open | your baddest behavior

[cozen]

WHO: Alexandrie, Bastien, Byerly, and their captive audience
WHAT: Mandatory etiquette and dance lessons
WHEN: Justinian 15, 9:45
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See the OOC post and IC announcement for more information! If you didn't sign up, you can still participate in Parts A and D, and just handwave the other two, without needing to sign up or get an assignment. If you want to do B and C, you can find your own dance partner/seating group OOC, or you can sign up now and we'll dole out new assignments if we get enough latecomers to do so. If you signed up and are missing from the lists when you shouldn't be, I'm sorry and please tell me!

disclaimer: event less fancy than pictured

Seating Assignments
— Table One: Gwenaëlle, Iorveth, Matthias, Athessa
— Table Two: Flint, Ilias, Darras, Med Seller, Yngvi
— Table Three: Julius, Thranduil, Anders, Brienne
— Table Four: Benedict, Colin, Valentine, Six, Derrica
— Table Five: Teren, Salvio, Bartimaeus, Osana
— Table Six: Freddie, Petrana, Kain, Merrill, Silver
— Table Seven: Yseult, Cosima, Steve, Inessa
— Table Eight: Sidony, Fifi, Nell, Fingon
— Table Nine: Thor, Nathaniel H., Solas, Skadi

Dance Partners
— Cosima & Nathaniel H.
— Athessa & Anders
— Teren & Flint
— Freddie & Bartimaeus
— Yseult & Darras
— Nell & Julius
— Merrill & Colin
— Skadi & Benedict
— Gwenaëlle & Solas
— Petrana & Salvio
— Osana & the Medicine Seller
— Sidony & Matthias
— Six & Thranduil
— Brienne & Valentine
— Fifi & Steve
— Thor & Fingon
— Ilias & Iorveth

Comments

derrica / open

[tender]

This is a far cry from any of the dances Derrica had learned aboard any of the ridiculously named ships she'd sailed upon. And it's not exactly what she'd been expecting when she'd disembarked several days ago to join what she'd expected to be the Inquisition but discovered was now something else entirely.

Etiquette lessons: just one more surprise in the grand scheme of things.

After the requisite amount of torture on the dance floor, Derrica retreats to the sidelines to claim wine and consider the idea of escape. After all, she didn't come here to learn how to comport herself in polite company. Derrica has certainly never considered the possibility that the course of her life would ever and her in polite company, and the idea of that changing just because she's part of...whatever this is, it just makes her laugh.

"Does this happen regularly?" She asks the next person she notices slipping off the dance floor. It seems like a safe thing to assume that everyone else here has been around long enough to judge that habits of this company.

[aforethought]

"Twice a year, reckon."

Melys is pleasantly, incongruously, having a splendid fucking time. It's anyone's guess where her hat got that pink feather, unless that anyone has been to Hightown inside the past year.

It's a lot easier to guess where she got an entire bottle of wine (and what failing marks that will get in return).

"Don't call it lessons, mind." The wag of a pinky — you put them out when it's fancy — "Not mostly. Figure that's only gonna work once."

This is the second night. She's perfectly aware.

[tender]

"I heard they said it was mandatory, but not what the punishment was for skipping it."

Hence Derrica's presence, trying her best to get off on the right foot. She's here to be helpful. Can't be helpful if someone's already marked you off as a troublemaker.

"Is that good?" She points to the bottle in Melys' hands, lifting her own cup slightly. "I just took this off a table, I wasn't really...being choosy."

Derrica's quietly envious of the feather, but a bit of wine is an easier achieved goal.

[aforethought]

"It's free, innit?" So: Plenty good. "All this is. Can't figure why no one would skip out."

Of course she can. Stubborn is as stubborn does, and it's only another streak of that to bring her here now. In this crowd, bitching would make her as much a joiner as curtsies and bows.

This way comes with a decent meal. She beckons Derrica closer, offers the bottle.

"Hold this, will you," She has to fish in her own pockets, clinking as they are with purloined utensils. Habit, more than anything; she doubts the Duke sprung for silver. "That why you came? Reckon you'll get put on some list?"

[tender]

"Hold this" doesn't necessarily mean an invitation to sample, but Derrica lifts the bottle to her lips anyway. It's a small sip. It's enough to know it's decent wine, better than she'd had at sea.

"No."

A beat. Derrica tips the bottle a little as she relents, shrugging.

