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

[hornswoggle]

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—)

[katabasis]

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."

[hornswoggle]

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.

[katabasis]

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."

[hornswoggle]

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?

[katabasis]

('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?"

[hornswoggle]

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.

[katabasis]

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."

[hornswoggle]

"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.