WHO: Coupe + Gervais, Yseult, Lakshmi, Teren WHAT: Back 2 Kirkwall WHEN: Now-ish, some prompts backdated WHERE: Kirkwall/Vaguely Orlais NOTES: HMU on plurk if you want something.
Her return is unannounced. It doesn't go unnoticed.
There's a man to drive the ferry, a guard to check faces (blinking one brown eye into ink replica). There's still word here or there — and here is there, though the runner to find him wasn't sent for him at all, disinterested to find a mage too dour to be Voss.
The dog paces. Hesitation creaks. The scrape of a tread worn familiar, slower, and then she's there. There, and hasn't the faintest fucking clue what to say of it. Even silence is disparate, isn't it? This business of choosing when and how to speak. Some tongues bend slowly. And pages,
There are words, lists, names. Loss at such scale that it begins to inure, numb as tumbled white stone.
Losing. But she's known that longer than some.
Can't say whether she expects Yseult among them. An assessment of their odds is not some mad vision, must yield similar score. But there are optimists even in the pit. Wren dips the pen again, frowns as ink spatters loose across parchment. She didn't frown so often last week. There was more medicine then.
"I thought that must be its name, it was all that my father shouted." Halfway through some inane little story. Not the first, not the last. She signs the bottom of the letter (Maker knows if the family can read), "Ratbastard."
Call it fortune, to be left behind as so many were routed north. Call it a fucking headache, more favours to repay, but they haven't been tossed into the snow yet and Yseult at least has proven pleasant company.
There's a washtub in her room (a small extravagance, Deacon would spit) and little to be gained from showing her face below. Conversations dry up, discomfort steams. This is a place of community; not hers, any longer.
But there seem more stairs to the Central Tower than when she left, lungs heaving one enormous bruise, and the prospect of dragging herself up them only to swat at the vultures —
Well. May as not wash her hair first.
Colours fade and mottle beneath the water, flesh grown thinner for time abed. Heat pries soft fingers to joints, presses at the seams of scar. Eyes shut,
The smallest watchtower, a bottle of — something, Maker knows — and slack eyes for the night beyond. They've been undisturbed this far, the occasional rattle of boots along ramparts already passed this shift.
"However it is done," She drinks, passes it over. "I will need a name."
With Alistair south, with this mess to speak around. If the wardens are to exist within (outside) the Inquisition, they require a representative.
I noticed? Or: not insignificantly, yes. Or perhaps: better late than never. Gervais makes no attempt to voice any of these thoughts, rising to his feet from where he's been quietly plucking away at correspondence he was struggling to convince his own private anxieties was really the most pressing thing he could be doing this instant, and
into her shoulder, “Th-th-th-they've, they've, they've given you back unfinished.”
Hi, honey, you look like shit. He holds her very carefully, but he does not let go.
Whether magic can heal a broken heart is a matter for Yngvi's shit novels; spells only do so much for the rest. Her hand finds his neck, fingers circling new tangles into ruddy hair: It's alright,
It's not. Takes the moment, this acceptable pause; time stilled just enough to breathe in the scent of him. Sweat and ink, and all that the past weeks have clotted into blood.
I heard of Emeric, a wound half a year in the making. Can't stand to say it, to have him run again. This time no one cut off his head. Hums low in her throat, rubs a lock between finger and thumb.
Usually the nature of their quiet nighttime rendezvous is different, but Teren understands how things have changed, and makes no mention of it. There's still drink and sullen conversation, which is all she expects or has ever wanted from Coupe. It's nice. At least, until that question comes about, and then it's not.
Teren doesn't like to think about it, hasn't fully acknowledged it yet: there's a flicker of reserve over her hard face, of longing, even of sadness. Little by little, her people have trickled down to almost none. If they're all gone, what does that make her? The sole champion of yet another lost cause, one for which she didn't even volunteer?
Yseult's laugh is half a soft snort, not just because anything more would strain the still-healing gash in her gut.
She has a letter of her own, similar to Wren's, but neater, for all she's not left-handed. She hasn't been here long enough for many to learn her name, but there are too many for four-to-eight people to write themselves and she's good at strewing just enough detail among the vague platitudes to make a quickly-composed condolence letter seem genuine.
"I had an uncle like that," she tells Coupe, tapping the tip of her pen carefully against the inkwell. She leaves it there, hovering for a moment. "He had this odd curse I've never heard anyone else use. It was--" her head tilts, willing the memory to tip off its shelf and out. "Saddlegoose. He said it so often I thought it was my aunt's name."
The depths of winter make the days so much shorter here. Cut her off from the length of her training, which no doubt is only something only something she would sulk about.
