closed; and before his eyes the dark skies parted

[redinside]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Baudin, Raleigh Samson
WHAT: an interview and/or cussing-out
WHEN: well after troops have returned from the Battle of Ghislain
WHERE: Samson's room in the Mage Tower of the Gallows
NOTES: will add as needed

The Gallows has been quiet for want of those who dwell here. Bodies went out from the island in streams and left it behind, listless, grey as a corpse, and though many of those bodies have since returned, not all of them came home. Or, they came home missing pieces, blood and limbs and lives left behind. Ghislain has sucked the vibrance out of this place and spat it back on them as misery.

Other than to oblige the occasional necessity, Samson has not left his room since the Inquisition marched—and since they've returned, he's left it even less. Barely a word spoken to anyone. Barely a glance above shoulder level. Before departing with the rest of them, Derry managed to snag eye contact just the once, by accident, and smiled oddly—lips hidden, like a shrug, an expression of guilt and pity, the very same one a pedestrian will flash to a beggar as they pass them by. That smile he's seen so many times. He could hardly stand it.

The young woman coming to see him won't give him one of those, he's pretty certain. It was good of her to send word ahead. She could have come at any time, with permission and without warning, but she chose to share her intentions weeks ago—a strange Satinalia gift among other unexpected trinkets. Samson unrolls the notes again, presses them out on the table, smooths them down under his palm. If she's that interested in candid answers, there's no doubt she's been given leave to interview him with the door closed—otherwise, what would be the point?

For a long time he sits, tense, his guts clenching like a cold fist, and waits for the guard's knock. For days he hasn't slept more than an hour or two at a time, and he looks it; he looks as grey as the fortress feels.

By the time the door swings open to admit her, he's already standing.

Comments

[elegiaque]

Rather than elaborating—at length—on the whys and wherefores of what she's doing, Gwenaëlle instead flourishes her pen, casts him an artful glance from beneath her lashes, and dictates as she writes painstakingly—

“And then Samson shrugged, like an arsehole.”

Probably this will go fine.

[redinside]

Here he makes a moderate production of rolling his eyes—and once they've done their duty, he closes them, and smiles like he's trying not to let it happen. It happens anyway, and a chuckle follows—the sudden kind, tearing loose with a quick snort. In an instant his body language has relaxed into an overall opening-up both subtle and obvious. The careful way he's been staring at her, replaced with a sideways cant of his head, looking down at the floor as though to mitigate the appearance of amusement. Not shy; it's a habit now, when he's sat across from someone.

Finally he sighs, aloud, with his voice and everything, and waves his large hand in concession.

"All right, just get on with it."

[elegiaque]

“Thank you,” terribly dryly.

She considers her mostly-still-blank paper for a short time, contemplative. It isn't that she hadn't prepared, it's more that this is a departure from the things that she's done in the past—she asks questions, and she writes down the answers, but she's never dedicatedly sat someone down with a piece of paper to discuss...themselves...she's never interviewed anyone, purposefully.

Good thing he's such an easy, uncontroversial subject.

“I don't have a list of questions,” she warns, lightly. Then: “Were you surprised by how Skyhold dealt with you?”

[redinside]

Meanwhile, Samson's eyebrows tick upward when she admits she doesn't have a list, and stay just so for long enough to be sustained by her first question while he readjusts himself in the chair. A long, grumbling sigh (thoughtful, like) eases out as he settles. Now eminently more comfortable than he was a moment ago—but still politely seated, more or less—mostly less—he's content to carry on with this as a conversation rather than just another interview in a long and dreary history of interviews (interrogations).

"Not at first. I thought that dungeon would be the last place I ever—lived." A bit of vocabulary retouch at the last second, there. "Thought I'd been left to rot, and rightly so. But then... after I agreed to the exchange," information for lyrium, just the thought of it squeezes him, "it began to change. If we're being honest... and I suspect you'd rather I were honest, despite whatever that suspicion might make you want to say... I did my best to tell them only what seemed important but wouldn't've amounted to anything crucial. They could tell, of course. Never thought for a second they didn't know it."

He's just realized how much talking he's done based on a single prompt. It amounts to only a momentary snag in the flow of his answer, just long enough to clear his throat.

Softer, then, "I must've given away more than I thought I'd done at the time. In the throes of delirium, maybe. I don't know."

One booted toe scuffs at the floor, and again, in the same spot.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle had let the raised eyebrows pass without comment, but if she had been going to give it one...probably and this is why. She's much more interested in following where his thoughts lead, especially when she's not unaware that the questions she might choose to ask are likely to be, in turn, revealing. It's unavoidable that he'll learn things about her through this, if he's even slightly observant; it had seemed to her that she'll get more out of this and give less if she prompts more than she interrogates.

