faderift | A bottle of white, a bottle of red

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A bottle of white, a bottle of red

WHO: Open to anyone that wants wine and warmth and a little company.
WHAT: Wine and no whining.
WHEN: After the mage meeting wraps up.
WHERE: Close to the healing tents, specifically the Orlesian section.
NOTES: There will be wine, drinking, unwinding, and nibbles.

The meeting had been stressful for just about everyone involved. Tempers had flared, opinions made known, a few rounds of confetti and arguing before some manner of accord. Whether it would last or however long it might? No one could truly say. In the interest of being quite done with the stress and headaches such debate brought on the Orlesian healing tents clearing out the potions, bandages, and poultices in favor of what cushions and braziers they had on hand for light and for heat. The space was open, warm, and inviting with an odd assortment of tin mugs or clay glasses set around flat side tables propped up with stones to keep them from wobbling and tipping the whole mass onto the ground. There are some dried fruits and hard cheeses, dried meat and hard crusted bread- whatever scraps they could scavenge or spare and a few bottles of wine or brandy. Across the entrance to the tents there was a sign:

Bring a bottle or food to share for entry.

Tacked below was a list of rules:

Everyone is welcome, don't make a fuss
Don't hog the wine
Don't hog the food
Don't fight or argue
If you finish a bottle open a new one, don't recork it for someone else to find
Clean up after yourselves

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She pauses at that, head lifting, eyes passing over the crowd around them. No. Not quite around. They were all mingling, one body, many voices.

Not the two of them, though. Always some degree of separation, even if she doesn't know quite what to do with that realization yet. It's all still too raw, too new. Her brow furrows, teeth grazing over her lower lip.

"...hope." There's disappointment in her voice at the conclusion, and it shifts down to the bottle in her hand. "But it's not here. Laid down and didn't get up again."

Hope, laid down and never getting up again. That all hit a bit too close to himself once more. Was she truly like that strange boy? Could they both see inside of him? The thought of having to deal with both of them was a bit too much to handle.

Still, she didn't quite state it as clearly as the strange boy, so maybe he was overthinking this. But it was sitill better to be safe than sorry, nonetheless.

"There's always another day," he says instead, since that's what people needed to hear, from what he understood. "Perhaps tomorrow they can get up and try to find it once more." And maybe they'll actually succeed. These people here at least deserve a success for once.

The strange boy. The thought makes her smile ever so slightly, her hand pausing. No, she's not Cole, not a spirit in skin looking to heal hurts. Cole may be unique, but he has a purpose. That's more than she could say.

Her fingers toy with another cork. "Dull casings for knives, knowing they wait just out of sight. It's not true." Dark eyes cut towards Bruce after a moment, almost wry.

"You don't believe."

Bruce starts to mull over her next words, but then is entirely distracted with what comes after that, and he blinks at her, expression a mix of surprise and confusion.

"I don't believe--what?" In Andraste? In the Herald? In the Inquisition? Not that he didn't believe in the latter two, but it wasn't exactly the sort of belief others had, most likely. His own faith in the Maker and whatever gods there were shattered a long time ago. He was here because he could at least trust that the people here were trying to do the right thing, however difficult it may seem. And if he could aid the people here, however he could, then that was all he could ask for.

"It doesn't fade, doesn't get better. Tomorrow will be the same."

Empty platitudes. She'd never been a fan, even before. Her parents used to give them too, when Simon had been taken to the tower. When she'd been sent off to Tevinter. Things will be better. That's what they always said before the worst came, as though denial would be enough to shield them.

Now, too. But she'd forgotten the wine for the moment.

"They stay dead. Stay lost. Stay angry. It just waits."

It was a strange feeling, whenever somebody managed to say something that could render him silent. Particularly because he always did his best to not go against anybody, and even more because nobody had really went around to peer into him long enough to pick out these things. Everyone just saw the nice, calm man Bruce did his best to project himself as.

So when those words were said Bruce couldn't help but frown a bit, trying and failing to put on a neutral expression. Again, words that hit a bit too close for his tastes. First the strange boy, and now this strange--girl. The Inquisition truly was full of the unexpected.

