I have a disgusting amount of headcanon for Orsino and I need to vent it. This is the companion piece to The Maker Demands, which I published like thirty seconds ago, and has a reference or two to it. I like this piece better out of the two, though. :)
Mentions of past self-harm and literally one reference of sexual abuse in the first two sentences.
At first, she trusts Orsino. At first, she thinks he is a competent First Enchanter who has a handle on his Circle. She thinks, after she has sorted out the mess with the sexual abuse, that he is the right man for the job.
But the little things add up.
He once mentions that his hair went gray when he was only eighteen. Stress, he calls it, but what stress, he will not say. All Meredith takes from that conversation is the haunted look in those murky green eyes.
When a mage turned apostate is captured again, he tells Meredith under no circumstances will he allow the mage to be forced into solitary confinement. Hard labor is better, says Orsino with that twisted grimace he wears when angry, anything is better, he says, but not solitary confinement. It crushes the soul and saps the will, he says, and it hurts. It is not hard to tell he speaks with personal experience, not when his hands shake like that.
He is never seen without his gloves, ever, except the time Meredith does. He is caught unawares by her late-night visit, pulling blankets around himself as he prepares to discuss whatever pressing problem has driven her to wake him from the little sleep he gets. She forgets it for a moment, distracted by the ridges of fine pink scar tissue that run from his inner wrist halfway to his elbow. He notices and reddens, but offers no explanation. She thinks blood magic, and the doubts grow.
He hates whipping too, and again it is easy to see why. The scars on Orsino's back are not like the ones on his wrists. They are not fine and pale, but harsh and thick and numerous. Sometimes, when he thinks no one is looking, the tallest elf in the Circle lets his back sag as he rubs it wearily, the flat of his hand pressed firmly into the sharp bones of his back. Elves are all twigs, stick-thin and fragile, and Orsino is no different.
"If you are so worried," says one of Meredith's friends, a fellow templar (as they almost all are). "If you distrust this elf so much," he adds. "Then look up his records."
She doesn't reply, but he guesses what it is.
"You're forgetting that he's' still a mage," he says. "His blood is in a phylactery, waiting for the day he tries to run. He was once taken from his parents to be shipped here, just like the rest of them. He wears a staff and struggles to control himself just like the rest of them. He may be First Enchanter, but does that really make him any different?"
"It should," she states.
"The First Enchanter is still a mage," he says. "If you were to invoke the Right of Annulment, it would apply to him too."
She hasn't thought of that.
Maker. She hasn't thought of that. In the end he really is no different.
"Could you strike him down?" he asks.
"You are overstepping your bounds," she snaps, mind reeling. "I am Knight-Commander, not you."
He has shaken her, and that realization is what drives her to look at Orsino's records.
She does not like what she finds.
When she was seventeen years old, she was training as a templar. She was fresh and new and promising, overbearing to some and quite trying to many as she tried her best to forget the horrors of her past. When she was seventeen she was idealistic and hopeful even as she tried to quash that down, memories of Darktown brimming right below the surface. When she was seventeen she was complicated.
When Orsino was seventeen he nearly killed a man.
The records were written by the old Knight-Commander, but Meredith could tell someone- maybe the Knight-Captain at the time- had amended them, bias made softer by the passage of time. Still, the facts were there. Orsino happened upon a templar beating a child to gain the location of a family member. He jumped to the child's defense; the templar began beating him instead. Orsino, still young and apprenticed, lashed out instinctively. The templar wasn't killed, but crippled, and Orsino was kept in chains as they decided what to do with him.
Meredith runs her fingers down the old yellow pages and see the ink, black and dry and written in a failing hand, as though the Knight-Commander had trouble bringing himself putting it to paper. She cannot help but imagine Orsino, young and cold and shivering, hands and legs manacled, as he awaits trial for attempting to do the right thing. She wonders if he was still bleeding from the beating. She wonders if he regretted it. She wonders if he still does.
She continues reading. The Knight-Commander demanded he be made Tranquil, it says. She tries to imagine Orsino Tranquil. It hurts more than she wants it to. Those intelligent eyes and exasperated features dulled forever, to spend the rest of his days tending herbs and taking stock. A man turned into little more than a walking example.
She keeps reading. The First Enchanter convinced the Knight-Commander to let him off easy. Eighty lashes, forty before and forty after eighteen months of solitary confinement.
She puts the book down and closes it. That's all she needs.
A year and a half. If she is remembering his birthday right, he was nineteen years old before he saw another person again. She spent age nineteen training, working, earning her stripes. What did he do?
Brood? Fester? Think about how the templars had treated him? Curse them?
Nurse his wounds, most likely, she told herself. And mourn for lost time. For a mage and First Enchanter, he was a good man.
Still, good man or no, he'd spent a year and a half of his life locked in a room, all because of a templar.
And they'd made him First Enchanter.
"Knight-Commander, I didn't expect to see you-"
His voices cuts off, choked, almost broken in the sharp intensity with which he stops speaking. She looks up to see Orsino mere feet from her, staring at his own records. The smile he attempts is weak and unconvincing.
"Find anything of interest?" he asks, voice more subdued than she'd ever heard.
She swallows. Almost killed a templar. Crippled. Unable to work. Unable to earn a living. Crippled.
The templar had been beating a child.
She looks at him. His face is set in stone, complete with premature lines and slick gray hair. She cannot see remorse on that face, but neither does she see pride.
"I did," she says. Whatever else she is, Meredith is an honest woman.
"Ah," he says, rubbing one gloved hand against his wrist in nervousness. "Knight-Commander...I..."
"You don't need to say anything," she snaps.
"I paid for my crimes," he says softly. "More than you can ever know."
"Orsino-"
He turns away from her. "Templars have friends, Meredith. Life was not easy."
"I understand."
She knows her voice is sharp, but he knows this too. If he knows her at all, he can hear the sincerity underneath.
"I trust you."
Those words are harder, but as she leaves there is satisfaction in her step. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Orsino pick up the records and return it to its proper place. She imagines she can see those pink scar ridges through the fabric of his gloves, chafing at the wrist.
Even as she says she trusts, doubts grow.
Reviews are love. :)