This particular group hasn’t made it that far across the Continent yet. They’re still near the Spring Meadows, and the weather is lovely and temperate, a deceptively easy start to the trip.
(He wonders when Renoir will catch up. The man always does.)
Still, it’s a nice evening. Beyond the green meadows, blood-red trees giving way to autumnal yellow, an eclectic jumble of foliage which doesn’t correspond to any real passing seasons. The Stone Wave Cliffs are somewhere off in the craggy distance.
Expedition 56 isn’t furious with him (yet), but: they’re reasonably mistrustful. It’s odd that this man is immortal and can’t die, considering that everyone dies, and he has no better answer for it than the fact that something strange happened to him after the Fracture. So they’ve been keeping him at a safe distance, although that hasn’t seemed to stop the blonde.
The forest opens up near the edge of the cliff, a star-lit clearing with the Paintress visible in the distance. Verso’s still standing there, staring quietly at the massive huddled white figure, when he hears Ness approaching. He hasn’t summoned the piano yet; he’s still considering options.
Whatever speaks to you, right now. What could that be? He’s actually not sure.
The first sign that he's not alone isn't a twig snapping behind him, or a small body coming up beside him—it's an even smaller body, a little squid, swimming through the air like it's water, coming up beside Verso and wrapping an iridescent black tentacle around his wrist. Its suckers stick and suck at his skin, leaving smears of chroma-ink as the thing investigates—
"Nessaros," comes a high voice from behind him, chiding, and the tentacle slips away as quickly as it had appeared, leaving a blotchy ink stain behind.
"Sorry," Ness says, chagrinned, as she steps up beside Verso. Her chroma companion curls around her bare forearm. "It does what it wants when I'm not actively guiding it."
Only partially true—but true enough that it shouldn't invite questions, unless Verso is far more familiar with the workings of chroma than the rest of the expedition.
"I brought you dinner," she says, holding out a plate in the hand not currently hosting a cephalopod, "if you eat that sort of thing."
Verso arches an eyebrow at the explanation. (He is, in fact, far more familiar with chroma than the rest of the expedition; but he won’t mention it. It’s not exactly a realm of expertise he can safely discuss without tipping his hand.)
“Of course I eat dinner, it’s not like I’m inhuman,” he says, with a huff of joking fake affront. “But thank you.”
He accepts the plate and moves to sit down on a convenient nearby log, plate balanced against his knees. One hand absentmindedly rubs at the black inkstain on his wrist.
“How are the others?” he asks. Maybe a little nervous to be asking. He’s been giving them space and time and distance, holding himself apart and letting them come to him rather than forcing himself on the expeditioners too fast too soon. Letting some of the hotter tempers subside. (He’s still considering, perhaps, if it’s time to scrap this attempt and abandon them and try again next year. The jury’s still out.)
"Oh, forgive me for not knowing how immortality works," she teases, "you can shrug off a lancelier spear through the kidney, but an empty stomach—"
It very abrupty, visibly occurs to Ness, with a dramatic blanching of her face and shocked widening of her eyes, that if Verso still has to eat, he can still starve, and if he can starve, but he can't die of starvation—
"Putain de merde, I'd take the spear, actually," she mutters. The inkblot around her wrist burbles, distraught, and Ness flicks her hand in a tight crescent, dissipating the squid into glittering chroma. The glint of its light fades on the wind, taking the implied horror with it, and she moves on to his actual question.
"The others are alright. Simone's calmed Lisette down, convinced her that you're a resource we can't afford to pass up, which..."
Gross, in a certain way, Verso's a person, not a resource—but if it's what it takes to get Lisette to keep him around... Ness shrugs, and sighs, and gives him a what can you do? look.
"You can probably camp with us tomorrow, if you want to. I understand if you'd prefer to be by yourself, though."
@wearyallalone; he is just himself, and i miss him and miss him and miss him.
Now that everyone is—for the most part—present and accounted for, the Gallows has turned en masse to coordination, each division in their own ways: Research by poring over Cosima's notes on red lyrium, Diplomacy by reaching out to contacts across Thedas, Scouting and Forces by preparing for Corypheus' inevitable reprisal. Everyone is helping the displaced citizens of Lavendel settle in and find work. There's plenty of work to be getting on with; enough that whatever losses they did take, there is little time to linger on them.
Much as one might want to.
von Skraedder was—more than anything, it was horrific. That's what Ness heard, anyway, she wasn't in the Cauldron herself. She's glad of that, truthfully; curious as she is, she can't see anything to gain from watching a comrade explode. Teren... Well. Hopefully she wasn't aware there at the end. Hopefully the last thing she knew was that they'd won, and she'd redeemed her fellow Wardens.
