Rilien was finding it unusually difficult to quiet his mind.
Though he gave as little outward sign of it as ever, his thoughts had been... troubled, for the last few days. It wasn't difficult to ascertain why—the discussion of the 'cure' for Tranquility was what had done it.
Cure.
As though he were diseased.
In a way, perhaps he was.
His Tranquility had certainly been something of a problem for him in the past, when it came to matters more personal than professional. His inability to feel in the same way others did no doubt presented some limitations in his work as Spymaster as well, though he believed he adequately compensated for them in other ways. And he just as surely could not deny that it had given him many advantages: he was never shaken, never in doubt, and his decisions—even the quick ones—were always rational. Measured, and more often than not optimal given the situation. He was very, very good at what he did. There was no point in false modesty.
Unfortunately, his thoughts, always so clear, were clouded now, no doubt because of the part of him that remembered what it was like to be otherwise, and the part that wasn't quite perfectly Tranquil, a thread of connection to the Fade remaining. He still dreamed, after all.
“You are moving your wrist too much. The motion you want is a controlled arc, not a snap or flick." With a small motion, Rilien loosed one of the daggers in his sleeve from its holster and slid it down to his hand, raising his arm and tossing deftly. The blade spun end-over-end, thudding point-first into the center of the target he'd set up against the tower wall. “You are strong enough to do this without exerting so much effort. The force should come primarily from your back and shoulder, not your hand."
Lowering his arm, he tucked it back into the opposite sleeve and slid his eyes to Estella. “Try again."
She nodded, exhaling a controlled breath through her nose and reaching down to the small brace of short throwing daggers at her waist. He'd taught her a little bit of a lot over their time together, and a lot of some things in particular, but she'd never protested that. Perhaps she understood that versatility would serve her better than specialization, or perhaps she lacked the confidence to believe she could succeed at being a specialist. In either case, she never seemed to mind trying something new.
Estella emptied the brace into the target—or around it, in some cases. About three-quarters of the knives hit somewhere on the hay bale and stuck, a marked improvement over how she'd been doing when they started this morning. Of those, few wandered too close to where his own had struck dead-center, but there weren't many on the very edges, either. Her mouth pulled into a very familiar dissatisfied frown, and she jogged over to the target to pull the knives out, sliding hers back into their places before tugging several times at the one he'd thrown to try and pull it free.
The task took some doing, but she managed it, and returned, handing it to him hilt-first. "Is everything okay?" she asked. It would have been sudden, but she'd looked a little bit like she wanted to say something to him for the last hour or so. "You seem a little... distracted. For you, anyway. And then I thought maybe I knew why."
She probably did—Estella was sharp, better at reading his microexpressions than anyone but Lucien at this point, and the options were limited. No doubt she'd drawn the connection easily. Rilien considered his answer, then shook his head slightly. “I do not know."
It was absurd, really. Whatever else he may or may not have been at any given time, Rilien always knew himself to be capable of functioning. Of being what she would consider merely 'okay.' And yet now his thoughts wandered, enough that it was quite clearly affecting his instructional methods. Enough that she'd felt the need to ask.
Estella's brows drew together; she bit her lip. It was clearly not the response she'd expected. But then she pulled in a deep breath, and smiled. "Well... then how about you come with me for a bit and we'll see if we can figure it out?" Unbuckling the brace of knives, she racked it where it belonged, apparently not inclined to continue the lesson regardless, and gestured with a hand for him to follow.
When he did, she led them both outside of the tower, over the bailey grounds, and then even further, until they were on the bridge leading away from Skyhold entirely. Eventually they made it down to the lakeshore, but she moved them even past that, until they came to the ledge of one of the mountain's many sheer cliff faces. This one looked out over other parts of the range below, the mountainsides green still with late summer foliage, a glimmering ribbon below no doubt the river that began back up at the lake and wound its way down the other side.
She stopped a few feet from the edge, settling herself on the ground. "Khari and I found this place on a run," she said, leaning back and bracing her weight on the heels of her hands. "The fresh air helps me think, and there's no one around to hear what we're saying."
Rilien stared at the vista for some amount of time—he didn't keep track of just how much. The air did indeed smell nicer than that inside Skyhold, where many people and animals lived in often-close proximity to one another. Seeing the logic in it, he settled himself beside Estella, crossing his legs beneath him and setting his hands on his knees. Even at this time of year, the breeze was bracing, slightly chill against the warmth of the day. The contrast was not unpleasant.
Not unpleasant was almost the highest compliment he could give.
