[ The nonchalant thing to do would be to write back of course, coolly, and amble his way back. Make some stops. Take some detours. Arrive with straight shoulders and a crooked smile, as unbothered as the day he died. If he was certain she was done with him, that is how he would do it. The certainty would make him calm. He’d hold his dignity like a shield and walk into it.
He’s been worried, even though Solas said she would forgive him, and Solas is certainly in the position to know what Beleth will forgive. But he hasn't been certain. He's even further from certain now, looking at the little bird he'd been fidgeting with like a worry stone for the last few days, where Beleth hasn't written come by. She wrote please come home.
Felassan does not write back anything at all, then. Just goes. He hadn't wandered too much afield; between flight and fade step he’s there within the hour. It's not until he's at the tree line around the house's little clearing that he hesitates, then steps back. He scans the windows he can see. He picks a brittle winter twig out from where the rush got it stuck in his hair. He worries anew. He thinks she deserves time to put her armor on — metaphorically — rather than have him appear upon her suddenly, when she might have expected a day or two more, so he takes the bird out and answers: ]
I'm not far.
[ It's not a lie. Just maybe too true. Regardless, he sinks deeper into the trees to measure out another half hour in hopeful, wary pacing, before he goes to seek her out inside. ]
[ It's not odd, for Felassan to take some time to actually get back to the house. He ranges far, and magical teleportation can only do so much -- though Caldera had some kind of odd magic... but whatever the case, when she's requested his presence for other, less emotionally fraught situations, he's taken a certain amount of time, which always feels like Too Long.
It feels even worse, now, in the hour that she waits for a reply. Maybe he's tired of her and her theatrics. No -- she tries to wrest the anxious worries from the spiral they try to descend. She ought to trust him. She had that worry with Solas, hadn't she? That she was the idiot patiently waiting, while he hadn't worried at all? And look how that had gone. The moment he'd seen her face, he had been unable to deny the feelings she'd been unsure existed.
And then he texts back, so there's that, at least.
Still. She worries. She sets up tea leaves, gets the water on the stove, then busies herself. A mortar and pestle make for a good way to use her hands, grinding various herbs into fine powders that will be made into various concoctions. They are only set aside when she hears his footsteps at the entryway. ]
I'm in here.
[ Then she rises to greet him, and decides first thing first -- as soon as she sees him, she reaches to touch his face, hands gentle. ]
[ Felassan doesn't smile, and he doesn't exactly relax. He steadies, though — a dozen barely perceptible shifts in posture and expression that make the difference, to someone good enough at reading people, between might crack and can handle this. He puts his hand over one of hers to hold it in place as he turns to press his mouth into her palm, nose full of the herbs she was handling, eyes searching her face. ]
I missed you.
[ He did. And it's strange to have missed her, especially so much. Five days is nothing. Even here. He's gone longer all the time. But it's a different kind of gone, when he might pick up the bird and let her know the moment the terrible joke occurs to him, or meander into a shared dream to say hello, or come back whenever he likes and know she won't mind seeing him.
The press of his mouth against her hand turns into a kiss, finally, and he loosens his grip so she might have her hand back, if she wants it, while he nods toward her work. ]
Can I help?
[ They do need to talk. Which means he, too, could use something to do with his hands, before holding hers segues inevitably into trying to wind around her like a vine. ]
[ Maybe it's silly to admit that -- seeing as he was gone at her request, that it was her request that brought him back. But she had missed him from the moment she walked away from him in that grove. The lack of his presence haunted her as it never had before, and guilt twisted into the space he had left.
It was her fault he'd left, after all.
But here he is, standing before her, and pressing a kiss into her hand, and steadied by her touch and her words. It helps her to know that -- that he missed her, that he's kissing her. That he isn't upset with her, somehow. Which was a stupid worry anyway, but it's nice to have it debunked anyway. ]
Ah, yes. I'd be glad to have some help.
[ It's only when she turns to go back into the kitchen that she pulls away, slowly. It would be easier to not pull away. To stand there and hold each other and not talk. But if Beleth has learned anything in the time she's been granted, it's that things that are easy are rarely the wisest choice.
At the kitchen table, herbs are spread out, neatly organized by type, next to various containers, neatly labeled. Another mortar and pestle are fetched and set down next to hers. And then she sits, gesturing to the chair next to hers. ]
I've been told there are more efficient ways to grind herbs in Caldera, but this was how I was taught. So.
[ And Beleth, who breaks traditions at every turn, is still tied to them inextricably. ]
Efficiency for its own sake is overrated, [ says the immortal to the soon-to-be. The might-as-well-already-be, for all Solas would let anything, age or otherwise, happen to her. For all Felassan would, to the more limited scope of his power. ] What would we be saving time for?
