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

[elegiaque]

( she'd had some vague thoughts of going to hightown instead of the gallows, but at best the idea had been impractical and she'd consoled herself with the thought of going after—there is a moment when she sees her grandfather moving swiftly through the crowd of (mourners?) where she immediately forgets her realisation and can't quite understand why he's here and not there.

no, she reminds herself, she knows why. she can see why. eventually, she will take for granted his ongoing affection; even now a part of her registers dim surprise at this new evidence his refusal to have a change of heart upon her is sincere. he has been utterly, illogically steadfast. what will she do when he's gone?

—but they are both here, right now, so she lets go of iorveth to collide with him, which does nothing for the state of his dignity but is such an abrupt relief it takes the air out of her. )

I want a bath, ( she says, blankly, into his shoulder. ) Where's my husband?

[toujoursdroit]

He's here, he's so tall I don't see how you can miss him.

[That said, Romain isn't letting her go enough to really look just yet. The strength with which he holds her may be surprising, but his arms are steady. He knows others were in denial, at first, demanded more proofs. He briefly wonders what it says about his life that he was so ready to believe the worst. It had seemed consistent with his experience.

He can't stand there, holding her, forever. But for a few moments longer, he can, and she feels reassuringly solid. Mourning has never been something that reversed before, and he'll take a moment.]

We'll go home, once you find him. [To Hightown, he means. Even if she hasn't technically lived there for some time.]

[elegiaque]

( the way she laughs into his arm is only a shade too close to hysterical. this is absurd, all of it—how did she come to be here, someone who would go on a mission like this one, married to a dirty great elf, with her grandfather expressing more emotion in public than she thinks she's ever seen him do in private? dirt and exhaustion aside, she wonders if the young lady vauquelin who'd gone up to skyhold would even recognise her now, in this moment.

she thinks she'd struggle to recognise herself. she'd quite like that bath, and then to do very little, for at least a while. the war will not wait, the work will not wait, but perhaps she can be spared a few days, just a few— )

I'll find him.

[toujoursdroit]

[He squeezes her, steady pressure, before he lets her go. By his standards, it is quite the display, but he's careless of it for just a moment. It's become a bit chaotic, regardless; everyone has turned their attention to the individuals who had been mourned, and who needn't be any longer.]

I'll come along, just until you find him. You seem like you could use an arm.

[Entirely ignoring Iorveth is, at least, reassuringly more Romain-like.]

[elegiaque]

( there's something very reassuring about the familiar line of his mask, the shadow of him beside her; he is not a small man, but he seems mountainous more by inclination than size. enduring. she has had to endure a great deal, recently, and there's something comforting about finding him (unusual demonstrativeness aside) so unchanged.

still, she says, ) I'm fine, ( automatically, because there is almost no situation in which she wouldn't make the claim.

it's not very convincing, and she's still holding his arm, but she says it. )

[toujoursdroit]

Of course you are.

[She, like her grandfather, is always fine. He steers them ably through the crowd, shielding her without seeming to. Before they make it to Thranduil, he says,]

When I leave you on his arm, what should I start arranging other than the bath?

[elegiaque]

I want to stay for a while. I don't know.

( bath and husband and retreat are foremost in her mind; she's a little vague on the details of all of the above, and what else more she might need. (thranduil will have to think of the healer, because gwenaëlle, like her grandfather, is always fine.)

she squeezes his arm, briefly: ) I think I left clothes there. Guilfoyle can make arrangements for my fucking menagerie.