faderift | [open & closed] and when that day comes

“How long were you a bear?”

And why has no one mentioned this to her before?? He just dropped that in like it was normal. Korth, every time she thinks she’s used to life in Riftwatch—

Barrow squints pensively, eating the last cookie to help him think, and folds his arms with an air of conclusion.

"Couple weeks?" His eyebrows pinch in a look that's both uncertain and amused as he directs his gaze back to Astrid, "felt like it, at least. Long enough to figure it out properly."

Clarisse twists her lip, thinking, and starts to wipe away the blood on Abby's face. She starts at her chin, working her way up slowly so she doesn't bump her hand against Abby's nose.

"Once I was near the top of the lava wall at camp and a boulder clipped my shoulder. I fell off and broke like four ribs and smashed the shit out of my face on the way down." As far as injury stories go, it's kind of lame, because it wasn't like it happened while she was doing something heroic, but the thing is, if a Greek monster hurts you badly enough for it to become your "worst injury ever" story you're probably dead anyway.

She dabs the gauze under Abby's nose, trying her best to be gentle. "What's yours?"

"Fuck," Abby says in sympathy, wincing — then adding, soft, "Not you." Not her hand or gentle daubing with the gauze to get the blood off her skin, because in that Clarisse is completely gentle and attentive. She reacted to thinking about having four broken ribs. Most Abby has ever broken was two.

"Uhhh..." Then she's quiet, thinking for a moment. Broken bones are bad but not worst, and she's had some gnarly gym-related injuries before but nothing that kept her off her feet for too long.

Eventually, shrugging as if it isn't that big a deal, she says, "Got caught by the Seraphites while I was in their territory — I told you about them, right? The death cult freaks. Anyway, they knocked me out and tried to hang me. And gut me. In that order."

"... I'd say congratulations but," Abby jokes, trailing off as Prudence gazes out toward the courtyard. She looks like Barrow in lots of little ways, their relationship is very obvious. When Prudence turns back she catches her looking and Abby's gaze drops to her own hands.

The people who live outside of these walls really have no idea what goes on inside them. It's not like Abby forgets about this — it's hard to, in Kirkwall, when she goes outside and people stare at her — but she's never really considered it from the point of view of an outsider before, not until Prudence. She says, "Do you... have any questions, or anything?"

Prudence blinks, eyes widening in mild surprise-- but after a pause, she nods, redirecting her gaze to Abby's shard.

"Is it... painful?"

Uhh... "You've mentioned them," Clarisse says, before adding, "Isn't gutting someone after you hang them kind of overkill?"

Like, she's into overkill as a general concept, just not when it pertains to hurting people she cares about. Doesn't matter that it was however many years ago now, she's still frowning as she wipes at the last of the blood under Abby's nose.

"How'd you get away?"

"I like dares," Byerly says, scratching his chin. "Or clothing. It's been too long since I've mooned the public."

Byerly kicks his horse into a walk. He pointedly does not look at Prudence's face. While many of his countrymen - and countrywomen - are broadly, wildly emotional, others (especially in the North) feel that open displays of grief are shameful. He doesn't yet have the measure of Prudence, but he certainly doesn't want to risk causing her discomfort if she's of the latter sort.

Instead, he simply says, "If you have questions, I can answer them. Or we can ride in silence. As you prefer."

“Wish I could’ve experienced that,” Astrid muses. “Woulda been a wolf if I were there. Although maybe that’s like… sacri-leg-ious to say, ‘cos holdbeasts are special? Still, though. If I could choose.”

And then she gives him the once-over, considering. “So Bear really fits you. I called it.”

"What," Abby says, doing a double-take at her hand because she assumed Prudence was referencing some other bruise she hadn't noticed, "This?"

The shard? "No. It — if we get too far away from other people with shards it starts to hurt. But not here."

"Dares it is," Barrow decides, the nervous energy of the moment bubbling into something a little rash, a little vindictive. He hasn't forgotten Bastien's japery in particular, and if he's about to die, he's going to make them work for it.

"Yeah," Abby deadpans, "I think it was a sex thing for them."

Kind of a flippant reply in the face of the actual number of bodies she saw blood and gutless, dangling from ceilings, but sometimes jokes are the only way forward through it. She rubs her neck without realising, around the spot where the rope had bit in. Clarisse is pretty much done mopping her up and she has a little fucked up wish then, that there had been more blood and Clarisse's hands would have a reason to keep moving across her face all gentle like that, but — alas.

