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
"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.
Derrica's hand on her wrist is a reminder in itself. Of how long Athessa spent out there in the cold, about how high she still is, of the last time Derrica was in this room, the first time they kissed, and the last time.
It takes barely the span of a breath for those things to register before she takes her hand back, but instead of moving out of reach she closes the space between them. She cups Derrica's face in her trembling hands and kisses her.
Derrica has a moment to draw breath, thinking to protest further as Athessa draws away, and then abruptly, Athessa is terribly close. The soft, confused voice of protest is entirely lost under the soft press of Athessa's mouth.
The force of emotion behind the kiss is paralyzing. It knocks the breath out of Derrica. How long has it been since she kissed Athessa? Nothing about the passage of time has tempered this. Her hands come up to catch at Athessa's wrists, draw her hands down into her lap as she breaks away with a soft, ragged breath.
Her intent had been to say something. But nothing comes to her. Her thumbs run along the inside of Athessa's wrist, and she feels like she's been hollowed out, throat closing around a wash of conflicting feelings.
Athessa's not so far gone that she doesn't recognize Derrica removing her hands from her face as a signal to stop, though she's loathe to comply. The haze makes it feel like it's happening in slow motion. Every soft sound of ragged breath or the pa-thum pa-thum pa-thum of Athessa's heart deafening in the wake of what must have been a mistake.
But Derrica isn't saying anything. And her touch brushes over Athessa's skin, over the forget-me-nots tattooed there (yet another reminder), and Athessa's gaze flickers between Derrica's mouth and her eyes.
The words trail off. It feels like taking advantage, like she's inserted herself here at the worst possible time. There's some quiet agony over the idea of mixed messages, whether or not her expression of concern had been too much, too familiar.
How much more damage has she just done? Derrica doesn't know. Her grip is so gentle over Athessa's wrists, fingers careful over the delicately tattooed flowers.
That's what she settles on, pushing back against her own doubts and insecurities to say the truth of how she feels. Despite feeling like she's put Derrica in this position, taking advantage of a time when Derrica is less likely to assert herself because Athessa isn't in peak condition.
Athessa looks down at their hands, her own upturned against Derrica's lap. Derrica's hold on Athessa's wrists would be easy to break, but Athessa has no desire to break it. She shifts her thumb to brush against Derrica's arm.
"If you're thinking that you're somehow being selfish with me," she says, thinking back to the nights on the road home from Churneau, and what Derrica had said upon their return. Soft firelight and fresh injury, gentle touches and the comfort of a warm body to lay beside. A heartbeat to thrum in time with. "Then be selfish."
Derrica feels herself flush, heat gathering in her cheeks, along her throat, pooling in her chest. She takes a breath, holds it for a moment, then exhales slowly before she shakes her head.
"I should let you rest," she says in answer, some quiet strain in her voice as her hands lift from Athessa's. The minor shuttering in her expression is inevitable, tempering the warmth and concern. "I've kept you up long enough."
Ironic, perhaps, that Derrica thinks leaving Athessa alone will result in her getting rest when even at the best of times she doesn't sleep well alone. Now, with the images of dead elves and dismembered limbs fresh in memory, she'd be lucky to sleep at all.
"You could stay," she whispers, wincing at how small her voice sounds. The last thing she wants right now is more pity. "Until I fall asleep?"
Actually, the last thing she wants to do right now is beg. And this feels too close to that for comfort.
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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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It takes barely the span of a breath for those things to register before she takes her hand back, but instead of moving out of reach she closes the space between them. She cups Derrica's face in her trembling hands and kisses her.
Sweetly. Desperately.
Like her lips are air and she's been drowning.
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Derrica has a moment to draw breath, thinking to protest further as Athessa draws away, and then abruptly, Athessa is terribly close. The soft, confused voice of protest is entirely lost under the soft press of Athessa's mouth.
The force of emotion behind the kiss is paralyzing. It knocks the breath out of Derrica. How long has it been since she kissed Athessa? Nothing about the passage of time has tempered this. Her hands come up to catch at Athessa's wrists, draw her hands down into her lap as she breaks away with a soft, ragged breath.
Her intent had been to say something. But nothing comes to her. Her thumbs run along the inside of Athessa's wrist, and she feels like she's been hollowed out, throat closing around a wash of conflicting feelings.
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But Derrica isn't saying anything. And her touch brushes over Athessa's skin, over the forget-me-nots tattooed there (yet another reminder), and Athessa's gaze flickers between Derrica's mouth and her eyes.
"I—" She's sorry. She's not sorry.
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The words trail off. It feels like taking advantage, like she's inserted herself here at the worst possible time. There's some quiet agony over the idea of mixed messages, whether or not her expression of concern had been too much, too familiar.
How much more damage has she just done? Derrica doesn't know. Her grip is so gentle over Athessa's wrists, fingers careful over the delicately tattooed flowers.
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That's what she settles on, pushing back against her own doubts and insecurities to say the truth of how she feels. Despite feeling like she's put Derrica in this position, taking advantage of a time when Derrica is less likely to assert herself because Athessa isn't in peak condition.
Athessa looks down at their hands, her own upturned against Derrica's lap. Derrica's hold on Athessa's wrists would be easy to break, but Athessa has no desire to break it. She shifts her thumb to brush against Derrica's arm.
"If you're thinking that you're somehow being selfish with me," she says, thinking back to the nights on the road home from Churneau, and what Derrica had said upon their return. Soft firelight and fresh injury, gentle touches and the comfort of a warm body to lay beside. A heartbeat to thrum in time with. "Then be selfish."
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Derrica feels herself flush, heat gathering in her cheeks, along her throat, pooling in her chest. She takes a breath, holds it for a moment, then exhales slowly before she shakes her head.
"I should let you rest," she says in answer, some quiet strain in her voice as her hands lift from Athessa's. The minor shuttering in her expression is inevitable, tempering the warmth and concern. "I've kept you up long enough."
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"You could stay," she whispers, wincing at how small her voice sounds. The last thing she wants right now is more pity. "Until I fall asleep?"
Actually, the last thing she wants to do right now is beg. And this feels too close to that for comfort.
"Please."
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slaps a bow on here