faderift | OPEN: Cloudreach Event

OPEN: Cloudreach Event

WHO: Anyone at Skyhold
WHAT: Cloudreach showers bring weird shit.
WHEN: Cloudreach 15 onward
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: For information about the illness, its effects, and its cure, please make sure to also read the OOC Post.

This high in the mountains, snowstorms are to be expected. But this one is large and lingering, hanging over the valley and the fortress for days. In Skyhold, with its eternal spring, the snow becomes rain before it hits the ground, leaving inhabitants and visitors to wade through puddles and mud in the courtyards. In the valley, snow and ice accumulate under cloud cover—and worse, when the clouds finally thin, a whole winter's accumulation of snow begins to melt in the sunlight.

Within a day, the ground is sodden and mucky enough to give the survivors of the Fallow Mire (or Ferelden in general) unpleasant flashbacks, and those who live in tents are issued additional hastily-constructed wooden pallets to raise their floors above the mud. It is worse outside the fortress: streams and rivers have overflowed their banks, rapids run twice as fast as normal, and flash flooding has made even road travel treacherous.

On Cloudreach 17 a mudslide buries the pass into Skyhold from the west, and on the 19th a sheet of snow loosened from a mountainside collapses into the shadowed passage from the east. An Inquisition supply caravan is caught in the latter, scattering wagons and goods across the hillside and leaving a dozen people and horses in need of rescue and medical care.

Healers may find themselves stretched thin, as in addition to the usual rash of blisters and sniffles that come from days of rain and flooding, an illness begins to sweep through Skyhold's ranks from around the 16th onward. It's marked first by climbing fever, then by flashes at the edges of vision—green light and jagged formations that aren't there, beings of light and shadow gathering around people or clustering in corners—and distant voices, coherent for brief moments if you're quiet and still and not trying too hard to listen.

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Alistair has gone a bit soft on her, honestly. She's not so frightening a thing to a thirty-one-year-old seasoned Warden as she was to a nineteen-year-old recruit fresh from the Chantry's propagandist clutches, not so sharp in the barbs she aims at him, selfless and worried for Kieran's sake in a way he wouldn't have thought she was capable of if he hadn't seen it himself. Kieran will never be his son the way he's Morrigan's, but it's enough for Alistair to appreciate how loved he's been.

So he only says, "Eugh," rather than launching into gagging sounds or a lengthy protest. And he does as he's told. Slowly. He walks toward the stairs in no particular rush, keeping Leliana in sight. Lovely, she says. He can't mind the rain too much—what sort of Fereldan would that make him?—but if the damp means he dies of fever he's going to make sure his last words are tell Leliana... the garden... was lovely.

Then she'll be sorry.

"The only way to protect the nobility then," he amends, persistent. "You couldn't have said you needed to introduce her to someone else. That would have been ridiculous. Claiming to need her to step away as discuss Inqusition business—no one would have believed it."

Leliana smiles at that, amused. "There were other ways," she acknowledges, not especially concerned. "I chose to ask her to dance." In retrospect it was, arguably, a silly whim to have indulged, especially in that location with that audience, but there were some benefits to courting scandal, here and there.

He is here, in the rain, asking her questions when he does not really look his best. She should probably direct him back to the healers (or to the Wardens) but part of her is curious and part of her is enjoying this absurd interaction, after their drawn out silence. In so many ways she feels frayed and worn away, and this is an echo of times that were easier, in a strange way.

"Why does it bother you that I did?" It's not his business, but that has hardly ever stopped Alistair, has it? "You're as bad as some of the Sisters," she notes, not without amusement.

"That's—you volunteered for the cloister." He isn't offended, and he doesn't sound offended, but he does sound like someone who's trying to sound offended despite not being offended. He has to stop talking for a few seconds while he disappears down the stairs, then picks up where he left off when he reemerges at the bottom. "And you didn't—" Past tense. Important. "—like her anymore than I did. You were just—"

He gestures to all of her. Whatever she had, she doesn't quite have it anymore. The softness, the innocence or acting skills that let her distrust and loathe someone but still speak sweetly about their—lovely necks—

Maker.

