WHO: Bastien + YOU?, Redvers + Marcus WHAT: Two problems and counting WHEN: Haring 9:48 WHERE: Kirkwall NOTES: This will have other things in it eventually probably. Hit me @ circuitry if you need me or want to plan something specific!
Bastien doesn't need help. The fight, such as it was—one man tackling another, some mixed-language accusations, the intervention of strangers—is already over. He's on his feet, a handkerchief stemming the tide of his bloodied nose; one of the watchful city guardsmen posted at nearly every corner up here, in the interest of preventing shenanigans, is already on the scene; the small crowd that gathered has become bored enough to disperse; the assailant has transitioned from blind rage to a defeated, hollowed-out apology.
"Désolé, I'm really—I really thought—"
His mask covers only half of his face, but either way it would be obvious from his voice and posture that he's fairly young. Mid twenties. Orlesian. Noble. The last is likely the reason for the guard's hesitant posture, clearly preferring to smooth things over than to drag the fellow anywhere to answer for anything.
Bastien's not going to make that difficult. "No it's. It's fine," he says. His voice is different than usual, even beyond the bloody nose. Clipped. Different inflection. Thinner sound. A more rural accent, if someone's ear for Orlesian regions is keen enough. "Honest mistake. I'm sorry, about your—" The man is failing in his valiant attempts not to cry. Bastien removes the handkerchief from his own face and begins to offer it out, spots the bloodstain, and visibly thinks better. It's a very convincing impression of a confused, flustered man finding himself in the position to comfort someone who's just attacked him, not especially wanting to do that, but also not knowing how to stop. "Your father. How awful."
The young man nods emptily. The guard puts a cautious hand on his shoulder and says, "I'll just walk him home," watching for Bastien's nod of unoffended approval before he makes good on it. And Bastien watches them go for a few seconds, their footsteps echoing down a street that's steadily emptying as evening sets it, before he turns away and finds himself looking right in the direction of a familiar face down the way.
He wasn't expecting one. His head cocks. Then his eyebrows go up, widening his eyes along with them, and his whew of an exhale puffs out his cheeks. A vague, cheerful invitation in on a secret: he has just gotten away with something he did not entirely expect to.
Byerly's manner is certainly wry and light - easy enough that, if he wishes, Bastien can simply laugh it off, keep smiling and shrugging and acting like it's nothing at all. He takes the handkerchief from Bastien's hand and tends to his face, cleaning up the bit of blood that had worked its way into Bastien's mustache, smiling all the while.
But the way that By looks up - a flash of the eye, a tilt of the head - speaks to curiosity. He doesn't ask, but he clearly wants to know.
"Shall we move on a bit? Just in case that young man changes his mind again."
The cold wet breeze off the sea had turned Bastien's cheeks and nose pink hours before anyone took a fist to his face, and now they're worse, so who's to tell if being coddled in the middle of the street turns them any pinker? And who's to judge him if it does? Even his old bardmaster would have made allowances for Byerly's eyes—
No. That's bullshit. She wouldn't have. But it's pretty bullshit, and so is imagining that it's only By's lovely eyes and gentle hands behind the deepening flush, not a hot twist of some uncomfortable feeling at having a good man be kind to him, now, after that.
Bastien's fond of pretty bullshit. And it is at least half the lovely eyes and gentle hands. The warmth in Bastien's smile is real even if it isn't simple. He says, "He won't," with confidence he doesn't deserve after failing to have seen Mathelin coming in the first place—and he knows it, which is why he begins walking amenably in the opposite direction, one arm winding around By's to bring him along.
"Stalking," Byerly corrects, "the proper term is stalking. Like prey."
Then, less archly - "Had a quick meeting a few blocks over. Madame Moneybags - " A fond name for an Orlesian merchant expat who'd taken up residence in Hightown after being displaced from Ghislain, whose fortunes were now being applied to fighting the brigands who'd so rudely evicted her - "sent a raven in a hurry. And you know how lovely it is when she sends an emergency raven." Her good fortune translated so often to Riftwatch's - so long as they obeyed her beck and call.
"And then, while leaving, I heard a bit of a scuffle. Naturally, being a coward, I then ran fully away from that scuffle and found you." Ha-ha.
Letting this little narrative lead him briefly away from everything else, Bastien grins, then laughs, then presses his fingers to one side of his nose, which is sore but straight and minimally swollen.
