MOD PLOT ↠ ALL SOULS WHO TAKE UP THE SWORD

[faderifting]

WHO: Nearly everyone
WHAT: Retaking Val Chevin
WHEN: Late Firstfall into early/mid-Haring, 9:47
WHERE: Val Chevin, Orlais
NOTES: Generated injuries here! CWs for violence, slavery mentions. Use content warnings in your comment subject lines as needed.

THE BATTLE

The battle begins just after dawn, once the distraction at the harbor has drawn as much of the enemy force to that end of the city as possible. Bombardment (magical or otherwise) is fruitless while the elvhen shield artifact continues to magically reinforce the walls and gates, but a Riftwatch team is on its way and will soon have disabled it. In the meantime, while the enemy's attention is focused on the harbor the assault begins. The first waves of soldiers are sent up ladders to try to fight their way over. Some make it, and fight their way along the battlements to try to reach the gate below, in hopes of unbarring it from within even before the shield is broken. The attacking force very nearly manages a lightning-quick victory, numbers pouring over a section of the wall left unmanned by the harbor distraction. They might have managed it when, suddenly, a rush of magic descends down onto the walls, physically, enough to blow their hair back and everything, and a glowing dome spreads over the city—essentially an enormous magical barrier.

Those at the tops of ladders suddenly find their blows absorbed by the magic rather than landing on the overwhelmed guards along the wall, while the defenders' blades still pierce through from within. The tide quickly begins to turn in favor of the Tevinter defenders. Some of the attackers are caught already within the walls when the barrier drops, and without more following behind them are quickly outnumbered, either killed or forced to flee deeper into the city to try to avoid capture. There is traffic jam at the top of the wall as forward progress abruptly halts, and at least one ladder accidentally falls in the resulting confusion, taking a dozen or so attackers with it. Attacks from the walls above now rain down with impunity as the attackers attempt to force their way through the barrier, reasoning that all barriers break eventually and it's just a matter of applying enough force. For a short period that feels longer, the battle stagnates, all the damage being taken by the allied forces, the Tevinters on the wall able to regroup and reinforce their ranks.

It takes longer than anyone had planned but finally the Riftwatch team inside the city is successful and the barrier dome dissipates as abruptly as it had appeared. A cheer goes up, flagging morale restored, and the assault takes on renewed intensity. Without their magical protection the gate is no longer unbreachable. Rams are aimed at it and magical force as well, protected by archers and more mages, with assistance from some griffon riders above. The enemy throws down scalding stones, oil, even Antivan fire, but their force is stretched thinner and thinner, and more and more attackers make it over the walls to harry them back. Finally the gate splinters, and the armies of Orlais and the Divine stream into Val Chevin.

The Tevinter and Ander forces don't give in that easily. They make a stand in the central square of the city, fighting on the steps of the Chantry and the lip of the great fountain itself with its four leaping seahorses. They retreat through the streets, broken up into smaller groups, some barricading themselves inside a building, others seeking to hide in a home, more running, or looking for chokepoints they can defend, mages tearing stones out of walls to block pursuit. Some of the people of Val Chevin, sensing an end to the occupation at last, join the fight, driving soldiers out of their homes and shops with pitchforks and butcher's knives, raining trash and debris down on them from windows, calling out warnings and directions to friendly forces, offering water or aid where they can.

By mid-afternoon, it's over. Some of the occupying force have managed to flee into the countryside or into one of the few ships remaining intact in the harbor. Many more are dead. The remainder, perhaps as many as a thousand, are gradually cornered at various places around the city and give themselves up. Not all surrenders are honored--some, particularly Orlesians and locals caught up in the fighting, are eager to dispatch the enemy occupiers once and for all and unless someone intervenes may ignore the laying down of arms. Stragglers still attempting to hide or escape are rounded up throughout the day (some even later), tracked down by searchers or turned in by locals.

