faderift | EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

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EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.

It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.

But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.

Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.

The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.

A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.

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I. PROJECT OFFICES

Kostos has had better days, but that's less because of whatever is going around, honesty-wise—he hasn't realized yet, or at least not the extent of it—and more because he's clearing his personal possessions out of the project office and putting things in order for whoever is taking over.

He's not sorry to have lost the post. Ask him, he'll say so, even today. But he is sorry that he has to tell anyone else he lost it, and possibly be observed in the process of losing it, rather than disappearing from it so completely and instantaneously that he can pretend he never had it at all and anyone who thinks he did is imagining things.

But he's also had worse days. Like, nobody is dead. And Talas is methodologically breaking small pieces off a long, thin stick he brought in from the courtyard, in the room's far corner, and then fluttering over to the desk to deliver them one by one out to Kostos, which is the only thing in a long time that Kostos has considered cute.

The door is open, if someone needs him. Or likes ravens. Or likes little piles of stick bits.

II. FOR NELL

"Crystal."

He's now realized the extent of it—and that Nell has it worse, which is why he's locking the door to an empty residential room that doesn't belong to either of them and holding one hand out to her.

His crystal is in the palm of his extended hand, but Kostos isn't giving it to her. He wants hers. He'll put them in a drawer, just in case. Maybe they can keep their mouths shut. He definitely can. But there's more than one person here he wouldn't trust not to take advantage of the opportunity, so they aren't getting one.

He has a bad feeling about it, but he has bad feelings about nearly everything. It will probably be fine. The room has four beds and a bathroom, and he brought a deck of cards.

Edited 2019-05-19 05:48 (UTC)

It's not very often that Sidony goes out of her way to visit cousins of any kind; most of the time it's sour whispers over the crystals or a note left in some place to annoy and irritate, but today she is feeling particularly prickly. She's seeking the attention of someone who might be both honest with her and, yet, hold some kind of kindness. She knows that she is inflicted with some kind of a magical curse - because, of course, magic is always to blame - but she has yet to recognise the depth of it.

Peeking into the office, she smiles almost smugly as she spots Kostos, stepping inside with her arms crossed behind her back. She gives the appearance of having simply wandered around, happenstance lending itself to her finding him, as if none of this was deliberate.

"I didn't know you had a pet."

Kostos looks up at her—not unhappy to see her, except for the fact that he's in the midst of clearing out his office and his ambitious, competent little cousin is fairly high on the list of people he doesn't want to explain it to. But other than that, she's fine. Which is a compliment, from him. Very few people are better than annoying.

So there's not any irritation, really, when he looks at her, and then there's something close to affection when he looks at Talas, who is watching Sidony with his head crooked from the back of a chair in the corner. Kostos has never actually called Talas a pet before, himself, but it's true enough.

"He was one of the messenger ravens," he says, "but they retired him."

And that's the end of the affection. He looks back down at the stacks of papers on his desk—his former desk, the desk he's now trespassing on with each passing moment—and resumes frowning.

"Did you need something?"

There's no reason for Sidony to comment on the fact that he's clearly cleaning up; it's none of her business. If he wanted to talk about it he would - or, rather, he'd be forced to if she asked, so she's going to bite her tongue. There's going to be time enough later for whatever wallowing Kostos might want to do... Maybe she'll organise some wine, or steal some from Byerly.

Stoking her fingers down her dress, she swans in and makes herself comfortable, settling in a chair with one leg crossed over the other. There's no point wasting time with pretending to be courteous; she's not trying to impress him. She looks at Talas again, wondering if she might dare to pet him eventually before she focuses on Kostos.

"So you adopted him? How sweet of you."

The frown on his face must be repaired, she thinks, and her arms crossed over her chest, almost petulant.

"Can't I come and visit family? You almost sound unhappy to see me."

“I’m not,” Kostos says, honestly—like he has a choice—“but I might be if you call me sweet again.”

Talas was retired for a reason: his delivery path took him through a fight, and now he’s skittish, easily startled, and liable to panic at loud noises or sudden movements. But he’s improving, too, and when Sidony has been still in her chair for few seconds, there’s a flutter of wing, bookended by the scratch of talons on wood, as he moves to perch on a shelf that gives him a better view of her.

While the raven is repositioning, Kostos is lifting his eyes, without lifting his chin, to give Sidony another look. She didn’t answer his question. Maybe because she doesn’t need anything. Maybe because she does and is being evasive. He isn’t very good at giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. But she’s family, so he tries, and doesn’t just repeat himself.

