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open | the drunk horn's so violent, all spinning out sound

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: SATINALIA
WHEN: Firstfall 1
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Party hard, use content warnings, move explicit content to inboxes.

Named for Satina, the smaller of Thedas' two moons, Satinalia is a celebration of freedom, marked by wild celebration, pranks, the donning of costumes and masks -- not the fine, delicate masks of Orlais, but animals and caricatures and playful horrors -- and the exchange of gifts both sincere and satirical. There's also the crowning of a Fool to rule for the day, or two Fools, in this case: Iskandar and Valentine are given crowns and the right to issue orders. Non-military orders. Unless they manage to start some kind of battle between their imaginary kingdoms.

Elsewhere in Thedas, the festivities may last a week. At Skyhold, no one can pause the war for that long. But all those who can be spared are released by late afternoon, given the night and the next morning -- handle those hangovers before reporting back to work please -- to enjoy the celebration in the fortress or the even less restrained revelries in the valley.

This day was originally a celebration of Zazikel, the Old God of Chaos, but let's not dwell on that.

SKYHOLD

Tables in the Great Hall are piled high with several whole roasted tuskets, meats thinly sliced in the Orlesian style, a tower of cheeses and candied fruits, and great bowls of Antivan pasta with brightly colored sauces. Casks of ale and wine are tapped, emptied, and replaced to keep a near constant stream of alcohol flowing, only improving the efforts of a trio of bards in the corner playing music that's spirited but still easy to speak over. An area near them has been cleared for entertainers: a small troupe of exceptionally limber acrobats tossing and climbing each other in increasingly impressive shapes, and then a team of dancers, romantic and expressive, performing a piece made famous in the theaters of Val Royeaux.

Even once the entertainers finish and leave space for the guests to dance, the party remains more on the sedate side. The celebration indoors is meant to impress and entertain visiting dignitaries and nobles: others are welcome to assist with the schmoozing, but anyone too rowdy or otherwise controversial will be asked politely to relocate, and no one who looks even slightly mischievous or inebriated is permitted into the gardens or library or other easily-damaged areas of the fortress.

The courtyard is noisier. The sparring rings and archery targets are claimed for contests of strength and skill made intentionally ridiculous: soldiers fighting in costume with raw fish as weapons or their hands tied behind their backs, training dummies dressed in discarded finery, an archer capable of standing on her hands and shooting with her feet who's happy to give demonstrations. As the light fades the play-fighting does as well, replaced by music and dancing, with the way lit by braziers and candles and glowlights from Orlais strung in the trees and along the walls.

After midnight, the celebrations within the walls taper off. Some people need to sleep. But those who don't may make the journey down the path and into the valley.

THE VALLEY

In the valley, there's no one to say shush. The party starts early and runs late enough to be early all over again. The food is less fine -- stew and bread, cider and ale, some barrels of young wine and rough liquor gifted by the quartermaster from a mistaken shipment. For anything nicer than that you'll have to bring your own or charm someone who has, but plenty have brought out their carefully hoarded stocks tonight. Flasks of rum from Rivain or treacle-sweet wine from Antiva, tiny boxes of candies and chocolates, small pouches of smokeable herbs: there isn't much of anything but there's a little of everything, all available for the price of a well-played trick or well-placed kiss.

Tonight instead of the usual spattering of camp- and cook-fires, the camp is lit by torches and roaring bonfires, the entire valley caught in the shifting, flickering firelight. Shadows flare and twist, flames limn masked faces in gold and orange and red, and the constant crackle and spark provides its own accompaniment to the music. Fiddles and drums pound and wail, spinning dancers faster and faster, whether big circles of linked hands tugging each other round and round the fire, or a crush of couples, each clasping and spinning and catching and pressing close again. Some duck into shadows, clutched together out of sight until the wind changes and shadows shift, revealing some and concealing others.

