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[rathercommon]

crystal | letter | cease and desist notices slipped under her door | action

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mmmm

[rathercommon]

"Never really liked dancing," she answers, easily enough. Truly enough, too. In school, it'd always been sweet little English country dances, a bunch of ridiculous fluff to make the good little girls and boys proud of their homeland. There'd been dance-halls in London, too, but mostly that was where girls went to find boys, and Stan and Fred and Martin and Nick had been more than boys enough for her purpose. "Or drinking, or - whatever all of that's supposed to be. Aside from anaesthetic for a wound they're pretending not to have."

She looks a little closer at the skeletons dancing their way along his clothing. "I never thought you'd do something so - unserious, Captain Flint."

[katabasis]

No, he thought she might not care much for it.

"If you have some better way of appeasing a restless crew and securing four casks of wine for their entertainment at no cost, I'll hear it for next year."

Or tomorrow. If he could keep the entire company in liquor and whores for the next month, he'd be happier for it. De Groot would complain about being left to oversee the debauchery and the cleanup effort would be its own struggle, but at least the men wouldn't have any thought to simply vacate the harbor. The Inquisition is for Ghislain, meaning he must be for it, and he means to return to Kirkwall to find his ship still here.

Anyway, he'd some quiet business here to attend. Better to be seen loudly carousing in the other direction first.

[rathercommon]

Kitty thinks, abruptly, about the Resistance. There were times when they'd had to go underground, to be cautious until the government got distracted by something more pressing and started turning their attention away from the problem of the commoners. Those times when they couldn't do jobs were utterly dreadful; everyone was irritable, fractious, ready to fight at the least provocation. How much worse must an entire ship full of pirates be?

"I suppose something else wouldn't work as well," she says a little slowly. Her eyes lift to Flint's face; her head cocks slightly to the side, curiously, implying a question even as her tone is firm and unambiguous. "I'm sure they needed a raid, since they haven't been raiding. That was probably the only way to really appease them."

[rathercommon]

Well, it doesn't make for very good conversation, though. Just having them heaving sighs and rolling their eyes and all that.

[katabasis]

"--and to remain friends. I thought the same."

No, there are a half dozen ways they could be appeased. They could slip from the harbor to harass legitimate shipping out of Orlais - the De Grasse will be making her way East even now and he knows the inlets she prefers. Or they could finally take advantage of the invisibility so long at anchor among the merchants and tradeships has afforded them and, under cover of night, board and capture ships manned by only Satinalia-boozed skeleton crews and make their way from Kirkwall with their own fleet before anyone knew the difference. Or he could take his men, few that they are, and--

He doesn't have enough hands to both hold this thing together and avoid looking foolish.

[rathercommon]

Kitty nods a little bit. Right. There are doubtless ways of making them happy, but with a huge cost - just like how she could have led the Resistance out on additional raids, but at incalculable risk. How dreadful a thing it must be for Captain Flint. For Vane and the others, too, of course, but Vane has a sort of natural camaraderie with his men that Kitty's seen every time she's been up in the rigging. Flint needs to calm his crew without the advantage of Vane's natural stoic charm, when his crew are accustomed to action and excitement and adrenaline - and when they're surrounded by tempting targets, the sort they'd have claimed in their earlier piratical career.

"Would you have tea with me?" Kitty asks, suddenly. She finds that she's got a sudden hunger to talk with him about this, about all the entanglements and difficulties of being in charge. "Before you go back to them?" And then, with her most charming smile - "I promise I won't make you steal any wine for me."

[katabasis]

The look he gives her narrows by a degree, by two. But the suspicion, if that's what it really is, passes away as quickly as it came over him. With a good tempered sniff, something like approval of her joke, Flint tips his head in a gesture leading back up the stairs.

"All right."

A little extra time away won't do him or the Walrus any trouble and the longer he waits, the more likely anyone roving about the Gallows' ferry slip will be too drunk to make any note of him there.

[rathercommon]

She smiles and turns to lead him in the direction of the little kitchen where there's a kettle with water for the boiling. The smart thing to do, of course, would be to wait until he's got a cup of tea in his hand before asking any sensitive questions, anything that might make him want to slip out of the conversation. But patience has never been her forte. And so, even while they're still walking, she can't quite stop herself from asking him -

"I wondered - d'you like it? Being captain, I mean." Her gaze, curious, swings around to meet his over her shoulder for just a moment. "Is it something you can like?"

[katabasis]

He follows, some anonymous joint cracking loudly as he turns back up the stairs.

"There are certainly easier things I could be doing if it didn't suit me."

