faderift | [CLOSED] YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN

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[CLOSED] YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN

WHO: Gwenaëlle, Loxley, Abby and Derrica
WHAT: Closing a rift
WHEN: Sometime in Harvestmere
WHERE: Rivain
NOTES: OOC info is available here. Add warnings in your subject lines if applicable.

Cutting across Rialto Bay proves to be less dramatic than feared by the crew of the Amberdine, the fleet little trade ship who had agreed to convey the four Riftwatchers to Rialto in exchange for added firepower. Despite tales of cutthroat pirate activity in the Bay, the Amberdine and her cargo of wool, furs and wood makes the crossing unmolested.

Bound for the bustling harbor of Dairsmuid, the ship makes a brief stop south of there to see Gwenaëlle, Loxley, Abby and Derrica ferried ashore. The agreement is that they will see the rift in Sanavo dealt with, and then travel north to rejoin the Amberdine in Dairsmuid a week hence. All together, with a new cargo of tea and sugar, they will make the allegedly risky sprint south again.

But in the meantime: Sanavo, a quiet village tucked in along the coast. It's immediately clear that the pearl harvest must be the only thing that sustains its existence. There are no fields for planting or grazing lands, and little visible evidence of trade that isn't somehow accessory to either pearling or fishing. Clearly, the pearl business must ordinarily be good enough to sustain the few hundred people in residence.

What quickly becomes just as obvious is that, despite the warm welcome by the village council—a trio of women of disparate ages—, the generous accommodations, and the fact that Riftwatch is here to help them, the locals are clearly wary of their guests. Children of the village have been subtly discouraged from interacting with the visitors, a number of doors have been judiciously closed, and in general there is a sense that everyone is keeping a careful eye on the four strangers.

But it's probably nothing to worry about. Maybe once the rift is closed and they have a better sense of who they're dealing with, the chilly edge will defrost…

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She is joined, eventually. Whole minutes committed to allowing her some time to herself, made more generous if you're to include the previous few hours of light contact, casual conversation, stretches of silence.

But then, a presence. The general murmur of the ocean's friction against the beach is broken up by the sound of closer, watery splashes. Approaching from the shore is Loxley, wading closer. He has already been in the water, has already enjoyed the sun on the beach, and so his hair is still shiny and damp, still curly, and there's a speckling of sand giving silver skin new texture up his back and around a shoulder.

"Hello," he says, once near, a hand drifting out to touch the small of Derrica's back. They've been around each other all day, but this hello has that tone of a reintroduction, now they've a moment apart from the rest.

Yes, this is different.

In this moment, afforded privacy and quiet, the veneer of easy, casual conversation that has carried them through all the mission thus far can drop.

She'd heard him coming. Turns towards him at that light touch to her back. For a moment, Derrica just looks at him. Loxley, glistening with salt and sand, tall and lean and so, so welcome. She feels the fluttering presence of warm emotion in her chest, newly named. Still terrifying.

"Hello," she echoes, soft on the heels of that appraisal. "How are you?"

She turns and so his touch to her back finds a resting place on her waist, and so too does his other hand. He'd thought about continuing to feel uncertain about their mutual boundaries over the past little while, motivated by a desire to afford her some space after all they'd been through and all that had been said, matched against the concern that perhaps space is not wanted and could be ripe for misinterpretation, all of which muddying his own perception of what he, personally, would like,

and then decided that that was an awful lot of overthinking. Today, he thinks it would be nice to hold her in the surf, under the waning sun, and pursues it.

"Good," he says. "Wondering how much the handling of one little rift can be pushed back. Certainly another twenty-four hours won't kill anyone."

He has on, also, a patch of grey-black leather, flecked with water, a hint of decoration in the silver beading along the strap, the way it winds around a horn. He has very nearly gotten to a point of not fussing with it while out and about. It is not, anyway, the thing he is missing that concerns him.

"What about you?"

All would be easier if Derrica had a clear idea of what she wanted. But Loxley's touch is still a comfort, and she still wants him. If it is wiser to hold herself apart, then—

Well, it would mean she has made a decision of how they might move forward. If she creates distance, it would mean choosing separation. Eroding the intimacy and closeness they've created. It would be unbearable under any circumstances, but even more so now when she's had her first language lifted away from her and the return to Dairsmuid looms in the immediate future.

Still, she doesn't take that last step to lean in against his chest. Instead, her fingers come to rest just above the bend of his elbow as Derrica tips her head up to look at him. Her eyes trace the eyepatch. Observe again the damp curl of hair framing his face.

