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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
Case in point. Whatever grim humor he had at himself vanishes in an eyeblink at his intuition of what those things that were done might've been. (Probably he can't imagine it as bad as what it was; they were sheltered in Hasmal. But they'd heard.) "D'you have reason to suspect he's somewhere in the Inquisition? Or elsewhere?"
no subject
"I don't even know if he's alive. I don't want to find out. If I'm public about anything, which I'm not keen on in the first place, I might not just find out whether or not he's alive. I just...I want other mages to understand--especially ones like you, whose experience wasn't as bad--what's at stake for the rest of us, and what we need in order to keep going. Maybe the rest of society needs to know as well. The Chantry certainly knows, and has known all along, but never faced pressure from the rest of society to change."
He sinks forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
"You asked what system I'd introduce to protect mages from their caretakers, even if those caretakers were other mages. There's no magical solution to keeping people from being hurt. But what I faced was, if I said what was happening to me, he would have killed me. If they'd kept that from happening, and if they didn't believe him saying he caught me doing blood magic, they'd probably transfer one of us. If he got transferred, he'd just start doing the same thing in a Circle where he had a clean slate, and his friends would have avenged him through me. If I'd been transferred, he'd stay in a Circle where he'd be protected by his friends and able to keep abusing apprentices. Nothing would change there. Then I'd be safe, but nobody back home would be. And all of that is assuming I survived and wasn't made Tranquil.
"Maybe the solution isn't to have mages taking the place of templars. If we could design a Circle that was more like a village, and a First Enchanter is more like a mayor or something, and there was no Rite of Tranquility, maybe that would work. Then have the templars in the towns, with the normal people, to protect them if something happens. Make the mages separated from everyone else, but able to trade outside their Circles. And in those Circles, we can do what we like--fishing, farming, masonry, anything, while still practicing and learning our magic."
no subject
Attentive to all of it, even so, to the point of marking pieces down beneath signs and symbols in the Circle tower in his mind. This is what he's been asking them all for, after all; this is what they're going to have to build on, sooner or late--both the horrors of the past and their collective dreams for the future.
"They feed back into each other--the Chantry, society. And so long as the worst among 'em can keep the unknowing convinced that all a mage is, is terror and death for them and theirs, neither's going to change. It's more than knowing what's at stake--it's knowing that we are at all, with hopes and fears, dreams and ideas just as they've got. But I do," low breath out, "understand."
He does, viscerally, even more so that Colin's laid it out for him. "It doesn't seem sufficient to say I'm sorry but--I am, Colin. You needn't do anything that would put you back at risk. But should you, and should he come looking--the Inquisition's already broken one templar for harming a mage."
Never mind what happened to Cade was unjust; it was precedent all the same.
"Your vision for a Circle, though--I'd assume any mage who wanted would be free to leave for another Circle? That we'd stay where we were for the company of our own kind," some part of him still finds that a little odd to stay, stumbles over the words, "rather than being penned in by walls?"
He taps his fingertips together, considering the idea from all angles. "It'd be a good solution. Something like the way Dairsmuid was, from what I know of it; there's still a concrete place for us to be but we're in touch with the outside world. Not so removed from it someone can vanish without anyone's noticing. I doubt it would float with the Resolutionists who think we've got to be a part of society exactly like anyone else--but we'd need a transition to that, anyway. And this is as good as any and better than most."
It's getting there that's the problem, of course.
no subject
He scratches his arm. His hands are shaking.
"This isn't politics. It's arithmetic. The Chantry won't be happy unless it's actively staving off the next Imperium. Templars are their army, so we will be under their supervision again. I'm not going back to that. And people will act like it's unreasonable of me to ask not to be murdered or raped. To have a system that won't allow it. I'm some...acceptable loss. An unfortunate extreme that hardly ever happens and doesn't deserve to be taken into account, but we can all pity him on our way to our old Circles, that should be enough to prove we're all compassionate."
