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

[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."