However Isaac probably was glad she wasn't pushing her injured hand too hard while it was recovering.
But at least compared to London's slums and the odd notions the English had about bathing some times, at least the Inquisition appreciated a hot bath that she could look forward to. (Self banished from Magni's bed didn't make her sulk by itself, but it made the cold bit that much deeper at night when she was always a desert child, even now).
More focused on that, then her company. Stripped down with just the loose white material wrapped around her waist then up and over her shoulder. The rope of black hung like a pendulum over her shoulder. But the vanity of it all was the basket ok her off hand of tubs and bottles of oils and fragrances. Gently settling herself on her side of the bath, feeling the steam beginning to unice her still remaining fingers and toes.
(her neck empty of the heavy silver phial, if she is bothered about being naked, it is only because she is missing that and now her clothes).
The basket set down at the edge straightens, and it's then that she captures sight of Coupe. But mercy be, she doesn't bother the other woman. Just bows her head deeply as a commander deserves.
Then takes her seat not in the water, but on the ledge. Dipping her legs in but no more, as she reaches out of the container. Fishing for the bits and pieces she wants. A brush, a bottle of oil, a rough cloth, a strange metal hook that wasn't sharp but catches the light in a dull shine. Perfectly ordinary to her. The last is a wooden bowl that she places in her lap. Settled in place Lakshmi began the almighty task of brushing out her hair. Dropping to tug loose the tie at the of it. Unravelling the braid like snakes detangling from each other, all that hair kinked faintly with a wave from how it was kept up, it covers her, loops around her knees, pools in itself on the floor next to her where it reaches well below her hips. Until a little tug of a mattered knot where her helmet had sat during the day of her training. Makes her grunt in that particular pain of tugging at single strands of hair and sends the bowl in her lap tumbling free into the pool.
She's not quick enough with occupied hands as it bops away across the ripples of movement. The deep breath through her nose is mildly frustrated as she can't quite reach it. Damn it, was this her punishment for her everything she'd done?
Lakshmi wets her lips, soft with steam and clears her throat to get Coupe's attention. "Commander, may I ask you to push that back this way?"
For a long time, Gervais didn't allow himself to wish even so much as that they might live in a world in which they might wish; now, he will go that far, at least. It feels like a world being molded for people who will go to it and leave them behind, all the more reason to hold her closer and tighter while he yet can. Emeric is dead, Gwenaëlle is a mystery and the life he once lived coals he must still walk over, but this—
this, still.
He had not allowed himself to think she wouldn't return, so he didn't have to wish for it. Here she is, now, and the thought of home is strange, and sad, and lovely, and he turns his face against her throat and exhales all of those things.
"Would we could afford you time to breathe," As though that were the source of her regret; polite eyes turned out to darkness, and not the vulnerability of a moment (of travel back across hard country). Would we’d time to mourn. "I cannot keep track of who knows what any longer."
A glance back, then. Stop me if you've not heard this.
"If red lyrium is taken with Blight, we will have little luck against it without Warden aid." The wave of a hand. "Delacroix is able enough, but it is my understanding there are — personal grievances in play."
"I would not see this overlooked for ego. We've an enormous fucking dragon, and Darkspawn on the field. This requires cooperation."
It is something she's heard, but never has Teren been expected to care. And though she's a spite-fueled anarchist with seemingly nothing to gain by playing nursemaid to an organized militia, it's... actually more difficult not to care, these days.
"Then I imagine you shall have it," she replies, in a low and joyless tone. A pause, then, "...forgive me if I'm ignorant of military protocol. My experience is." She clears her throat, almost awkwardly. "...somewhat less refined."
If she had her way, all the Wardens would be tree-climbing experts, and they'd know all the best places to stick a knife. One might say such arts are wasted on Darkspawn.
i pinky promise 2 actually boomerang this now whenever we're both around
Pleased for a roof. [ walls. ] It is — different, I think, for the young. The land changes, and they change with it. To be something, still but an act of will.
[ amsel. shivana. voss, averesch, all those spun about the point of a year (of five). and the two of them, words heated, still paralyzed of action.
[ they. she hardly marks it; it would more feel strange to be included in 'the young', for all she's of an age with those Coupe calls to mind. maybe it's that she's spent decades longer in the world. ]
At least they have that. Opportunity for change might be created with will enough, but there's no forcing a man to take it.
What else would you have them be? [ a look takes in the room, the rows of beds like their own ] It's a time for swords. We've too few properly forged as it is.
[ that fatal flaw, the crack of fade that lets in something — else. ]
We give all we have to this, because we must. But they play into blunt hands. It is how the world wishes to know them: Not a man, a child, but a spit for one’s enemies.