"I'm not bothered. I'm baffled," he says, and maybe that doesn't sound convincing, but it's mainly because he's now trying to think back on every conversation between them he ever witnessed. Not so baffled, then, maybe, if still too much of an oversized human mabari to develop the idea any further than Leliana likes Morrigan's neck.

"And I found myself disagreeing with a good many things said, both then and now. The gossip was amongst the more harmless points, but..." But it was still troubling, at turns, and annoying at others, and Leliana had frequently been the subject of it. At the time it had bothered her little, and perhaps part of her had enjoyed it. Perhaps, all things considered, it is not so very surprising that she danced with Morrigan.

Her hands come from behind her back to hang at her side, fingers curled loosely towards her palms, and Leliana's gaze narrows slightly as she considers him. The apparent bewilderment, the supposed lack of being bothered, which rang a little hollow, and though they are both of them changed, Leliana knows herself more transformed than Alistair. He, at least, can still be read. (Not as well as she thought, though, and it's a bitter reminder that prickles up as water runs down her neck.

"Alistair," she starts, and it's a little gentler, and she has to step around sounding strained, which is a private surprise she will dissect later. "If you have feelings for Morrigan then it is up to you to ask her to dance, not chase others away from it." It sounds wrong, even as she says it, but she is perplexed and at worst surely the response will be... well. Alistair was never one to downplay dramatics and entertainment.

"If I," Alistair repeats, as if not quite understanding what the words mean, "have feelings for—"

He isn't above dramatic fake fainting, on a good day, but this isn't a good enough day. Sick, Calling, all of that. So when he falls down it's actually entirely accidental, feet slipping on an unnoticed slick of mud, related to how ridiculous Leliana is being only by the fact that his confused outrage is what's distracting him from using his feet correctly.

He doesn't get up, though. He splats down onto the wet ground and stays sitting there, glaring up at her. He can make it work.

"I would rather die," he says. That's not true, anymore, but close. "And I'm not trying to chase you away. If you're into that sort of thing, then that's—disgusting, but sort of nice to know that someone out there can appreciate even Morrigan. Maybe there's hope for all of us."

Leliana is part way to helping him up when he breezes through that opinion, stepping forward and stopping short of actually reaching or even leaning down to help him. Instead she pauses, back straightening imperceptibly, arms crossing over her chest.

"And here I had imagined we were on the verge of establishing an olive branch." Alistair coming to her for help, worried. Seeking advice, seeking camaraderie. A moment of foolishness in the relief that came to her with sleeping after days of having denied it, she suspects, and when she looks at Alistair there is something-- confused, really, in her expression. "Go back to your tent, Alistair. You need to rest."

And she needs to pretend her feelings are not oddly hurt, and that she is not angry, and that his sarcasm leaves her unconcerned.

"No, I don't. I'm fine."

He stays sitting in the mud. Lovely, the garden is lovely. He wanted to go inside.

"I'm trying to tease you. That's the only olive branch I have. If you want another kind, I'm going to need a hint. I know it's been a long time, so you may have forgotten, but I'm not very bright." Or he's plenty bright, and he doesn't really believe otherwise, or else it wouldn't bother him so much to have someone insist otherwise, but he is stupid about people sometimes, naive, periodically blinded by principle and stubbornness, not always able to say the right thing or even to say what he means regardless of right or wrong, and rarely capable of shutting up while he's ahead. So here they are. "Just ask Morrigan."

"At least your absurdity remains at a healthy level," she replies, only slightly hideously dry. With a roll of her eyes she does finally offer him a hand to haul him up, because there is something extremely sad about seeing a seasoned warrior acting the role of a petulant child, even when it's Alistair.

"You simply lean on the excuse of being obtuse to shirk the responsibility of truly seeing - of thinking. If you aren't bright then you have no reason to challenge yourself, and you can stay in a safe cocoon of your own ignorance and whatever is convenient to believe."

There is nothing especially cruel or venomous about it. It just seems... a fact, a thing she has considered a few times over, not in any particular reference Alistair himself. "But you, Alistair, are bright, and Morrigan doesn't deserve to be the target of your scorn."

