faderift | For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

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For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Wow was closing those rifts a bad time and double wow guess who is a terrible patient
WHEN: post plot/early Octoberish; we can handwave time a bit
WHERE: Healing tents; her + Korrin's room later
NOTES: Okay there will be discussions of injuries here as well as what went on in that plot, I'll try to put warnings in headers if specifics come up but if there are things you aren't comfortable with discussing, let me know (Araceli's ic/ooc inbox, plurk or discord all work!)
Also let me know when you're catching her since that'll change how injured she is/if she's still lyrium'd to the gills!

There isn't much of a choice in where she goes when she comes back to Skyhold. Araceli is sent to the healing tents, too hurt, too tired, too out of her head to even attempt to argue. Half her arguments aren't even in a language the healers about her understand until one of the Rivaini mages agrees to step in, knowing decent enough Antivan but she drifts. Tries to sort through memories with her right hand curled against Lux who visibly bristles even at friends throughout the first awful days. Her left arm is useless, bandaged tightly to keep her from hurting it more, right leg not much better. Healing potions and spells are turned away. Sleep, she just wants to sleep.

(There are too many nightmares but she presses her face to Lux, and at least she can open the flap of the tent to breathe fresh air when she struggles for air when she fights herself awake.)

Later, when she's able to argue a little better, she attempts to sneak out. Attempts. Being that her right leg is weak and aching and useless. The bandages are off to reveal stitches closing up the wound in her calf, maybe with another poultice slapped on if someone argues her into it. But she's been stuck somewhere against her will already for so long that she can't explain the itch under her skin or that she can't breathe when she's trapped in the tent, that no she never just lies down to sleep all at once, and the longer she's cooped up, the worse her temper gets. Her head feels more like hers; she's Araceli, she's been here nearly a year now, she's Korrin's kadan, she knows all of that. But she looks up at the walls with longing, testing her thumb, attempting to put more weight on her leg--

(I've been shot, I've been stabbed, I've broken bones worse, I can climb again, I can, I can--)

Eventually she gets to go back to her and Korrin's rooms, either for a few hours or because she's well enough that they don't have reasons to keep her. Still, she's always running around doing something. And she's bored. Tremendously bored. Stuck in a chair or more likely the bed because she doesn't like admitting how sore and how tired she is, not really, and there's an open door policy if you know to look for the one with the blue seashell. There are books scattered about, and all of Araceli's cards and dice but playing games with herself is no fun when she wants a distraction.

(You should probably give Korrin a break, having to deal with this pain in the ass all the time.)

[[ooc: any mix is good - like bringing cards etc to the healing tents - or wildcard it up, just check in if it's when she's still full of lyrium for memory flash stuff!]]

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Damn right nobody's going to keep him from visiting Araceli. It's almost like half the people he knows ended up on this trip of torture and/or rescue and it's not okay. There are strings of guilt plucking in his brain that he knows he has to ignore, that it's all just stupid stuff leftover from his time in Blood Gulch (or, maybe, even before that)--thinking maybe if he'd gone along then at least he might've been able to do something. Or if he'd gone, then he'd be the one in the tent instead of literally anyone else.

He knows better than to feel these things, and he knows better than to get in the way of any of the healers, or of Korrin, or of Lux. He lingers outside the tents the first day, when everyone had filtered in and he'd seen the terrible state the teams were in, but doesn't enter. And then when he peeks in later, she's sleeping, and again later, still sleeping. He's not about to disturb her rest.

Eventually after a couple of days, with permission, he sits by her cot on an upturned box. Lux isn't the happiest fox, but he's going to have to just deal with it, because Church is going to sit here until she wakes up, not bothering her. Spending his time chewing on the end of a quill, wishing pens had been invented, scribbling on sheets in his lap awkwardly.

Araceli has been Lux's whole world since he was a baby thing that wandered onto a ship that happened to be captained by a certain Felix Bonaventura, who delivered him into Araceli's hands. Ever since he's gone where she's gone. Sometimes here he gets left behind but Araceli has never smelled like this, sick and sad and strange, never dampened his fur with so many tears; there's more bark than bite, and more whining than bark. An anxious fox.

