faderift | OPEN: this will be a better year

OPEN: this will be a better year

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: First Day
WHEN: Wintermarch 1 (forward-dated)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Scouts from both the Western Approach and Emprise du Lion are welcome (but not required) to have returned to Skyhold in time for this event.

There have been better First Day feasts, and less crowded ones, and cheerier ones. It isn't a good year for many to look back on, and this one isn't starting any better. Reports from both Eastern and Western Orlais are grim. Many in the Inquisition can't afford to take more than a few hours away from their work, if that.

But for those who can, the ambassador does her best. At lunchtime some tables, hot food, and finery are reserved for visiting nobility and wealthy pilgrims--cause for grumbling in some quarters, perhaps, but they're the people filling the Inquisition's coffers, and allowances must be made--but there's plenty of stew, bread, and ale for everyone, even with the soldiers and refugees who stay outside the fortress invited inside for the holiday. The recently repaired garden and its carefully tended plants aren't off limits, but anyone noisy and holding a drink will be stopped at the door; the battlements, with their potential for deadly falls, are blocked by Inquisition guards. But the courtyards brim with people, most of them happy despite the possibility that the world might end before another First Day arrives.

If the courtyards are too full of tipsy visitors for comfort, there's also the valley beyond the fortress, expansive, barren, and covered in snow. By the river the soldiers help the refugees make a bonfire larger than would ever be allowed inside Skyhold's walls, and some lend their shields to use as sleds down the embankments. A group of scouts start the most intense game of hide and seek Thedas has ever seen, with snowballs to the face for whoever is found first. In the camp, a refugee girl with her hand wrapped in a green scarf chases other children around the tents, shouting raaar, I'm from the rifts!

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"Why are you competing for my favor in the first place? Is there something I should know about our association?" She shakes her head, trying to get rid of the mental image of the two of them dueling in the first place. "Are their rumors that I should hear?"

"There are always rumours," he says, with the complacency of someone who has been the subject of many almost since birth - long before he was the renegade he was the great hope of the knighthood, his mother's project at court, an exhausting friend and a dangerous enemy. He has been courting attention of one kind or another for too long, and while Skyhold's interpersonal politics are not without their deeper, darker waters...

...he is not much the subject of those. Not yet, at least. For now, he can appreciate the lighter note he strikes in this place, as opposed to the shark-infested waters of Aldreas's Elenia.

"I choose to find them flattering."

"Always..." It takes a moment for the thought to occur- though being spurred on by his commentary on said rumors assists with connecting the dots. Before, in the Spire, there had been hushed wispers. That was half of life no matter what was being said- but something such as this? No one dared to speak of for fear of being overheard and taken to task by a senior enchanter- or a templar.

SO that anyone would think that they-

That he and she-

That they were at all-

"Someone truly thinks that you and I are lovers?!" For a moment her incredulity has her voice cracking sharp like anger. And just as quickly it shatters into peals of helpless, hopeless laughter.

Ostensibly unmoved beside her, he says, "Don't be so quick to protect my feelings, my lady," drier than the Western Approach, the edge of his amusement betraying him in any pretenses to affront.

Self-preservation began this acquaintance, but -

He rather likes it, when she laughs. It suits her. It eases her in a way that he doesn't think anything else he can do will, and there is a part of him - Sephrenia's part - that wants to.

How long has it been since a fit of laughter has left her with hiccups? Far, far too long. She has not laughed like this, so long, so bright, so full since well before the Spire. Since, perhaps, Robert. She quiets somewhat after a moment, wiping at her eyes, the bubbles of her laughter interrupted by the odd hitch in her breath until she is able to settle herself.

Of course looking to Martel only sets off a shorter fit of giggling that she presses a hand to her mouth to muffle, cheek pressed to his shoulder. "I suppose I should say that I am flattered?"

Martel considers it for a moment, as if it's of great importance, and then gives her a grave nod.

"Yes," he says, firmly. "Yes, I think you'd best."

She manages to school her expression. Carefully piece together the shards of the Lady Leblanc from where they lay scattered about her and save for the little hitch of her shoulders with each soft hiccup- it is perfect.

