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

Entry tags:

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

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.

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Even for Byerly, that penetrates the fog hanging about him - he takes a look momentarily over his shoulder. How's ferrying? He furrows his brows at Benedict, wondering for a moment if the boy has completely forgotten how to talk to a human being.

Do service workers count as human beings?
Benedict shrugs incredulously back at Byerly, not sure if it's what he wanted or not when the ferryman starts answering in the manner that he does. Could be worse, he could have to carry the whole conversation himself.

"No more turtles, I hope," he remarks, and immediately takes on a look known well to those close to him: I shouldn't have fucking said that, is written all over the tension in his face.

Bastien dedicates half a second to wondering whether Benedict is being passive-aggressively awful on purpose to get out of being responsible for this conversation, or if he really is so hopeless.

During that half a second, the ferryman’s bemused smile is faltering.

“There won’t be anymore turtles,” Bastien says without looking away from Byerly. “Jonah—“ is not a worrisome name for a ferryman in a world without the Bible, thank you “—how’s your uncle? Feeling better?”

"Ah, no," says the honest Jonah, "still gouty as ever. But he likes to complain, so, I suppose he's happy in his own way."

And then, perhaps as some subtle revenge against Benedict's faux pas, he nods to the young man, saying, "That's what rich living will get you, you know."

For his part, Benedict does look genuinely contrite, and his glance at Bastien is even a little grateful for swooping in-- but then he remembers a certain thing Bastien said, and his expression hardens again.

"Sorry," he mutters to Jonah, gives his head a little shake, and digs around for a cigarette that he can smoke to keep his hands busy; he's walking around and talking fine ("fine"), but he's definitely still in need of some sobering up.
Realizing that he would have to use magic to light the damn thing, and that he doesn't even carry matches for this reason, Benedict opts to fiddle with the unlit cigarette and look out at the water rather than shove his entire foot in his mouth again.

Bastien, magicless, goes nowhere without the fire-starting runestones they've been issued—but he doesn't offer it. Obviously. He manages a convincing little laugh for Jonah, then some convincing little response, then another, even though he what he really wants is to focus on the solid warmth of By's back under his hand and stare at the back of his humidity-dampened, uninjured neck until everything feels more real.

By the time they reach the ferry's slip at the Gallows, Jonah is saying, "—took weeks to get the smell of fish out, so we called her Tuna for years," while he stands to handle ropes and bring them in close enough to climb out. "I ought to call her that again, now that I think of it. See what her face does."

"Please," Bastien says. He stands, climbs out onto the dock, and offers his hands down to help poor oyster-stricken Byerly follow. "And report back. I want a full reenactment."

Jonah says, "Aye-aye."

Which all seems to answer the question of whether the ferryman has any idea anything is amiss. But then, once they're out of his boat, Jonah starts singing to himself; the first line is maaaybe I'm going maaad. Which could either be a song Bastien has never heard before, or one he is making up on the spot to narrate the fact that he was, half an hour ago, under the impression that the Ambassador was dead.

Byerly is tempted beyond words to join in with the song. Maybe I'm going mad, maybe I'm going mad, but it won't be so bad, once I'm well and truly mad, sings Jonah, and By couldn't agree with the sentiment more. If he's cracking, let the cracking happen to completion. Let his sanity go completely.

It's not so many steps up the dock. Not so many more to a place sheltered from the water and from curious eyes. Each one feels like it's being taken through heavy sucking mud, but each one happens, one after another, until finally they are within the confines of the Gallows and Byerly can lower himself gingerly to sit upon the ground and lift his hands to clutch at his hair and turn his face towards his knees.

"Fuck," he whispers, and trembles, and breathes hard, but doesn't know where to go from there. All the panic and terror and grief and confusion finally have space to be vented, now. But he'd thrust the cork into that bottle so hard that now he doesn't know how to loose it. All he knows how to do is stare blindly down at the ground, paralyzed, hoping that Benedict or Bastien will slap these feelings out of him.

On the contrary, it gives Benedict pause when he sees Byerly curled up so helplessly. He fully understands why, in the burgeoning part of his brain that has been taught to feel empathy, but it's an uneasy sight nonetheless, and apart from shoving a pillow under the Ambassador's head and bringing him a steady stream of coffee, Benedict has never been in the business of comforting him.

But he's not going to just stand there (and standing still, especially after being on the ferry and after what he's imbibed over what he can only gather was a very short time, is not a tenable plan), so instead he moves with a distinct sway to sit beside Byerly. He doesn't touch him, doesn't say anything, just looks at the ground and exists there. Perhaps it's not the best anyone can do, but it has to be for him, for now.

