faderift | i want to lie down somewhere and suffer for love until it nearly kills me

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i want to lie down somewhere and suffer for love until it nearly kills me

WHO: Hercules Hansen, Benevenuta Thevenet, + dogs.
WHAT: A touchingly romantic reunion, probably.
WHEN: Cloudreach 14th, let's say.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: I lied.

It doesn't take long for news of Warden Hansen's escape to filter up to the hold proper. She is made aware of it with a promptness that almost offends her; the girl who bears the news is a kind thing who means well, who looks for something that she won't find in Benevenuta's straight back and taut mouth and accepts her dismissal with poorly hidden disappointment thoroughly ignored by the lady in question. Seen, remembered, but not acknowledged. It's - good. That he is here. It's what she wanted, and in satisfaction she finds her own wanting immediately abhorrent - a weakness unforeseen and nothing he invited from her.

He lives and he returns. Good. He does it himself, under his own power; better, but the fierce pride is something to be tamped down, not hers to grasp. He made her no promises and voiced no expectation, and why should he? She entertains him of an evening now and again. She might entertain any number of men so and what business would it be of his? None. And he is a man grown who knows as much, and they are not -

They are not something that dashes down to the Wardens' camp and flings itself about the place like something out of cheap melodrama. She is informed of his escape and she says something she doesn't recall in so many words later about the will of the Maker and his great mercy and does not rise from the desk at which she works. The plans for the housing expansion are coming together nicely, and she attends closely the discussion begun by that girl Katniss, and keeps her records, and

she still leaves the door open a little, so that when Max comes to her as is his recent habit, he only has to nudge it a little to join Husband at her feet and settle angled toward the warmth of the hearth.

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The longer she - and by extension, his dog, who he's gathered has largely been in her care despite wandering about the camp and the fortress from time to time - does not attend the camp of her own volition, the more concerned he becomes. Not out of some anxiety that she doesn't care for him, when she's a noble and theirs were entanglements first of convenience and comfort, and then of... well, inconvenience and daring, given the sort of company she keeps.

Herc wonders if it'd be worth breaking back into the fortress haunted by demons and their mages, to spare himself this conversation. Ultimately he realises that without any Orlesian nobles to carry him back in the right direction, it might take too long.

The door is ajar, though, and he's not done up in his uniform proper, because his arm is wrapped up in a sling and he's more like an ornamental warden in his current state, beside. He walks in, back straight and rigid, his movements hindered by the build up of scar tissue and the slight wasting of muscle from being cooped up so small.

"Lady Thevenet," he starts, from the doorway, after knocking on the frame. "Nice to see you looking well."

So stoically has she resolved not to be bothered by his absence from her company, for a moment she doesn't know what to do with the fact that he's come to her at all. Her lips thin and she sets her sending crystal down with a great deliberateness; it isn't fair to be angry at him. It's unreasonable and foolish and she decides not to be, but her hands that tighten whiteknuckled in her lap have apparently not got the memo.

"Hercules," she says, unsure if it's a greeting or the start of a sentence (about his personal flaws, many and varied), decisive that she'll presume as far as his name. Max's ears twitch and he wiggles closer toward her on his belly in an impressive display of not actually adjusting from his comfortable sprawl to do it, which might’ve made her smile if she weren't trying so hard not to do anything at all.

"As perilous as Vivienne's social calendar is, I daresay I've had a less fraught month," very dryly, taking in all the small changes in him in critical detail, assessing.

Edited 2016-04-18 00:33 (UTC)

And there's the mongrel. Herc notes the fact that Max has not responded to his voice at all, gaze sliding back to Benuta with a faint hint of well, all right.

"I don't know about that. Soirees still mean you need to make some escapes." Not so light as he might have managed previously, for all the crooked grin.

"This one hasn't been making a nuisance of himself, has he?"

