When the head of your division is your partner on a mission, there is no need for debriefs, further strategising, opinions or perspectives. Flint already has plenty.
And so when Marcus' boots find solid ground, he finds he is free of obligation. Well. Almost. He sees to the griffons, first, freeing them of their equipment, feeding and brushing down, ensuring Monster gets further attention so as not to incite any jealousies, and all of this he is a little too tired to do but it feels good, anyway. Sensible labour that requires nothing from him but a dedication to tasks he knows well.
He gets himself clean, after, and more than just his face. The water in the basin he is using is quick to turn a murky grey, and needs a few refillings before he is satisfied.
It is late. Darkness is slow to encroach. The nights in the desert are colder than you'd anticipate. He has found a place by a fire, hair still damp from determined efforts to clean it of soot and dust and blood and tied neatly back, a cloak over his shoulders, and a scrubbing brush in hand he is using to see to his staff. Beside him, lodged in the earth beside the blanket he is using as his seat, a half-emptied bowl of the slow-simmered stew some Diplomacy members had helpfully seen to over the day.
This spot by a fire also, incidentally, affords him view of the larger tent, where he flicks his attention up now and then.
Whatever conversation occupies the denizens of that tent drags mercilessly long. But eventually, a flare of light in the burgeoning darkness: the entrance to the tent rolling back, and a figure that isn't Flint slipping free. Then, the recognizable shape of him turned into a brief, lingering silhouette—he and someone else loitering momentarily at the threshold to exchange a further word before the tent flap is allowed to fall back and they become dusky shapes in the purple twilight.
The fire is also, incidentally, more or less along one of the most likely footpaths Flint might take to go from the point A of the field office to point B, his own tent. Though if not for some glint of firelight off the staff's sharp edge drawing the eye, he might not have given it so much as a passing glance. He is tired (though looks less so out here in the forgiving slant of the dark), and wants to peel himself out of these gory clothes, and to wash off the stink of murder and sweat. The sticky edges of the poultice one of the healers had been called in to apply while and and the other division heads had still been bent over their table is already beginning to itch, and if he does those other things then maybe he will be able to ignore it.
But the gleam of some scrubbed clean section of blade prompts a glance flickering in the fire's direction. Captures a brief scrape of eye contact. A nod, made in passing.
Once fire-crusted grime has been worked off the iron, out of grooves and runic engravings, it's gone over with oil and a rag. Checked over by light of the fireplace, and then he sets upon cleaning the bowl. There's been no battle that Marcus has been through, no matter how gore-spattered, how sizeable the victory or total the loss, that he hasn't come out the other side ravenously hungry, and tonight is no exception.
He leaves his spot by the fire. There are watch rotations already established of which he is not a part, but he relieves someone of theirs so they can enjoy a break for the excuse of standing somewhere empty and cold and dark at the very fringes of their camp and put a further dent in the limited supply of cigarettes he carries with him. Flips a scorpion off his boot with a turn of his ankle. Contemplates this truly dizzying amount of landscape that is switch to diminish from the scope of his vision, darkness swallowing sand dunes and red rock rendered indigo in dwindling dusk.
When he makes his way back to the camp, he moves towards where there are casks of water and ale both, the latter being of the same instinct someone had when they made sure to pack spices with the cooking supplies. He fills a tankard with it, and upon turning from that spot, and noting the light still on in Flint's tent, he sets a course.
Does not barge through the entryway, folded closed against desert vermin and company.
"It's not tied," is succinct an invitation as any.
The slanting tent is no back country lean-to; it harbors a low cot, a writing desk and a low-backed seat that's more really more stool than chair, a coarse mat laid over the rocky ground, all of which must collapse or roll up to be backed onto a griffon without much imposition. The tent's dimensions require only a slight stoop from any occupant choosing to remain standing. Flint though is sitting posted at the writing desk, and has twisted only partially round to acknowledge Marcus' entry.
It the intervening interval, Flint's washed and changed. If any trace of blood or dirt remains on his person, it's a failing of having to scrub down out of a basin and not a lack of dedication to the task of setting himself back to rights. Even so, the light of the little oil lamp illuminating the page under his pen is less than flattering—renders the man in craggy touches of shadow, and paints wide dark swathes from cheek to under-eye.
The point of his attention flicks, briefly, to the tankard in Marcus' possession, and then makes to rock back to the half written page.
"You would do well to consider some rest."
There will be more work tomorrow. With the Venatori bitten back, further depths of the shrine await exploration. Given what all they faced today, they can hardly hope to send Research there without well-armed and capable company.
