player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 5

[cozen]

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Everything's fine and we're going to have feelings about it.
WHEN: August 15 9:49
WHERE: Primarily the Gallows! But potentially anywhere.
NOTES: We made it! You are all free of my tyrannical plot grasp! There is a final OOC post with some notes + space for plotting here.

This is a timeline where, some mild chaos aside, things for the last month have carried on as normal. Riftwatch hasn't lost anyone at all. There were no funerals. The work continued. The late afternoon of August 15 may find people at their desks, in the midst of meetings or debriefs, in the library, in the sparring yard. Or maybe afield, seeing to errands or meetings or missions somewhere else in Thedas. Maybe, if they are particularly unlucky, they are deep in conversation with an ally or embroiled in combat with an enemy agent at the precise moment when the magical connection between two realities closes and the diverging timelines snap together into one existence.

At that moment, everyone forgets what it is they were just doing. Instead they remember what they might have been doing in the world where a third of Riftwatch's number was lost, despite their hands suddenly occupied with the normal business of handling pens or swords or books they don't recall picking up.

For the always-living, it may feel as though they have been magically transported somewhere new mid-thought. For the dead—the formerly dead, the might-have-been dead—it will feel as though they have just woken up. Perhaps they'll have a vague sense of a dream they now can't recall, in between their last conscious moment amid the blood and screams in Granitefell and awakening just now in a quieter world, or perhaps they'll have a sense of nothing at all.

For a few hours, the worse world will be the only one anyone can remember. Over time, memories of the other world—the only one that really exists now—will filter in, competitive with other memories in a way that might require everyone to double or triple check whether they wrote a letter or completed a mission in that timeline or this one. But the memories of death and dying will never fade into anything less real.

Comments

closed to gwenaëlle.

[portalling]

In another time and another place, they go to Hightown.

It’s been three weeks and change since that bizarre day when three panicked members of Riftwatch appeared in the Gallows and demanded to change the plan. As the details eventually emerged over the days to come and Strange learned about his other self’s involvement, he’d taken it in stride, time travel and parallel universes being just another Tuesday for him: crisis averted, timeline swerved, and everything is surprisingly fine, and so the summer ticks along in its distraction and busywork.

And so he and Gwenaëlle do eventually plan for some musical lessons, a first-time visit to her grandfather’s house. They leave the island, take the elevator up to Hightown, and it’s a pleasant ride with pleasant conversation, a particular chapbook waiting in his back pocket.

When they eventually arrive at the estate, he cranes his head to take it all in — the De Coucy residence in all its finery does remind him of the Sanctum Sanctorum — and, being ushered in, the sorcerer is unfailingly polite to her grandfather the Duke and the servants alike. He’s given a brief enough tour, shown the shape of the house in broad strokes, before they meander into the parlour with the pianoforte.

Strange immediately lights up at the sight. It isn’t exactly a common, cheap instrument to have here in Thedas, and so he gravitates toward it like a moth drawn to a flame. A finger pressed against an ivory key, a light note ringing out: painstakingly in tune, because of course, one expects no less here.

He’s peering at the latest sheet music still set out, sussing out whether it is the same musical notation he’s used to. While he pokes around, Gwenaëlle busies herself with a sideboard where a servant had set out some chilled summer-wine, good for a warm afternoon.

“You really don’t miss the comforts here?” he asks, bemused, rifling through the pages.

It’s a perfectly normal day. So far.

[elegiaque]

Stephen is spared the necessity of being polite or not to the Duke — instead, the heir's heir, Lord Thomas Charnier, is equally unfailing in his politeness in a brief courtesy greeting that has the air of a young man aware his elder cousin is humoring him by making sure to see that it happens. He and Raoul may reside there, but it's clear she comes and goes as she pleases, that many of the servants still defer to her when she's present in the absence of l'Duc, that there is something decidedly offhand about the way she introduces him to Dr Strange.

Raoul does not get a particular introduction, because she fancies not being trapped in an ongoing conversation when she's other plans.

