faderift | open, catch-all

( tsenka takes a breath.

she considers him, through the smoke, over the glass. a more serious look, not troubled precisely; measuring. how much she trusts him, how much she believes his interest sincere, what it means to answer those questions. )

I can tell you the good stories. I don't mind it. None of them come from the Circle. I can tell you about the Circle, too, but—

( she sucks her teeth. )

Hard not for it to sound... ( a spin of her fingers. ) You don't want to sit here and listen to some dreary old tale of mundane woes.

( does he? )

Didn't keep everyone in check, you're not wrong about that, but you did not want to be caught. And we all heard the rumors about what happens if you're fool enough to get pregnant, and unlucky enough to stay that way.

[ He gives a nod. Unsurprising, of course. ]

I don't want to force you to sit here and tell your woes. Of course.

But what is mundane to you is not necessarily well-understood by all.

( a hum, a quirk of the corner of her mouth hearing an echo of an ongoing realization out of a relative stranger's mouth, )

It's funny. All my life, everyone around me knew everything I knew.

( other than the secrets, but— )

Cared about the same things. Feared the same things. Knew their shapes, at least. I wanted a bigger world, ( ruminative, ) it only takes some adjusting to all this elbow room.

( to new people, who don't know. )

You imagine no one outside cares. You think, how could they leave us here, if they cared?

[ A tilt of his head. As if continuing her thought - ]

But it is, often, not lack of care. It is lack of knowledge. Sometimes lack of power. [ A small gesture of confession - ] Sometimes lack of care, from some corners. But not all.

( the tip of her hand toward him is agreement— )

But you don't know that, as children. And when you're grown and free, how to know the difference?

( when everyone feels like an enemy; when you are still under that same threat, only delayed. when strangers who sit down with you speak in the circles with the present tense. )

Growing pains.

All we can do is exhibit curiosity towards one another.

[ A shrug; easy, casual. He toys with his glass. ]

A pity, then, that curiosity is often the first victim of trauma and cruelty.

( tsenka smiles, over her glass— )

I'm curious about you.

( which would absolutely be a line if she thought he'd go for it, but in the absence of any real prospect of turning this into a shag, it's just true. )

Are you?

[ His smile is slow. Consider his earlier thought corrected. Perhaps. ]

Well, I'm curious about you.

Oof, not much to tell yet.

( that is certainly debatable. she leans an elbow on the table — if she were wearing something more salacious, it'd be an interesting move, but the oversized knit could generously be called 'chunky' and accurately called 'misshapen', so it's just comfortable. ) Expect you've been up to more exciting things than I have.

I've certainly been up to stupider things than you have.

[ He's cheerful as he says that. ]

Does that count? A few decades of nonsense?

( the sound she makes against her teeth could be disapproving, except for the bright laugh in her eyes— )

I wouldn't count on that.

( "stupider than her". she had missed time to make up for, in the rebellion. boy, had she. )

So we end up here, fighting another war, trying to be terribly responsible.

Mmhm.

[ A shrug. ]

Pissing everyone off, in my case. - Which, to be fair, was also something I spent a lot of time doing as a lad.

Oh, I've been good on that front.

( sure, she opened her knuckles on vanya orlov's teeth, but it's healing and he doesn't count because fuck that guy. )

Suppose I don't know anyone well enough for them to worry much what I'm up to, as yet. Jone, maybe, but we get on.

Rowntree.

[ don't forget that asshole that you apparently like. ]

Marcus, ( agreement. ) That's different.

( a twitch of a smile, )

He puts up with a lot from me.

( she trusts him implicitly. she'd die for him, if she had to; would live for him, if she had to. fondly, ) Told him I wouldn't have made a pass at his man if I'd known about the three of 'em. Trust my luck, no? Trying to make friends in this unfriendly place and out of the first three, one's for my brother and one's the sister of the last man I loved.

( wry, ) You top that, if you like.

( he seems like a storyteller. it's an invitation. )

[ He frowns thoughtfully. Interesting, though, that comment about his man; Byerly had rather assumed that that little fuck-knot had duplicitous little Petrana at its center. That'll teach him to think that lads who sleep with both sexes must by nature be fun. Apparently, Rowntree's of that persuasion, and that man is joyless. ]

One time I had sex with - [ He thinks back, squinting - ] Twenty-three people in a single night. With sex defined rather broadly.

( it surprises her into a laugh— )

Maker, sounds like work at that point.

[ A cheerful shrug. ]

It was, honestly. But pride drives a fellow to do extreme things, a-times.

I can imagine.

( she considers for a moment, offers: )

Coming out of the Circles— there's things you've always had to hide. Parts of yourself you aren't allowed to let anyone know you've got. Your body and your heart, those things aren't yours to give, they belong to the Chantry and the Chantry has said you don't deserve and you won't get. You learn to keep yourself a secret.

Some were gentler than others, some were the fucking Gallows, either way— you learned the limits of tolerance somewhere, learned to live within them or didn't make it.

( she lifts her fingertips off her pipe, a sort of miniature shrug: )

Everyone does something different with that, on the other side of it. Rebellion means a lot of things. It's a choice for me, to smile.

( smile stands in for a lot of things, there—

to live out loud, to love furiously and at the top of her lungs, to be frank about her curiosity. to try to imagine who she might have been, in another life, and take parts of that person for herself.

drolly, )

That's mage extremism, that is.

( happiness. the finding and the having thereof. )

Mm.

[ He listens quietly. Toys with his glass. It's still nearly full.

After a moment of his own: ]

It's not the same thing, but - Say there's a fellow who is not very well-loved. Intolerable personality, you see. He is also a fellow without much power in the world. Consequently, he has almost no path to take vengeance on his tormentors, save to live well - or to pretend to live well, where they can see him.

[ An arch of his eyebrow. At last, he pulls out a cigarette to start to join her in smoking. ]

So. I understand a part of it, at least.

( she offers him her little riftwatch lighter, quite possibly one of her favourite things she's got since arriving, and clinks her glass lightly against his— )

It's not for everyone.

( tsenka is more patient with her mage compatriots than she seems like she might be, at first blush; she is learning to apply some of that to the rest of everyone. or at least some of them. )

What, smiling through it all?

[ He accepts the light. Leans in, then leans back and takes an elegant drag. He really does have fine features, beautiful eyes - But he looks so very tired. ]

( there's a kindness that's too knowing to be pity when she leans back, too, shrugging: )

It can be fucking hard, can't it?

( which she might not have said to someone else. but she thinks—

it isn't a weakness to admit it. to someone who looks like he knows, too. )

Mm.

[ He smiles, half to her and half to himself. ]

And there are so many people who ask - why are you like this? Why can't you just be honest? As though honesty weren't a dearly-bought luxury.

We all pick our moments. The people we want to let see us.

( a quirk of her mouth, )

Hard to remember that, sometimes.

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