He licks his thumb and gently takes her chin, swipes at the ink stain before he tilts her face up so he can lean down and kiss her. The early sunlight is soft around her. Rosana is out here as well, curled up on the sofa. She doesn't lift her her head but her ears turn toward them.
"You should try to get back to sleep. All of this," whatever is spread out across her desk, "it will keep."
She's visibly confused by the thumb for a moment until it meets her cheek and then eyes roll and mouth hitches up as his purpose clarifies. She lets a hand drag down his chest as Darras pulls back from the kiss.
"I know," she says, glancing back at the stack of reports, her little notebook with its incomprehensible shorthand. "But I've already begun. I can nap later. Sit with me, we can go through the reports from the Waking Sea."
The weight and warmth of her hand is very solid and very grounding as well, a reminder: this is real. The curve of her smile is real, the early dawn's light and the way it softens her face is real. It was all nearly taken away--but it wasn't.
He sighs, heavily. Then he pushes back and goes to drag a chair around to her side of the desk.
"Only because it means spending time with you."
Rosana pricks her ears again. Her eyes track Darras as he moves. She doesn't yet jump down, but she's clearly thinking of doing so.
She smiles, soft still and crooked, too, for his grudging, conditional acceptance. She makes room for his chair beside hers and shuffles through the stack of reports for a sheaf someone has helpfully marked 'naval'. As he gets settled she begins, reading of pirate attacks in the waters around Ostwick and Hercinia. The descriptions of the ships and their colors are frustratingly limited and contradictory, impossible to reliably identify as anyone in particular, and she makes a note to set agents to gathering better information, looking to him for direction on precisely what information would be most useful, and where they might find it, if there are any particular captains he thinks might be most inclined to the Venatori cause for one reason or another.
As they go, she shifts gradually nearer, first hooking one bare foot into the bottom rung of his chair, then, to Rosana's undoubted annoyance, draping a leg across his knee. Both are there by the time the stack is dwindling and there are footsteps in the hall outside and the narrow pillar of sun through the window opposite is tall enough to reach them, warming his back and turning her hair to bronze.
This scene is familiar, but becomes more familiar as the weeks pass, because it repeats, and repeats, and repeats. There is always a stack of work. There is always an early morning, when Darras wakes up and the bed beside him is empty and he leaves their bedroom to find Yseult sat in her chair, working.
She is deft when she changes the subject, when the subject comes up. And it does come up. How could it not? She was missing, she was held captive. And she doesn't talk about it, no matter the hour or the day or where they are when Darras brings it up--at her desk and working, sitting on the sofa while she works, laying in bed and trying to fall asleep. Some days he comes back from the ferry early and finds her already asleep, taking a nap while Rosana suns herself curled up on the desk. And even then, when he shakes Yseult's shoulder, gently, and her eyes flick open and soften as she smiles--even then, she swings her legs over the side of the couch and stands up, stretching. Not now.
One evening he brings her fishing with him, instead of dinner in Kirkwall or dinner in her office. The days are getting shorter as the season begins to turn, but the weather has been pleasant enough on this particular day, so even as the shadows start to lengthen, there is no need to turn back from where Darras has taken them--a rocky cove off of the Wounded Coast, with a narrow strip of beach well protected from the sea winds. They can build a fire there, cook what they catch. Mostly it is nice to be alone together, in the quiet, with the waves lapping at the side of the slender skiff and the wind pushing lazily at its slack sail.
Yseult is looking out across the water when Darras says, again, "Will you tell me?"
It is nice, stretched out across the narrow bench in the last patch of orange sunlight, shins and arms bared to catch it. This little part of the Waking Sea is drowsy tonight, and the gentle rock of the boat and the shush of Darras's fishing lines in his hands have Yseult the same, gazing out toward the distant shores of Ferelden without any particular focus. So it's startling, when Darras speaks, to realize she has been caught in a trap.
She lolls her head back to him, and then drags a pointed look around at their surroundings, so that when she fixes her gaze back on him and draws herself back to something like upright, it is with a sigh that is both annoyed and a little amused (even impressed) to have been so neatly and unwittingly outmaneuvered. She brushes hands together and flicks the hem of her skirt back down to her ankles.
"Why do you keep asking? What does it matter now that I'm back?"
