faderift | you can't handle the truth

Entry tags:

you can't handle the truth

WHO: Whoever wants
WHAT: Kickoff of the truth plot!
WHEN: Right now
WHERE: The dining hall
NOTES: Feel free to use this to post open starters with prompts! Or make your own logs. Or create open posts on the network. Do whatever you'd like. No rules just right

If only the cooks had screwed up the soup. The problem is that it's a particularly nice soup today, full of fresh summer herbs, nicely seasoned, and plentiful. And so it's quite likely that you grabbed a bowl - maybe even got a second helping - and so ingested the potion that a devious hand had tipped in there earlier that day.

The effects begin to set in within twenty minutes of ingesting the soup. They may be mild - your tongue stumbling when you go to tell a little white lie...or they might be strong, and you might be overtaken by a sudden hysterical urge to tell deep truths to anyone who might listen. Or perhaps you skipped that soup, and instead, you're surrounded by babbling, confused people who want to tell you their life stories.

The potion's effects will last for up to two days. And they may at times be stronger, and at times weaker. Here's hoping you'll do minimal damage to your reputation in the meantime.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A flicker of confusion passes over Byerly's face as his mind leaps to the most literal interpretation: that he'd, embarrassingly, been completely wrong in his digging into Flint's past, that he'd actually misidentified Flint and McGraw was just some friend of his. And then his critical faculties engage, and he realizes: ah. A metaphor.

"Is that so," Byerly says, voice a bit slow. He tips his head slightly, takes up his glass, sips from it. It has a medicinal sort of bite, sharp and satisfying.

(Was it an insult? By knows it would be if he told someone you remind me of myself. But Flint is, however unhinged, a little more at peace - for lack of a better word - than Byerly is.)

"I have a hard time imagining it. You going at anything at less than full speed."

Whatever it is, it must be true.

"The officer's roster of the Imperial Navy is almost entirely made up of Laetan mages and the children of Altus. I suspect you can imagine the role a Soporati in such a position might be convinced he was compelled to play."

Maker, this is - incredible. Like having a hawk land on your shoulder. Byerly prays he doesn't startle it into flying away.

So he gives an easy guess: "Pleasant and agreeable?" And then he immediately knows it to be wrong. And he corrects himself: "Careful." Careful not to jeopardize anything, to trouble those around him, to disturb the good will of those he depends on. Like any penniless boy without protectors.

"Careful," he repeats back, confirmation. "Though if you'd asked me then, Lieutenant McGraw would have described it as astute."

Not Captain. There would never have been a Captain McGraw in the Imperial Navy. Even with the endorsement of a prominent member of the Admiralty, there would be nowhere for him to advance. Had he stayed, he would have found himself climbing the seniority list of Lieutenants, consistently unfortunate enough to have never been at the exact right place or time or posted under the right officer to accomplish something worth further promotion.

Eventually, there would have been a choice: give up the service, or relegate himself to the laughable prospect of becoming an old man in the ship's wardroom as a peer to boys a quarter his age. Either would have served to prove what was already understood.

"I knew what I was expected to achieve, and what I would never be permitted to be. Until someone showed me otherwise, I believed that the only way to find satisfaction between the two was to become so familiar with my limitations that I might find some way of leveraging them. Something you know a little of, if I'm not mistaken."

Byerly nods. He looks up to search Flint's face, trying to see if that's a request for him to share some piece of his own story. A rather surprising thing, if so; Flint has always seemed quite bored by Byerly talking about himself.

(But, to be fair, Byerly has always used tales of himself to camouflage. There's never been anything truthful in them. Nothing to be learned, aside from that same old lesson that Byerly Rutyer is not to be trusted.)

"The Rutyer name is a good one - an old one - in the South," he says. "But too disgraced to go into the Chantry, too clumsy for the army; no wealth, no estate. And - " Disinherited is, at the end of the day, a lie; he cannot utter it. So instead: "Having refused my inheritance. As you say; expectations and limitations."

It makes him, for a moment, powerfully melancholy. He frowns, pensive. Then he takes a breath - "So - your affair. Rebellion against those limits placed upon you? Defiance against the social structures?"

Standing there, with a nearly untouched cup in one hand and the chair back under the other, there is an absurd kind of patience to be found in him. Somehow, it doesn't look entirely ill-fitting however that might be defied by ordinary practice. Evidently, lacking a degree of suspicion or maybe just when afforded the barest measure of certainty, he is ready to wait and to listen.

