Logs:Politics, Not Scandal
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| RL Date: 13 October, 2015 |
| Who: Hattie, E'dre, Elaruth, Wroth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: After the Weyr Council, there are drinks, a morose mood and plans for bronzeriders. |
| Where: Council Room, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 26, Month 13, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: N'rov/Mentions, Ebeny/Mentions, N'muir/Mentions, A'ryk/Mentions, M'kris/Mentions, Kyouri/Mentions, R'hin/Mentions, Ali/Mentions, Mirinda/Mentions |
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| It's been a long day by the time a return is made to Fort, the light dim enough for a faint glow to be seen emanating from the weyr that Hattie's family occupies, and yet, when Elaruth makes a careful landing on her ledge, the Weyrwoman appears to be in no hurry to trek inside her weyr and find her weyrmate and child. Instead, she slowly strips her queen's straps away and lets her head inside to the comfort of her own mate, while she turns for the council room. She opens glows along the way, the lamp left unlit, until she reaches the sideboard and pours a generous measure into a heavy glass, then tips an empty one towards E'dre in silent query. E'dre's a step behind Hattie into the councilroom, Wroth's straps laid out near the entrance rather than set at home. He nods his head at Hattie in acceptance of that offer before he moves to slide into a chair. He's too tired to care about the slouch of shoulders and the tilt of his body in the chair. He kicks out his boots and settles them on the chair beside him as he heaves a sigh. "That took everything out of me, I think," he admits to her as he scrubs a hand down his face and then brushes his hair back from his forehead. Hattie is a little clumsy in the way that she lets the empty glass thunk to the tabletop, then sloshes the whiskey into it. She slides it across to him with a little shove, leaving a smudge of spilled alcohol in its wake, and for a half-moment it looks like she might lick it from the table. Not today. Collecting up her own glass, she flops down into her usual seat and begins unbuttoning her jacket with one hand. "At least it was Kyouri," she murmurs. "It's the best outcome we could hope for. I don't know what Ali was thinking with Mirinda." She smirks over the rim of her glass. "Now you really will have to start training N'rov. Soon, potentially." E'dre takes the glass with a murmured, "Thanks." He takes a hearty swig of it that is followed by a grimace to the burn of it down his throat and the fumes that hit his nostrils. "The best outcome we could've hoped for would've been the one in which no one decides to take a life," he grumbles, sipping more cautiously this time at the glass. Mention of N'rov draws a darkening to E'dre's features. "A brownrider training a bronzerider on how to be a Weyrleader? The blasphemy of that," he's too tired to hide his thoughts from Hattie, no matter how petulant and child-like he may seem. "I'll do what I can. I still haven't mended much between us since he went and fucked my weyrmate." He lets that drop into the conversation with little thought as he finishes his glass and sets it on the table. "Assuming you mean beyond R'hin's, from what I've heard we may well all be better off without M'kris." She demonstrates no shame in stating so, the tilt of her glass what must serve for a shrug. "Anyway, Kyouri only works out for us if N'rov is any kind of willing to let Vhaeryth chase again. He needn't be told why you impart anything more than you would to any other wingsecond, not that I believe he's so oblivious as not to notice." Hattie tips her head back and drains a long drink from her glass. "He should notice Kyouri's new status, at any rate," she remarks rather raspily. Only then does she pause before braving what she has previously stepped away from. "Do I assume attraction or flight? In terms of his being in bed with your weyrmate." "I meant in terms of R'hin's death," E'dre explains, shaking his head at Hattie's mention of M'kris, "And killing M'kris, if he is found to be guilty, will serve us no purpose either." He's notably bleak in that delivery, though he taps his glass to indicate he'd like more of that whiskey. "I tapped N'rov to wingsecond with the intention of preparing him for being Weyrleader at Fort," he continues, shifting in his seat to stretch his arms behind him with a grunt. "Because I needed to start looking to our bronzeriders of Fort for such a purpose. None outside of X'vin have made it clear that is their intentions." He waits until he's had more whiskey before he tackles that latter topic. "It was a flight at first and then