wythersake | Inbox 1.0

[ without preamble: ]

I thought I knew all the rebels in Kirkwall. Should I know you? Your voice sounds familiar, but your name doesn't.

[ of course he's heard she's here. he's been very careful to hear who everyone in charge is. it's why he thinks, for several minutes, about just not replying —

what do you even say? 'you ripped a man in half in front of me'? 'i saved your life multiple times'? 'there was a windmill on fire'? probably that wouldn’t narrow it down much. ]

Kostos is a contact. I believe you and I met near Farwater.

[ that's a town as of now ]

Farwater?

[ she has to think about that one, whether it rings any bells. the battles all began to run together after a while, but that name conjures up particularly ugly memories. a brutal fight, a near-pyrrhic victory. she couldn't name which scars came from Farwater as opposed to Green Hill or Markston or the Verge, but she knows it's a decent number. that does it. ]

The healer. The one I kept seeing. You told me I was going to have to start bringing lyrium if I expected you to keep patching me up so often.

[ or someone did. in her defense, she'd lost a lot of blood. ]

[ ah, memories. ]

If everyone kept your habits, I daresay we'd be in better shape for leverage.

[ but please don't start again. pls. it had — helped a little, in farwater, to be so dead on his feet. made everything a little more dream-like, a little less real. it hadn't really helped with running. ]

Isaac, [ he repeats, doesn't bother to add the title. it's only useful for fishing at opinion; they're well-settled there. ] And I can't imagine they told you of this freely.

[ if she trusted the heads to back this, there'd have been no point in privacy. ]

[ if everyone was like her they would have won the war, nell thinks but does not say, instead of being stuck in this indefinite peace, nothing stable or safe about it to really earn the name. ]

Nell [ she replies, by reflex rather than necessity; he seems to know her already. ]

There are several mages on the Division Heads' staff. They're not as careful with their secrets as they might think.

More than several. [ and that says a deal: that none lead directly, ] De Fonce and Bonaventura; have you any notion where their sympathies lie?

[ a striking thing for a strike, if they might pull all supporting roles with them ]

Bonaventura lives with a qunari apostate, so I'd imagine she'd be sympathetic. De Fonce is an Orlesian noble, but seems to enjoy being lazy and perverse, so who knows. You think we should try for the full set?

Edited 2018-04-10 04:25 (UTC)

Why not? Some of what these Rifters practice is near enough to magic. If we're trading on our utility, we can't afford to be easily replaced.

Presumably a diplomat can keep from mentioning qunari apostates around anyone important, and we'll have someone who could entertain De Fonce. Do a card trick, or point out the window and shout: Look, a bird —

Edited 2018-04-10 07:14 (UTC)

How much time have you spent in Antiva, dear Isaac?

Are we counting flights of imaginative fancy?

[ that's a solid 'none' ]

Edited 2018-04-19 16:12 (UTC)

Ah, if we included that, I would be far better travelled, myself. No, I think physical relocation.

And I'd hoped for your thoughts of Minrathous.

[ blithe, as though that isn't a dig, and he isn't deeply suspicious of the inquiry -- ]

If you ask the right people, [ 'nevarrans' ] I spent a spell in Nevarra. Are you looking for recommendations?

Perhaps one day.

( B)a )

Oh? And how did you enjoy Nevarra? ( she's ignoring that comment on recommendations, for now )

Ghislain left something to be desired. As I expect did Antiva City.

Edited 2018-04-20 20:02 (UTC)

I could never be so disloyal to one of my home cities. Antiva City... when you looked out to see it seemed like the world was rich with possibility.

( Looking to the streets was another matter. Perhaps that was why Merchant Princes had such big estates - to obscure the view. )

There's vantage from above, I'll grant.

[ better a tower than a tunnel. but he doesn't like where this conversation's heading. ]

But there is a great deal to learn, on the ground.

( She sighs. )

I wonder what mistakes might have been avoided in Kirkwall's history, had there been more listening.

Not a question of how much, but to whom.

[ certain parties are always heard — ]

Forgive me, is this a social call? I fear I've been distracted.

Really, all you had to do was tell me your name when you arrived and I would have remembered you. I could not tell you by voice.

[ A pause. ]

And do not say "who is this" or I shall reach through this crystal and give you a smack.

Who's this?

Enchanted to hear from you again, Delacroix. Who ratted me out?

[ it's amiable. he's not particularly concerned. ]

Oh, I have my sources.

[ Meaning the player didn't think this through and assumed the infirmary had a schedule or something. ]

It has been ages. Where has life led you?

[ probably definitely they do ]

Two years or more, if I'm not mistaken. [ more. had lost track of her some time before the war's end. ] Took the Inquisition's offer, took me upon a lovely tour of the desert — word has it they stuck you in snow.

Edited 2018-05-16 17:00 (UTC)

Ah, yes, though I have been to the Western Approach as part of my duties, so I have experienced that as well.

[ The sun brought out the freckles on her nose. It was horrible. Oh, and she also fell into the Fade. That was bad too. ]

Skyhold was remote, but beautiful. I have a new appreciation for the mountains now.

[ There’s no preamble or warning—save his assurance over the crystals—but shortly after Isaac’s request, a large jar full of dead spiders shows up on his doorstep.

It would be really fucking creepy, if he hadn’t actually asked for them. ]

Where did you find this many?

My job involves a lot of hanging around nasty old dusty places. I usually take some time, for instance, to poke around some of the rooms that are still deserted.

Deserted, or full of our latest recruits.

[ the spider cavalry. ]

Thank you. They'll do nicely.

[ they're too small for his purposes (likely — check the purple one that doesn't look as though it ought to have been done growing), but that seems a poor thing to say for a favour done in apparent good faith.

difficult for even isaac to bristle at, like an apprentice's macaroni project. and not the most pressing question: ]

And what else have you found?

Edited 2018-05-16 17:06 (UTC)

[ It is not every day that one has their portrait... drawn? Painted. Years upon years since her last. ( Burned, no doubt, by the British. Like everything else. Meticulously done so, she knew, to remove every trace of her. ) If an image remains of her, she certainly doesn't know about it, to say the least.

Then again, this was hardly like any of the times she had sat for such a thing. A great deal informal. But she made sure to look her best. More than her best - little enough occasion here, she had already realised, for the work that was required of her. So this seems a good one, to don gold and bright colours. Blue, always favourite, mingled with white below it. The heavy fabric that she pulled over her hair as ever, a little down below her face so he could at least recognise her. True to her word, a great deal more hair than him. Her women would chide her, of course, but she was long past caring so much other than to make a point. It fell all the way down to her hip, think and long and dark. A pin of flowers she'd made sure of, just this one, behind her ear.

( She might not be vain, exactly, not prone to the hours say, Malhari, had. But she took pride in caring for herself. )

And the plate of sweets, just as she promised, held between her hands. Covered with a cloth. Ready for the company - looking for him in the gardens. Ignoring the inevitable looks at a Rifter who didn't seem remotely interested in hiding otherwise. ]

Isaac? Was it?

[ Is the easing greeting, whenever she does spot him. ]

[ There are always eyes for green hands, for foreign name, and dress, and speech.

So — himself a stranger to the Marches (to four years outside a tower), he's taken the opposite tack: Dark colours, sturdy cloth. Practical. Distinctly not a robe. You could run in it, and make it more than thirty yards before tripping onto the point of a sword.

His best, at least, since Montsimmard. But he's shaved, and the shirt's clean of any healer's stains, and there's a teapot and blanket tucked into a corner of the garden with absolute incongruity to the distant clash of swords, the salt-and-seagull-shit smell of the air. ]

Lakshmibai, [ He stands to greet her, dips head and shoulders and moves to take the plate, clear her path. ] You look positively a sunrise.

[ Closer to noon now, and the bustle of the place stilled a short time, shovels and rakes at rest. The ground here, reinvigorated, blooms in something a touch beyond the summer itself; verdant and swollen with life. Little like the straggling rooftop rows tucked here and there of the city beyond. ]

[ It does not come into her words and her face - but how this makes her ache. Not just for the kind words he gives her, though they are enough to make her smile. A bright smile that belongs to a younger woman, a different woman. One that doesn't have quite so many scars, that gives the plate easily over to him with a soft and pleasant laugh.

But it is the old woman that aches for the younger. She does not belong to this place, she knows that not just because of how she is treated, but because she already knew what had claimed her. Where she owed her whole self too. A place that had gardens like this. Jhansi had been constructed with wildness in mind. A fortress to house elephants and lions. Open stretches of gardens that framed the central mahal and all of its five stories. A soaked fullness that England could never match, not like this place did at present. Down to the training of guards, for a fort was a fort, after all.

Even if the smell of salt and sea air keeps her free of wading too deeply into memories. Keeps her grounded in the present. That, there never had been in the desert. ]

Thank you.

[ With her hands-free, she smoothes back her veil to reveal her face completely. Pausing only briefly at the edge of the blanket he had set out to take off the soft leather shoes she'd purchased in her first days. Bare, mostly, though there is not much left of the henna that had stained her skin before this. Faded deep brown lines on her already brown skin. The red dots that were painted onto the top of her feet and matched the ones on her palms now only just visible.

Settling if nothing else, to admire the flowers, for that alone, it was worth it. Different to lowtown, the rest of this mighty fortress, and even again from Hightown, and for that - she thinks she might adore it. ]

Do you keep this place to yourself?

Edited 2018-07-11 09:28 (UTC)

Why, [ He waits until she’s seated to slip down beside, cautious to balance the tray. A passing glance from the tips of her toes and back, to find her face once more. ] Are you thinking to rob me of it?

[ His own smile is worn-in, wry; as ready and waiting as the sleeves of a favourite coat. Shrugged on and off again as need demands, and no less genuine for the way it now crinkles about his eyes.

(No more for it, either). ]

No, if only. The Inquisition tends it. I understand that bringing it back was quite the undertaking — still withered, even a year ago.

[ Once there'd been another woman, another garden; older: Hedgerows, maze, that same pleasant laugh. It had been the work of servants' lifetimes to keep both tidied away. And for what? If there's been magic shed here, time given,

Well. Better company. At least you don't get lost in the bloody thing. ]

I may just, though what do they call it - green thumbs? I have but two hands and not one between them.

[ She is a warrior and a Queen and a mother - but a gardener? No, she had other people in her employ for that.

Not that she ever didn't approve or appreciate it. Appreciated it for just as much an art as the paintings on her walls, or printed on her hands. A happy mystery she was glad to allude to. In summer, the flowers had been full enough that she could wear them in her hair every day, the thick smell of Jasmine like Diwali night itself. The wide open lotuses like Padmavati herself graced the courtyard pulls.

Was Jhansi's now, as he spoke, withered? When the British burned everything, did they flowers at least - grow back. Her husband's oasis in the desert. ]

Well, at least others can see to it then. If neither of us do.

[ Two options: ]

Do you think they will give them their own Circle or distribute them?

Oh, but they don’t intend to be taken alive.

[ it's a good question: ]

Distribution — you don't concentrate trouble, when it gives you an excuse to crack down elsewhere.

[ ghislain was as it was, because the rest of orlais, nevarra, couldn't be. easier to move a problem, than to risk upsetting a functional system. only look at the spire, the gallows.

but nothing's functional now; a clean slate. ]

Perhaps Aeonar’s real. We could all meet up for holidays.

Edited 2018-07-27 09:01 (UTC)

Of course. A reunion. After we are taken alive.

[ Unlikely, he thinks, at least in his case, whether he's personally willing to cooperate or not. Maybe Isaac would be fine. He seems like the sort of person who usually scrapes his way into being fine in the end. But, more thoughtfully, ]

Do you think it might not be real?

[ we are not going to be taken alive.

he is — to some degree — counting on that. the sort of calculations you run at the back of your head, where the light's all dim and fuzzy, and you don't have to acknowledge too dearly that you've done it.

he'd like to say that gareth knows better than to trust him, when the time comes. (probably marisol will handle that) ]

Is the boogeyman real? Don't answer that. Why bother testing if someone's a blood mage? Why try to make an abomination? The menacing aesthetic is all very well, but it's impractical even for the Chantry.

[ Why doesn't isaac want to hear his excellent and literal answer about boogeyman.

And also: what is this nonsense about the Chantry ever lying to them about anything. Sounds fake and wrong. ]

It might be worth—

[ a half-formed thought that needs a couple additional seconds to finish ]

The Inquisition ought to know if our most dangerous and deranged are still out there somewhere, if they have not already looked, and we ought to know if they never were.

[ 'everything's real if it's thought about long enough blah blah i'm going to get possessed before i'm forty' ]

If they are, the Inquisition ought to find them before anyone else does.

[ before their opposition does. if mages can handle their own dangers — of course. but there's handling and there's harnessing. if they're real, then the inquisition ought to find them. before some of their own people do. ]

We'd need a collaborator. Or a templar.

Edited 2018-07-30 03:14 (UTC)

[ He makes a huffy noise of such pure disgruntled distaste that the fact that he's thrown food at good-natured strikebreakers is almost audible. ]

Do you know anything about the one with the sideburns?

They're very sharp.

— And he doesn't do his paperwork. Spoke about phylacteries. His clothes aren't cheap.

Edited (how many notifs can i send you) 2018-07-30 05:22 (UTC)

[ None of that is particularly trust-inspiring, but, ]

The rest are assholes.

Amsel might count. Or the—the cute one. [ Saorise. Obviously. ] Shivana, if we were to go soon.

There's that one that went insane.

[ probably cade's a bad idea ]

They've all gone in on Chantry outreach. Might have contacts, if you trust them enough to ask — Shivana's old healer thought he was Loyal.

[ says the loyalist, to the loyalist ]

[A brief message in a spidery but well-practiced hand has found its way into the hands of everyone in the newly-rechristened Hostile Powers project. None of this newfangled magical book business.]

In light of recent events abroad, their ongoing implications, and the necessary narrowing of our focus as a project, your input is requested at a project-wide conference that will be held via crystal at eight o'clock Tuesday evening.

Please let me know if you are unable to listen in. Minutes will be made available to those who cannot.

--Enchanter Vandelin, Assistant Project Leader

I think...I want to learn different kinds of magic. The kind that helps people, rather than hurts. Not--Not healing.

[ There's enough of that, he's never had much luck with it. As long as he isn't trying to use a spirit, there shouldn't be too much of a conflict with his...other abilities. But it still presents a risk, and Gareth hasn't survived this long without trying to avoid undue risks. ]

Just...helping other people. Making them stronger, or less likely to get injured, things like that.

[ kostos is the expert. probably gareth could have just asked kostos. but his grasp upon the fade must be — some days — slippery as a vein. a medium owns a different understanding. ]

Have you worked with Creation before?

[ he's not without some (unvoiced) trepidation. if isaac's aware of anything, it's how thin the line appears between blood magic and his own practice. ]

No, not really. Never had much of a knack for it. I had started taking steps to learning force magic, but.

[ But. He'd ditched it for the magic that seemed more likely to keep him alive when shit hit the fan. Which it did. ]

I'm not sure if I want to resume that. I want—Something that isn't destructive.

You know I'm not much for theory,

[ but gareth is, and might be able to work backwards from practical examples ]

But I imagine we might rework some of your present aptitudes to similar effect. It's all energy. We decide where it goes.

I could...make a fireball, but like. As a fire...shield? And anyone who tried to touch them would catch on fire!

That is —

[ definitely a thought. definitely a thought that will lead to missing eyebrows and smoke inhalation. ]

— How are you with ice?

I'm alright with it. It's my weakest primal element. But I'm better with it than, say, creation magic.

Weren't you telling me about ice and lightning?

[ that it conducts — something, something. it was a while ago. he was distracted by a room full of aequitarians knitting. ]

It may not be of defensive use, but similar ideas could be. You're good with the elements, and one might become another. There's often something to be found in the spaces between spells.

[ not that he does anything with that, go away. ]

Ice being used to conduct the lightning--make it easier to direct. Lightning can be...unpredictable, sometimes. The idea is something like...throwing an ice spike at someone and using it to direct a lightning strike.

[ Which is...still violence, just more direct violence. Still pretty cool, though. ]

But--I suppose it could be applied in other ways. A shield to keep others from directing lightning to allies? I'd have to brush up on my ice magic, but it shouldn't be too hard.

I agree, though. The elements combine naturally in nature, why not in spells?

Would that we didn't have to worry of magic turned against us — but there's utility in that, too. Anything that might draw a line between us and them.

[ venatori, hardline loyalists; whatever gareth will take from it. isaac can talk up a storm of unity if called upon (if calling upon others). but its use has limits, but gareth could tell he was lying. ]

Marisol's a hand for it. [ ice. ] Don't tell her that I noticed.

Enchanter.

[ Ilias sounds worn a little thinner than the last time they spoke, particular around the patience, but he's rallying all the same. ]

Apologies for the hour. [ Whatever the hour is -- no later than he'd been in the infirmary, but still. Late enough. ] I wondered if I might entrust you with something a bit sensitive.

You've my slightly-divided attention.

Much obliged.

[ A n y w a y. ]

Sidony Venaras. You've met by now, I presume?

A charming young woman.

[ how were you acquainted — is the next, natural question. but ilias is plainly leading to something; better let him answer without asking. ]

I suppose she is that.

[ Charming. Quick to use said charms to get what she wants, too. But.]

She studied with me for a time. Anatomy, obviously, not necromancy. She is exceedingly bright, but I am somewhat -- [ Hm. ] concerned she may have overstated her experience.

[ To put it mildly. ]

To what end?

[ he'd be impressed she'd any experience to speak of — anatomy, as though it's that easily-done — but perhaps in nevarra, with the chantry a shambles, it is. ]

Hubris?

[ Is that too honest? It's been a long day. Ilias makes a soft, resigned sort of noise, head tilting back to settle into his chair. ]

She wants to be taken seriously, that is all. I do not think she intends anyone harm. But that would not keep her from doing harm, you understand.

