[closed]

[katabasis]

WHO: Sofia Teresa Oyanguren & James Flint
WHAT: Familiar faces in brand new places
WHEN: Early Wintermarch
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: N/A, will add if necessary

Leading the project office of a nonexistent navy for an at-best tattered organization in the wake of a military defeat may not spell legitimacy to much of anyone, but it's certainly the closest thing thing Flint's known to honest work in years. A decade. A lifetime. If he considers the prospect for too long - what it looks like, the shape of the work as some heavy article of clothing wrapped strangle tight about him -, it begins to feel as ill-suited as it must to Charles Vane.

So he opts not to. There's enough work to be done both over the table and under it that the last thing he needs is to turn over what any of feels like. If that had been the winning argument of the day, he wouldn't be here. The Archon might be dead. They'd never have left the Nocen Sea to begin with and Nascere would be no closer to determining its own future. They might all be dead, their feelings with them. Instead, think on this: that in the months since they've arrived, they've somehow made their way from an infestation in the Kirkwall Harbor, to the controlling voices of an office in the Gallows. It's an unbelievable amount of leverage in return for next to nothing.

He can work with this, is what Flint is thinking after a full morning of excavation on the mountain of paperwork Araceli had been keeping. As he stands now near the Gallows' ferry landing, waiting for the jolly boat from the Walrus to arrive with a chest of papers and chart books, his attention is consumed enough by the work on hand that for a moment he doesn't recognize the woman stepping from ferry.

Had he, he might have found the opportunity to disappear back into the jumble of bodies along the slip. At the very least, he might have shifted back into the shadow of the stairs leading down here. Instead, he's right there at the water's edge, cutting some impossible to miss figure there just apart from the crowd waiting to load onto the ferry in the steely gray winter afternoon as he meets Lady Oyanguren's eye.

The man now called Captain Flint goes very still.

Comments

[anillos]

It helps that she's tall.

She's here to try and continue to convince someone - anyone - to assist on this ill-fated and perhaps suicidal mission to recover her jewelry. Byerly, as usual, it completely useless in this endeavor, and Sofia Teresa is thinking maybe she should just let that go when her bodyguard helps her down out of the ferry and she looks up-

Her skin is not made for blushing; her skin is just a smidge to dark. Besides, as ladylike as it is, it's not a blush of flattery or a blush of embarrassment, but rather one of surprise, so its just as well that when she sees him all she can do is say, "Oh! It's you!"

Not the most intelligible she's ever been.

[katabasis]

Her face is familiar. That is, more or less, the extent of his memory of the woman on the quay. But that paired with fine make of her clothes and the flash of jewelry in the cool winter sunlight is enough.

In retrospect, it is something of a miracle that this moment hasn't come sooner. It's something he'd considered, then dismissed, those months ago when they'd first made their way South - that they'd arrive in Kirkwall and the Inquisition would be manned entirely by men and women who might somehow know his face, recognize some other version of him. At the time, it had seemed a worthwhile risk.

Today, faced with the reality of it?

The abrupt nakedness of it curdles something in him. Maybe it shows in the slightly taut lines of his face and the faint way he tips his chin down as he faces her, though she's taller than him by a hand.

"So it is." Prickling: "I'm sorry, remind me--"

[anillos]

She just raises her chin, and there's a smile there, smart and sharp. Hello. "Sofia Teresa Oyanguren. And you are," she pauses, as if to recall. The truth is that she never forgets names; she knows everyone by name, and her memory is a steel trap for it. It is a function of survival.

But she recognizes, too, that sometimes people change. That it's been years. That he knows she is not in her late twenties. By every curse in the world, she does not want people to know her true age. "My apologies," she decides. It's best not to insist. "I seem to have forgotten your name. But your face is so familiar."

[katabasis]

He knows the name better than the face, thanks in some small part to her own public introduction and larger still due to the presence of that name in the North. He's had cargo in his hold with that family's crest more than once. Neither her look or her name alone would be enough for him to be sure, no. But in combination? An uneasiness gives way to certainty. Had the table they'd both sat around been set before or after matters in the Magisterium had begun to deteriorate? Had it been before or after he'd made the first expedition to Nascere? He can't place her in time. He can't recall what might have been said over a young woman's head.

It's you!, she'd said. He might have an easy answer otherwise. Here, he hesitates. A visible line of tension forms and dissolves in rapid succession. "James Flint."

It's impossible for him to stand any farther back on his heels without first lifting his toes from the ground.

[anillos]

Oh.

Oh, that is certainly not his name, and she knows it. She tips her head up, like she's trying to decide how she's going to respond to that, and finally she makes up her mind. "James Flint," she says, taking care with the second half of his name. So he knows.

She knows that's a lie.

"Are you doing well here? I believe I met you in the home of a lord, ah-" she pauses, and tips her head down. "Well. You know."