faderift | [semi-open] hold onto me

Entry tags:

[semi-open] hold onto me

WHO: Cade Harimann and YOU, also a few starters for specific people
WHAT: A thing has changed. Whether it's a good or bad thing remains to be seen.
WHEN: late Solace
WHERE: around Skyhold
NOTES: It's likely that some conversations will end up pertaining to things like suicide, child abuse/molestation, and so forth. Take care and feel free to ask first if you aren't sure about tagging in!

[open]

Early risers may have noticed a severely underdressed and clumsy Cade returning to his room just after sunrise on an otherwise typical day in late Solace. He had no shoes on, looked like he had just warn his sleep clothes out onto the battlements, and in fact appeared to be drunk. Perhaps Ruby was with him, perhaps she wasn't.

Or, you know. Maybe they didn't see anything at all.

I. Main Hall

If possible, Cade has gotten even hidier than before, resurfacing pretty much only for meals. The guy doesn't look good; he's skinnier than he should be, his skin paler, and the circles around his eyes darker. Needless to say, he sits alone, and eats as quickly as he can manage before disappearing again.

II. The Chapel

All of the above applies, though Cade usually goes to pray in the early morning or late at night, when he's less likely to be disturbed. He'll sit there on his knees for hours, and never seems to find any relief in it.

III. Not the Construction Areas

Though he has been assisting with the building efforts of the Inquisition's assorted laborers, after that morning he has been conspicuously absent. He can potentially be found in transit between the chapel, the main hall, and his tiny cell of a room up above the gardens, but never for long.

[for Beleth]

Unbeknownst to most, at least half the reason for Cade's absence is the fact that he made himself sick as a dog by sitting outside being sad in the cold all night. Since he'd almost literally rather die than ask for assistance, he has been keeping to his bed and leaving only when he absolutely has to, which is essentially to eat or compulsively pray or take care of basic hygiene.
what a dummy

[for Alistair]

With the note sent and presumably received, there is nothing left to be done. Cade can only assume that Alistair has made his decision about where they stand, and is at the very least grimly appreciative of being left alone.
He's eating by himself, a book laid open beside his bowl, as he sits placid and safe in the assumption that Alistair is definitely not anywhere near him at the moment. Absolutely not. I'm not hinting at anything YOU ARE

[hit me up if you want one! or just jump on in]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She hadn't been sure what to say to him, exactly. She had seen him speaking to Ruby--seen enough to discern what was going on, but she couldn't bring herself to interfere. Maybe if someone else hadn't been there to try to talk him down, but crowding him didn't seem like a good idea. She'd just had to trust Ruby, and the trust had paid off. But afterwards--What can you say?

But Beleth hears things. She sees things. She notices Cade's absence, and how he looks when he's there. She has always taken it as fact that men are generally idiots, and humans are idiots, and it does not overly surprise her that a human man is being a particular idiot. She gathers up spindleweed and other healing herbs, she makes a soup taught to her by her mother, a balm for the ailing. And she takes it, along with a thick blanket and a jug of water, to Cade's door, and she knocks.

"It's me." Cade can probably guess. Maybe. Does he know a lot of women with Free March accents? "Can I come in?"

Since negotiating himself out from under the constant watchful eye of the Tranquil, and also making distance from Zevran, there's... really no one Cade is expecting. Least of all Beleth, whose voice he recognizes on the basis of just how many times he's heard it recently.

His head spins as he sits up, and he manages an "uh," before beginning to take stock of himself: he's been in the same clothes for days, just putting on others over them when he has to go down and eat. He's kept himself clean (Cade is Cade, after all) but certainly not as put-together as he'd like, and... well, he's really not prepared for company.
"...why," he says helplessly after a long pause. He's addled, he'll need things explained to him in a bit more detail than usual.

Well, that...wasn't the response she expected. Maybe she shouldn't be surprised, though. Maybe he thought that she'd been waiting for him to be sick to finally finish him off? Which was silly, because Beleth could have killed him at any point in time before he had gotten sick, but maybe he didn't realize that.

Anyway.

"Because, Cade, I have an armful of materials to help you. One is very heavy, one is very bulky, and one is full of hot soup that might spill on me, so I would appreciate if you would open the door before all of this falls." She explains, in that tone that is pretending to be patient, but would really just like you to get a move on, please.

If only he weren't infuriatingly cautious, perhaps Cade would have friends. ...perhaps.
"...oh," he says in a small voice, hesitates for several moments, and then concedes, "...all right." Steeling himself, he gets up to shakily walk to the door and crack it open, only swinging it back fully when he sees that it is in fact Beleth and she is not in fact carrying a pile of knives.
He stands there still holding it awkwardly to admit her.

Maybe the blanket was to hide the pile of knives!!!!

No, not really, and it's readily apparent once Cade opens the door and lets her in. She needs no further invitation to march in, glancing around before setting down the soup and the jug. "The jug has water in it, drink some of it." She doesn't leave room for argument, already busily arranging the extra blanket on his bed.

If Cade can't take care of himself, then she'll have to. Who else will? "Then get back in bed. If you need help with the soup, I can feed it to you." Her tone is undeniably bossy, but there's a soft edge to it. After all, she's trying to help him.

