"It's not really over," Barcus says softly, calmly. "He won't leave unfinished business. But that's a moot point for as long as I'm here."
Barcus' pale eyes lend themselves to gentle looks; the natural quirk of his brows leaves him looking pensive or forlorn more often than not. None of this is misleading. He's as mild and preoccupied with art and artifice as he looks, and yet there's enough space behind those slate-blue eyes to hide a few secrets. No one has ever asked him why he was comfortable letting Wulbren walk away, with the recipe for Runepowder still sitting in his head. It certainly wasn't an act of trust. Maybe it was a foolish fancy, the last remnants of a dying love. Maybe there's more to it than that.
He can all but hear wheels turning in Solas' head, though what exactly he's thinking over, Barcus isn't sure. When the words come, his eyebrows rise, but then he just smiles. The fact that he was unwilling to ask for an explanation seems to have inspired enough trust to earn one.
"I guessed you were in some way extraordinary," he admits. "The way you speak of your people, the way you talked about the veil and the Fade...I still couldn't put it into proper words to save my life. Just a hunch, a feeling."
Like someone who's had a project gone wrong, or left unresolved on the workbench for weeks, aching to have it done one way or another, but dispirited by the hours of work it will take to untangle the fault down to the root and rebuild. "You were there, weren't you, for that ancient empire you mentioned, that's only myth and legend?"
Living so long, he thinks, must be terribly lonely.
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Barcus' pale eyes lend themselves to gentle looks; the natural quirk of his brows leaves him looking pensive or forlorn more often than not. None of this is misleading. He's as mild and preoccupied with art and artifice as he looks, and yet there's enough space behind those slate-blue eyes to hide a few secrets. No one has ever asked him why he was comfortable letting Wulbren walk away, with the recipe for Runepowder still sitting in his head. It certainly wasn't an act of trust. Maybe it was a foolish fancy, the last remnants of a dying love. Maybe there's more to it than that.
He can all but hear wheels turning in Solas' head, though what exactly he's thinking over, Barcus isn't sure. When the words come, his eyebrows rise, but then he just smiles. The fact that he was unwilling to ask for an explanation seems to have inspired enough trust to earn one.
"I guessed you were in some way extraordinary," he admits. "The way you speak of your people, the way you talked about the veil and the Fade...I still couldn't put it into proper words to save my life. Just a hunch, a feeling."
Like someone who's had a project gone wrong, or left unresolved on the workbench for weeks, aching to have it done one way or another, but dispirited by the hours of work it will take to untangle the fault down to the root and rebuild. "You were there, weren't you, for that ancient empire you mentioned, that's only myth and legend?"
Living so long, he thinks, must be terribly lonely.