faderift | open: lol never mind.

Entry tags:

open: lol never mind.

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.

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This is perhaps the dirtiest John has ever been in his life. Exhaustion feels ground into his bones. He is not too tired to trade jokes with their gleeful ferryman, but thinking ahead, he consider leaving the rest of this group to drag themselves into the city proper and explain everywhere while John sequesters himself on the Walrus.

But the impulse that saw him submitting himself to join the others on this terrible journey in the first place still makes itself known. No, he can't shirk this re-entry. (Duty is such a loathsome thing, what had ever possessed him to make such space for it in his life?) So when the doors open, John is still stumping along near the back, leaning heavily on the stolen staff. Useful, to have all his traveling companions before him as a buffer while he gets his bearings.

"Well, don't let us stop you," John says finally, because humor is closer at hand than any other question he might dredge up.

And it's easier than the rising concern of what has been done in his absence, if he's been mistaken for dead. (What has become of all the plans he and Flint had been constructing? What have they all told Madi?) There's no quick way out of this crowd, and there's some benefit to staying, but John is seized very quickly with the urge to extract himself from all the fuss as smoothly as he can.

The relief Six feels when she sees the dead return is not something she can put into proper words. She had been mourning, despite not knowing too many of them on a deep, personal level - save John, who knew more of her than she did of him, who had accepted memories of her past without too much of a flinch, who had been there to accept her apologies and offer her kindness. She had been mourning that as much anything else, her heart sore in her chest.

She had been praying for hours, but she did not feel the numb ache in her knees. She could not allow it, not when words were to be said and offerings to be given.

Stoic and tall, she steps forward as she watches people mill around, her heart beating fast as she realises that she was wrong, that all is well, that the relief she feels can be accepted and given into. It's a rush and she almost, almost smiles, fighting the urge. It might be improper.

"John," she says, voice soft, her hair, for once, tied beautifully and properly. "It is good to see you."

It's a relief that so much of the attention is directed elsewhere. John is here, content to remain mostly out of sight until it serves him to exist otherwise. (The only show that matters it the one he puts on when he sets foot on the deck of the Walrus, his presence in the courtyard carries a different sort of weight.) He expects nothing, and desires nothing but for his continued existence to be noted. That is, after all, what had propelled him to join this mission in the first place. To be noted, to be useful, but not essential.

And then Six materializes from the crowd and John finds himself wrong-footed. He is at a loss for a long moment, uncertain what to do with the relief on her face. To have been missed, it still strikes him strangely.

"Hello, Six," he replies, taking a few ungainly steps to close the distance between them. There's a pause, then—

"You've done up your hair. What's the occasion?"

"It is a funeral."

It's said wryly, at least, even if she looks a touch uncomfortable. She's not wearing more than she might normally; her armour is shining, however, newly cleaned, and she even appears to have taken a bath using smelling soaps rather than her usual plain kind. Clearly, she has made an effort to appear more like the knightly figure people imagined her to be, even if she looks a touch discomforted by it.

Moving forward, her hand rests gently, carefully, on his shoulder, looking him up and down before she breathes in relief.

"I imagined for a moment that you might be a spirit."

"No, just blessed with opportune timing," John tells her, tone still light. He is unsure of what to do with this relief. What is there to be done with such a thing when there's no use for it beyond simply the pleasure of a reunion?

In a way, it's a blessing to weather this now before he has to stand before the crew of the Walrus. Six is doing him a service, letting him prepare. After the loss of his leg, John had been sequestered in Flint's cabin, recovering. After his return from the sea, there had been a battle looming ahead of them too soon for celebration. This return to Kirkwall is different. He is going to need to steady himself much more quickly now.

"They truly thought all of us dead?"

Which, obviously, but in all their discussions during the journey no one had quite considered that as a viable option.

"I am glad to hear it. I did not enjoy being there to witness the promise of your death." Not that she and John are the closest of friends, but they have worked together and she has stood at his side. Six knows that giving herself over to her emotions does not come easily to her, but she is doing her best to manage herself - John knows much of her already, truly.

