closed | I'm never very good at getting what I need the most

[keenly]

WHO: Bastien and Colin
WHAT: Addressing a small problem with going rogue
WHEN: Current
WHERE: The apothecary in the Gallows
NOTES: tw: discussion of templar abuses.

On their departure from Denerim, Colin had assumed Alexandrie and Byerly had done impeccable work covering their tracks. And they did. They were perfect. But not everything was in their control.

Ser Lutair had been sent away with Ser Albert to face the Templars for sentencing, desertion and rape at the forefront of his charges. It left Colin waiting anxiously, not knowing whether this man who had tormented him would get more than a slap on the wrist. The Templars might simply tell him to get back in line. Ser Albert had made assurances, but it was never going to be Ser Albert's decision. Colin has been awaiting his letter ever since.

Business is slower during the summer, so the only person in the apothecary when Bastien enters is Colin. He looks up at him from the bundle of herbs he is tying together.

"Come in. What can I do for you?"

Comments

[keenly]

Colin freezes. Did something go wrong? Was there a leak? How could they have known where to find him? Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe it's unrelated. Maybe Ser Albert gave him up somehow. He swallows, stomach fluttering in fear.

"Yes?" he barely dares to ask.

[cozen]

Bastien looks up from the bottle in his hands then, properly, and smiles, just a little. The degree of smiling that means something is to serious to make light of, but not so serious as to warrant a panic.

"From the Chantry," he explains, "wanting to confirm whether the Colin of Kinloch Hold involved in some legal matter in Ferelden was the same Colin of Kinloch Hold employed here."

[keenly]

How in the Void did—

Albert. He must have mentioned a name, and the Chantry made the connection by itself. Colin is accustomed to being faceless. This may have ruined that.

“It’s a common name,” he says with a straight face. “And I have no quarrel with Ferelden.”

He rocks onto his heels briefly, thinking. He is a good liar, but Bastien is a professional one, and Colin doesn’t want to insult him. He’s not the enemy.

“You know already, don’t you? If you’re asking.”

[cozen]

The official line remains that he's a printer, from Val Royeaux, here to muddle along with assisting in diplomatic efforts as best he's able. But Colin has been around for the unofficial line frequently enough that Bastien doesn't want to insult him, either, with fake stumbling.

"I try to," he says—pleasantly. The pleasantness isn't fake. "You can send me searching for proof, if you like, but if you do, and I find it, I will spend the rest of my life looking for opportunities to dip that hair of yours in ink."

He's teasing. That's his teasing voice.

[keenly]

Colin braced himself for a real threat and heard...a tease. His chest compresses in a soft laugh, and he smiles despite himself, pulling a lock forward and peering at the dark tips.

"If you find an ink that would show up on this, you're welcome to it." As he pushes the hair back behind one ear, the smile doesn't completely fade. Bastien has asked him nicely. Gently, in fact. He's not an arm of the Chantry. At this moment, he's Colin's best hope of dealing with this quietly and without earning himself a lot of trouble when the Circles are restored.

"It was me," he sighs. "What do they want?"

[cozen]

"To know if we knew, if we arranged it, if we intend make a habit of it," Bastien lists off, returning to examining herbs to keep his hands busy. "I think most of all to let us know that they are paying attention, in case we have forgotten that they employ as many spies as any sovereign."

He'll never forget. That's where one of his scars came from—the one he tells people he got from splashing boiling water on himself out of clumsiness.

"What was your letter about?"

[keenly]

"Letting me know the results." It's not surprising to learn the Chantry is displeased, but it still stings. To prove he's telling the truth, Colin offers the folded letter to Bastien. It's vague, but not coded--Albert is too much of a meathead for that.

"So you don't feel too sorry for the Chantry, the Templar order got to decide what would happen. How unfair."

[cozen]

"Ah, la pauvre chantrerie," Bastien says, pantomime hand to his chest, while he takes the proffered letter. While he scans it, he adds, "They have now perhaps only enough gold to feed the entirety of Thedas for one year instead of two," mouth curved in exaggerated sympathy for their plight, until he reaches the end of the letter and wrinkles his nose a bit instead.

He's an Andrastian himself. Usually. More so when he thinks he might die in the immediate future. But Templars are so boring about it.

The letter, he holds back out—serious, now.

"Do you think he is still dangerous?"

[keenly]

"Yes." Colin's look becomes a little less shuttered, or rather, like the house behind the shutters might be on fire. His breath deepens so he can keep it from quickening and showing weakness. Bastien is kind and good at putting him at ease, but this goes too deep for that to mean so much now. He takes the letter without looking at Bastien. "Even if he never finds me, he'll find someone to take it out on. Probably already has. Hopefully they stab him five or six times first. In the throat."