[ Admittedly, his standards for altruism may be a bit high. ]

A man with a rake can do harm.

[ but there's no heart in it; a man with a rake and working knowledge of the human body can do a lot more. ]

I'll happily keep an eye on your student, but I do need know what to look for. I'm an apothecary, Ilias,

[ unless she's developed a sudden, severe case of magic. (if he's foregone ilias' own title, well, liberties) ]

And we've no shortage about the place.

Blood magic, is what some of it may look most like.

[ Which. Is a whole other barrel of worms, and why Isaac had seemed the right confidante for this. (That, and he seemed to know what he's doing.) They aren't in Nevarra anymore; magic or no, he doesn't want Sidony toeing a line she can't get away with here. ]

It may be enough simply not to rely on her if a patient is in a precarious position. She might not appreciate that, but I would rather her first mistakes not be lethal ones.

[ gareth is his first, paranoid thought — his ideas the second —

but there’d be far easier ways to trap them both. isaac doesn’t bother to disguise the pause before he speaks, ]

How closely might it resemble that?

[ ilias can assign the source of his concern as he may. and my icons as i may, ooc, because email tags ]

--Sorry, I don't mean to make you nervous.

[ Note to self: less blood magic talk at parties. ]

I mean surgeries, primarily. I don't know what her other training has entailed exactly, but the Mortalitasi do a fair amount of repair work on the dead. Some of these things -- let us say, I would not teach a mage who had not taken vows. But without magic, some might be translated to the living.

Old habits.

[ the charming local history, etcetera.

it would be smarter to put distance between the pair of them. anders, gareth, nell — they're all appropriate weathervanes. known quantities of little consequence to the world at large. but a noblewoman and a mortalitasi (kostos counts for neither) can shrug off an accusation more easily. onto his own head.

it would be easier, it would be foolish. this is a fortunate warning. this can be useful. this is coincidentally a pretty solid bone structure. ]

Then caution's most due in the field — she has been seldom outside Nevarra?

Very seldom, to my knowledge.

Nor have I, to be quite fair. In that respect, your guidance would be invaluable.

[ At least he knows enough to know he doesn't know enough? (And that this request is perhaps a bigger, more dangerous sort of thing than he ought to simply trust to a man he's just met, but sometimes the quickest way to find out if there are rocks at the bottom is to jump in.) ]

The Inquisition's more forgiving than most. [ but: ] Kirkwall, less so. Have you opportunity to visit the Chantry Memorial?

[ like, not that it's covered in flowers in a nice part of town or anything ]

Not yet. [ Hm. ] You would recommend it?

For a sense of the local perspective, certainly considering your focus.

[ 'work'? 'calling'? 'mucking about with corpses instead of quite reasonably burning them'? ]

If you'd prefer a guide, I might arrange the time.

Edited 2018-10-21 00:15 (UTC)

Might you?

[ How generous. ]

The day after next, perhaps?

[ He's got a date with a corpse first. ]

Splendid. We'll both need to crack an eye before midnight: the ferry.

Edited (Actual setting facts remembered several hours later) 2018-10-22 10:43 (UTC)

Mn, and it would be a shame to miss it on our return.

[ Or would it? Food for thought. ]

In the afternoon, then. I have every faith we can manage it.

[ Isaac works nights. By now, of course. Ilias knows this. Even comes by from time to time with a pot of tea, or to ask after an herb, or just to say hello, letting a touch linger on elbow or forearm like neither of them have noticed how often that keeps happening. Since Ghislain, he's there a little more often, working at the hand. Three severed tendons that don't quite want to knit.

He isn't there tonight. Where he is, as becomes evident only at the very end of Isaac's shift, is at the end of the fourth floor hallway of the Templar tower, outside Isaac's door. A shadow near the window, head back, pale face meeting with pale hand to exhale a matching shade of smoke from cigarillos he shouldn't be smoking, out into the cold he shouldn't be letting in.

Stubs it out with Circle-trained swiftness, at the approach of steps.

He wishes he'd brought wine. He wishes this were the sort of visit that might have started with a bottle of wine and gone— anywhere. Anywhere else. ]

Can I ask you something? In private. About the battle.

[ The battle was more than a week ago. Sending crystals exist. Ilias is wearing his usual warmth like someone's shrunk it in the wash. That's probably all fine. ]

[ His smile folds away. So much for wishful thinking.

An eye to the hall, but he picked this room to purpose: Ears above to hear a scream, and none to hear anything else. He gestures at the door — go on, then — fits key to lock.

(That'll never stop being strange, the shape of it in his palm. Cold against skin.) ]

Shut the window, there's a fireplace.

[ And more cigarettes. Maker, he looks like shit.

The door creaks open, Isaac doesn't stop to check he's been followed. It's tidier than the sprawl of his Infirmary table, as deliberately ordered as the chaos below must be. Someone's dragged off the second bed, the resulting space far too large for its scant possessions. A trunk, a desk. Candles.

The brush of a hand catches them alight, aid for the dim sun rising through its own, narrow glass. (No bars, and that's strange too.) He doesn't look back to sling down his bag, set to routine. Silence fills its own expectation: What is it? ]

[ The door shuts neatly behind him, and he follows, eyes drawn in to the negative space. When they'd first moved into the Necropolis, he'd marveled at that, Clio filling her room to bursting with a life's accumulation of knicknacks and books and brightly colored settees, and his like this. More room than he'd known what to do with. (He'd taken smaller quarters, after.)

He'd rather be talking about that, than this.

He shouldn't have another cigarette. Doesn't want to test the steadiness of his hands just now. In place of either, he lets out an exhale, bracing. ]

You did something on the field that— [ Bones warping beneath stretching skin— ] That they don't teach in Circles.

I don't think anyone else saw. [ But he had. And hadn't said a word, even when they'd spoken of heads and platters. Might never have said a word. ] But I need to ask you why you learned it.

[ Not how, or where, or from whom. Why. ]

[ His shoulders don't tense. He doesn't pause, now fiddling with a poker,

But he doesn't answer, either. Nell saw. Nell saw, and that was danger enough — leverage, if he thought she'd a reason to use it. Hasn't given her one.

So what do you want? Ilias waited to speak of this. Might have knocked that arrow in more dangerous company, instead saved the bait for a week or more. Tinder catches, ignites. He pulls back. ]

An accident,

[ No, that's how. Isaac turns, and his face is too still to be anything but wary; taut about the awareness of threat. It's been more than a decade since a mask could cover these little slips, and he's never had the control necessary to lie like a true professional. To pretend that he's about to put down the iron in his fist.

(It isn't blood. Would burning be kinder? Do you really think anyone would believe —) ]

You didn't fight. In the war.

[ The last one. A question:They don't share contacts; that only means so much. ]

Edited (SORRY holy shit typos) 2018-12-09 20:44 (UTC)

[ There are times when Ilias will avert his eyes from other people's vulnerabilities, out of politeness or respect; this isn't one. He can't afford for it to be, fights the desire to reassure this man he doesn't want to be a threat to, to just believe whatever his fallible heart wants to believe instead of what's in front of him: that Isaac's first instinct is to hide, here as much as on the road from Ghislain; that he's not as practiced at it as some.

'An accident' can mean a lot of things. ]

No.

[ Existed near, perhaps. Been accessory to. Dipped cloth into stream and told himself the water wasn't running red, would stop running red soon, but didn't fight. ]

Not in the way you mean.

Then you should know that we were losing.

[ Are, or may still: Depends what you hang your victories upon. The Inquisition is a temporary state, the rights it's been bullied into are. There will be progress, for some — in all those places it already coiled, upon piles of coin and banners of house —

But they weren't sold to Tevinter for a lark. ]

Tell me what you think you saw.

[ Best they be entirely clear. Already stupid to have ceded this much ground. ]

A creature's body contorting beyond recognition beneath your hand, is what I saw.

[ There could be disgust in those words; odder perhaps that Ilias's voice is entirely devoid of it. That even poised on the edge of chain-smoking himself into an early grave, he can talk about the active mutilation of a living being like they're discussing a painting in a gallery. That he can't talk about it any other way. ]

I am not asking if it can be used in self-defense. [ He was fighting an ogre; they were losing a war. ] I am asking why that is the skill you chose to develop.

[ If there was a preexisting fascination. For example. ]

[ A contorted Darkspawn must look like an ordinary fucking person —

It's the wrong point to argue from. If this is even that: An argument, blackmail. Recruitment, an interrogation. Is this when you shout for the latest washed-out knight to grace us with their dead title,

No. Wouldn't trouble them like that, would he? Ilias Fabria doesn't like others to worry. Not when he might do something about it. ]

It isn't. [ What he's chosen. Six years — five, seven, they must have guessed on the papers — and a woman screaming, and the baby so pale. It sounds flimsy to his own ears (the truth always does). ] Why do you imagine I studied healing?

Edited (icon) 2018-12-10 05:24 (UTC)

[ It's Ilias's turn to go very, very still. ]

I'm sorry, are you suggesting— [ careful, delicate syllables, ] You would have rather studied this, from the very beginning?

[ Is this just his life now. ]

[ Would I rather blight everything I touch? ]

I am suggesting, [ The poker swipes at air: Grip familiar as any apprentice's staff. ] That it didn't require study. Do you really think I'd cultivate this?

[ Until he was pressed. Until he needed an edge. Until his back was to the wall, and no one thinks to silence a healer, do they? Not while another's spitting fire in their face. Until he'd done it, and there was no turning back, and only good sense to work out the rest — ]

I don't know if anyone else could.

[ There's nothing new under the sun. The sun's what he'd have been under, to ask. ]

Edited 2018-12-10 06:50 (UTC)

[ Do you really think--

Yes, yes he did, and the relief that he might not have to keep thinking that breaks visibly across his face, not as a held breath released so much as whatever adrenaline had been holding him together cutting out. A hand presses to his forehead to stop it trembling.

I don't know if anyone else--

He doesn't laugh, but it's a near thing, bubbling to a choked, bitter sort of noise between pressed-closed lips. He knows. Knows and can't say a fucking word. Presses his eyes closed instead. ]

I had to ask, Isaac. [ It sounds like an apology; not a good one. ] I just need to be sure, that it is something you do out of necessity, and not--

[ You know. Fun. ]

[ Ilias crumbles, and his first thought is: Good.

The vicious little rush of victory, and he's never needed a spell for this, to ruin a perfectly good thing. Isaac casts the poker aside, an anticlimactic clatter. Good, He thinks. This can end now.

Quietly: ]

Ilias, [ Who waited a week. Waited, and smiled, only to melt down here; a sculpture of distress. Ilias who has always been a little too good to be true. Who didn't fight in the war, not the way you mean, ] Are you going to tell me what's going on?

[ Or is he going to get (the hell) out? This is yet a perilous imbalance, the cards all in Ilias' hands (hand shaking on his face, and someone ought to take it —)

He doesn't. Palm coils about air. ]

Edited (Will an email tag ever not get janky html) 2018-12-10 21:31 (UTC)

[ No, is the answer his eyes give. When he'd come here, perhaps that had been the plan, after he'd asked the questions he'd needed to ask and gotten the answers he hoped for, but now that he has — how can he drag Isaac any further into this? (Doesn't he owe him a fucking explanation, after all that?)

Instead of words, his gaze drops. Hands, too, to his pocket, fishing out a simple circle of beads strung to a long cylindrical clasp. Has to press them hard against his coat to get at the fastener one-handed, fingers slipping on the clasp, but he breathes and (pull yourself together) sets to unscrewing it. ]

I will handle it. [ A preface. An easy out, for when at the end of this Isaac still wants him gone — from this room, from his life. ]

I trusted someone I should not have, once. It went very poorly. [ It's the thinnest sliver of the story. It's not a lie. (It went very poorly, and he needs to ask now if his would-be lovers enjoy deforming live darkspawn; he can't just tell.) ] But he was dead. Years ago, I was so sure that he was dead.

But either I am losing my fucking mind, or— [ Or he isn't. Is it crazier to wish for a hallucination, or to have one? One end of the bracelet swings free. ] I hoped that I could trust you to just— tell me which. Please.

[ Please. A hand extended, the beads offered in a white nuckled fist. Within the hollow cylinder of its clasp, a small, very old vial of clouded glass and red. It's not Circle standard issue. It's easier to hand a Templar than a story about twisting bones. ]

Edited (icon indecision) 2018-12-11 05:48 (UTC)

[ Like he would have handled this? There aren't many ways to be sure. Not ones that end with someone's blood in your locket.

He takes the phial, with a pause that isn't hesitation so much as instinct: A reverence that time and proximity ought to have lessened, haven't. It feels like a bad secret; intimate in the manner of any viscera. The spells aren't difficult, enough Loyalists must know — at least, Loyalists without an arrest record. He doesn't need those lessons now to observe the gleam. Dim, and unmistakable.

(Not so bright as his own.)

I trusted someone I should not have. How peculiar it must be to draw an end to that story. Closure, tied up neat. How peculiar to watch it unravel. If any of this can even be believed — that couldn't be Ilias' blood. Could be anyone else's. As stories go, it's all terribly convenient.

This can end now, ]

Alive.

[ But it doesn't. ]

[ Alive. It feels like— something. Finality. A decision. Dread (hope?) flooding his limbs with weightless cold, but at least he can breathe around the damage when he knows its shape. How and why matter less than the fact of it, neatly reducing every nonessential to background noise.

He ought to cut ties now, while there's still time. He ought to follow it, try to finish this again, or just run and run and run, but what he's doing is standing here in front of Isaac's fireplace, surveying his own wreckage.

He reaches to take the phial back, his hand steadier. –Doesn't rush to pull away again. Can't quite find it in him. ]

Thank you. [ In case there isn't another chance to say it. ] Not just for this.

[ There's a way to be sure — more sure than so sure, at least for a location. An identity. A mage bursting into lightning (ice, terror) would find it difficult to hide. He doesn't volunteer it. This could be anyone's blood.

(It seems a bad moment to suggest more sketchy magic.)

Ilias' palm curls about glass. Isaac's hand catches, a second followed up to smooth bloodless knuckles. One cracked thumb circles his wrist like a worry stone, lifted to meet the dip of Isaac's chin, the press of lips where skin meets sleeve. ]

Of course.

[ A different sort of stillness settles in his eyes; slows breath.

This is not Ilias's finest moment. Isaac has seen him finer. This is shaking to pieces and not being sure how to pull himself back together again. This is vulnerability with a blast radius; the sort anyone in their right mind keeps away from. Not the sort you treat gently.

And yet.

His thumb shifts to find the line of Isaac's jaw. Brows pitch; You have terrible taste. But instead of saying so, instead of saying anything at all that might tilt the delicate balance of this moment, he steps in and presses a kiss to Isaac's lips. ]

[ There are questions to ask. How long ago did it start? Where’d you leave them, that Nevarra, Orlais, Kirkwall didn’t stir it? What exactly were you planning on if you hadn’t liked my answers?

There are better things to do.

Isaac leans in, savours the contact — not long, not to delay the graze of teeth as he pulls back once more, head inclined like the cat still after a canary. Too curious to be entirely self-satisfied, too satisfied with its own curiousity. He has terrible taste; that's never been unique. ]

Show me, [ His grip slackens, twists in turn to settle over Ilias' hand, over Ilias' chest. Skin pressed to skin, to cloth and sluggish glow. Fingers drift exploratory, still tracking the motions of the hand beneath his. A guide. ] What you want.

[ If this is even it; contact kept loose enough to pull away. His other palm slips to rest where muscle meets bone, the overhang of hip beneath cloth. He doesn't really need directions. ]

[ What does he want?

The hand beneath Isaac's doesn't move first; it's the other that lifts to meet it, two fingers reaching between hand and cloth to draw out that glowing bit of glass, lower it to tuck back into a pocket. Defining a positive with a negative. Not this.

(The first time he'd let anyone else touch him, it'd been like trying to scrape off his own skin, raking other people's hands over every bit of him that had learned to want just one, as if the only way to disentangle himself was to shed what he'd been before. Become something new.)

(He doesn't feel disentangled now. He feels like the thing doing the entangling, vines reaching for bricks to twist into against the wind. That's probably not important.)

Isaac doesn't need directions, but Ilias's eyes light at the prospect of giving them, curious in turn what exactly he expects. Shyness? Politeness? Fingers beneath fingers lead up to the collar of his robes, always so tightly buttoned, and unfasten the clasp at the very top -- and the next, and the next, a shaky breath pulled in or released between each, until there's room to slide his hand in around ribs, skin against skin.

(There's a scar, thin white and too clean from the hollow of his throat down, that he tries not to touch at all.) ]

[ If not shyness, perhaps reserve — whatever it is that inspires such earnest attempts at distance —

One unraveled with suspicious ease, along the length of a seam: Pale and deliberate as the path that Ilias cuts around it, and still threatening to snare the eye. Isaac stalls to catch the curve of a rib, fingers splayed to pin Ilias' hand in place. The press of his weight forward, the shift to grip a handful of thigh, betrays more eagerness than he'd care. It's been a while.

(Longer, since there were any secrets worth stealing.)

Stubble grazes under his lips, pressed in again to whisper at a jaw. ]

Like this? [ A huff of breath, amused; another moment to decide that: ] Not like this.

[ It's a shit angle. His neck is going to kill him. ]

Edited (word repetition, my mortal foe) 2019-01-03 06:42 (UTC)

[ A low laugh hums in his throat, even as his head tilts back to bare that vulnerability too. It is a shit angle. The accommodating bend of his knee does nothing to help matters, either — but they're not apprentices relegated to balancing acts in awkward alcoves any longer.

A decision is made; a heated murmur near his ear, and a touch sliding greedily round the back of his neck to the midline, to keep Isaac near as he takes a reluctant step back, ] Follow me?

[ Convenient, that there isn't more furniture in this room after all: a destination, and not much to trip over along the way. ]

[ Drawled, ]

Anywhere.