[ intolerable when turned inward. a gesture, ]
The Ambassador, you know. It was such an argument, her training.
[ she’s talking too much; that's half yseult's purpose. but she’s tired. but this is hardly a secret. but she can’t speak of it elsewhere without counting the seconds to talk of slavery ]
[ then temper it are the words on her lips throw it in the fire and beat it until the weakness is gone, until it can hold the shape you need, until it can take an edge. but that's not what she's said before, is it. not everyone can do what they've done. those that can't shouldn't have to just to survive, or else what's the good in being a sword at all?
and too late she realizes the commander's only talking about mages, anyway. ]
She was thought weak?
[ brittle, maybe. steel worked too long will crack before it bends. ]
[ she says after a moment, a thoughtful pause that will not seem unusual the more they speak like this ]
to know and care for right and wrong but also see the spectrum in between, the strange forms they can take. To admit to nothing but black and white is childish, but so is claiming all is equally grey. I don't know which does more harm.
The Ambassador has lasted this long. Luck, or has she learned?
[ which is more than she's generally wiling to credit herian where it might be repeated (stories their own reluctant endorsement). luck, that she'd a sword to learn by.
wren presses a crease into the page. a pause, eyes slipping shut. doesn't yet reach for the next. idly, ]
You must have few lessons left.
[ yseult's been lucky enough to — by the looks of it — get hit with every hammer on the field. ]
[ a huff of a laugh, dry. she is too old for this shit. ]
I was certain I'd learned this one already.
[ magic may smooth away any scars that might someday cause a mark to grow suspicious, but you don't last this long in her business without earning a handful, or without minding their teachings all the same. still, there are things they don't cover: ]
Though I can't say I've ever been in a pitched battle like that before.
The look she turns over wrinkles briefly bizarre, as though Teren's begun speaking in some foreign tongue. A moment to catch up, to consider the reservation more seriously,
Still. What the shit.
"Our refined allies," Antiva, sure. But mostly Orlais, and 'allies' is a more politic word than her patriotism will lately allow, but Teren's just apologized — "Are dying en masse."
"Fuck refinement." She shakes her head. "We’ve too much to see done."
That finally yields a smirk, and Teren feels a little more at home. If there's one thing she's good at, it's not dying, and to a lesser degree not letting the people around her die either.
"In that case," she muses, and stops, thinking silently for several long moments. When she speaks again, her tone is a testing one. "The prisoner, Samson. An expert on red lyrium, isn't he?"
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GERVAIS
There's a man to drive the ferry, a guard to check faces (blinking one brown eye into ink replica). There's still word here or there — and here is there, though the runner to find him wasn't sent for him at all, disinterested to find a mage too dour to be Voss.
The dog paces. Hesitation creaks. The scrape of a tread worn familiar, slower, and then she's there. There, and hasn't the faintest fucking clue what to say of it. Even silence is disparate, isn't it? This business of choosing when and how to speak. Some tongues bend slowly. And pages,
"I was delayed."
There's an understatement.
YSEULT | backdated vaguely orlais ??
Losing. But she's known that longer than some.
Can't say whether she expects Yseult among them. An assessment of their odds is not some mad vision, must yield similar score. But there are optimists even in the pit. Wren dips the pen again, frowns as ink spatters loose across parchment. She didn't frown so often last week. There was more medicine then.
"I thought that must be its name, it was all that my father shouted." Halfway through some inane little story. Not the first, not the last. She signs the bottom of the letter (Maker knows if the family can read), "Ratbastard."
Call it fortune, to be left behind as so many were routed north. Call it a fucking headache, more favours to repay, but they haven't been tossed into the snow yet and Yseult at least has proven pleasant company.
LAKSHMI
There's a washtub in her room (a small extravagance, Deacon would spit) and little to be gained from showing her face below. Conversations dry up, discomfort steams. This is a place of community; not hers, any longer.
But there seem more stairs to the Central Tower than when she left, lungs heaving one enormous bruise, and the prospect of dragging herself up them only to swat at the vultures —
Well. May as not wash her hair first.
Colours fade and mottle beneath the water, flesh grown thinner for time abed. Heat pries soft fingers to joints, presses at the seams of scar. Eyes shut,
And open again, onto Lakshmi. Oh, goddamnit.
TEREN
"However it is done," She drinks, passes it over. "I will need a name."
