In Jone's absence, and with everything happening like it did, it's been difficult to focus too intensely on his combat training-- at least too much more than he already was.
He shivers at the cold flagstone under his feet, regretting not at least putting on slippers, but it seemed a mistake to keep Gabranth waiting.
It isn’t exactly a motivated answer, and it lacks any sort of definitive plans for future endeavors...but Gabranth supposes he can hardly expect the man to become Larsa overnight.
Or at all.
A few turns, an intentional course cut (one Benedict himself might recognize), and they stand outside the room where they’d first met in short order. Gabranth expects there’s some degree of comfort found inside for the mage, and at the very least, a place to warm himself.
Pleased by Gabranth's choice of room, if only for its fireplace and generous assortment of pillows, Benedict wanders inside and makes himself comfortable atop several of them. The fireplace is cold, but if their discussion is to be a lengthy one, it's not like he needs anything other than wood to light it.
"Huh," he intones, crossing his legs and looking up at Gabranth, "how'd that go?"
He pulls his own helmet free as Benedict seats himself, content to remain at a distance— looming beside the doorway as a cautious measure, should someone decide to wander nearby at this early hour, however unlikely.
The noise he makes is an unhappy one. A throaty little sound that only winds up as a meager mmph, his eyeline lowering by degrees.
“Not well.”
Which is putting it lightly, considering how vividly they’d argued for a short, volatile period of time. In hindsight, even after all they’ve been through since, he still does not understand it. “She seemed claimed by malcontent. Quick to provocation, though it was she who bid me remove my helm to begin with.”
Fearful, anxious— those aspects of it he keeps to himself, as he’d not dare to speak of her vulnerability to another without consent. Not even Benedict.
Benedict has known Jone to have Feelings about things, but this surprises him somewhat, especially with the detail that it was she personally who requested he remove his helmet.
That he was an arse, a prettyboy, somewhere along the way between shoving at him and calling herself a monster.
Still, despite his meager lack of confession, the simple truth that he realizes in this moment is that there is no point to dredging this up: much as he wants to understand why she’d drawn into herself in a panic— why she lashed out in the first place— there is too little he can divulge that isn’t part of biased, blurry (infuriated, even) hindsight.
In the end, to press farther would only result in this becoming the equivalent of petulant whinging...and he refuses to stoop so low.
“It is unimportant.” Offered as an abrupt dismissal, his attention drifting instead towards Benedict’s chosen nest of pillows.
“Did you officially report on your success in Orlais?”
"Oh." Noting the evasion with a raised eyebrow, but he doesn't push the question.
"...um. No, not... I mean, I didn't." He looks a bit self-conscious, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know that anyone wants to hear it from me. Jone spearheaded the thing, and all that."
"To speak of your own contribution hardly detracts from her efforts."
And it had not, for a number of reasons, been an insignificant amount of assistance in the grander scheme of things. Benedict had granted them all the benefit of safety between the jagged snaps of claws and fangs, and regardless of how they'd come to bare teeth at one another during the party, his work in accumulating favor seemed fairly well executed so far as Gabranth could measure at a distance.
"Your standing within Riftwatch is poor, is it not?"
Edited (what is sleep what is english idk anymore) 2021-04-17 11:10 (UTC)
Perhaps it's about time Gabranth learned the whole truth of it. If Benedict weren't still waking up, it would seem like as good a time as any, but with things being as they are, he waits a moment to see if Gabranth has any specific questions.
There is no evasion, no sign or glimmer of fear in Benedict’s expression, though hesitancy dwells deep in the sound of his voice— apparent even at a distance. A subtle shift, compared to the ever-harried man he’d first met, grasping for footholds in everything surrounding him as if afraid to be caught unawares.
“With those in leadership as well as your peers, I take it?”
Gabranth, now satisfied with the lack of footfalls anywhere in the hallway nearby, sets his helm within the crook of his arm, rather than gripping it fully— pacing instead towards the window, and tilting his head towards the crisp scent of a frost-touched morning.
"Then I would suggest you do as I propose, and speak of your most recent accomplishments to those who hold station above you. Do not boast, only offer a report, and leave it at that." A beat, his pale eyes shifting to view Benedict out of the corner of his own peripheral vision. "This will help you atone in their eyes."
The mere thought of it, of daring to exist in the gaze of Flint or Yseult or... most other people, really, without proof of some major heroism-- confusing a dragon doesn't count-- is enough to send a shiver up Benedict's spine.
