faderift | [open] the way it feels to be just anyone

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[open] the way it feels to be just anyone

WHO: Benedict and you
WHAT: catch-all
WHEN: Bloomingtide
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: will give warnings as needed. hit me up if you want a starter!

I. The Library

Performing his chamberlain duties in the daytime and studying magic in the evenings doesn't leave Benedict a lot of time for leisure, and in fact the hours he would have spent drinking or playing cards are now occupied in the little office he sets up every night at one of the library tables. It's here that he writes letters, several scrolls weighted down in front of him which list Tevinter's major families and their relations, spread all across the country and ripe for persuasion.

Sometimes he can be found writing fervently, a cup of tea sitting untouched and forgotten beside his scribbling quill; more than once he's fallen asleep there, his face smudged with ink as it rests atop the desk.

II. The Gallows Courtyard

On the rare occasion that he's out of real work to do, Benedict can sometimes be found sitting on the steps of the tower with his parchment board and a quill or stick of charcoal, idly drawing the surrounding architecture. The sketches are loose, but hone in with great detail on things like the flourish in a column or a specific pattern of tilework; he shows little interest in the denizens going about their day, and in fact makes a little face of irritation if ever someone steps in the way.

III. Wildcard

do ur worst

for Solas

With the warming weather, Benedict has felt more comfortable taking his magical studies outside to practice in the open. Well, semi-open-- still afraid of being heckled at the proper training grounds, he opts instead for the herb garden in the evenings, where he can take his time and maintain a relatively low level of anxiety.

The barrier is something he mastered ages ago, but Benedict's skill in it has weakened with his resolve; he can't seem to keep it going under duress, which has led him to try a visibly stronger method: the Rift barrier, as he saw Solas conjure when Kirkwall was besieged by ghosts.
Benedict is able to draw a brief form: a slab, part of a wall, which remains for several seconds and then disintegrates, much to his aggravation.

If he can't make a simple barrier work, no matter its material, he can't protect himself.

for Kitty

It's been more than a few days, but the Inquisition is like that: people get busy and stay busy, with less time than they hoped for side projects. So it's more like several weeks later when Benedict next visits Kitty in the library, walking in with his posture straight and his eyes bright, hopeful.

"Any luck?"

for Marcoulf

There's been no reason to talk to the little ferret-face, save perhaps for a gnawing conscience that rears its head every time Benedict remembers that awful night and the subsequent conversations. Perhaps he was too unkind to him-- perhaps he's afraid of Marcoulf still, even after everything. But he can't have this nonsense hanging over his head, not when anxieties are at an all-time high and the whole world seems unbalanced.

So he approaches Marcoulf one night, sauntering up next to him and leaning against a nearby pillar, where he lights a cigarette and just... stands there. One of them will speak first. Maybe.

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Maybe there's a protest to be made there - fuck you, that's not why I'm being dramatic -, but it must not occur to him. Or maybe it does, and he chooses not to say anything about it. Or, or, or--

It's fine. He fixes Benedict with a flat look and asks in a way that's so dry it hardly sounds like a question at all, "What would you like to talk about?"

"Well," comes the drawling reply, "seeing as it's resolved that you do still want to kill me, I'll leave it up to you."

He brings out his little cigarette box again, removing two and sticking one in his mouth-- the other he holds outstretched to Marcoulf, eyebrows raised. A peace offering?

That's not true either. He isn't resolved to kill much of anyone, much less some stupid boy the Inquisition has (for reasons surely only the division heads know) decided to put some measure of trust in. Report him? Certainly. Given some additional reason to. After all, he's had that terrible glow in his hand for weeks now and if it's not been noticed, then all the more reason to assume that no one important has any impression that what the man does might be dangerous. But killing him is as pressing a need as killing any other of a dozen apostate mages, or Lakshmi Bai, or the man who sometimes runs the ferry service in the evenings. It sounds like work. It sounds irrational. It sounds like the kind of thing that must happen in Tevinter: if you don't like a person, simply slit their throat.

What a monstrous place.

He takes the cigarette. There's something stiff about the hand in his glove when he does, an awkward laborious quality to how he turns it to take the cigarette between his second and third fingers rather than forefinger and thumb. He sets it between his lips. "A light?"

It's as if Benedict was waiting for him to ask. With what can only be described as a shit-eating grin, he snaps his fingers to produce a small flame on his thumb-- a party trick, the first thing he ever learned how to do-- and uses it to light his own cigarette, then steps forward to light Marcoulf's.