And lasts for all of three seconds before she's pressing her forehead against his chest, laughing helplessly.

"Well,"

he says,

philosophically.

"I suppose I may comfort myself with the knowledge that so long as no one actually heard what you said, this will really only fan the flames--"

He is courting a swipe is what Martel is courting.

"They do not need fanning!" Gasped out between hitches of laughter and twists of hiccups, eyes damp and shoulders trembling under the force of them. Without recourse he will simply continue onward and that- that she cannot have. Finding the right spot to pinch on him is difficult but- there is a bit of give to the muscle below the ribs, above the hip- and she does so mercilessly.

If nothing else, she should be rewarded just for managing to find somewhere on his body not cut from marble -

"Ow," he complains, a great exaggeration, and at last the solemnity of his play breaks and he laughs, too, deep and not so dangerous as he can be. As he is, usually; as she has learned to be wary of in him. No, it is a cleaner, lighter moment, an echo of a man he should have been, and if he were of a mind to be self-reflective now

(he is not)

he might be glad to find himself capable.

For a moment- for a span of moments, she feels as she once was. Brighter, lighter, not so afraid. Not so bitter. The things that made her flinch and the things that left her tense are far from her mind; nothing in her bones but her for a short while and it is long enough for her to do as she might have before. Call upon her magics, form a soft powdery handfull of snow- and reach up (Maker he is so tall, why is he so tall) to shove it into his hair.

With an indignant squawk that is as much for her benefit as any of the things he has said this evening, Martel lets himself fall back onto the blanket, shaking the snow out of his hair as he does, some of it turning darker on contact with him; she is very good with his hair, but it does run a little when it's still fresh.

"I see how it is," he sighs, gazing mournfully up at the sky.

"It is absurd is what it is." She manages to work herself down to a fit of hiccuping giggles, falling with him easily. It almost feels like what she had before- with her friends. Her peers. The casual contact born of trust and it feels so good to have this back even only for a little while. "You, you are playing it up, aren't you?"

"No, no--"

A sidelong glance - assessing. Gauging her mood, the play between them, how much she's relaxed since he first sat down (and felt her tense, and knew what it meant). He might regret this, if it goes poorly - he doesn't want to ruin her mood - but he can't quite pass up the opportunity, and he thinks, probably, it will be all right.

And if it isn't, he will cross that bridge contritely when he gets there, but for now -

He catches an arm around her waist and rolls her into him, grinning.

"Only this evening."

Edited 2016-01-03 04:13 (UTC)

There's a twitch. A faint coil that rears up before it is squashed entirely and she goes. She crackles with laughter and rolls against him; tipsy and giddy and warm and feeling as if-

As if so much of what has come to pass, hasn't.

As though minding a few troublesome students were all that she had to worry over- not murders and templars, not a hole in the sky and the future of mage rights. For a little while the future does not rest on her ability to cope, history does not look back and wonder who she was or why she wondered. It slips and slides away.

For a little while, she is simply Adelaide.

"You are going to continue to do so. It amuses you."

Success. That hurdle passed and feeling no lingering need to hold her loosely that she might easily escape him once she's settled, Martel adjusts his arm more securely about her and his grin lingers, audible in his voice when the angle at which they rest makes it harder to see.

"I have so few pleasures in my life, Adelaide, would you deny me such a small one?"

"The pleasure of feeding rumors?" That involve her, none the less. She honestly- she doesn't understand why such assumptions exist- anyone that knows how she spends her days knows that she does not have time for a lover. What little time she spends in bed is spent sleeping.

"Surely there are others you are better suited to playing the rumored lover to than I, Telquet." Or at least those that might be better suited to spinning the rumor along.

"I haven't played anyone's lover in a long time," he says, a wry glint of humour in it - oh, he'd not been celibate all that time, but mistresses had been upkeep he couldn't afford (in more ways than one) and the past few years had been...he'd not had time, with everything else. Whatever he insinuated about Arissa, he'd rather have put his cock in a steel trap than any part of her body; nothing had quite so effectively killed his libido as imagining Princess Arissa and Primate Annias conceiving the mistake they called a son.

