open. “Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”

[delphian]

WHO: Tsenka Abendroth + YOU?
WHAT: Tsenka takes a bath. A lot.
WHEN: After the skeleton wars.
WHERE: The heated baths in the former Templar tower.
NOTES: Nudity, discussion of trauma, the uzh.

Against all of the odds stacked heavily out of her favour, Tsenka Abendroth is alive. She has survived her first, unlikely rescue; she has endured time in the infirmary, ensuring that having made it to the Gallows she wouldn't simply collapse with all of the foundations of her taken away. She has survived, again, the attack on the Gallows itself by what Riftwatch left behind in Nevarra City—it feels like a thread pulling tight, somehow, her Nevarran name buying her freedom and the Nevarran dead coming to take it away from her again—

she is alive. She is with Riftwatch because she has chosen to be, and not for any other reason. If she decided the choice didn't suit her any longer, she could leave. She has been released from the infirmary under her own power, and she can choose any unused room she wishes,

but right now, she has decided to choose the baths. Tsenka is not, typically, given to overindulgence in luxurious hygiene, but it's been actual years since she's had the leisure to do or not do at her own inclination. Bathing, during captivity, had been...nonexistent, if one were not to stretch the definition to include the occasional bucket of cold water thrown on her if she seemed like she might be sleeping easy. There had certainly not been any soap involved. At liberty to do as she pleases until she can commit to doing something useful to anyone else, it pleases her to set up camp in a corner of the heated baths with a clean robe and towels, a platter of food she'd gathered from mealtimes and the occasional application of large, sad eyes. A bottle of cheap wine, easier to drink from directly with hot, wet hands than fuss about with cups or glasses—some incense that she'd found, and had set up to burn where the ash would fall directly into the water, making it much easier to clean up after.

A few books, though she hasn't figured out the best way to read them without getting them wet, yet. Her crystal. Scissors, because even wet it's obvious that about half her hair is a good several inches different from the rest.

She will be here for some time.

Comments

[delphian]

Tsenka's shrug is lithe, lissome—

“Only so many Circles as produced accents like ours,” she points out, and it isn't as if she's heard a lot of Starkhaven voices in Riftwatch. Not that she's met many people yet, on the whole, but she'd spent at least part of her dull stay in the infirmary aimlessly listening to whatever crystal conversations took place publicly.

“He thought I was dead. I'm good news,” with another shrug, a little more deliberate. Hey Jim you need some good news or.

[acreage]

She's right about the accents, though he hadn't thought about it before. Strange how easy it can be to forget that Starkhaven is a place where countless people have lived their lives, and not just the city besieged he'd seen. Even for him after his little pamphlets project to remind people of that very fact.

I'm good news, she says, and his smile grows a little lopsided even as he shakes his head.

"I'm sure you are. I'm..."

in mourning, actually, is what he's been. In the spring he'd gotten a glimpse of a future in Thedas with the woman he loves and had it ripped away. At some point since, he'd decided that not being able to have that means he can't be happy here. But James Holden doesn't need happiness, see, so that's okay.

"...out of practice," is where he lands. "Not looking," amends, where he should've really started. "But I doubt you'll have any problem finding a good time."

[delphian]

“A good time,” she repeats, like something about the phrasing strikes her as —

just strikes her, somehow. She's smiling as she leans back against the side of the bath, tilts her head up to the stone above her (wet hair on her shoulders; steam and sweat and water on her throat), contemplating it. And everything above it. Templars lived in this tower. Bathed where she is sitting now.

Crystal Meredith Stannard for a good time. That's more than one punchline, that is. Right there.

What a fucked up place to go looking for a good time.

“Yeah,” she says, aimlessly. “I bet.”

[acreage]

She's smiling, but a part of him wonders if he's misstepped. Not because he imagines for a second that she was so invested in the idea of flirting with him, but there are so many ways to accidentally hurt people. So many places where they may have bruises, hidden.

"I didn't get your name," he says, after a pause. "I'm James Holden."

[delphian]

“Tsenka Abendroth,” she says, which is a fairly Nevarran name to come attached to a definite Starkhavener. A useful thing, as it had turned out. She flattens her hand on the top of the water, then straightens, setting her pipe aside to open a wine bottle with her teeth.

Conversationally, “Hard for anyone to be glad to be in the Gallows, but any port in a storm.”

[acreage]

He straightens, watching her with interest.

"You've been here before?"

