Falling in step with him is easy—most everyone is taller than she is, and John's strides are not so lengthy as some she's grown accustomed to keeping pace with, particularly given the obvious—and it doesn't have to be remarkable that she doesn't let go of his hand. After all, she doesn't know where they're going; she ventures out this way almost never; she is small and easily lost.
It could be only those very reasonable things.
“J—Commander Flint was delivered a painting from a rift,” she says, which less a non sequitur than it seems while not, actually, being the point. “Of me.” Not belonging to her, precisely, but she is inarguably its subject. “Did you see it?”
She makes no assumption in either direction; she is feeling out a context.
In turn, John considers the context of what she is telling him. This seemingly unrelated piece of information coupled with the unusual request—she isn't bringing this up for any idle reason.
But she'll unfurl whatever it is she's working towards at her own pace.
"I did not."
Their pace is slowed by necessity; it is cold, and there are patches of ice to be avoided. Emlyn's is not so far, but Petra doesn't seem in a hurry. John steers them from the center of the road, keeps hold of her hand as they ascend the stairs from the docks to the first market place.
It is no bad thing for it to have been so private; this part might have been a little easier, if it had not. The two things can be true, and Petrana lets them sit alongside one another as she considers what else to say. What else she will say. That she must say something, having made this request of him.
Eventually, skirting the ice and holding onto John, she says, “My husband painted it.”
(She has not worn her wedding ring in a long time. Perhaps since even before John Silver had come to Kirkwall; certainly long before they became so close.)
“I recognized the details; that he had imagined it, and painted from memory. He edited our history. Removed from the skyline behind my gardens the tower that I was thrown from.” It isn't the only thing he changed about that painting, but she has thought on it more than once since she first set eyes on it.
Removed from the skyline behind my gardens the tower that I was thrown from.
Petrana is telling him something. About a painting, about her husband, about a fiction he made her into. She is telling him part of a story with the assumption he knows the piece she is speaking past.
The way he slows might be attributed to the navigation of the streets, ice and all. But his expression has shifted, and there a few misplaced beats of silence before he asks, "I hadn't known that."
But it clarifies certain things for John. His hand shifts slightly in hers, grip resettling. There is no question about what she's implied. People are not thrown from towers only to survive the fall.
"Was it him?" is a question only necessary so John can decide what he feels about the painting itself, how best to respond to her going forward. Did this man kill her and absolve himself of it?
A flicker of honest surprise in her expression speaks to the closeness that they had been building, that the dreams they shared had wound tighter still; if she had been thinking on it directly, then she would have known that. Of course she would have known that — she had never told him so. Yet it had seemed so natural, absorbed in the impact of I've a cousin Veda, to assume. The stumble is not permitted to linger, though, in that question —
Melys rises in her memory, the smell of Kirkwall's underbelly suddenly mingled with the acrid smell of bile not sufficiently covered by the cloying burn of incense, how her remaining arm had fit around Petrana's waist as she had repeated he killed me into her shoulder again and again.
“He placed me there,” she says, at length, her fingers curled around his own. “He called what I had done — what I had attempted to do — treason.” A woman might merely flee her husband; an empress who attempts to do so with her sovereign lord's heir is no private, family concern.
Did he mean for her death? She has never wondered it in so many words. His hands were not clean in it.
Were John's balance a more certain thing, he'd put his arm around her. As it stands, she is obliged to wait until they've made it through Emlyn's doors for John to do anything with that impulse.
"I'm truly sorry," is paltry. John has nothing else to offer beyond it, though his tone is deeply sincere. It is useless to express any intent towards vengeance; the man is not here, may never be here. What use is it to offer?
Beyond this place, she is gone. That is something for John to consider later. At present, his focus shouldn't stray from what she's telling him. This momentary stumble should be jarring, but it feels more like a minor wrinkle, something easily smoothed between them.
As they cross over from one side of the street to another, John's chin lifting to the establishment at the corner, he asks, "Is it the reminder the painting brought?"
They are not pretending she isn't somehow upset, even if John will not say as much directly. The pair of them have a particular gift for diving what has been left unsaid; John has never been concerned about whether or not Petrana will take his meaning.
Petrana is still deciding precisely how she's going to answer that as they bustle into his chosen venue for the rest of their evening (how much of that evening? —she is in no great rush to return to the Gallows, just yet), and the initial noise and warmth of it buys her a little more time to do so.
