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saturdaynightspecialpresentation · 1 year ago

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Poor Things

First of all, Emma Stone’s performance is as good as everybody is saying. Stone takes a very difficult role that easily could have gone very, very wrong and makes it look like the most effortless thing in the world.

I have been looking at the reviews, good and bad, and I think that the minority of people who didn’t vibe with this movie had slightly skewed expectations.

Poor Things starts out at Tetsuo The Iron Man levels of fucked up, but by the end it has dropped to Edward Scissor hands levels of fucked up. This is probably plenty of weirdness for the average movie-goer, but true connoisseurs of mondo cinema should calibrate their expectations.

Second, apparently this is being talked up as a sort of feminist coming of age fable chronicling an everywoman’s sexual awakening and liberation, and it really isn’t that, and I think if you are hoping for that you’ll come away disappointed.

Better, I think, to look at it as an autistic coming of age fable and power fantasy, which I think it does a tremendous job at.

Very minor spoilers under the cut; really, this is more an essay about what I thought the film was about than a review, my review would be that it's somehow simultaneously a feel-good crowd-pleaser AND a movie where an adult woman with the brain of a toddler stabs the eyes out of a corpse with a scalpel and then plays with its penis (I wasn't kidding with the Tetsuo comparison)

Honestly now that I've actually written that out I have maybe underestimated how impressive it is that Yorgos Lanthimos made a movie where that happens on screen but somehow basically everybody loves the movie.

In terms of sex, we do watch Bella discover sex, but she very quickly comes to a conclusion about her relationship with it which never once changes throughout the rest of the movie:

She likes it, she likes it more with an attractive partner, she is utterly lacking in any kind of sexual jealousy, and she doesn't attach too much more to it than that.

This is an odd comparison, but Bella treats sex the way Joey did on Friends. A man acting this way is a sitcom cliche, but a woman acting the same way…

This is a film that is really, really not interested in the real-world consequences of this kind of sex; in fact, given that a pregnancy is the inciting incident of the film, it came off a little weird to me that the possibility of a pregnancy or STD was never really addressed (unless there was a line or two that I missed while I was in the bathroom).

For the most part, though, I was able to get past it by just thinking of it as a heightened world. The sets and settings are extremely artificial, and ultimately I figured, “Hey, if I can buy this kind of thing as harmless and fun in a sitcom, I can buy it in this other kind of heightened reality.

I will say, I don't think Bella is meant to be an every-woman, and that there's textual support for this in the film itself.

All of the women Bella deals with in some way question her approach to sex, making it clear, sometimes through explicit dialog, other times more reading between the lines, that her approach to sex is not for them.

If there’s any particularly feminist message in the film, it’s that when confronted with Bella’s bizarre approach to the world, none of the women get angry at her, and most of the men she meets do.

But Bella’s relationships with other women aren’t really the meat of the film, that’s more about her relationship with men, and particularly the way that they feel, deep in their bones, that they should have control over any woman that they have sex with.

Duncan Wedderburn, when he first discovers Bella and convinces her to go away with him, thinks he is tricking and seducing a beautiful naif who he can use and then discard when he tires of her. Their relationship disintegrates as it becomes clear that Bella hasn’t been tricked at all; she wanted exactly what he was able to give, a chance to sow her wild oats by having some no strings attached sex with an attractive, likable person in an exciting foreign city.

This makes Wedderburn increasingly unhappy and unhinged (He says at one point that he has become what he hates, a “grasping succubus”) much to Bella’s growing consternation. She has no idea why he can’t simply be happy having sex with her and otherwise letting her do what she wants, and he is so committed to a certain vision of gender roles that he can’t even begin to explain it, he can only lash out in frustration.

And that I think is the meatier part of the film; Bella doesn’t so much flout social expectations as she is simply totally unaware that they exist.

Honestly I think the character isn’t so much coded as autistic as she just is autistic. Bella is a woman who is basically totally unaware of social expectations and constantly taken aback to discover that they exist.

More than that, she has to figure out a way to work around the fact that many of the people who become most enraged by her are also so totally lacking in self-reflection, and view their social situation as so normal, so self-evidently obvious that they cannot explain to her why it is she has made them angry. They suddenly fly into rages that clearly perplex Bella and which they themselves don’t even bother to explain, because they regard their own ideas as self-evident.

Bella is an idealized autistic hero; personally as outlandish as she is I don’t really think the film expects us to take the side of anybody else, and I think there are some fairly subtle and accurate bits of autistic behavior on her part.

She responds to life as a kind of social experiment, attempting to parse out a set of logical rules and, especially in the latter parts of the movie, she often justifies her actions with a perfectly sensible internal logic that the emotional men in her life can’t parse out. Late in the film, when she and Wedderburn are destitute, she prostitutes herself for 30 francs, and with implacable logic, explains the two reasons that Wedderburn ought to be quite happy she has done so: First, her john was much worse at sex than Wedderburn, which ought to satisfy his ego, and second, they now have 30 francs and the potential to earn more.

