faderift | waiting for the front door to splinter

Entry tags:

waiting for the front door to splinter | OTA

WHO: Casimir + Open.
WHAT: Feels.
WHEN: Post-Ghislain.
WHERE: The Gallows, Research offices.
NOTES: General CW bad brains, specific stuff will be tagged. If your character visits, probably someone on the team took note.

i. not fine

To wake is to rise underwater, head broken between one moment and the next. The surface disturbed, ripples before a hand of terrible light. Remembers thinking with sudden clarity: Petty,

It's been a day since the candles were blown out, and the water poured away. A few days, more; time stretches strange about seven years' memory and so many watching eyes. His skin crawls with it, the very stones do. There’s a sense of life so vivid in the walls —

A plate smashes into one, sends sharp shards of pottery spraying beside your head.

ii. more fine

This room is an intermittent mess — what's picked up, placed away, simply refuses to stay put. He's given up moving the toppled books and bits of crockery. Sits in the middle of the dull little bed with its well-intentioned blankets, and knows that down the hall are waiting clever little people with intentions of their own, and,

The door isn't locked. But he doesn't intend to leave.

He doesn’t look well, but he looks different; the changes as obvious as they’re impromptu, cheap. Curls soaked down in the vain effort to smooth a scar, grey robes traded for some Inquisition tunic (too tight about the shoulders), eyes that search the corners for pattern. He hasn’t shaved.

Upon a visitor, his expression flickers. Tries to still itself only to pull again in abrupt dismay.

"It isn’t you,"

He begins, before anything’s quite begun.

iii. probably that's fine

He doesn’t sleep.

Not since he’d first awoken, nerves pooling slick as lamp oil. He doesn’t sleep, but he eats — ravenously — and asks after tea, coffee, anything to keep awake.

It can't last.

His friends are attentive, if that's what he ought to call them (attentive, friends). But the hour's late, and the Central Tower swells with shadow. He's made it to one of the windows by the stair, hand lingering in the hollow where bars once stood. Reaches out, farther, until his arm's through, his shoulder —

His eyes are open, slack; expression dead as ever before.

iii. wildcardDDD

[[ hmu on plurk if you have any questions about limitations or specific prompts u want ]]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Gwenaëlle can't help herself but to start righting what's overturned—pick up pieces of crockery, straighten a book. She says, “I'd sort of be impressed with myself in a kind of a sick way if it were,” probably because there are things wrong with her, that seems like the kind of thing it's slightly insensitive to actually say to him, to his face.

But: “I mean, everything you might possibly have to deal with, but somehow I've cut through it all to be the most pressing problem you've got.”

It'd be kind of an accomplishment. She straightens—

“I brought you some shirts that should fit better. I altered them a bit.” More for comfort's sake than because she thinks he's very concerned with keeping up appearances, presently, although if he bursts a seam in frustration he will look more insane to any Chantry that do get past their potentially somewhat ineffective barriers.

“Casimir.”

Here was the list of things Casimir was not: a plant, a pet, a bird with a broken wing. Thranduil had always struggled with the idea of tranquility, had snagged on what he might do to put the man at ease, but he had faced similar things with other men, all of whom were unknowable and foreign to him simple for being men, and had padded along anyway. And it had worked, splendidly, until those who had known Casimir before had wanted him back, and now here they were, with Casimir both himself—

and, also, inconveniently, yet another slap in the face to the Chantry.

Head cocked just-so, in his sleeping robes bundled tight about his face to keep out the cold, venturing out of his rooms in the middle of the night for— elfy nefarious things, probably.

“Did you misplace something?”

Julius is not, technically, supposed to be out of bed yet.

He's been given a pair of crutches for emergencies, but he is prepared to attest with a straight face that he will set his room on fire if he's not allowed to leave it, and then it will become an emergency, so that's almost the same thing.

Since he's up, he thinks he's overdue to check in. (Should have talked to Myr, he'd meant to, it was all just...)

From the doorway, he says, "I'll go if you want, I just wanted to... I intended to help, with the ritual. Before my foot was..." No good verbs for that one. "Do you need anything?" Send the temporarily lame man to fetch it, go on.

