[ Simon isn't the first person to have bitten Kostos—probably not even the first this month, maybe not even the first this week—but he's offended anyway, and presently, having been taken by surprise by their sudden solitude, he's doing up the fastenings on his one (1) surviving shirt as quickly as he can while glaring at the wall.
He isn't afraid of Simon. Or, he would never admit to being afraid of Simon, or of Templars generally. He would rather fucking die.
Leaving the room immediately would be favorite, however.
So when Ser Ashlock talks—talks in a way that requires a response—he closes his eyes, at the wall, in the way of a man who has suffered greatly and will continue to suffer. When he opens them again, it's to turn his head just enough to look at Simon out of the corner of his eyes, grudgingly.
[Simon will all too gladly do him the favor of avoiding eye contact, and even better, of being on the far end of the room. This will not be a conversation that can be held quietly. (Not that any conversation Simon ever has can be held quietly; even when he makes a concerted effort not to, he has a voice like a foghorn.)
He has given this question thought, mentally rehearsed it, and still somehow finds the words lacking now. It has never occurred to him, and never will, that Kostos could possibly have any fear of him. How could he, when he has such constant and ready backup, and when his outrage at Melys' shirt theft is the only visible reaction Simon has ever seen from him in their entire acquaintance? Simon could not have borne the idea of having this conversation in front of Nell.]
Why did you pick me to have written up, back in Ansburg? Why me, and not some other templar?
[ Shirt successfully fastened to his neck, Kostos takes his time smoothing down his sleeves and turning to look at Simon. ] Why did I pick you? [ he echoes, with a contemptuous sort of incredulity. He can be quiet, and he is, in a way that's either polite or ominous depending on how you hold it up to the light. ] Was there someone else I should have?
[That incredulity gets a genuinely baffled look in response, a small vulnerability that Simon would not ordinarily allow, except that Kostos' thought process here is so inscrutable to him that he gets the sudden and distinct impression they're having two different conversations.
Why this would be the case, he doesn't understand. They're the only two people who actually know what happened back in Ansburg. It's a self-evident truth that Kostos was lying, and Kostos would know that better than anyone, because he's the one who did it. Why maintain this absurd pretense when nobody but Simon can hear it anymore, and nobody from the Circle is left to do anything about it?]
Someone who'd actually done something to you, maybe. Or someone with more of a reputation for roughness, to make it more believable. [Not that Kostos had needed the story to be any more believable, in the end. They'd believed him just fine.]
[ There's a joke to be made about Simon's size. How it would be difficult to swing of any kind and not hit him. But Kostos isn't much of a joker even with people he likes, even in good moods, so he doesn't attempt it here. He crosses his arms and gives Simon a prolonged look, disguising any similar confusion he might be feeling about this conversation's lack of sense with a blank sort of hostility. ]
If I chose easy 'targets,' Ser Ashlock, [ he says, measured, with those quote marks communicated more by a skeptical upward eyebrows twitch than any sarcasm in his tone, ] I would never have been sent to Ansburg.
[ He makes Ansburg sound a bit like Nevarran slang for that miserable backwater. ]
Ayland had bruises. He'd been in your care. He was afraid of you. I don't give a damn about your reputation.
[With anyone else, he'll complain at great length about what a Maker-forsaken cowpat-scented nowhere Ansburg was; now, he would feel compelled to sing its praises out of contrariness and spite, were there not more pressing things to discuss. The rest of it fades to irrelevance next to the realization that finally, chasteningly dawns.]
--You thought I actually did it.
[The past tense is clearly inaccurate at best, wishful thinking at worst. No wonder his outraged assertions of innocence have always fallen on deaf ears.]
You still think I did it. [And phrased like that, for the first time, he can understand why.]
He was afraid of everything. He was afraid of his neighbors when they chased him at us and told him good riddance; he was afraid of us because he said we were too big and he didn't like the armor; he was afraid when I told him he was going to meet other children like him, because he didn't want them to set the beds on fire.
He was afraid of the tower when it came up in the distance because he thought it was too tall. He bolted and he tripped and he fell down a hill before I could catch up with him and he cried the whole rest of the way there.
I never laid a fucking hand on him. I never would have.
[ You thought I actually did it, Simon says, and Kostos experiences his first moment of doubt. However, because he's sort of an asshole, none of that doubt is apparent on his face. Instead he doubles down on looking at Simon like he's a bit of an idiot. Of course he fucking thinks he actually did it—
Or did. Until Simon seemed so astonished by that fact.
If there's any squirm of belated guilt, he promptly knocks it unconscious and hides it in a corner of his mind that won't affect his face until Simon he's no longer in the room. ]
If you said as much to your superiors, and they believed me over you, then Ansburg was very different from Ghislain.
