[It's not like the guy who gave up on the Templar Order literal years ago is in a position to say it's not that bad.]
I don't imagine I have much to say you'll find useful just now, but I don't think ... [He stops, a pause presumably while he thinks of what to say instead of what he'd been about to.]
Edited (wow I should not be trusted with markup tonight) 2024-11-21 03:08 (UTC)
I don't want to presume to know what you feel. But if you feel betrayed at all, or as if you should have known not to hope for anything better, in this moment. I think it would speak well of you, rather than otherwise. To expect more of the Order.
[ there's a letter in his bag: hello, my name is cedric, and my mother was ostara. another, on the desk, ink-spotted where grammar slips. where something else does. he is trying to put it in place,
the bones of his hand flex clean. whole. nothing's changed, not really, but there's a letter in his bag and a hole in his story; and hard as he works, the shape won't hold. he is trying. the inn bustles, a jumble of noise all to say the crystal hasn't shut off. it's a while before he speaks, and when he does, the words are thick. a little hoarse: ]
You're welcome. But I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it. I know it may not seem ... I do understand that.
[They've so carefully explored the edges of why Vanya tendered his resignation, and he's aware of not wanting to make this conversation about himself. But on the other hand, it's a situation where he can't resist the instinct to extend a hand.]
[ He knows better than that. A little — at least, a little better than he did. He'd hate that, running. Staying perfectly safe.
Hadn't been thinking of this, during that last argument. Spent so long telling himself there's real templars, and the gone ones, that it shouldn't shock to hear command agree. Just that he never split the us from them. Just that it wasn't the Knight-Divine hauled his ass out of that smithy, stacked the pyres, stayed up talking until his head went still. Just that lately, nothing stays put.
The anchor gleams. Cedric swallows, ]
'M going by the Abbey. Get some questions asked. Maybe see Broward. [ It smuggles out of him: ] You hear of nothing like this before? Within the ranks.
[ Under the Order's protection. In the old days, there must have been a check. More Seekers, else that cunt Commander out of Ostwick, Hang-em-High. But he never stood a Circle so long as all that. What he knows is field justice: Quick. Messy.
Forgiven, often as not, on the next forward push. ]
Back when I was at Cumberland, I dismissed a lot of what I heard from outside Nevarra as exaggeration. Or perhaps cases where things were stretched too thin, oversight was insufficient. Since the war [not the current one against Corypheus] and seeing more of the world, I think ... Many people in the Order are individuals of good faith. But part of why I left is that I think the structure of it. What gets permitted. What gets promoted, even. There aren't built-in checks to stop a great deal of what I'd once thought were aberrations.
[Another short pause, as if he might stop there. Then:]
I still believe there are many genuinely good men and women in the Order. I never stopped believing that. But from what I've seen, there are also many, some high-ranking, who believe that anything done under the Order's banner is good by definition. And that can lead to dark places.
[ Why he left. Rings stupid now, and maybe it always has been; just easier to look at the part made sense: Vanya gave a damn for the right thing, and that wasn't. Simple. Stupid. Tongue wrestles the urge to continue, to race the facts, prove he can keep up. That he won't be left behind.
But he is trying, a little better, to listen. ]
There's things I reported. [ Had a hand in. ] Didn't go nowhere.
[ It's a question. He wasn't the only one to raise it, of the March. But that first war, the Inquisition. The Circles. Had Vanya? ]
You're far from the only person who assumed it was Antosha.
[It wasn't not Antosha, but not in the way most people had assumed. A man morally against Corypheus ran to the Venatori because he saw the mere possibility of life in a Circle as worse. It was one more thing on a pile of things, but it was there, still.]
I wrote a very censorious but scrupulously formal letter to Lord Seeker Lambert, when he dissolved the Accords. I'm certain he never saw it. But it is surely sitting in a file somewhere, now. [A short pause.] I didn't think of it at the time, but I do wonder if it was only bad luck that my unit was sent somewhere so dangerous I was the only survivor. But maybe that is the paranoia of hindsight.
[He hopes it was bad luck. The alternative is that his idealistic dissent got the blood of many Templars he'd known well on his hands, indirectly or otherwise.]
[ Paranoia, yeah, he fucking hopes. A step beyond the pale, past what he's willing to believe. But to sit with that thought, that guilt, ]
Would've been someone sent. Bad luck, or not. Would've been someone.
[ Another company. Maybe his own. The Rebellion is a shadow, stippled in points: First girl he killed. First time he might've died, first time a friend did. Then more of them. The Conclave, the Inquisition, and through it he never wrote a letter. Never stopped to ask much at all, not eighteen and a sword in his hand.