"No. Society loves to punish the infidelity too much not to allow for it. I knew those rules too."

Byerly hesitates a moment. The rules here are ambiguous. So he doesn't know if it's an undue risk, or a reasonable one, when he asks, "Then - Was it love?"

That hesitation reads like the flash of a stern lamp's light in an otherwise dark night—obvious, but not telling.

"Are you asking if I loved the woman I fled Tevinter with, or why we left it in the first place?"

Which of these does Byerly actually want to know?

He considers that. “Both,” he says after a moment, “though I will confess that my curiosity about the former is shaped primarily by simply wanting to know more about you.”

"What possible use could you have in that?"

He can imagine a half dozen possibilities. The impulse to speak them aloud is one easily drowned with a drink.

“This is likely hard to believe,” By says a little wryly, “but I don’t always have an angle.”

He fetches up his own glass and tilts it towards Flint. “I just find you fascinating. And even after all these years, I’ve never managed to figure you out. I keep hoping for the key that will unlock the mystery.”

The shape of Flint's cup as he raises it for another drink gleams softly in the low light, illuminating in turn a corner, or band, or polished stone of the rings worn on nearby fingers. By the time the level of the cup has lowered again, the shape of his attention has reassembled itself into that measuring weight. He doesn't need to scrutinize Byerly sitting there in the armchair with his medicinal drink. The shapes are familiar enough that it isn't necessary, and he's studied him enough times that logically there must be next to nothing else to glean from observation. And yet—

"And me, standing in this room, telling you honestly that I'm going to make what you want real isn't it?"

“No,” says Byerly, with a hapless half-laugh. “The opposite. I’d just about decided that you thought me a coward and an idiot. We’d had a few moments now and again where it seemed more peaceable - that time on the ship, a few conversations here - but on the whole, every time you look at me, it looks like you’re looking at a slug.”

He doesn’t sound particularly offended by this. Just a little resigned.

“But now, this faith - not in my plans, but in me. It’s thrown everything into great confusion. But knowing a fellow’s heart is quite helpful to knowing his soul.”

It wouldn't be the first time that he's wielded Miranda to induce a desired effect in someone. Years ago, he'd sat in this very room across from Herian Amsel and used her as the scapegoat to explain away his willingness to sabotage the bare scrap of good that had been permitted him and his company in favor of arguing to see Radonis, that old snake, executed in secret. He's used her with the crew of his ship, and has slipped her into conversations with Petrana where it was logical for her to fit, and he should be able to say now to Byerly that yes, clearly it was love. That she'd recognized him before he'd known himself, and that Flint had been a product of mutual design as certainly as that house at an island's interior had once been. Uncomplicated or uninjured, no. True, yes.

It should be easy to say. An off the cuff answer, easy in how obvious it is, and they may return their attentions forward rather than back.

"I can't tell you what she was to me," he answers instead. "I'll tell you the other thing and anything else, but not that. Not tonight. It's personal to me, and I don't want you to know."

Is the fundamental fact he can't work his way around the margins of.

An answer in its own way. And Flint, of course, knows it's an answer. A man won't hide indifference (unless it's some sort of twisty plot to deceive, because that wouldn't be a lie, would it? letting Byerly perceive the answer to be yes, when it's actually no? but for what purpose? if Byerly had known the woman, perhaps, but there's little more meaning in yes than in no). Yet he gives it even so. It might be more telling, truly, than just yes.

"As you will." By supposes he could press. He could insist. But instead, he takes a breath, and presses his fingertips into the desk in front of him.

"Then tell me what sparked your desire for change. What made the cautious lieutenant into the dangerous man before me today?"

If he recognizes Byerly's restraint, it passes without remark. Instead, with the sensation of slipping an anchor cable to give chase through the dark after something he can only guess the shape of—

"Nascere."

This is a ghost story.

"The island had fallen into disrepute some years prior, and was proving to be a thorn in the heel of Nocen trade and an embarrassing blot on the record of Tevinter's presence at Seheron's fringes. I was meant to assist Miranda Hamilton's husband in devising a plan to check its way and see it made profitable again. Ordinarily, this would have involved sailing with a contingent fit to simply capture or burn whatever ships we found in the harbor, oust the corrupt magistrates in installation, then try and expediently hang whatever pirates we discovered there."

