girls learn to watch themselves in third person ( closed )

[ipseite]

WHO: Petrana, Julius & Marcus
WHAT: Who has two hands but maybe not for long? This bitch.
WHEN: Current
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Regards this, will discuss voluntary amputation, prosthesis in a generally ableist framing.

The prospect of this conversation is not one that Petrana relishes.

She puts it off, for a short time. She allows it to ruminate, though Wysteria had exhorted her to think carefully but quickly; she mulls over it in the privacy of only her own mind, and comes to no satisfying conclusions. That there are no satisfying conclusions to be had is

unacceptable. Yet: difficult to argue.

If she puts it off indefinitely, the conversation may not be hers to control. Young madame de Fonce is not known for her great patience, and the subject had seemed of such great import to her; to allow it go indefinitely undiscussed, perhaps equally unacceptable. She prefers, she decides firmly, that the first either Marcus or Julius should hear of it be from her, and not anyone else. Finding them to do so is hardly difficult, Vysvolod walking ahead of them on a more sedate outing,

“Madame de Fonce has proposed that I might remove my anchor-shard,” so abruptly that even the dog looks around.

Comments

[luaithre]

It's late enough in the day that the ice patches that had grown overnight around the courtyard have melted to puddles under the rarity of a sun unimpeded by cloud cover. In trade, the cold has a sharp and vital quality to it, but—if one were to ask Marcus—it is pleasant. On his hands are nicely made gloves of deep brown leather and he wears a heavy overcoat of rich blue, and he has always, a little, liked it when the weather had some hostility to it.

By all accounts, a pleasant day. When Petrana says this thing, he doesn't leap to any conclusion at all. He has her anchor-shard pierced hand, in fact, tucked into his elbow as they walk in a familiar configuration, and might not even immediately remember he does, given the likelihood her hands are also gloved.

So he asks, "How?" with more cautious confusion than anything else. It seems to him there'd have been a fuss made if they'd finally solved something that's been impossible for so long.

[overharrowed]

Julius notes but does not indulge the initial twinge of confusion and defensiveness; he isn't going to make anything easier that way, and his steps don't falter. Still, he looks at her, safely between the two of them and tucked into Marcus's side. They've found their way back to what feels mostly like equilibrium, months after losing and then not losing Marcus, and he too has been enjoying the day (though not, necessarily, the weather). The abruptness with which Petrana started the conversation suggests something about how the subject has weighed on her. Julius can defer to that.

Marcus's question, while brief, is pertinent. Julius doesn't add anything before she responds except his attention, along with the clear sense that he, too, would like to know how, exactly.

[ipseite]

Avoiding the explicit— leaves it the only possible question, she realises. For how abruptly she had raised the subject, she isn't in as much a hurry to answer that, and it takes her a few moments of quietly girding herself to say before she does:

“The only way. She advises the urgent removal of the limb to which it is attached, for...among other things, to guard against such fate as most often befalls a rifter. She considers my particular situation the most pressing.”

If Petrana is not here,

she is no where. A crumpled body at the bottom of a tower, a lifetime away. That there is a comforting freedom in knowing so is and is not the point, or besides it.

[luaithre]

He can imagine this conversation—this one they never have—in their room. How close the air might feel, the walls. It has a strong gravitational pull, the three of them together in their quarters, so much so that when one leaves it feels all a bit tilted out of order, and perhaps the topic would gain too much mass and density to bear were it raised over, say, breakfast.

This Marcus barely thinks when he is met with the abrupt wish they were back there, absorbing this answer and slowing his already slow stride as he automatically raises his attention up from Petrana, over her head to Julius.

(Bites back some little unfair twinge of temper in Poppell's direction, which doesn't mean it vanishes.)

[overharrowed]

Julius clearly isn't best pleased with Wysteria either, in the moment, but it's not helpful. Instead, he meets Marcus's gaze, then glances back down to Petrana. "I read her report," he says, instead, evenly. "I also suspect that coming, as it does, so entwined with two recent rifter departures, including Provost Stark, it's..."

He pauses.

"What did you think of her proposal?" Because he (and Marcus) clearly have their own opinions, but it's her arm. Her life. And finding out what conversation, specifically, they are having seems to him to be the most pressing order of business before he goes on.

[ipseite]

“I have no great wish to die.”

Her gaze remains direct ahead of her — easy to avoid either of theirs, walking between them and so slight as she is — it is easier to speak of, thusly, and not easy at all. A conversation that she would gladly have had them go on not having, indefinitely, for so long as she might be here to not have it with them—

and how long might that be. And what, after.

“Longevity is not a promise, as has been made abundantly clear.” Two Provosts, innumerable others. Only by inclination, of course: there are records, here and in the Inquisition. Were she determined to do so, it would be tedious but not impossible to catalogue each and every rifter who passed into and again out of Thedas, this way and any other. “That I prefer to know there is no chance of my returning to Sulleciel—”

She has not yet had to pay the price of that freedom, but it dogs her heels regardless.

“We have no absolute guarantee, either, that it truly protects against dissolution. But I have read their work, since our conversation. It is not uncompelling.”

[luaithre]

He can't help but recall the times that either he or Julius, from one to the other, have made mention of Petrana's tenuous relationship with physical existence in relation to the fragility of the mortal condition. Normally not within Petrana's earshot, but it needn't be. It has always been something of a certainty, although not exactly like an inevitability.

It must be something of a shared experience, loving a rifter. The day Adjei had taken his leave of Thedas, he'd put his arms around Petrana without saying anything and wondered if a rifter had ever vanished while being held thus.

Marcus runs his thumb across her knuckles. He is listening, rather than running wild with whatever reaction is building up in him.