That thought brought him back to his conundrum. As she had not yet spoken further, he could only assume that Estella was waiting for him to elaborate on his earlier statement, and though it was difficult, he wanted to do so. Perhaps because, while she might come to him for advice on what logic demanded in some situation or another... he could think of few people better to tell him what was right in a situation about right. About feelings. About anything warmer than the chill water of tranquility allowed him to feel. He was numb to a great deal.
“I am not sure what to do." The words were quiet. “I do not know whether it would be better, to be rid of my tranquility, or to remain as I am."
She nodded, apparently having been expecting something along those lines. "I don't really know the answer to that either," she confessed, "but I'd like to help if I can. What's the most logical argument in favor of going through with the reversal?"
“There are things I do not fully understand as I am." The first part of his answer was immediate. Rilien let his eyes wander along the uneven line of the river in the valley below, tracing its course down towards sea level. This one emptied into the ocean near Jader, but it was little more than a trickle by the time it got so far. “Things that, in some sense, it would be useful for a Spymaster to know. I am not always able to predict with accuracy what the emotions of others will allow them to do. I cannot... empathize. Place myself in the position of another person and assume the outcomes would be even remotely similar. This damages my predictive capacity and is a shortcoming that I consistently must work around."
Of course, that was far from the entirety of it, but the second part did not have such an easy explanation, such obvious relevance. “Also... being as I am has... done damage. It has hurt people I have no desire to harm. It may have lost me the greatest gift I ever received. I am under no illusion that undoing my Rite will repair what damage I have done, but it may prevent me from making such mistakes in the future. From hurting others."
Estella was silent, shifting her position so that she was sitting more upright and her hands were loosely folded in her lap. The breeze stirred her ponytail, still a bit sweat-slick from being put through her paces earlier in the day. "And what are the arguments in favor of staying the way you are right now?"
“Being tranquil affords me considerable advantages in what I do." Rilien closed his eyes, letting one whole breath pass before he opened them again. “My judgement is most often clear even when that belonging to others is clouded by emotional considerations. I am able to put aside what limited feelings I possess in the interest of the most logical, efficient decision. I can ignore more pain than most people because it does not cause me panic or fear. The fact that I do not easily empathize with others allows me to be ruthless. That is perhaps not a very desirable quality on its own, but it is a necessary counterbalance to the idealism of the people I have taken it upon myself to assist."
It felt more difficult than it should have been, to move his eyes from the scene in front of him to her face, but he did. For once, Rilien had no idea what he was going to see there, and that was... unpleasant. He could not imagine what he would do if he saw something that had once been common for him—horror, or disgust, or pity. He had never laid out his ways of thinking, his shortcomings, in such stark terms for anyone before. People tended to build into his presumed thoughts ones that really were not there. Ones that would make him more like everyone else. They tended to think that he was really just like them, somewhere internal, that his stoniness was a lack of expression, not a deeper lack.
But it was. This was the way he thought, the way he made his decisions. The cut and dry assessment of advantages and disadvantages, professionally. And the occasional unwelcome, disturbing thought of a more personal nature.
But Estella met his eyes with not a bit of any of that on her face. No pity, no revulsion, no fear or horror. Instead, she smiled slightly. "I think you're selling yourself a little short, Rilien." She paused, tilting her head. "Or maybe you just think too much of the rest of us, I'm not sure which. But look." She shuffled a bit closer, so as to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with him, hers warm from sunlight and solid from years of conditioning. Most of which was, at base, his doing. "Everyone does damage sometimes, whether they have all the usual emotions all the time or not. That's just part of being a person living in a world with other people."
She tipped her head slightly sideways, resting the side of her cheek on his shoulder. "I think I know what you're talking about specifically, and I can't really give you an answer because I'm not the right person for that. All I can tell you is what I know. Maybe it will be relevant to your decision, and maybe it won't but... will you listen when I explain it?"
Rilien was admittedly not used to this much physical proximity to others—others rarely dared or bothered. It was... there was an uncomfortable twinge in his chest, but he had no desire to move away, and so he didn't. Unsure what his voice would sound like if he spoke, he simply nodded instead. He'd always listen to anything she found important enough to say.
"I think you're wonderful," Estella said, no trace of uncertainty or hesitation in the words. "Exactly the way you are, right now. I've always thought that, and you've done nothing but give me even more reasons as I got to know you." Shifting slightly, she pulled in a deep breath, her arm pressing a little more firmly into his as her lungs expanded. "I will wholeheartedly support you in whichever decision you make, but I don't want you to choose to do this because you believe that you're somehow inadequate as you are now. You're not."
