[closed] who's gonna throw the very first stone

[onlyhymns]

WHO: Alistair, Cade, Zevran
WHAT: the great pissbaby debate
WHEN: post-mommy, pre-baby
WHERE: Camp Shady Fucker
NOTES: Shit Might Get Dark. Also, anyone in CSF is free to have witnessed this, but keep commentary to a separate thread I s'pose!

There's a lot of work to do around the Warden camp, what with the building of actual housing, and Cade is among the laborers who have been sent down to do the bulk of it.
He's never actually been down here before, and can't help noticing how pitiful it is in comparison to the rest of Skyhold. But perhaps that's why they're here.

As usual, having no actual trade skills in building things, Cade has been relegated to running errands and bringing more supplies. At present, he is encumbered on both hands by two buckets of pitch, which he shuffles toward the worksite.

Comments

[byblow]

"That's completely different."

He doesn't explain how. Alistair has a complex system of morality, you see. One far too complex to articulate while he's angry. Something like: add up all the deaths a person directly caused and a quarter of the deaths they indirectly caused, divide by half if the person was below their target on the social ladder or less heavily armed or trying to protect other people, multiply by two for nobility and by three for Chantry sanction, then take that final number and probably just throw it in the garbage because what actually matters at the end of any ethics debate is whether or not Alistair likes them and whether or not they've hurt anyone he cares about.

"It's not any of your business," he decides with a glare. There aren't many things that aren't Zevran's business, historically, but Alistair is choosing this for the honor. Or trying to, anyway. "I don't care what you've worked out with him. I've known him longer. If he doesn't want to deal with me, he can avoid me. He's actually very good at it. Practically a prodigy. But if he needs a refresher now he can start by not coming to where I live."

His voice raises at the end—not an angry shout, only a display of flippant irritation, words called after Cade even though he's likely out of earshot.

[ombranera]

"He goes where he is ordered to go. He was ordered here to work as a laborer and is not exactly in a position to go 'oh, no, I can't work there, please send me somewhere else.' He does as he is told. To a fault, Alistair, he does as he is told." How much can he hint at without crossing that line drawn between himself and Cade in their trust. how oblique must he be? "He was trying to work and not bother you. He was trying to do as ordered."

And failed because Alistair continued to poke.

"How long has it been since you knew him well?"

[byblow]

Oh, no, I can't work there, please send me somewhere else, seems like a perfectly reasonable response to Alistair, who also does as he's told--when he wants to. So it's not the same at all. Whatever.

"I lived with him until I was nineteen," he says.

That isn't an answer to the question Zevran actually asked. The answer to that question is twenty years or never, actually, probably. How much can twelve-year-olds know about anyone? But they slept in the same room for nine years, names stitched into their socks to prevent mix-ups, and until the Wardens there was no one he knew better than the boys in his barracks, not one of whom he managed to befriend.

"He stopped talking to me when I was twelve," he concedes, which is a bit of an exaggeration, to the extent excuse me or hand me that counts as talking, and for the span of a syllable his voice pitches oddly and he looks nearly miserable. Then he straightens his shoulders and sounds almost kingly--the sort of thing that had the poorer boys tripping him in training as often as the nobles--and concludes, "and I'm happy to let him continue if he doesn't come down here."

[ombranera]

"Don't you take that tone of voice with me." He is in no mood to put up with Alistair's airs, what few that he has to him. He's rarely in the mood to humor him when he is like this- at least when he is on the other side of it. Which is rare. This whole situation is somewhat unprecedented but he is grateful that it is happening with someone he can stand against and fear no true reprisal. That he doesn't need to juggle or weigh more masks than he already has on hand.

Alistair has seen his blood, his bone, his spite, his smile. His blackest, most bitter thoughts, his brightest moments. He can argue and not be afraid. For what is neither the first or last time, Zevran marvels at that.

"I'll speak to the laborers and see to it he is not sent to this camp in the future. Then he shall not be here to ignore you and bother you with ignoring you- and see this is how I know you are very much Fereldan. It is a cat's ploy, this and you are very much more a dog person."