"Might have made my life easier if he'd broken it," he mumbles parenthetically. Perhaps nonsensically. Or perhaps Byerly, spy that he is, can easily follow the thread and see how a broken nose might benefit a man trying to leave a past behind.
Mostly. Sometimes. Whenever it suits him and the war effort to have left it.
Parenthesis closed: "I am grateful every day that you are a coward—and brawny, and short, and simple, and slow..." His fading inflection implies the joke carried out ad nauseam, trailing off into the distance toward a vanishing point, but he doesn't follow it. "He mistook me for someone."
It wasn't a mistake. Bastien's not going to say so outright in the street, but he expects By will understand.
"A man who he believes killed his father when he was a boy. But it was a long time ago, and memory is imperfect, so." So Bastien is a fantastic gaslighter, when he applies himself to the task, and now he doubts himself. "I don't think he will cause Riftwatch any trouble, at least."
It's sometimes a funny thing, that little rope that tugs between duty and loyalty. Bastien knows Byerly as a dutiful man, and he's speaking to the dutiful man when he says that - no trouble to Riftwatch. But Byerly, in this moment, isn't thinking like a dutiful man; he's thinking like someone whose beloved was struck across the face and who may be in danger if memory perfects itself a bit.
"Do you have his name?" A question that sounds sinister indeed - when a spy asks something like that, knives in the dark soon follow. (Except that, as Bastien knows, this is Byerly. Knives aren't likely...But, then again, it must be noted that Byerly has sometimes gone to extremes for those he loves. Maybe there is some sort of threat in it after all.)
He slides his hand down to lace his cold, bony fingers through Byerly's. Knives aren't likely. But the fact that someone as honorable and self-punishing as Byerly is on his side—now, or ever, at all—is a gift. He's holding onto it. Right or not.
"Mathelin de Rosfort. I gave him and his sister music lessons for months, before," killing his father. Mathelin didn't see it happen. He could only surmise, correctly, and live with his suspicions all through adolescence and into his hotheaded young adulthood. "He was ten. Sweet kid. A little shy. Completely tone deaf."
"What did he do?" The father, Byerly means. It's a rather guileless question, in the grand scheme of things, and says rather a lot about the difference between a spy and a Bard, or perhaps between a Fereldan and an Orlesian; Byerly, for all his years doing this, for all his self-proclaimed cynicism, still assumes automatically that death would be something earned. Retribution, rather than just a move in the Game.
He does recognize his naïveté a moment later, though. Takes in a breath, says, "Or..." But he doesn't drop Bastien's hand or pull away. Guileless, maybe, but certainly not righteous; there's no judgment here, no censure.
"Or," Bastien confirms, smiling despite the admission and rubbing Byerly's knuckle with his thumb, terribly fond.
It could easily be patronizing fondness. It could be what a darling naif. But By's not naive, in Bastien's estimation. He's a clever, experienced man who hasn't let his shitty life and shitty job corrode his belief that the world could and should be decent. Admirable, not adorable.
"Of course he did something," he adds. "He played the Game. But I don't know—he could have had someone else killed, or he could have started a rumor, he could have cut someone out of a deal. I know his marriage was improbably good. But I don't know how."
He inhales and huffs out a puff of visible vapor. There's more to talk about, surely, where Mathelin is concerned. But he can only hold his own feet to the proverbial fire so long before he yanks them back for a break, so.
"Ah," says Byerly, less a noise of surprise than a soft acknowledgment of Bastien's need to change the subject. He takes a breath, resettles his shoulders, and answers -
"Not all. Not like a charcoal drawing or something of the sort. It's more like at twilight - reds and blues disappear, while yellow still maintains a bit of its character. Your eyes are just as enchanting as they ever were." He gives a little squeeze to Bastien's hand.
Then - "How is your balance? I've heard of fellows who have some injury to the ear and afterwards can't stand on one leg any longer. Are you still steady on your feet?"
His balance is fine; he proves it silently, hopping on one foot for a few paces, carrying By’s hand up and down along the way, with neither stumble nor wobble.
“I suppose it isn’t an injury exactly,” he says. “And more’s the pity. I could have made you carry me everywhere.”
As if he’d ever ask that of Byerly’s skinny arms.