It does seem cruel, to ruin the peace of the moment. Times like this are the easiest to put away the weight of what happened. When Yseult gives him that look, Darras understands. Another time and he would pull a wry smile, give her a half-shrug. Helpless, me.
But he can't. What happened--and what nearly happened--is still there, a shadow under the surface.
"A great many things have happened in my life, Darras. We will be on this boat a very long time if you insist on hearing about them all."
Her tone is dry but beneath the surface skim of humor lurks growing frustration. She settles wrists on crossed knees, threading fingers together. The posture tilts her away from him, open, but for her arms arranged between them.
"I've put it behind me. Can't you?"
Edited (Formatting on my phone whoops) 2021-11-09 21:05 (UTC)
"Is that it. So if it weren't for me, you'd be forgetting it all, just like that." That; he makes a gesture through the air, cutting through the air. "It wouldn't stay with you at all. Any of it."
"That's not what I said." She is looking at him firmly. In her lap only one knuckle is white, where the nail of a thumb is dug discreetly into the base of the other.
"But your obsession with it isn't helping. You can't really think knowing will make you feel better. You'll only be angrier than you are already."
Looking right back at her, steady--not angry, though he is angry, she's right about that, angry at whoever did anything to her, as he always has been in times like this. And each time feels like worse than before, and this one doubly so, because it has been so long. Long enough to feel comfortable.
"It's not an obsession. It's wanting to know what happened, because it happened to you. And it's worse, not knowing, 'cos all I can do is make it up."
Worse for you, she almost says. Instead she shifts that thumbnail a half-inch to the side and digs in harder.
"Fine." Tight and frustrated, she abruptly gives in. "They kept us in a cell, chained to the wall. Sometimes it was dark for days, or bright at all hours. Sometimes we were fed, sometimes not. The interrogator assigned to me would heat the blade of a penknife in the lantern flame until it was red hot and burn me with it." She speaks briskly, matter-of-fact, holding eye contact. "First the soles of my feet, then elsewhere. Each time, she'd pick some specific part to focus on. Occasionally we'd be healed so they could start again. One day, she stabbed me twice in the stomach and didn't have the wounds healed until I nearly died of infection.
"She also had magic and favored paralysis spells. She would hold me in a vise grip, completely still, sometimes so that I couldn't even blink or breathe. When I passed out from lack of air, she would wake me and begin again. Sometimes she would stab or burn me while paralyzed. You're going to ask if I killed her. I didn't get the chance, but I'm not going back there just for that and neither are you. I've told you what you wanted to know, and now we are done with this."
The sun is setting now, the shadows coming across the water. The sea, too, is darker now, but the wind stays mild, playfully tousling the heads of the waves like a fond uncle. The chill still creeps into Darras. The crisp recounting of the cruelty is Yseult to its core, the same business-like tone she adopts when reading reports, when reading a section of a history book, when telling him some fact of her life.
And the chill in Darras fades as anger heats in him, from the inside out. His fingers tighten on their grip on the fishing line.
He doesn't say anything, yet. He looks back at Yseult. He's the one to break that eye contact, so he can look blackly out across the water.
There is an urge to press him, to see how he likes having fingers jabbed into the wound. Was it worth it? Is he happy now? Satisfied? Better for having heard it? She waits out the impulse, watching his profile, and then turns her own face back to the horizon.
Darras does not look away from the sea. He keeps his eyes fixed on it, on that endless line of the horizon, the boundless possibility of that escape. The wind sifts over the water, and the waves crash at the shore, and the sun keeps setting so that it will rise tomorrow.
"Why won't we," he says, eventually. Tightly. Without looking at her. "Why won't we go back for that."
Because it doesn't serve the mission. Because revenge is pointless, a waste of resources, risk without reward. Because it's been a strict policy all her life not to allow these things to touch her. If she gave that up now, how could she keep from feeling it all? The possibility looms just at the edge of her vision like a rogue wave rising to swamp their small boat.
She clenches hands together until she can feel every bone in them and finds the only thing she can say that will ring true to them both. "It wouldn't help me sleep."
