faderift | [OPEN] Heaven bend to take my hand

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[OPEN] Heaven bend to take my hand

WHO: Hermione Granger and YOU
WHAT: Hermione's seen some shit and is trying to get over it.
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway through the end of the month.
WHERE: In and around Skyhold.
NOTES: Takes place after this plot, so some threads will likely have mentions of child death and/or signs of depression. Please let me know if you'd like me to avoid any triggery topics.

Library

Though the curly-haired rifter has become a staple in the library over the past six months, Hermione has been relatively scarce there lately. She has no real heart for research anymore, not after the things she'd uncovered in those journals in that cave in Fromage, and there's so much more to Thedas than what can be found in books. She'd learned that the hard way, and now instead of reading and taking notes, she finds her thoughts wandering as they rarely do. For once, she can use a distraction from her failed attempts at studying.

Stables

Avoiding people isn't always as easy as she'd like it to be. But if she can preoccupy herself with animals, Hermione can withstand a bit of small talk. There's usually a kitten or two playing around the stables, and if not, at least helping to feed some of the horses will make her feel productive as well as distracted. And if that doesn't work, there's a certain dracolisk that she'd been slowly learning to get friendly with, assuming it won't sense her dour mood and become agitated.

Battlements

The battlements are actually quite pretty. She'd never really come up here before - if she wasn't in the library then that usually means she wanted to be social, and so the courtyards were where she'd spent more of her time - but now that she's looking for a change of scenery... well, there are worse places to get some quiet with a beautiful view. She's not always alone, since there are always people passing back and forth, but most people don't seem all that keen on hassling the young woman perched in between two turrets, staring out into the mountains. Indeed, unless someone happens to recognize her or just manages to catch her as she wipes at a stray tear, most probably wouldn't even know she's there.

Healing Tents

Returning from Emprise had been difficult, for more reasons than one. Beyond the obvious, Hermione still had a few physical injuries that she'd intended to ask the healers in her group to help with on their way back, but had clearly never gotten around to it due to the extenuating circumstances. Of course, she can't indefinitely deal with waking up with a sharp pain in her back and some of the bruises had begun to look particularly gruesome, so there's nothing wrong with making the occasional visit to the healing tents. If she takes care of one thing at a time and sees a different healer each time, it minimizes the chance of any awkward questions being asked, which is all the better; she's not ready to talk about that dreadful day and is in no rush to change that.

Wildcard!

She probably won't be quite so cheery until later on in the month, but Hermione still needs to eat, drink, bathe, and presumably sleep. She may be a little awkward around those that had gone to Emprise du Lion with her, but she isn't about to actively ignore anyone or send them off. Her nerves might be a bit frayed, but there's still such a thing as etiquette, after all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Had this been a normal situation, Hermione might have greeted Kirk with a joke. Seeing the way he held out an apple towards her would have had her commenting that she wasn't a mare, thank you, before grinning and asking after how he's been. Instead, she barely glanced up from the horse she'd been petting, sparing the apple a moment's consideration before slowly reaching out for it.

Her hand hurt. That was what happened when she kept it clenched in a fist to keep from crying in front of people. At least she was able to focus on that absent, throbbing pain rather than allow the sight of Kirk to stir up any unpleasant memories.

"You could say that," she murmured softly, voice barely above a whisper. The horse seemed incredibly interested in the piece of food in her hand, and she had to shift a little so as to not bump heads with it as it tried to make for the apple. "Are you all right?"

Only a blind man would miss how this was affecting Hermoine, miss how the normally bubbly (in his estimation) girl was subdued and quiet and seemed far away. He couldn't blame her. What had happened was harsh, cruel, and for someone who had never been exposed to that most likely shocking and even devastating. He hated to see her like this, but he couldn't change what had happened or what she had seen.

He clucked his tongue at the horse and reached out, tapping its nose to get it to leave her alone and fed it a carrot for its troubles.

"As well as a person can be," he said. "Still tired, mostly. I don't think I'll be heading out of Skyhold for a little bit, at least." He focused his gaze back on her. "Did you sleep at all?"

Hermione felt a bit bereft of the horse's attention when Kirk came in to distract it, but she didn't say anything about it. It wasn't as though the apple was for her, after all, but having Kirk there made it a little difficult to focus on feeding the horse. Between that and attempting to carry on a conversation, she wasn't sure she had the attention span for such strenuous activities.

"I've slept," she replied simply, trying not to be curt. "Sleeping isn't the problem." It was the things she saw behind her closed eyes as she slept, but she wasn't about to say as much. Not when Kirk was likely smart enough to be able to guess as much for himself.

