[closed]

[doneisdone]

WHO: Teren, Anders, Alistair, any other Wardens who want to be in the office
WHAT: everyone is extremely mean and cruel to their loving mother for no reason
WHEN: before Building Bridges
WHERE: Warden office
NOTES: all in reference to this catastrophe

The assignment has been given, preparations are being made, and Teren is in the Warden office slogging her way through some final arrangements and paperwork (she's a slow reader and writer, it's no secret) before she and the others depart for the Deep Roads.
Her feet crossed on the desk, she's reading over the briefing one last time as she takes the occasional swig from her favorite flask, seeming to be in somewhat neutral spirits since accepting her own leadership despite Alistair's return.
Inessa is, of course, in charge of making sure nobody dies in her and Barty's absence.

Comments

[doneisdone]

"Mm," Teren grunts when Anders bursts in and starts talking, unsubtly raising the missive to cover her face and block him from view. Sometimes, it's her only defense.

His final question yields a lowering of the parchment long enough for a withering glare, and then the raising of it again.

She's not hiding, YOU'RE hiding

[justice_is_blond]

Wow. Rude. Also not wow because it's not all that unexpected. Anders flops down into a chair.

"You're not allowed to die. For the record. And it's a very fair question, considering last time. So is the talk about stabbing, considering... all of the times." He puts his legs over an arm of the chair, getting completely relaxed as if to say she can't glare him out of the room.

[byblow]

“The gentleman from wherever raises a good point,” Alistair says, helpfully, from where he’s half-absorbed in an entirely unrelated report in the office’s corner. “About the stabbing. Because—point. Stab.”

Get it?

[doneisdone]

A scowl accompanies Teren's glance at Alistair from behind the missive, and she lowers it again, directing her glare at Anders. "You're both bloody fired," she decides, "...and I'll die if I want to."

She seems to realize after the fact that that's a weird stance to take, but Teren without a pointless cause is a cactus without sun. "...but I don't," she decides, glaring into the missive again, "so I won't."

[justice_is_blond]

Alistair gets an approval grin from over Anders' knees. He got it. He approves.

"You can't fire me. There's no one to offload Tainted goods on around here and that's what I am so you're stuck with me. We're Joined together. Forever." Until death. Which isn't happening on his watch. "Besides. You'd miss me from beyond the grave."

[gentlecountry]

"You've got a commanding mastery of death, Miss Teren, and that's what I appreciates about you," Barty interjects from his own desk where he is peaceably assembling a small battalion of small, neatly paper-wrapped packages tied with brown string, each carefully labeled. If he has a worry in the world, it's not apparent; the stack is taller than he is, "Posthumous Andersing notwithstanding."

He stops a moment, and hums as if pleased. Huh! New verb, that.

[doneisdone]

Teren mumbles something along the lines of setting him on fire, but her grousing is interrupted by Barty chiming in. He, now, also gets a Look.
"Is that what you appreciate," she says flatly, and then to Anders, with a disgust that is at least somewhat performative, "are you going to sit there wasting my time all day, boy? Got something you want to say, have out with it."

[justice_is_blond]

Andersing. Used as a verb to mean... making someone miss him? It's odd, but he'll take it. He's heard his name used in far less flattering ways.

"Yes. As in, yes. I'll sit here wasting your time all day. I've no patients in the infirmary and it's my day off at the Clinic, so I'm going to sit here wondering if you're actually going after the Architect. Because I did ask already. It's out there. But I can ask again. Are you actually going after the Architect this time? And what on Thedas is Barty stacking over there? Also, to not leave Alistair out, Alistair, how many Wardens do you think we can fit in here?"

He's not used to having days fully off. It's nice. For him, at least.

[byblow]

"That depends on whether or not we can stack them," Alistair says, helpfully answering the question posed to him, setting a good example for Teren probably, thanks, "and if we can, it depends on how many are dwarves."

[doneisdone]

"Yes we'll be actually going after the fuckin' Architect, Anders, why don't you ask me a little bloody louder," barks Teren, spreading her clawed hands as if in appeal to the Maker, raising her voice somewhat to be heard over the multiple conversations. "If this nattering lot isn't the death of me first."

To punctuate her annoyance, she takes another swig from her flask and focuses harder on the missive. She has read the same sentence three times, and homicide levels are rising.

[gentlecountry]

Silence greets that. Very briefly. Barty finishes tying the most recent knot and pushes the current stack of brown-paper packages into line with the others, a neat row all together. He does not appear to notice Teren's outburst at all, deliberately nonchalant.

"Casseroles," This to Anders, and then to Alistair; "Forty-fives, if yous didn't mind suffocating the ones on the bottom or risk leaking a few outs the windows."

He has no idea if this is accurate, but the specificity might be enough of an answer to sort out the joke of the question if not its purpose.

"And Anders, I thinks somehow you'll finds that Dwarfs have been fighting darkspawns off for a long time before we had fancy magic healers. We're not going to get perforated to death at a simple choring, and if'n you really wants to be a help, you can make sure these gets to who needs 'em," He indicated the nearest, most recent stack for reference; "This bits for you and Miss Inessa, as a holdsover while you're on duty. Ambrosia pudding on the bottoms, minds you save it for last so as it can age proper."