It's easy enough that it sounds like a joke of an answer, but it may be the most complete one he can think to give. The work sits in a cross place of necessary and what he knows. The men or ones like them are ones he's known all his life, the sea is constant, the account a requirement. Given his choice, would he prefer some other role for himself?

It's not really a question for a night like this one with the moon all full over the courtyard, masked men and women laughing and dancing, and Ghislain just there on the horizon waiting for them.

"Planning to hire your own ship?"

[rathercommon]

"Having something suit you isn't quite the same as liking it." Her voice isn't forceful; it's more an idle observation than it is a rebuttal. But it is true, she thinks. She was well-suited to the work of a secretary, but she'd have hated it and hated her life and hated every breath she took. Or - What was that ridiculous offer that John Mandrake made her to try to get information out of her about the Resistance? Making her some great lady of the British Empire - she'd have been very good at that work, quite well-suited, but also she'd have torn off her own skin in sheer self-hatred.

She does turn a smile back at him, lightly and wryly amused, in response to his question. "But I think that Captain Vane would have a word or two to share about my knot-tying skills if I tried to move up to a captaincy myself." She looks ahead and says - "But - no. It's more that...It just seems so dreadfully difficult, and dreadfully exhausting, keeping everyone under control. So I just was wondering whether the rewards of it are so great."

[katabasis]

It isn't either of those things on account of the crew. It's true that they wear on him, and the finicky tedium of the politics and the bickering bullshit may be irritating beyond belief, but that's why John Silver is quartermaster. No, there is a familiar domesticity to the lives of men forced to habitat shoulder to shoulder - as natural as hammer and forge must be to a blacksmith. But what she really wants to know is--

"There are easier ways to be a ship's captain as well, if I cared to." He could be anywhere but here for starters, feeding on the war-panic rich trade fleeing Orlais. Or if all he wanted was to secure some place for himself, well then Llomerryn has gone to scrap. It would be easier to step into some meaningful role there than to attempt to conduct any business farther North or here in Kirkwall. "The freedom to act how I please in a role that I've chosen" --matters of being voted to the position not exempt, as if he'd never wanted this it would have been just as simple to avoid as winning it-- "is a rare thing in this world."

(Sometimes the quiet of a room removed entirely from the sea bothers him as he's meant to be sleeping; it didn't use to, but he finds it's true now. When he thinks of rooms with set floors and hearths, crockery in cabinets, and gardens beyond their door, they belong to someone very distant. Far enough removed that he doesn't think on it now when pressed to. It's Satinalia and the question of the men is resolved at present. No need to be so goddamn dire.)

[rathercommon]

"What's that mean, though? Freedom."

She reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she turns off from the staircase, leading the way to a little sitting room where there's a bit of water warmed over a brazier. Definitely not something lovely and convenient like the kettle back home, though it works well enough, she supposes. Still, it's so odd - of the things she's had to adjust to here, the war hasn't been the hardest, or the fear, or the races of people unknown to her, or the complicated politics, or the complicated tongues. It's the mundane things. It's the way that it takes three times as long to make tea and five times as long to bathe and how she's always hot or cold and never quite manages to feel fully clean. And the fact that she's pretty sure she's gotten bit by a flea or two already, which is horrific. And all that's stuff she doesn't want to complain about, either, because hears the other Rifters carrying on and they all sound ever so obnoxious...

Oh, well.

"I mean - " She gestures him towards a seat. "Freedom and what that means, it's obvious for some people. For slaves, the meaning of freedom is clear. But what's it mean for people like us? What's it mean to go after freedom?"

a little after satanalia and secrets being revealed etc

[shri]

[ Knock, knock. ]

cease and desist notice!!!!

[elegiaque]

K.

We were not in disagreement because I am capable of holding two separate ideas in my head at the same time without nonsensically equating them, and I dislike it extremely when a specific point can't be discussed without first addressing something unrelated that ought to go without saying. I won't say that common folk have the same value as the people whose capture was under discussion because broadly speaking I'll give most people, common or otherwise, the benefit of the doubt that it would be a ghastly and untrue thing to say.

The reasoning behind who is and is not captured as a prisoner of war, in this war, is not about their value as people and should under no circumstances suggest to you that they are valued more than anyone else as people. They are scum whose innate worth is less than that of the Blight. They are men and women whose power or position would have allowed them to fight against Corypheus—something that many people with less have been willing to do—and instead they looked at the rest of us, they looked at what Corypheus is doing, and they decided that our lives are collectively worth less than the outside chance that knowingly working towards our annihilation will personally benefit them. Their only value is how they can be used and they can and should be executed the instant that they outlive that usefulness. If they survive the war to do anything other than stand trial for war crimes, that will be an injustice to those who died in their place worth fighting against, but arguing that anyone else deserves their treatment right now does a terrible disservice to anyone who isn't presently facing rightful execution, and I won't be finger-wagged into saying otherwise by anyone.

