WHO: Athessa, Madi, Lucien, Skull, and YOU!! WHAT: catch-all WHEN: mostly Satinalia and later WHERE: Kirkwall and The Gallows NOTES: post-murderhaus h/c is gonna go here
There's a pause, some mixture of frustration and worry working it's way across Derrica's face before she opts to throws the fabric of the shawl over Athessa's head.
"It doesn't work that way."
Life might be easier for everyone if it did, if it were simple enough to stop feeling any particular way about a person. But that's not possible.
Taking ruthless advantage of the momentary confusion, Derrica assists in the form of maneuvering the shawl more securely down around Athessa's shoulders. It's a good, warm knit, the lingering woodsy notes of incense caught in the weave.
"You're shivering."
A succinct summation of Derrica's most pressing objection.
"And I know you were on that same mission Holden came back from with his stomach torn up."
Instead of saying what she thought to say, that she's merely savoring the ability to feel the cold, Athessa lets out a breath and deflates slightly. The shawl smells nice and Derrica's hands seem warm enough to be felt through the wool when she adjusts it about Athessa's shoulders.
Maybe the warmth only seems to radiate because of how high she is, like how sometimes little touches feel more electric and sounds seem louder than they are. Regardless, Athessa doesn't resist the adjustment, even if she does keep her gaze averted.
"What'd he say about it?" If she heard it from him. It's possible she talked to Colin, since they were both working in the infirmary then.
"Not very much," Derrica answers. "That it was bad."
Holden hadn't been very forthcoming. The wounds had spoken for themselves in some ways. Athessa being led out of the room in tears had signaled enough on it's own as well.
"You don't have to talk about it."
Not if it wouldn't be a comfort. She hadn't pried into Holden's experience, and she doesn't mean to pry into Athessa's. But as complicated as everything has gotten, she wants to at least be close by. She shouldn't have to be alone.
Horrific is a better one. But she's not going to out Holden as a chronic under-seller just to regale Derrica with an account of a murderous innkeeper and his underground mirror-lined torture maze.
"I don't really want to go into detail," she says, shaking her head and watching the smoke ribbon into the air and drift away from the lit cherry. "But that fucker deserved so much worse for what he did to those people."
Where are her manners? Athessa gestures with the joint in a silent question. Want some?
A shake of the head at the offer. Satisfied with the drape of the shawl, Derrica has crossed her own arms against the cold, set one hip against the stone of the ramparts. All her many layers are a seemingly endless safeguard against the chill of the south, and losing the outermost won't see her shivering immediately.
But the goal is to coax Athessa inside, really, not to linger out here.
"Then I'm glad he's dead," Derrica says, some sharp, vengeful edge in her voice, that ebbs away as she continues, "But I'm sorry you had to be there. To be the one who had to stop it."
Holden hadn't said very much. But he'd said enough for Derrica to know it was bad, and ugly, and that it was the sort of thing that lingered. She won't pry, but she isn't ignoring the weight of surviving something nightmarish.
"Yeah, well," she shrugs her good shoulder. "It was kinda fitting."
For an elf to be the one who dealt the killing blow, to have the last word. Athessa was the last thing Medrod saw before she buried the axe in his face, and hers are the last words he heard. May you rot and be forgotten like the nothing you are.
"Not as fitting if I'd had vallaslin, maybe, but. It's done now."
Unable to recall if she's ever made mention of them to Derrica, Athessa gestures to her face when she says vallaslin. The tattoos, she means.
"Mostly. I need to send word to Lady Pickney," this much, said to herself more than to Derrica directly. "Find the clan those elves belonged to."
There's a moment where Derrica is poised on the edge of a question: Do you want vallaslin? But it's the kind of question that strikes so hard at such a tender spot. It feels wrong to do that now, when Athessa is already curled in on herself around such a specific kind of pain.
"Is someone helping you do that?"
Mhavos comes to mind, without knowing what kind of woman Lady Pickney might be, without knowing whether it's even possible to track down Dalish clans. It'll bring Athessa some peace, it'll bring those people some peace. That's all the more reason to pursue it.