Edited (haha i'm the worst more pointless blather tweaking) 2021-11-16 03:08 (UTC)
Still staring across the water, Darras nods. One nod, small, tight. His anger has tightened his chest, close his throat, winched his jaw so firmly that he can barely speak. He is thinking of a dark room, and Yseult, and someone who he could make hurt as badly as she hurt, flesh for flesh, hour for hour.
Time. Work. Answers he'll hate. She breathes in deep and exhales slow and quiet, then shrugs.
"Life going on as normal. Reading in the evening. Reports over breakfast. Rosana sleeping on my feet." The sweep of her hand takes in the boat, the shore behind them, the line in his hand. "This, until now. Each day it recedes a little further. You need to let it."
He reaches out to take her hand in his, the one that she's gesturing with. His fingers close around hers, tightly, tighter than his grip on the line. The wind sifts the other direction, ruffling the waves, pulling at strands of Yseult's hair, billowing the fishing line.
She nods. She stays that way for the trip back to the shore: face turned into the wind, eyes closed, her hand in his.
It takes that bit of distance to start to ease some of the tension this conversation has prompted, enough that by the time they are dragging the little boat up onto the beach she bumps her shoulder into his and jokes, a little tentatively, "You still owe me dinner."
For Yseult, and only Yseult--because she is warm and alive and real against him, because he loves her--Darras gives her the smallest smile. He leans his shoulder back against hers.
She can see the effort it takes, and she considers the merits of dragging him to a busy table, forcing a distraction on him versus returning to their suite in the Gallows and letting him brood.
"There's the tavern over the hill with the clams. Or the little Antivan shop you like near the ferry. Or we can just pick something up from the kitchens when we get back."
Once the boat is secured, she slips her hand back into his. There are very few concessions she's inclined to make to his feelings on all of this, but there can be one. "You choose."
"Place near the ferry. I could use a bit of Antiva. The kitchens won't have that."
Their path requires them to climb stairs slippery with seawater and muck. The higher they climb, the clearer the steps become, though they never become truly clean. That's Kirkwall for you, a persistent muckiness that doesn't bother Darras. The lanterns are being lit along the way as darkness settles around the city like a worn cloak.
"I meant it," Darras says, eventually. "About going home. Not to the Gallows."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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He licks his thumb and gently takes her chin, swipes at the ink stain before he tilts her face up so he can lean down and kiss her. The early sunlight is soft around her. Rosana is out here as well, curled up on the sofa. She doesn't lift her her head but her ears turn toward them.
"You should try to get back to sleep. All of this," whatever is spread out across her desk, "it will keep."
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"I know," she says, glancing back at the stack of reports, her little notebook with its incomprehensible shorthand. "But I've already begun. I can nap later. Sit with me, we can go through the reports from the Waking Sea."
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He sighs, heavily. Then he pushes back and goes to drag a chair around to her side of the desk.
"Only because it means spending time with you."
Rosana pricks her ears again. Her eyes track Darras as he moves. She doesn't yet jump down, but she's clearly thinking of doing so.
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As they go, she shifts gradually nearer, first hooking one bare foot into the bottom rung of his chair, then, to Rosana's undoubted annoyance, draping a leg across his knee. Both are there by the time the stack is dwindling and there are footsteps in the hall outside and the narrow pillar of sun through the window opposite is tall enough to reach them, warming his back and turning her hair to bronze.
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She is deft when she changes the subject, when the subject comes up. And it does come up. How could it not? She was missing, she was held captive. And she doesn't talk about it, no matter the hour or the day or where they are when Darras brings it up--at her desk and working, sitting on the sofa while she works, laying in bed and trying to fall asleep. Some days he comes back from the ferry early and finds her already asleep, taking a nap while Rosana suns herself curled up on the desk. And even then, when he shakes Yseult's shoulder, gently, and her eyes flick open and soften as she smiles--even then, she swings her legs over the side of the couch and stands up, stretching. Not now.
One evening he brings her fishing with him, instead of dinner in Kirkwall or dinner in her office. The days are getting shorter as the season begins to turn, but the weather has been pleasant enough on this particular day, so even as the shadows start to lengthen, there is no need to turn back from where Darras has taken them--a rocky cove off of the Wounded Coast, with a narrow strip of beach well protected from the sea winds. They can build a fire there, cook what they catch. Mostly it is nice to be alone together, in the quiet, with the waves lapping at the side of the slender skiff and the wind pushing lazily at its slack sail.
