open.

[byblow]

WHO: Alistair or Bastien or Kostos & Other People
WHAT: A Rather Blustery Day. Or rainy. Or both.
WHEN: Mid to late Drakonis
WHERE: Kirkwall & Surroundings
NOTES: Feel free to wildcard me instead, or hit me up if you would like something different and specific.

i. alistair in the project office with the dog statues

Alistair hasn't yet made good on his threats to decorate the Project Sashamiri office with dog paraphernalia. But he has brought in a half-dozen little wooden mabari carvings, reminiscent of the statues littered across Ferelden, to hide in drawers or behind frequently-used books or on top of the door frame, to see if it's possible to make Enchanter Julius crack.

It's possible to catch him at it, standing up on his toes to try to put one on top of a shelf where it can stare at Julius while he works. Equally likely to catch him frowning at his desk, though, holding a dagger to candle light and turning it this way and that, or with his chin down on his folded arms to glare at a book that he definitely can't read at that angle.

Regardless, someone will only have to pause in the doorway for him to beckon them closer and say, "You. Come here."

ii. alistair in the mountains with the mud bath

"You'd think the darkspawn would mind the rain," Alistair says, squelching through mud. "Wouldn't you? They spend so much time underground, they should be like the dwarves. Scary sky water, oooh."

It hasn't stopped raining since they left the Gallows--so several hours ago, at this point. But waiting for better weather is only a viable option when better weather seems like it might happen at some point. And the darkspawn, who do not mind the rain, are apparently sneaking in and out of a crevice newly opened by a mudslide in the Vinmarks.

So here they are. Alistair and whoever. He's been dealing with the rain pretty well, himself, despite what it's doing to his hair. But, maybe as comeuppance for teasing dwarvenkind, that's the moment where he loses his footing on a slick incline and splats flat on his back in the mud.

iii. bastien in the courtyard with the crushing sense of futility

If Bastien were telling a story about someone else, he'd have them crack and cry all over somebody, or spend so many days in bed that someone decided they ought to do something, or take some sort of dramatic lifelong vow, or clean out their room and disappear in the middle of the night and never be heard from again.

He comes closest to that last one. He packs a bag. Then he puts it under his bed, leaves it there, and goes about his business, mostly as usual. His smiles are just as quick but a little more muted, the cello sounds from his room become short and irregular and confined to rote scales, he's harder to find, and he lets small talk die small. But he's fine, right up until the point a gust of wind funnels through the Gallows' walls and smacks his armful of letters and notes out of his arms to scatter across the courtyard.

In another mood he'd take it in stride and run to catch them. In this one, he sits down heavy on the stairs and watches a few sweep out of sight down a stone corridor. Maybe they're important. He should probably be more worried about the possibility they'll end up puddles.

iv. bastien by the canal with the naked antivan

The problem with how Bastien works is that so much of it rests on letting people have their way and arranging the scene around them to make it useful. So when he's meant to be charming a wealthy visitor whose inclination is to get utterly smashed and a bit high, because what happens in Kirkwall stays in Kirkwall and can Bastien even imagine how dull life becomes once one is married with children--that's what he does.

Meo Fiesi, not Bastien.

And when he--Meo Fiesi--is then inclined to strip off all of his clothes and jump into a Lowtown canal because he's never been swimming naked, in the rain, on a public street, and apparently that specific combination is a personal dream, that's, you know. Great.

Bastien has called for back-up. Just in case the man starts to drown. Back-up can find him sitting in the drizzle with a pile of Antivan Merchant Clothing beside him, his feet dangling over the dirty canal, while someone in it says, with an Antivan accent, "This one is called the Butterfly!"

v. kostos in a cave with the incomplete deck of cards

A partial list of things Kostos hates and/or is bad at: Being stuck in a small space for a long period of time. The outdoors. People. Cold weather.

So having a sleepover in this cold, shallow mountain cave Northwest of Kirkwall, to monitor the reported potentially-suspicious comings and goings through the mountain pass that forms the shortest route from Nevarra City--he's handling it really well.

For example, the deck he brought along is apparently missing three cards, and he's decided the solution to that is to throw the remaining forty-odd cards off the edge of the cliff and into the distant river below, one at a time, while he silently watches the dark road for any bit of firelight.

vi. kostos in the market with the teddy bears

Mummies probably don't care about stuffed bears--at least not more than the wisps residing in their bodies care about anything novel. But the wisps probably don't care about enormous underground crypt-mansions, either, and they have those. Kostos has already told several imaginary people passing imaginary judgment to fuck off, in his head, while he picks through the contents of a stall in Hightown.

He could have gone to Lowtown. Even if mummies care a little bit about stuffed bears, they certainly don't need them to be newly made and neatly stitched.

It's for his own sake that he's tossing aside the ones with loose button eyes or frayed stitching. He's perfectly aware.

"Please stop touching everything," the seller says when his sifting knocks a few plaidweave tuskets out of their pyramid formation.

