WHO: Siorus + You; Bastien & Byerly & Benedict & Vega WHAT: Warden intro, dinner party. WHEN: Spring 9:50 WHERE: Various NOTES: Catch-all for some open and closed stuff.
He arrives more than a week after the attack, when the dust has at least literally settled. Some of the rubble has been organized into piles. Walking here to there only occasionally requires climbing over an enormous piece of stone that used to be a wall. This is one such occasion, and Siorus has paused his exploration of the Gallows on top of the stone instead, taking advantage of the added height to look out over the gaping hope in the outer wall where one of the towers crashed down through it. The grey sea, the grey mountains. Spring has tinged the grey green.
Footsteps turn his head. He smiles, nods his head, looks back out at the sea, but second later overcomes it all—shyness, hesitation, the faraway distance of his interrupted thoughts—and turns more fully to say, "I think I'm lost," or maybe, "Can I help you with that?" if their hands look too full to add helping him to the pile, or only, "Hello," with some of the hopeful awkwardness of a new kid hovering at the edge of a ball game, if the kid were tall and brawny and bearded.
He sounds a little Fereldan. A little not. A familiar ear will hear the Chasind at the core of it. Whether or not he's underdressed for the weather, thin materials and rolled-up sleeves, depends entirely on one's opinion of whether mid-spring Kirkwall weather is cool or warm.
ii. the mountains
It's not a secret that he's a Warden, or was a Warden, or can't help being a Warden despite his best efforts, or however any given person would prefer to think about it. Familiarity with darkspawn and the ability to handle a few things that would kill other people are, openly, the main things he is here to offer Riftwatch and its Research division. But it's also not something he advertises, either—no armor, no title when he introduces himself, no picking up Blight-coated stones and licking them as a party trick.
So it may or may not be new information, heavily implied, when he holds up a hand to encourage stopping where they are on the trail that winds and switchbacks up the mountain.
"We could go around," he offers first. And it's probably true. But ahead, somewhere out of sight, between them and the griffon nest they're trying to reach to check on and count eggs: "Darkspawn. Just a few."
Isaac confirms, leaned on his staff and short for breath. Just checking that there’s absolutely no reason they need to go bother the nice, deadly, Blight-soaked monsters, and -
A deep inhale, exhaled as a sigh with, "Yeah," on the tail of it. "We'd need to go fast."
He gives Isaac a sidelong once-over. The calculation contains a hint of old man, very debatably warranted from anyone fewer than twenty years younger. Maybe it's thin man. Short for breath man.
How much would anyone miss a new face? How many griffon eggs can he plausibly invent? Four? Four is good, significant, but few enough that they won't overrun -
The chief question's this: How many darkspawn are on this mountain? And it's maybe one more, if he ditches Siorus.
"I’m not getting mauled without witnesses, they’ll only call it a heart attack," He saw that look. "Alright."
No armor, thick arms; if Siorus isn't planning swordplay, perhaps he'll pitch them off the mountain. Not the worst plan - the path breaks to cliff-edge, steep enough to skitter.
"Keep them off me," Isaac finally straightens, the staff angling out sharp. "And I’ll keep them confused."
This is a terrible idea. They all are; you pick the least, and hope for the best.
For a second Siorus' expression pinches, brow furrowing less with confusion—though his life has left him unfamiliar with the full scope and style of Andrastian mages' abilities—than with a desire to press for further information for the sake of it. He resists, and he smiles. "Deal."
The cliffside path ahead switches back to wrap around the mountain in the other direction. The darkspawn are both ahead and above, which would be fine if they were too stupid to use bows and projectiles, but Thedas has never been so lucky. They could hide, or back up and wait for them to come around the bend, or he could ask Isaac to climb, or.
Siorus stands there, thinks it through, says, "I'll be right back," and folds himself into a large bird, brown and charitably ugly-cute. Its eyes aren't made for the daylight, but neither are darkspawns', so they're even.
He leaves Isaac behind to flit up the cliffside, pausing here and there on scrubby branches to reevaluate his positioning, and disappears over the upper edge.
Then: heavy thudding footsteps, first only rattling rocks loose to skitter down onto the path below, then heralding four blighted bodies that go sliding over the edge. It's orderly: they're escaping, not being thrown, sliding down on their armored hips or backs with weapons in hand.
Isaac startles for the bird. You hear of these things. It’s just another to witness it, the strange, blurred moment where man becomes — owlet?
(He has questions, too. They'll both have to wait.)
So that takes a moment. One in which it occurs to Isaac that they haven’t exchanged either half of the plan in whole. The first crude body to barrel down comes a shock. The rest, a recoil: For all his time in the Approach, Ghislain, a half dozen skirmishes; it’s only intensified. Lips close, lungs shut, a struggling reflex against the unnatural.
But they haven’t seen him just yet. Isaac's knuckles whiten over his staff. Not a channel, here and now, but a talisman. It’s always a sign, He’d said. That something’s gone to shit.
Fingers flex. Fade ripples, thickens; drags the brood's momentum into strange, seasick spiral. Two hurlocks stall, a third staggers into open air, metal crashing down the cliffside. The last, though — taller, burlier, an arrow fletching its skull — shrugs the spell aside.
And turns to lay eyes on Isaac. It rolls an axe in hand.
"Hello," flatly replies the tall, angular woman below, who has had a similar aimlessness to her presence as she wanders the rubble, looking for familiar faces and finding them drawn and dirty. This one, at least, has the spirit to climb up on a piece of wall.
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about sleeping arrangements," she hazards, having made the astute observation that her old room has crumbled into the harbor.