Wedderburn does not appreciate her logical approach.

Another thing that strikes me as very true is that Bella has a very odd theory of mind for other people. There’s a scene where, traumatized by the unspeakable poverty and suffering she sees in Alexandria, she puts all of Wedderburn’s money in a box and rushes out to give it to the poor. Unfortunately the ship is leaving, but two port attendants tell her that they will be staying on the island, and would be happy to deliver a package. She tells them that she has a big box filled with money and they should give it to the island’s poor, and they agree to do so. Now, the film never tells us one way or another whether they keep their word; but Bella herself retains an iron certainty that they did exactly what she asked them to. Now, we know Bella understands what lying and deceit are, because we’ve seen her trick people before, like when she chloroforms McCandles to run away with Wedderburn. But it never once occurs to her that these sailors might do something similar. Call it paradoxical, but that kind of thinking is common in autistic people.

There’s also the scene where the self-professed cynic Harry Astley shows her the suffering in Alexandria; he admits, when he sees how terribly it has affected her, that he didn’t tell her simply because he thought it was the truth of the world, but that her attitude made him angry, and he wanted to hurt her. A very common part of the autistic coming of age is the slow realization that not everything people tell you is part of a dispassionate, scientific search for the truth.

There’s also a scene in a whorehouse in which Bella argues that it would make more sense to have the women decide who is to sleep with the johns, so that then the john could be more confident that the girl was attracted to him, which he must doubt if he chooses. You can tell I’m autistic because I immediately had the thought, “Well, but the johns would probably be worried that nobody would choose them.”

One of Bella’s fellow working girls instead tells her, “Some of them like the fact that we don’t have a choice”.

#poor things #movie review #autism #cw violence #I'm actually not sure what kind of content warning I should put for the corpse stabbing

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mercysought · 1 day ago

Note

"You are note a fool." // for Orla

disco elysium / letters // accepting // @extravagantrook

a spiritual sequel to this :’)

Everyone had told them that the fade and dreaming would be simple, just as easy as closing one’s eyes and floating. At best, a world where the warmth of the sun never grew cold, at worse a place that made your insides burn.

Orla had assumed that she would be able to know - to understand - that she would be in it.

To be able to have a realisation that the space that the body now occupied was made out of the same thing as the waking world. Because this was a world that she had not belonged in. Intrinsically, Orla had believed (erroneously) that they would know it just as easily as breathing.

She had not dreamed or had nightmares, proper ones, since her younger years and her memory was a fickle mistress all the same. It held and withheld without reason or explanation and Orla had not deemed it worth to ask further. To peel the layers left only blood behind, after all. This was not closing one’s eyes, no floating. No burning.

There had only been four words: ‘Your work is done.’

The clicking of mechanical switches. The turning of the lights, the buzzing of magic and the smell of ozone. The fall. The deep, inky darkness. The murmuring of the crowd as they settle upon seats. The ruffling of heavy fabric curtains. Then—

ACT III Scene 1.

The lights in the sky are like smeared lines of paint in a dark, vanished black background. Bright, shiny and yet incapable of holding her attention; not when the warm figure with sown edges in lines of painted tears and hand sown lines look to her.

[ORLA] I’m not like you. I can’t make sense of half this shit and I’m terrified of the other half. Solas is right - about this at least. I’m just a blind piece in a game I don’t fucking get, a fool or worse. I’m a good enough obstacle, but what the fuck do I do when I know when it’s just a matter of time before he betrays me?

The snort that the other has at her question makes her eyes attempt to find theirs. Their face is blurred in shades of red and purple, sown at odd angels like a picture that attempts to refine itself. A grin upright twisting into a frown with each breath taken. Two naked figures without a face, hanging towards a dark abyss of dragged lights.

[ASHA] You’re not a fool.

A warm hand atop hers. A lyrium brand that hums in resonance and soothes itself under cheap linen that covers only part of her body. Shoulder against shoulder. A soft hum as they continue talking and Orla tries her best to believe their words. To truly believe their words. One expert to another.

[ASHA] You’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.

ACT I Scene 1.

The smell of old oil paint and varnish is intense. The wall is solid and flat behind the gloved hands. She is hiding. Hidden, that she knows. There are distant voices but all that is heard in the rattling in her skull is hear erratic heartbeat. The attempt at keeping her breathing smooth.

She knows she should be moving. Out of this hiding spot. A dark shadow against bright red walls, just on the edge of an impossibly brightly lit room. Three long shadows grow as the voices increase, but not her understanding. Gloved hands press harder against the wall.

A familiar perfume and the sound of a scraper. The burning smell of the start of a fire.

ACT II Scene 1.

Three children. Not older than twelve. Someone talks to Orla, but she can only see the eyes of those children looking back to her, terrified.

