[open] the way it feels to be just anyone

[altusimperius]

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.

Comments

II.

[keenly]

Someone sits down beside Benedict, clearly curious as he peers at the sketch. The last couple of weeks have been absolutely wretched for the visitor, and a glimpse of art in this place is welcome.

"I didn't know you draw," Colin says quietly. "It's very good."

[esquive]

He has minded his own business. Which amounts more or less to guard duty, patrol duty, fetching and carrying duty, sewing buttons on shirts every third day duty, grooming and shodding horses duty, riding out into the Free Marches and fumbling his way through foot hiil skirmishes like a it's the first time he's held a sword duty. He has not spoken of that evening. He has not fished around for extra work, though the scratching urge of it prickles under his skin. He has not sought out anyone for anything, which is both a relief and a terrible, tired thing.

He thinks--

Well, he tries to avoid that too. And mostly it's fine until this evening as he takes a moment in the heavy shadow of the gallows and he finds that the person who has come to rest near to hand is the exactly last one he would care to see. In the dark, Marcoulf sharpens by some perceptible degree. He goes very still, all elbows and sharp shoulders.

And says nothing, though his head is tipped toward Benedict like a wary and listening dog's might.

Re: II.

[altusimperius]

With a little start, Benedict almost blots his quill on the parchment, but moves it away just in time to turn and see who's addressing him. It's Colin, whom he realizes he hasn't seen in some time... though it's not so unusual, considering their schedules don't coincide often.

"Erm. Thank you," he fumbles, looking down at the drawing and shifting almost as though to hide it, "I'm not... it's. It's not what I'm supposed to be doing." Is that a blush?

[altusimperius]

Benedict sees him, even if he's pretending not to. He smokes in silence for several moments, the vapor trailing from his mouth and his nose as he slowly exhales and gathers his courage.

The weasel isn't going to speak first, he should've known as much.

"Why did you speak up for me," he asks, bluntly, angling his head toward Marcoulf and pinning him with his gaze. There's no escaping, no scuttling off into the shadows this time.

[esquive]

It's not a look he meets. Which is one way to avoid the point even while standing perfectly still.

"Because it wasn't anyone else's business."

A clink of metal, the line of his sword shifting at his hip as his idle hand comes away from being draped over its pommel. He holds his hand out expectantly. Share that cigarette, you snot nosed brat.

[altusimperius]

Benedict looks down at Marcoulf's hand, then raises his eyes to meet his gaze, a smirk playing onto his lips as the game shifts. Oh, so we're making demands now? What a strange little man.
He holds the cigarette to his mouth and inhales, blowing the smoke out prettily as he watches Marcoulf with a very specific look in his eye: come and get it then.

[keenly]

"Maybe it is." Good grief, the man is adorable when flustered. But they all need the ability to get away now and then and make something lovely in the midst of a war. Something to help them clear their heads and sort themselves out.

"Can I see it?"

[esquive]

He bristles, jagged lines in the dark growing briefly sharper. And then drops his hand, hooking the loose line of his wrist back across the sword's pommel.

[altusimperius]

The smile dwindles as Benedict's eyes follow the path of Marcoulf's hand, and he tenses as well. He wouldn't do it, really, would he? Kill someone over a cigarette? Surely not with Lakshmi on both their cases the way she was?

"Oh will you settle down," Benedict snaps, involuntarily sneering as he takes another drag, blows it out, and then tosses the cigarette to land at the other man's feet. "I don't know what you think I'm going to do, but I can tell you I hardly have the freedom to do it."

[esquive]

He makes a low noise, the narrowest flicker of impatience playing out in the near invisible line of his mouth behind those ginger whiskers. His hand doesn't shift, fingers all loose like maybe this - the absent hook of his wrist across the sword - is habit as much as biting his tongue is.

He sets his heel on the cigarette and grinds it into a smudge on the old paving stones.

Eventually: "Then why are you here?"

[altusimperius]

A sheepish smirk results from that, and Benedict seems genuinely uncomfortable, but he passes it over. The drawing is of a set of windows on a tower: serviceable, unschooled but observant, nothing one might find hanging in a fancy gallery but perhaps impressive for someone who has never been caught doodling by anyone who wanted him to.

"...it used to make my tutors so angry," he murmurs with a tiny smirk, "they'd lecture and shout at me, then my mother would get rid of them, then I'd do it again for the next one." Unexpectedly, he seems the tiniest bit ashamed of this revelation. "...but I suppose there's no tutor to lecture me here."

[altusimperius]

Maker, what a baby. Benedict rolls his eyes, giving a little shake of his head.

"I don't know," he admits with a scoff, "I suppose just to make sure you aren't going to kill me." He looks over his shoulder at Marcoulf, derisive in a lofty, almost amused way. "But I suppose I already knew that."