“He took our living child,” the specificity of it is as clean as a knife, “out of my arms. And I believe that she has been brought to Thedas. I cannot know what she has — been told — what happened, after,”
after.
Petrana does not mean, as a child. He knows her better; she would not be here, if that were the case. She died, and her world kept turning without her.
There is an element of her grief that is utterly foreign to him. (Is it? Did he not dream of a child, a son, is it so far removed—) But Petra is so very precise in her explanation; it is not difficult for John to understand her exact meaning.
"You think she will expect the version of you from the painting."
A fair concern. John knows something of it, to be painted into a role and then trapped there.
"Here," is quieter, unnecessary as Emlyn's place comes into view. They have hold of each other. When he shifts, Petra comes along with him.
A brief consideration: Emlyn's place is not so rough as others in Kirkwall, but it is rough and the floor is sticky in spots and the tables are all some manner of rickety. It is a foregone conclusion that they will ascend the stairs, to the more tolerable and less crowded balcony.
Upon the balcony, as they find their seats, Petra says — softer, wearier, “I cannot know the version of me she expects. I would not have credited the way that my husband appears to have remembered me, the...it is not what I expected, and I do not know what it means. My mother was her lady governess, and I know well what she will have said of me.”
Different things, by her tone.
“Her feelings were far less ambiguous. And the way in which I — I know that it would have been impolitic for my husband to shame me for a traitor in public. He need not remember me warmly to our daughter simply to protect his reputation.”
All in all: there are a lot of possibilities, but probably none of them resemble the tired, frustrated woman sitting opposite John Silver now.
John's hand comes to rest on the scored wood of the table, palm up and fingers loose in silent invitation to her as he considers the disparate, warped images Petrana is implying.
"Do you think she'll be unable to accept the truth of you?"
Stories are a powerful thing. A man can be fashioned from nothing but secondhand accounts. (John would know. John wears Billy Bones' words, knit them into the truth of himself.) But the heart of the thing—
The person Petra was, who John had the privilege of knowing, would not square with what her daughter would expect. That is the difficulty.
“I worry it will not be welcome,” she says, picking her way through it with great care. “That she may have no desire to know — that I may be burdensome to her, as memory, and unwelcome in fact. And if not, then...”
Yes, she wonders.
“He had time with her, John. Time I did not. What am I to tell her? I had never even considered that he might have regretted my death, before the painting. I have always ... he killed me, and he raised her.”
Even if he had not meant to, she thinks it is still true. That she wrestles now with whether or not he had meant to doesn't undo that.
Fuck him catches behind John's teeth, suppressed even though the flash of it shows briefly on his face. Instead—
"You have time now," is a quiet offering, as John's hand turns over on the table, bracing him as he leans in by degrees. "I don't know your daughter, but I can't imagine she would want to cast the opportunity to better know you aside."
Maybe some aspect of this is colored by John finding the idea of Petrana being unwelcome laughable. It still feels accurate. What child wouldn't have some curiosity about a parent long since lost to them?
"Tell her what she asks, to start," he advises, quieter. "There'll be room for the rest after."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
It could be only those very reasonable things.
“J—Commander Flint was delivered a painting from a rift,” she says, which less a non sequitur than it seems while not, actually, being the point. “Of me.” Not belonging to her, precisely, but she is inarguably its subject. “Did you see it?”
She makes no assumption in either direction; she is feeling out a context.
no subject
But she'll unfurl whatever it is she's working towards at her own pace.
"I did not."
Their pace is slowed by necessity; it is cold, and there are patches of ice to be avoided. Emlyn's is not so far, but Petra doesn't seem in a hurry. John steers them from the center of the road, keeps hold of her hand as they ascend the stairs from the docks to the first market place.
no subject
Eventually, skirting the ice and holding onto John, she says, “My husband painted it.”
(She has not worn her wedding ring in a long time. Perhaps since even before John Silver had come to Kirkwall; certainly long before they became so close.)
“I recognized the details; that he had imagined it, and painted from memory. He edited our history. Removed from the skyline behind my gardens the tower that I was thrown from.” It isn't the only thing he changed about that painting, but she has thought on it more than once since she first set eyes on it.
no subject
Petrana is telling him something. About a painting, about her husband, about a fiction he made her into. She is telling him part of a story with the assumption he knows the piece she is speaking past.
