because it doesn't make sense for me to cry out in my own defense

[keenly]

WHO: Colin, Alexandrie, Anders, Loki, Kostos, Myrobalan
WHAT: Colin gives up.
WHEN: The evening after the news of the new Divine reaches Kirkwall.
WHERE: Alexandrie de la Fontaine's apartments.
NOTES: CW: Suicide attempt. Physical violence will ensue. Mentions of past sexual violence.

Hearing her name doesn't change anything. He doesn't think he even feels anything at that point--wouldn't know for sure, though, because he doesn't bother to ask himself. He just floats. Quietly closes the apothecary early for the day and posts a sign. Stares down the hallway. Stands still for so long that someone bumps into him on their way. The walls are narrow and cold, still with remnants of the old history in their stains and accents. You can see the marks where there were slave reliefs taken down. And in the old days, at the end of the hall, there would be a door locked and barred.

He drifts down the hallway, stopping to look closely at all the evidence of those who died here, slaves and mages alike. Flattens a palm against the stone as if, across the mirror of the Veil, someone from long ago is touching that same stone. It used to be too much to think about, but it doesn't hurt him now. Not as long as he makes it down the hallway before they lock the door.

The ferry skims over the water streaked pale gold by the late afternoon light. Smoke from the foundry district blows over it as Colin passes through like a ghost, looking back at the Gallows and wondering how many people are there whom he should speak to. He didn't pass any of them on the way to the ferry, so it must not be meant to be. If they can't catch him as he flits away like a moth, he isn't capable of turning around to give them another chance, or seek them out. This hallway is too narrow for him to travel in any direction but one.

The apartment is familiar and lovely, spotless and comfortable. It still feels like the last place he belongs, but he has never belonged anywhere except the place he was taken from too long ago to belong there again. He goes to the little trinket box on a side table and opens it, taking out the cool, smooth contents.

The flask is altogether unremarkable, but his spirit balks at the sight of it because of the color of saffron, the taste of smoke, the dappled pattern of the sun through trees, the gleam of laughter in a friend's eyes. He doesn't have to do this. He can toss it out a window. But his spirit balks at the thought of that, because he remembers climbing into a wall, and being flung against one. He remembers the shreds of an apprentice's robe hanging on the body of an abomination. He remembers frightened Templars shutting and barring the great doors. He remembers the taste of Ser Lutair's spit and seed both, and how to make sure to cover his knees from the cold stone as he got down on them. He remembers ghosting through hallways just like he did today, and for four years, no one stopping him to talk to him. No one asking if something was wrong, or looking closely enough to see it for themselves. No one coming to help, no rescue, only a threat that if he didn't shape up, he would end up Tranquil. Which didn't turn out to be such a bad suggestion. So since there was no escaping his torturer, and showing any signs of being tortured would have earned punishment, he turned himself Tranquil. He spent years as a corpse walking down that empty hallway, unseen and unloved.

He won't go back to it, and he won't shiver through a year or two of war knowing what's coming will be even worse for him. He has always been his only source of mercy, and this is his call. This will be the last time he dies.

Comments

[exequy]

It had just been a comment on the scenery, for lack of any further arguments to make about how good or bad anyone's future is, but that works, too. Sort of. Kostos shakes his head a little, then resumes walking. After a few paces he checks to make sure Colin is coming. He wouldn't want to deal with Madama or whoever else, if he were to take Colin out and lose him.

[keenly]

That wasn't Kostos' point? Then what is the point of this walk? Colin folds his arms tightly against his chest and follows the man quietly.

[exequy]

There is no point, besides the sunlight and the sea breeze. A walk, like he said. When they pass a bake shop Kostos stops to buy a sticky bun, and foists all but a pinch of it (a little pinch, his abs) off on Colin.

He doesn’t have a lecture planned, never did, and he’s deep into his own thoughts—and sucking sugar off the side of his finger—when he emerges just far enough to say, “Beatrice was from Kinloch Hold. She would have been around your age. Tall girl, brown hair. Her tooth was,” crooked, as demonstrated by two fingers twisting an invisible front tooth askew.