[justice_is_blond]

"It's all right, Teren. People of a certain age lose some of their hearing and there's no shame in it." She gives a care about him, and he knows that for sure now. She's doomed. "If I have to ask questions a few times at a few different volumes, I'm all right with that. I'm not all right with suffocating people, though. So let's say we can stack about... 37?"

Should he say something about Teren's penchant for stabbing people? Let Barty in on that? Except he doesn't think Teren ever really does it on purpose and he doesn't want her to feel like he's holding a grudge. Well. She doesn't stab allies on purpose. The enemy-stabbing tends to be deliberate.

"Is the pudding alcoholic?" he decides on. "And why isn't it for Alistair? He's right there. He might like pudding. I think everyone likes pudding."

[doneisdone]

Though a curl of her lip and roll of her eyes is all the reaction Teren gives to the further needling before she focuses on her reading, something is said that yields a sharp "Anders." and a cutting glare.

Perhaps he hadn't meant it that way, that the pudding with alcohol should be for Alistair, but it's a bit close for comfort.

[justice_is_blond]

He blinks, and there's the briefest shake of his head as he catches on.

"Everyone wants pudding," Anders reiterates. "But I've never heard of a pudding that has to be aged before."

[gentlecountry]

"Alistair has said he is waiting to prank me on the order of an voluntary initiation hazing ritual, and I am withholding reward until I can evaluates his performance," He replies, blissfully ignorant of the context, and likely to remain so, "No performance, no pudding. That's why they says, they says the proof is in the pudding."

[doneisdone]

A knife thunks into the wall just above Barty's head.

Teren settles back and buries her face behind the missive again.

[gentlecountry]

Barty glances up in alarum, turns to look at the knife, then back at Teren. Then he cocks his head, thoughtful, and nods.

"Yeah, I deserveds that."

[byblow]

Meanwhile, Alistair is doing everyone—especially himself—the favor of pretending not to notice Teren fussing and Anders understanding the fussing, because if he has to pause this conversation to explain that he doesn't need to be babysat over alcoholic pudding it will just draw attention to the fact that someone is trying, and, despite how he behaves ninety percent of the time, he does sometimes know how to not make things worse for himself.

"Ha," he says instead, a single syllable imbued with sarcasm, because Barty is his enemy unto the death. Then, more cheerfully: "Lucy," one of the kitchen staff, "will make pudding if I ask her to."

[justice_is_blond]

"Mm," he says thoughtfully, glancing between the knife and Teren as well. "And what sort of performance are we talking about? Because I can vouch for him giving an excellent one."

On a tightrope, at least.

"Or are you waiting to be pranked? Maybe pranking involves him mysteriously getting some of the pudding."

[gentlecountry]

"If Alistair wants to forfeits his own self-imposed grudge match via cheating whilst I am in the Deep Roads, I will neither knows about it, nor cares, as I will be occupieds with actual Wardens work and be beyonds the bounds of this sorts of thing," Barty points out, dipping a pen in preparation for writing the last label on that last paper package, "I can't even honestly says I'll be mads abouts it. Ambrosia puddings is worth a bits of rules-breaking, most times."

...And curl the e....and done. There. Here, Anders, this one is for you.

"I will however, be disappointeds in him, if that is the case. He seems like a good sort, and I have a great faith in his forbearance and moral uprightness."

[justice_is_blond]

He sits up, bending himself about as much as he possibly can be bent, to take the package and look it over.

"His forbearance and moral uprightness, of course. But did you take me into account? Everyone knows I have no forbearance or moral uprightness. I'm Anders. Rule-breaking," a short beat, "rule-breakings, might as well be my middle name."

[gentlecountry]

"And a very finelys-tuned sense of fairness," Barty notes, blandly, because the stakes are literally pudding and that's a very relaxing level of direness, "Such as that might lets a man achieve his inevitable victory pudding on his own terms, free and clear. That's what I appreciates about you, Anders."

[doneisdone]

The continuing chatter is not helping with Teren's focus, and she seems to bury herself further behind the missive. This is hell. She is in hell.

[justice_is_blond]

"Oh, really," he says lightly. "Is that what you appreciate about me? Something you don't even know if I have or not?"

This is fun. He is in funtown.

[byblow]

Actual Wardens work, the man says, and enemies unto the death becomes enemies unto the end of the afterlife, if ever there is such a thing, but Alistair fairly well ignores him in favor of (a) the report he's reading and (b) folding that report into something akin to a paper arrow to toss toward Teren. It lands gently on her desk.

"You'll want to read that one," he says, "boss."

[gentlecountry]

"You haves it," Barty says, completely unbothered, and with total confidence, "Just as Alistair here has that, and Miss Teren's got an ironclad patience givens how we're all chattering up her nice quiets office hour and we aint' nones of us suffered worse than a threat. Can'ts get this kinds of patience in Antiva, don't mind tellings you so. You get poisons in your tea if you try."

[doneisdone]

The muscles around her mouth twitching into something like a sneer, Teren levels Alistair with a death glare and swipes up the new paper with her fingers like talons. She unfolds it, and now disappears behind that one. Sometimes, it's best to just not give them what they want: which is to say, attention.