faderift | We're Back! A Gallows Tale

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We're Back! A Gallows Tale

WHO: Athessa and YOU!
WHAT: Oh, you know. Getting back from the jungle and getting way too into her work.
WHEN: Now, Post-Jungle
WHERE: The Gallows & Kirkwall in general
NOTES: shrug.

I. Back on her Bullshit...or...not.

Athessa is quite possibly the best rested of the whole group that returns from the jungle, having found sleeping rough a lot easier than sleeping in a bed here. Weird. But in the few days that follow, she once again gets back to her habit of not sleeping well and prowling around in a cloud of root-smoke. She also has a small dagger strapped to her hip instead of going unarmed or strapping on her dual-wield blades, and an unusually heightened work ethic during daylight hours. Minimal antics, maximum...something else. Something like responsibility? Weird.

II. Can I Raas you a Question? (Closed to Raas, if that wasn't clear)

They don't know each other. They've never even interacted, at least as far as Athessa can recall. But where else is Athessa supposed to turn, when she doesn't know anyone else who speaks qunlat and doesn't want to snoop around unnecessarily before handing over what she found to the boss?

"'Scuse me..." She isn't timid, just a little awkward. It's not typical for her to introduce herself to someone just to ask a favor. "Do you have a minute?"

III. A New Kind of Office Visit (closed to Yseult)

Athessa knocks before entering, same as usual. But this isn't one of their scheduled check-ins or typical scout work that either of them expect from one another. They're barely settled after getting back from the jungle when Athessa is reporting to Yseult with a missive in one hand, and a qunari dagger in the other. Both are set on Yseult's desk.

"I...figured I should report this to you. I dunno if it even really matters, but I found these in De--in Sten's room."

IV. Wildcard

[ you know the drill ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Everything is unwinding, the little voice that constantly nags at him about all the ways the world is trying to kill him finally still for the first time since he was captured. Despite his warning to the others early on, he is the first one to reach for the gingersnaps.

"We won't slap you out of it," he says before crunching into a biscuit. Athessa has the worst time expressing emotions that aren't anger, so why should he discourage it when she finally does?

Colin reaching for a biscuit reminds her that they exist and she grabs two for herself, tapping them together idly while she answers.

"'Bout anything, really," she gives a one-shoulder shrug and bites down on a cookie, which has no business tasting so damn good. Like, really. Oh. The cookie is gone! Good thing she has another--it's gone too. Heck. "Like how good these biscuits are. I could weep."

It's a joke, but also kind of true. The sweetness of the cookie reminds her of Eshal's nickname for her: Sweet Tessa. Thinking of Eshal makes her wonder whatever happened to her errant Tal Vashoth friend. Thinking of that reminds her that Deimos is gone, and of the unfortunate revelations contained within her conversation with Raas. Eshal also organized that fight club, which makes Athessa remember Derrica kissing her bruises better after a bout.

All of these thoughts are normally just swirling chaotically in her mind with no coherent way to untangle them, but the smoke draws them out into a branching path. Athessa traverses the path, looking backwards at the thoughts as they drift away, out the window, to a respectable distance. She sighs.

"There's a lot going on all the time, isn't there."

Athessa talking about the biscuits reminds Benedict that they exist, and he leans forward, over Colin, to take one. He, too, looks deeply emotional at the moment he bites into it, and his eyes actually tear up while he chews.

"This is so good," he whimpers. Taking another bite to finish it, he almost sobs while he chews.

Welp, Colin has a Bene in his lap, he guesses. And now he doesn't.

"Thanks," he says to the compliment, noting to himself to move the gingersnaps to a more central location. Instead, he takes another drag from the hookah and forgets. About everything. Sinking bonelessly against the cushions.

"I really needed this," he sighs. "Though now I need to--"

He squirms a bit until he manages to lean against Bene and press a leg against Athessa. She's sappy, Colin is cuddly.

She absently pats his leg with her free hand, the other turning the nozzle over between her fingers.