Her eyes fell shut. "When we first met, I wasn't sure if I was going to be in Kirkwall the next day or if I was going to sneak away in the night. The Lions confused me. I thought their kindness couldn't possibly be real. That they had to be lying, because no one ever gave that much without expecting something in return. I didn't know what it was going to be, but I was afraid. waiting for the other shoe to fall the whole time." In her lap, her hands curled into loose fists.
"But you... you were just what I needed. You didn't try to tell me that I'd do better or be better if only I tried. You didn't have any expectations, and you never once made your words any gentler to spare my feelings. You just told me what I was doing wrong, and how to fix it. And when I still couldn't, you didn't coddle me or get frustrated and give up, even though I was always waiting for you to. All you wanted me to do was keep going." Consciously, she relaxed her hands.
Her next breath was a little uneven. "I know now. That you feel things. Nothing you say can convince me that you don't, because I've seen it. I know what it's like when someone's only pretending to care about me. You've never once pretended anything, not to me. And that... that saved me, Rilien. You did. Your steadiness, your... unimpeachable honesty. That was exactly what I needed. And I've relied on you so many times for just that. For the part of you that sees right to the heart of things, with logic and ruthlessness and all of it. But also... also for the part of you that cares. Because you could be anywhere. You could be doing anything, almost. Maker knows I've never met anyone as capable as you. But you're here, and helping us. Helping me. And if anyone's ever told you that what you feel, the way you feel, isn't enough... then—then fuck them. Anyone who thinks that doesn't deserve you anyway."
For an interminable, distended moment, Rilien simply stared at her. The signs of emotion were there, the uneven breathing, the slight tremble he thought he could feel. It was almost incomprehensible to him that she should feel such things for his sake, on his behalf. But in another way, it wasn't so difficult to understand at all.
He swallowed, the motion curiously difficult, as though there were something lodged in the back of his throat. Reaching up, he laid an hand on her head, stroking his fingers back until his palm rested on her crown. It was warm. Just like everything about her.
“Thank you." Her words were not an answer. But she hadn't intended them to be—she respected that this was his choice to make, and as she'd promised, simply told him what she thought. What she saw. He could not see quite what she could, but he acknowledged that she was not deceiving him, and he knew there was merit in her words. Perhaps... perhaps what passed as his feelings were enough. Perhaps he did not need to be anything he was not, even for the one purpose that had eaten away at him since Cyrus revealed that undoing his Rite was a live option.
But to know that for sure... he would have to speak to someone else.
Though he gave as little outward sign of it as ever, his thoughts had been... troubled, for the last few days. It wasn't difficult to ascertain why—the discussion of the 'cure' for Tranquility was what had done it.
Cure.
As though he were diseased.
In a way, perhaps he was.
His Tranquility had certainly been something of a problem for him in the past, when it came to matters more personal than professional. His inability to feel in the same way others did no doubt presented some limitations in his work as Spymaster as well, though he believed he adequately compensated for them in other ways. And he just as surely could not deny that it had given him many advantages: he was never shaken, never in doubt, and his decisions—even the quick ones—were always rational. Measured, and more often than not optimal given the situation. He was very, very good at what he did. There was no point in false modesty.
Unfortunately, his thoughts, always so clear, were clouded now, no doubt because of the part of him that remembered what it was like to be otherwise, and the part that wasn't quite perfectly Tranquil, a thread of connection to the Fade remaining. He still dreamed, after all.
“You are moving your wrist too much. The motion you want is a controlled arc, not a snap or flick." With a small motion, Rilien loosed one of the daggers in his sleeve from its holster and slid it down to his hand, raising his arm and tossing deftly. The blade spun end-over-end, thudding point-first into the center of the target he'd set up against the tower wall. “You are strong enough to do this without exerting so much effort. The force should come primarily from your back and shoulder, not your hand."
Lowering his arm, he tucked it back into the opposite sleeve and slid his eyes to Estella. “Try again."
She nodded, exhaling a controlled breath through her nose and reaching down to the small brace of short throwing daggers at her waist. He'd taught her a little bit of a lot over their time together, and a lot of some things in particular, but she'd never protested that. Perhaps she understood that versatility would serve her better than specialization, or perhaps she lacked the confidence to believe she could succeed at being a specialist. In either case, she never seemed to mind trying something new.
Estella emptied the brace into the target—or around it, in some cases. About three-quarters of the knives hit somewhere on the hay bale and stuck, a marked improvement over how she'd been doing when they started this morning. Of those, few wandered too close to where his own had struck dead-center, but there weren't many on the very edges, either. Her mouth pulled into a very familiar dissatisfied frown, and she jogged over to the target to pull the knives out, sliding hers back into their places before tugging several times at the one he'd thrown to try and pull it free.
