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Open | Words in my mouth
WHO: Colin + you
WHAT: Catch-all for February
WHEN: February/Guardian
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Starters available by request.
WHAT: Catch-all for February
WHEN: February/Guardian
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Starters available by request.
Clarke - Apothecary
Once the ghosts are gone and Colin is permitted back to work, he finds himself short of almost everything. He's come back from the garden with a fresh batch of winter herbs to dry and is hanging them in the closet when he hears the door open.
"Right with you!" he calls out, voice muffled by the wooden walls. A second later, he's walking out and shutting the closet door behind him, giving Clarke a searching look.
Cade
There is a knock at Cade's chamber door; upon opening, he will find Colin there, looking a little uneasy but smiling wanly and holding a box.
"You didn't pick this up," he says, offering the lyrium.
Julius
Colin arrives at Julius' work space with a box of cookies. He gives a little wave and sets the box before him. These are spicy, chewy things with bits of candied ginger. He heard how bad things got here, and it sounds like Julius could use a lot of delicious cookies.
Byerly - Lexie's apartment
"So." Colin shows Byerly in to where he has light refreshments set up--tea, anise seed cakes, and buttered bread. A small smile is on his face. "I had to learn your name from someone else, but at least I got it."
It's a light jab; there are no hard feelings here. He pours tea for his guest.
Lexie & Byerly - Lexie's apartment, a while after By arrives
Of course, it's too much to hope they could chat in private about things no one is supposed to know about. Colin asked the servants to take a break when By arrived, but didn't realize they hadn't stopped working after they left. It's not really an underestimation of them as much as of Alexandrie, who he has slowly come to realize has way more of a past than she will ever admit to him. Which is just.
Fine! It's fine. It's, it's fine. It's fine!
Myr - Delivery
A package is delivered to Myr's doorstep. It is full of sketches. The first is an abomination, not drawn in great detail except for the tattered remains of an apprentice's robe around its waist. There's page after page of hands, the same pair of hands in various positions--clenching, scratching, clawing, clinging to brick and mortar. There's an almost informative sketch of a fortified wall--two layers of stone sandwiching crumbling clay. A templar with a terrified face. The Great Doors, shut so tightly not even light can get through. Wide-open faces of screaming mages. Shallow-eyed corpses. A glimpse of a lake beyond broken brick. Dirt under fingernails, a pair of twisted legs learning to walk.
Wildcard
no subject
Assuming her worries are for his survival. He can't imagine what else she'd worry about.
no subject
"So it begins. You learn only to listen, only to watch, then to speak, then to stand, to smile or not, to blush or not, then to become whatever may be needed. Then to do whatever may be needed. And then, as the years of the war wear on, you learn to see the fabric of it, and where the knots of lies are, and how to collect them and how to tie them and while you nurture those parts of yourself the others die. Earnestness, honesty. Compassion. Softness. Love."
She takes a rather extensive drink from the refilled glass.
"And your instructor, if they are good, will let them wither. Encourage them to. And then one day you will wake up and look in the mirror and find yourself unrecognizable. Or, if you are lucky," she looks at her glass, at her hands, "you will not notice at all."
tw: reference to sexual abuse
"Lexie," he says gently--and could not have imagined, at one point, that he could ever refer to someone of her station so informally. "When I was sixteen, a templar decided he had to either fuck me or kill me, and he did one while endlessly threatening the other. To get him to stop, I stole another mage's contraband lyrium business by turning him in, and used the lyrium to bribe the other templars to protect me. If anyone caught on, I'd be Tranquil or dead. And you think this is going to break me?"
no subject
"Yes." It's quiet, a bare whisper, and she looks away. "Survival is different than gain. If I had meant only to protect myself—" but power was protection, and she had gone further than paralyzing terror had taken her. "—and when it is not for yourself, when you no-longer choose how far it is you go..."
She doesn't trust them to wield him like that. Not any of them. Not Ashara, and not Byerly—as much as that stung. And the worst wound of all of them, one day she would no longer trust him. The very fact that her instinct is now to relax the muscles of her face so her lips won't tremble at it is enough to make the simple exercise nearly impossible. Perhaps, for a little longer, she can let herself sound as wretched as she feels.
"Say you will not. Let it fall on someone who has already withered themselves so." It is the wine, perhaps. Or perhaps it is simply aiding and abetting her natural inclination towards catastrophizing. "I should rather cut and dye my hair and trade myself to her service than see you made to pick up such a thing again."
She sounds desolate. "I wish you happy."
no subject
"If I don't cooperate with her, she could tell the other division heads that I was trading in illegal lyrium on their property less than a year ago. Which she knows because I was sold to the Carta by my runner, and because she knows this, I'm pretty sure she'll never trust me with anything remotely like you're talking about. I'm not becoming a bard, Lexie. I'm never going to become a bard. I'm just following orders."
no subject
Perhaps he would keep himself. Perhaps, if he cared at all for the person he was, he would not try as hard to eradicate himself as she had the weak foolish thing who'd let herself be so shattered, but it does nothing to calm the little fearful bird crushing itself to death against the inside of her chest over the memories of picking herself so carefully apart fiber by fiber, reweaving that weak foolish girl into a perfect shining heartless monster. Of what had happened when she'd briefly faltered at being even that.
Not for the first time, she wishes it all gone. To have had less luck at Ghislain. Alexandrie is tired. So tired, and still gripping the pieces of what she'd shattered hard enough to cut her palms to the bone and all the keening of her grief of it will never come to anything, and the cycle of it will continue.
She is quiet for a very long time.
Then "Fine." And only that.
no subject
"I know who I am, yeah? I know this is dangerous. But I promise you, the path most likely to lead me where you fear isn't this one. And you'll be here for me. I can't tell you any specifics, obviously, but you'll know when I'm struggling. You'll be able to see that even if I can't tell you. So even if I'm led astray, you'll be right there to guide me back."
no subject
This is all too much, but that is more than too much.
"Not here. Never here."
no subject
"Okay," he agrees quietly.
no subject
But what can she say about it that she hasn't? The eminently selfish near begging strangled in her throat is all for her own sake. That she wants to keep the one confidante who might someday have rendered her not alone with the fullness of the wreck she'd made of her heart. Whom she could trust to not be filing away maps of places in her and handing them, witting or not, to the precise person she desperately doesn't want to have them.
You are not important enough to break, she reminds herself, There is no reason for this, but it's lost under the simple thoughtless catastrophic press of terror that had become impossible to fight down after Minrathous—she snaps a shaking hand over her mouth and closes her eyes so she can pretend the lack of sight is her choice before it comes.
no subject
"You need rest," he says tensely. "We can talk about this in the morning again, but...no part of this is my choice. I can ask her, again, to take me off this duty, but she won't do it. And if I leave the Inquisition, I have no one. And if I lose you, I..."
Nope. Now he needs to get some rest and come back to this in the morning. He stands up and gives her a short chance to speak before walking to his bedroom.
no subject
It is only when he has left that she finally says, quietly, to the empty room,
"You will feel as I do now."