CLOSED | ressurrected,

[poleaxed]

WHO: i saw goodie proctor delphian talking to the devil poleaxed
WHAT: jone and tsenka have some things to iron out
WHEN: nn...now.
WHERE: the gallows courtyard
NOTES: probably swears

Is Bede dead or alive?

The thoughts been haunting her more and more lately, and every event, it seems, only feeds the fire. Now, one of his ex-lovers has shown up. Bede and a women? He'd sworn off them, last they'd talked, but he was also twelve at the time.

And, you know, so was she.

There are a lot of things people think are true about twins. That they can guess each other's thoughts, know each other's locations. The worst part about that is that it isn't true. Especially in Bede's case. What was going on behind those eyes of his, almost the same color and hue as hers?

She may never know. The thought bids distraction. She doesn't want to think of this, where the conclusion is like dangling your heart over a knife. Yet she can't argue that the woman she's promised to meet, the woman approaching now, clearly knows her brother better than her. You are who you are as an adult, not a sniveling child, afraid and covered in dirt, carried away from a Templar on promises of regular meals.

She doesn't like that memory. Jone forces it to the back of her mind. She'd rather talk to Tsenka, the funny little elf with the sharp tongue. Jone sits in view of the training yard, drinking from a clay jar of warm beer. She waves Tsenka over, and offers her a jar for herself.

"I reckon we have some catching up to do," she says, "more'n I thought."

Comments

[delphian]

“Puts trying it on with my brother's man in perspective,” Tsenka says, ruminative, as she sits down and takes up the jar; it is both true and a purposeful effort to puncture the unavoidable tension of the moment, let it (them) breathe. Bede's own sister, right here under her nose,

or, well, above it.

Would you even know her now? Say you've walked past her and not known—

What's she meant to say to Jone about him. Flip as she was on the crystals, what does she even make of their shared history herself, now? She wonders if he was sad. If he was relieved; if he enjoyed the romantic tragedy of losing her that way instead of whatever stupid argument would have done for them. If that less memorable piece she took him from had taken him back, after, to comfort him in that trying time—

[poleaxed]

She doesn't know what to say, can't concieve of where this will go, and then the question bubbles up out of her mouth, unbidden and unrestrained.

"Is he well?"

What a stupid, weak, transparent question. How needy. She grimaces, shakes her head, tries to recoup what face she's lost in the transaction.

"Last you seen him, like."

[delphian]

She thinks of tapping against the door, are you safe? is it safe where you are? and knows it's what she'd want to know, knows as well that it's not a question her answers are like to satisfy. How far might he have gone, in the intervening years. Anything could have happened to him. He could be anywhere.

She thinks of the last she saw him, her face twisted in petulant, pointless anger about what she's long since forgotten, shouting at the set of his departing shoulders. Probably they'd have made it up in the morning. He liked being able to do that.

“He was,” she decides. Decides, all things measured fairly, that it's not as if the freedom to row with one another about stupid things wasn't in itself proof of broadly things going well, for a time. “It was—years, now.”

And she's no closer to knowing where he is than Jone is, but: “He looked for you. Kept looking for you. I know your name from him, that.”

And her face, the way he remembered it, from his dreams. She can see it in her now that she's looking for it; how one became the other. Shades of Bede, too, in what Jone grew to be.

(No wonder she fancied her a minute.)

[poleaxed]

"Course it were years." More of a grumble under her breath than anything. Of course it's another missed meeting, almost a lead, but never enough to actually get anywhere close to a man who might be, maybe, not dead.

She doesn't know what to do with the information that he cared. That he wanted to find her, too. She tsks. "Reckon he went back to Denerim, poor sod. Found a note he left for me, must've been years ago."

She shakes her head, sits back. The unbridled emotion this brings-- she hates it. It makes her feel foolish, weak, stupid. She'd like to shove it aside, but she can't risk losing the information, the connection-

"Did you love him?"

What a stupid thing to ask, but it's too late now.

[delphian]

If anyone else were asking, she'd just say, yes, and maybe to mind their own fucking business, and let it be. Not examine it too closely, even for herself, because of course she loved him and everyone that she told she loved and burned brightly for, for never very long,

but he's been on her mind, lately. And she'd have wanted an honest answer, if Marcus had been gone and his fancy little pieces had still been here.

“Yes,” she still says, and it feels true in her mouth. For a time, he'd held her and her attention both and there's something seductive about the memory and the way they left so much undone between them, albeit very little unsaid. He's out of her reach, but they never said it was done. It's done for him, probably, but the idea that if she hadn't been taken—

Years. Would she still have been bickering with him now? It's not unappealing.

“I liked the story of us he told,” she says, taking a drink. “I wanted to know what happened in it.”

[poleaxed]

"Fuck," she says, again without thinking. She really is the stupid twin. Bede would always think first, calculate. At least, he did when he was young.

"I mean-" she scrambles. "He's still doing that, yeah? Telling fucking stories. Born liar, he was."

She sits back, sips her beer, and wishes she had something to smoke. Something to do with her hands... "Glad you knew him. All I can say, innit."

[delphian]

“Aye, the man's an insufferable cunt.”

Even as she says it, Tsenka is patting herself down for her pipe, because Jone isn't the only one finding this sort of conversation a challenge to navigate without something to occupy her; the beer isn't half strong enough for what she needs to wade into what she and Bede were, once.

