Open | Life is just a troubled sea

[keenly]

WHO: Colin + You
WHAT: Open post for Haring
WHEN: Throughout the month
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: If you would like a starter, let me know.

I. Eyrie

No one here has yet been eaten by a griffon, but there's a first time for everything.

They're big. They're all so, so big, and they look hungry, and one of them is literally drooling. Fortunately, most of them are ignoring the normal-sized healer as he creeps about two feet into the eyrie, then stands there frozen. Is this a bad idea? This is a bad idea. Animals can smell fear, and these animals have sharp claws and sharp beaks and sharp talons. Thing is, these animals could mean life or death to a wounded ally. Moreover, he's learned a thing or two about himself from these bizarre dreams, and the most important of those things is that he's not as normal and boring as he has striven to be all his life. His instinct to hide from all things remotely heroic isn't as important as his curiosity, and when faced with both fear and wonder, he's going to try to act on the wonder.

That is, until one large, glossy, black griffon comes up behind him and nudges his elbow gently, at which point he chokes on a squawk and stumbles away from it. It follows. He bumps into another griffon, which makes an annoyed sound. Eventually he remembers to stand still. The black griffon approaches him and gives his shoulder a tiny headbutt. Colin turns positively grey. It gives his hand the gentlest of nips and Colin squeaks, backing away again.

II. Closed to Alexandrie

The doorman doesn't even have time to announce Lexie's guest before Colin is storming up to her. She has never seen him this angry, not even during their recent fight.

"You won't believe the conversation I just had," he snarls at the same time as the doorman stammers "A-apothecary Colin, my lady."

III. Obligatory workplace setting prompt

It's the apothecary. Maybe Colin is bottling potions and tinctures. Maybe he is sweeping. Maybe he is compounding various herbs. Maybe he is cooking lunch over the fireplace. Maybe he has run out of things to do and is sketching in a book. Come bother him.

IV. Wildcard

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie thins her lips in concentration while she follows the quick darting patter of Colin’s speech, her hand a still quiet presence in his as she waits to see if more will flood forth.

[keenly]

"You, and Byerly. When I needed justice in order to live, you rigged a trial for me, and I'm grateful. You did all the work, and all I did was stand in front of a blackhaller and await your pre-ordained verdict." He seems to run out of a thought then, or at least find that it isn't quite lining up with what's bothering him. It's close, but not quite the same road. His lips part, his gaze wanders, and after a moment, he breathes in.

"But manipulation, and vested interest. I can't help think that's how you treat an enemy, or at least a potential rival. But not a friend. And it's...I don't doubt Byerly really wants me to have the land. But I feel taunted. He says the land is mine, he waits for me to finish asking questions, and then he tells me the catch. If he'd just asked for my help, I'd have done it. But he gave me a glimpse of something I desperately need--hope--and then took it away. And I'm..."

He finds a chair and sits with a heavy sigh. "I have to look to other people to provide me with that. Hope. I can't make a place for myself in a world where I'm an apostate. And it's the most frightening thing of all, because I don't want to die. I don't want to go back to that place in my head. I know it's still there. And I know when I go there, I'm completely powerless. I need hope, and I can't make it for myself. So I see a little glimmer of it, a friend's spontaneous offer, and I think, 'I'm going to be all right.' And then it turns out he's just trying to get me to do something.

"He doesn't know what I did to myself, but it felt...exploitative. Because even though he doesn't know about that, he knows I don't have any choice but to do what he says because my life depends on it."

[coquettish_trees]

She listens, nodding slightly as he speaks, and when there is another pause she squeezes his hand and pulls at it lightly to guide him to sit with her in a pair of chairs nearby. A flicker of her eyes towards and brief arch of her brow at an attentive servant means there will be some tea joining them shortly, and then she returns her full attention to Colin, waiting to see if there is more forthcoming.

[keenly]

"I need him, I need this--" His eyes widen. "And...I'm afraid that if it doesn't work out, if we fail, or if his favored candidate isn't willing to fulfill Byerly's promises, I'm very much afraid I'll go back to that place. I'm afraid I'll try again."

That's the last of it. Finally, the root of the problem. This plot could be his salvation, or it could seal his fate. And that's chilling. He doesn't want to die. He never wanted to die. But he knows what he's capable of, and where his mind goes when he thinks death is his only form of protest.

