faderift | [open] got tired of wastin gas livin above the planet

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[open] got tired of wastin gas livin above the planet

WHO: Ser Cade and yoooouuu
WHAT: Futzing about, trying to suck less, possibly failing
WHEN: Before he leaves for Kinloch Hold and everyone's dreams are broken
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Lemme know if you want a specific starter! Also negative CR is always welcome (read: inevitable), so please don't be afraid to either provoke it or ask me how it could be provoked on my end.

He's here, he's fairly anti-queer, he's not quite as vanished as he always tries to be but considerably moreso than the average person!

Cade can be found in a variety of places for those who care to look or just happen upon him accidentally, for better or worse. One of such locations is

the library, where he can occasionally be found curled up in a chair with a dessert of some kind and a smutty romance novel that he'll pretend is anything but. He'd take them to his room, but that seems a whole lot more sinful so maybe not.

The kitchen is where he acquires the aforementioned sugary snacks, for which he has a particular fondness. One of the cooks likes him, which raises the Likes Cade tally to about four.

Another such place is the Herald's Rest, where he is That Guy In the Corner, but less mysterious and brooding and more awkward and afraid someone's going to demand his lunch money. He averts his eyes from most people, but will talk to them if they approach and have a stronger personality than his own (which isn't hard).

In the courtyard, on his breaks, he can often be found sitting against a wall and fiddling relentlessly with a puzzle box. It can be funny to watch, especially when he gets super frustrated and goes red all the way to his ears. Life's hard.

Lastly, those who have busienss with Seeker Darton or Knight-Commander Norrington will first have to penetrate the receptionist's desk, wherein Cade is at his most dutiful and confident unless someone deliberately tries to make him uncomfortable. Which they never would, that's ridiculous.
(Do not actually penetrate the desk.)

[If none of those make you happy, toss me a PM and we can set up a starter. Or give me a wildcard if you like!]

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Normally Araceli enters the library not from one of the side doorways, not the main stairwell from the rotunda but up she comes, the tapping of her crutch and soft aggrieved huffing heralding her arrival before she finally stops, leaning forward to catch her breath. She might have overdone it. Possibly. But nothing is bleeding and nothing is pulling too tight, and it took her a stupidly long time so here she is.

Every other book in her shared rooms is something to do with her studies, too much for her mind to really cope with still but she's horribly bored as she starts browsing the shelves, not quite sure where to start as her eyes alight on Cade.

"Any recommendations for light reading?" She asks quietly, easy enough to ignore if he wants as she leans more heavily on her crutch, swinging her weight off her right leg entirely to rest it.

Cade is fully ready to ignore the tapping of the crutch and its owner shuffling past, but when he hears her voice and looks up, he is horrified to see that it's... well, she may not be that bad herself, but he last saw Araceli with That Woman, neither of them in any proper state of dress, both laughing. At him. At least that's how he remembers it.

"...um," he falters, going a beet red as he presses his hand against the lower half of his face, "..no." Please don't take your shirt off.

Well it's Cade's lucky day for two reasons. Reason one: Araceli still needs help getting her clothes off herself and reason two: she isn't going to be showing off any of her injuries when it means letting the world see how beaten down she was by something else. Although it makes her feel half a child sometimes, needing help with some of her coats when they've got narrow sleeves, or when there are too many buttons on a shirt, or if she wants her laces done up good and tight on her boots.

"No?" She asks, glancing about to make certain no healer is going to tell her off before she sets the crutch down to stretch one leg then the other, wincing though it's not just as bad as it was. More of a stitch in her side from being idle so long compared to the usual. "Not even whatever has you all settled like that?" And even more fortunately for Cade, she's desperate enough for a distraction that she's not in a teasing mood either.

He's quick to shake his head, but only then realizes what a ridiculous notion that is: that there aren't any readable books in what is clearly an extensive library.
He looks down at what he's reading and then quickly covers it. "This is nothing," he asserts, "it's, um. It's boring. Just. Chantry stuff." Oh no, was that a sin? He's pretty sure it was. He'll have to spend extra time in the chapel tonight.

"What Chantry stuff?" Cade. Oh Cade she is a bard student. "The Divines or the-- shit, what is it-- is it fire or flame? The flame everlasting?"

She knows that she knows this, frustration not confusion taking over her face as she drums her good hand on her leg when she can't remember but she had this discussion, right here, in this very library but some details take longer than others to come back it seems. At least she got the words out without slipping into what he'd think of as Antivan.