Really, the worst of it is a new discomfort in crowds. The added strain of following overlapping jokes at a table full of quick-talking friends. His half-paranoid awareness of everything around him making him constantly try to parse the sounds behind and around him, without being able to place them. He loves a buzzing swarm of people too much to avoid it—but since Arlathan he’s been quieter during evenings out, and afterwards more frayed. There might even come a day he’s short-tempered about it.
But he’s not going to complain. Not about that, not right now.
“I heard him coming, but I couldn’t tell what direction. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let him hit me so hard.” Bastien thinks he might still prefer his confusion and bloodied nose to having so much color leeched out of the world. It is lucky that he’s all black and white and tan, but, “Alexandrie will look different. But the twilight thing? That makes it sound romantic. I hope you use that when you tell her, if you haven’t already.”
"She's already sent me a few charcoals," By says, confirmation on his reporting of his misfortune. "I hope to become her new muse. Starting a new phase in the output of la Artiste."
By smiles slightly over at Bastien. It is easier, now, a bit; By misses Alexandrie desperately, but he thinks there's less strife between him and Bastien because of the distance. It's sadder but simpler with only two.
A moment of quiet. "Obviously you spend little time on the battlefield," he says. And then, not an overt request, but a silent one - "Perhaps this means that you shouldn't spend any time out there at all."
Bastien answers By’s slight smile with a full one. La Artiste, and a worthy muse—and he would never volunteer to admit he’s happier this way, but of course he is. Freely greedy with By’s evenings, no negotiating or maneuvering around anyone else. Sharing a heart is easier than sharing time. Hearts are infinite. But if she comes back—when she comes back, or when they’re free of the war and their lives converge again, or when By’s going off to have a romantic rendezvous and Bastien’s going to luxuriate in some city with good bookshops—then he’ll have a new calm and magnanimity about it all, too, in place of the prior quietly anxious martyrdom. Regardless of what he thinks she thinks of him. It doesn’t matter. Thanks, truth soup.
As for the second thing—
He hums.
“The battlefield,” he echoes. “The real one, with the soldiers and everything? I don’t know. That might be my only chance to ever see an elephant or an ogre.”
"You've seen ogres aplenty," By returns wryly. "You can hardly get away from them, in fact."
But, quips aside - "But - the other sorts of battlefields, too. The ones that consist of - dark houses, or nighttime alleyways, or shots placed from hiding. The Bard's battleground." He caresses Bastien's knuckles. "Those might not be safe for you, either."
An automatic rejoinder, still smiling. But the smile is fading. It's a fair point. Even before today. On the days he's enlisted various members of Riftwatch's Most Muscular to have a go at him, the number of bruises he's brought to bed afterwards hasn't been decreasing as steadily as he'd hoped.
"Even with one ear, even not even being in her division, I'm the best Yseult has," is what he's saying, though.
That might not be true anymore. And Byerly asks him for so little, so rarely. There's already a gnawing part of him that wants to agree on that basis alone.
But on the other hand: an adventurous streak. The dream of dark houses and nighttime alleys with Byerly, someday, for fun or for justice. And pride.
"Yseult doesn't have a claim on you," By replies. Which is not actually true; after all, friendship and the loyalty of comrades isn't nothing. So Byerly amends, "Not like I do. She can find substitutes for your skill, but there's no one who can replace you for me."
(And, honestly, it probably isn't true. Byerly has seen Ellie and her magical powers of unerring marksmanship. But he'll keep that thought to himself; he's already challenging Bastien's pride enough as it is.)
Redvers came here to get away from his quote unquote colleagues, but there's a difference, right, between choosing to cover a scab to stop yourself from picking at it and being able to resist once it's uncovered—
Perhaps the grossest possible metaphor for the fact that he has joined Marcus Rowntree at the bar, the mug in his hand is not nearly empty enough to serve as an adequate excuse, and has continued utterly failing to leave well enough alone for the past minute and a half. Some subtlety to start with. The hellos, the horrible weather todays, the I was here before you silently implied in his posture and comfort whether it's true or not. But then:
"How many of them," meaning the tavern's other patrons, variously grimy from days on the docks and in the mines or from just living that way, "would let a mage into the family, you think? We could take a count. That's valuable research."
To look at them here at the bar, unreconcilable difference is not immediately apparent. For one, Marcus does not look very much like a mage, if one's static image of a mage involves robes and a slightly frailer disposition and probably less scarring. He does not even, tonight, have his staff with him, for the same reason a Templar may not necessarily wear his plate or carry a broadsword for his errands. Maybe it's on purpose.