"Not really. I was a little concerned about it."

She'd always been that way, wanting to be good, hating being scolded. It's just that the stakes are higher now. How well would she be received into this group that was meant to do so much good if she'd started off digging her heels in?

"But I mostly thought it'd be easier to get the measure of everyone this way. Simpler to take it all in if the entirety of the Riftwatch is all in one place, isn't it?"

[inkindled]

"Oh, aye," Matthias says, cheerfully, "once a season, I'd say, but then we all prove to be such shit at dancing that they give up on us and burn the records and strike it from memory--and then enough time passes that someone new and brilliant says oi, we've not taught them dancing and manners in some while, let's have a go at it--and it starts all over again."

He keeps a serious look fixed to his face as he raises the jug of wine to his mouth and takes a big sip. A whole jug, mind.

"Don't tell me you don't like etiquette lessons."

[tender]

"Are you telling me you do like etiquette lessons?" She counters, eyes on that jug of wine.

Truthfully, once freed from the table Derrica hasn't found the dancing to be the worst way to spend an evening. It's difficult for her because she's in a room full of strangers and she's dressed poorly and she doesn't quite understand why this is all required of her. She's having some difficulty with all of it. It's hard to come all this way to join the Inquisition, only to find the Inquisition has up and split itself once more. Has she made the right choice staying here instead of moving onward to Skyhold?

She'd liked the idea of being so close to the sea. Enough to linger, anyway.

"Are you going to drink that jug all by yourself?" She tacks on, partly out of concern and partly out of curiosity.

[inkindled]

"'Course I do. Don't I look it?"

He grins at her. Clearly he's reveling in how very much he does not look like the etiquette lesson type, finally having come through the mire of feeling outclassed and inadequate and stupid and found his footing on the promised shores of deliberate peasant confidence.

"All the etiquette greats drink wine straight from the jug, y'know. S' a known fact." With great familiarity and generosity, he holds it out to her. "D'you want some? 'Cos sharing and being open-handed, that's not precisely etiquette, but I'm willing to bend those rules a bit."

[tender]

Rather than try to parse out exactly what Matthias looks like (a walking reminder, is what) Derrica just smiles. Resists the urge to pat his cheek. Holds her hand out for the jug instead.

"It's polite where I'm from."

Conveniently, she's late of a sailing ship with mostly disreputable history. It turns out packs of pirates aren't entirely concerned with manners.

"But I'll be sure to remember how gracious you've been when I come into some wine of my own. Perhaps we can be very polite and you'll let me return your generosity?"

Though really, Derrica has some terrible urge to split the jug with him to keep him from drinking it all himself.

[inkindled]

"Sounds very fair and polite to me."

He gives the jug over easily, with a little uptick of his grin. Sharing wine is a good way to make friends and Matthias always, always wants to make friends. He can't help it. One off his biggest weaknesses.

Without the wine, he's got nothing to do with his hands. Hooks his thumbs into his belt, out of sheer need to be occupied, and rocks on his heels.

"Where's it you're from, anyways? Not the Free Marches. I know it 'cause we don't believe in that tosh."

[tender]

"You don't believe in politeness in the Free Marches?"

Mostly to give him a bit of a hard time; Derrica's sure there's some fashion of etiquette in the Free Marches, even if none of the Marchers she'd ever sailed with had let on. Hefting the jug in her hands, she considers whether or not swilling from it will land her with wine drenched down her front or not.

Wisdom says get a cup, so she turns towards the table with one eye kept on Matthias.

"I've been sailing for so long I don't think where I came from really matters anymore."

Except it does. It always does. Derrica carries Dairsmuid with her wherever she goes.

"Can I tell you I was a pirate without it scandalizing you?"

Was, still is. Who's to say? She's here now, so maybe pirate isn't so applicable anymore.

[inkindled]

He's very convincing and earnest in the way he shakes his head, first. No manners. No belief at all. Isn't it scandalizing, and so on.

But that earnestness evaporates as she makes her confession, and Matthias instead stares around at her. It would be more normal--just a stare, someone waiting for the other half of that tale--only he's got these great shining eyes, and his mouth has dropped open a little, and he probably looks like an idiot hayseed child, which he would hate, but he's hardly aware of it in the moment, because: a pirate. Like a real pirate.

