OPEN: Kirkwail

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.

The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.

The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.

In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.

But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

"Ah, oui! Death becomes you," adds Alexandrie, although she will not turn back around. That is what makes these visits tolerable; knowing that she still walks the earth while Rolant's perfect shell has rotted away to finally match his soul. She hopes the Chantry is right, and the putrefaction of it vanished to nothing. She hopes the Chantry is wrong, and that he wanders the Fade tormented by demons. "You truly ought to have tried it earlier."

"And a little growl from him as well!" Exclaims Rolant, ignoring Alexandrie's rejoinder and slinging a casually proprietary arm around her shoulders. He rests his chin on the top of her head as a vantage point from which to continue to regard Byerly. Raises his eyebrows and affects thoughtfulness, "You've never so much as raised hackles to defend yourself in your life. Well. Save the once. But even then it was all for that lovely little sister of yours, wasn't it?" He pauses, and then gasps with dramatic realization, shifting his eyes to look briefly down towards Alexandrie and then back up. "Can it be? My darling! He still comes to your defense even after everything you've done!" The man looks approving, gleeful in a way that stops just before it becomes truly vicious. "You really ought to keep your obscene desire for debasement in bed where it belongs, my good man." He quirks a brow languidly, his smile widening as if the two of them are the best of friends sharing a joke. "Unless, of course, it pleases you better to have us all watch. In which case, you really ought to have stayed with her."

Now her shoulders raise, despite herself, hands fisting in her skirts. Rolant chuckles indulgently and turns his face to kiss her head. "You're awful at this, mon petite. Love makes you weak." He sighs with terrible sadness and turns back towards Byerly, his cheek resting partway in her curls without disturbing them at all. "I thought I taught you a better lesson than that."

[bouchonne]

The blows cause pain, but - Well. Byerly would not be a Rutyer if he didn't know how to take pain without flinching. Still, there is something quite difficult in this, because - this is not Rolant in truth. This is Alexandrie's imagining of him. Or possibly his own, but he suspect that this ghost is Alexandrie's. So these are not the thoughts of that foul man; these are the thoughts of Lexie herself, given voice through his cruel mouth.

Maybe. Who knows. This might really be Rolant's ghost. Who can say, truly.

"You always did overestimate your capabilities, dearest Ezoire." Byerly's smile is as it ever was with Rolant: mocking without being overly so, wry with a little tiny soupcon of kicked dog slinking back to its master. "Maker, I remember your pride over the size of your cock. I hadn't the heart to tell you that that was only impressive for an Orlesian. In Ferelden, it would have gotten you laughed out of the bathhouse. You'd have been mistaken for a woman. Andraste's mercy." He sighs fondly, shakes his head. "What a pity you've gone, dear man. I do miss our little jokes. How did you die, anyway? Was it syphilis after all?"

[coquettish_trees]

It is not, of course, Rolant’s ghost. It is worse. Rolant’s memory is incisive enough—he’d been well and truly born to play at the national pastime of Orlais—but the spirits haunting the Gallows have the sort of knowledge and ability that any noble, any spy, would kill to possess. Artifice is useless; true feelings are plucked as readily as children pluck blackberries, the flesh of them gripped and yanked at greedily for more.

And so the spirit ignores every piece of bait, and grips at the kernel that matters, swirls into Fade-stuff, faceless for a moment before it floats to him in diaphanous skirts, artful ringlets, a lovely smile, the point of her chin balanced coyly on the tip of her fan.

“Ah, mon cher, so clever.” says Alexandrie, looking as she does now, save for the slight translucence, the blur of her edges. The Alexandrie beyond her turns back sharply to stare at her own advance. “You know, I think you trust this face more on a spectre than in flesh. Expect more truth to issue from this mouth. Should you like to hear you are right to? After all, what need have I for lies when the truth is a much better blade? Ask me, and I will pull it from her like a milkmaid skims the cream that cannot help but rise.”

The sudden terror on the solid Alexandrie’s face suggests that despite its addressing, this hell may well be hers.

[bouchonne]

"The truth?" he echoes in a murmur.

There is temptation there. Did you love me. Do you love me. But the answers to those questions are ones it would be better not to know; after all, no would hurt, and yes would hurt worse. Will you fall victim once more to that Vint - That's a question that cannot be answered, as it would consist of fortune-telling. For some, if their ghosts made this offer, it would be an unparalleled opportunity. But he wants no truths from her. He needs no truths from her. He already knows her, inside and out; even if she lies, he knows the color of her soul.

"The truth, my dearest, is nothing but a story we tell ourselves." He reaches out and offers a mimicry of a gesture of affection, cupping her illusory cheek. "You don't offer some trenchant insight into reality; you only offer a tale that exist in dearest Lexie's head which she does not want told. For you will not tell me any facts I don't know, dear ghost; you'll only offer me her interpretation of them."

[coquettish_trees]

It is not a patient thing, this spirit. Not when there are so many other ready sources of strong emotion trapped so close on the island, and so unexpectedly thwarted by both the wash of relief from the true Alexandrie and Byerly’s too-ready refusal to take its offer, it curls to nothing to chase other prey.

The remaining Alexandrie’s shoulders drop, and she turns away again, her arms folding across her.

“You should leave,” she says, hoping vainly that the slight quaver in it is less audible to him. “Or I should. It is only a matter of time before there are more, and I would not see any other memories you would not have me see.” Her arms tighten. “That is a kindness you will believe of me, is it not?”

[bouchonne]

Any other memories, is it? That sends a little shiver of tension through him, engages his defenses. "There's nothing you've seen here that I'm ashamed of, dear Lexie," he says - perfectly pleasant, even as a flare of desperation kindles in his stomach. But he will not let her go away thinking that Nadine is a weapon that can be used against him. He will not give her that power.

"But if you're afraid of me seeing more, then I won't stop you."

[coquettish_trees]

“You cannot help it any more than I can, can you,” she says sadly. The deception, the wariness, the curling around themselves and speaking as if they stood straight.

Louder then, and resigned. “We shall say it is for my sake, then. My shame, my secrets, my fears, as it has always been.” She releases her skirts and smooths the crumples there with her hands. “And your kindness.”

[bouchonne]

"Kindness?" His lips thin into a taut smile as he watches after her. "What kindness is that, pray tell?" Hardly any kindness in letting her purported weakness be the pretense. A coward now, as ever, it seems.

[coquettish_trees]

"Having spared me the continued embarrassment I might cause myself, of course."

Those words will, perhaps, smell of truth. And they are true, if not about memory. Rather, about her fear that she will continue to clutch to her chest the remains of some faded flower that had come out of the book she'd pressed it in, even after it had gone to dust in her hands.

Rolant, living and dead, had always been right about one thing. Love makes her weak. And it was no longer safe to be weak here. Hadn't been. And he'd let her be and watched, just as she'd done back then. Shouldn't she be grateful, to know? Even so, she can't bear to hear him say anything else. She can't. And so, without turning to look, she moves away down the hall in her practiced glide, her back held as straight and head held as high as she can manage.