"I'll ask around. Mhavos would, if I asked. Probably some respectable human to deliver the rings we found on Gawen and his wife to Lady Pickney."
Would you go with me? She'd wanted to ask Derrica to come to lay her family to rest, but this doesn't feel like something to put on her now. It's not like she has any ties to this whole mess. Athessa flicks away the spent joint after finishing it off. Straightens a bit, resting her knuckles against the parapet, and glances down at the forget-me-nots around her wrist.
There are too many things she wants to say, and too many reasons not to say them. Things she wants to ask Derrica specifically, things she wants to tell her, wants to know about her, wants her to know about.
Her weary, rueful laugh makes a short puff of steam in the chilly air when a stupid thought crosses her mind.
A short pause stretches in the wake of Athessa's summation. It's sound, nothing really unexpected. Yes, a respectable someone to intercede with the Lady Pickney. Yes, Mhavos to assist Athessa with the Dalish. Derrica looks out, away from Athessa, exhales softly as Athessa laughs.
"You sound tired," is what she finally decides on, eyes returning to study Athessa.
There's a few things Derrica would try to caution her with, in the same vein as she's prodded at Holden. But she lets the observation sit for a moment, considering.
She thinks of Isaac's sharp, sideways look, how searching his eyes had been on her face in the wake of his insinuations. She thinks of Athessa's message, tripping over similar ground, incongruous against the scrape of a note she'd left with Satinalia gifts. It's grown to such a tangle that there feels no clear way to wrench free from it.
The laugh was for their wager, for which the prize still hasn't been decided. The end of the year is still a few weeks away. There's time.
Athessa turns to look at Derrica, expression softening slowly with the drift of her gaze over her face. How long ago was it that they first kissed at that party? A year? It feels so far away, now.
Some small, wounded expression flickers across her face.
"Athessa," she murmurs. It's not necessarily an admonishment. But tension winds through her body, as if bracing against the softness of Athessa's voice.
"It's true," she says, knowing that the new tension in Derrica's posture is not brought on by self-consciousness in the face of a compliment. She might doubt her own skill and experience, but Derrica knows full well that she's gorgeous. And if she doesn't, then she deserves to hear it until she believes it.
It's hard to say whether Athessa's slight lean is magnetism or brought on by the smoke, but one way or another she reigns it in and looks away again. Closes her eyes, briefly.
"Sorry. I am tired, and you know how I get—" Without taking the heel of her hand off the parapet, she gestures with her fingers. When she's tired, Athessa either talks too much, too freely, or not at all. "—It's even worse when I'm stoned."
In other words, she's bound to say anything they might normally not mention.
A few moments to consider this, to think on all the things they're not saying to each other and how this might be the worst time to skirt any single one of those topics.
"You should come inside," Derrica says gently. "I know it's going to sound like a platitude, but you will feel better after you've had some sleep."
At the very least, it'll give her some space from thinking about everything she just survived. Derrica drops her arms, catches at the hem of the shawl to give it a small, encouraging tug.
A soft exhale, the breath seemingly driven from her at the mention of sleep. Most of the time she would love to be able to sleep, but for whatever reason can't. Now, she feels as if she could fall asleep standing, and is afraid to.
Athessa didn't sleep the entire way home from Ostwick.
But Derrica is asking, and it would take a much stronger woman than Athessa to refuse. The little tug at the shawl is enough to make her turn, nod with resignation.
They wind their way down, into the Gallows, descending until they come to Athessa's room. Derrica has not visited here in a year, and she is not yet convinced she should enter it now. She sets one hand at Athessa's shoulder, squeezing lightly before she opens the door for her.
"Just lay down. I'll get you something else to put on, if you want."
Athessa doesn't shrug Derrica's hand off her shoulder, though she's half a mind to. She just gives the mage a look that says: puh-leez. Or something like that. A blend of mild entreaty and annoyance.