It's a clear night out there, where she's staring beyond the balcony. Birds call and flit about, ships in the distance looking to be no bigger than those birds. That's perspective for you. Which direction is North? How far away is Seheron? But then again that doesn't really matter, because they've already made that journey and Raas said Deimos wasn't Qunari anymore. Tal Vashoth. Just like Eshal.

"Deimos left," Athessa says to the open window. Maybe she forgot to call him by his rank, or maybe she figures, why call him Sten when that's no longer true? "The big fuck-off Qunari I was...ya know. Fucking."

Bene slowly caves under the pressure from Colin leaning on him and slumps over himself, until he's lying back on one of the pillows with Colin draped across his middle.
He's still having an emotional crisis over the cookie when Athessa drops something of a bomb, and he looks over to her in trepidation.

"You were fucking a Qunari?"

Now Colin is struggling to sit up so he can hug Athessa. When that doesn't quite work, he grabs one of her wrists and tries pulling her down into his arms.

"What happened?" he asks gently.

Bene gets a flat look. That's what you're hung up on? And she laughs at Colin's attempts to right himself, but all his tugging on her arm gets is a reactive swaying from her. It's not a refusal of the hug he wants to give, just a refusal to lay down for it because then she can't stare dazedly out the window.

"Dunno," she says. "I found a letter in his room, I guess from some other Qunari giving him orders, but...I dunno. It was weird."

Bene, still flat on his back, stares at the ceiling and listens with a look of deep concentration.

"Qunari," he remarks, as if it just occurred to him.

Colin finally manages to sit up and wrap his arms around Athessa.

"Weird because he just...left? You clearly meant a lot to him." Since he killed Devigny for her.

He did do that for her, didn't he? That's not nothing, and yet there he went, without a word.

"Sure. And because of some stuff Raas said. I had her translate the letter before I handed it over to Yseult."

Was that the right move? Should she have investigated more on her own, or kept it to herself entirely? Athessa sighs, leaning into Colin's hug, bonelessly.

"I keep trying to think about whether or not I did something wrong, or if it's really just outta the blue, ya know? First Ciara, then Derrica, now Deimos...maybe there's something wrong with me? Maybe I should just stop talking."

Still listening, Bene brings the hose to his mouth and draws from it. He doesn't know any of these names, or what they mean to anyone, so silence seems like the best tactic.

"I understand the feeling," Colin sighs, cheek against her hair. "Wait, what happened with Derrica?"

"Ahh, I just fucked it up, is all," She scrubs her hands over her face and fetches up the hose again. The smoke billows out on a heavy sigh. "Told her I loved her."

Benedict's brow furrows in his silence. That seems like a good thing to tell someone.

Colin's expression and Bene's match quite unknowingly, almost in sync.

"And she...didn't like that."

"Neither of us did! We were just having fun, ya know? And then I--" She wants to smack herself in the forehead, or drag her hands down her face, or shed this mortal coil and live the rest of her days incorporeal. But she just rolls her eyes at herself. "I realized that it wasn't just fun and casual for me anymore. So I told her how I felt and that we should probably stop seeing each other."

She doesn't offer up that Derrica said she couldn't love her back, or that having two people tell her the same thing makes her wonder if she's even lovable at all.

Qunari, thinks Benedict.

Do Qunari love?

"And she agreed with that? With not wanting to see each other anymore?"

More smoke will probably make this better, right? Athessa nods.

"She said she couldn't love me back."

They're so frightening. And powerful.

Fucking one would probably hurt, or it would be great. Maybe both?

He looks at Athessa, deliberating.

Arms wind back around Athessa, harder than before.

"I love you back," Colin tells her, then reaches out to try to drag Bene into the fray. This is friends. This is what we do for friends. We hug our sad friends.

Even when we are stoned.

That's so sweet and embarrassing, gosh. She smiles, even if it's sad, and doesn't resist any part of the hug. She does, however, take note of Benedict's peculiar expression.

"You're still thinking about Qunari, aren't you."

Jostled like a rag doll, Bene slumps over in the other direction and is idly taking another puff when Athessa addresses him.

The question surprises him, causing him to inhale at the wrong time and start coughing violently, smoke coming out his mouth and nose.

After a few seconds of that, Colin reaches out to give Bene a pound or two on the back.

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