It's easier to unclench her hands when one of them is drifting down to Max's head, proprietarily if sort of distantly affectionate; her difficult mood is hard to pin down and not helped by how aggrieved she is with herself. Weeks upon weeks of leashing her anxiety, of drinking less than she wished so she didn't drink more than she might have, of smiling with her teeth and being polite to the likes of Malcolm Reynolds -

And here he is. In front of her, even, unprompted. And she can't quite make herself do anything other than relive the embarrassment of a woman half her age when she'd read her mother's admittedly gentle rebukes for the end of that soiree. She'd held it together for most of it, admirably if unsettlingly for her closer acquaintances, but word of indifferently giving up toward the end and sinking down onto the floor with Dorian and Max had reached Ayse, as she'd expected it would and decided it was a problem for her future self to deal with. Her present self had not been thrilled with her own judgment.

"No," she says, eventually, after a pause that she's conscious of being solidly awkward. The flat answer doesn't make it less so.

She's so unhappy it thickens the air.

"He returned with Dorian," at further length. "Dorian - had tried to pursue, I understand." From him. When he came to break it to her, so kindly she hated him for it.

This is going about as well as you'd expect a total disaster to. Maybe this was a bad idea to come talk - though he didn't drag his carcass up here to talk, he wanted to grab his dog and make sure he was doing all right. Seeing Benuta was complicated, and difficult. Being locked up in a dungeon was exactly the kind of thing that reminded you that maybe forging connections, even indulgent physical ones, was a stupid idea.

If he hadn't mused on it in the dungeon (he'd thought about her too much) then he'd sure as the Void be thinking about it now, when he feels like he might just be smothered by the weight of everything between them.

Max looks at Herc, slobbering a little, and there's a moment where he thuds his tail on the floor and almost moves to wander over, but stops himself short.

"Dorian's a good man." Quiet, himself, not quite so flat. "Even complimented my cooking," Herc supplies, even if this is the worst time to make a joke, to try to lighten the mood. "Not everyone would go after someone taken captive. I owe him one." He owes all of them, really. He knows that, but he doesn't correct her.

All this was supposed to be was physical and indulgent and it is inexpressibly irritating that that is the very thought that prompts her to say, "Would you close the door," and it isn't a request, but neither is it the high-handed demand she's perfectly capable of delivering. Just a decision made and then delivered, curiously flat; she knows her impulse to let him take his mutt and leave to be cowardice in the clothes of practicality, and there are two problems with that. The first and most obvious is her pride, pricked by self-awareness, but the more pressing is true practicality--

The likelihood of his never discovering how strongly she'd felt about his disappearance is slim to none, and if he's going to hear it, he's damned well going to hear it from her, where it's her decision, and if she can manage to pick a fight with him at the same time it might make her feel better about the whole thing.

After a slight pause, "Please," in the same conscientiously polite tone that had made Mal step closer and ask if she needed him to hide a body, because there are people in her life who simply do not ever hear her sheath her claws that way.

(She had been somewhat gratified that even in Mal's wild imaginings of what trouble she might be in to be so distressed, he had assumed she'd have killed whoever it was herself.)

She asks all nice and calm and polite, and that's enough to make his brow furrow. It's not that Benuta isn't calm and nice and polite - those are three very good words for her. Benuta was a politician, and though he's seen her make faces at him before for being a bit ridiculous, or obnoxious, and there's a prickle of dread in his gut when she sounds so calm and asks him to close the door. It hardly seems like anything good could be following that, does it?

So he shuts the door, and stands a little straighter, hands folding before him.

"Am I about to get an earful for going and getting caught?"

There's a certain gruffness in his voice, a quietness that doesn't make it to being displeased or frustrated, but certainly doesn't sound happy at being held here for a discussion. It's not like he couldn't just leave, but he was stuck with thoughts of her while he was locked in a cage, and she deserves better from him than the poor temper that's been following him since he got back.

