With money you squeezed from the peasants (open)

[toujoursdroit]

WHO: Open to all Riftwatch agents who care to attend. Plus-ones allowed within reason.
WHAT: The duke de Coucy is throwing a celebration to mark his eldest grandson’s 18th birthday, which he would do anyway and which is definitely not a blatant attempt to keep said grandson from running off toward the nearest opportunity for combat.
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway
WHERE: The de Coucy property in Hightown. (The servants are spying in case you break anything.)
NOTES: If you’d like your character to come but think some maneuvering would be required to make it happen, hit me oocly and we’ll figure it out. Similarly, if you need or want a starter with Romain or an NPC, just let me know.

The engraved invitations only go to a select few: the division heads and project leaders, Alexandrie d'Asgard, Petrana de Cedoux and (after some deliberation) Hugo and Jehan Mercier d'Annecy. Others, without a specific addressee, are posted in common areas in the Gallows including both dining halls, the herb garden and the game room:



Those at ease enough or bold enough to take him up on the invitation arrive to find the duke’s Hightown residence lit with a mixture of opulent scones, torches and enchantments. Once admitted through the outer gates—the servants at the door have a list on which one’s name must appear, seemingly including every member of Riftwatch—guests will be ushered a short walk back from the street to the house proper. The foyer boasts more servants, ready to take any outwear (the weather does not dictate it, but fashion may), as well as any gifts for the marquis.

Guests are then shown through to the ballroom. While it is generally used these days as a training area, it has been converted back to its intended use for the evening. The space is brightly lit and features a small but talented collection of musicians. The center of the room is clearly intended for dancing, but chairs and railings along the edge of the room provide a place for those who need a breath or who simply prefer conversation to dancing. Staff circulates with wine and hors d'oeuvres (mainly local shellfish and assorted pastries from Romain’s imported Orlesian patissier). In addition to their fellow Riftwatch agents, guests may run into carefully selected individuals from Hightown society, gratified to varying degrees at having been included.



Those who find even the edges of the ballroom too much may discover that the lower level of the two-level library is open, though servants pass through with enough regularity that it is not truly private. (Assuming one thinks servants count, of course.) The upper level is roped off. Anyone attempting to make their way up will be gently but firmly redirected by the staff. The lower level, however, does offer a few tables and various comfortable chairs and chaises, good for quiet conversation or simply a break from the crush of society.

About two hours after sunset, dinner is announced. All present guests are shown into the dining room. Those few in attendance who have seen the duke’s estate in Orlais, or even his home in Val Royeaux, would know this room is smaller than either. Everyone is seated comfortably, but in addition to the long, rectangular table at the room’s center, a few smaller circular tables hold the overflow. The seating has been chosen carefully for status, affiliation and balance of conversation. The duke heads the long table, and his grandson Thomas sits opposite. Thomas, like his grandfather and younger brother, is masked, but those who chat with him will easily be able to determine his buoyant mood from his voice and manner. The food is excellent, if less varied and exotic than it would have been had supply lines not been so constrained. (Romain thought to bring a few things back from his most recent trip to Orlais and finds himself glad of it now.)



After dinner, guests may resume dancing and gossiping in the ballroom, or engaging in quieter conversation in the library. Or they can make their way out to the courtyard in the rear of the property. While Hightown’s constraints mean the outdoor space is not extensive, it is walled to offer privacy from the nearest neighbors and boasts a water feature, impressively lit in honor of the occasion.

The duke circulates throughout the party for the evening, seemingly doing absolutely nothing other than chatting with his guests. Yet somehow after he passes through, any guests with empty glasses find someone offering to fill them, any low-burning torches are promptly replaced, and any guests causing a scene are discreetly spoken to or, if necessary, shown into a carriage that will take them home. In addition to Romain, guests may have a chance to speak to the guest of honor, Thomas, or to his younger brother, 15-year-old Raoul, who has been given a special dispensation to stay at the party as long as he likes and is seemingly determined to make the most of it. The festivities will drag on until dawn, for those most committed to a bit of merriment in the face of invasion, or at least most committed to eating the duke’s refreshments and drinking his wine until they’re cut off.