And he will. There is no choice in that matter, physically or by way of obligation, but Marcus still enters, letting the flap fall closed behind him. Head ducked and shoulders forward to accommodate the closer quarters. And now there's a distinct familiarity in nearness, but apparently in service to placing the tankard down on Flint's desk.
Smokey cling is far more reminiscent of recent cigarettes, thinner and sharper than the earthier black summonings on a battlefield. Doesn't linger in the air by the time he moves for the other available place to sit, which is at the edge of the cot.
The angle of his face alters by a half degree in answer to the tankard's placement, eye line resistant to being pulled from the page a second time but attention freely sliding sideways in spite of that. To the tankard, to the brief nearness of Marcus' presence and the shadow it paints on the canvas above them. The continued scratching of the pen is slow to resume as that shadow withdraws.
"I don't imagine Rutyer will be going in my stead."
His hand gets as far as completing the end its interrupted sentence before the pen is laid aside in favor of the cup.
Flint is allowed to drink from it without further commentary, first. Marcus' focus lists towards him, snags on something else. The shadow on canvas, or the loose fold of his own hands. Not a restless roving of focus, meditatively cycled through.
When it does cycle back to Flint, and desert-warmed ale is appreciated or otherwise, there's a small moment of study, for the faint streak of dirt or soot or something else that stripes a sickle's curve along the back of exposed neck. Maybe if he'd lingered there at Flint's seat at the desk, he'd have smudged it away with his palm, his thumb, the texture of skin and the starting fade of bristle at hairline easy to recall, and it's the fact that this thought feels like something sharp and broken off that finally prompts him to speak—
"I'm sorry for," and there is a tinge of regret, already, for words summoned into the tent. Apologies are clumsy things, easy to misuse. Nothing for it now. "That I didn't act differently first, today."
There has been plenty of time to consider alternate actions, particularly when twisting time had afforded him opportunity to enact them.
He has only just set the cup aside—privately grateful for the thin tang of the ale, which does more the alleviate the itching thirst at the roof of his mouth than any water today has—, and moved to take up the pen again when Marcus says this. Short the inkwell, he twists in the low backed chair to look at the man perched there in the cot's edge rather than dip the pen and continue across the page.
The lamplight cuts in through the bristle of red beard; melts the skeptical look he paints Marcus with into something less cutting.
"That you didn't act differently," he repeats back.
And notes that on a delay, his phrasing wants for explanation. For perspective. He can imagine that being in the thick of a thing is different to being several paces back, as fast as it all was. The teeth of that internal pressure don't let up.
"I left you open to the sword," he explains, customarily quiet, sedate gravel-edged tone in a space rendered private, and also safe, relatively speaking. "I focused on the wrong thing. It was only good fortune that there was a window to correct it."
It is different—warrants consideration. How aware had he been of that wall snarling up out of the crevasse floor as he'd been yanked down toward the sharp end of the swordman's arm in the moment, versus here in the security of the little tent far removed from that place and with only the tingling sense memory of some length of steel punched through him left to clench at his belly? Not very aware. Cognizant of the fact only to be more or less grateful that it shouldn't have played out a second time.
(The less consideration dedicated to that uneasy, queasy twinge in him that accompanies the thought, the better.)
"It was fortunate." All things being even, that's true enough. On most days, he prefers the experience of not being a corpse. Flint's attention remains narrowed on Marcus, brow set low and an idle shifting of the hand at the edge of the desk—thumb fussing against some spot of chipping veneer.
"I suppose next you'll expect me to express some apology in return for firing on the mage instead of the assassin."
(There had been an opening to sink a bolt in the lightly armored Venatori at close range before they'd vaulted over the patch of shared cover with those jagged twin daggers. He'd intentionally not taken it.)
His focus sharpens, some, a subtle telegraph of an attempt at reading Flint, divining sarcasm or sincerity from tone, the minor pulls of expression. More curious than anxious. A pause follows as recollects what Flint means. Similarly, it's difficult to discern the other man's decision making in a moment that was heady with adrenaline, having only felt the sharp sting of the knife at his chin some seconds after, fast beating heart pushing blood quicker through veins.
"No," is the simplest, truest response.
No, he wouldn't expect it. No, he doesn't require apology. Both of those things. But mainly, "It isn't the same."
There's no inquiring cock of the head, no softening upward slant of the chin. So maybe it's not really a real question when he asks—
"Isn't it?"
But rather an assessment, dialed in on Marcus in order see watch in which direction his answer breaks having already internally determined which trajectory would be preferable and which wouldn't. Why, because Marcus had only suffered a nick to the chin? Because he'd survived it?