[THE MASTER] Dispose of them.

It scratches in the back of her mind, the chain pulled and pushed.

[THE MAGEKILLER] No.

The chains are pulled tighter. Hot as iron until her eyes burn. The lyrium on her neck, back and stomach pierce through muscle and bone. Skewering her, twisting muscle, cracking teeth in a closed jaw. This is a familiar pain, but in her lungs there is something that implodes, the ribs that rip both inwards and outwards. A blood vessel in her head that makes the struggling breath louder than the scratching, comfortable voice. It continues until she is done with the last ropes and the bodies are sinking into the darkness.

The sound of the horse. The dashing through the rain. The weight of her body against mud. The blood is heavy on her cloak as she travels and she is taken. The blood is heavier when she enters a dim house.

The sound of the horse. The dashing through the rain. The weight of her body against mud. Voices asking her questions. The heaviest when she climbs over corpses to the large oak doors. There is a sick pleasure that sings in her body when the blood feels the lightest: when she picks up the cane from the floor and the pool of blood. When she is called an animal. When the begging starts.

ACT I Scene 2. Scene 1.

The smell of oil is heavy and the gallery is as silent as a grave in the late hour. These walls were familiar. The frames and their detail familiar too though just in passing.

Red walls press against the back of her hand. The shadows are a deep, almost black tone of brown and they spread across the floor like an oil painting that had been attempted to be varnished before it had been fully dry. The taller figure points to the back. The other two shadows follow the direction - away from where she hid, into a wall with more and more paintings. Weapons in hands.

A hand extended, cigarette between fingers, a thin envelope with matches inside and a scraper.

[DAMIANO] THEY ARE IN THERE—

The match is lit, racked against the thin strip. Breathing accelerates. She knows what it is behind the walls that the shadows point towards. It is the reason why they had both agreed to meet in this particular gallery, time and time and time again. The shadows grow darker, breathing accelerating but body remaining still. There is a pulsing within her body that roars against the arresting of muscles, the fear that locks jaw and eyes alike on the shadows forms. That keeps her hidden.

There is silence coming from behind the walls. You need to do something, the twisted expression in a frozen body begs. But the mouth does not move. Not a single muscle does and the shadows grow only darker.

ACT I Scene 3. Scene 1.

Minrathous is a large city and Orla knows only part of it. This part is one that she knows better than most, perhaps. The many stairs up to the gallery. The address of the Magister that owns it, the face and hands of the magekiller that they own. The distance that they had stood when they first met overlooking paintings of angels that look down upon them both dressed in the black robes that souls such as them are provided: leather, utilitarian, easy to wipe blood from.

She would know his voice anywhere. In the small apartment, hole in the wall, space that she had come to call home in Minrathous. Against the bright red walls. In the hand that aided her smuggle people in and out of this building outside of the city - away for anyone that might look for them. He had called her crazy and she had called him crazy in return, but it still had been both of their hands that had unlatched the mechanisms that unlocked the holes in the walls that allowed people to come in and out.

Waiting for a signal.

But he stands before the painting of judging angels, with the same distance that she would usually stand. Two guards side by side. Both hands behind his back.

[DAMIANO, a man with slicked back black hair, mustache. Wears expensive leather armour with a side cape of a rich purple with golden embroidery. Thin face with an easy charming smile. Warm brown, sharp eyes] They are in there.

[MAGISTER BATARIS’ SLAVE HUNTER 1] What should we do with them?

Another match. Another raking through the scraper. The smell of burning.

[DAMIANO] Take them back. Or kill them,

There is a flickering of match being racked against a scraper. The pull of a cigarette. The scent of tobacco filling the space where the sickening and heavy scent of varnish was before.

[DAMIANO] It’s all the same to me.

This had been his idea. He had had to convince her.

There is no light but the dimmed enchantments that were left to showcase the paintings. That and the bright torches that the two guards carried that made their shadows so long. Orla barely has a shadow. A shadow besides what she feels like she is herself in that moment. So close against those same red walls that she might become a smudge of that same shade. Body frozen in the moment as she hears the steps drag across the floor, over creaking wood boards towards those same switches. Her body cold. Beyond her there is a child that looks at her from the frame of the painting - rosy cheeks, dark eyes, perfectly combed hair. Rich bright blue cloak over a white blouse.

A half parted book, a single hand that is lit by the brighter lights that pour from the figures. Pointing to them. She smiles - either in mocking Orla or in spurring her. It does neither. In the wild horse of a heart in her chest that screamed and lips that remained still. In her body that burnt but in hands that remained cold. The growing panic. The thought of what would happen to her when she was caught.

When word made its way back to her own master. ‘Do something’ is a voice that is barely heard as her body seeps into the shadows once more, from the path she took to sneak in - the same locks she had known.

Out once more into the city and the night that she barely knew in a city that felt all the stranger and mean now.

