faderift | OPEN

Entry tags:

OPEN

WHO: Dick
WHAT: Dick.
WHEN: Guardian
WHERE: The Gallows/Kirkwall
NOTES: Brackets or prose ok, wildcard ok. Other starters maybe later who knows what could happen.

The Gallows

A sharp intake of breath, pupils blown out in freefall panic that quickly pins into blearier confusion, Richard Dickerson jolts awake where he’s sat. Sometimes he reaches for his hip, sometimes he flinches blind to jostle an empty glass, or knocks the book at his knee to the floor.

In the library, in the chantry, in the baths, in any seldom-used nook or cranny between the towers after hours, he might be found dozing and nudged or shaken or spooked by instinct at the proximity of another living creature’s presence.

Lowtown

In a Lowtown tavern, he’s being hefted off a table by the shoulder, levered to his feet to have his satchel shoved into his arms.

A gossamer thread of drool keeps him tied to the surface for a moment after he’s upright. There might be blood spindling through it if his nap was unscheduled at the end of a sucker punch at some smart remark. Or maybe it’s clear -- maybe it’s just past closing time and he doesn’t have to go home, but he can’t stay here.

Regardless, he cuts a distinct figure at a distance -- long legs and beak and beard and the shaggy ruff of his cloak, which will serve him well in the snow outside.

Kirkwall/The Gallows

On business in the streets of Kirkwall, or in the hallways between spaces within the Gallows, his reluctance to engage in anything but the most cursory of conversation is clear: he keeps odd hours and waits behind blind corners for approaching footsteps to carry on past.

This is especially true of ferry trips and mealtimes, when he must watch from afar to see that the boat is likely to stay empty, or snake in and skim off the scraps left over -- cold eggs, lukewarm dregs of stew. He’s not picky, so long as he doesn’t have to make small talk.

He’s always been this way, but now more than ever, there’s a clockwork regularity to his comings and goings that makes him easier to find than he’d like for anyone who’s looking.

Wildcard

Choose your own adventure -- check in w/me about meetings arranged or requested IC, as he is likely to be rude or otherwise strange about them for the foreseeable future.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are alarm clocks with puzzle-working elements that must be solved through before the ringing stops. So Richard finds himself hauled up from the Fade and sat down before a series of minor shocks to his system to make sense of: the location, the presence of Fitcher’s hands folding his book away, placing papers out onto the table, news of the affair.

Panic sublimates after the initial adrenaline spasm of awareness, processing clogged instead by his struggle to recall some context. Was this a scheduled meeting? How long has it been since the ordeal with the dream? Days? Weeks?

Who is Lord Bayros?

He nods, breathing in to steady himself, shifting to sit up straighter in his chair.

Yes, of course, this is all fine and above board and he is definitely qualified to help in some way.

She waits for him to acclimate; while not a patient creature by nature, it is one of a series of trades Fitcher has forced herself to learn. While Richard unfolds his crumpled accordion self, she withdraws her hands from the letters and tucks her chin into one upturned palm.

Eventually, when she senses the room has stopped spinning, she explains, "I've been tasked to keep up correspondence with a contact among the Nevarran court. I recall you having a rather deft pen and thought you might have some advice for me."

And then, lest he settle comfortably beside the faint possibility that they will avoid the dragon in the room completely--

"Would you prefer me to call you Richard or Silas?"

His chair protests being stretched against with a chitinous series of clicks.

He is awake, and worse for wear for it -- grubby stubble prickled at his throat, some muss to the sweep of his hair back off his brow, buttons unfastened and laces half-done. But his eyes are clear, when they finally find hers for a read, and the hand he scrubs over his mouth and under his chin is steady. Not drunk, then. At least, not anymore.

Just a little reproachful about her advantage. How did she even find him here?

“I haven’t thought about it,” he confesses, voice still rough with sleep. He clears his throat and reaches for the first of the papers, drawing it in closer, only to glance up again from the text. It’d be foolhardy to think this particular dragon so easily turned aside. “Silas.

“But I will answer to either.”

"Silas will do then."

She holds his eyes for a beat more, but is the first to blink - lowering her gaze to the papers between them. Fitcher allows her chin to settle a little more firmly there into her palm. She waits. She neither leans unnecessarily far forward over the table or taps her thumb against the tabletop. No, she and that pretty wine colored bodice with its high collar buttoned all the way to her chin are the very illusion of demure reserve.

Dick (Silas?) takes the opportunity afforded him by broken eye contact to clock the high collar, the buttons fastened all the way up.

He looks down again a beat after she does, that brief pause standing in for any comment he’d otherwise have time to make. None seems warranted, and he’s dimly aware of the state he’s in opposite her, all the disheveled tabs and creases of a rake with none of the pomp or charm.

The more he reads, the more trace humor finds its way into crow’s feet, the ghost of a grin behind his next glance across the table.