[ He shoves, playful, frees hand from hand. It's not the convenient grip to relinquish, that one's still hitching Ilias’ step up the side of his leg.

It makes for a strange, hobbled gait: Four feet and two heads of some Imperial chimera; motion entangled and enumerated by each point of contact — five fingers on his neck, eight teeth in Ilias' — the drum of pulse. They aren’t moving quickly, wouldn’t win a race, but tell that to the blood in his head (lower).

Fumbles at a button, caught in momentary indecision, his or his. But fuck, if robes aren’t the worst for this, and he doesn’t know the Nevarran style to wrangle it blind. Shakes his own loose just enough to stumble, lean into it. What good are arms like that if you can't, occasionally, fall into them. ]

[ She's standing outside his door. She realises, after arriving, that it might seem rude, so she is doing her best to remedy that with - ]

Isaac. Are you free?

[ To the Chantry's great regret, ]

I've a moment.

[ Not that he particularly wants her in his room. Can hear the footsteps.

The lock clicks open, the sweep of an arm -- after you -- onto space rumpled by sleep. The desk owns a solitary chair, the trunk offers another perch; he ignores both, ignores candles and hearth. Better this be brief.

(The side of his tongue has long grown back; face smooth and pale as if it's never seen a bruise. Like nothing ever happened,

An old ache in his gums.)

Isaac turns to shrug on a shirt. ]

The leg?

[ She's moving better. That's a low bar. ]

Thank you.

[ Six steps inside and looks utterly uncomfortable. She doesn't mind much about his living conditions - it's not as if her own are much better - but she is discomforted by what she did to him. ]

Well enough, but that is not what I came to speak of.

[ Her arms cross over her chest, awkwardly. ]

I came to apologise.

[ Like nothing ever happened, ]

You aren't the first.

[ Men delirious with pain are seldom discerning. He's been bitten, he's been grabbed. But that wasn't some random blow; not the daze of battle or seize of limbs. No. A fist and intention.

She isn't the first. He finishes the buttons, regards her: Stilted as a child called to office. Some of the knights were so, even in Ghislain; gripping themselves like armor, and no use in prying it now. Look where that's gotten him.

If she wants to speak, let her speak, or tire out standing. He can always leave.

(Here, he can leave.) ]

Edited 2018-12-28 08:05 (UTC)

That does not excuse what I did to you. How I have treated you since my arrival.

[ Her discomfort with him has never been well hidden and it has never been anything that he might blame himself for. Six is a towering beacon of a woman, strong and intense, but around him she felt a childish terror. Even now, owning her shame and her own mistakes, she is afraid.

She feels no better than the man her father was, beating another for existing. It matters little to her sense of honour that she was delerious with determination and pain in an awful mix. This is her shame. ]

You carry a face which... Is familiar. No, I - [ She swallows.

If she’s to be honest then she must be honest. Adalia is gone - who will find out? ]

You look like my father.

[ He’s getting old.

She’s just said something mildly insane, of course, but does he really look as if —

There’s more than one breed of armor. Isaac watches, and tries to retract the spines from his tongue. She’s just said something mildly insane, and more evidently at cost. His father's face is a weary blur, but he knows why others stick.

A breath. He sits. ]

I can’t promise, [ Not gentle, but steady. A caution: ] Where I’m assigned.

[ There’s more than one solution to that, but he’s not about to choose for her, to interrupt a confession hardly begun. He shifts toward the end of the chair, hands folded in view; all the old gestures, to new purpose. These ways of making yourself small (large enough you needn't ever do so again --).

A child, called to office,

Well, alright. ]

Edited (What the shit is a heart blur) 2019-01-04 02:36 (UTC)

[ She feels nauseated.

It's not the same as her confession to Marcoulf, an explanation as to why drunkenness made her panic (The sun was too bright, he said-) It's not the same as speaking to Inessa and dancing around the realities, giving a suggestion of truth without telling the tale of it. It's worse but not as bad all at once, and Six is ashamed of herself for still feeling this way, for allowing it to cause her harm and pain, even now, so far into her own self-made future.

Shaking her head, she purses her lips. ]

It is not something that you are required to deal with. If necessary, I will work out a way to keep distance.

[ It's not his fight to shoulder, she thinks, and he has been nothing but polite to her, healing her when her own magics had been taken from her. She shakes her head again. ]

I - [ A pause, as if trying to find the right words. ] - I have unpleasant memories and you are similar enough to him that my mind plays tricks. I will deal with it, and I will make sure you are not harmed again. You have my word.

[ He nods. Isaac doesn’t put particular value on anyone’s word.

What he thinks is that they don’t have much control over the matter. There are only so many healers — fewer, with every battle, and if he’s honed any skill above others it’s surviving —

What he says is: ]

You don’t have to do that alone.

[ (Is this ammunition? Stows it for the same drawer as all the other wounds that he’d rather not wield — will, if pressed.)

A glance: Humour me, ]

Breathe in. What do you smell?

[ A bit of sweat and winter. Above it the peculiar, cloying scent of herbs. ]

[ The idea of not doing things alone -

that is a novelty. Six is accustomed to working with other people when it comes to a job, to a mission, to a battle and a war, but when it comes to her own issues? The problems that have haunted her since she was very young? That has been something that has been hers to fight; she had barely scratched the surface with Adrian.

Frowning, she hesitates, about to reject him - I can do it - when he continues. ]

Smell? [ A breath.

Cold. People. Herbs. ]

Plants. The wind.

Plants,

[ He echoes. ]

Specific ones; I can give you the names. [ His thumbs splay briefly, refold. ] I always wear them. A bit overdone, isn't it? But it reminds me where I am.

[ That's not why. 'So I don't reek of blood and pus' doesn't really roll off the tongue. ]

Your mind can play tricks. But you can trick your mind, too. Give it something else to hold.

I might recognise some.

[ She was technically a healer, once, even if it was magical rather than anything else.

Hands clenched at her sides, Six breathes. ]

Something to anchor me? Or - [ Brief hesitation ] - something so that I know it is you and not him?

Both. Neither. You know perfectly well that I'm me. If you're aware enough to recognize that, there isn't a problem.

[ or at least there isn't a problem for his face, which he needs (it's his best quality) ]

But when you aren't, it might cut through. Travels straight to your throat, you know, your lungs. Even when you feel you can't breathe.

[ isaac stoops up, slowly — cautiously — indicates the motion before his body follows. fiddles with the lock at the chest. ]

Burn it somewhere you feel safe, and focus on that. The scent, the safety. Who and where you are. I can't tell you it'll work,

[ a warning. ]

But it's a place to begin.

When I am not hurt, or - or concerned.

[ There's a swell of shame as she thinks of it, of what she had felt on the battlefield; even now, looking at the shape of his jaw, she feels on edge and uncomfortable, a touch panicked and not sure what to do with herself.

It's hard to look at him for more than one reason now. ]

... Somewhere I -

[ Her brow creases and she hesitates for a moment, not sure what to do with herself, breathing out before she steps closer. He appreciates what he's doing; she just feels on edge. ]

It will help?

If it doesn't,

[ he comes up with a packet (dried, folded in paper), passes it over at distance. ]

At least we'll all smell nice.

I don't think I smell terrible.

[ That's her attempt at a joke, as much as she can manage as she takes the bag. ]

Thank you.

Of course.

[ his head inclines toward the door, the sweep of an arm. not to hasten you out,

but he's usually asleep by now, but he's still half-dressed, but another day might not find him alone. difficult as this must have been for her — courage, or guilt, or something in the approach — some part of him still bristles too sharp to voice. ]

You can always find me in the Infirmary.

[ better to keep boundaries ]

Edited 2019-01-14 06:55 (UTC)

[ Six understands a dismissal when she sees it; she knows she has intruded, no matter what she might have intended with it, and she feels the discomfort gnawing at her. Herbs in hand, she nods her head. ]

I appreciate you allowing me the time. I will not disturb you again.

[ And she means it, heading to the door to leave. ]

[ mumble mumble sometime after this, idle and without context, yw: ]

You wouldn't, would you?

Never. What are we discussing?

Bracelets. Childhoods. Hypothetical truths.

[ Intimacy. ]

I am not particular.

I'm a touch out of practice.

[ all the above ]

Mn. [ He'd noticed. ] For lack of interest, or opportunity?

Marks?

[ hm. not the metaphor to carry. ]

That’s — not what I mean. You know how it is; there aren't any secrets in a tower.

Edited 2019-01-31 08:47 (UTC)

[ Hm. ]

Not many, no.

[ A few. Still: no point in sharing what everyone already knows. ]

And no one you would have made new ones with?

I didn't care to replace them.

[ the gesture — emphatic, a struck nerve escaping — is also blessedly invisible. it's not as though it's terribly invasive; rather, it's not as if it ought to be.

it's a relief, sometimes, not to be known.

it isn't the first time he's been asked, and that's the real question, isn't it? there's no need to lie; there's no need for the whole truth. ]

Not for lack of trying. You've never swallowed your pride until gurns spend a season infesting your bathwater.

[ That's an image. The wrinkling of a nose, likewise invisible, carries on a breathed smile a little easier. Charmed, as ever; willing to leave a moment's breathing room. Not distracted. ]

And nowadays?

[ Didn't. Past tense. ]

I don't, [ need another knife in the back — ] Know that it replaces anything.

No.

[ Agreeing? Considering. If they were having this conversation in person, there'd be a press of tongue to teeth to witness. (If they were having this conversation in person, he'd have brought wine; might not have had a conversation at all.) ]

Perhaps— that is not always the point.

No. [ slight enough that it mightn't be a pause: ] But you grow used to the shape.

Edited 2019-02-01 06:23 (UTC)

Mn. [ Heavier. He hesitates, chewing over something. ] Do you think— that you want the rest of your life to look like the part that came before?

Fuck, no.

[ whether he'll get a say in that? more gently: ]

Do you?

No.

[ --Well. ]

I don't know. There wasn't supposed to be a rest-of anything.

[ there's more than one way to take that.

no, there's one: the crumple of posture, those words after ghislain; isaac's seen enough barred windows and battlefields to know the type — just not what to say. the impulse has always been as foreign as its wreckage familiar. ]

Has there been?

[ he's here. ]

[ A pause, too careful to be reassuring; not long enough for a lie. ]

More than I expected.

[ Oh look a bird. ]

Considering the rest of the world seems to be on its dogged march toward ending, perhaps we are all doing rather well.

That's grading on a curve.

[ does thedas do that ]

I hope you keep getting it wrong. The supposes. Whatever the rest looks like.

You are— [ A lot of things, in this moment, but most especially: ] kinder than you like to put on, you know that?

[ is it unethical to kiss someone with a head injury ]

You're going to spoil my reputation.

Edited (word choice etc) 2019-02-04 02:16 (UTC)

Lucky for you, I am good at keeping secrets.

Am I the lucky one, now?

[ by basically every objective measure: yes. ]

In one or two respects.

[ —That he's willing to be smug about, anyway. Speaking of: ]

Don't tell me you require a reminder.

[ Do, though. ]

I don't know if I can hear you properly over this, [ counting both arms is cheating ] Where are you, anyway?

You see, if you had fetched a bracelet...

[ You'd know. ]

Don't tell me you'd hold still.

I might if you asked.

[ That's a different sort of 'bracelets,' guys. ]

How nicely?

[ A hum. ] I would not want to spoil your reputation.

[Oh dear, it looks like a cat has caught something and left it in the infirmary. In unspoiled condition. On a table. Conspicuously. At a time when it's likely to be noticed by the correct person. Cats are clever, aren't they.]

[ it takes him a while to work it out.

there are the cats — and anders, who thinks it charming to disregard isaac's opinion of them — there's gareth, and marisol, and he'd hardly put it past his own paranoia to mistake the tiny corpse for something more than the happenstance that it's owed.

but if he's never had a hand for art, isaac owns a pair of hungry eyes, and the choice of specimen doesn't stretch so far from the fingers to first examine it; what to do about that, another matter entirely. he's aware that his awareness of these matters is somewhat. overweighted. even so, ignoring it, its own small discourtesy.

etiquette's such a bitch.

eventually (airily), ]

What makes a collection?

[ hi. ]

[It's the very same one.

With friendly spite, for making him wait, Leander leaves the message for a day. And then another. And a third. He listens to it just once more, with brush in hand, before activating.]

A collection needs curation, otherwise you're just hoarding.

[A puff of breath blown, away from the crystal. Not smoking; more like dust.]

What can I do for you?

Red or blue?

Blue. I hope we're not discussing wine.

Not this time. But I am going to need your set of eyes later, so feel free to bring some then.

Which is better do you think to sleep on, cotton or linen?

A pile of gold and furs. [ linen, ] To what am I contributing?

Naturally. Why did I ever think you liked anything else?

[ A hum. ] Bed testing.

Terribly forward.

Only with you, honey drunk lover. [ Which is now what she is going to call him, for forever. But that is what it is. ]

No, but rather, I am looking to make space for someone a might taller than me, and I need to rearrange it. But I've really not much head for this sort of... frippery.

Frippery. You're going to give me a complex.

Linen breathes, red looks cheap. May I assume that you're working with the Gallows?

Me? Never.

[ A hum in agreement. ] My new quarters. So not to be a bother to anyone else.

If you aren't bothering someone there's hardly a point. I do hope this isn't the Fereldan.

Edited (I FUCKED UP HE'S NOT THAT SHORT) 2019-04-27 19:35 (UTC)

Him? He's only pretty enough when he's bleeding.

[ A hum. ]

No, an Avvar woman. The tallest one.

We're acquainted.

[ if there's a taller one he'd like to know where they've hidden her. ]

I don't know that you've made the wisest choice of accommodations.

There isn't any here, that is for certain. She insists it's a fault of the lowlanders.

[ Idly, out of the blue as usual, ]

Are you very familiar with Enchanter Averesch?

We were in the same Circle.

[ as were you, but calling attention to certain public spats isn't the most politic way to begin. ]

After Nevarra City?

[ Not hiding it, then. But gently surprised, his focus shifting. ]

Were you there when he was transferred?

Unless I’ve terribly mixed my geography.

[ that's a 'yes' to both ]

[ A huffed exhale. Funny, the way everything circles round. ]

May I ask— how much do you trust him?

Is there a reason that I shouldn't?

Not-- necessarily. [ But maybe. ]

It can be difficult to accurately assess someone who's been engaged in a one-sided pissing contest against you for as long as you've known them. I thought I ought to get a second opinion.

If he hasn't punched you, it can't be going that badly.

Deflecting suspicion before the eventual murder attempt, perhaps.

You're granting him a great deal of subtlety.

[ which isn't to say he's an idiot (far from it), or unsuited to his work (well), or that isaac trusts him (well). ]

Kostos is a prick. If that hasn't changed, what else has?

It's not something I am liberty to discuss.

[ ...With Isaac. Despite apparently planning to discuss it with Kostos. ]

Not yet, at least. But if I disappear, I suppose you'll know he's more than just a sour face after all.

Is this really how every conversation is going to go?

—I tell you quite a few things.

[ Like, double digits. ]

You didn't come to me just to have a go at him. If I'm handing you opinions, we'd both rather those were informed.

This is not about what I would and would not rather tell you, this is— [ Important. Which is of course the point.

Air huffs through his nose. Trying again: ]

One person can keep a secret. Two can tell who has let it loose. More than that, and you cannot be certain of anything.

So you're uncertain of me,

[ — which may prove he has some sense of self-preservation after all ]

But not whatever dirt I might supply.

[ Well— ]

You are not the one whose discretion I feel the need to test.

[ —is the answer to a different question. Adjacent, though. ]

I don't want you to tell me anything you aren't comfortable with, Isaac. If you trust him, then you trust him. If I have good reason to think otherwise, I will tell you that.

[ the trouble with — prevarication isn't the word, casuistry (no), he can't place it and that's its own irritation —

the trouble with bullshit is that they're both rather good at it, and isaac knows perfectly well when an accusation is left unaddressed. picking a fight over it only means giving in to distraction.

that doesn't mean he can refrain. ]

I've known him longer than you; you've known him longer than me. If one of us trusts the other...

[ ilias ]

Well, maybe you can work that one out. I hear that mages get a good education.

[ the crystals don't actually make any sound when someone hangs up. ]

[ A few days, perhaps a week, and then there is a fold of parchment slid beneath the door, sealed with a cypress crest pressed into wax. If the dry hint of incense clinging to the paper and the fine, unadorned script aren't familiar enough, the ink is a particular shade of crimson Isaac might recall purchasing some months ago. ]

Isaac,

This letter was very nearly something else. Another bottle of wine, perhaps. Some simpler token of apology. It seemed unnecessarily dramatic to lay out my thoughts in some grand treatise, as if you would not have a number of valid counterpoints to each. But I hope there is value too in delivering all of this together in ink and paper, where you might have the freedom to consider your answer in your own time.

I should not have involved you in something I did not intend to be transparent about. Other people's secrets are not something I share easily; I ought not to have asked you to do what I would not. It was a thoughtless question, and I am sorry for it.

[ But not, apparently, for keeping said secret in the first place. ]

I have come to rely on your judgement in many things, without asking whether you wish to be so relied upon, or what you expect of me in return. In the process, I suppose I have made some assumptions about the limits of your interest in me. Perhaps it is better ask—

Is my trust something you want?

We have shared things neither of us offers lightly. That alone means more to me than can be committed to paper. But you are very good at avoiding my questions — better even than I am at avoiding yours. It is not a challenge I mind; there is a familiar safety in secrecy for us both, and a pleasure in the unraveling. But what I have of you is not all that I want. If you would have more of my trust, I would ask a measure of yours.

What that means precisely, I leave to you. Ask something of me and I will answer. Allow me a piece of you in return, and I will keep it safe. Or allow me nothing but what you have already given, and I will keep that in my confidence just the same. Whatever you decide, I would have it offered freely, as I do now.