She steps back to give him some space, some room to breathe, and she manages to offer him something of an easier smile. She does not wish for him to feel under pressure, not when he has so soon returned - and he likely needs a bath and a rest both.

"We did. A group went to find you when we thought you only missing and we found nothing other than your personal possessions and what we imagined to be your remains."

Which makes her look rather pained.

"It seems I'm rather hard to kill."

Which is either a boon or an inconvenience depending on who you ask.

"I'm sorry for all of it. It seems that this mission was a failure on many levels."

As John says this, he reaches carefully to touch her elbow. It's a comforting gesture, or so he intends it to be, even if he isn't being entirely truthful in the moment. Yes, this mission was some kind of failure. They hadn't accomplished what they were meant to do. But it's a boon for John. At the very least, his reunion with the crew will make placating them all the easier in the coming weeks.

"I can at least promise you I have no intention of dying any time soon."

Fifteen (more or less) people walk into their own funeral, and one of them arrives long after the fact. John Silver has already been buried - days ago, in the form of a cutlass cast over the Walrus's rail with a ragged crew watching the glint of metal slice down through the cold black water; months ago, with no ceremony on an island that even now may be slipping further beneath the sea.

Maybe this accounts for why, when Flint turns toward the disturbance rippling up through the small crowd thronged about the unlit pyre, the severe line of his expression manages to shift with such alacrity. He laughs. It's a sharp sound.

Water splashes into a waiting basin. It's a long haul from the fire to here, one of a dozen narrow Gallows rooms, and so the steam (if there every was any) has long since dissipated. However, what it lacks in heat, the water more than makes up for in every other respect. It's clean, suffused with the smell of copper copper rather than the salt sea's brackish tang, and clear enough to see all the way through to the bottom of the ceramic bowl.

"You know," says Flint as he sets the empty the bucket down. A flex of the fingers; the rope handle has driven a hard line over (softening, from weeks of real labor traded for paperwork and arguing over chartbooks) callouses. "It's slightly gratifying to realize I'm not the only one who finds you exceedingly difficult to kill."

Flint's laughter cuts through the outcry their appearance has sparked. John hears it and thinks of standing on the roadside in the aftermath of Ghislain. He understands immediately. It's the same sense of incredulous relief. Against all odds, you. That shorthand carries in a single burst of laughter.

That particular burst of reaction carries all the way back to the Gallows, where John abandons the stolen Tevinter staff and eases off the outer layers. His coat is cracked with blood and dirt, sand ground into the seams. He is reasonably certain there is still blood and dirt in his beard. It's possibly the dirtiest he'd been in his life. He has the sense that the ferryman's joke of dunking them into the water hadn't been too far off the mark.

There comes a moment just before Flint returns with the water, where John marvels at the toll this journey took on him. Having finally emerged from the wilderness, the entirety of what their party had undertaken to return has come rushing in like the tide. The ache of it spreads through John's entire body.

Seated, bare-chested, John curls his fingers around the edge of the basin. There is a rag draped over his thigh, but he doesn't reach for it yet. He almost can't decide where to start. He exhales a chuckle as Flint speaks before shaking his head.

"I don't think it would be wise for me to expect this trick to hold out a third time," John answers. "Even my luck has it's limits."

In the wake of that statement lie two peculiar sentiments, both impossible to put into words: gratitude, and apology. Both feel owed, in this moment.

"There were a number of moments when the entire venture could have gone very badly."

Chief among them: that first moment, feeling the drug hit and being unable to do anything about it. John's had a lot of time to consider how lucky he was that it had been a drug to knock them out rather than kill them all at the table. His eyes lift to Flint's, watching his face for a moment before he continues:

"How did the men take it?"

"They haven't burned anything down in your name if that's what you're asking. Though," he allows. "Charles and I have been forced to make certain allowances to mitigate the risk. Namely, promises of work in relation to the dreadnought wrecked off Brandel's Reach."