Marcus' cup has gone through one refill since Keen settled near him. Some defiance in it: why should he be the one to cede territory, etc etc, semi-conscious reflex. His hand is resting on top of it, a finger decorated with a signet ring from the Satinalia recently passed. Speaking of family.
His focus shifts slightly left of centre.
"Is that how you imagine us?" Marcus asks, and his breed of sarcasm tends to be somehow more understated and more hostile than your usual. Quiet, either way, while he draws his mug nearer, lifting it. "Begging at their doors?"
Redvers' head wobbles a noncommittal more and less. To suppose he spends much time imagining Marcus and his ilk—
is fair. The Circle and Chantry claimed as many years of his life as any mage's, and counting. Of course he tries to imagine the precise shapes ahead of them all in the fog. Of course it keeps him up at night.
If he's ever going to be earnest enough to say so, it won't be from the position of a casual-seeming lean over a pint.
"How should I imagine you?"
A sip. He's only so much of a drinker in the absence of peer influence; this certainly does not count.
"Wasn't so long ago your friends were begging at Tevinter's borders, was it."
The drink Marcus takes between speaking is deeper, having more to go until he reaches the bottom of it. He thinks: when he is done with it, he will go home. This arbitrary ruling, as if it were crucial not to waste the few coppers it cost to purchase his ale, feels fair to him.
It will count if it winds up on the floor, probably. For now, his fingers flex around the handle.
"If only we'd been successful. Then you could go back to murdering us without shame."
Murder is not usually the word Marcus would use for the casualties of war, on either side. It is one he might feel moved to apply to the slaying of Abominations, but there is a slight edge to it that speaks of some more specific thing.
His lean against the bar is not really so casual. The lines of shoulders, spine, jaw.
"I doubt you even capable of imagining a southern mage neither dead nor captive. I don't intend to be either anytime soon."
Slowly, as he's deliberating something else entirely: "You know what they say about good intentions."
Presumably. And it is also presumably a clunky sort of saying, without the word hell at their theologically-sound disposal, so it's for the best that it's staying implied.
The deliberation is for murder. Not puzzling over the terminology; what might want for clarification doesn't occur to him. He is thinking of the war, that's all, while someone jostles both of them in turn on their tipsy way past.
"I can imagine what I've seen," he says, tipping his drink. A mage, alive and free, having a pint. The same mage wreaking havoc, sending men fleeing choking ash across ground they couldn't trust. "Give me that much credit." And only that much. "I just don't find a very idyllic dream."
There's a semi-tolerant, semi-defensive lean away from the tavern patron bumping past them. It hadn't been very long ago when that alone had been enough for Marcus to turn and reach a hand out and haul in whatever unfortunate warm body had given him the excuse. His ire doesn't catch on that, this time.
He'd been only paying attention to a sort of blurry Redvers Keen shape in his periphery, keyed in more to the sound of his voice and the distance he was keeping than the finer details.
"It doesn't need to be idyllic."
There's that errant thought, of: is it possible to change a Templar's mind? Orlov makes for an interesting case study, and it is not one that Marcus finds himself equipped to pursue. The notion intrudes anyway when one finds oneself standing in comfortable distance with such a person, in a boisterous tavern, ostensibly sharing a drink.
Something about this, talk of dreams, talk of imagining, sets claws in him. It is earnest when he tells Redvers, "The Circles were a nightmare," just to see if something changes.
Redvers tilts his whole head into the sidelong look, thumb fidgeting on the lip of his mug.
"Food," he says. "Shelter. Wealth—communal, at least. The largest libraries in Thedas. Art collections. Leisure time if you want it. Books in your name if you don't. Your little conclaves."
He shrugs.
"But I guess anywhere can be a nightmare if you put your back into it."
Food. Shelter. Marcus' regard goes flat, listening to these first two things, things that a dog might be content with. A flicker of doubt at the idea of wealth—communal, at least before that too is smothered down, neutral for the rest. At least, he thinks so.
Unsurprising, of course, but that it is this will be reflected upon at some later hour. It is not surprising, either, but it is sudden, quickfire heat that seems to travel through veins and on the same trajectory of blood, heartbeat and clenched fingers around a metal handle.
Motion, but not until tension coils tight and sure from wrist to shoulder, lashed across the back.