With Alistair south, with this mess to speak around. If the wardens are to exist within (outside) the Inquisition, they require a representative.
no subject
I noticed? Or: not insignificantly, yes. Or perhaps: better late than never. Gervais makes no attempt to voice any of these thoughts, rising to his feet from where he's been quietly plucking away at correspondence he was struggling to convince his own private anxieties was really the most pressing thing he could be doing this instant, and
into her shoulder, “Th-th-th-they've, they've, they've given you back unfinished.”
Hi, honey, you look like shit. He holds her very carefully, but he does not let go.
no subject
Whether magic can heal a broken heart is a matter for Yngvi's shit novels; spells only do so much for the rest. Her hand finds his neck, fingers circling new tangles into ruddy hair: It's alright,
It's not. Takes the moment, this acceptable pause; time stilled just enough to breathe in the scent of him. Sweat and ink, and all that the past weeks have clotted into blood.
I heard of Emeric, a wound half a year in the making. Can't stand to say it, to have him run again. This time no one cut off his head. Hums low in her throat, rubs a lock between finger and thumb.
"I wish,"
The sound dies in her mouth. It's alright.
WHAT
It's nice. At least, until that question comes about, and then it's not.
Teren doesn't like to think about it, hasn't fully acknowledged it yet: there's a flicker of reserve over her hard face, of longing, even of sadness. Little by little, her people have trickled down to almost none. If they're all gone, what does that make her? The sole champion of yet another lost cause, one for which she didn't even volunteer?
"Me," she says wearily, "it's me now."
time and space are both flat circles??
She has a letter of her own, similar to Wren's, but neater, for all she's not left-handed. She hasn't been here long enough for many to learn her name, but there are too many for four-to-eight people to write themselves and she's good at strewing just enough detail among the vague platitudes to make a quickly-composed condolence letter seem genuine.
"I had an uncle like that," she tells Coupe, tapping the tip of her pen carefully against the inkwell. She leaves it there, hovering for a moment. "He had this odd curse I've never heard anyone else use. It was--" her head tilts, willing the memory to tip off its shelf and out. "Saddlegoose. He said it so often I thought it was my aunt's name."
no subject
However Isaac probably was glad she wasn't pushing her injured hand too hard while it was recovering.
But at least compared to London's slums and the odd notions the English had about bathing some times, at least the Inquisition appreciated a hot bath that she could look forward to. (Self banished from Magni's bed didn't make her sulk by itself, but it made the cold bit that much deeper at night when she was always a desert child, even now).
More focused on that, then her company. Stripped down with just the loose white material wrapped around her waist then up and over her shoulder. The rope of black hung like a pendulum over her shoulder. But the vanity of it all was the basket ok her off hand of tubs and bottles of oils and fragrances. Gently settling herself on her side of the bath, feeling the steam beginning to unice her still remaining fingers and toes.
(her neck empty of the heavy silver phial, if she is bothered about being naked, it is only because she is missing that and now her clothes).
The basket set down at the edge straightens, and it's then that she captures sight of Coupe. But mercy be, she doesn't bother the other woman. Just bows her head deeply as a commander deserves.
Then takes her seat not in the water, but on the ledge. Dipping her legs in but no more, as she reaches out of the container. Fishing for the bits and pieces she wants. A brush, a bottle of oil, a rough cloth, a strange metal hook that wasn't sharp but catches the light in a dull shine. Perfectly ordinary to her. The last is a wooden bowl that she places in her lap. Settled in place Lakshmi began the almighty task of brushing out her hair. Dropping to tug loose the tie at the of it. Unravelling the braid like snakes detangling from each other, all that hair kinked faintly with a wave from how it was kept up, it covers her, loops around her knees, pools in itself on the floor next to her where it reaches well below her hips. Until a little tug of a mattered knot where her helmet had sat during the day of her training. Makes her grunt in that particular pain of tugging at single strands of hair and sends the bowl in her lap tumbling free into the pool.
She's not quick enough with occupied hands as it bops away across the ripples of movement. The deep breath through her nose is mildly frustrated as she can't quite reach it. Damn it, was this her punishment for her everything she'd done?
Lakshmi wets her lips, soft with steam and clears her throat to get Coupe's attention. "Commander, may I ask you to push that back this way?"
no subject
this, still.
He had not allowed himself to think she wouldn't return, so he didn't have to wish for it. Here she is, now, and the thought of home is strange, and sad, and lovely, and he turns his face against her throat and exhales all of those things.
“Yes,” feels like plenty.
call your mom
A glance back, then. Stop me if you've not heard this.
"If red lyrium is taken with Blight, we will have little luck against it without Warden aid." The wave of a hand. "Delacroix is able enough, but it is my understanding there are — personal grievances in play."
"I would not see this overlooked for ego. We've an enormous fucking dragon, and Darkspawn on the field. This requires cooperation."
shes fine
"Then I imagine you shall have it," she replies, in a low and joyless tone.
