faderift | open | back in the atmosphere

Entry tags:

open | back in the atmosphere

WHO: Lexie, Loki, Lea, Yseult, you
WHAT: complaining, spy things, catch-all for all your Lexie-based needs
WHEN: Presently, just after her return from Val Royeaux
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Hi again <3

Loki:
The carriage is unloaded, its driver paid, and its riders retired within the estate to trade their road-dusted travelwear for something eminently more comfortable. Tea is made and delivered to the sitting room followed closely by a robed Alexandrie finger-combing her released curls who disdains the other plush chair beside the small tea-bearing table in favor of wiggling herself into the space between the long droll stretch of her husband and the arm of his chair, tucking her head beneath his chin and sighing with gusty finality once settled against his side.

“Merde.”

Leander and Yseult:
It’s easier this way; all three of them, in Yseult’s office late on the evening of her return, Alexandrie still standing, uncorking a bottle of exceedingly fine wine retrieved from the family’s cellars in Val Royeaux to soften the frustration she brought back along with it for them—and to soften whatever local frustration she’s to be briefed on.

“Shall I begin?” is her query over the quiet pop of the cork releasing, “It will be a thing of depressing brevity.”

Wildcard!
[Come at her wherever; home or studio in Hightown, Gallows office, library, somewhere completely different!

Alternately, come at me, and we can figure something out if you like.

shaestorms or shae#7274 on discord]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But the heavy sound of richer fabric skirts, the delicate tick of the rather ostentatiously shaped glass jar of Heartland grape preserves placed down on the counter beside him, and the brief affectionate brush of a greeting kiss on Colin's cheek mark it, indeed, the lady of the house. She peers into the pot before withdrawing, her eyebrows arching upwards.

"Belle Andraste! What haunts your day, mon chou, that it produces not only paella but the recipe with the little peppers?"

He ducks away from her kiss, and immediately feels guilty. She saved his life. She has always been there for him. And yet.

"You put one of my friends in prison," he says flatly. Which isn't quite the point, really. Benedict put himself in prison. Colin purses his lips. "Cruelly."

Stung, her lips thin in response, expression flattening out quickly through hurt to irritation to neutrality. Her tone has all the lightness of a strung tripwire.

"Ah, do you mean my terrible cruelty in taking great personal risk to arrange for a suspected traitor and heir to a House that publicly supports our avowed enemy, who is proven to be dangerously susceptible to the manipulations of its Magister, who has, by his actions, no doubt cast further suspicion on my House, to be able to turn himself in for the leniency such an act might provide rather than be dragged before tribunal?"

Colin isn't buying this martyr act. He raises a hand briefly before continuing his work.

"I'm grateful you let him turn himself in. Now he has the chance to do his time and become a better person. It's sending Leander after him I take issue with. And you really can't defend that one, if you knew what he's like."

Granted, she had been coldly furious in equal portion to her sympathy after hearing Kitty's tale. The risk one of her own dearest friends had taken, the fallout she bore. The care Benedict refused to take, even knowing—or being stunningly ignorant of—who House Artemaeus served, even knowing—or being stunningly ignorant of—the precarious position the Tevinter members of Riftwatch occupied as the war continued to heat.

Further suspicion at her husband's feet she could not abide.

And so, on her mission of mercy: Leander.

If Alexandrie feels guilt for it, she stubbornly refuses to show it.

"Leander is second in command of our efforts to counter espionage—which this may well have been, not able to properly judge until I spoke with Lord Benedict if he was at the purposes of his mother—and able to pass unremarked where I cannot. He is disarmingly congenial and to my knowledge singularly above being bribed, manipulated, or otherwise turned aside by his—" prey "—targets."

She knows well enough.

"I should have gone myself where I might have been marked, unable to truly counter magic? I should have sent you, with flowers?"

"You should have sent me." There is heat in Colin's voice now. And, in some grand statement, he slams the spoon into the pan and leaves it, wiping his hands on his apron and turning to her. "Or you should have at least asked me, or anyone who knew him. You should have done at least as much research as you did when you helped me disgrace Lutair, who was a truly evil man, which Benedict is not. Benedict is lost, abused; and now, he is assaulted at your orders by a man not worthy of being in this organization. Or am I wrong? Is this organization more tolerant of a sadist than of a fool?"

