[closed] 2 feet below the surface I can still make out your wavy face

[dalishious]

WHO: Merrick, Metaari, Pel and Cyril
WHAT: The three of them try to calm Merrick down. It's going to be a long, long night.
WHEN: Right after this.
WHERE: From Cade's quarters to Cy and Merrick's
NOTES: PTSD symptoms, self-harm, probably more. Also like flashbacks of suicide and stuff it's not gonna be a pleasant log ok

From the moment his fist had connected with Cade's face, Merrick had stopped being Merrick-- at least, the Merrick that exists right now. He's a child, scrambling to make sense of the ragged emotions tearing through his tiny body, frantically reaching out for something he can never have again. He's a creature made of grief and helplessness and hate, hate so terrible and hot and thick and burning through his skin and sinew and down to his skeleton--

He's crushed against Metaari's chest, and he claws at the qunari's jacket, letting out keening noises and ragged moans as he is carried away. He has no sense of where he is anymore. He is somewhere else entirely.

Comments

[dalishious]

Merrick grips her tight as if he's sinking down, down into the depths of the Fallow Mire with the corpse's arm around his throat. He has devolved into keening and whimpering again, trembling wildly in the circle of her arms.

"Pel," he whines. "Where's Papa? Where's Papa..."

[mythalenaste]

"Gone for a while," Pel says tiredly. It's this old routine again. It's always excruciating and it never gets better. "Don't you worry yourself, my love. I'm here forever."

And ever.

[dalishious]

"I can hear scratching in my head," Merrick whimpers, curling tighter in her arms. "Make it stop..."

[mythalenaste]

"The scratching is Mythal cleaning out your head for kinder thoughts." She rocks and rocks him. "You hear her dragon-claws defending you from evil. But if it worries you, I will sing.

Elgara vallas, da'len
Melava somniar
Mala taren aravas
Ara ma'desen melar "

[dalishious]

It's a moment among countless others, a pattern they'd been repeating for many years. Merrick is exhausted, his head throbbing, body aching, drunk and filthy and bleeding. He curls in Pel's arms and stays there, hides there, trying to run away from his mind.

He wants it to just leave him alone. He wants to sleep. He wants all of this to be over.

"Stop, stop," he whispers, though he isn't speaking to Pel. "Go away..."

[mythalenaste]

"Look at me." Pel touches his chin, trying to tip his head up to look at her. Look at her, not the memories, not the demons.

[dalishious]

He does look at her, and his eyes are big and frightened and pleading. No tears fall; he'd cried out the last of them twelve years ago.

"Pel," he says, reaffirming it to himself but also begging her for an answer she cannot give.

[mythalenaste]

"Yes. Pel, ma vhenan. Now. What is your name?"

These little things help establish reality.