CLOSED | The Mortification of the Flesh

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Cyril, Merrick, and Pel
WHAT: Cyril and Merrick give Pel a day of rest and recuperation.
WHEN: Harvestmere 8-ish
WHERE: Cyril and Merrick's quarters in Skyhold
NOTES: This post and its comments will refer to blunt trauma violence and aftermath. Also, the quote for the cut text comes from Call the Midwife.

The body is an extraordinary thing.

Healers have worked her broken nose back into place every time they have healed it, and every time, it has been agony. Her wrist and hand have undergone similar treatment, but will take even longer to heal. The bruising on her face isn't nearly as bad as it was a few days ago, but she still doesn't like to go out. She doesn't like people to see her like this.

The baby, for all she can tell, has no idea anything has changed. All reports from Anders have been that it is healthy and thriving and about the size of a kumquat. So she did it. She and her child survived their first existential crisis and she protected it. Him. Her.

Cyril has invited her to his room and has made no secret that he is going to treat her somehow. She arrives in comfortable, loose-fitting clothes. Her baby bump is small, but mostly she wants to be comfortable. Cyril will hear a knock at his door.

Comments

[samahl]

Cyril pressed his lips together for a moment. "I did, but it's not important right now."

[mythalenaste]

She studies him for a moment. "You know something I don't," she says quietly.

[samahl]

Cyril takes a breath and realizes she isn't going to let this drop. "He does want something, Pel, but it's not malicious. He wants to figure out a way to help us get a better life for our people."

[mythalenaste]

There's a bit of a pause, during which Pel's expression deadens. She gives him the least impressed look of all time.

[samahl]

Cyril's shoulders pull back a bit, as he tries to take in the full effect of that expression. "What?" he asks. "Why is that so hard to believe?"

He doesn't sound defensive or insulted, more curious about her point of view.

[mythalenaste]

A wry smile. She is no longer worried about this man.

"Cy," she sighs. "First, he doesn't know how we live. He's a rifter. He can't possibly know what's a better way for us to live when he has so little experience with us. Therefore, he turned up out of nowhere, saw some pointy-eared things that didn't remind him of himself, and decided that can't stand. And by the by, the Dalish have a good life when we're not wreaking havoc on other people. That could stand to change, and far from having an awareness of it, he told me I was the problem for defending myself. And defend him you may on that, but he never apologized for it.

"Second, he has no power here. None. You have more power than he has, but he's told you he's the one who's able to give you something you don't have. The con is, he doesn't have it either. He's selling something he doesn't have and hoping you're too stupid to realize it.

"Third, when I told him I don't mind being my own kind of elf and not his, he humiliated me in front of you. Which would discredit me, if our relationship wasn't so close."

[samahl]

Cyril listens and is careful to actually hear what she has to say. They might disagree on some of these points, but he still loves and respects her and wants to make sure that she has her say. Once she's done, he squeezes her arm very lightly, just to put some emphasis on the idea that their relationship is close and nothing at all will change that.

"He does have some idea of how we live. He visited Clan Ashara when a group of us returned there." He's careful to call it 'Clan Ashara' with her rather than 'Our Clan' because he respects her desire to not associate with the clan anymore. "Plus many of us have been talking to him and explaining our lives to him. He may not have experienced it first hand, but he's trying to understand it."

He takes a breath and then continues with some things that he's thought but never put voice too. "And I understand why you feel the need to defend the way we Dalish live. We've been conditioned since birth to believe that is the best option that elves have, but it isn't that great, Pel. It's hard work, and it's sleeping out in the cold, and it's getting dirty every day, and hunting to eat, and hauling water from rivers, and trying to find the next safe place to settle before moving on again and starting all over. It's not something that can sustain a real future, no matter how much we try to pretend it is." Saying all of this, even to her, who he knows he can trust with his opinion, feels like such a deep betrayal. His expression shows that, with his eyes and mouth dropping with some deep sorrow he rarely expresses. Still, now that he's started he isn't sure he can stop.

"We used to have an hold on this world. We used to have a home. Now... now we cling to the past and try desperately to create a future will likely fade eventually, just as much as we lost our immortality."

He pauses for a moment, hesitant to say this next bit, but he thinks about the world they are leaving for her child and continues. "We are so isolated from one another that we attack each other and anything we think is different. We are stubborn and plant our feet in the soil we try to pretend is still ours while the humans hurt and hunt down our brothers and sisters in the cities for sport. We isolate ourselves from them and think we're better. We hold to that so much that when people come to us allied with anything not Dalish we act as if they've tainted themselves somehow. Yet even then, we barely have a coherent culture across our different clans, let alone something that we can build from as a whole people."

"I want something better than that. I want a real future. I want us to be able to see ourselves as one people, not just a collection of small clans. I want to trust and believe in one another so deeply that we would never dream of attacking one another. I want to bring back something more than a fraction of what we once had. Maybe we need a Rifter to do that, because having an outside perspective could help us see things we've been too busy just trying to survive to see."

"He and Galadriel come from a world where the idea of kinslaying is so profane that they could never dream of raising their hand against each other. That is what he was responding too and why he had such a strong reaction to what happened. He was a blinded by it with how he dealt with you and I'm so sorry for that, but if we had even a tiny fraction of that belief you and Sina never would have been attacked, captured, or hurt."

He stops then, and in a quieter voice. "I don't see how that that could possibly be a bad thing."