There are a number of avenues she might snarl along. The equating of Benedict's capture to Lutair's disgracing, the intimation that the lost and abused cannot be eminently dangerous to themselves and others. But chiefly... it's that Colin had apparently listened to and trusted completely whatever story had come out of Benedict rather than thinking to ask her anything at all.

"What is it that Lord Benedict told you occurred."

Colin gives her a smarmy smile. Does she think he's choosing between them? Maybe he is. Maybe she believes it's going to be that easy.

"That Leander seduced him, then held him down and force-fed him magebane. Are you saying that's completely out of character for Leander, or that Benedict is some brilliant and experienced liar?"

"As I had it reported, Lord Benedict made the attempt to seduce him. Leander turned him down, and only later obliged to what amounted to quite tame intimacy sans sexuality upon judging that such a thing might cause him to feel safe enough to speak to his purposes and what had occurred during his absence. It did not, we certainly could not simply leave him to his own devices as he wished, and so Leander sedated him—which, regrettably but understandably, he fought—and called me, whereupon I brought him enough lyrium to dismiss the lingering effects."

She crosses her arms.

"You have the benefit of hindsight and a heart that so often cannot be but kind. I had to choose how to deal with what might have been threat. I must be hard so that others need not be, and yet still I requested that all possible gentle kindness be taken in it! Lord Benedict was taken off the street. Fed. Provided with a bath. Treated as a suspect to be interrogated rather than friend to be trusted, yes, but we are at war, and he both endangered an operative and disappeared for an extended period of time with a Magister loyal to Corypheus who is eminently able to manipulate him."

Edited 2019-10-29 23:27 (UTC)

"And in what way did we present ourselves as the better option, to him?" Colin spreads his hands. "He started out our prisoner. He never really was anything more than that. He was confronted by his family, and to this day, exactly what is it about us that earns better favor than those we stole him from? If you're willing to send in a cruel and sadistic man because, what? He cast suspicion on your house?

"What he did was wrong. He knew it then, and now he is willing to do whatever he must to pay for it. But you? You will never pay for what you did, or what worse might have come of it. You will argue for it, and justify it, as if you did what you had to do. But you never had to do it. Any cursory research would have shown you that. So why did you do it? Because you have something to prove, having married another Tevinter?"

Edited 2019-10-31 01:53 (UTC)

"He never was really any—" if Alexandrie had less than a decade's worth of hard-earned control over herself, she would sputter. "He held the position of Chamberlain, Colin! A position of visibility, honor, and standing that evidenced a great deal of trust placed in him! You name him so willing to atone, yet he meant to leave! He only took what small leniency and control I could offer him when he was sure I would not simply let him!"

What could possess Colin to turn of a sudden to such zealous support, such loyalty, making a repeated risk to their organization its holistic victim, ignoring or dismissing facts that should temper his anger or at least make pause in it. To turn on her in the home she'd invited him to make his own and make her a villain, believing everything—and seemingly wanting to believe everything—Benedict had apparently divulged.

Shock suddenly turns to suspicion, suspicion to scrutiny, and that to a kind of surety as she stoops at the only answer she can think of like a hawk.

"You slept with him."

The accusation makes the words fly right out of Colin's head. He aims a finger at her, produces no intelligible sounds, and tries to redirect himself back to what he was going to say. Maker, how the fuck does she figure these things out?

"You...changed the subject," he says at last. "My point is that you sent in your punisher first. And forgive me, but even the use of someone willfully cruel, no matter the reason, is inexcusable, Lexie. We're the good guys. Our methods matter, otherwise we might as well let Corypheus have us all because he's at least organized!"

There is silence for a moment, and her face changes to something softly sad.

"I am grateful for your naïveté, but cannot share it," Alexandrie murmurs, shifting her gaze to the meal Colin had been making. The relative simplicity of food, its smells, the physical creation of something warm and filling sitting next to the complications of war. "It is a kind thought, that all might be achieved by loving method, but I fear it unrealistic. We employ spies to lie and manipulate and steal, assassins to kill those in our way who cannot be otherwise removed, soldiers who maim other soldiers. Those we fight have families, dreams. I imagine most are not 'evil', although it makes it simpler to do what we must if we think it so. Some may simply have been misled by the thought of glory, but we mark them enemy, and we do what we judge best must be done to address the threat we believe they pose."