“She’s lonely.”

What a nice project for her to share with a friend.

For a time during his review, she merely examines the shape of the papers from the reverse side. The light is too poor and the contact's handwriting slightly too ornate for her to read along upside down, but she's already been through the documents a half dozen times already and so further study (from her perspective, in any case) is irrelevant. An excuse. Motivation to not fixate the singular point of her attention on Silas' bent head.

But she's ready to look up again and to meet that glance when it comes.

"Is she?" Might be feigned ignorance. Fitcher's eyebrows climb gently toward her dark hairline. "What makes you say so?"

Is she?

“Perhaps I’m projecting.”

Might be is enough for him to spit the bit back into her hand, this latest shared glance hooked into and held into a more direct study, trace heat a little acrid in the blue of his eyes. He’s had a challenging week.

Still, his right hand is poised at the edge of one sheet as if with an invisible pen. The spirit is willing.

This is a good letter.

“What were you thinking?” The absence of italics makes it clear that this is an ask for input on her preferred approach to this task, and not accusation of ulterior motive.

Edited 2021-02-21 07:02 (UTC)

Yes, well.

Across from him, Fitcher shifts her chin in her upturned palm and sets her knuckles contemplative across the line of her mouth. Her gaze too slides away—from him, down to the pages between them, or to Silas' ready hand, or to both. After a moment, Fitcher turns her hands to lace her fingers together. She sets her cheek into the cradle formed by the back of her linked fingers.

"You're right. She is lonely," she admits. Her eyes flicker up. "But I will admit to having trouble maintaining those charades for very long. Despite appearances to the contrary, it doesn't come very naturally to me."

They are definitely discussing Lady Seamstress.

Whatever chipped free of his already shoddy polish smooths over in the time she takes to contemplate the task at hand. The corner of his mouth crimps down at his own expense; the flop of rifled pages marks the return of his attention to the text.

“I can draft a reply and pass it onto you for revisions, if you like. Or we could work on something together.”

He’s re-ordering the papers as he speaks, light with the corners.

“How are you faring?”

The thoughtful noise she makes is reserved for his proposal and not for the question which follows it. For that, she has a ready enough answer.

"I dreamed of putting an arrow in Enchanter Leander's eye and since waking have been tasked with spying on Marcus Rowntree. So somewhat mixed. And you?"

“I was involved in a number of attempts on our colleagues here, several of which were successful.”

That’s how he’s doing. The fraying at his fringes fills out the rest -- the anxiety in his letters made manifest now in his dread of being Known. Or at least seen too clearly for comfort through one particularly polarizing filter.

He quiets his shuffling to look across the table at her.

“Does he know it was you?”

"No idea. But I suspect it's only a matter of time before he finds out. Well kept secrets are a rare enough thing when the Fade isn't involved."

Her attention flickers down to the letters between them, then back up.

"I've yet to decide whether I'll discuss it with him or if I mean to let it lay as is. I shouldn't want him finding out and thinking that I'm avoiding the matter, but I'd also prefer not to make an enemy of the man."

“I only know that he’s a mage,” Silas says of Leander. “Rowntree I engaged in Venatori territory, and left alive at another mage’s request.”

On the table between them, of course if young Harric had his way, the beast would have a place of her own at the dinner table meanders into a list of grievances that could be attributed to an adulterous lover or a dog, it’s hard to say.

Fitcher and her dilemmas have proven to be the bigger draw -- he’s watching her now as if he’s only just registered her intent to grab an actual tiger by its tail. He shifts in his seat, 5% concerned, 95% Highly Interested.

“He split the earth and brought molten rock to the surface in a temper.”

Across the table, with her chin set on her knit together fingers and her attention cool in the low light of this narrow back reading nook, Fitcher makes a humming noise of acknowledgement. It's a thoughtful sound, not unconcerned but not worried. There's a difference, and it is wise to draw a line between what shapes reasonable caution and what is merely—

Unproductive.

"I gather he was something of an extremist during his time in the mage rebellion as well." Her head tips gently in one direction, though her chin doesn't lift. "On whose request?"

“Another mage’s request,” Silas repeats. He’s worn too ragged to pass for cool in return, more pointed in the nothing personal nature of this second deflection. “I’ve gathered they have a tendency to band together under duress, but their instincts in this case may have had merit. I understand that Marcus was among those who joined the procession to Skyhold.”

As opposed to being consumed by rage in any kind of literal sense, presumably.

“The majority of those I’ve spoken to are eager to dismiss actions taken while dreaming as a fiction. Perhaps in their haste to limit or deny their own exposure.”

He pauses; his gaze trips absently down to the height of her collar.

“I’m not sure.”

The line of Fitcher's mouth shifts in light of that repetition—not thinning or drawn down in disappointment, but rather curling. Quirking faintly in the direction of good humor. You sly dog, you.

