faderift | Nothing to eat but fears in the back seat

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Nothing to eat but fears in the back seat

WHO: Yngvi; open
WHAT: Yngvi takes a moment to reflect on Asher's passing
WHEN: August 14th, evening onwards
WHERE: A quiet spot, the fringes of Hightown
NOTES: Discussion of character death, general state of the Yngvi given previous outings

Today creeps up on Yngvi. That must be what keeping busy does to you, makes you notice the days passing but not the dates until it lies heavily on him with the letter thats that they've all been dancing about. Funny how him and the rest of the Boneflayers can talk about death, joke about it, even laugh about it until it was Asher's. Maybe it was how. Maybe it was just how unfair it was.

The whole day he can't settle. Feels himself pulled from one thing to the next or sitting and watching time stretch out impossibly; minutes crawl by the way hours do on a stake out, his heart beating so loud everyone must be able to hear it.

So when he leaves coin for the meat he 'borrows' from his lady's kitchen (he's left the coin, he'll go with whoever has to buy more) he doesn't feel guilty because she was there, she'd understand, and the Avvar do their death thing and that's fine, that's grand, time doesn't mean much but if Asher is off with his Lady of the Skies and the birds took him--

"Stupid," he mutters to himself as he bundles the wrapped meat close and sets off, Avvar mead and a cup in the other hand to a spot that looked like the last place someone would go find him. No Chantry remains, no stupid fucking weird garden that makes him itch like the tree he hit in Halamshiral, no Darktown and Carta, no Gallows and red lyrium ghosts, no one.

Just Yngvi and the meat he unfolds from the waxed paper, weighed down on one corner with a cup of Avvar mead and another cup he drinks himself in silence for a long time as the sun starts setting until the words come out.

"Wish you were here mate, could really do with you here now. Wasn't right. None of it was right." Quiet. There's a dark bird with glossy feathers watching from a rooftop across from him; they gave Asher to the birds to give him to the Lady, this is all he can try to cobble together just now.

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Ordinarily, she'd answer what he's asked, even knowing he doesn't want a serious answer. She does it because it keeps conversation flowing, but apparently some people think it means she can't take a joke. She'd rather not add one more person to the list who thinks they know better than her.

So instead she moves to sit down on the other side of the meat and drink, staring down at it thoughtfully.

"Waiting for someone?" she asks. Christine doesn't know what's in the mug, and the raw meat seems set out for a wild animal or a stray domesticated one. The question is, who?

Setting almost every relationship he's had with everyone around him on fire is pretty much Yngvi's raison d'être currently, or it seems that way to him, if he claimed he knew that much Orlesian.

Yngvi looks up, meets the beady black eyes of the crow and he's not a mage but he got raised with Asher's stories, Asher's life, Asher's way of loving life and living it that he feels something. Is Aura dreaming? Aura writes, Aura sees a lot of crows in dreams landing on the things she needs to see and she says that they're Asher, Asher pointing her, making her pay attention or be brave or ready as she needs to be.

"Asher," he replies as if that's the most normal thing to be waiting for, for a dead man to come back. He's put out the meat to bring down the birds to him and there's a crow that's waiting, the same dark bird that haunts every sight of blood and battle in the world since they started, the ones that drowned out every sound when they took Asher. "Asher's with his Lady. The Lady of the Skies is the wind and the birds, her messengers, so, if I leave this out? Sit with it and his good mead, then they come. And it'll be Asher." That was how Asher had taught Yngvi (and Gunnar, but Gunnar's far away just now, remembering with the rest of the Boneflayers wherever they happen to be) when a dwarf who only knew dwarven ways and elven ways and Chantry ways about his ways. At campfires and long walks. At holds in cold mountain air that burned the lungs. No augur is Yngvi, no Sky Watcher, but lay out an offering and the Lady of the Skies sees because the Avvar gods are still living and watching and haven't been sealed away or turned their backs on those who know to look for them.

It sounds so poetic for a soul to fly back down to the world in the form of a bird, but what are the Avvar if not people who rejoice in the beauty of the world around them? They aren't simple, bloodthirsty warriors, holed up in the mountains because they're just as wild. They sing songs and tell tales, and the notable members of the hold are gifted with a title for their deeds, or cursed with one if the deed wasn't impressive. And the spirits surround them, talk to them, aid them. Even now as Christine thinks of it, she feels Faith's presence in her mind as a welcome reminder that she does the same.