We were not arguing. Your point wasn't wrong, it simply wasn't relevant to the discussion at hand, which was the matter of what we do with scum we can use, and the cost-benefit analysis of taking such risks. Pointing out that it wasn't relevant because the things being discussed were entirely different isn't arguing against you. Someone isn't arguing against you simply because you don't like what they have to say or how they happen to say it. I don't bother discussing ideas with people whose opinions I disregard, so I don't know why I'm bothering writing this to someone who couldn't deign to hear mine when I said it the first time. Maker, you aren't even reading it. What's the point.

( although gwenaëlle had decided against sending this, she'd left it addressed on her desk; guilfoyle delivers it along with a number of other minor pieces of correspondence it had been among. )

[rathercommon]

[ Oh - Kitty looks up, curious. No one had said they were coming over. But, in a mark of how much her paranoia has settled down since getting here, she gets to her feet and pads over to the door and simply opens it. No hidden knives or concealed weapons when she does. ]

Oh - Lakshmi. Hullo.

bless guilfoyle

[rathercommon]

[ Kitty looks at this, and reads it several times, and debates whether to answer it or to scream until she's red in the face. It's certainly not what she was hoping for - what she was hoping for was for Gwen to come over and for them to chat over tea - but, well...It's at least an overture. And she's not going to reject that. Not when she knows that overtures are bloody hard for Gwen to make.

And so she sits down and writes a response. Well, writes several responses, really. This is the one she settles on, though.

Her hand is neat and even, the formatting of the letter precise and formal. This is a girl who was trained to write a business letter. ]

Dear Gwenaelle,

What I 'dislike extremely' is hypocrisy. I know that where I came from matters not at all here, but my life (real or not) was spent hearing silver-tongued liars murmur about how important commoners like me were to the Empire, even as they tortured and hurt us and killed us in the streets and never faced a bit of punishment for it. Is that what the Inquisition is going to become? Is that what it is, even now? Is that what I'm fighting for? Because if it is, if we're the sort of people who refuse to name our hideous deeds - if we're the sort of people who murmur about how important commoners are even as we cut them down - then I've no use for the Inquisition at all.

I know that's not what you were talking about. I know you were trying to explain the reasoning. But it is what I am talking about. In truth, I do not care about battle tactics; I do not care about what we do with the scum we can use or not use or anything of the sort. What I care about is whether or not the Inquisition is made up of liars. I care about whether I can trust any of these people at all.

The other thing I dislike is being called stupid and ignorant. I am not stupid or ignorant. Hearing that, especially from the mouth of someone like you, is a miserable, awful thing; and I do not deserve to be made to feel awful simply because my concerns diverge from yours. I especially do not deserve to be called it in front of everyone, where everyone can hear, because people respect your opinions and hold them in high regard, and so if the words come from your mouth they will also begin to think of me as such.

Sincerely,
Kathleen Jones

[katabasis]

Strange questions to choose for discussion while water is brought to temperature. It makes Flint smile, mouth going all briefly crooked behind the auburn of his beard and the still kohl smudged creases about his eyes deepening. He takes the chair indicated and thoughtlessly sprawls to fill it.

"Has someone been troubling you over your principles?"

[rathercommon]

It's such an odd thing to see him smile. Which is funny to think, because he's smiled often enough in her presence, and not an hour prior he was bellowing like the most hammish actor in the world over capturing wine - and pirates are supposed to be jolly, aren't they, that's what all the stage-plays she's seen have shown. But it still strikes her as strange. Because he's so solemn in his thoughts; it takes her by surprise when he's not similarly solemn in his manner.

"Myself," she answers, and then adds, "constantly." She supposes she ought to apologize for bringing a topic this heavy to bear on a night of festivities, but then she searches her feelings and decides she's not sorry, and the reason that she likes Flint and enjoys his company is because he doesn't seem to mind that sort of thing either.

She checks the water - it's nearly ready, good - and then arranges the cups and teapot to prepare the brew. "The spirit of this holiday, it's supposed to be the social order turned upside down, isn't it. But it's nothing of the sort. It's just a temporary removal of consequences for certain deeds - for debauchery and drunkenness and all that. It's about relieving the tension." She nods to Flint, to the remnants of the paint on his face. "But no one's actually free. On this night or any other."

[katabasis]

Maybe it's for the best - that she doesn't apologize, that it's her own interrogation and not something passed down to her from one of the half dozen voices trying to talk her down across the sending crystals (he isn't deaf). In any case, it's an answer that suits him enough to take the question more seriously than the evening or her perfectly true but unrelentingly earnest criticism of the festivities might otherwise merit.

