faderift | open. you believe what you want to believe.

"Oh, y'know--"

No, she doesn't, obviously. Pleased to tell her more, Matthias sits back a little--not too far--and that means he moves his face out from under her hand but he reaches for it to hold it instead. It feels natural. When she'd walked in the room, things had been horrible. This is better.

"I'm trying to get better at healing, mainly. I'm getting quite good. Derrica reckons I could help with it, official-like--she said that ages ago but I dunno, I don't want to cock it up in some way. Spirit blade--Knight Enchanter Voss is helping me with that. And control, in general. I can write my whole name with fire but with everything else I'm crap."

"I remember the spirit blade." That, she still likes the idea of: weapons matching, fighting together, one more thing they're both capable of. Her other hand comes and covers his, enclosing it loosely between her palms. Healing, too, is good, and being able to control the things he does. All of it useful, all of it manageable by people without magic, only more quickly.

It's thinking of that--only more quickly--that leads her to add, "You want people to be better. That means you would be a good healer."

"I hope so." He looks down at where her hand is laid, covering his. The spaces between her knuckles, where her claws appear, are smooth. There's no sign of them. There never is, not until she needs them.

"I think--I want to help people, y'know? I always have." Saying that after doing blood magic in a dream might seem counter to that statement. Matthias puts that thought--and his immediate defensiveness--to one side. "Healing is the most straightforward, like. And I'd be glad to learn it, and be good at it. I'd always want to be on the front lines, though."

Her knuckles are smooth, the backs of her hands only faintly lined--old wounds, not self-inflicted, places that were neatly pinned open for lyrium experiments and then closed again. Her fingers and knuckles, compared to everything above them, and particulary everything behind her wrists, aren't marked much at all.

"Other healers couldn't," she points out. Matthias has this on the others she's encountered: he can fight as well as heal, can fight better. That makes him more useful than anyone scrambling along the edges of a battle. "So you would be more helpful. No--you will be more helpful."

"I will be," he repeats. Her affirmation means more than his. As ever, Matthias puts more stock in the opinions of others than he does in his own--and more, still, in Laura's opinion. She's numbered among those most important. Of course what she thinks counts for more.

He turns his hand so that his is now covering hers, so that he can run his thumb over her knuckles, raised like tiny mountains, the smooth valleys in between. Back and forth, almost meditative. In some future, he could be a healer and a fighter, both at once. In some future, he could still do blood magic--but he won't, he swore it. In some future, they could be in a tent together in a swamp, and the world could be horrible outside, but they'd be together.

"D'you think," he starts, then stops himself. "Sorry. I was thinking-- It doesn't matter. Or, I mean, it does matter, quite a lot, but I dunno if... Just, there's a lot of time between now and the point in time we were dreaming about. Right?"

"Yes." Five years, or around that long--though he likely doesn't need the exact number supplied. He remembers the dream as clearly as she. "Enough time to learn the things you want to."

It doesn't occur to her that he's not still talking of magic, in bringing up the numbers. Even with his thumb idly rubbing her skin, the new stumbling in his question. Matthias is confident, but he isn't always confident; this is something it's taken her time to figure out about him. And magic is important to him.

So it must be about magic.

"Right, yeah. Or-- you know, do the things I want to. Or the things I think I want to."

He looks at her, properly like. They're quite close still. It wasn't long ago--minutes, maybe--that the space between them felt like a gulf that couldn't be crossed. No, yeah--it's too recent, he can't say what he's thinking. If he told her that he would marry her, still, that he might want that--and might is such a stupid word here, a word he might use as a space between himself and the real truth--but if he told her now, with all that fear and all that she has lived, blood magic, and him with blood on his hands (in a dream, of course, it was a dream), all of it so close, still--well, saying it now would spoil it. It must be better to wait.

So instead, Matthias says, "I like you."

Which is stupid, really. But he means it, and he means the weight that it really has, which maybe she won't know--but she will know, of course she will know, because Laura is much cleverer than he is and can pick up even the littlest of things.

Laura understands, after a moment or two, what it is he means. There's a gap between the things Matthias wants to do and the words I like you, and inside it is everything they haven't talked about: all the parts of the dream that still feel like a dream, everything possible that she hasn't told anyone in the waking world.

"I asked Commander Flint what is required for a wedding," she informs him. Her voice is its usual flat, steady thing, made softer by the topic at hand. I like you, too, she means, dressed up in knowledge gained--like the taste of oranges and the rules to card games--later than most. It's easier, somehow, to explain what she's done than it is to explain what she feels.

And here, her eyes are on their hands, a lock of hair falling before her face. "It is not complicated, and it may not be legal. But he is capable of marrying people. If it becomes...relevant."

A grin jumps to his face first, and he squeezes her hand. There. She got it. And she brought it up, which means that it's all right, it could happen, and Matthias can feel his heart knocking very hard against his chest--but he collects himself, he marshals his face and tries to put on a look of pleasant consideration, like the thought is very new.