A pause, then, "...forgive me if I'm ignorant of military protocol. My experience is." She clears her throat, almost awkwardly. "...somewhat less refined."
If she had her way, all the Wardens would be tree-climbing experts, and they'd know all the best places to stick a knife. One might say such arts are wasted on Darkspawn.
i pinky promise 2 actually boomerang this now whenever we're both around
[ that it was a plausible name. saddlegander? ]
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Balázs. But there was also an uncle Hopper, if that helps.
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[ good-natured. the marches continue to elude. ]
One-legged fellow?
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[ She'd shrug, but that's tough with several shattered bones in one shoulder. The tip of her head suggests it instead. ]
The ginger fellow who hovers occasionally. I haven't caught his name.
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[ there's a tasteless joke or two about that. she doesn't make them. shakes her head (ginger, itself) to glance down again, cross a 't'. ]
If you caught his name I should be impressed. [ deciphering code is one thing; the stammer's not slight. ] Ah, Vauquelin.
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[ whatever. vauquelin is more interesting. ]
He doesn't much resemble the provost's wife.
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Have you been married long?
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I imagine that depends upon one's definition, [ a pause: ] Would yours match Mssr. Darras'?
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I imagine so. It's not a complicated formula--a chantry, vows, rings. But you might have to ask him; we agree on very little.
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[ possibly of just knowing darras ]
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He hasn't been quite himself. The Inquisition is...not his preferred environment.
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Environments may be shifted.
[ they've no shortage of tasks afield of authority. skill's not the question. interest? ]
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What does your Vauquelin think of the shift in environment? Or do the Gallows carry enough familiarity?
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the tip of her chin. ]
Pleased for a roof. [ walls. ] It is — different, I think, for the young. The land changes, and they change with it. To be something, still but an act of will.
[ amsel. shivana. voss, averesch, all those spun about the point of a year (of five). and the two of them, words heated, still paralyzed of action.
to abstain from a war isn't to avoid sides. ]
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At least they have that. Opportunity for change might be created with will enough, but there's no forcing a man to take it.
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I do not know that we should. [ force them? take it? ] Melted down for steel, so pleased to find themselves a sword.
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[ that fatal flaw, the crack of fade that lets in something — else. ]
We give all we have to this, because we must. But they play into blunt hands. It is how the world wishes to know them: Not a man, a child, but a spit for one’s enemies.
[ intolerable when turned inward. a gesture, ]
The Ambassador, you know. It was such an argument, her training.
[ she’s talking too much; that's half yseult's purpose. but she’s tired. but this is hardly a secret. but she can’t speak of it elsewhere without counting the seconds to talk of slavery ]
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and too late she realizes the commander's only talking about mages, anyway. ]
She was thought weak?
[ brittle, maybe. steel worked too long will crack before it bends. ]
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The honourable knight, given simple decisions. Good and wrong. Day and night. It is what many are told. But when it is taken --
[ crumples to a fist ]
The consequences, yes? To allow in anger, grief. Untested, but they wanted to give her a blade.
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[ she says after a moment, a thoughtful pause that will not seem unusual the more they speak like this ]
to know and care for right and wrong but also see the spectrum in between, the strange forms they can take. To admit to nothing but black and white is childish, but so is claiming all is equally grey. I don't know which does more harm.
The Ambassador has lasted this long. Luck, or has she learned?
no subject
[ which is more than she's generally wiling to credit herian where it might be repeated (stories their own reluctant endorsement). luck, that she'd a sword to learn by.
wren presses a crease into the page. a pause, eyes slipping shut. doesn't yet reach for the next. idly, ]
You must have few lessons left.
[ yseult's been lucky enough to — by the looks of it — get hit with every hammer on the field. ]
no subject
I was certain I'd learned this one already.
[ magic may smooth away any scars that might someday cause a mark to grow suspicious, but you don't last this long in her business without earning a handful, or without minding their teachings all the same. still, there are things they don't cover: ]
Though I can't say I've ever been in a pitched battle like that before.
hey-o
Still. What the shit.
"Our refined allies," Antiva, sure. But mostly Orlais, and 'allies' is a more politic word than her patriotism will lately allow, but Teren's just apologized — "Are dying en masse."
"Fuck refinement." She shakes her head. "We’ve too much to see done."
into the sea
"In that case," she muses, and stops, thinking silently for several long moments. When she speaks again, her tone is a testing one. "The prisoner, Samson. An expert on red lyrium, isn't he?"
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"I'm off," she announces, clapping Wren on the back (hopefully not making her choke), "got things to do."