Unmoved, pouring the wine, she says, “Why should I, when my home was designed specifically for me? I'm hardly so hard up for comforts I'm going to start pining for what we really have to acknowledge is a Marcher's quaint best effort at Val Royeaux.”

It is rather reminiscent of Orlais — it is a fine house, there's no disputing it, and Gwenaëlle had made changes to it when she was its mistress to make it still finer, but...

She shrugs.

“It's preferable to the Gallows, but the commute was a nuisance, I may have to shoot one of the neighbours sooner or later and—”

who wants to share their living space indefinitely with adolescent boys, she might have said, but he never hears it. She's turning, drinks in hand, when the world shifts under her feet and the memory of impact nearly drives her off them— crystal glasses shatter on the polished floor falling from suddenly nerveless fingers, forgotten in the chaotic first moments of another memory entirely.

Florent—

Gwenaëlle doesn't know how she comes to be on her knees in a puddle of summer-weight skirts, gasping for breath she can't catch in tightly laced corsetry, struggling to reach her back.

marcus rowntree.

[luaithre]

just a normal day. closed to barrow.

[luaithre]

The dimensions of this room are perfectly familiar. He can tell what time it is from the slant of light coming through the windows (late afternoon) and the air is permeated with the after-scent of cigarette smoke.

It's a different kind of smoke than the one he'd just been recalling. That smoke had been heavy with char, burned flesh, sulphur, the kind of smoke that pours thick and black up into the sky like ink. The ash of buildings and bones, not just dried leaf, fine paper. He is sitting at his desk when he last remembers being on his back. He is trying to apologise, and catch his breath to do so.

In front of him are notes, his handwriting somewhat scratchy and big, notes of—(he isn't reading it, but they are notes around a training schedule for the Forces division on anti-siege weaponry and the drilling there of).

He isn't reading. He's drawing in a sharp breath, the chair legs scraping slightly on the wooden floor where he jerks backwards from his desk, some, still seated. Raises a hand and grasps at his shoulder, which feels—perfectly fine, and not like it's been shattered at all, and his heart is beating fast but healthily, not the quick weak pulses of a dying animal. It's not as immediate as all that, because it's like he'd been asleep and is waking, and like there is some formless stretch of nothing between laying on his back in the mud and now sitting here in his desk, but also,

how to make sense of it? Marcus grips the edge of his desk with his other hand, and then snaps focus to the other person in the room sitting on the other side of his desk, as if realising, in that same moment, that they're there.

normal day continues. closed to petrana (and julius).

[luaithre]

Their offices are right there, Petra's closest. Once free of his own, recklessly leaving the door hanging open in his wake, he checks them first. Feels some unbidden spike of irrational anxiety when the doors, both, stay locked fast. If he thinks to go for his crystal, he elects not to touch it—and it's highly possible it simply stays forgotten in his coat pocket, by the time he's near-angrily pushing off from Julius' office door and marching his way down the stairwell of the central tower with the intent to get to the other.

The people who would compel him to stop in his tracks are few and far between, and don't appear, and so he continues unimpeded, unseeing of anyone else he storms past.

By the time he makes it to the hallway with their room, surging adrenaline has been spent on that many flights of stairs, pausing for a moment to master quickened breathing. Tastes blood. Or maybe not, he hasn't exerted himself that much, maybe that's just what he remembers, because he does remember it, all of it, vivid little nasty details in the foggy haze.

He moves, grips the door handle, feels his heart leap in a more hopeful direction when it gives and he doesn't need to search out the key, pushing into the room as if on a mission.

Ellie

[notathreat]

Closed to Abby

[notathreat]

In both realities, Ellie is braced for this. That there'll be a moment of something getting fucked up and disconnected, reconnected. That there will be a sense of timelines meeting, of a rush of memories unplugging.

It's happened before -- it's the kind of thing she doesn't like to remember. A whole life hallucinated. It makes her wonder what counts as real anymore.

But there's been that doubt. What if. What if doesn't work.

So when it does, it rocks every molecule of her being.