"No, please." He fumbles up, eyes torn to the ground. "Julius."

Enchanter, glyphs, history; the certain kindness of efficiency. Abstract pieces smashed to fit. He's not gone mad, hasn't forgotten anything.

But what a hollow shape.

Casimir steps closer, holds the door clear of a crutch. A candlestick crunches underfoot, free hand twisting itself by his side.

"Perhaps," This isn't terrain for the wounded. "In the office."

Adjoining; less a wreckage, pages and shelves untouched. He glances down the hall to suggest it — and if his smile looked fake before, this is a new low.

(They can't keep him from work forever, can they?)

"I can't reach it."

A reply — if not an answer, and not one given Thranduil. He turns his head to speak to the wall, words drifting with dazed urgency. Not the empty attention he's given most often, or the muddled distress of these past few days. Something,

Else.

He twists his head, too large to fit through the frame; hand scrabbling over bare stone outside.

Edited 2018-12-28 07:11 (UTC)

He doesn't shift to greet her — still and stilted in place —

Hasn't tried to break anything in here, hadn't meant to; but none of it precious before, and Maker if it hadn't sunk in how young she must be, the volume of words exchanged prior. Why were you so interested?

"Thank you." It's what you say. He's practiced the words often enough to find them now (to find the gratitude strange, a stutter in routine). A hand into hair, tugging self-conscious as some miniature lever. Stand. Do something. "You are a talented needler."

He's lost the knack for deadpan. Steps forward, hesitates out of reach. Fingers find the edge of a cabinet, curl until the pause grinds free:

"I'm not your most pressing problem."

It's an out, if she chooses; one he can't force himself to push. He knows damn well why.

He's not vain enough—in this specific way, at this particular time—to think that the plate was aimed at him, though he also wouldn't be especially surprised if it had been. He's also not unshakeable enough that he doesn't flinch away from the shattering sound, arms a quarter of the way up to shield his face before he registers that it's both too late and largely unnecessary. The worst damage is a spray of ceramic dust on the shoulder of his clothes.

But he preferred his clothes without any white dust on them, so he gives Casimir a tetchy look that isn't even slightly tempered by sympathy. Or self-aware empathy. Punching people is clearly superior to throwing plates. The plate didn't do anything wrong.

He plucks the cloth at his shoulder to jolt the pottery loose, and says, "Are you done?"

"Are you?"

He wheels from place, fists clenched. Was never much for anger. Let it curdle into small revenges, sour asides.

This isn't that. This is just pissed.

"Why did you even start?"

An ink bottle begins to rattle. His eyes cut away, involuntary; nerves flashing undisguised. It shifts again in a moment, furious.

(Hates that. How much easier that must make this on him. Kostos, who can't abide a bared throat, can't manage anything that he can't despise or deck.)

Edited 2018-12-28 21:18 (UTC)

"What is it?"

He's thankful for the small windows, that he needn't immediately set himself to trying to pull Casimir away from them for fear he'll do anything worse than wrench his shoulder (or, in the very worst case, attract the griffons above) which means he's allowed to stand, and wait, hands tucked into his sleeves, and see if Casimir cannot simply snap himself out of whatever this particular fit is, or explain enough that Thranduil can catch on and indulge.

He has the sneaking suspicion they will need more time than however much they manage to steal.

"The office, then," he agrees, easily enough. They're in uncharted territory, which is never Julius' favorite place to be, but this is also not about Julius' comfort and he knows it. Steady he can do, if called upon. "I hope you'll forgive me the slow transit. Someone was rude enough to drop," 'drop' "a battleaxe on my foot a few weeks ago."

It's not a joke, but it's also light enough to suggest he's in less pain than he was right after it happened. (He was making jokes then too, but they were certainly more strained.)

Kostos watches Casimir's face (save a corner-of-the-eye glance at the ink bottle that's a mix of wary and don't you dare, as if the bottle might obey him the way a wisp would) and he can remember the moment they decided, him and Myrobalan. Not to do this, but to take a step. To ask the first necessary questions.

The Divine had wanted to know if it could be done. The Lord Seeker interfered. That's why he started.

