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

[shri]

That answer - that answer is easy. She neither withdraws nor presses forward. But stays exactly in this place. Without breaking to look away from him, let him see it on her face, let him see it for what it isn't without it half disguised for the sake of others who are not ready to hear such things. "Not to you, but for what you stand for. Because you are the Pirate, Captain Flint. Who fights with Charles Vane. Calico Jack. Anne Bonny. You serve no kings, you live by your own rules. Your captains are elected, you sign yourselves to the accord and live beyond the pettiness of nobility and their ilk. You do more than just dream of a better world, you make it, and I have admired it."

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

[katabasis]

Someone, he thinks, has been running their mouth.

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?"

[shri]

Lakshmi straightens, rolls her back up and - good - good he's listening. Which is more than frankly she could hope for. Pulling up straight, she grabs the edge of one of the long scarves she seems so fond of ( blue always blue ), and begins to wipe the blood off her hands. Methodical, digging into the space between bones, ringing out her fingers one by one.

"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.

[katabasis]

He gestures to the blood smeared onto the desk. It's a dark black spot in the swaying light.

"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.

[shri]

"Our commanders, and one of every kind of race in this place that I could manage, though I personally know no dwarf or qunari to trust with the information as of yet. But I will, in time." she blows out a sharp breath she held wetting her lips. "I was told it was unwise, but I disliked our commanders being the only ones to decide the fate of such a thing when they are half chantry aligned or pretending to be, or dressed up nobles."

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."

[katabasis]

And she's told him, as equal a form of leverage as all the rest. Give a piece of a thing to everyone in the room and suddenly they'll all be too stricken by the consequences of using it to actually do it. Who moves first? Who looks the worst by doing it? Who risks their neck? Who--

"Do they know you're telling me?"

[shri]

"They do. I intend to tell Vane as well."

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."

[katabasis]

If there's a flicker of irritability over mention of Vane, it dies just as promptly as it appears. Fine. If half the world knows it, why not Charles Vane as well? That they've been squabbling while trapped at anchor makes no great difference to the truth in that.

"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."

[shri]

She gives him a look, up under her lashes, warm and quick, all mirth like she's letting him on some grand trick. "They think I am petty in my concerns. I have always found fools to be my greatest ally. Let them think what they will, it changes little."

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?"

[katabasis]

The look he's adopted remains pointedly neutral, arranged into such careful flatness that there's no mistaking it for real disinterest. This too is a kind of survival technique: a stillness that's both prey and predatory all at once. It isn't so different from those coy looks she's so fond of deploying. Not really.

"We do."

[shri]

"It's origins are a little similar." She says with a sigh, meeting his eyes levelly, looking over him plainly. The game of it gone, meeting him in that upward turn that is more about what she keeps back than what it is showing.

"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."