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

[chainlightning]

"Perhaps he's more of a rolling thunder than a loud crack," Merrill muses, laughing quietly. There's more than one type of thunder, just as there's more than one type of bear. The Dalish know; she imagines the Avvar know too, and for the same reasons.

The mention of Ruby gets another laugh, this one startled out of her and louder for it. "But Adelaide is the one who made the snow. Or- well, her students. Ruby wasn't allowed to turn into a wolf for it." So don't be a big baby about it, Asher -- though admittedly, Adelaide is a bit more terrifying than Ruby. "There would have been plenty to see, though. I haven't been kissed very much, but I've read a great deal, and it's not all mouths. It's hands, posture, noises..."

Merrill this is an inappropriate time and place to be thinking about Noises, calm down.

"I think I'm a bit more teeth and nails than beard, but I'll try. Maybe there's a spell that feels like beard. And no, it was James Norrington." Which... well, James is a Templar, so don't get too worked up there, Asher. "Though I may have to ask Korrin if I ever decide Mal needs to dress up. I'm horrid at picking out clothes for anyone else."

But it may just be that self-esteem, again. Asher says you don't need to be me and Merrill shakes her head, runs frosty fingers a little bit down his cheek to cool the sweat in the lines and creases. "I couldn't ever be you, not entirely, but- I can take what I've learned from you, add it to me. You're what happened to make you who you are, but part of that is the people you've met, that have made an impact. That you've loved. It's the same for all of us." Merrill is a clan giving her away and a clan giving up, the death of everyone she once knew and the friends she never expected to find. Merrill is the destruction of a chantry and an invasion by Qunari. But Merrill is also Hawke's adventurous spirit, Varric's watchful eye, and Isabela's taste for freedom; she is the alienage's sense of community and the Inquisition's sense of purpose. She will be Asher, too; not his charm, maybe, but perhaps some of his boldness, perhaps some of his bravery.

"Then- well, then I imagine it depends on what we do with those parts." Many broken, yes, but many whole, and all put together as one. It's like the stained glass in the chantry, a dozen different colors but fused neatly into something more. "What you did for me was be a friend, someone who made me laugh, and I've never been good enough at words to really tell you how much that means to me. But it means a lot, Asher. It gave me some of that happiness."

Don't go to your grave thinking you weren't anything, that you didn't have a home. Home, too, is what you make it -- and he had a home with them, with the Boneflayers, with the Inquisition.

[hlif]

"You ever been somewhere like this before? Where the snows wait just right for an avalanche? Can build for weeks, months, years, then all it takes is one well-timed crack and down it comes tumbling, might sweep you away and bury you until the thaw if you're not careful? He's like that." What a cheerful thought, the idea of an avalanche in Skyhold but well, someone has to think of the realities of sticking an entire refugee camp in a valley when they've spent a decent chunk of their life living in mountain terrain.

Rolling his eyes, he gives her a very light shove since it's Merrill. Or more since he's weak as a kitten but distinctly lacking in the the claws department. "That's rude, telling her she couldn't be a wolf. She is what she is. So fucking what if she was a wolf for it, that's discrimination that is." Someone get on that shit for him, he's too ill and busy rotting to get on the soapbox, especially when he's still salty about Adelaide being so up her own arse saving Anders. "And location, location, location. Broken a few beds. Tables. One or two walls in my time too. An antique fancy Orlesian couch, no one was happy about that after but at the time everyone was pleased."

Seeing as he couldn't really warn the lady about the impending cracking furniture because she was kind of...sitting on his face so you know what yeah, they began their friendship talking about dicks and sex, they should go out this way. This is how some people bet Asher would die okay.

"Tell him he's not allowed any of my homebrew. The deliveries from the farm are still going to keep coming, but he's banned. If he even looks at it it'll go flat," he jokes because Templars are such buzzkills badum-tssh. "D'you want a tip? Tight trousers. Tight trousers and tall boots, it's a cracking view. D'you get it."

Kirkwall happened to Asher to a lesser extent than to Liadan, when there was screaming and a month of silence when the destruction of the Chantry and all the ensuing chaos came to them. Asher is you have no place in the world at fifteen, Eleanor's hand on his arm, a very real sort of fear that finally cut through the anger, the sense of shame, something that felt like drowning. "Don't worry what people think. I… fucking did." Gwen said as much to him, carefully enough that it didn't feel as if she'd laid him open to the bone but then that's Gwen and him in a way, and maybe it's surprising that Asher does care but he had to learn to care, to think about being a person again and not just a weapon to go cleave limbs. "S'not worth it. Eats you up inside, swallows everything up and turns it dark, that's all you'll ever see if you think about that. Whenever someone tells you not to think a thing or do it, that's all you want to do. It's the same with this just worse, it's there, and you think maybe if you go digging around you'll scrape it out. You don't."

Asher has enough scars to know that you don't, that you can't, that some things are what they are, that you pick up and move on, make a new life and a new family. He's just bitter enough that it took long enough for him to do it, long enough for it to get in his head, to make itself a nest of all the fears and whatever else there is in there.

"You need anything...after. Let them know. They'll sort it. Whatever you need. Family is family." Which is Asher's bad awkward way of saying he loves you too Merrill and also 'sorry that Yngvi is going to be A Thing In Your Life'.

[chainlightning]

He isn't wrong, either. Haven already had an avalanche, and yet- there they are again, not preparing for an avalanche, as far as Merrill could see. Sure, the Herald had set off the avalanche in Haven for the good of all, but it could happen while there are still people in the valley itself.

"See, that's what I said, but I was overruled because she was on my team. I did get to put some war paint on her, though. It wouldn't have stuck on wolf fur." So- that was good, or something.

A- cracking view. Merrill blinks for a moment, tilting her head- and then starts to giggle. Yes. Yes, she gets it.

Don't worry what people think, though. That is harder. She trained her whole life to be a leader, to be someone people look up to. She had to worry what people would think. And now she's just Merrill, and she isn't really sure what that means, either. "I can get- obsessive, sometimes. You should have seen me while I was in Kirkwall." When she wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping, because she couldn't get her eluvian to work. She's better now, or she likes to think she is. In truth, nothing has so fully grabbed her attention; she doesn't really know.

She holds his hand tighter, shifting forward to press a kiss to Asher's forehead. He feels hot, burning up, and closer she can smell illness, infection. "They can ask me, too. I'll tell them that, but they might listen and actually do it if it's from you, too."