[keenly]

Colin isn't feeling hungry, but the smell of the bun is divine. For a while, he holds it just to smell before eventually, he takes a tiny bite.

"Crooked," he confirms. "We were apprentices at the same time. Not friends. She came in after the Blight, I think. Why, was she in the war?"

[exequy]

“She was in my—“ a pause, because the words always felt foreign and a little silly, like they were playing at being soldiers until dinner “—unit. We lost her in Claose. We were pinned down, and she.”

The details are vivid—the impossibility, the choice, the fabric of her sleeve brushing past when he grabbed for her arm too late, the heat and the smell and the screaming. But the details also aren’t anyone’s business, who wasn’t there, and aren’t the point. There is no point, except he’d thought Colin might have known her.

So he pauses, and just says, “She was funny.”

By his definition.

[keenly]

"And now the Circles she fought against are coming back." Colin looks toward the water, wrapping up the warm bun and holding it nervelessly in one hand. "The Circles you fought against, on behalf of people like me. What was the point?"

[exequy]

“Is it over? You should tell Nell.” He folds his arms behind his back, content to stop walking and look at the water for a minute. Exactly a minute. The seconds are ticking down. “Let me know what her face does.”

[keenly]

The deep gloom breaks for a second, and on the corner of his mouth, a gleam of a smile can briefly be seen.

"I don't think I'd survive that."

[exequy]

Kostos tilts his head, considering and then agreeing.

"Well, if you're giving up anyway."

[keenly]

A tight smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Doesn't mean I want to die. There are just some things worse than death."

[exequy]

"Quite," Kostos says, because obviously would be too rude a thing to say to someone post-suicide attempt, even for him.

[keenly]

"Anyway," Colin continues, "death by Nell sounds a lot more painful than what I had in mind. Though it would probably work better."

[exequy]

“She is fairly good at making it quick.”

Not that he actually wants Colin to go get Nell to kill him, or that he thinks Nell would do it if he tried instead of giving him the facial-expression equivalent of a cheek pat and going back to whatever she’d been doing before.

The minute he’s willing to stand still is up. He starts walking again, though not in any particular hurry.

“It was not a bad idea,” he says, out of nowhere—not actually talking about Colin’s poisoning attempt, but context is for the weak, so maybe that’s how it sounds for the length of that sentence. “No families, no money, no land, no country... minimal political influence.” Not quite none. Especially in a Nevarra. “They took away everything they thought we might destroy the world to protect, if we could have it. It was a decent plan. They just missed a spot.”

[keenly]

"What's that?"

[exequy]

The short answer is, "Each other," so that's what Kostos says, and then he hears himself say it, and hears how stupid it sounds. Like he's going to keep fighting this war and probably die because of the power of friendship. He glares a little extra at the road ahead while he clarifies: "They made us into a nation."

So he's going to keep fighting this war and probably die because of nationalism. That's better.

[keenly]

Each other falls a bit flat, to Colin. The rest of it is colored by what he thinks of from Kostos' first answer, though he can't deny the man is right.

"We'll still be a nation when they shovel us back in," he acknowledges quietly. "Sort of."

He looks away, at the water. Tries to talk without thinking or feeling, because he's not feeling bad yet. But the more he talks about this, the easier it becomes.

"When I was an apprentice, there was this Templar. He used me, and because of him, everyone left me alone because they were afraid to draw his attention. I wasn't part of a nation then."

[exequy]

Whatever minimal interest Kostos might have had in arguing about the conclusion—whether Fereldans are any less a nation because sometimes they steal from or kill each other, for example—is firmly quashed by the rest of that.

“Everyone?”

Say yes. He hasn’t formed strong opinions about the other Kinloch Hold mages, and he’s perfectly fine with forming the strong opinion that they’re cowards, and maybe tripping them on the stairs.

[keenly]

Colin shrugs.

"Everyone who knew. The um, the enchanter I was apprenticed to, he didn't know. But I couldn't tell anyone or the Templar would have killed me, or said I was practicing blood magic. And he was a Templar, I was an apprentice, so people would have believed him over me."