"Sometimes..." he starts, slower this time, trying his best to find the best words to say. "Sometimes. It's just better when people think that." Instead of having to face the real truth, a truth that could possibly crush ~~him~~ them. Sometimes that was what he they needed just to go onto the next day.

"But the evidence doesn't support it. It's wrong and you know it's wrong, but you pretend to believe anyway." Clearly, the logic here was missing, and Bruce's attempts at self-delusion were only confusing her further. Why willingly choose to rely on something you knew to be false?

It was hard enough trying to determine anything in clarity, most days.

"It doesn't matter what I think." It doesn't matter what be believes himself, because he doesn't really matter in the long run. There was no way a thing like himself would matter to anybody, to anything. He was just the ghost of a shell of a man, living only because he had no other choice, for even death wouldn't accept him.

Bruce lets out a sigh after that and glances away, not quite able to look at the strange girl, the guilt rising up from within once again. "As long as other people can believe, that's what matters most."

"...so they don't become you."

Suddenly, the pieces snap together. Coherency at last. It follows logic after all, just not the trail one might expect. It was more selfless than that, a selflessness born of despair. No hope for me, might as well save someone.

She hadn't considered that, and it settles weightily into place as she straightens, blinking at him slowly.

A hard lump forms at the back of Bruce's throat at her words. Too close, this time. Far, far too close.

He bites his lips and closes his eyes, trying to think of anything else except the thoughts that are rushing towards him. So many memories, so many regrets, each of them more painful than the last.

"Yes." It's all he can say in response, and its a struggle to even keep that one word steady. There should never be anything else like him. There are enough monsters in this place to have more of them.

He pulls in when it hits home, where it hurts. He goes all stiff, withdraws into his bones like a wound trying to close.

It's probably not the wisest notion in the world to encroach upon that, and yet she does. One hand reaches tenderly for his shoulder, understanding lending just a shred of something stable for a moment. A monster who tried to save others from his fate, his kindness every bit as strong as his fury.

No wonder Cole had been interested in him.

Bruce freezes at the touch, every part of him going deathly still from the suddenness of this human contact. It's definitely the last thing he had expected and it shows in just about everything in how he responds. How could she still do that, despite being able to see it? To see the monster that he truly is?

He cautiously looks up and stares at the strange girl, and in that one moment the mask slips, his eyes showing the pain that he constantly tries to hide from the rest of the world. The pain of forever being remembered as what he is rather than who he is. Of being the monster he never wanted to be and having to live with it no matter what.

"How..." he starts, wanting to ask, to know, but he can't quite bring himself to do it. There's too many raw emotions swirling inside him right now.

And that, she does understand. Everything bubbling and roiling until the words won't come, choked in your throat while you try to make sense of it all. Simon had always managed to soothe those moments, in his way. Perhaps it would help now.

So she does what he would have for her, and moves closer. Her thin arms wind around Bruce while he stands there, gripped by that immeasurable pain, and hugs him gently. As coping methods go, it's probably a healthier option than the wine.

Less likely to cause vomiting, as well.

Bruce didn't drink anyway so wine wasn't going to be an issue at all, but suddenly with her moving in like this--it was all so sudden.

For a moment his mind flashes back to a life so long ago, where things had been so different, a time where everything was still so full of hope. Where he once had gestures like these everyday until everything broke apart around him.

He forces himself to take in a breath and center himself, to keep himself in control, trying to stop the trembling of his hands as he slowly slides his own arms around her, shakily returning the gesture.

For a moment, it seems as though she's made it worse. But it gets worse before it gets better, Simon had said that once before. And if things were at their worst now...

They weren't. Not for Bruce. Something pressed at the seems inside, burned and festered and wouldn't let go, not unlike the spirits that had pressed in at the scenes of carnage in Redcliffe. It would never truly be safe. But at the very least he didn't have to be alone, or caged, or any number of other fates one might deem worthy of a monster.

Finally she tips her head up to look at him, curious as to the hug's effects. Her brow wrinkles faintly.

"We can be monsters together."

He pulls away when she looks up at him, taking one small step back so that there was space between them. He had... she would be safer, to not be this close to him.