Easy forget how young Riftwatch is in the grand scheme of things; he hardly remembers the Inquisition's existence most days. Easier still to forget that the Gallows have a history long predating their organization, that not so long ago this place was used for very different things.

[delphian]

The slow way that Tsenka stops what she's doing to look at him — not merely to meet his eyes but to take in the whole of him, her eyebrows rising only very slightly — is itself a warning shot, even as her expression doesn't especially change. A still pool. Steady.

That gets his interest, does it.

“You want to hear all about the Gallows as it was? You're out of practise, is it, or you prefer to wank to someone crying?”

It is not difficult for her to remember that it was a Circle. It's almost impossible for her to imagine that anyone else forgets.

[acreage]

This isn't unfamiliar. (1) James Holden has an exceptional skill for angering people, whether deliberately or not. At least the ferocity of her gaze means she's unlikely to miss the bloom of complete bewilderment. He holds his hands out, palms facing her, a sign of surrender.

That his anchor shard is in plain sight as he answers isn't at all by design, but may add some credence when he says,

"I don't know what you're talking about. I thought you meant you were with Riftwatch before Marcus got here."

But that's clearly not it, and I've apparently stepped in a minefield, is writ across his tone instead of spoken.

[delphian]

It isn't so much ferocious as flatly disbelieving; more incredulous than anything else. That he said that to her, with his whole mouth and everything. Tsenka has little enough experience with rifters yet for it to really mean much to her, but she drops her head back against the edge of the tub and says,

“Isn't that nice for you.” To not know what she's talking about. “I didn't know Riftwatch existed until Marcus said it did.”

[acreage]

He drops his hands when she does her head, leans his weight back against the pool's wall.

"I can't even imagine that." Thedas is huge, and he's only seen parts of it. Conceivable enough that there are places where Riftwatch isn't spoken of, but it's been the entirety of his world here. "Kirkwall and the Gallows were the first places in Thedas I ever saw."

[delphian]

“Inquisition must have snapped up everyone that actually looks at the things they see, I take it,” is droll,

and that's all, the threat of anger draining away, and a weary bitterness that has absolutely nothing to do with Jim Holden remaining.

[acreage]

The fact is: he has no way of guessing what he'd said, specifically, that shattered her languid flirtatiousness. Or, more accurately, why the question had struck bone. And she may not still be angry, but she's clearly here to relax and enjoy herself, and he's clearly accomplished the opposite of that for her.

So he doesn't immediately answer that, water splashing as he reaches for the soap he'd brought with him.

"I'll be out of your hair in a couple of minutes," is all he can offer, and so he does.

[delphian]

“Mmmhmm.”

A silence, then, or at least a quiet over the movement of water, and scrape of bottle glass on stone, and a match flaring to relight a pipe. That she is still as close to relaxed as she's got in some time speaks less to present ease than past lack of it, certainly.

Eventually, “Don't ask people about the Gallows. It was a Circle. It was the Circle that started the rebellion, no one actually has to have been here to know the only right thing to do with the place would have been to break it into the harbour.”

(She was, but that's not the point.)

[acreage]

He's done with the work of soaping by the time she speaks, is rinsing out his hair. Her answer makes him still and look her way, horrified.

"Jesus Christ."

He knew about the Gallows's slaving past, of course; impossible fucking not to, given the architecture choices, given Astarion's refusal to live within its walls. He knew, of course, about the ex-mage and ex-Templar towers, but not how recently they were inhabited and used in that way. The word Circle hadn't even crossed his mind, somehow.

(Somehow: like the founding context for a place, any place, isn't the hardest to see past.)

No wonder she doesn't like it here. And he thinks of Derrica, Marcus, every mage he's ever met who lives here —

"I'm sorry."

[delphian]

I could see my old window from the ferry is the sort of joke she might make, except that it is absolutely not the right moment to make that joke and she'd probably rather wait and say it to Marcus, let him cast her a Tsenka look from over whatever he's doing, let her make this with her hands into something that she can live with.

Amazing, the things people can live with.

“Love what you've all done with the place,” she says. “Don't miss the statues.”

[acreage]

"Doesn't sound like there's much that was worth missing," is said by way of agreement.

By much he means anything, probably. Later, he's likely to look around his room and wonder about who might've stayed there. What kind of person they might've been, how much they must've hated the space, and where they are now. If they've survived this long.

He'll never know, of course, but that's never stopped him before.

As promised, it's only another moment before he's levering out of the pool, grabbing a towel to dry off, and then his things to get dressed. By way of goodbye, he says,

"Take care of yourself, Tsenka."