The contents of his glass are designed to be sipped rather than swallowed. Flint finishes it by way of the latter, though, and here sets the cup carelessly aside before at last moving to sit in the chair he's been so studiously haunting.

"It wasn't meant to be a question of what to do. It was meant to be one of how to avoid the financial burden of protracted fighting and the rendering of any undue damage. In spite of this and what we have established was my abundance of caution, I was persuaded to consider the value in an alternative—pardons issued to Nascere's various malefactors with the intent of seeing them turned into legitimate residents of the island from the parasites clinging to its belly."

Byerly remembers some story of those pardons being awarded - but was it not only lately that this had happened? Stories of Nascere were muddled even when the island was still hale and whole, so he cannot fully trust this recollection. Yet there's something of that timeline that does not square.

(That the pardons had no effect upon the parasitism of Nascere's residents need not be commented on. He's met Flint's crew.)

But he's not here to investigate the history of Nascere. His interest in the place begins and ends where it intersects with the man across from him. How it made Flint, or how Flint made himself to fit within it.

"How were you persuaded?" It's an easy, coaxing sort of question, pitched in a tone meant to not pull Flint from his reverie. Sometimes, when a fellow is telling a story, the best thing you can do is get out of his way and let him tell it.

"By seeing a man willing to stake the reputation of his House, his place in the Magisterium, and his own convenience—all the things the Imperium loves—in the defense of the idea. And if that could be different, why not too our approach to the problem of that island?"

Somewhere from in the darkness clinging at the margins of the room, he can feel the closeness of an altogether different place. It's from a long time ago, from a considerable distance removed. Yet if he were to stand up out of this chair and leave by the door, would it be disorienting to pass into that darkened assistant's office rather than into one of the wood paneled rooms of that fine Minrathan row house?

"I told you the Imperium loves when a wife is unfaithful to her husband. What it can't tolerate is any infidelity to it. So when it became clear there was some legitimacy to our plan, it took those things. And when it was finished, the Imperium demanded everyone remaining return to a state willing to respect that power."

Why that island, Byerly had all but asked once before. Why hadn't they fled to any of a dozen safe havens elsewhere? Never mind the question of one of them having been a mage; apostates have been making their lives for Ages, and even just the scraps of an Altus' fortune could have purchased a formidable measure of security.

Sitting now, faintly leaned forward in that chair across from him, something has tightened far enough in Flint's face that it bares some of his teeth in apparent discomfort. It's some co-mingling of old anger and an older cut. A loose fist, bloodied knuckles.

"I just couldn't bring myself back to being the kind of man who could pretend not to see another way."

Whenever Byerly has looked at Flint, he's seen a man who's rigid and judgmental. Part of the reason the man has always gotten under his skin so deeply: with his burly brusqueness, he's always seemed close kin to the scowling patriarchs of the most hidebound parts of Ferelden. Those men, of course, would never be swayed from their positions with anything save trickery; those men would balk at a direct approach and dig in their heels, but were such unsubtle thinkers that a crafty young man could coax and finesse them into changing their minds. Like recalcitrant hounds, only doing what they thought they already wanted to do.

But Flint's tale isn't one of trickery. It's not the one that Byerly might have imagined for him (had imagined for him), that of an escalating pile of small decisions that led him deeper and deeper into unorthodoxy until it finally became full treason and he had to flee. Flint was not deceived. Instead, the story seems to be one of forthright dealings, honest idealism leading to a passionate cause.

But that's just the thing, isn't it? Flint, despite his physical appearance and manner, isn't one of the blunt thinkers of back home. He can be as subtle and crafty as Byerly himself - sometimes even more so. Maker, the man's a Vint. Of course it's never effective to try to trick or manipulate him - and of course he'd be moved and swayed by forthright honesty, especially when it was coming from a man who'd been raised in a hive of snakes.

He'd asked, once - or as good as asked - if Flint's affair with Miranda had grown out of wanting to fuck over her Altus husband. The man had nearly swung on him. Now it makes sense why. In his smothered, stiff way, Flint is positively brimming over with love for Thomas Hamilton.