THE "SAFE AND SECURE" SHIP

Anchored at what is believed to be a safe distance just up the coast to the northeast of the city, Riftwatch's shipboard base of operations provides a landing and launch area for griffons, triage for wounded, and on large tables and boards a collection of detailed maps of the area and of the city and its various districts on which action is tracked as crystal reports come in. Some are assigned to shifts manning the crystals: taking in reports, asking questions, soliciting aid, sending griffon riders where they're most needed. Others analyze the information provided, plot it on the maps, or coordinate with allied movements. Supplies are doled out from the ship as well, from spare weapons and armor to food and water, grenades, lyrium potions, healing poultices. Though the breeze only intermittently carries the sounds of battle out here, the ship is still a buzz with activity throughout the day.

Disaster doesn't strike until the afternoon, when a group of Tevinters fleeing the city manage to commandeer one of the remaining mostly-intact ships and somehow make it out of the harbor despite not entirely knowing how to sail. They straggle out into the bay, catch the wrong current, and are suddenly on top of the Riftwatch ship. Though smaller and already beginning to sink, the Tevinter vessel manages to tangle itself with Riftwatch's anchor cable, and the couple of mages on board make a doomed attempt to trade up for the bigger, more seaworthy model. They fail, but not before managing to do some serious damage to Riftwatch's ship, sufficient to sink it as well.

A hasty evacuation follows by griffon and longboat. The ship sinks rapidly, leaving just barely enough time to get all the wounded ferried to shore and still come back for the healthy before they go down with the ship.

THE AFTERMATH

IMMEDIATE NEEDS

First things first: the wounded from the battle need to be attended to, including not only those from Riftwatch's ranks, but also members of the Orlesian military, local civilians, and Tevinter and Ander prisoners—though opinions vary about whether or not to provide them with any assistance. The Orlesian military has supplies and surgeons, and Riftwatch will be welcome to either seek care or help provide it in medical tents that are set up on the outskirts of the city even before the fighting has fully concluded. During this first evening, this area is not a peaceful place to be, filled with shouts and moans and blood-spattered people darting between emergencies. Even with Riftwatch's help (and magic), resources are stretched thin enough by severe injuries that those who look like they're going to survive without help might be turned away to deal with their pain and cosmetic concerns the old fashioned ways: finding elfroot sprouting up between the cobblestones to chew on, or gritting their teeth and getting over it.

Throughout the night, paranoia persists about the possibility that belated reinforcements—or, worse, a dragon—might arrive to prolong the battle. Soldiers keep watch along the walls and at some forward locations, and Riftwatch's griffon riders are sent to observe the portions of the occupying force that fled north and ensure there's nothing amiss. Nothing seems to be, but continuing to lightly harass the Tevinter and Ander forces to hurry them on their way and keep them from pausing to ransack anything won't hurt.

In the morning, back in Val Chevin, those who look strong and uninjured are enlisted to help with clearing debris from the places where the fighting was heavy and magical enough to collapse walls and roofs or topple statues, or else loading bodies onto carts bound for the pyres outside the city. By mid-morning plumes of smoke streak the sky. The bulk of the damage and death is concentrated on the docks, where the dreadnought crashed and where the initial smash-and-burn fighting took place. Meanwhile, throughout the harbor, griffons will prove useful in examining the water for concentrations of floating bodies—which need to be fished out to avoid a walking dead problem in the future—or debris that's potentially either useful or dangerous. Given what the dreadnought assault team reports, there's also a careful search for any red lyrium-infested sea creatures in the harbor, but while other pens like the one that contained the very large red lyrium octopus they encountered, all have been destroyed in the chaos and no other beasts are spotted.

TAKING STOCK

Over the course of the week, supplies arrive by land and by sea from across Orlais—some from the government, some from charitable patriots who put together donation drives as soon as they heard the news. About eighty percent are practical and useful: winter shoes and clothing, flour and preserves and other long-lasting foods, bolts of fabric, apothecary supplies, a few dairy animals and chickens. The usefulness of the rest varies, including a crate of used toys (labeled FOR THE SWEET PEASANT CHILDREN), an assortment of expensive hats that were in season last winter, and collections of plain masks and face paints in case Tevinter was cruelly forcing anyone to go barefaced. Riftwatch is given leave to distribute these to people as they find needs to meet.

