The corner of his mouth flickers. It’s not an outright smile, more of a small muscle spasm, but at least it’s the memory of a smile. (They had, once upon a time, talked and joked and it had felt comfortable. Not strained, not the way they’re now searching for multiple layers and nested motives. But at least he’s not trapping her in mirror dimensions and she’s not trying to rip his entrails out so, hey, that’s progress.)
“Riftwatch is efficient; its members won’t spare time for fools, but you’re not a fool, so they’ll be friendly and collaborative for the most part. The locals are… less so. They’re very mistrustful of magic, and to a certain extent, rifters.” The two of them are in the same boat in that regard.
But can she or can’t she read minds? That’s the question. And it’s a huge risk to leave it unanswered. Stephen’s presumably the only person in all of Thedas who knows what Wanda Maximoff was once capable of, and therefore so far the only person she can discuss this without preamble.
So he considers. It’s curiosity and risk assessment. Where would she sit on the blood magic scale, to an untrained local eye?
Stephen makes a decision.
This is atrocious, he hates to do it, to bare his throat to someone who could so efficiently tear it out, but after another moment he pulls up one of the chairs and sits down at the library table. Literally meeting her halfway. “Try me,” he says. His voice is a little stiff, expression still guarded, but: “Better than you first doing it accidentally on some baker down in Kirkwall market.”
At least this is with permission. Consent. (Trust, or the fledgling beginnings of it.) So, with that, Stephen consciously lets his mental barriers drop: the ones he had learned to put up against demonic possession, against her; he goes against every last self-protective instinct and opens his mind to Wanda instead.
no subject
“Riftwatch is efficient; its members won’t spare time for fools, but you’re not a fool, so they’ll be friendly and collaborative for the most part. The locals are… less so. They’re very mistrustful of magic, and to a certain extent, rifters.” The two of them are in the same boat in that regard.
But can she or can’t she read minds? That’s the question. And it’s a huge risk to leave it unanswered. Stephen’s presumably the only person in all of Thedas who knows what Wanda Maximoff was once capable of, and therefore so far the only person she can discuss this without preamble.
So he considers. It’s curiosity and risk assessment. Where would she sit on the blood magic scale, to an untrained local eye?
Stephen makes a decision.
This is atrocious, he hates to do it, to bare his throat to someone who could so efficiently tear it out, but after another moment he pulls up one of the chairs and sits down at the library table. Literally meeting her halfway. “Try me,” he says. His voice is a little stiff, expression still guarded, but: “Better than you first doing it accidentally on some baker down in Kirkwall market.”
At least this is with permission. Consent. (Trust, or the fledgling beginnings of it.) So, with that, Stephen consciously lets his mental barriers drop: the ones he had learned to put up against demonic possession, against her; he goes against every last self-protective instinct and opens his mind to Wanda instead.
A door, cracked ajar.