[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]

Noticing the change, Benedict cants his head toward Cassius, his eyebrows raising. He'd have thought it obvious.

"Like they're afraid of people knowing what they are. Like they'll be punished for existing."

It's an observation rather than a judgment-- he couldn't claim to be close to Colin if he derided his caution.

[satinet]

"Well yes. I suppose there is always that."

With a great labored sigh and a judicious rearrangement of his limbs, Cassius makes to adjust his position on the bench opposite of Benedict. Both eyes at last come open. He balances his elbow against some miscellaneous bit of trim about the carriage's interior and his temple on the flat of his palm. Were it not for the general sway and bounce of the carriage, it would be exactly the sort of affected posture one might assume while reclined on a chaise longue. In his elegant robes, all brocade and soft silks (he had, despite everything, been rather remarkably well suited to dallying around a noblewoman's useless salon), Cassius manages to more or less nail the impression despite certain environmental difficulties.

"I can't imagine I'm the first person to try and explain the nuances of a Southern Circle to you. But I wouldn't be surprised if I were the first to tell you that they once offered a rather distinct series advantages and protections that we mages below the border now find ourselves without. It is a dangerous world out here, Benedict. Twice over, given the reputation we've made for ourselves. Perhaps some of us are wary they might be punished because they think they have reason to be."

[altusimperius]

It's a mark of personal growth that the foppish and hedonistic Benedict finds himself wearied by the sight of Cassius-- he knows exactly the type, he is the type-- but he maintains his own posture, sitting primly scooted into the corner by the window.

"But the Templar Order as we know it has all but dissolved," he remarks, "more and more Southern mages are pushing for a future without Circles. To punish anyone now, for practicing magic outside the walls of a tower, would be at best hypocrisy and at worst a war crime."

[satinet]

"More mages are pushing for a future without Circles," he echoes back. "It has been ten years since the violence in Kirkwall, many of them with no Divine in place to steward them. You would think between the fight with the Venatori, the collapse of the Order and and weakening of the Chantry that we might have heard calls for the same from other people. I've not heard of any. Have you? Certainly there has been no organized effort I can think of."

No ladies' sewing circles or patrons of the arts or just-minded Chantry mothers loudly taking up the cause.

"People are prone to do whatever is most comfortable to them in the moment. Just ask Duke Arissian and his lovely niece. Today, it is convenient for us to be outside of our towers. But tomorrow?"

He waggles his eyebrows for effect, as if there is something faintly comedic about the prospect of the war being over and everyone remembering the danger that mages pose.

[altusimperius]

What starts as a scowl turns into a grimace as Benedict looks from Cassius back to the window, as if considering that now might be a good time to pop on out and start running.

"But surely-- Northern allies can't be held to the same standard. We came here of our own free will," more or less, "and I can't think of many who would willingly let ourselves be locked up, even if the Southern mages capitulated. It would start the war all over again."

And now a thought springs to mind, one he has been successfully putting off until this moment: where will he go, when the war ends, if Circles are reinstated?
Tevinter? Hilarious.

[satinet]

"Do you imagine that you'll return to Tevinter once this business is finished?"

He isn't a mind reader; it's merely the very obvious question.

[altusimperius]

"As much as I hate to say it, I hope not."

His whole face is a wince. "I imagine if I do, it will be in chains."

[satinet]

Up go Cassius' eyebrows toward his receding hairline.

"Oh? Whatever for?"

[altusimperius]

"My family are aligned with the Venatori."

He rolls his eyes and looks back out the window in lieu of demonstrating emotional vulnerability in front of this man, whom he trusts no farther than he can throw-- but some of these things are at least mostly open knowledge.

"One might say that's a bridge sufficiently burned."

[satinet]

"With the South or with Tevinter?"

Please. As if he requires eye contact to ask invasive questions.

[altusimperius]

"With the Magisterium, if not Tevinter at large."

He carefully does not detail his relations with the South-- it may come to light anyway, but it won't be because of him.