With affection,

[ A distinct lack of signature. ]

[ a few days of their own; a letter tucked where he'll find it later. he hasn't troubled to seal it at all. ]

Ilias,

Of course I want you. That’s the problem of it.

Much as I esteem your discretion, you offer it from the advantage. It's been easier for us both to pretend otherwise. There is a comfort in familiarity, true, as there is little simpler than the weaving of two to one: The blur between a reflection and its image. Skin repeats and we may think ourselves single in nature; seen.

I have made a habit of ignoring the glass.

I don’t have a grandmother, Ilias. No one is watching to see me well — and what you've seen was not all freely shared. I never wanted to give you a monster, but how still you took it in your hands. Familiar. I'd be a liar to claim it didn't trouble me.

You’ve addressed your letter to Isaac, by which you mean me. Montsimmard seldom agreed about that: I was taught to write Isik and Ysaac and Izak. I must have been a dozen such men before a man at all. I don’t have a grandmother, Ilias; I hardly have a name. If you want more of me, care for what you would leave me with. Affection is pleasant. It isn’t enough.

I know that you worry after your tongue, imagine it dusty, but you’ve always done well by me. Isaac. It’s the same in Orlais as Nevarra. It’s not how my mother said it.

[ there's no further signature ]

Edited 2019-04-22 06:43 (UTC)

[ Enclosed within the well-sealed response is a small packet, folded to crimp on all edges; inside, the amount of ash a single sheet of parchment might produce. The exterior reads, For your peace of mind. One of them ought to care a whit about privacy.

(And if there's a certain dramatic appeal in being the only two (~~three~~) who will ever set eyes on a letter, well, that must be incidental.) ]

Isaac,

You are not wrong, of course. You have a keener eye for distinctions than I. Not only because my position makes such things regrettably easy to overlook, however. It is a shortcoming I navigate with more difficulty than I think wise to admit to most, but while I may keep others' secrets well guarded, I do trust the gentleness you have shown with mine.

In my life there have been those whose edges became indistinguishable from my own, who I let myself be drowned in. You might call them monstrous, but in them as much as you, I consider choice more important than potential. Still, it is a dangerous thing to lose one's self in another and call it understanding. All those since, I have allowed no more of me than skin for fear of a repetition.

Already, you have more of me than skin. You have more than my affection. What advantage I have over you, I cannot will away, but what steps I can take to even our footing, you need only name. If I am at times in some small terror to offer you more still, understand it is only because I know not where I ought stop. But an exchange of trust need not be even to provide a gauge by which to measure. Perhaps in the end that is fairer. It is at least a place I am content to start.

Teach me someday, the way you were called when you were named. Not today, not for years if you like, but should the Maker grant us time and your patience with my incessant curiosity hold throughout it, I would learn every face you care to show me.

Yours,
Ilias

[There's no curse to excuse this, to preclude tact or secrecy; but these things are no longer necessary. And while he can't guess where Isaac was born, never had a mother of his own to say his name, he's read the name on paper and the Fereldan way of speaking it feels like a knife in his hand.]

Isaac.

[It's unnecessary, and gratifying.]

You were there. Did you take them?

You'll have to be more specific .

[ he doesn't. the point sticks in his belly, chill and insistent. if anyone were in the room (anders, sidony) they'd spy not annoyance or outrage, but the rarity of real anger: still face, shaking hands. this isn't some quirk of leander's own, nebulous heritage, he's called the name before to different shape.

he'd burned it. even sealed the ashes, what a perfect little show. yours,

the bracelet (its blood) hasn't left his pockets. the firestriker lies with the rest of the grisly collection, and perhaps that was foolish. he'd thought it an acceptable trade; for the grandmother, a passing friend. didn't think anyone would think to draw a connection. to think he'd anything to take.

doesn't know quite why he did. the safest course would be to dash it on a rock. ]

Edited 2019-05-25 01:59 (UTC)

[Leander treats the crystal to a glimpse of his teeth, grinning through the silence after Isaac's voice. Strokes his thumb down its widest facet, and again, with incongruous tenderness.

He brings it closer; shuffling, soft; wherever he is, this nearness gives him the air of a fellow camper getting cozy in their tent.]

I'm going to open his room. [Confident, despite his lack of a key. (The drawing he never saw—it would have been enough.)] You can look through it if you like, take anything you want. You can have anything at all but those. You leave them for me.

All right? Will you do that?

[ what he wants —

with revin, there hadn’t be anything to take but the chains off his wrists. continued survival: a parting gift. he’s so careful of them since. ]

I don’t want whatever you steal.

[ which is two lies, really. he’s never given a fuck about graverobbing, and what he wants,

what he wants is someone still alive to scream at. fifteen years' caution and still he hasn't learned, but this time, there's no one left to hate. what he wants, idiotic: cloth between his fingers, a lungful of funeral smell. to bury his face in denial.

but that will pass. it has before. ]

I couldn't say which knucklebones are his, we haven't precisely sorted. You're welcome to try.

[ a string of beads doesn’t mean anything, and the fear in ilias’ face wasn't enough to keep him from lying of it for so long. leander could have them and their secrets for nothing at all,

save that leander's used his name. isaac has bent so often to the needs of the moment that it’s strange to remember now, what it’s like to spit in a face. it doesn’t feel any better.

but then, he never thought it would. ]

Edited (SORRY minor wording edits u kno how it be) 2019-05-25 03:56 (UTC)

[Absurdly, it hadn't occurred to him the remains might all be together, a jumble of bodies impossible to distinguish. He remembers suddenly the knife-glint of anger, the radiance of it, so close, the fist on his breastbone. They had to reconstruct most of her skull. Did you know that? It hadn't occurred to him then, either, and the way it does now—

Leander could run his fingers through ash and bone for weeks, months, for the rest of his life, and never find him again. Nothing left to reconstruct.
He will never be brought back to Nevarra, to be arranged, to be treated with gentle reverence, the way he's meant to be.
He will never cross the Veil.

Softly,]

Later tonight—closer to dawn than dusk. Come up to his room. I'll be waiting there for you.

Edited 2019-05-25 04:33 (UTC)

[ in the end, he does.

which is stupid. that much crosses his mind, for all he doesn't expect a threat, it's stupid to be coming here. but the fortress is wrapped in its private dramas; if anyone knows of this, certainly they don't care.

where else was he going to go?

he looks poorly. that can't be a surprise. unslept, for all he's bothered to shave; posture drawn newly tense, and the phylactery out of sight. he'd thought to just hide the damn thing, but keeping it's never been the purpose. it rests heavy as it has since leaving livia's bag — in a pocket, away. ]

Edited 2019-05-25 05:55 (UTC)

[Leander is already there. Has been there. He's opened the door, and closed it again, but the latch hasn't caught. It would be simple enough to push open.

On approach it becomes clear to the discerning eye that something about the door itself has changed. Happened to it. Alongside the mechanism's iron plating, the wood is worn smooth, as it would become after decades of grasping fingers; the surface is raised in places along the grain, as it might become after many seasons left outside; the pattern of the grain itself has shifted. Warped. As if by defect, natural or otherwise.
Even the plating itself shows signs of buckling, the little bolts not quite set. An error of design, perhaps... overlooking this amount of protrusion seems unlikely.

It's not a mistake, any of it: this was design wrought with patience. Hours worth of it. Materials shifted, pried apart, put back together.

The latch still works, it just hasn't caught. Enter, it suggests. Simple enough.

Inside, the room is just as orderly as Ilias would have left it, with all the little signs of a life permanently interrupted, the contents undisturbed save for a few candles, necessarily lit. A few pieces of the lock's mechanism lie on the table nearest the doorway, as though placed there in a handful. (Some are twisted beyond repair. Ask him if he truly gives a shit.)

Leander himself sits on the bed, his back facing the door. Rounded shoulders, head at a slight angle, hands in his lap.

Just

sitting.]

[ he makes no attempt to conceal his footsteps, or their pause outside the door; the creak as it swings on shifted hinge.

he picks up the mangle of the lock, looks it over — still heavy enough to brain him with, and it's funny, the things you reach for in those moments. a poker, instead of the poisonous hand of a spell. a learned response. education, not instinct. if someone hits you, you don't pull a blade. if someone pulls a blade,

metal drops back to the desk, a small clamour. isaac watches the bed, his shoulders. watches those, for lack of his hands, and waits.

why are they here? ]

[Leander sits patiently until the body behind him sounds like it's grown likewise still. Softly, he clears his throat of the catch he suspects is waiting there; the result is smooth enough.]

Thank you for coming.

[His head turns to one side, enough to show the profile of his own face past the mess of curls, and to verify the shape in his peripheral vision as the correct one. It isn't; it is.]

I'm going to ask for your help.

[The shameless flash of a hook, just in case Isaac is more angry than he is curious. He wouldn't refuse a fight—it would be satisfying, probably for them both—but it's not what he's after. (Not the only thing, anyway.)]

First I'd like you to know something. Will you hear it?

Edited (this sausage party) 2019-05-26 04:39 (UTC)

[ he came, didn't he.

leander turns, and free fingers flex — halfway to a fist, only to uncurl once more. if someone pulls a blade, you look for an intention.

the splay of a palm: go on. it's a hell of a silence, from someone so chronically loquacious, but this little performance wears at his nerves. how many hours has it been rehearsed? stone as a statue on that bed, animated only by the presence of an observer. it isn't wholly unfamiliar.

who is isaac, when he's alone? not much, he thinks; maybe nothing at all.

but something with more blood than this. ]

[A single nod, thank you. He begins with a full breath, and a sigh through his nose, and a courtesy:]

I read one of your letters.

[No sense of restraint, no tension in his voice; merely a fact.]

Until I read it, I couldn't have cared if you'd lived or died, any more than someone might miss... [a quick facial shrug,] a new piece of furniture, or a particularly nice shirt. I liked you. I liked meeting you. After the spirits came, when you started avoiding me, I wanted to chase after you and at least get you to admit why. But you were irrelevant.

[Isaac might track his gaze by the movement of his eyelids, his lashes; vague, unfocused, moving occasionally through memory.]

I liked to sit where he sat, sometimes, just to feel it, to... see the things he saw, where he saw them. I saw a piece of paper that seemed new, [wherever it was left, slipped, or tucked; he'd been scavenging for the barest scraps of insight,] and I opened it.

[Slouching in Ilias's chair, the click of candy on his teeth, swallowing his own sugary spit, just another trivial moment among many—and there, under the negligible weight of Isaac's pen, on the page's very ordinary surface, the universe shifted. The incredible power of a few humble strokes left unsigned. Leander thought what had opened was a wound, or a mouth full of teeth; it felt keen and greedy and it bled for a while. In nursing it, he discovered it was more like another eye.
It surprised him. He wasn't sure what he should do with it, or about it, so he did nothing.
But now...]

And I put it back. I don't think he knew—he'd have said something to me if he did. He never shied away from that. [The ghost of a smile; his head tilts again; he's watching his own hands, moving vaguely on his lap.] But I knew, then, that it could never be like it was again. He doesn't— [Frustration, briefly and softly sighed.] He didn't stop loving people, not completely, so there'd always be... you. You'd always be there, even if you weren't.

[More blood—if only he knew. (He may, soon enough.)]

[ anger bites again, the echo of a glove already thrown: that wasn’t meant for you, ]

Until you read it.

[ he repeats, at last and aloud. the words taste like exertion. leander can assert whatever he likes, but love has never been on the table, only more than my affection —

hairs that split upon a pattern in the grain. unimportant, unexamined; until something else emerges, a shape from noise. isaac was never the point of it. irrelevant, still, to the central image. ]

What you’re trying to say is that he loved you.

[ as though that changes anything. stakes some greater claim, else puts them in on it together. the transitive property applied to some stupid, seasonal fling.

(as it will be, when he rewrites this; a month from now, a year. when ilias becomes just another name he doesn't say.) ]

No, [comes out thoughtful. Patient.

He turns upon the bed, suddenly but not quickly, and as he twists to look back at Isaac his nearer hand reaches around—and it's empty, appearing only to settle on the blanket. Silence as his eyes move from one miserable detail to the next, observant and emotionless. Inquisitive, too, as though from a distance much greater than the steps it would take to bring them together.]

It's more than that.

[A voice not his own, not his, but hers: Do something, Lea.

It feels so fragile in his hands. He mustn't repeat his mistake.]

What was the monster you gave to him?

[ the lock is within reach. too far to do so casually. it isn't the first time he's considered dispensing with this (conversation and speaker) it won't be the last. at some point his eyes have fallen away, broken the discomfort of contact.

he doesn't look up again. ]

Why don't you tell me? [ the lock; the door. (the boathouse, the blood; they're a bit beyond lies) ] That wasn't my dream the spirits found.

[ obviously: he'd fled from it like a child. something of the memory scrapes, sends him a step closer to the bed. away from the desk, and its civilized violence. ]

Don't.

[It's the first ember of a warning, not inspired by that step forward, but timed with it nonetheless. If it compels Isaac to keep his distance, that may yet be for the best.]

I'm asking because I want to understand.

[Surely he wants to be understood. The way he referred to himself—if it wasn't only a show of melodrama, a way of gathering pity from one so willing to give it, he must know what it means. The necessary distance. The incredible lonesomeness of it. And if it was that sort of contrivance...

Given the letter's recipient, and the nature of this keen-eyed creature on the other side of the bed, one hopes it wasn't only that.]

[ if you have their intentions,

isaac turns. raises a hand, and that Other sense entangles: finds the threads of skin and sinew, all those quiet places where flesh and fade once knit. finds them, and pulls.

for a moment it doesn't seem he's done anything at all. almost comic, the way that sweat collects, that his expression soars with brief triumph. somewhere beyond the window, a breeze stirs. canvas flaps.

the first scars break open onto blood. ]

Edited (SORRY i broke the icon) 2019-05-27 05:57 (UTC)

[Isaac's hand lifts, and Leander is up and turning, quick as a snake—and he holds. Holds, fingers half spread, and in this state of readiness he waits for something to happen that he can detect. Anything to counteract. There is a sense of gathering that brings to memory the scent of decaying plant matter and a mouth full of blood, and in that dreadful anticipation he resolves to stop this before it starts. A sharp burst of will should do it—but before the decision can coalesce into action, it's already begun.

Leander's face changes, not in fear, but in comprehension.

It burns in strips down the back of his neck, his chest, both of his arms, warm, and it begins to run. His shirt is dark; the blood blossoms darker. He looks down to see the bright rivulet cross his palm, watches mutely as it reaches the webbing between his fingers and keeps coming, dribbles from his knuckle. Jerks his hand back, too late to keep it from staining the blanket on the bed, and shortly finds himself against the wall. A bump, and he leans there, sagging.

When he meets Isaac's gaze again, he looks dazed—his mouth is open, working in subtleties of indecision—until finally there come a few syllables of laughter. It's weak, mostly breath, but laughter all the same.]

You fucking idiot.

[Slick with red, held in a casting claw, a hand raises toward him, the heavy charge of power impossible to miss—

(Never in desperation, never in panic. This is well within his rules: he's not afraid—he's never afraid—and Isaac drew it for him.)]

[ leander reels. fingers splay, begin thoughtlessly to carve new shapes against the air. isaac's chin tips, comprehension sluggish behind its work, and

— fuck, what is he doing? what has he just done? ]

Maker, I —

[ will never know how to finish that sentence, because leander's laughter startles his attention, and now it is instinct: nothing but plain ugly reaction. weakness ripples out from the fade, a smothering miasma.

isaac stumbles forward. doesn't know whether it's enough, even as he's moving, as slickness catches his foot. it's half a fall that brings him down, fumbling for a bloody palm. ]

If you try that again, [ breathless, distracted. ] I will leave you here.

[ alone, to crawl towards help that isn't waiting. ]

Edited 2019-05-27 19:14 (UTC)

[The catch looses in Leander's throat, barely vocalized, strain of exertion releasing in surprise, inspired by both the surge of atmospheric weakness and the strange resistance in his own wounds. A bloody smear follows him down the wall. While his hand trails at a stubborn delay, the barest beginning of metaphysical theft is snuffed before it can siphon much of anything at all. (Perhaps it assisted Isaac in stumbling; he'd like to think so.)

It's amazing, isn't it, how many trifling scars a body can accumulate. There's a small cut on Leander's left cheek from some forgettable piece of shrapnel, and the wet patch in his hair is negligible, opened the first time by a childhood fall. His nose, fractured at the age of seventeen by Averesch's fist during a boys' quarrel, the skin split anew both inside and out. Any number of tiny marks on his hands, acquired in the course of work or play, little red beads on his knuckles, all those little lines too thin and pale to see beyond close scrutiny made bright all at once.
The orderly wounds that line the sensitive medial surface of his biceps, though, and the slices up his forearms, contrived to look defensive—those are significantly less trivial.

Most meaningful of all are the marks left by Ilias (nearly a decade older than the one Leander gave to him). Sentiment aside, without a blade left in to staunch it, the deep wound in the back of his neck, alongside his spine, is

concerning.

(To say nothing of the internal warnings beneath his breastbone.)]

Don't—

[The shadow of a nightmare's wheezing desperation. Don't— you promised— Whatever his hands catch, slip against, they grasp hard. It isn't altogether friendly. Neither is the flash of his teeth, their creases limned in blood.]

Help me, Isaac— we've got to go back there—

Edited (>:V) 2019-05-27 22:30 (UTC)

Hold still.

