faderift | open; and so we burned

WHO: Samson and assorted guests
WHAT: The red general has been put where he belongs; the rest is up to you.
WHEN: Harvestmere 28-30... ish
WHERE: Skyhold Dungeon
NOTES: Warnings for very strong language and substance addiction. Fight and capture, still in progress, is here.

day one;

On a certain night, deep into the coldest hours before dawn, a wagon under heavy guard enters Skyhold and passes through the yard by torchlight. It stops at a certain door, and armed soldiers drag its cargo roughly through and down two flights of stone stairs. One of the men left behind spits after it. By midday next, the word has begun to spread, and quickly: there's another body in the cells. Whether through gossip or a proper announcement by the returning war party, it won't be long before a name surfaces, and even the humblest of the Inquisition's agents will know they've cut off the Elder One's despicable right hand. Samson, the general of the red templars, the blighted traitor. They got him.

Separated now from his armour, without the heavy Kirkwall steel and thick horns of red lyrium fused to it, without the nauseating glow to lend him a towering presence and the power to break a soldier in half, he is simply a long-legged man folded on a bedroll with his back turned to the bars. He's been quiet and still, lying just where they left him. Most of what he's done amounts to slow bleeding—and even that's since stopped.
Don't get too excited, now. He's only unconscious, not dead.

During these first hours, only those who've come down to the dungeon on official business will be admitted.

days two and three and beyond;

A few days' time will see him livelier, though not by much. He's since been stripped of his filthy clothes, allowed a cursory wash with a rag and bucket, and given something different to wear. It seems a kind of uniform, fitted with straps and buckles and other odd bits of metal tackle—to restrain him, he reckons, should an authority figure deem it necessary for whatever arbitrary reason. Maybe they'll drag him up for a proper trial, though he doubts it. The hood even buckles closed—for what? To conceal his identity? As if anyone can keep gossip contained in a barracks. So he won't know where they're taking him, more likely. Or so he won't see the swings coming to dodge them.

He sighs, often. Rubs his eyes, his face, massages his forehead. Doesn't eat much of what they bring, can't get comfortable enough to feel rested. He's taken to moving around the limited space of his cell to keep the strange ache in his joints at bay, and trying—failing—to sleep through the headaches. There's nothing for it. This is his life, or whatever little is left of it, as far as he knows: suffering in this stone box until he dies in a haze of pain and madness.

The dungeon doesn't have visiting hours, exactly. Anyone without a legitimate reason to be down here might get in a bit of trouble—one of the prisoners might even tattle out of spite. There's always a guard on duty, besides. But when has common sense ever stopped anyone doing anything in Thedas?

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Paths change. That's true enough, but to change like this? It sounds like he is acknowledging that he is no longer a good man, and her brow furrows all the more, eyes watering suddenly. She blinks the tears back -- she refuses to cry just at the thought of his decision.

"Yes," she agrees instead, moving a little closer to the bars herself. The guards will hear, if she screams. "My name is Merrill." Corypheus wanted her eluvian, sent agents to get it, but that doesn't mean Samson knows her name. Besides, it's polite to offer it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't expect to see you, I didn't realize- you helped people. What happened?"

Maker's breath, it's almost painful to look at those big elf eyes brimming with sentiment—but he does. He makes himself do it. Why can't she just curse him out? At least that would be familiar territory.

"I never stopped," he answers, quietly. The other prisoners don't need to hear this. "Someone else needed my help this time."

The shabby way he looked back in Kirkwall, with his tired eyes and paling skin, that was the picture of health compared to the man standing on the other side of these bars. His body looks strong enough, but lean in a way that speaks of more than hunger—something inside him is wasting away. Slowly, so slowly.

The other prisoners, if they start something, might be cursed out. But not Samson, not this time, not at this point. Merrill takes a breath and lets her fingers tentatively curl around the bars, frowning slightly.

"Please tell me you don't mean Corypheus," she murmurs. She really does mean that, too. "Did you mean to let it get this far? Or did it just get away from you?"

She won't mention Anders, but that's what happened to him, too. Trying to help and then it all blew up (literally), dragging so many down into despair as a result. "Just- you had to have heard of what red lyrium does, living in Kirkwall. But you still..."

