faderift | we're hell raising and we don't need saving

( when dorian had asked her if she'd reacquainted herself with hercules hansen, benevenuta had truthfully been able to answer no, for several reasons, not least of all being how unspeakably lowering it would have been to have made an overture only to be declined. still, here they are, and it had probably been sort of inevitable -

oh, all right, it had been a choice. and one she supposes she would make again, considering the line of his body as he rises from her bed. there are benefits to all of that muscular heroism. upper body strength, for instance. thighs he would probably protest having described as 'shapely', even though it is a perfectly acceptable way of describing a well toned limb. benevenuta considers some of these benefits from her vantage point of being sat cross-legged in a puddle of blankets, relaxed in her own nudity; a benefit of being in skyhold and not at a campfire on the road, come to that.

when she figures out what he's looking for, she whistles; husband rouses herself and rolls over. )

Ah.

( amused and quiet, herc leans down to retrieve his belt, setting it on the end of the bed for a second as he hides those shapely thighs away with battered trousers that have seen a bit too much action, and not at all in a pleasantly euphemistic way. still, he's giving her a little nod of thanks for that, before speaking. with completely insincere concern: )

You aren't going to make me leave out the window, are you?

( there weren't windows to kick him out of in tents, at least, but he's not simple. he can't imagine him swaggering out the door would be her idea of a good thing in any way. at least max isn't here, because there's about nothing as indiscreet as a mabari.

he's pretty confident she wouldn't actually make him go out a window, unless it was payback for the suggestion. )

( her eyes do stray to the window - open a crack, the heat of the fireplace and their bodies a little oppressive earlier - but her smile is as lazy as it is sly and she probably isn't actually going to do it.

this time. )

I don't know...

( probably. )

That's reassuring, ( as if she'd just made a comment that it wasn't going to rain on the day of the picnic, rather than refusing to rule out sending him out the window.

right, belt acquired, and he's pulling it around his hips and tightening it. )

You comfortable, there?

( all curled up in bed, instead of going out horribly early to return to... wherever it is grey wardens sleep. it's probably terrible. )

Immensely.

( she stretches out to illustrate as much, lying toward the end of the bed on her stomach, resting on her elbows to watch him fasten his belt. she leaves a bit of space where he might sit to put his boots on, her ankles crossed in the air behind her. given the nature of their previous trysts, it's probably actually the first time that he's seen the tattoo on the back of her hip, rose vines twining through and around a skull. )

I suppose you ought to go before its too much light.

( that just earns quiet laughter, and a shake of his head - what was he expecting the response to be, exactly?

tilting his head a little to try and get a better look at the tattoo, when he notices it, herc nods towards it. ) Nice work.

( not a comment on it being unexpected, or on the meaning. he's met enough people and seen enough that, sometimes, you don't want to talk about the meaning behind the something. no doubt she has it somewhere easily concealed because that's the kinda thing she'd prefer staying private. )

I suppose I ought to, yeah. ( but, hang on. he's frowning, before s l o w l y patting over the pockets of his trousers. like maybe he's looking for something, just maybe. )

( what comment she might've made on his compliment to her art is forestalled by the dawning realisation of what he's doing.

what is it with old men thinking they're funny. she rolls sideways, grasping until she snags the corner of her pillow, and swings it around to hit him in the stomach.

that's what you get. comedian. )

( oof. and yes, he does exhale a dramatic oof. old tank like him definitely can't handle the likes of a pillow, and he rubs his hand over his abdomen as if checking for a bruise. )

Bit harsh. I'm fragile, y'know.

I know no such thing, ( she says, immediately, but it curves a smile she didn't give permission for all the same. )

You are the most exasperating man I know.

( that's not fair. she knows a lot of annoying men. )

Really? I get a prize for that?

( no, really, he wants a prize, and he crosses his arms, essentially strapping the pillow across his abdomen with his mighty man arms.

or whatever, pretend he's a badass because he's too busy being a goof. ) Medal, maybe. Something I can pin on my uniform.

( spoilers benevenuta is always only pretending to take him seriously.

