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Library, Sunday

Despite the fact he way or may not have gotten fired on Wednesday, though he pretty sure it'd been a case of not, Face was back behind the desk today. Though in between checking and stacking books, he made a point of scrubbing out the coffee pot.

Just because Barry hadn't been responsible for the island going weird, it didn't mean that the pot was safe.

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Cassandra smiled. Then she realized she was smiling perhaps a bit too much, and she glanced down at the floor as she cleared her throat.

Then she looked back up. "What do you like best?" she asked. "...In your books."

Face scratched his neck as he thought about it. "I like humour." Try to contain your surprise, Cassandra. "Heroes who get by on their wits without being complete dicks about it. Oh, and women who know how to handle themselves."

He's propose to Agent M on the spot if she wasn't fictional.

Poor Agent M probably got that a lot.

"You like joking heroes? I am not surprised," Cassandra said. "I suppose those are worthwhile, as long as their wits do not get in the way of getting by."

She had only limited tolerance with people who wouldn't get on with it. Which was also a huge surprise, truly.

Face was shocked by that revelation, indeed he was.

"I do like them to be competent tricksters," he said. "As oppossed to just confidence tricksters."

He thought he was punny.

You were ridiculous, Face.

"There is a difference?" Cassandra asked dryly.

Just wait until you meet Varric, Cassandra.

"They're both likely to con you, but one of them will do it for great justice."

You mean that fateful day where she would throw a book at Varric's head, wait until it dropped into his lap, and then stab it?

"Or they could consider speaking and acting truthfully," Cassandra said, "If justice is their preoccupation."

And she'd wonder why he'd lie about where his BFF was after that.

"Sometimes you have to be sneaky to get justice." Said the guy who fully intended to join the Rebellion as soon as they'd have him.

Well, if he had any respect for justice and all things true and good, he wouldn't have let himself be put off by such a small matter.

"I would always prefer the truth," Cassandra said. "Andraste would protect the truly righteous."

Oddly enough, most men have a lot of trouble thinking about justice and things good and true when people were stabbing at their laps.

Sadly, Face wasn't in a position to point out that Andraste wound up rather...broiled. "Who?"

"Andraste, the Bride of the Maker."

It was strange, whenever she was confronted with the notion that no one here but Anders knew of her.

"She who returned the Maker's attention to Thedas with her song, and freed us of the Tevinter Imperium."

And then wound up broiled because her husband was a prissy asshole.

Nothing being from around here, Face couldn't even point out the Joan of Arc parallels. Though that story had less divine cuckoldry. "So she was a freedom-fighter turned religious figure?"

"Or a religious figure turned freedom fighter. Or perhaps, both at the same time," Cassandra said. "'“And thus fell the eye of the Maker upon Andraste, she who would be raised up from outcast to become His bride. From her lips would fall the Chant of Light, at her command would the legions of righteousness fall upon the world.'"

The beauty of the Chant of Light was that it was a lot easier to memorize than, say, the Bible.

"'Legions of righteousness'? That doesn't sound comforting." Look, you have your people enslaved for a couple of centuries by religious extremists, and you got a bit wary about things like that.

Cassandra looked faintly amused. "The Tevinters had ruled over Thedas for a thousand years," she said. "They believed in false gods, and carried out terrible experiments in their name. Andraste changed all that, when she brought the Maker to the hearts of the people. Then they organized in the first Exalted March and threw off their chains."

She glanced at Face. "Righteousness is not such a terrible thing, if it is in a true cause."

"But who gets to decide what's the true cause. I mean, ending slavery's one thing, no one with a lick of decency should argue with that." Least of all a Lorrdian. "But what were the rest of these Exalted Marches supposed to accomplish?" He'd picked up on the word first in there.

"To protect the righteous from those who might do it harm," Cassandra said. Honestly, Face. "Against the remains of the Tevinter Imperium, several times. And against the Qunari who conquered Rivain and Antiva and threatened the Free Marches."

Face was maybe not that swayed. "That just leads to the question of who's righteousness gets to be protected," he said. "The Myrialites believed they were righteous. As a result my ancestors, and everyone else on Lorrd, got to spend the next three hundred years enslaved."

"And my ancestors rose up and took arms in Exalted Marches to keep such a fate from touching Chantry nations again," Cassandra said, raising an eyebrow. "Is that wrong in your eyes?"

"Not really, no," Face said. "Assuming that's what actually happened instead of being justification after the fact."

It was almost like being used as a propaganda tool had left Face cynical about some things.

Nah, that was only the Exalted March against the *elves*, Face. She hadn't even touched on that one yet.

"Trust me when I say that both the Qunari and the Tevinters would love nothing more than to conquer our lands anew," she said dryly. "How did Lorrd free itself?"

Surely bringing up 'and then we excised the bit about our allies when we decided to annex their lands' would only help her argument!

"A couple of different things," Face told her. "There was a resistance, which required developing a whole new form of communication, since speaking carried a death sentence, and the Republic finally got itself stable enough to notice what was happening and the Jedi led a task-force to help."

Hey now. Hey now. The official take on the Exalted March against the Dales was that the elves turned into assholes overnight and started attacking Orlesian villages.

"You developed an entirely new form of communication?" Cassandra echoed, looking interested.

And what did the elves say about who started it?

Face nodded. "Kinetic communication. Mix of body language, facial expressions, subtle gestures you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for them. You'd be surprised how much information can be conveyed that way."

Cassandra didn't know. Nobody asked.

"So you became more... subtle," she said.

Yeah, you didn't need Lorrdian communication skills to figure out how Cassandra felt about anything.

Library, Sunday

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