"It must be though, if you are so red. Shall I open the window?" Only she can't because that would need two hands so she sighs at the shelves, pulling a face as she runs her fingers over the spines. "Why is half of this nonsense all Orlesian? If the Antivan or Rivaini books are on the top shelf I will eat the curtains."

"No," Cade says quickly, fully aware that he's digging himself deeper, but he's never been good with either banter or lying. Ask him to lie, why not ask him to walk on his hands? But here he is.
"It's fine. I'm fine," he insists, and closes the book to set it beside him, cover-down. "..um, if you need help reaching one..." Maybe a distraction will work. He could just leave, but he's trying to do that less. It just makes the odd looks worse when he passes people in the courtyard.

"Gracias," Araceli's gratitude is sincere and bright, gesturing helplessly at the ladder propped at one end of the shelf. "I cannot climb--" The laugh bubbles up, too sharp, too quick to be anywhere close to real; Cade knows her for one thing but her reputation as the girl on the rooftops. She clamps it down, sighing through her nose.

"Can you see the one with the roses-- or maybe they're vines on the spine? Between the blue and the orange? Someone recommended that for me."

The laugh surprises him, and Cade immediately goes on his guard, only to realize that her amusement has nothing to do with him whatsoever. Perhaps he should apply that to more situations.
Following her gaze, he looks up at the indicated book and reaches for it, only to find that it's stuck fast between its neighbors. Being that it's right at the top of his reach, he can't exactly finagle it out in a more graceful manner, so he starts to tug lightly, wiggling it out.
Of course, he didn't quite think this through. He frees the requested book, but one of its neighbors comes flapping down onto his head, off of which it bounces and then falls gracelessly to the floor.

Loud noises make her jump. They make her think of when her hand had been alight with pain only for a man to send her sprawling on top of it, and then the sudden cold of a knife at her mouth, close enough to taste cold steel. A sound catches in her throat, not a shout or a cry but a little louder than a gasp as her hand grabs the shelf to steady herself.

"Are you hurt?" She doesn't think so, it's not one of the heavier books but better to think about someone else and not herself when her voice sounds shaky to her own ears when she slowly, she is so damn slow and cumbersome for that is the only word for this, kneels to fumble the book. "Gracias, I would have fallen doing that. Opened my leg up."

Luckily it's more of a thump than a crash, but it's understandable that she might be concerned with Cade's sudden start and angry muttering. He's not about to become violent, but with his reputation in Skyhold, it's always a possibility.
He looks at her apologetically when he hears that she's upset, and stoops quickly to pick up the book and offer it to her while he rubs his head with the other hand. "Sorry," he says quickly, "that was stupid."

"No, it's not you it's--" Another breath - is this part of what Sister Nightingale meant about following the instructions of the healers? That now she has utterly mastered all the breathing exercises required of bards? - to a steady count in and out before she can answer properly.

It feels unbalanced, she realises, now she's spoken to Beleth on this subject, probably not helping matters at all.

"It wasn't your fault, a lot of things are making me jump just now, it isn't you." her smile is small, a little too tight as she takes the book in her right hand since the left is sore today, thin bandages holding her thumb in the correct position but doing little to hide the glow of her shard. "Something happened, I think the more distractions I have then maybe I can think about it less."

Or stop having nightmares that chase her into the waking world, because that's the worst problem she's having, hence the jumping at loud noises or any movement that's too sudden for her liking. Which is honestly fucking laughable when she stops to think about it.

It's strange for Cade, to relate to someone. But something about the look on Araceli's face wakes in him the realization that perhaps this is how he looks, when he starts to let the fear creep in.
He nods uncertainly, if only because this person is a near stranger and he's terrified of her partner. "If... you fix it, let me know how," he says quietly, with a small and sympathetic smile.

"Little things to fill the time. Stitching up my clothes, practicing with locks, playing games of cards with myself. Reading until the words blur in front of me," one hand points to the shelves, the whole reason she's here in the first place. "Before I hurt myself and something had happened I could climb as high as I liked, run around the battlements until it was nothing but the wind and my heart pounding, you stop thinking about your head and it's just what the next step is, where your foot goes, how far you need to reach."

Obviously that's out, and most of the books in her quarters are things she needs to study from so trying to distract herself with those is upsetting because she feels like she's falling behind, even if Sister Nightingale just wants her to get better and to listen to the healers.

"You find things, find people. But there are times you have to be by yourself and just breathe because being around them makes you want to scream, no?"