Edited 2023-08-31 18:04 (UTC)

Something in Bastien doesn't want to move. It wants to watch, inhibited. It wants to get hung up on Benedict's irritating presence, use the fact that there's an a audience as an excuse for staying distant and contained for that much longer, the way he once used Alexandrie's. It wants to tell By they have to go a little further to find even more privacy, like a closed door and no Benedict, before he's allowed to fall apart.

But over the last couple of years, something else has gotten stronger than the inhibition. Hardy enough to even acknowledge that Benedict matters to By, cares about him, and might be a helpful presence.

He crouches in front of Byerly, then tips forward out of the crouch to kneel with a knee on either side of his. He holds his jaw in both hands.

"Hey," he says. "Tout va bien, By. You're here. We're here. Look at me—" with encouragement from his hands, trying to raise Byerly's head. "You remember everything?"

Tout va bien, tout va bien. If Bastien is saying it, it has to be so. Bastien doesn't lie about the things that matter. Not to Byerly. Not lately. They got most of their lies out early, the two of them, and now he wouldn't tell him anything untrue.

"This is - unmanly," chokes Byerly, who sashays everywhere he goes and likes to wear gowns and yet still can't escape from this expectation of himself. Can't help but hate himself for this fear. But it's Bastien and Benedict, and so the shame is muted, more than it would be for others; the implicit apology hardly lingers.

And he looks up, his red-rimmed eyes meeting Bastien's. He clutches desperately at Bastien's wrist. "I remember it. I remember...what it felt to die, and then - and then I was in de Tolly's parlor. I - Did you - Were you all right? Both of you? They didn't - " He swings his head around just far enough to see Benedict, though he can't turn his face far. "They didn't come after you as well, did they? Maker, tell me you both lived."

The word unmanly pierces directly to Benedict's core, and he hates how well he understands: being one of the least manly people alive and still tying one's worth to masculinity, because… well, that’s what growing up rich gets you. He frowns, clenches a hand like he's about to pat his shoulder, but refrains when Byerly clutches at Bastien.

"We did," he says quickly, glancing to Bastien and back, "we both lived. We helped bring you back."

Edited (period tried to be ellipses >:C) 2023-09-01 00:46 (UTC)

“We were fine,” Bastien agrees.

He’ll mention his lost hearing some other time, when it will be romantic or funny. Or just when it won’t be one more thing to add to the overwhelm causing By’s panicky sentence fragments.

“Except for missing you.”

Maybe that’s the point where he would cry, if they were alone. But tending to By with an audience/co-tender is one thing. Crumbling himself would be another. The wall holds.

At a delay, he softens his hold on one side of By’s face. The side nearer to Benedict, specifically, to allow a little more movement to look in his direction. But only a little.

"Ah," Byerly says, and that heartache gives some small vent to the chaos in him. Loosens the cork so that a bit of the frothing misery can spew forth. His eyes well up, and he squeezes them shut, and he feels a little more real.

But, with his eyes closed, he turns his blind face towards Benedict. And he whispers, "Thank you."

But then, immediately afterward: "I can't believe I was so stupid. To not see it coming...I - Did Yseult make it out?" The question seems suddenly vitally urgent. His eyes come open once again, and he looks Bastien full in the face, expression pained. "Did she pass along my message?"

"How could you have seen it coming," Benedict whispers with sympathetic incredulity, in a stop talking madness sort of way, but he falls silent again when Byerly refers to Yseult and a message. He doesn't know what that means, glances at Bastien and gives a little shrug.

Bastien doesn’t return the look or the shrug, because he’s busy with a fresh burst of distantly feeling as if he betrayed Byerly by—

“She offered to, but I said no. She said I already knew, and I.”

The explanation of what exactly he thought and felt will have to wait, because now he’s glancing at Benedict, buttoning up his feelings and face again for his presence.

“Benedict told me about your letter,” he offers as a redirect, because it is not so private, and because it makes him feel less guilty. “A bit of it.”

In another circumstance, Byerly would not have been so easily led. But he is in these circumstances, and so he cannot follow up on that I said no. Instead, he looks at Benedict, and says, "Ah. Yes. The letter. I - " Wasn't planning on having to look you in the eye after saying those ludicrously sappy things. "Apologize for the sentimentality of it."

Then he looks back to Bastien. It's strange how guileless he is in his assumptions. The world-weary cynic, for whatever reason, doesn't think that either of these two would have suffered from any sort of base or petty emotions and would work as a team. Perhaps simply because of an underestimation of the effect his death would have, but perhaps it comes out of trust in them.

"Did you take on leadership?" Then, to Benedict, "And Artemaeus - did you manage to find some allyship with Flint? Did you secure a new place?"