ACT II Scene 2. Scene 1.

Three children. Two with the face of the master, the third with the mousy brown hair. The eldest, no older than twelve stands in the front in defiance, the youngest is barely a smudge in the back, its elven form wrapped by its mother’s hands who whispered softly. The eyes of the older woman as it whispered soothing nothings to the child pull all colours from the space; all light atop her face, expression bleached of all but a silent anger and a plea.

An older woman’s whose face she cannot really see through the muddled vision talks to her. Begs her. Orla counts. Makes a list. And balances. There is a scratching and a burning and while her left hand fans the flames the right one attempts desperately to put it out.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] Dispose of them.

There is a turning of the stomach at the bodiless voice. At the strength of the command. Of the weight of a hanging hand and the flinch that takes over a body. The assassin’s head tilts to the side, left gloved hand pressing against the budding headache and the stomach that threatens to unravel.

The sniffling. The crying. She could hear it as well as see their shadows even as the eyes closed. The defiance on the face of the child closest to her. The desperation on the voice of the woman closest to her. Let them go. Turn around and lose track of them.

[THE MAGEKILLER] No.

Eyes remain closed and the breathing of the woman closest to her itches. Her eyes barely open when Orla is turning towards the small, worn down smudge of brown.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] No? I see how it is. I’ve been too lenient with you, of late. Maybe you forgot what happens when you push outside of the gifts I already give you. The kindness I have shown for your faltering and failures? We all know what comfort does to dogs,

Steps stop, even as muscle pulls and peels from salt burnt wooden floors. The white flecks on the floor as bright as the terror in the eyes of the woman that had held the youngest child.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] It makes them lazy.

The screech that is pulled as an engine is forced from one state to the next; it rears its ugly head and it pulls at her mind. Teeth sink into her own flesh until it is painted copper all the way down to her stomach. Until the sloshing she hears is not from her own body but from the sinking rope and stone and the soft shimmering of strands down into the salty depths. The curtains are pulled again but it is the wind that rips through, the salt on her tongue as the last shadow sinks into the darkness.

The leather gloves are peeled from her shaking hands, thrown in the pockets of the heavy suit. The lightest of meals she had eaten but a few hours ago follows suit with the bodies. The blood swallowed mixed with bile, catching dark strands of hair as she leans over the pier. With the strings loosened the flooding of awareness pushes through the body.

A guttural noise kept at bay with teeth that clamped shut. What now, magekiller? What now, perrepatae? Both naked hands pressing agains the bloody dark shirt. The heavy cloak and the rain above. The horse behind her neighs. And she pulls herself up from the slippery stones, cleaning her mouth with the back of her hand, flickering the sick to the floor.

The ride is misery. There unpaved roads turn into muddy traps to the horse but she rides the animal hard until landing on the beautiful stones in front of the Magister’s large doors.

The inside is dimly lit but for the shades that haunt the place just as she did. Dragging blood, mud - the assassin is not a shadow but instead the very physical aspect of one’s worse impulses. Someone tries to stop her from moving up the circular grand stairs.

They call her name and another larger figure approaches. Blocking her path. This shadow of a person stands before two bright smudges and she feels her hands shake. What now?

[ELVEN SLAVE 2] Is there a problem?

The shade of an animal. The rain pours down outside and it weights still down her cloak. When her eyes lift to look at the smudges in front of her, blocking her path, she doesn’t see anything other than the fluttering of hair, sinking into the depths. That bright white of scelera looking back at her in defiance, another in terror, in begging.

One hand presses against her shoulder. Blood sprays but she cannot get darker and she will not be stopped now. There are so many screams and the ghosts around her scatter - the thin lines of lyrium that had been sunk into her body push into muscle and into the bone, they gnaw at her like teeth and the soft song lightens the rain, the screams. It bleaches it all with a soft, gleaming blue that emboldens hands, pushes her through.

The bodies that didn’t move away from her quickly enough. The ones that fall as her blades carve a path. The steps creak under her step, under the weight, until she reaches the large door.

Inside there are five figures too. Two slaves. An older woman. A teenage daughter with a book and a hand that falls to the side pointing towards the fith and last figure. A blank face - a face that is quickly covered by the shadow that she is. The cane that had been held against him fit comfortably in her hand in a glimpse of a second.

The room is red at her fifth breath. The bright blue piercing through even the darkest and thickets parts of her armour. The cutting of the air. The figures that were on the floor were a mangle of colour and texture - an oil painting varnished too soon and attempted to be cleaned in a panic.

The teeth in the palm of her gloved hand, the ivory tainted in iron and red. And a smile, a laugh of madness and relief when she remembers the begging from a mouth that didn’t resemble it any longer.

ACT III Scene 2. Scene 1.