Siorus considers her—and her armor—for several seconds more than such a basic question warrants before he gives half a shake of his head, chin jerking to one side. "I just got here," doesn't mean no. Only a caveat. "They told me I could set up a tent anywhere I found room."
And while he's been here a few nights, he hasn't done that yet. On the clear nights he's been happy to look up at the clouds and patches of stars between them. On the wet ones, a simple thing for a bird to shelter in a nook.
Then he probably doesn't know what befell the Gallows, and she won't trouble him with it. "Right then," Teren concludes, looks around, gives a little sigh, and unceremoniously drops her pack to the ground. This is as good a place as any.
The time he thought the Wardens might send someone after him, that's now long past. It mostly ended with Clarel. And any lingering paranoia proved fruitless over the years. He hasn't been horribly hard to find. The old Wardens who came to the Legion of the Dead, if nothing else, had some opportunity to send a message back if it were important. If someone meant to punish him, they'd have done it already.
But it's kind of awkward, you know?
He says, "I'm one too," with a jerk toward her chest plate. "A Warden. Kind of. I don't figure you're here for me, but just so you don't feel lied to if it comes up later."
The sound Teren makes in response is akin to a grunt, but with an interrogative bend at the end: ah, are you, interesting, etc. She almost smiles, a wry amusement in her more-open eye before it's overtaken by something else, and her expression goes flat again-- she's not here for him or anyone else.
"How long?" she asks instead, leaning one hip against the debris.
Shit timing, he doesn't say. That'd imply that the timing was an accident. In his view it wasn't. More mages for their insane plan. Was she there, at Adamant? He doesn't remember her. But every face there was a new one, equally resented, and then he was gone. So she might have been.
Only to mop up the blood after the fact, but the shrewd glance she offers suggests Teren is thinking along similar lines: there were the Wardens who ignored the false Calling, and there were The Other Ones.
"Missed the Blight, then," she observes, "always reassuring." Not that she didn't nearly miss it herself, but then, if she hadn't, she likely wouldn't still be here.
It occurs to Vlast that he's never actually repaired anything before. He's seen ruins, of course he's seen ruins. Even before Balthazar, even before his grandfather, Palawa Joko had laid waste to so much of Elona.
Be he never really thought much on it. Buildings rise, buildings fall. It seemed simply a thing that occurred, like the coming and going of seasons. He could chase the Awakened from a region, but he never stuck around to see if the people they'd been terrorizing would return or rebuild. He certainly had no inclination to help.
Standing in the middle of the wreckage of the Gallows, Vlast's perspective is rapidly changing with physical proximity to the bodies being pulled from the rubble. The concept of grief is becoming far less abstract as he watches people break down when they recognize missing loved ones by clothes or trinkets or tokens, but not their faces, never their faces. Not anymore. Necks don't bend liked that. Skulls aren't shaped like that.
Of course, standing around and watching people mourn isn't going to fly. People keep handing him heavy sacks or carts full of rubble like he should know what to do with them and sending him on his way with nary an explanation. Not that he's bothered to ask, of course, that would be far too straightforward and he has no desire to let his ignorance show.
Presently, his arms are laden now with a number of heavy looking sacks. He's not sure what's in them or where he's supposed to be taking them or why.
When the person atop what was once a wall asks if he needs help, Vlast gives him a long, measured, calculating look, as if trying read ulterior motives in the stranger's face. He can't, of course; facial expressions and their nuances are, at present, a closed book to him. But he tries.
"I don't know where these belong."
His voice is a low growl. It would probably be frightening coming out of a wall of a Qunari, but it's tinged with such petulance that it rather takes the edge off.
"I see. Maybe I can't help you, then," Siorus says.
He's new; he's disoriented by the high walls and the rubble; he doesn't have the faintest idea where anything belongs. But he hops down anyway, landing with as much grace as could ever be fairly expected of a man his size, and approaches to have a look at the sacks anyway.
There's no fear in the look he gives the fellow's horns. Curiosity, though, definitely. He's never seen a Qunari before.
I think I’m lost says the newcomer, and it’s that Chasind voice which draws Astrid’s initial attention and curiosity, like a hound hearing a familiar whistle. Rare enough up here, north across the Waking Sea. Her own Avvar accent sounds Fereldan-but-not, too — not precisely the same as his, but with enough similarities in the turn of the vowels — and she’s equally thin-dressed, enjoying this scarce spring warmth.
Southerners.
“Where are you trying to go?” she asks, sizing him up, but her expression’s friendly. His face is unfamiliar, but that’s not saying much. The woman’s hauling some firewood on a little trolley; bringing it up to the central tower from the ferry, helping to replenish stocks while brawnier labourers continue to work on the rubble.
His eyes light with recognition, the relieved smile of someone hearing something familiar. Kind of familiar. Siorus hasn't known any Avvar in his time. None came to his village, while the village was standing, and none to the Fereldan hills where they relocated. Maybe the Wardens had a few, but he was gone before he met them. But still—
"Wherever the food is," he says. "I was told meals are included but I haven't seen one yet."
“Oooh well. The old kitchens are out of commission, but we’ve some outdoors kitchens still. There’s food, though nothing fancy.”
Someone else, accustomed to finer fare, would probably turn up their nose at Riftwatch rations. But it’s nice not existing in perpetual starvation: not having to hunt your own game, scraping the barrel to use every last piece of the animal, food-stores fermented and salted to survive the winter, getting through the cold and unforgiving Frostbacks. Guaranteed square meals every day is an improvement.
Astrid drags her burden closer to him, before dropping the wheelbarrow’s handles. The palms of her hands are raw and red from the weight, and she flexes her fingers where they’ve been locked into the grip. “Strike you a deal: help me get this last batch over to the tower, and I’ll lead you to the grub.”