[ leander’s not going anywhere soon. is that what he wanted? better off asking another: the magister, or whoever it was rutyer had a go at —

surely he didn't think isaac an optimist.

the hand tightens around his own. there's no affection in isaac's answering squeeze, there's no we beyond a certain guilty pulse. his free palm gropes for leander's neck, cups over the hole only to slip red. heat flares in the gap between flesh and fade; isaac's lip catches itself, gnaws. he's never tried to fix this before.

it's only quite now that he realizes his own exhaustion, how much this has already taken. it's time to run. give this up, find his bag, and go. now, before anyone thinks to look past the misshapen door and its simple latch. before the noises draw attention, the fatal kind. ]

Hold still,

[ it isn't gentle. neither, the radiant pressure in his wounds, plastering itself between receded skin and air. power stirs. need be coaxed, managed, lest it leap to something that festers. words repeat under his breath, inaudible and orlesian.

he's good. this much he might still manage — another day, on fresher spirits and other injuries; here and now he struggles to stem even the worst of it. something in the walls won't hold: slides off the little hurts to leave knuckles and nose still streaming. layer by fragile layer, divided between the worst, will and repetition close the hollows (motion still jerking them to weep). leander's neck, his chest,

the arms are a problem. he's lost a lot of blood. and these, monuments to it. isaac's bag, his useless bag, is still far and away. the sheets closer, not so easy to tear as in the stories.

the story. he's going to need one. ]

Edited 2019-05-27 23:55 (UTC)

[The catastrophic amount of damage he's taken, the concept of his own mortality, it's well eclipsed by the urgency of his designs—but he stills, as commanded, and for a while he is quiet but for his breath. It's shallow, but steady, with conscious effort. Occasionally the rhythm catches as though with the urge to clear his throat, each time unrealized. Like bubbles of suffering, quiet until they pop.

The blood seems darker with each passing moment, both in congealing and against the growing pallor of his skin. He has yet to close his eyes; they remain fixed on Isaac. A whisper:]

Here.

[One fistful of fabric slips free, and cramped fingers loosen to cover Isaac's wrist—slowly, lest he be scolded. (And because it's too heavy to move at any speed but this.) What little focus he can spare, he urges to flow through skin and bone, this time to assist. If he can. If it makes any difference. It might—this school always did come naturally.
It helps that he isn't moving. Isn't doing anything else at all but bleeding, and even less of that as the seconds move sluggishly on.

At length, with his bloody face and watery eyes, wearing a lethargic approximation of wonder—still staring—]

That was extraordinary.

[ he doesn't flinch —

— it's too slow for that, but awareness shifts to his wrist with a discomfort absurd before its circumstance. strength flows, bone catches; the both of them rendered a temporary conduit. when he finally meets leander's eyes it's to whisper. ]

Shut up.

[ he turns to stand, already clawing a stained hand at his pocket for the crystal. the other drags a chair to the door. it's not much. it'll have to do: back pressed against it a cheap reinforcement.

(distance from leander, silent and chill)

the conversation is muffled. his voice is tight. ]

[Were anyone looking, they'd see the urge to rise in Leander's face, bright as blood, though it amounts to nothing. He's well past the time of adrenaline, when wounded men can do astonishing things; he allowed that momentum to wane under sharp command. He tries to sit up—feels like he's trying, barely moves—and the same hand that slipped free of a wrist now reaches after receding legs a moment too late to catch even a cuff or a heel.

Don't, he mouths, desperately tired. His arm lands gently, lies just there. Through the blur of his own eyelashes he watches Isaac reach the door, watches him secure it, and stay, and he closes his eyes and breathes. Listening.

Occasionally he tries to flex his fingers through their stiff chill, cracks an eye to one glittering slit to check they're actually moving. (They are.)]

[ after a time there will be an audible approach, the whisper-drag of fabric covering the sound of the feet that must be attending it.

Silence, after it reaches the door, and then two knocks. The delivery is crisp, although the sound is muted. Nothing else accompanies them. ]

[ the scrape of shifting furniture, then it's Isaac's face at the crack of door. he ushers her within; replaces the chair.

blood trails from bed, to floor, to leander's heap. isaac's clothes — hands — are little cleaner. the front of him stains from kneeling, footsteps streak red. don't scream, he thinks to say,

but lexie was right: he didn't choose her carelessly. the battle of ghislain; the ambulance crew. the orlesian court. ]

He's stable.

[ enough. isaac sounds no less winded in the trade tongue (this much leander ought to hear) ]

I don't know what he was trying to accomplish. But I know what it will look like.

Edited 2019-06-03 05:01 (UTC)

[ There was a time when she would have needed to be told that. Don't scream. Even if that time hadn't passed, she is sheathed in a numbness at the moment that means only a sharp breath in through her nose as she takes in the room.

Leander looks like her heart given form: sliced open in a hundred places. A perfect pinprick bead for each curl righted, carved lines from the merciless growth of tenderness she'd thrown up her arms to ward off, the darker red depths of truths that have seen no light but incisive green eyes or air but breath between lips pressed to their edges. Although she can see she'd been given the right of it, that it has slowed to stability, the vital weeping of his body had been made obvious, had soaked into everything, and the hawk in her chest shrieks a greeting-warning to see another winged shadow cast over its home.

Gold and emerald glints serpentine against the pristine white of her glove as Alexandrie crosses her arms against it. ]

Like a Sunburst brand. Or the gallows.

[ Perhaps for both men. In Orlesian, quietly: ] I will not play with only half a hand showing. Not at this table. [ Trade then, so both will know she asked: ] How came this?

[ Leander. Issac. The room. She would hold something in reserve, and she is neither in the mood to try and ascertain whether or not they are nor to dig after it. Alexandrie finds she can't spare a thought for her own reputation under the circumstances, but a secondary rumor of associating with maleficarum at her feet—she looks down, briefly, checking to make sure her hem hasn't dragged through any of the literal blood there—lends credence to the first, and if she remains a vocal ally of Thor's, Benedict's, as she means to, it will leap to them easily enough.

As much information as there is risk to her and those she deems hers. That is her buy-in.

(They would both be free, of course, to keep the coin of their knowledge, pay her in gilt wood and bet she will stay regardless. She will, and Isaac at least knows so, but there are three choices of whom she will play for in this room that holds both mages and blood, and this is a chance to sway her.) ]

Edited (CONJUGATION) 2019-06-03 16:17 (UTC)

[Sounds of movement rouse him to awareness (barely), rumbling of furniture, the door (distant as his own heartbeat, quickly, lightly), and he cracks his eyelids to watch the hem of a dress glide in, sideways (the smear a little longer, now, painting his trail to the floor). His mouth flutters a smile, light as a moth.

Of course it would be her. Something stirs, some sense of—not comfort, but something—a gathering. Some vague significance. He should resent the Lady's involvement, the further complexity it creates, but in this misty-edged moment he's simply content to see her.

And while he has faded (is still fading, by the smallest increments), he's been listening, too.

The first try is a soundless whisper. The next, he licks his lips, lingers in meandering distraction at the taste of blood, and finally manages,]

Everything he says,

[A pause, both to catch his breath in shallow puffs, and to create a moment of suspense—even the dying can multitask—as he turns his gaze on Isaac. Hooded eyes in a mask streaked with blood and liquid salt. He lets loose the only weapon he can reach:]

is the truth.

[Take that, fucker. Let's see what you do with it.

His eyes close; his brow knits in controlled discomfort as he tries to shift the jut of his hipbone to a marginally more comfortable position against the floor.]

Don't exaggerate.

[ dry, before he can quite contain it.

well, fuck. agreement is more damning than any protest: returns him the burden of supplying a secret worth this liars’ story. agreement creates the illusion of alliance, where tolerance might have served.

isaac paces to the wardrobe, the better not to block the door. he needs a change of clothes. de fontaine needs to own some control of this scene, beyond the caress of metal, the invocation of doom. a grey wash of loathing sluices past, but however long tranquility has been held threat, it’s not one he’s cared to examine. the habit doesn’t break now. ]

These are Speaker Fabria’s rooms,

[ were, but she could read that on a list, and there’s little harm that can be done a dead man. if there’s value in this, it’s for words already said: ilias had been thoroughly apolitical, ilias had lately taken enough interest to take up asking her favours. isaac trusts she can spy between the lines. ]

We were close. [ the tip of his chin to leander, however reluctant, ] He wanted to go back. I don't know what he —

[ was trying to accomplish. a whistling breath. ]

Edited (word repetition SORRY IM VERY SLEEPY) 2019-06-04 04:47 (UTC)

[Are is correct. The man is gone; the room still belongs to him. It's the closest to tradition they can reach. He'll have to come back, later, and clean it up—new sheets—a rug, maybe, to cover the stain he's made. They've made.

(Likewise, the consequences don't bear any reflection. If it comes to it, better to die than be robbed of his link to the Fade.)]

To kill them. [The effort it takes to speak is immense, and it sounds it; somehow it's easier to muster the energy if he keeps his eyes closed.] As many as I can find. Could you help me to the bed, please.

[ A sympathetic sentiment. Were she a mage, Alexandrie would have ripped herself similarly asunder for vengeance's sake.

Which means, perhaps, that she has finally been introduced to the identity of someone I like very much, who is likely also the 'he' in he wore the light beautifully. Who may, prior to Leander's reappearance, have taken up with the other occupant of this room.

There was a time she would have ripped herself similarly asunder for that as well. Or done it to someone else.

So: there is at least one blood mage in the room, Leander is identified as the culprit, then volunteers that he will abide by whatever story is told, which is largely a marker of cozying to power or wishing to seem to be. Putain de hommes. The two of them are playing at their own game in the midst of this, even with both the Rite and the noose laid out on the table before them, which makes the bizarre entangled enmity-alliance of sharing a beloved—

Having shared a beloved—

(Not that, not now.) More likely. Fine. She plays for herself. Looks at Isaac, raises a brow: 'You're stained already. You do it.' ]

And so we keep you alive, free, and able to do so.

I imagine you would prefer to limit the number of involved parties. If we must seek a healer elsewhere... [ assuming neither of you can do it, or you would have, ] how should you like to be brought there? We could well have found you in a Darktown alleyway, mistaken for someone who owed the Carta money. Perhaps you did owe the Carta money.

[ levelly: ] Or you could have found your way into a grief-stricken fight that turned very bad unexpectedly. [ beat ] While drinking a great deal in Lowtown.

[ Who knows. Could be anything. ]

Alternately, if non-magical skill will suffice, I shall see to you myself. Forty minutes will see you both re-clothed, and you, mon cher, acceptably salved and bandaged where it shall not be visible, and with very well applied cosmetic where it is. [ dryly: ] How lucky our skin is not overly far off matching, that you are both of a height and build with Byron, and that my carrying a large packed satchel whilst unaccompanied is extremely simple to explain.

[ u can use that time to think about what u've done and clean the floor. ]

Edited 2019-06-05 06:20 (UTC)

[ to kill them, as many as i can find — the inquisition has always been full of fucking lunatics. he would have had better success with another. but another wouldn't have had his blood. he doubts he's forgotten about the phylactery.

sooner or later,

the robes are black and roomy, conservative to cover a wound or six. they'd drown leander, and too many questions would be asked. isaac drags a pair from the wardrobe, takes the moment to meet lexie's eye. rare now that his own expression doesn't contort (wry, dry, any synonym you'd like for 'asshole'), just stills and sobers. intent: ]

There's only so much magic can do. [ he's seen to both ends of that. ] He needs rest now, water. Somewhere with a door that locks. It can't be the Infirmary.

[ they'll know this wasn't some alley debt. the cuts on his arms are too distinctive, the scars too memorable, and what a strange beating it all would compose. the carta are more likely to break a knee. ]

His room's in the other tower, or I can pay an inn,

[ none of it's as secure as a set of hightown apartments or a recently-bereaved estate, but there's colin to consider. there are the servants. he runs a hand over the absence of stubble, glances leander: a spasm of interior revulsion, a nod that's either gratitude or assent. he drapes the cloth over sheets and steps closer, cautious. for all their closeness, he's awkward of it now. a man hauling quarry free of dogs' teeth, still wary of its own.

he isn't strong enough for a bridal carry. leander's going to need to lean. ]

[The cuts on his arms, too distinctive—to say nothing of the scars no one has seen. His forearms can be explained as marks of defence, by design, but his biceps—his chest—too deliberate.

(Isaac has more than his blood.)]

No cosmetics,

[he breathes, before the oncoming trial consumes his concentration.

Hand up (shaking, pale) for assistance, no serpent waiting under the leaf, only a moment of dizzy effort and vision bursting white. He sags on the way up, but returns in the next breath to catch himself. Fierce concentration and hissing through his teeth. Stay awake. Stay awake. Leaden limbs forced on by a mind light and tenuous as dandelion seeds—

At the bed, he wants nothing more than to collapse, but sits instead, painstaking, oddly stiff. The throb in his ribcage is a familiar ghost; a jolt or slouch might stir him out of this floating numbness, which he'll need if they're going to move.

He turns his head to look at Alexandrie's shape, her head and shoulders crisp, the rest of her dreamlike. How lucky.

To Isaac, then, hooded and bleary,]

We'll go to my room. For convenience.

[ A sober Isaac, a Leander barely holding on to the world, and an mildly irritated Alexandrie. No need for disguise, no need for clean clothing, and surely Isaac didn't think she'd tidy the space. Why did he feel the need to call her of all people.

It's only belatedly that she realizes that in this instance she counts as a healer. A rudimentary one, yes, but with enough experience forced down her throat by Ghislain to take stock of injury, tie a smart bandage, judge what will heal well enough alone and what needs to be encouraged with fine even stitching well-practiced elsewhere (the only difference between petticoat and man is that the latter flinches and dyes the thread when you put flowers onto it with a needle,) and one who is notably sympathetic to mages and has ties (had. has.) that would discourage her from saying 'blood magic'. ]

I surmise you have had fine reason to become a hermit forced upon you, but if you wish such reason to remain quiet, you may borrow my room in the apartments when you are well enough to make it to Hightown. It is largely a studio now, after all. [ Her mouth curves in a thin wry smile. ] You may take an artistic retreat. Your interests in that arena are not unknown to my staff, and those circumstances render it perfectly acceptable to shut yourself up with canvas and paint and have your meals left outside the door.

[ When shutting oneself up in a room for long periods of time and refusing to take visitors the lower class are suspicious, the nobility are eccentric, and artists patronized by nobility are inspired. ]

Since it appears you need not a change of clothing and you refuse to be beautified, I am for the infirmary. Having the near entirety of those I have come to care for unceremoniously ripped from me has apparently made me most desirous of having always with me the ability to preserve life with my own hands.

[ For all the content, the delivery is bloodless. A field of lavender flattened by an unprecedented storm, stems snapped, dry in the sun. She turns to leave, pausing with her hand on the door only long enough to ask and receive answer. ]

Which is your convenient room?

Fourth floor. The other tower, [ down the hall from his own. isaac may still take up an inn — ] There's a bag on my desk.

[ in the infirmary, he means. a traveling bag, to be perfectly specific, he hasn't wholly unpacked. ]

It has most of what you'll need. Venaras' station will have wine.

[ or brandy. something to render the poor saps less sensible. a pause, a grunt of effort as leander detangles. he steps free, lingers by the door. a glance to lexie, orlesian again: ]

Thank you.

[ he doesn't promise shit. it doesn't mean there isn't a debt. ]

[Since it appears you need not a change of clothing— Lady. Lea pants out something like a laugh, shallow—call it a pair of good-natured huffs, maybe. A grimace is like a smile, right? Breathless, he adds,]

Room H. Don't worry about— mn. Noise. The floor's nearly empty.

[A small gift in gratitude; she doesn't need to know exactly where Isaac lives if she doesn't already know. Not that she couldn't find out, easily, but still. It's the gesture.]

Thank you.

[Spoken at near the same moment, two voices overlapping. This time he does smile, barely, with his face turned away.]

[ Alexandrie has as little desire for gratitude and smiles as she had had for condolences. The blood and secrets suit her fine.

A briefly raised hand in acknowledgement, nevertheless, and then she is gone. ]

[ a curse under his breath, soon as the sound of footsteps recedes. get him clean enough to get down the hall, out the courtyard, up another set of steps while upright —

get himself clean enough. there's nothing for it really, but to shrug on the second pair of nearly identical robes. it isn't what he'd hoped to do with these. it isn't going to hurt a dead man. ]

What you did to the door.

[ hates acknowledging that any further than he has, ]

Can it be done again?

[ that's one thing. doing it in this state, another. if it comes to it,

none of isaac's skills are suited to this. jam it and hope for the best. ]

[ The silence while Leander just looks at him, chin tilted down, eyes moving along his body in a meandering path as he wraps himself in that fabric, into that shape, so familiar—this silence is a long and heavy one. The blood streaked down his nose and mouth and chin (and elsewhere) has darkened; he's listing to one side; his blinks are slow and uneven, eyes threatening to roll with each. But he's still awake.

The urge to tell Isaac to stop touching things in the room comes and goes.
He'd have been okay with it.

His own clothes—his shirt's going to dry, and peeling it free of so many scabs will be... unpleasant. Sluggish, he plucks at the fabric, sticky fingers holding a delicate shape. His mind finally catches up to the question; he nods.]

I can try.

[ leander's still covered in blood. isaac still doesn't have any fucking water. but at least alexandrie de fontaine got the last word, so clearly this was all a splendid use of an unspecified favour and not a colossal waste of time better spent on a boat to the mainland —

he pulls a scarf free, while he's at it. pushes it between those tacky hands. ]

Lea. [ is he going to have to snap his fingers. he doesn't have water. doesn't have smelling salts, won't for another tower's distance so this must have been completely worth calling in the cavalry, ] Clean your face.

[ then the robes. then the door. it's not as though any ideas tonight have been good ones. ]

[Like a child, snapped at to clean himself up. Annoyance flares dimly, along with amusement; he probably does look like a child as he tries. He can't see, won't rise to find a mirror, can't muster enough clean spit to be helpful, and much of the grace has bled out of his hands. But he tries, and perhaps there's a sense of dignity in the way he straightens his spine while he does it, gathering himself for the long walk to come.]

Leander. [It isn't an impossible name to know by any stretch; still, they'd might as well be formally introduced. And since he not only stole a secret, but weaponized it, it only seems fair—] Named for a character in a book. By one of the sisters at the orphanage. [A pause to flatten the scarf over his palm, find a clean place, wipe it across his open mouth.] In the story, he dies.