"Not made of glass..." She continues grumbling to herself as she walks into her room, undressing on the way. The shawl goes first, then the sling, and her boots, but she breaks then to trudge herself over to the fireplace. The stone floor in the room is cold enough to be felt through her socks.
The protests are summarily ignored. Athessa's not an invalid, but she deserves some fuss, some expression of care.
"Athessa, let me do it," Derrica says again, touching Athessa's elbow as she comes to stand beside her at the fireplace. A small smile as she confides, "Matthias taught me a little bit of fire."
Not something that will ever come easily, but it's nice to have for moments exactly like this: when you need to kindle a fire quickly and would prefer not to bother with striking at flint. Anything bigger is unreliable, but she can manage the right level of controlled spark to warm a hearth.
Derrica just had to go and smile, didn't she? It nips Athessa's protest in the bud, and she sighs, backing away from the hearth.
"Go on, then. Show us your moves."
The area just in front of the fireplace is, as always, strewn with cushions and blankets for lounging on comfortably. Athessa plops herself down, starting to work on the buttons of her overshirt.
One of the now-grown kittens who are supposed to be roaming elsewhere and mousing, a calico, looks up from where she's napping on one of the cushions, markedly offended that Athessa even nudged an adjacent cushion. Athessa reaches across to scratch the spot behind her whiskers until the cat begins to purr, then returns her attention to her shirt.
The answer is delayed while Derrica shakes out her hands, trying to remember the motions Matthias showed her.
"Not when I'm in the Gallows," Derrica answers, before she cups her hands blows into them and conjures a little spurt of flame to blast the logs in the hearth. It catches at the kindling, and she leans down to blow at it, tending to the growing flame. "Usually I'm not trying to do any big magic here."
In hindsight, it had just been luck she'd had her staff on her the day of the abomination. Some pinch of consideration works it's way across her face, as she second-guesses the instinct to go without.
"Some mages carry theirs everywhere they go. I got out of that habit," she answers, and when she turns to look back at Athessa it's with a small, sheepish shrug. "Maybe it's foolish."
"They do take up a bit of space," Athessa says with a return shrug. "Trying to lash one to a saddle is a hassle, and climbing things—"
But surely she's preaching to the choir here, and Derrica knows everything she could say about the unwieldy nature of staves. After all, Athessa's only experience with having to haul one around was simply to bring the Keeper's staff back from the forest.
"I guess there's some reason or another why they have to be so big, eh?"
This is a stupid topic to be prattling on about. She should just stop talking. She leans back on her elbow and continues:
"If there were a way to make a collapsible one, more people'd probably know. Unless..."
"Oh, I don't know if they need to be a staff," Derrica says, considering. The fire has caught, and after a few more coaxing breathes Derrica is content to sit back. First on her heels, then further, tucking her legs criss-cross as she orients herself towards Athessa. "I suppose we could use other things to store our focus."
Not that Derrica feels any pressing need to explore other options. She's been fighting with a stave all of her life. Learning new ways to fight doesn't displace what has become almost second nature.
"But so many of us construct our staffs to suit us. There's a whole way of focusing your body, using it to draw on your power. I think it must be the same for you, with your daggers? You know how to move with them."
That makes sense. Enough sense that Athessa feels a bit dense not thinking of it before.
"Sure, yeah," she nods and waves backhandedly towards wherever her daggers are, forgetting that that happens to be the same place her grandmother's staff is leaning. "The daggers are just more arm to swing about."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
"It doesn't work that way."
Life might be easier for everyone if it did, if it were simple enough to stop feeling any particular way about a person. But that's not possible.
no subject
That, said as she tries to push the shawl back away from her face.
no subject
"You're shivering."
A succinct summation of Derrica's most pressing objection.
"And I know you were on that same mission Holden came back from with his stomach torn up."
no subject
Maybe the warmth only seems to radiate because of how high she is, like how sometimes little touches feel more electric and sounds seem louder than they are. Regardless, Athessa doesn't resist the adjustment, even if she does keep her gaze averted.