The surviving Orlesian civilians who have been trapped in the occupied city for the last two and a half years haven't been as starved or brutalized as popular imagination may have assumed, but the experience has been plenty miserable. Outside of a few public executions, agitators and those who fomented rebellion against the occupiers have by and large disappeared more quietly. Due to its collective general experience with the Tevinter language and magic, Riftwatch is given the fairly depressing task of sorting through the cells and torture chambers in Val Chevin's central keep, where records and other evidence of executions remain. It's enough to determine who died and how. Some had quick deaths; others were tortured or used for blood magic rituals. A handful appear to have been removed from the city and sent north to be held in Tevinter instead. Relaying the specifics to family members will generally be the responsibility of Orlesian officials, but family members eager for information may corner Riftwatchers coming or going from the fortress to press them for details.

Over the next couple weeks Riftwatch is also called to assist with handling other remnants of the Tevinter occupation, such as translating documents, evaluating evidence of blood magic, and sorting through relics and enchanted objects accumulated by the Venatori. Among the things left behind is a trove of elven artifacts seemingly extracted from nearby temples. None are as powerful as the shield; most seem to be completely unmagical cultural relics.

Elsewhere, many locals were evicted from their homes to make room for Tevinter occupiers. While Orlesian officials sort through claims to those homes, including several contentious competing claims, Riftwatch is sent into them to sort through what the enemy left behind and make sure they're safe for their occupants to return to. In many they find the ashy remains of hastily burned private documents and a variety of fairly mundane magical objects: spoons that stir themselves, hats that are always cool on the inside, candles that light and extinguish in response to clapping.Each is the work of a bound spirit that can be released or destroyed—or left to continue its eternal work, if someone wants to pocket an object rather than restore it to its original inanimate state. Throughout the city, there may also be opportunities to reunite grateful civilians with appropriated belongings ranging from fine art to beloved old horses.

Orlesians aren't the only ones in the city in need of assistance. A small number of Tevinter slaves—exclusively those performing menial tasks, as far as anyone can tell—remain in the city now that their masters have been killed or captured. With the Orlesian populace and military inclined, on average, to consider them threats and collaborators, Riftwatch's intervention on their behalf is necessary. Interviewing them and checking their stories against witness accounts and Tevinter records, to ensure none of them are Venatori mages or gleeful torturers in disguise, will allow Riftwatch to vouch for them confidently. They may also be able to find sympathetic locals willing to shelter and hire those who would like to remain in the city, though there aren't that many who do want to stay.

Throughout their time in the city, Riftwatch representatives are asked to report what they find regarding the treatment of the locals and any practice of blood magic. While Orlesian officers ask for Riftwatch members to give this information to them directly, it's quickly clear that it's likely to influence Orlais' decisions about how to deal with the thousand-odd Tevinter prisoners. Individuals identified as responsible for atrocities are being tortured or executed, especially if they're unlikely to have or provide information, and there is nothing ensuring the entire group won't be ultimately executed after the dust settles. With that in mind, Riftwatch receives instructions from the Division Heads to instead bring the information to them so it can be compiled, double-checked, screened for any individuals Riftwatch may need to question themselves, and delivered with a diplomatic touch.

GOING HOME (OR NOT)

Approximately a week after the battle, as the majority of Riftwatch is preparing to leave, Empress Celene and members of her retinue arrive in Val Chevin. They're greeted by a restrained military parade and less restrained enthusiasm from the civilians, who will line the streets to catch a glimpse and celebrate the symbolic return of the city to full Orlesian control. Riftwatch's attendance is not mandatory. Most of the organization leaves that day to return to Kirkwall and their other work. However, a small number remain behind for a few more days, overseen by the heads of Diplomacy and Forces, to provide administrative support while the Ambassador and Commander liaise with the Empress' people about their plans for the Tevinter prisoners. As thanks, they might be invited to endure a few stifling fancy dinners.

Comments

[bouchonne]

"Setting them free, no doubt," the merchant growls - to which Byerly steps forward and bites, "We are not setting them free."

It's strange that watching Bastien playact is comforting. Why is that? It should remind Byerly of the fact that he's a capable liar and that there's a possibility that he's pretending with By. But - it looks different, now versus with Byerly. Grief looks different on Bastien. He playacts a hazy sort of absentness with this merchant, but Byerly has seen Bastien with his heart crushed, smiling grimly and joking about names of Fereldan places. He has seen Bastien generous, and it has nothing in common with this solid stoicism - his generosity has an element of impishness, and an element of tenderness, and an element of vulnerability.