[Again he folds the cloth to its cleanest, holds it up, doesn't look at Isaac while he does it. If any conspicuous smears remain, he'll have to do his duty as a healer and finish. Then Leander will be ready for the rest.]

[ it is at about this moment, having reached the door at the bottom of the stairs, that the greater situation and the number of floors needing to be traversed both finally make it to comprehension.

Since she can see no-one else, Isaac's crystal will chime to announce more Orlesian, which, despite the apparent privacy, is delivered in a soft tone of consolation in words easily explained away. ]

If you have not moved, stay. I will fetch what is needed to at least clean yourself.

[ The fact that it took her this long to think of bloody boot tracks is—

a brief pause, and then, ]

If you can think of aught else you might need, I implore you to make attempt to overcome our shared heritage and ask outright.

[ He’s halfway to spitting himself when the crystal crackles into speech. Listens with eyes shut. If it’s reflex that finds malice in distraction — well, there are only so many reflexes that one can dull. ]

If there’s lyrium, take it. [ A mop’s somehow the greater ask at present. He’ll deal with that later. ] Something to jam the door. Venaras' tools might do.

[ If Leander can’t pull this off. Shit. Leander. (Malice,) ]

I know the story. [ A version of it, at least, which is all that any story is. What a name to slip past one’s Mother, with all it implies of certain vows. He wipes at the stray smear of an eyebrow. ] Not a Hero?

[His head being the current focus of stressed hands, Leander turns only his eyes in the general direction of the lady's voice, and then to the mouth in front of him as it moves in response. It seems wisest not to interject.

Then the mouth asks him a question, sharp, and he twitches a smile. To his credit, he is still when the cloth moves a little too briskly alongside his re-fractured nose, only closing his eyes against it, the short-lived frown of his brow his only tell. That and the crease at one side of his mouth, not quite a grimace, as he murmurs,]

No. She never fought with her doctor— [This one's a full grimace, though probably not about his face.] —and I'm in no condition to climb out a window.

Thin enough for it.

[ Is telling, but only if you know the story; the natural state of windows and bars. It's been five years, but it was thirty before that. Iron, gaps. You wriggle. Slip out just as distraction does now: Attention more automatic than warmth. Another unwitting flash of belly.

You talk to sick men. You find the gaps. ]

She's coming back up.

[ A warning. Can't bring himself to make it a threat — worse, an apology. ]

[Thirty years, a lifetime; they all know how the world looks through bars; they're all bound together by the memory. But that doesn't mean anything is owed, and he knows better than to assume more than decent bedside manner: gallows humour, a distraction from pain. Warmth would be incongruous, would suggest a deficiency in recognizing the seriousness of violence—or else a disregard for it.
At worst, an appreciation.

Still, he didn't need to stay. (Ilias didn't stay. Couldn't bear to see what he'd done, even to finish it.)

Cleaner now, the open wound hardly seeping, his hand finds the wrist again. While privacy remains,]

Thank you.

[His gaze clings to focus, a sharp point in the haze. The barest squeeze of cold fingers.]

I understand now.

Edited 2019-06-19 19:22 (UTC)

[ a quiet knock at the door again, almost precisely the same as its predecessor. ]

[ Bones upon his. That same crawl of revulsion, the urge to snap that he doesn't understand a fucking thing.

Childish, even to his own ears. Too close to the swell of anger that brought them here. Isaac couldn't reach for a spell again if he wanted to; it's the wanting that spells trouble. The knock is,

A welcome distraction. He watches the door, frozen in the crack of light from beneath. Tries to number the odds that she's returned with guard in tow. There's nothing for it. Pries digits loose — gentle, and that's automatic too — to answer. Ushers her in before anyone else might see.

(Serra can be distracted. Artemaeus, cowed. Yngvi, diverted. But any hands might do it; no loyalty or guarantee.) ]

[ No guards, only white skirts—laughable, in this room. Alexandrie with a stuffed satchel slung over her shoulder heavily, the strap digging down into the pale of her shoulder alongside lace. (Pink beneath, when she sets it down. The audacity of it, to touch her so). She bends, opens buckles, frees waterskins and rolls of absorbent cotton bandage to set on the desk. Shears to cut it. Curved needle and waxed thread for what has already been cut. A roll of tools, a small bottle with a soft familiar glow of blue.

Their previous owners wouldn’t miss them.

A long exhale through her nose, as she turns her head to regard Leander even as she speaks to Isaac. ]

Was your need only for the delivery of such tools or their utilization as well, Enchanter? I know little of your skills in the arena of healing.

[ He reaches for the bottle, accedes: ]

I'm at your disposal.

[ There are few things in which Isaac could be termed particularly useful; he has worked very hard to make certain this is one. But there are practices dangerous for a mage, and they don't begin or end with the Fade. He hasn't often cause to risk stitching — and all the lyrium in the world won't straighten a wobbling hand. This is Alexandrie's domain.

(He was tired before coming here, he is exhausted now.) ]

[ She takes a moment to look—really look—at Isaac. Drawn, pale, over-used. She’d not had too much cause to observe mages expended by their magic. Once or twice after Ghislain, but near everyone had looked the same. She softens with what little kindness grows in her garden today, and nods, pulling off her gloves and folding them inside the satchel before stretching to begin the process of undoing the line of delicate pearl buttons that lies along her spine. ]

This I can manage, but it may happen that I need your aid when lacing myself back in.

[ The barest of bright spots on her skirts might be memorable, never mind what would occur were she to whisk them across the slaughterhouse floor, kneel to attend to Lea where he lies prostrate, so she peels herself bare perfunctorily. Little ability to disguise the flat-handled knives strapped to her thighs now, but there’s nothing for that. They and their sheathes will join the slowly and neatly accruing pile of gown, frothy layers of petticoat, corsetry, fine silk stockings. Even the pearls around her neck, the gold and pearl earrings. She’s left in her hair when she retrieves what she needs and makes her way over to the bed without a single iota of embarrassment.

(For the last two steps, the red is vivid on the white of her feet, a bloody swan.)

She touches Lea’s broken nose with the very tip of her finger, and offers him a small wry smile. ]

Sneeze on me, and I shall sew your nose shut.

[Moving free of Leander's grip needs no strength at all, and once released he takes his hand back into his lap and leaves it there, both palm up, fingers and arms loose. (Minimal discomfort; he knows from experience.) He follows Isaac with a slow turn of his head to witness, dimly, the furtive entrance and exchange.

Alexandrie steps out of her clothes and comes to him just the way she is, and surreality finally closes over the crown of his head. Sensation of floating. The writhing of his subconscious prying and squeezing itself into waking time: a smooth-skinned celestial vision juxtaposed to suffering and gore.

He's still sitting upright, still hasn't fallen over—Isaac asked him about the door, there's work yet to do and he must be present for it—but again the sag of his posture says his body's considering it. Glassy eyes and silence. This time, he doesn't smile back. But he is pliable; he will do whatever is asked of him.

(And, captivated though he is, he will keep turning his head to make sure Isaac is still there.)]

Edited (oops) 2019-06-23 02:05 (UTC)

[ He nods. Peculiar how a sight can render pornographic not for the layers one sheds, but retains. But then her necklace is gone, the stockings,

The knives.

Those wouldn’t surprise if he’d ever stopped to think of it, but behind her back Leander will spy his skin crinkle the same. Isaac turns, sets to the brief business of adding water to basin, shrugging Ilias’ robes again. His own shirt follows. Boots. Trousers. It isn’t the first time he’s been naked beside a lady of breeding — or had his cock out before Leander. Both moments more pleasant than this.

(They've moved well into the realm of the lurid,)

He scrubs. ]

[ Despite Leander’s persistent consciousness, Alexandrie judges it easier to cut the shirt from him than get it off any other way. It’s not as if it’s salvageable. Nimble hands and sharp shears make quick work of parting it, her fingers peeling it from him with slow care afterward, stopping to wet the cloth if it sticks.

(Whole over the cuts. Whatever opened the wounds for use, it didn’t go through the cloth. The spell itself, then?)

Her lips thin, clinical. There are... it’s a lot. Brutal looking and clean, bisecting his chest. Myriad and exacting on his upper arms, too orderly to be anything but chosen and placed. More haphazard on the forearms—wait. A slight frown. Those she’s seen. Or at least, she’s seen them closed and healed and old, light lines storytellers of a life near violence as he paints.

(Scars... made new wounds to cast from? One cut to make many quickly to cast something larger? That would, perhaps, fit the story she’s been fed. Other stories wear it equally well.)

Alexandrie sucks in a sharp breath when she checks his back and finds the deepest of them, still bleeding. Says something unladylike on the exhale and moves quickly to thread the needle, maneuver onto the bed behind him. Pauses briefly, then sets to making smaller holes in his flesh to close the large. She is more careful than she is quick; it will take some time. ]

[As the fabric leaves his chest, he drops his chin to look at the line carved down his breastbone. Lifts a hand to it, though this simple act of flexion squeezes at the lacerations lining his arm. His fingers hover close, poised as though to delicately pull back the front of a garment that isn't there—as though he's thought to open the seam of his own flesh and is puzzling at how, precisely, to go about it.

The worst of his wounds, made by a single vigorous application of a short knife, punches through the meat of his trapezius muscle, right alongside the spine, and the way the skin pulls taut with his bent neck will make Alexandrie's mending difficult to begin. So, too, will the quick and heaving breaths that suddenly arise: first snuffled through blood-crusted nostrils, then in an openly panting struggle for self-control. The occasional reedy hint of his voice. Face creased as if he's only now decided to acknowledge the condition of suffering.

Finally agreeing to lift his head and hold it there for her guiding hands seems to calm him; the first push of the needle is a welcome point of focus, like a star, small and bright.]

I can hold, [he rasps, in case it's still in doubt.] Keep going.

[Staring forward, breathing through relaxed jaw, more slowly with each stitch. Eventually, calm. (He does not look at Isaac.)]

Edited 2019-06-25 05:00 (UTC)

[ She assumed he could. Hold, that is, even without the benefit of the whiskey she’d filched along with the tools.

Leander might want it, though. Alexandrie might, to splash the wound she’s begun to put small stitches into, more even since he’d lifted his head. She’d not brought it over with her. An oversight, perhaps, but it was an unwieldy size and weight along with the rest. Remedied easily enough; she looks up from her work to seek Isaac’s gaze and then makes a gesture towards the bag on the floor. ]

The bottle in there, if you please.

[ If not all of the liquor in the bottle makes it over, well, that’s to be expected. ]

[ Not now.

Later. Later that night, alone in an unstained room, he'll open another. Read a letter. Days after, still drunk and sore for the space beside him, he'll pour it into the fire.

A better man — rather: a more present one — might have offered the bottle sooner. But now he stalls, recalled abruptly from his work (every whine broken from Leander's chest punctuates the swipe of cloth against board). It takes a moment to process, to hand it over and brace Leander's head.

It isn't Leander he looks to now for a decision; it isn't Leander's decision whether to drink. Not if it might disrupt her task. Rip free that careful thread. ]

[A pitifully human reflex, to take the closeness of any body, the touch of any hand as an anchor of comfort, and even conscious awareness of it has the same effect, drawing focus away from the importance of all Leander's severed, blazing nerves. He'd have rejected the bottle for this same reason. (He'd have died without their bodies, their hands.) Nevertheless, his thoughts crawl along their limbs, into branches, into necessary plans.

What's left to preserve? The line drawn down his breastbone, nearly identical to Ilias's own scar—the sight of it new again, running fresh, is what crumpled him so suddenly—and the contents of his own journal, reverently curated. The Speaker's modest collection of personal effects, ultimately meaningless, should be sent back to the Maker along with the rest of him. The phylacteries: important, so important, more symbolic than a marriage vow. To think the one he made himself can never be revived—

Interrupting himself, strained, desperate,]

How many more?

[The people Ilias knew. Sidony, his discarded apprentice; whatever unease may have grown between them no longer matters. Kostos won't want the attention, but it isn't up to him. Casimir... wherever he is...
Isaac. Whose hand cradles the back of his skull.]

Bandage me up, we'll do the rest later—

Two.

[ Calm and absent, the sound of a woman who takes it as a foregone conclusion that she will be finishing her work to her own satisfaction. It’s a bit late for the sluice of liquor to burn over the parted flesh, but she relieves Isaac of the bottle to pause and do it anyway, pat it dry with a folded square of bandage, and then two stitches later release Leander from the heavy thread that joins them with the shears. ]

There.

[ A quick glance reveals that to be what most needed the extra aid in sealing. His chest might want for one or two. Alexandrie reaches for the same folded square, comes around to scrutinize the bisecting wound. ]

Are you in a hurry to bleed upon another room?

[ But she makes the concession of folding a pad of cloth to place over the line of stitches— although she then looks at its placement with thinned lips. There’s no truly elegant way to bind it, although across his chest and back... that requires the chest wound done first. A morbid logician’s puzzle. She pulls thread. ]

Two more.

[ And reaches to brace a delicate hand on his chest. ]

[Making a fist is one of the very first things a human learns to do with their body; hands are formed for it, brains wired to clench on reflex. When Leander snatches at Alexandrie's hand—unthinking, a primitive urge—it's only the weakness forced upon him by this whole affair that keeps his grip from squeezing a bruise. Weakness, too, is partly to blame: as his mind slips loose with exhaustion, so does the personable young man he tries to be, so artfully curated, lose shape.

The splash of alcohol, he took that well. The last tying-off of his neck, borne without complaint. But not this.]

Don't— [His voice cracks at sudden volume, retreats to a hiss after the stab of fractured ribs.] Don't touch it, it's not yours.

[The fierce honesty of the moment is short-lived. Focus drains. Indicating no one,]

It belongs to him.

[After a stretch of visible struggle, his brow grows suddenly smooth and his eyelids relax to half-mast; they remain just so, open and unseeing, as the rest of him sags. (At last, his fingers may be pried apart.)]

Edited 2019-07-03 04:51 (UTC)

[ Well, that settles that.

Leander fades. Isaac's grip in his hair relaxes from the moment it might have asked action. ]

Are you alright?

[ — Is a vestigial question. Of course she is; of course this isn’t. They can afford a breath, should she choose it, and it’s funny, isn’t it? The manner in which one might choose: Transfigure the pause into vulnerability or control.

He sets down Leander’s head, fishes for his pocket again (the lyrium). A bit of work with stopper and teeth, a grimace for the taste. Leander won’t be up for the door. May as well give up on that, ease the rest of this.

The palm that smoothes his eyes shut carries true sleep. ]

[ Don’t touch it, it’s not yours.

It belongs to him.

Her hand stays—it echoes in her. This is what he has left.

She has none of her own, not like that. The last marks Loki had left on her have faded, her skin left traitorously fine save for the thin white slice of a scar on her thigh from Ghislain. The pink dashes across her palm, perhaps, from when she’d nervelessly clutched a handful of roses hard enough to make stems flush with skin, the thorns hide in her flesh.

Maybe she shouldn’t have let Thor heal them, the small bit he could. Should have grabbed his wrist and hissed.

Alexandrie sets down the thread. Flexes her hand. Takes the breath. ]

Are any of us?

[ She takes up the bandages without waiting, takes the time to wind and tuck them nicely.

It hardly needs answering. ]

He will be heavy.

[ Some time ago, ink was put to parchment. Rolled and sealed, it was affixed to the foot of a raven, one of sixteen sent off with care and purpose to bear a heavier burden than paper and twine. Through the thick summer canopy of the Planasene Forest and the leveling tail of the Vimmarks, one wound its way down the banks of the Minanter and found its roost in Hunter Fell. Parchment passed from rookery keeper to errand boy to the paper-skinned hands of a woman who had nearly forgotten there were still things in this world from which one might flinch.

(Expectation is not the same as acceptance. It is easy to imagine, to plan for an inevitability, to hold a certain collection of words in hand and tell yourself they were always going to come to rest there, and it is a blessing the Maker kept them at bay for so long. It still feels like robbery.)

Days pass. Weeks. No personal effects find their way down the Minanter. No letter follows the raven's path.

And so tonight, when Isaac's shift at the infirmary begins, he'll find the room — and more specifically, the stool at his station — less empty than usual. Perched upon it, soft shoed feet braced against one spoke, is a young woman of no more than twenty, dressed in traveling silks of enough drape and gather to suggest her origins before the tidy syllables of her accent confirm them: Nevarran, noble.

Presently twirling a little stalk of embrium between her fingers. The rest of his desk is undisturbed, as if to do otherwise might be beneath her, though perhaps not beneath the man at the far side of the room, a head taller and broader and better armed than the young lady but keeping a substantial distance.

Never mind him. ]

Enchanter Isaac, is that correct? [ Her smile is warm and her eyes bright to see him — brighter than her cousin's, though a similar shade. ] Of Monsimmard?

[ Oh, fuck.

It doesn’t show; it shows clean through: Features arrange into faint curiousity, fingers tense against the latch. Still beneath lamplight. For half a second he might excuse himself, No, this is Anders, I’ll just go fetch him for you —

He shuts the door, sets down a box. It croaks. ]

My lady, [ Isaac hasn’t written any merchants, wrote only two by Montsimmard.] You’ve the advantage of me. I regret we’ve not been evenly introduced.

[ If it's groveling again, he’d sooner know to whom. The family resemblance is passing enough to pass for something altogether different. He’d written more than one missive. Regrets that nearly so much as their subsequent neglect.

They'll shoot the messenger, he’d thought to tell Matthias, and they've sent someone nearly so young. If the matter demands attention, they've esteemed it (him) little enough to afford a practice round. A cat with a mouse.

Certain outcomes predetermined.