[coquettish_trees]

“So,” she says finally, with another reassuring press of her hand in his, “with this news about the appointments made by Divine Beatrix in response to your successful venture, your worry of Chantry reprisal is renewed. You spoke with Byerly about this, and in response he offered you the feeling of safety in the form of land that you might disappear to when this has finished, but did not reveal until after you had truly seized upon this offer with all hope that it was land he had no true right to promise.”

Which of course he didn’t. Byerly is long disinherited, although Colin has little enough reason to know that. But such a promise, and the mention of a favored candidate... it is time, then, for Dragonmount to change hands?

“But,” she continues, “he believes it assured should the candidate he favors succeed the Bannorn, and he wishes your help in influencing the succession now that you have been given a compelling reason to care for the outcome. And this has made you feel tricked and used and treated as gamepiece rather than friend, and the bite of it made infinitely more cruel because the hope he offered and then made you feel was contingent upon your cooperation is the one you need most desperately, and a place in which you have been wounded terribly before.”

Here is the tea.

“Do I have the lay of it?”

[keenly]

Colin dumps a significant amount of sugar into his tea before drinking. “That’s the lay of it,” he confirms. The anger is wearing off and he has realized he’s far more upset with himself than with Byerly, who did not deserve such treatment. Byerly didn’t try to kill him back in Bloomingtide, and isn’t going to kill him if they fail this endeavor. He can’t say the same about himself.

[coquettish_trees]

“Which presses more harshly now,” she asks, forgoing both sugar and cream in her tea in order to keep her attention to Colin uninterrupted, “your fears for the future in which the Chantry seeks you out, or the surprise and hurt of being treated so by a man you consider to be a friend?”

[keenly]

"The fear." He doesn't even have to think about it. "Of myself, as much as the Chantry."

[coquettish_trees]

“Will the latter be assuaged at all by a reminder that this new offer of land is not, in fact, your only recourse?” She holds the cup in her hands, the tea warming her fingers. “That you have had two other offers of protection, from both Lord Artemaeus and myself?”

[keenly]

A soft sigh.

"Lexie. Tevinter might not exist by the end of the war. Even if it does, Benedict will be unwelcome to return there, and who knows what you and your husband will have left? You're both on the wrong side, where they're concerned."

[coquettish_trees]

“Surely you cannot think my lord husband and I have but one set of plans,” Alexandrie raises her eyebrows and sips at the tea, more for emphasis than anything. “Even should the very worst come to pass; the House destroyed, my family suddenly repudiate me, the both of us wanted as traitors by whichever side should prevail, we are not without the skills required to survive such a thing.

“If we are, by some absurd twist of fate, penniless on the road, you should still be welcome. But we shall not be subjected to that, and neither shall you be.” It’s said with confidence. After all, she and Loki have already, quietly, begun preparation for the years to follow.

[keenly]

"Outside of Tevinter, I would be a liability," Colin reminds her. "Honestly, I have no doubts in your abilities, Lexie, but you would harbor two mages."

His gaze drops. "Although the Chantry isn't as good at catching mages as they told us, I guess."

[coquettish_trees]

“The Bannorn of Dragonmount is also outside Tevinter, mon cher,” she reminds gently. “There is, and has never been, anything truly and perfectly safe in this world. Not for any of us, although I grant it worse for mages in the South. Even so, no matter how secure and sure something may seem, there is always a set of ‘if’s and ‘but’s that strung together might topple it. This is why we must learn to make our own hope. So that, even knowing this, we still move forward, and believe that even with one hundred ‘if’s that go wrong, there is one that can be found that goes right, and that we will find it.” She puts down the cup to offer her hands to him again.

“But as you cannot yet produce hope for yourself, you may borrow my surety.” She straightens in her seat and summons all her formidable stubborn world-breaking will for him to see.

“Whatever transpires, you have friends. And as long as even one of us draws breath, you are not, and will not, be alone.”

[keenly]

He smiles, mostly in amusement at first, but her confidence is hard to deny. Once he drains the rest of his tea, he takes her hands again, both of hers in both of his.

"The Templar who brought me into the Circle said I'd have a lot of people looking out for me. I got there, and my arrival must have broken everything, because before I left, I saw the Templars shutting doors in my face, then actively harming me while the senior enchanters thought I was the one to be scared of. Trusting is hard for me. It's not that I don't want to. To the contrary, I want it more than anything. I just always expect people to have more important things. Unless they have...a vested interest."