[ So there will be no complaining from him about the work of it. He's done this before. But not with her, not to her particular preference for the smoothness of a paste or the fineness of a grain, so while he handles the pestle with confident familiarity, he'll be watching her for cues and showing her his progress now and then for direction rather than traipsing boldly ahead.
First, though, before he's begun grinding anything at all, he's only quiet for a moment. ]
I didn't understand where I was yet, and they were the only clan I knew well enough to fake, of late.
[ A minor misstep, in the scheme of it all. But Felassan so often tells straight-faced jokes for no one's amusement but his own, and he'd like her to know that isn't what he was doing, when he gave their name to a strange Dalish woman in a strange tavern. He wasn't being funny. He was just being a spy. ]
[ It's a foreign line of thinking to her -- one of many, she supposes, between her and her partners. It's foreign lines of thinking that lead to the two of them sitting here, with unspoken words woven between them like a blanket lain between the two. What's the point in saving time? When you have precious little of it, there's always a reason. So much innovation had come from trying to save time.
She'll have to ask, later, just what stirred innovation in Arlathan, if not saving time. ]
I suppose you're right. I like doing it this way, anyway.
[ And then, he starts the talk. And Beleth finds herself on the precarious balance that she had often felt with Solas. The desire to soothe and assure, to not inflict unpleasantness on the one that she loves. And knowing that she cannot. That some things can't be brushed off. ]
... It was never about obscuring your identity, when we first met. I understand why you did that. It was -- [ She pauses in her grinding, hands staring down at the powder, grip still tight. ] -- All the comments, all the jokes about the Dalish that you've made while you were here. I thought they were in... good faith.
To find out that you acted like that, while helping wipe out the clan that you had lived with -- did their deaths mean nothing to you? [ She turns to him then, purple eyes alight with a grave focus. ] Do you care that they died at all?
[ Felassan meets her gaze for the sake of not shying away for it, at first, out of much the same impulse that would make him stand steady instead of ducking away from an incoming slap. Not that she means to hurt him, of course. But he could flinch, anyway, at the look in her eyes — warmer and brighter than his or Solas's, and big enough to drift away into — if he were someone else.
Then he does look away, back at what he's doing. He's quiet for several seconds. It isn't stubbornness or reluctance. It's that he spends so much time looking outside of himself, toward other people's emotions and motives, or the mission, or the clouds and the trees, and only on special occasions contemplates the shadowed contents of his own heart. That's how being willing to die for Briala's dreams could sneak up on him, leaving him comfortably certain that he could kill her, too, until the moment he didn't.
So he genuinely needs a moment to decide: ]
Not the way you want me to.
[ She won't turn him away, he reminds himself. Or if she would, lying to her now to cover the cracks will only make it more likely, not less. ]
That's not because I found them frustrating. I did, but I had found the Dalish frustrating for seven hundred years, and I promise nearly all of them survived it. It was a pity, but there were bigger things to worry about. We were going to remake the world.
Now... I don't know. Maybe I could begin with them, but I couldn't stop with them.
[ Maybe that's cryptic. Or maybe the leader of an army will understand the impossibility of feeling the same sorrow for the tenth dead man as the first, or the hundredth as the tenth, or the thousandth as the hundredth, if one intends to ever feel anything but sorrow again. ]
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action text.
He’s been worried, even though Solas said she would forgive him, and Solas is certainly in the position to know what Beleth will forgive. But he hasn't been certain. He's even further from certain now, looking at the little bird he'd been fidgeting with like a worry stone for the last few days, where Beleth hasn't written come by. She wrote please come home.
Felassan does not write back anything at all, then. Just goes. He hadn't wandered too much afield; between flight and fade step he’s there within the hour. It's not until he's at the tree line around the house's little clearing that he hesitates, then steps back. He scans the windows he can see. He picks a brittle winter twig out from where the rush got it stuck in his hair. He worries anew. He thinks she deserves time to put her armor on — metaphorically — rather than have him appear upon her suddenly, when she might have expected a day or two more, so he takes the bird out and answers: ]
I'm not far.
[ It's not a lie. Just maybe too true. Regardless, he sinks deeper into the trees to measure out another half hour in hopeful, wary pacing, before he goes to seek her out inside. ]
no subject
It feels even worse, now, in the hour that she waits for a reply. Maybe he's tired of her and her theatrics. No -- she tries to wrest the anxious worries from the spiral they try to descend. She ought to trust him. She had that worry with Solas, hadn't she? That she was the idiot patiently waiting, while he hadn't worried at all? And look how that had gone. The moment he'd seen her face, he had been unable to deny the feelings she'd been unsure existed.
And then he texts back, so there's that, at least.
Still. She worries. She sets up tea leaves, gets the water on the stove, then busies herself. A mortar and pestle make for a good way to use her hands, grinding various herbs into fine powders that will be made into various concoctions. They are only set aside when she hears his footsteps at the entryway. ]
I'm in here.
