faderift | Cold upon the mountain

Entry tags:

Cold upon the mountain

WHO: Asher Hardie; open (npc appearances by The Boneflayers)
WHAT: Asher's fever returns and his crew drag him to the healing tents, knowing it's the end
WHEN: Last week of Solace - mid-whatever August is called
WHERE: Skyhold, healing tents
NOTES: eventual character death; language, discussions about death, violence, faith. Discussions about Asher's childhood. Other warnings in subject headers. Feel free to make your own threads and have them open or closed, the death thread will go up closer to the time! Related ooc post

Asher has known for longer than he's cared to admit so he hasn't admitted it. He's shrugged it off the way he shrugs off pretty much everything else in his life until three nights passed of him coughing and coughing and coughing, keeping his crew awake with it. His chest has been rattling since they brought him back until blood started coming up with it. And now there are wounds cracking open; little cuts that weep for days on end, ugly wounds from the Storm Coast or sparring that feel hot to the touch. (They smell, Amalia had hissed as she'd pressed her hands to his chest over the burn scars to try to force the fever out. Melisende had sworn.)

So they bring him to the healers tents, the sweat rolling off him as he staggers; two dwarves and a Rivaini to help him, his hound with him as ever. The mage in her red leathers explains what she can with a slight elven woman, and the elfblooded one brings up the rear with a hand to his back. They're a constant from that first day to the last, a different combination each time at least one will always be there, stepping out for privacy or finally curling up to sleep.

And Asher...Asher isn't good with this. This isn't how it's meant to be as he presses his fingers into the festering gash over one hip from where a sword bit deep through his armour but the pain only makes him swoon, makes him cough and bite his lip. Doesn't make him focus, doesn't make him want to fight. This isn't how it was supposed to be and for the first time since his mother put him out the house twelve years ago, Asher Hardie is afraid.

It makes him a rather difficult patient, to put it politely.

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He knows little about Asher. The grudge, certainly, that he has some friends, that too, but he hasn't bothered to learn more because it hasn't mattered. Now... Now, as the wound seeps and fever spikes, it matters a little.

"Would you like some water?" He's a healer here in these tents, first and foremost, despite all else. Anders has brought a cup over, already knowing the answer. Fever makes people thirsty, even near the end.

"Here." Voice calm, hands calm, he holds it up to Asher's lips in offering.

When Asher had left, hot on the heels of his argument with Kaisa that had been less an argument and more Asher being hurt enough that he'd let her see a raw weeping wound, he'd gone to the hold to talk about Anders. He'd lived in Kirkwall for a few years. Not a Blight refugee, he'd gone before that. Made his money, made his mark but Fereldans talked to each other so he knew.

But Avvar ways were Avvar ways and the spirits matter to Asher so he'd gone. He'd talked. Talked for hours until his voice had gone.

When he tries to speak at first only a clicking noise comes out, his throat is so dry, so he nods instead, sipping instead of knocking it back the way he wants to. He can't now. He'll choke. He'll cough. "Everything tastes like blood," he mutters when he's done, wiping his mouth and his beard. "Thank you."

Then he gets a look (he's not so sharp now, too tired, just keeping his eyes open is exhausting half the time) and a moment of confusion passing over the warrior's face. "You're Anders?"

"I can put mint in it if you'd like," he offers. It might not help much, but it could a little, and it buys him maybe a second or two before he has to answer the question. Asher is in no shape to fight, and Anders doesn't want to set him off... but he's also not going to lie.

"And yes. I am. You're Asher, and currently not doing well. Would you like mint leaf in the water?"

Or maybe he'd like to throw a fit, and Anders will sigh and stick around to see what damage is done that needs to be healed because that's why he's here. There had been a time when he'd been desperate to talk with an Avvar, to try to see what people who supposedly worked with spirits did that could have helped. This was who they'd had, and now it's too late. Too late for Asher, too.

"Thanks, just anything to get the taste out." The only other option when he's between watches with the Boneflayers is to worry at his lip or bite his tongue or the inside of his cheek until it bleeds so the blood is fresh at least. It makes a difference. When he can smell himself dying from the foul stench when the poultices aren't as fresh or when he turns and jostles them enough to have black blood welling beneath the surface of them.

It's slow, trying to sit but there old scar from the base of his skull to the small of his back is throbbing, but his sides and his front aren't options now. The world spins violently enough that he grips the bed tight, deep shuddering breaths. He isn't going to be sick. Not again. There's not even bile left in there anyway by now.

When he can speak again, his voice is surprisingly level for a man this close to the end but he's part-Avvar, he's been a mercenary for almost half his life, and even if it's seemingly accelerating all of this, he's still a Reaver. It's a strange combination but it allows him to cut through the haze sometimes. "Why are you here?" He asks, no heat in it, rubbing his eyes to get them to focus a little better. "There are other healers. After what I said to Adelaide, s'not like anyone would force you to come."

Asher remembers and well, Asher might be a shit but Asher is at least an honest man if not always a good one. So he can own what he said. In another tent. He was getting better last time though.

