bury it and rise above | closed

[hassaran]

WHO: Yseult & Darras
WHAT: Sometimes Riftwatch is a frustrating place to work
WHEN: Now?
WHERE: Scouting Office
NOTES: n/a

The office door is locked, but Darras has a key. Opening it draws cool fall air rushing past him from the windows thrown open at the other end of the room, fluttering curtains and rustling papers, tugging against the paperweights holding down three maps of Nevarra on the table, markers scattered on their sides, gathered into piles.

Undisturbed by the breeze is Yseult, her head ducked down low out of its path, ear pressed to the round door in a big metal box set in the center of the room. A dwarven-style safe by the looks of it and brand new, with neat gold-painted piping and POLLANDER & SONS SINCE 8:24 on the side. On top is a glass, nearly empty of wine.

Yseult doesn't look up, or even open her eyes, just holds up a hand with one finger extended.

Comments

[hassaran]

"It's a popular model in Tevinter," she says, still without looking up though her hand stills for a second on the dial. One of the dials; there are two, and two keyholes arranged beneath. "I'm sure we'll encounter it at some point."

She begins turning the dial again, very slowly, almost imperceptibly. But he doesn't have to wait in silence long this time (another good reason to learn to read) before she makes a disgusted noise under her breath and slams the heel of her palm against the door before pressing fingers into her temples and then above her eyes.

"I missed it," she explains, perhaps unnecessarily. She sounds frustrated, but not angry at him. "I'll have to start over."

[staysail]

Having grown bored enough leaning up against the wall, Darras has by now moved quietly across the room, to sit on the sofa. He and Rosana both look around at the smack of Yseult's hand against the side of the safe, a broad flat sound. Rosana's ears fold back against her head and her tail lashes back and forth, quickly.

"Before you start over," Darras says, reaching to chuck his cat behind the shell of her right ear. "D'you mind telling me exactly what it is you're doing? I see what you're doing. Maybe I mean why. And how, 'cos that looks a bit large to have hauled all the way up here for practice."

[hassaran]

"I had it delivered." She sounds a little irritated by the question.

Yseult scrapes fingers back through her hair and then wraps arms around her drawn-up knee. She exhales in a huff. "When I was training, if we got angry or upset, we'd have to sit and pick open a series of locks and couldn't leave the table until they were all open. It takes focus and calm."

She picks at a bit of lint on her knee and finally rolls her eyes and looks up at Darras and Rosana. "Things have gotten very frustrating," she admits, "I needed something to clear my head."

[staysail]

"Sounds like the exact thing to drive me mad."

Darras gives a kind of half-smile to her, quick, before his expression settles back into something more pensive. Now that he knows what he's looking at, he understand--or at least he understands the broad strokes. Looking at a face you know and seeing a tightness under the eye, you don't have to understand how muscles pull together to make that tightness. You just see it.

He scratches a little lower on Rosana's neck, and she tips her head up in appreciation, her eyes narrowing to slits before they close. Here's where Darras could say something about leaving, chucking it all and heading home. Let Riftwatch sort itself out, if it's Riftwatch that troubles her. Let her employers go hang, if they're the trouble.

Instead, he shifts to stand, abruptly, collecting Rosana off his lap and switching her to be carried in his arms. She bears it gracefully, startled before she settles back down. They go over to the wine pitcher together, which Darras picks up and fetches back, to refill Yseult's empty glass. He leaves the pitcher on the safe and takes the glass instead when he crouches down beside her, and holds it out.

"Tell me about it, then. If you like. What's the worst offense, the most frustrating? Start there."

[hassaran]

"It was good practice," Yseult replies. One shoulder shifts in the start of a shrug, and then pushes back, rolling the joint and flexing a hand. She cuts off when Darras gets up, folding herself up more neatly, legs woven together, hands knit in her lap, until he offers wine and she reaches out to accept.

It takes her a moment to answer, but it doesn't sound as if there's been any debate necessary about what is worst. "Flint caused the current situation in Nevarra," she says, looking down into the cup he's handed her. "The letters they're talking about were recovered during a mission some time ago. Flint and Sliver proposed giving them to the Van Markhams, and Thranduil and I said no. And now the Van Markhams have the letters. He betrayed our trust and ignored our orders and may have started a war."

[staysail]

Rosana wriggles out of Darras' arms and jumps lightly to the floor, to pad back to the sofa and reassume her spot. Darras lets her go, surprised enough by what Yseult lays before him in her response. He sinks back to sit on the floor proper as he turns this over in his mind.

