Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2019-05-15 11:04 am
faderifting) wrote in faderift2019-05-15 11:04 am
Entry tags:
- ! open,
- alexandrie d'asgard,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- darras rivain,
- isaac,
- julius,
- kostos averesch,
- matthias,
- nell voss,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { anders },
- { athessa },
- { charles vane },
- { ilias fabria },
- { kenna carrow },
- { lakshmi bai },
- { leander },
- { magni an forleif o talonhold },
- { thor }
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.
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.
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.
closed || Yseult
[Darras nods over his shoulder, back the way he came. The stairwell is narrow in this part of the Gallows, and certainly would not be wide enough for two men to walk abreast--which is nearly what it would take, to bring the large rug out of the scoutmaster's offices and carry it down the stairs. One man might manage it alone if he took his time with it. Darras is one such man, cheerful enough to volunteer his assistance. It's not quite what he's meant for, but he can manage enough all right. That's even what he'd said to Yseult herself, when he'd turned up with the work order at her office this morning.
He gives her a little half-grin now. They're more at odds than evens these days, delving into arguments that linger between them like souring wounds. It's all still there, clouding the water.
Only it's still Yseult. When the day ends and the sun's gone down on it all, it's Yseult. Impossible to separate her out from the rest of it, and that's what makes it so miserable.]
Four flights, sixteen steps apiece, reckon-- [you owe me for that, how do we calculate what's owed, something along those lines is at least what he intends to say. What he actually says is,] --it would be easier if we didn't know each other, if we were just meeting, but then I'd not be here in the first place. D'you think, ever, of what, [Hang on, what. Darras cuts himself off with a scowl. Sure and it's an early morning; he's tired. Still. He gives his head a little shake. This time, instead of what he means to say (an apology), he ends angling for peace with a different sort of offer:] I've been trying to learn horses, since half the missions involve the bloody things.
[True. But still. He touches a hand, cautious, to the back of his head. Perhaps he'll find some wound there that's making him act mad. Perhaps it will be as in that dream he used to have, as a child, with a string coming out of the back of his neck.
There's nothing, of course. What.]
no subject
What?
[ She wasn't going to ask quite like that, but out it comes, doing nothing to smooth her frown. ]
Do I think ever of what?
no subject
[He manages it, first. The lie. Then he says--]
What it would be like if we met now. Somehow. It's like thinking of time. When I was just some kid in Afsaana-- [He's said to her before where he's from, but it still feels unnatural to have the name just fall out like that.] --you were somewhere else. All of it happening together, and we didn't know.
So would it be different, meeting now? Would it change anything? That's, [a scowl comes to his face, and then a heat, is he actually blushing,] nothing I meant to say. Maker's balls.
no subject
[ It's true, and something she still doesn't know quite what to make of. He wouldn't be here, but he is. But he wouldn't be. But he is. Around and around they go. ]
I don't know where I would be. Here. Or maybe dead. [ She's less affected than he is, but things still slip out. She only half explains, offering the more obvious, less sentimental reason. ] A different schedule, different missions. There's no way to know.
no subject
[This feels more natural, now that she's responded in some way. There's something wrong about it all, still, like fever-raving or something, but she's answering back. That makes the structure of the conversation more the way that it ought to be.]
You might not be here either. None of this might have happened. It's all--delicate, like. All barely balanced. I leave the tavern one moment earlier, you decide to sit at a table--
[He shrugs. The great bulk of the carpet shifts.]
I don't know what I mean. Fate, maybe. I don't know if I believe it.
no subject
[ harsh as the words are, there's some relief in just speaking, after a day of mincing carefully about her words, of swallowing down words that rise with unnatural buoyancy ]
Does it make a difference if it's fate? What would it change?
no subject
[Would, won't, will, won't. What will happen will happen, and what could never happen might never happen, or else it might, or else it will never. Once they'd been caught in a hailstorm together. A great big storm--a blue sky, and then a blink, and it had all been dyed black, and then came the hail. It never hails here, Darras had yelled, over the patter of ice striking stone. They'd been on the beach, too far from the cottage to go home. Yseult's eyes like the pale blue of shallow water, crinkled at the corner from her smile. It's hailing, she'd said.
He'd not be able to say what made him think of that, not even with the power of this truth on him. It's enough, maybe, that she's looked at him. There's no smile on her now but her eyes are the same, just the same as they were at the inn, and the same as the day he'd come home to find her in the cottage again, and the same as the day he'd seen her on the deck of the ship, and in Llomerryn, and in the tower.]
Why are we talking like this? That's the real question, that's-- [But he's answering, already, not meaning to--] It would make the ending true. It would mean whatever happens, there's some ending for us.
no subject
[ Whether they really have is a more difficult question. In some ways everything is the same as it's always been. ]
An ending? [ How could that not catch her ear. ] I don't follow.
no subject
An ending. Like a story. Some conclusion, some way that we've-- come together, in the end. The way we've said.
[No; he shakes his head again, impatient, and scratches his fingers through his hair, like this will dislodge what he really wants to say, the rest of that truth that feels less childish, if no less raw--]
You keep coming back to that. That we're so different, than we were before. D'you really feel all that different? It feels different between us because of where we are, what we're doing--what we're asked to do. What's expected. I know what you expect out of me. There's no way that I could forget it. But who we are, really. What we are to one another. That's not changed. It can't be changed. Not really.