[ It would be nice if he had something to do with his hands. A bag to pack, maybe, to signal that he's on his way out the door, but there's nothing for him to do but stand here and look snottily defiant. ]
I watched you— [ either the general you, Templars, or the specific you will work ] —because if I had disappeared, if I had died in a dungeon or been made Tranquil, my family would have noticed. They would have cared. There might have been a price for someone to pay. That was not the case for many others. So you must forgive me— [ or not, he doesn't care! nyah nyah! which might be awkward for him later when he realizes he needs Simon's help! ] —if I do not apologize for your slapped wrist.
[Ansburg had been very different from Ghislain. And it had been very, very different from the Gallows, thus its appeal to a young Simon's fledgling conscience. It had been the easiest sort of place to pretend that the first three years of his career never happened, could be erased tidily from the record if he only made up for it hard enough by being One Of The Good Ones. And even the good ones, from time to time, need to resort to force when they have no other options, don't they? Even the good ones need to let the mages under Harrowing age blend into a faceless mass.
Simon might well have been believed over Kostos, had the report not happened to be made to the very Knight-Captain with whom he'd started a shouting match the week before. But what is there to say about it that matters now, when the principle of the thing no longer applies? I might at least have been a Knight-Lieutenant now if it weren't for you, he could say, if he were the worst person in the entire Inquisition, but the words die mercifully long before they can reach his mouth.
(You wanted to speak with me, Ashlock? Meredith had said, her small frame seeming somehow to look down on him from a great height as he'd steeled himself to ask about the Tranquilizing of a mage whose Harrowing he'd overseen.
No, ser, he'd told her. I shouldn't have bothered you.)]
It's--
[The audacity of it would choke him if he tried to say "forgiven," and the humiliation of having to say such a thing to Kostos, of all the people in the world, would still prevent him. His concession can be victory enough for the justifiably self-righteous prick.]
[ Ungracious in quasi-victory as be certainly would have been in defeat, Kostos says, ] For a certain definition. Yes.
[ To the extent fairness exists in this world or any other. To the extent that the situation between them here isn't weighted on either end by hundreds of years of history that nothing done by or to or between the two of them alone could ever balance.
He is a Loyalist, really. Ask him. He's ready to explain it, to frame it, to characterize ten years of dogging Templars' every move as trying to make them do their damn jobs and keep their damn oaths before it came to this. Whether he was beaten then or not, Ayland is likely dead now.
Kostos unfolds his arm and moves for the door, but he pauses there to say—ridiculously, because even if he might be the sort of person (half-Antivan, after all) to hire assassins without guilt, he would never be foolish enough to send one after Inquisition personnel, but he's good at nothing if not being deadpan— ]
I will try to cancel my contract with the Crows.
[ Which is as close to I'll take you at your word as he'll probably ever be able to bring himself to say out loud. ]
[Simon is the type to make flippant jokes at the worst times, in hostile and decidedly inappropriate circumstances, though his track record for appreciating the same impulse in others is spotty. Any number of responses rise to his lips, playing along--I hope you can get your money back, or nice to know you were thinking of me, or even a simple thanks would suffice and possibly defuse, if only just a little.
He can't bring himself to joke back. It would feel like insult added to injury, like a somehow gratuitous sacrifice of dignity on top of the one he's just convinced himself was necessary, even if he can't possibly articulate how or why it would be. Let it be done with.]
Good talk.
[His tone is flat, entirely defeated. He would push past Kostos to the door, if he had a very little less self-awareness. As it is, he merely jerks his head at it in a please continue leaving sort of gesture.]
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no subject
He isn't afraid of Simon. Or, he would never admit to being afraid of Simon, or of Templars generally. He would rather fucking die.
Leaving the room immediately would be favorite, however.
So when Ser Ashlock talks—talks in a way that requires a response—he closes his eyes, at the wall, in the way of a man who has suffered greatly and will continue to suffer. When he opens them again, it's to turn his head just enough to look at Simon out of the corner of his eyes, grudgingly.
That means what?. ]
no subject
He has given this question thought, mentally rehearsed it, and still somehow finds the words lacking now. It has never occurred to him, and never will, that Kostos could possibly have any fear of him. How could he, when he has such constant and ready backup, and when his outrage at Melys' shirt theft is the only visible reaction Simon has ever seen from him in their entire acquaintance? Simon could not have borne the idea of having this conversation in front of Nell.]
Why did you pick me to have written up, back in Ansburg? Why me, and not some other templar?