Siorus would have agreed, easy, but the glimpse of her red palms makes him agree even easier. "You could have asked for more than that," he says, taking up the handles in her place. "I'll do a dozen more if you want. After the food."
He hasn't eaten since he arrived in Kirkwall, due to—
"I thought pickpockets were partly made up," he tells her, more readily than he'd admit it to anyone else he's met here so far. She might be savvier than this, but he assumes she'll at least understand the concept of a man who's spent more time bartering goods for goods than storing up coins and learning how to handle them safely. "I thought they existed, but it was maybe one in a city? Two? And the rest was exaggeration. But it took about fifteen minutes."
“Ohhhh no,” Astrid says as she falls into pace beside him, starting to lead the way along the island walk, and there’s a wincing sympathetic dismay in her voice. That’s rough, buddy.
“I’ve heard Kirkwall’s even worse than usual ‘cos it’s so close to the front and we’re packed with refugees from Starkhaven? People are desperate.” Which is a kindly read on the city’s thriving criminal population, but then her tone shifts to the mutual grumbling of someone who’s been through the same thing:
“I made the mistake of lingering to stare at the big statues in the port and someone nicked one of the daggers right off my hip. Didn’t even feel ’em cut the belt. The pickpocketing’s practically, like, an art.”
Lady Vega Arany's invitation might have been left mysteriously in her pigeonhole, if the towers were fully accessible and structurally sound. But they aren't, so it's delivered by a mysterious go-between instead—a man of average height and pudgy build, polite with a faint air of humoring someone, somewhere, by presenting the little card with flourish and a bow.
The invitation itself is less mysterious. Luring young women to private residences until false pretenses is questionable behavior even when no one's in the middle of a war. So there are names—Byerly's, Bastien's, and Benedict's—to accompany the time, day, address, and indication it's for dinner.
Benedict's invitation, meanwhile, comes in the form of a finer dinner than he's usually provided being brought home from an assortment of merchants and street vendors, and the table being dragged to the center of the room the way it is when company is coming and they need more room for chairs, and Bastien holding up two jacket options to silently ask Byerly to pick one out for him. Him Bastien, not him Benedict. Benedict is on his own.
By an insane stroke of luck, a good portion of Benedict’s most treasured belongings were here with him during the Gallows attack, and as such are not still lying strewn about under various debris. Which means he could dress nicely, given the option, but he’s been dragging his feet by reading on the sofa with Rat Red curled protectively on his chest.
“I don’t know if I’ve got a debate in me tonight,” he remarks, breezily apologetic, “but I can fuck off after dinner if you need the space.”
He’s not missing dinner. He’s never missing dinner again as long as he lives.
Byerly takes a moment to narrow his eyes at the jackets, scratching his chin-scruff thoughtfully. After a moment, he points decisively at the slightly more ornate.
"That won't be necessary. No debates, I promise. What do you think...?"
The last question is directed at Bastien, as Byerly has moved over to the table and is debating the placement of a decorative vase. It takes up a bit of space, but it is charmingly gaudy.
"I think... absolutely," Bastien says as he wrangles his arms into the chosen jacket. The other he folds neatly and—to save precious seconds running it back upstairs, when their guest might arrive any moment—leaves behind in the tablecloth's place in the cupboard.
He gives Benedict a look. An inquisitive, mildly judgmental look, like is that what you're wearing. That counts as fair warning, right?
He snaps the tablecloth open like a pro, with the intentional addition of catching By in the bum with it, and flutters it in over the table before the vase can land anywhere permanently.
"Us and them, or us and them?" he asks, pointing first at two sets of adjacent chairs, better for the two of them being able to see both Benedict and Vega at all times, and two sets of opposite chairs, better for forcing Benedict and Vega to look in each other's directions as often as possible. Each tempting.
If anybody cares to glance at the time they'll notice that Vega arrives precisely at the time she was instructed to and even has the invitation with her, clutched in a hand as if she thinks she might be stopped and questioned along the way or has to show it to get in. Bastien and Byerly's house is... fine, if not a bit small. Apparently Benedict is also in there, staying for a time. Perhaps he's been put into a corner.
She's smiling at her own joke when the door is answered, revealed to be wearing her best (read: only remaining) dress, dark blue and utterly unexciting in shape, cut and fabric. It fits her and is practical; the sleeves do not bother her hands. Her hair is up.
It is oddly pleasant to be invited to something like this even in the midst of chaos.
Bastien's odd look receives an uneasy glance in response: what? But Benedict barely has time to reconsider his choices when the knock comes at the door, and his indiscretion becomes all too clear when the visitor is revealed.
"Shit," he whispers under his breath, and slips off the sofa, muttering an "I'll, um, be right back," to whoever's near enough to hear him in his attempt to abscond. He's just going to change his clothes, promise.
Stopping Benedict must fall to Byerly—and to Whiskey, the large droopy-faced hound who's partway down the stairs to see who this new voice belongs to, but no further, before lying back down stretched across the width of the steps to observe. Bastien is busy at the door, ducking to catch the scruffy rat-faced terrier who's attempting a much more energetic investigation.
"Mademoiselle Arany!" he says as he stands up straight again, squirming dog tucked into his arm like a parcel. "We're so glad you could make it. Please come in."
The room she's invited into has been neatened up for her benefit, but there's still a friendly amount of clutter—overstuffed bookshelves, a leaning stack of cups on the fireplace mantel, that kind of thing—and an assortment of secondhand furniture that prioritizes extra seating over flow. But between the two of them, they do have something of an eye for aesthetics, and so it all coalesces into a respectably shabby maximalist style, warmly lit and begging for company, Benedict's attempt to flee from it notwithstanding.
