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WHO: Silver, Flint
WHAT: Two pirates scouring Kirkwall's bookshops in the service of important diplomacy work.
WHEN: Early Drakonis
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Doing their JOBS.

It is their fourth stop. They've wound their way through the more prominent Hightown booksellers, having worked their way from out of the company of skittish shopkeepers anxiously overseeing the systematic scrutiny of their shelves by two alleged pirates and into the clutches of what can only be described as Kirkwall's most peevish old bat:

"I don't care who you think you are; you can't be here this long without purchasing something," she'd wheezed at them in the cavernous old place, one hand trembling at the head of her cane and the other arm wrapped around a ginger cat with large blinking eyes.

Which is why they now own a collection of romance novels with increasingly unlikely love interests, including but not limited to a Chantry sister and a shapeshifting witch, between them. It's also why they're being left alone now to pick through the labyrinthine shop's back room, wading through unorganized stacks of used titles, and--

Choking on dust, mostly.

"Have you considered simply copying the book instead?" This said into his sleeve while scrubbing a thick layer of grime from one of the room's upper shelves.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This backroom is one of many to be found among the slew of taverns crowding the Kirkwall docks. It is not, evidently, one often frequented by the Walrus crew, as evidence by the fact that they are given very little in the way of extra accommodation and John Silver is expected to pay for his drinks. But the building was once finer than it is now or even more disreputable than it appears, as this back room has clearly been designed for business and not for carousing. It costs ten coppers for its use and an additional two for a fire to be built up in the hearth. A narrow back door leading out onto a balcony and a series of stairs suggests the room's utility.

The service is irritatingly considerate - the maid in and out to poke the fire, the pot boy eager to sell them anything that might add figures to the bill. Flint is in no hurry to see either chased away, to be finished with the door opening and closing so that the sounds of conversation and laughter, the shouting from a dice game occurring in the main room might filter back here in intervals. Maybe this looks like avoiding the subject. Maybe he is waiting for Silver to decide this is a subject better discussed tomorrow, and to quit the room of his own accord.

Or maybe he is just waiting to have a bottle of cheap wine under his belt first. It's only after the second one is delivered that Flint tells the service he'll call for them when they're needed next. The door it shut. The sound from the tavern beyond is reduced to its low, hissing hum. Beyond the back door, the rain has started.

The table is very clean.

For whatever reason, that observation sticks in John's mind as they halve the first bottle of wine in near silence. The stilted conversation they'd traded on the walk here has lapsed. The sought after book rests on the table, remains there after the second bottle is delivered and the girl (Jocosa, he'll give her an extra gold before he leaves on the off chance he ever decides to add this tavern to his usual rotation.) has closed the door quietly behind her. John draws the bottle to him, leans forward to fill their cups.

"If one of us doesn't begin, we'll have wasted ten copper."

John is very good at affecting levity. His own personal dread at what he's begun is almost undetectable, and were he sat at a table with anyone else it would have gone unnoticed.

"Surely you have some opinion."

He must.

He has been waiting for it to resolve into some recognizable shape during their walk down to the docks, through the arrangement of the room of their first glasses of wine as the fire was coaxed to life. Somewhere in there, he'd made the conscious choice to set away the sharpest edge of him; given a moment, he is capable of at least the appearance of moderation. He had expected to rest - a reasonable direction in which to take this conversation - to follow from that.

And here they are in a room, beginning in on their third cups of wine after a day spent hiking the length and breadth of the city, and he finds himself struggling after the disparate lines of this still.

You can say if you want to go, he forbids himself from. Saying so makes it more real, reality more willing to bend in that direction, and he doesn't know what that would mean.

Instead, pulling a drink from the cup, he goes with: "My opinion is that you are unlikely to be satisfied by anything I might tell you."

Which is dry and broad and feels true regardless. Either the extent of what he hasn't said will be crippling, or it will breed further uncertainty: is this the whole truth? How would anyone know?

The dull ache in his shoulders, the burn in his arm, those pains have begun to fade as they've sat here. John knows all that pain will come back when he stands. Watching the expression on Flint's face shift and settle, he closes one hand around the cup (clean, what a novelty) and waits, watching Flint's expression as he speaks.

In spite of the tension and misery of this conversation, John finds himself chuckling.

"If I were in this for immediate satisfaction, I believe you and I would have parted ways a long time ago."

