there ain't language for the things i've seen

[alankazam]

WHO: Alan + Kain, Medicine Seller, Thingol, Bruce, Jaime + OTA
WHAT: Gotta catch 'em all
WHEN: Post-Winter Palace
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: N/A

Starters in comments. If we agreed to do something and I missed you, just let me know on Plurk or Discord (oeste #8807). :)

If you'd like a specific starter, or if anything needs altering, please feel free to hit me up. If we have a Winter Palace Pt. II thread going, I'd like to finish those off first!

Comments

B

[onlyhymns]

Cade prays a lot. Like, a lot a lot. In the early morning before he goes to his tasks, around lunchtime, in the evening before dinner, again before he goes to bed, and that's just what takes place in the chapel. He prays like a man with a guilt complex, which is of course ridiculous.
On one such evening he's stepping out into the cloistered garden, still limping a little from the injury he sustained at the Winter Palace, and he sees That Guy sitting there. Cade freezes; he's not sure he wants to invite Alan's attention, because he's weird and says uncomfortable things.

[alankazam]

Living in the middle of the woods can teach you a lot of things. Social graces are seldom chief among these, but a certain awareness of one's surroundings often becomes second nature.

Which is to say: Sorry Cade. You've been Noticed.

Alan doesn't look up (knife safety is temporarily being prioritized over his commitment to weirdness), but he pauses humming along to regard Cade from out the corners of his eyes,

"It's nice weather,"

He offers. It's nothing of the sort: The usual frigidity of the winter months has settled deeply into Skyhold. But that's the sort of thing that you say (or so he's learned) when you're beginning a polite conversation. In some vague sense, he's aware that Cade's owed that. Alan isn't given to apologies, but that doesn't mean he enjoyed upsetting the man.

"It didn't really move as much, in the West." Orlais has fewer howling winds, it's true. "Sort of stifling."

He's no idea whether Cade attended or not. After what Alan's seen of the Templars there, he rather hopes he didn't. If he doesn't enjoy upsetting Cade, he really didn't enjoy upsetting a Horror.

[onlyhymns]

At first, Cade actually believes that he's gotten away with it, and he starts to walk away-- but then Alan addresses him, and he stops with a quick intake of breath. Yes. Weather. Weather exists. Say something back, you idiot.
"...where in the west?" he asks awkwardly, taking the bait.

[alankazam]

Alan stops carving long enough to glance up, to gesture vaguely westward with the blade.

This is probably not a reassuring move — and the way he points it at himself betrays just how temporary that whole knife safety phase really was. Still, he tries to sound casual about it, to force the sort of warm interest that Beleth affects into his tone. He even remembers to keep his eye contact brief.

No one's about to applaud. But he's trying.

"All of it, I suppose. Once you're out of the highlands it's all so still. Halamshiral was worst for that." His eyes drift half-lidded, and he sets the knife aside, considers his pile of sticks. "The smoke wouldn't hang so much in the mountains."

Another point against ceilings, architects take note.

"I don't see why anyone wants to live there."

[onlyhymns]

At the mention of Halamshiral, Cade shudders. That was a night to remember, that's for sure-- and little does he know it, but he was barely half a vestibule away from Alan while he battled without armor and got his leg impaled by red lyrium. A sensible sort, Cade is.

"...I don't either," he murmurs after a pause, having considered it. Orlais is so grand in some places, and so desolate in others. "...living here is fine," he decides."

[alankazam]

Confirmation it is. Alan stoops to collect a stick, the better to fiddle between his hands.

"I can't get the edges right on these." A non-sequitur, but a small one. It's easier to circle around the topic. Cade doesn't seem to care for it either — and Alan supposes that must explain the limp. "I grew up near here. Not far, really. I never thought I'd come back. But I missed it."

"You're from up north, aren't you?"

His accent's hard to place, but everything's north of Haven.

[onlyhymns]

Cade tilts his head to better see what Alan is doing, curious in spite of himself, though he's quickly led back to the initial train of thought by the man's question.

"Yes," he answers, with a note of surprise, "um." Then he hesitates, realizing he isn't sure where to say he's from. "Starkhaven," he decides, since, if nothing else, he was born there.

[alankazam]

"Really?" He offers the stick out to Cade, belatedly. "Here, I've got lots."

There's no real use for them, aside from tinder. Or perhaps very small, shitty projectiles. Maybe he wants to build a nest.

"There was a girl at the party," A bit of a fuzzy memory, but not entirely unpleasant for it. "A servant, I think. She said she knew someone in Starkhaven. Said the streets were paved with marbles, or."

Alright, more than a bit fuzzy.

"Something, I suppose. I expect if it was really marbles, you'd just slip a lot." Alan's still cautious, but it's beginning to edge towards cautious optimism, inch by inch. He's clearly nailing this conversation.

[onlyhymns]

When Alan offers the small shitty projectiles, Cade just furrows his brow and shakes his head. He has no need of them.
He's thoroughly baffled by Alan's description of Starkhaven, and can't help but wonder where in Thedas someone got that idea. Although...

"I haven't been since I was little," he admits, "perhaps they've paved it with marbles since then."

[alankazam]

Alan shrugs and uses the stick to scratch absently at his hair. Your loss, buddy.

"It's funny how much things can change when you're away. You expect it to be stopped in place. But everything goes on without you."

Sort of a comfort, he supposes. Seasons change, streams keep running, life pushes through.

"Do you think you'd ever want to see it again?"