He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--

"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."

This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.

[rathercommon]

She considers that a moment. There's more than just a grain of truth in it, isn't there? A life of perfect freedom is a life completely unbounded. But that wasn't the sort of freedom she had fought for - not the sort she'd even want. She and her compatriots, they'd wanted a voice in government. Not its utter destruction. It's not the freedom he seems to be advocating, either.

"But balance is needed." She leans up against the wall beside the brazier, arms crossed, head tilted thoughtfully. "There are people who get freedom and use it to do wicked things. When people don't face consequences for their actions, sometimes they go mad with it - turn to abuse and cruelty. So freedom isn't always a good thing."

[katabasis]

He abandons twisting at the ring with a low, meditative noise. No, that's not--

"Freedom isn't a lack of consequence," he clarifies. "It's the ownership of it, and of the justice a place where people share in that freedom decides on. Balance, such as it is, in a world built by men who have only ever looked after their own security is as much a story as that party happening downstairs right now. But give men and women ownership of themselves, and they'll be as veilfire for each other in the dark."

A pause. "Your water sounds ready."

[rathercommon]

"Don't try to teach me my business," she replies. Her manner is wryly confident rather than scolding or disapproving, but she means it; she doesn't move to check on it. She's made enough bloody cups of tea, on a stove or over a brazier, to know the sound of water when it's ready. And this pot needs another minute.

She thinks over his story, though, considering his position. It...does sound right. "Where I come from, the people in power - they seized power from a parliament. We got taught the story by rote in school - the old commoners' parliament was corrupt and weak, and so the Founder, William Gladstone, came in and during the Night of Long Counsel convinced them to give power over to him..." She blows out a breath, shaking her head. "Watching you lot, though - the way you vote, and politic - it does make me feel better. No one could accuse your democracy of weakness."

That came out a little incoherent, didn't it? Well, her thoughts are confused and a bit disjointed tonight. She hopes she's not incomprehensible. Regardless, now the water's ready; she goes and fetches it, pours two cups.

[katabasis]

His mistake. Won't happen again, says the way he tips his head and the corner of his mouth twitches back.

(Funny too, how the temper of the room isn't half so self-serious as the topic of conversation really implies. It's easy, like they are talking about the weather or a discussing a book they've both been reading.)

"Consider telling that to the people already doing it."

Because, isn't it? Weak. Or only as strong as the men inside it believe it to be. Today it's been proven as tenable for a few more hours, but weeks existing at the fringe of what the world calls proper society was a way of wearing on things. Blunting them. It's easier to say 'Fuck those men who hate you for your liberty, who call this version of democracy nothing more than mercenary criminality,' when you aren't living in their pockets.

[rathercommon]

Kitty blinks very slightly in surprise. She didn't expect that to be Flint's reaction. After all -

"Hold on. Weren't you just saying it was the only way to be free, all that?"

She places the tea at Flint's elbow, then sits primly in the chair opposite him. The primness is immediately ruined as she kicks off her shoes and pulls her legs up beside her, curling up like a cat in the chair.

"And it's not like it hasn't lasted a while, right? This system. It's been in place for some time, hasn't it?"

[katabasis]

What a pair they make: discussing free democratic republics while neither of them even knows how to sit in a chair properly.

"But there isn't any continuity in it, is there?" How old is the oldest man on the Walrus? On Nascere? What has any crew passed down to another? Secret pieces of seamanship, how to raid and survive, how to make a name that will be forgotten when you are gone. What difference is there in the lives of the women and men who did this work twenty years ago and the ones that do it today? Nothing. Yet.

Flint fetches the cup up from where she's set it, wrapping both his hands about it. Holds it just there, letting the warmth leech into his fingers. "The trouble isn't the system, it's that it exists in isolation even from others like it. A ship is an island, surrounded at all times by the world in opposition to it. That world means to break you; it has dashed a hundred other crews and swallowed everything they've done and it will do it to you and it will do it to your men given the barest chance.

"And if it doesn't, what then? One day you will be old and gray and you will be tired of the sea, but there will be no alternative. There is no place waiting for you because a ship's freedom, even in places like Llomerryn, is a story told to contradict something else. It is defined by what it chooses not to be, by people who believe they are right to be different. That may be just, that may be true, it may even be the nearest thing to independence certain men can find in this world as it is presently. But it is a state under perpetual siege. Until freedom is a life lived and not a weapon you have to use against something else, our option - yours and mine and the people in that courtyard tonight - is to take the best version we can get and figure out a way to use it to show the rest of the world that it can be done."