There's still a possibility that Bastien is still playing. Being what Byerly wants to see when he's with Byerly, and that it just happens that By wants to see something different from this man. It's not impossible; after all, Bastien is perfect to him. But his moods have the ring of honesty.

"We'll try them," By says. His Orlesian is usually urbane, but he lets it - carefully - gain edges of the Southern dialect that was his mother's native tongue. She taught him to speak court Orlesian, of course, but in moments of fury or grief, the flat vowels and rolled rs of Montsimmard would creep in.

"And hang the worst of them."

[cozen]

The change in Byerly's accent catches Bastien's attention the same way someone spontaneously taking up a harmony or doing a novel coin trick would. With his head safely turned, there's a moment of brighter eyes, sharper focus, and the slightest hint of the pleased and curious smile that would unfurl if they didn't have an audience.

But they do. The flat haze of war-weary grief sweeps back into Bastien's eyes before Byerly's finished talking, as he looks back at their target, whose sobbing has reduced to sniffling and who is looking at Byerly with his jaw set like he might still like to protest but, in the face of all this stubborn and sympathetic reason from apparent peers, doesn't know how to do that anymore.

"They won't go free," Bastien echoes. "Here, let me—"

He pats his shirt and sides, searching for paper and a writing instrument. Which are there, tucked out of sight. But getting the man and his knife away from the bound soldier long enough for Byerly to have him moved might be wiser than standing here long enough for him to get worked up again, so Bastien feigns finding nothing.

"Come with me. Let me write down your information, about your brother, and we will make sure you have a chance to speak when they decide what to do with this one. Right?" He's turning back to Byerly now, hand on the merchant's shoulder shifting into optimistic configurations that sum up to I'll find you soon. "We can do that."

[bouchonne]

If there's Bard-sign for thank you, Byerly hasn't learned it yet. He suspects it doesn't exist. But he also probably doesn't need to communicate his thanks to Bastien; Bastien will know just how grateful he is, that they've worked together to save the life of a man who doubtless deserves it not at all. To momentarily save this life, because it seems quite likely that he'll swing before the month is out.

Doubtless it would have saved some trouble to not stand in the merchant's way, By reflects. After all, when he turns to look at the bound man, the expression on the man's face is closer to a sneer of contempt than anything resembling gratitude. That's not the face of a righteously innocent man. It'll take time, energy, and coin to let the normal course of justice flow; and the normal course of justice is corrupt in peacetime, never mind in times of war. But -

But this is the only honorable act.

Bastien goes his way; By goes with the soldiers who secure the prisoner and take him to be held and, in time, judged. He can be found later in his makeshift office in Val Chevin's keep, hunched over his paperwork, left hand buried deep in his mussed hair, right hand tapping a pen against the desk.

[cozen]

Bastien pauses in the doorframe to look at him, smile small and fond, before he steps in, clicks the door shut behind him, and comes to stand beside his chair.

In his hands is a skin of water; he sets it on Byerly's desk. In his pocket jacket are notes from the merchant—Lorens Alméras, brother to the deceased Colart Alméras, who was cut down in the street some four months earlier for being mouthy and defiant with the occupiers. They stay where they are. First things first: lifting and tilting Byerly's head with his finger tips to look at his jaw and placing a belated, feather-light, mustache-y kiss on the bruise.

"All of your teeth still in there?" is a thin layer of a joke over genuine concern, sounding more gentle than flippant.

[bouchonne]

"All three of them."

Byerly accepts the kiss, and then - when he straightens - leans his head lightly against Bastien's midriff. One hand comes up, elegant fingertip resting on the note, as he sighs heavily.

"You know you're very sexy when you work, don't you?" There's a layer of weariness to it - likewise, not flippant, just...fond.

[cozen]

His eyebrows knit and his head tilts. He didn't know that. Partly because it isn't—can't be—universally and objectively true. Seduction never even cracked his top five methods for prying people's lives open.