Tankards are built sturdy, heavy-bottomed, wood and metal, but lacks the wind up when Marcus hauls it from bartop in a sideways swipe across Redvers' face, where the heady flash of lost temper makes up for momentum. It will go clattering out of a briefly numbed hand—the rest of his ale now on the both of them, on the floor, on some nearby patrons—and therefore out of the way in a shove that
probably won't send Redvers to the ground, unless he gets luckier than he has been lately, regarding the Order, and tavern fights.
Surprise, more than force, moves Redvers back, the shove catching him while he's already trying to step backwards, requiring a shuffling of feet and heavy one-elbowed lean on the bartop to stay upright, his own drink sloshing out onto his hand and wrist.
The thing is, historically, most people in any position to brawl with him in a tavern have found him pretty charming and inoffensive. Actually.
There is a moment of bewildered, damp blinking. A short pause, just long enough to make it clear Redvers wasn't expecting that. It's also a pause long enough that a cooler head could prevail if it tried. If beneath the shock there wasn't the fact of the war, the shouts and burnt corpses, and a flood of relief—of a kind—to have permission.
He straightens up, leaving his tankard behind, and follows that momentum back into Marcus' space—
At which point some of beer-splattered onlookers who had briefly been content to watch, unsure whether this was going to be interesting or not, move further back, and the bartender is saying, "Maker's ass—outside—"
—to make a reasonably good, well-muscled and heavy-fisted attempt to slug him cross the jaw.
For all of those burnt corpses, and before them, smoke-filled rooms and the distinct rumble of earth crumbling beneath stone, and after them, the long years since—
Something in Marcus marks this as transgression, from Redvers' shocked expression to his own rising heart rate. Anger still cuts his own expression sharp and haughty, but there's the dimmest flicker of uncertainty—whether to do with how solid the other man was beneath a forceful shove, or to do with being unable to anticipate what Redvers will do. What he might do if the other man walked away.
And then he's hit in the face.
There's the automatic defensive flinch back as soon as Redvers lifts his fist, but it's not quite enough to prevent the strike from landing well. The shock of it temporarily short circuits any awareness Marcus has of his physical body as he staggers aside, pure instinct grabbing onto the back of an empty chair that stops him from hitting the ground.
Good. Great. This is what he wanted, obviously. The chair is tumbled aside with a furious shove, rounding on Redvers with the aim to answer in kind, a wild swing for the general vicinity of the other man's face. The intent to grab on to him after follows.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
hightown.
"Désolé, I'm really—I really thought—"
His mask covers only half of his face, but either way it would be obvious from his voice and posture that he's fairly young. Mid twenties. Orlesian. Noble. The last is likely the reason for the guard's hesitant posture, clearly preferring to smooth things over than to drag the fellow anywhere to answer for anything.
Bastien's not going to make that difficult. "No it's. It's fine," he says. His voice is different than usual, even beyond the bloody nose. Clipped. Different inflection. Thinner sound. A more rural accent, if someone's ear for Orlesian regions is keen enough. "Honest mistake. I'm sorry, about your—" The man is failing in his valiant attempts not to cry. Bastien removes the handkerchief from his own face and begins to offer it out, spots the bloodstain, and visibly thinks better. It's a very convincing impression of a confused, flustered man finding himself in the position to comfort someone who's just attacked him, not especially wanting to do that, but also not knowing how to stop. "Your father. How awful."
The young man nods emptily. The guard puts a cautious hand on his shoulder and says, "I'll just walk him home," watching for Bastien's nod of unoffended approval before he makes good on it. And Bastien watches them go for a few seconds, their footsteps echoing down a street that's steadily emptying as evening sets it, before he turns away and finds himself looking right in the direction of a familiar face down the way.
He wasn't expecting one. His head cocks. Then his eyebrows go up, widening his eyes along with them, and his whew of an exhale puffs out his cheeks. A vague, cheerful invitation in on a secret: he has just gotten away with something he did not entirely expect to.
no subject
Byerly's manner is certainly wry and light - easy enough that, if he wishes, Bastien can simply laugh it off, keep smiling and shrugging and acting like it's nothing at all. He takes the handkerchief from Bastien's hand and tends to his face, cleaning up the bit of blood that had worked its way into Bastien's mustache, smiling all the while.
But the way that By looks up - a flash of the eye, a tilt of the head - speaks to curiosity. He doesn't ask, but he clearly wants to know.