[keenly]

That tiny shame is so oddly endearing, at least to someone who wishes rich people would show more shame about the terrible things they do. Like getting tutors fired. But the story also brings the man down a bit, makes him seem like he used to be a semi-normal boy who doodled during lessons. It very nearly makes up for the impression that he's never had a hard day in his life.

"Usually if I need to step away and sort my head out, I cook something. It got me through some hard years, in the Circle."

[esquive]

Here, finally, Marcoulf actually turns to look at him properly. It's almost assuredly meant to be an exceptionally flat look, but in the dark it just seems strangely wounded. He's all pale and narrow, attention simultaneously fixed and crooked.

Then he snorts. Tucks his spare hand into the open lapel of his coat. "You're keen on trouble."

[altusimperius]

"Oh?"

It's stupid, Benedict knows, to tempt fate-- but there's something about some people that he finds irresistible, and if he has no true reason to fear them, there's nothing stopping him from needling them until they give him what he wants.
Not that he even knows what he wants, at the moment. If nothing else, perhaps just to know a little more about this strange fellow and how he operates.
Bene is a scholar at heart.

"What sort of trouble?" He raises his eyebrows in a challenge that's almost playful. He saw how Marcoulf shied away from Lakshmi and her beast of a companion; he wouldn't dare try anything.

[altusimperius]

If anything, it's the first time Benedict has demonstrated shame at all-- at least without being scolded first, called out for thoughtlessness and made to think on his error. Could it be that a conscience is beginning to form?

That, or he's just embarrassed his mother had to solve his problems for him.

"They let you do things like that in the Circle?" The question comes out blunter than he'd meant it to, and Benedict winces slightly-- of all the things he doesn't understand about the South, he at least has a healthy respect (read: fear) for the concept of Circles.

[keenly]

A small shrug.

"It wasn't usual, but I cleaned up after myself and the Tranquil didn't mind, so they let me. It also kept me from, um, getting in fistfights with other apprentices. So."

Colin seldom puts forward the energy of someone who got in fistfights. He certainly isn't now.

[altusimperius]

Tranquils. The word itself sends a shiver down Benedict's spine, accompanied by a pang of nausea. To think that something he'd never even heard of was... is..? so prevalent in Southern Thedas, to think that even someone of his standing wouldn't really be safe from it--

it haunts him. His eyes have gone a bit distant, his posture tense.

"You were just... working alongside them like that?" Perhaps it's an insensitive question.

[keenly]

Colin nods.

"It seemed sort of morbid at first, but they're not actually very different from us. They'll have a conversation with you just like anyone. Sometimes, you can't even tell, until something gets caught on fire and they have absolutely no reaction."

A soft laugh.

[altusimperius]

It doesn't seem right. Somehow, the casual tone of Colin's answer makes it all the more frightening; what is it like, being oneself but not, surrounded by familiar faces who can do nothing, are perhaps even content working alongside one's husk?

Would he be having these thoughts at all if the Knight-Commander hadn't tapped him on the forehead in that dark cell, threatening him with a horror didn't even comprehend until learning later that tranquility no longer only meant a state of peace?

Colin's laugh shakes him to the core.
"What do they..." He keeps his voice low, conspiratorial-- it feels like all the warmth has been stolen from the day, the sunlight gone cold on his face. "....what do they do, to... make them like that?"

[esquive]

"The kind that could get a knife in you, if you aren't mindful," he says, eyes sliding away from that incessant raised eyebrow to cast out across the shadowed courtyard. "A poor habit for a Tevene mage so far from home."

How has Benedict not been stabbed and left for dead in some back corridor yet? Truly, the world is full of wonders.

[keenly]

Colin's gaze goes distant.

"I don't know," he says in a hushed tone. "We weren't allowed to see. They wanted to keep that power over us a secret. One day, they're your friend. The next day, they remember you, but they don't remember why you were friends. Their smile's gone. You won't laugh together anymore."

He carefully passes the sketch back to Benedict.

"I thought I was going to join them, for a while. My Harrowing was very late because I wasn't showing good progress."

[altusimperius]

"For not sharing a smoke," Benedict concludes, folding his arms, "you're being awfully dramatic, you know."

He pauses, thinking, lightly tapping his chin. "...but I suppose if I were you, I'd also try to be shifty and frightening-- it's a good way to cover for no one liking you anyway." Another smile, oddly friendlier.

"We both know what'll happen if you try to stab me. I'll hex you halfway to the void, and you'll wish it were all the way when that bear woman arrives to take you over her knee." He tosses his head primly, shifting the hair out of his eyes so he can look more closely at Marcoulf.

"Or we could just have a chat like gentlemen."

[altusimperius]

Benedict takes the sketch back, listening intently, his face grim. To think this is something that's just... allowed? Not just allowed, but encouraged at times?

"...if the Circles come back," he murmurs, "you and Anders can return to Tevinter with me."

[esquive]

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?"