There's moisture in his eyes now, and he doesn't do anything but blink it away.
no subject
Myr isn't always good at realizing when something's not part of an argument to be debated; he's not always good at stopping short of trampling a conversational partner when he's gotten fixed on an idea.
But he'd have to be a damn sight more unobservant than he is to not realize this is not the time.
Instead, he holds out his hands to the other mage, offering that tangible support if it should be desired. "If he catches up with you, if he comes here--and those of us who care for you and know what he's done don't cut his throat first--he'll be dealt with. Bann's son or no--the Inquisition can't tolerate that kind of filth walking around. Ambassador Amsel won't allow it--Ser Coupe won't allow it." Simon would put the bastard through a wall, if it came to that.
"And until he is locked away, or hanged, you won't be left alone for a moment where he could get at you. This isn't Kinloch Hold, we don't eat our own, and you are not an 'acceptable loss'. Not to me." There's a look in his eye, a zealot's gleam that doesn't often show itself.
"Not to Julius, or Inessa, or Kostos, or any other mage who's argued for caution. You aren't alone and unheard."
no subject
Now, Myr is promising to protect him. Telling him what he's sure he ought to have assumed but could not, and can hardly believe even now, because he didn't know such a world existed, where people are kind and risk themselves to protect others. He has friends now, some of whom rescued him from the Carta. Why would he think they wouldn't protect him now, from whatever comes next? At the words not to me, a sound begins low in his chest. While he barely manages to swallow it, the tears fall, and his head bows.
Finally, he reaches out to take Myr's offered hands and clings for dear life as stifled sobs rattle his chest. He bends low over Myr's hands like a starving beggar bowing in gratitude for a crust of bread.
i am still not sure this tag is worthy & thank you for your patience in waiting for it <333
"We'll make it through this." The words aren't much above a murmur; they're spoken more for their cadence and the air of reassurance a voice can provide. "All of us. You're a part of that and you're not alone..."
it's beautiful
"I don't think Julius will ever talk to me again." A sniffle. "We fought, and I was awful. I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid I'll be on my own again. That was worse than anything else, worse than abominations, worse than being raped for months, was being alone. And look at that, I'm pushing people away again, to save myself from when they decide I'm too difficult to love. Like it was in the Circle."
YOU'RE beautiful
He shifts a little forward on the chair so they're touching knees and lapses briefly silent; he needs--a moment to breathe through hearing all that stated so plainly, to take it in without absorbing it (yet). To stay functional and in charge of his own emotions. "We do come back when we're pushed, some of us. Too stubborn to know better."
Too familiar with what it was to be alone in a crowd and unwilling to let go easily. "And we won't abandon you. You're very far from too difficult."
and now I'm super late
"You wouldn't have been able to protect me. In the Circle." His voice is weary, his eyes red, and it feels like all of this discussion is entirely moot. "If you'd even found out, I'd have got punished for it. By him or his friends. 'Cause even if you'd got him, you wouldn't have got his friends. And I know you and Simon, you're all right right now. But in the Circle, mages and templars know which side they're on."
...AND beautiful
(No one will get all they want out of this, but they might--they must--wrest enough to keep the most vulnerable among them alive and safe. In light of that, why does Myr deserve the desires of his heart?)
It doesn't need to be about sides, he wants to say and doesn't. It doesn't need to be that way; it wasn't that way in Hasmal. We were friends, we were family, we could trust they'd have our backs... "Maybe I couldn't have," but he'd have shattered himself trying, "but this isn't the Circle any longer--it's the Inquisition. It isn't simple any longer; we can't go back to how things were because we won't fit in our old shapes. You've more than mages fighting for you."
A breath in, a breath out. "As for me and Simon, we'll always be on each other's side. Whatever comes."
no subject
"Simon's a good man. You two've got as good a chance as you can get. It doesn't have to be something that anyone else understands. And if you weren't together now, you'd both be unhappy. There's no point in not being happy while you can."