[open] I feel calamity whisper

[altusimperius]

WHO: Benedict & you
WHAT: livin' that wartime life back on the home front
WHEN: Solace, over the course of the modplot
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: feel free to request specific prompts if what's here doesn't suit you!

I. Diplomacy office

Receiving, sorting, answering correspondence; following up on important dates, of which there are seemingly countless these days; making and delivering coffee; taking dictation, recording meetings, making lists; cross-referencing names and locations as requested, labeling markers on a map; there's hardly time to breathe.
It's been some days now since Benedict has had a proper sleep or sit-down, spending his days and nights scrambling after Byerly, seeing to the many minuscule needs of a Diplomacy office when its Forces and Scouting counterparts have fallen off the face of the world.
He doesn't begrudge Byerly-- in fact, for the first time since starting to work for him, Benedict is as quick to snap to his needs as a seasoned valet.
When not hunched over his desk in the office itself, he can frequently be found scurrying to and fro with this or that missive, list, or directive, if not just the latest pot of coffee.

He'll stop for a few moments to chat, but only if it's important.

Ia. for Byerly

With the Diplomacy office's activity having thinned out for the day, the room looks like a hurricane hit it-- this likely includes its denizens, although one of them has stepped out to retrieve more coffee, despite the darkened sky and the guttering candles.
It's an automatic motion, setting the cup on Byerly's desk, but Benedict actually looks at him for the first time in a while, and furrows his brow.

"...how long have you been here, today?"



II. The Off Hours

Going to bed just isn't cutting it anymore. Benedict can lie facedown on his mattress for the hours he's able to take to himself, but amidst the racing thoughts and the day's anxieties, sleep just isn't happening.

It's at these times that he drags himself out of bed and ascends the tower to the room where his hookah lives, long abandoned by either Athessa or Colin, but he can't let himself think about that. He smokes, and lies there staring at the ceiling, and sometimes he sleeps.

After a while, he can be found there nearly every night, either unconscious or trying to be amidst the haze of elfroot smoke.


III. Wildcard

Comments

[altusimperius]

It's never been unusual for Bastien to pop in and say hello while Athessa was here, so Benedict isn't surprised by his appearance any more than he would be by Vanadi's or any of her other attachments.

He feels that 'oh' in his chest, however, and quirks a sympathetic little smile, lifting the hose slightly to waggle it at Bastien, enticing him inside if he should want to partake.

[cozen]

His pause is very short, but it is a pause—a pause while the two wolves inside him, one a rule-abiding suck-up square and the other an easily-tempted knave, gnash their teeth at each other for a moment.

Then Bastien steps inside and shuts the door behind him. He’s taking the hose, sitting down. But his inhale isn’t as deep as it looks. (Losing less of his mind than a target, while appearing to keep up, was an important skill.)

How are you? would be a stupid question. Instead, while he hands the hose back: “This sucks.”

[altusimperius]

A single nod punctuates the sentiment as Bene takes the hose, drawing from it as deeply as he dares and then passing it back as he lets his head drop back onto one of the pillows.

"Peace and quiet are proving more and more difficult to find," he muses in weary calm; present company excluded, of course, as Bastien is not known to be any manner of disruptor.

[cozen]

It's Bastien's turn to nod, watching a tendril of smoke. Peace and quiet wouldn't have been anything he longed for, before he came here. He'd had something of a peace and quiet overdose. This had been a way out. But too much of a good thing, and so on.

He only stews on that for a moment before reaching, as ever, for silver lining:

"You are doing good work though, from what I have seen. Terrible circumstances, but I am glad you are getting a chance to prove it, you know. That we can count on you."

[altusimperius]

A moment of elfroot-addled introspection, and Benedict nods, his gaze hooded under downturned eyelashes. It's easy to forget, sometimes, who knew him before, when there are so many new movers and shakers who have no idea who he was. What he did.

And then there are those that visited him in the dungeon.

"I'm glad you think so," he admits, daring to sketch the faintest of smirks, though he doesn't quite make eye contact.

[cozen]

Bastien smiles a little, nods to himself, and lies back on a cushion to watch the ceiling and the smoke that wafts into view. He'd like to smoke a cigarette, but it would ruin the scent of the room. Maybe Benedict wouldn't care, but if Athessa comes back, she'll know.

He should go to bed. Instead he's quiet for a while before he says, "If you had to be from another country, which one would you choose?"

[altusimperius]

Closing his eyes, Benedict's smirk relaxes somewhat; it seems an appropriate question for the times.
"My mother's half Orlesian," he remarks, scratching idly at his temple with his pinky, "she'd hate me for saying so. But I'd been to visit Orlais, before coming here. It's... not the worst."