- is not true, but she would absolutely imply as much for any audience they might have, if it were at all acceptable to her that their (it's not a relationship) have an audience. she pushes herself up to her knees, at the end of the bed, and uses the pillow and his mighty man arms to tug him close enough she can pull up against him for a kiss that lingers, a reminder of what they were doing before he climbed out of her bed. )

You don't get a prize.

( this is your prize. )

( these mighty man arms are not to be used for such devious means
but on this occasion it will be allowed.

accepting the kiss is a burden he will shoulder, for the good of mankind, or maybe just for the good of herc, in this particular instance. one hand presses heat into the small of benuta's back, and his mouth quirks into a crooked smile. )

No? Shame.

No,

( very firmly, holding onto his upper arms for steadiness and because she likes to, letting herself sink nearer to him under the warm weight of his hand. she should probably let him go, and

she will

in a moment. )

You'll survive, I'm sure.

No, normally in these circumstances, Herc wouldn't fuss too much over Wintersend. It's not really his thing, anyway, the sort of holiday that bristles at memories and leaves him better suited to a distant sort of nostalgia. Given that he recently was travelling all about to try and get away from his fellow Wardens and head towards Skyhold, it's not like he's really got much spare coin handy for picking up gifts, either.

And yet, here he is, with a knife that's intended for a peace offering, no matter how counterintuitive that be. Seems like he and the Councillor got off on the wrong foot, and for all that she stole his knife, he's not actually got anything against the woman, politician or not.

He's on his way to seek her out following one of her meetings, however, when he runs into her. Not quite literally, no, though they do round the same corner at the same time, and he smiles and nods politely.

"Councillor," quietly friendly, "just the person I was looking for."

"Am I?"

Benevenuta is politely bemused, slowing to a stop when she'd been about to sail on by him as if there were nothing interesting whatsoever in passing Hercules Hansen at any time, but particularly not this one. Things to do, terribly busy, terribly important. Letters to write and pockets to coax gold out of and mages to wrangle - mages take a great deal of wrangling, she has discovered, when one is obliged to do it sitting on a Council seat and not from slightly behind them, pulling the strings. Maker knows there are days she wishes she'd set herself at Adelaide's elbow and left well enough alone. Perhaps she'd drink less.

(He is, of course, the most senior warden present now - he is also terribly busy and important. The usefulness of that, potentially, hasn't failed to occur to her.)

"What might I do for you, Warden?" So polite.

"Not a thing, in fact. Just here for a delivery, if you've got time."

She seems the sort to enjoy being asked, rather than just being saddled with something carry around all day, especially when that something would be hard to pass off as a fancy letter opener. His eyebrows are just slightly raised, and from around the corner that he's just rounded, a quiet wuff can be heard as Max comes trotting along, mouth wet from sticking his head in an obliging water trough.

Max bounds over, but stops short of jumping up on the Councillor or Hercules, just looking up expectantly at them both. Pats? Pats good. Pats good yes.

Pats good; Benevenuta provides them, absently.

"Well," after a slight pause, "how convenient it is, then, that I have something I had intended to give you. If you wouldn't mind delivering it to my quarters?"

But by the gesture of her hand, she means - alongside her. To collect his (Max's) gift.

His eyebrows raise, at that. "For me?"

That doesn't seem right. In fact, he's faintly perplexed, though it translates to an expression that looks more grave than confused.

"No problem at all," Herc clarifies, without feeling very clear on why he's having to agree to this.

"No," she says, sunnily.

If he thinks she is beginning to enjoy provoking that particular reaction from him -

he's observant.

With another scratch under Max's chin, she sweeps past them both to lead the way to her private quarters; a modest room, by her standards, but probably a sight better than wherever he's rolling at night. There is a small desk, with the room's one chair, and by the fireside she's dug up an ugly old rug from somewhere for her spaniel to sleep upon. It is tidy and organised - impersonal in most ways besides accommodating that spaniel.

What?

He stares after her, for a moment, because not a thing she says makes any kind of sense. Instead he's stilled his steps, but Max is lumbering after her, and once she's a few steps ahead, Herc makes sure to catch up and keep up. Ridiculous, honestly.