(Some other answer that he has tucked up close somewhere he can feel, but not see.)
insistent, still quiet. There is an easy logic to follow here, he knows, he has contemplated it while watching the desert go from red to inky purple and shrink into blackness, he has twisted it through his fingers while raking stiff brush bristle over iron. They are alive, through virtue rather than fault of their own actions.
But there is a snarl in it, thorny and stubborn.
"I know what a near miss feels like," he says. "Being in one, seeing one. But that wasn't it. There was a world where it wasn't, for a moment. And I'm sorry."
Here, a twitched gesture, almost a shrug, as if to offload something.
It makes logical sense to check this. To dismiss the overture of Marcus' guilt or sentimentality or whatever this is meant to be. To refuse this as something that doesn't belong to him; wipe away the shape of this because he doesn't care to have the thing driving it hooked onto his person.
Yes, it was lucky there was some opportunity to take a second crack at the thing. But it's not as if whatever Marcus had done during that first pass had been particularly to blame. These things happen. They happen to good men with sturdy sword arm's and sure aim. It is rare, technically speaking, for anyone in his profession—the ones has held, the one he keeps now—to avoid the thing forever. Eventually, that Venatori short sword or one like it will find him again and there will be no changing it then. That's true no matter what ownership Marcus Rowntree might prefer to have over the matter.
He might easily say so.
But rather than curtail him, Flint looks at Marcus across the narrow tent—glower painted on by the unflattering slant of shadow more so than it is legitimate, the world having a habit of contriving to make his brow appear heavier and more serious than it may actually be.
"Well," he says. "Thanks for not fucking it a second time."
It's probably an arrogance unique to battlemages given their amount of control over as many elements of a scrap as they have. Where to throw ones concentration, who to protect and when, what part of the field to manipulate and which enemy to target—all quick decisions that those skilled in warfare might fancy themselves adept at managing, of equal importance as how good a person is at magic at all. It's a falsehood to think that all mages are capable or even competent soldiers, just for virtue of their power. It's a falsehood to think that even those adept at combat are in charge of how that combat goes.
But there is some ragged edge of belief in this one error that has hooked into him and compelled him to this tent and the conversation in it. Marcus tolerates that apparent glower with the ease of someone who has, in many respects, gotten used to it.
And doesn't laugh, but makes a sound is the beginning of it.
"Welcome," shorthand acceptance, dry. It feels like a trade. Apology given over for a brusque gratitude he wasn't after. It eases the thing that had set its teeth in him, a little. Marcus would not say in so many words that he came here to make himself feel better.
But he didn't come here to soothe anyone's else's apprehensions either.
Flint's study of him flicks down to Marcus' joined hands, then scatters back up along some impulsive unplanned track. When his own hand shifts from the chipped desk's edge, it moves after the cup—a certain impression that it's ultimately headed back for the discarded pen.
"I trust you'll keep all of this in mind tomorrow with your charges," Flint says, the low chair creaking gently under his weight as his attention slides back toward the page. It isn't a dismissal, strictly, which Marcus should know. He's certainly been in the receiving end of every kind of one.
The cot squeaks on its folding parts as Marcus pushes himself up to stand.
No Aye, Commander, just sort of a noise that acknowledges this thing Flint has said. His shadow doesn't shrink on the wall where it would if he'd made for the entryway, but skews off strange in scale as he moves nearer. Contact established with a hand light at Flint's shoulder, sort of a warning for the second, which lands gently and inevitably more intimate at the curve where muscle connects shoulder to spine.
Higher than where the sword jutted out, but he doesn't really recall, and it's not his aim to pantomime some kind of physical confirmation of the absence of killing blow. It's his aim instead to squeeze over the muscle appended to sword arm, to brush his thumb against the streak of dirt at the back of Flint's neck.
The specific rub of his thumb makes the purpose clear. Missed a spot.
Unsurprising. Possibly there are also little flakes of blood mixed in with the dusky sand under his fingernails and in strange places he wouldn't think to scrub—shadows of things that won't come fully away until they've returned to the Gallows and he's soaked himself in the deepest basin he can commandeer.
But here— a faint twitch, and now that gentle inquiring cant of the temple. Not turning so far as to raise his eyes to Marcus, but laying over to such a degree that the shadow plays differently on his face and over the desk, and that the glow of the oil lamp touches pale eyelashes and the fine hairs hatching the width of Flint's cheek.