"What'd he say about it?" If she heard it from him. It's possible she talked to Colin, since they were both working in the infirmary then.
no subject
Holden hadn't been very forthcoming. The wounds had spoken for themselves in some ways. Athessa being led out of the room in tears had signaled enough on it's own as well.
"You don't have to talk about it."
Not if it wouldn't be a comfort. She hadn't pried into Holden's experience, and she doesn't mean to pry into Athessa's. But as complicated as everything has gotten, she wants to at least be close by. She shouldn't have to be alone.
no subject
Horrific is a better one. But she's not going to out Holden as a chronic under-seller just to regale Derrica with an account of a murderous innkeeper and his underground mirror-lined torture maze.
"I don't really want to go into detail," she says, shaking her head and watching the smoke ribbon into the air and drift away from the lit cherry. "But that fucker deserved so much worse for what he did to those people."
Where are her manners? Athessa gestures with the joint in a silent question. Want some?
no subject
But the goal is to coax Athessa inside, really, not to linger out here.
"Then I'm glad he's dead," Derrica says, some sharp, vengeful edge in her voice, that ebbs away as she continues, "But I'm sorry you had to be there. To be the one who had to stop it."
Holden hadn't said very much. But he'd said enough for Derrica to know it was bad, and ugly, and that it was the sort of thing that lingered. She won't pry, but she isn't ignoring the weight of surviving something nightmarish.
no subject
For an elf to be the one who dealt the killing blow, to have the last word. Athessa was the last thing Medrod saw before she buried the axe in his face, and hers are the last words he heard. May you rot and be forgotten like the nothing you are.
"Not as fitting if I'd had vallaslin, maybe, but. It's done now."
Unable to recall if she's ever made mention of them to Derrica, Athessa gestures to her face when she says vallaslin. The tattoos, she means.
"Mostly. I need to send word to Lady Pickney," this much, said to herself more than to Derrica directly. "Find the clan those elves belonged to."
no subject
"Is someone helping you do that?"
Mhavos comes to mind, without knowing what kind of woman Lady Pickney might be, without knowing whether it's even possible to track down Dalish clans. It'll bring Athessa some peace, it'll bring those people some peace. That's all the more reason to pursue it.
no subject
"I'll ask around. Mhavos would, if I asked. Probably some respectable human to deliver the rings we found on Gawen and his wife to Lady Pickney."
Would you go with me? She'd wanted to ask Derrica to come to lay her family to rest, but this doesn't feel like something to put on her now. It's not like she has any ties to this whole mess. Athessa flicks away the spent joint after finishing it off. Straightens a bit, resting her knuckles against the parapet, and glances down at the forget-me-nots around her wrist.
There are too many things she wants to say, and too many reasons not to say them. Things she wants to ask Derrica specifically, things she wants to tell her, wants to know about her, wants her to know about.
Her weary, rueful laugh makes a short puff of steam in the chilly air when a stupid thought crosses her mind.
no subject
"You sound tired," is what she finally decides on, eyes returning to study Athessa.
There's a few things Derrica would try to caution her with, in the same vein as she's prodded at Holden. But she lets the observation sit for a moment, considering.
She thinks of Isaac's sharp, sideways look, how searching his eyes had been on her face in the wake of his insinuations. She thinks of Athessa's message, tripping over similar ground, incongruous against the scrape of a note she'd left with Satinalia gifts. It's grown to such a tangle that there feels no clear way to wrench free from it.
no subject
The laugh was for their wager, for which the prize still hasn't been decided. The end of the year is still a few weeks away. There's time.
Athessa turns to look at Derrica, expression softening slowly with the drift of her gaze over her face. How long ago was it that they first kissed at that party? A year? It feels so far away, now.
"You are so beautiful."
no subject
"Athessa," she murmurs. It's not necessarily an admonishment. But tension winds through her body, as if bracing against the softness of Athessa's voice.
no subject
It's hard to say whether Athessa's slight lean is magnetism or brought on by the smoke, but one way or another she reigns it in and looks away again. Closes her eyes, briefly.