The nightmares are worse now she's in Skyhold. Maybe it's the shock wearing off, or whatever they give her to make her sleep that has her trying to frantically claw herself awake when they come but they're so real, they're so real she can't breath, that she wakes up gasping. Usually she thrashes about like a wild thing too, knocks her leg, her arm, her slashed ribs.

Waking suddenly from teeth and wretch you are nothing, heart pounding, she squints through bleary eyes still red and a touch swollen. Expecting a healer. Another round of 'no I do not want healing spells, go away' only that isn't a healer, that's-- "Church?" That's his name isn't it? Names slipped out of her head for a while but that sounds about right.

Her unfortunate sleep is distressing, but at the same time, it's not the most unfamiliar feeling. It's interesting to sometimes realize that everyone he knows is fucked up. Occasionally unable to sleep for fucked up reasons. It's not like he hasn't hella realized that shit is fucked up, that people are going to die here. That people will get hurt and tortured and just get increasingly fucked. Just like in any war.

It's her fits and starts that don't bother him too much. He's concerned, obviously, but it's all right. It's when she starts the claw and thrash and hurt herself, when she's wound herself up into a nightmare-induced frenzy, that he sets his pages aside, fetches some water, strokes her hair.

She's so distant. But she recognizes him anyway. There's that much. "Yeah. Hey. You were dreaming." He offers up some water. "But you're here, so...you're okay."

Another face swims up - dark curls, tighter than hers, neat moustache and a trimmed beard, a scar, darker skin - and she blinks in confusion when the gasp lodges painfully under her ribs. He isn't here, something says in her head, he is at sea, look at your hand.

Only she closes her eyes, leans into Church's hand as much as she can just to pretend. Just for a moment.

Dreaming is a kind way to put it when it's disjointed, sharp as the needles and the teeth but she takes the water with a murmur of thanks, sipping so she won't choke. "I forget sometimes. I think I'm there." Usually at night when it's pitch black outside because that just confuses her. "Siento." Her friends? They shouldn't have to see all this, and at some point she'll probably be embarrassed about it since she sometimes says things since the healers try to get her talking and nope, no sale.

"What're you doing?" Rescue your papers, Lux is stalking them now he's done nodding his approval at the petting Araceli just had.

"Hey, c'mon, you're good. Um. Estás bien." Yo, just because he's not a fluent Spanish-speaking robot (anymore) doesn't mean he doesn't know a little Spanish. C'mon. "You went through hell, so your brain's gonna fuck with you in the meantime."

Just because Lux is eyeballing and playing around with his papers doesn't mean he's gonna leave Araceli's side. Glad he's got fox approval, though. Little fucker can screech. "Something to pass the time. I, uh. I've been, um. So, I mean, we were talking about singing, before, right, so uh I don't know any y'know. Songs. From here. And I had the stupid idea, y'know, stupid, really dumb, like, if this was a movie it'd be really sweet and the music would swell and all the girls in the audience would have tears in their eyes--I mean, I was gonna sing? To you. Which, I mean, in retrospect, not the best time for it. I was trying to write down lyrics to songs I know. You know when you need to remember something, and when you're not thinking about it, you can recite it flawlessly, but when you think about it, it disappears? It's kinda like that."

Those sure are a lot of rambling words to throw at a woman waking up and in pain. "I also don't have musical accompaniment, and I'm not about to do this shit a capella."

"I wish I'd cut his arm off." The Venatori. Her rapier had gone into an elbow and he probably hadn't been the one to backhand her so she fell on her broken thumb. Or put his knife at her mouth. Was that the same one that stood on her wrist too? It doesn't matter, it had hurt, she'd heard the sound torn out of hi. It had felt good in that swirling mess of aching and sickness.