He glances at her with a little smile at his own hypocrisy.

"Did I ever tell you about Audra?"

[coquettish_trees]

She answers the small smile with one of her own, but then—

Audra.

The shuffle of the dead soldiers that guarded their bedraggled train, their eerie silent watch. The woman who had called the small spirits that pulled their strings.

It has been long enough, but even with edges dulled by time the desolate horror of Minrathous and the long march that followed shudders briefly in the hands Colin holds, surfaces as a shadow flitting through her eyes.

“The necromancer? No, cher,” Alexandrie says, as calmly as she might have, had the memory not sparked, “you did not.”

[keenly]

He feels her freeze. He sees the glint in her eyes. Something triggered, and he has no idea what. Audra is as benign a soul as he has known, which was part of the problem. So kind, then so far away. Colin bobs his head.

"After Uldred's whole rebellion-thing, I was in a pretty bad state. She sort of took me under her wing. She protected me. She gave me the first family I'd had since I left my real family.

"Then she found out...something about her birth family, and I can't remember what. But she always protected me. She was granted a transfer to another Circle, and it was after that that Lutair came after me."

[coquettish_trees]

“Because he saw your protector had left,” she murmurs, folding her thoughts of the past beneath her empathy for him. “Small wonder you are worried about such things now.

“It is not the same, of course, but I felt similarly when I first joined my peers at court. Geneviéve did not come with me, she went to begin her training to follow her dream of becoming a Chevalier.” Pride here, for all that had followed her twin’s ardent decision, her prestigious position today, but a long held wistfulness also; for all that Alexandrie doesn’t speak often of her far-away half, the absence of the grounding and wholeness of Evie’s presence is felt always, a missing corner of her heart.

“For the first time, I was without her. She was so much of my strength then, so much of my armor that I had not learned to have my own. I had not needed to.” Alexandrie shakes her head, remembering. “And I had, already, so many looking for a chance to step upon the back of a fallen woman to reach a little higher.”

[keenly]

"So I guess it's not just something that happens with people who aren't your blood." Oddly, that makes him feel slightly better. It's about someone's determination to stick with you, as well as luck, probably. Lexie has both. "I just keep thinking, there's a reason everyone left me back then. I'm not worth following through on. I don't...stick, in peoples' lives. Not that people don't like me. They just don't like me enough to keep me, or I wouldn't have wound up so alone."

[coquettish_trees]

“I cannot truly tell you the ‘why’ of anyone save myself,” Alexandrie says, “nor make my surpassingly clever guesses without knowing more, but—” again, a little squeeze for his hands.

“Where you found yourself then is not where you find yourself now, no? Do you still feel so alone?”

[keenly]

"No." Sometimes he feels alone, in darker moments, but there's no mistaking now for then. "Well, unless it's a really, really bad day. But I think that's mostly my habits. Once I arrive home, the staff has usually gone for the day and I never think to invite anyone over. I don't have the least idea how to do anything social, most of the time. Maybe I should, I don't know, have a dinner party for close friends of mine. Try creating new habits."

[coquettish_trees]

“A fine idea,” she approves, “If you like, we might have a standing time for tea, or lunch. We might even go to the theatre sometime, should you wish such a thing.” It occurs to her she doesn’t actually know whether or not he would. Ah well, no time like the present to find out.

“But! Although I know myself to be a brilliant and immensely enjoyable companion, I should hardly wish to monopolize your time.”

[keenly]

"I like that idea," Colin says with a smile. It's a relief for her to suggest these things. "I've never been to the theatre. I've a feeling I'd like it."

His thumb runs over her knuckles affectionately before he releases her hands and sits back in his chair with a sigh.

"Now I have to make a cake."

[coquettish_trees]

“Fill it with bourbon,” Alexandrie suggests, her lips pursing slightly in a little mischievous smile before she lifts her tea again.

[keenly]

A small chuckle. "I was thinking rum. Rum spice. Something nice and dense. And I'll need to make marzipan. I like how you know exactly what it's for without being told."

[coquettish_trees]

She lifts a shoulder and sips her tea innocently through the little smile. “Baking only makes you sigh when it is a peace offering, and unless I am much mistaken there is only one of those that might needs be made.”