faderift | (open) for all we know it's just a lie

WHO: Alistair + You
WHAT: Sleep deprivation and a long ride.
WHEN: Both vaguely before and vaguely after today.
WHERE: Skyhold (before today), the road to the Fallow Mire (after after).
NOTES: Vague starterish things because I don't like doing the same thing multiple times! If they're too vague and you want something more specific you can leave me a blank comment or something, it's cool.

I. AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF PLACES ALISTAIR FALLS ASLEEP IN SKYHOLD

1. In the stables with the dogs, usually. He only sleeps for three or four hours at a stretch, lightly and fitfully, but he never wakes up screaming. At worst he wakes up gasping and sweating, with concerned, wet muzzles nudging at his face. More often he times things well enough that he's woken in the still-dark hours of the morning by heavy boots or banging wooden doors, instead, and is already on his feet before anyone can reach him.

2. Draped over a table in the tavern still holding the handle of a tankard. He might look like a drunkard from a distance, but really, it's still three-quarters full.

3. Draped over a table in the kitchens with his arm curled protectively around a bowl of porridge or stew or whatever else the kitchen servants were willing to give him at the given hour.

4. Draped over a table in the dusty, cobwebby cellar library, with his arms folded on top of a book he couldn't force himself to stay awake for for very long even if the fate of the Grey Wardens and/or possibly all of Thedas is hanging in the balance.

5. Standing up and leaning against the back of a horse that doesn't belong to him, brush still in hand, until it steps away to search for something more interesting or edible and he falls right over.

II. AN EVEN LESS COMPLETE LIST OF THINGS HE FINDS ON THE WAY TO THE MIRE

1. Money. That's one good thing about wars and demons: there's more coin on the bodies than when roadside homicides are mostly the work of highway robbers. Alistair is a practiced looter, but a gentle, respectful one, too. If it were possible to close their eyes once they'd gone this stiff, he would.

2. A set of Ferelden figurines, mostly soldiers, half trampled by horses. He doesn't pocket them; he's not a child. But he takes the time to move the ones that aren't broken yet to the side of the road for someone else to find.

3. A temporary Inquisition camp full of travelers headed in the opposite direction. He doesn't consider himself one of them--he's a Warden, he's only visiting--but he hasn't found so much money on corpses that he won't borrow their fire or eat their spare food, if someone offers.

4. A Grey Warden, and not any of the Grey Wardens he was on his way to find. He recognizes the armor at a distance on the road, even in the cloudy half-dark. The sight makes his heart stop in the curious, still, emptied-out way it always does in the seconds before a fight begins. But the moment passes, and he keeps moving forward. Maybe he won't be recognizable, he thinks, now he's traded his griffon-and-blue armor for something simpler from Inquisition stores--

Or maybe it will be someone he's met before. Never mind. He raises a hand instead of his sword. The wave is a little sheepish.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The spirit horse had done her in. She'd thought to stay in the mire until the job was done, no stranger to uncomfortable living conditions. But after a run through the mire chasing after an elf clinging for her life on the back of an undead, spirit ridden monstrosity she had admitted she could use a break. And a bath.

But there were still duties to be done. Before the bone tired templar can see about her own comfort, her current (Marker be praised, living) horse needs to be brushed down and fed. There was no need to go waking people at this hour when she's hardly unable to see to it herself...

Soon. Surely the horse will understand if she just takes a quick breath. Maria's armor clangs loudly as her back hits the wall of a nearby stall and she slides down into a seated position. Just a few minutes. While she was here on her own.

He was already awake, kind of. Sort of. Awake enough that the sound of armor clanging against a wall doesn't startle him, only earns a mental maybe it's morning then, and by the time he realizes it isn't, in fact, morning, and the sky outside the stables doesn't have even a little bit of a glow, he's already looking over the edge of a half-wall and down at the top of Maria's head.

"Knight Hill," he says, "you're going to get a crick."

She looks up without otherwise moving, feeling suddenly more like a preteen again then she had for...ages. Having a vague face from years gone by suddenly hovering a foot above her frankly ungraceful collapse was apparently the key to that specific feeling, and it makes her flush slightly to be caught like this. Still, despite the faint embarrassment she's in no rush to move. Another few minutes, then she'll have that particular ability back again.

"Warden. I didn't realize the stables were under guard."

"All the time. Usually it's dogs, though. I'm filling in while they have a break." He invites himself into the stall and rubs a hand down the side of the horse's broad neck. It comes away with dirt and cold sweat, so he invites himself to find a brush and cloth, too--not with any judgment. Maria looks more exhausted than the horse. "Long ride, was it? Did you come from the Mire?"

She makes a half-hearted effort to get up, then gives up. The man was a hero of the realm. If he wanted to brush down the horse, who was she to stand in his way.

"I did. Have much experience with undead, warden? I didn't. Until this week."

"Only a little," Alistair says. He starts with the horse's other side, checking for rubs and injuries while he wipes it down. "I can never decide whether or not they smell worse than darkspawn. Whichever one I'm smelling at the moment always seems like the worst thing I've ever smelled."

He looks over the horse's back at her and smiles, a little tightly.

"How did it compare to mages?"

Her eyebrows go up a little, any thought of making that final effort to finally relieve Alistair of his work put on hold. An interesting leap.

"Less fireballs. But not really a comparison I'd make."

"I meant the smell," Alistair says.

That isn't what he meant. He expects she knows that, and he smiles wider in case she doesn't.

"Possessed mage corpses are probably my favorite," he adds. He probably shouldn't be so flippant, but--it's him. And he's tired. And this is a little awkward. He wonders if Maria remembers his worst, spottiest teenage days as clearly as he does, and decides she doesn't; he doesn't remember hers.

They were all horrible teenagers trying to be soldiers at one point, she assumes a hero of Ferelden had grown out of it the same way most Templars did. Not all, given the abuses one always did hear about. But she liked to believe most.

"Wait until you see our possessed horse corpse. You might have to reorder the list."

Even she still can't believe the 'bog unicorn.' What a world they lived in.

"Your--what?"

That's enough to make him stop brushing down the non-possessed non-horse corpse, after a processing delay, to squint at her over its back. He's heard of spirits possessing animals--there was that cat in Honnleath, too--but he hopes they aren't going to begin making a habit of it.

"Sword right through the skull. Like a unicorn horn."

She can only shake her head, still not sure they had done right by not simply killing the creature on sight.

"For the horror of it, the thing seems harmless enough. At least in these relative times."

(open) for all we know it's just a lie

Stables (take your pick of sleeping places)

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