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 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.”