CLOSED | oh the mountaintop, oh the visions stopped

[alankazam]

 

WHO: Alan + Kain, Cade, Jehan, Thranduil, Others
WHAT: Catchall for closed prompts. HMU on Plurk if you want one!
WHEN: Now-ish
WHERE: Around Skyhold
NOTES: Fantasy drug use in one prompt.

He's gone a week, perhaps two.

The absence was unannounced, as is his return. He just slips back into routine one day as though he'd never left. Explanations aren't forthcoming: Backwoods apostates aren't exactly known for their reliability, and he doesn't intend to question that narrative.

His space in the barracks stays empty, day or night.

Comments

[rowancrowned]

"Testament," Thranduil replies. Solas' things have been mostly cleared away, what was left behind put into storage, he supposes. Space is at a premium, Thranduil himself sharing a room with another and a pony. "Why are the actions of the Inquisition reported upon in mediums that will last far longer than you will? In eighty years, these-" the paintings, the library above them. "-are all that will remain of your actions, and how quickly they will be corrupted."

He moves a certain way. He speaks a certain way, an accent lilting his words, certain vowels rounder, the occasional 'c' shaped like a hard 'k' before he catches himself. Alan, with his clever eyes, catches it more than most.

(The... arrogance, too. The confidence.)

But Alan is more than bearable, for a man. [i]Beorning[/i], though he chooses other forms. So he is kind, genuinely interested when he stops his agitated review and sits on a bench, smoothing his robe under him. "What story would you have told to your descendants?"

[alankazam]

"I suppose that,"

It's a good theory, Alan's just never considered that those moments (small preservations, the emotions of an object or scene) might outlast his perception of them. He's keenly aware that he'll die, some day, has long made his peace with it —

— But he's twenty-three, and if he's at peace, that peace mostly only makes it easier to ignore. He considers in silence.

"That they aren't alone." Finally: "This won't be the last time someone has to do something like this."

History cycles. Souls, too, but Alan has never assumed his will be so strong as that. There will always be struggle, until the Maker returns to His children. It won't mean less for the repetition.

"What would you?"

[rowancrowned]

Pleased, Thranduil nods. Knowing a path has been walked before, having examples of proper conduct is, if not soothing, at least some measure of comforting.

"Of mistakes made," and if Thranduil will ever divulge the extent of his faults, it will be to his family; he has laid many of them at Thingol's feet. "Lest they risk them too."

He loves his son fiercely, the thought of Legolas in pain was crippling until he learned to separate himself from it. Despite the differences in species, he wagers it is the same for most humans. Everyone wants an easier life for their young.

"I would hope that there is only one Corypheus." Verging into amused, now. "Though there will be others like him. Nor that we need discover even more colors of lyrium."

[alankazam]

"Perhaps you could paint with those."

It's a joke, however deadpan. His head tips owlish. Thingol had alluded to faults enough of his own, the weight of years too alien to readily bear, the context too Other to understand. As much as he wants to help, Alan knows his own limitations, and these tall, shining things test them.

(It has not occurred to him that the rifted elves might hail from so many different worlds as their human counterparts. He isn't immune to some habits of men.)

"Mistakes," He finally ventures. "Do you think they ever really stop? That we can?"

An honest question, and there's a bare sketch of something else beneath it. Not distress, not — not.

[rowancrowned]

"Grind them up, use them as pigment?" he asks, and Eru, someone has done it. This is Thedas. No one has an ounce of sense but the dead. This boy, though, he asks questions, and Thranduil considers his softness, his own ability to be honest, Thedas' history.

"The Blight," he admits. "Your people know it is coming, and yet-- nothing. Your Wardens are..." he trails off, does not offer more, because what can he say. "The Men of Arda are not nearly as advanced as most of Thedas. There were the Numenoreans, but they overstepped, and it was their end. Yet for all your trebuchets, Craft in the hands of so many of your people, you have come forward with no solution to the Darkspawn, who ought to be so easy to ally against."

And in the years between the Blights, what? How quickly they forget, with no elves between the generations, even their Dwarves so short-lived and weak.

"That does not mean the cycle cannot be broken. One good Man might bring about a great deal of change. There is something... motivating about the finality of death. The fire that it lights."