faderift | [Open] Time for some enjoyment

Entry tags:

[Open] Time for some enjoyment

WHO: Iskandar and OPEN
WHAT: Iskandar is here to have a good time. Join him?
WHEN: Throughout Drakonis
WHERE: Skyhold and other fun places
NOTES: Probably lots of cute times. Maybe some sad times depending on the threads. But mostly a lot of cute and loud affection. Because Iskandar.

A. It's a new dog!

He'd been wanting one since first seeing the mabari. Now he had one of his own. A fine pup who tended to spend much of his time tripping over his own feet but was ever eager to be with and please the large man. Really he'd been told that an older dog would be recommended but they'd laid eyes on each other and that had been that. After all, once that bond was formed there simply was no going back.

And so one could find him with a puppy in one of the more open areas. They were training and it seemed that the puppy was at least rather intelligent at picking up on things! So long as Iskandar used his native tongue for the commands, something he'd decided to do just to solidify their bond further.

"Heh. What a clever boy you are, my Achilles Alexander!" The pup gave a bark and then happily ate up the piece of meat that he was given. And yes, Iskandar sure had named this dog after himself.

B. Training is important

The best way to perfect how one used their adjusted powers was to, well, use them. So he was around the training grounds to work with the couple of them that he felt could safely be done here. Name the teleportation and invisibility ones. So it was easy enough to spot him standing in one location only to reappear in another. At times he frowned and rubbed his beard as he considered what he'd been doing before trying again.

One could feel free to interrupt him though. He wasn't needing the concentration to do this really.

C. Memories rise to the surface

There were times when even Iskandar needed a moment to reflect, to think on the sadder days. Though he never regretted any of them that hardly meant they didn't weight on his heart. Many had been lost under his command or had given up much to follow him. Then there were times when he remembered Hephaestion and how perhaps he would never see him again. Or that his son would be someone he'd never lay eyes on.

So he was in the gardens with a kitten and a mabari pup curled up together on his lap. Both were sound asleep as if they'd been playing hard until that moment. He smiled down at them fondly, stroked their soft ears as he admired their pure innocence.

"It has been long since I had your purity, little ones."

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Hermione was a little startled by the sudden appearance of Hephaestion, but if nothing else, realizing that it was another friendly creature put a small, if absent, smile on her face. Moving from a crouch to sit herself down on the ground, she reached out to pet the cat with her free hand as she tried to think over how to reply to Iskandar.

"And what happens to those different futures?" Because really, would it have really made much of a difference in anything at all if there was still a world where the Inquisition had been forced into hiding, especially after making that last stand that had left so many injured or dead? What if, upon seeing her and the others go back through time, Jamie had stood by and waiting for things to change, only to be struck down by a lingering Venatori?

And, of course, that made her wonder about Jamie, and about what he'd told her (or will have told her, as grammatical tenses get so complicated when the future was involved), and about whether or not she should tell the Jamie of today what the Jamie from five years down the line had told her about his feelings for her. It was a serious topic, but that was a much more personal sort of serious rather than the vague severity of her previous broader question.

"And should we use future knowledge on a smaller scale, such as when it comes to helping our friends and with other... relationships?"

He'd been about to speak more when he heard the second question. Blinking, he studied her a moment and considered what she could mean. Other relationships? Besides friendships? He frowned a moment as he thought about it when...

Those red eyes of his widened.

"Did someone give you their heart in the future?" Really he had nothing else to say yet. He was more invested in finding out who had confessed to this young woman he'd decided to adopt in some manner of speaking.

Hermione had thought she was being vague. After all, there were different types of relationships besides friendships and romantic relationships. But at Iskandar's question, she froze, realizing that she might have to talk about this more blatantly than she'd really anticipated. After all, she could easily lie to Iskandar, but... somehow, it just didn't feel right to do so.

After a moment, she glanced up at him, not quite knowing how to proceed. Finally, she slowly reached under her blouse and withdrew a small pendant she had hung around her neck, showing it to him.

"Not quite his heart," she murmured softly. "But if this could come back with me from a future that should no longer exist, I have to wonder how real it is here and now."

