"Yes." As much as he's not looking forward to this, there's a relief in directness. "So. When we were at Dirthamen, trading memories. I received one of Ellie's. Joel's death. And I thought you should know that I did, under the circumstances." Since she was in it; since he saw that memory from 19-year-old Ellie's point of view.
After the briefest pause, he adds, "We do not have to ... You do not need to explain anything to me you do not wish to. I saw something that was not meant for me to see, something I did not have context for. But it felt unfair, that you shouldn't know."
Abby had thought it might be something along those lines but that doesn't stop what he says from hitting her hard. Not just any old memory, huh. The memory. That fucking night...
She wonders, perversely, if he saw it all play out from her perspective. Pressed into the ground, a knee on her back, writhing and spitting and cursing and crying.
She's gone quiet and stiff. It takes her a moment to come back, from the cabin.
"Thanks for telling me," is brusque. He very easily could have kept it to himself and didn't necessarily have to tell her about any of it. After a moment she adds, "Does this change anything between us?"
The two of them, her and Vanya, aren't best friends or anything, but they are colleagues. They work together and Abby's always thought well of him. If he's decided he wants to avoid her from now on that's... It's something she wants to know now rather than finding out later on. She doesn't look especially happy about it. Her jaw is rigid.
"It doesn't," he says, instantly and without hesitation. "I think ... I don't know how many of my memories others among our number received. But I can think of more than one that I'd be sorry someone else experienced, especially without context." A pause, then quieter: "One moment in time does not define anyone, for good or ill. At least I think so."
He's not averse to hearing more from her, if she wants to talk about it. But it's nothing he thinks he's owed, and if she wants to leave it there, his answer to her question isn't contingent on them discussing it further.
He does add: "I would be sorry, if you felt you had to avoid me or act differently, now. We know one another today, in Kirkwall, and our pasts do not change that."
She makes herself watch him, gauging any reaction, and seems to find it satisfactory judging by the way she relaxes by careful degrees. One hand comes up, fingers touching at her jaw where it hinges, pressing in gently, working on a lingering soreness.
"Thank you." It slips out. She looks awkward, clearly caught out by what he's saying. It's kind. Offering not to judge her, because he doesn't know all the details, probably the best reaction anybody has ever had to this situation.
Abby sighs. She adds quietly, "It's not like I would have wanted to avoid you or anything."
But she would have, if she had to, for any reason. The meaning is clear.
His expression warms a little, almost imperceptible in its particulars, but clear enough for someone even as familiar with his demeanor as Abby. "I haven't so many friendly relationships in Riftwatch that I am inclined to be extravagant in throwing them away," is, in fact, a joke in delivery (if somewhat true in content). Less of a joke, though, when he adds: "I trust you. It is not something to be undone that way, in a moment."
He's known before now that being friendly with both Abby and Ellie has meant navigating the bad blood between them. If he knows a little more of why, now ... it's still only a little. For him, it doesn't truly change the situation much. He's as relieved as she is that this needn't shift how they interact.
She looks at him then and a smile flashes across her face for seconds, a quirk of her lips. Exhaling, releasing tension, she says, "Thanks. I trust you too."
Perhaps that's why it feels necessary to add a little more, not to excuse the action but rather to explain it. That same awkwardness from before has returned. Abby doesn't usually tell people this; she's choosing words carefully. "I wasn't trying to hurt her. She got caught in the middle of it. She wasn't supposed to be there."
But she was. Abby doesn't think she'll ever forget it.
"It seems like it must have been." It doesn't take more context than he has to gather at least that much. "She did not tell me many details, but it was clear that was not the beginning or the end of your stories. Yours or hers." He doesn't mind hearing more, if she feels moved to share it. But he's also sympathetic to the way one event can lead to another in a way that seems nearly inevitable at the time but disastrous in hindsight. And the world they come from seems especially unforgiving.
He's right in that the world they come from seems unforgiving. What happened between her and Ellie could have happened to anybody else, and probably has. A tale as old as time, right? Eye for an eye. Maybe it isn't that complicated after all.
"He killed one of mine," she says, "And I couldn't let it go. Had to get even. I did, but then she had to too."
And Vanya can undoubtedly imagine how hard it snowballed out of control.
He nods; when sketched that broadly, it's certainly not hard to understand. "It's hard to let go, when it's that personal. Or even when it isn't, sometimes." One could argue that the entire Mage-Templar war was he killed one of mine multiplied out across countries.
"It had to be jarring, for you both to end up here," he adds, muted but sympathetic all the same. What might have felt like more of a fresh start for either of them.