"Blood and ashes," he says, eventually. The kind of oath when there's nothing divine to turn to for mercy or aid. "That's not frustrating. That's somewhere beyond frustrating. Finish that wine and I'll find you a rum instead. What's his excuse for having done this?"

[hassaran]

"I haven't yet confronted him," Yseult shakes her head, absently swirling the wine in her glass before she drinks.

"I've no proof, but I've no doubt it was him. If he admits it, likely he'll say he thought it was the best course of action, we were wrong to refuse him, so he did it. But he and Silver never gave a satisfying reason why they were so intent on the Van Markhams over the Pentaghasts. There must be more to it, but I'm not sure what."

[staysail]

"If I had to guess blind, I'd say it's to do with that island of theirs." Darras casts a glance toward the maps on Yseult's worktable. The north isn't familiar to him as the Waking Sea or Rialto Bay, or even the Amaranthine. "I've heard a little of it. Enough to know it's what they care about."

Nascere. The North Sea. What do any of them know about Captain Flint? Rumors and reputation, spilled out like shadows. It never came to Darras to press more on any of it because what he cares about is narrow and small, when the coins are down.

"I won't pretend to know too much of Flint, beyond what's muttered behind his back. If it were me, and someone told me I could get what I want," he starts, and then thinks, no, maybe better to not go into it too much. What Yseult won't want to hear: how quickly Darras would give up if it was a choice between her and Riftwatch. He sucks in a breath instead, lets it out in a quiet whistle. That will stand for what they both know to be true, without uncovering it.

A better question: "Will you be confronting him, then? With or without proof?"

[hassaran]

There is a sour twist to her mouth when he starts, and it lingers when he stops. But he does stop. It's not much, but it's enough to stay her tongue for the moment it takes to swallow back down that knowledge--that for all her complaint about these selfish single-minded people who surround and plague her, he's one too--and to focus instead on his question and the fact that he's asking it.

"I think I ought to," she says, lines between her brows to join those around her mouth. "In some fashion or another. The other three should know how willing he is to ignore our decisions and do what he pleases. And that he has some desire of his own he's willing to put before Riftwatch's mission. Likely you're right about the island, though I don't see how this helps him." She takes another sip of wine, "And without proof it's not something worth keeping for later use, its only value is to discredit him right now, on this subject."

[staysail]

"And then what? Vote him out? Push him into the bay and tell him to swim for it?"

He reaches for her glass so he can take a sip after she does. The wine is good, particular to Yseult's taste. He can tell. He's known her long enough. She doesn't have a long list of indulgences, or even preferences. Lumps it as well as anyone. There's only a few things that border on vice for her, and even those, she could do without. Adaptable, mutable, capable of anything.

"What sort of justice is Riftwatch going to impose?"

And because he is, in part, the same--selfish, devoted to his cause, which is sitting here quite close to him with a purpleish tint to her mouth--he's thinking of that island, still. What is it that was promised? There's got to be something. A thread that can be pulled.

[hassaran]

Yseult makes a noise in the back of her throat, a bitter little huff.

"None, would be my wager. We've scarcely punished a confessed traitor. And there are too many here like Flint who believe their personal goals are more important than anything else, no matter what consequences the rest of the world may suffer for it. Nothing will be done. And so I can't suggest anything, or else I'll seem weak and petty when it fails."

[staysail]

"Be much easier t' start marooning people." Darras hands the wine back to her with a kind of half-smile. This is a joke. "Or maroon yourself, if you like. They don't deserve you."

She won't like that, except perhaps as a joke, if she's in the mood for it. Perhaps she's not. Her assessment shades a little too close to what Darras actually is. Personal goals being rather small, but incorporating little of the world as a whole and focused more on, well, Yseult.

"'Course, I'd maroon with you out of protest. A great love story." But, back to the point at hand-- "I'd say you can't keep him on as is, but I s'ppose there's not much say in that, either. Even if there ought to be. Unless you think the others'd have him out of his position as this as well, without having to worry about failure? Who's it that votes these people in anymore, anyways."

[hassaran]

She doesn't mind it, at first. There's some telltale note of humor in the breath she exhales. It helps that right now, she agrees. Marooning Flint would be satisfying. These people here do not deserve her effort or her time. (Those Riftwatch is meant to aid are what keeps her, not those who are meant to be tools at her disposal in that work.)