"Sorry. I am tired, and you know how I get—" Without taking the heel of her hand off the parapet, she gestures with her fingers. When she's tired, Athessa either talks too much, too freely, or not at all. "—It's even worse when I'm stoned."
In other words, she's bound to say anything they might normally not mention.
no subject
"You should come inside," Derrica says gently. "I know it's going to sound like a platitude, but you will feel better after you've had some sleep."
At the very least, it'll give her some space from thinking about everything she just survived. Derrica drops her arms, catches at the hem of the shawl to give it a small, encouraging tug.
"Walk in with me?"
no subject
Athessa didn't sleep the entire way home from Ostwick.
But Derrica is asking, and it would take a much stronger woman than Athessa to refuse. The little tug at the shawl is enough to make her turn, nod with resignation.
no subject
"Just lay down. I'll get you something else to put on, if you want."
no subject
Athessa doesn't shrug Derrica's hand off her shoulder, though she's half a mind to. She just gives the mage a look that says: puh-leez. Or something like that. A blend of mild entreaty and annoyance.
"Not made of glass..." She continues grumbling to herself as she walks into her room, undressing on the way. The shawl goes first, then the sling, and her boots, but she breaks then to trudge herself over to the fireplace. The stone floor in the room is cold enough to be felt through her socks.
no subject
"Athessa, let me do it," Derrica says again, touching Athessa's elbow as she comes to stand beside her at the fireplace. A small smile as she confides, "Matthias taught me a little bit of fire."
Not something that will ever come easily, but it's nice to have for moments exactly like this: when you need to kindle a fire quickly and would prefer not to bother with striking at flint. Anything bigger is unreliable, but she can manage the right level of controlled spark to warm a hearth.
no subject
"Go on, then. Show us your moves."
The area just in front of the fireplace is, as always, strewn with cushions and blankets for lounging on comfortably. Athessa plops herself down, starting to work on the buttons of her overshirt.
One of the now-grown kittens who are supposed to be roaming elsewhere and mousing, a calico, looks up from where she's napping on one of the cushions, markedly offended that Athessa even nudged an adjacent cushion. Athessa reaches across to scratch the spot behind her whiskers until the cat begins to purr, then returns her attention to her shirt.
"You don't use a staff much, do you?"
no subject
"Not when I'm in the Gallows," Derrica answers, before she cups her hands blows into them and conjures a little spurt of flame to blast the logs in the hearth. It catches at the kindling, and she leans down to blow at it, tending to the growing flame. "Usually I'm not trying to do any big magic here."
In hindsight, it had just been luck she'd had her staff on her the day of the abomination. Some pinch of consideration works it's way across her face, as she second-guesses the instinct to go without.
"Some mages carry theirs everywhere they go. I got out of that habit," she answers, and when she turns to look back at Athessa it's with a small, sheepish shrug. "Maybe it's foolish."
no subject
But surely she's preaching to the choir here, and Derrica knows everything she could say about the unwieldy nature of staves. After all, Athessa's only experience with having to haul one around was simply to bring the Keeper's staff back from the forest.
"I guess there's some reason or another why they have to be so big, eh?"
This is a stupid topic to be prattling on about. She should just stop talking. She leans back on her elbow and continues:
"If there were a way to make a collapsible one, more people'd probably know. Unless..."
no subject
Not that Derrica feels any pressing need to explore other options. She's been fighting with a stave all of her life. Learning new ways to fight doesn't displace what has become almost second nature.
"But so many of us construct our staffs to suit us. There's a whole way of focusing your body, using it to draw on your power. I think it must be the same for you, with your daggers? You know how to move with them."
no subject
"Sure, yeah," she nods and waves backhandedly towards wherever her daggers are, forgetting that that happens to be the same place her grandmother's staff is leaning. "The daggers are just more arm to swing about."
no subject
"Are you thinking of taking up the staff? Tired of your daggers?"
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
slaps a bow on here