This may or may not be news to Vane. Regardless, something had needed saying to the men and there was no ignoring that this, as with so many other things, might be ultimately played to their advantage. After so long spent idle, asked for little more than fetching and carrying on the Inquisition's behalf, it may have been difficult to motivate the crew to it without the leverage of their quartermaster's death driving the effort. What answer would they have gotten otherwise? Fuck you. Let the Inquisition or Riftwatch or whatever it is do their own business.

It had been a case of finding, pardon the crassness of the expression, silver at the edge of a storm cloud.

"It wouldn't hurt to play toward that for the time being. A word from you now would keep their attention aligned in whatever direction is deemed most appropriate." A celebratory crew was as likely to wreak havoc in Kirkwall as one in mourning and this, too, can be used.

(And what of the rest? What can that be traded for? Just about anything, he thinks with enough conviction to make it true.)

John snorts, letting the cloth sink into the basin as Flint speaks. He is gratified to hear what he'd been instinctively been considering spoken back to him by Flint. Yes, this event gave John a certain amount of leverage with the men. (More so than usual.) Yes, this is something they can and must put to good use.

"I know they've been frustrated with our present state of affairs," John concedes, as if there is ever a time when the men aren't vaguely frustrated. "I was worried when I'd thought we were merely missing. You can imagine my concern about their reactions when I realized we'd been taken for dead."

Not just concern regarding the men. Water droplets spill from his palm as he lifts the sodden cloth from the basin. (Madi, what has been said to Madi?) John's face is out of sight for a few moments as he scrubs the dirt and blood from his skin, emerging as the cloth is drawn down, over the bristle of beard and the nape of his neck.

"We can make use of this entire fiasco for a time. And I think we'll have some leeway to act as we please while everyone else is considering retribution for the guilty party."

Leeway to hunt, which meant more careful picking of targets. But while everyone is considering how best to punish the baron and drag his associates out to be murdered, the men of the Walrus could mete out some payback of their own to the Venatori ships without needing any further justification than John's long absence. Helpful.

Here, a pause. He studies the disturbed surface of the water.

And here, a response made rare for the fact that it's born out of some largely unexamined instance: "It may be best to make that case through our Scoutmaster. Or, given the organization's diminished sense of oversight, to simply do it and explain ourselves when questioned."

(The bruising on Flint's face has faded to the point of being unremarkable.)

In fairness, John would sooner attribute the bruising to Vane than to Coupe.

But John does not consider the bruising across Flint's jaw in this moment. Instead, he considers the decision Flint has laid out before them as he draws the cloth absently back and forth across his collarbone. There is dried blood spattered up the left side of his throat, still untouched, mottled bruising painted across his torso. His broken thumb had been repaired, but John is a poor healer. The ache is still there in the bone when he closes his hand into a fist.

This is all part of the assessment, as he considers what he has spent his time doing in service of the Inquisition. (No longer the Inquisition but something else now.) The toll of a mission gone wrong. Certainly, there has been something gained, but still, he finds himself tired. And rest is not yet an option until he has seen to their men.

"I think there's merit in taking some initiative," John says, as he dips the cloth back into the basin. "If there were ever a moment to set a new standard for our involvement, it would be now."

This is an old, old impulse: to simply do what is most profitable in the moment, talk his way through it later. John has not yet failed at this. He does not see failure coming to pass, particularly if their hunting continues to provide something tangibly useful.

"I can make our case, if questions ever arise."

If.

The water runs into the cloth, and what's wring out in return is dirt and sweat and salt and blood, until the smooth unblemished bottom of the basin is made obscure by the red tinged cloud of it. It's Orlais and Tevinter and the Deep Roads and the Freemarches. It's Thedas as much as it is John Silver, swirling and muddy in that bone colored bowl. Standing there in that windowless interior room, he's gripped by some inexplicable urge to reach out and try steadying its artificial current barehanded. Or, to fetched up the basin and try swirling it in the opposing direction to test if it might eventually regulate. Maybe all that debris would irrevocably be wrestled to the bottom. Dirt and blood made to be unnaturally still at depth.

"You should know I've made Max aware of our contact with Llomerryn," he says suddenly. This, followed by a more ambitious leap: "And that I mean to make use of Aurelia Pentaghast's papers."

