For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Wow was closing those rifts a bad time and double wow guess who is a terrible patient
WHEN: post plot/early Octoberish; we can handwave time a bit
WHERE: Healing tents; her + Korrin's room later
NOTES: Okay there will be discussions of injuries here as well as what went on in that plot, I'll try to put warnings in headers if specifics come up but if there are things you aren't comfortable with discussing, let me know (Araceli's ic/ooc inbox, plurk or discord all work!)
Also let me know when you're catching her since that'll change how injured she is/if she's still lyrium'd to the gills!

There isn't much of a choice in where she goes when she comes back to Skyhold. Araceli is sent to the healing tents, too hurt, too tired, too out of her head to even attempt to argue. Half her arguments aren't even in a language the healers about her understand until one of the Rivaini mages agrees to step in, knowing decent enough Antivan but she drifts. Tries to sort through memories with her right hand curled against Lux who visibly bristles even at friends throughout the first awful days. Her left arm is useless, bandaged tightly to keep her from hurting it more, right leg not much better. Healing potions and spells are turned away. Sleep, she just wants to sleep.

(There are too many nightmares but she presses her face to Lux, and at least she can open the flap of the tent to breathe fresh air when she struggles for air when she fights herself awake.)

Later, when she's able to argue a little better, she attempts to sneak out. Attempts. Being that her right leg is weak and aching and useless. The bandages are off to reveal stitches closing up the wound in her calf, maybe with another poultice slapped on if someone argues her into it. But she's been stuck somewhere against her will already for so long that she can't explain the itch under her skin or that she can't breathe when she's trapped in the tent, that no she never just lies down to sleep all at once, and the longer she's cooped up, the worse her temper gets. Her head feels more like hers; she's Araceli, she's been here nearly a year now, she's Korrin's kadan, she knows all of that. But she looks up at the walls with longing, testing her thumb, attempting to put more weight on her leg--

(I've been shot, I've been stabbed, I've broken bones worse, I can climb again, I can, I can--)

Eventually she gets to go back to her and Korrin's rooms, either for a few hours or because she's well enough that they don't have reasons to keep her. Still, she's always running around doing something. And she's bored. Tremendously bored. Stuck in a chair or more likely the bed because she doesn't like admitting how sore and how tired she is, not really, and there's an open door policy if you know to look for the one with the blue seashell. There are books scattered about, and all of Araceli's cards and dice but playing games with herself is no fun when she wants a distraction.

(You should probably give Korrin a break, having to deal with this pain in the ass all the time.)

[[ooc: any mix is good - like bringing cards etc to the healing tents - or wildcard it up, just check in if it's when she's still full of lyrium for memory flash stuff!]]

Comments

[foxsays]

Rubbing her head, she pulls a few stray curls (a charitable definition, they look about the same as they did when she got back from the Fallow Mire right now) tight around a finger until the new flash of pain gives her something to focus on. There's too much that she wants to ask Lexa - the hand on her shoulder, and 'I won't let them take you' or how she'd fought the Venatori but she didn't even know Lexa before the trip. Hadn't even said two words to her, not even in the tavern.

Would it even help to ask her who she thought Araceli was, or does she just want to know what she's worrying at the same way she'd poke at a loose tooth? Does she try asking when she's still going to be able to be honest or does she wait until she can hide her face again? There aren't many people she'd look at the way Lexa looked at her, and it only makes her skin feel too tight all over again.

So back to something safer. Easier. A bit closer to who she really is. "If they do that then they will be a beggar the rest of their days when I am well, and they will never be served again in the tavern. If they are, it will be watered down every time." When making threats, you hit someone where it hurts and this is why Araceli so rarely kills people: there are always much worse things than death, and taking all the pleasures out of a life are infinitely sweeter satisfaction. "At home we paid the doctor to come to the house, and I could lie in my old bed until I thought my mother wouldn't hear me trying to open the window and get out." How she heard her every single time, she has no idea but she did.

Usually she paid for it in some way. Chores until she was too exhausted to even think of escape plans most often.