It's a testament to a year in the Inquisition's service - a stormy island, a spirit infested abbey; the fade; Ghislain; a hundred bickering conversations overhead on the sending crystal; Lakshmi Bai's company; afternoons spent in the shadow of the Templar's most reviled commander -, that he doesn't find anything offensive about the sudden little burst of flame. If there's anything troubling at all about it, it's in how quickly the Tevinter mage has gone from frightened deer in the underbrush to arched eyebrows and crooked grins and painfully self assured simply for having avoided being beaten within an inch of his life. Is Lakshmi still speaking to him? She must be. The woman has an unending capacity for the truly dramatic. Has anything at all changed for him beyond the glow in his hand? What friends did Benedict have before then that he doesn't have now because of how stupid he is?

It's fine, Marcoulf thinks, a sturdy insistent patter in the dark night. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine.

He bends to light the cigarette off the little dancing flame, shielding both from the night air though that hardly seems to matter either. Maybe magic just isn't touched by these things.

"There," hums Benedict, "no need to make a fuss." As if he's the sensible one here, as if he's never done anything suspicious or obnoxious in his life-- he's doing Marcoulf a favor by not giving in to the dramatics, you see.

"So," he says, leaning back against the pillar and taking a drag as he tucks the box back into his robe, "you're from... what. Orlais?" It's not like the man talks loudly enough to have a detectable accent.

After a few puffs of the cigarette, smoke curling away and melting into nothing: "Oui."

Finally - eventually -, and because he apparently has no option: "Not from anywhere in particular there. Just Orlais."

"......right."

Narrowing his eyes as he takes another pull, Benedict keeps his gaze fixed on Marcoulf. "That so."

He's better at this than he's being. This is how this usually goes: Where are you from? From Orlais, near Celestine, though I left there very young and so couldn't say the exact place, Monsieur or Madame. Is that so? For what reason? For an apprenticeship, Monsieur or Madame. Oh, you have a skill. How nice. What is it? Or, how is the weather there? Or, Is that where you learned to be a swordsman? Or, do you know a fellow named Leamierre? My family employed him when I was a child and I believe he was from the same region.

And so on.

He is good at meandering conversation, at small talk, even at little jokes that make people who are predisposed to being entertained at someone roughshod being cheeky laugh.

So it's irritating to be irritated by being made to do it now. It's frustrating to be bothered by a thing that is normal. That so, says the Tevinter mage, and it scratches like a burr.

Marcoulf takes another drag on the cigarette to keep from setting his jaw. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. You wouldn't be angry if it were anyone else.

"I travelled as a boy, and then grew to soldiering and mercenary work, and then came here. I'm sorry to say that there is nothing much to say about any of it."

"I think," Benedict says, a little smile creeping back onto his face, in that chiding, full-of-himself way: "you're afraid to talk to me."
He grins then, smoke sifting through his teeth on his exhale. "You don't want me knowing anything about you, because I'll send all my Big Scary Blood Mage Monster friends to scour up all your secrets and hunt down your loved ones." He's clearly delighted by the idea, and shakes his head, looking dreamily off toward the sky.

"That's awfully presumptuous of you," he purrs, ostensibly to Marcoulf, "you don't even know how many blood mage monster friends I have."

He makes a short, sharp noise and for a second it sounds like he's choking around the cigarette. His fingers spread around it, palm pressing flat against his mouth and chin, the bottle brush of his beard. And then: a relieved sigh, smoke pouring out with it.

There's still a note of laughter in his tone when he says, "No." Firmly. Then laughing again, a sawing noise that's as baffled as it is delighted. Scared of him? Only an idiot wouldn't be. But the rest? "--No. You're wrong."

"Tell me, then." Pleased by Marcoulf's reaction, even if it's laughter at rather than with him, he can't help but pry further.
"Why have you been such a little weasel since the moment you laid eyes on me?" He pauses, then something seems to click into place (or at least he's pretending it has) and he meets Marcoulf's eyes, his own widening with delight.

"Because," he starts to say through his fingers, glancing in Benedict's direction. It catches him up - that wide open look on his face; it's not exactly a double take, but it's near enough that he's startled into taking a long drag from that cigarette instead. Changes his mind from Because you're a suspicious, shifty little prat with no reason to act as superior as you do so far from the place where you came from, to:

"Suppose if it was just my nature."

"You're in love with me," comes the assertion, barreling right over whatever dumb answer Marcoulf tries to give, "I should have known!"
Clamping the cigarette between his teeth with a ridiculous little laugh, Bene folds his arms and leans back against the pillar again, shaking his head.