The small apartment is more akin to a broken into closet that could be called a home. The walls were tall and held no colour. Even in the darkest of night, it was just a continuation of the abyss. The assassin’s favourite part of the city had always been the view, the odd angle that one could see the Magisterium, the lights projected upon the cloudy sky. It was impossible to see the stars in Minrathous - but this was close.

Two assassins sit one beside the other. Both naked except for the thin excuse for a sheet and a think mattress dragged to an opening that could be called a window.

[THE MAGEKILLER] I’m not like you—

The conversation feels familiar. The words half die on her tongue. But not quite, the hesitance is an opening - however.

[LE MAT] You saw Varric. In the Lighthouse.

From the words her eyes flash towards them. The figure resting with their shoulder against her but eyes that don’t quite look at her. There is a spotlight above them both.

The assassin’s mouth hangs half opened.

[THE MAGEKILLER] It—

Yes. But I never told you.

How had Asha known? Who had known? Who had she told? There had been care to hide the scratching at the back of her mind, the illusions and awful little games. The thinness of the familiar clouding the edges of her eyes. The animal that crawled back in to the comfort of familiar chains.

[THE MAGEKILLER] It’s not him. Wasn’t—

The words stumble. The magekiller looks for their eyes. One cloudy and another brown. In the spotlight, however, there is nothing but the deep cast shadows that are the abyss. They don’t look at her. A dramatic carving of their lips in a half formed snarl is enough.

[LE MAT] You’re not a fool. You should have told me.

The words are familiar. The space crumbles around them both but the light remains. The disappointment burns, burns in the pit of her stomach and on the edges of her eyes.

[THE MAGEKILLER] I didn’t know.

[LE MAT] I deserved to say goodbye, more than you. It was because of you that he died. He trusted you and your gut instinct to do the right thing, and in that moment you crumbled, you got scared of what it might mean if Varric was wrong. With this insistent and blind search to become someone better you ended up getting him killed!

The room around them is gone. There is only the cold. The cold on her hands, on the pit of her stomach, on the anticipation that everything will always crumble - regardless of where the axle swung. One way or another, she was bound to loose.

The foolishness was not in the being tricked, it was in the attempt to change the outcome.

The figure that stands before her. Le Mat has their mask removed. Asha’s face is wrong in the way that the light casts the shadows down on them. The milky eye looks at her too intently and too bright - similar and familiar with the brands within her body and they burn with a hatred that twisted their face into something - someone that she never could come to recognise.

[LE MAT] The hunt was always a lost cause. You knew this and you still let him try. You should have told him to take the shot.

ACT II Scene 2. Scene 3.

The hovel was a known safe house to one that knew where to look, what to search for. To one that knew how to tell which veins still pulsed with life and which had been cut due to necessity. By the piers where escape would be easy to the boats heading South, there are houses that have been carved into and down the cliffs.

It is on some of those salt hovels that they were found. Three children, two elf-blooded and one human. Two women, one elven who clutched a small child around her arms in the back of the small room with half prepared food. A human, who stood by Orla after she had barged into the door after entrance had been denied.

The job was simple: dispose of whoever you find in the room. The assassin had expected it to be a hideout for spies working within the Bataris household, smugglers that worked in the docs, perhaps preparations for an assassin to make their way through the Magister’s family.

She had not expected to be sent to clean up after bastards.

The elven woman looks to her through tears of anger and fear and she whispers to the small thin child that everything would be alright. The older human child standing just behind the human woman looked at her in defiance as if to dare her to enter further.

[HUMAN WOMAN] We are not a threat to the Magister. You don’t have to do this.

The children were still frozen in space. The smell was intense, a mix of salt, sweat and half baked beans that now burnt in the small flame. The wind cannot come in and yet the place was deadly cold even in the light of day - one could only wonder the pains they were going through, waiting for the ship to arrive and take them away.

The child, the youngest, wrapped in the arms of the mother in the distance looked to her with large, wide eyes. Scared out of its mind, the body a simple vessel. She knows what that is like and when she looks to the face of the worn elven woman with fear in her veins, looking to Orla with a terrified light behind large brown eyes, she can only see the glinting of her own mother’s eyes.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] Dispose of them.

The anger she feels in the pit of her stomach is kept only within the pit of her stomach. Was that what she was now? A child killer for a man that could not face its responsabilities? Was she to be the hand that fixed responsibilities such as these? The magekiller’s eyes glance from the woman in the end of the room, to the older child, to the human mother. A step is taken back with her lips curled.

[THE MAGEKILLER] No.

The confusion of the woman face is clear, though it is not to her that the magekiller. Please she hears but barely. The pleading on the breaking of brows, the tension on the oldest child’s hand holding onto the table the had just been preparing for the meal. The two other children whimper, gleaming tears through the small light that pours from the cracks in the rock on the ceiling. The elven mother continues, as if speaking it quicker, holding the child tighter it might save her from the fate that the magister had bestowed upon them.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] No? I see how it is. This is what leniency leads to. Insubordination.