Though he's a bit startled by Beleth's immediate shift into giving orders, there are worse things. Being told what to do is what Cade does best, and he's long since learned better than to argue with that kind of tone.
He pours himself a cup of water and drinks it down, following directions to the letter as he then goes to sit again on his bed, looking as concerned as he is confused, but not about to put up a fight.

It's a relief that he's listening, instead of arguing. She's never heard of him arguing with directions before, but she has no real authority over him. Briefly, she wonders if it's because Cade is just that whipped, or because it's her, and their relationship is complicated enough that Cade won't argue with her, specifically. Well, it hardly matters.

She tucks the new blanket around him, then plops on the stool, holding the soup out to him. "Are you strong enough to drink this yourself? You can just sip it from the bowl, if you need to. If not, then I can help you." She pauses, then takes the spoon, and takes a quick sip of it herself, first. Just in case Cade might worry that this is some kind of very complicated poisoning attempt.

"It's a Dalish recipe. It'll help you feel better."

In truth, he is just that whipped, but it's fine for Beleth to be unsure for a while. Cade sits very still and very uncertain as Beleth tucks the blanket around him, a gesture that isn't completely foreign, but which he has not encountered for most of his life. It's... kind. Almost heartbreakingly so.
When offered the bowl, he takes it quietly, barely glancing to Beleth when she gives it a taste. He's beyond caring whether or not anyone is trying to kill him; in fact, at the moment it might be welcome.
He takes a tentative sip, then is silent a beat for murmuring, "it's good. Thank you."

She Will Learn.

In the meantime, Beleth watches him eat--not because she doesn't trust him, but to gauge for herself if he'll even like it or not. When he affirms that it's good, she nods approvingly. Here, for some people, she might make a joke about it being made out of beetles and bark and whatnot, but...she's not sure if Cade wouldn't just believe her. She doesn't want to test it.

"My mother showed me how to make it." She tells him instead, and then examines her hands for a few moments, debating. "...I'm glad you're still here." Her words are quiet, still staring at her hands. "I would have missed you, if you had left." She won't elaborate unless Cade wants to, won't make him talk about it any more than that. But he should know.

He does seem to like it, and though he may just be eating it to be polite, it is genuinely making him feel better. He gets lost in it for a while, brought out of his reverie only when Beleth speaks again. And then he just looks at her, wanting to believe, but not knowing how or why he should. He does, however, know deep in the pit of his heart that she's aware of what happened, and he ducks his head slightly, ashamed.

He doesn't reply, and she's not sure what she expected him to say. Thanks? Why? I don't fucking care??? He doesn't look to be particularly...pleased, by it, though.

"...It's okay, you know." She told him, voice still quiet. "It's okay to get tired. Of everything. It's okay to want it to stop. There's no shame in feeling like there's only one way to find peace." It's against what she's been taught, it's always been frowned on by the Dalish, a great taboo. But she understands how Cade feels, and she tells him what she wants to hear, not what she's heard.

"You're not a bad person, for wanting to make the pain and the hurting stop. But...you're also a brave person. For walking away from it." She examined her hands closely, suddenly quite interested in her palm. "I think that it takes a lot of courage to decide to keep moving forward instead of stopping, even when it's hard. And I know that it's easy to think that no one would care, that everyone would move on without you, but...That's not true. There are people who want to be there for you, Cade, and I know that it's hard to see that sometimes. A lot of the time. But when moving forward is hard, if you go to those people...they'll make it a little easier to see why it's the better option."

He watches Beleth silently as she speaks, not offering much reaction, but still clearly listening. He eventually angles his head to look back at the soup again, his lips pursed and his eyes pensive.
"...I still don't understand," he rasps, several moments after she's finished speaking, "...why you defend me. Only you." He raises his eyes to warily meet hers, like a stray dog eyeing food in a friendly stranger's hand.
"I've done nothing for you."

That is...a fair question, really. Why was she helping him? Why was she going out of her way to aid someone who had hurt her so much, hurt her in ways that she was still struggling with, even to this day? Even her friends would doubtlessly question that, if they knew.

She doesn't say anything at first, because it's such a complicated answer, and even though she's asked herself multiple times, she's never come up with an entirely cohesive answer. "It would be easy," She starts out, voice quiet, still studying her hands. "to hate you. I did, for a while. But--what good does that do either of us?" She finally flicks her eyes up to look at him. "Hating you doesn't make me feel better. Seeing you suffer doesn't fix anything for me, or for you. It doesn't help anyone. But assisting you, and trying to lend you a hand? That's something with a tangible positive effect."

She shrugs, fingers fidgeting with her scarf. "I think that you deserve support. When--when the Seekers questioned me, I told them that. And I still believe it. And if they won't do it, then I will." Saying that seems to bolster her somewhat, as she turns back to Cade, sticking her chin up. If anything soothes Beleth, it's the knowledge that she's doing something because everyone else is utterly incompetent.

"It doesn't matter if you do anything for me. I'm doing what I think is right."