But every step forward after the first one—

"I had time to kill," he says, which is not true, in general, nor the reason he did anything. But it will take more than this to make gentleness with anyone's feelings his first instinct. Or his second. In this case, his second instinct is that of an instructor with a child who can't stop knocking books off the shelves. "For fuck's sake. Focus."

Not a good instructor.

His mouth works into empty retort, turns loose with frustration. Get out threatens the edge of volume. One of them is old enough to remember the other a boy.

(There's a bit of cloth in the office, wyverns and stitches. There's a thing or two to owe, debt on monstrous scales --)

He raises a hand. The bottle steadies,

Glass implodes onto blue. Casimir shakes his fist loose.

(-- And Kostos can still go fuck himself.)

Edited (Timelines my mortal foe) 2018-12-30 03:58 (UTC)

“You're not one of my problems at all,” she says, ignoring the implied open door entirely and setting down the shirts on the end of his bed and regarding him with a patient lack of awkwardness that's akin to but not the same as the way she did, before. It's different, this is different from any possible thing a person has done before, but still: she knows something about wreckage, and rebuilding.

Something new always means something broken. Nothing ever just snaps into place.

“Which makes you sort of unique. You know, more. I thought I'd just see if there was anything else...if there's anything practical that you could do with.”

She knows where she is, with practical. Anything else feels dangerously like expecting someone else to handhold her inability to help them, so: shirts. Maybe he needs something for his hair and beard. She's still tidying, sort of absently, like she hasn't entirely noticed her own occupation.

There’s a joke buried in there; something about an Imperial march. He doesn’t make it. Doesn't laugh, either: The bob of a head that signals someone's heard perfectly well that you meant to be funny, and can't summon the will to fake it.

"Nothing to forgive."

We're happy to have you back, but there's plenty buried in that, too. Under thick mud and pyre wood.

He waits to take his own seat, fingers scratching invisible keys into the surface of the desk. An idle pressure. Avoids looking, deliberate, to the mirror behind him (a pressure of its own). Should Julius stare too long, the fearling will twist itself — as ever — to shape. It shifts itself at Casimir's back. No longer so empty.

"I am," This bit used to be easier. Nails tense. "Grateful."

If that's what Julius came for. Casimir chances a glance up.

Edited 2018-12-30 05:05 (UTC)

"The door."

A pause in the contortions. A long one, unmoving; his chin drifts lower, breaths slow. Weight slumps itself in place; once again recognizably asleep.

Save the mumbled pronouncement:

"You could open it."

The impact jars down nerves still jangling from Ghislain and Myr freezes like a startled deer, eyes as wide and one hand half-raised in warding. (Fast with a barrier but not always fast enough--he got lucky this time but the next one might hit him or someone on his flank--)

Mind catches up with body. There isn't a threat here. He lets his arm fall; studies Casimir with an eye fallen out of practice. Memory makes the subject easier to see--memory, and demons who never scrupled to wear a useful face.

Don't think too hard about that.

"Good morning." The words are rueful but not sarcastic. "You haven't slept."

It doesn't seem to be; at a minimum, there's a brief flash of surprise and... something in response to that. But it doesn't linger, as Julius has always been good at control. "Are you?" he asks, after a moment. "I imagine that's probably complicated."

It's franker than Julius usually permits himself to be. If not now, though, when? It's a situation without precedent, at least for either of the two men in it.

Is he?

Does laugh then — looks startled by himself, a moment of brief, childish surprise. A moment. It falls away bleak.

You will mean something to the rest of us.

"I don't know what I am," He admits, grinds against pronoun. "But I know what it means, if I am not."

Drags a nail along the wood, watching the it curl and splinter. The spirit coalesces, becomes something hard and white.

"And I know that you didn't need to help."

Doesn't narrow why Julius did. There are reasons enough: Attachment, indignance; to get ahead of a secret bound to hatch.

Edited (Agh sorry for double edit) 2018-12-31 05:01 (UTC)

"So report me."

It hangs in the air, from the corner he’s backed himself into. I didn't mean it, maybe,

But they both know he does.

With palms pressed to the wall, shoulders hunched, he looks every inch a man in a box. Better than whatever knives are waiting for his back. Casimir knows the deal that he made. What will you do, if the meaning isn’t what you’d hoped?

