contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

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[bouchonne]

Someone is still dead.

[ By tilts his head in acknowledgment. There's no condemnation in his manner. Nor any suspicion, nor any trouble in his brow. This is just a conversation to uncover something about Bastien. Just looking for a little piece of his soul, to have it, to know him. ]

But it's hard not to feel that way. Rather like how it's so easy to loathe the louts who hunt to prove their athletic prowess, and easy to empathize with those who hunt to eat.

[cozen]

[ Bastien nods, considering the metaphor, and looks back at Byerly’s face. ]

Don’t imagine me as the someone hunting to eat, [ he says first; he’s said similar before, vigilant against Byerly making him out to be someone without a choice. ] But yeah. Like that. And the people doing it to fend off an attack, [ is a little pointed. Byerly. ] They are the easiest.

[bouchonne]

[ He purses his lips slightly. Don't take this as an opportunity to be kind, you son of a bitch. But the faint disapproval fades: ]

I suppose, though, not many people have only one motive, do they. We can pretend purity of intent - condemn a fellow for craving violence - when for many, it's a combination of a few different desires. I'll bet that Astarion gets pleasure from it because he's a terrified creature who finds some sense of control in the enacting of violence.

[cozen]

[ That lip purse earns a little what are you going to do about it eyebrow raise, before he’s nodding along with By’s assessment. ]

It sounds like he has had a hard life and not a lot of choices. If he did much killing before he came here, it probably wasn’t of his own accord. Maybe he needs to think of it that way now to—to feel like less has been taken from him.

I do like him, [ Bastien adds; however Astarion truly feels about murder, he’s on their side, he hasn’t stabbed anyone without warning, and he’s fun. It really is only about wanting Byerly to be careful. ] We should make him come out with us sometime, too.

[bouchonne]

[ Innocently: ]

Why, do you think he'd fit in with us?

[cozen]

[ Bastien sits forward so he can place a finger between Byerly’s eyebrows and try to push the innocence out of them. ]

He’s a card cheat if I ever saw one, so—yes.

[bouchonne]

I have never cheated at cards! How dare you.

[cozen]

[ Bastien's jaw obligingly drops. ]

Never? So all the times I have lost, I have really been that bad?

[bouchonne]

[ A laugh. ]

Like I haven't caught you losing on purpose to cheer me up when I'm in a mood.

[cozen]

Oh, that isn't losing, [ Bastien scoffs. ] That's winning a different game. There's a fantastic prize.

[ He nudges By's leg with his foot. ]

Are you worried about the mages?

[bouchonne]

Oh, yes.

[ A hand pressed to his chest - ]

Just imagine if they're not allowed to roam free. I worry for them ever so.

[cozen]

[ He grins at the pantomime—not the kind of worried about he meant, but funny. ]

Maybe they can be offered a choice between Circles and serfdom, [ he proposes, unseriously, and more seriously adds: ] I do feel for them. Having so much of their lives decided by something they can't change.

[ His tone implies an unsaid but. ]

[bouchonne]

Of course.

[ Since they're speaking more seriously, he agrees, and quite honestly so. ]

But an abomination is an abomination.

[cozen]

Yes.

[ For a moment his face shifts into something even more serious, though also warmer, and probably inscrutable. Behind it he's thinking about the abomination in the dining hall—about Byerly's wounded side and burned arm, about wanting to to fuss and to wind around him but holding back. There were a lot of moments when Bastien should have known he was in it for real; that was one of them.

But that does not make it a good memory. ]

Had you ever seen magic before you came here?

[bouchonne]

Mm.

[ He lifts his eyebrows in confirmation. ]

Battle of Denerim. I was hiding during it, to be sure, but I saw some of the fighting. And I knew a mage, too, back in my Fereldan days - a friend of mine, one of my circle.

[cozen]

Really? An apostate? Or did he have a day pass?*

[ * He does not literally say "day pass." Something like it though. ]

[bouchonne]

The latter.

[ By smiles wryly at Bastien's rather wry, and not-at-all-modern, turn of phrase. ]

A good and dutiful fellow - of noble birth - who was a specialist in healing magic. He'd be sent out from his Circle to serve every now and again, and would be sure to get a drink before he went back home again.

[cozen]

It would be nice if they were all healers. I suppose that the healers can be possessed just as easily—but they are so much less intimidating in the meantime.

[bouchonne]

And just easier to get along with. With the exception of that Anders fellow, I've liked every healer I've known.

[cozen]

He was very, [ a search for the right word, ] passionate.

What happened to your friend, do you know?

[bouchonne]

Dead.

[ A grim little smile. ]

In the Blight.

[cozen]

Oh, By, I'm sorry.

[ He holds out an expectant hand for one of Byerly's, fingers giving a sedate and sad little wiggle of invitation. ]

[bouchonne]

[ That takes him aback. That simple expression of sympathy and sorrow. By looks up, genuinely startled, because -

Because what? That's the sort of kindness that Bastien gives. He takes a breath, and then reaches out to Bastien, taking his hand back. ]

It was a long time ago.

[cozen]

[ Bastien keeps hold of Byerly's hand, wrist resting on his knee, and nods. ]

Still shitty. All of it is.

[ He has a distant memory of the dragons attacking the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux when he was twelve—distant in both time and physical space, he wasn't there. (Though he did tell people that was how his mother died, for a while.) A more recent one of rioters and locked gates and fires scattered through the city. Both of those together can't be a fraction of what the Blight was like in Denerim. ]

It doesn't seem fair for all of these problems to be so big and magical, when so many of us are only—

[ There's no good word for non-magical, so he shrugs and trusts Byerly to get it. ]

[bouchonne]

Yeah.

[ By smiles a little, sadly, and rests his chin on Bastien's other knee. ]

All we can do is - possibly - stab a thing. And even then, not terribly well.