Look. Church. Papers. Pat-pat-pat, that is a satisfying sound you cannot deny that okay, he likes that sound and Araceli is always hiding her papers up on high shelves or under that one floorboard she pried loose. But he won't eat them because she taught him papers are very valuable. "Yes. Yes, I remember that. It isn't stupid," done with her water, her good hand can reach out to just settle somewhere on him, she doesn't really have great aim right now, ignore that it's shaking for the sake of what little fractured dignity remains to her please. "I forgot where I was. And all the names of everyone here, and what faces went where for a while. I think I'm still forgetting sometimes with some people."

That's an attempt at a pre-emptive apology because she forgot who Korrin was. Forgot about the dragon's tooth necklace Korrin gave her and that hurts. It wasn't her fault but you never forget the ones you love, right?

"Some of the best songs are like that, just a voice, drumming your hands on whatever there is to drum. Songs on ships go like that. I think you owe me, I would never forget debts." Pirate captain's daughter, that sort of thing is just hard-wired somewhere deep down in there.

Yes, Lux, don't eat the papers. So long as he doesn't eat the papers of half-remembered lyrics (and memory is so important to both of them now, with Araceli's forgetting, and how memory is the key, and he has to cling on to what's his when there's so much that isn't, and she has to cling on to the here and now)-- Even if he does eat them, that would require at least temporarily leaving Araceli's side. No can do, little fox bro. Go nuts.

The shaking in her hand makes his breath stop for a long moment before sighing out. He won't comment on it, hell fucking no, just rest her hand on his arm and pretend he doesn't feel that. He thinks about when they were talking about singing, when she was arriving from some other mission, her grin bright, her step practically bouncing. And he could remind himself that that's war, but it's so fucking inadequate that he could laugh. Doesn't, of course. "It'll all come back to you. It'll be a little slow, but you'll push through the fog, and you'll remember everyone. It's just confusing right now. Don't rush it." Like waking up from an intense dream. Or nightmare. But during her waking hours, too.

He forces his small smile, and he knows it looks forced, but maybe she'll look past that, too. "I'm finding a lot of the songs I'm remembering so far aren't exactly happy. Or they're, uh, a genre that doesn't fit my voice." Who listens to Lady Gaga? Absolutely not Leonard Church. "Or I gotta--I mean, I don't want to make things worse by trying to beat out something depressing, you know? Now that would be stupid. What you need is an honest to god shanty. Or an Irish drinking song. Holy shit, I should see if I remember any good Irish bands." See? To keep it light!

Forgetting is better than flashes that aren't hers. Nothing she can really pin down as belonging to any particular person but somehow that only makes it worse, more questions that answers, all the sideways looks when it's over in the blink of an eye. Hopefully she'll forget those too the same way she did try to keep the names right in her head for as long as she could before they just got lost. Of course usually when she gets this way she runs, climbs, and home would have the ship graveyard where the smell of salt and brine sticks to her, and Skyhold has places where she can always taste something like winter in the back of her throat. But she can't, and they shut the tent all the time, shut her in until it closes tight about her.

Flexing her good hand, she sighs at it. There's a joke to be made somewhere but she's forgotten the punchline. Or maybe she's the punchline? She's told that joke before perhaps or did she just listen to it and laugh over a drink somewhere else. "I'm bad at slow," she complains, her scowl exaggerated by just having woken up. "Sometimes you have to run first but I think someone would hit me with a glyph or a spell if they thought I'd try it. Even Korrin would." What sort of a world is this, where even Korrin would turn traitor on her too, if she felt better she could be a sight more dramatic about the whole affair.

Church please explain disco sticks. So she can tell a certain old man. Before she maybe tries to get him to fence with her when they both have canes because can you imagine how great that would be, you cannot deny progress or something. "Sometimes you have to have something that just comes from the heart." And being in the healing tents all Araceli can think of are the songs everyone starts singing when they're maudlin drunk, when they start salting everything with their tears so that's just incredibly unhelpful. "Do you have shanties too? I didn't know that. Half of them are just nonsense so people don't tie themselves into the rigging. Which...people do."