A snapped quill lifts itself from the debris, hovers a moment. A gesture — it drops. When he speaks again, low and miserable, it's mostly to the floor. Won't look him in the face.

"No one will say you didn't try."

(Bizarre, how more easily a miracle sits for logic alone.)

He’s been waiting for that blow for seven years—braced for it as long, the only reason he doesn’t flinch when it lands. Still a silence follows, like the lacuna in a room’s conversation after the crack of fist against flesh; Philomela taught him grace enough to acknowledge the well-placed hit.

“No one’s got the authority to hear it,” which is true both shallow and deep, and surprises Myr only a little in the uttering. Unpleasantly so; this is not the sort of progress he thought he’d make in a year with the Inquisition.

But then he’d already set foot on the path leading them all here last Wintermarch—maybe it’s not progress at all.

He notes the pen and the way Casimir won’t look at him in the same glance; moves to put himself against the wall to his friend’s left and out of arm’s reach. (Eyes turned toward the door: guarding the flank, not against Casimir’s escape.) “They could,” you could, “accuse me of fucking it all up by trying.”

Edited (fixing a really weird assumption I made) 2018-12-31 10:41 (UTC)

"Lots of us make do with things because they're better than the alternative, or because there aren't viable alternatives. It's not a situation with which I'm unfamiliar." Which is to say, he can think of reasons why gratitude may not be foremost, especially at the moment. He shifts a bit in the chair, but the discomfort is physical, not conversational.

"You're here now, and some choices ahead of you. I'll be interested to see what they are, and I won't be the only one. That's not altruism, and I doubt it is in anyone except possibly Myrobalan, but on the other hand I can offer you honesty, if you've any use for it. If you want me to tell you why I helped, I think you're owed that."

Making do is just life; there's always a worse option, a choice to make —

Which is which, more muddled. The pause stretches awkward, overlong; becomes an absence. Silent save for the scratching of varnish, the click of clock-wheels. It would be pleasant to leave it there.

Well. Not pleasant. It'd be something.

"It's not altruism." In Myrobalan. They could put this back, fix it; rather: They could try. They won't. The promises that he (he?) wore out of Kostos are flimsy in shade. Fix this, and they'd lose the meaning. "Go ahead."

Please, dies unspoken. There are always alternatives, he isn't used to taking them for a crowd. I'm interested to see what you think it is you owe.

Edited 2019-01-05 17:21 (UTC)

Relief is absurd, embarrassing: A wash of clammy heat.

He's been clamouring (silent) all day to be left alone — terrified, then, to imagine he'd be taken up on it. He's been alone. Another thing, to be lonely.

"A friend." He says, and it sounds cheap to him as it must the air. He's not the poet. Thumbs lift, as much acknowledgment of that as he'll pry his grip loose to afford. "Someone else's problems."

It's not generosity or recognition. If he doesn't think about something other than himself, and this room, and all the other lives, other rooms, the bones of this place —

His head is going to split. She's still tidying, and there's a story he heard once, about a rock and a hill. He doesn't tell it.

“I have so many,” she says, and the laugh is so lightweight and barely there that it's hard to see the unsteadiness in it, which is just as well. She looks down at her hands full of—untidiness, and finally sits on the edge of his bed, automatically tucking one foot underneath herself, brushing her hair back behind her ear.

A friend. With other things to think about. She can do that, she thinks; if he wanted to talk about his then she would have listened, but she knows she isn't good at it, experiences some relief that...not that she's being spared, but that it isn't what he needs, that he asks for something she thinks she won't fuck up.

“My father died,” is a hell of a thing to lead with, but she isn't looking for even compassion—she says it like it's something she's still turning over in her hands, that she hasn't settled on. She had liked you can put it away best of the options Thranduil had proposed, had dismissed firmly and out of hand the notion of ever wanting to speak of him, but this is...different. Casimir just wants for distraction. It doesn't have to be a thing that matters. “I don't usually call him that, actually, but it's factually accurate. A friend of mine was with him when he passed—at Ghislain. It was strange, in the healing tent, looking at his body afterwards, because I was with both of my mothers when they did, but I don't know if I would have wanted to be there or if it just feels...asymmetrical.”