How many others did? How many, in that dead unit? ]
Dunno if no one wrote mine down. New Captain's not… well, he's Orlesian. But I worry, I mean. I wonder if this don't sign worse ahead. Telling folks we got a mandate, so we'll use it.
[ The only survivor. They don't talk about it much. Didn't, before, when any invocation felt it might bring the war back down on the Inquisition's head. The only survivor. Alone, save Antosha; and alone for that choice. ]
[Cedric is right, of course; if not his unit, someone else's. It does sting, knowing how much he still believed when it happened. If it did. But it's an old hurt; this isn't the first time he's had the thought, though it may be the first time he's articulated it.]
I think it's a sign of which way the wind is blowing, [quiet, off Cedric's last observation.] It could still change, though whether in direction or intensity remains to be seen. Either way, we've been fighting Corypheus a long time. Someone, at least, is starting to think it's past time to establish a new normal, I imagine.
[Corypheus will win or he will lose, eventually. But the longer Southern Thedas does without a functional Circle system, the more people potentially become accustomed to its absence. It's a political problem as much or more than a military one.]
[ That's where I'm going, he'd told Benedict. After.
But it's one thing to want the Circles restored. It's another, to know the blood that'll take. Self-organization hasn't worked. Reforms keep getting thrown back. Every year there's less room for a peaceful way out, for a world more like Cumberland; less like the Gallows. A generation of mages have only known this. The continent crawls with untrained apostates, folks primed to be sad and angry and frightened,
(If I'm being generous, Antosha. He was frightened.)
The creak of a chair. Fingers tent over eyes and nose. Where and how Riftwatch should fall into that new, ]
[It would probably land better if Vanya was sure it won't come to that. Still he exhales, not quite a laugh but a placeholder for where a laugh would go.]
Well. I don't think there's any need to jump ahead. But maybe it is worth thinking about how you'd react to some of the more likely next steps, when they come. Though I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.
[This exhale is closer to a sigh than a laugh.]
If you stay. I sincerely hope the Order is worthy of you. I suppose that may sound ... I do mean it.
[ Not the first it's been said, and no easier to hear. He's run his whole life to be worthy of the Order, to be a piece of something greater. The grand design of child thieves. Mumbled, ]
'S my sword hand.
[ He's ambidextrous. And so that too could sound a joke, save that —
The next steps. He has thought about some, he has decided; one bright line above the noise: To take Riftwatch is to take him from the field. There are things that Cedric can't stomach. There are people he's done cutting down. ]
If you... Know you got yourself sorted, but I got ears. Can't say I'll understand any better. But I'd like t'try. I mean that, too. Not only for now.
If you'd like. I'd — not many people have asked who have the context.
[He doesn't mind explaining his position to sympathetic rifters, since they've started asking more recently; if he minded, he'd decline to. But it's different in a way that can't be fully measured.]
To the extent I'm sorted now, [debatable, in his own view] it didn't happen cleanly and it didn't happen fast. I've tried to do the right thing, but. You know.
[How easy it wasn't, sometimes, to identify "the right thing," nevermind actually doing it.]
[It's a good question. One he's not sure he's thought about in so many words.]
...I think there is good in the world that's worth protecting. Helping to grow, if I can. Even without the lyrium, I still have a pair of strong arms, a decent education. The willingness to stand between someone more vulnerable and a threat, when I can. I don't know that I know what's right, but I still believe it's worth trying to figure it out.
[A pause.]
Didn't mean to make a speech, but. I think those who would use power to oppress or abuse those without should be opposed. Corypheus and his followers are a clear-cut case and an imminent threat, so.
I asked for it. [ the speech. chews it over: ] Back in Skyhold, y'know, all felt clear-cut. Way forward did. Never figured we'd still be fighting him in nine-fifty.
That good you found — it feel the same way when you see it? Clear.
Sometimes. I think ... when you're in the Order, there's always an answer. The clarity of that is something I miss sometimes. Working on my own power, it's more—
[A pause while he considers.]
Sometimes it's just as clear. Laid out perfectly in front of me. And sometimes it's a mass of gray, and I just try to grab hold of the lightest shade I can because not choosing is also a choice. It doesn't always feel enough, but it's the best I have.
There's a point to having the answer, I mean. Clear or not. Choosing wasn't why I went after you. I dunno. 'S just, can't field an army on no orders. Seen how that goes.
[ the reds, the march, it all breaks down in the pitch of battle. ]
Don't expect you t'have the answer. But you been in charge of folks, before. They're never putting me in that.
I don't know if that was the right call, in the city. [In a tone that suggests he's thought about it since.] But not making a choice, they still would have died, and the attack on the Gallows could have been even worse than it was. Then again.
[An exhale, not quite a sigh.]