"No, I can't," he insists breathily, drawing his knees up to his chest, "and... don't. Please. Don't mention me to them."
Whatever half-given attention had rested upon Benedict before, it now turns to full attention: his own stance rearranging to take in the sight curled up before the hearth.
Perhaps strangely, he doesn't look angry about that refusal.
"The less you speak of yourself, the less merit they'll find within you."
It's...unusual. Unusual in that the words are so gentle, so carefully exhaled from a voice that's usually calcified with harshness and authority. Here, now, in the sanctity of this moment there's a richness to the low hum lurking in his throat, surrendered entirely to a room without witness—
Those words ring more true than Benedict could possibly know— enough that for a single, steady beat that peregrine gaze pauses, as if searching for some sort of knowable answer in the lines of Benedict's face, rather than demanding it outright. He stays otherwise still, fingers drawn along the front plating of his helm, frozen in the face of conviction.
Perhaps this is the end of it. Benedict's gaze falters, and he looks at the ground-- does this count as the lies he's told to get out of things, if it was a lie by omission? Should he have volunteered it the instant someone pledged loyalty to him, is it his fault for not mentioning it sooner?
All of that will become clear soon enough.
"...a couple years ago, I went to Tevinter, for personal reasons. A slave had been sold, who was... important to me. And I wanted to buy her back."
Off to a great start. A strand of hair has fallen into his face, and he tucks it self-consciously behind his ear.
"I was with a Rifter at the time, Kitty Jones. We managed to get Mic-- the slave. But we learned it was a ruse. My mother had sold her just to bait me into coming north again. She convinced me to meet with her, and..."
He sighs through his nose, lips pursed.
"...I stayed. I sent the others back south and stayed with her. While she and the other Venatori studied my shard. I... I told them about the Rifters."
He's been slowly slouching forward, and his face finally makes it into his hands, which cover his eyes.
He watches that already slight figure sink deeper by the second, becoming little more than coiled shadow against a flickering backdrop of kindled flame.
“You went for the sake of someone you cared for.”
Though his voice remains evenly kept, still a tangle of subtle syllables and merciful pauses, there isn’t a touch of pity within the words themselves. He doesn’t sound as Jone did, cradling him to her shoulder; this is a matter of discussion between equals, and Gabranth seeks understanding— not platitudes.
As a rule, Benedict doesn't talk about it. The subject is too raw, and if the right people know about it, why dredge it up to those who don't? Never mind that some of his most significant relationships are all with people he's met since then.
And they don't even know.
With his face still covered, Benedict suppresses a sob behind it as he's overcome by the sudden rush of emotions tied to these memories; he's been ignoring them so successfully until now, but lying to Gabranth's face is utterly out of the question.
"It was for me," he shakily admits, "and it could have gone more smoothly if it hadn't been. Micaela would be with her family. Kitty..." Someone else he hasn't thought about for months, years? The memory of her hits him like an icy dagger in the heart.
"...her reputation was ruined by association. And then she disappeared." Like Rifters do. To say so aloud, in the moment, feels unbearable.
"I was sent back to spy." His voice cracks as he speaks, though he holds back any more undignified displays, for now. "I'm shit at it. I didn't even try. I was caught out immediately, and imprisoned."
He isn’t the man for this. For narrow rooms filled with the sound of shuddering sobs, or the pain of tangled blame overgrown with time and knotted anguish.
Gabranth— Noah. Kingslayer, his brother’s cruel jailor: willing pawn, treacherous impostor, a merciless traitor utterly devoid of honor. A life lived only in pain from a past gone rotted with misery. What right has he to offer assurances or promise of peace? His own amends were paid in blood, and he would not suggest Benedict do the same.
...but maybe that is the point. To advise another soul away from his own endless errors.
“These things cannot be changed.” It’s a hushed sigh of a sound, something that precedes the way he sets his heavy helmet aside— careful when he moves nearer to Benedict, kneeling across stone flooring. Within arm’s reach, yet not touching.
“The pain of it endures, and so must we, for it is unjust to ask those who we’ve brought suffering upon to bear the consequences of our misdeeds alone.”
If his friend is gone, if the woman he’d sought to save is misplaced or in despair, then they alone cannot be the testament to that turbulent chapter.
“Atone, Benedict. In their honor, until your fingers bleed and you can walk no further.”
“You protect yourself in hiding. What use is that to those you’ve wronged.”