[ Then she rises to greet him, and decides first thing first -- as soon as she sees him, she reaches to touch his face, hands gentle. ]
Aneth ara, ma lath.
no subject
I missed you.
[ He did. And it's strange to have missed her, especially so much. Five days is nothing. Even here. He's gone longer all the time. But it's a different kind of gone, when he might pick up the bird and let her know the moment the terrible joke occurs to him, or meander into a shared dream to say hello, or come back whenever he likes and know she won't mind seeing him.
The press of his mouth against her hand turns into a kiss, finally, and he loosens his grip so she might have her hand back, if she wants it, while he nods toward her work. ]
Can I help?
[ They do need to talk. Which means he, too, could use something to do with his hands, before holding hers segues inevitably into trying to wind around her like a vine. ]
no subject
[ Maybe it's silly to admit that -- seeing as he was gone at her request, that it was her request that brought him back. But she had missed him from the moment she walked away from him in that grove. The lack of his presence haunted her as it never had before, and guilt twisted into the space he had left.
It was her fault he'd left, after all.
But here he is, standing before her, and pressing a kiss into her hand, and steadied by her touch and her words. It helps her to know that -- that he missed her, that he's kissing her. That he isn't upset with her, somehow. Which was a stupid worry anyway, but it's nice to have it debunked anyway. ]
Ah, yes. I'd be glad to have some help.
[ It's only when she turns to go back into the kitchen that she pulls away, slowly. It would be easier to not pull away. To stand there and hold each other and not talk. But if Beleth has learned anything in the time she's been granted, it's that things that are easy are rarely the wisest choice.
At the kitchen table, herbs are spread out, neatly organized by type, next to various containers, neatly labeled. Another mortar and pestle are fetched and set down next to hers. And then she sits, gesturing to the chair next to hers. ]
I've been told there are more efficient ways to grind herbs in Caldera, but this was how I was taught. So.
[ And Beleth, who breaks traditions at every turn, is still tied to them inextricably. ]
no subject
[ So there will be no complaining from him about the work of it. He's done this before. But not with her, not to her particular preference for the smoothness of a paste or the fineness of a grain, so while he handles the pestle with confident familiarity, he'll be watching her for cues and showing her his progress now and then for direction rather than traipsing boldly ahead.
First, though, before he's begun grinding anything at all, he's only quiet for a moment. ]
I didn't understand where I was yet, and they were the only clan I knew well enough to fake, of late.
[ A minor misstep, in the scheme of it all. But Felassan so often tells straight-faced jokes for no one's amusement but his own, and he'd like her to know that isn't what he was doing, when he gave their name to a strange Dalish woman in a strange tavern. He wasn't being funny. He was just being a spy. ]
I should have told you sooner.
no subject
She'll have to ask, later, just what stirred innovation in Arlathan, if not saving time. ]
I suppose you're right. I like doing it this way, anyway.
[ And then, he starts the talk. And Beleth finds herself on the precarious balance that she had often felt with Solas. The desire to soothe and assure, to not inflict unpleasantness on the one that she loves. And knowing that she cannot. That some things can't be brushed off. ]
... It was never about obscuring your identity, when we first met. I understand why you did that. It was -- [ She pauses in her grinding, hands staring down at the powder, grip still tight. ] -- All the comments, all the jokes about the Dalish that you've made while you were here. I thought they were in... good faith.
To find out that you acted like that, while helping wipe out the clan that you had lived with -- did their deaths mean nothing to you? [ She turns to him then, purple eyes alight with a grave focus. ] Do you care that they died at all?
no subject
Then he does look away, back at what he's doing. He's quiet for several seconds. It isn't stubbornness or reluctance. It's that he spends so much time looking outside of himself, toward other people's emotions and motives, or the mission, or the clouds and the trees, and only on special occasions contemplates the shadowed contents of his own heart. That's how being willing to die for Briala's dreams could sneak up on him, leaving him comfortably certain that he could kill her, too, until the moment he didn't.
So he genuinely needs a moment to decide: ]
Not the way you want me to.
[ She won't turn him away, he reminds himself. Or if she would, lying to her now to cover the cracks will only make it more likely, not less. ]
That's not because I found them frustrating. I did, but I had found the Dalish frustrating for seven hundred years, and I promise nearly all of them survived it. It was a pity, but there were bigger things to worry about. We were going to remake the world.
Now... I don't know. Maybe I could begin with them, but I couldn't stop with them.
[ Maybe that's cryptic. Or maybe the leader of an army will understand the impossibility of feeling the same sorrow for the tenth dead man as the first, or the hundredth as the tenth, or the thousandth as the hundredth, if one intends to ever feel anything but sorrow again. ]