Vanya...
No one knows what happened to Vanya, and Ness has asked everyone. No one saw him fall, or be taken by the enemy, or run. All they know is he didn't come through the eluvian with them, and he's not in the Gallows now. Pamplemousse didn't return, either. It's been over a week since Riftwatch returned from the Anderfels.
Ness has been so busy these past days, reaching out to the Inquisition and her University contacts, chronicling the events of the Cauldron for the Archives, cobbling together supplies enough for the citizens of Lavendel. More often than not she ends her days long after sundown, curled on the chaise in the office, only to wake a handful of hours later to begin again. There's precious little time for personal pursuits, personal grief. More often than not, she doesn't have even a second to think about—it.
But there are... moments. Brief lulls between tasks, when her mind has just enough time to wander and her chest to ache and her eyes to prickle and she
moves on to the next thing. There's no time to spend on grieving, what-ifs, wishes. Too much to do to allow herself to fall into mourning.
Tonight, it's well past sundown, and Ness sits back in her seat, rubbing her eyes to relieve a dull ache. She's been writing for hours in the dim, unnatural violet light of her father's magic, and elfblood eyes aren't meant for this—not to mention her hand, cramped and throbbing from hours of use without a break.
A soft sigh, and she concedes to her body. A reprieve, just a small one, would not go amiss.
She rises from her seat and stretches, elongating her back and spreading her shoulders, flexing her arm, her wrist. Only now can she feel the dull pain in the small of her back, the tight tension in her arm, her shoulders: everything hurts. This must be what getting old feels like, she'll have to express her sympathies to Vanya and Stephen—
Ness stops mid-stretch. Her breath hitches, quite suddenly, and her shoulders tremble, and before she can stop herself she's crying, quiet weeping that begins to rise in volume the longer she fails to master herself. She presses her hand to her mouth to stifle the sounds. Curls forward, protective, around the horrid feeling in her stomach.
The drowlight hovering above her desk flickers, then winks out, leaving the office in darkness.
There had been a hint of deja vu about having to walk back to Kirkwall.
This time is, without a doubt, more comfortable than the desperate stumble with Gela after they'd escaped the envy demons. He has intact boots, for one thing, along with warm clothes, a shield and a sword. A few coins, even, though he's rationed them to keep them fed. They've been sleeping rough, but both of them have done that before.
He had such a particular mix of good and bad luck, at the Cauldron. He can't help but feeling the good luck keenly, especially given what had happened to Teren. Vanya and Pamplemousse had been strafed by enemy fire, yes, but she got them out of the battle and to the ground in one piece. It's all too easy to picture the counterfactual, given the chaos and the way the griffons had been particularly targeted.
Still, for all that good luck got them out of the Cauldron, they had no access to the nearest eluvian, with enemy troops between them and that path back to Kirkwall. He might have chanced stealth alone, but not with a griffon to think of. And once she got them to the ground, Pamplemousse was clearly in no condition for further flying. He'd splinted her wing and bandaged his arm (a cut, bloody but not deep, from the same attack that hit Pamplemousse's wing). It was during this process that he discovered the fire they'd took had ripped open one of his saddlebags and he'd lost half of his supplies — sending crystal inclusive.
There had been nothing for it but to walk back. He mostly led Pamplemousse, unwilling to risk jostling her wing with his leg even if they stayed on the ground, so their pace was set by his walking speed. One or two farmers were bold enough to let Vanya ride in the cart with Pamplemousse padding behind, but most were afraid of a griffon spooking their horses. They're mainly restricted to the pace he can set himself.
But even a long walk has an end. He gets Pamplemousse settled in the eyrie, inevitably seeing a few of his comrades along the way. It's clear, and probably unsurprising, that they were given up for dead. He'll go out to the houseboat tomorrow, probably. He'll get a new sending crystal soon, too. But it's late, and that can wait until morning.
But one thing can't wait, actually. And someone he asks can confirm that Ness hasn't left her office that evening.
When he knocks, it's quiet, but it isn't hesitant.
She almost doesn't hear the knock—might not have in truth, but for that it came in the middle of a sniffling pause for breath. The unexpected interruption startles a sob from her, but she doesn't allow herself the time to worry it's been heard.
How long has she been standing like this, weeping alone in the dark? How much work could she have been doing, instead of sitting paralyzed by missing someone she has only the barest claim to mourn in the first place?