"You're having me on," he decides, eventually. Trying to be wary. Hoping he's wrong. Hoping she is an actual pirate. "As in, an actual-- Maker's balls, what're you doing here, then, if that's what you came from? That's loads better'n-- I mean, s' more brilliant, at least--"

[tender]

There's a moment of hesitation. Should she be admitting that? It hadn't ever mattered before, but Derrica hadn't exactly stayed anywhere long enough for it to matter. Would it matter here? Would people trust her if they knew she'd been happily participating in high seas robbery for years before she landed here?

Looking at him hurts her heart a little. He's so sweetly eager. There had been so many like him at Dairsmuid, before—

"I wanted to help," she says finally, a little softer, choosing not to confirm or deny her earlier claims. "I thought I'd come here and find the Inquisition, but it seems like Riftwatch will do just as well."

Admittedly, Derrica's still a little baffled about what Riftwatch actually is.

"For a long time it seemed like I could just ignore what was happening, but you can't hide forever, I suppose. You have to fight for what's right, in the end."

Even if you were terrified of what being on dry land, in one spot, very close to templars, would turn out to be like.

[inkindled]

Nodding, Matthias voices his emphatic agreement: "Yeah--I think loads of people felt that way. Like they could wait it out. S'ppose you used to be able to, if the problem was small enough. But you can't wait out anything like this. Not really. Not with bloody great rifts in the sky, spitting demons everywhere--not when what happens with Corypheus is going to blacken anything around it if something's not done about it. Like the Circles, sort of. No one can play neutral. You've got to do."

He follows that little speech up by reaching for the wine again, so he can get another gulp of it--and then a second, straight away. Emboldened as much by the drink as by his own declaration and her apparent agreement, Matthias goes on. With perhaps more gushing than he ought to cop to, if he wants to be thought of as cool. Can't help it, not in the moment, because--

"Can't believe even pirates feel that way, though. 'Cause you're, you know. Out there. Doing whatever you like. Maker's balls--never thought I'd meet a pirate."

And an altruistic one as well. Like something out of a folk story. All right, perhaps he's had a bit too much wine--blessedly not enough to get him to articulate any of that aloud, so he's got that going for him--but still.

[tender]

In spite of herself, Derrica can feel herself flushing. It's a lot of praise. Or admiration. It's delivered warmly enough that she doesn't quite know how to take it in stride. Is this worthy of praise? The war had simply become urgent to the point where she couldn't turn her face from it anymore.

(It had taken her so long to screw up the courage to set foot on dry land. Is that worthy of praise? All those years of cowardice?)

"Some of us have different ideas about helping than others."

A nice way of saying some of her crew still didn't care and others thought it was ideal to turn a profit in. Surely Matthias doesn't need to know about this.

"Were you at a Circle when all this started?"

[sarcophage]

Derrica's being followed.

From a distance, mind—eyes only—and not for very long before the one who follows her, seeing a sustained ebb in conversation, slips into public view with a specific trajectory in mind.

He's just as thin as she might remember (still eats like a bird) but even in the depths of his depression he never looked quite so ill: pale as milk, visibly tired, buoyed up mostly by his tireless hatred of boredom—and now by raised spirits, in smaller proportion. But he's clean, dressed reasonably well, distinctly not dead, and all but sparkling in anticipation as he inserts himself with a poetic halt in her field of view. (Speaking of surprises.)

[tender]

For a moment, Derrica thinks she's hallucinated him. It's happened before, moments when she'd tipped out of the present and back into that last, terrible night when the templars had come to put them all to the sword. It's been years and she's seen no one. (It's been years since the last moment she'd seen him, stood over a screaming templar.) She reaches for his hands without thinking, as much to reassure herself that he's here as it is to satisfy the urge to draw close, to hug him very tightly.

Her eyes are wet.

"You're alive," is the first thing she blurts out. Unspoken: I thought you were dead like everyone else. Then, quieter, "I missed you."

Or, more truthfully: I grieved for you. She'd mourned Leander alongside everyone else, their instructors and the children she had grown up alongside and learned with, the villagers, the Seers, the life they had all been torn out of.

There's more she wants to say. The words catch in her throat, questions and relieved exclamations tangling together. Why do you look so ill? and Where have you been? and Have you seen anyone else from home? thrumming under her skin as she looks into his face.

[sarcophage]

"Come here."

