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

[libratus]

[ That's

not what he was braced for either. The story comes out in pieces; understanding solidifies on his face just the same, in flickers of his brow, a flex of the jaw on behalf of their privacy, before the color begins to drain.

Is this what he should have been afraid of? He knows Leander, knows the deftness with which he can apply pressure when so inclined — would not have expected Isaac to have enough vulnerabilities exposed to press upon. Burned that damned letter to be sure of it. You weren't supposed to miss me, as if anything were that simple.

The heel of a hand presses to temple. But it's brief, eyes pressed shut against this only for one blessed beat before he moves to step into the other man's line of sight. Look at him. Talk to him. ]

What exactly did you do?

[ The details matter. The confession of it. As ever: complicated truths. ]

[wythersake]

There's a spell,

[ As though it's written in any book, and not some private invention. He used to think it so ridiculous, transparent, the occasional reports of confession: Certainly, ser, he told you he'd been consorting with demons by the light of the moon —

Convenient. This doesn't feel convenient. Convenient would've been walking out the door, shutting it behind him, shocked as anyone when Leander was found. This has never been an acceptable level of stupid, but it was less with one fewer to keep it. ]

To undo old healing.

[ Kinda. ]

[libratus]

[ Another day, after another much shorter trek between waking and reaching this familiar room, he might be better at tempering his reaction. Smoothing himself over, the way he does. A hint of the instinct tugs at his movements still: a flutter of hand over mouth, turned askance; a miserable breath expelled from chest, balked from. If there was ever any doubt how intimately familiar he is Leander's injuries, well, ]

And you didn't know how badly he'd-- [ been hurt. He swallows the words, sick with them; Issac isn't feeding him euphemisms. ] How badly I'd hurt him.

[ If they're baring truths.

It's not a question; that doesn't mean his eyes don't lift in search of answer. ]

Will he live?

[wythersake]

[That pitiful ghost, gurgling in the dirt. He knew enough. If you try that again, I will leave you here, ]

You didn't cut his wrists.

[ Colder than it deserves. Defensive wounds. Gareth has those, too. He's seen Nell dig fingers into her own flesh, and Isaac isn't an idiot. It's a dismissive sort of absolution — he doesn't expect it to stick. Doesn't entirely want it to, grateful for how readily Ilias implicates himself, that he needn't lean upon affection for insurance. Ilias has the reputation, connections to shrug an accusation; he has the guilt such that it wouldn't matter.

(He has, once more, that fucking phylactery. Physical evidence.) ]

He's recovering. It'll be slow.

[ Isaac stands to find the bottle again. Nurses it, a worry stone, the base of his skull in that courtyard. Circling a decision that he's already made, that he'd thought the desert to make for him. ]

I can't keep doing this.

[libratus]

[ It's a lifeline Ilias sees and doesn't so much as reach after. Didn't cut his wrists, no; let him live long enough to learn where to cut, though, how to use it. There's guilt to be found on every side of this if you're looking, and of course Ilias is, fitting himself back into self-loathing like an old coat. Simpler, to turn a thing inward than sort out the blame. (Simpler, to keep hating what you hate already.)

Simpler. Doesn't feel great. The wine in his cup might almost seem a blessing, if he weren't watching a man who never drinks try to drown in it. ]

Which part?

[ Opening bottles, or veins, or cleaning up after?

(He's starting to sound as tired as he is.) ]

[wythersake]

This.

[ Repeated, gesture and words dull. It settles thick against his tongue, which is good: Flattens anything sharper. The face in his shoulder was more fang than Livia's incisors. Isaac has spent too many years inuring himself not to recognize it now, the way his veins stir; pulse animates. Influence.

One falls under it. ]

All of this. Ilias, he could have died. And for what?

[ Maybe one of them wishes that. Maybe two — but Isaac doesn't want to. Ilias must be exhausted. Looks it. He crumples, and Isaac can guess the angle. (Inward, where else does venom travel?) ]

You want choices, then here we are,

[ Free. Full of potential. And: ]

Making bloody stupid ones.

[libratus]

The only choice I have made today is coming back here.

[ And yes, it is beginning to look like a bloody stupid one. Like, apparently, letting either of them learn half a truth about the other, and then leaving them unsupervised.

(Like ignoring the beat in the back of his mind, steady as their footfalls from the Fields of Ghislain, of how fucking selfish it is to let anyone put down roots on a cliff's edge.

Stupid, to imagine this time he'd hold on.) ]

Yes, he could have died. You could have killed him for fucking nothing.

[ (Clinging, all the same.) ]

Is that a mistake you expect to make more than once?

[wythersake]

A mistake. [ Flattened, but not enough to quiet: ] Listen to yourself.

[ There are areas in which Isaac is prepared to concede the Chantry are right, he hadn't thought this one. A personal failing to be so easily led.

He abandons the bottle at last, closes the distance to lay hand over hand over untouched cup. Tries to find his eyes. ]

Don't lose yourself for this.

[libratus]

[ What composure frustration had afforded him buckles in proximity; fingers balk under the touch. He hadn't meant—

But only because it was a given, of course. That he would excuse this. Has excused it already, quick to invent an answer he could live with, ready to believe it a manageable accident of temper even if that isn't true. Ever reaching for the easy lie.

(If Isaac had killed him, would he forgive that too? Hasn't he forgiven worse?) ]

Is the alternative any better?

[ Blame. Separation. Being alone again. ]

[wythersake]

Remaining Ilias Fabria?

Well, [ A show of consideration, and there's something a touch more settled in the lilt of his brow. Briefly normal. ] I happen to be fond.

[ It falls away. He shifts the little mug free, sets it back upon the desk. It's more complicated than that. He knows. He just can't allow himself to care. ]

You can stay here long as you need. I'll, [ Take an inn. Take a walk. Something. ] Find a place.

[ He hasn't mentioned the state of the room. That's its own statement. ]

[libratus]

[ Fond. But not fond enough.

A wince; air pushed bitterly from lungs. ] I will not be here long.

[ He'd take the Silent Plains over this, staying in the shell of a place he'd just begun to know and now will not. Even in a crypt, you separate living from dead.

Luckily Isaac's isn't the only room within hobbling distance. He'll allow them both the dignity of an exit, though, first. Resists the urge to so much as turn to watch him go.

(The room, whenever Isaac returns to it, will be more or less as it was. A set of night clothes, ones he's never seen Isaac wear, are borrowed and returned in a day's time, laundered and pressed. The mug is cleaned and put back in its usual place. Nothing else of his is missing. Nothing is left for him.

If any of Ilias's letters were kept in this room, however, they are no longer. Not even the pressed plants. As near as can make it to having never been here at all.) ]