"Huh. Wasn't sure this place even had rooms," he says, a bright kind of dryness. Yeah, no. He sleeps in the courtyard with a mabari for warmth and a outcrop of roof for shelter. Sometimes a bush or a tree, depending. It's real luxurious, the Warden life.

Benevenuta would consider her own living situation 'simple' - she does much for herself that elsewhere she would not - but Herc's is another thing entirely and she wrinkles her nose at his remark, as if he doesn't remember how willing her pragmatism had been on the road toward Skyhold. She plays at softer than she really is, this hard-edged thing.

"Always you are learning something," she says, so mild as to imply the dryness she doesn't infuse the words with. "Now - here it is."

...for Max. A black collar, hand-crafted, its onyx studs polished to shine.

"I had it made for him in Nevarra," with a scratch to the mabari's big head.

"Always," he echoes, just as mild, just as not-dry. In fact, it verges on sunny, as he collects himself and remembers to keep up with the politician.

And-- oh.

A grin that starts wry, but is accompanied by a quiet chuckle as Max barks very happily, and looks at Herc in a distinctly she likes me better way. Useless mongrel.

"Very nice. Are you going to do the honours, or...?"

Astute mongrel.

"By all means," she says, properly sunny, in turn - playful, dangerous thing that she is. She crouches down by Max to strap the collar on; she'd had to guesstimate the necessary size, but it's a good fit and well-made, too. She's rather pleased with herself as she fastens it in place, giving the mabari a good scratch under his chin as she rises again, smiling up at his master.

"Now. You had something for me?"

She may or may not be gifted with a lukewarm trail of drool down her wrist in appreciative response for her efforts, Max's tongue lolling out and Herc making a quietly appalled sound as he kneels down and holds out a handkerchief to Benuta - more like a rag really, rough and coarse, but it's clean. "Pull yourself together," he reminds Max. "Treat the Lady with some respect."

Max whines at Herc, and goes to apologetically lick Benuta's arm, before Herc sets a hand on the dog's barrel of a chest. "No."

And then her reminder comes back to him, and Herc nods, drawing a package wrapped up in simple brown paper that's pretty crumbled. With the wrapping lies a dagger, a suspiciously close match to the one she returned not so long ago. It might have been the same, if not for how very much newer it was.

What's the point of sleeping with the most senior Grey Warden in Skyhold if you can't or don't occasionally abuse your pillow-talk privileges?

Not that that's the only reason Benevenuta had invited him to her bed, this evening; he is due to leave, to go and take his Warden business to the Western Approach and cause a bit of trouble for the Venatori there, a cause she strongly approves of but which will take him away for time enough that she might make a point of seeing him first. Not for any sort of dramatic farewell, or -

But to have seen him, before he leaves. And she has, and there is no rush afterwards, not yet, and while he is quiet and warm and probably not lulled into any sort of sense of security after having spent so much time with her, she says,

"Anders," in a very thoughtful tone of voice.

It is a prompt.

He's quite enjoying being lazy, as a matter of fact. Lazy, in a bed that's much more comfortable than the roll he has to battle max for, more often than not, and the company is a marked improvement, as well. The prompt isn't so much a surprise as an inevitability, and when it comes he groans and sighs and laughs all at once, a short sound with his forearm flopping over his eyes before he lifts his head a little.

"Anders," he replies, expectantly and with just a hint of a question in it.

A bit more forthright, but by no means ill-tempered, "What about him?"

Ill-tempered. No. Herc isn't, and neither is she; not angry at him, or the Wardens, or the Inquisition. Not even, ultimately, all that angry with Anders - he made a fucking mess, made all of this so much harder than it might have been, made her side look bad in a way that matters, but what he did was the act of a desperate madman, she thinks. The product of what she opposes. In and of himself an argument for mage freedom because look what fucking happens.

What angers her is the situation. This untenable reality of a world that isn't good enough, of having to fight always for every little thing, of -

Here, in the warm languorous afterglow, there isn't anything to fight. Benevenuta measures herself before she provokes one just to have it, just to fight someone about this bullshit.