Near to that scuff of thumb, the muscle is stiff and tender. Something in his back aches, and it has very little to do with the creeping memory of the Venatori sword and everything to do with the struggle of clambering up out of the crevasse and because, against all odds, he is becoming an old man. Because it's cold in the desert. Because he occasionally wants—
He sighs out through the nose. Dips the pen in the neglected inkwell. If the line of his neck alters faintly under the span of Marcus' fingers, then it can be because he's bowing his head to the work.
Dirt removed, that touch travels down that well-mapped line of the back of Flint's neck, a gentle seeking out of muscle that feels strung through with cord, tight and overworked. Marcus presses against it, and when there is no immediate verbal objection, the working over it with his thumb that doesn't pretend at being something other than an attempt at easing the physical evidence of a long and miserable day.
Firm, but not just jostling. He imagines that ruining penmanship is more likely to see him turned away than most other things that surprisingly have yet to. Palm pressing against the wing of muscle lower down. His other hand keeps a familiar hold of shoulder, resting there.
They like to touch each other. He likes to touch Flint, and there's yet to be spoken analysis of what it means when it isn't in the service to getting off. What itch is being scratched. Here, working down tense muscle in a way he knows to be pleasing, it certainly scratches at something in himself, not wholly related to that panicky clench that was slow to release.
He'll do this for a while, disinclined to interrupt work with more chatter he hasn't an instinct for. Content to.
Through it, Flint is satisfied to scratch out the typically curt lines of what appear to be orders or a report. They include a careful summary of the findings of the shrine thus far, rendered in the banal, uncolorful language more often utilized for shipping manifests and clerking paperwork than for ancient cursed caverns touched by darkspawn and old necromatic magics. Given our assessment of the Donarks and the Venatori presence discovered here, I would strongly advise—
Perhaps passively observed across curved shoulder and bent neck, it might be a document meant for the Inquisition. A report made out to satisfy the curiosity of some ally among the Divine's forces, or perhaps something of a professional acquaintance among the Orlesian army. Whatever it is, whomever it's for, Flint makes no attempt to guard the shape of the page from Marcus.
As he reaches what appears to be the end, having made no attempt at conversation save for some low (in protesting) cringing grunt of discomfort for this press of thumb or that firm palm, he writes, The ordinary channel will do, and neglects to dash off the familiar signature. Instead, Flint draws a faintly lopsided circle in the lower left corner before setting the pen aside.
It's possible these things, where he simply sits and allowed Marcus to untangle the corded muscle in his shoulder, read as dry and without any intimacy. As apparently drab as the lines of this reporting, a secret made dull and pedestrian for its blandly painted exposure.
"Marcus," he says after these minutes where the only conversation has been between the page and the scratching pen nib, or possibly his muscle and Marcus' pressing fingers. "You would be wise to get some rest."
There's a glance over for the text being written, but he doesn't lean enough to try to catch more than just a few scant half-sentences. Noting, more, progress down the page. The position of his hand. The circle in he corner.
Flint speaks, and Marcus moves his hand, leaving off those back muscles to travel further down, across the span of ribs. He can feel the impulse a little like that those strange time fluxes of the rocky crevasse, can vividly imagine letting his fingers curl against the fabric to draw shirt tails out from waistband. Some insistent part of him that wants, in spite of the hour, the day and tomorrow, where they are.
Wise. Not quite intimately tilted enough for Flint to feel as well as hear the heavier exhale that follows.
"Aye, I would be. I set up a tent and everything."
He doesn't fit here. The cot is not very accommodating, looking at it. There is a desk for work and the non-zero chance of interruption. The night has compressed down into narrow, dark hours that are swift to flow past. But still, he feels bodily resistant to simply making for the entryway, beer and apology delivered, and lingers. Hands gentling.
Tomorrow will be long and dark, the desert sun reduced to distant and rarely glimpsed stripes above the head. It will be cold, and dangerous, and there is every likelihood that the day following will be much the same. And after those long hours spent trudging through what more or less qualifies as underground, he will have more of this—questions to manage, the next twenty four hours of watch rota and Maker knows what to scratch together, paper, a narrow desk, a narrower bunk.
From the Gallows' central tower, he might have guessed that despite the glum lack of sunlight and the ground firmed up underfoot, that this might nearly serve to satisfy the itch that sometimes scratches at the base of his skull. Instead, the similarity of the work strikes just near enough to what he likes to prompt a kind of homesickness. A low knot in the belly, its tangle loosely cinched and no less easily undone despite the slack in its cabling. Or maybe that's the lopsided sense of the sword left in him.
Anyway, yes. It's time for Marcus to go.
