I know, [ he drawls — though it isn't much of a secret worth being smug about. ] I mean, I didn't know him personally, but I could have picked him out in a crowd.
[ Not everything had been lost then. Not the eluvians. Not their sleeping kin in uthenera. Not so much of the truth about Fen'Harel. The Dales were no place for Felassan and his ilk to stay, watching their descendants slip swiftly past them like leaves in a fast-moving river, their opinions on politics and practices as useful as a parent's opinion on a teenager's love life. But he'd had a look, full of wary hope.
The hope was, of course, swiftly dashed on the rocks and set on fire. But Beleth knows all about that, if her mother was Keeper, so no need to be depressing. Instead he grins around the threat: ] Maybe that is how I will charm your mother when we meet.
[ And her question he guesses before she has quite reached it, in the thick of the apologies and prefacing. He keeps looking at the clouds (tree, snake, Orlesian mask) until she trails off, then turns his head to grin at her. ]
You heard him. I was his agent. [ Tongue in cheek, from agent to associate. More seriously, ] No, we were friends. And I was his agent, but we were friends first. Nothing romantic, nothing sexual, and you don't sound petty.
[ Maybe that's enough to put her off the scent. If not, he could say more. He could take the condescending immortal route: how deeply they felt things, how closely they knit themselves together over the ages, you can't possibly understand. But he remembers how cross she was about being lied to when he first arrived, and they're in a world where memories of the past and visions of the future might both be unspooled before an audience, and sometimes he sleeps in her house, and she is not some mortal girl best spared from being troubled with things she ought not waste time worrying about. She's the Inquisitor who held the whole world together. She's Solas's partner. She's canny enough to be asking. And if her vision has any truth to it, she may have forever, and Felassan might be around to see it. That's a long time to hide anything.
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[ Not everything had been lost then. Not the eluvians. Not their sleeping kin in uthenera. Not so much of the truth about Fen'Harel. The Dales were no place for Felassan and his ilk to stay, watching their descendants slip swiftly past them like leaves in a fast-moving river, their opinions on politics and practices as useful as a parent's opinion on a teenager's love life. But he'd had a look, full of wary hope.
The hope was, of course, swiftly dashed on the rocks and set on fire. But Beleth knows all about that, if her mother was Keeper, so no need to be depressing. Instead he grins around the threat: ] Maybe that is how I will charm your mother when we meet.
[ And her question he guesses before she has quite reached it, in the thick of the apologies and prefacing. He keeps looking at the clouds (tree, snake, Orlesian mask) until she trails off, then turns his head to grin at her. ]
You heard him. I was his agent. [ Tongue in cheek, from agent to associate. More seriously, ] No, we were friends. And I was his agent, but we were friends first. Nothing romantic, nothing sexual, and you don't sound petty.
[ Maybe that's enough to put her off the scent. If not, he could say more. He could take the condescending immortal route: how deeply they felt things, how closely they knit themselves together over the ages, you can't possibly understand. But he remembers how cross she was about being lied to when he first arrived, and they're in a world where memories of the past and visions of the future might both be unspooled before an audience, and sometimes he sleeps in her house, and she is not some mortal girl best spared from being troubled with things she ought not waste time worrying about. She's the Inquisitor who held the whole world together. She's Solas's partner. She's canny enough to be asking. And if her vision has any truth to it, she may have forever, and Felassan might be around to see it. That's a long time to hide anything.
So. ]
Why? Am I obvious?
[ Painless, mostly. Shameless, entirely. ]