faderift | a coworker asks me if i'm sad, still,

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a coworker asks me if i'm sad, still,

WHO: Flint + Petrana
WHAT: A conversation
WHEN: Current-ish
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Probably fine.

( it is a curious sort of double-vision.

this is not the first time that petrana has found herself, armed with notes and plans, in search of the commander of forces for a forgotten appointment. it is the first time that the commander has been james flint, and not luwenna coupe, and that she had no expectation of said appointment being forgotten—that she had played no role in creative scheduling—

that is a term for it, that shot in their ongoing cold war that had presumably prompted coupe's request for her testimony on the matter of the former commander's fitness for position. it had been petty and unkind and so had most of the things they said to one another, which sits oddly now alongside the tinge of real concern she's conscious of as she makes her way down from flint's empty office to the docks. she has not known him to be tardy or careless; quite the opposite. they had intended, of efficiency, to fold her lessons in tevinter into a briefing regarding certain planned encounters in hightown—there is something thrilling about forcing herself to think in another language for the purpose of something at which she is far more skilled.

but he is absent. so she will try the docks, first, and then perhaps leave a note. she stands out, there, dainty in blue and her blonde hair pulled back with a ribbon at her shoulders. she looks out of place and oblivious to it in sheer purposefulness— )

Commander, ( when she finds him. ) Am I interrupting?

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( certainly, today has not proved a great success. it would be easy enough to agree—and surely she can rearrange her own schedule around whatever of his tomorrow is available, yet—but what she finds herself saying, mild, is )

Will it?

( —which might be reasonably called more forward than whatever he'd done with his eyebrows in hightown that had set the gossips off to the races. )

[It certainly draws him short.

For all his severity, a lifetime dedicated to brusque handling and purposefully sharpened edges, his face is so much like an open page. It has been visible upon arrival at the division offices before - how he sometimes greets an opening door with a scathing look, only to moderate abruptly when she isn't someone he doesn't care to chase directly back out again -, and it's visible now as some slanting flicker of irritation and the hard cut of his attention to verify they are indeed alone, all painted over some broader base of extraordinary weariness.

That last one is winning when he looks back at her.]

What have you heard from Hightown?

[There is news of it in Lowtown - Some Tevinter pirate island finally gone tits up to authority being more or less, he believes, the exact phrasing being in use; it would be good to know how high into the city its traveled, if at all, and what form it's taken there. His guess would be hardly, and disinterested footnote but—.

He doesn't know what he prefers her answer be.]

( what of it has reached her is—much the same, if phrased differently, )

Some concern, ( is how she puts it, ) that Tevinter is removing its distractions from the board.

( it might not have necessarily caught her eye, assumed connection, but she has paid flint a good deal of attention since they began to circle one another, to move in the same circles; she recognized the name nascere. knows the broad strokes of where he came from, prior to the gallows. there is a reason that they speak tevene to one another, now. it is not an uncomplicated thing.

there is not much sympathy for nascere in hightown, a lack of feeling she doesn't herself share, but that tevinter is clearing house

well, that concerns everyone paying enough mind to hear of it. )

[Something in that makes him look away again in no particular direction, to no specific object of study, but rather to check some undefined frustration that rises in him. It's managed. Or is at least steered toward—]

If that is the extent of their concern—that the resolution of the question there will allow Tevinter to divert some previously occupied force elsewhere—, then I have happy news for Hightown. The governor in that place has few friends in the Imperium, and I think it likely to take more than at last managing to stumble into effectiveness to win them back.

Hightown is not in urgent need of comforting.

( mostly because it does them good to sit uneasy, if petra were pressed to give her opinion on the matter. james flint may not be in urgent need of comforting, either—she cannot immediately draw to mind what that might entail—but it seems to her eye that he is winding up, and will in some direction be released.

it is not a new observation, but today it seems particular. it would be more polite to let it alone, but she might take a cue from marcus who is so courteously direct one almost doesn't notice he is being extremely rude in the process.

almost. )

It changes something else. ( for him. )

[Almost.

Like a hand closing to show just knuckles, the exhaustion in him is folded away.]

That place is my home.

[There are two words for it in Tevene; the house you live in, and the place where you were born. He uses the second; it's better practice for her, and more honest besides.]

( the soft roundness of her face often gives the illusion of openness that it rarely has; the difference is immediately apparent in the momentary dismay that rises in her eyes, where she might have said james, aghast at the breadth of that loss.

she does not, but her hand closes around his wrist, which is the same. from what she knows of him (of him, and not the assembled details of his present existence from which she might draw conclusions) she presumes the birth he refers to to be—figurative, metaphorical, and the more significant for that. it is something she

reclaiming the name that another petrana was not buried beneath,

presumes to understand, in part. )

You intend to respond.