He thinks all this rather than think about the man on the wall. Acknowledging his presence would be a faux pas until pressed. This remains Isaac's territory, and a scuffle here would be unnecessary. There's a whole city to break his knees in. ]

Edited 2019-07-02 04:58 (UTC)

Of course.

[ Light, her feet find the floor again, as if she might curtsey for him instead of the reverse. (She doesn't. Isn't this a fun game?) ]

Lady Fabria. —Lady Eupraxia Fabria, to be quite exact.

[ In case the fact that they are numerous as well as wealthy might not have traveled as far as Kirkwall. Imagine me, looking like this at eighty-eight, is all that's in the lilt of her chin, but she's watching close, measuring for a reaction before continuing. ]

You wrote to us in Hunter Fell, about the Speaker.

Ah,

[ He says, and means: Ah, it gets worse.

That and the bow of his head (shoulders) could be gracious, respectful, if it weren’t only stalling. An opening of weakness; blood dribbled in the water. See what she does with it, and he'll how much more he need spill. ]

A rare thing, to apologise for good news.

[ Do they know? They have to know, they’ve gotten all the way here to make him say it. Does Ilias know? Of course he won’t. Ah. ]

Still, would that our acquaintance came under finer circumstance. Will you be in Kirkwall long?

[ The box rustles, something thwacks against it from within. Isaac doesn’t look. ]

Edited 2019-07-29 22:00 (UTC)

Have you met our new Head Archivist yet? Mssr. Dalat?

[ it's not a spit-take

it's really more of a abruptly choking on water ]

[ ???? ]

Is that a yes, or do you need hand with-- [ you know, the whole having-a-face-again thing etc. ]

[ with all the dignity he can eventually muster

like, at least ten cents' worth: ]

We've been acquainted.

[ Hold up-- ]

Intimately?

What?

--Or not intimately. Either way.

I haven't fucked the slave you freed.

[ — sure is an aggressive way to begin this conversation he doesn't want to have, about things he probably shouldn't know. ]

[ holy whiplash, batman ]

He has a name. [ don't be a dick ] I had no idea you'd such an interest in his previous circumstances.

He does.

[ the flop of a hand is apologetic; crossing his arms, less so. ]

The family wrote. That business with Kostos.

The [ a searching gesture, ] de Revins?

They wrote to Riftwatch? I didn't know anything came through diplomacy about it.

[ the window's too narrow to climb out. pity. ]

It didn't come through Diplomacy.

[ The turn of his chin is slow. ]

The de Revins wrote to you?

No one begins in Ghislain, Ilias.

[ correction: no one who matters. ]

[ All he knows of Ghislain is it's where they send people whose brothers make enemies of kings. All he knows of the de Revins is they keep slaves who marvel at gentleness is if it's rarer than spun gold.

A certain caution stills in his eye. ]

A patron?

A long time ago. I didn't think they'd kept track.

[ but it's easier now. one name in sixty, not thousands. one name that lately visited val royeaux in company of a nobleman and an obscenely tall elf. it's easier. ]

Will that be a problem?

[ The letter. The keeping track. (Interesting, that they did.) ]

I don't know. They sent money.

[ the pause is indelicate, hangs like cord. ]

You asked me once, whether you were being paranoid. [ and here leander is, alive. ] But if there's a trap, I can't divine the mechanism.

[ The comparison is-- effective, more telling than he's come to expect from Isaac. (Worrying. Warming some small point behind his ribs, all the same.) ]

You've a better head for plots than I. [ Not a dismissal; trust your judgement. ] But it does at least seem unlikely anyone would arrange to lose to me at cards on the off chance the Avereschs would start a two-man Exalted March over it.

[ Which, of course, doesn't rule out a trap more belated in the making. ]

What did they say the money was for?

His wages. [ arms finally shift loose, he sinks a bit in place. pre-emptive: ] I know — but we've no contract to dispute it. He doesn't want them.

I don't know that he'd care to dispute it, either. [ Impassioned fools, was the turn of phrase he'd had for Kostos and Nikos. Ilias gives a tetchy sigh. ]

Is there any hope of the consequences touching them regardless?

[ He doesn't answer, which is of course its own.

Finally: ]

He's clever. [ A conversation regathered; a view again obscured. Isaac rolls onto his elbows, considers. ] Gave him an idea and he made it better. More useful.

[ To himself, not Isaac. Obviously. It wouldn't be a compliment otherwise.

(It wouldn't be a question: He wants Ilias' measure of the bloodthirsty little stranger. Some names have a way of blotting out the sun, but his eyes have since adjusted; there must be a reason that Mhavos came up.) ]

Edited 2019-10-14 08:10 (UTC)

Mn. [ Not disagreeing; softening to eye the line of a shoulder, perhaps. ]

He's good at that. Making himself useful to other people. Less so, I think, with-- [ Hm. ] wanting anything for himself.

[ The quirk of an eyebrow, ]

That seems like underestimation.

[ With a relenting smile, ]

Perhaps not nothing. Safety, choice, comfort, routine. But the things bigger than those -- hopes and dreams, careers, love -- he doesn't seem to know what to do with.

One way or another Athessa has brought to Isaac's attention a book, procured for her by Mhavos, called La Langue des Fleurs.

The bulk of the text is translated into Trade, thankfully, but now she's pointing at an illustration. It seems that the notes below each drawn flower weren't considered important enough to translate, or that the translator assumed whoever read the book would actually read the book and be able to fill in that gap.

"J'espère," she reads, in a...passable approximation of the real pronunciation. "What does that mean?" The flower in question is that of the hawthorn tree, lovingly rendered in pastel colors and crowned with a hand-written label.

"Ah," He squints, points with the end of a pinky (hands occupied with a knife, some sort of root). J — ah. That's what she means. Well, still better than Ilias. "I hope."

"Protects against hexes, or so my mother used to say." If she said any such thing, he doesn't recall. Seems doubtful; Hawthorn trees don't grow in tenements. "Planning a bouquet?"

His manner's breezy. Athessa is pleasant enough company, and she hasn't broken anything yet.

"What? No," don't be absurd, her tone says. "I wanted to see if this flower language would be useful at all." In truth, she's trying to parse as much of the language as she can without actually reading the book. It'd simply take her too long and she'd have to read aloud and sound out the words--

"What about that one? The lilac? je n..nai...n'ai...jamais?" She gives up trying to embarrass herself even more than sounding out Trade words would and just angles the book towards him and points again.

"A bouquet is eminently useful," For the young, the fripperous, and anyone whose correspondence is reviewed by armed guards. "Though here I may recommend speaking directly. Je n'ai jaimais aime que vous: I never liked you."

A short gesture with the knife (away from Athessa).

"Really, it varies more than that. The meanings go in and out of fashion — not strictly reliable as code."

She makes a face at the idea of a useful bouquet. Maybe if you had to hide a knife.

"I was thinking something more...indirect than just handing someone flowers," Like having someone set all the tables in an outdoor cafe with agapanthus blossoms to send a message about the Divine. "If the meanings change so much, that could actually be helpful for using it as code, because if only the sender and recipient know the key, then it's harder for the message to be intercepted. Right?"

Agapanthus. J'éprouve pour vous un amour divin. I feel for you a love most divine. A code within a code, potentially.

That's actually —

"A good point," He manages to not sound surprised. "If you could coordinate volumes for reference. Trouble, of course, should one's enemies catch on."

A light shrug.

"But isn't that always the trick in novels? Hang a lamp in the window, wear a flower in the pocket. One wonders how many accidents come of it."

Edited 2019-10-13 05:39 (UTC)

Hmm... "Sssso we change the meanings of the flowers periodically. Same as what happens with the normal kind."

She thinks about the mistakes that could be made if looking for someone wearing a flower, and there are multiple people wearing one.

"I guess passphrases would be too predictable?"

He stops chopping.

"You do mean to try this, don't you?"

"Sure. Maybe not in the field right away, but--" She shrugs and starts flipping through the pages to find the next illustration. Maybe she'll try it around the Gallows, first.

"You'll know to think twice if you get flowers out of the blue, I guess."

There's only so long John can feasibly put off the inevitable. The news Teren brings feels as close to a nudge as John cares to receive, so he makes his way to the Infirmary after nightfall.

It is not a quiet approach. The sound of his crutch on stone announces his arrival before he appears in the doorway.

"I assume you've seen the news."

They were successful, after a fashion. And here is John, as agreed upon, to learn whatever it is Isaac is capable of teaching him.

He has. Seen it — heard, rather —

The knife is sharp; the thunk of it dull against board — again: a peg and slate. Roots multiply, divide into thin discs, thinner. Preparations.

They're going to war. He's heard the news.

"And its absence." The primary discussions have stayed behind shut door. Must have, for the silence of the yards. It's another moment, two, before he stops cutting. Looks up. "Though that vouches we won't be disturbed."

Isaac won't. Silver, another matter. He's as certain that Commander Flint has thoughts, as he is that Commander Flint hasn't bothered to learn blonde from black (there are only so many mistakes that one may estimate to shock). It rankles; it shouldn't. He's done well to disappear here, and pride an unwelcome guest.

"I'm not a scholar," Sets the blade aside, wipes his hands upon cloth. "But neither is any child. Circle theory, vocabulary, comes later. A way to frame ideas that come less naturally."

Or the natural byproduct of sitting piss-bored in a tower.

"Feelings that come less naturally. Do you follow?"

Edited (SORRY) 2019-12-11 06:10 (UTC)

John volunteers nothing. Yes, he is aware of the public absence of certain discussions. No, he doesn't care to translate Flint's slumped shoulders and dull fury. That all of their machinations have not gone to plan doesn't need to be spelled out any further.

And it galls John to think of how vastly awry their plans have gone. The cost is staggering.

It's the reason he's here, levering himself into a seat as Isaac speaks. John has spent so much time trying to avoid facing this head on, and yet—

"The implication that none of this has come naturally?"

He hasn't decided whether or not to contradict that concept. But it lodges in his chest, wedged like a dagger.

"Or that learning technique comes before learning the theory behind it?"

"Yes and no," To the latter — the first notion must say more of John, and isn't that peculiar for a Vint? "What I mean to say is that we all begin somewhere, with some expression of will."

However accidental.

"A girl wants to help her mother, and the candle lights itself. A boy is so angry that he stomps, and makes sparks." The flick of his fingers doesn't accompany any now. "An impulse can signal an area of strength, for its early familiarity. We know where it comes from within us."

"What you used in Nevarra, the South would call it force," A shrug with the rag: He didn't pick the name. "But what do you call it, when you call upon it? What does it feel like?"

Wary resentment doesn't reach John's expression. All it does is burn, coiling in his gut as John does his best to tread the line between succinctly answering the question and revealing too much.

"I have never attempted to name it. I've always known what it was, there was no need to call it anything other than magic."

There is no need to lie about that, at least. John has known his ability for what it is, just as he knew the way he relied on blood and bone and pain distort the way it was meant to be used. Innate ability recognizes the sense of being overextended, bent out of place.

"But I must admit, I find it difficult to describe what it feels like to use. Do you find it easy to separate the physical sensation from the abstract sense of...your abilities?"

Abilities is appropriately vague. It allows for focus on the more traditional healing Isaac does, rather than the way his body had knitted back together, bones cracking back together as blood-gouged flesh slopped over deep tears. What did that feel like, John wondered. More or less painful than the slow agony of a body repairing itself naturally?

Edited 2020-01-21 04:20 (UTC)

"Mhm —" His head cants, briefly, toward nostalgia. Levels. "— No. Some have no trouble with it, of course. Pricks."

There's no particular heat to that; itself almost fond. Younger years. He shakes them off.

"When you define a sensation, an attitude, you make it easier to recognize and repeat reliably. To hold in check." A splayed hand. "Think of a spell as a shortcut. A bundle of names and gesture that prompt you toward that abstraction. That magic. There are dozens of books that will tell you how to throw a fireball, argue about its classification and technique."

"But they're only a means to practice. For you, I think, less than a useful one." The unnameable thing, the instincts of an apostate — how well would it fit within Chantry geometry? He supposes that's the point of all this. Isaac has long been worn to a ring. "Was there anything else? That you do."

Aside from crushing ribs, snapping necks.

"For lack of a better word, sleight of hand."

The books and theory Isaac mentions are not unknown to John. He's made some faltering attempts to grasp that kind of knowledge, but it had felt more like trying to read another language. There was some foundation John simply didn't have.

"There's a few things I know that you might find familiar, but I think largely what I know to do isn't going to be recognizable."

And some defensive instinct wards against sharing too much.

"Especially if these lessons entail...redefining my instincts, so to speak."

It arrives the day before they're all meant to leave for Nevarra. Within the modest cloth wrapping:

A simple iron bowl, wrought by hand. Around the rim is a thin ornamental band in the Nevarran style, resembling gouged or sculpted clay more than metal. Suitable for ointment, oils, and/or offal. It comes filled with an arrangement of autumn leaves; cradled in the centre of those is a phial of light cologne, with a (more or less) complimentary scent to the strange assortment of herbs Isaac tends to wear.

[ definitely while tucked together in the world's smallest bed is the right time to ask-- ]

What do you think of Leander?

[ no reason. ]

[ face pressed to shoulder, cock pressed to — well —

the haze is sluggish to part, even about pointed names. he shifts, and his palm draws unwitting over that old line of scar; the one that bisects two chests: ilias'. another's. the recollection stutters on delay, his fingers stopping short an inch or so past memory. ]

Huh?

[ isn't exactly the sound, isn't anything quite so articulated. he isn't confused. he knows his thoughts, and he knows dreadfully well why ilias might ask them now. but,

shit. his leg's gone to sleep. isaac shakes it, makes another stupid, sleep-muddled sound. ]

What do I ... ?

[ truly, the wit to ensnare highborn blood. ]

[ Mouth presses to perfectly-adequate hairline all the same, as if in apology for the question, or the circumstances, or the interruption of Isaac's far more predictable circadian rhythm (as if any of those things were not, in their way, a choice), ]

Think of him, yes.

[ The slip of a palm between mattress and half-asleep hip might be cheating, too, if it wasn't just habit, muscles easing muscles they've gotten used to tending.

He doesn't doubt Isaac has thoughts on the subject. --Somewhere in there. He can be patient. (He'll have an elbow cramp in a minute, too.) ]

[ He shifts into it — then away, shuffles upright to reach for a packet that isn't there. Foiled reflex: His cigarettes are at the docks with the rest of the fucking grippe. He exhales instead, brushes the rust from grey matter.

There are those that he hesitates to give honest counsel. Ilias might press those lines, but they draw about him close as ever upon some points. The dead.

The living.

He doesn't, Isaac suspects, want a true assessment of Leander. And why should he? I think he's dangerous, the three of them are. That's why there are towers. I think you were terrified,

But of whom, for whom, never precisely defined. Ilias wasn't the one left bleeding.

He thinks Ilias fucks when he's avoiding something. He doesn't think it's so different now. He thinks, then he asks: ]

Do you know what he does all day?

[ When he isn't gobbing phlegm. It's an honest question: Isaac doesn't. Alexandrie de Fontaine is not what he considers honest himself. ]

[ Ilias sighs, stretching shoulder and elbow into the vacated space. He does rather prefer fucking to talking about his problems. If distraction was an effective alternative, if the subject weren't already pressing into every corner of his mind, he might not have brought it up at all.

But he did bring it up, and not for nothing. He's never known Isaac to give a straight answer; equally important, then, the route he chooses to take. ]

He works with Lady Asgard. [ the shape of a gap, to be filled as he collects his own thoughts in turn. ] There are reports sometimes, of his missions. He minds the archives still. Helps with the horse, when he thinks I'm not looking. He sketches.

[ None of it the point. Lips press flat; eyes find the ceiling. ]

I do not think he's hurt anyone since he arrived here. [ Well— ] Not anyone he wasn't meant to. Not outside of extraordinary circumstances.

How important is that to you? To know?

[ What he does; whether he's hurt anyone. Would it matter if he had? A question to which Isaac already knows the answer. One which Ilias seems perilously frequent to forget. ]

Edited 2020-04-01 08:02 (UTC)

[ Ah. ]

Important. Of course it is important.

[ But. Ilias squints, as if wondering whether Isaac used to be taller, perhaps with more hair up top, or less down— anyway. ]

Only he can't live his whole life under my supervision. At some point I have to trust him, or— [ blood and saliva spill onto dirt, fingers crunch into dead leaves; ] I don't know what happens if I can't.

Of course you know. You've done it.

[ Another little phylactery and murder plot. Ilias knows the stakes, certainly better than Isaac, peering always through glass.

They're worse when they're together, He'd told Kostos, and meant it. There was a time, however short, when he'd known them apart. Clipped images, maybe. But finer in the frame. ]

When I asked you of his days — What I mean is this. He has a life outside you. [ The girl, Clio; a corpse, and forever a girl. They were young: Ten years ago, maybe fifteen. ] He deserves that.

[ Isaac stretches a leg, an excuse to shift his gaze. The room is dim, and cloth strains the light indistinct. Perhaps it's the same outside, he loses track of late. His nights, Ilias' days, and this illness. Time bleeds. ]

You do.

[ I can't, he thinks. Sink knife into flesh again. Listen to that primordial fear rise in the voice of someone he loves.

I can't — have a life despite it. Deserve that. (Deserve this.) Mirrored eyes trace the line of him, a careful arrangement of edges where the light catches. A moment stretches on into the dark.

In place of a lie, he says, ]

You do, too.

I hope we've not begun an echo.

[ You do, you do. What does Isaac deserve, exactly? A life outside Leander, Maker, give him that much credit. Beyond Ilias? This petty legacy of trying to be wanted by men who want for nothing.

This is a life. He stole it, and sooner than later they'll ask it back, but for now it's his: The stark scraped edges of this room, beyond reproach; the warmer spill of his Infirmary desk. A bed only built for one.

Staked claims.

At length: ]

What do you do in a day, Ilias?

Edited 2020-04-12 04:45 (UTC)

More than I used to.

