open: lol never mind.

[cozen]

WHO: Open!
WHAT: A memorial that doesn’t go as planned.
WHEN: Justinian 1
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nah.

The ceremony takes place in one of the side courtyards that’s been converted into a garden, where the oppressive architecture is offset with flowers and trees. There’s a small pyre, for those whose traditions call for pyres, but no bodies to burn. Instead there are tokens, flowers, favorite foods, treasured possessions—not yet lit.

(For the others, the Dalish and Nevarrans and anyone else with a different wish, their friends and family will have made different arrangements alongside the pyre, probably, if they aren’t universally reviled.)

Anyone who wants to speak, whether it’s a prepared speech or a single spontaneous sentence, can do so. The tone is respectful but only so solemn. It’s been more than a week. For many, the worst of the shock has passed, and the sun has continued to rise and set, and there’s room between bouts of misery for fond memories and occasionally laughter. The memorial is a door that’s closing—slowly, kindly—and tomorrow, on the other side of it, the war will continue.

Today, on this side, the only people judging anyone else for crying are the assholes.

***

Across the harbor, more than a dozen filthy and tired people come to a stop on the docks, and the loitering ferryman pauses to take stock of them, then starts laughing. There isn’t even any local mythology about ferrymen and the dead. It’s just that funny to him on its own, that he’s been rowing miserable people around all week, and here’s the source of all that misery, dirty and tired but significantly less dead than believed.

When he stops laughing, he offers to dunk everyone in the harbor before rowing them over. For the smell, you know. No one is going to be happy to see them if their eyes are watering too much to actually see them. Then he laughs some more at his hilarious joke.

But he does eventually load up his boat—and maybe there isn’t room for everyone all at once, maybe some dramatic reunions will be delayed, maybe some people will be even more fashionably late to their funeral than the others—and carries everyone across the bay, still chuckling intermittently.

***

In the courtyard, the speeches and anecdotes (and singing, perhaps) wind down to long silences peppered with murmurs or sniffling. Someone is preparing to light the pyre. And then the gate creaks open.

Comments

Kitty, Who Is An Asshole | OTA

[rathercommon]

Kitty's towards the back of the group. Thank God. The people in front of her, they ask the awkward questions, and get the awkward answers, and all Kitty has to do is see the tears and listen to the sniffling and deal with her exquisite embarrassment from a distance rather than having to - you know - talk to people.

Because this really is excruciating. All that emotion and all that sorrow and relief just makes her feel so flustered and nervous, and so she resolves straightaway to not get involved in any of it.

So as the first few people bear the brunt of the misplaced sorrow, Kitty tries her best to creep around the side of a statue so that she can just slip into the castle without having any conversations. She's really too tired and too dirty for - you know - sentiment.

[altusimperius]

"Kitty!"

The call has a tone of pleasant surprise than of outright relief: it comes from someone who was standing more or less off to the side as well, witnessing the tearful reunions and feeling somewhat separate from them.

Oblivious of her effort to vanish, Benedict strides over with an uncertain little smile.
"I'm glad you're back." It's unusually candid, but there's something off about him as it is.

[rathercommon]

Kitty wheels at the sound of the voice. Which - She doesn't know why she does that. If you're trying to avoid people, the best thing to do is to not look round when you hear someone call your name, right? But she looks round. For whatever reason.

And that's Benedict, looking...happy? That doesn't seem right. He never looks happy. So she frowns, puzzled, and ventures - "D'Artagnan?" It's not impossible that he returned in her absence.

[altusimperius]

A confused look that becomes slightly wounded, even, and Benedict shakes his head. "No," he says, "...D'Artagnan's been gone for months."
The smile effectively drops off his face-- he looks almost like he's about to burst into tears, but thankfully doesn't. Instead, he just looks at the ground for a moment.
People just disappear sometimes.

"Lakshmi wasn't--" he begins, giving a little scuff of his foot, "-- she didn't come to find you all, did she?"

[rathercommon]

Oh. She feels even more awkward and even more embarrassed now. What a muddle. She wishes she weren't so bloody tired.

"No, not yet," she replies. It's a weird question, it seems, but maybe it's just her exhaustion that's keeping her from wrapping her head around it. "Why?"

[altusimperius]

His fear is confirmed, at least a little more than it was. She wasn't with the missing people. Maybe she just...

"She's gone," he says, a little crack in his voice as he does. He withdraws something from an inside pocket and holds it to his chest: a sending crystal, found unattended in a room empty of people but full of signs that someone had only just been there.

"...I'm glad you're back," he says again, not entirely sure why.

[rathercommon]

"What d'you mean, she's gone?"

Kitty would be looking for something - anything - to focus on that isn't just his sentiment. But this - this really catches her attention.

"Gone where?"

[altusimperius]

"Gone," he repeats, and seems to get paler as he does so. "...gone, like. Like D'Artagnan."

He can't help but glance at Kitty's anchor. Like she could be, for reasons they don't know. His hand clutches around his own as well: could that happen? Could he blink out of existence, even though he's from this world?

[rathercommon]

"That's - ridiculous." She feels a sudden tight numbness, a faint tingling in her fingertips. She really is so tired and so hungry. That's the reason for it.

"How do you know? Have you - Where have you looked?"

[altusimperius]

"I went to see her, after we heard--" About you all, he's about to say, but can tell Kitty won't want to dwell on it. "--I heard her moving around in her room when I knocked. And she didn't answer, but I..."