"Shall we move on a bit? Just in case that young man changes his mind again."
no subject
No. That's bullshit. She wouldn't have. But it's pretty bullshit, and so is imagining that it's only By's lovely eyes and gentle hands behind the deepening flush, not a hot twist of some uncomfortable feeling at having a good man be kind to him, now, after that.
Bastien's fond of pretty bullshit. And it is at least half the lovely eyes and gentle hands. The warmth in Bastien's smile is real even if it isn't simple. He says, "He won't," with confidence he doesn't deserve after failing to have seen Mathelin coming in the first place—and he knows it, which is why he begins walking amenably in the opposite direction, one arm winding around By's to bring him along.
He'll explain. He wants to. But first, teasing:
"Have you been following me?"
no subject
Then, less archly - "Had a quick meeting a few blocks over. Madame Moneybags - " A fond name for an Orlesian merchant expat who'd taken up residence in Hightown after being displaced from Ghislain, whose fortunes were now being applied to fighting the brigands who'd so rudely evicted her - "sent a raven in a hurry. And you know how lovely it is when she sends an emergency raven." Her good fortune translated so often to Riftwatch's - so long as they obeyed her beck and call.
"And then, while leaving, I heard a bit of a scuffle. Naturally, being a coward, I then ran fully away from that scuffle and found you." Ha-ha.
no subject
"Might have made my life easier if he'd broken it," he mumbles parenthetically. Perhaps nonsensically. Or perhaps Byerly, spy that he is, can easily follow the thread and see how a broken nose might benefit a man trying to leave a past behind.
Mostly. Sometimes. Whenever it suits him and the war effort to have left it.
Parenthesis closed: "I am grateful every day that you are a coward—and brawny, and short, and simple, and slow..." His fading inflection implies the joke carried out ad nauseam, trailing off into the distance toward a vanishing point, but he doesn't follow it. "He mistook me for someone."
It wasn't a mistake. Bastien's not going to say so outright in the street, but he expects By will understand.
"A man who he believes killed his father when he was a boy. But it was a long time ago, and memory is imperfect, so." So Bastien is a fantastic gaslighter, when he applies himself to the task, and now he doubts himself. "I don't think he will cause Riftwatch any trouble, at least."
no subject
"Do you have his name?" A question that sounds sinister indeed - when a spy asks something like that, knives in the dark soon follow. (Except that, as Bastien knows, this is Byerly. Knives aren't likely...But, then again, it must be noted that Byerly has sometimes gone to extremes for those he loves. Maybe there is some sort of threat in it after all.)
no subject
He slides his hand down to lace his cold, bony fingers through Byerly's. Knives aren't likely. But the fact that someone as honorable and self-punishing as Byerly is on his side—now, or ever, at all—is a gift. He's holding onto it. Right or not.
"Mathelin de Rosfort. I gave him and his sister music lessons for months, before," killing his father. Mathelin didn't see it happen. He could only surmise, correctly, and live with his suspicions all through adolescence and into his hotheaded young adulthood. "He was ten. Sweet kid. A little shy. Completely tone deaf."
no subject
He does recognize his naïveté a moment later, though. Takes in a breath, says, "Or..." But he doesn't drop Bastien's hand or pull away. Guileless, maybe, but certainly not righteous; there's no judgment here, no censure.
no subject
It could easily be patronizing fondness. It could be what a darling naif. But By's not naive, in Bastien's estimation. He's a clever, experienced man who hasn't let his shitty life and shitty job corrode his belief that the world could and should be decent. Admirable, not adorable.
"Of course he did something," he adds. "He played the Game. But I don't know—he could have had someone else killed, or he could have started a rumor, he could have cut someone out of a deal. I know his marriage was improbably good. But I don't know how."
He inhales and huffs out a puff of visible vapor. There's more to talk about, surely, where Mathelin is concerned. But he can only hold his own feet to the proverbial fire so long before he yanks them back for a break, so.
"Your vision—is all the color gone?"
no subject
"Not all. Not like a charcoal drawing or something of the sort. It's more like at twilight - reds and blues disappear, while yellow still maintains a bit of its character. Your eyes are just as enchanting as they ever were." He gives a little squeeze to Bastien's hand.