Instead: “How are you?”

"Do you hate the idea so much? One should be kind to family, surely, my dear."

Sidony's eyes flick over to look at the bird, but she says nothing. It's not her place to comment on what company Kostos keeps, not when she has none of her own. Anders, she's sure, would adore it if she were to adopt a kitten, but that's hardly her area of comfort. Perhaps she should invest in a hound, or some other kind of small thing, something to keep her company.

Her legs cross, one over the other, and she leans back, making herself comfortable. At least, unconcerned about being watched, more than used to people observing her and making judgements. She flicks her hair over one shoulder and sighs softly.

"Well enough, I suppose, given the situation." Wryly, she turns to look at her cousin properly. "My work has been as exhausting as ever, but that is the nature of the profession. "Tell me, Kostos. Would you like to get a drink with me one day?"

He does hate the idea so much. He hates it more than he hates the idea of family—mages don’t have families. Arule broken frequently enough in Nevarra but still a rule, one with proponents, of which he was one. Is one. He just isn’t very good at believing it, when his family is right in front of him instead of somewhere unseen and distant, which is why he says, “I suppose.”

Drinking is good. Sidony isn’t bad.

But he’s still looking at her a bit like he expects her to be setting up some sort of trap.

For a long moment, all Sidony can do is look at him. There's a slight ache in her; so far away from home with nothing to cling to, she was desperate to wrap her arms around something familiar, something she understood, and now... Now she feels restless, on edge, unsure, like something is gnawing at her throat. Clearly, Kostos wants nothing to do with her, and there's a bitterness on her tongue that she can't bite back.

"Only if it's not too much of a hassle for you, of course. You must be busy."

An idle glance at what he's doing, brow raised.

"Don't," he says.

Don't what? He isn't sure—don't rub salt into the scrapes on his pride, don't take this personally, don't be hurt, because right behind the realization that she really isn't setting up to ask him for some favor or ensnare him in something beyond a drink comes the separate realization that he's hurt her feelings.

He drops a book onto a stack of other books. The crack of leather on leather makes Talas ruffle up in alarm.

"I am not any good at this."

In case she hadn't noticed. If this curse had loosened his tongue further he might elaborate: he hasn't seen his own parents in over a decade, even now, when he's free to visit whenever he asks for leave; he never knows what to do with his own twin; Marisol only got through to him by refusing to accept any other outcome. How is he supposed to know what to say to a cousin who was only a splotchy, wailing infant the last time he was allowed to think of anyone as family?

"We can get a drink. I'd like to know you better. But if you want me to be charming about it—that isn't going to happen."

Sidony is sour about it and she isn't particularly willing to hide it - let him know that she's been wounded by his attitude. How else is he going to learn how best to please her, how else is he going to be aware of who she is and what she wants? They are family and it has been a very long time since they were in the same room - and then she had been far too young to be at all impressive to him.

Things are different now. She is impressive, and she will prove it to him, time and time again if she must.

"I think you've made that quite obvious." Snidely, arms crossing over her chest as her eyes flick up and down and over him. Perhaps the other cousin is better at this than he is, but perhaps there is a reason why Kostos is like this. She would like to know, even if he seems reluctant to spend any more time with her than strictly necessary.

But, still. She sighs.

"I imagine my side of the family stole all the charm away, then," said with an air of exasperated teasing, glancing at him with something of a smile; at least she is trying to be more gentle about it all. "I'll simply have to manage with you being as dour as you are over wine, then." As forgiving as she is inclined to be, just there.

Nell tosses her crystal across the room toward Kostos rather than wait the split second it would've taken her to walk it to him, which is statement enough of how her day has gone. It's not been a subtle change, and all the more so because she's been unusually quiet these last few weeks, chewing on something any time she's given a moment to slip into distraction.

"Good," she says now, pacing around the small space, already restless, crawling out of her secret-filled skin, "Lock the drawer and the door. Hell, just knock me out until this is over, otherwise I'm going to tell someone that we killed the Grand Cleric and then we are all going to get hung and for fucking nothing."

Kostos catches it one-handed—deceptively athletic individual, etc.—and drops both crystals into a drawer, closes the drawer, and is two seconds into the process of looking for some sort of locking mechanism when Nell says killed the Grand Cleric.