It would not be the first punishment for refusal that Orla would face, but it would be taken over this. A child killer, his child killer. They were too young to even be mages and even if they were, they would not have been a danger for her. A simple assassin would have done the job, but it wasn’t about simplicity. The cruelty was the point. Orla glances once more to the children’s faces and starts to turn.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] If I say that you bite, you bite.

The first signs are her head growing light. The dryness of the mouth and the shortness of breath. Stiffing muscles that Orla pushes through. This was not the first time, it would not be the last that she struggled against the direct pulling of strings.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] I say you jump, you fucking jump.

There is urgency in the way that she holds onto the handle of the door, attempts to push it only to find strength lacking. A heavy blanket that is wrapped around her arms like a jacket with tied sleeves. Teeth sink into her cheek, the pain allowing for another push. The creaking of hinges that feels both from the door in front of her but inside of her skull. The breath she’d been holding is pulled deeper into her body. Her eyes burn and she feels the balance start to go.

The darkness of the corridor that she had been seeking so desperately never reaches her.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] If I say play dead, you ask how realistic to make it.

Locked out but able to see it all. Statis was dangerous, both to the original person casting it but especially to the one that was to experience it. More, dangerous when the body and mind in statis was forced to work through familiar actions.

Left hand releases the handle of the door. The handles of her daggers know her palms though they can only know the warmth of her hands and not the intent that carries them.

It is over in less than five minutes and the deaths are swift. Thankfully. The humans first, in two steps. The elf blooded child doesn’t even get up from the chair, one of its major veins sliced and slipping into sleep in but a few seconds. The elven mother next, sparing her the sight of the murder of her last and smallest child.

She didn’t need to activate the lyrium brands. And they aren’t activated.

The bodies are prepared. Dragged across the dark corridor. If anyone sees the scene no one stops the figure dressed in leather. Ropes tied, heavy anchors. A part of the pier that would take the bodies deeper into sea. The bodies are light against her body as she raises them and watches them disappear into the darkness of the waters.

The youngest child is the last and it feels impossibly light on her arms as she cradles it. Holding the bloody head and the stone on the other hand. Her knees bend down to releases it. The brown hair swirls in the water. The forehead cleared from the blood and fear and it too disappears in the darkness.

When the darkness settles and the whistling of the wind returns, the darkness is allowed to show itself akin to a mirror - allowing her own reflection to appear. It is then only when she feels the stones against her gloved hands. The cold in her body and the warmth and heaviness of the blood against her armour. The blood caked in her hair and chin. The burns of robe against the side of leather as she had worked in similar movements. The sound of her ragged breathing makes her sick.

The smell of blood and iron. The light that comes from the clouds that roll over the sky above with the spattering of rain. Her throat burns as the small meal she had reacts to the treatment the body had gone through. The wounds in her chewed through cheeks making her bite a sob as her head bows against the pier. Tears falling from effort.

What now? The horse neighs behind her as gloves are pulled from her hands, thrown in the pockets of her cloak. She looks at the strong beast, feeling its beady eyes reflect her own. A terrible idea pierces through her mind with a clarity that feels like a divine command like no other. A demand that her body and the heavens must see through shaking hands. There are no thoughts in her mind as she cleans the vomit with the back of her hand, lifting from where she had stood.

They didn’t want to be this type of animal anymore.

The storm grows as she rides back to the mansion. The wind and rain falling on her head but unable to clean the blood or the thoughts that put her on a single thought: a throughline. She was not done killing.

It is that thought that curses her mind as she slams the door open. A half made shadow with nothing but a growing madness behind quiet, brown eyes and a bloody mess. She drags herself over expensive rugs and ancient woods, blank eyes beyond the slaves that look at her with horror at what they would need to clean.

Orla doesn’t see them. The assassin moves to the right, quiet on her feet despite the dragging of the bloody shadow. Eyes on the marble stone stair.

[ELVEN SLAVE 1 - SELYN, a thin elven woman with a sickly frame. Dressed neatly exactly like any of the slaves that are allowed to work within the household. Her brows are knit in concern] Mistress? The Master is busy, he’s not-

The woman stands on the side. Expecting the assassin to stop. The assassin continues, walking a single step beyond.

[ELVEN SLAVE 1 - SELYN] Mistress Orla?

The growing concern. In the voice and in the white of widening eyes. Seeking help. Another approaches, standing in her path. More figures walk behind them, up and down the stairs. Distant talking, music coming from upstairs.

[ELVEN SLAVE 2 - MARZIO, a built elven man, wears the identifiers that mark him as a bodyguard] Is there a problem?

I don’t want to be this type of animal anymore. The assassin’s eyes move from the stairs, the large door at the top. Down to Marzio in front of her. He had a family. A little one. Orla had held him, congratulated him and his wife. There were fifteen other people between the assassin and the door. Half of them house slaves. The other half contractors to set up a large chandelier in the center of the room.