He turns his face to tell him so. And here is the hand light at his shoulder, so Flint's chin and cheek sets quietly across the backs of Marcus' fingers. Body warm touch of the metal in his ear at a wind-chafed wrist, intimate and tired.
He turns his hand subtle at the wrist, just enough to convey something like a touch being returned, reciprocated. Then turns around completely to conform palm to cheek, fingers loosely curled up under jawline.
His other hand finds its way back up to shoulder, then over it, fanning high on Flint's chest. Gentle pressure applied. If Flint capitulates to it, he'll find the ability to lean back and rest against Marcus standing sturdy. If he doesn't, it doesn't cease this lingering, not right away, as thumb feels out half an inch of territory on Flint's cheek.
"I imagine when all of this is over," he says, "and I'll have found myself to've survived it, and the Chantry has finally decided not to trouble itself with corralling its children or writing execution orders," this part, more wry, "I'll have to decide where it is I go after. There was a time where I wouldn't have been at all fussed about where that was, so long as it wasn't the Circles."
He taps a light, thoughtful beat against Flint's chest. "The Anderfels, though."
He does—capitulate. Sinking back, he makes for a heavy shape there in the loosely arranged bracket of Marcus' hands. Cheek willing to defer to the curve of fingers and palm; the wide span of his shoulders a softly blunted square against where Marcus has posted up behind him. It is selfish to do, he thinks. But surely no more so than Marcus' appearance here with the cup of ale as an excuse and his firm commitment to having his guilt assuaged by the act of acknowledging it.
(And who would begrudge him the warmth of that hand and the sturdy support at his back? Except maybe for himself, and only then at his most uncharitable when he is assigning opinions to people who would think him cruel and foolish for doing so.)
Flint makes a low noise, the shape of his summoned scoff murmuring against the gentle press of fingertips under his jaw. A hum that chases the hand on his chest.
"Is that what you've gleaned from all this? An affection for darkspawn and sand."
Marcus' hand flattens where it rests against Flint's chest, the other maintaining its idle fidget, similar to rubbing the velvety corner of an ear of a resting hound, light and obtrusive. If it occurs to him that in his attempt to offer something to Flint for any perceived or true responsibility for the trauma inflicted this day, if he'd have simply handed off the ale and then taken up this post—
Well, it is easy to project meaning onto silent things. In the tipping back of Flint's weight against his middle, the vibration of vocalisations under his fingers.
"I don't know if I'd spurn it in the face of capture and execution," he explains, "but it would be a hard decision."
This is a joke. It's difficult to tell from his tone.
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And so when Marcus' boots find solid ground, he finds he is free of obligation. Well. Almost. He sees to the griffons, first, freeing them of their equipment, feeding and brushing down, ensuring Monster gets further attention so as not to incite any jealousies, and all of this he is a little too tired to do but it feels good, anyway. Sensible labour that requires nothing from him but a dedication to tasks he knows well.
He gets himself clean, after, and more than just his face. The water in the basin he is using is quick to turn a murky grey, and needs a few refillings before he is satisfied.
It is late. Darkness is slow to encroach. The nights in the desert are colder than you'd anticipate. He has found a place by a fire, hair still damp from determined efforts to clean it of soot and dust and blood and tied neatly back, a cloak over his shoulders, and a scrubbing brush in hand he is using to see to his staff. Beside him, lodged in the earth beside the blanket he is using as his seat, a half-emptied bowl of the slow-simmered stew some Diplomacy members had helpfully seen to over the day.
This spot by a fire also, incidentally, affords him view of the larger tent, where he flicks his attention up now and then.
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The fire is also, incidentally, more or less along one of the most likely footpaths Flint might take to go from the point A of the field office to point B, his own tent. Though if not for some glint of firelight off the staff's sharp edge drawing the eye, he might not have given it so much as a passing glance. He is tired (though looks less so out here in the forgiving slant of the dark), and wants to peel himself out of these gory clothes, and to wash off the stink of murder and sweat. The sticky edges of the poultice one of the healers had been called in to apply while and and the other division heads had still been bent over their table is already beginning to itch, and if he does those other things then maybe he will be able to ignore it.
But the gleam of some scrubbed clean section of blade prompts a glance flickering in the fire's direction. Captures a brief scrape of eye contact. A nod, made in passing.
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Once fire-crusted grime has been worked off the iron, out of grooves and runic engravings, it's gone over with oil and a rag. Checked over by light of the fireplace, and then he sets upon cleaning the bowl. There's been no battle that Marcus has been through, no matter how gore-spattered, how sizeable the victory or total the loss, that he hasn't come out the other side ravenously hungry, and tonight is no exception.