Herself, well. Another matter, there.

Edited 2016-05-01 20:19 (UTC)

Alistiar accepts the hand up, without actually using it for much; he's heavy, and he's also capable of standing up on his own, but he doesn't want to turn down an offered hand. But he's quick to release it, once he's on his feet. For a moment, while she speaks, he's frozen and almost sad-looking, wondering which of them changed to cause this to be so difficult.

"Morrigan and I are getting along," he says, italics for compare and contrast to you and I. He busies his hands and the bulk of his attention with sluicing mud off his trousers. "And I could say that she's very clever and a good mother and I could see how someone other than me might find her attractive rather than terrifying, but then the world would end, and I thought that's what we were all here to prevent."

Round they go, again, to Morrigan and attraction and it specifically not being Alistair who is apparently so burdened. She takes a step further out into the rain, looking up at the grey of the clouds, rolling and blurred by rainfall. The rain maps paths down her face and her jaw, and she exhales what could have been a laugh on a better day as the pieces fall into place. At least, they seem to be in place, though she is not fully convinced, herself.

"You think I am attracted to Morrigan?" And that was enough to incite all this. "Alistair, you are a very strange man." She even sounds fond and bemused, rather than exasperation.

"We need to get you some good books so you have better means to entertain yourself."

"No more books, please," Alistair says. He's spent enough time in the library—a thing he hates not out of any specific distaste for the written word, but in comparison to what else he could be doing, something outdoors maybe, something involving swords and darkspawn. Something that would feel less suspiciously like doing nothing at all—

—he thinks, hypocritically, while harassing Leliana in the garden rather than doing anything useful. At least it's outdoors. With his attention on her face the air tints green and glows behind her, and his eyes slide to the spirits for a moment, but they're gone as soon as he looks, and he doesn't say anything. Knowledge stored away. He knows what peers at him, too, and none of it means anything.

"What I think," he goes on, refocusing, "is that I'm within my rights to wiggle my eyebrows. If you think she has a lovely neck or assets worth displaying, that's your business."

"We do have stables in need of mucking out," Leliana offers. "I believe the hands that see to it are rather overcome by fever, at present."

And, and he continues to be absurd. She isn't surprised, and she probably shouldn't be even a little impacted.

"That was ten years ago!" Indignant, yes, because she feels a little indignant, and because despite everything and despite how hurt she is by Alistair and Zevran's silence regarding Anders, they are still as brothers to her. They still remember that young woman from the Fifth Blight, and even with all her frustration, there are brief moments when she remembers just how infuriating they both were. Leliana stops a moment, shakes her head, and when she has exhaled she is the Nightingale again, not some silly girl with dreams about how she was chosen.

"Wiggle your eyebrows at your leisure," she replies, rather more dryly. Clearly that momentary indignity was nothing more than his fever, a delusion. "Though I would remind you it is you who has felt the need to discuss Morrigan's assets, not I."

And if she did think Morrigan was very beautiful, still? What of it?

Leliana bursts—only for a moment, a flash—and he smiles at her; it's a small smile, fond and not too smug, close-lipped and crinkly-eyed. That's what he was after, that burst, and it feels worth the wet and the mud and the barbs, the same way a few minutes of getting his schoolmates to laugh with him instead of at him now and then was worth any amount of punishment from the Sisters. When she withdraws back into herself the smile shrinks but doesn't vanish.

"I have eyes," he says, and is quick to clarify: "Respectful eyes. Eyes that I'd like to keep where they are and not have removed from my skull."

So please, for the love of Andraste and the Maker, don't repeat this to Morrigan.

"So," she starts, tone immediately helpful and entirely compliant to his wishes, "I must be sure to pass one your feedback."

That is what he's hoping for, yes?

In truth she isn't sure what to do with the smile, the fondness there, which feels like it lies so much in conflict with the things that have happened between them. She offers another look to the sky, and looks up towards one of her scouts, standing where Alistair had been before he came down here to join her. Business calls, as it alway does, and her gaze settles back on Alistair.

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OPEN: Cloudreach Event

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