faderift | 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.

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.

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It returns to her in a wave, that feeling; it's gone numb over the years, but that simple statement, 'no, he won't be', is enough to refresh Fifi's memory of the days after. The loneliness. The rage.

With a little sigh through her nose, she leans to gently bump her shoulder against Bastien's, as if by way of apology.
"What you want for him," she amends, "still matters."

He doesn't lean into her shoulder when it knocks against his, like he might have otherwise. But it does spur him on to step two: spearing the potato with his knife and moving it toward his mouth.

"He has a sister."

That is left there for a moment while he chews (step three) and swallows (step four).

"He had not seen her since they were children. They were writing to one another, finally, but we never found the time to go see her. She should have some if she wants them. And Madame d'Asgard. And his wife." Hearts are infinite; ashes are not. "Then if I fuck it up it is only a fourth of them."

She's proud of him, even if she doesn't say so. Potatoes contain a lot of nutrients. A little can go a long way, especially in times like these.

"You could write to them," she muses gently, "or someone else will, I'm sure. It will get sorted." Nothing needs to happen right now.
"You won't fuck it up, Bastien." It's rare for Fifi to use such language, but it feels necessary to mirror his phrasing.

Rare enough that it earns a sideways look and a hint of a smile, where some ribbing might have been under other circumstances. And appreciated enough that he trades the hand he's using to eat so he can take hers and hold it.

The soothing wisdom might rankle right now, from anyone else, but she's been through this before. He can't say she doesn't understand. She understands, and she came out the other side of it dancing, and that probably felt as impossible to her then as it does to him now, with a great grey and sunless fog where all their plans for the future used to be.

"I will," he says, then clarifies, "write to them."

No one else will. No one else should.

"Thank you."

She squeezes his hand, mirroring the faintness of his smile as she tips her head in a little nod toward the partially-eaten potato. She won't be distracted from what's really important.

He nods a slow and wobbling nod that means I know, I know, and begins working on another bite. One-handed, still holding hers, but he can manage.

"I have no plans to waste away," he says, just in case she's worried it's more than, you know, moving being hard and food tasting ashy.

The idea of giving up might hold slightly more appeal if he were surer of an afterlife, or reunion in some recognizable form, or anything—but even then not enough appeal for him to give up his one life. Not to mention Byerly, if there is still a Byerly in any sense, would be pissed.

He pauses with his potato before his mouth to ask, "Do you believe in—what do you believe in? The Chantry, the elven gods? None of it?"

Carefully watching the potato's progress but making no comment, Fifi's smirk is dry, tired. She's not offended by Bastien's question, but the whole situation is so... well. This.

"Andrastian, I suppose," she replies with a bob of one shoulder, "I was raised with the Chantry's teachings, and Jacques was devout."

She pauses a moment, giving that statement a little room to breathe: the connection has been invoked now, and she feels personally responsible for not letting the conversation deteriorate on either side.

"I want it to be true. For him." Her eyes shift to meet Bastien's. Does that make sense?

He gives a twitch of a nod, jaw busy chewing.

Byerly seemed to believe in the Maker but not to have faith in him. Existent but not trustworthy. Wouldn't hurt for His plans to restore the world to a paradisiacal kingdom to be delayed indefinitely so it could go on being lovely in its own shitty way—By said something to that effect once. One of the moments Bastien keeps carefully wrapped in his head, as protected from distortion and fading as anyone could will a memory to be.

"When he died," is blunt, but here they are, "was it up to you? What was done with him?"

She doesn't mind the bluntness. And she's glad he's eating.

To his question, Fifi shakes her head, her gaze taking on a faraway quality.

"I wasn't welcome at his funeral," she explains, betraying no emotion, "I believe he was given the proper Andrastian sendoff."

That isn't surprising. Fifi is the only elf he's ever known to have married a human—a full human, not someone elf-blooded—and as far as he knows they didn't even have their house burned down over it. It would have been more shocking if there weren't some disapproval from his family.

Still, "I'm sorry," warrants saying, he thinks, even if it's the fifth or tenth time he's said it this week.

"I'm sorry," Fifi replies, with a little shrug designed to bump Bastien's shoulder again. It means as much coming from her as it does coming from him; what else even is there to say?

"...it would hurt less, if he hadn't been so good. Tried so hard." Whether she's talking about Jacques or Byerly isn't specified, and frankly, it isn't even relevant. "To have that goodness stolen from you--"

She ducks her head, shutting her eyes tightly for a moment as if weathering a wave of anguish, but it passes. She looks up and away again, all the wearier.

"...it can be difficult. To like yourself, without it. You don't realize how much you relied on it." She purses her lips, her eyes fluttering closed more gently as she gives a shake of her head. "I'm sorry."

It's relevant to him, who she's talking about. But he doesn't ask people for what he needs. No clues to the puzzle lock sealing him out of their reach—that's the stupid, self-defeating, and subconscious rule. So he doesn't invite clarification. He works his way through a third piece of potato while he listens, nods at the end.

"Thank you."

player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

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