Introductions may not be necessary, after so many weeks of passing familiarity in the Gallows, but they're only polite: "I'm Bastien, and this," the terrier in his armpit, "is Rat Red, Whiskey on the stairs, Byerly Rutyer, and of course you know our Benedict."
Our Benedict has had an arm thrown around his shoulders in a way that looks congenial - and which is - but which is also absolutely holding him in place and preventing his flight. Byerly is not particularly strong, but he's certainly strong enough to hold Benedict in place.
"We hope you don't mind a meal that isn't home-cooked," By says cheerfully. "We're not dreadfully poor chefs, ourselves, but we promise that Owain down the road is far more skilled at bread-baking, and our local silent and nameless cheesemonger has the finest stock in the city."
Knowing better than to struggle too obviously, Benedict settles for shooting Byerly an incredulous look with a little wiggle of his shoulders.
"Hello, Vega," he says, as lightly as possible for someone who is dangerously close to entering a Snit-- it's not her fault, but nobody likes to be ambushed.
slides in on my knees in such a cool way you forgive me for being late
Containing the wriggling dog was a good move considering the awkward little look Vega gives it, her attention darting elsewhere instantly as if determined to ignore it completely. Especially in favour of looking around the place, her head craning right around the corner before they get into the room properly. Verdict? It is very homey.
"Lovely," she says absently. And then, looking directly at him with an arched brow, "Oh, Benedict. Fancy seeing you here."
As if she didn't know he would be. As if their previous 'interaction' never happened at all. Which it didn't, not really, because it wasn't Benedict she was screaming at and threatening but that's in the past now and Vega won't dare bring it up, not tonight. Not with witnesses.
She smiles at Byerly and Bastien both. "I don't mind at all. Your invitation was very cheering. The Gallows are dismal at the moment."
"Remarkable that they managed to get worse," Bastien says, tone mild and insult blunted by the kind of affection generally reserved for, say, a relative who's a horrible drag to have around but who's been very financially supportive and doesn't mean to ruin every dinner.
Nevertheless. Dismal.
"Here, sit down," he says, gesturing not to the table, but to the settee. "You and Benedict can catch up a moment while we—" eavesdrop shamelessly "—finish setting the table."
"Mmhm," Benedict intones toward Vega, a bit of anxiety creeping through his annoyance: he hadn't even considered that he might owe her an explanation (or worse, an apology), and now this is happening. Another dark look at Bastien precedes his hesitant alighting on the settee, because to make a fuss at this point would look worse than just enduring it.
Vega wonders if Benedict thinks she can't see these furtive looks happening; she decides she will be graceful and ignore all of it. Let them pretend this was planned to the letter and that everybody is happy to be here. She joins him on the settee, smoothing her dress with her hands. She actually feels too warm in it. It pinches her under the arms.
This is bringing back some ridiculous memories: the both of them younger but still sitting together, like this. Vega bites the inside of her cheek and reminds herself: you don't need to perform, here. Nobody is watching you.
"Should I ask you something only you would know, just to make sure it really is you this time?"
It takes all of his willpower not to roll his eyes-- not because Vega's wrong, per se, but because he doesn't know how else to react when he's so uncomfortable, forced into a meeting with his estranged erstwhile fiancée while looking like absolute shit.
"You're welcome to," he says, toning down the sulk, but only a little bit.
"Ask him why he did not tell us about you," Bastien suggests from off to the side, tone pleasant as anything, between setting out butter and whispering with Byerly about which cabinet has the blackberry preserves.
Vega gasps and turns her body inward to face Benedict, her hands perched on her knees like little birds. "Why didn't you tell them about me?"
This is very fun. She would have never told anybody else here about Benedict, for example, and wouldn't have wanted him to tell anybody about her in return. Not really. It's fun to bully him, that's all.
An incredulous glance to Bastien is followed by something of a double-take with the one-two punch, and Benedict wrinkles his nose in instinctive annoyance.
"Why would I need to tell you something so inconsequential?" he asks, fully and immediately knowing that this is the wrong thing to say, only trying to salvage it by adding: "we didn't get married, we barely had a relationship. We met what, twice?"
And he was definitely rude both times, as well as almost certainly intoxicated. He has the vague memory of making snide comments about a young wealthy girl's hair or clothes or what have you, but the real problem is it happened so many times that it could have been anyone.
Vega's mouth drops open and then snaps shut, so hard her teeth click together. She abruptly goes quite red, fighting embarrassment in complete silence. It's not that he's wrong, it's the way that he said it; she'd forgotten how abrupt his rudeness is and that it is fun to be mean to him right up until he is mean back. She swallows.
"Three times," she says, voice as level as she can make it. "But the last one was very short, because you walked out before the food was served."
He sees that color rise in her face, understands that what he said was Not Nice, and yet there's still that familiar feeling of pressure, like his mother is standing right behind him and gearing up to berate him as soon as they leave the room.
Tormenting Benedict: a joy. Tormenting Vega, who did not ask for this: out of the question. And so as soon as Byerly sees the least sign of distress on her face, he steps in.
"Maker above, Artemaeus," he says, shaking his head, "you must have been falling down drunk not to remember so lovely a creature."
And then he turns his attention on Vega. Byerly has a very respectable smoulder, all things considered - a privilege bestowed upon him by his very long eyelashes and very dark eyes. He turns that on her now, smiling at her in a way that is flirtatious without being particularly forward.
Bastien glances sidelong at Byerly, mouth twitching into a brief smile. The smolder isn't aimed at him, but he's in the splash zone, and he's rather infamously susceptible to Byerly's charms.