[satinet]

There is a whole parade of things one might say in such a situation. Here is one example: 'Nonsense lad! The Magisterium that will hate you for siding with the South, if any part of it still exists when the Exalted March has finished its work, will be in the sticky situation of needing to prove to the South that they mean well; welcoming a defector back with open arms would be good politics.'

Or maybe simply: 'If the South has its way, and we all seem to currently be hoping it does, I doubt that your family's friendly most likely to put you in chains will be allowed to stay in the Magisterium.'

Or maybe even: 'Come now; if they wanted to slap your hands for falling out of step, I doubt they'd stop with a little metal. It's awkward to keep political prisoners captive after a war. Best slit a few throats and be done with it.'

But Cassius declines all of those options, perfectly reasonable though they may be. No one ever got anywhere by being perfectly candid in every hour of the day, now did they? So instead:

"I'm surprised that you of all people would be so resistant to the idea of a Circle," he says, as if the thought is a random musing aloud occurring to him in real time. To reinforce this perception, he quickly adds as if chagrined with his own penchant for thinking aloud— "Not in the form you will have heard of them, of course. I'm sure they tell all kinds of horror stories in the North, to say nothing of what you've heard from our fellows in the Gallows. But there are quite attainable alternative versions of the idea which might see you quite comfortable here in the South after the war."

[altusimperius]

"Is it not more or less a prison?"

A question asked in earnest, even if the phrasing is harsh. "I know in some cases, Orlais in particular, mages can come and go. But never without escort, and they must always return. They have little choice in where to live, how to spend their time, who they can see. Is that... inaccurate?"

[satinet]

"You're right that in some Circles, that was true. But we were also educated. Fed and clothed. Granted opportunity that many of us never would have had had we not been accepted into a tower. Are most professions not rather like a prison? Few peasants farm because they enjoy it, Benedict."

There are worse things than to live comfortably in one place. He can think of a great long list of less preferable alternatives.

"Besides, that was years ago. Prior to the rebellion, the Chantry was on the very verge of reforming how Circles were operated. Who had oversight. How mages might defend themselves for abuses. If we are to play our cards right and avoid the paranoia that we might be interested in picking the war up right where it was left off, we might still bargain for a more permissive arrangement."

[altusimperius]

Skeptically furrowing his brow, Benedict watches Cassius' face. It's not that the man isn't making good points, but to come at it from having already lost, already accepting that subjugation is the natural way of life--

"Magic is our birthright," he says incredulously, "we shouldn't need permission to use it, let alone to exist in the world."

[satinet]

From where he as settled in that corner of the carriage, Cassius laughs. It's a cheerful, pattering sound made purposefully charming and best suited for the confines of sitting rooms and little private conversations held over tea or drinks or shared tobacco smoke.

"The whole world requires permission to exist. There is not a single man, woman or child in either the South or North who doesn't rely on someone to tell them how to behave. Even the lowliest field hand—whose birthright is to knock fruit from a tree—does what he does according to what the weather and planting calendar permits."

[altusimperius]

It's too true for comfort, and yet there's something deeply unpleasant about the notion of letting Cassius have the upper hand.

"...still doesn't mean he should live in a cage if we don't like how he's knocking the fruit," he grumbles, sensing that he's fighting a losing battle, "he can choose to leave and do something else. It'll be hard, but he has that freedom."

[satinet]

Cassius' smile flexes briefly wider as if Benedict has said something funny and then patiently schools itself into a more reasonable shape.

"Illiteracy, poverty, disease. Those don't seem like a cage to you?"

[altusimperius]

Benedict rolls his eyes, doing everything he can not to groan.

"What kind of fucking pedantry is that," he replies, flinging a hand up impatiently, "yes, Seneschal, and wild bears are also caged by their ignorance, but they still manage to wander around wherever they please and eat whatever they like. ...within reason." Good save? Sure. Probably not.

"I'm not arguing that we aren't all yoked to the burden of our pathetic existence, but I'd rather do it outside a stone prison. Maker's breath."