036 x 630 // winter is coming

[dignity_misery]

[[ooc; AU Info over here and here. Network style responses are fine too.]]

[Her family has always borne Death in their name, dark-eyed and dark-haired, their lands have always been a home for dark secrets. Father had his share, hid them beneath a pleasant smile and a generous nature that could just as easily turn ruthless. Brother Donovan had never done so well to disguise his brutish needs for power and for glory. Perhaps that was why the inheritance had fallen on pretty Carla, disinterested as she was in taking up the task to rule. She had been far more interested in dark secrets, cared not for money but could be found to revel in blood.

Even if it was Donovan who ruled, it was Lady Morir who brought terror and chill everywhere she went. Only the haughty thing who wore the bones of dead at his wrists and his throat disparaged her, he felt confident in his hold on her strings. Confident, but dissatisfied. He was not content to merely hold her attention and fascinations, he needed all the rest as well: body, heart, soul.

And he extracted it, piece by piece.

It has been five years since the Lady Morir last walked in glory, the warnings and tales dried up, except for little whispers of the banshee locked into the darkness. Leave her a ghost in the stories, it was far more palatable than the old realities of her hobbies. Better if her dungeons languish without their mistress. There were no stories told, when she entered the world once more. There were no witnesses, no heralds. She crawled from the darkness out into the night and slipped her way to sanctuary. A year now it's been, a year where winter has never left though it makes its approach once more.

The temple that has housed her sorrow for all these months is a humble place, low ceilings and grim slate walls, small windows that let in only the barest slips of light. It has been quiet here, and she has kept herself hidden from eyes and ears except for those few who still attend to her; a pitiful state for a noblewoman indeed. Even still, from time to time, visitors have appeared with words for her, knives for her. They're disappointed by the reaction they find: an empty woman who would not, perhaps, object to a final rest.

Perhaps she's decided to take it out at sea. She isn't yet certain, but the cold air has reminded her of what a tomb her asylum has come to be. She can't stay here any longer to wallow in the misery. So as the leaves have begun their turn, she makes her plans. She will cross the city to the docks, and if she is not murdered along her path, she will be free.]

AT THE DOOR
[ Before she goes, she feeds a number of old sketches into the fire. Unwilling to take them with her, but unwilling to entrust them to anyone left behind. Those who, perhaps, might be interested in her plans have been informed, but even they are not truly to be trusted. ]

THROUGH THE CITY
[ It's been many years since she was last here. She wonders where her brother's men are hiding, waiting to finally clear her stake to the inheritance with a sword through her. She wonders where Barbet's wraiths are waiting to take hold of her and drag the last of her soul out of her body. It doesn't matter, does it. What comes will come. ]

ON THE DOCK
[ The ship is larger than she remembers it, and she stands staring up at it for a long time, the long length of her turning in the wind as the tide rolls back and forth. There's no need to hurry, she has already been waiting this long. ]

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[dignity_misery]

Carla's eyes did not turn to regard him immediately, gaze still fixed on the ship. Her name was the Iris, a gift left to her by a pirate woman who once hunted for heads with her. Isabela was dead and gone now, a trend amongst those that Carla trusted the most implicitly. She had never known anything different, this was a brutish world of short lives and quick swords. She had never truly intended to carry on this long, but... Barbet had forced it upon her. Now she was here, not truly sure whether she lived or merely haunted this world.

And Dresden observed her through it.

She turned to regard him slowly, her expression heavy-lidded but ultimately empty. A look of exhaustion and desolation, dark-eyes heavily ringed with insomnia. Sleep became elusive to her, when she left her necromancer's manor, whether it was simply heartache or something more, however, was unclear to her.

"He does not rule the sea." It was not, precisely, an answer. Merely the suggestion of an idea.

[harrydresden]

He let her stew for a few moments. Being patient about it until her eyes finally turned to him. It made him shiver a little, that emptiness. She hadn't been getting enough sleep. He could mix a potion but he didn't really think giving her magic against her will would be good for her psyche considering what she'd been through so far.

Really her necromancer was a little man in the grand scheme of things. But necromancers could be seriously dangerous. And he'd really done a job on her. He frowned at her words and glanced out at the water. She was right, the water fell to far greater powers than any man. "True. So you plan on running away?" Somewhere that man couldn't follow. Admittedly it's good to see her outside. No one could live locked up their entire life. But it seemed like quite a leap to take.

[dignity_misery]

She responded, initially, with silence. Something about her expression taking on a little light, even if that light was pain. There was a man who had told her that she couldn't run, that had nowhere left to go. It hadn't been Barbet. It had been someone offering her a hand, and she had slapped it away. There was no help for her, and there was nowhere to run.

"I cannot run from what I am." From what she had become. At least once she had been beautiful and powerful. Even if she had been wicked, she had lived and made her mark upon the world. Now she was nothing more than a heartsick corpse, weighed down by the realities of her frailty. Barbet's dungeons had nearly driven her mad, with only the dead for company and only her lord and master for solace. He had subjugated her, and she felt a constant burning disgust for it. She bore it everywhere with her, it confined her, even in the temple, and even out at sea.

"But you, perhaps, have no obligation to follow me out onto the waves."

[harrydresden]

Stars and stones, he hated it when women looked like that. Like their whole world was shattering. Made him want to go punch the thing that made them feel that way. If Barbet showed up again he might. He was already paying back what the guy had done so their scores were settled. Necromancers didn't get to just walk away anymore.

"No." He agreed and glanced back up at the ship. "But you can become something else," he pointed out. "Life is about choices."