He's also years past possessive fretting about where those charms are aimed. Even if Vega were ten years older and the strong odds she'd be mean to Byerly in the way he enjoyed were a real threat—no they wouldn't be. But he flicks at Byerly's shoulder with the backs of his fingers anyway. Behave without enough insistence to really interrupt the exchange. Just for show.
It's a fine line to try to walk, to let Benedict suffer just enough to squirm but not enough he fully shuts down into a sulk or runs out of the house to escape and never comes back. As Bastien puts the finishing touch on the table, he wiggles his hand in Benedict's direction to vie for his attention, then gestures to his own jacket and points toward the stairs, mouthing I can go get you one.
Eugh, what is this power? Vega abruptly leans back in her seat when Byerly turns to her, flustered by the sudden turning on of charm without fully understanding why. "Stop that," she splutters. She is beginning to think they're all a bit dreadful actually; they have clearly not considered she is equally likely to blow up and run out of the house to escape, but that is because Benedict has not mentioned her! Not even once.
She breathes out hard through her nose.
To Benedict, who has suddenly become the safest option, "Do all three of you live here?"
True to Bastien's intuition, Benedict is dangerously close to entering a sulk when Byerly gangs up on him-- he glances over to the former at the finger wiggle, is about to nod if only to escape temporarily-- and then Vega blindsides him by shutting Byerly down and speaking to him again. With alarming civility.
He looks at her for a moment like he has no idea what she said, but quickly recovers with a little shake of his head, thoroughly rattled out of his impending mood.
"No," he says, with a quick glance to Byerly, what just happened, "just while I'm recovering." A pause, and he adds, "...from. The envy demon."
Byerly was not expecting to be yelled at. He was expecting the young lady to blush a little and look flattered by his attentions. And so he straightens up, frowning, affronted, and looks around at Bastien with a clear expression of what the hell.
Bastien puts his hand on Byerly's shoulder for a sympathetic squeeze—and as his hand falls back to his side, with professional fluidity, positioning, and awareness of everyone's lines of sight all coming together to ensure Vega's eyes in particular are spared, for a fleeting moment grabs his ass as well.
He can set the table, though, yes. With Bastien's assistance, handing over dishes and flatware from the cupboards.
"I think it is more for our sake than his, at this point," Bastien appends to Benedict's explanation to Vega. "We were so worried about him, and we felt so awful for not seeing enough of him to notice right away. A few more weeks of bringing him milk and tucking him at night and we might feel better."
So earnest. Surely not an attempt to torment Benedict further.
"Why is it you had not seen much of each other before? Different social circles? Choice? Is there a generations-long feud between your families that your betrothal might have brought an end to, and those hopes were cruelly dashed when Benedict disappeared into the barbaric South? And what is your family like, Mademoiselle? Should I feel sorry for them, that you are here, or only happy for you?"
Vega is either immune to these reactions or pretending to ignore everybody involved in them, save for Benedict, who she has turned her body in toward to effectively cut Bastien and Byerly both from the conversation. It's strange hearing somebody other than herself teasing Benedict in a mean way, even sounds terrible coming from Bastien. She says, with as much sympathy as is possible (for her), "Well — I hope you also feel better, Benedict."
And having made her point, she finally looks at Bastien to answer him properly. "You should feel happy for all of us, I think, because my family did not want me around any longer than I had to be and I wanted to be rid of them. We're both lucky that I have this... this thing in my hand." The shard, not shown. She's become used to holding her hand stiffly in her lap when speaking, palm down.
"To answer your other question: we lived in different cities. We only saw each other when we had to."
The ass-grab is almost enough for Benedict to miss the bit about milk and tucking in, but in his distraction he allows it to slide (when will it be his turn), and drags his focus back to Vega.
"I do," he says, easily enough, quickly adding, "...and I'm sorry. About your family." It's something he understands well (he thinks), and he's sincere when he says it, glancing down at her hand.
Perhaps as a peace offering, he slips off the glove he usually wears on his left hand, showing her his own shard. "It does complicate things."
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open.
He arrives more than a week after the attack, when the dust has at least literally settled. Some of the rubble has been organized into piles. Walking here to there only occasionally requires climbing over an enormous piece of stone that used to be a wall. This is one such occasion, and Siorus has paused his exploration of the Gallows on top of the stone instead, taking advantage of the added height to look out over the gaping hope in the outer wall where one of the towers crashed down through it. The grey sea, the grey mountains. Spring has tinged the grey green.
Footsteps turn his head. He smiles, nods his head, looks back out at the sea, but second later overcomes it all—shyness, hesitation, the faraway distance of his interrupted thoughts—and turns more fully to say, "I think I'm lost," or maybe, "Can I help you with that?" if their hands look too full to add helping him to the pile, or only, "Hello," with some of the hopeful awkwardness of a new kid hovering at the edge of a ball game, if the kid were tall and brawny and bearded.
He sounds a little Fereldan. A little not. A familiar ear will hear the Chasind at the core of it. Whether or not he's underdressed for the weather, thin materials and rolled-up sleeves, depends entirely on one's opinion of whether mid-spring Kirkwall weather is cool or warm.
ii. the mountains
It's not a secret that he's a Warden, or was a Warden, or can't help being a Warden despite his best efforts, or however any given person would prefer to think about it. Familiarity with darkspawn and the ability to handle a few things that would kill other people are, openly, the main things he is here to offer Riftwatch and its Research division. But it's also not something he advertises, either—no armor, no title when he introduces himself, no picking up Blight-coated stones and licking them as a party trick.
So it may or may not be new information, heavily implied, when he holds up a hand to encourage stopping where they are on the trail that winds and switchbacks up the mountain.
