faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

"Well that's a shit analogy," she scoffs, trying very hard to keep from crying bitter, angry tears. It's not that she's mad at him, not really. She's mad at herself for trusting him. More aptly, she feels like a child who has just been slapped across the cheek by someone she thought would never hurt her. So she tries to focus on picking apart his justification to keep herself from wallowing.

"An arrow can't choose to do anything, it's the archer that calls the shots. You're not an arrow. You're not even a pawn. You made a choice and now you're trying to make it sound like you didn't have one."

"I did make a choice," he agrees. "A long time ago."

The memory crystal they were after is still on the floor, a few feet away, where she dropped it when he hit her. He retrieves it. Considers it in the firelight. Such a small thing—but he doesn't decide what is and isn't worth the trouble or cost. Someone wants it, someone will get it. That he might not have agreed to the contract, if he knew how he would feel now, doesn't matter at all.

"If you can just stay alive, Fauvette, I am sure Riftwatch will send someone after you."

That stings. His nickname for her, in this light, doesn’t quite have the charm and lustre it used to. Now it seems demeaning, or a mockery. She frowns and looks down at the rope around her wrists, both to assess the knots and to hide the tears that have managed to fall despite her efforts.

“Don’t call me that.”

He hesitates for a moment, considering not changing course, but doubling down, twisting the knife to kill any ambiguity of feeling, trying to draw out outrage and loathing to replace the misery. Sometimes that's easier. But he really doesn't know what will happen to her, after tonight, and if it's a quick death and a ditch—

Well. For his sake more than hers, perhaps, he doesn't want to be any crueler than he already is.

"All right," he says instead. "Athessa. We should have a few minutes. Is there anything you want me to tell someone for you?"

Tell who? She rarely leaves anything left unsaid, and other than Riftwatch, she has no-one. If anyone else were asking, she might have them leave Bastien a message, but she’s hardly going to give him a message to himself.

So she shakes her head, wanting to say no, or fuck you, or tell your mother what you did, but saying nothing, because she can feel her lip quavering and the tears are dripping off her nose and chin and trickling uncomfortably down her neck and she doesn’t want to add sound to the mix. She hates that she’s crying, she hates that he got the drop on her, she hates that she trusted him like a fucking idiot and it’s going to get her killed or enslaved.

And still somehow she doesn’t hate him.

It's just as well. He wouldn't have passed anything along anyway—too easy for her to send him back with messages that would clue someone in to something not being right, and the story he's planning to tell doesn't leave much time for last words. He only wanted to offer the comfort of thinking he might.

And instead she's crying.

He takes a deep breath. Doesn't ask her to stop, certainly, or tell her it will be all right. He sits in a chair of his own, off to her side, and continues to examine the crystal in silence while seconds slip by, until there are boots and voices in the hall beyond the door.

"Do not provoke them," he says at the sound, without looking up.

"Fuck," she swears under her breath, and with him safely out of her line of sight, raises her head in order to wipe her face on her sleeves as best she can. She swallows thickly and clears her throat as if that'll keep her voice steady. "You better not tell anyone I cried, Bas."

Maybe it's a silly priority to have, but she hates to be seen crying, hates knowing that people have seen her and are carrying that knowledge with them. That she isn't always cheerful, isn't always the cocky show-off or the plucky stoner she pretends to be. Not that she isn't a plucky stoner, of course, just... that she's also vulnerable, and cares an awful lot.

With her face mostly dry, despite some post-cry sniffling, she watches the door and waits for the odds to reveal themselves.

"Never," Bastien promises. Sincerely, this time, with a rush of earnestness, squeezed in before the door opens and three people file in from the hall. Their talk amongst themselves comes to a halt while they take stock of the situation. One of them—a woman, dressed as if for a hunt—steps closer to examine Athessa, while an older man with a mask and a woman carrying a staff stop in front of Bastien.

He doesn't move from his chair, while he hands over the crystal and answers a few stupid questions about the situation. Was there anyone else here? No. Does anyone else know? No. How long until they know there was a problem? When he goes back and says so. With them he's still and cold in a way he wasn't before, all signs of regret gone. All signs of anything gone, really.

"You couldn't get someone with an anchor?" the huntress standing over Athessa asks.

He shakes his head.

“He wasn’t able to, but I can.”

The words are out of her mouth before she truly registers that she’s speaking, her attention divided between the huntress who seems so disappointed in Bastien’s haul, and the amount of give in the wood of the chair beneath her. She isn’t struggling, per se, just flexing her ankles slightly to see if there’s a chance of breaking free if her gambit doesn’t pan out.

“You?” The huntress scoffs, and glances sidelong at Bastien. Surely his reputation is far better than Athessa’s, and she’s weighing the claim.

The ensuing pause stretches out for a few long moment—obviously she's expecting his opinion, but she shouldn't, and Bastien pretends to only slowly realize that she wants him to say something just to emphasize how stupid it is.

Then he shrugs.

The masked man takes a step toward him. Maybe it's meant to be threatening. That's funny. But the mage isn't funny, so Bastien doesn't acknowledge that advance, exactly, but he does explain: "No one is paying me for advice. Honestly, you could not afford it. Words are cheap. Blame is costly." Bordering on a bored sort of sing-song, emphasized by a hand gesture reminiscent of a conductor. "Leave me out of it."

There may be a follow-up conversation to that. The huntress looks like she'd like to have one. But not in front of the hostage, who she turns back to, glaring.

"How?"

Athessa inclines her head, all defiant confidence. The chair does have give, she can feel the effects of flexing her ankles beneath her thighs, where the legs of the chair meet the seat.

"By using him as bait." She says, not looking at Bastien but clearly referring to him. "He's too good at his job, he might actually be considered important to the District heads, and is definitely less likely to be able to survive on his own. Me? I'm Dalish. They'd expect me to find my own way back."

As she talks, she gestures with her hands, bound as they are. She does talk with her hands often, but this time it's specifically to put further strain on the wood her wrists are bound to. "If Bastien doesn't come back, they'd want to send someone to look for him right away. I'd volunteer to do it, and take one of my Rifter friends with me, in case we need their anchor for some added firepower."

"You want us to let you go," the huntress paraphrases, all skepticism, "and then you will voluntarily come back and betray one of your friends, instead of staying gone or explaining to someone what has happened."

It's so brazen that it's cheeky, and with everyone's attention on Athessa—but not enough attention to worry about her bindings, apparently—Bastien allows himself a little bit of a smile.

"Not for nothin'," She corrects with a scoff and a roll of her eyes. "Youll pay me double whatever you're paying him." That's incentive enough, isn't it?

If it shakes the foundation of the huntress' skepticism, there's no sign of it on her face. She does, however, look to her companions, which is all the distraction Athessa needs to take action.

The legs of the chair aren't quite loose enough for her to break them off herself, but surely the weight of a larger person would, right? So she tips back on two of the feet to get proper momentum, then pitches forward.

It's not a full somersault. It's barely half of one, but it serves its purpose.

Athessa and the chair crash into the huntress, knocking her legs back and pitching her torso forward so she lands with a CRACK on the weakened chair. And with that collision, the chair is broken and Athessa rolls out from under the larger woman. She hurls a broken chunk of chair towards the mage, not doing any significant damage but succeeding in knocking the staff out of their hands.

MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

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