Ellie comes to when she's right in the middle of riding the ferry. She doesn't know whether she's coming or going, doesn't know what she's headed to or away from. All she knows is that the seared burns from the dragonfire on her hands are suddenly gone, that a horrific layer of exhaustion is gone, and that her insides don't feel like they're trying to eat themselves.

She stares down at the spread palms of her hands, watches them shake. And for the first time in weeks, feels something like hope. They shake harder. Ellie draws them into fists. Draws the air, searing, into her lungs.

Did it work? Does she dare hope that it worked?

She nearly falls flat on her face as she gets herself out of the ferry. Staggers, on the pier. She hears excited barking, familiar, and it drags attention up from the next step to all-too-familiar silhouette.

The last glimpse she had of Abby's face, it had been obliterated. It's there now, superimposed, a grim rictus staring back at her before reality asserts itself. Forces it all out. Leaves her, pale and sweaty as the ghost she suddenly isn't. It probably would've been different, if it had been anyone else. But Abby is the first person she sees. Abby is the confirmation that for once, things went exactly right. The world stutters into snapshots, and later she won't remember crossing the distance between them. The decision to do this. Whether it was a decision at all.

It's not so much a hug as an impact. Ellie's body hits Abby's with enough blunt force to bruise the shit out of them both, and quite possibly lay them both flat on the pier.

clarisse

[laruetheday]

ota

[laruetheday]

She's in the armory, going over a long list of inventory, when it hits her.

The words on the list in front of her seem to swim, and Clarisse bends over double, suddenly nauseous, breathless. The list and pen she's been holding slip from between her numb fingers and go clattering on the floor of the armory, where they'll sit forgotten for the rest of the day. Sweat breaks out on her forehead as she tries to breathe through the feelings of utter disorientation, because she can breathe, now. The air in here is slightly musty, smells of oil and metal and leather all mixed together, something normally comforting and familiar to her. She can breathe, but each time she inhales she expects nothing but acrid smoke and the taste of her own blood pooling in the back of her throat. Her forehead presses against the stone floor, and she squeezes her eyes shut.

She's dying. She was dying.

Time passes like that. Minutes. At some point, she manages to pull herself off the ground. Slowly, like someone recovering from a sudden incapacitating illness, Clarisse makes it to the door of the armory and tumbles out like she's forgotten how to move.

The afternoon is hot, muggy with summer stillness. She can hear birds, and farther off, the sound of waves crashing up against the docks, the ferry.

Those are the things that feel like a dream.

She crashes headlong into the first person she comes across, like she hasn't even seen them, only stopping when their physical presence blocks her. She reaches out and grabs for their shoulders, as if holding onto someone else can anchor her here, in this reality that still feels so unreal.

"What happened to us?"

closed to ellie

[laruetheday]

It wouldn't be right to say that she's over the shock of this, because how could she be? But she's upright, walking, talking, thinking a little more clearly now in the bright afternoon sunlight, and the only thing Clarisse can think about is finding Ellie.

Problem is, she has no idea where Ellie should be right now. She feels like she should be able to, but she can't. The only thing she remembers is that she was trying to breathe around the blood in her throat and wishing she could talk to Ellie again, hear her voice one last time, and now—

Now she can do that. If she finds her. If this isn't some fucked up dying dream.

Clarisse ends up walking around the Gallows like some kind of lost dog, not entirely certain of where she's going. It's not like she's the only one. She makes it halfway up the stairs to the griffon aerie before turning around and heading back the way she came, because if Ellie's here she would have come down already, right?

Eventually it occurs to her that Ellie might be looking for her, too, and this is how she winds up in the courtyard near the armory again, and this is when she sees the familiar profile, the hair that always looks so much more red when they're out in the sun.

Clarisse should feel elated, but in that moment she's terrified. That she'll speak too loudly or touch Ellie and she'll disappear, like a bubble popping, like getting ripped out of a good dream. For a few seconds she just watches, drinking in the sight of her, unable to force herself to move.

"Ellie?"

closed to abby

[laruetheday]

Later. How much later, Clarisse isn't sure. Time still doesn't feel real.