Kirk reached down to his hip, tugging out his knife and holding out his hand for the apple that Hermoine still held. He had meant for her to eat it, but she seemed unfocused, so perhaps might need a little prodding on that front. Though honestly it would give him something to do - he talked better when he was doing something, he found, working off the energy. Even three years stuffed into his head, and he still had that particular quirk.

"I know," he said quietly. "The way I always dealt with it was to tire myself out somehow. Exercise, mostly. If my body was tired enough, I didn't dream." He had other methods than exercise, but that seemed an ill advised topic to take up with a young, teenage girl.

Hermione automatically handed him the apple again without really thinking about it. She was only half-listening to him, but it was enough so that she knew he didn't quite grasp the enormity of the problem. It wasn't just dreaming that she had an issue with; she kept seeing things she didn't want to see every time she closed her eyes, whether or not she was trying to sleep.

But she didn't bother saying that much to him. There was nothing to be done about it, no therapist or sleeping aids or anything like that to help her through this. There was no sense burdening someone else with it, too, especially since she was fairly sure he was of the same mind as her.

"I'll try that," she lied, not caring that she wasn't a particularly good liar. "I don't know that it would help, though."

He bit his knife into the apple, cracking it open and began turning the halves to trim. For a moment he glanced at the nearby horse, as if seeking wisdom in those large, dark eyes - but found only quiet and an interest in the apple. Greedy creature.

"You can talk about it, Hermoine," he said to her, putting his knife away and handing her half the apple back. "It's okay to talk about it."

The sight of the offered apple caught her eye again, and Hermione looked at it for a moment before gingerly reaching out for it. She still hesitated for a moment before accepting it, though, frowning as she shook her head and pulled her hand away.

"There's nothing to talk about." Another lie. Amazing, how easily she could actually do it when she was too worn down to worry about whether or not she was doing it well. But she wasn't doing it well, and she admitted as much at least to herself as she added, "What would I even say?"

"Whatever's on your mind," he said gently, reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder.

"Hermoine, you can talk to me," he murmured, giving her a gentle squeeze of solidarity. "I know this type of thing - it's hard. In a lot of ways and some you can't rightly explain, but it sticks with you. So don't keep it all bottled up. I was there too. I can understand - I do understand."

Another squeeze, encouraging now before moving to sit on a nearby bale of hay and patting the space beside him.

His efforts to comfort her seemed to be doing the opposite. She could feel the tears stinging at her eyes, but she was far too stubborn to let any of them fall, at least for the time being. Keeping still seemed to help with that, given that she couldn't bring herself to close the distance between her and Kirk for quite some time.

Eventually, though, she moved towards the bay, perching at the furthest possible corner that she could. If she got too close, Kirk might try to hug her, and the open offer of physical contact might cause the dam to burst. There'd be no coming back from that.

After another few moments wherein she tried to gather her thoughts, Hermione asked, "Did I ever tell you about a boy I knew named Colin Creevey?"

Kirk knew well enough this wasn't something to force. He had reacted poorly to those same attempts, in the beginning at least. Slowly he had opened up, at least to a few people, but it had been slow work, and even to this day he had not spoken with all honesty to them. Some things he kept back, because he didn't know how to tell them, didn't want to tell them - not when he had caused them their own nightmares, their own pains.

So he kept where he was and let her make the moves, decide the space she wanted. He crunched into his half of his apple, shaking his head at her question. "No, not as I recall. Was he a friend of yours?"

"Not particularly," she answered automatically, staring dolefully down at her slice of apple. "He was in the year below us, and he sort of idolized Harry. I've mentioned, Harry, haven't I? My best friend? Colin had a sort of hero worship wherever Harry was concerned, including his friends. He was eager and loyal and... so, so brave."

Slowly turning the apple over in her hand, she paused for a moment before continuing. "The final battle of the Second Wizarding War took place in our school, and before it began, our professors ordered all of the underaged students to get out and get to safety. But Colin... I think he was just so small that he was able to get around them unseen. He fought for us. And he died for us. And when it was all over, I saw his body and I just... I had to stop and wonder how anyone could be so evil as to just kill a young boy in cold blood."

It wasn't until she felt the tears dripping on her hands that she realized she'd started crying somewhere in the midst of her story. Clenching her jaw in an effort to keep the tears at bay without drawing attention to them, she concluded, "Colin was sixteen, seventeen at most. And now I witnessed a boy about half his age die at the hands of people I'd trusted. Maybe you were right; maybe the Inquisition isn't necessarily the answer."

When the tears started he reached out, laying his arm across her shoulders. He did not quite pull her into a hug, but the physical comfort his offered nonetheless. Sometimes he forgot how young Hermoine was, that she was barely into her adult years. It was easy to forget when she spoke and acted so maturely.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, giving her the slightest of tugs to lean into him. "I'm sorry you had to see those things, in your world and this one."

