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 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.

[mythalenaste]

Pel has a permanent tightness in the base of her palm and the ball of her thumb, and this feels amazing. She relaxes with more of a smile.

"Having them," she says simply. "It's hard to imagine specific ones. Neither you nor I ever really learned any. But families are meant to have them. I'd always thought the father would help, but."

Saeris definitely doesn't want to be in the picture.

[samahl]

"But," Cyril continues for her. "You have me and Merrick to help you come up with some."

[mythalenaste]

"Yes." She grins. "Yes, I do. And when you go away to do your great things, changing the world, it will be family tradition to keep space for you in our house, or our aravels, just in case you come back early."

[samahl]

Cyril smiles at that idea. It's so comforting to know that he will always have a family with her. "Which are you hoping for?" he asks. "A house or an aravel?"

[mythalenaste]

"I really don't care. When I think of home, I think of people, not a structure." The light in her eyes goes distant. "Though I suppose we all dream of having houses. An alienage wouldn't be so bleak if I could grow flowers there."

[samahl]

Cyril thinks about that for a moment. "You could always get a home outside of a Clan or an alienage. It wouldn't be easy, but people do it."

[mythalenaste]

She gives him a faintly puzzled look, then a tentative smile.

"Thinking on it, if I have my choice, I should like to live in Halamshiral. That's not an alienage. I would be able to travel freely from there, for my work, and the baby would have other children around. And...it would be Halamshiral. It would feel like coming home, where the People belong."