Still. There's affection in the assessment, like maybe that was part of the attraction. Chaos, squared.

“Some kind of funny,” a gesture between the two of them, unthinkingly elegant for all she's a vexing, messy thing herself, “that it's me as found you. I wouldn't mind telling him that joke.”

Might forgive her for all the times he had the upper hand and she resorted to twisting the knife of his long absent twin. (Might not.)

[poleaxed]

Jone can't help but snort. For the first time she can remember, someone's insulted Bede and she doesn't feel wounded. Familiarity-- love, apparently-- bred that.

It's a nice feeling.

"We used to call him a cock-robin. His head'll turn 'round, you ever see him again."

It's a fine thing to reminisce. Would that she always could. "Won't pry more'n I already have. If he were happy, s'more than I could've hoped."

[delphian]

Lighting her pipe, Tsenka leans back on her elbows and— remembers. Leaning back the same way between Bede's knees, her arm slung around his thigh, listening with half an ear to what he was murmuring to her under the crackle of the fire. Staying by it as late as she could manage, convincing him it was romantic to sleep under the stars when she couldn't stand the idea of walls around her and anything between her and the sky. The sound of his laugh. That they didn't only fight.

“Tevinter did a.. I don't know what's real, sometimes, what I remember.”

She says it plain, not like the vulnerability she must know it is.

“But I remember we were all right. I'm glad it means something.”

[poleaxed]

She nods, taking that in slowly. A magic so vile it fucks your memory? Jone didn't know, before this moment, that such a thing existed. And yet, it clicks perfectly into her view of the world. Of course such evil things have been dreamt up.

"When you were captured-?" She can't bring herself to ask. Was he captured? No, the elf would've said. A chatty sort, she is. Usually. Jone reaches out, a solid hand on Tsenka's shoulder. "Glad you're here. S'all I should've said."

Nice save, huh.

[delphian]

The way she leans into the weight of Jone's hand is no more than it seems; a woman who spent her life surrounded by the people closest to her, who grew used to being able to reach for them, isolated for years and not touched with kindness til her escape. She feels raw, still, uncertain of how to get back what still feels lost.

Marcus has enough people (and dogs) in his bed, he doesn't need her fussing over sleeping alone now; there's just not been anyone else to turn to, either. Thinking of Bede underlines how alone she still feels, even now. In the ways that matter most she isn't, and it matters, but there's much else not rebuilt.

“They threw me in a hole I thought I'd die in,” she says, “and I stayed there a long time. The Gallows don't look half bad, after that. I was glad it was only me.”

(She doesn't know if she'd have held out, if they'd had leverage over her.)

[poleaxed]

Jone has never been thrown in a hole. Jone has never been locked away. But she has been powerless, and she dealt with that by finding someone to be responsible for, and taking on every physical strike she could in order to protect them. The part of her mind that will always be searching for the sticky warmth of that version of home finds another crevice of humanity to slide into. This woman needs someone. Jone pulls her, without much evident effort, into the shape of a one-armed hug. She is solid muscle where Bede was lanky confidence. It must be an entirely different sensation. It's all she can give.

She pats Tsenka's shoulder, gentle, slow.

"Braver than both of us, now," she says, voice calmer than it is soft. "You got out. All that matters."

Jone will recognize, later, the way her loyalty twisted into a new shape.

[delphian]

How much it means to be drawn in close—easy as you like, natural as anything—is a thing for which she isn't entirely prepared. And a strange thing, for a moment, because it's true: Tsenka needs someone. Needs people, needs a whole to feel a part of, and Tsenka's people have always been Tsenka's kind.

Not elves; mages. She doesn't dislike it, it isn't unwelcome, only there's a pang of guilt in accepting it, her own derisive words ringing in her ears across memory. What did Bede need a sister for? What'd he need with someone who wasn't like them—who among them had not been taken from or given by their families? Didn't he have family, now? Weren't they enough?

Tsenka had doubted the devotion he'd implied. Had been cruel about her doubt, when it suited her to be. Even now this is a small kindness that could still be taken away, but that instinct offers it in the moment knocks her down a peg, all the same. She recognizes the humble pie for what it is, swallows it, decides to rest her head on Jone's shoulder and does it.

“Aye.”

A wreath of smoke blurs the air around them.

Soft, steely, “That's so.”

[poleaxed]

The wind, of course, blows the smoke into Jone's face, but that hardly matters. Tsenka seems better off, if only momentarily.

"Supposed to be watching the recruits, I am." She still has some humor to spare, and it colors her voice. "See anyone promising?"

Lately, or right now. Jone's been distracted, these last few weeks.

[delphian]

Tsenka flexes her hand — split knuckles could have any number of causes, but in this instance she opened them on that Templar, Orlov, and there is a bleak humor in the brief impulse to suggest he takes a hit well.

She does not. She decides to admit (more generally, not by that lout),

“Been impressed by more of what I've seen than I thought I would. And you have to like a fellow who leads with needing a drink.”

[poleaxed]

Jone wrinkles her nose. "Don't train 'em in pickup lines. That's confidential.

She knows what role she needs to play, here. Jocular, confident, deflecting worry. It's like slipping on an old coat, well worn and comfortable.