Closed. Morning finds you still warm and breathing.

[wearyallalone]

WHO: Vanya and Tsenka
WHAT: An overdue confrontation
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: TBA if necessary

If anyone were to ask Vanya Orlov what his relationship to his faith was, he isn't sure he'd be able to articulate it in any meaningful way. It isn't what it had been; it isn't nothing. It is, like much of the rest of his life, a bit of a mess.

Luckily for him, no one is asking.

Only a handful of members of Riftwatch visit the smaller chapel attached to the former Templar tower. The few truly devout mainly use the larger chapel in the central tower, other than at designated hours for prayer. As long as he avoids those times, Vanya usually has the place to himself.

Sometimes he prays, but more often, he just sits, taking in the quiet and centering himself. For all he tries to go when no one else will be there, he makes no secret of his habits. He's just a solitary person who has made few real connections here. He doesn't imagine anyone will care, so long as he stays out of everyone else's way.

Comments

[delphian]

Tsenka Abendroth cares.

Well,

that's one way of putting it. She's here, at any rate, standing at the back of the chapel and scanning it for — yes. There he is,

“Orlov.”

[wearyallalone]

He is surprised, though not evidently irritated, at the interruption. As usual, he is alone in the chapel (was alone in it) and he'd been evidently lost in thought. He rises and turns toward her. "Yes?"

[delphian]

“Why,” coolly, trailing her fingertips along the empty pews as she closes the distance in no great hurry, “would some traitorous Venatori piece of shit think you might be willing to do him favors?”

She doesn't sound unfriendly; she sounds curious.

He is not nearly stupid enough to think that means anything.

[wearyallalone]

Vanya Orlov is not a man of large reactions, but she is unlikely to miss the way the color drains from his face.

"You're talking about Antosha." It's not a question; there's isn't more than one. "What did he say."

[delphian]

Some satisfaction finds her, in both his instant recognition and the way it cuts him at once. Not enough, but some.

“Not that you were a Templar,” a salient point she has been nursing an injury for ever since discovering it.

[wearyallalone]

"He was always exceptionally good at ignoring facts that were inconvenient to him, even before he betrayed us," Vanya says, quiet and even. "For what it's worth, ex-Templar, though he wouldn't have known that to mention or fail to."

He hasn't moved.

[delphian]

“And what does that mean, Orlov?”

Ex-templar. He's here, he's not with the exalted March or the divine, not taking that route back to the Chantry and legitimacy, but what's "ex" to someone who could Silence her?

To someone whose sympathetic mage connection is a coward and a traitor.

[wearyallalone]

"What does it matter?" he asked, quiet with containing the pain of the prodded wound that was Antosha. "Could I say anything to you that would make any difference when the sole thing you know about me is my name in a traitor's mouth, and my former affiliation with an order that rotted from the inside out years ago?"

[delphian]

When he puts it like that,

Tsenka punches him in the mouth, hard enough to split her knuckles on his teeth.

“You know what? No.”

[wearyallalone]

He possibly should have expected that; on the other hand, he doesn't know her at all, so maybe he doesn't have enough information. Either way, he clearly didn't expect it. He's man who knows how to take a punch, but she takes him entirely off guard and his head snaps back before he can take a step backward to avoid the blow.

He lifts a hand to his split lower lip, almost absently, watching her to see if she's going to hit him again. He considers speaking and, at least for a moment, decides against. He's hard pressed to think of much he could usefully say.

[delphian]

It doesn't fix anything. Nothing's solved, for Tsenka having hit him in the face; Antosha is no less a traitor, and no less responsible for her freedom. She doesn't feel better about either of those things, or the way that they weigh on her.

But it didn't not feel good. There is a moment where it's unclear, probably even to Tsenka, if she's going to do it again and where she'd aim a second time.

(Dust trembles, near her, the little stones on the floor that might have got caught in someone's shoe. Barely noticeable.)

“If I ever see him again,” she says, “I will tell him the same.”

In much the same fashion.

“I don't absolve him. Or you.”

[wearyallalone]

He catches himself before he automatically says I didn't ask you to. He probably would have never said I don't think you should, even if he thinks it. What he actually says is:

"He'd deserve it and worse. If you came to find me to be sure I knew he was a traitor who deserves no sympathy, I can assure you, I do know. He didn't..." Vanya exhales. She doesn't care. Why should she, under the circumstances?

"I'll stay out of your way, to the extent it's up to me. If that's what you want. It's a small organization but I'm out in the field as much as I can be regardless."

[delphian]

I hope you die out there.

True enough in this moment, but meaningless. What's his death to her, in the end? One less Templar to kill when Corypheus is done and it's time to turn on each other again? To look at him now, she thinks if she said that he'd believe in this moment that he's already that. One less. But guilt is a lever that can move a man in many directions, and what's a couple of sad mages to the rotten Order that made him the man he is now?

He's sad now.

He could be a hundred things tomorrow. He could be persuaded a hundred ways. He could follow that spoiled traitor north, hoping—

There is some cold comfort to be found in the idea that the Order, probably, regards him with as much contempt as she does right now.

“Stay away from mages. The young ones, especially.” It's flat, and brooks no argument even as she can't imagine him choosing now to voice any. “As much as it's up to you.”

[wearyallalone]

"It is easy to promise you something I'm doing already," he says, shuttered up and quiet. It's easy to see in her hatred confirmation of what he already carries on his shoulders; that there's no way to atone for something when the system that taught you atonement is the source of the wrong you did in the first place. He doesn't look for absolution that he doesn't believe exists. It doesn't surprise him to be reminded of its absence.

It is sort of bleakly funny, though, that Antosha wasn't wrong. If she'd wanted help from someone like him, he would have helped her.