There are games down here, too: knives and axes and arrows aimed at hay bale targets, circles marked out with rope for grappling or boxing rings, a bizarre struggled over a greased pumpkin, even pairs growling across tables as they arm-wrestle. The prizes are mostly just the cheers of a wildly enthusiastic crowd and maybe a half bottle of stolen brandy, but there are plenty of challengers all the same and plenty willing to bet on the outcome. The Inquisition is a truly motley assortment, and scattered around are plenty showing off their skills, from juggling to firebreathing to telling fortunes. Instruments from a half-dozen countries can be heard, and small groups clustered around dry patches of ground or upturned crates roll dice and deal cards two dozen different ways.

Unlike up at the keep, this party takes a little while to ramp up, as more and more people finish their shifts and make their way down to join, and it only gets louder as the hour grows late. There haven't been many chances to let loose since all this began, and Maker knows they've all been under plenty of stress. Loud laughter and singing and music continue well into the wee hours, and the crowd only finally thins out several hours past midnight, with a hardy (or foolhardy) core still just stumbling home at dawn.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He lets himself be tugged and gladly follows. "I...I dunno, things are so different here." Sure, Ruby's got boozemaking, and he's teaching the cooks how to do a few goodies like pizza bites--aw man! he should've had some made for tonight! fucking missed opportunity to introduce it to the world at large!--but there's not a lot of Blood Gulch here.

Which isn't a bad thing. But he does miss the guys. Even if he hates them. Yeah, totally hates them. "I made up a shanty off the top of my head about some of the guys I worked with. Not much of a song, but I'm working on it. And Rifters who know some of the stuff I'm talking about help. Pumpkin carving might be nice. I'll put it somewhere it hopefully won't get smashed for a day or two."

Maybe he should see if he can't carve a dreidel for the winter, though. He'd introduce Thanksgiving, but they don't need two big eating holidays when supplies should be saved for the ones they already have. Plus, is it the same without Grifball on tv?

"Are not shanties meant for the sea?" she asks, clearly teasing him. But once again she's reminded of how worlds can vary so much. It's like a more extreme version of Tevinter vs. the south, or Qunari-held lands vs. Chantry-held lands. To walk into that and live everyday doing one's best to fit in must be exhausting for some.

But some things translate. Like holding hands. She gently swings their joined hands between them with a thoughtful look on her face.

"Would you like to look for a pumpkin now or would you rather stay at the celebration?"

"I was talking to Araceli. Do you know Araceli? Anyway, she's great, very pirate-y, very much, um, kind of Antivan but from her own world? So very sea-based. Hence shanties. She wasn't... She was pretty fucked up from a mission--yeah." He waves his other hand, not gonna get into it. Still wishes he'd been there, despite how fucked up everyone was. "Anyway I wanted to cheer her up, and I'd promised her I'd sing something, and I don't think it technically counted since I wasn't really singing, just rhyming--so. Uh. Yeah."

Yeah. He lets them swing for a little before, on a whim, pulling up her hand and quickly smooching the back of it, and then going back to swinging. "I'm enjoying the party. Pumpkin later. Probably in the dead of night, or early morning when things wind down and I should totally be asleep but can't actually sleep. Promise I won't use a sword. For the delicate parts."

"Oh, yes, I know Araceli," she says, having first seen her giving parkour lessons one day. Christine had obviously stood by in case anyone hurt themselves attempting to scale walls. "I was one of those who tended to her after that mission." By all accounts it was a horrific time, with experimentation done on her, a wolf bite, and a broken wrist in a desperate attempt to escape. All that and you would think Araceli would have taken it easy, but no, she was one of Christine's more stubborn patients.

A smile spreads across her face at the kiss and she soon laughs at Church's promise.

"I am worried that you might require supervision for such a project."

"Oh. Yeah. Then you already know all about that, probably better than I do."

Maybe better not bring it up in detail! Or the mood might be ruined. He's too good at ruining moods. Try to avoid that.

"Aaaare you suggesting you wanna stay up and carve a pumpkin with me and make sure I don't stab myself on accident? Maybe I'll just do a traditional spooky silly pumpkin face. And we'll scoop the insides on a plate and take it to the kitchen where they can work their figurative magic and make something tasty. And borrow a candle. And it can sit around until it rots or gets smashed."

It certainly would work as a mood killer. Wise move to avoid it, Church.