Comments

[illithidnapped]

Slaves. Of course. Why else would anyone bother keeping a roaming soul alive, after all?

His expression withers in distaste, lip curling entirely on its own, without Astarion’s conscious awareness in play. His jaw works slightly, teeth set as they grit. He’s quiet a touch too long, bitter about something that’s already history— and wasn’t anywhere within his own reach regardless.

“And?” He asks flatly. A sign of acidity, rather than disinterest. “What happened then?”

[notathreat]

"Couple of assholes came to check the traps," Ellie says, settling down on the bed next to him, pulling up her bare feet to settle her back against the wall. "Were really pissed off about me being in such bad shape. Cut me down."

Ellie takes a deep breath, lets it out, and there is something vicious about her eyes, despite the unconcerned way she says it.

"One of the assholes figured I was on my way out. When I started pissing him off, he thought it'd be fun to feed me to a clicker still in one of the other traps."

She shrugs.

"He figured I was too far gone to fight it much. Was real surprised to find out I wasn't."

[illithidnapped]

He doesn’t need to look to hear it in her voice, the whittled sharpness of something almost bestial at heart. Fanged and barbed, and far more dangerous than the uninformed might guess. The part of her that first drew his eye— the part he never needed to fully glimpse in all its violent glory to know it was there.

He’d bragged to Fenris about it, once. Now, all he does is bask in its otherwise silent presence.

His voice practically curls like the tail of a cat. Smooth from wickedness alone when he asks, “How bloody were their deaths?”

[notathreat]

Ellie can't say she really enjoys killing, but the horror has mostly gone out of it. She remembers holding Glimmer as she cried in the aftermath of the Aerie, sobbing out the misery of some part of herself, lost. Ellie was introduced to killing at a tender age, and while she's had a few kills that have struck her to her core, overall it's always been easier for her than perhaps it should have been.

And she can't deny that sometimes, there's satisfaction, and a type of fucked up justice in it. She knows where Astarion's coming from.

"Clicker ate the first guy's throat out," she says, coolly. "After I shoved him into it. Stole his gun, took out the second guy's kneecaps. He tried to bargain, said he'd give me information on Abby if I let him go."

Ellie lifts her eyebrows, glances at Astarion, unsmiling.

"I heard him out, then shot him."

[illithidnapped]

The rush of satisfied warmth he feels is stolen: he wasn’t there, this wasn’t his fight— in truth, it means nothing, changes nothing— but he likes it all the same. Basks in it as if it were sunlight, drinking deep in the pictured memory as he sinks back into lazier contours against the stone wall at his back.

This could easily be a bedtime story for him. Soothing and sweet, lips twisted into an easy grin.

How proud she makes him, sometimes. And how strange it is that he can’t help it.

“So,” he says, all dramatic villainy lost when he slips back into conversation as relaxed as if they were talking about the weather. “You had those myconids— clickers— in your world. And apparently they were a common enough nuisance that they found their way into traps as easily as trouble. Not to mention your immunity to their bite.”

Simple facts. Remembered facts.

“What else was there? Do you miss any of it —aside from the obvious, of course.”

[notathreat]

"Clickers and Runners and Stalkers and Bloaters," Ellie mutters with a sigh, but doesn't elaborate; they're easy enough to infer. All gross variations of the same theme, but he knows enough about that ugly mess. She lets her eyelids droop a bit as she draws up her legs, going crosslegged, gripping an ankle. The wall is cool against her overwarm back, keeps her head from spinning.

... what did she miss?

The people, mostly. But he knows that. She's silent for a few breaths, and then her brow furrows.

"I miss... music."

It sounds almost like a tender confession, somehow more serious than the flippant way she talks about death.

"Here, I've got to go out to the docks to hear anything. I miss being able to sit in my room alone and listen to a recording of a band, and try to figure out the notes."

As she speaks, she holds out her maimed left hand, miming holding an instrument -- and then a frown streaks across her face, before she banishes it.