"I wonder your thoughts," she says, her fingertips finding his heartbeat and lingering there. "About him."

About all of this.

"He's a Warden. One of my men, and my responsibility. We stand together."

And yet, he doesn't put a lot of effort into masking the weariness in that, for all that he's glad they have Wardens to stand together. "I think what he did in the Chantry was beyond stupid, but the Champion passed her verdict, and the Wardens argued for his life. I respect that."

Though he wouldn't have minded tossing him over the damn ramparts, in the moment. He wouldn't have minded doing that with a few of the Wardens, when they got on a roll about how many each of them had killed, like it was something to be proud of. War was war. Death was death. Bragging about how awful you were before you became a Warden doesn't bring anyone any honour or victory.

A beat, and then, "But I think he's a bit of an arse. Sorry bastard," he admits, "Could've been a good man if the world hadn't messed him about, but the world is full of people that've gotten messed about, and they don't all go blowin' up Chantries." Finally, he lifts his arm, smile just slightly curling the corners of his mouth. "And yours?"

"A martyr's death at the beginning would have saved us a great deal of hassle," she says, which is a good deal more frank than anything she's said elsewhere, or intends to. "Not that I desire he be martyred - as representatives of my cause go, he is a poor one."

To say the least. For all that Benevenuta tends not to loudly discuss her own personal viewpoints in great detail, it's no particular secret that she supports mage freedom unequivocally, that she's been a steadfast Libertarian for years. What Anders wanted to achieve is not what she objects to, but to have done it this way, for it to have played out like this, a civil war that's ravaged Thedas and mages more feared than perhaps they've ever been... there is little sympathy to their cause when it's those dastardly rebel mages wreaking havoc across nations while Templars that the smallfolk look to for their protection, their holy mandate and their polished damned armor, step heroically in to strike back.

And strike down. So many people have died, and they are too much in flux now to even say for what.

"The verdict was lawful and it is upheld. If the Maker wills that he be shown mercy, so be it, but it is a costly gift he has been given, and he will not be the one to pay. I hope," with a sigh, easing down into Herc's side, "that he is suitably grateful."

Edited 2016-03-13 08:51 (UTC)

"Wouldn't have minded chucking him off the bloody ramparts before it became an issue," he admits, finding a point on the ceiling and making a careful study of it. Fascinating things, ceilings. Still, there's a thoughtful pause, and he looks at her then, more curious but still keeping his tone even. Non accusatory, he finally says, "Wouldn't have figured you for being all for mage freedoms, and that."

Probably makes sense, of course, Nevarran Necromancers probably wouldn't like to be bundled up in the Circles so much. He's been so wrapped up in the Wardens that the outside world and poltiics sometimes - usually - is a secondary thing, him. When she settles down next to him, Herc is happy to let his fingers idly trace over the tattoo that he knows is there, now, even if the tracing is guessed and probably inaccurate.

"Grateful?" he breathes. "Manner of speaking, I suppose." Paints himself as a victim, and the rest of the world as the villains for wanting recompense, even if he said he'd understand the verdict at the beginning. That's what Herc reckons, though he's not necessarily going to say that much. "Can't imagine it's much better than the Circles he was already complaining about, getting guarded by someone all the time."

Her eyes close; his fingers close enough to their mark that she can guess his aim and smile at it, a warm and private thing nothing to do with anything they're discussing. (It is nice, she thinks, to have warm and private things, little nothing things to wrap her hands around, quiet where no one is looking. She is still someone, when no one's looking.)

"That it is a compatriot and not a Templar, I am sure that distinction matters."

Maybe not in a way that Anders seems grateful for, but the luxury of complaining about it isn't nothing for all that if he complains, now, Benevenuta would sort of like to rip his tongue out with her bare fucking hands. Speaking of what they aren't going to say out loud, even here.

After a moment - "Do I not strike you as free, Hercules? I promise you, I put my fate in no hands but mine and the Maker's."