He frowns. "...after a minute or so I let myself in. And she wasn't there. And she'd left this."

[rathercommon]

The tingling in her fingertips gets a bit stronger. She rubs them together, trying to make it go away.

"Maybe - she left. She was always threatening to leave. Especially after the split with the Inquisition and all that."

[altusimperius]

The possibility is too painful, that Lakshmi would up and leave without telling anyone, without saying goodbye. Benedict looks down at her sending crystal again, his eyes misty.

"She wouldn't," he murmurs, "...would she? Not... just like that?"

[rathercommon]

"Maybe." Kitty, by contrast, thinks the idea is rather comforting. Better disappeared than dead. "It wouldn't be out of character for her, would it."

[rowancrowned]

Thranduil has a nug in one hand and a hairless cat in the other, a rucksack thrown over his shoulder, his expression leaning more towards ‘determination’ than depression. Everyone is in the middle of celebration—doubtless wine will be liberated soon, and he and Gwenaëlle ought to be on the ferry back to Hightown by then—but he stops in his very purposeful stride by Kitty, and sets the nug—not the cat—by his feet, where it waits sedately and nug-like as Thranduil digs in his pocket.

“Here,” he says to Kitty, passing her the key to his office. “The tub is in our bedroom—the staff will bring hot water up for it if you ask, and I dare say that no-one will look for you in there, if you need a space to hide. Do not,” he says, sharper, “make a mess of things, but you are welcome to my books and the like, and you and Gwenaëlle are near enough the same size that her boots may fit you, seeing as I believe you said you only had the one pair—” and lost them, or had them stolen, whatever. Key in Kitty’s hand, he rakes his free one back through his hair, and bends to pick up the nug, who squeaks, but then goes limp. The kitten meows. Free him.

“I will call you when I return. It will be a few days.”

[rathercommon]

The key is...appreciated, the offer of a hot bath sounds heavenly - but this is all so bloody weird that she can barely wrap her head around it. Why on earth is he leaving? Where is he going? Where did he get the animals? Why does he have them? And ugh, will she ever be able to look at a nug again after those days in the Deep Roads...The sight of it turns her stomach.

She quickly triages her questions and decides that the first and most relevant one is - "Return from where?"

[rowancrowned]

"Hightown," he says, and he softens, somewhat, or at least loses a bit of the frantic energy. Kitty's easy enough to see over, and Gwenaelle is only just right there, under Romain's watchful gaze. "To her grandfather's estate."

And her grandfather's men-at-arms, and all the protective nonsense and privacy money and a title can buy in Kirkwall, which is what Thranduil- protective, looming Thranduil- wants for them. Needs, frankly.

"For a few days only," he elaborates. The animals remain unintroduced.

[rathercommon]

"Right," she says a little uncertainly. "And - the - ?"

Her gesture takes in the hairy and hairless creatures, respectively.

[rowancrowned]

"I cannot leave them," he says, like that explains it all. With something approaching guilt, perhaps, "-I would not ask for you to care for them in our absence."

The nug squeaks.

[rathercommon]

"I'm pretty sure that cats just take care of themselves," she says, then scratches at the back of her neck. Urgh, she hopes that her itchy scalp is just because she hasn't been able to wash it in days, and not because she's got lice or something.

"Since when did you have pets, anyway?"

[rowancrowned]

"Are you suggesting there are pests in my quarters," and ah, there's the old humor, the lilt in his tone, though it fades as he spares some thought for her question and answers honestly.

"They will be a comfort to my lady, and I thought you would not enjoy being asked to care for them." He shifts the nug a bit closer.

[rathercommon]

And Kitty shifts a little bit backwards. No great surprise; she's not much of an animal person.

"Well, no, obviously." She fiddles with a strand of her hair, and then says, "I just don't see why you two are going away so dreadfully quickly." Stupidly, she finds her face getting a little hot, and she hastens to amend, "I mean - I don't even know what I ought to be working on for you when you're gone."

[rowancrowned]

"She does not feel safe here," which also means 'I don't feel safe with her here', but veiled in his own concern for her. At this exact moment, he can see her, sitting with Romain, and that comforts him. He's able to have this conversation, after all.

"Bathing," he says. "Getting your thoughts in order. Finding new boots. If you have the desire to, sort through the papers on my desk and figure what can be discarded now that we haven't lost a good portion of our force. There were attempts to reorganize after your deaths; luckily we did not implement many."

[rathercommon]

"She doesn't feel safe here? It was out there that all of that happened." But - Fine. Kitty supposes that fear isn't exactly a rational thing; where you feel safe has very little to do with where you actually are safe. Because, well, no one is actually safe anywhere.

Anyway. "Well - Fine. I guess - I'll do that, then. Even though that's not actually all that productive, it seems to me. Did news get out that we're all dead?"

[rowancrowned]

“We need some time,” Thranduil says, and shrugs his shoulders, effortlessly and elven-elegant. “Time to call back messengers—” as some had been sent, riders who might be overtaken on the road, “—and to enjoy the living. Many came to realizations while you were gone.”

He makes a short gesture. “It is productive. It is work I cannot do right now.”

[rathercommon]

"We could use it, though." She scratches her cheek a little uncertainly. "If our enemies think we're...weak, or our forces are diminished. That could be useful to us. Couldn't it?"