What can John say? He was dead. Flint had done what he must in the wake of that, sought to strength his position in the wake of John's presumed absence. But still, there is a moment where John must ride out a moment of cold panic over the sense of exposure, at their flank left open for Max to tear into if it suited her.

They had touched so carefully upon her intentions with regards to Flint. John can only wonder how she had received these plans, and what she meant to do with that knowledge now. Suppose she decides it does not align with her vision for the future? There will have to be something in place to counter her, to answer her. John looks down at the cloth in his hands. There is blood in his nail beds. He had broken a man's neck to escape that cart, but more the fool him for ever landing in that cart in the first place.

"Make use of them in the immediate sense?" John asks, clarifying while he strives to resolve his own reaction in his mind. Even as he considers the implications, the potential to turn an entire country to their cause without bloodshed, there is the danger Max presents. He will have to speak with her. Tonight. Tomorrow. Soon. (In the back of his mind: What else has been spoken of? Did you send a letter to Billy? Did you contact Madi, did you send a letter back to tell her that I—)

This, at least, sounds like something he's given considerable thought. Or maybe the man simply has a gift for making the half-formed seem fully realized. With enough force, debris can be turned into the ghostly outline of some tangible thing and Flint is easily prompted.

"Nevarra may not realize it, but between the loss of Perendale and the new Divine's declaration of an Exalted March, they can no more afford infighting than we can their continued neutrality. Aurelia's inability to organize meaningful support behind her in these last weeks leaves us with one obvious position from which to bargain - the erosion of what's left of her support in favor of the Van Markhams, on the condition that they commit some part of their forces promptly again Corypheus and the Imperium once the boy is crowned. I expect that there is a very real possibility of some division irregardless, but this at least would benefit our purpose in the short term. And in the long, we have a Nevarra with a renewed sense of its own vulnerability with an ear sympathetic to unexpected friends."

There is no force or fire in it. John Silver is covered in dirt and dried blood and through it, a weariness shows with startling clarity. Flint is all gentleness as he says, "What happens when Corypheus is beaten back and the Imperium folds under him? The Southern Chantry finally takes what it believes is its due, unless we have the means with which to protest it."

Quietly, gently, Flint lays out a particular set of circumstances. John divines the same weaknesses, understands the stakes at hand. This is no more and no less than what they had been driving at before, but it makes sense now that there is needs to be a new approach to service their goals. As their little group breaks away from the Inquisition, they enjoy a certain amount of freedom. Of course there comes this adjustment.

Is this any less than what John had hoped to do in service of Agathe, before she met her end? Swap one person in power for another more useful, more sympathetic? There is less left to chance in what Flint is proposing. No vote, no one to convince but any whose assistance they'd demand.

John feels something spark between them, warming under the lilt of Flint's voice. He must dredge up an answer, but he thinks already: So I shall go to Nevarra.

"And Nevarra would be a sufficient ward against those efforts," John answers finally, because what else have they come here to secure? Powerful allies, and this splintered group in Kirkwall is not exactly that anymore. "Our options are more limited now that we've split from Skyhold. If we can secure Nevarra, it'll make things go easier in Nascere."

John's thoughts are snagged in the immediate. They had left a specific fight in their wake. It's a wrinkle between them, one John has to work to smooth over, to think in large-scale terms, remind himself that there is a greater scaffolding beyond the struggle their people are engaged in. (Madi. Her face ghosts through his mind, drags like a lodestone that John can't bring himself to shake off.)

"Did you tell Max of this?" John asks, thoughts dragged back to this moment, to the man sat across from him.