She didn’t need to activate the lyrium brands. But she does anyway.

Three stabbings, all three in the chest drop Marzio. Left hand slices Selyn’s throat before she can scream.

Stepping over the gurgling corpse. Orla starts to climb the door. Three contractors do not turn before she gets to them. Two of them drop down the stairs, the last falls over the railing. The screaming starts. By the time she gets to the top, the bottom of her cloak - muddy and bloody is more red than brown.

The house is quiet. Those that had escaped left the large door to the mansion open. Orla’s hands push open the door to the Magister’s parlor.

Five people inside. The magister is already standing, eyes wide in a panic upon seeing the state of the mage killer. It is too late. It is too late to all of them. It is too late for her too.

Five people. The two slaves that attempted to escape but could not escape her daggers or her understanding of their threat. A teenage daughter with a book that ends up blood. It is a swift death too that welcomes her. Beady eyes in surprise, distant now, resting against her large comfortable chair - soaking it with her blood. A mother whose chest is covered in holes from the sharpened edges of her daggers as she stood in front of the magister.

A cane in her hands and the whistling that rises as her eyes are blind with rage, her mouth pressed until teeth feel close to shattering. The air in the room is siphoned by the lyrium, flickering out the flames from the mage’s hands. The staff kicked from an assassin too strong to be natural. To be good.

It is wrong how good it feels to feel the weight of the broken raven in the cane against a soft body. The screams and the panic as she lifts the cane and throws it down once more. The cracking of bones. The turning of the cane to break a jaw the same way that he had broken hers.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] STOP!

The gurgling through the words make her lift the cane once more. The blade piercing through cheek and the a loud screech of pain rock the very foundations of the mansion. The tearing of teeth. Those same teeth that she will later collect one by one in a daze once everything comes to a still.

The magister starts crawling towards the open doors, but it is too late for any of them. The magekiller holds onto his ankle, dragging him closer, away from the place that he thinks will save him. There is no one coming to save him. No one to save any of them. Turning her blades, feeling the warmth of her body she feels him attempting to crawl into her mind once more but there is nothing to hold onto.

There is only a wild animal on the loose with rage and appetite for one one thing: to feel his teeth in her hands like rotten seeds.

[MAGISTER BATARIS] STOP! YOU DAMNED ANIMAL!

He sobbed and it feels like digging into the lyrium brands, making them sing louder, press deeper into her muscle. Fuel to an already roaring inferno.

The assassin doesn’t stop. Not until there is nothing to soften her blow. Only when the object of her hatred is barely recognised as anything close to human. Until Magister Bataris can only resemble the monster that he was within.

She collects the teeth. Feels them in her hands. It doesn’t feel the way she thought. And yet it makes her laugh, laugh at this scene that plays before her. This dream that she will surely be pulled away from once the adrenaline wears out. The relief pulling at the long held breath from her lungs into a laugh that tastes like pure madness. This shadow of a person that feels nothing but dread, dread and relief all in one.

ACT III Scene 3. Scene 1.

When Orla looks out of her small makeshift window the lights could almost be compared to shooting stars. Varric had told her about them because Orla had never really seen one. There was something to be said about never looking up; but the more she thought the more she considered that even in Ventus where there wasn’t so much light emanating from the city that she was unlikely to be able to see them.

The Magisterium looms still but it is a distant concern. Not when compared to the chipped paint in the window sills from the humidity and lack of care. Not when compared to the company that stands just beside her, the warmth of their body still resting against her. The words are easy and they familiar.

[THE MAGEKILLER] I’m not like you—

The words die in her mouth. The sound of the city below sounds wrong.

[LE MAT] You saw Varric. In the Lighthouse.

The mattress is paper thin but it is warmed all the same by both of their presence. The shapes of their bodies had still been there. The scene, however, was wrong. The whole thing.

Asha’s hair is bright red and it feels like she can see their edges. The shadows are cast too deeply against their darkened eye. Her mouth hangs open as the lights from the Magisterium rear their ugly head towards them both. The next line follows, ‘You-’

[LE MAT] You’re not a fool. You should have told me.

I deserved it more than you. To see him. To say goodbye. Orla holds their hand with her left. The right moves to the side of their face that she knows is tender, that causes pain. The figure doesn’t move, it just looks to her - waiting. Waiting for her to say the lines.

Brown eyes look into the bright light that pools from the window. There is no city, there is just the blinding, bleached light and them both - and the abyss beyond.

The assassin has no other choice but to look in the perfectly drawn face of Asha. The thought that this might be the last time she might be able to see them, hear their voice, and it never truly being them. A trick, another trick of the fade, a trick of magic. A nightmare, just another one of the same iteration of a nightmare.

Another punishment.

One hand moves to hold the hand. One expert to another, one assassin to another.