"I don't know," she offers, after a moment's study. She amends, with a slight smile, "Homesick."

Missing so many things all at once, knowing she would never fit seamlessly into life here the way she once had.

"I keep thinking I should have tried to come back before now."

The shine of his mood dulls, by design, matching her for tempo and tone. He doesn't ease her nearer to him, feeling the measured bracket of her arms against his that is both welcoming and moderating, but he can sketch little circles against the damp cloth of her tunic with his thumbs, up over her waist.

"Perhaps out of the company of some bizarre foreigners," he suggests, a little wry. "I doubt we're making the best impression, by existing."

A little Orlesian, two rifters, one of them a qunari. He doesn't sound too apologetic about it—he has travelled in his share of mixed company.

"Did you enjoy beaches like this one, back when?"

Her suspicion that Loxley might have been better received were he only perceived as a qunari instead of a rifter doesn't need to be shared. It might be wrong anyway. This town is small, and seems insular, protective.

Maybe that was different before Dairsmuid too.

"I did," she answers, instead of any meditations on what this village might have been, on what they may or may not think of the people she came here with. "Even when I was a baby."

In that scattering of early memories she has, many of them are of the water. Tide pools. Her feet splashing in the surf.

"I don't think it's possible for you to make a bad impression," is softer, comes as her grip flexes over his bicep, just above the bend of his elbow. "And you look well in the water. That will impress anyone."

A brief smile, a glance down at himself, back up at her.

"There were these islands south of Ifrin," Loxley says. "Pirate coves, you know, and villages like this, people living harmlessly off their trades. I was still a boy, mostly, when I got to see them. When someone asks me if I miss home, places like them are among what I think of."

There's no true longing in his voice, no gentle heartbreak. Homesickness is one of those things he is free from experiencing, save for, occasionally, little misdirected aches, aimless, reaching for something. But that's not now.

"You might ask Olu," he says. She has a loose strand of hair that provides him with the excuse to raise his hand, push it back from her face. "The word for beach. Sea, sand, salt."

It's a sweet little touch. It comes easily, doesn't it?

And it reminds her, just as the story does, of all the ways Loxley fits. The effortless quality of his company, how she could have taken him here and seen him welcomed. Rivain suits him.

"I could."

Maybe it'll be easier after they close the rift, and it feels less like they're balancing on a tightrope. (Maybe this would all be easier and they'd have been given a warmer welcome if she could speak the language.)

"It's going to take a long time," she tells him, head tipping into his fingers. Eyes flicking over his face. "I still know it as I hear it, but none of the words are there when I reach for them. I have to remind myself where everything is."

And hope that it's possible to learn it all again.

"I can only imagine how helpful it is to hear, 'you'll find it,"

light humour, Loxley's hand turning to briefly map against the plane of her jaw, then down against her throat where fingers can tuck up into her hair,

"but I know you will. And in the meantime, there's the ocean, and the warmth of the sand. There'll be the docks and the food and the way when many people are speaking at once, all around, you can't understand them anyway."

Loxley's smile for her is small, a hint of apology, knowing it won't really be good enough in a meaningful way but certainly willing to try. His thumb tracing along the edge of her jaw. He lessens that levity as he adds,

"I'm sorry they took what they did."

It's been implicit, but worth saying. Especially given how all of it happened.

Even before he finishes, Derrica is shaking her head.

Yes, she has lost something important. Yes, it feels as if some essential piece has been gouged out of her body.

But when she weighs it against the alternative, against that moment when Loxley had pulled away from her and stepped towards the soft clicking stones of the mural—

"I would have given more," she tells him, though of course there is a line. Things that had too much utility to give up. Things that would be needed at the next conclave, and whatever lay beyond that. But when the price was Loxley's life, she can think of many things she would have laid down instead.

Her fingers leave his arm, reach up to touch his cheek, cup his face, fingers at the very edge of the strap holding the patch in place.

"I'm grateful for what we were able to keep."

Loxley goes and lays his hand overtop of hers, urging it around so that he can kiss just at the edge of her wrist and palm. A few platitudes shuffle in and out of favour before they're all rejected—it's nice, to have gratitude expressed for your continued existence, and he doesn't want to move her to reassure him if he starts in on apology.