Not great, but it's no Ferelden.

[cozen]

Not the worst makes him laugh a little, quietly. The laugh of someone who thinks it’s the greatest most beautiful place in the world but is secure enough in that belief not to be hurt by disagreement.

“I didn’t know that. Is your Orlesian grandparent anyone I would have heard of?”

[altusimperius]

"I don't know. Maybe."

Benedict angles his head to look at Bastien, arching his eyebrows amusedly. "His name was Yves Devouchet. Old Churneau money, fell in love with the daughter of a political exile from Marnas Pell. His fortune was failing, she vowed her family would return more powerful than before. My mother was the weapon they forged."

The smirk has faded, but he shrugs once, playing at disinterest.

"It worked."

[cozen]

"Devouchet," Bastien echoes to himself, quietly, searching his memory—a fellow marrying a Tevinter exile would stand out, he thinks, but it would have happened when Bastien was a child, if not before he was born, and perhaps it became one of those things that wasn't spoken of.

He's still searching when he goes on, "What caused the exile? Or is that terrible to ask."

[altusimperius]

"I actually don't know," replies Benedict, resting his head back to gaze at the ceiling, "no one would ever tell me. The Orlesian side was a dour lot, children aren't especially worth talking to in our family, and I couldn't even hope to read about it, since any records of the matter were either destroyed or kept under lock and key."

[cozen]

“Oooh,” Bastien says, though it’s a tired, muted sort of oooh. “Un mystère.”

[altusimperius]

"C'est vrais," Benedict mumbles, and takes another long drag from the hookah. He exhales deeply, blowing a pillar of smoke up into the air, where he watches it drift toward the window.

"How fucked do you think we are?"

[cozen]

"Ohhh," Bastien says—which is different from his oooh a moment ago. Different sound, obviously, but also a different tone. He's giving the question some serious thought, before he says, "Halfway at most," in distantly reassuring tone. "What do you think?"

[altusimperius]

"More than I want to think," Bene muses, twiddling the hookah's hose, "...but less than I know. Probably."

Whether or not that makes sense, he apparently feels it's a good answer.

"If we fail, it won't be for lack of effort."

[cozen]

Bastien hums.

"We should rename the Gallows. Call if Ef. The Ef Fort."

That's seventy percent genuinely having a ridiculous sense of humor, thirty percent wanting to test Benedict's while he's high—but if anyone asks, he'll reverse those proportions.

[altusimperius]

It takes him a moment, but then Benedict snorts, a smile creeping up over his mouth as it sinks in.

"Seems appropriate," he says sleepily, "considering the amount of effing that goes on here."

[cozen]

"Here?" Bastien echoes. "No."

A fortress full of buttoned-up and blushing Chantry Sisters, that's what they are.

[altusimperius]

Smiling around the hose as he takes a draw, Benedict waggles his eyebrows at Bastien. Oh, yes.

[cozen]

"Who? Besides—you know—the ones I know about."

Like himself.

[altusimperius]

"You've obviously never walked around the halls at night," Bene replies, dancing around the fact that he is not among their ranks nearly as often as he would like, "but it's a good thing most people have private rooms."

He leans his head back to exhale deeply. "I'm not about to name names. I have some decorum."

[cozen]

Bastien's laugh is a little indulgent, a little skeptical. A sure, kid, whatever you say kind of laugh. (He does not doubt people are getting it on, for the record. He does doubt that Benedict could name all that many names, if he set aside his bit of decorum to try.)

But mostly the laugh is tired.

"I should go," he says, but instead of moving to go just yet, he says, "Will you tell me, if you ever hear from her? Just that you have, I mean—you don't have to tell me what she says."

[altusimperius]

The room's temperature seems to fall, Benedict going quite still as he glances to Bastien.
"My mother?"

If he hears from her, it will probably already be too late.

[cozen]

"Quoi? Non," Bastien says, blinking his eyes back open to look over at Benedict in concern—but he realizes after that moment where Benedict would have gotten the idea that that's what he meant. So he shakes his head and makes a gesture that ends in a point at himself, one that means this is my fault. "Athessa."

[altusimperius]

"Oh." Blinking rapidly, Benedict loses some of the tension in his shoulders-- and promptly feels the sadness creeping in once more. Athessa.

"...of course." All the humor has gone out of his voice; as someone who tries not to think about things that upset him (for all the good that's done), he isn't about to make a pithy comment on the matter.