Kostos doesn't look up to counter, "Stop selling garbage," which is maybe not the best thing to say to someone you want to give you a good price.

Comments

[cozen]

Bastien doesn't cry, either. He could—a little for her sake, a little for his, the way sometimes he reads a book or listens to music he knows will make him cry because he wants a good excuse. But it's not a story. It's her life. So he takes a steadying breath instead, because he was already half unsteady before, and slips his arm free of hers so he can put it around her shoulders and pull her close enough to his side that he can press his mouth to the top of her curly head.

[sulahnan]

This is where she stops their ambling, because to keep walking would just be too awkward. She looks up at his dark eyes and the well-hidden sadness behind them, and cups his face in her hands.

"You don't have to tell me anything, but I want you to know that you don't have to be strong for me, either." Athessa hugs him then, burying her face in his shoulder and giving him a squeeze. He smells like tobacco, parchment, ink, and soap and it all melds together into something uniquely comforting, even under such a dreary gray sky.

[cozen]

Having his words thrown back at him—or gently tossed back to him, really—is more satisfying than irritating. Using his own words, and being vulnerable first, and not pushing too hard. Bastien a little proud of her. If it were insincere it would be well done.

"I am strong for myself," he says. But he loops his arms over her shoulders, instead of stiffening or shrugging away, and rocks side to side on his feet to wobble her along into a lazy dance in place. "Someone I used to be close to died. That's—" all, he was going to say, because people die all the time, and who hasn't lost someone to something in these last few years.

But it sits wrong. He doesn't say it.

[sulahnan]

"I'm so sorry, Baz," Him not saying it says enough, at least as far as Athessa is concerned. She tightens her hold on him briefly before relinquishing it entirely.

In this moment, she feels like she understands Bastien more than he ever intended her to, which is at once a source of pride and sadness. As if they need any more of the latter between the two of them.

"I know a good place to break shit, if that'd help. Or we could just find somewhere quiet and wallow a while. Whichever."

[cozen]

Bastien considers those, looking skyward with a musing head wobble. His appetite for real destruction is fairly limited—he tipped over a bookshelf once when he was younger, out of frustration with his own slow progress, and he still remembers with crystal clarity how silly and ashamed he felt looking at the wreckage.

So wallowing. Maybe.

He dips sideways to grasp her hand and tug her in a new direction, toward the entrance to the fortress, where the walls eventually give way to a stretch of sea and cliffs and mountains. It's still all in greyscale—the black cliffs topped with a grey city, the grey sky and the grey waves—but the wind is more consistent and bracing, and now and then there's a wave large enough to cause some spray. Not quiet, exactly, either, but around the corner from where the ferry comes and goes, no one will bother them.

On the way, he says, "You can fly with the griffons, ouais?"

[sulahnan]

"I can," she agrees, glancing at him. "Most of them know me well enough but a few are still a bit shy."

The question presents another, one that has different implications.

Why not just leave? Take a griffon and fly somewhere warm, away from the City of Chains, away from the Waking Sea, away from the rain and bitter cold. It wouldn't have to be forever, but would it be so bad if it was?

"Do you want to fly somewhere?"

[cozen]

"When the weather is better," Bastien says—not because he wouldn't go now, but because he wouldn't ask her to. And he points toward the top of the tallest of the cliffy mountains rising up across the harbor from the city, a dark grey shape against the lighter grey haze—not because he wouldn't go farther, but because he wouldn't ask her to.

[sulahnan]

"Why there?" If he asked, she'd go, and it wouldn't matter when or how far. All that would matter is that he asked.

But of all places, she didn't expect the mountains. Mountains seem as likely as the desert, or Tevinter. Maybe it's just a process of elimination? Not Orlais, clearly, not Tevinter, the desert, Nevarra...

[cozen]

"The view is probably nice."

He's thinking of a day trip. Lunch on a mountaintop, back by dinner. Matthias and Derrica and the Qunari she clearly doesn't have feelings for would not miss her, that way, see?

He sits down on the ground, back against the fortress wall, and gives her hand two little tugs—the sort that invite her to join him without quite dragging her down—before he lets go.

"Do you know of somewhere better?"

[sulahnan]

Sure, the view might be nice, but those mountains have snow on them year-round. Athessa sits heavily beside him, as if his pull wasn't purely performative.

"Somewhere warm, maybe," Of course the only time you can take a day trip somewhere warm is in the summer. Even in spring, the nearest warm clime is too far for a whim. "Wouldn't mind going back to Rivain at some point."

[cozen]

“I’ve never been,” Bastien says.

He traveled a little outside of Orlais, before Riftwatch. To Denerim, in the course of unraveling the business of an Orlesian merchant who frequently traveled there. To Cumberland twice, once to retrieve a runaway teen (ha) and once to poison someone’s uncle. To Wycome to learn who a baron had been meeting with—which turned out to be no one. He’d just wanted to get away for a while. To a few other places that haven’t earned marks on a map.