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no subject
Why this would be the case, he doesn't understand. They're the only two people who actually know what happened back in Ansburg. It's a self-evident truth that Kostos was lying, and Kostos would know that better than anyone, because he's the one who did it. Why maintain this absurd pretense when nobody but Simon can hear it anymore, and nobody from the Circle is left to do anything about it?]
Someone who'd actually done something to you, maybe. Or someone with more of a reputation for roughness, to make it more believable. [Not that Kostos had needed the story to be any more believable, in the end. They'd believed him just fine.]
Why was I the easiest target?
no subject
If I chose easy 'targets,' Ser Ashlock, [ he says, measured, with those quote marks communicated more by a skeptical upward eyebrows twitch than any sarcasm in his tone, ] I would never have been sent to Ansburg.
[ He makes Ansburg sound a bit like Nevarran slang for that miserable backwater. ]
Ayland had bruises. He'd been in your care. He was afraid of you. I don't give a damn about your reputation.
no subject
--You thought I actually did it.
[The past tense is clearly inaccurate at best, wishful thinking at worst. No wonder his outraged assertions of innocence have always fallen on deaf ears.]
You still think I did it. [And phrased like that, for the first time, he can understand why.]
He was afraid of everything. He was afraid of his neighbors when they chased him at us and told him good riddance; he was afraid of us because he said we were too big and he didn't like the armor; he was afraid when I told him he was going to meet other children like him, because he didn't want them to set the beds on fire.
He was afraid of the tower when it came up in the distance because he thought it was too tall. He bolted and he tripped and he fell down a hill before I could catch up with him and he cried the whole rest of the way there.
I never laid a fucking hand on him. I never would have.
no subject
Or did. Until Simon seemed so astonished by that fact.
If there's any squirm of belated guilt, he promptly knocks it unconscious and hides it in a corner of his mind that won't affect his face until Simon he's no longer in the room. ]
If you said as much to your superiors, and they believed me over you, then Ansburg was very different from Ghislain.
[ It would be nice if he had something to do with his hands. A bag to pack, maybe, to signal that he's on his way out the door, but there's nothing for him to do but stand here and look snottily defiant. ]
I watched you— [ either the general you, Templars, or the specific you will work ] —because if I had disappeared, if I had died in a dungeon or been made Tranquil, my family would have noticed. They would have cared. There might have been a price for someone to pay. That was not the case for many others. So you must forgive me— [ or not, he doesn't care! nyah nyah! which might be awkward for him later when he realizes he needs Simon's help! ] —if I do not apologize for your slapped wrist.
no subject
Simon might well have been believed over Kostos, had the report not happened to be made to the very Knight-Captain with whom he'd started a shouting match the week before. But what is there to say about it that matters now, when the principle of the thing no longer applies? I might at least have been a Knight-Lieutenant now if it weren't for you, he could say, if he were the worst person in the entire Inquisition, but the words die mercifully long before they can reach his mouth.
(You wanted to speak with me, Ashlock? Meredith had said, her small frame seeming somehow to look down on him from a great height as he'd steeled himself to ask about the Tranquilizing of a mage whose Harrowing he'd overseen.
No, ser, he'd told her. I shouldn't have bothered you.)]
It's--
[The audacity of it would choke him if he tried to say "forgiven," and the humiliation of having to say such a thing to Kostos, of all the people in the world, would still prevent him. His concession can be victory enough for the justifiably self-righteous prick.]
That's fair.
no subject
[ To the extent fairness exists in this world or any other. To the extent that the situation between them here isn't weighted on either end by hundreds of years of history that nothing done by or to or between the two of them alone could ever balance.
He is a Loyalist, really. Ask him. He's ready to explain it, to frame it, to characterize ten years of dogging Templars' every move as trying to make them do their damn jobs and keep their damn oaths before it came to this. Whether he was beaten then or not, Ayland is likely dead now.
Kostos unfolds his arm and moves for the door, but he pauses there to say—ridiculously, because even if he might be the sort of person (half-Antivan, after all) to hire assassins without guilt, he would never be foolish enough to send one after Inquisition personnel, but he's good at nothing if not being deadpan— ]
I will try to cancel my contract with the Crows.
[ Which is as close to I'll take you at your word as he'll probably ever be able to bring himself to say out loud. ]
no subject
He can't bring himself to joke back. It would feel like insult added to injury, like a somehow gratuitous sacrifice of dignity on top of the one he's just convinced himself was necessary, even if he can't possibly articulate how or why it would be. Let it be done with.]
Good talk.
[His tone is flat, entirely defeated. He would push past Kostos to the door, if he had a very little less self-awareness. As it is, he merely jerks his head at it in a please continue leaving sort of gesture.]