I gave back my rank and my insignia, but I can't give back years of training. For better or worse. I did used to lead, and when someone looks to me, even now, I have the impulse to give an answer.
[Would he still think any choice is better than no choice, if he hadn't been trained to make those battlefield calls? No way to know, now.]
[Even if it's wrong. It's a trap he knows well enough, and one he still sometimes falls into.]
I don't think being wrong is the end of the road, though, for what it's worth. It's only the end if you never ask another question again. Don't think you're in any danger of that, at least.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[It's not like the guy who gave up on the Templar Order literal years ago is in a position to say it's not that bad.]
I don't imagine I have much to say you'll find useful just now, but I don't think ... [He stops, a pause presumably while he thinks of what to say instead of what he'd been about to.]
no subject
[ someone in the distance laughs, rattles a door. a muffled: sorry, wrong room — ]
no subject
no subject
the bones of his hand flex clean. whole. nothing's changed, not really, but there's a letter in his bag and a hole in his story; and hard as he works, the shape won't hold. he is trying. the inn bustles, a jumble of noise all to say the crystal hasn't shut off. it's a while before he speaks, and when he does, the words are thick. a little hoarse: ]
Thank you.
[ and very small. ]
no subject
[They've so carefully explored the edges of why Vanya tendered his resignation, and he's aware of not wanting to make this conversation about himself. But on the other hand, it's a situation where he can't resist the instinct to extend a hand.]
If you ever need an ear.
no subject
[ He knows better than that. A little — at least, a little better than he did. He'd hate that, running. Staying perfectly safe.
Hadn't been thinking of this, during that last argument. Spent so long telling himself there's real templars, and the gone ones, that it shouldn't shock to hear command agree. Just that he never split the us from them. Just that it wasn't the Knight-Divine hauled his ass out of that smithy, stacked the pyres, stayed up talking until his head went still. Just that lately, nothing stays put.
The anchor gleams. Cedric swallows, ]
'M going by the Abbey. Get some questions asked. Maybe see Broward. [ It smuggles out of him: ] You hear of nothing like this before? Within the ranks.
[ Under the Order's protection. In the old days, there must have been a check. More Seekers, else that cunt Commander out of Ostwick, Hang-em-High. But he never stood a Circle so long as all that. What he knows is field justice: Quick. Messy.
Forgiven, often as not, on the next forward push. ]
no subject
Back when I was at Cumberland, I dismissed a lot of what I heard from outside Nevarra as exaggeration. Or perhaps cases where things were stretched too thin, oversight was insufficient. Since the war [not the current one against Corypheus] and seeing more of the world, I think ... Many people in the Order are individuals of good faith. But part of why I left is that I think the structure of it. What gets permitted. What gets promoted, even. There aren't built-in checks to stop a great deal of what I'd once thought were aberrations.
[Another short pause, as if he might stop there. Then:]
I still believe there are many genuinely good men and women in the Order. I never stopped believing that. But from what I've seen, there are also many, some high-ranking, who believe that anything done under the Order's banner is good by definition. And that can lead to dark places.
no subject
[ Why he left. Rings stupid now, and maybe it always has been; just easier to look at the part made sense: Vanya gave a damn for the right thing, and that wasn't. Simple. Stupid. Tongue wrestles the urge to continue, to race the facts, prove he can keep up. That he won't be left behind.
But he is trying, a little better, to listen. ]
There's things I reported. [ Had a hand in. ] Didn't go nowhere.
[ It's a question. He wasn't the only one to raise it, of the March. But that first war, the Inquisition. The Circles. Had Vanya? ]
no subject
[It wasn't not Antosha, but not in the way most people had assumed. A man morally against Corypheus ran to the Venatori because he saw the mere possibility of life in a Circle as worse. It was one more thing on a pile of things, but it was there, still.]
I wrote a very censorious but scrupulously formal letter to Lord Seeker Lambert, when he dissolved the Accords. I'm certain he never saw it. But it is surely sitting in a file somewhere, now. [A short pause.] I didn't think of it at the time, but I do wonder if it was only bad luck that my unit was sent somewhere so dangerous I was the only survivor. But maybe that is the paranoia of hindsight.
[He hopes it was bad luck. The alternative is that his idealistic dissent got the blood of many Templars he'd known well on his hands, indirectly or otherwise.]
no subject
[ Paranoia, yeah, he fucking hopes. A step beyond the pale, past what he's willing to believe. But to sit with that thought, that guilt, ]
Would've been someone sent. Bad luck, or not. Would've been someone.
[ Another company. Maybe his own. The Rebellion is a shadow, stippled in points: First girl he killed. First time he might've died, first time a friend did. Then more of them. The Conclave, the Inquisition, and through it he never wrote a letter. Never stopped to ask much at all, not eighteen and a sword in his hand.
