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]

Ghislain has been all but washed away from Gwenaëlle by the time she walks through Samson's door; her wounds since tended to by healing mages, weapons put up and soft fabric in place of rogue's leathers, perfume hanging in her hair rather than the pervasive, lingering scent of death. She looks like the sort of young woman accustomed to people standing to receive her, only the scrape of hew scars over her left-hand knuckles (still dully aglow with the anchor-shard) and the burn of old ones visible in the neckline of her dress (the edge of claw marks, rising out of decolletage) wrong notes in a gentler image. She could be some kind-hearted thing come to do a charity, if not for the dispassionate air about her—

She holds herself a little differently than she did, their previous and very brief meeting. And if she'd hastened out of the Skyhold cells at Cullen's behest, positioned always with his sword arm between herself and the lesser known quantity, she seems less concerned by his absence now.

“You haven't got to say anything to me,” she says, sitting down without waiting to be invited to do so and flipping the lap-desk tucked beneath her arm over her knees, regarding him frankly. It isn't unfriendly, but he's right: she doesn't smile. “You should know that—I have permission, but you have no obligation, you will not be punished for a lack of cooperation and you will also not be impressively spitting in anyone's authoritarian eye if you decide to pass on the opportunity. I write things down. It's a terrible habit. I'm interested in anything you have to say, but I will write all of it down. Or that you didn't.”

Her fingers tap, tap, tap, restless against the wooden edge— “Silence isn't an absence of a story, it's just a different shape. So. My name is Gwenaëlle Baudin,” not Lady Vauquelin, as she had previously introduced herself all spiky bravado upon cushioned stool, “and you are welcome to ask any questions you may have about what the fuck I think I'm doing and where I get off doing it. Mostly, I think stories matter, and are more complicated than true or false.”

A slightly different pitch to the first, though the thrust of it remains the same; she had called it a courtesy, then, and she thinks of it still that way, if not only. If he cannot decide how he is remembered, what would he like it remembered that he said?

Maybe nothing. Maybe this is another waste of time.

[redinside]

It was a courtesy, she'd said the first time. When she as Lady Vauquelin minced down to the dungeon with her personal guard and her rich clothes and her ridiculous little baby throne. And worse, the presumption—the implication that he should be honoured by her condescending to be interested in him, the lowlife traitor—this is how he remembers her, through the haze of pain and despair that permeates all his memories from that time. It could be that she's left some or all of these qualities at home today; or that she never owned them, only wore them, like a child digging through her mother's wardrobe, because she could. Whether or not his recollection is true, Samson already likes this version of her much better.
Or, well, he doesn't not like her. Close enough.

This time, the prisoner is only dressed in prisoner's garb from the belt down, having availed himself of the freedom to choose a shirt without buckles or straps. A regular, boring, plain linen shirt, with sleeves he can roll up to his elbows, which he was glad to do. He looks far, far better than he did in the dungeon at Skyhold, no longer slipping toward that final precipice and the eternal void beyond. And he is quiet during her introduction. Somewhere in the middle, for want of anything else to do with his arms, he folds them (a renewed impression of strength in his forearms), and shifts his weight to one leg (those, too, seem more substantial) but does not sit.

She finishes, and the next seconds pass in silence. Samson watching her with his hooded eyes, still strange and pale and faintly limned in the colour of old blood.

Finally: "You've grown since we last met. Grown enough to come out from behind the Commander and make your own way." A certain glint in his eye when he mentions Cullen. "Seems to me we might have something in common this time round—we're in agreement about the complexity of stories, for one." That and her apparent loss, or rejection, of status. He's not unfriendly when he says, "By all means, tell me more about what the fuck you think you're doing and where you get off doing it."

[elegiaque]

Her short, sharp laugh is not insincere, nor over-warm—if anything, a little bleak. She had bickered similar points back and forth with Kitty to exhaustion, stumbling around the point she had wished to make until they sort of wanted to strangle each other, and this would be...not worse, to make a muddle of, because he is much less important to her than Kitty, but inconvenient in a very different way.

She gathers her thoughts, which isn't difficult: this has been in the offing for some time, and she didn't come unprepared. Certainly not with that opening.

When there was nothing else I could do, I knew how to do this.