Oh.
All right.
Cade's expression seems to dull again, and though he looks back down at the soup, he's lost his appetite. Ever talented at skating past the nice things people say, he can't help but focus on what he perceives as the crux of her argument: she wants a positive effect, she wants to feel better. And be the bigger person.
Which leaves him, once again, the smaller person. The person who has to be cleaned up after and watched and controlled, like an animal. That was all Zevran had wanted: results, and the return to a functional Skyhold without a lunatic ruining everything.

"Well I'm glad you feel better," he mutters, too tired to snap properly.

She said something wrong. A lifetime of carefully studying other people's responses to her, and a tendency towards assuming the worse makes her mental alarms ring out as clear as if Cade had yelled at her. Her reaction is just as immediate, nearly instinctive at this point. She said something wrong, Cade is mad at her, she fucked up.

"I-I'm sorry." She pulls her shoulders up, trying to look smaller than she already is, glancing off to the side. "I said something stupid, didn't I? I'm sorry. I didn't--I didn't mean to." The fidgeting gets worse, and she occasionally sniffles, eyes fixed on the way away from Cade. "Please don't be mad. I'm sorry. I won't do it again." When she does turn back to him, she ducks her head. Subservient and small and nonthreatening, please don't yell at her.

Cade isn't much of a yeller, at least when Alistair isn't around. He's visibly startled by Beleth's reaction, and rapidly begins to panic a bit himself at the sound of burgeoning tears.
"No, no--" he says faintly, reaching a hand forward as though to touch her, and instead thinking better of it. "Please! Don't... I'm not mad."
Anyone who didn't know better might think she had just threatened him.

Edited 2016-08-13 23:19 (UTC)

That seems to calm her down a little, though she still sniffles a little when she looks up through her lashes at him. "Are you sure?"

At least he doesn't look angry, and Beleth has certainly seen him angry.

"I just--I thought you deserve to be treated nicely. That you deserve to be happy. Is that wrong...?" Her fingers twist into her scarf, still looking very sad and small and like she might start crying again if Cade tries to be MEAN.

Cade is probably the worst-equipped to advise Beleth on the matter out of anyone she could ask, and he looks at her as she talks, fretting,
He has to think for far too long before he's able to answer her question, if it's one that even has an answer. "I don't know," he says, and looks anxiously from her back down to his bowl. "...it might be." It's never been made a formal rule, as far as he knows, but paranoia dictates it's always a possibility.

Well. That's certainly not the answer she'd been expecting. Cade had worse self-worth issues than Beleth had even began to guess--worse than her, even. It strikes her as incredibly sad. She frowns, and reaches over, to rest her hand on his wrist, looking up at him.

She doesn't look incredibly intimidating or fierce, but she looks slightly less likely to burst into tears. Which is improvement??

"Well. I'm here, anyway."

The gentle touch surprises Cade, but doesn't upset him. He stares pensively at Beleth's hand for what seems like an eternity, then slowly looks up at her. The ever-present fear glimmers in his eyes, but for once it seems almost overshadowed by... something else. Relief, perhaps. Gratefulness. The realization that maybe he finally believes her.
The corners of his mouth twitch upward in the ghost of a smile, one he doesn't want to display too confidently in case this is some kind of misunderstanding,

It's a nice feeling, seeing those emotions on someone's face, because of what she did. Of course, Beleth tries to be helpful to plenty of people--if you help someone, if you listen and talk to them, sooth them, then they will like you better, be more attached to you. With Cade, it's also a little...moving, because there's a feeling that she's one of the few people that can get him to make such a face.

She likes it. It makes her feel important.

"Is there anything else that you need? From around Skyhold or anything? Any books or food or anything...?"

Beleth's questions remind Cade that he hasn't spoken to Ruby since that night, but... perhaps it's for the best. All the same, it feels undeniably and strangely good to have someone asking after him. Taking care of him. Even if he was shutting her out just a moment ago.
"...no..." he murmurs, and actually manages a tiny smile this time. "...but thank you."

His smile is returned with one of her own. Good, this was definitely progress. She gives his wrist a gentle squeeze, and nods, pulling away and straightening up. "Alright. Do you have a sending crystal? If you do, use it to tell me if you need anything else. If not, I'll be back later with some more soup, and you can tell me then."

She looks around the room, then takes the water jug, scooting it to be close enough for Cade to reach from bed. "Your main focus should be resting, okay? Please don't overexert yourself. And drink plenty of water." She pauses, and glances back to Cade. "...I'm sorry if I'm being too bossy."

Cade doesn't have a sending crystal of his own, so he shakes his head- then nods his understanding, then nods again, and pretty much keeps nodding without any protest. He only stops at her last comment, and silently shakes his head,

She can't really say anything about his lack of actual words, when she'd just told him that he needed to rest. Resting his voice counted, she supposed. She hesitates to leave, but she's pretty sure that she's done all she can do to help him for the moment, and anything else would just be idle chatter--something he didn't seem interested in, and certainly not something conducive to resting.

So she stands, and heads for the door. "I'll be back later, try to rest, if you can." And unless Cade protests, she'll exit the room, for now.

(no subject)

onlyhymns - 2016-08-19 06:00 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only