For all his faults, John is a patient man. If the reward is compelling, he's more than able to take the long, slow road. Kirkwall has been an extreme test of that ability. John has never been able to consider how close he's skirted to whatever breaking point exists in him, and now isn't the moment to attempt it.

"Then you'll forgive me for having difficulty seeing which part of this has become so unbearable for you."

It's a sharp thing to say, but it doesn't sound as cutting as it might. His legs are stretched out before him at an angle toward the fire, a hand slowly turning his cup on its base. Flippant, maybe. Because he could suggest a half dozen things that might easily make these circumstances unbearable, but they aren't here to paint in broad strokes now are they?

"But, by all means. Consider yourself adjacent to my thoughts from this point forward if that will make it less so."

What does that mean? He can figure it out later. He swallows down wine and wishes he'd thought to ask for something stronger.

Unprompted, John pushes the bottle into easy reach.

There is not immediate reply beyond that. John considers what he's been offered. He doesn't doubt the sincerity, but the vagueness of it fails to be reassuring. What will that mean tomorrow? What does it mean that this is now something they must negotiate?

"This fucking place," John says finally. "I never intended to set foot in Kirkwall in my lifetime, but..."

But here he is. Here they are.

"I understand your concern. I know I'm not able to undertake certain...projects, not without accepting some risk. But if we are no longer discussing the actions we've undertaken, regardless of which of us pursues them, then I don't understand my role."

It's a clumsy statement, as John tries to couch something more raw in detached tones. But he cannot leave Flint's acquiescence as it stands.

Edited 2020-03-29 07:12 (UTC)

"Your role," he says, fetching up the bottle to top off his cup. "Is the same as it has ever been. You will do what I cannot, and I will do the same in return. The place and the circumstances are the complication - the fact that you and I are in positions where we must sometimes make our own decisions on what qualifies -, not the relationship."

It sounds reasonable. To lay what this is at the feet of the city and the world than believes itself to be legitimate pressing in on them through it. Looking down at this conversation like he might a chart spread across the table in the division office, he can see that. And he can see his own place in it: a careful hand feigning easiness to lure Silver onto solid ground.

But looking at it technically and being present in it are different things. With the bottle replaced to the table's center, Flint regards the fire in the hearth rather than the man across from him. If there is a list he keeps of what is required of him, which part of this gets added to it?

"Hence why I'm sending you to Orlais with Rutyer rather than going myself, and why I trust you to see to the men. That we still have any crew left is a testament to your suitability to it. The role."

Flint presents him with an escape. It's not unfamiliar. They've been trading these balms back and forth for months now, steadying each other each time the earth beneath their feet tips one way or another. John could accept this reassurance and it would hold for a time. Maybe a few months, maybe a few weeks. The trouble is, his role has changed. The knowledge of what he is has inevitably altered him in Flint's view.

He watches the gleam of firelight off Flint's rings as he sits back in his chair. Silence spins out between them, though it lacks the ease they'd once enjoyed. John sighs.

"Do you recall what you asked me when we returned from Nevarra? In your cabin?" John says after a time. "You asked when else. What other times there had been when I'd fallen back on it."

Would everything between them been less fraught now if he had answered differently then? John's thought often what he should have said, though more about how he could have gone unnoticed in the road. If it had only been the mages who had noticed—

But there's nothing productive in considering yet again how he could have altered the events in Nevarra. Only in considering how to repair that fracture, how best to break and reset that connection between the pair of them. John's hands spread, language of his body like a locked clicking open.

"Do you still wish to know?"

The point of it reaching him is visible. Maybe this is part of why what Flint is works the way it does - the man's inability to keep anything from his face lends some weight of truth to every demand or driving point, and it finds some place here too in the way his attention on the fire flickers so severely. He appears as a man who is turning a thing over and over because he is one.

When Flint looks to him, there is something half guarded and half failing to be there in his face. The cup is turned by small degrees on the table.

"I do."

Which is true, but he isn't asking for it.

The moment of hesitation can't be helped. Every instinct that has guided him towards survival rebels at the idea of up this truth so freely. A confession, have mages not been punished for less than outright admission of their crimes?

But there is no use in faltering. John raised the question. Nothing comes of it if he does not follow it with some answer.

"That night, in the Wastes. Not that it did me any good."

A slashed palm, stepping into shadows while the world blurred around him. John hasn't considered that misstep in a long time. Blurring out of sight mattered very little if where you were carried to wasn't as safe as previously imagined.