Meeting Byerly's gaze in favor of not having to meet Bastien's, which he'd prefer not to do again as long as he lives if this keeps up, Benedict's mouth quirks into a sheepish little smile. Yes, it was sappy. Yes, he will treasure it forever.
"I'll be certain to hold it over your head the rest of your days," he says with a gentle dryness, growing somewhat more withdrawn when the line of questioning continues. He shakes his head, but then adds: "I barely had the time."

The squiggle of guilt that Bastien might have felt about this, too, is knocked flat and still by the mention of Benedict’s letter (Benedict’s stupid letter) being sentimental. His chin lifts. He rubs Byerly’s cheek with his thumb, because being unsorry and a little angry doesn’t at all lessen the miracle of his face being here, before letting go.

“I left.”

He’s still kneeling in front of By, hovering over his legs.

“Benedict told me when I was all packed and on my way out,” he has to say, because look at that horrible timing, that inexpert manipulation, but he also offers freely: “I would have left either way.”

Byerly stares at Bastien a moment, lips slightly parted in astonishment. But then his intellect catches up with his sense of duty, and he scolds himself: why would that be astonishing? Bastien talks about leaving often enough. He'd been on the verge of it, after Vincent had died; he'd raised it as a possibility even recently, during all that nonsense with the Chantry Mother's visit. He's made no secret of the fact that he's here, at least in part, to stick beside Byerly.

But - Well, perhaps it's a failing of the imagination. Sometimes it's hard to imagine a person - even a beloved person whose face you've memorized - as being truly different from you. But Bastien's definition of honor is different. It's always been different.

(And he crushes down the rebellious, stray thought that rises to mutter, actually, isn't that dishonorable?)

"I - see," By says. Then he takes a breath and says, "Well, that's all right," because that's better than asking whether the issue was that Benedict took too long to mention it or whether the issue was that Bastien left so soon. "It sounds like you all held it together quite well in spite of our losses. All of Riftwatch - to be able to execute on a plan like this. Stark and Flint and Yseult must have performed their duties phenomenally well."

Sparing either of them his commentary for the moment, Benedict nonetheless shoots Bastien a hard look. Yes, and you were a real piece of shit about it, his eyes say, even if his mouth doesn't.
He wrinkles his nose in an expression of subtle irritation when Byerly waves it off, but there's no reason to kick up all the mud again right this second. He won't take potshots, he'll be the bigger person. Bastien.

Edited (icon) 2023-09-01 19:52 (UTC)

Not noticing Benedict’s facial expressions at all is surely the best revenge. Not that Bastien intends it as revenge; he just doesn’t care enough to look away from Byerly to keep tabs on what Benedict is or isn’t doing with his nose.

“Stark, mostly,” Bastien says. “It was his team. His idea.” He sits back on his heels, reluctantly willing to tolerate that extra five inches of distance from Byerly’s face. For now. “And he came to find me. Maybe we should buy him a present.”

"Of course it would be him." Byerly's voice is rather vague and distracted. "It happened in his world, too. We went to see an entire play about it."

His gaze is turned down to the stone beneath him. He's lost for a moment. What more can he ask? What other information might cut through his confusion? He still half-hopes for a slap from one of them. He feels so...doubled. Like he himself is an actor observing the actions of a character he's playing, yet somehow without the power to break away from the script. It all feels like a dream.

And so he swallows. "I - suppose I ought to get up. Before someone sees me like this." Then - "I - don't know how to thank you. Either of you. For all that you did. I feel as though I'll be indebted beyond all possibility of repayment." (It's easier to fall back on these formulaic niceties, even towards these two. It's safe. Easy and thoughtless in a way that more heartfelt speech wouldn't be.)

"You should rest," is all Benedict says, still contending with how uncomfortable it is to see Byerly like this, to hear him speak this way. He might have enjoyed the gratitude, once upon a time, but at the moment all it does is remind him of how wrong everything was, how glad he'll be to get back to normal.

“Yes,” Bastien says, thrilled to agree with Benedict on a plan that involves ditching Benedict.

—and, less pettily, a plan that involves being genuinely alone with Byerly for the first time. To kiss him without feeling either rude or observed. To let his own guard down at all.

He’s still watching By’s face, keen-eyed, like maybe he can see past the polite mask if he examines it closely enough.

“Maybe we can find our girl, yeah?”

Some part of him really does want to rest here, to just press his face into the ground and not move. It’s the prospect of seeing Whiskey again that leads him to push through that notion. If he just goes a little further he can bury his fingers into her droopy neck and inhale her wonderful dog smell. All will seem right then.

“Yes,” he says, and for the second time forces himself to stand. (Maker, please, please, let them see no one on the way to his room. He will have no strength to put a wry and jocular show on. Not that he has to do so to keep secrecy - but he does have to do so.) “Yes, let’s go.”

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