Yseult is looking out across the water when Darras says, again, "Will you tell me?"
no subject
She lolls her head back to him, and then drags a pointed look around at their surroundings, so that when she fixes her gaze back on him and draws herself back to something like upright, it is with a sigh that is both annoyed and a little amused (even impressed) to have been so neatly and unwittingly outmaneuvered. She brushes hands together and flicks the hem of her skirt back down to her ankles.
"Why do you keep asking? What does it matter now that I'm back?"
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But he can't. What happened--and what nearly happened--is still there, a shadow under the surface.
"It matters because it happened."
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Her tone is dry but beneath the surface skim of humor lurks growing frustration. She settles wrists on crossed knees, threading fingers together. The posture tilts her away from him, open, but for her arms arranged between them.
"I've put it behind me. Can't you?"
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"You've put it behind you, aye. And that's why you're not sleeping, because it's so far behind you."
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"And how is telling you the details meant to improve that? You make it difficult enough to forget as it is."
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"But your obsession with it isn't helping. You can't really think knowing will make you feel better. You'll only be angrier than you are already."
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Looking right back at her, steady--not angry, though he is angry, she's right about that, angry at whoever did anything to her, as he always has been in times like this. And each time feels like worse than before, and this one doubly so, because it has been so long. Long enough to feel comfortable.
"It's not an obsession. It's wanting to know what happened, because it happened to you. And it's worse, not knowing, 'cos all I can do is make it up."
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"Fine." Tight and frustrated, she abruptly gives in. "They kept us in a cell, chained to the wall. Sometimes it was dark for days, or bright at all hours. Sometimes we were fed, sometimes not. The interrogator assigned to me would heat the blade of a penknife in the lantern flame until it was red hot and burn me with it." She speaks briskly, matter-of-fact, holding eye contact. "First the soles of my feet, then elsewhere. Each time, she'd pick some specific part to focus on. Occasionally we'd be healed so they could start again. One day, she stabbed me twice in the stomach and didn't have the wounds healed until I nearly died of infection.
"She also had magic and favored paralysis spells. She would hold me in a vise grip, completely still, sometimes so that I couldn't even blink or breathe. When I passed out from lack of air, she would wake me and begin again. Sometimes she would stab or burn me while paralyzed. You're going to ask if I killed her. I didn't get the chance, but I'm not going back there just for that and neither are you. I've told you what you wanted to know, and now we are done with this."
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And the chill in Darras fades as anger heats in him, from the inside out. His fingers tighten on their grip on the fishing line.
He doesn't say anything, yet. He looks back at Yseult. He's the one to break that eye contact, so he can look blackly out across the water.
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"Why won't we," he says, eventually. Tightly. Without looking at her. "Why won't we go back for that."
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She clenches hands together until she can feel every bone in them and finds the only thing she can say that will ring true to them both. "It wouldn't help me sleep."
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"And what would?" he says, eventually.
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"Life going on as normal. Reading in the evening. Reports over breakfast. Rosana sleeping on my feet." The sweep of her hand takes in the boat, the shore behind them, the line in his hand. "This, until now. Each day it recedes a little further. You need to let it."
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"Let's go home."
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It takes that bit of distance to start to ease some of the tension this conversation has prompted, enough that by the time they are dragging the little boat up onto the beach she bumps her shoulder into his and jokes, a little tentatively, "You still owe me dinner."
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"Do I. And what d'you fancy?"
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"There's the tavern over the hill with the clams. Or the little Antivan shop you like near the ferry. Or we can just pick something up from the kitchens when we get back."
Once the boat is secured, she slips her hand back into his. There are very few concessions she's inclined to make to his feelings on all of this, but there can be one. "You choose."
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"Place near the ferry. I could use a bit of Antiva. The kitchens won't have that."
Their path requires them to climb stairs slippery with seawater and muck. The higher they climb, the clearer the steps become, though they never become truly clean. That's Kirkwall for you, a persistent muckiness that doesn't bother Darras. The lanterns are being lit along the way as darkness settles around the city like a worn cloak.
"I meant it," Darras says, eventually. "About going home. Not to the Gallows."
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