"Me too," instead. "And to that point—"

His eyes crinkled ever so at the corners, the beginnings of a smile. "Would it be bad manners for us to take over one of those little huts all to ourselves?" There's nothing in his tone that implies he might expect her to decline him, but then again, had not things felt a little shifted, he might have simply invited himself over in the moment, not hours in advance.

Maybe she should decline him.

Not on the basis of what may or may not be prudent, because Derrica is not altogether certain the wariness within the village has anything to do with Loxley's presence as a qunari. But maybe on the basis of her own uncertainties, the worry that she's going to do harm to him.

She has resolved to stop running from things, and by and by has made good on that intention. But it is harder to know what it looks like when applied to this moment, this man with his hands on hers.

"Not bad manners, no," she answers, watching the way his face shifts towards a smile. The waves sigh out around them. Her thumb runs along the edge of his jaw.

They aren't truly alone here either. Derrica is aware of Gwen and Abby, Olu sprawled in the sand beyond them.

"Are you sure you'd like to risk it?" frames the larger uncertainties in a type of humor. Is he sure he'd like to, when she is uncertain? When she is what she is, skittish in the face of something that should be simply good.

He sort of wants to say something funny about a balcony in Cumberland, but the joke doesn't form into a clever enough configuration of words to be worth it. It's the easy thing, obviously, and he should probably occasionally not respond with the easy thing. Maybe one out of three times, he can choose differently.

"I miss you," instead, as a yes. Beneath them, the sand breathes in and out, blankets over their toes and snares at their ankles. Loxley keeps a smile in place—he is not intending to be overly sentimental in this declaration. "And I can be very stealthy, if you require."

Another uncertainty, framed in humour.

"I don't care who sees you visiting me."

They have reached a point where Derrica may as well be plain about this. She is unconcerned with who thinks what, even among her own people here. It is hard to imagine being judged harshly, least of all by anyone who has met Loxley, but she has very little space to worry over this exact perception.

What worries her more is—

"I miss you too," being such an obvious truth. Why bother saying anything else?

But it is not quite as clear cut as Loxley's iteration. She is conflicted. She is worried that she is being selfish with him. And all is tangled up with missing him, wanting him, wanting there to be a way to have him where nothing else changes.

"Then imagine how ridiculous we'll feel," Loxley says, letting his knees bend, letting his arms slide around her waist in the water, "lying there in the dark in separate buildings, listening to the waves and missing each other."

Emboldened, maybe, by this first thing she says. That their companions, Olu included, might glance over and see them so entangled, as if standing in the surf with their hands variously placed on each other were not indication enough.

But perhaps there's more to discuss than simple sleeping arrangements. Perhaps.

"Whatever you like," is assurance, just in case.

Whatever you like is a safeguard. She recognizes that, how quick he is to reassure and assuage whatever it is he perceives in her. There is still unease. Derrica would like to dispel it, because everything would be easier if she could shake it away.

Her fingers are very soft where they trace along his cheek, his temple, over and under the strap of his eyepatch.

"I want you to come," she decides, looking into his face. "Whenever you can."

Maybe he sits up tonight with Gwen. Maybe Derrica sits up with Olu and any others who will entertain her trading Rivaini back and forth. Maybe it is late when they occupy the same space.

It's a decision about sleeping arrangements, yes. But it's other things too. Things they should discuss, that he's kindly let her put off.

The gentleness of her touch is familiar; the skimming of her fingertips over the strap that presses a line over his brow is not. Another thing that is both familiar and not—offering that effortless out. Neither things are, in themselves, bad.

Later, he does. After some staying up with Gwenaëlle, which comes after watching what the sinking sun does to Rialto Bay, and after clams roasted over the fire and modest helpings of rum, courtesy of Olu. Later, when there's darkness, the sound of the waves.

A knock against the light-weight wooden door follows Loxley slinking inside. This time, there's no eyepatch, and the glass eye set into the socket is impressively reminiscent of his remaining one—except for in the dark, which he doesn't think about. Only his real eye gives off that reflective, night-seeing glow when it catches the shadows the right way.

He's barefoot, lightly dressed, cotton trousers rolled up high above his ankles and a loose shirt. Nothing in hand, bringing only himself.

By now, she and Abby have smoked their cigarettes. They have separated, Abby to her hut and Derrica to drift back through her own doorway. Remove her boots. Light the little gas lamp alongside the bed. The cigarettes she'd been rolling are set alongside it, laid out perhaps for her, perhaps for the next person who stays here.