"Just—sorry," she calls through the door, and then hears her own voice and winces, clearing her throat to dislodge the tear-thickness. "Just a moment, sorry."
It's a few moments before Ness opens the door. When she does, her eyes aren't on her caller at first, back over her shoulder to prestidigitate all the candles in the room lit at once. She's made an effort to mask what she'd been caught in the middle of, but the evidence is still all over her face: wet, glassy eyes, bulb of her nose red from sniffling and cheeks splotchy from being scrubbed of tears. Her voice scratches when she speaks.
"I apologize, I was—indisposed, what can I—"
She stops mid-sentence with hardly a sound, just a sharp gasp of air as she blinks up at Vanya, frozen in place.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
expedition 33 au.
(He wonders when Renoir will catch up. The man always does.)
Still, it’s a nice evening. Beyond the green meadows, blood-red trees giving way to autumnal yellow, an eclectic jumble of foliage which doesn’t correspond to any real passing seasons. The Stone Wave Cliffs are somewhere off in the craggy distance.
Expedition 56 isn’t furious with him (yet), but: they’re reasonably mistrustful. It’s odd that this man is immortal and can’t die, considering that everyone dies, and he has no better answer for it than the fact that something strange happened to him after the Fracture. So they’ve been keeping him at a safe distance, although that hasn’t seemed to stop the blonde.
The forest opens up near the edge of the cliff, a star-lit clearing with the Paintress visible in the distance. Verso’s still standing there, staring quietly at the massive huddled white figure, when he hears Ness approaching. He hasn’t summoned the piano yet; he’s still considering options.
Whatever speaks to you, right now. What could that be? He’s actually not sure.
no subject
"Nessaros," comes a high voice from behind him, chiding, and the tentacle slips away as quickly as it had appeared, leaving a blotchy ink stain behind.
"Sorry," Ness says, chagrinned, as she steps up beside Verso. Her chroma companion curls around her bare forearm. "It does what it wants when I'm not actively guiding it."
Only partially true—but true enough that it shouldn't invite questions, unless Verso is far more familiar with the workings of chroma than the rest of the expedition.
"I brought you dinner," she says, holding out a plate in the hand not currently hosting a cephalopod, "if you eat that sort of thing."
no subject
“Of course I eat dinner, it’s not like I’m inhuman,” he says, with a huff of joking fake affront. “But thank you.”
He accepts the plate and moves to sit down on a convenient nearby log, plate balanced against his knees. One hand absentmindedly rubs at the black inkstain on his wrist.
“How are the others?” he asks. Maybe a little nervous to be asking. He’s been giving them space and time and distance, holding himself apart and letting them come to him rather than forcing himself on the expeditioners too fast too soon. Letting some of the hotter tempers subside. (He’s still considering, perhaps, if it’s time to scrap this attempt and abandon them and try again next year. The jury’s still out.)
no subject
It very abrupty, visibly occurs to Ness, with a dramatic blanching of her face and shocked widening of her eyes, that if Verso still has to eat, he can still starve, and if he can starve, but he can't die of starvation—
"Putain de merde, I'd take the spear, actually," she mutters. The inkblot around her wrist burbles, distraught, and Ness flicks her hand in a tight crescent, dissipating the squid into glittering chroma. The glint of its light fades on the wind, taking the implied horror with it, and she moves on to his actual question.
"The others are alright. Simone's calmed Lisette down, convinced her that you're a resource we can't afford to pass up, which..."
Gross, in a certain way, Verso's a person, not a resource—but if it's what it takes to get Lisette to keep him around... Ness shrugs, and sighs, and gives him a what can you do? look.
"You can probably camp with us tomorrow, if you want to. I understand if you'd prefer to be by yourself, though."
@wearyallalone; he is just himself, and i miss him and miss him and miss him.
Much as one might want to.
von Skraedder was—more than anything, it was horrific. That's what Ness heard, anyway, she wasn't in the Cauldron herself. She's glad of that, truthfully; curious as she is, she can't see anything to gain from watching a comrade explode. Teren... Well. Hopefully she wasn't aware there at the end. Hopefully the last thing she knew was that they'd won, and she'd redeemed her fellow Wardens.
Vanya...
No one knows what happened to Vanya, and Ness has asked everyone. No one saw him fall, or be taken by the enemy, or run. All they know is he didn't come through the eluvian with them, and he's not in the Gallows now. Pamplemousse didn't return, either. It's been over a week since Riftwatch returned from the Anderfels.