"Were I to leave you to it and you ended up bleeding, I would feel responsible for letting you do it on your own." Look, she's seen you fire a crossbow. You with a knife? It's worrying.

"Besides, you are bringing a little of home here to Thedas, and I would like to experience it with you." A pause. "I would like to know more about you."

Excuse, shooting a gun/crossbow and carving with a knife are very different things!

"About me? Like...about me or just about my crazy world I come from and its weird holidays?" About you, dumbass. "...Uh. Like what? And do we want to be drinking right now?"

"Why would we want to be drinking?" she asks, because he's making it sound like she should be drunk before she hears about his life. Or maybe he means he would have to be drunk to tell it. Maybe both.

"I want to know... anything, really. Where did you grow up? What did it look like? Did you attend a school away from home or were you taught at home? You know; the things people learn when they get to know one another." The two of them sort of skipped that and went straight to stumbling into bed. Now she's trying to play catch up.

Abort, abort mission, fucking abort.

"Um."

No, don't abort, but man, this is not stuff he can just make up on the fly. But he can't just tell her the truth.

Oh god, that sounds really awful. 'Hey you can't be stupid enough to tell that girl you really like the truth about yourself! That's just crazy talk!' Fucking god damn it.

If he draws on the vague, blurry memories he has of childhood, what he can only guess is a mix of the Director's memories and his own broad strokes to make sense of it all, then maybe he can construct a semi-true story that doesn't sound...like a horrifying monstrosity.

Oh shit is he taking too long to answer? He's taking too long to answer, isn't he? He rubs the back of his head, mussing up his hair. "It's...kind of complicated. My life is, I mean. I kind of have...memory problems?" It's true! Holy shit, that's the truth, and that'll help everything! "Like, um, I don't always remember things in my past, or I don't remember them right. But I can try and tell you things I do remember. Or...think I remember."

Christine slows them to a stop when he takes too long to answer. There's a crease of confusion set between her eyes, but it suddenly smooths out and she grips his hand tightly in both of hers.

"Church, I had no idea! Why have you never spoken of this before?" The thought of his past being a mystery because he can't remember it causes a pang in her chest. How awful and frustrating to have to deal with!

"You must hold on to those pieces you still can remember. Please, I would love knowing about your past. Whatever you can recall."

"It never really came up?" Given the whole skipping past the learning little things about each other...thing. "I mean, being a soldier, I remember a lot of that part of my life, the recent stuff. And when I'm not thinking about it, it's almost like I remember the rest of it? But when I stop and think about it, there's a lot of blank space, or parts that should be detailed that just...aren't. Like I remember a mom and a dad, but I barely remember what they look like. I remember school, but not the name of it or what I might've studied. And enlisting, and boot camp and then things start getting clearer."

Which is funny, because everything up until about he got assigned to Blood Gulch after what happened in Sidewinder is either fake or...mushed together all weird. "Memory--" is the key "memories are important. It's, um, it's kind of, y'know, not very comfortable? When I realize, uh, my life is kind of...fucked, and stuff. That my head's not really...all right? That I can't always trust what I'm really, really sure I remember."

For slightly different reasons. But he's never had a good chance to vocalize that sort of thought, stumbling out of his mouth awkwardly.

Christine's expression is all sympathy. She can tell this is uncomfortable for him to talk about and she can only imagine what it feels like for all memories older than a few years to slip through fingers like smoke when he tries to focus on him. But it seems he has no problem forming new memories. He isn't stumbling around every day asking who everyone is and what this place is.

"Something must have happened," she says softly. "Perhaps you hit your head?" It's all she can come up with since she has only Thedas-level medical knowledge, which is not great. They still believe in balancing the humors here. "But that may be something else you have forgotten." She slides her arms around him in a tight hug -- as close to her version of a bear hug as she can get. Her hand combs through his hair soothingly, wishing there was some way they could unlock these memories if they were still hidden somewhere in his head. But maybe they were erased forever.

Oh Thedosian medicine, so backwards. The bear hug makes him laugh a little, scooping her in closer and nuzzling into her hair.

"It's a little more complicated than that. A...lot more complicated. I was, um...told what happened. It was described to me? The thing that made me lose my memories, and I don't even really know if I want them back. It, uh, wasn't long before I ended up here, so in some ways it's still new and in some ways it's not, so."