"I used to play guitar. It's- like a lute, here. But it's got a richer sound. But, y'know." She holds her hand up, indicating the stumps of her fingers.

"Not anymore."

[illithidnapped]

He knows what a guitar is. The idea of telling her that dies when she lifts her hand, the damage all too apparent— and where someone else would exercise some degree of decorum, Astarion simply reaches out to grab hold of it, inspecting the differing digits with a tightly furrowed brow. As if by peering at them, the answer will simply materialize.

But he's drunk, of course, and no deductive genius besides.

"One of those monsters?"

His best guess, given her immunity.

[notathreat]

Ellie prefers Astarion's way of handling things. No pity, no aversion, just interest. He touches her without hesitation, and it bypasses Ellie's instinct to hesitate. As he takes her hand, Ellie shifts, lets her cheek rest against his shoulder, lets him inspect it as long as he wants.

"Nope," she says, a little dry.

"Abby."

And she doesn't entirely know why, but she adds: "She won't remember that, though. The cut on her cheek's still fresh. But for me that was a year and a half ago."

[illithidnapped]

“She...won’t remember?” He asks, the pad of his thumb still pressed to the middle of her palm.

The weight of her head on his shoulder is pleasant. It isn’t a numbing distraction the way some things are, but like playing cards opposite to sharp talons, or stargazing in the dark with company, he simply feels at ease for it. Settled.

[notathreat]

"Nope," Ellie answers again, this time a bit fuzzier. The press of his thumb feels right, releases some of the tension in her hands. Lots of small fractures over the years, never healed up perfectly before the next one.

"I'm from farther along than she is. She's... probably just a few months after Joel."

From right after Ellie hunted her the first time. From right after Abby rendered her unable, both emotionally and physically, to continue.

[illithidnapped]

“So the rifts can pull us from different points of time.” He murmurs, lost for a moment in letting that pressure sink— and then slide, as he lets her hand fall easily away to rest in his lap.

“I suppose I always thought it was possible, but...”

His cold fingers settle over her own— intact and mended alike— his head tipped back to rest against the wall.

“You were chasing her for a year and a half, then? Did she know you were still on her tail?”

[notathreat]

It's a good place for her head, for her hand. The easy, simple contact of another warm body next to hers. She rubs her thumb slowly along the joint of his, meditative almost, letting the thoughts just flow. The feelings ebb in, aching, but not enough to keep her from breathing.

"No. After the first time... the one she remembers... I came back home. Dina was pregnant, and Jesse was dead, and Tommy couldn't walk-"

Ellie falls silent, just breathing against Astarion's shoulder. It's more than she's told anybody, period. Three details she's kept to herself. The reasons she stopped, the damage she'd done that hadn't been intended.

"I tried to forget, but I couldn't. And finally I couldn't keep pretending, so I went again. Alone, that time. Dina begged me not to, but-"

She opens her eyes, looking across the room, fuzzy and thoughtful with the alcohol warm in her system, loosening her tongue.

"I had to finish it."

[illithidnapped]

He's thinking. It's clear enough whenever Astarion is, the way his brow furrows, his lips tighten— uniquely quiet compared to all the usual chatter. Her touch is grounding; he sinks into it as he tries to follow everything from the foggy viewpoint of an outsider, looking in.

"You left her on her own, for the sake of vengeance."

[notathreat]

"Left her. Left our home. Left..."

Ellie trails off into dead silence, staring off into the middle distance of something only she can see. She closes her eyes, turns her head to rub her face against Astarion's shoulder, letting out a sigh.

"I thought it was vengeance. Or justice. Or, y'know. Whatever else I told myself." However prettily she tried to dress it up, she knew that it mostly tasted of bitter guilt.

Stay, Dina had begged, with tears in her eyes. Stay.

[illithidnapped]

He hears it in her voice. Pain. Sharp and insatiable, deep as a yawning pit. An old friend. A familiar friend— for the both of them, in fact, making its home here in memory and drink alike. Her profile sinks into his shoulder. Her breath so unspeakably warm.

