three ☀ video / optional action

[deshabille]

Who: Mal
Broadcast: Fleetwide!
Action: On the Caprine if anyone desires it! I'm flexible.
When: 6/20.

[As in her first broadcast, Mal can be found tinkering around in the engine room, elbows-deep in something interesting and greasy. This time, though, she seems pensive, deep in thought, perhaps about Deep Subjects and Philosophies.]

[She is, in fact, thinking about something entirely different.]

[When she speaks, it's in tones of airy contemplation, meant to disguise the fact that part of her thinks this is a terrible idea.]

Here is an interesting thing: vampires, for all their reputation for seduction, really aren't that good at it, at least where I come from. When you're always hungry, you mostly rely on people leaving windows open at the right time and then being a bit woozy from blood loss. For the really old ones, the ones who can barely stand without crumbling to dust and really hate sunshine, that's the only way they can eat, and if they tried to seduce anyone their arm would probably fall off.

[She twists at a mysterious innard of the ship with a wrench, tongue in her cheek.]

We've had enough excitement for a while, I think, so why not something boring instead: tell me about romance in your world. Describe the sorts of flowers you like to kill for love. Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten, complete dunce to Casanunda, if you like.

Actually, everyone should have to do that. That's compulsory. I will genteelly admit that I am a nine. [Liar.]

Comments

[forcemageure]

It gained sentience eventually. We talked about liberationist politics every time I went for the kettle. Then one night Gamlen got out the fondue pot and it was all downhill from there.

[ Anyway. If Mal were currently eating a schoolbus full of children on camera, she would just about make Average in Kirkwall, sooo Hawke's concept of monstrous is ...somewhat skewed to begin with. He grimaces exaggeratedly, because he was also, at home, frequently covered in blood although for entirely different reasons. ]

Terrible on floor tiles, too. I had a cult named after my blood once! Demon-worshiping dwarves. All pomp and circumstance and boomy voices, you know how it is.

[ Is that. All he has to say on the subjYes. For the moment. ]

You know, ordinarily I'd be the last person to recommend ...muckiness to anyone, but we're already trapped in an endless void with nothing but mysterious sheet metal between our fragile little bodies and death. What's the worst that could happen?

[deshabille]

Dwarves do have terrifically boomy voices, I've heard.

[Only heard, because all the dwarves in Borogravia left after being declared Abominable. She vaguely remembers this from when she was much younger and paid much less attention to the goings-on of the little people.]

[His advice (is it advice? Hard to tell with Hawke) makes her tip her head curiously. It's practically a straightforward statement, which makes her not quite trust it.]

The worst thing that could happen as a direct result of muckiness, or the worst thing that could happen in general?

[She's prevaricating, and knows it, and doesn't care.]

[forcemageure]

[ Oh shit, she noticed. Remember - somehow, even though it hasn't been brought up at all - he is speaking entirely hypothetically and not like, as a result of anything (or anyone, certainly) that has happened to him, in the long dark teatime of space. ]

The first. The second could keep us here the rest of our respective lives, I'm sure.

[ Do you know how much funnier he would find that if he knew the general myth vis vampires and immortality plus the fact that he's technically dead. So funny. ]

[deshabille]

[Well. She actually seems to hesitate at that for a moment, a move utterly uncharacteristic of her, her expression heavier and more serious than usual. It only lasts a moment, but before the heaviness lifts and tugs her expression back into a smirk, she glances slightly to the left.]

[The worst thing that could happen. Humiliation. Loss. Loneliness. There are few things worse, in the grand scheme of things. In her opinion.]

People being people.

[She is going to assume that he will understand what that means.]

[forcemageure]

[ Hawke understands those things because for a long time they were what he chose, by consequence. Loneliness because he couldn't stand the thought of more loss. Humiliation may not ...actually mean that much to him as a concept, but rejection is probably close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades.

It would be nice if whatever he's stumbled into with Anders ameliorated all of those things, but the truth is that loss now terrifies him more than it ever has. Telling someone how you feel, he's observed in another life, doesn't fix that.

So to reiterate, yes. He understands. ]

Oh, I suspect people will be people no matter what you do.