He leaves his spot by the fire. There are watch rotations already established of which he is not a part, but he relieves someone of theirs so they can enjoy a break for the excuse of standing somewhere empty and cold and dark at the very fringes of their camp and put a further dent in the limited supply of cigarettes he carries with him. Flips a scorpion off his boot with a turn of his ankle. Contemplates this truly dizzying amount of landscape that is switch to diminish from the scope of his vision, darkness swallowing sand dunes and red rock rendered indigo in dwindling dusk.
When he makes his way back to the camp, he moves towards where there are casks of water and ale both, the latter being of the same instinct someone had when they made sure to pack spices with the cooking supplies. He fills a tankard with it, and upon turning from that spot, and noting the light still on in Flint's tent, he sets a course.
Does not barge through the entryway, folded closed against desert vermin and company.
Anyway. "Commander."
cant believe i set myself up for a tent flap door
The slanting tent is no back country lean-to; it harbors a low cot, a writing desk and a low-backed seat that's more really more stool than chair, a coarse mat laid over the rocky ground, all of which must collapse or roll up to be backed onto a griffon without much imposition. The tent's dimensions require only a slight stoop from any occupant choosing to remain standing. Flint though is sitting posted at the writing desk, and has twisted only partially round to acknowledge Marcus' entry.
It the intervening interval, Flint's washed and changed. If any trace of blood or dirt remains on his person, it's a failing of having to scrub down out of a basin and not a lack of dedication to the task of setting himself back to rights. Even so, the light of the little oil lamp illuminating the page under his pen is less than flattering—renders the man in craggy touches of shadow, and paints wide dark swathes from cheek to under-eye.
The point of his attention flicks, briefly, to the tankard in Marcus' possession, and then makes to rock back to the half written page.
"You would do well to consider some rest."
There will be more work tomorrow. With the Venatori bitten back, further depths of the shrine await exploration. Given what all they faced today, they can hardly hope to send Research there without well-armed and capable company.
me, free of sin
And he will. There is no choice in that matter, physically or by way of obligation, but Marcus still enters, letting the flap fall closed behind him. Head ducked and shoulders forward to accommodate the closer quarters. And now there's a distinct familiarity in nearness, but apparently in service to placing the tankard down on Flint's desk.
Smokey cling is far more reminiscent of recent cigarettes, thinner and sharper than the earthier black summonings on a battlefield. Doesn't linger in the air by the time he moves for the other available place to sit, which is at the edge of the cot.
"You'll be going back in?"
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"I don't imagine Rutyer will be going in my stead."
His hand gets as far as completing the end its interrupted sentence before the pen is laid aside in favor of the cup.
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When it does cycle back to Flint, and desert-warmed ale is appreciated or otherwise, there's a small moment of study, for the faint streak of dirt or soot or something else that stripes a sickle's curve along the back of exposed neck. Maybe if he'd lingered there at Flint's seat at the desk, he'd have smudged it away with his palm, his thumb, the texture of skin and the starting fade of bristle at hairline easy to recall, and it's the fact that this thought feels like something sharp and broken off that finally prompts him to speak—
"I'm sorry for," and there is a tinge of regret, already, for words summoned into the tent. Apologies are clumsy things, easy to misuse. Nothing for it now. "That I didn't act differently first, today."
There has been plenty of time to consider alternate actions, particularly when twisting time had afforded him opportunity to enact them.
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The lamplight cuts in through the bristle of red beard; melts the skeptical look he paints Marcus with into something less cutting.
"That you didn't act differently," he repeats back.
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And notes that on a delay, his phrasing wants for explanation. For perspective. He can imagine that being in the thick of a thing is different to being several paces back, as fast as it all was. The teeth of that internal pressure don't let up.
"I left you open to the sword," he explains, customarily quiet, sedate gravel-edged tone in a space rendered private, and also safe, relatively speaking. "I focused on the wrong thing. It was only good fortune that there was a window to correct it."
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(The less consideration dedicated to that uneasy, queasy twinge in him that accompanies the thought, the better.)
"It was fortunate." All things being even, that's true enough. On most days, he prefers the experience of not being a corpse. Flint's attention remains narrowed on Marcus, brow set low and an idle shifting of the hand at the edge of the desk—thumb fussing against some spot of chipping veneer.
"I suppose next you'll expect me to express some apology in return for firing on the mage instead of the assassin."
(There had been an opening to sink a bolt in the lightly armored Venatori at close range before they'd vaulted over the patch of shared cover with those jagged twin daggers. He'd intentionally not taken it.)
