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

[fightingale]

"It will be beneficial for dexterity," she agrees. "if you had an interest in traps and mechanisms then pursuing a little training with an Artificer might suit, even if they simply show you a few steps. It would require a different range of motion, I'd think. Simply something to consider."

As she talks, Leliana leads the way to the gardens. On the way she passes a scout who hands her a message, and murmurs a quiet apology to Araceli as she reads it over. Whatever she reads pleases her, apparently, and by the time they reach the gardens she is just finished with the note and rolls it back up to hand back to the scout that temporarily joined them. "Very good. Please report to Abarca, and advise him purple ink. He will know how to proceed."

The scout nods, inclines his head in a slight bow to each Leliana and Araceli, before moving from the gardens. By now they have reached a table and two chairs, and Leliana indicates for Araceli to take a seat. Lunch is not yet here but it is not hard to assume Leliana has it somehow taken care of.

"It will doubtless do little to appease you, but this is an excellent form of bard training. Bards must be patient and careful. Obeying the orders of medical personnel will, henceforth, be a requirement of your education." For the good of her health, if nothing else.

[foxsays]

The word 'traps' makes her jaw tighten just a fraction. Funny how little things make you not yourself, isn't it? No traps with the Venatori but magic that fixed her in place, wouldn't let her body obey and then the shackles that she got one hand free of with nothing to show for it. "Zevran would know, I think," the confusion comes more from just keeping it all straight in her head, just how much she has to think through everything these days. "I helped at the rogue school so…" And it trails off because she's doing that a lot.

The scout is a welcome interruption, letting her concentrate on keeping the crutch in the right place, on keeping her weight where it should be and ignoring the fact that in almost a year here she's never actually come this way to the garden, not once. Every single time there was a shortcut from the rooftops or cutting through from somewhere else, and she listens with half an ear as her eyes dart about, as if waiting for someone to step out from somewhere. (People bump into you on the ground here. In Castileos where the streets aren't streets there's more swaying but she can't get out of the way so easily if someone barges along and nearly clatters right into her.)

Sitting isn't as bad as it was even if she almost drops the crutch, fumbling a catch because Araceli will offer help, give it freely but when her pride is wounded then just receiving it hurts like pressing on an old bruise, and asking for it seems out of the question.

"If they would stop talking right outside my tent? Or as if I'm not there?" Araceli's voice doesn't get louder but it climbs up, a little higher, a touch strangled. "It would be easier. I don't-- even now I don't remember when I wake up. Not always. I hear people talking. About me. Very quietly. And all I can think is that I have to get out, and I don't even think that it is thinking, just everything in my body screaming at me to move, to get out before something happens." She's painfully aware that it sounds on the edge of hysterical but this isn't something she's really talked about, not like that when she's had healers chasing after her, worried friends, or worst of all a worried lover that she didn't even remember at first. But she looks at Leliana when she says it at least, even if that hurts too, the possibly mad girl saying mad things that's she's kept under her tongue, behind her teeth, trapped in her throat until they almost choke her for too long now.

[fightingale]

The tension of Araceli's jaw winding rtighter, that the scout's arrival suggests relief, the trailing off— all are noted.

She listens in patient silence, watching Araceli. Not the sharp gaze of a cat or bird that catches all, but something less dangerously focused. A moment skips by before she starts to make a reply, a scout bearing a tray ladened with sandwiches on a platter and a jug of water with two wooden cups and setting it all down between them, nothing ostentatious or overly challenging for a recovering body or its stomach, before Leliana dismisses him with a very slight smile and a nod.

Leliana waits until he is out of earshot to speak.

"At least you've not held a knife to the throat of a Chantry sister endeavouring to treat your wounds." She pours water for both of them. "I made a wonderful impression on the sisters of the Denerim Chantry, when first I was there. I must have been your age, or so. What happened prior did not involve lyrium, but... I was no calmer for that."

An offer, an outstretching of solidarity one might suppose, but she'll not force Araceli to listen - only offer that knowledge of some kind of familiarity, of understanding. "Such ordeals are not simply or quickly overcome, but I have every faith in you. Unfortunately, enduring terrible things does require enduring the recovery."

[foxsays]

At least if she drops something or knocks it over because it's habit to reach out for things with the left hand then remember that she can't pick them up properly a moment too late, she's not going to break something. Embarrass herself, yes, but maybe there comes a point where you're so low on your belly that you can't get any lower and you find you stop caring after that. A sandwich though that...okay Araceli is probably the strange one but she can count on one hand the number of times she's eaten a sandwich.

Bread bowls make the world go round in Castileos.

The water catches in her throat, a startled almost-laugh of shock forced out of her. "You are the hand of the Divine," and maybe Araceli can say nothing when she went to steal from Leandra and got her job that way but she killed the assassins, her blades, her pistols, her life, they've never been laid against Leandra. But she takes another sip, resting her left hand on the table to ease the pressure on it. "No one ever hurt me like this before. The intention? That makes it worse than the lyrium." Her shoulders come down a fraction of an inch, as if just being able to say even that much helps her.

"How long did it take before you stopped wanting to scream at everyone around you?" Draw a knife and it means something, there's so much she can't say, won't say because she doesn't want to give other people the same nightmares snarled up in her head, the same fears that have her tensing at whispers, turning sharply at shadows as if they're going to bite.