[THE MAGEKILLER] You did. And I should have. Maybe it wasn’t him, but it could have been. And I still didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to think- To think I was going crazy. Seeing things. That my mind was being messed with again. I was afraid I’d… I’d lose you.

That it might mean that he could see how much of a danger of being around her, close to her truly was. Worse, that she would make a jest of such a thing. Or that they would take pity, that it was a method of her ailing mind to attempt to heal over something traumatic. In the end it had been fear that had kept that information, especially as she had started noticing discrepancies in behavior and a terrible familiar shadow lingering in her mind like a blanket.

[ORLA] Varric made his choice. Long before we ever got to the ritual. I couldn’t have changed his mind, even if I had wanted to. You know this, because if the roles had been changed, you’d have done the same thing I did.

[ORLA] You have a good heart without trying and I just wish that was me. You don’t need to try, you just do. And even if I know I will need to struggle with it until I drop dead, I still want to do it. And that’s because of you. So, even if you decide to no longer be part of my life... I get it. I’m still going to do it.

She could lie down and quit, or she could keep trying to see through this and, perhaps foolishly, attempt to find a way out. Her cold hands rest against theirs, and Orla wants to hold them so badly but she knows this is not Asha. She would hate the thought of holding them and feel nothing but the cold aspect of stone resting against her. That was not Asha. It could never be Asha.

Varric had seen a future that didn’t involve her being this awful shadow of an animal. Asha saw that too. If they thought that Solas might be worth of redemption despite it all, why should she not be worthy of the same?

[ORLA] Because I know you’d do the same thing.

There was no other path to take.

“There’s no other way to go but forward, hm, kid?”

These particular set of stairs are an unwelcome sight. As is the holder of the voice.

The assassin, the magekiller - Orla - looks back all the same. The choice is made to not correct him, that she was not a kid, not his at least. What point was there in correcting a ghost, or worse, whatever this place’s version of Varric was allowed to exist.

Varric looked well. Better than she had ever seen him in the Lighthouse. Perhaps there was a chance still that this was indeed him, some measure of him in this prison of hers. Or perhaps this too was another peeling of the curtain. Orla stands on the same spot that Varric had been before, but there is no Solas to stab her and there is no ritual to stop. There is only a dead silence of her failure: her failure to stop the ritual in a manner to avoid harm, her failure to keep Varric safe.

She stood in the light of the knowledge that she had done and respected what Varric had wanted - all the way to the end. Orla closes her eyes, tilting her head down.

“No. There never is.” she stands there, as if waiting. And Varric walks up those same fated steps. Her hands are gloved and it always surprised her what she did look like in the dreams, what her mind or the space chose to keep and what to let go. Brown eyes focus on the dwarf “You try to hold onto something too tightly and it just turns to shit.”

“Poetic.” he snorts, nodding with a breath that comes and goes from nowhere.

“The lesson was a bit too on the nose.”

Whatever it is, perhaps even spirit if dwarfs could become so, it really looked like him. She wasn’t sure if that made her angry or sad, her body was too fatigued to feel much at all but at least he was clear in her vision. One last time. That was all she could ask.

“You can put it in one of your books, though.” she offers with a crook of her brow, pulling the black, sweaty hair back. Barely a hint of a smile on her face “Free of charge.”

He laughs and her lip quivers, eyes moving away as she hears something. Just beyond the edge of the stone that made it Varric’s last stand, something shifts in the fade and voices can be heard. Orla tries to keep herself from feeling hopeful when those voices are heard. One more trick of this fucking place.

“Maybe we’ll leave the writing up to you this time around.”

Orla glances to him, seeing him watching the fade shimmer and start to tear and the voices grow louder. Varric looks to her for a reply but the words feel jumbled. It has felt like a lifetime of torture only to be allowed a small moment of goodbye. It is not what she wished, but it is what they all would get.

“Sounds like one of your worst ideas.”

Perhaps a flickering of a mind. Perhaps she too was dying. Not yet. She could suffer, but she wasn’t dead yet.

Rook!

“Yeah, well. You’re not a fool, got your head screwed on straight enough. I look forward to seeing how it will turn out, anyway.” he holds the side of her arm, pushing her towards the same spot that Solas had stood once. She looks back to him and in that moment there is the roaring of the ritual once more, the sky above them roaring. And Varric smiles “One step at the time, Rook.”

#extravagantrook #orla “rook” mercar ( muses )#raven received ( meme replies )#abuse tw #death tw #vomiting tw #teeth tw #slavery tw #( there is just so many trigger warnings in this baby )#( alright anyway I WILL write at some point them meeting again but this was already so ungodly long so I'm putting a pin in it )#( and leaving that for a LATER POINT. ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY FOR STABBING )#( anyway something you said: knife as love language )#orla “rook” mercar ( headcanon )#( this goes in the tag )

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