"When the ship went down on the blockade."

Propelling himself upwards, more panic than finesse as he'd drawn on that power. John's hands settle on the table. The ache in his shoulder reminds him (the leg, all that blood—) but it's beyond his explanation. Uncertainties do more harm than good.

"Maybe I would have done something on the warship, if it hadn't been our men on the other side of that door. I reached for it in Ghislain, to give myself a chance to get out of the mud and onto a horse. Beyond that...there is nothing remarkable to note."

And he doesn't owe anything that has come before they entered each other's awareness. Whatever that brings the tally to, whatever history John cannot speak, remains untouched, masked in the darkness of that half-opened doorway.

Looking backwards, not to Ghislain or the blockade or anything that Silver mentions but drifting elsewhere, the question which floats closest to the surface is, What might it have looked like when they'd attempted to take Nascere if this had been on the table then? Mages make up some part of the street. How much farther might they have gotten had it been known Long John Silver was one? Or when they had been among the maroons, in that cage, when there had seemed to be no way forward. What had he said then?

What a waste, it seems to me, knowing it doesn't have to be this way.

Flint scuffs his knuckles against the rough line of his beard. He adopts a thin smile.

"Well," he says. "Then it appears we're all in order."

"Are we?"

Because John knows. He knows the calculation Flint makes because he's made it himself, many times, in the months since Nevarra. It's inescapable.

And inevitable, in some ways. For all his desperation, John feels a specific end point weighing down on him. This truth about him can be utilized. How long can he ignore that?

That silver ring set with aegirine and red aventurine is bright gold in the fire light as Flint turns his hand. It's a small gesture. Who knows what tomorrow will dictate on their behalf?

"If you're asking if I still meant what I said when we returned from Nevarra, you needn't bother."

If something risks that secret, it won't start with him.

John's eyes rest there, on that ring, on Flint's hands, before he shakes his head.

"I'm not worried about that."

The prospect is roundly dismissed. He has never worried that Flint will leverage this information against him. That kind of fear would be so much easier for John to deal with. He's lived his entire life with it. The place he's found himself now is very different territory.

"You may as well ask whatever else you're wondering. Or say whatever it is you've been holding back since."

He lifts the cup, tips it slightly in muted invitation.

What is he wondering? The whole world is there in the questions available. What has he been holding back? Enough.

"Where would you like to begin? With a headache? If so, I can regale you with the details of the whole mess with Artemaeus if you like," he says, rises from the chair.

The cup comes with him as he moves to fetch the singular iron by the fire. But before it can be applied to turning the embers, he pauses. He looks to Silver and it's as if something has just occured to him.

The point of the iron sets against hearthstone. The empty metal sound is like a coin dropping.

"Does Madi know?"

Some other, relieved response had been on the tip of his tongue (We'd better call for another bottle—) before the question is posed. It occurs to John that this is perhaps the first time either of them has spoken her name aloud since they've arrived. He feels the punch of it like arrows, impact and then pain in quick concession.

"No."

There's a bitter edge to the smile that works its way onto John's face.

"And it's certainly not the sort of topic one discusses by letter."

Edited (htML) 2020-03-30 03:28 (UTC)

He has gone strangely still against the fire, the line of the iron quiet in his hand.

"And if she were were here? What then."

What a useless question. But Silver's posed ones like it before.

"Now, or when we returned from Nevarra?"

It doesn't matter. The answer is the same. There's no way around what became necessary after what he'd done in Nevarra. There is no way to withhold this part of himself from them. He has devoted himself to Flint. He has devoted himself to Madi. He reached out in the road and crushed the bones of a rider who meant to do them harm. It was not an action that can be hidden, and John could withhold and omit, but he cannot lie outright to them.

There is a whine of something distant in his ear and this isn't what he wants to know. This isn't what he wants to say.

"You--" He revises slowly, grip on the iron adjusting compulsively. "You agreed we should come here. She agreed."

There are enough disparate pieces in this that the dark wound behind his ribs shouldn't expand as rapidly as it does. But here is the form of the thing whose shadow has plagued him, sharpened to a point that actually matters.

Fuck the loneliness of this place, or the frustration of it. Those are blows that can be absorbed.

