Cold upon the mountain

[hlif]

WHO: Asher Hardie; open (npc appearances by The Boneflayers)
WHAT: Asher's fever returns and his crew drag him to the healing tents, knowing it's the end
WHEN: Last week of Solace - mid-whatever August is called
WHERE: Skyhold, healing tents
NOTES: eventual character death; language, discussions about death, violence, faith. Discussions about Asher's childhood. Other warnings in subject headers. Feel free to make your own threads and have them open or closed, the death thread will go up closer to the time! Related ooc post

Asher has known for longer than he's cared to admit so he hasn't admitted it. He's shrugged it off the way he shrugs off pretty much everything else in his life until three nights passed of him coughing and coughing and coughing, keeping his crew awake with it. His chest has been rattling since they brought him back until blood started coming up with it. And now there are wounds cracking open; little cuts that weep for days on end, ugly wounds from the Storm Coast or sparring that feel hot to the touch. (They smell, Amalia had hissed as she'd pressed her hands to his chest over the burn scars to try to force the fever out. Melisende had sworn.)

So they bring him to the healers tents, the sweat rolling off him as he staggers; two dwarves and a Rivaini to help him, his hound with him as ever. The mage in her red leathers explains what she can with a slight elven woman, and the elfblooded one brings up the rear with a hand to his back. They're a constant from that first day to the last, a different combination each time at least one will always be there, stepping out for privacy or finally curling up to sleep.

And Asher...Asher isn't good with this. This isn't how it's meant to be as he presses his fingers into the festering gash over one hip from where a sword bit deep through his armour but the pain only makes him swoon, makes him cough and bite his lip. Doesn't make him focus, doesn't make him want to fight. This isn't how it was supposed to be and for the first time since his mother put him out the house twelve years ago, Asher Hardie is afraid.

It makes him a rather difficult patient, to put it politely.

Comments

[el_tybs]

Sam opens his mouth, clearly about to ask about that story - crude but most curious - but quickly thinks better about it and slowly closes his mouth again.

There's a bit of silence as he listens to Asher talk, taking in the words and studying how the man moves in his place. The itching didn't seem to bother him as much with his mind focused elsewhere - just sometimes people needed just that, not medicine or magic. "Since you were you fifteen - you've certainly seen a lot more than I have. I had walls and books to look at." He grins slightly at that, trying to brighten the mood a bit - not at all making the subject about him, just in awe the things Asher has done.

[hlif]

"First night I got put out the house was the night I met Melisende. The gods were watching out for me." Melisende rolls her eyes whenever Asher says that but there's an awful lot that's hard to explain about Asher's life if you try to say his gods didn't have a hand in it somewhere along the way. "Anywhere you want to ask about? Been nearly everywhere except Tevinter - got up near the border once or twice - and Qunari lands. Avoid Rivain since one of the crew doesn't want to go there."

Melisende doesn't give a shit about going to Orlais but Nasir doesn't want to go to Rivain? Asher won't force him unless they really need to take on the job.

[el_tybs]

"Shame, the places I had the most questions about." Not really, just saying to keep the bit of joking mood alive since it was easier to talk like this with Asher - at least right now.

"There have been so many places I have yet to touch, experience." Where was he to start asking? "Is there a certain place you liked going to over the others? Where and when did you become a Reaver?" Asher has touched on the subject before, but never in detail. Before now Sam never bothered to ask for the full story, thinking there would be time later.

[hlif]

"Go practice flirting with the Tevinter." Is that a suggestion? Is Asher just kind of throwing things out there right at the end? Who knows.

"You'll get the chance. You and Christine. Even if you don't go the mercenary road like Korrin, you can go anywhere. You're free." It's important. That matters to Asher when he's not going to be around to help them fight for that though he knows that the rest of the Boneflayers know how much all his friends in Skyhold matter to him, that he'd want them to be looked after should anything happen. "I was in Nevarra when I became a Reaver, it's got a special place in my heart - if you get the chance to go, you should go, it's incredible. Thei r traditions are incredible but be respectful. Be very respectful."

Considering this is coming from Asher, that should carry some weight but given their practices and what he's about to tell Sam, the small smile creeping across his face, it's not so surprising.

"We'd been working a job, same old, same old. Few years back now. Not the most pleasant of jobs, I won't lie, slog from start to finish if I'm honest. Bloody business. Then we went drinking after because we had the coin to spare, a little time to go explore Nevarra or that was the plan. Someone comes up to me, gets me in a drinking game, and they're buying, I don't see why not, I can hold my drink better than some Nevarra." He laughs, laughs hard enough he regrets it when he chokes. "Next thing I know I'm choking, feels like I'm fucking on fire. Days later I wake up somewhere else, whole crew hovering over me looking like they've not slept.

[el_tybs]

Go practice- "With Dorian?" There aren't a whole lot of other Tevinters in Skyhold and generally he's the one everyone is talking about. "That would certainly be a disaster." He's talked to him - once - and not much since then. He has chill, Asher, not suave.

The mercenary road - he's considered it. Korrin has already offered a place in her group if he ever finds himself in need of someplace to go, but a lot has changed since the offer. Still, that the warrior was thinking about him and Christine even now-

His attention is quickly taken up by the choking, leaning in a bit more, hand raised a bit as he waits to see if Asher will be alright, or if he needs help. "Wait, someone spiked your drink during a drinking game?"