Clarisse is standing in front of the room she shares with Abby. Her hand is on the doorknob, unmoving. She's actually afraid to turn it, to go inside, because what if the room is empty?

She's seen a lot of people around the Gallows today, but Abby hasn't been one of them. And until Clarisse sees her, she can't relax. She can't let herself believe that they're really okay until she has everyone accounted for, and second-hand isn't good enough. She has to see Abby with her own eyes for it to be true.

After some time, (and at least one person walking past her down the hallway and glancing sidelong at the way she's just standing there with her hand against the door), Clarisse pushes it open and walks inside.

Wags is on her before she can even shut the door behind her, doing his usual booming barks as he wiggles and jumps up against her legs. Abby is a familiar shape on her own side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the bed. It could almost be any other day, any other time.

Clarisse feels something collapse softly inside her, a final tension unwinding.

"Hey," she manages, her voice shaking.

jayce

[pathlit]

closed to viktor

[pathlit]

The thing is, Jayce died fairly quickly.

He was dead seconds before his body hit the ground, neck snapped by the jaws of a dracolisk shaking him like a doll. The last sensation his body and mind recall in tandem is the sharp force of a pointed weapon punching through the muscles of his back, tearing through ribs to pierce his lung. Neither body nor mind suffered the effect of drowning in one's own blood because the dracolisk rendered the killing act immediately thereafter -- high on adrenaline and instinct, sure, but inadvertently merciful all the same.

So, when the timelines meld together on this warm and muggy summer afternoon where Jayce and Viktor have sought air, however sticky, on one of the library's balconies, it isn't agony that permeates his consciousness. It isn't much of anything at all initially. In one moment, he's leaning against the balustrade, peeling an apple with a pocketknife. In the next, he's holding a partially-peeled apple in one hand and a pocketknife in the other, his mind full of cotton, heavy and dragging along the confines of his skull as it tries to reorient.

A ribbon of red skin dangles from the fruit in his palm. Down, down below, the rhythmic crashing of waves against the shoreline is nearly inaudible.

john silver.

[hornswoggle]

open.

[hornswoggle]

( limit to three takers. one thread, first come first serve. )

Lady Eulalia has a lovely parlor.

Having become a regular guest to her Hightown estate, John is familiar with the trappings, the little things that are set out to impress this guest or that. Today Lady Corrina is in attendance, sighing over her newest husband and his mother in law. John can surmise that is why Lord Temo is not in attendance, and why Lady Anelie is seated by the far window. Serah Norwood has been tipping something from his flask into his cup again. Were John not seeking their generosity, he might have made his excuses. Perhaps abandoned his companions to the mercies of Hightown society; it's a relatively informal gathering, what is the worst that could happen?

And there is nothing Lady Eulalia loves more than an uproar at her gatherings. It is why Lady Sasha and her boisterous husband are continually invited.

Lord Demir has been talking at length about the play itself; his great-grandmother was Antivan, a patron of the arts, so in her honor he must contribute, perhaps enough for a dragon—

Abruptly, John is aware of a sharp pain in his palm. There and gone, no cause when John turns his hand to look, except that he remembers...

"Break them," Marcus Rowntree had said.

John's hand closes over this phantom ache.

Lord Demir has continued to speak, so comfortable with the concept of a captive audience that he startles when John sets down his own cup.

"Have I mentioned to you that Agnia was questioning the Antivan history of puppetry? If you've the expertise, than far be it for my recollection to stand as her basis for understanding."

It is a smooth redirection. Hardly any work at all.

And it buys John the requisite time to simply step out of the room into the cavernous hallway. Look again at his palm. Try to shake off the very vivid recollection of life siphoning away from him, of falling.

"Fuck," is the most eloquent summation one might manage, with a brief look around the hall to see who might have followed him out. "Did you feel that?"

Feel as close to the thing as John can get without saying it outright.

ellis.

[heorte]

open.

[heorte]

( limited to two takers, one thread. first come first serve. )

There is a rhythm to Ellis' days when he is in Kirkwall. Guard duty according to the Commander's rota. Tending to the animals at the Hightown house. Whatever Wysteria or Tony begs of him in between.