That was a longtime fantasy of Colin's, and he is not a man who tends to wish harm on others.

[cozen]

Messy, Bastien does not say, or, once is enough. It isn’t the time, and he doesn’t do that anymore—never enjoyed it when he did—and is perfectly content with no one thinking him capable of it.

“Lutair,” he echoes, from the letter. “If you would describe him, we could make sure the watch knows to have an eye out.”

[keenly]

Colin looks warily at Bastien.

"Blond. Tall and broad, paunchy these days. Lots of pale freckles and blue eyes. But...how did you know he might be dangerous, and why are you taking my word for all of this?"

Does Bastien know something from the Chantry's letter? Did they mention the specific charges Lutair was found guilty of? If not, he is placing a lot of trust in Colin without seeking many details. They've worked together, yes, but they don't know each other that well. For all Bastien knows, Colin sought to take down a Templar for political purposes, or petty revenge. Right?

[cozen]

“I am not taking out a hit on the man,” Bastien says, like someone who wouldn’t even know how to go about doing that, what an outlandish idea. “But if you have angered someone who might coming looking for you, that is what the watch is for.”

And, like, Venatori. Mostly Venatori. But also this.

“The letter noted the charges,” he adds, because he isn’t trying to evade the question.

[keenly]

They'd talked about this, he and Alexandrie and Anders and Byerly. It was never unexpected, for these things to be made public, or at least more public. It still causes a heat to rise to Colin's face, and he tries to take slow, deep breaths. It's good, he reminds himself. It's good for other people to learn about this, and have hope that Templars can face justice after all. Focus on the issue at hand.

"I went to Ferelden," he explains faintly, "because if I sought justice through the Chantry, I wouldn't get it. I went through legitimate channels because I wanted people to know mages can have justice in this world, and because Lutair always...he always made threats so I wouldn't tell anyone, so I thought, he must be really afraid of people learning what he did. What he does. No Riftwatch resources were used for any of it. No one ordered me to do it. This had nothing to do with our organization."

[cozen]

"Not the worst plan I have ever heard," Bastien says, doing Colin the favor of not watching him talk.

Not the worst, meaning it was a fine plan, to the extent any plan that hinges on or hopes to end with justice from a government seems a bit far-fetched. He's no mage, of course, but he is an Orlesian commoner who's encountered a chevalier or seven. Still, the details seem solid enough despite the idealism. And he isn't here to critique anyone's personal quest, anyway.

He glances up from the bottle he's turning in his hands to idly watch the grains inside it tumble over one another. "I do not think you are in any trouble, Colin. But are you all right?"

[keenly]

Colin hasn't been all right a day in his life since he was eleven years old. Whenever Bastien glances at him next, Colin shakes his head, arms folded against his chest as he leans back against a table.

"I feel like I should be."

It dawns on him why he needs this--needed Bastien to ask him this. He's not all right, and his friends deserve for him to be all right. After everything they've been through with him, after all the carrying they've done and the promises he's made that after this he will be all right, they deserve not to have to do any of that anymore. He swallows.

"I, um. Don't tell anyone, but, I tried to kill myself. Back in...Bloomingtide, when the new Divine was declared or whatever. My best friend found me, people saved my life and then sat with me for days so I wouldn't be alone. All the knives were taken out of the house, it was a mess. And I told them I thought I might be able to live in a world where I could have justice. So...I came up with this."

He's not going to let on that anyone else was involved, and if Bastien guesses someone else was, there is no way he will say who. This was his responsibility, regardless.

"And now, he's been found guilty. He's been punished, technically. His status in Ferelden is ruined and he is no longer welcome with the Templars, either. I've won. I should be all right. My friends deserve for me to be all right, after everything they've been through with me. And I'm not."

[cozen]

Bastien inclines his head very slightly to one side. It feels like—to draw on experience—approaching a vault with seventeen pieces of specialized equipment and a nine-step plan but instead finding it unlocked and unguarded. Only it’s filled with misery instead of money. And slightly less likely to be an intentional ploy to draw him inside and lock the door behind him.

It’s also, you know.

Sad.

Felise did her best to squeeze it out of him, like water from a cloth, or life from a bird’s neck, but by then she was feeble, and now beneath Bastien perfectly arranged expression of reserved but concerned sympathy, there’s a swell of the genuine article.

“I am not an expert,” he says after a moment, because he isn’t. He can say what people want to hear; saying what they need to hear is trickier business. “But I have never known any deep feeling to evaporate all at once. It takes time, and work, and even then sometimes you can only hope for it to fade instead of vanish.”