Secrets are sexy, though. Having someone be your secret, surrounded by people who don't really understand. Bastien knows something about that.

So he only hums, but it's an agreeable hum, while his arm settles around By and his hand comes up to play with the shell of his ear. An unspoken back at you.

"That is for you," he says, shifting to nudge the fold of paper under By's finger, "to give to the generals or tribunals or however that will work. Did your soldier say anything?"

[bouchonne]

"Kept his mouth shut the whole time," By says. "Though his eyes spoke in full volumes."

His fingers come out to spread across the page. Lorens Alméras. Colart Alméras, who could not take the occupation anymore, who could not take the indignity and the cruelty, who stood up and thought it would make him a hero but made him nothing more than a corpse.

He takes a deep breath through his nose and says, turning his face up with a smile, "I mean it. I love watching your mind at work. You're so damnably sharp, but usually you don't draw attention to it. When you really turn it on, a girl can get a little weak in the knees."

[cozen]

There are all of his usual impulses—to demur, to downplay, to credit his bardmaster, or to turn the compliment promptly back on Byerly, who is sexy when he cares and when he refuses to stand down, in addition to all the time when he does anything at all. But he bites them down. He squirms to communicate what a struggle that is, and his cheeks tinge pink, but he says, "Thank you," before anything else, earnest and pleased and punctuated with an earlobe pinch.

Smiling up at Bastien and delivering praise is also not a bad look on him. Wherever and whenever he goes to bed tonight, the odds are good Bastien will show up to crawl on top of him and let him know. For the moment, though, in an unlocked room in a keep crawling with Orlesian soldiers, he can be slightly more professional than that.

"You're a good partner. You are lucky I didn't realize how good, when you were in Orlais, or I would have—" quietly, tiredly sing-song "—corrupted youuu."

[bouchonne]

"Hah," By responds. He feels a little flush of pride, now, though. Bastien would absolutely say something like that to flatter him - absolutely - but it's still damned nice to hear. Bastien knows what real skill is and what it isn't.

"I'd have been very vulnerable to corruption. Depending a bit on when you caught me - " Obviously, after that horrible split with Alexandrie, that would have been the easiest - "But you could have talked me into it with very little trouble."

He gestures over to a chair. An indication that he's taking a pause from the work right now and Bastien doesn't need to hover like he's just here for the moment. (Though the closeness is nice.)

"And you wouldn't have just used me as some patsy?"

[cozen]

"No!" Bastien says immediately, and that is just to flatter him. Or perhaps to flatter himself. While he casts a somewhat forlorn look at the chair, all those many inches away, he backtracks—no lying. "Well. Maybe at first, before I understood what a treasure I had on my hands."

He doesn't want to go sit in the chair. But heavy boots pass this way and that beyond the door, though, and there's no Benedict to stop anyone from barging in without warning. So Bastien dips down for another kiss, this time on the mouth and with as much spice as he can cram into about two seconds, before dropping into the chair with as much sprawl as his average-height limbs will allow.

"Maybe we never would have had all of this, if things had not happened just so," he adds, "but I don't think I could ever really know you and not respect you."

[bouchonne]

"Respect me?" That catches Byerly off-guard. Of all the things that Byerly knows Bastien feels for him - and there are many things, and many of them are warm and sweet and lovely - respect isn't really on the list. No mark against Bastien. Maker, no. It's just - Well - Lust is justified, and infatuation, and sympathy, and maybe even love. But respect?

By scoots the chair a little closer to Bastien's, so he can wiggle out of his boots and place his feet upon Bastien's knees.

"Not know that I have a knack for this," he suggests as a more accurate rephrasing. Not respect, just an acknowledgment of abilities - that's more all right.

[cozen]

Bastien shouldn’t be surprised by Byerly’s surprise and resistance. He’s Byerly. But the idea of falling for someone he doesn’t respect is so absurd to Bastien that he’s caught off guard himself and left looking expectant, like maybe there’s a punchline. Maybe By’s about to feign indignation that he didn’t say adore or worship.

But no, no punchline.

Bastien smiles, though, as his confusion fades, both pleased about his acquisition of these two mildly aromatic feet and sort of perversely fond of By’s shitty self-regard, the same way one might become fond of a familiar old enemy who refuses to give up and stay down. He’ll still kill it and burn the corpse if he ever can, no question, but he doesn’t mind wrestling with it in the meantime.

