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

[rathercommon]

"As you wish," Kitty responds, though she's watching Petra all the while. When Petra rises, though, Kitty says -

"Why do you keep it all so secret? Are you afraid? Or ashamed?"

Which is, of course, a rather rich question, coming as it does from Kitty Jones, Professional Secret-Keeper. Even just the little flashes that Petrana's been witness to here are far more than she talks about with - well - just about anyone. Honestly, in spite of that bristle over the woman's indifference, it's absolutely for the best that Petrana is indifferent; Kitty doesn't want it getting around that she was charged with high treason against her government. So - she keeps secrets. But her reasons are hers; she doesn't know Petra's.

[ipseite]

Indifference is a protective measure, when so much is tumbling out around them; an unkind one, a difficult one. Not one that comes naturally to her, when she is so much more at home with someone else's pain than her own—when she has so much more compassion for that. It is too near, and too entangled with a conversation that bares too much of her own self; she cannot have this conversation and allow herself to be other than remote at the same time.

“No,” she says, and does not volunteer an alternative.

(She is so toweringly angry that she can barely see through it. She would burn all of this down just to forget. And she loves him, still, and she can never forgive him for that alone.)

After a moment,

“The past is the past,” a little softer. “We are given an opportunity here, and I would not waste it looking back at something that does not see me. We cannot change what is in our history. We cannot change the worlds that we came from any longer, we are not there. We will not return. The woman who died was not me, in truth, any longer. Our lives there continue without us and whatever hopes we might harbor for those lives—we will never touch them again.”

The woman who was never free of Marius wasn't her. She grieves that, more than anything; that someone was left behind to give her this. That the separation is not so clear-cut as she would have it be, but that it is enough to know...that a life was lived never knowing anything else. It is terrible all the more for knowing something better.

“You would not have chosen for me to see what I have been shown, any more than I wished you to see my own past. That we are not shown courtesy by the Fade does not mean I should be any less courteous, myself, in allowing you to choose for yourself what you will say of that. It is courtesy I wish to be shown.”

[rathercommon]

"The past contains patterns of behavior that we can learn from," Kitty responds, the ferocity in her voice muted but still there. "And it contains the roots of our own ways of thinking. If we refuse to ever think about it, then the way we act will be mysterious to us, 'cause we'll just never consider why we do the things we do. And if we don't learn from our history - Then all we can ever do is react to what goes on around us, without ever considering a better way to live."

She shakes her head, then, crossing her arms. "There's no point in hiding from it," she says. "If you pretend like all of it never happened, then you're just living half a story."

[ipseite]

It takes her a moment to reply steadily.

“I am not obliged to cut myself open for your inspection,” she says, very carefully, “in order to learn from what I have lived. Just as I do not call you half a person for not exposing yourself to me. They are your wounds, and not mine; I do not need you to strip naked before me to respect that they are there, and to offer you the benefit of the doubt you have the presence of mind to learn from them. You are no less a thoughtful person for not sharing with me each of those thoughts.”

Quieter: “There is not a single day I do not think of my daughters. Of that life. But it is my life.”

[rathercommon]

"I'm not demanding you tell me. But you said it yourself - all that about the past is the past and you don't look back and all that." She shakes her head again.

"I'm saying it for your sake. If you don't look back, then you'll just keep on repeating all your mistakes. Again and again. That's just how people are. Tell me, don't tell me, but don't lie to yourself."

[ipseite]

Petrana sits, again, this time more thoughtfully—less annoyed, considering how to put her thoughts into words. Finally,

“To me there is a difference,” she says, and this is easier, again. She is more comfortable explaining, debating, the further they get from matters still so close and so raw. “When I say, the past is the past, I don't mean what you say—to be ignorant of what happened, to ignore it, to never learn from it. I mean to say, I dislike a tendency I have seen, not merely in Thedas but simply in human nature, to dwell in past misfortune. Or to...refuse to see that things have changed. I wish to learn and to grow. Not to sit in something that is done, and never rise from it. What happened in my life will always define the steps that I take next, that is unavoidable. And you are correct: it must be learned from. But to sit around as if it is still the most important thing, as if unpicking it for an audience means...everyone who comes here and shouts, I am a king! Listen to me, for I am a king!”

Her little moue of distaste is almost comically ladylike.

“Why should we? What have you learned from being a king? If you cannot show me, then why should I care that someone else once looked? I would demonstrate what I have learned, not merely shout about the learning and expect to be heard.”

[rathercommon]

Kitty's brows draw together. Perhaps excessively unladylike, she exclaims, "I don't give a damn who's a king here." Then, holding her hand out and gesturing as she talks, she says, "Everyone ought to prove themselves with their actions. Their actions now. I won't ever disagree with that. And anyone who leans on their title or their fame or whatever to prove they're worth anything is an idiot."

Then, settling her hand back down into her lap - "But the more we know of the course of history, the more we can understand what the patterns are. And here, in this place, we've got a chance to learn of two dozen different histories. I mean - if that can't show you the patterns of human behavior, then what can? But if we all hide 'em and keep our secrets - Then there won't be anything to grow from."

[ipseite]

It startles a genuine laugh from her, so unexpected; she is not, despite her best attempts, carved of stone. The laugh seems far more genuine than the small, closed-mouth things she allows to be called her smiles—seems more natural to her, suits her better.

Rarely seen, but truer.

“What of a bargain,” she says, after a moment, considering Kitty.

[rathercommon]

That makes her hesitate. The laugh - which is really absolutely lovely, the sort of laugh that makes one feel like one's taken a sip of warm tea, but altogether unexpected. And the offer, as well. Both leave Kitty feeling quite as though the ground has shifted, and she's not sure in which direction.

"A...bargain?" She tilts her face slightly away, watching Petra from the corner of her eye. "What sort of bargain?"

[ipseite]

(Petrana would have liked very much to see Kitty say that to—well, it doesn't matter. Nevertheless, she is charmed.)

“For each secret of yours, I shall give you one of my own. At any time, whenever the mood might strike you to trade them. A sort of mutual education, to be used as we each see fit.”

As much as she does suspect that Kitty—who asks a great deal of questions, and it has seemed to Petrana volunteers roughly as much as she herself might—would find such forthcoming exchanges as challenging as she might, it is not an offer made in the assumption of having it declined.

(She would not be put out, if it were.)

It is an offer made because the results might well, as Kitty argues, have merit. And it seems a less difficult way of exploring that possibility than something less...structured, and particular. All the more for how much they've yet seen of one another, unasked.