The way he slows might be attributed to the navigation of the streets, ice and all. But his expression has shifted, and there a few misplaced beats of silence before he asks, "I hadn't known that."
But it clarifies certain things for John. His hand shifts slightly in hers, grip resettling. There is no question about what she's implied. People are not thrown from towers only to survive the fall.
"Was it him?" is a question only necessary so John can decide what he feels about the painting itself, how best to respond to her going forward. Did this man kill her and absolve himself of it?
no subject
Melys rises in her memory, the smell of Kirkwall's underbelly suddenly mingled with the acrid smell of bile not sufficiently covered by the cloying burn of incense, how her remaining arm had fit around Petrana's waist as she had repeated he killed me into her shoulder again and again.
“He placed me there,” she says, at length, her fingers curled around his own. “He called what I had done — what I had attempted to do — treason.” A woman might merely flee her husband; an empress who attempts to do so with her sovereign lord's heir is no private, family concern.
Did he mean for her death? She has never wondered it in so many words. His hands were not clean in it.
no subject
"I'm truly sorry," is paltry. John has nothing else to offer beyond it, though his tone is deeply sincere. It is useless to express any intent towards vengeance; the man is not here, may never be here. What use is it to offer?
Beyond this place, she is gone. That is something for John to consider later. At present, his focus shouldn't stray from what she's telling him. This momentary stumble should be jarring, but it feels more like a minor wrinkle, something easily smoothed between them.
As they cross over from one side of the street to another, John's chin lifting to the establishment at the corner, he asks, "Is it the reminder the painting brought?"
They are not pretending she isn't somehow upset, even if John will not say as much directly. The pair of them have a particular gift for diving what has been left unsaid; John has never been concerned about whether or not Petrana will take his meaning.
no subject
No,
Petrana is still deciding precisely how she's going to answer that as they bustle into his chosen venue for the rest of their evening (how much of that evening? —she is in no great rush to return to the Gallows, just yet), and the initial noise and warmth of it buys her a little more time to do so.
“He took our living child,” the specificity of it is as clean as a knife, “out of my arms. And I believe that she has been brought to Thedas. I cannot know what she has — been told — what happened, after,”
after.
Petrana does not mean, as a child. He knows her better; she would not be here, if that were the case. She died, and her world kept turning without her.
no subject
"You think she will expect the version of you from the painting."
A fair concern. John knows something of it, to be painted into a role and then trapped there.
"Here," is quieter, unnecessary as Emlyn's place comes into view. They have hold of each other. When he shifts, Petra comes along with him.
A brief consideration: Emlyn's place is not so rough as others in Kirkwall, but it is rough and the floor is sticky in spots and the tables are all some manner of rickety. It is a foregone conclusion that they will ascend the stairs, to the more tolerable and less crowded balcony.
no subject
Different things, by her tone.
“Her feelings were far less ambiguous. And the way in which I — I know that it would have been impolitic for my husband to shame me for a traitor in public. He need not remember me warmly to our daughter simply to protect his reputation.”
All in all: there are a lot of possibilities, but probably none of them resemble the tired, frustrated woman sitting opposite John Silver now.
no subject
"Do you think she'll be unable to accept the truth of you?"
Stories are a powerful thing. A man can be fashioned from nothing but secondhand accounts. (John would know. John wears Billy Bones' words, knit them into the truth of himself.) But the heart of the thing—
The person Petra was, who John had the privilege of knowing, would not square with what her daughter would expect. That is the difficulty.
no subject
Yes, she wonders.
“He had time with her, John. Time I did not. What am I to tell her? I had never even considered that he might have regretted my death, before the painting. I have always ... he killed me, and he raised her.”
Even if he had not meant to, she thinks it is still true. That she wrestles now with whether or not he had meant to doesn't undo that.
no subject
"You have time now," is a quiet offering, as John's hand turns over on the table, bracing him as he leans in by degrees. "I don't know your daughter, but I can't imagine she would want to cast the opportunity to better know you aside."
Maybe some aspect of this is colored by John finding the idea of Petrana being unwelcome laughable. It still feels accurate. What child wouldn't have some curiosity about a parent long since lost to them?
"Tell her what she asks, to start," he advises, quieter. "There'll be room for the rest after."