Then - "How is your balance? I've heard of fellows who have some injury to the ear and afterwards can't stand on one leg any longer. Are you still steady on your feet?"
no subject
“I suppose it isn’t an injury exactly,” he says. “And more’s the pity. I could have made you carry me everywhere.”
As if he’d ever ask that of Byerly’s skinny arms.
Really, the worst of it is a new discomfort in crowds. The added strain of following overlapping jokes at a table full of quick-talking friends. His half-paranoid awareness of everything around him making him constantly try to parse the sounds behind and around him, without being able to place them. He loves a buzzing swarm of people too much to avoid it—but since Arlathan he’s been quieter during evenings out, and afterwards more frayed. There might even come a day he’s short-tempered about it.
But he’s not going to complain. Not about that, not right now.
“I heard him coming, but I couldn’t tell what direction. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let him hit me so hard.” Bastien thinks he might still prefer his confusion and bloodied nose to having so much color leeched out of the world. It is lucky that he’s all black and white and tan, but, “Alexandrie will look different. But the twilight thing? That makes it sound romantic. I hope you use that when you tell her, if you haven’t already.”
no subject
By smiles slightly over at Bastien. It is easier, now, a bit; By misses Alexandrie desperately, but he thinks there's less strife between him and Bastien because of the distance. It's sadder but simpler with only two.
A moment of quiet. "Obviously you spend little time on the battlefield," he says. And then, not an overt request, but a silent one - "Perhaps this means that you shouldn't spend any time out there at all."
no subject
As for the second thing—
He hums.
“The battlefield,” he echoes. “The real one, with the soldiers and everything? I don’t know. That might be my only chance to ever see an elephant or an ogre.”
no subject
But, quips aside - "But - the other sorts of battlefields, too. The ones that consist of - dark houses, or nighttime alleyways, or shots placed from hiding. The Bard's battleground." He caresses Bastien's knuckles. "Those might not be safe for you, either."
no subject
An automatic rejoinder, still smiling. But the smile is fading. It's a fair point. Even before today. On the days he's enlisted various members of Riftwatch's Most Muscular to have a go at him, the number of bruises he's brought to bed afterwards hasn't been decreasing as steadily as he'd hoped.
"Even with one ear, even not even being in her division, I'm the best Yseult has," is what he's saying, though.
That might not be true anymore. And Byerly asks him for so little, so rarely. There's already a gnawing part of him that wants to agree on that basis alone.
But on the other hand: an adventurous streak. The dream of dark houses and nighttime alleys with Byerly, someday, for fun or for justice. And pride.
no subject
(And, honestly, it probably isn't true. Byerly has seen Ellie and her magical powers of unerring marksmanship. But he'll keep that thought to himself; he's already challenging Bastien's pride enough as it is.)
no subject
But: "Would you quit?"
@ marcus | lowtown.
Perhaps the grossest possible metaphor for the fact that he has joined Marcus Rowntree at the bar, the mug in his hand is not nearly empty enough to serve as an adequate excuse, and has continued utterly failing to leave well enough alone for the past minute and a half. Some subtlety to start with. The hellos, the horrible weather todays, the I was here before you silently implied in his posture and comfort whether it's true or not. But then:
"How many of them," meaning the tavern's other patrons, variously grimy from days on the docks and in the mines or from just living that way, "would let a mage into the family, you think? We could take a count. That's valuable research."
no subject
Marcus' cup has gone through one refill since Keen settled near him. Some defiance in it: why should he be the one to cede territory, etc etc, semi-conscious reflex. His hand is resting on top of it, a finger decorated with a signet ring from the Satinalia recently passed. Speaking of family.
His focus shifts slightly left of centre.
"Is that how you imagine us?" Marcus asks, and his breed of sarcasm tends to be somehow more understated and more hostile than your usual. Quiet, either way, while he draws his mug nearer, lifting it. "Begging at their doors?"
no subject
is fair. The Circle and Chantry claimed as many years of his life as any mage's, and counting. Of course he tries to imagine the precise shapes ahead of them all in the fog. Of course it keeps him up at night.
If he's ever going to be earnest enough to say so, it won't be from the position of a casual-seeming lean over a pint.
"How should I imagine you?"
A sip. He's only so much of a drinker in the absence of peer influence; this certainly does not count.
"Wasn't so long ago your friends were begging at Tevinter's borders, was it."
no subject
It will count if it winds up on the floor, probably. For now, his fingers flex around the handle.