How many others did? How many, in that dead unit? ]
Dunno if no one wrote mine down. New Captain's not… well, he's Orlesian. But I worry, I mean. I wonder if this don't sign worse ahead. Telling folks we got a mandate, so we'll use it.
[ The only survivor. They don't talk about it much. Didn't, before, when any invocation felt it might bring the war back down on the Inquisition's head. The only survivor. Alone, save Antosha; and alone for that choice. ]
no subject
I think it's a sign of which way the wind is blowing, [quiet, off Cedric's last observation.] It could still change, though whether in direction or intensity remains to be seen. Either way, we've been fighting Corypheus a long time. Someone, at least, is starting to think it's past time to establish a new normal, I imagine.
[Corypheus will win or he will lose, eventually. But the longer Southern Thedas does without a functional Circle system, the more people potentially become accustomed to its absence. It's a political problem as much or more than a military one.]
no subject
But it's one thing to want the Circles restored. It's another, to know the blood that'll take. Self-organization hasn't worked. Reforms keep getting thrown back. Every year there's less room for a peaceful way out, for a world more like Cumberland; less like the Gallows. A generation of mages have only known this. The continent crawls with untrained apostates, folks primed to be sad and angry and frightened,
(If I'm being generous, Antosha. He was frightened.)
The creak of a chair. Fingers tent over eyes and nose. Where and how Riftwatch should fall into that new, ]
Guess we'll know when they ask for amputations.
[ A bad joke. ]
no subject
Well. I don't think there's any need to jump ahead. But maybe it is worth thinking about how you'd react to some of the more likely next steps, when they come. Though I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.
[This exhale is closer to a sigh than a laugh.]
If you stay. I sincerely hope the Order is worthy of you. I suppose that may sound ... I do mean it.
no subject
'S my sword hand.
[ He's ambidextrous. And so that too could sound a joke, save that —
The next steps. He has thought about some, he has decided; one bright line above the noise: To take Riftwatch is to take him from the field. There are things that Cedric can't stomach. There are people he's done cutting down. ]
If you... Know you got yourself sorted, but I got ears. Can't say I'll understand any better. But I'd like t'try. I mean that, too. Not only for now.
no subject
[He doesn't mind explaining his position to sympathetic rifters, since they've started asking more recently; if he minded, he'd decline to. But it's different in a way that can't be fully measured.]
To the extent I'm sorted now, [debatable, in his own view] it didn't happen cleanly and it didn't happen fast. I've tried to do the right thing, but. You know.
[How easy it wasn't, sometimes, to identify "the right thing," nevermind actually doing it.]
no subject
[ Hoped, when he came here, that much'd come easier. Always seems it should be, under someone's banner. Simple problems, hero stories. Kid shit. ]
What's been guiding that? What,
[ a gesture unseen. ]
What've you been holding it to?
no subject
...I think there is good in the world that's worth protecting. Helping to grow, if I can. Even without the lyrium, I still have a pair of strong arms, a decent education. The willingness to stand between someone more vulnerable and a threat, when I can. I don't know that I know what's right, but I still believe it's worth trying to figure it out.
[A pause.]
Didn't mean to make a speech, but. I think those who would use power to oppress or abuse those without should be opposed. Corypheus and his followers are a clear-cut case and an imminent threat, so.
[Thus coming to Riftwatch, presumably.]
no subject
That good you found — it feel the same way when you see it? Clear.
[ imminent. ]
no subject
[A pause while he considers.]
Sometimes it's just as clear. Laid out perfectly in front of me. And sometimes it's a mass of gray, and I just try to grab hold of the lightest shade I can because not choosing is also a choice. It doesn't always feel enough, but it's the best I have.
no subject
[ when he wasn't choosing. ]
There's a point to having the answer, I mean. Clear or not. Choosing wasn't why I went after you. I dunno. 'S just, can't field an army on no orders. Seen how that goes.
[ the reds, the march, it all breaks down in the pitch of battle. ]
Don't expect you t'have the answer. But you been in charge of folks, before. They're never putting me in that.
it's been 84 years
[An exhale, not quite a sigh.]
I gave back my rank and my insignia, but I can't give back years of training. For better or worse. I did used to lead, and when someone looks to me, even now, I have the impulse to give an answer.
[Would he still think any choice is better than no choice, if he hadn't been trained to make those battlefield calls? No way to know, now.]
588 dog years
no subject
[Even if it's wrong. It's a trap he knows well enough, and one he still sometimes falls into.]
I don't think being wrong is the end of the road, though, for what it's worth. It's only the end if you never ask another question again. Don't think you're in any danger of that, at least.
no subject