Something unfinished, pressing at her.

He looks at the position of the moon in the sky as he approaches the Gallows, frowning. It's late. Darktown had kept him for longer than he'd wanted, and now he's hoping it's not too late for him to check on Casimir. Any worries about waking up the man are dashed away at the sight of the man already partly out the window. He freezes, breath catching as he tries to figure out what to say as he reaches for the staff on his back, wondering if he has enough energy to cast enough ice to keep Casimir from falling to his death.

"Casimir?" His voice is higher-pitched than usual; he's a little afraid. It's a long fall down and reasons to step out are everywhere in Thedas. "Can you take a step back? I'm here to talk, or be quiet company, whatever you'd like."

"A combination, which I expect is common. Curiosity; to see if it could be done, after all. Wanting to get out in front of it, if it could -- it's not impossible that it could be hushed up, but the more of us know, the less likely that becomes. Guilt," he adds, frankly. "I expect every Circle mages knew people who who took Tranquility under varying levels of duress. Some of them were apprentices I taught. It's hard not to feel that I failed them, both before and after the Rite itself."

He's not a man to let on that he second-guesses himself, nearly ever. But he'd told Casimir he thought he owed him honesty. He can do his best.

It’s a half-hearted barrier, a flash of light that reflects some of the glass and not half of the ink, leaving him spotted blue-black in an arc on one side of his face and in possession of overall less dignified than he’d like. He tries scraping together whatever is left with straighter shoulders and a raised chin.

“Temper tantrums,” he says. “I’ll make a note.”

—he did come here for a reason. It wasn’t to make digs at a vulnerable and questionably stable old friend. Maybe he’ll remember what it was in a second, or maybe he’ll leave.

For now, he only says, “We asked you.”

The danger's not immediate: Confines too narrow to work his way through by anything less than intent (shoulders unused to their own width). Wind whips about the battlements, frigid this close to cloud. He doesn't seem to have noticed.

His head's sluggish to turn, and when it does: Eyes unfocused, distant as a man asleep.

"Don't fall in," He mumbles, not entirely to Anders. "You're too close."

Not suicidal as he'd feared, then. Sleep-walking? Confused? His hand eases back from his staff and he straightens.

"Too close to what, where? I can't see it." Casimir can't be drunk. The watchers are too vigilant for that. But there are any other number of causes for seeing things that aren't there. "It's chilly, would you like to come back to your rooms and share some tea?"

There's a contradiction there, offering something he thinks Casimir likes (tea) while trying to pull him back to something no one likes (being stuck in a room.) Anders isn't entirely comfortable with keeping Casimir confined, but there's a threat to the man that's greater than his discomfort. This is temporary, meant to be a step toward giving Casimir back a freedom he's not had while other mages have enjoyed it. It's... acceptable in this context. He thinks. Time will tell as to whether or not Casimir shares the same opinion, but at least he'll be able to have an opinion.

He’s sorry, maybe —

Or at least, he thinks to say it. But there’s a lot to be sorry for, too much: The sum of strangers, and what significance to that? Someone carved a name once into the underside of this table. For all he knows, it spells dad.

"It’s not how someone would’ve written it." Not for her story — but another, maybe, that friend. Significance stripped and transferred (it's not a name, that's not what it spells). "It’s strange, isn’t it. You think you’ll be ready for it. You prepare."

To find the body an empty vessel, still as wood; but he’s rarely seen corpses so hollow as that. Revived for the touch of Fade,

"And the days keep happening."

There are comparisons he could make. The way that a drowning man, given air, will do nothing but shout for more. But it’s imperfect — but they asked again, on stable land. But he doesn’t truly want water in his lungs.

Words elude.

His chest heaves. Blue drips; he finally seizes a cloth, swipes it out in offering. Maybe it would be courteous, to invite Kostos across that distance. Maybe it would only be an annoyance. Here, through the debris,

He would rather break only glass. Morose: "I know."

Casimir paces. Plants a hand to cold stone, and feels seasick.

"Everyone just wants to help." As if that erases the whos and whats they want it for. "You don’t need to change anything."