"If it becomes relevant," he repeats, "that's good to know, like. Phworr--" He breaks just as quickly as he'd put that on, blows a breath out, "you really asked Commander Flint, didn't you? You're brave, you know."

"I knew he would know," she answers, burying her smile, chin tucked against her throat. But Matthias is smiling, too, and they are agreed in all this, and he has promised never to use blood magic. So, careful, she squeezes his hand back, her gaze meeting his. "And he was very helpful."

To the best of his ability, at least, which apparently is only somewhat more detailed than what Laura knew before that point.

"I reckon he was," Matthias agrees, "but him just looking at me turns me half to dust. Never mind if I were asking him about weddings and he were looking at me while I was asking it. You're brave."

It bears repeating. During his compliment, he's gone and said the word itself, hasn't he--wedding--and a quick nervous grin jumps on to his face which hasn't got anything to do with Commander Flint.

"Since you've asked, I reckon I don't have to. Lucky me."

It's hard to imagine being afraid of Commander Flint. He's serious, and he's rarely friendly, but he doesn't wish people in Riftwatch harm. For her, at least, that takes away the sting from his flat stare and terse comments.

But she does see much less of Flint than Matthias. Perhaps being around him is more difficult when one's Riftwatch career depends entirely on his opinion.

"He said," she adds, since her knowledge won't do Matthias any good unless she speaks it aloud, "someone who wished to be married should ask people to observe and come to him. There are other expectations for people with land or families. People pay each other before weddings occur. But that sounds...unnecessary."

"Dowries," Matthias says, with a nod. He knows that much about weddings at least. "But we haven't got anything, so, yeah--unnecessary, I reckon."

We, in the context of weddings and dowries, has a great deal involved in it--a headiness that makes Matthias' stomach pitch a little. He weathers it by holding to Laura's hand, running his thumb over her knuckles again back the other way.

"Who would you ask? To, y'know. Observe. If that happened."

This is proof, the fact that he pulled the word dowries from the air, that Matthias knows more of marriages than Laura. But not a great deal more, which is something. She looks down at their hands again, thinking. Not only of some future event and who would witness it, but of this moment right now. Matthias touches her hands like they could never hurt him, and sometimes, it feels unbelievable.

"I'm unsure," she says, after a pause. But she does try a few names on for size. "Bastien. Mhavos. In the dream, Mrs. Fitcher disapproved."

"Hang on," Matthias says, with a laugh, "we talked about this, didn't we? In the dream. I said Athessa--and, well, now Derrica, for certain, and Enchanter Leander--"

And both of those are a little fraught--Derrica would still be the one he would want to be there, if he were getting married (when?), but in the dream, she'd had it hard, harder than Matthias. Now her name is an easy one to give. And Enchanter Leander is gone, which is a worry calcifying into something greater, but Matthias pushes that away for now, too.

"Hang on," repeating himself, this time with a puzzled frown, "why did Mrs. Fitcher disapprove?"

"All of them," Laura agrees. Athessa and Derrica are friends, Leander is important to Matthias. Those are the considerations necessary. And six people isn't very many, few enough that it won't feel like being on display. A party after can have more people, all of Riftwatch for all she minds.

Her face falls at his question--or the equivalent to her face falling, at least, brows coming together a little, mouth drooping slightly at the corners. I should not have said anything about Fitcher, she thinks, because the last thing she wants is to repeat half-remembered comments from a dream.

"Fitcher...does not think that mages should marry." She can't think of a kinder way to put it, but surely it's better than she thinks you could become an abomination.

Oh. So the obvious answer, is what Matthias thinks--though he thinks it after a first initial stab of hurt. He can't help that. You get comfortable, living in Riftwatch. You don't forget, that there are people that don't want you to marry, that wouldn't even want you to live outside a Circle, that don't trust you--you don't ever forget all of that, of course, but the intensity of it is a little less. Day in, day out, you can live a step away from knowing that.

The hurt is followed by a flash of anger. But that passes quickly. Old scars make a kind of armor. Matthias shrugs.

"What does she know, anyway. And that was in the dream besides, so. It hardly counts. But even if it did, she doesn't know. It doesn't matter if it's what we want, right?"

"Right," she agrees, because the words for why it counts are difficult to find. Mrs. Fitcher was one of the first people she met in Kirkwall; she explained the purpose of cards and never seemed to mind that their conversations were small, strange things, rarely carried by the sound of Laura's voice. She's a plain, smart woman, older than Laura ever imagined getting, and stately about it in a sensible kind of way.

But Matthias isn't wrong. It was in the dream, in a world that doesn't exist. The things they keep from it are up to them. Her mouth tilts down further, her free hand covering his again as if locking his fingers up between hers might keep him safe from others' unkindness. And she tries to brush off the thought the way he has. "Her opinion does not change mine. And she might not feel that way now."

Doubt creeps into that last statement. But it would be nice, if it were true.

open. you believe what you want to believe.

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