[onlyhymns]

Cade nods absently. Everything goes on without you. That couldn't be more true.
He purses his lips and considers his answer before he speaks again. "I don't know," he murmurs, "I suppose I don't really care one way or another." Maybe he'll see it again, maybe he won't. It will never be what it was. That stopped being possible decades ago.

[alankazam]

He mirrors the nod, a small gesture.

"I suppose it'd have to have something worth caring about, for that. No one's at Skyhold for the weather." Not even him, not really. "How'd you find out about all this, anyway?"

[onlyhymns]

The question surprises Cade slightly-- it's not that he hasn't answered it before, he just hasn't thought about it in a while.
He regards Alan with mild suspicion while he rubs the back of his neck, then sighs and figures it can't hurt to answer. "I came here with the Knight-Commander of another company," he replies, keeping it vague.

[alankazam]

There's that look again. The horsemeat look.

"Did they —" A gesture. Order? What's the right parlance? Oh. Oh duh. "— Command you to come here, then?"

That has to be a neutral question, right? All these uniform types, they seem to like following.

[onlyhymns]

Cade seems confused by the question, and shakes his head mildly. "I came with him," he repeats. "My, um. My men were all gone." Another topic probably best left alone, based on how his eyes flit away and back, contemplating a potential exit strategy.

[alankazam]

"Well, it's."

Where did they go, is what he's trying very hard not to ask right now. Why did they leave?

"Got to be easier, not being here alone."

[onlyhymns]

He can feel the question coming, and Cade is... quite relieved, actually, when he can almost physically perceive Alan sidestepping it. "It is," he agrees, fairly quickly at that. Not that it's entirely true. The other Templars don't appreciate his company much, but he gets by.
He hesitates after answering, and wonders if he shouldn't keep walking. But this conversation isn't so bad, he's had worse. Even if the guy did try to feed him horsemeat once.

[alankazam]

In a move of pure unbridled optimism, Alan shifts aside to free half the bench.

"No one's alone in the Maker," Even if He's turned His face from them, He's all around them still. "But there's something more of Him in people. It makes it easier,"

The crook of a smile,

"Until it doesn't. Sometimes it shines too much for me."

[onlyhymns]

This is unprecedented. Cade has almost given up on finding anyone as devout as he is at Skyhold-- at least who's worth talking to-- and suddenly Alan has something that finds its way directly to his heart. Perhaps it's silly, but words like this are the ones he needs most desperately to hear.

Hesitantly, he comes to perch on the bench next to Alan, sighing lightly once he's able to take the weight off his injured leg. "How can it shine too much?" he asks.

[alankazam]

"Everyone has their own piece of fire, reflected of Him."

A glance down to his hands, considering. He hasn't even thought of how Cade's leg must be aching, and that really only proves the point, how hard it is to remember the whole of someone.

"A will. A purpose. The ability to love, or to hate. But it's like looking at a room full of candles. If you look all at once, you see the light, and not the wicks. And if you get too close, they might burn."

"And if you just stay back," He pauses, finishes a little lamely. "Well, it's cold."

Simile of the year.

[onlyhymns]

Cade nods. He still isn't quite sure he's parsing what Alan is saying, but he gets the basic gist of it, and finds it comforting to be in the presence of someone who thinks about these things.
"We wear Hessarian's sword to remember his penance," he says quietly, referring to the Templars, "but I see so little of it. And now, with the temple gone..." He purses his lips a moment. "It's difficult to forget. The journey he made. It couldn't have been for nothing, could it?"

[alankazam]

For an organization founded by believers, the Inquisition's most vocal are often far from its most faithful. Some days it seems that everyone he knows sees the matter as a peculiar curiousity, or else an invention intended towards power. Cade's brand of religion may be misled by the Chantry, but Alan can still appreciate the intent, the opportunity for talk without raising hackles.

"Was it nothing to him?" A small, sideways smile. "Nothing to the Maker? The temple was only ever a temple."

Nothing and less, eaten by time, beside those that raised it, inherited it. Even those that stole it.

"The belief that built it lives on. The believers do." Andraste will show herself again, with time and with faith. She will come again, and she will be recognized — he knows this like he knows the sun will rise tomorrow. "Hessarian lived in dark times, times he helped to make. But by turning from his old path, he brought them light."

Don't ask how any of this works into the candles.

[onlyhymns]

Cade shakes his head. It wasn't nothing to any of them, and it still isn't.
"Do you think he approves of what we're doing?" he asks, keeping his voice low, as though the Maker might here. "Of all this?" Andraste's Herald was killed, after all. One would think to take some meaning from that.

[alankazam]

"Corypheus keeps slaves. Poisons minds, lands, and bodies." He rubs a thumb over his bandaged hand, like a worry stone. "To stand against it is... We have to try and change that. We just do."

He knows it's not easy. Is a little ashamed, really, at how long he let it go. Alan considers how to put this. It's not a matter of Cade's feelings so much as his own — there are few areas of his faith which invite doubt, but,

"Even if He didn't ask it of us, if He didn't see, it'd be what's right." His fingers withdraw, reach up to tap once above his heart. "And He does ask us, in the Chant. And He still sees us, in each other."

His face is turned. Theirs needn't be.

[onlyhymns]

Another nod of agreement. This horsemeat guy, he's not so bad. He gets it.
Cade doesn't speak again for the moment, instead just angling his head to look at Alan for several seconds, taking a measure of him. Unexpectedly, he's now happy with what he sees: finally, an ally, someone who takes the Chant as seriously as he does.

"...you should've been a Templar," he says with a little smirk. mage what mage