The task took some doing, but she managed it, and returned, handing it to him hilt-first. "Is everything okay?" she asked. It would have been sudden, but she'd looked a little bit like she wanted to say something to him for the last hour or so. "You seem a little... distracted. For you, anyway. And then I thought maybe I knew why."
She probably did—Estella was sharp, better at reading his microexpressions than anyone but Lucien at this point, and the options were limited. No doubt she'd drawn the connection easily. Rilien considered his answer, then shook his head slightly. “I do not know."
It was absurd, really. Whatever else he may or may not have been at any given time, Rilien always knew himself to be capable of functioning. Of being what she would consider merely 'okay.' And yet now his thoughts wandered, enough that it was quite clearly affecting his instructional methods. Enough that she'd felt the need to ask.
Estella's brows drew together; she bit her lip. It was clearly not the response she'd expected. But then she pulled in a deep breath, and smiled. "Well... then how about you come with me for a bit and we'll see if we can figure it out?" Unbuckling the brace of knives, she racked it where it belonged, apparently not inclined to continue the lesson regardless, and gestured with a hand for him to follow.
When he did, she led them both outside of the tower, over the bailey grounds, and then even further, until they were on the bridge leading away from Skyhold entirely. Eventually they made it down to the lakeshore, but she moved them even past that, until they came to the ledge of one of the mountain's many sheer cliff faces. This one looked out over other parts of the range below, the mountainsides green still with late summer foliage, a glimmering ribbon below no doubt the river that began back up at the lake and wound its way down the other side.
She stopped a few feet from the edge, settling herself on the ground. "Khari and I found this place on a run," she said, leaning back and bracing her weight on the heels of her hands. "The fresh air helps me think, and there's no one around to hear what we're saying."
Rilien stared at the vista for some amount of time—he didn't keep track of just how much. The air did indeed smell nicer than that inside Skyhold, where many people and animals lived in often-close proximity to one another. Seeing the logic in it, he settled himself beside Estella, crossing his legs beneath him and setting his hands on his knees. Even at this time of year, the breeze was bracing, slightly chill against the warmth of the day. The contrast was not unpleasant.
Not unpleasant was almost the highest compliment he could give.
That thought brought him back to his conundrum. As she had not yet spoken further, he could only assume that Estella was waiting for him to elaborate on his earlier statement, and though it was difficult, he wanted to do so. Perhaps because, while she might come to him for advice on what logic demanded in some situation or another... he could think of few people better to tell him what was right in a situation about right. About feelings. About anything warmer than the chill water of tranquility allowed him to feel. He was numb to a great deal.
“I am not sure what to do." The words were quiet. “I do not know whether it would be better, to be rid of my tranquility, or to remain as I am."
She nodded, apparently having been expecting something along those lines. "I don't really know the answer to that either," she confessed, "but I'd like to help if I can. What's the most logical argument in favor of going through with the reversal?"
“There are things I do not fully understand as I am." The first part of his answer was immediate. Rilien let his eyes wander along the uneven line of the river in the valley below, tracing its course down towards sea level. This one emptied into the ocean near Jader, but it was little more than a trickle by the time it got so far. “Things that, in some sense, it would be useful for a Spymaster to know. I am not always able to predict with accuracy what the emotions of others will allow them to do. I cannot... empathize. Place myself in the position of another person and assume the outcomes would be even remotely similar. This damages my predictive capacity and is a shortcoming that I consistently must work around."
Of course, that was far from the entirety of it, but the second part did not have such an easy explanation, such obvious relevance. “Also... being as I am has... done damage. It has hurt people I have no desire to harm. It may have lost me the greatest gift I ever received. I am under no illusion that undoing my Rite will repair what damage I have done, but it may prevent me from making such mistakes in the future. From hurting others."
Estella was silent, shifting her position so that she was sitting more upright and her hands were loosely folded in her lap. The breeze stirred her ponytail, still a bit sweat-slick from being put through her paces earlier in the day. "And what are the arguments in favor of staying the way you are right now?"
“Being tranquil affords me considerable advantages in what I do." Rilien closed his eyes, letting one whole breath pass before he opened them again. “My judgement is most often clear even when that belonging to others is clouded by emotional considerations. I am able to put aside what limited feelings I possess in the interest of the most logical, efficient decision. I can ignore more pain than most people because it does not cause me panic or fear. The fact that I do not easily empathize with others allows me to be ruthless. That is perhaps not a very desirable quality on its own, but it is a necessary counterbalance to the idealism of the people I have taken it upon myself to assist."