He set his jaw at that. "My word means something." His voice was solid, determined. "Even if I hadn't promised, I'd come." He turned his head and gave her a kinder look.

[dignity_misery]

There was an amount of confusion in her expression, perhaps incredulity. Incredulity that he would bother to keep his word, or that she had his best interest in mind when thinking to free him from it. Loyalty beyond pragmatism confused her still in many ways. Those she obeyed were those who frightened her, who had reached their hands into her soul and torn out pieces for themselves. But it would be a lie to say the concept escaped her completely.

Still. The confusion bled back into pain the longer she thought on the idea.

"Anything I choose will be a lie." She will still remember, and she will still detest herself for her weakness.

[harrydresden]

Her confusion was just as good at making him determined to stick around as her pain was. "You just have to make it 'not' a lie. You live a new way and make that new way define you. Don't give that jackass any power over you. He's already done enough of that." Harry gave her a stern look.

[dignity_misery]

"I long for him." Her voice became softer, eyes lowering. She was ashamed of herself for it, that for all her hate for that man, she still ached for the chains he had provided her, the rulership and certainty. "Perhaps it is my wounded vanity, I was never deprived of something I truly wanted, and I wanted him to love me."

She turned her eyes back towards the ship.

"I could spend an eternity at his side and he would never love me."

[harrydresden]

"Yes well, many people who have been abused feel that way about the jerks who do it, or maybe you're right and you're a little spoiled, seems like both are good reasons to work hard not to think about him." Harry wasn't good at this emotional stuff. He worried he'd just make things worse by stomping all over her emotions like godzilla or whatever it was knights of their land considered godzilla like. Maybe a dragon.

"That's because he only cares about himself. It's not worth your time and suffering My Lady." If she got on that ship he was pretty sure he'd be seasick for the next month.

[dignity_misery]

Her expression pinched irritably, she did hate to think of herself as abused, but her annoyance was an improvement over the mournful gazing out over the water. At least in irritation she felt something, and perhaps that was, in the end, why she had tolerated his company for so long.

She gathered her skirts in one hand as she approached the ship. The vessel was not an overly grand one, it had room for a small crew but could be manned well-enough with one or two. Only one or two of Isabela's men had chosen to remain, lacking anywhere else to go when their captain had been lost to the sea.

"What greater height is there than love?" There was something rhetorical there, self-denigrating. She paused to glance back at him patiently. "What do you deem worth your time and suffering?"

An earnest question from a woman who really doesn't understand how to be human; to be vulnerable, to be weak. There was a great deal to learn.

[harrydresden]

He followed along, eyes scanning the crowd for danger. "You sure it was love?" He asked her although he wasn't looking at her just then. "Because love is totally different from longing."

He paused and looked at her for a moment growing a little more serious. "Keeping the people important to me safe." And he might not mean her necessarily but it was why he was there with her. And he would do terrible things to make sure the people who he cared about and who cared about him were safe. There wasn't hesitation in his answer or in his face. He knew he would do anything he could for them.

[dignity_misery]

Is she sure it was love? Truthfully, no one had asked her that question before. She was a woman who did not believe in love, and perhaps could not experience it in her early years, as narcissistic as she was. For her to use the word at all was taken as a token of her surety. But maybe it was a question that had needed to be asked.

You sure it was love?

"No," she admitted slowly. "I am not certain. But it made the time more bearable to think I was. It makes the pain more bearable to think it was, at least then there's a reason for it." Her eyes settled on him. "Do you understand what I mean?"

[harrydresden]

Well at least she was thinking about it. Most people would have just yelled at him.

He sighed as she looked at him. "Yeah, I think I get it. Lends some sense to the situation at least, eases the pain and makes you more of a martyr. But he's gone now and would you rather lie to yourself? Or would you like to take control of your life and do something positive with it?" Harry could be a little sanctimonious but he had a rough childhood as well and he'd spent a lot of time considering these things.

[dignity_misery]

That pinch again. She didn't like to think of herself as a martyr either, but... it was her objection to being a victim that led her to take so much of the weight on herself. If she took responsibility for her choices, even those that were not choices and where all blame lay with the necromancer, then it was almost as if she could minimize the impact he'd made. But that was a deluded and irrational course to take, the thoughts of a desperate woman trying to find some sense of control and agency over her own life and continually coming up short-handed. Martyr was no better than victim. She didn't want to be defined by this any more.

She would rather take control and do something positive for herself, although the fact someone else was saying it to her, because she hadn't been able to make the change by herself, was a painful fact. Harry Dresden wasn't to first, he was just the one to be there when she was tired enough to listen.

"We'll see." See if she could put her will behind such a change, or if she was just going to throw herself out into the sea a few days from now.

[harrydresden]

Well, that was a better answer than he'd really expected so he didn't give her any more guff about it. Really for a knight he talked back an awful lot. He'd never been good at the whole fealty thing.

"You ever been on a ship like that?" He asked her instead.

[dignity_misery]

"I have, Sir Dresden." A woman of noble blood, and her father's favorite no less. She had been travelling before, and they had most assuredly gone by sea with so much of their land on the coast. She had never realized how much she loved the sea until she was kept beneath the earth. "And I have been aboard this ship before, even if it is a pirate vessel."

[harrydresden]

Harry hadn't. Nothing that big. He'd been on smaller boats. Those big things were the kind of things were you ate stale food and wondered how long it would take to get scurvy. "That's a pirate ship?" He asked after a second, gesturing to it in both interest and wariness.