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Entry tags:
- ! open,
- ! player plot,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- derrica,
- ellie,
- fifi mariette,
- florent vascarelle,
- gela,
- james flint,
- julius,
- loxley,
- matthias,
- mobius,
- petrana de cedoux,
- redvers keen,
- stephen strange,
- tsenka abendroth,
- vanya orlov,
- viktor,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { peter parker },
- { tony stark }
player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2
WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.
Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.
Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.
Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.
Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.
Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.
OTA
The rescue team will find Julius ready to help — insistent on it — but he's visibly a mess, dirty and exhausted and very slightly limping. Blood has dried on his left forearm, and he's done his best to clean his hands but it is more or less a lost cause before the reinforcements arrive.
He's aware he may get approached with questions, and while he clearly defers to Yseult when appropriate, he seems to still be taking his duties of keeping the company informed seriously. He also may give the impression of a man somewhat sleepwalking, but he's resistant to any insistence that he rest or stand aside while they're preparing to move.
II. Gallows
For once, Julius feels like he doesn't have enough work to do. Of course, that's an illusion; there's more than enough, especially given how much they've all lost. But it's not enough to keep his mind as occupied as he'd like. He helps out with Diplomacy, down a leader, and takes on whatever anyone will give him. It means he can be found in his office as much or more than usual, sorting through correspondence and reports. Or, sometimes, staring out the window.
He can't help wandering, though, noticing how empty the Gallows feels. Not only his heavy personal loss but the quiet of the training yard, the muted conversations in the dining hall, the free seats at the tables in the library. The way it reminds him of Kinloch Hold turns his stomach; he's eating noticeably less, though enough to keep moving forward.
Julius fills his time because he doesn't know what else to do. But the way it's ripped him open is visible even to those who don't know him well.
III. Wildcard
[I'm doing a few bespoke starters, but please hit me up OOCly if you'd like to discuss setting up something more specific than the above will allow and we haven't already talked about it.]
granitefell
The woman before Julius was not in the battle. No mistaking that; her face is clean, her hair done up, her clothes tidy and - frankly - a little impractical. Part of the rescue team, clearly.
She holds out her hands. "I'm a healer. I can help."
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It's subtle, what she does. Julius likely won't even register that she's doing anything. It's not that she wants to be deceptive - certainly nothing like that - but Julius is a native of Thedas, and something like this might be seen as evil magic. Even though it's certainly nothing of the sort.
To all appearances, she's just applying magic to close up his few visible wounds. But under that, she's doing rather more: altering the glucose levels in his cells, drawing out a bit more cortisol to incrementally increase his adrenaline levels. Just a little something to push down his exhaustion and give him a little kick of energy.
When it seems like it's been enough, she withdraws her grip. "How do you feel?" she asks carefully, watching his expression.
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Today, though, he can't reach for that curiosity. There's too much else. When she asks how he feels, he takes a long breath in and then lets it out. "...like I've had some coffee and maybe a couple hours of sleep," he says, after a moment. "Thank you. It ... it didn't help, that few of us got very much sleep before the ambush." And while being tired was not high on the list of his concerns, being less tired certainly doesn't hurt anything. (Except to the extent that he's more aware of what's happened.)
Gallows
Not the first time she's called to him from the doorway of his office, palm flush on the wood. This instance is softer, more hesitant to interrupt him. He is sitting and staring out of the window and Gela does wonder if she should come back later to ask him – but that means she will have to put her work momentarily aside and she's only doing it so she doesn't sit around and, like him, stare out of windows, and cry.
Even now, seeing his grief so plainly, she has to lift a hand and touch it to the inside corners of her eyes. She sniffs. It prompts her to take a single step inside.
She has reports, is all. They're all doing an extra share, what with Byerly gone.
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"Yes, sorry," he says, quietly, at her finding him woolgathering. "What do you have for me?" It's like he still has the script for himself before, but the reading is without much conviction.
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These few things, the papers in her hands. Gela comes inside the room completely so that she can put them on his desk, inching them across the wood with her fingertips. It is difficult to look him in the eye, but Gela hasn't been looking at anybody since the news.
