#* calpernia ; v ; post game

[fals3nd]

@dracaeons said ; i’m ending it. i don’t care what it takes. - fenris to calpernia :) ( accepting )

fingers dance over the page of the book open in her lap and calpernia tips her head. ankles are crossed daintily from where she's seated on a low sofa, more lounging than anything. "yes," she agrees evenly, "but how do you intend on doing it? words are nothing, but the wrong action will just make things topple." speaking from experience, isn't she, who has famously backed the wrong horse.

[fals3nd]

well meaning means nothing. calpernia learned that long ago. how many children of magisters had looked at her with guilt lining their eyes before turning a blind eye to some small cruelty dealt out by their kin? mincing and wincing and saying things like i'm sorry or i wish and then doing nothing. years of it. she had sometimes wished they would just give up the pretense - - - they were not false-kind for her benefit, but for theirs, to make themselves feel better before asking for a drink or an errand to be run. those same children are lucerni now, and calpernia can think their cause noble enough but their methods still those of a child.

"yes," she agrees aloud after a moment, crossing to a small table and pouring a glass of water from a pitcher, "the whole damn thing needs to be killed. the head cut from the snake." the archon. the death of the divine in the south had caused enough unrest to drive everything to bits. calpernia had witnessed it firsthand. even if it had not been the primary goal, a backup plan, the scramble of leaders in an attempt to find a new divine had bought corypheus and herself precious time to lay plans.

if it surprises fenris, the knowledge of who her venatori are, he does not show it; he's good, still, at that. spent a too-long time where every emotion he felt showed on his face, bubbled up within him like a pot boiling over on a fire. now, fenris has a mask to wear again — it is more of a comfort than he feared it might be, once.

her leader before had been one of the sidereal; he thinks of asking, stupefied, how she could not have known what he was, how she could have walked into it all with her eyes closed so tightly. thinks of varania instead, convinced she would become a magister if only she sold him out; keeps the question to himself. "they are hypocrites," he says, dismissive, instead, "no matter how well they mean." he does not know them, not personally; has left them alone at varric's request, for the moment, though fenris does not understand his insistence to give them a chance. "even if they oppose the way things are, they still exist within the magisterium. they still answer to the archon. it cannot be reformed."

[fals3nd]

her teeth grit the longer he speaks. "i have divested myself of those," she says lowly, "or they have splintered off into their own little factions. those that remain by my side are like us." freed slaves, often by her own hand or commission. when she had thought corypheus was a key rather than a new set of chains, and she had been on a long enough leash or he had not cared enough so long as she was bolstering numbers, time and coin had gone into killing slavers and freeing those they held captive. not all became venatori ; calpernia would never force them. but some had. some still are. fingers tighten around her forearms and the blunt ends of her nails bite into her skin.

"would i had known then what i do now, more of his recruits would have burned." after a moment her fingers loosen their hold and she shakes her head and turns from the window. there is an urge to pace that she does not succumb to, instead moving back towards where she had been seated before stopping halfway there. "no. that was what i had intended once, but there is no way now." her name is double-sullied, once by her distant past and twice by the more recent. "and the little clutch calling themselves lucerni are too tender-hearted for the necessary bloodshed."

an eyebrow lifts, in response. "is it ever?" even he had not started out here, had not returned to these lands with the intention of earning himself a reputation, a title whispered among those who have little else but rumours to keep them sustained. fenris will not take it from them; no matter how he might feel about it, himself.

she is an idealist, he thinks, no matter what she might have seen or done or what she may even believe of herself, now. there cannot be a tevinter reborn. "and would it be you, instituting this new thing? and your followers?" he has met some of the venatori, to their mutual distaste; how she cannot see them for what they are, he doesn't understand. "the ones that were sent south, by corypheus— do you know how many of their names i already knew, from before? do you truly think the ones who are left would go contently to new lives, not eased on the backs of others?"

[fals3nd]

two splotches of red rise up to freckled cheeks despite herself and the frown tilts further towards a scowl. that stubborn thread of pride twists itself tighter around her heart at the mention. "yes. well. that had not been the intention." calpernia now shudders to think what would have become of her should the original plan gone through without interruption from the now-inquisitor. her fingers still against her arm at the question.

it was supposed to be hers. her and the venatori. the blood and gore and terror of it all would have been well worth it, would have forged a path for a new tevinter where there aren't souls being bought and sold to the highest bidder. and it would have been her at the helm. how she still longs to see those faces, to see them remember her in a way she remembers them - - - to see the recognition flash through their eyes in tandem with their final breath. that has not happened. not yet. it still could. "something new would have to be instituted before they could."

fenris laughs, a cold mirthless thing. "i am talking about your friend at the temple." hardly a friend, certainly not to her, but— what more good had it done him than anders's actions had done the southern mages? his great holy war had failed; anders's attempts to break the chantry had failed.

calpernia sounds so certain of it. as if it is a game of archon, and all she need do is move to the throne. "and then what?" fenris asks, cynical, too aware of the way people choose to rebuild, of kirkwall's reinstated gallows circle, of seheron, torn to pieces over and over again in an endless exchange of power. "what would stop them from putting the pieces back exactly as they were?"

[fals3nd]

"i know you don't." lips tighten and calpernia's fingers twitch again. arms fold in front of her and she frowns, coming up beside fenris to stare out the window. something burns in her eyes ; something is always burning in her eyes. it used to get her in trouble, when she was in a place and position for something as simple as a look in her eye to be reprimanded. calpernia's fingers tap an uneven rhythm against her upper arm and she shakes her head.

"do not mistake me for your friend in kirkwall," bleeding heart idiot, and calpernia's interest lies not in the circles. what good did one blood action cause? little. the thought of comparison hits on the weaker parts of her pride - - - to be compared to no one, to someone who did something on his own and faced the wrath of it with a pitiful handful of supporters. there are venatori still who listen to her words, who reply to her missives. corypheus had not been their leader. calpernia is. "the magisterium must fall first. the rest will follow."

"i have no intention of talking to any of these people." as if anyone of them would listen to him; beyond the shield of the blue wraith, fenris is now little more than he was years ago: a runaway, a thief of his own body, another deviation from the imperium's status quo, to be stamped out at any cost. luckily, not many seem especially interested in taking up the bounty danarius had placed on his head. "i am taking action," fenris says, evenly. small action, perhaps, and yet there are houses of the magiesterium who have no more heirs left to send to minrathous, as justice for their crimes. it is not nothing. "what do you suggest? another explosion? those actions have not served anyone well."

[fals3nd]

calpernia knows it would not work. she has tried, after all, and failed. there are other ways. fingers flick the book closed entirely and she sits upright and then stands. "i mean action. i am sick of talking." it is all anyone seems to do. they talk. they talk about how things are wrong and cannot go on ; they talk about change and what could be done and how it could happen ; they never do anything. her fingers itch and calpernia rubs them against the side of her dress with a scoff. "andraste herself was not andraste in her lifetime. it would do us all good to remember that."

he hears about the blue wraith, now, even when the person talking about it doesn't recognize who they're speaking to. it is not the kind of reputation fenris ever imagined having. not one he wants. but it's useful. he thinks it can be useful. "you mean some ill-thought-out display of power." it's practically all tevinter knows, a display of power. summoning demons and spilling blood and stealing lives to show they are the masters of their own magic. from the window, he stares out at nothing. "i don't intend to declare war on the imperium." a pause; not openly. "i'm no andraste. but it cannot go on."