There is, after all, a difference between making oneself useful— between the comfort of smoking and sitting and skirting duty— and truly setting all focus on a better cause: locked in course and purpose like a broken bone meant to be knit. “There is no more time left to burn. You cannot distract yourself, you cannot run from the pain— there is no distance in this world or any other that is wide enough.”
A slow pause, heavy enough that Gabranth feels it in his shoulders, for how he struggles to press the words between his teeth:
Though Benedict nods, the motion is despairing: it's the knowledge that he has been doing his best, despite everything, and that that isn't, and will never be, good enough.
It wasn't good enough for his mother either, and that bridge is as good as burned now.
Then, "I will help you." His hands slowly lower from his face and he looks at Gabranth, wary and exhausted and imploring. He wants that, even if he can't imagine what could be done differently.
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In Jone's absence, and with everything happening like it did, it's been difficult to focus too intensely on his combat training-- at least too much more than he already was.
He shivers at the cold flagstone under his feet, regretting not at least putting on slippers, but it seemed a mistake to keep Gabranth waiting.
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Or at all.
A few turns, an intentional course cut (one Benedict himself might recognize), and they stand outside the room where they’d first met in short order. Gabranth expects there’s some degree of comfort found inside for the mage, and at the very least, a place to warm himself.
Once inside, he shuts the door behind him.
“Jone of Denerim has seen my face.”
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"Huh," he intones, crossing his legs and looking up at Gabranth, "how'd that go?"
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The noise he makes is an unhappy one. A throaty little sound that only winds up as a meager mmph, his eyeline lowering by degrees.
“Not well.”
Which is putting it lightly, considering how vividly they’d argued for a short, volatile period of time. In hindsight, even after all they’ve been through since, he still does not understand it. “She seemed claimed by malcontent. Quick to provocation, though it was she who bid me remove my helm to begin with.”
Fearful, anxious— those aspects of it he keeps to himself, as he’d not dare to speak of her vulnerability to another without consent. Not even Benedict.
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Benedict has known Jone to have Feelings about things, but this surprises him somewhat, especially with the detail that it was she personally who requested he remove his helmet.
"...why? Did she say?"
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That he was an arse, a prettyboy, somewhere along the way between shoving at him and calling herself a monster.
Still, despite his meager lack of confession, the simple truth that he realizes in this moment is that there is no point to dredging this up: much as he wants to understand why she’d drawn into herself in a panic— why she lashed out in the first place— there is too little he can divulge that isn’t part of biased, blurry (infuriated, even) hindsight.
In the end, to press farther would only result in this becoming the equivalent of petulant whinging...and he refuses to stoop so low.
“It is unimportant.” Offered as an abrupt dismissal, his attention drifting instead towards Benedict’s chosen nest of pillows.
“Did you officially report on your success in Orlais?”
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"...um. No, not... I mean, I didn't." He looks a bit self-conscious, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know that anyone wants to hear it from me. Jone spearheaded the thing, and all that."
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And it had not, for a number of reasons, been an insignificant amount of assistance in the grander scheme of things. Benedict had granted them all the benefit of safety between the jagged snaps of claws and fangs, and regardless of how they'd come to bare teeth at one another during the party, his work in accumulating favor seemed fairly well executed so far as Gabranth could measure at a distance.
"Your standing within Riftwatch is poor, is it not?"
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Perhaps it's about time Gabranth learned the whole truth of it. If Benedict weren't still waking up, it would seem like as good a time as any, but with things being as they are, he waits a moment to see if Gabranth has any specific questions.
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“With those in leadership as well as your peers, I take it?”
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Here goes.
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Gabranth, now satisfied with the lack of footfalls anywhere in the hallway nearby, sets his helm within the crook of his arm, rather than gripping it fully— pacing instead towards the window, and tilting his head towards the crisp scent of a frost-touched morning.
"Then I would suggest you do as I propose, and speak of your most recent accomplishments to those who hold station above you. Do not boast, only offer a report, and leave it at that." A beat, his pale eyes shifting to view Benedict out of the corner of his own peripheral vision. "This will help you atone in their eyes."
"And if you cannot, I will do so on your behalf."
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"No, I can't," he insists breathily, drawing his knees up to his chest, "and... don't. Please. Don't mention me to them."
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Perhaps strangely, he doesn't look angry about that refusal.
"...why."
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He himself is curled in a ball on the pillows, chin resting on his knees, arms wrapped around himself.