Herc makes a noncommittal sound at the mention of the distinction. Given some of the Templars around here? Yeah, maybe. Given the Templars in Kirkwall? More than likely, if anything Bethany said was worth going off. But some people take and they take, and they aren't ever satisfied. Getting too much into Warden business, though, even in vague terms, wasn't likely to go all that well.

(And maybe he's all right with this. Idle chatter, even if this isn't all that idle. It's talk in a warm bed while tracing patterns on skin, and that's not nothing. He's not sure what it is, if it's anything, but he's pretty all right with it.)

"You do, yeah. You got your freedom already, no matter what happens to the other lot. Noble, Mortalitasi... means your pretty well set in Nevarra, the way I understand it." So he's looking at her with quiet interest, trying to puzzle it out. "Not everyone who's got their freedom already is that concerned with getting it for anyone else. Could've just been content with the world the way it was."

He's seen enough people like that. He's fought enough of them.

"I am not so lazy a creature," she says, and she isn't taking care to disguise the casual contempt that she has for those who are - there is, for a moment, none of the diplomat who will cultivate them in spite of her personal feelings because she can and must make use of people who will not even make use of themselves.

No; she isn't pretending anything. Very little disgusts her more than what he describes, and she makes no bones about it.

"Nor so stupid as to believe that my own freedom is anything but conditional and worthless if I were to be. We do not live in a world with which I am content; that has been true for longer than it has had holes in the sky. As has it been true that I work to improve it. The Inquisition is where the most urgent work is done - I am here to do it. It is not a change."

In her. She wasn't inspired, she didn't suddenly see a new truth - she is just living the same truth she always has, in a new way.

Could've fooled me, he'd say, if he were in the mood for teasing or being hit with another pillow. He and the pillows have been through some wars together, but they get by all right.

"Is that right?" Not accusing, not mocking. There's a lot of things his tone doesn't carry, but he's got quiet interest woven in pretty well.

He's quiet a moment, mulling that over, thinking it through. Makes sense, of course, and it's not that he didn't think she was smart. It just a matter of figuring out how much is for the greater good and how much is securing what is good for herself, and it conveniently happens to help others. Herc prefers to lean on the side of greater good, in seeing that side of people, but eventually you learn to be a little more cautious. "That's good to know."

She rolls over onto her elbows, pushing herself up to rest on them - to better meet his eyes, brushing her hair out of her own because this is important, this is something that it matters for him to understand about her. (She has no need to examine why; it's nothing she's not freely said to other people. She'd said as much to a girl she met once, briefly, by the side of a fire. That Hercules should understand as much as a girl who danced with her once is - perfectly reasonable.)

"You and I," she says. "We are in a position to aid those who do not have the means to aid themselves. You with your..." A gesture of one hand, a curl of her hair still tangled in her fingers; Warden business, large weapons, musculature, chiseled and scruffy jawline. "You go out and you do for those who cannot do for themselves. Well, I have a different set of skills and resources, but I have them, and it is no less my duty to act upon that than it is yours."

Her chin lifts, a little. Some fierce thing in her eyes is older than this moment, a banked fire that burns always within her - "There is no worth in a person who doesn't see that."

And then, a bit gentler, "But I would give for them, as well. To give of yourself is the right choice - the only choice. And it is not for me to decide to give only to those I deem most worthy." There are plenty of people she doesn't care for, and - what sort of world does she fight for, if she only fights for the people she likes?

She is surgeon and open wound, both.

"I see."

He understands. She's a sand storm, this one, charged up and cultivated by a world that's been neglected and turned rough. The kind of force of nature that people don't understand how dangerous it might be until they're caught in the middle. Maybe the storm'll only last a few minutes, or maybe it'll be months, blinding you and changing the landscape.

Herc mulls all that over in silence. Sounds good, reasoned - generous and right, even, the most important parts, and all the while his fingers are still tracing that rose, until his hands still.

"My what?" To clarify: "You never said what used to help people."

He is not being a shit, except that he is, a bit.

we're hell raising and we don't need saving

the first morning after in skyhold.

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the second half of this tag was originally entirely in capslock and i almost realised too late

herc feels really strongly about kissu kissu

backdated wintersend nonsense?

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before he leaves for the approach.

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