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
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."
Athessa blinks, looks at her daggers, at the staff. She had planned to wait until Derrica came calling about the note left with her Satinalia gifts, but—
"No, uh..." She turns back toward the fire, trying to pick the right way to address that. "That one belonged to my grandmother. I found it when I went back to say rites for everyone."
The note is set aside, paused in the wake of the message Derrica isn't planning on asking about. Her hands fold in her lap, considering the several different parts of Athessa's answer.
"It's good that it wasn't destroyed," is what Derrica finally says. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to find anything left from Dairsmuid. It's all gone, ground into ash and dust. "Does it bring you some comfort, having it?"
There's no need to ask if the rites had brought her comfort. Derrica isn't as well versed as Ilias in the art of laying the dead to rest, but she knows what settles spirits and what doesn't. It must have been of some help to Athessa, to go there and tend to her people.
"Not really," she says, fidgeting idly with a loose thread on one of the cushions. "I actually was planning on uh... offering it to you, if you wanted it. Since I can't use it, and I think... ya know it's not gonna be much use to me and I think it'd be best used by a healer, and —"
Athessa shakes her head, dismissing the rest of whatever she might ramble on about in the wake of that admission. Colin didn't want it because he rarely uses a staff, and it was too personal a gift to offer. He, whom she calls brother. It feels little more than perfunctory to offer it to Derrica now, knowing the implications and that the staff would likely require more practice to use than not.
And this whole time Athessa has avoided looking at Derrica's face, knowing she could gauge her reaction and, inexplicably, preferring not to.
"But if that's too much or just not something you want, I don't blame you. It just seems a waste for me to have it and not be able to use it. It...should be used."
It does feel like too much. Derrica's taken aback by it, though maybe she should have anticipated something as selfless as this from Athessa. Her fingers pluck at a small loose thread at the ankle of her leggings, indecision in her face, before she rises to sit on the bed beside Athessa.
"I'm honored that you want me to have it."
That much is easy to say. It is such an expression of trust to give her this piece of her family, maybe one of the only pieces Athessa has in her possession.
"But I couldn't—it's not wasted with you, Athessa. Doesn't it bring you some comfort to have something so important to your grandmother with you?"
The rites brought her comfort. The book of songs and her mother's journal bring her comfort. The staff brings her guilt.
"No," she says quietly, on a breath, and bites her lip. Hasn't she cried enough? When is she going to stop needing to fight herself just to maintain composure? She wins the battle this time, though she swipes a hand over her cheek just to be sure.
"No. It brings me guilt, and anger, and grief, and I'd rather someone take it and use it to do good rather than let it sit there reminding me about everything I never became and never will."
Athessa buries her head in her hands for only a moment, deterred from prolonging it by the flash-image of that poor elf woman's face. Eyes sewn open, mouth sewn shut. But instead of the glassy marbles Medrod had fashioned in place of her real eyes, Athessa sees her mother's eyes and it shocks a breath from her lungs and forces her to uncurl from herself and keep her own eyes open.
"It's yours if you want it," she says, making to stand. "But I won't force it on you."
Would Derrica feel much like this if she had any part of her mother to hold on to? She had never felt this kind of grief for the absence of her parents. Athessa's pain is so sharp, and Derrica doesn't know what to do for it, how to ease it.
She grieves Dairsmuid, but in a different way. It leaves her very little to go on.
"Don't get up," Derrica pleads softly. "Athessa."
The question becomes: should she take the staff to spare Athessa this weight? Derrica still hesitates over the idea of having something so precious in her possession, even as she reaches to catch at Athessa's wrist to keep her from drawing away.
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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.
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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."
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"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.
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"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.
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"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.
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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."
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"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.
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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.
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"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?"
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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.
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"Just lay down. I'll get you something else to put on, if you want."
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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.
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"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.
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"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?"
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"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."
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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..."
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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."
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"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."
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"Are you thinking of taking up the staff? Tired of your daggers?"
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"No, uh..." She turns back toward the fire, trying to pick the right way to address that. "That one belonged to my grandmother. I found it when I went back to say rites for everyone."
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"It's good that it wasn't destroyed," is what Derrica finally says. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to find anything left from Dairsmuid. It's all gone, ground into ash and dust. "Does it bring you some comfort, having it?"
There's no need to ask if the rites had brought her comfort. Derrica isn't as well versed as Ilias in the art of laying the dead to rest, but she knows what settles spirits and what doesn't. It must have been of some help to Athessa, to go there and tend to her people.
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Athessa shakes her head, dismissing the rest of whatever she might ramble on about in the wake of that admission. Colin didn't want it because he rarely uses a staff, and it was too personal a gift to offer. He, whom she calls brother. It feels little more than perfunctory to offer it to Derrica now, knowing the implications and that the staff would likely require more practice to use than not.
And this whole time Athessa has avoided looking at Derrica's face, knowing she could gauge her reaction and, inexplicably, preferring not to.
"But if that's too much or just not something you want, I don't blame you. It just seems a waste for me to have it and not be able to use it. It...should be used."
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"I'm honored that you want me to have it."
That much is easy to say. It is such an expression of trust to give her this piece of her family, maybe one of the only pieces Athessa has in her possession.
"But I couldn't—it's not wasted with you, Athessa. Doesn't it bring you some comfort to have something so important to your grandmother with you?"
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"No," she says quietly, on a breath, and bites her lip. Hasn't she cried enough? When is she going to stop needing to fight herself just to maintain composure? She wins the battle this time, though she swipes a hand over her cheek just to be sure.
"No. It brings me guilt, and anger, and grief, and I'd rather someone take it and use it to do good rather than let it sit there reminding me about everything I never became and never will."
Athessa buries her head in her hands for only a moment, deterred from prolonging it by the flash-image of that poor elf woman's face. Eyes sewn open, mouth sewn shut. But instead of the glassy marbles Medrod had fashioned in place of her real eyes, Athessa sees her mother's eyes and it shocks a breath from her lungs and forces her to uncurl from herself and keep her own eyes open.
"It's yours if you want it," she says, making to stand. "But I won't force it on you."
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She grieves Dairsmuid, but in a different way. It leaves her very little to go on.
"Don't get up," Derrica pleads softly. "Athessa."
The question becomes: should she take the staff to spare Athessa this weight? Derrica still hesitates over the idea of having something so precious in her possession, even as she reaches to catch at Athessa's wrist to keep her from drawing away.
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slaps a bow on here