"I don't care that you're a mage. I don't even care that you kept it from me." The cup is set on the mantle; that blind hum rises up in him. It takes shape. "But, forgive me, if that is the extent of what you've seen fit to do with it in all this time, while all of us have been so desperate—

"She agreed. And you allowed her do it, knowing she wasn't even fully aware of what she was giving away. Because you've been too afraid of losing more of yourself to this."

The first thing that comes to mind: he won't be able to get to his feet quickly enough, so better not to reach for the crutch at all.

It's one touchstone, one logical thing to anchor himself with as Flint's voice falls over him, one condemnation after another. In some way, it's a relief. This is not simply about Madi. It's about what he has kept from Flint, about what John hasn't done and what they've both born because he hasn't.

The calculation was inevitable. John knows that as he also knows what will be required of him one way or another, whether he cares for it or not. Eventually he is written into the story as a mage and apostate, and he will bear it.

"You know very well what happens to a mage that loses themself. I take my life and yours into my hands each time I perform any kind of magic."

They die, consumed by demons or put to the sword upon being revealed. People around them die by their hand, or as punishment for harboring them. John's concerned himself with the former, only recently with the latter. (He wanted to make a life with Madi. What life do they lead with templars dogging John's steps?)

"Speaker Fabria took the time to kindly remind me of it as well, in case I forgot after having spent most of my life weighing every action I took against the many possibilities of what can go wrong."

The finer points between the kind of magic John has done and what happens when he reaches farther, lifts aside the veil to what lies beyond, John doesn't know and cannot explain. He can't explain how hard it was to summon any strength after the amputation, nor the relief it was when he felt that moment of connection again when his health returned. John forces himself to relax his white-knuckled clutch of the mug.

"What do you think would have been different? The decision we made is still sound. We need help. And do you think I would have let you walk into a pit of snakes unsupported?"

Points from the past dragged forward out of the dust: Madi could not leave her people. Billy couldn't be trusted not to advance his own vendetta. John would go.

He does not say what he has thought for months on end now: their business here was never meant to be measured in years?

"It's not about what we agreed," he snaps right back. The point of the fire iron scratches on the hearth stone. "It's that we agreed with the understanding we all knew what the other had committed in seeing it done."

It's about having left her there. It's about how they might have avoided the circumstances which led them to that decision in the first place. What does one mage matter? He's had this conversation with Fabria and the answer is maybe nothing at all. But maybe something. It's about--

"What are we here for if not for this? If we aren't making a place where you don't have to be ashamed of this?"

"I have never cared to claim this for myself. You knew as much. I said—"

No need to account for my life's events in the context of a story that somehow defines me.

There is no way to come within glancing distance of this subject without feeling as if he is being strangled. Panic cinches tight around his ribs. The crack of open door tightens towards closing. He leans forward, lays his hands upon the crutch without attempting to pull himself upright.

"But I am here. I have remained here, with you, working to make that place a reality. My commitment has not and will not waver."

He has bound himself to this man, to the woman waiting for him in Nascere, to this cause and the war they've set in motion. It would be impossible to cut himself loose. He'd bleed to death.

"And if more is asked of me, if what is needed to heal this break is for me to make use of this, I will."

One thing John learned very early: nothing comes without a price. That lesson is as true now as it had been then. Maybe he won't break his fingers, or draw out a spill of blood, but he'll give up this single, agonizing truth for this war. It comes to the same thing.

"I don't care what you do." A half step forward shortens the distance between them by a significant margin. There's a threat of violence in it - not from a blow, but from fingers digging in. It's the impulse to grip so hard that marks are left behind, white knuckled.

"What I want to know is why, if this part isn't it, you have any commitment to that idea at all."

John doesn't flinch.

"Because I am committed to you, and to Madi."

And, continuing smoothly—

"And because whether or not I choose to claim this for myself, it does not mean others should hot have a world where they feel free to do so without fear. I believe in the world the pair of you labor to bring into existence. I want to see that come to pass."

The point of the fire iron rises and falls, swaying in the turn of Flint's hand - flashing gold, then transforming into a line of shadow against the firelight at intervals.

"But you see what you're asking for. For her and I, and what we want to be clear to you. Meanwhile," --that is a bark, so sharp it must ring in his own ears because he moderates himself immediately in the aftermath. He bites down on a breath, a closed fist around his own frustration; white knuckled, the venom of it oozing out between clenched fingers. He changes tack. "You can tell me. If there is some part of what we're doing here that you disagree with. All I ask for is the reason."

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