Some of her own mystery might remain if she isn't the one signposting every step of the way, and she'd suspected if he were given the opportunity to talk that he very well might. He's been interrogated. She'd rather have a conversation with him, and see just what it illuminates.

Her head tilts, interested: “Why do you think so?” She can think of a few possible answers, straight away, but which one he falls on...or wants her to think he does. (She thinks she'll better understand his answers when she has more of them.)

[redinside]

"Because they let me out."

At the time it felt a little like being thrown out—he hasn't bothered trying to unpack that one—and that's why he tried to make a break for it during transport from Skyhold. One of the reasons why, anyway. That, the failed (abandoned) escape attempt, he has made a little effort to unpack—and if the metaphor were literal, as soon as the luggage's clasps were undone, clothes and things burst out and went flying everywhere. So he decided not thinking very long or hard about anything was the best route to take in the foreseeable.
It's too bad Samson has more thinking time than any other kind, anymore.

"Because— well, let me ask you something now. Can you think of any other reason they'd have sent me here? By all rights, I should be wasting away in a lonely hole. It must've been the trade that got me out. Nothing else makes sense, does it?"

[elegiaque]

The space of a breath, the time it takes her to decide whether or not she's going to voice the thought, Gwenaëlle says frankly: “I can think of at least three things that are as plausible and make as much sense. It's,” her mouth quirks, “a matter of perspective.”

Maybe they'd noticed how hard he was working not to give away crucial information. Maybe, rather than having done so, they thought: Raleigh Samson is still capable of sentiment, of sympathy. Maybe they'd thought: he's not developing sentiment for the Inquisition in a hole at the bottom of Skyhold. And maybe in Kirkwall, if he can't be forthcoming he can be useful before he dies. In Kirkwall, maybe he'll start caring about the people next to him instead of the people Corypheus is grinding the personhood out of.

It's a very Orlesian thought, but then, the Nightingale is a very Orlesian operator. Gwenaëlle doesn't think it any less plausible. More, maybe, than that he's been somehow rewarded for a looser tongue than he thought he had.

“I'm not in charge. Maybe they would reward someone for something he didn't intend to do. But I think it'd have been clearer, if that was the intention. You can't repeat something that served you well if you don't know how it served you, or that you did it.” Relying on Samson to figure it out and then behave accordingly seems like...a stretch.

[redinside]

If it were him pondering someone else's situation, Samson would no doubt be able to think of just as many charitable explanations; but to examine his own state of affairs objectively might require allowing some self-worth into the equation, and we can't have that. He can't, anyway. Maybe once, but not anymore.

Note, for instance, the grunt of acknowledgement that makes up his answer. It sounds more or less affirmative, but his brow remains heavy with creases of doubt. A thought surfaces, something vague about training dogs, but he doesn't bother to let it coalesce into something worth expressing.

"Right," he grumbles. One of his big hands swats dismissively at the air. "Next question."

[elegiaque]

The only charity in Gwenaëlle's assessment is that Samson might yet have humanity left to exploit; otherwise, the lack of kindness in viewing that humanity as an exploitable asset that might be put to work for the Inquisition had made her hesitate to express it out loud to him. Not because it's unkind:

Because if she's right, then making him aware of it might make it less effective, and the longer she's in a room with him, the more she thinks he could still be useful. (She had her doubts, last time.)

So it's all right if he doesn't see it; it's all right if they brush it aside. She allows it with the good grace of someone spared having to do it herself less gracefully (the same opportunist that took secrets Alistair offered her in exchange for something she'd have done for him regardless), tapping her pen absently for a moment.

“What did you believe you were doing?”

Not in Skyhold. But she'll take whatever answer he chooses to interpret the question for.

[redinside]

"Running dick-first into a pit of spikes," Samson answers, with immaculate deadpan spirit.

Not in Skyhold is what he's chosen to hear; either she means the war, and the Reds, or she's planning on leading him there anyway, and he's got no patience for preamble.

"Those templars out there, still fighting and dying, they were all of them dead from the start. I wanted to help them as best I could. Wanted to help myself most of all," he mutters, looking at (through) the floor next to her feet, not shifting or fidgeting. "When he, Corypheus, when he put that sword back in my hand," one hand opening where it rests on his thigh, palm up, relaxing again around a loose handful of air, "it was like having another chance to be... to do something that meant something. Can't even say I didn't see what he was really doing. He didn't trick me, you understand—he trusted me. That's all it took."