He doesn't make it up to Hightown very often these days, and he often forgets what day it is. He lives in a haze of desperation, an unbreakable cycle of hopelessness he's slowly learning to accept as his normal. Fine, not learning. Just accepting, because what other option is there? So he stops and stares at the stairs leading up to the Viscount's Keep and tries to place the terra cotta pots of red-leafed plants, and he can't. He feels like he should, and stares for a long while until a city guard pauses next to him. "Something the matter, serah?" she asks, pleasant enough, but he knows the look in her eyes and hears the tone in her voice that says You don't belong here .
"Nice flowers," he says instead. She doesn't care what the matter is. Something is always the matter for him and people like him, and no one truly cares what that matter is. Asking is the guard's way of saying that he's been noticed and he doesn't belong here, where pots of bright red flowers line both sides of the grand stairway. "Where the fuck they get flowers like that this time of year?"
The guard stares at him as if he's gone cracked. He probably has. "It's Satinalia. They always import them from Antiva and Rivain."
"Always?"
"Are you sure you're alright?" she asks, rather than continue to engage in false pleasantry.
"No. I'm not alright," he says, and silently adds on, you oblivious idiot . Anyone can see he's not alright. Everyone can see he's not alright. And everyone pities him for it. Fuck, he even pities himself, which is the worst thing of all. He's not alright, but he doesn't want to be pitied. So he walks away and ignores how the guard sighs in relief and resumes her patrol.
"Did you ever celebrate Satinalia in the Circles?" he asks Faith later that night, or early the next morning, it just blends together in a haze and a daze. "I don't think I did."
She folds one arm under her head and stares at him with bleary eyes that see everything and nothing. She's in another world, or a world between worlds, and he's a little disconcerted by the fact that she seems so otherworldly like this. "No, you fool. It was the fucking Circle. Santinalia is too exciting for them. Now, at the Rose…" She fixes him with a teasing grin and the implication makes him stir in his breeches.
So that's why he doesn't remember Satinalia, because he went to the Chantry as a boy and the Chantry wants fuck-all to do with fun. And now, watching Faith smile and stare at the ceiling, in her in-between world as she lingers on a lyrium high remembering Satinalia at the Blooming Rose, he needs to know what it is: why it compels the high and mighty to decorate with pots of flowers red like blood, why it makes Faith smile in ways that he cannot.
He doesn't have much coin; but what he does have, he takes to the Blooming Rose the next night and books Jethann. The elf stares at him with flat eyes before realizing that Lusine is serious, Samson has paid for his time, and then he sighs and rolls his eyes and beckons Samson to follow.
"You can't afford more than a quarter hour with me, and I'm being generous with that much," he says flatly once the door's closed. "Whatever you want, make it quick." He's already slipping his silky robe off his thin shoulders.
"Fuck, that's not what I want," Samson says gruffly, even as he wonders what a night with the elf would be like. He thinks instead of Meredith in her nightgown, and his discomfort eases. "I need to know about Satinalia, and you know shit."
Jethann doesn't even hide his relief when he pulls his robe back on. He stretches languidly on the bed. "So you're paying me to talk to you? I don't have to fuck you?"
"You can even close your eyes for all the fucks I give," Samson tells him, and truthfully.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Does it matter? I'm paying you . What do you know?"
And so Jethann starts talking, telling him about Hightown streets full of Lowtown types of people, of Lowtown streets brimming with Darktown scum, everyone pretending for one day that they're not shit on the bottom of a boot, drinking and celebrating and dancing under the sun and the stars.
"And the Hightown sorts?" Samson asks. "Do they get to pretend they're Viscounts? Princes?"
"They gather for a fancy party at the Viscount's keep," Jethann says, just bored enough to suggest he's accompanied someone to such a party before. "They drink until they're sick, then they drink more. They hire musicians and station them near the windows and doors so they can't hear the noise from outside, so they can pretend that there aren't any people outside pretending."
"So… it's a great load of shite."
Jethann shrugs. "Sure. Unless that one day of being better than you are is something to look forward to. For some, it is. Time's up. Out."
Samson heads out into the night, aware that Hightown is just around the corner, that he could go there now and pretend he belongs, and a guard will see him and make awkward conversation in an effort to make him leave. But one day of belonging there? One day where the blood-red flowers are for him, for Faith, for all of them, and not just the fancy rich bastards?
Now he understands Faith's dreamy smile when she remembers it. And he thinks that for one day, he could take her out. She could be a Hightown Lady, dressed in her best, wearing her makeup, her hair curled about her shoulders.
Hightown is just around the corner and his feet take him there. He paces across the wide paving stones as if he belongs there. He even holds his shoulders back and his head up. It's not Satinalia yet, but he's just mad enough to practice for it. He strides right up to the steps of the Viscount's Keep, to the first potted plant. The petals are the color of spilled blood in the blue moonlight. He plucks a stem and holds his breath, but no alarms sound. These plants are just plants. Just like all the Lowtown and Darktown types are just people. Satinalia is about pretending, making them all feel like they're something.
And isn't that what he wants? To be something. He thought he'd find that in the Circle, as a Templar. When that got fucked sideways, he thought maybe he'd find that in the Guard, but he was too fucked by then. He wasn't any sort of mercenary.
He looks down at the flower, and then suddenly remembers where he is, what he's done, and worst of all what he is. He steals back toward Darktown, back toward the ramshackle dwelling he shares, and thinks that, maybe with Faith he is something. Then he laughs.
He finds a chipped cup and puts a little bit of water in in, then sets the flower stem in the water. He sets this on the table, and then goes to bed. Faith's out, which is just as well because he'd rather just get some sleep.
"Hey. Elf-fucker."
Samson rolls over to see Faith hovering over him. "Fuck off."
"You went to see Jethann ? You can't afford Jethann." She's pouting and looks a little hurt, even. Her voice has that high pitch it gets when she's getting beyond reason, and Samson scrambles to sit up.
"I didn't do anything with him. I had some questions, but the cheap bastard won't just talk, no, you need to book time with him. Go look on the table."
Faith stares at him, almost baleful, her fingers twitching. He recognizes signs of her fix wearing off. He's feeling something similar, to be honest. She disappears, only to come back a moment later holding the red flower. "This is one of those fancy plants from the Keep stairs."
"Happy Satinalia," Samson says. "Not sure if it's today or not. But I guess tis the season and all that shite?"
"I went to one of those fancy parties once," she says suddenly, burying her nose in the flower and closing her eyes. "Never thought I'd be on the outside looking in, pretending with the rest of the fools that I was actually someone."
"You are someone," Samson snaps. "Stop crying," he adds. "We're going to go up there and dance under the stars and drink the good drinks, and even if it's only one day, we'll be somebodies, you hear me?"
Faith stares at him for a long moment, then kicks off her shoes and climbs into bed with him. She trembles, a tremor he knows too well. She throws her arm over him, and in her hand, before his face, is a flower red like blood. "We'll be somebodies," she murmurs, and the tremor eases, as the flower falls from her fingers.
At that moment Samson realizes the lure of Satinalia: the hope of being somebody, symbolized in blood red flower petals on a Hightown staircase, and he drifts to sleep with Faith's arm around him. For once, he dreams in red rather than blue.