[overharrowed]

After a pause, quietly: "Longevity isn't promised to any of us in the middle of a war." As they'd had recent occasion to face, messily, at Granitefell. But that's a wound he's not sure has healed properly yet (at least for him), so he doesn't linger over the point. "That isn't to say there aren't reasons to think of ways to tilt the odds in our favor, either."

It's a deliberate reaction, still. Giving the conversation some slack to see where it goes.

It's not as if he and Marcus haven't thought about the topic, separately and together, at length.

[ipseite]

“Madame de Fonce feels most strongly upon the subject.”

Her instinct, first of all, had been outright rejection— but had that been her only instinct, perhaps they wouldn't be speaking of it now. Or at least not in such tones, the measured and wary way that she circles the matter. She has no desire to give up an arm, and yet...

“I would not care to be a figure of pity in my work,” she says, after a moment. “There is no Provost Stark any longer, to so expertly craft such a prosthesis as she possesses— of course when I said this, she said that I must have hers—”

[luaithre]

A more overt reaction—an impatient breath out, timed such that it's easy to read as directed at Madame de Foncé rather than Petrana.

"Very kind," is a rare brush with sarcasm. Being someone who values speaking directly at a thing, it's an easier preference to act upon when one knows exactly how to tackle that thing. Here, well—

He shakes his head. "You must have given thought to it before her approaching you."

[overharrowed]

Julius doesn't add his opinion, but his demeanor suggests he's not much more impressed with Wysteria's offer than Marcus is. Instead, he reaches to touch her arm just above the elbow, a silent gesture of support if she needs to keep looking ahead to get through this. He'll let her answer Marcus's not-quite-question for the time being.

[ipseite]

“In a manner of speaking,” she answers, on a delay.

Not no, only—

not the way that one might mean, when one describes Madame de Cedoux as having given thought to a matter. The same way she has avoided the thought of her own impermanence, certainly, she has likewise set out to avoid thinking too hard about the prospect of her arm, separate from the rest of her. It is not something she's given serious consideration, prior to Wysteria's insistence that she must; prior to that, there has been no insistence that she must, and so she has allowed it to simply

exist, a thing about which she does not think.

Then, “No,” frankly, because it feels dishonest to say otherwise. “No more than any other terror one might avoid indulging.”

[luaithre]

And so Marcus hears: plenty.

Because of course she has. And he has, and Julius has. (That she hasn't is dismissed, moved along from.) But at the word terror, his hand presses hers. Beneath his thumb, the presence of the shard feels no different than her other hand, but he knows where it is well enough to brush against it without looking.

"We want you here." A glance skates to Julius. Not to speak for him, but absolutely to speak for him, he adds, "At whatever cost you feel necessary."

[overharrowed]

"It's your arm," he agrees, softly. "And it's your life. And it matters to us very much, but I don't think ... if you want our counsel, it's yours for the asking, you know that. But ultimately it's not a choice we can make for you." He isn't saying anything new. They all know as much. But he thinks it's worth articulating even so. He exhales and adds, a bit more affected, "We wouldn't be without you. But it isn't a certainty: this much time without your arm, this much with it. You're making odds better or worse, but we still can't know."

Which is an uncomfortable truth he's avoided looking at as much as possible, but one he's carried in his pocket since before they even met Marcus. How many rifters has he met who've gone in that span? (It feels, suddenly, as if he should have been keeping count.)

[ipseite]

“To object to even tilting those odds this much only for the sake of my vanity,” she says, helpless and quiet — it is no simple prospect ahead of her, and she has been teetering on yes, then, tell me what needs doing since she spoke with Wysteria, but it isn't so much that her fears are assuaged so much as she has even more fears, now—

and what is she most afraid of?

And how could it not be to lose all of this?

“I have cachet in the rooms in which I am able to gain entry, now,” is quieter still. “Were I to make myself some ... some figure of pity— at every turn since I came to Kirkwall, my competence and my credentials have been questioned, I haven't Madame de Fonce's undeniable gifts that might off-set—”

She has borne the repeated denial of her own, disproven it matter of fact, even exploited the way that she has been undermined or underestimated. But this feels— different, somehow. A more difficult thing to counterbalance, if she doesn't feel so assured any longer.

[luaithre]

As Julius speaks, there's a quiet hum of agreement from Marcus—in part, it codifies his own role in this a little clearer—which will not stop him from snapping unfairly at Wysteria at a later date, as though anyone could be made responsible for the reality that had been true since Petrana has existed here. For now, he can listen.

Until he can't. "Petra," he says, and he collectively stops them all in their tracks by halting. The scrape of a look to Julius is as close as he'd get to an apologetic if I may when it comes to voicing his opinions, and less because he thinks the other man will disagree with him—

"There is no condition you could bear nor circumstance you need wade through that would ever cast you as a figure of pity," is, nevertheless, a thing that likewise needs saying. "Not to any detriment or advantage you don't intend. You're too much yourself for that. If anyone ever tried, they'd find themselves falling over themselves to correct it."

And back to Julius. Help.

[overharrowed]

"You've undeniable gifts of your own," Julius says, ably picking up Marcus's thread. He rests his hand on her shoulder, now that they've stopped, the two men around her a bit of a wind-break by chance if not by design.

"I know what you mean, and I won't say that appearances don't affect the work you do. But if anyone were asking me, I would also express perfect confidence that you'd learn to adapt, and maybe even find a way to capitalize. How it affects your work will be ... any of us in Diplomacy could lose a limb not by choice in a battle or some other way."

He studies her face, as if trying to sound her. "But work is work. That's a problem you can solve. We can, together. We're talking about your life. The quality of it, and also the duration." He has every faith in her continuing to maneuver Hightown ably, with any number of limbs.