"Then would you tell me what happened?" She doesn't pull back from the hug yet. There must be something terrible in his past if he isn't certain he wants to remember it. But if that's the case, should she even be asking?

"If it is not too painful to think about."

"See, I don't remember that part? Because I made myself forget. But it, um, it sounds...really horrible."

Also, is it going to make sense if he tries to remove the whole 'I am not a human I am an AI' thing? It's been working so far...

"I mean, I don't wanna...get you down when we should be partying, and I don't want you to treat me any differently."

It's amazing how he manages to sound vague no matter what issue they're discussing. If it relates to him in some way, it ends up sounding like only a hint of the whole story. Slowly pulling back, she rests her hands on his shoulders, searching his eyes for a clue as to what he means.

"Do you believe I would, if I knew what happened to you?"

"...Maybe we should go sit." He won't make it a choice, because fuck it, if he's going to try and spit out Wash's story to her, he wants to be sitting.

A couple of upturned crates are fine seats, in fact, and he rubs his hand on his trousers nervously, because actually none of this is stuff he ever wants to think about, ever? But here they are.

"Okay." Just gotta psych himself up for it. "Okay. So I was tortured." Get that part up front and out of the way first. It sounds really weird to use the first person, instead of saying Alpha, or it. "I was...th-there was this scientist guy, doing research for a project to try and end the war. And I was...involved. And, um, so this guy's a whole fuckload smarter than me, and he found out that someone, like me for instance, can...I dunno how I wanna say this. Shed personalities? With the right circumstances, something...something useful can come out of my head. So he tried to force those kinds of circumstances. There was a lot of psychological torture that went on, and I would...take a part of my own personality, kind of, and just get rid of it, and he was able to harvest that into something he thought would be useful. I got rid of a chunk that was labeled logic, so I wouldn't be able to understand what was going on. I balled up rage, because I was so angry it was threatening to tear me apart. More and more, until finally I took all of the horrible, terrible memories of what was going on and tossed them out, too. And then he sent me away and tried to hide me so nobody could find out what he did, and I had to try and sort of piece myself back together. That's what I was told happened to me."

So much of the world isn't kind and Christine likes to believe that after what she's seen and heard that she's desensitized to it in some fashion. A healer needs to have some level of detachment so they aren't bawling over a bleeding patient from knowing what happened to them. But at the same time, her reasons for being a healer are based on compassion and caring and that means her emotions are often bottled up to explode later. The color drains from her face as Church starts to explain things to her and her hand shoots out to grip his own. It's done to comfort him as much as it is to ground herself so she doesn't start crying.

Being tortured would be bad enough, but as he goes on to explain that pieces of himself are missing because it was the only way he could cope, Christine's stomach starts to turn. And someone harvested pieces of Church? She doesn't really comprehend that part. There is a woeful lack of knowledge on psychology here. Maybe his world has its own form of magic that can do that.

Once he's finished, she swallows the lump in her throat and nods. She had asked, and he had answered as best as he could.

"You do not want those parts back because with it would come the memories of what it felt like?" she asks, thinking she understands that much at least. But she can't help but wonder who Church was before this happened; before he split apart. And what was done with the pieces of his personality that are now gone from him? "What could that man possible do with parts of your mind?" She shakes her head in disbelief. "Is this what your world is like? People do this to one another?" It makes her want to shiver. Instead she realizes she has a death grip on his hand and she loosens her hold. Certain things start to make sense to her now. Not only the lack of information about his past, but his behavior. Subtle is not something Church can achieve. He's loud, with no brain to mouth filter that she can see, and is often awkward in his speech or actions. Now she feels guilty for being annoyed by something he surely can't help.

"Church," she starts, but finds she doesn't have the words to express how terrible this is. All she can do is exhale and rest her cheek against his shoulder.

He was pretty good before at putting the initial shock aside--by denying it, of course. And then everything with Wash, and the Meta, and the Director, and Epsilon, and the EMP... Sure, he's had time to process it now, but obviously he's been trying hard not to do that. Who wants to remember something like that, much less understand it? He was fine how he was before knowing, or before Tex died, or before he got fucking teamkilled.