That encounter feels like it happened a long time ago, and it did. Abby has been here for two years and a lot has changed. She sighs, rubbing her neck. Where her hand cups her skin is not too far from the jagged scar on her shoulder where Ellie stabbed her in the lowtown marketplace. "But... now I'm glad she's here. It means I didn't dream it."
Her life before this one was real, it happened. Ellie witnessed it. "You guys are all great. But you don't know what it was like to come here from that. She does." That means something. At first Abby didn't care, aggressively, but she holds onto that strange point of familiarity now. She thinks that she might even need it.
"I can understand that." He imagines it must be a different order of magnitude, for rifters. But he remembers the strange comfort of finding Benevenuta here, when he first joined, the strange reassurance of someone who had known what his life looked like years before the war. (Wars.) "I imagine the little glimpse many of us got did not really ... living there must be an entirely different thing. Even the Fereldens who saw the Fifth Blight, it was a year or two only. I would think coming here would have been. An adjustment."
He looks briefly sheepish, then, hearing his own words and feeling their insufficiency. He wants to extend empathy, but he's not sure he hasn't overstepped. She can almost see him resisting the knee-jerk impulse to apologize.
Yeah, and it makes her smile a little bit. "Sorta," isn't her way of helping him out of what he just said. "Sounds crazy to put it like this, considering everything, but it's a lot safer here, so it hasn't all been terrible. But it has been hard to adjust.
"Where are you from?" She doesn't actually know this about Vanya, and a flash of embarrassment makes her voice a bit softer, almost hesitant.
He doesn't seem even slightly offended. "Nevarra City, originally. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I suppose the place you're a child always leaves a mark on you. I don't think I left the country at all until ... maybe 12 years ago?" It feels longer, but it isn't, or not by much.
It seems like he might stop there, but after a moment, he adds: "You know, it's ... I didn't think about how different Nevarra's culture can be until I left it. I mean, it's nothing as different as rifters have to navigate, but there is still a lot that feels strange here in the Marches. Or in Ferelden or Orlais." He's learned to roll with a lot of it, but it doesn't mean it feels instinctive yet. Possibly ever.
"Where is that in relation to Cumberland?" She has a vague sense of where Nevarra is on a map: to the west of here and slightly north. She frowns, remembering. Going to the College of Magi was not a long trip from Kirkwall, but the atmosphere was entirely different. Its city must be the capital, right?
"Did you come here alone?"
She hasn't thought to ask these questions of the locals before.
"More or less due north from Cumberland. I spent more time in Cumberland overall, probably, I was stationed there starting when I was fairly young. But Nevarra City wasn't so far I never went back. My parents are still there." A brief stab of guilt at how long it's been since they heard from him, but set aside for now.
"I did come to Kirkwall alone, yes. But I'd been part of the Inquisition before, back at Skyhold, so I knew some of the people here by reputation or in passing." A pause. She didn't ask, but he feels compelled to add: "I wanted to help stop Corypheus. I thought I could do more good here."
Oh, well. That's far more noble than falling out of a rift, catching a bad case of shard in the palm and having to stick around or die painfully, huh. Abby feels abruptly humbled by this. She says, "We're lucky to have you." It strikes her that she's never asked the others their motivations for being here, had been assuming that, like any war, people were just doing as they were told, waiting for it to all be over.
May as well voice that.
"I was with the Washington Liberation Front back home," she explains, "We were at war with this... weird cult group that wanted control of the same area as we did, so we hunted them down and killed a lot of them. They did the same to us. It wasn't about doing good."
Abby doesn't know when this became embarrassing and hard to talk about. She pauses.
"I didn't give a shit at the time. I didn't care, I was just doing a job. And I thought I was using them for information, it was so stupid."
He's not entirely sure, if the organization were to be polled, "lucky to have him" would be a universal feeling (beyond the overall sense that there are too few members to willingly wish one away). But it feels rude to dispute an observation that's kindly meant, so he lets it pass.
Instead, a bit softer, he says, "I don't know how much you know about the Mage-Templar War, but I can understand that. I mean." He exhales. "It's complicated, I don't have to get into it, but I just mean to say that ... I was in a war I wasn't proud of, before this one. Risking my life to save the world from an actual monster isn't easier, but it's certainly more straightforward."
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He's made her nervous. She's not gonna walk around with him and talk about how she is and how he is and pretend something isn't wrong.
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After the briefest pause, he adds, "We do not have to ... You do not need to explain anything to me you do not wish to. I saw something that was not meant for me to see, something I did not have context for. But it felt unfair, that you shouldn't know."
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She wonders, perversely, if he saw it all play out from her perspective. Pressed into the ground, a knee on her back, writhing and spitting and cursing and crying.