[ Of course, he must therefore be glib about it. He is going to assume she understands why. ]

On the other hand you might accidentally find you've made yourself happy, at least for a little while. It's a difficult prospect, I know.

[ Seriously, it feels weird. ]

[deshabille]

[It's less that she isn't happy. She is, really. Even if she'd rather be at home, this place is interesting, curious, overwhelming, beautiful in its way. There are so many people being people that some days her smile feels likely to split her face. She loves people.]

[It's just that sometimes she doesn't quite feel part of them, and the thought of being pushed away, she supposes, is what bothers her most. Being pushed away, or being forced to run.]

Have you accidentally made yourself happy, sir? Or is this one of those situations in which you will turn me away with vagaries and I will have to be content in my ignorance and suppositions?

[forcemageure]

[ A specific kind of muck-related happiness, then. Hawke's life, despite all the ...well, all the running, for one thing, and the hilarious amount of stress, and the fact that Kirkwall was a cesspool full of insane blood mages and insaner Templars, was a pretty good life otherwise. ]

I did suggest fumbling about for a reason.

[ Is that a vagary? Maybe like half of one, since he's not really pretending otherwise. Plus, you know, the besotted grin just in the eyes. ]

If you want efficiency, I suppose you could find out what appeals to the object of your whatever and, in a truly shocking turn of events, provide them with it. The classics being the classics for a reason and everything.

[ Such as: jewelry that can actually get a person executed. ]

[deshabille]

[She cracks a smile. The fumbling around does sound a little bit fun. Although admittedly that's what she's been doing for the last, oh, several weeks. Slash . . . her entire life.]

[Anyway, if it's a vagary, it's a much more specific vagary than ones he's thrown at her previously, so she'll take it.]

Oh, I didn't realize this was allowed to be an equitable exchange of information. People make it seem much more mysterious than that.

["People" being . . . folk songs, mostly. To hell with folk songs.]

[forcemageure]

It sounds like you're implying anyone has any idea what they're doing when it comes to this.

[ 'This,' because of course, like the idiot object of his idiot affection featured below, Hawke will not say 'romance.' All these accusations of idiocy would be, you know, not very nice, except he's fully convinced that's what real love does to a person: makes you stupid. Maybe in the best way possible, but stupid nonetheless. ]

I suspect anyone who says so is lying, to be honest. [ Get it. ] Or wildly delusional, at the very least.

[deshabille]

So I shouldn't trust the Casanundas, that's what you're saying.

[Fair enough. She tends not to trust people who act too much like they know what they're doing, because that's more or less her schtick and she knows how often it's a crock.]

I suppose I may as well trust my own magnificent instincts.

[forcemageure]

Sure, unless they're telling you to give out copper marigolds. In that case your magnificent instincts are shit, I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you.

[ That is so bizarre and specific a detail there must be an anecdote behind this. Not that he's longing to be asked. ]

[deshabille]

Copper marigolds, eh. I can't imagine what you could be referring to obliquely and mysteriously. I suppose I will simply have to remain mystified until the end of time.

[Tell her the damn story, Hawke.]

[forcemageure]

[ WELL now there's all this hype and everything. ]

They're more an example, really. If a person can start a courtship--or whatever you young people are calling it nowadays--with a gift of those and still end up happily married, there's only so many ways you could cock this up.

[ What a great verb choice. ]

[deshabille]

I am certainly not calling it a courtship. [That sounds old-fashioned even to her.]

[However. She likes this example, and will keep it for future use.]

I also don't think I was talking about marriage, though.

[forcemageure]

It does sound very grim and formal, doesn't it?

[ According to the five seconds he was nobility, yes. ]

So does marriage, come to think of it.

[deshabille]

It does.

I liked the bit about happiness, though.

[forcemageure]

Think of it as an equivalence, then!

Oh, and don't force a hapless bystander* to deal with them by proxy, either. Or invite them anywhere and refuse to speak to them.

[* Hawke**

** who was not a hapless bystander at all; he was in fact whatever is thedas's equivalent of maid of honor when said wedding occurred ]

[deshabille]

[Slow frysquinting.]

Why would I do either of those things?

[forcemageure]

Terminal ineptitude, I suspect.

[ He loev u Aveline. ]

Successful ineptitude, though!