Ness has been so busy these past days, reaching out to the Inquisition and her University contacts, chronicling the events of the Cauldron for the Archives, cobbling together supplies enough for the citizens of Lavendel. More often than not she ends her days long after sundown, curled on the chaise in the office, only to wake a handful of hours later to begin again. There's precious little time for personal pursuits, personal grief. More often than not, she doesn't have even a second to think about—it.
But there are... moments. Brief lulls between tasks, when her mind has just enough time to wander and her chest to ache and her eyes to prickle and she
moves on to the next thing. There's no time to spend on grieving, what-ifs, wishes. Too much to do to allow herself to fall into mourning.
Tonight, it's well past sundown, and Ness sits back in her seat, rubbing her eyes to relieve a dull ache. She's been writing for hours in the dim, unnatural violet light of her father's magic, and elfblood eyes aren't meant for this—not to mention her hand, cramped and throbbing from hours of use without a break.
A soft sigh, and she concedes to her body. A reprieve, just a small one, would not go amiss.
She rises from her seat and stretches, elongating her back and spreading her shoulders, flexing her arm, her wrist. Only now can she feel the dull pain in the small of her back, the tight tension in her arm, her shoulders: everything hurts. This must be what getting old feels like, she'll have to express her sympathies to Vanya and Stephen—
Ness stops mid-stretch. Her breath hitches, quite suddenly, and her shoulders tremble, and before she can stop herself she's crying, quiet weeping that begins to rise in volume the longer she fails to master herself. She presses her hand to her mouth to stifle the sounds. Curls forward, protective, around the horrid feeling in her stomach.
The drowlight hovering above her desk flickers, then winks out, leaving the office in darkness.
no subject
This time is, without a doubt, more comfortable than the desperate stumble with Gela after they'd escaped the envy demons. He has intact boots, for one thing, along with warm clothes, a shield and a sword. A few coins, even, though he's rationed them to keep them fed. They've been sleeping rough, but both of them have done that before.
He had such a particular mix of good and bad luck, at the Cauldron. He can't help but feeling the good luck keenly, especially given what had happened to Teren. Vanya and Pamplemousse had been strafed by enemy fire, yes, but she got them out of the battle and to the ground in one piece. It's all too easy to picture the counterfactual, given the chaos and the way the griffons had been particularly targeted.
Still, for all that good luck got them out of the Cauldron, they had no access to the nearest eluvian, with enemy troops between them and that path back to Kirkwall. He might have chanced stealth alone, but not with a griffon to think of. And once she got them to the ground, Pamplemousse was clearly in no condition for further flying. He'd splinted her wing and bandaged his arm (a cut, bloody but not deep, from the same attack that hit Pamplemousse's wing). It was during this process that he discovered the fire they'd took had ripped open one of his saddlebags and he'd lost half of his supplies — sending crystal inclusive.
There had been nothing for it but to walk back. He mostly led Pamplemousse, unwilling to risk jostling her wing with his leg even if they stayed on the ground, so their pace was set by his walking speed. One or two farmers were bold enough to let Vanya ride in the cart with Pamplemousse padding behind, but most were afraid of a griffon spooking their horses. They're mainly restricted to the pace he can set himself.
But even a long walk has an end. He gets Pamplemousse settled in the eyrie, inevitably seeing a few of his comrades along the way. It's clear, and probably unsurprising, that they were given up for dead. He'll go out to the houseboat tomorrow, probably. He'll get a new sending crystal soon, too. But it's late, and that can wait until morning.
But one thing can't wait, actually. And someone he asks can confirm that Ness hasn't left her office that evening.
When he knocks, it's quiet, but it isn't hesitant.
no subject
How long has she been standing like this, weeping alone in the dark? How much work could she have been doing, instead of sitting paralyzed by missing someone she has only the barest claim to mourn in the first place?
"Just—sorry," she calls through the door, and then hears her own voice and winces, clearing her throat to dislodge the tear-thickness. "Just a moment, sorry."
It's a few moments before Ness opens the door. When she does, her eyes aren't on her caller at first, back over her shoulder to prestidigitate all the candles in the room lit at once. She's made an effort to mask what she'd been caught in the middle of, but the evidence is still all over her face: wet, glassy eyes, bulb of her nose red from sniffling and cheeks splotchy from being scrubbed of tears. Her voice scratches when she speaks.
"I apologize, I was—indisposed, what can I—"
She stops mid-sentence with hardly a sound, just a sharp gasp of air as she blinks up at Vanya, frozen in place.