"If only we'd been successful. Then you could go back to murdering us without shame."
Murder is not usually the word Marcus would use for the casualties of war, on either side. It is one he might feel moved to apply to the slaying of Abominations, but there is a slight edge to it that speaks of some more specific thing.
His lean against the bar is not really so casual. The lines of shoulders, spine, jaw.
"I doubt you even capable of imagining a southern mage neither dead nor captive. I don't intend to be either anytime soon."
no subject
Presumably. And it is also presumably a clunky sort of saying, without the word hell at their theologically-sound disposal, so it's for the best that it's staying implied.
The deliberation is for murder. Not puzzling over the terminology; what might want for clarification doesn't occur to him. He is thinking of the war, that's all, while someone jostles both of them in turn on their tipsy way past.
"I can imagine what I've seen," he says, tipping his drink. A mage, alive and free, having a pint. The same mage wreaking havoc, sending men fleeing choking ash across ground they couldn't trust. "Give me that much credit." And only that much. "I just don't find a very idyllic dream."
no subject
He'd been only paying attention to a sort of blurry Redvers Keen shape in his periphery, keyed in more to the sound of his voice and the distance he was keeping than the finer details.
"It doesn't need to be idyllic."
There's that errant thought, of: is it possible to change a Templar's mind? Orlov makes for an interesting case study, and it is not one that Marcus finds himself equipped to pursue. The notion intrudes anyway when one finds oneself standing in comfortable distance with such a person, in a boisterous tavern, ostensibly sharing a drink.
Something about this, talk of dreams, talk of imagining, sets claws in him. It is earnest when he tells Redvers, "The Circles were a nightmare," just to see if something changes.
no subject
"Food," he says. "Shelter. Wealth—communal, at least. The largest libraries in Thedas. Art collections. Leisure time if you want it. Books in your name if you don't. Your little conclaves."
He shrugs.
"But I guess anywhere can be a nightmare if you put your back into it."
no subject
Unsurprising, of course, but that it is this will be reflected upon at some later hour. It is not surprising, either, but it is sudden, quickfire heat that seems to travel through veins and on the same trajectory of blood, heartbeat and clenched fingers around a metal handle.
Motion, but not until tension coils tight and sure from wrist to shoulder, lashed across the back.
Tankards are built sturdy, heavy-bottomed, wood and metal, but lacks the wind up when Marcus hauls it from bartop in a sideways swipe across Redvers' face, where the heady flash of lost temper makes up for momentum. It will go clattering out of a briefly numbed hand—the rest of his ale now on the both of them, on the floor, on some nearby patrons—and therefore out of the way in a shove that
probably won't send Redvers to the ground, unless he gets luckier than he has been lately, regarding the Order, and tavern fights.
no subject
The thing is, historically, most people in any position to brawl with him in a tavern have found him pretty charming and inoffensive. Actually.
There is a moment of bewildered, damp blinking. A short pause, just long enough to make it clear Redvers wasn't expecting that. It's also a pause long enough that a cooler head could prevail if it tried. If beneath the shock there wasn't the fact of the war, the shouts and burnt corpses, and a flood of relief—of a kind—to have permission.
He straightens up, leaving his tankard behind, and follows that momentum back into Marcus' space—
At which point some of beer-splattered onlookers who had briefly been content to watch, unsure whether this was going to be interesting or not, move further back, and the bartender is saying, "Maker's ass—outside—"
—to make a reasonably good, well-muscled and heavy-fisted attempt to slug him cross the jaw.
no subject
Something in Marcus marks this as transgression, from Redvers' shocked expression to his own rising heart rate. Anger still cuts his own expression sharp and haughty, but there's the dimmest flicker of uncertainty—whether to do with how solid the other man was beneath a forceful shove, or to do with being unable to anticipate what Redvers will do. What he might do if the other man walked away.
And then he's hit in the face.
There's the automatic defensive flinch back as soon as Redvers lifts his fist, but it's not quite enough to prevent the strike from landing well. The shock of it temporarily short circuits any awareness Marcus has of his physical body as he staggers aside, pure instinct grabbing onto the back of an empty chair that stops him from hitting the ground.
Good. Great. This is what he wanted, obviously. The chair is tumbled aside with a furious shove, rounding on Redvers with the aim to answer in kind, a wild swing for the general vicinity of the other man's face. The intent to grab on to him after follows.