"The Magisterium didn't allow him to slip away, the way you could." Not a question. Byerly's investigations into Flint's past were frustrating, puzzling, and incomplete - but he knows that the Hamilton scion is no longer a player in Minrathous politics, hasn't been for a very long time, and that someone of that standing would not be allowed to go play pirate. The humiliation would not be permitted.

He thinks a moment, then asks, "Was Archon Radonis ruling Tevinter when this was happening?" Was he responsible for this betrayal, this destruction? Was that the reason for Flint's murderous rage towards the man, his fury when he'd been talked down from killing him? Or was the hatred not personal, but instead a blind hatred for all bureaucrats of Tevinter?

It's clearly not the question Flint expects. The sharpening produced by it (the surprise, or the question, or both) is subtle, but distinct enough to be measured by the eye—a faint squaring of the shoulders, his chin rising by the narrow margin. There in the chair across from Byerly, he straightens by a half degree. In that marginal adjustment is the evocation of a step taken backwards, or a stone being set in a wall's gap.

How guarded a half degree can be.

"He had had assumed that role just a few years prior."

The Why? is implicit.

Byerly, in return, spreads his hands before him, palm up, fingers wide: peace.

"Your fury at the man, when we took him in in the wake of Corypheus' coup...I had thought it, at the time, extreme." Not that Byerly himself had borne witness to that rage, but...Well, he would not be him if he didn't hear the gossip. And when he'd heard it, he'd been incredulous: how petty it had seemed, how pointless, to do violence to a man deposed. How thoroughly Byerly had lost faith in Flint to learn of it; how he'd assumed that the man's analytical mind could never again be trusted, because he'd go mad and lose sight of all strategy if he just had the ability to strike out at someone powerful. "It had seemed irrational to me - a blazing hatred of some fellow you'd never met, whose crime was simply ruling over a decadent and corrupt nation."

He turns his hands over, presses his long and elegant fingers flat against his knees.

"Now, though - I believe I understand." Not the full scope of it, no. Not the full weight. But the righteous rage at someone who'd betrayed Flint - more potently, betrayed someone he loved - Well. That is justified. "I apologize, that I so misjudged you over it."

Edited 2022-08-01 11:22 (UTC)

Were it offered any other evening, that apology would rankle at the well-practiced suspicion that bristles in reply to any open conciliatory hand, much less one attached to a wrist with a crown's shackle about it. Even tonight, Flint requires a moment's reassurance from the facts he's certain of—that Byerly had been as caught off guard and as miserable as anyone else in this afternoon's meeting, if not moreso; that this must be as honest an expression of regret as anything he's volunteered himself; that this is the entire point of his being here at this hour—before that braced sense of reservation is permitted to moderate.

It gives way to a truth that appears will be inconvenient to give voice to. Uncomfortable. Personally destructive, maybe. But something that requires saying if any of it matters at all.

"That's not why I pressed to be rid of him. And it's not why I was angry when the Inquisition refused."

Ah. Wrong again? Byerly should perhaps feel a sense of professional shame - save that he knows he is at least not alone in being perpetually flummoxed by Captain Flint.

"No?" he asks. It's a simple invitation, in a manner that seems curious and (as much as is possible, given that Byerly's face was pressed into sardonic lines when the Maker was sculpting him out) without judgment.

"No." Then. "Not entirely." And if both are true, then how much is he sorting in the moment here under Byerly's scrutiny?

"You must know we came to Kirkwall looking to ally with the Inquisition over dispensing with the Venatori presence and sealing the rift on Nascere. We were to offer the Inquisition a foothold in the North in exchange for the last measure of power necessary to secure it."

It's not so far removed an idea from what he'd eventually pushed to do all those years later, a piece of it spun out right here in this room to the man sitting across from him now. Why wait so long?

(The question he himself has been considering for so long that it feels like a conclusion.)

"Mere days after our arrival, we watched a diplomatic delegation ride from here en route to Minrathous."

"Faithlessness," By suggests. It's not quite a guess, because he suspects that even that particular bit of speculation will turn out to be more complicated than he thinks. But at least partially true. "To have your alliance thrown aside so swiftly. Not even a pretense of being interested in you over the corrupt monsters in the North."

And, perhaps - "And the willingness to compromise on ethical matters, perhaps? To see these people, who made themselves out to be righteous, cheerfully making deals with those monsters when it became expedient. It must have been - for lack of a better word - disappointing."

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