For a split second he would be forgiven for thinking the answer might be a curt yes; when she says, "No," after a pause just this side of becoming awkward, it would not be unreasonable to suspect that the answer's only no because he said it and in doing so forced her to remove it from the agenda for this conversation. (There will come a day where he asks if he's about to get shouted at and she's going to roar yes right in his face, probably, but for better or worse, they aren't there yet.)

She turns properly in her seat, hands folding in her lap, neat and tidy and made of iron. The moment that passes is measured, like she's steeling herself to put her hands into fire -

"Dorian is an appalling romantic," she says, after a moment. "It's his only flaw, I think. But he did - not inaccurately anticipate my response, and it is my...preference that if conclusions are going to be drawn from my behaviour during your absence that it is nothing you don't hear from me." There isn't much romantic about this, as a declaration, about the unflinching way she holds his gaze as if she's challenged herself to do so.

(It's different, when it's only for her. Nothing is only for her.)

It softens oddly and unexpectedly when she says, "I'm going to outlive you," very suddenly, almost wry. "Barring some terrible misfortune. And it struck me - it struck me that I wouldn't be glad to look back and think of any time ... wasted. I don't care, you know, for waste. And I felt more strongly about it that I was entirely...I was very angry to have such a thought only in your absence." And only in grappling with the idea that it might have come too late, that he would not be back, and that she would never forgive any of them--

"But I don't mean to presume. That was not the...understanding into which you entered and you owe me nothing. I didn't wish you to hear that I - to think that I expect -"

It all goes a little bit to pieces at the end, and her mouth twists. In a flat rush, stumbling over words in her haste to have them said and coherent and finished, "I am aware that you are not mine to lose. Nevertheless, I'd have - I preferred that you return."

...this is the least eloquent she's been in all her life.

A long silence follows it. All of it. All of that.

Honestly, for a while there Herc isn't entirely sure he's following, because what she's saying sounds awfully romantic (for her, or them, really) and a lot more complicated than he's sure either of them really thought was ever going to happen. Part of him, the part that's a man who has loved and lost a great deal, who isn't necessarily all that good at loving but who cares more than he can really give words because he isn't any kind of politician or wordsmith, not here, not in the damned Void.

Herc has the distinct feeling he's in trouble, because there's a weight plummeting in his gut.

"So," he starts, like it'll buy him time (laughable, time is the last thing he's ever had, but he keeps on trying to barter for it.) "You're saying..."

What, exactly? He knows, really, he does. All the talk about presuming and wasting time and Dorian being romantic and her having a strong reaction, but he's watching her steadily. This isn't romantic. Grey Wardens are not, cannot be, romantic. They're people walking with a death sentence, and she's talking about wasted time. Herc sighs, and he wants to be happy about this, which is the worst part. There's a part of him, a piece of him from long ago, who'd have smiled and chuckled and kissed her because words are evidently overrated, at this point.

But he can't even bring himself to joke his way out of this one. His expression gives away more than his words, though - lips slightly parted, more affection and conflict and concern in his gaze than has any business being there. Herc's face has always given him away, when push comes to shove. "Can you stop talking all properly about it, for a minute? You just said something important and I feel like I need to contact a diplomat to draft a proper reply." Quiet, teasing, bewildered by his own lack of adequate articulation rather than critical of her own. "I just got out of a dungeon," he tries to explain, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. "And I thought about you more than I had any right to, in that place, when I wasn't half delirious. And all of what you said-- it sounds well and good. It sounds great, actually, but I can barely stand. My head feels scrambled, and-- there's not a thing to suggest that'd ever change."

He hates that his tone gives away how sad that makes. Not because he hates being a Warden, mind. Being a Warden is a barrier, though.