He leaned over and down so he could look at the pendant. It was so carefully crafted. Truly someone had spent a lot of time on it and poured a lot of their soul into it before giving it to her. This young man must feel strongly for her and he wondered if that held true in this time as it had in the future. If so then he wondered why he wasn't saying anything already. Hermione was a fine catch, after all!

"Mm. I would say it may be more complicated than real or not. However, I would say that you do hold his heart in your hand as you hold that pendant. Not everyone of those who went forward received such a gift, after all."

"Well, we don't know that," Hermione breathed out, speaking quickly as she slipped the pendant back under her shirt. "There could have been all sorts of confessions or secrets. We all have a few things that we may choose not to say to a person unless we're reasonably certain we'll never see him or her again, after all." Realizing who she was talking to and how forthcoming he was, she corrected herself. "Well... most of us do, anyway."

Still, that didn't minimize the fact that someone clearly had had something to tell her, and she shifted a little, vaguely uncomfortable. Talking about this sort of thing never had been easy, after all. Not even with Harry.

"I haven't told him yet. What he'd said. I'm not sure I should...."

"Mm. It could influence a great deal but I think you should follow your instincts on this. If you feel that you should not tell him then you should not."

Her head was good at this and he wanted to encourage her to continue to use it. Then she could forge her own path. Strong women like this deserved so much encouragement considering how people could view them as weaker. Not him though. He knew better than all of that.

"You are right though. I believe strongly in never having a regret so I share all that I have at all times."

"But I want to." She cringed even as she said it. Hermione didn't usually flip-flop on her answers, but when it came to matters of romance, she really didn't have much of a leg to stand on. She hadn't been interested in very many boys while growing up, and not many had been interested in her in turn, so it was all still something very new for her, even if she was no longer a teenager.

Sighing deeply, Hermione absently combed her fingers through her hair, letting herself focus more on the tangles they snagged on then on what she was actually saying.

"I want to tell him, but I don't know that it would be fair. There's... someone back home. Someone I care for very much. And if I get attached and then find my way back or he finds himself here-.... But then, I've been here a year already, and only one person from home has found his way here. And we're really no step closer to discovering how to send rifters back, if anyone is even focused on that at all anymore. I just... don't know what to do."

"Ahhhh. So that is what happened. You gave your heart already but now you have to deal with the result of another giving you their heart too. And you are not at all like myself and able to give as freely." He sighed in understanding and reached out to gather her over to him. It wasn't long before he was very carefully working tangles out of her hair. It was gentle, never pulling. Just unweaving anything he found to knot.

"May I hear about this boy you care for back home?"

He had no desire to offer more advice until he heard her speak of this other person. It was surprisingly important to this moment.

Hermione wasn't sure what Iskandar meant by her not being like him and able to give freely, but she was already being folded into his embrace and dealing with the unusual sensation of someone else's fingers threading through her hair. It wasn't necessarily uncomfortable - she didn't think anything could be properly uncomfortable with Iskandar, given the way she settled against him - but it wasn't something she was used to.

"Ron? He's... he's my best friend. Well, aside from Harry, of course, but that's different. Harry has always been like a brother. Ron... even when we were children, it wasn't quite like that. We'd argue. We'd tease. We'd scold one another. Well-... I mostly scolded him." A small smile had crept its way onto her lips as she thought of him, though she didn't seem to realize it. "I think we both always sort of knew something was different, though we didn't really realize it until we got older. And by then, we had other things to worry about. So we've never really acknowledged our feelings, not until the war was over and we had to accept the fact that we'd kissed during the final battle and so things would change. But we'd decided, since I was going to finish my last year of school and he was going to train to be an Auror, we'd wait until the end of the school year and then we'd focus on us. We figured that, now that the war was over, we'd have time."

She paused for a long moment, that smile slowly fading from both her face and from the tone of her voice. "But then I woke up here," she said at last. "And that was more than a year ago. And I haven't seen Ron since. So we didn't really have much time at all."

As he listened to her talk about him, he could just hear the level of affection she had for this Ron. She truly cared about him, cherished him. That was not something so easily let go of and it made sense she would have hesitations now.

"But is he the one you want to be with? To devote your heart to?"

That was the really important thing here in his eyes.