[hlif]

"There's an Orlesian noblewoman that wrote a whole series of books about me, what's the worst that could happen?"

Probably a lot but well, Asher doesn't really care, it'll be good for Sam to broaden his horizons even if Asher is Avvar and thus has Feelings about anything related to Tevinter.

Waving Sam away for a moment until he gets himself under control, he swallows, inhales through his nose instead of his mouth, then continues. "Don't know if that covers it really. I mean it's a very common tactic actually, I've done it sometimes with rivals or people I don't want to kill when I know we can talk it out but I need to rattle them. Only it was everything you need to make a Reaver, told me all about it later when I could go track them down but I knocked it back, felt like I was on fire, slammed my face on the bar then I was out cold."

[el_tybs]

"I know both Christine and Adelaide, Asher. I think I'm covered on knowing 'could happen' when dealing Orlesian noblewomen." He loves them both dearly, but honestly you don't want to get on their bad side - he's pretty sure Asher is aware of this fact too. Besides he's broadened his horizons plenty - he shares a bed with a man who apparently sails the stars - that's way past the horizon. The thought is appreciated though.

"So you didn't even get to choose to become a Reaver?" Sam frowns lightly as he sits back, giving the man a bit of space when he's shooed off. Something that big and he didn't get to choose? Even if it had happened a long time ago that still didn't sit well with the mage.

[hlif]

"No. They're Circle mages before they're anything else, shit, Sam, this world is going to eat you alive. There's a difference. There is...there's a whole world of difference. Doesn't matter what their family name might mean, how tightly they were held, it's different." And Asher doesn't have the time to explain that difference now, because he's dying, because he doesn't have the breath to do it when he's been the outsider working his way in. Frustration at the unfairness of it all tightens his jaw until he breathes out.

There are friends. The Boneflayers will be back and forth. Their families are Asher's family, same as Asher's family is their family. They'll watch out for Sam in their own way.

"My mother put me out the door when I was fifteen and told me I had no place in the world," he admits with more bitterness than he thought he had left in him. "Choice is a thing I'd been lacking a long time. It worked out." He survived. Like he survived most things.

It's the most he can say about his life an awful lot of times really.

[el_tybs]

Normally this would be a conversation they would laugh at and argue, but this isn't really a laughing kind of situation. "I know Asher. I was just pointing out if they are trouble enough then someone who didn't have to live in a Circle would more then likely do just that." Eat him alive that is, and you wanted him to try and flirt with that - are you really looking out for him or getting him in trouble?

The bitterness doesn't go unnoticed, and Sam just stays quiet to let him rant a bit, lips thinning at hearing it. He's rather familiar with the aspect of lacking 'choice' but how is was put upon him was vastly different then Asher. At least, in some way, he had a place in the world - even if it was behind stone.

"Why did she tell you that?" He didn't know his own mom, but his aunt was hell of a role model and that just didn't seem like something a parent should do.

[hlif]

What's wrong with a little bit of trouble? Puts hair on your chest, gives you good stories to tell over a pint, and isn't this right here a prime example of that whole 'hey, who knows what might happen, we might die tomorrow' shit that people like to go on about when they're about to do something ridiculously lame like get matching tattoos or tell someone how they feel.

Ah. Eleanor Hardie. Where to even begin with Asher's mother who will always be Asher's mother but also not, because a mother is meant to be someone that loves you, not someone that is a knife between your ribs each and every time you see her, sleep under her roof, think about her, speak her name. Going back to see Aura or to crash between jobs, to help out, to organise deliveries, it felt like dying, each and every time.

"Because I was a punishment from the gods. See, she wanted to do things all right and proper. My grandmother, she met my Avvar grandfather during the occupation and had my mother, but then my mother wanted the farm back. So she goes off to do that and meets my father, a proper Denerim merchant. Doesn't want to seem out of place. Doesn't want to look like some terrble sort of savage. Looks very Fereldan. Good proper Andrastian. Denies any whisper, runs her farm right, pays everyone a good honest wage for hard work then she has a strapping boy not long after she's married only the firstborn is more like the child her mother should have had instead of her, he's like a slap in the face. Too big, too loud, likes the wrong stories, doesn't do what she tells him, no amount of the Chant makes him listen to her when he gets into scraps with every boy that says something that sets him off." And that's the thing when you grow up knowing there's something that makes your mother look at you sideways, there's always this itch under your skin that makes it so easy. Makes your fist fly out, and it felt good, still feels good now. "Eventually I got in a fight with a Templar recruit, I was such a shame to the family and I had to go."

[el_tybs]

Nothing wrong with trouble, he just doesn't want that kind. That and he's pretty set at the moment with relationships, he'll be fine, Asher.

"Seems to be the general idea with dealing with Templars and the Chantry. Do something against it and you get in trouble." It doesn't sound like Asher was an easy child to deal with, but just kicking a boy out rather then actually do something productive, not just throw words, doesn't seem like a good way to do things.

"So pretty much getting into fights and trouble since you were little?" Sam had his bullies, and there times he had to fight, but looking for a fight had never been his thing.