She has unraveled her braids, stowed her jewelry away. The air is warm, a vast change from the damp chill permeating Kirkwall. The weather and the familiar sounds of the land around them, in combination they are so good it makes her heart ache.

The light nightdress has thin straps, pools around her where she sits cross-legged on the bright-woven mat. Even in the warm, dim light, all her tattoos are easily observed. At his entry, Derrica looks up. Beckons Loxley in to her.

"Come sit."

Not on the bed.

"There are cigarettes, if you like," she offers, tracking his approach. Shifting over to make room for him alongside her.

Tempting to have a prop, something to fidget with, if they're to be talking instead of simply laying down together. Loxley glances to them as he comes inside, ankles crossing to sink into a sit next to her, rangy limbed and still graceful for it. "Certainly," as his hand finds a place at her arm, above her elbow, a smoothing up over the curve of muscle and bone and ink, as he leans in to kiss just beside her mouth.

And then back, away, leaning on the heel of his palm on the mat beneath them while reaching to be handed a cigarette. He has brought nothing with him that produces flame, and kind of apologetically turns it between his fingers in search of assistance from Derrica.

Quiet, not rushing into anything. He can feel purpose and intention, here, reflexively awaiting her lead.

Intentions or not, it is still so painfully tempting to simply fall into all the familiar routines they've built together. Her nightdress would come off very easily. It would take no effort at all to settle herself in his lap on the floor here. The air is warm and the night is quiet, no one likely to come calling. They would have the entire night, and they've not had much of anything since the temple.

But she is resolved. The impulse is narrowed down to the turn of her head to catch the edge of that kiss, the raise of her hand to touch his jaw as she summons a small spurt of flame between thumb and forefinger to apply very carefully to his cigarette.

Derrica knows that Loxley is waiting for her. Will let her say her piece first, before she can draw anything out of him in return.

He's still afforded a few beats of quiet before Derrica says anything. The flame is rubbed out between her fingers, heat shaken away. They are sat close enough that she might lean into him, but remains upright as she murmurs, "I love you."

It's something that should be repeated far from that temple, and all that happened there.

"I don't know what that means to you. If we have to change because of it."

It still gains the same response; a twinge of a reflexive smile, an outward expression of internal warmth. Perhaps it's Derrica's own fault, that this claim of hers doesn't inspire some kind of immediate defence or flinch-back, for virtue of having murmured and insisted upon so many sweet things in the past.

Not so uncomplicated as that, though. She asks him what it means, and Loxley turns the lit cigarette between his fingers after his initial shallow breath of it. Stifles the impulse to turn her implicit question back to her.

"I think that," he starts, pauses, resumes, "that we've been compelled to put it in so many words. But that it's been true for longer. Perhaps quite some time. Is that wrong?"

The answer blooms on her face before Derrica vocalizes her answer. She knows exactly how much longer it's been true. Even if she hadn't fully realized it at the time, it has become obvious in retrospect, when she looks back and tallies up all the nights spent together, tracing all the way back to that first night when she'd arrived at his doorstep the night Holden had gone.

It never crosses her mind to hold this back from him.

"No," she answers softly. "It's not wrong. Not for me."

She won't presume what he's felt, or how long he's felt it.

"Nor me."

Easy enough. Loxley offers the cigarette to share.

"So whether we have to change anything, I don't know. Perhaps the other question is if we want to change anything."

Her fingers catch briefly, brushing Loxley's as she takes the cigarette. Doesn't lift it to her mouth, but rolls it between index finger and thumb as she asks, "Do you want to change something?"

The question of more nips at the edges of this question. Wholly undefined, perhaps even far off and uncertain, but it feels inevitable.

This is a disservice maybe, to Loxley who has never pressed her for anything.

But she worries too, for the future. Whether or not it would hurt him, when she falls short.

He considers her seriously in the gentle light of the lamp, an open consideration that requires him to imagine further than he has previously. As far as exercises go, it's fairly demanding.

A smile plays out across his face as a thought crops up, amusing enough to laugh at privately first, and he says, "Do you remember there was some nonsense on the crystals of someone asking who all was with who? And it was just Bastien in the end listing off all the couples and configurations he knew about, because everyone hates showing their hand—"

He shrugs. "It would please me if our togetherness altered itself enough that someone would reply to say oh, Derrica and Loxley, I think it's fairly serious, them. That, I'd not mind at all."

Edited 2022-11-12 06:15 (UTC)

late afternoon.

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do a timeskip :knife:

instructions unclear /does a backflip

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