Or tie other people into the rigging but that's on purpose or for a dare. Araceli Bonaventura y Castell the captain's daughter has never done that ever.

He doesn't know all the details. Mostly knows bad shit went down. Something something experimenting on shardbearers, something something withdrawal symptoms. She's just made him aware of memory issues, but that it goes as far as flashes of something else, someone else? ...Man, the amount of how much he understands about that is just sad. With Epsilon pulsing in his tin can of a storage unit, showing him flashes that are and are not his at the same time-- It was giving him a damn headache, but between Wash's words, slowly explaining the story of Epsilon, the Freelancer AI, the Alpha, and the briefest flashes that helped put the pieces in place...

He can't even trust his own memories from before being put in that god forsaken canyon. Tex was never his girlfriend. He didn't grow up on Earth, didn't have parents. Hell, he probably didn't see Jimmy get beaten to death with his own skull. No wonder that didn't seem physically possible. His running isn't physical, not spidermanning up walls and across gaps for a breath of fresh air. His running is ignorance. Better to ignore it. Pretend he's just a guy that's about to die if he ever gets back home, soldier, leader of his team but otherwise Nothing Special.

Sometimes memories can go fuck themselves. "I think someone might drag you back to bed and give you a sedative, at least. Not sure they'd actually fling magic at you. That seems...kinda dangerous to do in a place like this. Korrin wouldn't do that to you." Maybe she would. He has no idea. "It sucks being stuck here. Being hurt sucks. But you have to recover first, or you're gonna get hurt worse."

If there's cane fencing he's selling tickets. He'll clear out the tables from the tavern to make a ring or something. "Yeah, we used to have sea pirates and shanties and navies and shit like that hundreds of years ago. Swashbuckling. I uh, don't know about tying yourself into the rigging, but I don't know that I've ever actually seen an actual ship with, y'know, rigging. And sails, and all that shit before. Back home I mean. Iiii don't think you want me making up something off the top of my head, though, and call it a shanty."

Rubbing her head, she pulls a few stray curls (a charitable definition, they look about the same as they did when she got back from the Fallow Mire right now) tight around a finger until the new flash of pain gives her something to focus on. There's too much that she wants to ask Lexa - the hand on her shoulder, and 'I won't let them take you' or how she'd fought the Venatori but she didn't even know Lexa before the trip. Hadn't even said two words to her, not even in the tavern.

Would it even help to ask her who she thought Araceli was, or does she just want to know what she's worrying at the same way she'd poke at a loose tooth? Does she try asking when she's still going to be able to be honest or does she wait until she can hide her face again? There aren't many people she'd look at the way Lexa looked at her, and it only makes her skin feel too tight all over again.

So back to something safer. Easier. A bit closer to who she really is. "If they do that then they will be a beggar the rest of their days when I am well, and they will never be served again in the tavern. If they are, it will be watered down every time." When making threats, you hit someone where it hurts and this is why Araceli so rarely kills people: there are always much worse things than death, and taking all the pleasures out of a life are infinitely sweeter satisfaction. "At home we paid the doctor to come to the house, and I could lie in my old bed until I thought my mother wouldn't hear me trying to open the window and get out." How she heard her every single time, she has no idea but she did.

Usually she paid for it in some way. Chores until she was too exhausted to even think of escape plans most often.

Leave her some tables though, she needs to have the parkour advantage when Martel has height advantage. "Swashbuckling - you sound like my friends when they came staggering off the ships to bring them to Castileos the first time." Not that they'd been her friends then but they hadn't really made an effort to get to know her country until Araceli had been the introduction. "What if something brilliant came out? If you didn't think too much and just let everything you felt like happen? Some shanties are ridiculous, and if you think they're singing about one thing they're singing about something else, and half the time it's dirtier."