No, it's been some time. It doesn't bother him as it might some men - rueful, if anything. He knows what he looks like, and he knows what's expected of a certain sort of man. The sort he is, or might be, or at least looks like most of the time.

"Besides," very reasonably, "I daresay it would be less amusing if it were more true."

"Well, if you must." She sighs, long suffering and too amused to truly worry after her reputation. Those that know her, those that work with her? Know better. And even then with a Rifter? The fallout is not so terrible a thing. So what if she has some manner of torrid affair with a man from another world- he is neither mage nor templar nor anyone for which she is responsible, he is in no position to curry political favor nor to offer her anything that could be seen poorly.

Were there truth to it- an entirely different matter.

But as it is a rumor and little more? She laughs.

"You ought to make a bigger fuss, I am Orlesian Nobility, after all. Apparently the common means of courting involves grand gestures of flowers and gifts, poetry and serenading. At least if the last letter my brother sent me was at all honest." The idea of Martel doing any of these things burbles up a fresh run of giggling.

The only reason he doesn't pull a face is because she won't see it.

"I was to be married, once," he informs her, amused. "I did - at least some of those things."

He casts his mind back - quite far back, good god, he is getting old - and considers for a moment. "Flowers, certainly. Gifts. I suppose she was present on occasions where I was obliged to sing, do you think I might call that serenading?" He'd sung with the knights' choir; Petrana had admired his voice, he thinks, and probably preferred his singing to his tendency to gently terrorise her.

She was so very well-behaved. Most of the time. He'd been doing her a service to prod at her.

"I don't recollect any poetry. But she did once kick me out of a tree, so I think fair enough I not write odes."

"Oh?" She supposes a man of his stature and education, his drive and his means might be in want of a wife. Any manner of militant noble most likely had a match made for them early on- or made one for themselves for whatever reason.

He certainly doesn't strike her as a man that would take a wife out of affection. He is by and large far too pragmatic for such things.

"I suppose you might. I would count that well enough." Singing in the presence of one's intended, by technicality if nothing else, counts. The story of a tree earns an indelicate snort of laughter. "I assume you knew her when you were both young? I cannot imagine you so easily being kicked from a tree now."

"Petrana's family's estate bordered mine," he says, by way of easy confirmation. He speaks of her with distant affection, not entirely dissimilar to that he tentatively approaches with Adelaide; he doesn't mourn her as love lost but as another of his many mistakes, wreckage left in the aftermath of all that he had done. She had been his lover for close to a decade, most of that spent as his intended bride - else she'd never have let him in her bed, not a good Elene girl like Petra - but she had been his friend.

She is married now, to some Deiran. He knows.

"I had been sent out to fetch her down, and she took issue with it. Planted both feet on my chest and kicked me down on my arse. Not so young, mind you, I was a novice."

"That makes it even better." Snickering now, gracelessly- the idea of it happening to a slightly younger but not childlike Martel moves her to rest a hand lightly on his chest, patting it in consolidation for the old slight.

"Oh how bruised your ego must have been." And his back, most likely, if it was a terribly high tree.

"I believe it was my back that suffered in the fall," as if the clarification is terribly important - it has been so long, and he had nearly forgotten what it was to remember these things, this way. There is an unaccustomed pang at the thought; that he should share a story of Petra's misspent youth while she dresses in muted colours and flees the court that should have known her as its jewel. He had not meant to hurt her -

He had not thought of her at all.

If he dims at all - let her think he misses his homeland more than he admits.

"She knew me well," he says, a bit gentler. "We were old friends. She said I might buy a wife, if I liked, but I could not buy her patience."

Adelaide reminds him very much of Petrana, now and then. Usually when she is taking him least seriously.

"Back, ego, they are more or less the same in some instances." Especially when women are involved, though the way he goes still, the way he becomes contemplative? She is not certain how to interpret. Perhaps he misses her. Perhaps he misses home.

Perhaps he is considering how it is she would see his funeral, as he is dead.

For a long moment she is quiet, giving him that space with none of her usual commentary or lack of regard. When he did speak again, her own voice was that much softer- if not any less wry. "A dowry is far, far more affordable than a woman's patience. I cannot imagine anyone that might afford it."

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