Ebeny admitted to more after it ended. I don't know," he twitches a shoulder, "I've got to proceed carefully with how I choose to continue to react. Ebeny is our Weyrlingmaster and that along with N'rov as my wingsecond... I never thought politics and my professional life would bleed so heavily into my personal." Hattie's silence on the subject of M'kris' fate may well be enough to convey her disagreement, anything she might have said swallowed down with the last of her drink. "Try being weyrmated to your Weyrleader and turned-on when he gets angry," she drawls, not without sympathy, but lacking in any outright humour, the bottle nudged towards E'dre. "I think you've already made a rather clear statement, not that that's probably what you want to hear. She was here and you were somewhere else. And here you are, now." But then, here she is, now. "If things become too muddied with N'rov, you might not have the chance to train him for anything. ...N'muir and I managed to run a Weyr when hardly speaking. You need not see the Weyrlingmaster at all after the weyrlings have graduated." E'dre shakes his head, taking the time to drink rather than fill the silence with his thoughts. He shifts his feet on the chair beside him, crossing them at the ankle. "I guess I didn't intend that to be as big of a statement as it ended up being," he admits as he cradles the glass against his chest, intent on nursing this refill rather than chugging it down. "I will see her," he answers, frowning down at the glass, "if she'll see me. It was just a fight. People fight." He shakes his head and tips it back against the chair. "I'm distracting us from the obvious reason why we're here," he tells her with a twitch of a smirk at the corner of his lips. "If we push N'rov in the right way, perhaps we can get him installed at Monaco. Then if things go to hell here," he tries to sound light on this subject but the tension of their conversation makes the joke miss its mark, "we have a place to go to." "...People fight," Hattie agrees, in what's not a terribly reassuring way. She's silent for long enough that it might seem she's able to hold her tongue, yet she adds, more quietly, "If you're not careful and you snap at and fight with them both, all you might do is drive them together and against you." There's very little change to her expression as she listens, neither frown nor smile summoned in answer. "...This is my home. All I'm doing right now is protecting this knot for a Fortian queen and hoping to Faranth that Elaruth doesn't rise first and make things murky." It's more candid than she's been about the whole thing thus far. "I won't leave, even when it's not mine. And I don't want N'rov to leave, unless of his own volition and he sees the same advantage we do. Or you." "You've known me long enough to know I'll probably fuck it up. I did with A'ryk in more than one way, didn't I?" E'dre says with some asperity, "If N'rov were to take an advantage here, then all the better. At least he's trained by N'muir and would keep our Weyr functioning as it has been for many turns." He doesn't say anything more on the subject of his leaving, unwilling to make a promise of staying. He takes a few thoughtful sips of his whiskey. "If N'rov were to win leadership at Monaco, that'd cause some gossip - wouldn't it? That'd be two of our own in places of leadership. Such the scandal," he drawls that last with lifted brows aimed at Hattie. "You chose with A'ryk, I've assumed," Hattie replies just about as blandly as she can. "I wonder if you'll choose again?" What she means, she chooses not to elaborate, and instead she leaves her glass behind and collects up Elaruth's straps from where she's dropped them. "Not scandal," is her comment on the latter matter at hand. "Politics." It cannot be said that the wan smile she gives the brownrider is at all a contented one, and in the tall shadows of the room there is something dreadfully unhappy lurking in the depths of her dark gaze. "Goodnight, E'dre." She doesn't look back. E'dre doesn't have much to say in reply to Hattie, meeting her unhappy gaze with his own answering unhappiness. "I'll see you tomorrow," he tells her, the only concrete thing he can think to say as he watches her go. He lingers in the council room, having another glass of whiskey before he gathers up his straps and heads towards his weyr. If he's sleeping on the couch again, he could always claim exhaustion had him fall asleep there, but in reality he just can't quite muster the resolve to face his weyrmate. He falls into a fitful sleep about murder and politics that seems to continue to be the waking nightmare he carries with him onto the next day. |
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