( he must. she cannot imagine it otherwise; cannot imagine doing nothing in his place. )

[The line of his wrist sharpens under her hand. It's a small, bristling thing—communicates with some finger of tension in his elbow, the set of his shoulder, and pulls like a weight at the slanting corner of his mouth. For a split second, there is a thing that threatens to or does briefly give. And then it is forced elsewhere. His hand tightens in the fist it's become.

He reminds himself to answer in Tevene.]

I'm leaving. For Llomerryn first, and then North.

[With as many people from this place as he can wrap his hands around.

(This plan will alter with the circumstances; but today, it's the one he has.)]

( the weight of her hand is light, if the weight of the moment is not, and it curves for a moment above his fist before she thinks better of something she might have said, and withdraws it.

she says, )

Is there anything I might do?

( and it is neither empty words nor naive assumption that perhaps he might like a hug.

he knows what she is the way she knows him in turn. the ground shifts under their feet. she shifts with it. alliances are cultivated things. )

[Later, when the scope of this problem has changed and the approach to its solution is so shifted, he may regret that this is how he answers that question. There are a dozen things he might task her with that might not be half so dangerous; when news from the north arrives in the Gallows, he will feel this moment like a sharp point.

But in the version of this where Madi never comes to Kirkwall, and he takes to Llomerryn, and the work on the island is an entirely different kind of struggle than the one which comes to pass, it makes sense to ask this. He doesn't know how long he'll be away. Someone will have to drive this point.

(Her hand was very light.)]

I assume you're familiar with Ilias Fabria?

Yes, though I can claim no great intimacy with him.

( and she might leave it at that, but she can claim at least some with james flint and so she doesn't, adding: )

I had intended to speak with him on the matter you divulged to me. I thought it interesting, at the time, how he had spoken in favor of van Markham in Riftwatch.

( that she hasn't done so yet is less by design than it is by the nature of their work, where everything is urgent, and where her curiosity about what might have been pure coincidence had not topped the list of things she most urgently needed to attend.

she would have preferred to have spoken on it, previous to this, but she hasn't. that she speaks frankly to flint of her intention, which might have been perceived as an end-run around him if she'd handled it indelicately,

well, she wouldn't have handled it indelicately. )

[(He and Speaker Fabria in the division office on quiet afternoons. They move pieces on a game board, play acting at strategy as a pretense for that organization of actual pieces elsewhere where they are playing with more delicate terms than those which rule a chess board.

Ilias makes some impulsive move. Flint resets the piece. Try again.)

For a flat moment, he just looks at her. Then—]

Fabria was there in Nevarra when the papers were traded, and has a vested interest in seeing this thing succeed. He knows everything. I suspect he would welcome a partner in this while I'm away.

( it is frustrating, for a moment, that she cannot in this moment know the tightening ties that bind them for fate's red string or a noose. )

I think it very likely, ( she says, and the measured way that she speaks tevene—a little slower than her brisk trade, or the elegant, musical flow of her native tongue on the rare occasions that she can be heard murmuring it beneath her breath, the confident way that she speaks the words of magic on those equally rare occasions she makes use of this thing that so defines her here,

it makes this something deliberate. a pivot he will remember, when madi brings news of nascere to kirkwall and the stakes change. )

I will speak with him.

[Maybe this will be some point recalled later for its significance—a study in a fine Tevene house with a big broad window, the dark of the Walrus' cabin ("I would not see us give up our investment here."), a half shaded garden gentling the exacting lines of a place so defined by the misery on which it'd been built.

It is, at the very least, trouble for another day.]

I'll see what can be done to find you an able substitute if tomorrow proves to be such an unlikely prospect.

You have, as ever, my gratitude.

( she touches his shoulder, once, as she rises; either to steady herself in the doing or to steady him, again, or both. neither, and only a gesture of ease between colleagues who seem to keep secrets for the company and know each other in familiar outlines where shading in more detail would

be unnecessary. ah, they would say. yes, that's so. )

I'll not keep you further, Commander. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madame, [he says by way of goodbye rather than outright dismissal, the last word slipping out of Tevene like shucking free from a shell. If there is some pleasure in using the language of a place to discuss how he means to undo it, it isn't an irony he can recognize in this hour.

(Later.)

For a moment after she goes, he will remain as he is - a dark shape in the garden, wound close, and poised to fire in whatever direction seems of most utility. There is some value in that pause, a moment of calculation arranged for by a light hand at the shoulder. He will spend it on his aim, rather than on catching his breath.]

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