And the training yard, always a stretch of time spent in the training yard.

Today, Ruadh is stretched out in the shade of stacked hay bales, passingly attentive to Ellis' activities. There is nothing remarkable about the routine itself, how Ellis weaves through the practice dummies. He has been at it for long enough that his muscles burn pleasantly, that he is aware he is nearing the end of his practice for the day. It is rote. His mind can be elsewhere as his mace clacks off the wood.

The pain comes first, more so than a memory. As if his body parses what's happened before his thoughts can catch up.

It had taken Ellis such a long time to die. (He has been dying for so many years now. He has been dying since Joppa passed him a tarnished silver chalice almost fifteen years ago.) It was not a sudden thing. He had understood it. He had walked towards it, with Marcus Rowntree at his back.

There in the training yard, very clearly, Ellis sees the face of that Imperial soldier standing over him. Recalls how she had lifted Ellis by his ruined breastplate from where he had been crushed into the earth.

Recalls her knife. The angle at which she had punched it into him.

It staggers him. The flow of his movements dissipates as he slows to a stop, presses a hand to his side. He is warm, sweat prickling across his skin. No wound, but he knows—

Ruadh has come alert, stubbed ears pricked. Every muscle in his body has gone rigid. Not upright, not yet, but suddenly watchful, seeking for something amiss.

His mace hangs at Ellis' side, his grip tightening and loosening and tightening again on its hilt. Stood there in the sun, it is very hard to draw a steady breath. Slowly, he grows aware of how fast his breath is coming. How far from himself he feels, pushed out of his body by the tangle of emotion roaring in his ears.

Again, he thinks. It is only because he's had some practice at this that he recognizes some of what he is feeling now.

Byerly, OTB (open to Bastien) (and later Benedict)

[bouchonne]

One instant, he is slipping loose. And the next, he is in a brocade chair, a teacup in hand, his back aching like he's been sitting for an hour, a smile on his face.

Is that the Maker? he thinks, and wonders why the Maker would possibly look so very much like Porfiry de Tolly, Nevarran expatriate living in Kirkwall, trader in metals, admirer of Riftwatch. And he wonders why the Maker would have him sitting in this absolutely ass-ruining monstrosity of a chair. And why he, Byerly, would be smiling his meaningless nothing smile at the Maker.

"Excuse me," By says, and sets down his teacup, and rises. De Tolly doesn't stop him, nor do any servants - do they try? do they question him or his sudden distraction? Because no memory clings to the surface of his mind, he does not know, and will never know. Instead, he finds himself outside, looking up at the blue sky.

It is the Fade, then. It must be. Does the green sky of the Fade appear blue to a spirit? Does all look normal? There's nothing here of the strangeness that the Fade has shown before, but perhaps that is simply a matter of perspective. Perhaps it is bizarre, but to his mind, it seems normal. The idea makes him want to retch.

And so he wanders in a daze through Hightown, blinking in the afternoon sun, staring at familiar landmarks like they've betrayed him. And then he turns his gaze, and stops -

"No," he says, his voice low and strangled as he looks at Bastien.

[cozen]

It's not coincidence, that Bastien is here. He'd walked up with Byerly, discussing de Tolly half the way, other matters the rest, and given him a go get 'em nudge in the ribs before slipping away outside the gates to the estate to attend to errands of his own. Then he'd come back to linger nearby, waiting for company for the walk down, and then—

Forgotten, all of it. He is someone else, leaning against a low wall he does not recall walking to, eyes on the first of a whole stack of broadsheets he does not recall collecting from Beatriz an hour ago, mind caught in the sudden flood of sound, welcome and overwhelming even with only one ear, where there'd previously been days of near-total silence.

It worked. Or it did something.

He rolls the papers like scrolls and puts them into his bag, and he starts walking smoothly toward the entrance, the stairs, Lowtown, the docks, the ferry, the courtyard, the tower stairs. It doesn't occur to him until two blocks that he might not need to wait that long to know. He's pulling out his crystal, when Byerly sees him.

Bastien sees him back. In time to see the no. His head tilts, his eyebrow tics up—should he be offended?