She sighs as she moves past him to take hold of the spoon still in the pot to take up the stirring he had left off when she'd interrupted him, and it is a tired sound. Quiet for a moment and then, gently: "I know what it is, to share softness with a man marked an enemy in potential. I should be as furious as you, should it come to pass he be treated with any roughness under suspicions, and no explanation nor offered excuse should ever satisfy me, for I have known him in wonder without mask or pretense and there is nothing he could do nor accusation that could be levied against him that could shake the bright clarity of the love I bear him.

"I think I cannot satisfy you either, cher. Will you still love me, if sometimes even my attempts at mercy end up unkind? It was not meant to be so, nor do I think Leander meant to be. It is only that we are harder than many, and often do not think things cruel that others do." She taps the spoon at the edge of the pot.

"But that matters little to the wounded. And so I am sorry."

The room goes from cold, to hot, to...nothing. The energy goes out of the fight when the other person refuses to engage. It leaves Colin adrift and confused. Contrary to his usual nature, he wanted this to hurt, a verbal equivalent to the fistfights he got into as a youth. He knows before she is halfway through her speech that this was always going to require a different action on his part, because she is right. That's what spies and assassins do. What truly disturbs him isn't only that Leander made Benedict take that tone and look that hurt, but that in another situation, it might be him doing it. It could have been his job, and he would have botched it because, really, he was never cut out for this kind of job.

He absorbs the rest of her words, shaking his head at some--particularly the bit where she clearly thinks he's in love with Benedict--but he has deflated so swiftly she could practically hear the air hissing out of him. A few heartbeats after she finishes, he walks forward to wrap his arms around her and press his cheek to her hair.

"I'll always love you," he says. "I just...I knew that look in his eyes. When he talked about it. Where he wasn't sure if he should even complain, because he thought he deserved it, or that I'd tell him he did. And I couldn't stop thinking what would have happened if Leander had been a different sort of man, someone you'd misjudged even a little. I...can't make people feel like that. I really would lose myself if I tried to be that. You were right all along. I can't stay in Scouting."

Edited 2019-11-13 18:04 (UTC)

Alexandrie's smile of relief is small and wistful as Colin moves to hold her, as she feels the familiar weight of his head resting against her own. She continues to stir for a moment, and then lets the spoon fall against the side of the pot, turning to embrace him in return. To kiss his cheek again, now that he won't dodge it, and then resume the gentle touch of their heads.

"I am glad to hear you say so, if not glad to have brought this realization in such a way." She leans back so she can look at him, hands moving to frame his face, tilt it so he will look at her as well. "We need you kind, mon cher. I need you kind. So that even if I do not choose it, I will never be let to forget that there is a choice."

"I need me to be kind," he says without hesitation. "I didn't quite realize that, till now. And I'm sorry. I don't mean to say you should...be me, or do anything I say. Knowing the kind thing isn't the same as knowing the right thing, which...that's it's own frightening thing, but your job is to look at the kind thing and the cruel thing and all the medium things and decide which is the right thing, and that's not something I can do. I went for years without any kindness in my life, so I want to...I don't know, I want to champion it. I don't want to be balanced. I want to be what I didn't have."

What fills her is something like pride, and something like compassion, and something like a fierce protectiveness, and almost before Alexandrie knows it she's raised on her toes and her arms are thrown around Colin's shoulders to hold him with a strength that would be surprising had he not been on the receiving end of her more vehement embraces before.

Years without kindness. So much unbalanced cruelty. He is deciding to be something she, too, did not have.

"I love you." Her chin tucked over his shoulder, head pressed against his such that the jewel of her earring is undoubtedly uncomfortable. "So very much."

If he were shorter than she, it would be his earring, so he doesn't care at all. Since her arms are above his, he does the only thing someone taller than the other hugger can do: he picks her up for a moment, gently swinging her feet over the floor, before placing her back down.

"I love you so very much," he answers in kind. "I'm sorry I acted out. You did the best you could, and he needed the push you gave him."