Easier in Nascere, yes. Importantly and significantly, it would make it easier everywhere else too. The trouble with Nascere tomorrow is the same as it is today. It is a place historically made valuable and vulnerable by being a pinch point between Tevinter - between rest of the world - and the Qun's shadow. What stops the Qun from resting easy in Seheron? The Imperium does. What befalls the places that would act as gateways to those shores if the Imperium wasn't invested in the North? How do you stop the Qun for absorbing everything it touches--

--(That is a riddle for which he doesn't yet have an answer: a dark spot at the edge of his vision growing in proportion to the likelihood of Tevinter coming undone)--

--is as relevant a problem as any other. The question Nascere faces, the one it has faced, the one it will face even after the Tevinter Imperium is broken, is the same one the whole world now asks itself. How do you fight a war on two fronts? The only conceivable answer is that you don't. That you can't. There is only so much blood in the body and there can be no refilling the basin.

The same is true with respect to their business here. It is impossible to keep so many things secret.

"This is the first time I've spoken of it aloud," he says as he takes the rag from Silver. It's flushed out in the basin, rust colored water wrung from it before he offers its return. "But I'm going to tell the Division Heads."

Edited 2019-06-04 23:43 (UTC)

For a moment, John's entire response is a slow exhale of breath.

Their fingers meet as John takes back the rag. John looks into Flint's face and measures the resolve there, finds himself reassured by the implicit trust in what Flint is unfurling for him now. Whatever is in Flint's mind takes shape between them in this room. It burns like a coal set in John's palm, his to keep until they find the proper kindling.

"I'd like to be there when you address them."

An afterthought. John doesn't think his presence was ever a question, but he wants to mark out his place once again. He's been wandering in the dark for a long time. He wants to reassess the foundation upon which he sets himself.

"Have we considered what we'll do if they decline?"

Which is a delicate way of asking: Will we do it regardless?

('Let's just for fun say that he doesn't.')

"They won't." Say a thing enough and there's no reason that anyone would have cause to imagine it isn't true. That can be as true enough for them as it has been for the things which now require dismantling. "Our separation from the Inquisition has already signaled a commitment to moving forward by any means necessary. In the war's present state, no one with the means to influence Nevarra could reasonably pretend it was optional."

And if reason isn't the rule of the day? What then?

"If they'd prefer to do this quietly or without signing Riftwatch's name to it, it's easily done. The information was the Inquisition's first. Who can say in what directions it may have traveled from there?"

They won't.

No, perhaps not. While John thinks that Flint may be overestimating the company's commitment to "by any means necessary," he does think that separating from the Inquisition removes some of the stickier objections they could have run into. If they make their case convincingly, this may come to pass with the full support of this group.

And if not—

"It's fortunate we are so well-connected in Llomeryn," John says, eyes dropped to his hands where he works at the blood crusted and spattered in the grooves of his palm. "If that's the case, I should speak with the men tonight. Or first thing in the morning."

Because whatever the outcome here, they would need the men on board. Support could not waver, not now. Not in this crucial moment. John had already been considering the reaction to the separation from the Inquisition, the need to reassure them that their priorities remain unchanged. It will be easier to convince them of this method, something that could have a tangible benefit for their home if they manage it and if they can get the Division heads to sanction it.

Here, he quiets - or sharpens, or bristles. For a moment, it's difficult to say exactly which way the edge of him faces as some thread of distrust rises from him as smoke, ribbon like, from a fire on the verge of catching. It strictly isn't a lack of faith in the man before him, but rather in the prospect of The Men. What they can be trusted with. What is too delicate to set in their open hands, with fingers all ready to grasp and crush.

It's short-lived. Flint looks at Silver from under the shadow of his brow for a few seconds, and then whatever internal debate he is arguing cedes sideways and diminishes for lack of study.

"If you think that's best."

"We need them."

John needs them.

"They don't need to know everything," and John certainly wouldn't be sharing everything. "But they need to know we have a way forward that benefits them. If I can show them the shape of it, their trust in us will do the rest."

The easier prospect for John will always be convincing these men. The contrary tangle of politics and personalities in Kirkwall is harder to bend beneath his words. He bound himself to these men with blood and bone. It hadn't been a spell, but it carries a weight regardless. He closes his fist, feels the ache of his haphazardly healed fingers, before he wrings the excess water once again from the cloth.

Words exist, unspoken, between the sound of dripping water: Trust me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

open: lol never mind.

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