"We could go around," he offers first. And it's probably true. But ahead, somewhere out of sight, between them and the griffon nest they're trying to reach to check on and count eggs: "Darkspawn. Just a few."
ii
Isaac confirms, leaned on his staff and short for breath. Just checking that there’s absolutely no reason they need to go bother the nice, deadly, Blight-soaked monsters, and -
Ah. Well, they can’t all be so grim as Ellis.
"Can they tell that you’re here?"
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He gives Isaac a sidelong once-over. The calculation contains a hint of old man, very debatably warranted from anyone fewer than twenty years younger. Maybe it's thin man. Short for breath man.
"Or you could go around."
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How much would anyone miss a new face? How many griffon eggs can he plausibly invent? Four? Four is good, significant, but few enough that they won't overrun -
The chief question's this: How many darkspawn are on this mountain? And it's maybe one more, if he ditches Siorus.
"I’m not getting mauled without witnesses, they’ll only call it a heart attack," He saw that look. "Alright."
No armor, thick arms; if Siorus isn't planning swordplay, perhaps he'll pitch them off the mountain. Not the worst plan - the path breaks to cliff-edge, steep enough to skitter.
"Keep them off me," Isaac finally straightens, the staff angling out sharp. "And I’ll keep them confused."
This is a terrible idea. They all are; you pick the least, and hope for the best.
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The cliffside path ahead switches back to wrap around the mountain in the other direction. The darkspawn are both ahead and above, which would be fine if they were too stupid to use bows and projectiles, but Thedas has never been so lucky. They could hide, or back up and wait for them to come around the bend, or he could ask Isaac to climb, or.
Siorus stands there, thinks it through, says, "I'll be right back," and folds himself into a large bird, brown and charitably ugly-cute. Its eyes aren't made for the daylight, but neither are darkspawns', so they're even.
He leaves Isaac behind to flit up the cliffside, pausing here and there on scrubby branches to reevaluate his positioning, and disappears over the upper edge.
Then: heavy thudding footsteps, first only rattling rocks loose to skitter down onto the path below, then heralding four blighted bodies that go sliding over the edge. It's orderly: they're escaping, not being thrown, sliding down on their armored hips or backs with weapons in hand.
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(He has questions, too. They'll both have to wait.)
So that takes a moment. One in which it occurs to Isaac that they haven’t exchanged either half of the plan in whole. The first crude body to barrel down comes a shock. The rest, a recoil: For all his time in the Approach, Ghislain, a half dozen skirmishes; it’s only intensified. Lips close, lungs shut, a struggling reflex against the unnatural.
But they haven’t seen him just yet. Isaac's knuckles whiten over his staff. Not a channel, here and now, but a talisman. It’s always a sign, He’d said. That something’s gone to shit.
Fingers flex. Fade ripples, thickens; drags the brood's momentum into strange, seasick spiral. Two hurlocks stall, a third staggers into open air, metal crashing down the cliffside. The last, though — taller, burlier, an arrow fletching its skull — shrugs the spell aside.
And turns to lay eyes on Isaac. It rolls an axe in hand.
Ah. Ah, shit.
i
This one, at least, has the spirit to climb up on a piece of wall.
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about sleeping arrangements," she hazards, having made the astute observation that her old room has crumbled into the harbor.
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And while he's been here a few nights, he hasn't done that yet. On the clear nights he's been happy to look up at the clouds and patches of stars between them. On the wet ones, a simple thing for a bird to shelter in a nook.
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"Right then," Teren concludes, looks around, gives a little sigh, and unceremoniously drops her pack to the ground. This is as good a place as any.
"Shit timing." To both of them.
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The time he thought the Wardens might send someone after him, that's now long past. It mostly ended with Clarel. And any lingering paranoia proved fruitless over the years. He hasn't been horribly hard to find. The old Wardens who came to the Legion of the Dead, if nothing else, had some opportunity to send a message back if it were important. If someone meant to punish him, they'd have done it already.
But it's kind of awkward, you know?
He says, "I'm one too," with a jerk toward her chest plate. "A Warden. Kind of. I don't figure you're here for me, but just so you don't feel lied to if it comes up later."
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"How long?" she asks instead, leaning one hip against the debris.
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Shit timing, he doesn't say. That'd imply that the timing was an accident. In his view it wasn't. More mages for their insane plan. Was she there, at Adamant? He doesn't remember her. But every face there was a new one, equally resented, and then he was gone. So she might have been.
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"Missed the Blight, then," she observes, "always reassuring." Not that she didn't nearly miss it herself, but then, if she hadn't, she likely wouldn't still be here.
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"I am from the Wilds. I didn't miss anything."
He comes down from his perch on the ruined wall carefully, crouching and using his hands for balance.
"Where were you?"
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"Here," Teren replies languidly, "or. Skyhold. Caught up with this rotten lot, a fair few of us denying the False Calling."
i
Be he never really thought much on it. Buildings rise, buildings fall. It seemed simply a thing that occurred, like the coming and going of seasons. He could chase the Awakened from a region, but he never stuck around to see if the people they'd been terrorizing would return or rebuild. He certainly had no inclination to help.
Standing in the middle of the wreckage of the Gallows, Vlast's perspective is rapidly changing with physical proximity to the bodies being pulled from the rubble. The concept of grief is becoming far less abstract as he watches people break down when they recognize missing loved ones by clothes or trinkets or tokens, but not their faces, never their faces. Not anymore. Necks don't bend liked that. Skulls aren't shaped like that.
Of course, standing around and watching people mourn isn't going to fly. People keep handing him heavy sacks or carts full of rubble like he should know what to do with them and sending him on his way with nary an explanation. Not that he's bothered to ask, of course, that would be far too straightforward and he has no desire to let his ignorance show.