He's not given to softness, but the question that chases it isn't one he'd meant to ask. And in the moment it snakes between his teeth, his own voice feels foreign.

"Was it worth it?"

[notathreat]

"No."

Ellie says it softly, the word sighing out of her, like it had been behind her teeth for years. Clenched tight, kept back. No. It wasn't worth it.

None of it was worth it.

Ellie doesn't cry -- doesn't let her voice break or tremble. It just has the heaviness of things lost, a lesson learned in the worst of ways. A consequence earned, and accepted.

Astarion's shoulder is warm, and feels steady, and that's all the comfort she'll let herself take.

[illithidnapped]

There's no judgment as she mires. Astarion, typical bastion of it, doesn't have any to give when it comes to this particular topic: Fenris never seemed warmed by the memory of vengeance, Ellie— sinking in against his silhouette— withers in its wake. Astarion tries, the same way he always tries, to picture what it might be like to roughly cut and shape his own imagined victory. In his waking dreams, it's glorious. Sanguine and gleaming and warm as the flowing rush of adrenaline. The perfect ending to a story centuries in the making.

But that's the thing about stories and their ends, real life never stops there. And at the pinnacle of everything, where else is there to go but down?

His head tips back, one of his own cool hands finding its way to resting along the crown of her skull, sinking faintly into those unruly flyaway strands. A slight weight. It lingers for a beat— two— and then he shifts forward, pulling her with him whether she aims to move or not.

"Come on, darling." Soft-spoken. Coaxing. "Much as I adore you, if I spend the rest of tonight against that wall I'm going to wake up as crooked as my own sense of humor."

Easy to tip the covers towards her. To offer her a chance to lie down.

[notathreat]

Simple acceptance. In the end, it's all Ellie's hungry for. Still, the hand tousling her hair makes her miss Joel with a deep, cracking ache. Astarion is so different from him in feel, but the memories bubble up regardless.

As much as Ellie is still angry with him, as much as she hated him sometimes, there was no doubt that he loved her, and what is grief but love with nowhere to go?

Adore you, Astarion says, like that very thing hasn't killed hundreds, maybe thousands.

Ellie rubs a hand across her face as she moves to settle down on the sheets, and opens her eyes to look at him. They're a little less than lucid due to the alcohol, but they focus on him readily enough.

She parts her lips like she's about to ask a question, but instead she reaches out, pulls him down with her.

[illithidnapped]

She doesn’t need to pull hard, he sinks to the mattress gracelessly in the wake of that silent insistence. Under the weight of weariness, and loneliness, and the simple indulgence of basic attention. Hers.

And if there’s no such thing as trust to be relied upon, why is he so certain she's not going to leave? That she's not going to twist the figurative or literal knife after everything he’s said, everything he’s done. Vicious to the marrow of his avaricious bones. He’s a creature prone to causing hurt, designed for it in fact, but—

But he drapes one heavy arm across her as he settles, and shuts his eyes with a lone, drawn out exhale through his nose. There’ll be time tomorrow to preen. To lie. To cheat and bicker and draw blood, same as ever.

For now, sleep is where he fits himself. Calmer for a change. Unbothered by all the faded shadows that surround, or the looming shape of a future he can’t quite see.

Whatever comes, they’ll figure it out.

[notathreat]

Being comfortably drunk and warm, Ellie welcomes the weight of Astarion's arm, the curl of his body close to hers, even the wine-scented brush of his breath against her skin.

His hair looks bright even in this darkness, and it reminds her of that night spend on the floor of the cavern, when he was touch-and-go with death, and Ellie wanted nothing more than to keep him talking. Enough to know he was still drawing breath.

He's everything he says he is, but there's fierce loyalty in his hardened heart, obvious in her eyes. Something that mirrors her own thirsty soul. Ellie reaches out and threads her fingers through his hair, gently stroking it back from his face.

It's nice not to second-guess the touch, to give it freely without the worry that he'll find it lacking.

Eventually, they'll both sleep well.