It takes him the rest of that sentence to make sense of it, and a long pause after that to turn around to look at her. There's ambiguity. No name. No definition of we. Maybe they killed a Grand Cleric by accident, during the war, and he never knew. Maybe—

"We killed who?"

His voice is quiet. Not in a good way.

"Grand Cleric Agathe," Nell says, spilling it all out in case he had any hope or doubt, and despite that fact that his face says quite clearly that it is almost as bad an idea to tell Kostos as anybody else. (But the almost, here, is important. Horseshoes, handgrenades, hangings.)

"Nikos, Caspar, Marisol and me. I got caught up. It sounded like a good idea. He had a whole plan how we would pin it on Benedetta, and then everyone who didn't want a moron or a prune would be convinced to vote for Elise and really change things instead of playing it safe. But then something went wrong with the team in Antiva and no one blamed Benedetta for more than a minute and it was all for nothing. And I feel fucking sick every time I think about it. Almost every time. Sometimes I feel proud for a minute, because fuck the Chantry, fuck all these people sitting up there on high holding court in their fine robes and pretending they care about anything but their own holy arses but Maker, Agathe might have done some good for mages even if it wasn't enough and wasn't fast enough, it might have been better than a fucking Exalted March and Nikos doesn't care, none of them do, they just get off on playing assassin for its own sake, rich kids playing revolution when they've got no idea what any of it really means and don't risk anything of their own and are so fucking proud of themselves and how hard they are for killing her like this did any good for anybody anywhere and please stop looking at me like that, I--."

She has to literally stick the first knuckle of her fist into her mouth and bite down to stop.

Edited 2019-05-29 04:11 (UTC)

He’s looked at her like this before, in the smoldering remains of an encampment, in a grove beside a brook, with sunlight filtering through leaves and smoke. Pretty as a painting, save the smoldering debris and battered bodies. The blood. If she hadn’t been so much his focus he might never have noticed her using it. But she was, and he did, and he looked at her like this: furious, gutted, not even bothering with incredulity, because how the fuck had he expected this to end?

Kostos hadn’t said anything, at the time. They had more to do, before they were safe. Someone was still breathing, wet and raspy, and they had their own wounded, and the things he needed to pack were two miles away. But that was the moment it was over.

And this—

“You got caught up,” he repeats, quiet like a thing about to pounce, “with my fucking brother, and you thought it was such a good idea that you didn’t tell me anything about it.”

"Why the fuck would I tell you about it?" is something Nell would say without any external compulsion at all, "You made it very clear you weren't interested in lifting a finger to do anything about the election. You wouldn't even work against Clorentine when Skyhold agreed she was a disaster that needed to be stopped. Of course nobody would tell you about this."

“Because—” he starts to say, but she keeps talking. And he hears her. But he also resumes well before she’s finished. “Because I have to live with it. I always have to live—do you think anyone is going to believe it if I say I didn’t know?” He no longer qualifies as quiet. Not loud, either, but his fists are balled. “Do you think anyone would believe I didn’t know about the blood magic? About fucking Nevarra? I am going to spend the rest of my life hiding your stupid fucking decisions.”

"So, what," she says, the split-second comma-like pause key to converting this from the dismissive question to the prelude to a different dismissive question, "I'm supposed to live my life by your rules so you don't feel guilty by association? Sit by and twiddle my thumbs on the sidelines while everything stays shit so you can feel good about yourself in confession? You chose to work with me, Kostos. You chose during the war, and you chose to stay with me after, and you chose to start up again here. You chose to help me in Nevarra City. You chose to help me with the strike. You saddle yourself with my stupid fucking decisions, you're just too much of a coward to ever admit why."

Slipped in like a dagger, that coward, between armor panels, quick and sharp and barely felt at first—when you know something's cut, you know you're bleeding, but you think you might survive it if you keep fighting, and he lifts his chin like he's squaring off.

"Because I care about you," more spat than soothing, "and I keep thinking that we're some sort of fucking team, and when you veer off without warning and jump off the ledge into some stupid—bullshit—"

He doesn't let himself struggle for the words long enough to leave space for her to elbow back in. He'd rather just sound stupid. But he switches to Nevarran, in the process, because it's easier, and because he means it.

"—thing that's going to make everything worse, I can pull you back, and all of the damage and the murder was just a mistake. But it's not. It's what you are. I don't know if you're stupid, or it's revenge, or if something's broken in your head—I don't care. I'm done."

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EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

kostos | far/low

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