Leave her some tables though, she needs to have the parkour advantage when Martel has height advantage. "Swashbuckling - you sound like my friends when they came staggering off the ships to bring them to Castileos the first time." Not that they'd been her friends then but they hadn't really made an effort to get to know her country until Araceli had been the introduction. "What if something brilliant came out? If you didn't think too much and just let everything you felt like happen? Some shanties are ridiculous, and if you think they're singing about one thing they're singing about something else, and half the time it's dirtier."

[motherfucking_ghost]

He doesn't stop her from tugging her hair, even if he doesn't think she should be doing that. Despite her predicament, despite her mental fucked-uppery, she must need so much distraction, must be bored as hell and restless. "Hey. If there's anything you need--anything that I can reasonably get for you--don't hesitate to ask. I'll even make a passable effort at trying to shoo your girlfriend away if you need it, even if I won't succeed." You try standing in Korrin's way for more than three seconds. If you're not Araceli.

"We had a medic show up at our base. He was helping both sides, because he was a conscientious objector and a pacifist, so he just wanted to help anyone who was injured. It was weird. And he wasn't very good at what he did. But at least he made housecalls. Housecalls albeit three months late, but still, once he was there..." Man, Doc would get eaten alive in a place like this. On the other hand, he did put up surprisingly well with O'Malley. Or...as O'Malley, whatever.

As for the rest of it? Something brilliant does sometimes come out of him, but not in the sing-song and rhyme department. "...I mean, I could uh. Y'know, I might give it a shot. About...something. Don't think to much" just bust that kick I wanna take a ride on your disco stick "just let shit roll out? I mean. Uh. Hold on." He's gonna lean back and try and think of rhyming shit. Sometimes armies have sounding off marches and dirty sounding shit to chant. This is my rifle, this is my gun, etc.

"Uhhhhh I think I can do this, hold on. Should I just, like, tap out a beat? I don't know that I can sing it if I'm making it up as I go, but I can at least sorta...go. Should I go? Hold on." She's been holding on, Church. He starts tapping his heel on the ground like a metronome. "Had a sword in one hand and the other a gun/ one was for stabbing, the other for fun/ got frisky with an alien don't know why or how/ but now he's the dad to a tiny space cow--wait, wh- am I seriously trying to come up with a song about Tucker, how did that even happen?"

He's making a face at himself. "I can keep going. You can fall asleep or tell me to shut up or, like, laugh a lot, I don't care, but this is your fault. Let's try that again."

More thinking. More thinking while he's tapping. "Okay, I think I got it! The rookie's coming in and talking some shit/ he needs to shut up or he's gonna get hit/ always doing something that's gonna end bad/ when he says my name I'm gonna get mad/

Pacifist and artifice, the medic of the gang/ gotta shoot somebody or he's gonna get hanged/ purple's the color between red and blue/ better not be malpractice or I'm gonna sue

The laziest fucker that you ever knew/ can't tell him what for or what to do/ afraid of bats or snakes in caves?/ better move his ass or he'll send us to our graves

Kiss-ass, smartass, all around ass/ if he's got an idea I think I'll pass/ nerdy motherfucker and an all around geek/ if it wasn't for his friends he wouldn't make it a week!" The longer he goes for, the more excited and enthusiastic he gets, because this is kind of fun and he's even surprising himself.

"The leader of the bunch, you know him well/ the shotgun sergeant straight from hell/ with his stupid one-liners and a passion for blood/ better call him 'sir' or he'll kick you to the mud/

Lightish-red armor not of his choice/ the Iowa farmer with a high-pitched voice/ if he was here he'd seem really fey/ don't tell him that I think he's pretty okay/

She's a bitch in black and hard as stone/ she needs no friends and works alone/ send in the soldiers then send for more/ don't try to stand up or you're back on the floor/ with a punch to the balls and a kick to the head/ you gotta get better or you're gonna get dead/ you think you've got skills but you're sinking fast/ the first time you fight her's gonna be your last--"

He finally pauses sheepishly. "Is...uhhhh. Is this stupid? I mean uh like this is--I'm not--wh--I feel a little bit stupid, tell me I'm not being fucking stupid, my crippling self-doubt is kicking in."

hover for translation

[foxsays]

"If you can play cards without having to be taught the rules? I can play cards. Just not for coin. Since...that's all back at the room." Because right now she doesn't have it together enough to think about having someone get some of her coin for her to start bribing people to look the other way when she wants to go wandering or escaping on her own. Apart from seeing Ruby. That's a deception she's proud of putting together, even under the pain of being throttled with her own hair by several people as soon as she's well enough to be safely throttled with her own hair. Aintza can make those threats when she's a Seer, when she's motherly or as close to that as Araceli will get away from home.