Yes, there is nothing a pressed mage loves so much as another mage. And yes, she will evidently have to do her own digging on the subject.

(As that old Antivan proverb goes, Birds of a feather flock together.)

"Say it like that and I will think you feel differently about it. You played your part with so much intent?"

A cat with a mouse. A clever dog assessing a quail in the reeds. A mongoose with a snake. The faint tip of her head sets the edge of her collar just there against the underside of her jaw.

“I know what I am. And I know that I didn’t imagine anything for myself that didn’t have a foundation in truth.”

For better or worse.

Mostly for worse.

In any case, Fitcher is one of a few he’s comfortable looking in the eye while he says it, and he fleets a crook at his mouth back at her, suggestion well divorced of earlier intrigue. As a mouse or a quail or a snake, he is comfortable with his supposed place in the food chain and how he must rate.

She looks at him.

—Is, on the surface, a simple thing. It is direct. Honest, in a sense. Straightforward, certainly.

And then Fitcher draws her chin from the unwinding cradle of her fingers. Her hands settle quietly on the table top, the tips of her fingers touching the topmost edge of the letters which lie just there between them.

"No, I can't say that I see anything in them I could outright deny either. Though saying so to anyone who thought to ask would—" Hm. A flicker of resistance in her face, a rare beat of hesitation. "Complicate things. Generally moreso than I would like."

“Then it’s convenient for you that most will do their own heavy-lifting wherever there might be a need for narrative revision.”

Just as quietly, he tugs the pages in a shade closer to himself. Hard to read.

He’s certainly more awake than he was when she found him, clear and crisp now in spite of tatty edges and stale breath.

“I don’t know that I expect Rowntree to be among them.”

Fitcher's long hands fold quietly, one over the other, on the narrow reading table between them. The sound she makes is an idle, noncommittal hum—the sort of thing born of a person who has opinions reserving them for one reason or another. It sounds a little like, We'll see, or maybe Another mage.

After all, why question the practicality of building a fence around the grubbier details?

"I'm sure I'll muddle through it," she finally says, for a moment seemingly content to observe him and the papers and the work. Then— "There is one other thing I think we should discuss."

“Mm,” Silas’ warning is easily assuaged, re: her muddling. He is also sure.

There would be no visual marker for the buzz of his nerves at what she says next — that queer falling sensation in the basket if his rib cage — if not for the pinch at his brow when he recognizes it. Unexpected.

“Of course,” he says, mild. There is ample opportunity for him to guess aloud what he suspects it might be.

He looks at her instead, a little too keen and a shade too sidelong for innocuous expectation.

Her attention is very direct, quiet and still without being particularly calculated. Either this is habit—one instance in a long history of putting people on the spot—, or she has given this moment enough consideration that it comes to her without struggle. Or it is easy because it's both, or—

"Your little messenger. And the interest you expressed in the abomination which set flame to the dining hall last summer. I would like to know how much of your world's magic comes readily to you and your assessment of how much of a danger it represents here."

—because she knows there are other options yet at her fingertips.

"If we are to be candid with one another, it's important to me that I know."

Who ever said anything about being candid?

“Thot,” he reminds, easily, because it is easy, while he looks back into her dark eyes and realizes there is very little he knows about Miss Fitcher’s politics, beyond that it was very easy to tell her about his when they were getting naked. Her scars, he supposes, speak for themselves.

He thinks rather than descend directly into it, with the air of one who’s seldom been asked to explain. Surely a careful kind of framework is necessary for easy understanding of the alien arcane.

“My abilities here are -- limited.” For lack of a less inflammatory word. “The Fade is a poor substitute for the aether I’m accustomed to. It runs thin. And I recognize nothing of the methods used by native mages to interact with it.”

1 out of 5 stars, is the sentiment. QUITE candid.

“Are there any recorded instances of Rifters falling prey to demonic influence?”

His interest is too coolly diagnostic to read as coy. This inquiring mind would very much like to know.

The question gives her visible pause—not a hesitation, just thinking. Turning the thought over like the carefully weighing of a foreign coin in a trading house.

"I don't know," is a tentative confession. The truth.

"But I suspect if there were you would know. As divided as the Inquisition and as leaderless as the Chantry was, I can't imagine they would have permitted to treat you as anything more than demons of the Fade if such a thing were possible. If a Rifter working on behalf of them were to be possessed in the field—They would have looked to enforce training to safeguard again the possibility, at the very least. It would have been made part of your—" Hm. "Orientation."

There’s truth in the resignation that grips in grim beneath his whiskers, distaste tinted with understanding tight in crow’s feet. Her concerns are neither unfounded or unfair, be they business or personal.

It was kind of her to allow him to wake up all the way before catching him flat-footed.

The process of him deciding as much is easy to read in a glance down, and back up again.

"It’s an ugly fate. But not one I live in fear of."

Edited 2021-03-19 00:05 (UTC)

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