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[katabasis]

action + written + crystal

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[katabasis]

I do.

[Plain enough.

(Maybe he will dismiss Rutyer early after all. Sitting like this as if nothing is wrong with the jagged ache in his side is making his fingers buzz.)]

[bouchonne]

Such ignorance.

[ There's a warm curl of amusement in Byerly's voice. It's rather sweet-sounding.

He hasn't drunk any of his wine. ]

To go through life a coward is like going through life like your little quartermaster, stumbling about on a single leg. No one makes an allowance for your shortcoming, but you must still do all that others do.

[katabasis]

Fear is normal, [he says, attention still there on the page before him. The handwriting is truly awful. Who the fuck filed this?] Cowards are made either by their inaction or in their refusal to own the choices they do make. Perhaps our definition of the word differs.

[He takes another sip from the glass-- and then pauses. Perhaps he catches the other glass, still full, in the corner of his eye or maybe the low sway of Byerly's voice has registered, or maybe he is simply tired of this particular series of papers. Either way, Flint looks up, sets aside his pen and finally sits back in the chair. If there is a wince, he pretends there isn't.]

The philosophy is a pleasant change of pace.

[bouchonne]

I'm a philosopher by nature, dear fellow. I've made no secret of that. You've simply disliked all my philosophy so far.

[ He smiles, long lashes lowered over his lovely eyes, head tilted very slightly to the side. ]

But I don't speak of fear. I speak of weakness. I am dreadfully weak, you see. And it's not my fault - I was born this way. It's a hard thing to understand for a man born of all the gifts you have, I suppose.

[katabasis]

[Elbows hooked on the chair arms, Flint laces his fingers together across his middle. He is being led by the nose, he senses, but that's fine.] Do you refer to a physical weakness, or to some other kind?

[bouchonne]

Ah, both.

[ He hooks an elbow around the back of his chair and slumps a little lower in his seat. ]

I mean, look at me, to start with. A descendant of the most vicious barbarians that marched north with Andraste, and I've these dreadfully narrow shoulders and this shallow chest. Shameful, don't you think? My great-great-great-greats looked like you - stocky, solid, burly and brawling - and your great-great-great-greats looked like me.

[ A mournful sigh, then - ]

But the spiritual weakness is the greater one. You might not think it, with how charming I am, but I am truthfully capable of very great evil, Captain. Evil without honor. Perhaps it's my physical weakness, at least in part, my childhood of boys like you finding their fun in taking advantage of my narrow shoulders and shallow chest to get their jollies, but honor had to be sacrificed, and the weakness embraced.

[katabasis]

[There is a threat in that. He elects to ignore it.]

Some might say that having found a way to leverage your deficiencies makes them no longer a weakness. Unless, I suppose, you find that your capacity for dark deeds weighs on your conscience.

[bouchonne]

[ For a moment, he thinks about that comment. It's a little surprising that it gets under his skin, but it does. Does it weigh on him, to have ransomed his honor and pride? To crawl, and scrape, and beg, and cheat, and steal, and even at times kill? He doesn't know. Even now, it's obscure to him. All he knows is that he's worthless and despicable, but self-loathing is a separate thing from guilt. ]

I suppose it all depends on how you conceptualize weakness. Is a weak man the one who is without power? Or is a weak man the one who cannot resist temptation?

[katabasis]

Neither. A weak man is one who somehow finds himself in possession of power and does nothing but cling to it. Everything he does is done in the service of preserving it; everyone he loves is as a support to it; everything he wants is more of it, to wield more broadly.

[This is how men who ruin sleep at night.]

[bouchonne]

So the powerless cannot be weak?

[katabasis]

What do you call power? In Ferelden it might be the strength of your arm, and in Tevinter it's where you stand in relation to the person above and below you, and in Orlais it's how well you play the Game, and in Antiva it's trade. But who names that thing, and why the fuck should you care about what they have to say about any of it?

[bouchonne]

[ An arch of his eyebrow. ]

How, dear Captain, could you ever not care about what they have to say about it? The world is not forged by your hand. It is a relic, a family heirloom, passed down from the generations before us. A tainted cup from which we must drink. [ To pick a metaphor at random. ] The only alternative is to die of thirst. No, we cannot and do not forge the world.

[katabasis]

[Something in his face goes briefly sharp, and then softens into strange lines. It is not pained, but viewed in the late afternoon haze through the office window which won't fully close, it could be that particular kind of fondness capable of inspiring it. There is something to this that is like reaching backwards. It is the nauseating pinch of space which occurs when travelling by eluvian, only what sits on the other side is a different kind of temple in a different time and with different people. Somewhere in Tevinter there is likely still a house with a private study not so removed from this one where two people had once sat and talked about the inevitable.