She didn't notice the arm, not until he tugged at her lightly and she ended up folding like a cheap tent. With a long, shaky exhale, Hermione leaned heavily against his shoulder, though she was still determined not to actually sob or bury her face against him or do anything else of the sort. She was much too prideful for that.

"It doesn't matter that I had to see them," she hissed out, and that at least was partly true. "What matters is that those things happened, regardless of who witnesses it. They happened, and they keep on happening, and if there's nothing to be done about it then what's the point of it in the first place?"

That was the harsh reality wasn't it? He wished he could tell her the future was better, and in many ways it was. But the bad things still happened. He had seen it, wept for it, still felt guilt for it in many ways. He didn't want to tell anyone that they'd have to get used to it. He didn't want her to lose that gentleness, that essence of being kind. Here he was afraid it might get hammered away, forged into something unrecognizable.

"There is something to be done. You know there is - Adelaide and Anders proved it. We fought to prove it," he reminded her gently. "But you have to remember it was only just discovered too. And after centuries of believing what they do, changing their minds won't happen in a night. Take the small pox vaccine. That wasn't believed to be effective at first - it took time for people to accept it. They're trained to react the way they do and they can't unlearn it in one encounter."

Sadly, it wasn't a sitcom where everyone learned their lesson and changed on thirty minutes or an hour. Life was much harder than that.

As much as it hurt, Hermione hoped that she would never get used to it. The day that she could accept the fact that a child had to be killed, that innocent people need to die simply so other innocent people could have half a chance of living their own lives... she'd rather that day would never come.

"Magic isn't the same as a vaccine," Hermione pointed out. "The effects are much more immediate, much easier to see with the naked eye. And Anders was standing right there as proof that there's a ritual that worked, so why would they... why would he...?"

Because that had been the bit that had really stuck with her, hadn't it? That someone who knew exactly what was happening to that poor boy, someone who knew firsthand how much it hurt and how he could actually be helped, had simply resorted to violence. It didn't matter that the demon had attacked first. One demon against eight adults - most of them mages - wouldn't have caused nearly as much damage, and Hermione isn't going to be able to stop thinking about that.

"Yes, but he is the one and only success so far," he reasoned to her gently. "And even if it works, not everyone is going to believe it immediately. The cure might work right away, but people don't change so easily." It was a sad, hard reality, but there would be many more deaths like this before the majority came to believe that such a possession was not a death sentence.

He moved his hand to gently pet her curls, a big brother comforting in his little sister, groping for the right words to say to her to make sense of this mad mess. How do you explain that in that moment, Kirk agreed with the choice? He didn't like it. He hated it and it made his stomach turn, but they were out of options.

"Because Anders knows best what that boy was growing through," he said softly. "He ran the risks of being taken over every day, and if anyone was fit to judge when there was no other option left it's him." He took a breath, searching for the right words. "I wish we could have saved that boy. I wish that he has not been approached with immediate suspicion and violence when it became clear what he was. But that's not what happened. I think in the heat of an attack, knowing that if he escaped us many more would pay a price for it, we made the only call that we could because it was growing stronger, shaking off the magic and the other wounds. It doesn't make it the right or the just call, but it was the only call we could make in that moment. I will live with that. Anders will live with that. All of us will. And hopefully one day no will have to again."

Hermione wanted to disavow everything Kirk was saying by proclaiming that he was simply wrong, that he didn't understand. But such a thing was petulant, and he by no means deserved that kind of treatment. He was trying to help, trying hard, and it wasn't his fault that it wasn't working. It was just a matter of too many emotions feeling too bloody raw for anything to be of much help to her.

It got harder and harder not to cry when he brushed his hand against her hair, and she shook a little as she swallowed around the hard lump that formed in her throat. She didn't want to be angry, not at Kirk and not at Anders, but anger felt more proactive than any of the other feelings coursing through her veins at the moment.

"Living with that is easier said than done," she managed to choke out. "Not all of us are doing a particularly good job of it."

"It shouldn't be easy," he consoled. "It's not. And if it is I would say there's something quite wrong with a person. I've just been through it a few times now, so I'm better at hiding it is all. Anders too. All of them really, I'm sure."

He continued to pet her hair, his heart aching for her. There wasn't a way to really make this better, but he at least wanted her to know she could talk to him and he wouldn't judge her. That she was not alone in that sour, dread feeling that permeated everything.

"I think it's good that you can't," he said softly. "We need someone like you." He leaned forward and touched his forehead to her curls briefly. "And if you ever need to talk about anything, you can come to me, Hermoine. None of this stalwart act. We're all in this together, so it's okay to lean on each other."