[ Softening, thoughtful. More than I thought I would. Every life is a temporary thing; his own more than most, but lately— lingering. Leaving a night shirt beneath the bed. Eying the width of the space between bed frame and window. ]

And not only because of you.

[ But partly. Influence, instead of permeation. What a funny thing, for there to be a difference.

He shifts finally, bending at the waist into a languid approximation of uprightness. Dry lips and bristle peck at the knot of a shoulder, breathe warm to skin in pursuit of nothing but a moment's grounding. Perhaps it isn't a sin to linger, if he doesn't mean to leave. ]

What did you think of him before? When you didn't know he was anything to me.

Funny, [ — Are the circumstances of that introduction: An improbably fortunate fumble, the pace of shade to follow. ] Clever.

[ That shadow, dragging itself over Fade dirt. ]

Odd. [ Disconnected thoughts: Gareth with a specimen jar and a gleam in his eye. The same mad look as Leander, skin already curling open to spit, you stupid fuck. He pauses, ] I think he left me a bug.

You like bugs.

[ Affectionate. Equally so: ]

He must have liked you. Apart from physically, I mean. [ As if they'd already discussed-- (They haven't.) ] As much as he likes anyone.

[ Ah,

It has occurred to him to think what Ilias knows. Whether, and when he knew. It's seemed a fruitless point of inquiry: A wound to unearth, or nothing of note, and difficult to say which would be worse. The warmth in his voice rankles.

He reaches (again) for the absent packet. Rolls eyes at himself when a palm closes (again) upon empty air. There are things he could say — that he doesn't like gifts, even those little corpses left prone upon his desk, or the knife he carries wherever he goes. He could say that he doesn't like surprises, that those have never ceased, that they'd only begun to see each other. That he wouldn't have, if he'd known.

But he might have. He might have, just to make a point. ]

I don't know what he likes. [ Flattery. Leverage. That can't be all there is — an unfair cast, from a familiar mold. ] I'd say art, but artists always seem to hate it.

[ He stretches, hooks a finger around the edge of his jacket at last, tugs its drapery from the chair to dig in a pocket. Maybe they aren't all on the other side of the ocean, maybe he remembered to bring a few, ]

I don't think he knew, Ilias. I was just there.

[ He's thought about that, too. ]

Edited (WORD REPETITION fuck) 2020-05-04 04:43 (UTC)

No,

[ he agrees, something less warm in that note; not the absence of wound, but the skinned-over divot left behind, still tender to the touch. ]

I imagine he would have used it sooner, if he had.

[ Used. It's not the impression he wants to leave now. A tool, a bit of poisoned arrow he's already decided to keep inside. Neither of them knew. Neither of them did anything wrong. Neither of them told him until it was useful to do so, that is all.

Smoothing instead, fingers across sheets, serenity forced across his expression, he leans to scoop the edge of a robe from the floor. Somewhere in a pocket, a cigarette case. An offer. An excuse to keep a hand near. ]

He asked me to choose between you. [ Dropped, finally, like a coin in a bucket. ] It-- made me wonder why you hadn't.

[ Abrupt, flinty amusement: ]

You're here, aren't you?

[ Halfway. One foot out the door, in a grave, or something else terribly dramatic. It sounds a little better like that — that small wrinkle in Ilias' voice. A point scored.

You can gamble, even if you're bad at cards. You just fold when you don't care to lose. His thumb brushes paper, not skin; burns without lifting to his mouth. ]

I am.

[ Halfway. His smile is quick and teetering, eyes dropping to ember. ]

But it does not matter to you, what else I do in a day?

[ dry, ]

I'm hardly going to lock you in a tower.

No.

[ Warming just a bit, as if that is a charmingly novel quirk of personality and not, say, a requirement to share his bed. ]

I haven't, you know. Touched him, or anyone else in some time. I just didn't want to say.

Why not?

[ why not say it, why not fuck leander, why not fuck any man with a pulse —

paper continues to burn its slow way down to ash. he's noticed; doesn't move to stop it yet. there's time.

he doesn't need to start a fight. there's time. it's nevarra, the pulse can hardly be a requirement — ]

And tether you to— what do you say, a sinking ship?

[ 'Sheep'. Cuter another time, perhaps. Lips pull. His hand doesn't move, either, to save cigarette nor sheets. ]

I don't want to obligate you, Isaac. But I want you to be certain of me.

[ finally, his fingers stretch out -- palm curls to crush the cigarette within. there's no reaction to the sting of the coal into flesh. when it unfolds, extinguished, his hand will be whole.

breathe: ]

I haven't either, you know. Touched anyone else. Not since him.

[ Fingers shift nearer, their backs bumping to connect with the nearest stretch of skin.

There's no flinch; that doesn't mean there's nothing to soothe. ]

Is that what you want?

[ well, if they're not lying, ]

I only want you.

Edited (Wow wrong icon) 2020-07-12 07:20 (UTC)

[ Only. The way those words brighten his eyes isn't

simple, the way it ought to be. Yours, written in ink or whispered flush against skin. Warm breath tucked into the crook of a neck. Fingers, touched now to fingers. All of those things, yes, but something else too, hanging heavy in between. ]

Then I'll tell him.

[ —isn't the same words at all. ]

If he wants me to make a choice, it will be you. It will always be you.

[ and isn't that exactly what he wanted? isn't that all you can ask?

there's a hand on his. he should smile now: say thank you, say i know this is hard; lean in toward victory and the rough bristle of a mouth. a kiss, a simple scene cut. easy. everyone gets what they want.

he doesn't lean in. his hand doesn't unpeel, but turns to wrap about ilias'. ash smears grey between them, its heat faded. isaac rubs a circle through it, then lifts his knuckles to lips. brief. still. ]

Lock the door when you go?

[ he stands to shrug on a shirt, put his back to the bed. to turn his face anywhere away. ]

[ It's barely a sound at all, his hand dropping to the sheets. Resting still against the mattress. Watching the swift turn of a back. ]

Isaac.

[ Hollow, in a room that's always had too much space; too little of it filled. ]

Please don't.

[ he does stay -

too long. he takes too long tugging buttons into place, rolling up sleeves. methodical: one, then the other. one, and two. simple.

it takes too long.

but he does stay: reluctant, when he looks over his shoulder; a delay that can't now smooth its injury. ]

I love you, [ reaffirmed. as if it were the easy thing to say: ] And I'm sorry. I should have told you about him.

[ as if it were easy to apologize. easier, abruptly, than the rest. ]

[ I love you shouldn't feel like a pike to the chest.

(Maybe just now, for him, it should.) ]

You didn't want him to come between us. [ A guess; a projection; ashen fingers twist in the sheets at his lap. ] I don't either, but--

[ But.

A few feet to Isaac's left is the spot where they first kissed. This bed, the one they tumbled into. There'd been a phylactery in his pocket even then. A vine twisting back, a body left bleeding in the woods. A tendril that every day now regrows its roots. Isn't it more honest, to bare them? (Or just cruel?) ]

What if he could learn to love you the way I love you?

[ Sharp: ]

He isn’t some dog you can train.

[ A hound; a horse. He isn’t talking about Leander. Isaac plucks up his coat, and watches fingers bend across a bed; lingering, constrained. He breathes. Amends, more softly, ]

Please don’t bring him in here.

[ A flinch. Eyes fix on the spot where his coat now isn't. ]

I won't.

[ Still as eggshells, otherwise. ]

I shouldn't have-- [ Asked, said anything, (kept wanting this); the words die in his throat, insufficient. ] You aren't the only one who doesn't have anyone else, that is all.

[ --is not a lot better. ]

[ Reflex wants flinch for flinch; stifled. Always with the sad eyes. His head tips, and can't swallow in turn, ]

Is that what this is? Community service? [ Feels shit to say, feels like punching someone already gone down. Feels like that ought to feel better — ] Penance to fuck us?

You know it isn't, [ finally bitten out -- is that better? (Is that what he needs, too? To stop trying so hard to make this wound bloodless.) ]

I want you both. Is that what you want to me to admit?

[ Sounds miserable to say it, raw; more real, too. ]

I know it is selfish. I know that being with you makes me happy and being alone with him made me want to bury us both in the fucking dirt. But I know I'm less without him, too.

Less, or lighter? Are you just that terrified of not being miserable?

I deserve to be miserable.

[ --Is not what he means to say, nor is it anyone's business, a n y w a y ]

But that is not what he does for me. He can be remarkably kind.

How?

[ blunt. ]

How is he kind?

You want a list?

[ Fine. ]

He listens to me. Not just about things that are easy or fun, but about things he can't possibly want to hear another word about. When you nearly killed him and then left me, [ remember that, ] and I hadn't even apologized to him for leaving him in the woods to die, he let me stay with him for weeks so I wouldn't be alone. Weeks of me moping about you, when all he wanted was for me to care about him.

And that would have been just fine, if what, if you'd just crawled back into my bed?

Tell me, if he listens to you, and I listen to you, do you still have to listen to yourself --

Sorry, are you upset that I'm fucking you now, too?

I am not saying I haven't been cruel to him, Isaac, I am saying I would like to stop.

And I'm trying to tell you that love isn't something you earn by being hurt enough!

[ It shouldn't stop him.

Nothing, right now, should steal the pounding blood from his veins or the words right off his breath but--

Ribs rise, fall. Between them, that neat line of white laid bare. One half of a pair.

(Is that enough?) ]

So, what then? [ Sharp edges blunting, ] I should abandon him instead? Ignore what he wants? Is that better for him, or just you?

Edited (idk white space) 2020-07-21 08:22 (UTC)

[ what then? frozen, a triangle point between bed, poker; door. ]

Be with me. Be with him, if it truly makes you happy.

[ bitter: ]

But if it doesn't, what are you doing?

[ Ruining this.

It ought to feel like a beginning, too. Potential. The start of something new. It doesn't feel like that at all.

(Would it be kinder to end it here? Braver? More cowardly? Fingers cling stubborn to twisted sheets, and he imagines his skin would hurt less to peel away just now.) ]

I want to figure that out. Only-- not by running from him again. That is all.

You can't —

[ i deserve to be miserable, and maybe he fucking does, if he's so set about it —

his hand lifts, levels itself; pushed down upon some silent valve. no one gets what they deserve. ]

Do you understand why I'm worried?

[ He exhales, spine slackening, if only by degrees, ]

He would never hurt me, Isaac. [ --sounding very sure. ] And I won't hurt him again.

But you'd hurt yourself.

[ and how often have they talked around that ]

[ Ah.

A muscle in his cheek tightens. ]

That is my decision to make.

That doesn't mean that I'll cheer it on. You said that you want to bury the both of you. You've said that you don't have anyone else,

[ well. not said, per se. ]

I have you.

[ Doesn't he? (For how long?) ]

I don't mean-- it isn't on your shoulders. You help. Being here, [ the ghost of a smile, ] even in stinking Kirkwall, that helps. If I can be kinder to him, that will help, too.

[ isn't it?

i'd choose you, but only because he wouldn't ask. i'd choose you, but he hasn't, not really. what a peculiar skill, to take oneself hostage. he needs space: a clear hall, a wall to punch. something that rage can't bruise. wouldn't it be easier if he could just be angry about this? maker, isn't he allowed to be angry?

isaac drifts toward the bed, lifts a hand free of balled linen to kiss its knuckles; soft. ]

You have yourself.

[ it's all the three of them share. ]

[ The sideways pull of his lips is brittle and thin, but that at least, he has the sense to push back inside again where it needn't be laid at Isaac's feet. Somehow, his breath stays steady. ]

You know you're kinder than you ought to be, sometimes.

[ His hand gives an answering squeeze, grateful but-- releasing. (Who needs skin? A heart?) ]

I'll lock up.

[Is Isaac free? Leander doesn't care, he leaves this like a nigh toneless fantasy voicemail regardless:]

Hello, Enchanter, it's Leander. I'm to advise the Seneschal whether the infirmary would benefit from a small amount of funding over a period of eight months, or a larger amount in fewer instalments. At your earliest convenience, please and thank you.

Eight months? It seems a gamble we'd all be alive.

[ eight months ago, substantially less of the south was under venatori control. but he's blithe enough about it — because this is obviously leander's strange idea of a joke — ]

Don't tell me you're running Pizzicagnolo's errands.

[ harrying him, more like, and even that limp blanket must have his limits. ]

Hardly.

[Ugh, he sounds in a good mood. Leander, not so much.]

It'll be the same amount in the end, the only difference is in how it's delivered. Which would you prefer?

I'd sooner have it to hand, but we'd only spend through it on this fever.

[ grippe. whatever. there's one every winter, and there will be more grievous harm ahead of them all. ]

Parcel it out. What's going on?

[He'll find out eventually, so it'd might as well be now, if only for the likelihood it will reach Ilias this way; that would be satisfying.]

I've been relieved of my position, and as further punishment, a further portion of my newly reduced wage will be diverted to the infirmary budget. Fortunate timing, don't you think?

Not particularly.

[ a few months ago, this would be anders' problem. there are a dozen reasons to remove leander from anything vaguely resembling responsibility — but at least six of those are maleficar, and it isn't as though he's the first to hold a post.

more concerning: the nature of that role. if he's run off fontaine, they're both in trouble. ]

Which would you prefer?

[ the money now or later. ]

Whichever is most helpful. Genuinely.

[Because he is a good and noble citizen. And because he can more or less hear Isaac's paranoia buzzing from here,]

No questions?

A surfeit.

[ what did you do would be rude, probably ]

What punishment?

[A big breath, taken through his nose, away from the crystal; sometimes you just need to sigh because it feels nice.]

There was an incident last Bloomingtide, during our big bereavement. Not the one you're thinking of; this one happened earlier. Someone thought he'd express his grief by picking a fight, didn't like what he received in return, later threatened leverage... anyway, in the spirit of honesty, [like that recently forced in the family crypt,] I confessed it to the division heads.

That punishment.

Edited (mmm phrasing) 2020-02-12 05:45 (UTC)

What did he 'receive'?

[ who is as good a question, less relevant. this wasn't magic, or he'd be out worse than pay. this wasn't a punch, or there'd be nothing to discuss.

the spirit of honesty. of leverage. fuck. ]

[Of taking leverage back into his own hands, a polite no thank you to the prospect of inconvenient blackmail.]

My response.

[Isaac's admission to a certain bed does not afford him everything.]

It's been handled. I assume I'll be under surveillance for a time, but that's nothing new. [Possession risks and other healthy childhood concerns.] Consider this news a courtesy.

[ Worse than a punch. Somewhere not far, a seagull receives a truly spiteful look --

Not a word of this is courtesy. How much is he meant to courier?

Pivot. ]

Then I take it you'll not visit her.

[ It. The girl. Fishing more than it's anything; a reaction to divine from Leander's atypical dullness. ]

[It takes him a moment. Softer, then (but no more fond):]

I've done this to correct a lapse in judgment, not perpetrate more of the same. I understand why you might think otherwise—but the circumstance of this misstep was extraordinary. As you may yourself recall.

[The same way he recalls the strange chorus of opening scars. When he remembers it, he wishes he'd have accepted it more readily, with more grace; it would have been a beautiful departure. But the survival urge won out, just as it did before, and does now.]

So, let their eyes follow me for a while. They won't see anything of interest.

Fucksakes.

[ but you know, in orlesian. he hangs up. ]

That was perhaps —

[ imprudent? abrupt? rude? a small noise, dismissive of itself ]

— Installments. If you've need to change the arrangement, we'll find a reason. This can stay between us.

Edited ("abrupty") 2020-03-10 09:02 (UTC)

You seem concerned.

You aren't?

Not overly. And you needn't be, either.

Isaac, darling. It's been some time. Shall we do tea?

[ after rifling through a mental rolodex of what venaras might want, and who else could have recently remembered he exists:

(not rutyer. that strikes unlikely. she can't have confused him with anders, though in the man's absence perhaps any blonde will do) ]

Of course. Your place or mine?

[ is a joke. one doesn't invite a young married woman to their rooms, and he's been often enough at the docks of late — this fucking grippe —

he sounds a great deal warmer than paranoia would indicate. chalk it up to practice. ]

[ Can a woman not simply be interested in an old friend?

And nosey, in turn? ]

Oh, either will do. I doubt Byerly will mind either way.

I don't own any chairs, [ ok. he has one. it just currently has someone else's robe on it. ] So I suppose we must to yours.

[ two can snoop. ]

How dreadful. Perhaps that shall be an gift, whenever you next have means to celebrate. Please, come whenever you have a moment. I'll prepare tea.

It's with no small relief that Isaac finds himself climbing not the steps of the central tower, but those that wind toward Riftwatch's rank and file. He's no particular desire to stumble upon any of the Heads today.

How many men live apart their wives? Enough. There are estates and shacks the world over with two beds, rooms, wings.

"Lady Venaras," As Rutyer has himself been absorbed. Lord Venaras; Lady Rutyer — difficult to say which would be the better joke. The details of each as vague as they are vaguely unpleasant. Byerly has been, at least, more formally and thoroughly disowned. "It's been too long."

As though she hasn't seen him in apron a day or so prior.

It's very easy to settle and prepare tea, to mix things together and flutter around her room. It's not quite what she might have imagined, being a lady, but she is more than aware that she is a person of the Inquisition first - or, rather, Riftwatch - and a noble second. She's not even certain that her family counts her as one of them now, given her rather interesting marriage.

Byerly is the perfect husband and she is more than content to have 'settled' for him.

She turns at the voice, offering a careful and gentle curtsey before she sets the tea on the table, motioning for him to settle.

"Darling, please, sit. Do we really need the formalities?"

Inbox 1.0

during his roll through the phylactery post

tag your character's sandwich roll

way to make me spend five full minutes trying to figure out if i'd used the wrong roll/role

good

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

before the strike;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

{ sending crystal }

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

crystals;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

crystal.

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

post-Tevinter

[crystal]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

crystal; slides in here also

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

action;

no subject