"That's when Lev and Yara showed up. They got me down. Well — Yara did, Lev didn't want to at first. Thankfully she convinced him."

Prudence nods, looking abashed in the face of Abby's surprise-- is it a faux pas to wonder? But she relaxes some when the answer comes honestly.

"How strange," she remarks, "and that's why there are so many of you here." One can almost see the pieces coming together in her mind.

"I saw the rifts over Crestwood before they were closed. There was..." She pauses, in the way of one uncertain of whether to proceed, but powers through: "...there was one under the lake."

He gives an amiable nod. "Most were," he confirms, pausing for a second-- it's sacrilegious to want to be a wolf?-- but he supposes he's not going around volunteering to be a burning prophet.

"You did." His smile grows, and he stoops again to test his work, "if that rift ever opens up again I'll make sure you hear about it."

For a moment it almost seems as though Prudence didn't hear him; she's quieter than her brother, but stoic in a similar way, her face stony as she takes the measure of the situation.

"How bad?" she finally asks, risking a furtive glance to Byerly.

It would be a pleasant thing to be able to provide some measure of comfort. But it would also be cowardly. It would only spare him; for her, it would just delay it, and likely cause all the more misery for that delay.

"Death is a possibility. But it is far from a foregone conclusion. We have excellent physicians working to support him."

She nods, stares stiffly forward, internalizes her reaction. Someone with this much life to hold together doesn't crumble easily.

It's only after a prolonged silence that Prudence speaks up again, apologetic: "I realize I never asked your name."

"Ah - My apologies. It was rude of me not to offer it. Byerly Rutyer." He offers a nod in lieu of the elegant bow he'd make were they standing. "Of Dragonmount."

Prudence nods back, only moments later catching the true meaning of what he's said. Rutyer, Dragonmount.

"You're--" she breathes, going a little pale, "apologies, my lord."

Maker. That's right. He's been in the north so long he's practically forgotten that there are places where his name actually holds some weight.

"Second son of a second son of a second son." That's hardly true, but easier to frame it that way than to explain the convoluted inheritances of the sprawling Rutyer clan. "No sort of lord."

(But of course there are other reasons why a person might go pale and breathless upon learning they were sharing company with a Rutyer. His family had produced more thrill killers and sadists than could be found at a full meeting of the Tevinter Imperial Senate. But he doesn't know how to address that fear without making a joke of it, and it doesn't not feel like a good time for a joke.)

Prudence, at least, is from a provincial enough community that she's unlikely to know all the nuance of a noble family that don't affect her directly: Rutyer from Dragonmount is enough to ring a bell, to tell her she's in the presence of someone important. It's for this reason that she's reassured by his answer, and manages to relax slightly, but only slightly.

"What brought you to work with Riftwatch?" she asks, out of genuine curiosity and an additional need to fill silence.

"Service to Queen Anora." He offers a slight smile to Prudence. "I went to observe what Riftwatch was doing and report back to her, to ensure we wouldn't be caught off-guard by any developments in the North."

I was spying is such a dreadfully ugly way to put it.

"Has the war touched you here at all?"

A snort, even though it feels like it vibrates right through her already achy brain. "You're funny."

Clarisse remembers Lev. Abby's brought him up before, talked about him like he was a friend. Yara is a name she can't place. She doesn't think Abby's talked about her yet, but it's not necessarily strange for that to be the case. Live in Thedas for a while and it sometimes feels impossible to describe people and places from home. Not because they aren't important. They're just not relevant anymore.

The realization makes her feel a little sad—there are all these people and places and things from home that they'll never talk about here. "Is Yara another friend of yours?"

“Good.”

Astrid’s wound up perched on the edge of the mattress, one leg now swinging restlessly off the edge as she leans to crane and watch Barrow work. There’s something soothing about someone working with their hands in the background of the room; building something, making something. There was always stuff to fix around the hold, keeping busy.

And even though she’s browbeaten her way in here, she feels the need to add for posterity: “Also if you do wind up needing anything later… just, y’know, holler on the crystal? That’s what friends are for.”

[open & closed] and when that day comes

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cw discussion of hanging

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cw discussion of hanging/cult murder

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