He doesn't stop her from tugging her hair, even if he doesn't think she should be doing that. Despite her predicament, despite her mental fucked-uppery, she must need so much distraction, must be bored as hell and restless. "Hey. If there's anything you need--anything that I can reasonably get for you--don't hesitate to ask. I'll even make a passable effort at trying to shoo your girlfriend away if you need it, even if I won't succeed." You try standing in Korrin's way for more than three seconds. If you're not Araceli.

"We had a medic show up at our base. He was helping both sides, because he was a conscientious objector and a pacifist, so he just wanted to help anyone who was injured. It was weird. And he wasn't very good at what he did. But at least he made housecalls. Housecalls albeit three months late, but still, once he was there..." Man, Doc would get eaten alive in a place like this. On the other hand, he did put up surprisingly well with O'Malley. Or...as O'Malley, whatever.

As for the rest of it? Something brilliant does sometimes come out of him, but not in the sing-song and rhyme department. "...I mean, I could uh. Y'know, I might give it a shot. About...something. Don't think to much" ~~just bust that kick I wanna take a ride on your disco stick~~ "just let shit roll out? I mean. Uh. Hold on." He's gonna lean back and try and think of rhyming shit. Sometimes armies have sounding off marches and dirty sounding shit to chant. This is my rifle, this is my gun, etc.

"Uhhhhh I think I can do this, hold on. Should I just, like, tap out a beat? I don't know that I can sing it if I'm making it up as I go, but I can at least sorta...go. Should I go? Hold on." She's been holding on, Church. He starts tapping his heel on the ground like a metronome. "Had a sword in one hand and the other a gun/ one was for stabbing, the other for fun/ got frisky with an alien don't know why or how/ but now he's the dad to a tiny space cow--wait, wh- am I seriously trying to come up with a song about Tucker, how did that even happen?"

He's making a face at himself. "I can keep going. You can fall asleep or tell me to shut up or, like, laugh a lot, I don't care, but this is your fault. Let's try that again."

More thinking. More thinking while he's tapping. "Okay, I think I got it! The rookie's coming in and talking some shit/ he needs to shut up or he's gonna get hit/ always doing something that's gonna end bad/ when he says my name I'm gonna get mad/

Pacifist and artifice, the medic of the gang/ gotta shoot somebody or he's gonna get hanged/ purple's the color between red and blue/ better not be malpractice or I'm gonna sue

The laziest fucker that you ever knew/ can't tell him what for or what to do/ afraid of bats or snakes in caves?/ better move his ass or he'll send us to our graves

Kiss-ass, smartass, all around ass/ if he's got an idea I think I'll pass/ nerdy motherfucker and an all around geek/ if it wasn't for his friends he wouldn't make it a week!" The longer he goes for, the more excited and enthusiastic he gets, because this is kind of fun and he's even surprising himself.

"The leader of the bunch, you know him well/ the shotgun sergeant straight from hell/ with his stupid one-liners and a passion for blood/ better call him 'sir' or he'll kick you to the mud/

Lightish-red armor not of his choice/ the Iowa farmer with a high-pitched voice/ if he was here he'd seem really fey/ don't tell him that I think he's pretty okay/

She's a bitch in black and hard as stone/ she needs no friends and works alone/ send in the soldiers then send for more/ don't try to stand up or you're back on the floor/ with a punch to the balls and a kick to the head/ you gotta get better or you're gonna get dead/ you think you've got skills but you're sinking fast/ the first time you fight her's gonna be your last--"

He finally pauses sheepishly. "Is...uhhhh. Is this stupid? I mean uh like this is--I'm not--wh--I feel a little bit stupid, tell me I'm not being fucking stupid, my crippling self-doubt is kicking in."

"If you can play cards without having to be taught the rules? I can play cards. Just not for coin. Since...that's all back at the room." Because right now she doesn't have it together enough to think about having someone get some of her coin for her to start bribing people to look the other way when she wants to go wandering or escaping on her own. Apart from seeing Ruby. That's a deception she's proud of putting together, even under the pain of being throttled with her own hair by several people as soon as she's well enough to be safely throttled with her own hair. Aintza can make those threats when she's a Seer, when she's motherly or as close to that as Araceli will get away from home.