He straightens and places his hands on her shoulders, breaking the hug. He beams down at her for several seconds before his brow slightly furrows.

"Going to bed with him...it was just a bit of fun. It was a little after I tried to, you-know. He didn't know about it then. But he asked me about the Circle, and after we talked about it a little, he said he'd take me to Tevinter with him so I wouldn't have to go back. And I kissed him. You know how I always wanted to be rescued, well, he was being unrealistic, but he was offering. But now, it's all flipped on its head. I went to visit him the first night he came back, and I thought I was angry with him, but he thought he was going to be executed in the morning. So I stayed with him all night. And since then, all I've wanted is to save him. He's not like he was before, when he was so selfish and spoiled. He didn't ask me for anything, and he was so worried I'd get in trouble for being kind to him. And I know, in my head, I can't rescue him. Only he can do that, and it's good he knows it. But I want..."

His gaze drops to the floor.

"I'd do almost anything to help him. To see him start to wake up, and smile, and be alive again. To find the good in himself I keep catching glimpses of. I want whatever it is that's best for him. Is that wrong of me? Wanting that for a traitor?"

A girlish giggle is the response to her lifting, a warm look of gratitude to the apology. Alexandrie covers one of his hands on her shoulder with her own as he speaks, tilting her head to the side with a small conspiratorial smile at the question.

“If it is,” she says, “you should never hear so from me.” After all, Colin knows well enough what waking smile brightens her skies at morning, the reputation and observable action of the man whom it belongs to. Even unspoken, the thought of it changes her, softens every line with a reverie so closely held to her heart as to be nearly trespass to witness, even as she allows it to be seen.

She returns after a moment, turns her head to kiss the knuckles of Colin’s other hand lightly enough to avoid marking them. “Sometimes the finer things are difficult to find in oneself. Sometimes you must believe for someone until they are able, and there are precious few willing to do so for men as he is.” Whether ‘he’ is Benedict, or Loki, or both, she leaves to interpretation.

“There were precious few willing to allow for my gentler self. And look, see?” Alexandrie straightens, poses herself in the way that she knows to show her to best effect, “She is wed now, and for love. Friends, true ones, grace her home. Sometimes, when she smiles, it comes from her heart rather than her ambitions, and this all she owes, in part, to the brighter, kinder mirror of a man who looks fine in green tunics.”

Colin blushes at that. "I don't reflect anything that isn't already there," he says gently. "But I do think most good people only see the bad in themselves."

He pulls her into another hug, less tight but just as sincere. A few heartbeats pass.

"And it's not like that," he says suddenly, "between me and Benedict. It hardly could be. He doesn't even know who he is right now."

Inside the gentle hold as she is, he won't be able to see her 'of course, dear' smile.

Perfect innocence: "What is it like?"

But he knows her well enough to get that tone. And he trusts her, which is why he doesn't bluster and deny and backpedal insincerely. He does pull back long enough to give a subtle eyeroll, but that's as insulting as he gets.

"It's confusing," he admits, reaching to scratch the back of his neck. "For me, anyway. I don't know what it is for him. Though, he has bigger problems. Very big problems. And I have no idea why I'm, I'm feeling things about a man locked in a cell who very much put himself there and has every emotional problem imaginable, but I am, and I don't know what to do about it."

Alexandrie smiles impishly at the roll of Colin's eyes.

"'Why' is such a difficult question, mon chou. The notions of the heart often have so little to do with those of the head. But if you like," she says, retrieving the spoon from the pot and offering it to him with all the ceremony of a high court ball, "I shall tug at the ends of it and we might see what unfolds."

Blink. Blink blink blink.

He takes the spoon, looking puzzled.

"Tug at the ends? What do you mean?" He turns to start stirring the paella again, though the burnt bits have already ruined most of it.

“Often I find that such feelings are much like a knot in ones embroidery thread. Some strands, when pulled upon, only make it tighter. Some loosen it.” She watches the little burnt patches surface and recede as Colin stirs.

“Whatever you have no doubt been repeatedly asking yourself has done little to provide an answer you are at peace with, no? Perhaps we might come up with a better question.”

open | back in the atmosphere

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