But he keeps it up too long, enough that her lips are starting to purse when he pivots back to the point. She stops picking at a water-spot on her glass and tosses back the rest of the wine. "We do it. I don't know how the others will take it but I think it very unlikely they would vote to remove him. He's popular, in his way." There is a pause, one that hangs about her shoulders like an ill-fitting shirt she stretches against until a joint cracks.

"I liked him," she admits, disgust in the way her jaw works the words out. "It seemed he saw things as I do, at least when it comes to Riftwatch. I thought he shared my frustration with the pettiness and the refusal to put victory over Corypheus first above everything else. And then he goes out--." Her hand, extended, flicks sharply from the wrist and falls again. "I should have been more wary. I might have predicted this and stopped him."

[staysail]

Maybe Yseult's weakness is that she likes pirates. Not pirates, as a group. Individually. The thought occurs to Darras and wisely goes unsaid. She'd not like to hear it. Probably there's only a kernel of truth to it besides.

It's not in her to be tricked. Charm doesn't go far with her. Lies and half-truths go even shorter. He'd gotten away with his for so long by virtue of the fact that he hadn't known he was lying to her. Wouldn't seem to be the case here, so he discards that as well.

"When did he give the letters over? How long ago?"

[hassaran]

Yseult's brows draw together. "I'm not sure. Most likely not very long. A few weeks? Why?"

[staysail]

He shrugs, loosely.

"Means he knew what he was doing, all along. You can't predict it if he's concealing it from the start. You wouldn't know what you were looking for even if you knew t' look. But you're also sharper than you're giving yourself credit for. If Flint took you in by sharing your frustrations, must've shared them in earnest at some point in you knowing him. If he got hold of these letters and used them for his own purposes--there's more to it, then. What would be big enough to sway him to throw over Riftwatch's cause? That's where you ought to start."

[hassaran]

"Seeing what people are concealing is my job," Yseult replies dryly. The persistent line between her brows and the way she lifts her hand to press fingers along the ridge of her eye sockets suggests that his words aren't really helping, but she doesn't snap until the end, and then it's short sharp laugh, and that hand flung up, empty, and dropped with a slap on her thigh.

"What isn't big enough? Everyone here would throw over Riftwatch's cause for the slightest advantage for their personal cause. He had the nerve," and here she looks up, finger pointed as if she can sense Flint's location through the office wall, "To come to me in a rage because he thought I'd concealed the existence of Tevinter sources from him because his pet rifter revolutionary Kitty Jones lied to him. And then he does this, which is far worse, and expects us to just let him have his way."

[staysail]

As one of the selfish members of Riftwatch (if personal cause could be summarized by a single person, especially, one who he's sat next to now), Darras holds his tongue there. He'd throw over anyone or thing for Yseult. Not the thing she wants to hear. Certainly she'd not see it as some grand romantic gesture. He's slow, but he's worked that out. And it's beginning to take shape, like something glimpsed far off that you're now closer to. What matters to Yseult has to matter to him as well, even if it's just that she's the lens he sees it through. If it matters to her, then it matters to him.

She likely won't want to hear that either, this crude way of understanding the causes she'd champion. He follows her gesture instead, thinking this through, all the players in this game and how they move, and are moved.

"And what's his way look like, now?"

[hassaran]

"Supporting the Van Markhams in their coup," Yseult says with a shake of her head, "I don't know beyond that. He's made some deal with them, or thinks they'll suit his ends in some way."

She looks back at the safe for a moment, but concedes that she's not going to be continuing with that just now and instead pushes to her feet, pacing toward her desk. "I want him out, but it won't happen. And there's no one to replace him. I don't know if the others will even care. They could approve. They could be inspired to do the same!" She lifts a hand as if to gesture and drops it, turning to sit on the side of the desk, arms first crossed and then just as quickly uncrossed, hands pressed once again to her forehead. "This is why I work alone."

[staysail]

Darras' smile is one more of commiseration than anything else, with a bit of a wince. Throw it over, he might have suggested at another time, leave them to it, who needs it--if it's a bloody hassle, let them sort it--but he doesn't, this time, say it. Yseult has left her wine behind; Darras takes a sip of it, then shifts so he can sit with his back against the safe, facing Yseult where she's paced away.

"Find out what the others think," he says. "Or what they'll confess to thinking. There's no one better at reading people than you. Even if they say one thing, mean another--you'll have a hint at it. If you want Flint sorted, and you've got to work with the others, might as well know their measure."