The words, though. The words. He shouldn't feel thankful for hearing something like that but the small selfish part of him does and he hates himself a little for that. It shouldn't feel comforting to hear words like that.

"You're..." he tries again, attempting to find the right words and voice them out without the others hearing it. "How do you... know?"

She pauses, tipping her head quietly to one side. "Listening," she murmurs, after a moment. "They're close, sometimes closer, and when they come through you see their fingerprints on everything they touch."

Focus sharpens her gaze again after a moment, fixing on Bruce in his confusion once more. "You glow. Carrying a piece of it with you. It has a song and I can hear it. I hear them all, but you're so much louder."

The words take a while for Bruce to process them, but with his own knowledge and experience it eventually clicks onto him. Coming through--the Fade. Spirits.

Demons.

Unconsciously he rests a hand above his chest, feeling the way his heart was beating, a little faster than normal, and he forces himself to take another breath again. Control. He needed to maintain control. He tries to think, to put the pieces together instead so that his mind goes to this mystery rather than the fear that gnaws at him.

"You--see them? The..." He can't quite bring himself to finish that question, but the girl can probably figure it out anyway. Spirits. Demons. Whatever it was from the other side of the Fade, where no human was ever meant to understand or touch upon. He was the result of that attempt to be something people were never meant to be.

She nods, fingers curling into her palms and out again, a reminder to stay present. This was important, he needed this. Focus.

"It started in dreams. They came and spoke. Some even played with me. Some wanted more. Wanted to be like you. Needles in the belly, so hungry, starving for power, for fresh air and clay to mold like..."

And there it went again. Frustrated, she wrinkled her nose, shook her head.

"Then I went far away. Now things are...harder. But I see more of them. Hear them even when waking. But it's all gone fuzzy. Hard to differentiate."

Spirits and demons in the Fade, talking to her through dreams? That could only be a dreamer. This girl was a dreamer? That would--explain quite a bit, possibly. He couldn't be entirely sure. Dreamers were so rare that Bruce could never really get much information on them at all, if there were actually any in the first place.

At least some things were clicking now, but in a way it only brought more questions than answers - and that irony of that wasn't lost on Bruce. Probably the only other time this happened to him was when he was finding answers about himself after the incident.

He gave a slow nod to her words, again trying to swallow the hard lump in his throat. "So you... see spirits. Demons. Anything that comes from the Fade." A pause, and his expressions twists into one that's part pain, part sympathy. "I'm sorry. It must be hard."

"There's a lot to sort through."

She gives a little sigh, her thin shoulders dropping. "It doesn't stop. Bleeds through and the patterns don't make sense, muddling like too much paint," she attempts after a moment, face scrunching as she tries to fit a fitting way to explain it. Not always the easiest task, and skirting around why she's like this now almost entirely.

But Tevinter isn't a place she likes discussing on the best of days.

Bruce gives a small nod to her words - really, it was hard to not sympathize with her. He could all too easily relate to her plight, even if his circumstances were far different from hers.

"You don't have to talk about it," he assured her quickly. Maker knew how Bruce never talked about his own problems as well, so its not like he's the best example of dealing with issues like these. But really, who could? Anybody else in their positions were either dead or had already lost their minds.

"...but I understand."

And that was the important part, the part she'd been struggling towards in all of this. Her brow knits delicately.

"What its like being dangerous."

And maybe the dangerous sorts should stick together. If only to be able to stop themselves if anything goes wrong.

Being dangerous comes in many forms, and even for both of them it was different. Vastly different, but it didn't matter to anybody else. They were still always going to be regarded as dangerous no matter what.

Bruce turns his gaze away from her, silent for a moment, unable to really say anything that was appropriate for this. How could he? When he already knew how useless words were for him, and it would be the same for her. No amount of pretty words would help the situation they were in.

Maybe words couldn't help. Maybe tomorrow wouldn't be any better than today. What mattered in the end was not feeling alone.

She remembered being alone, caged, certain she'd never see the outside world again, that her body would collapse on itself or a demon would take her over, and those were the more merciful options. Her teeth needle her lower lip.

"You don't want to hurt. You want to help. Simon did, too."

A bottle of white, a bottle of red

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