"...the less they hear about me, the less they can find wanting."
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It's...unusual. Unusual in that the words are so gentle, so carefully exhaled from a voice that's usually calcified with harshness and authority. Here, now, in the sanctity of this moment there's a richness to the low hum lurking in his throat, surrendered entirely to a room without witness—
Save for themselves.
"You deserve better."
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It hangs in the air a moment, his gaze fixed on Gabranth's face: so strange and lovely and alien, in its way.
"I betrayed them."
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Those words ring more true than Benedict could possibly know— enough that for a single, steady beat that peregrine gaze pauses, as if searching for some sort of knowable answer in the lines of Benedict's face, rather than demanding it outright. He stays otherwise still, fingers drawn along the front plating of his helm, frozen in the face of conviction.
"Tell me."
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All of that will become clear soon enough.
"...a couple years ago, I went to Tevinter, for personal reasons. A slave had been sold, who was... important to me. And I wanted to buy her back."
Off to a great start. A strand of hair has fallen into his face, and he tucks it self-consciously behind his ear.
"I was with a Rifter at the time, Kitty Jones. We managed to get Mic-- the slave. But we learned it was a ruse. My mother had sold her just to bait me into coming north again. She convinced me to meet with her, and..."
He sighs through his nose, lips pursed.
"...I stayed. I sent the others back south and stayed with her. While she and the other Venatori studied my shard. I... I told them about the Rifters."
He's been slowly slouching forward, and his face finally makes it into his hands, which cover his eyes.
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“You went for the sake of someone you cared for.”
Though his voice remains evenly kept, still a tangle of subtle syllables and merciful pauses, there isn’t a touch of pity within the words themselves. He doesn’t sound as Jone did, cradling him to her shoulder; this is a matter of discussion between equals, and Gabranth seeks understanding— not platitudes.
He imagines Benedict knows it.
“Is that not the way of it?”
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And they don't even know.
With his face still covered, Benedict suppresses a sob behind it as he's overcome by the sudden rush of emotions tied to these memories; he's been ignoring them so successfully until now, but lying to Gabranth's face is utterly out of the question.
"It was for me," he shakily admits, "and it could have gone more smoothly if it hadn't been. Micaela would be with her family. Kitty..." Someone else he hasn't thought about for months, years? The memory of her hits him like an icy dagger in the heart.
"...her reputation was ruined by association. And then she disappeared." Like Rifters do. To say so aloud, in the moment, feels unbearable.
"I was sent back to spy." His voice cracks as he speaks, though he holds back any more undignified displays, for now. "I'm shit at it. I didn't even try. I was caught out immediately, and imprisoned."
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Gabranth— Noah. Kingslayer, his brother’s cruel jailor: willing pawn, treacherous impostor, a merciless traitor utterly devoid of honor. A life lived only in pain from a past gone rotted with misery. What right has he to offer assurances or promise of peace? His own amends were paid in blood, and he would not suggest Benedict do the same.
...but maybe that is the point. To advise another soul away from his own endless errors.
“These things cannot be changed.” It’s a hushed sigh of a sound, something that precedes the way he sets his heavy helmet aside— careful when he moves nearer to Benedict, kneeling across stone flooring. Within arm’s reach, yet not touching.
“The pain of it endures, and so must we, for it is unjust to ask those who we’ve brought suffering upon to bear the consequences of our misdeeds alone.”
If his friend is gone, if the woman he’d sought to save is misplaced or in despair, then they alone cannot be the testament to that turbulent chapter.
“Atone, Benedict. In their honor, until your fingers bleed and you can walk no further.”
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He doesn't uncover his face, too wretched to risk being seen clearly.
"I try to make myself useful. And stay out of the way. What else can I do?"
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There is, after all, a difference between making oneself useful— between the comfort of smoking and sitting and skirting duty— and truly setting all focus on a better cause: locked in course and purpose like a broken bone meant to be knit. “There is no more time left to burn. You cannot distract yourself, you cannot run from the pain— there is no distance in this world or any other that is wide enough.”
A slow pause, heavy enough that Gabranth feels it in his shoulders, for how he struggles to press the words between his teeth:
"I will help you."
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It wasn't good enough for his mother either, and that bridge is as good as burned now.
Then, "I will help you." His hands slowly lower from his face and he looks at Gabranth, wary and exhausted and imploring. He wants that, even if he can't imagine what could be done differently.
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