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]

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."

[sulahnan]

"What for?"

[cozen]

"Crimes contre l'empire," Bastien says. He's still managing to sound matter-of-fact, aided by a little kernel of anger—at l'empire, at everyone involved, at himself. "Harboring deserters, sowing insurrection... He was the one we had to convince Val Royeaux we had nothing to do with."

He keeps his arm around her, but he lifts his head away from the top of hers, leaning a little bit the other way to look at the ground to the opposite side and begin rearranging some of the damp pebbles and bits of broken tiling into a little pile. That was weeks ago, at this point, and he knew weeks before that that Vincent was dead. It isn't fresh grief that's pulling him down now. Just fraying and wear from a month, now, of putting on his usual good face requiring so much damned effort.

[sulahnan]

Instead of turning to look up at him, she watches his work with the pebble pile for a few silent moments.

It's not obvious, but when she thinks about specific ways he's been different over the past weeks, and the ways he's been pointedly not different...well, all of it is what prompts the quiet question: "Did you love him?"

[cozen]

He laughs—just once, quietly, more like a spasm of an exhale than anything, accompanied by a flash of a smile. It could easily be a prelude to denial. That's what it's meant to be. It's reflex, like the way he grins when he's hurt, to cover wounds and weak points.

But this is Athessa, not some masked viper searching for a place to strike, so the denial doesn't come.

"See, I told you," he says instead. "Clever."

[sulahnan]

"Not clever enough," she says, though there's a tiny sliver of satisfaction at being right. The trick, she thinks, is to say what she thinks Bastien would say, but...well, she doesn't really know. "I guess I can tell you it's not your fault?"

If she found out that Ciara died, she'd probably blame herself a little, even if it couldn't possibly be her fault.

[cozen]

"You can tell me that," Bastien says, adding a little splinter of sea-rotted wood to the top of his tiny debris pyramid, "but I helped him do it, and it was blown out of proportion because someone saw my name wanted to get back at me by causing a scandal, and when they came for him I was not there, and his wife could not contact me because I made him promise not to tell anyone where I was, and I was not there when he died—I heard it took a long time."

So.

He takes a breath.

"But I did not make the law, and I did not tie the noose," he says, "so it is not my fault."

[sulahnan]

"Sounds like you're as involved in that trouble as I'm uninvolved in mine," she muses, though maybe the clearer analogy would be that Bastien is as responsible for Vincent's death as she is for her clan's. In any case, it sucks and her heart goes out to him.

"Fucking miserable."

[cozen]

His answering hum is subdued but agreeable, and he abandon his completed pyramid of debris to kiss the top of her head and then settle his cheek back against it. Later he’ll circle back to Devigny, and who is and is not useless—later, when he feels like he’s steady enough on his feet to try supporting someone else’s weight without falling over and making it worse.

For now, he says, “Tell me more about Rivain. What is the first thing you want to do when you go back?”

[sulahnan]

Sometime in the future she'll ask him how he figures out the right thing to say to someone, the thing they need to hear.

"Very first thing, stand on the dock and feel the sun on my face," she closes her eyes and imagines the warmth and light. "Or if we go by griffon, I guess it doesn't have to be the docks. Then I want to get a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry. Go to a festival if there's one going on, or get into a fight. Eat spicy curry for dinner."

[cozen]

“A festival or a fight,” Bastien echoes—weary but warm. Endeared. “What about a fight at a festival?”

[sulahnan]

"Two birds with one stone, sounds ideal," she sighs with a little bit of wistfulness as she looks out over the bay, unable to see the horizon through the mist and fog. "If it's someone else doing the fighting, maybe place a bet or two."