"I can hardly blame you," he continues, still grinning, "it's not the first time this has happened, but the sad fact of the matter, Marco, is that I'm just not attainable by someone like you." He puffs a breath of smoke out the side of his mouth, unable to contain the smirk.

And for a second, Marcoulf just looks at him. It's a quiet, intensely blank look: half his face all day from the shadow and the other very pale in the moon and lamplight. The cigarette in his mouth is nearly spent, a hazy finger of smoke drifting listlessly from it.

Then something in his face twists. He laughs again, only this time there's something shrill in the sound. He's tired, he doesn't think. That it's been a painfully long day doesn't occur to him. What does is a jagged, impossible flash of anger and a nauseating wave of envy - all of it rising all at once to strangle him where he stands there at awkward angles in the dark.

They're in the same courtyard now as the Satinalia dance where he'd taught Six some clumsy country dance, and had tried to fetch Magni away from Lakshmi after the woman had been so unspeakably cruel to her, and all at once he is swinging with his dominant hand. The shriek of pain that passes up through it as he punches Benedict is real enough to keep him from doing it a second time.

At this point in the game, Benedict really should see it coming-- chalk it up to the darkness perhaps, to the fact that he's enjoying the joke, or the fact that his expectations of Marcoulf actually doing anything are so low, and the punch hits him squarely in the jaw with a yelp of surprise.

The cigarette goes flying, of course, and Benedict immediately loses his balance, stumbling to the ground in a most undignified manner to land hard on one of his elbows. His free hand claps immediately to his face, his eyes raising to find Marcoulf's in the darkness.
He's afraid now, that much is clear: but when one has been the target of active murder attempts, a punch instead is an unexpected reprieve. At least, as long as it stops there.

So he watches, and waits, tensed to run or to cast. It's almost like he knows he was being an ass.

Well he doesn't go falling after Benedict keen to beat him into the paving stones. He also doesn't keep as close an eye as he should, seeing he's just punched a Tevinter mage. The pain in his hand and the flare of angry panic that comes with it supersedes Benedict splayed across the ground and any satisfaction or wariness that might be derived from it.

Marcoulf's stripping the heavy glove off his right hand, hissing as it eases free. "Light that flame again," he snaps.

Without rising from his current position, and still holding onto his face, Benedict timidly raises his left hand to snap his fingers and create another flame. He does so with an air both hesitant and fascinated; he didn't know Marcoulf was capable of behaving this way.
It's bizarre, but he's not sure he hates it.

The glove is shoved unceremoniously into a pocket. Marcoulf steps near, practically over him, and shoves his right hand into the tiny pool of light cast by the shifting flame. There's a bandage bound about the hand; he dispenses of that too, a silent but quietly frantic quality to how it's unwound. With an intent so single minded he might as well be blind to Benedict, Marcoulf inspects the shape of his hand by the wan illumination.

It's easy to see the source of his concern. There's a horrible dark scar bisecting where thumb meets palm as if someone had tried very hard to cut the finger off and had simply hacked into the hand rather than back through the digit like they'd meant to. Running at an angle lays another, cleaner and far fresher wound: the skin all raised and knit closed with thread. Nothing seems to be bleeding - no popped stitch - but his first two fingers are trembling as if independent from the rest of the hand.

He stares. He clutches his wrist so tight with his good hand that maybe the other fingers will go numb too. And then he takes a fumbling step sideways away from Benedict, clips the column with his shoulder, and just stops as if bound there with his hand held close to his middle and a rising sense of nausea.

Benedict jerks backward at the sight of the wound, nausea rising in him as well; he watches Marcoulf walk away, and slowly gets to his feet, snapping the light back out again.

"Maker, what did you do?" he asks in morbid fascination, since... might as well.

He doesn't answer. Instead, he fumbles with the unwound length of bandage - pinches it ungainly between the two small fingers of his right hand and begins to try rebinding it. It's fine. It's only suffering from the strain. Maybe it will swell or bruise, but the stitching is secure and it will be just as fine tomorrow as it was this morning. It's fine.

And then, as if the question is only now reaching him: "Nothing," he croaks, scattered and sharp all at once. This fucking bandage, the end continuing to slide out from between the brace of his weak fingers-- "It's old."

"No it's not," Benedict replies, "or if it is, it never healed properly. ...that's obvious." He folds his arms. "And just, you know, an amateur's opinion, but maybe you shouldn't be punching people with it looking like that."

He tosses his hair, then winces, pressing his fingers to his face again with a wince.

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pretend orlesian is french because otherwise this joke was too hard to explain

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