“Know that you have a knack for it,” he says in agreeable tones, finger wagging between By’s feet in a round of silent am stram gram, “and respect you.”

[bouchonne]

By tries to use his toes to grab at Bastien's finger. It's definitely a game for which he's at a handicap, because although his toes are rather freakishly long and articulated, it's still a game of clumsily trying to snap at the finger like a lobster clawing someone's hand. Quite silly.

"Do you remember the time I pissed myself at that Satinalia party?" he asks. It's not an explicit rebuttal to that matter of respect, but it's clear enough what he's talking about. The time in question had been his first year in Val Royeaux, so he hadn't even had heartbreak to use as an excuse - he'd just gotten phenomenally drunk and hadn't kept track of his bladder and had pissed himself.

But. But it has been quite a few years. And Bastien and Alexandrie have done rather more work than he's deserved, listening and prodding and pressing. And so he admits, "I suppose I've come a ways since then."

[cozen]

"You have," Bastien says, abandoning am stram gram for the sake of prolonging this toe-pincer game, "but even if you hadn't. You have always been a good one."

What was Bastien doing that winter? Ruining Lady Emilia de Darche's life, he thinks—sinking her engagement and sending her fleeing to an abbey, pursued by proof-backed rumors of a two-year-old elf-blooded bastard now being coddled by farmers in the countryside. She'd been eighteen at the time. Could Bastien have ever really convinced By to go along with something like that? Never mind the killing.

He gets cocky and sloppy about his toe evasion until his finger is successfully caught by one of Byerly's elegant feet. The finger wiggles like a distressed fish for a moment before curling around his big toe to pull his foot up further for a rub.

"I mean, I do prefer you sober. You are much more fun to talk to. But I promise, if you start pissing yourself when we are rickety old men," is a more presumptuous thing than he could have brought himself to say a few months ago, but now it's off-hand, "I won't respect you any less."

[bouchonne]

"Well, I think we'll have earned it once we're rickety old men. I think we'll have the right to piss on anyone we want to."

What a thought it is. Bastien, wrinkled, puttering around their apartments. Those hands with knobby knuckles, liver-spotted, thin-skinned, sipping scorching-hot coffee and humming about the weather. Do old men still fuck? Will they ever turn chaste? Maybe they'll go out with heart attacks in bed. Same time. What a thought.

But - "If you say so," he says, and pauses, and then says, "well, I can't think you're the smartest person I know and then disagree with you, can I?"

[cozen]

Bastien is already laughing quietly about their future pissing rights while he digs the joint of his thumb into the bottom of By's foot, and he laughs a little more about smartest person I know.

Because it's absurd, when the entire Research Division exists—some of them, anyway. And because it's possibly quite crafty of Byerly, if it's intentional, to make getting him to accept a compliment contingent on Bastien accepting one himself. A loving trap.

So Bastien doesn't protest. Not that part. "You can," he does say, quibbling. "You should. You tell me new things and make me think of things new ways all the time. But about this, no, you shouldn't disagree. I'm one of Thedas' foremost experts on how fucking great you are. Arguing is futile."

[bouchonne]

"Bastard," By replies fondly, and wiggles down in his seat so he can push his feet even further into Bastien's lap. The foot not currently being minded is slipped down under the hem of Bastien's shirt - not in a sexy way, purely so he can push his chilled soles against Bastien's warm stomach.

Then, reflectively - not bitterly, just reflectively - he says, "I wish we had figured this all out sooner. It would have been a better life with more years of you in it."

[cozen]

Bastien makes a face when Byerly's cold toes land on his skin, but there's no attempt to squirm away. He gives the foot a rub through his shirtfront—the warming friction kind, not the more methodological kneading he's bestowing on the other.

So much for looking professional.

"Me, too," he says, and then, "I'm sorry. I gave you a hard time—" If one comment counts as a hard time. It was a hard enough time for Byerly to take it unexpectedly seriously. "—about not staying in touch. But you were heartbroken, and you didn't have anyone but those assholes. I should have been the one to reach out to you. Been a real friend. And then who knows?"