She didn't know how Iskandar managed to always make things sound so simple, especially when they very much weren't. Closing her eyes, Hermione tried to remember the few times that she and Ron had managed to have together wherein they'd finally been able to act like something of a couple. She found that those memories have grown hazy, as though they'd happened to someone else, in another lifetime, and she was beginning to hate herself for it.

"Yes. But I don't know if I'll ever see him again. It's like trying to stay devoted to a ghost. Oh, I feel horrible just for saying that, but it's true. He's not dead to me. But for all the time we've been apart and may continue being apart...."

"Perhaps but if your heart is not ready to let him go then he is still the man for you." Iskandar knew that continuing to remain devoted to those you hadn't seen in years was not easy. Still he loved those men and women with all his heart. "However, if you feel you are ready to move down another path then know that you do not betray him."

He went to cup her face so he could press a kiss to her temple then wrapped his arms around her once more.

"You have waited long and you can wait more. You have done well, my girl. I have such pride in you for how well you have done to be this loyal to him. He has no idea the treasure he has in you."

She tried not to cry - she was so tired of crying - but it was hard not to when Iskandar cupped her face like that and proved to be such a comforting force. Hermione hid her face against his chest, pretending for all the world that she wasn't upset, that she wasn't conflicted, that this was all several years in the past and she was just frustrated over Malfoy teasing her and had run to Hagrid for comfort. Things seemed simple, then. She wondered if, years down the line, her current predicament will seem simple in retrospect.

"I miss him so much, Iskandar," she found herself murmuring as she let the tears flow freely. "I miss my old life, and my old problems. But I've been here a year and no one seems to be working on any way of getting us back to where we should be. What if he's moved on in that year? What if... what if I'm still here in a year's time, or five years, or-... or forever?"

Stroking her hair, he allowed her to cry it all out. He understood her fears, where they were coming from. So, he spoke from his own experiences on this.

"Did you know that I have someone here from my world? Someone I was very close to? He's actually from further in my timeline and remembers things that took place. Things that could only happen if I were to be brought back to the point in time I was pulled from originally." Stroking her hair still, he let all those tears soak his shirt as he smiled gently down at her.

"I think he is there for you still. That time has not moved yet. That when you return he will be there just as he always has been."

Hermione's lips twisted a bit, and before she could properly stop herself, she revealed, "Harry - the Harry who had been here - claimed to have never noticed I'd been missing from home when he'd first gotten here, despite the fact that he'd apparently come from two months after that time. I'd already been here six, seven months by the time he'd arrived? So time might not pass the way it should when people go through the rifts, it's true. But that could also just mean that the people we know from home don't come from our home, but a home so close to it that there's hardly any difference: an alternate universe, so to speak. So what if the one difference between where I came from and where Harry had come from had been that, in my universe, I'd gone missing, and in his, he'd been the one to have gone missing? What if there's another Hermione out there, wondering what had happened to her friend Harry, or another Harry who hasn't seen his Hermione in a year? And what if both of these worlds each have a Ron who's fretting over his missing friends but has no way of ever knowing what happened to them? What choice would he have but to move on?"

Moving just enough so she could wipe her eyes free of tears with the back of her hand, she cleared her throat before pointing out, "The only other possibility is that I'll one day return to my world at the exact same moment in which I'd left, not looking a day older and possibly not remembering anything about Thedas. How else could things be expected to carry on as normal? But that possibility seems just as far-fetched as the first one, and also just as likely."

With a soft sigh, she shook her head and murmured, "It's all wrong, Iskandar. The rifts, ending up in Thedas, the lack of research or proper answers even after all this time - ... forming close relationships here. Something about it just feels all wrong."

Honestly he felt that the pressure of being here had caused her to think about this too much. To question the existence of her own world and those from others. Smiling gently at her, he finally just nodded, letting her express the rest of her thoughts. Those with vast intelligence could spend too much time dwelling in their own mind from his experience. A terrible place to become trapped in.

"Many things will happen in your life, whether there be alternate universes or otherwise. They will guide you and change you and make you who you are and who others are. Even if you were to never remember those here, you would not be forgotten. Your mark would remain on this place and in the hearts of others. So I do not feel that all of this is wrong. I feel that this is one path in our lives and now it is up to us to decide what we do with it."

