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

[gatheringstorm]

"Yeah, I saw those paper shreds. I'll do better than to keep it near the furry menace." Said very fondly, of course. Korrin has been doing her best to live up to spoiling him for playing the hero when they needed it.

There aren't a lot of people Korrin will listen to when she gets into that vengeance mindset, but her kadan is naturally one of them. Leaning in, she brushes her lips against Araceli's temple. "Fair point, kadan. I'll never not want to blast them into the Void for what they did to you and the others. It'll be tough to hold back from that, but it's likely there are other such hellholes, and we need to find out where."

Then she tilts her head as a thought comes to her. "Maybe we don't have to wait. Zevran's Kestral's could find out for us, couldn't they? I'm pretty damn sure it wouldn't take much to get them interested in that." Not when Araceli had been kind to them, and Zevran a friend of them both. For that kind of information, Korrin would gladly pay well. She's barely touched her funds except for necessities and drinks, anyway. "At the very least, they could be our eyes and watch for them so we aren't going in blind once we're healed."

[foxsays]

At least Lux doesn't seem traumatised by any part of the ordeal, not even the aftermath. Clingy, but not much more than any time she's left him behind for any reason, and still willing to disappear off to be her lookout when she needs him to watch for a healer when she's wanted peace or a shot at escaping. "Put it in the book and shut it, it's been open on the chapter I was at before I had to leave." Which wasn't Tevinter, she wasn't that foolish, though she can't really remember what book it is just that she does have the sense not to leave so many clues lying about as to where she was off to prior to Craintellier.

Closing her eyes, they snap open again because it's-- something not hers. Enough lyrium still lingering around that there is something definitely not hers in her head for a moment that she has to ground herself, eyes on the white of the mountains until they sting with the brightness of it. She doesn't trust her voice to speak like any other time not when there could be others. When it could be Rajani or Nerissa, Eir or Brunilda or Argyris. Leandra. Her parents. She shuts that terrible sort of grief (because it's grief, it feels like grief, it has the taste of it because what can she do if they've already slipped through her fingers?) up in a box instead herself, pushing it away. They don't know if rifters go home when they disappear, not for certain. And now they don't know if they find every rifter, not for certain.

What hurts more, her head or her heart?

"Maybe. You would need to speak with Zevran first before you breathed even a hint of anything to them, it wouldn't be right otherwise." Or it wouldn't be right by Araceli, because this is how it would be done with her and Leandra, with the rest of the guard. "I don't know sirena, have they not seen enough terrible things? Do they need to see more? You can ask and a person can say no but when it is a friend, when someone vouched for your life and argued against others who wished you dead? Words do not settle debt so easily, not always. It's a tricky thing. I would need to speak to Sister Nightingale first anyway, before anything else."

And privately, maybe selfishly in a strange way, she doesn't want to share her horrors with more people than she needs to. If people could truly guess at her hurts, it would be the Kestrels just from looking and reading between her words.

[gatheringstorm]

Those moments of Araceli's don't go unnoticed, and Korrin looks on sadly, wishing she could purge the remaining lyrium out of her system. It will deplete, but not nearly fast enough for her liking. Her kadan has suffered more than enough, she doesn't need more bombarding these moments. Gently, she reaches up to run a hand through her curls in a soothing motion, slow enough not to tangle.

"They've seen terrible things, and they'll see more before the war is over. Ultimately, it's up to them to decide if they want to go forward. This time, they're no one's possessions. But you're right, it's something we'd have to discuss with Zevran first. He knows better than either of us what they can handle. Speak with the spymaster first, see what she says, and we'll go from there. You know I'll support however you want to go about this, kadan. If there's more I can do, you have only to say it."

[foxsays]

"I should go back to the tent," Araceli says at last because her head is starting to ache just from holding it up, and the cold - a bother at the best of times for someone suited to warm places - cuts through her sharp as a knife now. Her head lolls back when Korrin strokes her hair, the last three fingers of the left hand clutching at her too so she doesn't lose her balance.

(Losing her balance, if her father were here would he pity her or be ashamed? She doesn't like to imagine but she does anyway, rolls the dice on it until someone comes and tells her to get some sleep that comes with a Venatori putting a knife to her mouth.)

"I--" What does she want? What isn't something nebulous, something out of her reach? How does she do this now when she's adrift, when that shouldn't matter to her because the sea is in her blood so she should be able to accept whatever comes, be it washing up on the sands delirious or filling her lungs with salt and going under? It makes her want to scream and tear her hair out. Hit something. Race up to the highest points where almost no one else in Skyhold can reach until maybe her heart stops pounding so loud that everyone can hear it. "I don't know. I don't know what I want, or what you can do-- I don't--" she stops herself, chewing her lip for a moment before she sighs quietly. "I don't know. We should go back. Before someone sends out a search party for me."

[gatheringstorm]

Straightening, Korrin nods and gently turns them to head back down, letting Araceli set the pace. Her kadan hasn't had much control over what's happened or her condition; she should at least have control over this. That hesitation gets her sympathy, having had similar moments not too long ago with Asher's death, and guilt. "It's alright, kadan. There's no pressure to come up with anything; we'll take it a moment at a time and see what happens from there. If you need more, you'll let me know when you can.

...and I'll take full blame for kidnapping, as always. Maybe next time it will be more dashing, with a shining steed."

[foxsays]

"...What happened to my horse."

It comes out of nowhere but she had a horse. She cheated some sneering Tevinter out of that horse who looked down at her because she was just some Antivan girl, wasn't she, in armour that looked like nothing, and probably didn't have two coppers to rub together. Only she'd taken his coin hadn't she, and she'd handed it over, more than what the horse was worth (and he was probably a nice horse, if Araceli were a judge of horses but Rajani is the rider of all of them, Rajani who collects little horse ornaments in the markets) and galloped off to Craintellier. And what happened to him?

And then, tugging so Korrin will lift her because going down the stairs will have her pitching forward and splitting her head open, she says, "I wonder if the demons ate my horse. Well he was still someone else's horse, they used their own coin to buy him. Poor thing, he did well getting me to meet everyone with a fox barking in his ear the whole way."