It's strange to be on the other side of that conversation. It chokes something in him. For a split second, he wants to be here.]

But we could.

[bouchonne]

[ An idealist, under the scruff and the gruff? An optimist? There's an unexpected twist. Byerly's long, graceful fingers trace the line of his own chin as he studies Flint with some interest. ]

And how would that work?

[katabasis]

[Distantly, he is aware that the wine has done the ache in his side some good. That at some point, the latter has begun to slip sideways out from under the hum of everything else. The dull pain is there at his fingertips still - if he cared to, he could touch it -, but it's verging now on optional opposed to obligatory. It slides easily through the fingers in favor of:]

By convincing people it's possible - by showing enough of them that there is an alternative to what they believe they've inherited. Take this place. Could your father or your grandfather or however far back you'd like to go imagine that something like Riftwatch would even for a moment be tolerated to exist? Take you. Who was it that played you for worthless, and did they guess you'd end up here?

The world is already changing, Messr Rutyer. Someone will use that to their advantage, and there's no reason that it shouldn't be the people who would see it made differently.

[bouchonne]

But things always return to the way they were.

[ There's a small, odd twinge in his gut. Who knows why. ]

The Blight always comes again. Men like Corypheus always come again. A thousand years ago we were fighting the same things we fight now. The vulnerable were used and abused back then, and they are now. Something like Riftwatch is a deviation, not a change.

[katabasis]

It is an opportunity. It is has the potential to do what the Inquisition never tried and Divine Beatrix's Exalted March cannot. It is an independent force that has already said no to being collared once, and it is saying it five years into a war with what should be a common enemy which is destroying people while those in power who could be winning it do nothing for fear of losing what control they still possess.

Thedas thinks it is tired - Celene's drafted army in Orlais believes itself exhausted. But what they and you and I are finished with is fighting for people who do not know us, who do not care about you beyond what you afford them, and who they know would be powerless to stop a people who realize that, were they united, they could pull down more than just a corrupted magister.

[How many times have they spoken like this? Sawing back and forth over a some invisible point between them that seems incapable of shifting. But this is different. This isn't deflection, and isn't meant to cut though there is something sharp and keen in Flint's expression. He is gaining momentum, finding pleasure in it, and leaning forward now to make some further point.

The sudden shift sends an unexpected stab of pain across his ribcage, his head swimming. A clumsy hand hard against the edge of the desk. The wine in the opposing untouched glass pitches sharply enough to demand attention. For a strange moment, it swirls around and around and around.

He looks to Byerly, the spark in his face rapidly swallowed by some harsher closed thing. The desk hums under the splay of his fingers.]

What did you do?

[bouchonne]

[ There is nothing to mourn here. The drug will keep him talking, keep him happy, keep him honest, but likely that odd little intellectual connection will always be lost henceforth. But the connection was an illusion anyway; Flint would never have even entertained the idea of being so open and raw without being affected by that drug. His contempt was too complete. He himself saw - and would always see - Byerly as worthless, no matter that odd little comment that implied otherwise. There's nothing to mourn here; it's just a good trip going bad.

So By smiles. He leans back in his chair and steeples his hands. He looks at Flint. ]

My, my, it did take you a while to notice, didn't it? I told you at the very beginning what was happening. It's hardly my fault you weren't listening. How much of it did you drink? Enough, I think.

[katabasis]

[It is more difficult than it should be to take stock of-- everything that should be noted. The pace of his heart or the feeling in his limbs. The details keep trying to slither elsewhere.]

You poisoned it.

[As if baffled. Then he reaches for the sending crystal where it sits on the desk.]

[bouchonne]

Ah-ah.

[ His hand snakes out and snatches it before Flint's fingers can close over it. ]

None of that, Captain. Not that they'd be able to help you now.

[katabasis]

[He rises from the chair with a lurch. It's unpleasant and wrenching - requires that hand anchored at the desk and turns him snarling.]

You shit. How the fuck do you think you're going to explain this away?

[bouchonne]

I'm sure I'll find a way.

[ By doesn't stand. Flint won't make it far, even if he has the wherewithal to try. ]

If you don't fight it, you might enjoy it, my dear.

[katabasis]

What possible reason would I have to make this easy for you?

[Is said aloud before he can close a hand around it. He keeps that steadying hand on the desk as he forces his legs to carry him sluggishly around it.]

[bouchonne]

Hm.

[ By folds his hands together and watches, a small smile on his face. ]

[katabasis]

[He gets to the far corner of the desk and there must pause, one hand planted and the other hovering near but not touching his side. A calculation is occurring, plain on his face - the door or Byerly -, only it is painfully slow to progress. He could do neither and the pain in his side would melt away again. He could just not.]

Does Yseult know?