It's a distant thought. He doesn't move much otherwise, careful and watching. The only times he has ever run and flung himself into anyone's arms, it was a joke.

cosima niehaus.

[youwonscience]

[hmu by dm/discord/plurk if you'd like a starter, all comers welcome]

closed to Tony

[youwonscience]

Later, it will almost be embarrassing, the cliche of it. She's holding a mug of tea, and then it's dropping to the floor, her fingers nerveless as her brain screams about phantom pain and regret and failure. She's dying. Except no she's not. She's sitting in an alcove of the library next to the Research Division office on a sunny summer afternoon, a little too hot but with a small breeze coming in the window, and when her hands involuntarily press to her stomach, it's just fabric over whole, unbroken skin. She can see, the desk in front of her with a neat pile of reports, in focus because her glasses are on her nose where they're supposed to be. To the extent she's having trouble breathing, it's just that she's hyperventilating, as part of her mind can register even if it can't quite make sense of how to stitch her last memory to the present moment.

She has the slightly surreal thought: Surely we'd know if rifters who die just time loop back, we'd notice that.

Benedict

[altusimperius]

closed to Josias (nsfw, at least at first)

[altusimperius]

There was a reason for being here, no doubt an entire preamble to what's currently happening, and Benedict remembers none of it, aware only that he must hurry or risk fucking everything up.
And instead he's just... fucking. It's not unusual for him to be half-conscious while in the throes of something, since he does this by design, but what is unusual is that he's the one currently thrusting into someone whose identity isn't completely clear from behind.

"Shit," he gasps, having a mental scramble to figure out how he got here, whether or not he should keep going, whether he even wants to, and if there's somewhere else he's maybe supposed to be instead.

kingfisher, open

[dared]

Somewhere between the dining hall and the courtyard, Kingfisher stops mid step. The apple she'd been tossing in one hand is almost left to crash down to earth, only saved by her reflexes, honed enough that not even a blitz of undone memories can dent them. Still, there is no more movement than this and the tight knit in her brow.

"Oh," she says, after a long moment of stillness. She hadn't known. Hadn't known these people - still doesn't, outside of introductions and a few conversations here and there - but she hadn't known, and hadn't known how small Riftwatch was, how big a number sixteen was. How much bigger it was when it was names, faces, a whole fucking list of lives that had been wiped out in one blow. She slumps her shoulder into the wall.

"I was such an arsehole."

[wearyallalone]

Vanya hadn't been purposely walking with her so much as not trying to avoid walking with her. They'd left the dining hall about the same time, and heading in the same direction, and so he's only a few steps behind when her shoulders hit the wall.

His own steps don't quite stumble, but there's a pause as he adjusts to where he is and what's happening, the sensation cresting over him like a wave.

Still, before he goes to find anyone, he pauses here. She was probably speaking rhetorically, rather to him in particular, he's aware. Regardless of timeline, their acquaintance has been glancing so far. But even so, he says: "You weren't to know." Quiet and sympathetic. No one can really know, when they only arrive after someone has been lost, much less sixteen of them.

Abby A, open

[armd]

She might have had the initial moment of realisation, but the feeling doesn’t dissipate quickly. In fact, it lingers even as Abby walks herself back into the Gallows on unsteady legs, wobbling like a newborn deer. Her dog is at her side, insistent, nervous-happy. He barks once every so often; each time, her hand drifts down, finds his head and scratches idly.

Abby keeps seeing the world in double. The time before, the time now. The air should be thick with smoke and it isn’t. It should be nighttime, but the sun is high in the sky, hot. She is walking and lying flat on her back at the same time, staring up, the life draining out of her through a hole in her head.

All she’s interested in is finding other people. She needs to see for herself that they’re okay. Ellie’s word is usually enough (they don’t lie. Not to each other) but not this time; she’s headed up the path from the gate, toward the dining hall, her hands balled up into fists.