"You ought to be resting," she says, suddenly, rising - it's almost the beginning of that earful that she said he wasn't going to get, with a new topic, but she manages to rein in the desire to swear at her own foolishness for subjecting him to any of that when he's obviously...when it was such a near thing. He doesn't need this, any of it, he should have a healer. Eight healers. What is she to him? She isn't even a useful sort of mage, she's a Necromancer -

At least her sudden shift in mood apparently gives Max permission, because he moves when she does; returns to Herc's side, as Benevenuta conspicuously fails to do the same.

"I should have sent him to you," she says, decisively. "You shouldn't have come all this way from...that camp is terrible," a small aside. Which she'd been powerfully indifferent to when he hadn't been in it, it must be said, preferring that the majority of Wardens experience some discomfort and trusting that Teren is perfectly capable of avoiding any discomfort that she wishes to. Probably aches and pains are just intimidated out of her body. And -

And that's that, she's said all of those stupid things and he has a headache, and that's that conversation over with. Now is a terrible time for it, he's right. They can just never have it at all, that's - fine. Even preferable. What conversation is there to have? He was in a dungeon and he

thought of her

and everything is terrible and she's being selfish. He should have his dog back, probably.

There's been a shift, here. He's not dense enough to miss that, even if Hercules Hansen knows that he's got plenty of limits, and those certainly don't exclude dealing with people. Duty? That was fine. There were clear rules, most of the time, and when there weren't he could muddle through, try to stick by the guiding principle of what'd protect the many versus the few. It wasn't always easy, but if it were then just about anybody could do the job. Maybe the same should be said of interactions like this. Easy interactions didn't just fall out of the sky (except, maybe these days if there was a particularly friendly rifter, that might be a pretty literal way around the rule.)

Max lumbers back to his side, and now he's got Benuta sounding like she's made up her mind about something (not sure to what end, but it has him mildly concerned) and Max leaning his head against him, drool already trailing down from his mouth as he makes content grumbly sounds at the return of his master.

"We've had worse," he finally replies, and there's a bit of a smile with that. "That place is practically a luxury inn, compared to the Deep Roads." Which isn't to say it isn't still rough and the cold feels like its sinking right into his bones and he can't get warm, sometimes, but he's not eager to go ripping holes in their morale just yet, to set 'em up to get undermined.

Seems like that is that, then, and there's a knot of disappointment tangling unhappily in his gut. "Besides, Max probably liked being up here. I'd bet he gets more spoiled, with you."

"He is, of course, always welcome." The studied neutrality of it is - a bit more familiar ground than the way she'd forced that curiously formal expression of uncomfortable truths like she was a bleeding stone, but less, now. The sly edge of her that's run as a playful undercurrent to more recent interactions is blunted and she holds herself poised and apart; hard enough to say any of it at all, to accept it might be necessary or worthwhile, harder still to consider pressing the issue.

Easier - much easier - to focus on the I can barely stand part and not the it sounds great, actually part and withdraw, tell herself it's for just for now and never mean to press it again, anyway.

She shouldn't let her judgment be muddled by a man. Not even one with so little sand left in the hourglass. What would her mother say? What didn't she already say, probing, about Benevenuta's conduct at the soiree.

"You should rest," she repeats, with a small, odd smile. "I hardly meant to trap you in conversation."

"Thank you."

He means it, he does, and that he's genuine and grateful shines through better than almost anything else. Gratitude fits in with the job. Gratitude and surviving battles and getting jobs done could all be woven together and fit into being a decent soldier and good enough to work with that others'll keep on putting up with you better than if you're an uncooperative little shit.

He's not sure he did such a great job of teaching Chuck gratitude, though. He's a better soldier than he was a father, a better soldier than whatever he'd be trying to be for Benuta. Nothing long term, though, nothing last. She's a high born lady, and he's a man with time running through his grasp faster than sand.

"It's never a trap, with you." Course it can be, but his own smile is a little crooked. "Not one I mind so much, anyway."

But she wanted him to go, evidently, and he offers a stiff bow.

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i want to lie down somewhere and suffer for love until it nearly kills me

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that icon is such gold tho

her scrunchyfais c:

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