust but as much frustration. "You should have seen them, half horrified and hungering over the idea of eternal life. Fools."
no subject
"Do they know you're telling me?"
no subject
The worst of it over, she moves back, lifting a hand to idly scratch at pieces of dried blood.
"Though currently, I am not supposed to be leaving without their direct permission. I also must ask when and where I want the blackwater. I gave it over willingly, much as giving them my life counts as my compliance. I did offer to kill myself, if they really didn't have a use for me, but Coupe thinks I only care about my once crown."
no subject
"If that was your interest, I can't imagine what you could possibly have gained by being honest about your--" Hm. "This."
And here, finally, he pivots to ask a proper question that has nothing to do with his part in this, this has nothing to do with her climbing through the Walrus' stern windows. That has everything to do with the knit of muscle and bone and the how of why that is possible. "Where does it come from? Your blackwater that you've agreed to surrender to them."
no subject
Quick as it comes it goes - not to ire but thoughtfulness, as scrape scrape scrape goes her nail into tacky blood, flaking it off. Where to start? Familiarity probably. "I'm told you have a story, about Andraste's sacred ashes holding magical properties that can heal those who come to it?"
no subject
"We do."
no subject
"Some call it the Holy Grail, the cup which was blessed by a mortal son of God. Others Ichor, a powerful substance that runs in the veins of now fallen Gods. My own people say that it is the primordial substance that conjured the world, the very liquid of divinity itself." There a bite there, that is her long fight with the chantry, it seems, but this is neither the time or place. "I suspect the truth is a little of all of them, but it was discovered centuries before I was ever born to tell you absolutely. Only that long ago, knights found it, when mankind was threatened to be destroyed, and those that drink it, swore themselves to eternal protection of those around them. Not so dissimilar to your wardens or templars. I took it up for such the same reasons."