Presently, his arms are laden now with a number of heavy looking sacks. He's not sure what's in them or where he's supposed to be taking them or why.
When the person atop what was once a wall asks if he needs help, Vlast gives him a long, measured, calculating look, as if trying read ulterior motives in the stranger's face. He can't, of course; facial expressions and their nuances are, at present, a closed book to him. But he tries.
"I don't know where these belong."
His voice is a low growl. It would probably be frightening coming out of a wall of a Qunari, but it's tinged with such petulance that it rather takes the edge off.
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He's new; he's disoriented by the high walls and the rubble; he doesn't have the faintest idea where anything belongs. But he hops down anyway, landing with as much grace as could ever be fairly expected of a man his size, and approaches to have a look at the sacks anyway.
There's no fear in the look he gives the fellow's horns. Curiosity, though, definitely. He's never seen a Qunari before.
"What's in them?"
i
Southerners.
“Where are you trying to go?” she asks, sizing him up, but her expression’s friendly. His face is unfamiliar, but that’s not saying much. The woman’s hauling some firewood on a little trolley; bringing it up to the central tower from the ferry, helping to replenish stocks while brawnier labourers continue to work on the rubble.
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"Wherever the food is," he says. "I was told meals are included but I haven't seen one yet."
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Someone else, accustomed to finer fare, would probably turn up their nose at Riftwatch rations. But it’s nice not existing in perpetual starvation: not having to hunt your own game, scraping the barrel to use every last piece of the animal, food-stores fermented and salted to survive the winter, getting through the cold and unforgiving Frostbacks. Guaranteed square meals every day is an improvement.
Astrid drags her burden closer to him, before dropping the wheelbarrow’s handles. The palms of her hands are raw and red from the weight, and she flexes her fingers where they’ve been locked into the grip. “Strike you a deal: help me get this last batch over to the tower, and I’ll lead you to the grub.”
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He hasn't eaten since he arrived in Kirkwall, due to—
"I thought pickpockets were partly made up," he tells her, more readily than he'd admit it to anyone else he's met here so far. She might be savvier than this, but he assumes she'll at least understand the concept of a man who's spent more time bartering goods for goods than storing up coins and learning how to handle them safely. "I thought they existed, but it was maybe one in a city? Two? And the rest was exaggeration. But it took about fifteen minutes."
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“I’ve heard Kirkwall’s even worse than usual ‘cos it’s so close to the front and we’re packed with refugees from Starkhaven? People are desperate.” Which is a kindly read on the city’s thriving criminal population, but then her tone shifts to the mutual grumbling of someone who’s been through the same thing:
“I made the mistake of lingering to stare at the big statues in the port and someone nicked one of the daggers right off my hip. Didn’t even feel ’em cut the belt. The pickpocketing’s practically, like, an art.”
closed to byerly, benedict, & 𝒱ℰ𝒢𝒜.
The invitation itself is less mysterious. Luring young women to private residences until false pretenses is questionable behavior even when no one's in the middle of a war. So there are names—Byerly's, Bastien's, and Benedict's—to accompany the time, day, address, and indication it's for dinner.
Benedict's invitation, meanwhile, comes in the form of a finer dinner than he's usually provided being brought home from an assortment of merchants and street vendors, and the table being dragged to the center of the room the way it is when company is coming and they need more room for chairs, and Bastien holding up two jacket options to silently ask Byerly to pick one out for him. Him Bastien, not him Benedict. Benedict is on his own.
"Oh," he says. "We should use a table cloth."
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“I don’t know if I’ve got a debate in me tonight,” he remarks, breezily apologetic, “but I can fuck off after dinner if you need the space.”
He’s not missing dinner. He’s never missing dinner again as long as he lives.
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Byerly takes a moment to narrow his eyes at the jackets, scratching his chin-scruff thoughtfully. After a moment, he points decisively at the slightly more ornate.
"That won't be necessary. No debates, I promise. What do you think...?"
The last question is directed at Bastien, as Byerly has moved over to the table and is debating the placement of a decorative vase. It takes up a bit of space, but it is charmingly gaudy.
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He gives Benedict a look. An inquisitive, mildly judgmental look, like is that what you're wearing. That counts as fair warning, right?
He snaps the tablecloth open like a pro, with the intentional addition of catching By in the bum with it, and flutters it in over the table before the vase can land anywhere permanently.
"Us and them, or us and them?" he asks, pointing first at two sets of adjacent chairs, better for the two of them being able to see both Benedict and Vega at all times, and two sets of opposite chairs, better for forcing Benedict and Vega to look in each other's directions as often as possible. Each tempting.
the moment is now
If anybody cares to glance at the time they'll notice that Vega arrives precisely at the time she was instructed to and even has the invitation with her, clutched in a hand as if she thinks she might be stopped and questioned along the way or has to show it to get in. Bastien and Byerly's house is... fine, if not a bit small. Apparently Benedict is also in there, staying for a time. Perhaps he's been put into a corner.
She's smiling at her own joke when the door is answered, revealed to be wearing her best (read: only remaining) dress, dark blue and utterly unexciting in shape, cut and fabric. It fits her and is practical; the sleeves do not bother her hands. Her hair is up.
It is oddly pleasant to be invited to something like this even in the midst of chaos.
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"Shit," he whispers under his breath, and slips off the sofa, muttering an "I'll, um, be right back," to whoever's near enough to hear him in his attempt to abscond. He's just going to change his clothes, promise.
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"Mademoiselle Arany!" he says as he stands up straight again, squirming dog tucked into his arm like a parcel. "We're so glad you could make it. Please come in."