He tickles the bottom of By's foot and smiles at him. He's sorry; he's not beating himself up about it.

[bouchonne]

"That's absurd," Byerly says swiftly, and a bit too firmly. "It was - "

And then he stops himself. He cannot pretend that he actually believes what he's saying here. But he knows that it's what Bastien would want him to say. Which isn't the reason he's saying it - he's not saying it to please Bastien. He's saying it because if Bastien wants him to think it, then he probably should be thinking it, and maybe if he says something aloud enough he'll start to believe it himself. Maybe.

So. "It was no one's fault." He gives a rueful little shrug and uses his toes to grab and tug at a few stray chest hairs. "Maybe those assholes'. Maker, I used to actually think they were worthwhile. Can you imagine?"

[cozen]

Bastien smiles a little wider, glad to accept no one’s fault over Byerly blaming himself. “I—“

The answer is interrupted by a quiet, unpained squawk and a swat at Byerly’s ankle.

“I need those,” he says of his chest hairs, which of course are in no serious danger. “I’m not thin enough to be hairless anymore. I’d look like a dead fish. —and yes. I can imagine.”

Bastien wouldn’t have said they were worthwhile. But he still spent fifteen years thinking the greatest thing he could achieve would be beating people like them at their games, instead of finding something better to do with his life.

“Especially with so few people to tell you that you deserved more. How were you supposed to know?”

[bouchonne]

"How does anyone know?" Byerly counters. His expression is a rueful little smirk as he says, "I've heard rumors of the fact that there are some people who have parents who aren't bastards, but I have yet to confirm the information. I think that those few who are filled with all that swaggering self-confidence - I think that they're simply demented, that's all. Half-insane."

A moment, and then he allows, "Alexandrie's parents are all right." But someone still managed to crack her spirit and twist her mind even so. Maker, the world is rotten.

So he takes a breath and says, "And you'd still look beautiful hairless. Mon beau saumon."

[cozen]

Bastien cheerfully wrinkles his nose, mimes a fish mouth with bedroom eyes, and pulls his shirt hem out from his skin to make a cave for easier feet-swapping. “Other foot,” he says, and once he has it in his hands—“My parents were fine, too.”

The objective truth of that is debatable, but he believes it. They certainly weren’t anything like Byerly’s father.

Tangentially: “Do you want to have children?”

It is not the time or the place. But it’s also not the time or place for Bastien to have Byerly’s feet in his lap, so that ship has sailed.

[bouchonne]

That is quite a question to spring on a fellow. Bastien can, no doubt, see it in his eyes - the flash of uncertainty that borders on fear. Because the answer is so clear and unequivocal, but suddenly he's forced to think about - What if Bastien feels differently? What if he's desperate for a passel on his heels? My parents were fine, he says, and what if that means that he's inspired by their example to try -

"I, ah," By says, when he realizes that he probably seems like a man with a crossbow leveled at his heart. And that his toes have curled in a way that probably is reminiscent of someone balling their hands into fists.

So he clears his throat and says, trying to sound light, "Dogs are probably all I could handle."

[cozen]

Bastien’s smile fades, at Byerly’s reaction, but it’s only concern. Not disappointment. Children with him hasn’t entered his mind. Only the chance of Byerly making some bloodline-continuation arrangement with wife, one way or another, or some possible future where Alexandrie’s various Lokis are all gone for good—and himself no more entitled to a say in any of that than any lover stashed quietly in the corner of someone’s life would have.

It’s an habitual way of thinking, left over from years of moderated expectations. He should know better by now. Reality will sink all the way in eventually.

“I think you could handle anything,” he says, uncurling Byerly’s clenched toes one at a time, “but that doesn’t mean you have to.”

[bouchonne]

A very generous assessment. By forces himself to relax, concentrates on those muscles loosening up, and clears his throat again.

"How terribly kind," he says, still awkward. Then he looks at Bastien, searching his face for some sign of sorrow, of longing, of - anything. "Do you - ?" The tone of his voice makes it clear enough; this is not a question of idle curiosity, but instead a grimmer question: Have I destroyed some dream of yours? Is this something that will disappoint you?