[byblow]

Alistair isn't really used to having his way--not even from Zevran, who indulges him possibly more than anyone should, but from whom Alistair also rarely asks for anything that isn't very simple and harmless and free of scowls. So it takes him a moment. His face clouds further and he says, "I am not--" out of reflex.

Realizes he's about to say he isn't a dog person.

Stops and actually thinks about what he just heard.

His face doesn't un-cloud, when he realizes, too puffed up and angry to unwind quite that easily. "Good," he says. But the wind is rapidly leaving his sails; he adds, "Thank you," still sullen but now visibly looking as if he feels a bit ridiculous and unsure of himself, and then settles down slightly further, enough to conclude with a sulky, "Sorry."

[ombranera]

To the beginning of the denial, Alistair gets but a look. One that is high of brow, singular, and low of the other, one that is of narrowed eye and faintly flared nostrils, one that is of pursed lips and canted head, everything that spoke of looking down upon a man while still being forced to look up at him purely due to height differences. It is a look that speaks of dull scorn and extreme boredom, changing only in the degree of the single brow ratcheted up. It dials back with every degree, every puff of wind that wound out of Alistair's sails.

It is still a look when he apologizes. A gentler look, a softer look- but still. A look.

one that comes with its own voice. Dry and drawling. "You are forgiven. You still owe Cade an apology for provoking him."

[byblow]

Forgiven, and for a very brief moment there's a hint of a smile—one that would have, without interruption, stretched out and accompanied an attempt to be irresistibly adorable about his half-repentance until Zevran sounded more like he meant it. But it is interrupted, and Alistair's eyebrows knit back together as he turns his head to look for Cade.

"I'll write him a note," he says, which is not entirely born out of stubbornness and intentional difficulty. He doubts Cade wants to look him in the face right now anymore than Alistair wants to talk to him.

[ombranera]

"It had best be brief, sincere-" He says, as though he'd expected some manner of difficulty. As he pulls a page from the back of his journal and offers it and one of his charcoal sticks to Alistair. They have time. He can wait. "And legible."

He has seen Alistair's handwriting. It is nothing to sneeze at but he would not put it past the man to scrawl just to be that much more difficult.

[byblow]

Alistair scowls at him for a moment, unable to believe that Zevran doesn't trust him to do it on his own, and then takes the offered charcoal and journal. He cradles it on one arm to write with the other hand. His handwriting has been better; it's also been worse.

Sorry for bullying you, says the note when it is held back out to Zevran. I know it isn't your fault you're horrible. If you want to hit me just wait until Zevran isn't watching..

Just kidding.

Or, not kidding—it does say that—but beneath it on the page, low enough to be torn off separately, there's a less ridiculous (if equally sullen), Cade, Sorry. —Alistair

[ombranera]

For a long moment he stares, watching dutifully to ensure that Alistair actually writes the note. When he takes it back to read he...

Sighs. As though deeply and greatly pained. "You are thirty one years old Alistair. Why are you behaving like a child?"

Still. The one on the bottom is enough and that will have to suffice. "See, it did not kill you to be civil. This is what comes of domesticating me, I use my powers for good. You have only yourself to blame for this."

[byblow]

Alistair wavers on the precipice of saying that he feels like a child--like a twelve-year-old, discovering that even having no friends at all is apparently preferable to having him, facing down another seven years of starving for affection and accepting attention as a substitute and making sure that if no one was going to love him they had a damn good reason not to, so he didn't have to wonder--

"But you're so charming when you're disgruntled," he says instead, belatedly breaking into that previously-stifled smile.

[ombranera]

"I am a fearsome assassin." He gripes, folding the note neatly and tucking it away. "An assassin that WAS going to spend his evening with a large, warm, vigorous Tal Vashoth lover. But no. Tonight I am going to have to do damage control."

Seriously, Alistair, it is not always about you. Still. He sighs and reaches out to pat him on the arm, the chest, whatever his hand hit first. "You love me best when I am smiling and we both know it."

