EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[hassaran]

Are we? Neither of us is who the other thought then. It's like we've changed.

[ 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.

[staysail]

[He shakes his head, short, trying to put off answering any of that. But the urge rises in him, like some physical thing that needs to be got out--]

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?]

[hassaran]

I do feel that different.

[ 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 ]

[staysail]

[Plain enough that it's gutting, that it's like nothing Darras has ever felt before. Maybe that numb feeling he'd had, in Llomerryn, the night Taviano had killed the captains, maybe that comes closest. Like losing feeling to a limb. The way it must feel to have a bit of you cut off. He's thinking in circles because he doesn't want to look at what she's said, at the ugly truth of it.

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?

[hassaran]

Not all it was [ she mimics his tone, not mocking, shaking her head ] not like it was nothing. Not having to play a role every second and think carefully about every little detail. Trusting that I could just exist and react like a normal person. Having a future that wasn't just working until I die. That's not nothing.

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.

[staysail]

I'm not waiting to claim victory, if that's what you think-- I don't understand.

[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.

[hassaran]

[ She nods. They both know it's true: she'll carry on alone if that's what's necessary. ] I don't want to. But it's become difficult to see an alternative.

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.

[staysail]

[The miserable horror of it flushes into something else, just as quickly--twisted, complicated, darkening his face. And they're back in Llomerryn again, facing each other down in the little room above the tavern.]

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.

[hassaran]

I get to call it something else because at least I'm trying to do good. You've no right to judge how I do that when you'll barely even bother to wrap your mind around the concept!

[ 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.

[staysail]

And if I had any doubts, any thoughts on any part of this, why would I share 'em with you? Because you'd not see it with any nuance. Because it's good or it's evil, and no room for the in between. Indiscriminate crime. Call it by a different name, it's just shades away from what you do. But you get the pass on it, and I don't.

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.]