Is there anything they can do for him? Or by sparing his life, have they just condemned him to die of torture from within?

"I knew the price. It wasn't for him, it was for them—those men still out there, marching to their end."

Samson looks down at the iron between them, the elf's gentle fingers there. He might try to touch those hands if they knew each other at all, more than a fleeting association from years gone by. They don't, but here she is anyway, so bloody sincere.
Maybe...

An idea wriggles free of the lowest part of his mind.

Edited 2016-11-06 03:10 (UTC)

"Those men that are changing, turning into monsters. Those men helping him destroy the world." She shakes her head, though she doesn't back away. "Did they know the price? Did they have a choice?"

She very much doubts they knew the full extent, very much doubts that many of them had any choice at all. She knows those found in the Emprise, locked in cages, did not.

"Are you sure you didn't do it for yourself?"

If Samson were holding the prison bars, himself, he might have squeezed them just now. It shows in the subtle hardening of his expression—where he was struggling to keep an unexpected sadness at bay, it's just gone dry.

"It was for all of us." And that's as much as he'll give her. Her concern may have touched him, but that doesn't mean he owes her an explanation any more than he owes it to anyone else. Honesty hasn't bought her the right to judge him. "You wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't I?"

She lets go of the bars, takes a step back -- just enough that she can rub her hands over her face, wipe the water threatening to fall from her eyes away. She has made choices for the good of all, or so she thought. Her entire clan is dead because of it, dead at her hand. Her eluvian works, but was it worth that?

She doesn't know. She can't ever really know.

"You don't know that much more about me than I know about you. But I know you helped people. I just- if being on his side is helping people, in a way that the Inquisition isn't, I want to know. I want to help people, too. I want to stop failing them. I want to stop making my choices be their death sentence."

"You could help me," he says, even quieter than before, his voice rasping barely above a whisper—and wills his guilt for even uttering the words to drop down somewhere deep inside. "You could make it bearable." It lingers, heavily. "If you're willing."

That isn't the answer she is looking for. It's an answer to a different question. But it is an answer, a start, and Merrill tilts her head. She is quiet too, knowing that it is not just the prisoners who would not like this, but likely the guards. "What would you need me to do?"

"Dust," he whispers, and glances over Merrill's head, aware they haven't much time before a hushed exchange will draw the guard's attention. "It's been weeks since I had any. Not a drop of the stuff since they brought me in. Look." Now he does bring his hands up to the bars for her to see: they are large and long-fingered, with a swordsman's callouses and scarred palms, the nails kept trim by his teeth. The strength of their appearance is diminished by a faint, but genuine, trembling. And now, at last, he slips his fingers over the crossbar, and leaves them there to rest. "When it really hits you, it's the worst pain you can imagine. I can feel it coming—the headaches've already started."

He might ask the Maker to forgive him if he thought He was listening anymore.

Lyrium. That's definitely one thing she can't do. Samson is still a Templar, more powerful with lyrium than without it, and Merrill suddenly taking more lyrium from the stores would definitely attract attention. But- she wants to help him. She wants to (has to) believe that there's hope for him, somewhere.

"I don't know that the regular stuff would even work anymore," she whispers, brow furrowed, eyes locked on the faint tremble of his hands. It doesn't stop her from gently reaching out with one finger to, if he'll allow it, gently trace along one of his own. "With how potent the red is..."

With how it eats you up from the inside, how it makes you a monster. "I'll see, at least, if I can do something." For the pain, for the shakes -- maybe even to rip the red out. She's no healer, but there has to be something, somewhere.

The stillness of Samson's body—the absolute stillness as he watches Merrill's hand come near, the rarity of such a gesture, like a butterfly has found its way into this dank place and chosen to alight upon him—lasts only as long as he can stand it. It's the first gentle contact he's felt in a long, long time, and in this circumstance, in this context, it burns. "Thank you," he murmurs. If she looks up, she'll find him staring; he averts his eyes at once. "It's more than I deserve."

His hand slips out from under Merrill's touch, then, and he turns away from the torchlight, and from her, withdrawing into his cell.

open; and so we burned

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