He sets the cup to the side and pulls some mint out of the stores, tearing it roughly so the flavor will spread better through the water while he listens to Asher's breathing. It's not good. But it won't be, not again. Maybe with Justice and enough of a warning... but it's far too late now.

It's only after the mint is in the cup and the cup is refilled that he approaches and looks at Asher to answer.

"The same reason I'm in Skyhold in the first place." The cup gets offered back. "There are a great many assholes here. There are some people whose passing I'd feel relieved by. But I have wounded this world, and I am here to help heal it. Not to help heal only the parts I like. Cullen could be brought in here with near-mortal wounds and I'd save his life." And his hatred of Cullen is very personal. Asher? Not as much.

He holds out a hand. "I'm going to ease a little bit of the pain, if you'll allow. It won't last long, but it should let you breathe more easily for a few moments without being so eased that it comes back with a vengeance." With most patients he simply does what's needed. With one he knows doesn't like him, he'll ask permission. It makes things far easier.

Amalia tried. Not a healer taught but live a life as a mercenary and you learn how to do things, same with Gunnar and his alchemy. Asher waited, Asher rattled back from Gwaren's salt-damp air through Ferelden's spring rains and up the mountain where the cold got into him after all that. It's been sitting there since. A little maggot growing fatter and fatter. Waiting to feed the birds when Asher's taken back to his kin.

(Is it even a week, he's losing track of that and if time matters now then they'll know and he can't do that to them.)

Sipping slowly, he listens quietly swishing the water around his mouth a few times to make sure there's no blood still lurking somewhere. Asher thinks. Most people don't actually credit Asher with being able to do that ( he works for a lot of Orlesians, a lot of nobles in general honestly, they don't like to believe that the rabble is worth anything more than they pay them to be worth) but he does think. Would've been dead years ago if he didn't. Would've lost company members to death and injury if he didn't. Hearing Cullen's name makes him raise an eyebrow - Asher hates Templars, ask anyone about Asher and you hear that in the first five minutes of conversation - but after the mission together, he respects him well enough.

(Still doesn't trust a Templar to train soldiers but that's such an old thing, no one was ever going to listen to a mercenary about how everyone fighting together one way doesn't work, about armies breaking, people want to be inspired, not to hear boring practicalities from a mercenary of twelve years.)

The healing he assents to with a nod before he finally starts to speak himself, clearing his throat and setting the cup down so he doesn't drop it. "I spoke to my augur - I don't know if you listened to everything I told Adelaide, if you know what that is, what that actually means to my people - about you." The Chantry hears confessions, Asher remembers that part well enough from being dragged there as if it would make him better, and Gjurd has always listened whenever Asher has come at strange hours, restless and pacing, the spirits close enough to touch. Asher has absolutely no qualms about admitting it either: people talk, and Asher's hold are all up a mountain, a tiny hold that don't really care so long as they're left alone to carry on as they will.

"Spirits are treated differently up in the holds. Respected. Not even your spirit healers come close to the connection an Avvar mage would have, or any Avvar. They're with us. They're always with us. Watching and knowing and there."

Anders gets to work as Asher drinks, eliminating some of the acidic buildup in muscles and organs as things fail. The raised eyebrow doesn't get an answer - there's no point in telling the stories of how his and Cullen's paths have crossed poorly in the past, not to a dying man who dislikes him.

"I didn't pay attention. It wasn't worth my time." He'd been tempted, but Adelaide had been right there and her calm had prevailed. Thankfully he's getting better in regard to people coming up to him with grudges, but it takes work. Steady work. "Granted, I was very interested in hearing more about how the Avvar treat their spirits, hoping to find a way to help my friend, but when you weren't even going to have a conversation, that path was closed to me."

For a moment, his neutral expression sharpens. Justice is dead. He'd been desperate to find a way that would help both of them and hadn't, and if Asher... But then he goes back to neutrality as he takes the cup. Justice is dead, and Asher soon will be.

"I don't know what an augur is. I know that I respected Justice a great deal." Any Avvar. He doubts that's true, but he'll listen to Asher. And refill the cup with mint water, setting it down beside the man again.

"None of our ways would have been any help to you at that point." Asher doesn't say it to be cruel, he says it to be honest, because Asher holds to his Avvar heritage, and is able to live and breathe it in a way even elfbloods can't despite him being less than half Avvar, raised on a farm in the middle of a sleepy part of Ferelden until he got put out the door. He drops his head to his chest to breathe when the healing starts to...well do something. Rolls his neck, his shoulders.

There's a lot of popping and cracking that goes on. He's a big man unaccustomed to just lying on his back like a sack of potatoes.

"Each hold has one augur. Lowlanders call them shamans, keepers of the lore - we were more fortunate than the elves, we never lost what they did. The flights of birds tell them much, or our old songs, our rites, our ways. The Chantry would piss themselves if they saw a single Avvar ritual." Illness strips much of the relish from Asher's telling of that. Usually he grins, the young wolf baring his teeth in a challenge but he can just about lift a head filled with wet sand that threatens to reel too far back right now, getting his bearings again.