The room she's invited into has been neatened up for her benefit, but there's still a friendly amount of clutter—overstuffed bookshelves, a leaning stack of cups on the fireplace mantel, that kind of thing—and an assortment of secondhand furniture that prioritizes extra seating over flow. But between the two of them, they do have something of an eye for aesthetics, and so it all coalesces into a respectably shabby maximalist style, warmly lit and begging for company, Benedict's attempt to flee from it notwithstanding.
Introductions may not be necessary, after so many weeks of passing familiarity in the Gallows, but they're only polite: "I'm Bastien, and this," the terrier in his armpit, "is Rat Red, Whiskey on the stairs, Byerly Rutyer, and of course you know our Benedict."
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"We hope you don't mind a meal that isn't home-cooked," By says cheerfully. "We're not dreadfully poor chefs, ourselves, but we promise that Owain down the road is far more skilled at bread-baking, and our local silent and nameless cheesemonger has the finest stock in the city."
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"Hello, Vega," he says, as lightly as possible for someone who is dangerously close to entering a Snit-- it's not her fault, but nobody likes to be ambushed.
slides in on my knees in such a cool way you forgive me for being late
"Lovely," she says absently. And then, looking directly at him with an arched brow, "Oh, Benedict. Fancy seeing you here."
As if she didn't know he would be. As if their previous 'interaction' never happened at all. Which it didn't, not really, because it wasn't Benedict she was screaming at and threatening but that's in the past now and Vega won't dare bring it up, not tonight. Not with witnesses.
She smiles at Byerly and Bastien both. "I don't mind at all. Your invitation was very cheering. The Gallows are dismal at the moment."
same?
Nevertheless. Dismal.
"Here, sit down," he says, gesturing not to the table, but to the settee. "You and Benedict can catch up a moment while we—" eavesdrop shamelessly "—finish setting the table."
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But let it be known he's not happy about that.
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This is bringing back some ridiculous memories: the both of them younger but still sitting together, like this. Vega bites the inside of her cheek and reminds herself: you don't need to perform, here. Nobody is watching you.
"Should I ask you something only you would know, just to make sure it really is you this time?"
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"You're welcome to," he says, toning down the sulk, but only a little bit.
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This is very fun. She would have never told anybody else here about Benedict, for example, and wouldn't have wanted him to tell anybody about her in return. Not really. It's fun to bully him, that's all.
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"Why would I need to tell you something so inconsequential?" he asks, fully and immediately knowing that this is the wrong thing to say, only trying to salvage it by adding: "we didn't get married, we barely had a relationship. We met what, twice?"
And he was definitely rude both times, as well as almost certainly intoxicated. He has the vague memory of making snide comments about a young wealthy girl's hair or clothes or what have you, but the real problem is it happened so many times that it could have been anyone.
Maybe she avoided it, somehow.
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"Three times," she says, voice as level as she can make it. "But the last one was very short, because you walked out before the food was served."
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"Oh," he says, a bit faintly, "yes." That time.
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"Maker above, Artemaeus," he says, shaking his head, "you must have been falling down drunk not to remember so lovely a creature."
And then he turns his attention on Vega. Byerly has a very respectable smoulder, all things considered - a privilege bestowed upon him by his very long eyelashes and very dark eyes. He turns that on her now, smiling at her in a way that is flirtatious without being particularly forward.
"He's a dreadful man, isn't he, our Benedict?"
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He's also years past possessive fretting about where those charms are aimed. Even if Vega were ten years older and the strong odds she'd be mean to Byerly in the way he enjoyed were a real threat—no they wouldn't be. But he flicks at Byerly's shoulder with the backs of his fingers anyway. Behave without enough insistence to really interrupt the exchange. Just for show.
It's a fine line to try to walk, to let Benedict suffer just enough to squirm but not enough he fully shuts down into a sulk or runs out of the house to escape and never comes back. As Bastien puts the finishing touch on the table, he wiggles his hand in Benedict's direction to vie for his attention, then gestures to his own jacket and points toward the stairs, mouthing I can go get you one.
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She breathes out hard through her nose.
To Benedict, who has suddenly become the safest option, "Do all three of you live here?"
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He looks at her for a moment like he has no idea what she said, but quickly recovers with a little shake of his head, thoroughly rattled out of his impending mood.
"No," he says, with a quick glance to Byerly, what just happened, "just while I'm recovering." A pause, and he adds, "...from. The envy demon."
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"Perhaps I'll set the table, then," he huffs.
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He can set the table, though, yes. With Bastien's assistance, handing over dishes and flatware from the cupboards.
"I think it is more for our sake than his, at this point," Bastien appends to Benedict's explanation to Vega. "We were so worried about him, and we felt so awful for not seeing enough of him to notice right away. A few more weeks of bringing him milk and tucking him at night and we might feel better."
So earnest. Surely not an attempt to torment Benedict further.
"Why is it you had not seen much of each other before? Different social circles? Choice? Is there a generations-long feud between your families that your betrothal might have brought an end to, and those hopes were cruelly dashed when Benedict disappeared into the barbaric South? And what is your family like, Mademoiselle? Should I feel sorry for them, that you are here, or only happy for you?"
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And having made her point, she finally looks at Bastien to answer him properly. "You should feel happy for all of us, I think, because my family did not want me around any longer than I had to be and I wanted to be rid of them. We're both lucky that I have this... this thing in my hand." The shard, not shown. She's become used to holding her hand stiffly in her lap when speaking, palm down.
"To answer your other question: we lived in different cities. We only saw each other when we had to."
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"I do," he says, easily enough, quickly adding, "...and I'm sorry. About your family." It's something he understands well (he thinks), and he's sincere when he says it, glancing down at her hand.
Perhaps as a peace offering, he slips off the glove he usually wears on his left hand, showing her his own shard. "It does complicate things."