The idea of one day leaving Thedas and not remembering the people she'd met, only to have them never forget her in turn, was that much more depressing for Hermione, and she had to force herself not to cry all over again. Iskandar was doing his best, but they were two very different people, with two very different ways of looking at the world. What he found comforting wouldn't necessarily be her version of comforting... but he was trying, and that meant enough for Hermione. More than enough, really, considering how alone she'd been feeling.

Though she didn't feel as though she'd exactly received much in the way of guidance, talking it out rather than letting her thoughts and fears silently plague her mind did help somewhat, and she found herself nodding slowly in response. "I've never exactly been good at making decisions without thoroughly researching all of my options. Unfortunately, life doesn't really have much of a means of conducting research, unlike academia."

It explained why she'd spent so much of her childhood in a library. It made things so much simpler.

"It is true."

Iskandar smiled a little bit and then let out a sigh. Not one of regret though for that simply wasn't in his nature. Just a sort of sadness but also a peace. If he could have been able to research and plan out everything, if it had been possible, how would his life really have ended? How would Hephaestion's?

"But, that is why we have people who are good at the things we are not in our lives. And we can rely on them to handle the things too hard for us. It is the beauty of so many living in the universe."

Part of Hermione wanted to pipe up and argue that it wasn't right to simply sit back and rely on other people to handle the difficult problems in their lives, and that she should know, since she was the one people usually relied upon and here she was, lost in a world very different from her own and stymied by the prospect of a relationship. But she didn't want to argue, didn't want to debate; she just wanted to know what to do to make this a less painful decision.

"Does that mean you'll handle this for me?" she asked dryly. Fingers wrapping around the wooden pendant on her neck, she sounded more sincere as she asked, "What should I do about Jamie?"

"I more meant that you can turn to others to help you figure out what to do. Having others solve your problems helps no one."

He was quiet for a moment or so, stroking his beard slowly. Not for any reason one might think though. Rather...

"Jamie is the one with feelings for you?"

She noted the way he was stroking his beard, and she frowned over how much that reminded her of her father. Considering that her father didn't have a beard, that was quite an accomplishment.

"He is," she replied. "I wasn't sure whether or not you two even knew one another."

There was no reason to think they didn't, but it was hardly as though Hermione kept tabs on which of her friends spent time with her other friends. She'd be surprised to learn that Iskandar and Kirk were as close as they were, all things considered.

"I do know him. He's a fine young man."

He nodded slowly but his words to her weren't about to change just because he knew the identity of the man now. Knowing someone didn't mean he was automatically going to see to it that Hermione dropped everything she loved to change her life. Doing that would be wrong.

"Because of that I feel you should talk with him. No matter what comes of it, you both deserve that."

She nodded in response. Jamie was a fine young man, there was no denying that. That was never called into question, and she would irritated by anyone who tried doing so. The question here was whether that was enough for her to - even temporarily - put aside her feelings for someone she may or may not ever see again.

Of course, though, Iskandar was right, and she knew that much. She couldn't very well make this decision without Jamie. It wouldn't be fair to either of them, for her to pretend that she didn't know he'd eventually develop feelings for her, if he hadn't already.

"Yes, I think-... I think that's best. He deserves to know." Forcing a small smile on her face that was compromised by the sense of nervousness, she looked up at him and added, "After all, what was the point of coming back from the future if we weren't going to do anything with the knowledge we'd gained?"

"You are welcome to come find me after you talk. Whether it goes well or poorly, I will be here if you need someone. I know those matters can be very difficult to deal with."

And she deserved to have someone who wasn't going to judge her for whatever decision she made in this. He certainly would be that for her.

Nodding absently, Hermione took a deep breath, trying to get herself to relax. It wasn't quite working, but at least Iskandar had been able to help her feel a little better. She would tell Jamie, and they would talk about where to go from there, and whatever happened would happen. Jamie knew about Ron, after all. If Ron ever did show up... Jamie would understand. She hoped.

The possibility of Ron turning up in Thedas was what was making her stomach twist up into knots, so she forced herself to widen that already-forced smile as she refocused on Iskandar. "Thank you, Iskandar. I don't know how I came to view you as such a constant confidante, but I appreciate it. Really, I do."

[Open] Time for some enjoyment

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