Considering all she'd been through before even arriving in Thedas, Hermione couldn't help but feel as though she was being something of a crybaby, or at least an overly emotional wreck. She'd stood in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, watching as more and more of her friends, professors, and classmates were brought in, dead or close to it. One child really shouldn't make her feel so....

But of course it should. Because it shouldn't matter if it were one child or a score of adults or a village filled with the elderly. What had happened had been horrible, and the day that she could witness that sort of thing and not acknowledge that much would be the day that she lost whatever part of herself that Kirk was claiming was some sort of virtue.

"I don't feel like I'm needed for much of anything," she whispers. "I couldn't do anything then - couldn't do it fast enough, at any rate - and now.... Thedas doesn't need more people like me. It needs more people like you. You don't rely on your magic to be useful."

Kirk was glad at least one of them was, honestly. He didn't want them to become jaded, to lose the parts of themselves that had compassion for the people around them. Yes, life was harsh here, but shedding tears for that harshness wasn't a weakness. More people should, he thought. Maybe then more might care, more might come to see the change this world truly needed.

"That's not true. I think Thedas needs someone like you too," he murmured. "Your magic doesn't define you, Hermoine. You're a good person, who speaks up for the right and the morale thing. You're that voice we all need in the heat of things, to remind us not to get lost and that there's always another choice. That's very useful, Hermoine. Damn important, even."

Hermione outright scoffed at the thought of Thedas needing more people like her. Unless he meant more people from her world, people who were used to adapting their magic to unconventional circumstances and making it look easy, she highly doubted any Thedosian would want to deal with a young woman being dragged into battle and shaking and crying at the first sign of trouble. Even if it had been rather gut-wrenching trouble.

"It would be more useful if I didn't lose that voice when it matters most," she remarked bitterly, remembering how she'd been so paralyzed by watching the horror unfold before her that she hadn't so much as spoken a word, even before it had become clear that they'd been dealing with an abomination. "Or if people would listen. But how much of a voice do rifters really have, Kirk? Especially one who can do magic? If half this world thinks you're secretly a demon, I can only imagine what they and the other half think of me."

"We lose our voices entirely, if we never speak," he said softly, looking down at her. "And I think that you can do magic is important. You show them - you are living proof - that the way they have been doing things doesn't have to be." He gave a half shrug. "And honestly, I've earned my fair share of enemies so being called a demon isn't the worst thing to happen to me. All you and I can do is stay true to ourselves and what we believe in. And maybe that'll be enough to help change this world."

He let out a sigh, reaching down to pick up another apple and pull out a knife to cut it open as he had the other.

"Don't try and take on to much, Hermoine. Just do what you can, and that's all anyone can ask."

Hermione had always been a realist, but she'd been used to dealing with the extremes of naive optimism and cynical pessimism. But Kirk? For being an adult well past his school years, he seemed to be so mind-numbingly optimistic that Hermione didn't know whether to feel sorry for him or be angry at him.

"We can't change a world that doesn't even want us in it, Kirk," she retorts, frowning deeply as she absently watches him cut through the second apple. "I wouldn't care so much about people calling us demons, but after seeing how they treat demons? Especially when it had been in the guise of a child? I think my magic would be better spent looking for a way out of here before certain members of the Inquisition decide we've worn out our welcome."

Maybe he was. He had more than enough reason not to be, considering all the things he had seen and done. But he just couldn't make himself live like that. He couldn't keep focusing on the bad and never look forward to the good or keep hoping for it. What sort of life was that to lead, seeing only the darkness and never the light? Good things didn't happen if you never looked for them.

"And that's your choice," he acknowledged. "I don't blame you. I want to go home too. I have a ship, a family, I want to see again. A universe to explore. But we are here, Hermoine. And I care about people here. And while I am here, until I go back, I want to try and make this world even a little bit better. This world doesn't want us, and we didn't want to be here, but we have to make the best of it." He pushed up from the bale of hay, turning and leaving the apple beside her.

Covering half her face in one hand, Hermione tried to take a few slow breaths in an effort to stave off yet another headache. She'd been through deep spirals of despair, but she'd always had Harry or Ron to help pull her out of them. Kirk wasn't Harry or Ron, and she didn't want to hold that against him. It wasn't fair to him, and it wouldn't help her at all.

"I have been making the best of it," she replied, voice surprisingly steady. "And if this is the best...."

Again, that wasn't fair to him, or to the decent people they'd met here, and it certainly wasn't any sort of help. Looking down at the apple besides her, Hermione forced out a long, slow sigh, preferring that over a sob. "I care about the people here, too. Please don't think that I don't. That's part of the problem. I don't want to be afraid of the people I care about."

[OPEN] Heaven bend to take my hand

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