So to talk about it now, with another person, about himself and not about some mythical Alpha that isn't him, is kiiiind of...terrible. He feels Christine's hand, feels her squeezing and feels her eyes on him, but he feels very small, very conflicted, and he doesn't see the ground he stares at, but Epsilon's flashes in his head, Wash's stupid helmeted face, all the AI surrounding the Meta like a halo of everything he could have been.

That moment when, briefly, he was with Tex again.

"Sorry," he says, suddenly, when she lays her cheek on him. "Sorry, I was--uh, this is hard. Harder than I thought it'd be. Okay, um, generally speaking, no, we don't do that to each other. It is, in fact, super illegal to do anything remotely like he did? Like there are laws on how to treat--" AI "--people like me and that sure as hell isn't something you do. But he was desperate and determined I guess. And what he was doing with them was, um, pairing them up with some of the badass super soldiers he was training. Kind of like an extra piece of a mind to help run complex shit. Made them faster, stronger. They were like little people all on their own."

"Don't be," she murmurs, head still resting against him. "I asked, and you answered." She takes to joining him staring at the ground as if staring at something solid and unchanging will help make sense of this all. It won't, but she does it anyway.

"But they were all a part of you." Pieces of him given to other people. Soldiers. For war. It always comes down to a war, doesn't it? Everything horrible happens because of war. Mages being cut down by Templars, a father never getting to see his daughter again; all of it.

Her voice is hardly above a whisper when she says, "You used to be someone else, but he took that from you."

"I..." There we go, that's something so far deep in his fears that he...doesn't even know what to do with that. "I don't even know what I must've been like. Was I different? Was I better? I must've been better. I'm like a whole person. I don't really...feel like I'm missing anything, but I-I must not be. Whole." All the pieces around him before the EMP closes in. Everything he never knew he was lacking.

This is a hornet's nest she never meant to kick but now she has and she has to do something to help him through it. He's been carrying it all on his own, hasn't he? Despite it making sense that things are missing from his personality, she doesn't want him to feel like he's less of a person than he is.

"Different," she says firmly, lifting her head in order to meet his eyes. "Not better. You are not the same, but you can decide who you want to be. You can form memories now, yes? And feel anger, sadness, happiness? If you have all that within you, then you are whole."

"I'm...trying really hard," he admits, only briefly looking her in the eye before his gaze is away again, down. "To be my own person here. I can be whatever the hell I wanna be, but I'm still me. I don't have anyone else who knew me to tell me what I was like, but I haven't...y'know. Really changed. And that's okay! But there's this...knowing, what I am, that I've got these holes in my head where I just filled in all the gaps with what made sense to me, and the few people who knew just let me do it. And everything I was told it, it makes sense of things that didn't make sense in my life, but it, I mean, it just sounds like so much bullshit, right? And--"

A horrible thought strikes him. "I'm gonna die. They're all gonna die. Everything about me except for my stupid awful fucked up memories is gonna get wiped out in the blink of an eye."

In the space of an instant, everything seems to change. She hadn't known that her questions would reveal all this about him. How could she? And everything she thought she knew about him is suddenly cast in a different light. He is someone who has been filling in the gaps of his life with what made sense. A man who isn't sure if he's whole or not. A man who is still trying to figure out who he is. She'll sit here in quiet support, listening to him work it all out, ready to encourage him to do so, but then--

"What?" She sits back, giving him a startled look. "Church, what are you talking about?" He sounds so upset, but she's sure he's skipped some part of the story here.

"I came here right when we were about to die. Falling through the rift, I was thinking, I dunno, maybe this is what death death is like, when I actually die for real and for truly this time instead of my other stupid deaths. And the rest of them are there. The rest of me, the other pieces, even Tex, but Epsilon is the memory, and memory is the key, and my friends are trying to make sure he makes it out so people can know what the Director did and put an end to all this stupid assitry, but the rest of us are gonna die. Boom, that's it, no more fragments! Just the Reds, the Blues, and tin can Epsilon, and that's all that's gonna survive of me!"

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