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"No," is the simplest, truest response.
No, he wouldn't expect it. No, he doesn't require apology. Both of those things. But mainly, "It isn't the same."
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"Isn't it?"
But rather an assessment, dialed in on Marcus in order see watch in which direction his answer breaks having already internally determined which trajectory would be preferable and which wouldn't. Why, because Marcus had only suffered a nick to the chin? Because he'd survived it?
(Some other answer that he has tucked up close somewhere he can feel, but not see.)
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insistent, still quiet. There is an easy logic to follow here, he knows, he has contemplated it while watching the desert go from red to inky purple and shrink into blackness, he has twisted it through his fingers while raking stiff brush bristle over iron. They are alive, through virtue rather than fault of their own actions.
But there is a snarl in it, thorny and stubborn.
"I know what a near miss feels like," he says. "Being in one, seeing one. But that wasn't it. There was a world where it wasn't, for a moment. And I'm sorry."
Here, a twitched gesture, almost a shrug, as if to offload something.
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Yes, it was lucky there was some opportunity to take a second crack at the thing. But it's not as if whatever Marcus had done during that first pass had been particularly to blame. These things happen. They happen to good men with sturdy sword arm's and sure aim. It is rare, technically speaking, for anyone in his profession—the ones has held, the one he keeps now—to avoid the thing forever. Eventually, that Venatori short sword or one like it will find him again and there will be no changing it then. That's true no matter what ownership Marcus Rowntree might prefer to have over the matter.
He might easily say so.
But rather than curtail him, Flint looks at Marcus across the narrow tent—glower painted on by the unflattering slant of shadow more so than it is legitimate, the world having a habit of contriving to make his brow appear heavier and more serious than it may actually be.
"Well," he says. "Thanks for not fucking it a second time."
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But there is some ragged edge of belief in this one error that has hooked into him and compelled him to this tent and the conversation in it. Marcus tolerates that apparent glower with the ease of someone who has, in many respects, gotten used to it.
And doesn't laugh, but makes a sound is the beginning of it.
"Welcome," shorthand acceptance, dry. It feels like a trade. Apology given over for a brusque gratitude he wasn't after. It eases the thing that had set its teeth in him, a little. Marcus would not say in so many words that he came here to make himself feel better.
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Flint's study of him flicks down to Marcus' joined hands, then scatters back up along some impulsive unplanned track. When his own hand shifts from the chipped desk's edge, it moves after the cup—a certain impression that it's ultimately headed back for the discarded pen.
"I trust you'll keep all of this in mind tomorrow with your charges," Flint says, the low chair creaking gently under his weight as his attention slides back toward the page. It isn't a dismissal, strictly, which Marcus should know. He's certainly been in the receiving end of every kind of one.
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No Aye, Commander, just sort of a noise that acknowledges this thing Flint has said. His shadow doesn't shrink on the wall where it would if he'd made for the entryway, but skews off strange in scale as he moves nearer. Contact established with a hand light at Flint's shoulder, sort of a warning for the second, which lands gently and inevitably more intimate at the curve where muscle connects shoulder to spine.
Higher than where the sword jutted out, but he doesn't really recall, and it's not his aim to pantomime some kind of physical confirmation of the absence of killing blow. It's his aim instead to squeeze over the muscle appended to sword arm, to brush his thumb against the streak of dirt at the back of Flint's neck.
The specific rub of his thumb makes the purpose clear. Missed a spot.
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But here— a faint twitch, and now that gentle inquiring cant of the temple. Not turning so far as to raise his eyes to Marcus, but laying over to such a degree that the shadow plays differently on his face and over the desk, and that the glow of the oil lamp touches pale eyelashes and the fine hairs hatching the width of Flint's cheek.
Near to that scuff of thumb, the muscle is stiff and tender. Something in his back aches, and it has very little to do with the creeping memory of the Venatori sword and everything to do with the struggle of clambering up out of the crevasse and because, against all odds, he is becoming an old man. Because it's cold in the desert. Because he occasionally wants—
He sighs out through the nose. Dips the pen in the neglected inkwell. If the line of his neck alters faintly under the span of Marcus' fingers, then it can be because he's bowing his head to the work.
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Firm, but not just jostling. He imagines that ruining penmanship is more likely to see him turned away than most other things that surprisingly have yet to. Palm pressing against the wing of muscle lower down. His other hand keeps a familiar hold of shoulder, resting there.
They like to touch each other. He likes to touch Flint, and there's yet to be spoken analysis of what it means when it isn't in the service to getting off. What itch is being scratched. Here, working down tense muscle in a way he knows to be pleasing, it certainly scratches at something in himself, not wholly related to that panicky clench that was slow to release.