"I've finished these." Write-ups, mostly. "They need to be checked before they go anywhere else. It doesn't have to be right now. Or even today."
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Still, he takes up the papers she's set down. "Anything especially pressing in this set?" Whether or not there is, he's not sorry for something to do.
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She didn't want to assume he'd have the time or concentration to go through it all, and so she thought of this, small thing. Slowly, she slinks into a chair by his desk, tucking one leg up underneath of herself.
"I'm not needed anywhere else." He doesn't need to worry about that either. "Everything is quiet, today."
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He doesn't say that, though. Instead, he says, "Thank you," for sorting the reports. "We're going to have to ... Diplomacy is going to need someone else in charge sooner than later, it's not a chair that can sit empty. But we've been lucky nothing dire has come up this week." 'Lucky.' He looks at the first report, but his eyes can't seem to hook onto the words as easily as they should, and it's slower going than he expects. "I suppose were never a big enough organization to talk about deputies or appointing someone to serve as acting head of a division."
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“I don’t want to presume that I could do something like that,” she says slowly, “Because I am still new. But I’d be willing to try… Perhaps we could take turns, until we work something out.”
The thought of sitting in Byerly’s office like that, as if nothing bad happened at all, is slightly disturbing to her. Even though there are jobs to be done.
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the gallows.
"Julius," is a light greeting. She has a pouch of mixed nuts and candies in her hand.
Marcus had given her a little satchel of them, one Satinalia. It had been the first thing she'd received from him. She remembers being surprised by it, by having earned his notice thoroughly enough to warrant even some small thing.
The pouch she sets on the corner of Julius' desk. Occupies the chair across from it.
"Will you have some with me?"
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They can talk about him eventually, but he knows she has to be tired. And there's no one else here just now. They can be honest with each other, to the extent either of them is ready to be.
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It isn't about the work. It is some other weight, which nearly doesn't matter anymore, except that like all things about Riftwatch, stubbornly does.
"It isn't a hardship to care for them," is what she says, sincere over the words. "I was afraid it wouldn't be possible."
That they would have had to do what little they could miles from the Gallows, and it would be as if those people never walked among them at all.
"It doesn't make it easy, but I think it made it easier for everyone, to have the chance to lay them to rest as they wished."
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"If nothing else ... people might have clung to denial, if they could. Probably best, that no one had the option." The false hope could have done a different sort of damage, and it stuck with him, how many people had reacted to him on the sending crystals with flat rejection. Even his own mind had said no, in the moment. He can hardly blame anyone else.
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Derrica has lived years of her life with that kind of uncertainty. Not hope, but a lack of knowing that she carried with her out of Dairsmuid. How can she ever know who was burned to ash and left amid the rubble of the tower? It was denied to her. She will never know for certain if all are dead. And if some are not, she may never find them.
To sentence those who work alongside them here to such a fate—
No. It would be a terrible kind of misery to weigh them down with.
"I know it doesn't seem it now. But I think it was the best you could have done. All of you."
Five. Five of them, alone among the carnage, when the griffins had arrived.
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He'd had the thought, in the past few days, that at least it's not like when rifters vanish. At least death, even in its unfairness (and, here, in its magnitude), is something there are rituals for.
"Has Strange said anything, about traditions from where he's from? Things they might want to do in addition to what we would?" It's a gesture, mustering this much curiosity. Not disingenuous, exactly, but it takes effort that it wouldn't normally.
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And no one had asked.
"It feels wrong to burn them," is something Derrica can say to Julius, unchecked. "Without knowing for certain it's what they would want."
The Chantry is presumptuous. It consumes. It imposes. She has seen it before.
It feels like a failing to permit their own people, these men and women who came so far and died away from their families and loved ones, to be abandoned to rituals that might have meant nothing to them.
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speaking of late tag-ins: ii
He doesn’t think they will. For starters, the remaining Division Heads aren’t known on the whole for asking anyone else’s opinion on anything. And he won’t be here for them to ask in person. It would have to be Julius saying, yes, he ditched us nearly immediately, but beforehand he voted for me.