"And you do."

The authority to hear it, to decide? Myr's always run hot, a quickness to action hidden only by his speed in thought — in justification. They'd been smaller heresies, once. Hero, and they don't derive the same. They don't.

But to speak it aloud —

"I," he begins, and denial sticks in his throat for the lie of it.

Someone had responsibility. Someone had started this, and it hadn't been Kostos, with his knowledge of the Divine's intent. It hadn't been Anders' bleeding heart.

Someone had started all of this when he'd gone to authority he trusted with He hasn't slept and I'm worried. It's worse than before. How much worse, exactly--

He looks back in Casimir's direction; no demurring, no downcast eyes. "Not alone. Not for wanting it. But if we've done wrong by you--"

A hesitation. A moment stretched out like a neck for the axe. "I began it."

“It looked as if it hurt, at least.”

As if that's a comfort to her, the assurance that at the end of his life, Emeric had been surrounded by only strangers, and in pain. And then,

“It doesn't feel as good as I imagined it would.”

No satisfaction in it, no finality. It's done and all she feels is...tired, mainly, exhausted by the new awareness that his absence undoes nothing, changes less. He is gone, leaving her to carry the tangle that they were by herself, as if she hadn't been already; as if that's anything new. All that time she'd imagined being free of him only to find that if anything he looms larger in death than he had in life.

Now, she can't pretend his death closes that door. She's alone with it, and so faced with what it is—

she doesn't miss him. He barely feels gone.

There is a question in this for Solas. How does sleepwalking affect one’s Fade experience? He should absolutely stop peppering the other elf with questions, but—and he supposes this as he steps closer—Solas is the only one with a half-empty cup of the truth over a half-full one.

He brings his hands together, the clap echoing through the halls, supposes it better than shaking Casimir awake and risking him dislocating his shoulder or, Andraste forbid (needs to get in the habit of saying that) yelling and risking waking the other Division heads.

Snap him out of it indeed.

To see if it could be done.

Motion stutters, knuckles ease. Guilt and curiousity are the measures of a life, black-bound and laid in neat row. For long as he can remember, or can remember their absence.

He thinks to be suspicious of it. Wants, too badly, to take someone at their fucking word.

"It can be done," He agrees, looks away; less unable to confront the rest than consumed by it. Duress is written in the walls. "Do you think it should be?"

Again, or Julius wouldn't have made it this far. It's an irrelevant question — better: What is he judging this venture by? Guilt and curiousity. Hardly the measure of success.

He jolts, slams his chin into the side of the stones.

A moment’s startled breath, before he glances Thranduil, jaw working into a wince. Awake, he looks at once uncertain of his presence (the glint of something else, nearer fear). It’s a bit of work to unwind himself from the window, brushing the water from one wet sleeve. He doesn’t find Thranduil’s eyes. Doesn’t say anything, just massages his arm, opens and shuts his mouth.

Finally,

"Good evening."

Sure, those are words.

“Are you injured?” he says, brushing away Casimir’s former state, a hand at the other man’s jaw to tip his head and inspect his chin. At the absence of blood, he withdraws, and steps back, hem dragging against the stone floor.

If Coupe suffers from insomnia, she does not wander the halls, and he could spin a story enough to keep anyone else who might be about discrete.

Still, it is not good for Casimir to be about.

“Perhaps a drink, to help you sleep?” Thranduil gestures back towards his office.

I don't — Almost leaves his mouth, doesn't; dutiful to the tilt of Thranduil's hand as a dozen others times and faces. But the frown that curls his mouth can't be so easily-kept, reflex twisting muscles unused to the effort. Tears loose as soon as Thranduil does, back to the wall. Something bristles feral at his neck. Couldn't, for the life of him, name why.

"A drink," He agrees, after a moment too long. "Thank you."

He doesn't make to move first.

"The door," Dreamlike — "You know where it is."

His chin dips, drifts in stupor. Breath heaves; he doesn't move further. Looks for a moment quite still. With sudden clarity:

"You've done it before."

That (probably) isn't about the tea.

He laughs — sharp and startled, laughs to the ground, and doesn't sound amused. Braced hands tremble.