He'll do this for a while, disinclined to interrupt work with more chatter he hasn't an instinct for. Content to.
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Perhaps passively observed across curved shoulder and bent neck, it might be a document meant for the Inquisition. A report made out to satisfy the curiosity of some ally among the Divine's forces, or perhaps something of a professional acquaintance among the Orlesian army. Whatever it is, whomever it's for, Flint makes no attempt to guard the shape of the page from Marcus.
As he reaches what appears to be the end, having made no attempt at conversation save for some low (in protesting) cringing grunt of discomfort for this press of thumb or that firm palm, he writes, The ordinary channel will do, and neglects to dash off the familiar signature. Instead, Flint draws a faintly lopsided circle in the lower left corner before setting the pen aside.
It's possible these things, where he simply sits and allowed Marcus to untangle the corded muscle in his shoulder, read as dry and without any intimacy. As apparently drab as the lines of this reporting, a secret made dull and pedestrian for its blandly painted exposure.
"Marcus," he says after these minutes where the only conversation has been between the page and the scratching pen nib, or possibly his muscle and Marcus' pressing fingers. "You would be wise to get some rest."
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Flint speaks, and Marcus moves his hand, leaving off those back muscles to travel further down, across the span of ribs. He can feel the impulse a little like that those strange time fluxes of the rocky crevasse, can vividly imagine letting his fingers curl against the fabric to draw shirt tails out from waistband. Some insistent part of him that wants, in spite of the hour, the day and tomorrow, where they are.
Wise. Not quite intimately tilted enough for Flint to feel as well as hear the heavier exhale that follows.
"Aye, I would be. I set up a tent and everything."
He doesn't fit here. The cot is not very accommodating, looking at it. There is a desk for work and the non-zero chance of interruption. The night has compressed down into narrow, dark hours that are swift to flow past. But still, he feels bodily resistant to simply making for the entryway, beer and apology delivered, and lingers. Hands gentling.
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From the Gallows' central tower, he might have guessed that despite the glum lack of sunlight and the ground firmed up underfoot, that this might nearly serve to satisfy the itch that sometimes scratches at the base of his skull. Instead, the similarity of the work strikes just near enough to what he likes to prompt a kind of homesickness. A low knot in the belly, its tangle loosely cinched and no less easily undone despite the slack in its cabling. Or maybe that's the lopsided sense of the sword left in him.
Anyway, yes. It's time for Marcus to go.
He turns his face to tell him so. And here is the hand light at his shoulder, so Flint's chin and cheek sets quietly across the backs of Marcus' fingers. Body warm touch of the metal in his ear at a wind-chafed wrist, intimate and tired.
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His other hand finds its way back up to shoulder, then over it, fanning high on Flint's chest. Gentle pressure applied. If Flint capitulates to it, he'll find the ability to lean back and rest against Marcus standing sturdy. If he doesn't, it doesn't cease this lingering, not right away, as thumb feels out half an inch of territory on Flint's cheek.
"I imagine when all of this is over," he says, "and I'll have found myself to've survived it, and the Chantry has finally decided not to trouble itself with corralling its children or writing execution orders," this part, more wry, "I'll have to decide where it is I go after. There was a time where I wouldn't have been at all fussed about where that was, so long as it wasn't the Circles."
He taps a light, thoughtful beat against Flint's chest. "The Anderfels, though."
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(And who would begrudge him the warmth of that hand and the sturdy support at his back? Except maybe for himself, and only then at his most uncharitable when he is assigning opinions to people who would think him cruel and foolish for doing so.)
Flint makes a low noise, the shape of his summoned scoff murmuring against the gentle press of fingertips under his jaw. A hum that chases the hand on his chest.
"Is that what you've gleaned from all this? An affection for darkspawn and sand."
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Marcus' hand flattens where it rests against Flint's chest, the other maintaining its idle fidget, similar to rubbing the velvety corner of an ear of a resting hound, light and obtrusive. If it occurs to him that in his attempt to offer something to Flint for any perceived or true responsibility for the trauma inflicted this day, if he'd have simply handed off the ale and then taken up this post—
Well, it is easy to project meaning onto silent things. In the tipping back of Flint's weight against his middle, the vibration of vocalisations under his fingers.
"I don't know if I'd spurn it in the face of capture and execution," he explains, "but it would be a hard decision."
This is a joke. It's difficult to tell from his tone.
"Rivain," he adds. "I'd like Rivain."
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