He is voting, anyway.
If he knew about Byerly’s instructions to Benedict—he would still be voting. Byerly lost the privilege of having opinions when he died. But before he died, they conferred often and thoroughly enough that Bastien is still close to being on his page, if not precisely on it.
“And if it is you, you should consider bringing in Seeker Hart as—a right hand, something. She’s genuine, and she’s cooperative, and I think it would lend you a lot of credibility to have her working closely with you, among the kinds of people who might balk at,”
Julius knows. Bastien gestures vaguely.
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"...I appreciate that. The vote of confidence, and the suggestion. I don't know Seeker Hart well, but I see the logic of it." It's a canny enough move that he's lightly surprised Bastien wouldn't be voting for himself, but that's neither here nor there.
Instead, he sighs, sitting back. He knows he still looks something of a wreck, but if there's anything to be said for losing as many people as they did, it's that everyone in the Gallows is feeling it. It's not as if he has to explain why to anyone, at least. After a short pause, he says, "I suppose we're going to have to fill that chair as soon as we can. I've been... well. I suppose you're conscious of it the way I've been thinking about the new captain of the watch." Like a wound to prod, though Bastien's thoughts may have been more productive than Julius's corresponding ones.
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Not that Byerly didn’t. But new requests are rolling in. New problems. Convincing anyone at all to continue their financial or political support now, when they must look like a lost cause—when they might be a lost cause—
Bastien does want them to succeed, Riftwatch. Without him.
(And certainly without him in charge of anything. The reasons he coordinated a dozen interviews with outside candidates, all those years ago, and then nudged Byerly into offering himself up as a sacrifice without being willing to do so himself—they all still apply. He is not much of a leader, he’s blackmailed and/or betrayed and/or killed the family members of too many people they need to impress to risk the sort of scandal that might occur if he were recognized and that difficult to disown, and there is truly no overstating how much he would hate the job. Add to that how it would now entail sitting at Byerly’s desk and being called by Byerly’s title, and he has not imagined the possibility even enough immediately to reject it. It is not a possibility at all.
Plus, he’s leaving.)
“I suppose they might give it to one of the Templars,” he says, watching Julius’s face for signs that he’s overstepping—for next time, as it is too late now—“and find out if pure irritation can bring someone back from beyond the Veil.”
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"That said, Redvers or Orlov wouldn't be mad choices. The real issue is how much watch there is to captain, at this point." A bit quieter, yes, but logistics are one of the relatively easier topics. Even if they brush more painful things, Julius has always been good at compartmentalizing. His fellow Riftwatch agents have almost been able to see it in real time, the past few days. Talking about work, even when work is fairly bleak, is one of the first systems back in place.
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"We don't have to stay here."
He isn't staying here. But in general.
"It is a lot of fortress for so few people. And if they come for us where we live, there will be a lot of collateral damage, here. But with the eluvians, we could go anywhere, and still be here in a few minutes if we needed to be. Set up underground, in the mountains, at sea—all three. If we positioned the mirrors correctly we could have one base spread across the four corners of Thedas and hardly notice the difference. Easier to escape if we need to, that way. If we lose a location, we do not lose everything. If the weather is awful and depressing in one place, you can go work in another for the day. But, you know—"
He shrugs a little, looks back at Julius, and manages a shruggy sort of smile.
"—it's not up to me."
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Assuming Riftwatch survives this at all, which Julius still doesn't take as a given. He'll stay until there's nothing to stay for. Then he expects those with anchor shards will, as a practical matter, need to make a collective decision. He's not going to leave Petrana, so wherever they go will effectively be his destination. (He's not sure which way Stark will lean, which he imagines will hold some weight.) But all of that will hold for at least a week or two, probably.
"I've been thinking of the dream Trevelyan sent us a couple years ago. Most of it is fairly hazy, and I have to assume we've already undone at least some of it, but even so." The impression of a handful of survivors holding onto the little they have left feels less distant than it had a week prior. "Sorry. Not especially helpful. But I suppose an illustration of the idea that Riftwatch in some form could survive a displacement from Kirkwall."