She's gone quiet and stiff. It takes her a moment to come back, from the cabin.
"Thanks for telling me," is brusque. He very easily could have kept it to himself and didn't necessarily have to tell her about any of it. After a moment she adds, "Does this change anything between us?"
The two of them, her and Vanya, aren't best friends or anything, but they are colleagues. They work together and Abby's always thought well of him. If he's decided he wants to avoid her from now on that's... It's something she wants to know now rather than finding out later on. She doesn't look especially happy about it. Her jaw is rigid.
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He's not averse to hearing more from her, if she wants to talk about it. But it's nothing he thinks he's owed, and if she wants to leave it there, his answer to her question isn't contingent on them discussing it further.
He does add: "I would be sorry, if you felt you had to avoid me or act differently, now. We know one another today, in Kirkwall, and our pasts do not change that."
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"Thank you." It slips out. She looks awkward, clearly caught out by what he's saying. It's kind. Offering not to judge her, because he doesn't know all the details, probably the best reaction anybody has ever had to this situation.
Abby sighs. She adds quietly, "It's not like I would have wanted to avoid you or anything."
But she would have, if she had to, for any reason. The meaning is clear.
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He's known before now that being friendly with both Abby and Ellie has meant navigating the bad blood between them. If he knows a little more of why, now ... it's still only a little. For him, it doesn't truly change the situation much. He's as relieved as she is that this needn't shift how they interact.
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Perhaps that's why it feels necessary to add a little more, not to excuse the action but rather to explain it. That same awkwardness from before has returned. Abby doesn't usually tell people this; she's choosing words carefully. "I wasn't trying to hurt her. She got caught in the middle of it. She wasn't supposed to be there."
But she was. Abby doesn't think she'll ever forget it.
Her brow furrows. "It's... complicated."
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He's right in that the world they come from seems unforgiving. What happened between her and Ellie could have happened to anybody else, and probably has. A tale as old as time, right? Eye for an eye. Maybe it isn't that complicated after all.
"He killed one of mine," she says, "And I couldn't let it go. Had to get even. I did, but then she had to too."
And Vanya can undoubtedly imagine how hard it snowballed out of control.
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"It had to be jarring, for you both to end up here," he adds, muted but sympathetic all the same. What might have felt like more of a fresh start for either of them.
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That encounter feels like it happened a long time ago, and it did. Abby has been here for two years and a lot has changed. She sighs, rubbing her neck. Where her hand cups her skin is not too far from the jagged scar on her shoulder where Ellie stabbed her in the lowtown marketplace. "But... now I'm glad she's here. It means I didn't dream it."
Her life before this one was real, it happened. Ellie witnessed it. "You guys are all great. But you don't know what it was like to come here from that. She does." That means something. At first Abby didn't care, aggressively, but she holds onto that strange point of familiarity now. She thinks that she might even need it.
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He looks briefly sheepish, then, hearing his own words and feeling their insufficiency. He wants to extend empathy, but he's not sure he hasn't overstepped. She can almost see him resisting the knee-jerk impulse to apologize.
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"Where are you from?" She doesn't actually know this about Vanya, and a flash of embarrassment makes her voice a bit softer, almost hesitant.
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It seems like he might stop there, but after a moment, he adds: "You know, it's ... I didn't think about how different Nevarra's culture can be until I left it. I mean, it's nothing as different as rifters have to navigate, but there is still a lot that feels strange here in the Marches. Or in Ferelden or Orlais." He's learned to roll with a lot of it, but it doesn't mean it feels instinctive yet. Possibly ever.
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"Did you come here alone?"
She hasn't thought to ask these questions of the locals before.
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"I did come to Kirkwall alone, yes. But I'd been part of the Inquisition before, back at Skyhold, so I knew some of the people here by reputation or in passing." A pause. She didn't ask, but he feels compelled to add: "I wanted to help stop Corypheus. I thought I could do more good here."
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May as well voice that.
"I was with the Washington Liberation Front back home," she explains, "We were at war with this... weird cult group that wanted control of the same area as we did, so we hunted them down and killed a lot of them. They did the same to us. It wasn't about doing good."
Abby doesn't know when this became embarrassing and hard to talk about. She pauses.
"I didn't give a shit at the time. I didn't care, I was just doing a job. And I thought I was using them for information, it was so stupid."
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Instead, a bit softer, he says, "I don't know how much you know about the Mage-Templar War, but I can understand that. I mean." He exhales. "It's complicated, I don't have to get into it, but I just mean to say that ... I was in a war I wasn't proud of, before this one. Risking my life to save the world from an actual monster isn't easier, but it's certainly more straightforward."