[Is he asking or is he telling? Somewhere in the middle, maybe. Saying it plainly means he'll get a plain answer back. Is that what he wants, really?]
no subject
[ Yseult's disagreement is quick, as is her frown, settling into the now-familiar lines at forehead and eyes, around lips pressed thin together. ]
It is different, everything is. You-- we were... an escape. Something easy and pure that balanced everything else. The sort of life I wanted to protect. And now every time we speak I feel worse than I did before. Every interaction we have is part of this argument that I can't afford to lose or nothing I've ever done will matter, nothing I've ever believed will have really been mine. I can't let my guard down for a second with you or I give up everything I am. It's exhausting.
[ is that plain enough ]
no subject
He's not holding up the carpet any longer. At some point, he's put it down. Now it's only the two of them, in this corridor. They might be anywhere. This argument, ground that they've trod and retrod, and now they're both winded and, this. Peeled back to expose the rot.]
That's it. That's all it was. [Is. Was. Time that comes all at once, a thousand moments collapsed into one another. Flipping through the pages of the book and seeing the words go by, quick, but they're all bound together.] An escape.
[It's easier to face that part first. The second part is harder.]
And if I just let go. If I do what you want, if I learn, to live the way you want, then what. It can be the escape again? Because it will suddenly fit together?
no subject
And yes [ she says, after a moment, a pause she makes sure to weigh with obvious signs that she's not finished, tipped on the balls of her feet, head tilted, lips parted on a word not quite chosen ] maybe. If we weren't at odds on something so basic and important. If I believed you meant it and didn't have to feel you were constantly waiting for me to slip up so you could claim victory and go back to playing bandit without a moment's guilt.
no subject
[That's more to the real truth than the first part was. The silence, waiting for what she'd next say, brief and torturous, and the moment he feels like he's got an in, he bursts in with this protest. It's the raw truth, beneath. Beyond words, really, that's where that truth lives. Something not to be worked around, some obstacle.]
I am, that. Whatever else I am, I'm that, too, pirate or bandit or whatever you want to name that. And I always was, before. I've never not been that. What you're saying, not having to play some part--d'you think I haven't felt that too? You know I have, you more about me than anyone else out there, anyone at all, but I've always been, what I am, from the time you met me, that was me, and I didn't make a pretense out of it. And this is what you can't get past. Time and time again.
There's nothing more basic than-- Yseult. I love you, I always will, and I can't change that part of myself. And I can't stand to think that you're in some--place, where you can't think for yourself--
[But here's the horror of it. If she's watching her words now, if she's fitting herself into a role--it's not for the Inquisition or whatever they call themselves next, not now. She can be herself, for them. Not the Yseult that catches berries in her mouth and stands on one foot on a fence post, the Yseult that likes painting shutters and reading in bed and can pick things up with her toes. Her as well, but the bigger braver parts, the parts that do the work asked, that's her, too, that's who she is, and it's Darras that is trying to fit himself in. It's Darras that she has to play to. Stubborn to defend her beliefs, to argue him down, to stand against whatever argument he gives to her. So then he's the one that's ruining her. In the end, it is him.
He'd been about to grab for her hand. How often he's done just that, who can say, but he doesn't do it now. Clenches his fingers into a fist instead, and stops looking at her, looks away so he doesn't have to see your face.]
Where d'you go, after this. If you're not here, to work until you die--you're here to do some good. But then what. If I'm not here, and I'm not out there, waiting for you-- You'd get on. I know you would. Right?
I wouldn't.
no subject
I have loved you too, Darras, and I love the man you could choose to be, but I won't condone the life you've lived and want to go on living. Of course I didn't object to it when I didn't know about it, but now I do.
[ She might leave it there if it weren't for this compulsion to keep going, to say again what she's said before but maybe this time it will be believed, since he insists on not taking her at her word. ]
And I can't keep explaining only to have you tell me again that you don't understand. Men who do what you do and think like you think killed everyone I had, and every day others do the same, and I want to stop them. What is hard to understand about that? How many orphans have you made? Because it was fun at the time? Because you felt you deserved not to care? Your life was hard so it doesn't matter how many other lives you make harder? It's like you're a child I need to keep teaching right from wrong while you try to wheedle your way out of it and plead ignorance. It's incredibly unattractive.
You've had a year now to change and you haven't. You just go through the motions and then make the same arguments you made in Llomerryn. I don't know what the point of any of this is anymore.
no subject
Then say it.
[He snaps it out before he can stop himself.]
If that's the thing that will make you happy in this place, make it all worth it--
But you're lying to yourself. You made orphans too. Some of 'em I know, even. And you did it on someone else's orders, you did it 'cos it was right, against what was wrong--well, you still did it. Your life was hard and then someone took you aside and taught you how to do it all their way. Doesn't make you innocent. Doesn't make you any less a killer than I am, but you get to call it something different, dress it up and change its name and say it's all for the good. And you won't admit it. You won't look at it.
So again, say it, and this time, I'll abide by it. I'll be gone for good.
no subject
[ She can snap as hard as he can. ]
And you've no idea what I look at because I can't talk to you about it, can I? if I did have doubts, why would I trust you with them? We already can't discuss my work at all without you deciding I'm just some poor sad puppet who needs to embrace the freedom of indiscriminate crime. And I will never do that. So either change or go, Darras. Find it in yourself to understand, or go, but I am not having this same tired argument ever again.
no subject
All right.
[He takes a step backwards, away from her, his hands open and empty.]
You want me gone? I'm gone. See how far this all gets, without men like me. Or maybe I'll hang about yet and find it in myself to understand how it is you can stand there with all that judgement for me. We'll see, won't we.
[And he drops his hands to his sides at that, heavily, and turns to stride off, back toward the stairs by which he'd gotten here in the first place.]