And there are a lot of stairs in the dungeons. The guard had to help her most of the way back up when her leg just refused to carry her as soon as she was out of Ruby's line of sight.

"Three months late? I suppose sometimes it must be a case of tómelo o déjelo but so long?" Church she is aghast, leaning in to peer at you as if she might find wounds this medic has left untreated by taking so very long. This is why crews pay their cooks and their doctors so well, to stop them from leaving to find another ship in need of such skilled men or women.

Whatever Araceli is expecting when she nods for him to continue? It's not this. For a moment she does wonder if the lyrium has made her lose her mind but this feels too real because she's smiling. She can feel herself smiling properly for the first time since she got back. She's not following, not really - what is a space cow, how does a person have a space cow if they get together with an alien? - but even though it hurts her ribs, she laughs. (She'd forgotten she could laugh. Like all the colour had been drained out of the world and her life, everything grey and sharp at the edges, and now there's this and her cheeks aching from the strain of trying not to explode giggling.)

There are tears to wipe from her face when she's done but they're the good kind, and her flask of rum is offered out when she can find it after that because payment where payment is due. "You," she says, swallowing a hiccup when she almost starts laughing again because space cows, Church she only just saw a real cow for the first time in the flesh when she came to Thedas and that's not quite a year ago, "need to not hide your light under a bushel. That was incredible! Those are the people you know, that you are close to where you come from?"

To see her, in the state she's in, smile? Grin? Laugh? That can't be comfortable, but she does it anyway. It's encouraging. And despite his self-doubt, he's also grinning. Takes the flask with a tilted salute and a drink (and a cough or two) before handing it back.

"You really think so? I might have to write some of that down, polish it up. I'll start rapping the tales of the dumbasses I was with." So there's that confirmation. He ticks them off on his fingers. "Lessie, we got Tucker, Caboose, Doc, Grif, Simmons, Sarge, Donut, and Tex." Look, Grif's sister kind of counts, but also kind of doesn't count, okay? Anything he makes up about her is likely to get hella lewd anyway. "Tucker, Caboose, and Tex were with me on my team, the others were on the other team, except for our three months late Doc. Wasn't his fault; we just had really shitty oversight where we were."

Sometimes, very very very briefly, there's the fear that none of this is real, that the rifts and this place and these people are just some new experiment. Gary sending him through a new scenario again. The Director toying with him. What if it's not real? What if some part of his computerized brain is rejecting reality and living the last few stretched out milliseconds here?

"I think that took out all my creativity for the week, though. You want me to get some cards, I can tell you in less rhyming terms about 'em? Maybe get some food, too?"

"Need to teach you how to drink," she says, holding up the flask in a wobbly hand so that what little light there is in the tent makes the big octopus on the front dance. Or it always looks like it's dancing to her. She likes tracing it most of the time. "That's watered, so sailors aren't too drunk to work."

A sage nod. At least there are apparently some facts nestled so deep in Araceli that she can't forget them, generations of knowledge carved into her bones, truths you'd find if you cracked open the marrow.

But there's a more important thing when she tucks the flask back into her belongings, a name that catches because it makes her laugh again. "Donut? Is that a name? That...does not sound like a name. Or Caboose." Saying that one makes her laugh though, it just sounds like the right level of ridiculous that she apparently needs or she's just loopy enough to find it funny.

Maybe people would find names from her home strange. Poor Arsenio might be the worst just for the start of his name depending on the maturity level, and well, Brunilda too. It does conjure a certain image, not helped at all by snow-bears and maidens. Or however that story goes, Araceli can't remember.

"Burly, Raas and Kalla all cook things that I love, and Korrin brought my spices from our room. And I will owe you a meal. You can write that down and leave it with me: Araceli Bonaventura owes Leonard Church one home-cooked meal."

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For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

sometime in those first couple awful days

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