[mythalenaste]

She shakes her head softly. "Cy. He's not a craftsman you bring a sword for him to slap a new hilt on. Even if he's innocence itself, he can't give us that dream and he'd be wrong to try. Your vision is good, it's bright and beautiful, and it's something you should work for. But change doesn't stick unless we do it ourselves. Not just because he'd be driven out of the Arlathvhen by a lot of very proud Keepers who are glad to have worked for everything they have. Change never works from the outside. Ask the Orlesians how well it went to civilize the Fereldans and you'll see.

"There's a lot of work to be done. And you could get it done. You could make a real difference. But it won't help you to rely on a very shifty Rifter to get it done. And if his reasoning for attacking me was that his kind is somehow more moral, I want you to think about that. I want you to think about what you would think of him if he'd been human. Because that's as much kinship he has with us."

[samahl]

Cyril has to stop and think about that. If he had been human, Cyril wouldn't have messaged him privately with an appeal to his sympathy, he would have verbally eviscerated him publicly on the network. Still, the idea of comparing either of the elves from that world to humans just feels so wrong to him that he can't fully imagine doing so.

"I agree that we have to make the change ourselves, but I still think there is value in letting the two of them share their opinions to help us get there."

Then, after a moment, because he realizes how that could be taken given all of the things that were said to her. "But that doesn't mean that he didn't overstep the line with how he was speaking to you. He was absolutely wrong in that. You had to do what you had to do to survive, and I'm still proud of you for getting out and getting back to me and Merrick. I won't defend the things he was saying to you."

[mythalenaste]

"But you have. You have defended them. You've told me it's because he is specially moral, to attack me for such a thing." She doesn't sound upset. She's not. She's pointing out a problem, that Cyril listens to this man a point that is, perhaps, a touch worrying. "But I have no idea why their opinions merit so much more consideration than any other utter outsider. They've conversed with us. So have others. James Norrington wanted to know everything he could learn about us. I've given Kallian lessons about Dalishness for upwards of a year. Why don't you ask their opinions on how we should change?"

[samahl]

Cyril has to admit she has a point about how he did rush to defend Thranduil and there's a frown when she says it that is more him expressing disappointment in himself more than anything. He doesn't say anything to that, though, to focus on the last part.

"I would, and I have. I adore Kallian and cherish her opinion. All viewpoints could help us in building a better future, it's up to us to sort through which we should take in." He just believed that Thranduil had something worthwhile to offer, while she seemed to disagree with that completely. Though, given how she had been treated he could understand that viewpoint right now.

[mythalenaste]

"Then use that discretion with Thranduil just as much as you would with anyone else. Don't be blinded by his beauty or his manner of speech, or how much he claims to know. And remember how he treats the People when they're of no use to him." She's getting more passionate now, fighting tightness in her chest and an absolutely horrible feeling. "How he mocked me and belittled me and made you hesitate before condemning it."

Tears are stinging her eyes. She bows her head, so accustomed to avoid crying in front of other Dalish, but this is finally coming to the thing that worried her the most about that exchange.

"Don't let him separate us. Please. I'm afraid--if you believe him over me, he can tell you anything to turn you against me and I can't bear it."

[samahl]

Cyril can't bear to see her crying again and know that he helped cause it. He gets up and then carefully puts his arm around her, drawing her into a gentle hug designed to know dislodge her arm or make her hurt anymore.

"Nothing could ever do that," he promises. "You are my family. I love you."

There that word is again. It usually takes so much to draw it from him and know it's told it to her twice in so many days.

"I will never turn against you."

[mythalenaste]

Cyril will probably make her cry again by putting a rag on a table or something, soon. She's pregnant, sometimes it just happens. Now, it happens for a good reason. Next, it will probably happen because he put a rag on a table.

She leans into him, calming at his reassurance, eyes sliding shut. Somehow, she has never been confident in her ability to make people stay with her, after watching her parents walk away time and again.

"You have to be my baby's uncle. Who else will teach him how to be as charming and adorable as possible?"

[samahl]

Cyril rubs her back lightly hoping to calm her a bit more. He smiles a bit when she mentions her child. "Oh, you better believe I will be. I also have to teach him to shoot an arrow. I can't trust you or Merrick to do that."

[mythalenaste]

Pel smiles as well, when he gives in to the fantasy. "I've had trouble thinking of boys' names."

She sits up, bending a little to heat the water in the basin her feet are in with a touch.

[samahl]

He scoots back to give her some space. "What kind of names do you like?"

[mythalenaste]

"I'm not sure. Simple, straightforward names. Maybe not so simple and straightforward as mine. My parents had a very austere way of naming us."

[samahl]

Cyril gives it a thought. "You know, I've always thought I'd eventually have children but never thought about how difficult it would be to name them."

[mythalenaste]

"Do you dream of anything else about them?"

[samahl]

Cyril presses his lips together. "Mostly how I'll be as a father. I don't want to put any expectations on my children and give them complexes if they can't live up to what I imagined."

[mythalenaste]

"It's not expecting, it's dreaming." Pel's hand goes to her belly, as if trying to channel love through her skin. "What it will be like to see them for the first time, or see them smile, or how you'll deal with it when they wake everybody up crying in the middle of the night. How you'll braid their hair if it's curly or straight, or teaching them how to make it through getting their vallaslin."

[samahl]

Cyril smiles as he listens to her. "I guess I've thought about taking them on hunts, and teaching them how to climb a tree..."

After a moment he takes her good hand and then starts to set to massaging it gently, they might as well get started on the planed pampering. "What else have you thought about?"

[mythalenaste]

"Songs I would sing them. Stories I would tell them. Family traditions. Flowers that would best complement their hair colors. Strategic ways of washing nappies."

[samahl]

"Family traditions?" he asks. He gets out a moisturizing oil to rub into her fingers and knuckles. He wants to know which traditions she's most interested in passing on.