[thereneverwas]

Once inside, she nearly collides with Barrow, who's moving in a similarly hurried gait down the stairs in the same direction. He pauses a moment, surprised, but ultimately responds by flashing a wide grin and pushing at the top of Abby's head in the guise of tousling her hair. It's to move her aside, because he has to be first, and he's bigger so he wins.

Gela B, open

[sprent]

When the timelines collide, push through each other and merge seamlessly as if they were never apart, Gela is walking through the courtyard with books in her arms, going somewhere. She is in the middle of doing something, and knows it, but she suddenly can’t remember what that thing was, exactly. It slips out of her brain, the same way the books slide from her slack grip and cascade down onto the gravel.

She takes a quick breath in. She says, “Oh,” simply. “It worked.”

It worked. Right? She has three timelines to reckon with, really, the one where Riftwatch fell, the one she stepped into, briefly, to stop the first from happening, and the one now.

Slowly, she sinks down, to sit beside the books. Just for a moment. Just until everything resolves itself more nicely in her head.

[tender]

The hand that settles at her shoulder is only a light touch. Derrica crouches beside her, among the scattered books, eyes on Gela's face.

"It worked," she repeats. Reassures, maybe.

As disorienting as the sudden punch of memory is, the breathless collision of possibility (is it possibility if it happened, somewhere?) and the present moment, Gela is a fixed point. Solid and real, and clearly remembering all the same things Derrica does.

"Breathe," Derrica murmurs. "You did well."

closed

[hassaran]

The water is lapping at the sides of the ferry, the pole creaking in its lock, a couple of the kitchen help laughing two rows up. The late afternoon sun paints the white stone of the towers up ahead a buttery gold that almost makes them seem inviting. Yseult notes each of these mundane, familiar sights as she takes stock of her surroundings, and then herself. No pain in her head, no sleep in her eyes, no strange taste in her mouth, nothing to explain why she has no memory of where she's come from or how she got here.

She was at her desk, scraping ink out of her cuticle and trying not to let her mind wander from her work and then-- here. She spreads her hands, finds her nailbeds clean but a little papercut scab on the back of a knuckle that wasn't there an hour ago. She's changed her clothes too, she realizes, the skirt beneath her spread fingers a brilliant sapphire. She hasn't been in mourning blacks but it's felt wrong to wear anything so vibrant.

Her heart begins to race, instinct faster than thought. Discreetly, she inches the neck of her blouse away from the skin to peek beneath for the pink splash of dragonfire burnt across her shoulder that hasn't been fully magicked away yet, and finds only freckles in its place. The ferry bumps against the Gallows dock. She looks up again at the position of the sun. A couple hours til dinner. If it's still Tuesday, he'd be at the Green Duck, or maybe the Waxmaker. If it's Tuesday, if it's really worked, if she hasn't just been drugged or lost her mind.

She rises and makes her way to the front of the ferry, reaching into a pocket to check the contents of one of her purses. "Head back to shore at once, please," she says to the ferryman. The new man hesitates. "I'm not scheduled to go for another quarter hour," he says, looking back at the Gallows gates. "Now," has more the tenor of an order, and she punctuates it with the compelling clink of silvers shaken between her fingers. "Quick as you can."

[staysail]

For Darras, it's the clouds in the sky, slate gray and hiding the face of the sun. It's Tuesday, a few hours shy of dinner, and from the Green Duck's ample window, he is looking over the water, as slate as the clouds above, with whitecaps that rise like some great invisible finger is plucking them up.

Behind him, the noise of the Green Duck is the usual midday noise, a pleasant hubbub. Darras looks down to the scarred tabletop. Here are a few maps, one with a route traced across the open sea in a span of red ink. Here, a sheaf of papers loosely tied with a cord. Here, a half-empty mug of the Green Duck's dark ale. His hands are pressed flat to the tabletop, so hard his fingertips have turned white.

He releases this pressure and finds his breath, a breath he didn't realize he was holding. His eyes find the open water again. The Green Duck is positioned high enough that he can't hear the sound of the waves. If he were to close his eyes, he could imagine them, the way he used to put shells to his ear to hear the roar of the sea. Darras finds that he does not want to close his eyes.