He nods. Perhaps he doesn't understand the jumping around element, but Cade has seen his share of physical exertion, especially that which takes him out of himself entirely. ...a little too effectively, they've found lately.
But the being by himself, wanting to scream-- that connects oddly well, and he finds himself looking at Araceli strangely, as though wondering how she could have put it into words so well. "...most of the time," he admits.

"I love being around people, I'm miserable on my own for too long usually but even so, I need time to be just me. In my own skin, no one else around just to-- to breathe." Closing her eyes after she has a good look around to place where everyone is in the room, and in the rotunda below for good measure, she allows herself to imagine where that would be at home. The place where the ships are reclaimed by the sea at last, where the air is so thick with brine she can taste it, the very last place for the fog to burn off.

The shaking in her leg as it threatens to buckle brings her back to reality, reaching for her crutch.

"Right now, everyone - even the people I love, the people that I know love me - they're hovering. Treating me like I'm going to break and if I snap at them then that's not easy to fix. So I go somewhere else if I can. Somewhere it's just me, my own head, no one to bother me. Let it out as much as I need to. When it's all snarled up in here," it's a little awkward to tap her head when she's getting the crutch where it needs to be but she manages, voice quiet and gentle as she speaks slower because she has to remember not to slip into her own tongue by mistake, "then it doesn't help. You can't think. Take off the mask or the armour where you know someone can't get underneath and hurt you. I can sort it all out there but I mean sometimes I lose my temper, have screaming fits in our room and kick over the furniture. That's when I know I need to go be on my own for a while and not be around people until I can think again."

Cade is good for situations like these, where someone just needs to vent. He never interrupts, he's attentive, and on the whole he's an excellent sounding board.
He stands still and quiet as Araceli talks, nodding periodically, his expression politely interested but otherwise impassive. He finds that, despite her companion, he quite likes her, even if she is a bit overwhelming. He doesn't even know how to react to so many words.
"..yes," he agrees, giving a small nod. If nothing else, it's confirmation that he's paying attention.

"Ah, lo siento. My mouth runs away with itself." Right now it's either trailing off into awkward silences or talking to fill the silences up. Probably because she had a healer in earlier with the same routine of asking too many questions she didn't have proper answers for, then getting the same 'wait and see, give it time' answers back that make her want to throw their poultices at the walls.

Or their heads but she'll get in much more trouble if she does that, no matter how satisfying it might be.

"Are you...doing better than you were? Beleth Ashara and I, we know one another quite well." Araceli wouldn't necessarily say friends, she doesn't know Beleth well enough for that really and doesn't always feel comfortable about her the way she does with most people. Honestly she's not sure where she's going with this more than wanting to try to ask 'hey are you okay' but it feels weird to just ask a stranger without trying to qualify it, at least a little. "A few things came up in discussion before I went to Dairsmuid, and...I suppose I have been attacked by someone who was not who they usually are either now."

Oh no. Beleth. ...this topic. oh no.'
Cade flushes a bright red and quickly looks away, curling a hand over his mouth as though afraid of what he'll say if he doesn't. "Um," he mumbles into it, "yes. Much better." He's of the 'try to forget a thing ever happened and hope it never comes back to haunt you' school of coping, which has gotten increasingly difficult with basically everyone in the vicinity knowing who he is and what he did. It's probably time to try a different tactic, not that he knows what that would be.

The good and bad side of being a thief is this: your mistakes have to be addressed. Admitted. Aired out in the light of day, hopefully by your peers and not the guard because the guard won't be nearly so forgiving (and even then, the roasting of your supposed friends? Oh how that can burn.)

"Good, that's good." She smiles, nods though she's not sure why exactly she's nodding. It's too new to say that she knows the story from Beleth's mouth, that she still isn't happy about how Beleth went about it (that Beleth wasn't happy with Araceli's reaction to the truth of it) but she leans back against the railing, tapping the spine of her book.

Everyone here? Well everyone has to try to live as best they can as it ticks ever closer to a year since a rift spat her out.

"I should get going before someone sends out a search party, but thank you again, Señor Harimann. I'll let you know if the book is good or not. And I'll even translate any of the Antivan bits properly."

Cade nods mildly, not about to stop her, and even smiles a little. "Thanks," he murmurs, though he doubts he'll ever have any reason to read or speak Antivan. It's still a nice gesture. "Have a ... have a nice evening, then."

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[open] got tired of wastin gas livin above the planet

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