"You are so," He can't find the word. Can never find the word when he needs it. Nevarran: "Arrogant."

Used to find appeal in it, the confidence to do what's needed; to seem to know that at all. He doesn't want to care about that now. Turns his eyes to the ceiling,

"I had a life before Hasmal."

Nothing began there. So interminably long spent crawling into his own skin in search of kinder shape. An exile of his own making — or the Chantry's, or the Maker, or mortal sin, or whoever his mother fucked —

No one began this, or maybe he did, ten years old and blooming light.

"How did you think it would?"

Feel — as if he's any more equipped to describe that. How does anything feel, other than too much; not at all.

Better.

“Different.”

She tilts her hands. Looks at them, for a time, then puts it away.

“I am getting married, also, which is a different problem entirely.” One Emeric might have liked, after a fashion, some evidence that her entanglement with Thranduil is—while not so easily dissolved as he might have hoped—at least not a total loss. And then he'd have hated it, anyway, so does it matter?

“Not the marriage, just the pantomime.”

"I don't think I'll be there."

No shit. Isn't certain it matters, isn't certain of a lot where weddings are concerned — doesn't know anyone who's done it. One hand pries free of the desk entirely, a step that carries him just far enough to slide open a drawer. It's in there somewhere, the ring (a distraction).

"It's not usual," Is it? "To have a second?"

Less usual, perhaps, to string so neatly to it from a funeral.

“Not to the same husband,” is a little arch, but in this moment perhaps more by habit than anything else. Like maybe that's just a thing her face does, without requiring a great deal of input from her on the matter. Reliable.

She curls her fingers in the covers of his bed.

“The first one had personal weight. Not...legal. Or any other kind. Here, anyway.” Or anywhere else, really, because Thranduil has never in truth been anywhere else; the man (elf) that he was there remains there, and never knew her, and has married only once.

It's a strange thought.

“So we're putting on a show. Look how normal rifters are. Look how they have families, and give a fuck.”

"And it would have come out the same regardless?" A flash of heat behind the words, frustration returned for what reads as fatalism. "You know what I meant."

Even if Casimir taking him at the expanded sense wasn't wrong and that stings to admit. Far more than the word he doesn't know (not melodramatic; Philomela used that one often enough he'd absorbed it) and parses too well by tone-- You aren't responsible for all the world's ills; you don't build a pyre of them to martyr yourself on in one glorious, selfish, useless gesture.

You don't demand your penance of a man trapped in a corner.

Breathe in, breathe out. "You deserve a life after." Myr glances upward himself--mirroring, entreaty. Maker help me, because this is and isn't familiar and what he knows doesn't tell him where to step.

"On your terms." More heresy. Followed by something quieter: "Why are you in the corner?"

"I think that you're in a better position to answer that than anyone I know, frankly," he returns, not startled but... assessing. Unsure to what degree any of these questions are tests. "Clearly, I thought it should be the once, or I wouldn't have participated. But I think it would be foolhardy to venture whether it should be done again so soon. Or without your input."

The politics of it were going to be a complicated mess, but it isn't as if mage politics had been anything else prior. Julius had been there, at Skyhold, had gotten a closer glimpse than many at what the Inquisition was and was not in a position to promise.

If you asked him, he still might say he was a loyalist. It might have been wise to then ask him to define the term.

Casimir gets his back, the slim train of the gown as it drags back along the stone towards his office. He can have his dignity in Thranduil's bland ignorance of the emotions, like ice melting come spring, Thranduil supposes.

Unavoidable.

In his office, it is quiet. A nug sleeps near the fire, there's only a single candle burning (beeswax) though the mirrored sconce catches the light and throws it generously.

In the room beyond, his wife sleeps.

Thranduil fusses with something on his desk, then asks, "Tea? Wine?"

He's lost. What has he done before? Unless they're talking about Karl, and then he'd only blindly cracked open the door, not known where it was and helped to fling it open.

"I don't know." Casimir appears to be more present, at least, so Anders stops trying to shepherd him for the moment. "What are you asking?"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

waiting for the front door to splinter | OTA

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sorry 4 short tag

you come into my house

and take your nz netflix so i can finally watch disco

its so good

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