It felt more difficult than it should have been, to move his eyes from the scene in front of him to her face, but he did. For once, Rilien had no idea what he was going to see there, and that was... unpleasant. He could not imagine what he would do if he saw something that had once been common for him—horror, or disgust, or pity. He had never laid out his ways of thinking, his shortcomings, in such stark terms for anyone before. People tended to build into his presumed thoughts ones that really were not there. Ones that would make him more like everyone else. They tended to think that he was really just like them, somewhere internal, that his stoniness was a lack of expression, not a deeper lack.
But it was. This was the way he thought, the way he made his decisions. The cut and dry assessment of advantages and disadvantages, professionally. And the occasional unwelcome, disturbing thought of a more personal nature.
But Estella met his eyes with not a bit of any of that on her face. No pity, no revulsion, no fear or horror. Instead, she smiled slightly. "I think you're selling yourself a little short, Rilien." She paused, tilting her head. "Or maybe you just think too much of the rest of us, I'm not sure which. But look." She shuffled a bit closer, so as to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with him, hers warm from sunlight and solid from years of conditioning. Most of which was, at base, his doing. "Everyone does damage sometimes, whether they have all the usual emotions all the time or not. That's just part of being a person living in a world with other people."
She tipped her head slightly sideways, resting the side of her cheek on his shoulder. "I think I know what you're talking about specifically, and I can't really give you an answer because I'm not the right person for that. All I can tell you is what I know. Maybe it will be relevant to your decision, and maybe it won't but... will you listen when I explain it?"
Rilien was admittedly not used to this much physical proximity to others—others rarely dared or bothered. It was... there was an uncomfortable twinge in his chest, but he had no desire to move away, and so he didn't. Unsure what his voice would sound like if he spoke, he simply nodded instead. He'd always listen to anything she found important enough to say.
"I think you're wonderful," Estella said, no trace of uncertainty or hesitation in the words. "Exactly the way you are, right now. I've always thought that, and you've done nothing but give me even more reasons as I got to know you." Shifting slightly, she pulled in a deep breath, her arm pressing a little more firmly into his as her lungs expanded. "I will wholeheartedly support you in whichever decision you make, but I don't want you to choose to do this because you believe that you're somehow inadequate as you are now. You're not."
Her eyes fell shut. "When we first met, I wasn't sure if I was going to be in Kirkwall the next day or if I was going to sneak away in the night. The Lions confused me. I thought their kindness couldn't possibly be real. That they had to be lying, because no one ever gave that much without expecting something in return. I didn't know what it was going to be, but I was afraid. waiting for the other shoe to fall the whole time." In her lap, her hands curled into loose fists.
"But you... you were just what I needed. You didn't try to tell me that I'd do better or be better if only I tried. You didn't have any expectations, and you never once made your words any gentler to spare my feelings. You just told me what I was doing wrong, and how to fix it. And when I still couldn't, you didn't coddle me or get frustrated and give up, even though I was always waiting for you to. All you wanted me to do was keep going." Consciously, she relaxed her hands.
Her next breath was a little uneven. "I know now. That you feel things. Nothing you say can convince me that you don't, because I've seen it. I know what it's like when someone's only pretending to care about me. You've never once pretended anything, not to me. And that... that saved me, Rilien. You did. Your steadiness, your... unimpeachable honesty. That was exactly what I needed. And I've relied on you so many times for just that. For the part of you that sees right to the heart of things, with logic and ruthlessness and all of it. But also... also for the part of you that cares. Because you could be anywhere. You could be doing anything, almost. Maker knows I've never met anyone as capable as you. But you're here, and helping us. Helping me. And if anyone's ever told you that what you feel, the way you feel, isn't enough... then—then fuck them. Anyone who thinks that doesn't deserve you anyway."
For an interminable, distended moment, Rilien simply stared at her. The signs of emotion were there, the uneven breathing, the slight tremble he thought he could feel. It was almost incomprehensible to him that she should feel such things for his sake, on his behalf. But in another way, it wasn't so difficult to understand at all.
He swallowed, the motion curiously difficult, as though there were something lodged in the back of his throat. Reaching up, he laid an hand on her head, stroking his fingers back until his palm rested on her crown. It was warm. Just like everything about her.
“Thank you." Her words were not an answer. But she hadn't intended them to be—she respected that this was his choice to make, and as she'd promised, simply told him what she thought. What she saw. He could not see quite what she could, but he acknowledged that she was not deceiving him, and he knew there was merit in her words. Perhaps... perhaps what passed as his feelings were enough. Perhaps he did not need to be anything he was not, even for the one purpose that had eaten away at him since Cyrus revealed that undoing his Rite was a live option.
But to know that for sure... he would have to speak to someone else.