It's low and warm, Leander looking almost as pleased to see Derrica as he feels pleased with himself for anticipating correctly her reaction. And as he says it, come here, he pulls her in by the hands to grant that unspoken wish (another good guess, he presumes) and enfold her properly—not very tightly, he must still take care with his arms, but tightly enough to matter. One hand cradling the back of her skull; a light brush of stubble, then three quick kisses to her cheek, the last one just a touch longer; all familiar in a familial way.

"I've missed you," a gentle lie. He's glad to find her now, pleased by the unlikeliness of their reunion, but with dry eyes: he never mourned the death he never saw, only wished he could have been there to see it. If. "I always wondered if you'd made it out."

[tender]

There's something shared: that unknown, the question of what fragments of their life had survived. Derrica had tried so hard not to dwell on it. She'd been too terrified to go back and ask the right kinds of questions, the ones that you use to start a search. She doesn't know how to look back.

Leander had put himself in her way. The soft kisses he puts on her cheek warm her through. The sense of them lingers like a talisman as she draws just slightly back to look at him properly but not enough to break the circle of his embrace.

"I almost didn't."

But hadn't it been the same for him? All the blood she'd spilled clawing her way to the sea, how could it have been any different? There had been so many templars. It had felt impossible to break free of them without cleaving their skulls in.

"Have you been hurt?"

Predictably the first question she settles on.

[sarcophage]

Impossible for some—irresistible for Leander. He was positioned to flee with the first of them, could have made it nearly unseen, and he turned back to kill because he wanted to, because how dare they, because he'd never had so simple an excuse until then.
Because the opportunity was there.
Because he could.

No sign of that black-eyed nightmare stands before Derrica now, none of it darkens the fondness in his voice,

"Comes with the job, darling. It's still early in my recovery, that's all—I'll be well again soon enough. You look marvellous, meanwhile. How long've you been with us?"

[tender]

"Only a day or so."

Long enough to be warned she'd have to learn manners, at least.

Her hand lifts to his cheek. If she'd been here when this happened, maybe she could have done something about it. She's healed men through worse. (Maybe? Whatever happened here might have been...) He's in one piece, if pale, so whoever tended to him likely did their best.

"How long have you...?"

Long enough to be injured in pursuit of this organization's goal, at least. But there's something bigger in the question. There's so much time to be accounted for since they'd last seen each other. She exhales hard, shakes her head.

"We have so much to catch up on."

[sarcophage]

They certainly did their best to keep him alive once the passion had burnt itself down to something more fragile. Guilt: his lucky escape hatch.

"We do."

A hand on her shoulder, thumb moving the fabric of her shirt. She still smells like her—feels different, now. If there's any suspense in their familiarity it's for the stories they have yet to trade, the safest of their secrets changing hands like cards. Will it be that way still?

"When can you get away?"

[tender]

Get away? She looks around the room, hand drifting from Leander's cheek to his neck. (Absently checking his pulse, as if he's still newly injured, still in need of immediate tending.) There are still people dancing. She had a partner, but she never got their name and she can't pick them out of the crowd. Her answer to Leander is a shrug.

"I don't think anyone's going to notice if I'm gone."

A beat of time passes before she smiles a little.

"I'm newly arrived. I hardly think anyone knows my name to complain if I am missed."

And she's done her part. She's had her feet stepped on, she's shared a bit of wine, and she has might have no stronger grasp of etiquette now than she did when she arrived, but she's done what's asked of her.

"Can you go?"

He's been here longer. If anyone's going to have prevailing obligations, it's Leander.

[sarcophage]

Fingers slide to throat, and another hand comes to meet them—casually, but promptly—and guides them instead to the more neutral territory of his shoulder. (His pulse is fine.) Her smile, too, is answered—though he hasn't really stopped since he announced himself. Not completely.

"I'm in the other group. Today, I'm only here to watch. So," separating enough to offer his arm, most gentlemanly, "why don't we take a walk? I'll show you my workspace, if you like."

[tender]

"Yes," simply, without hesitation. Maybe she should stay. But can dancing with a group of strangers hold a candle to Leander being delivered back to her? She'd thought he would have been killed. What he'd done to that templar, if anyone else had seen, they wouldn't have hesitated to put him to the sword. Derrica had assumed he'd been taken apart along with the Circle, razed to the ground as if he'd never been.

Her grip is tight on his arm as they walk. Where have you been pounds in her chest.

"Have you heard from anyone else?" is what she settles on, asking a question she knows is likely hopeless.