And there are a lot of stairs in the dungeons. The guard had to help her most of the way back up when her leg just refused to carry her as soon as she was out of Ruby's line of sight.

"Three months late? I suppose sometimes it must be a case of tómelo o déjelo but so long?" Church she is aghast, leaning in to peer at you as if she might find wounds this medic has left untreated by taking so very long. This is why crews pay their cooks and their doctors so well, to stop them from leaving to find another ship in need of such skilled men or women.

Whatever Araceli is expecting when she nods for him to continue? It's not this. For a moment she does wonder if the lyrium has made her lose her mind but this feels too real because she's smiling. She can feel herself smiling properly for the first time since she got back. She's not following, not really - what is a space cow, how does a person have a space cow if they get together with an alien? - but even though it hurts her ribs, she laughs. (She'd forgotten she could laugh. Like all the colour had been drained out of the world and her life, everything grey and sharp at the edges, and now there's this and her cheeks aching from the strain of trying not to explode giggling.)

There are tears to wipe from her face when she's done but they're the good kind, and her flask of rum is offered out when she can find it after that because payment where payment is due. "You," she says, swallowing a hiccup when she almost starts laughing again because space cows, Church she only just saw a real cow for the first time in the flesh when she came to Thedas and that's not quite a year ago, "need to not hide your light under a bushel. That was incredible! Those are the people you know, that you are close to where you come from?"

[motherfucking_ghost]

To see her, in the state she's in, smile? Grin? Laugh? That can't be comfortable, but she does it anyway. It's encouraging. And despite his self-doubt, he's also grinning. Takes the flask with a tilted salute and a drink (and a cough or two) before handing it back.

"You really think so? I might have to write some of that down, polish it up. I'll start rapping the tales of the dumbasses I was with." So there's that confirmation. He ticks them off on his fingers. "Lessie, we got Tucker, Caboose, Doc, Grif, Simmons, Sarge, Donut, and Tex." Look, Grif's sister kind of counts, but also kind of doesn't count, okay? Anything he makes up about her is likely to get hella lewd anyway. "Tucker, Caboose, and Tex were with me on my team, the others were on the other team, except for our three months late Doc. Wasn't his fault; we just had really shitty oversight where we were."

Sometimes, very very very briefly, there's the fear that none of this is real, that the rifts and this place and these people are just some new experiment. Gary sending him through a new scenario again. The Director toying with him. What if it's not real? What if some part of his computerized brain is rejecting reality and living the last few stretched out milliseconds here?

"I think that took out all my creativity for the week, though. You want me to get some cards, I can tell you in less rhyming terms about 'em? Maybe get some food, too?"

[foxsays]

"Need to teach you how to drink," she says, holding up the flask in a wobbly hand so that what little light there is in the tent makes the big octopus on the front dance. Or it always looks like it's dancing to her. She likes tracing it most of the time. "That's watered, so sailors aren't too drunk to work."

A sage nod. At least there are apparently some facts nestled so deep in Araceli that she can't forget them, generations of knowledge carved into her bones, truths you'd find if you cracked open the marrow.

But there's a more important thing when she tucks the flask back into her belongings, a name that catches because it makes her laugh again. "Donut? Is that a name? That...does not sound like a name. Or Caboose." Saying that one makes her laugh though, it just sounds like the right level of ridiculous that she apparently needs or she's just loopy enough to find it funny.

Maybe people would find names from her home strange. Poor Arsenio might be the worst just for the start of his name depending on the maturity level, and well, Brunilda too. It does conjure a certain image, not helped at all by snow-bears and maidens. Or however that story goes, Araceli can't remember.

"Burly, Raas and Kalla all cook things that I love, and Korrin brought my spices from our room. And I will owe you a meal. You can write that down and leave it with me: Araceli Bonaventura owes Leonard Church one home-cooked meal."