He sweeps a hand across the table, gathering the papers together. Garr was here, come ashore from the Fancy. They'd met. They'd talked. In the back of his mind, Darras feels an itch. He bolts the rest of the ale and sets the cup back down, heavy, on the table as he stands to leave.

Barrow

[thereneverwas]

for Tiffany (and whoever's around, if they want)

[thereneverwas]

The first thing Barrow does after extricating himself from Whatever The Fuck That Meeting Was (he'll come back to it, it'll be fine) is hurry down to the Diplomacy workroom, peer inside, and immediately continue his descent to another common area. He does this until he finds her.

He probably wouldn't even remember where or what time of day it was, but all that is immaterial when Barrow sees Seeker Hart across the room. He goes to her, mindless of whom he might be jostling out of the way, and as soon as he knows she sees him, he envelops her in a tight embrace: the kind that, say, one might give if they knew they might never get another chance, and almost didn't.

val.

[heirring]

She is standing in a swept clean chamber-turned-work-room of the Gallows dungeon on the near side of a tear in the world.

Neither of these facts is particularly out of the ordinary. Research division indulges in its fair share of dangerous work and often tests it where it is likely to do the least harm. And Riftwatch is hardly stranger to rending the Veil. However, this is no test, and the rip in the fabric of reality over which she as the Doctor hold vigil is no ordinary opened seam. The whole chamber is lit with it, bathed in the monstrous dark red of a high dragon's blood; the arcane energies run so thick in the room that Wysteria might only turn her hand and gather the woven shapes of it in the palm of her hand.

They have been gone a long time, she is thinking. Miss Gela and Messers Artemaeus and Mobius. Any moment now and they will—

She is sitting in a narrow chair holding a sheaf of papers. There are words on it that say things like unpermitted subterranean renovations and demand immediate recompense in the sum of—. A man is saying, "Ah, yes. That is to say, oui. My recommendation would be a modest gift to the correct officials."

Wysteria looks up from the papers to the man. There are two of them seated across the very wide and very darkly stained desk in this relatively well appointed office. The one speaking is a rather heavyset dwarf. He is wearing very small spectacles and a great deal of oil in his braided mustaches, the growth of the latter being so thick as to obscure a great deal of the Carta branding on both his cheeks.

Then, because the dwarven man is certainly not speaking to her, Wysteria turns her head to see who he is addressing.

She fumbles the papers, springing so abruptly to her feet that she all but rises from a cloud of loose leaf and is fully standing before the various pages of the suit have fluttered even halfway to the carpet.

"Oh!" She cries. "I'm brilliant!"

[degenere]

"I," says Val, as the man Wysteria's solicitor is addressing. I. He is leaning forward in a posture customary for him: engaged, annoyed, entitled, and altogether ready to speak up in defense of the cellar, which was carefully plotted and carefully planned by accredited craftsmen and himself, a student of architecture--a cellar in a home wholly owned by Wysteria--does ownership of property mean nothing in Kirkwall, land of barbarians--and has anyone met Veronique, who (none can argue) requires a cellar, and if the officials should want to argue with her--

His next syllable is, "N," uncertain and unfinished, as he sits back in his chair and lays a hand upon his chest. Pats once, twice, and then a third time, this one lower on his sternum. Once he had beheld a cadaver split in this precise place, slowly, at the mercy of an incessant saw grinding out dull notes as a grim counterpoint to the ongoing lecture. Once--much later, much more recently, never--there was a great shadow that fell, quickly.

In this stuffy and ill-appointed office, the papers fall. The shadow is receding, the room coming into light. Wysteria first: on her feet, crowing her own praise. At the window there are curtains, partly drawn, allowing a single shaft of weak Kirkwall sunshine to fall upon her.

The mouth of Monsieur Dugrand has drawn down into a frown. He is likewise seated on the other side of the grand desk. Half-Orlesian, a passable speaker, a slightly more passable solicitor, with a widow's peak sharper than the Vinmarks. Peevishly nonplussed, Dugrand taps his pen upon the desktop. "Then this proposal of the modest gift--it was your idea, Madame?"