semi-closed; i cannot see the path

[redinside]

WHO: Samson, Cullen, Mia, Anders, Thranduil, and more perhaps
WHAT: Even more dungeon visits
WHEN: One backdated, the rest current
WHERE: Skyhold Dungeon
NOTES: Preemptive warning for strong language and substance addiction.

the commander's visit;

How long since they first hauled his sorry carcass down those steps and dumped him in a cell? Hours? Days? No sun or moon to tell by, not down here. In the lingering aftermath of his own foolishness, consciousness has been elusive. Through the murk of his memory he glimpses a brisk voice and gentle hands, faces reduced to indistinct shapes, there and gone again. He slept after that—for how long, who knows—and it's from that same sleep he's just been jerked by a well-aimed boot.

Samson is hoisted up from the bedroll before his wits even have time to congeal into awareness, strangers' hands gripping him rough under the arms. They jostle him till he'll sit on his own. Now awake enough to be aggrieved by it, he shrugs them off abruptly, and thereafter two armed and armoured men leave the cell to join others outside it. Shadows and torchlight beyond, bodies moving or leaning to look, the man at the cell door glaring down at him expectantly. The chains are heavy on his wrists as he drags them toward his lap.

Someone important's coming down. He can tell that much.


a captive audience;

First hours, then days, and now weeks later, Samson is still here. Same clothing, same sweat-stained bedroll, same small space to call his own. Apart from sluggish but persistent beard growth that waxes and wanes from week to week, not much else has changed since the first day—not at a glance—only now there's a pail sitting outside his cell, the long handle of a dipper keeping its wooden lid just slightly ajar; from this he can drink when he likes.

It's just as likely you'll find him sleeping as standing. Occasionally, he'll be seated on the bedroll without any shoes or stockings or gloves, biting or tearing at his nails when they grow long enough to need a trim. His hair might still be wet from the occasional wash achieved by bucket and rag. Sweating or shaking, listening or waiting, he's still here.

Comments

[redinside]

One puff of humourless laughter escapes through his nose. "What chance do I have against popular opinion?" There's a low current of bitterness there—real bitterness, dredged up by the commander's prior insistence on looking to the past. "You can't just throw a few coins at this in secret and hope it goes away. Not this time."

The cup, now full, remains where it is, held heavy on the bar between them with both his hands curled around it.

[lionheartedman]

"About as much as I did? I'm here. Just... give me something." Something that he can take back, something that he can make stick. There has to be hope. He needs to believe that it can turn out all right for them. Because he still can't help thinking that things could have so easily turned out differently for him, that he could be the one in the cell with death growing inside him.

[redinside]

Very well: he'll be the first to raise his voice.

"Give you what. What d'you want me to say? That you caught me, now I repent all my sins? That I'm ready to come crawling back into Andraste's bloody light? Fuck's sake—" With both hands he tears the cup from its perch and throws it at the cell wall. The resulting arc of wine spills across his arm, his shoulder, spatters at his feet. He doesn't care.

But just as quickly as it flares, Samson's temper drains off, leaving only shame to uncoil its familiar shape as he turns his back on the front of the cell and the man standing there. His posture crumpling, his head hanging low. Broad shoulders sagging and dark hair in disarray. While his pulse settles, he takes measured gulps of air, and the last of these breaths slips out as a weak laugh.

"I thought I'd be dead before it came to this."

[lionheartedman]

Cullen can't actually remember the last time he hurt this deeply. He's been hurt worse since the start of all this, but what he's lost so far has all been recent additions to his life. The Herald, gone before he could even solidify his feelings, before he had a proper name for what he lost. Samson, though, that runs deep, and the wound it leaves is jagged.

He places his own hands on the bars, rests his forehead against them next. He's tired. He's so tired. "I have to believe there's something left of you in there."

[redinside]

Samson closes his eyes against the thrice-repeated demand. The way it lances at his receding anger, it's like a bubble of molten iron bursting, searing where it lands. Pulling as it hardens. He'll be bloody before long.

"You do, do you? Why? What does it matter? Whatever's left, it'll be gone, eventually. You know as well as I do how we all end up. In time, there'll be nothing left of your templars, either. You're using them the same way the Chantry used us, the same way the Inquisition uses you, still, and you can't even see it."