"It's sort of like the Dalish, but I've only spent time with the Dalish in Skyhold so I can't account for them but our mages are in our community. They do things. Not just spells but they're there. They're just people, living their lives, only the augur is to provide council to the other mages, and to the thane; spirits are the ones that the augur takes council from since they're our gods, and the augur shares that with the hold." Asher is...waiting, honestly. For the scoffing, or the eyerolling because Christine and Sam are his friends so he was confident when he told them that they'd react well, and Adelaide was an actual scholar. No telling here and he's too close to death to really be sharp as he should be. "Lots of rituals. Possession is a natural part of it too, every apprentice is possessed for a bit."

The Chantry pisses itself over a lot of things, and Anders is amused every time. It needs to be shaken up more. It needs more change, more adaptation, more growth, because it tries to restrict and control that which it doesn't understand and can't predict. But it will not seek out what's different except to try to destroy it.

Spirits as gods are another difference... but it's not something he's going to laugh at. Some people need to have faith in the Maker who he can't have faith in, some people need to have faith in spirits. Let them. What he's raising an eyebrow at comes last.

"If possession is natural, and every apprentice is possessed for 'a bit,' how, exactly, would that sort of knowledge not have helped me?" He's not sure he believes that happens. He's not sure he can afford to, because 'a bit' implies that they don't just commune with spirits and find a way to work with them, like he's heard. It implies there might have been another way after all, and Anders feels tired at that.

Asher is lying here because he's the answer to a joke played on a mother who slighted the gods, the price she has to pay for denying her heritage, denying them. Her firstborn was a slap in her face. Her youngest daughter will run from her house one day over this and more, and her husband who hasn't looked her in the eye in twelve years will just stop, and suddenly he won't be her husband but more an old and done man bearing the weight of his guilt and hers.

"If an apprentice refuses to part from their spirit then they're exiled. If they can't because they don't have the strength then the augur watches over them for signs of corruption. No one wants that, not even the rest of the spirits. They drive bad spirits out of the hold. And if someone is corrupted? If there's an abomination? They go to sleep one night and they don't wake up." Which is exactly what Asher told Adelaide, what Asher offered Adelaide since the augur has a way but a blade is a blade, and Asher hasn't lost any of his own company on a battlefield but he doesn't torture people. He's always offered a quick end and if that's a dagger to the back of the neck, then so be it. "She wanted to save you."

By 'she,' Anders takes Asher to mean Adelaide. She had, and she did. He refills the cup and offers it back out again.

"I wanted to part. That's what she was working with me on. And I've no idea what the layers of distinction are between corrupted or not - the Chantry holds that to join at all instantly makes one an abomination." There might not have been any help after all, because he knows Justice was corrupted... but he'd still been willing. He might have had the strength. There might have been a chance and that's exhausting. There may have been a way to save Justice rather than destroy him and injure so many people in the process.

"You've no idea where I was at, where he was at, when you'd not bothered to speak with either. And you're no augur." His voice reflects his tiredness far more than his frustration. It's done. Justice is gone. There's no undoing any of the past.

"You're no augur either. Do you want to know why I'm here? I'll tell you. The first time I left I was meant to make someone a Reaver and I dragged my feet. I left because I didn't know if I could stay, I had to speak with my augur to settle my heart and my mind and my soul, I had to be with my family again. Then I took a job on the way back and an abomination threw itself at me and burned me. I'd never been hurt like that, never been sick like that, and I knew that it was because I hadn't honoured my oath to Hakkon." Asher believes the gods are with him always, and maybe that was the thing that rankled with Eleanor so easily, that Asher lived and breathed it, because he says it calmly, he says it without any hint of shame or embarrassment.

His Lady is waiting for him somewhere just outside, each bird that alights upon the tent, every finger of wind that finds a way in, all of them saying Asher Hardie your time is spent, I am your Lady now until the ending of the world.

"I went to put things right. Gave him the blood, showed him how to mix it up, sat there while he did it but that's life. Sometimes it's already there, and it's the shadow under your tongue when you're laughing in your cups with your friends, leering when you've got someone back in your tent feeling more alive than you ever thought you did. Sometimes life is what it is. Sometimes you cut and cut again until there's nothing left but the bone, then you leave that out for the world and the gods." What a man would give for a cleaner line, as Gwenaelle had put it so gently.

"Let me put it to you this way: what if it had been the spirit that endured and not the man? Spirits can live with a hold for generations. We court their favour like you might court a lover."

It's a religious system entirely unlike anything Anders has heard of. Most believed they were being punished when things went wrong, yes, but they never had clarity as to what they'd done, or did they go to make it right. They tended to put it off, blame others, or act like it was over. And he could certainly get the whole cut to the bone and left out metaphor.

But that's not what Asher is asking about.

"They would have tried to kill him." The answer takes no time. "Or are you asking my opinion? My preference would of course be to not die. But I wish we'd had a way to move him back to the Fade safely. We didn't. We don't. And I'm not the first to wind up like that, and I won't be the last. People will make mistakes. Having things in place to help both who are caught in the situation would be worthwhile."

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Cold upon the mountain

Closer to the end

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