[byblow]

"That's true," Alistair says, smirk shrinking down to almost nothing. "If I'd known you were his bodyguard or whatever I'd have tried harder to work around your schedule."

[ombranera]

"Alistair. You saw him when he fought Beleth. You saw him just now. Look me in the eye and tell me you see someone that is able to control themselves. " One of them would have to be mindful and wasn't ever going to be Cade. "There is 'easily provoked' and then there is this."

[byblow]

"Are we calling it 'fighting' now?" Alistair asks—oblivious to loads of context and thus, now and for the foreseeable future, baffled as to how he's the villain in this unstable-asshole-attacks-people-and-then-works-in-their-vicinity scenario. He's at worst the anti-hero vigilante. "Look, I'm leaving him alone." He holds up his hands, which are empty, as if that proves the point. It's a metaphor. "Whatever you're doing tonight instead of your Tal-Vashoth is apparently none of my business. Don't act like you're interfering for my sake."

[ombranera]

"Beat her mercilessly after he was provoked- you are piddling with semantics." Let the record and his narrowed glare show that he is not at all pleased with this turn of events. "I was. I have and shall continue to do so if you continue to be so blinded by your wounded pride to see that something is very wrong with him."

And he could not explain what. Or why. Or how it is he knows. "Do you have any idea what it is to be made to hurt someone you respect? To see your hands move and know it was not your will that did so, to come awake after the fact and realize what you have done? How upset he might have been if I had not stepped in, you fought, and he came to knowing he hurt you before you made an ass of yourself just to prove that you can?"

[byblow]

"He wouldn't have hurt me." Not really. He can take a punch. "And he doesn't respect me, and if something's so wrong with him he shouldn't be down here. Someone smaller than me might provoke him." But they've already addressed that. Alistair claws a frustrated hand through his hair. "Maker, Zev. I don't want to fight with you."

He wants to fight with Cade. So much for that.

[ombranera]

"Alistair this is not about you. It isn't even about me." He has to pause for a moment, again, aware that somehow this bullshit has become his life. Taking responsibility for someone just as broken as he was- if not more so for the lack of discipline and charm, and a dull thought twinges that he truly ought to say 'fuck it', make it no longer his problem, and walk away from the mess entirely. There is nothing forcing him to do this thing for Cade.

He does not even truly like Cade.

"Perhaps I should just kill him." That's be the simplest solution. "Everyone would be happiest then, yes? Problem solved."

[byblow]

"Maybe you—"

Should. He was going to say should. He remembers himself in time and stops, face creasing further into its glare, mildly betrayed—as if perhaps Zevran did that on purpose, to make Alistair realize he was going too far.

That can be the story, regardless, if they want it to be.

"I tried to talk to him before," he says instead. Calming down. Sinking into something more reasonable to make up for that almost-should. "I was nice to him—" Relatively, for him, under the circumstances. "—and he just walked away."

[ombranera]

That would be all it would take, truly. Alistair giving him the go ahead. Cade wouldn't see him coming- something quick and easy, slipping away in his sleep. How sad. The room was small enough but no one guarded it- getting in and out would be quickly done-

For a long moment he seriously considered the particulars of such an arrangement. Killing for free isn't something he does normally but this is one of the rare exceptions.

And then Alistair remembers his morals and Zevran sighs, put upon. Another month or so of this and he might go mad. "Nice to him in the way you were nice to me when we first met? Alistair- that is not nice even when it is to people that understand people. I understood a certain subset of people and have learned better. Cade? Is shit at people. And paranoid- this is coming from me. I locked the doors to the room where I cornered him-"

He says this as though it is a matter of fact, he hunted, he cornered, they spoke. He scrubs a hand through his hair and steps in that much closer, voice pitched low. "And he assumed I was going to beat him or kill him. And he intended to simply allow me to do so. In short- he is fucked up. Very much so. He's not going to react the way you expect- he's not going to react the way I expect most of the time. Combine that with his tenancy to be violent and it is deeply worrying. So him walking away is likely the best thing that could have happened."