It's true; she doesn't say it. The interesting part isn't that, the interesting part is that she still thinks it's worth doing now it isn't all she has to offer—

“The stories that we tell are...the way that we explain the world to the each other tells us what we think is important. Everyone has a story, everyone is telling a story about themselves, the two things are similar but not the same except in very particular cases, they make up the fabric of what is considered acceptable or not, they are what makes us people. Understanding how people get to where they are,” a tilt of her eyebrow, like in a cell for instance, “...no one ever just wakes up and thinks, I really think today's the day I just run dick-first into this pit of spikes. Not many people.”

Maybe he did, she doesn't know his life. Yet.

“You make a hundred choices first, on the way. And every one of them makes sense. At the time. I think understanding those things is important everywhere, I think there is a responsibility to try. Especially in something like this, where so many of us make such loud, noble noises about all the things we're going to change, and what the fuck do we know about any of them? And I don't think history is written by the victors. I think history is written by the people who understand how other people like their history to be written. And that is something I know the fuck about.”

It never sounds like a put on, precisely, but there's still something moderately surreal about the little Orlesian princess's voice and the things she chooses to say with it. The swearing and the sentiments, both.

“I am going to write some history. Because I think it's worth doing. I used to write propaganda, but I haven't the taste for it any more. When the war is over, if anyone's left, then I will be in a position to publish that history in whatever form I deem fit. In the meantime, I'm going to write everything.”

(If the Venatori ever got their hands on even half of what she's already written down.)

[redinside]

Samson nearly laughs, too, about Gwenaëlle's abruptly colourful turn of phrase; the amusement catches in his throat and surfaces instead as a smile, all the way up to his eyes. Running dick-first into a pit of spikes is not how he'd have described any of his choices, but there are less accurate descriptors, to be sure. Maybe he should adopt it.

"Everything, eh." It's now that Samson decides to unfold his arms, and to avail himself of the only other chair in the room, first pulling it back to increase the distance between the two of them. It creaks beneath his weight when he sits, not because he's formidably heavy, but because the chair is old and tired and complains when absolutely anyone puts it to use. (He can relate.) "What you've described, giving someone a chance to massage his own history into whatever shape suits him best, that still sounds to me like propaganda of a sort. You sure you've got rid of that taste, Messere Baudin? There's a pot over there if you need to spit again."

[elegiaque]

At this point, she does smile—but there's no guilt in it, no pity, and no hint of embarrassed chastisement, either. Just a matter of fact sort of expression, quick and honest:

“If you were the only person I'm speaking to, and if it were your story alone, then you'd have a point. But I said everything, and I meant it. You can massage it all you like—I will write what you said down. And I will write down what your face did while you said it and where you looked in the room and if I think it sounded like horseshit, and I'll write down everything everyone else has to say, too. I'm not writing your history. I'm writing down my understanding of ours, collectively, of which yours is a part.”

She taps her pen against the paper before her, tilts her hand illustratively.

“I don't intend to just walk away from here humming cheerfully about whatever you said to me. I intend to do my best to put it into context, and understand it. I may never publish any of it. And it isn't...if you lie, I'm still learning something about you. The shape of your bullshit will tell me what you care about being perceived. That isn't a loss to know. It's just a different angle from which to approach it.”

Honesty seems like the most effective way of dealing with him, but more than that it seems like she is probably just like this, all the time. No wonder she's not still a lady of anything in Orlais.

[redinside]

While his guest goes on, Samson watches her steadily, reactions flickering: a momentary deepening of the crease in his brow, eyelids bunching minutely, lips pressing into momentary thoughtful shapes. Everything, she says. She says a lot of things. The urge to pick at them is strong, but even he can recognize he'd only like to do that because he's not feeling well, so he takes this opportunity to control his own dumb ass for once.
Little victories add up, right?

"Well... can't say I understand why you're going to all this effort if you're not even going to publish it, but I've heard of stranger hobbies." He shrugs, shoulders and face alike. Just like that, decision made. "Sure. Include me in your diary, I'm not bothered by it." Not bothered, and yet, true to form, he can't resist a little indulgence. "And don't forget to record that shrugging I did just now—might turn out to be important later."

[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."