But he never had work that warranted going too far north, and Rivain seems very far away, and very strange, and—warm. That would make sense. And the thought makes him wrap his arm around Athessa, who’s smaller and leaner and out here with him in the chill anyway, and tuck her against the side of his chest.

“What it is like there?”

[sulahnan]

"It's nice. It's like if Kirkwall wasn't miserable."

Which, she thinks, isn't how you're supposed to feel about your home town. Maybe people who wax poetic about where they come from have more charmed histories. Athessa tucks her knees in closer to her chest and leans into Bastien's one-armed embrace.

"The air in the market districts smells of spices and tea, and the food is amazing. The towns outside of Kont-aar have this funny blend of Rivaini and Qunari influence, lots of gilded horns and bare skin--hard to argue with that, right?"

But of course that's just her specific weakness, clearly. Bastien's is probably a teensy bit different.

[cozen]

A teensy bit. But he likes listening to her talk about it, anyway, leaning his jaw against the top of her head. For her sake, clearly, given the cold, and given Devigny.

So his tone is reflective, not confrontational or judgmental, when he says, "I have always been a little afraid of the Qunari. Having someone else decide what you would be for the rest of your life—I know it happens everywhere, but at least here I am allowed to hate it."

[sulahnan]

"It seems pretty strict, but I think that's part of the draw. Takes the pressure off of deciding who and what you'll be, and kinda taking away the fear of failure by choosing based on your strengths. Nobody's useless, or alone. Something like that'd probably make me think about converting," It's clearly a topic she's taken time to consider. She's not just guessing about what the key selling points would be to someone like her.

"But at least in Kont-aar, they didn't seem too bothered about not everyone becoming Viddathari."

[cozen]

“I suppose there is that,” Bastien says, a little distantly, and turns his head to press his cheek into her head. “Do you feel useless or alone?”

[sulahnan]

"Sometimes."

Byerly asked her something similar, not too long ago, in the midst of a joke. The joking helped, but she'll always be more comfortable talking to Bastien in earnest than double-talking with Byerly about anything. It feels wrong, or unfair to think so, considering Byerly's willingness to help take down Devigny with little more than Athessa's word to go on, but the man has made himself hard for an honest, emotional simpleton like her to talk to.

"I don't know. I was alone for so long, and it was fine, I took care of myself. I wasn't useless," She sighs, and watches the puff of steam dissipate in the cold air. "Lately I feel like...like I'm only good at getting into trouble and needing my friends to bail me out."

[cozen]

A half-dozen potentially comforting things come to mind, but he holds them back. Trying to solve a problem without fully understanding what the problem is, in his experience, usually causes between one and seven new problems, and he's currently at full problem capacity. So instead he asks, "What trouble? Devigny?" half into her hair.

[sulahnan]

She hums softly. Devigny is just the most recent in an ever lengthening line of mishaps. Falling through the ice in the mountains, the shared dreams, everything about that stupid cigarette box, the blood puppetry, getting pushed down the stairs... Maybe it was the truth bomb that started this descent? In any case, Bastien did guess right.

"He was part of it," Athessa hesitates, which is when she knows she's going to tell him. "I really wanted to kill him."

[cozen]

Bastien hadn’t been completely sure she hadn’t done it, somehow. Wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. Might have held her bag or even done it for her if she’d asked.

But he still feels an odd sort of relief that she didn’t.

“Do you think you would have felt better?” he asks.

[sulahnan]

"I don't know. Maybe not. But it wouldn't have been anyone else's problem if I had. It's because of Byerly that we knew he was in Kirkwall. Colin found the balcony for us to stake out the estate. You and Colin got the evidence against him, and Deimos killed him."

What did she do, except crumble?

[cozen]

"It is an honor to share your problems, Athessa," Bastien says, with a subdued swell of better humor, wiggling his fingers slightly where his arm is wrapped around her in a way that might be an attempt at tickling if he committed to it more. But it's just a swell, like the swells in the bay, and it passes by. "What stopped you, then? Lack of opportunity?"

[sulahnan]

"I'm already on thin ice with Yseult as it is," Kind of hard to prove to someone that you're trustworthy if your first act after being assigned training is to disobey orders. "And I was afraid of what'd happen if I tried and failed."

[cozen]

"Mm, I guess that is reasonable," Bastien says, a little wry but mostly tired, and backs out of that little detour. "But you were involved in everything else. You were never useless. And if you had been, it would have been all right. It was a difficult situation for you to be in."

[sulahnan]

Athessa makes a dubious noise in her throat, but lets his words sink in a little before she speaks. When she does, it's something of a left turn, away from herself.

"What happened to your friend?"

[cozen]

"Ah," Bastien says, caught very close to off guard. But he doesn't hesitate as long as he wants to—which is forever—before he answers. "Hanged by the neck until dead, as they say."