Her gaze follows Yngvi's and she spots the crow, so reminiscent of the wooden one in her hair right now. It's looking back at them and Christine feels her chest tighten with emotion. She remembers watching the birds in the sky at Asher's funeral and then having to turn away, unable to watch them land on his body. It was only on her next visit to the hold when she was able to look up at the spot and watch them circle, her heart lightened that they were doing their Lady's bidding and bringing a soul up to her.

Christine wants to believe all this is true. She wants to believe that spirits have the ability to command birds and carry the souls of people, because it's them doing something. It's not being told that the Maker loves them but abandoned them because not every single person believed. It seems like a convenient excuse created by scholars to explain why they were alone in the world with no loving god assisting them in their most dire times of need. But spirits help. They always help. Maybe that's why the Chantry teaches everyone to fear them: because people would worship the spirits instead of the absent Maker.

"He will come," she says, deciding to believe it. "Though it may take time. He always has to make an entrance, does he not?"

If he could've left Kirkwall he would've gone off to see Aura.

But if Yngvi left Kirkwall then he doesn't know if he'd ever come back and he said he'd see this through, he could change with someone else but he said, and Asher was gone and they sat down in the place where Asher had a family in his wife's house where his son was sleeping and Yngvi said yeah, right, sounds like it'll be a laugh and an adventure, I'm good for it and he was, he-- He is? Not as much. They'd understand if he left and begged off and that'd be the worst thing he thinks.

So he'll write Aura again after and find out what her dreams told her, send some exciting Kirkwall luxuries off up to the mountains for her since he's got the means to do that.

"How you make a living in this business. Need to make a mark on the world and carve a space into it so the world knows you were there." That's how a lot of things work everywhere, legacy isn't so different when it comes to mercenaries and Carta than nobility would like to think, harder to make a name for yourself when you come for nothing and scrape for it with your blood, sweat, tears, with your reputation, with making yourself into something. Asher got that. Yngvi's trying. "Worked everywhere that weren't Tevinter or Qunari lands because we didn't go there. Let people think a thing 'bout you and it works."

Asher's dead, not going to mind Yngvi talking about him now and the crow starts to come down, quorks to call more. Yngvi reaches for the mead, slow and easy so he doesn't startle it but birds that live around Kirkwall don't spook like others do and these are the sort that peck at whatever lies bleeding in a darkened alley, not usually offered up a choice cut by a small shabby dwarf toasting to them.

Christine has never considered making her mark on the world so she could be remembered. All she's ever wanted was a safe place of her own choosing and the ability to save lives. But mercenaries live and die by their reputation. They get work because a friend of a friend told this guy's uncle that this is the company you hire to get things done. So she can see Yngvi's point, even if she never aspires to have a legacy of her own. Children would be nice, though. That's a different kind of legacy.

She watches Yngvi and the bird, not sure if she's intruding. As much as Asher made an impact on her life, she didn't spend near enough time with him to be considered in some kind of inner circle. She regrets that now. She regrets not putting down her work that could be finished later to go down to the Boneflayers' camp and see what they were up to. She regrets not asking him for more stories of Avvar gods, even if she found herself cast in one of the roles for Asher's amusement. But isn't that the way it always goes? Everyone thinks they'll have more time. Now she stares at Church's glowing hand in the dark when his breath has evened out and sleep has found him, afraid of a rift opening and him falling back through. Afraid of the shard trying to consume his body much like the red lyrium is doing to Templars. Now she is very, very aware of there never being enough time to say and do all the things you wanted to with a person, and she learned that truth from Asher's passing.

Once she's sure she won't spook the crow by talking, she murmurs, "Do you think he will always be this bird, or will he be others too? If I ever wish to talk to him, I mean."

Watching Christine from the corner of his eye, Yngvi can remember the fun times even in Skyhold when Asher was on the mend. He wasn't but it had been different and they'd had chickens for some reaosn. Settled longer than any of them had settled outside of the places they'd come from; sometimes he still meets people who were Liadan's life too, not that they remember him well, the ones that did are gone now with the Chantry and the chaos of that night.

"Here's the thing," Yngvi says as the crow quorks to the others, coming closer. "Everyone burning their dead just feels like it was the Chantry way of trying to be different to other folk. Dalish plant trees over their dead, Orzammar says we go back to the stone and I know what I want for me, Avvar have sky burials - you lot burn them and that's...that's it. Gone. Just ash. Dust. S'all people are to the Chantry ain't it? Walking, talking, breathing dust takin' up space until we don't."

And people say the Chantry loves them, that it's not a scam, he'll believe it when he sees it.

"Aura has dreams." Stretching his right arm out slowly with a small grimace until the elbow pops and he can lean back on both hands again more comfortably, he continues. "She sees a crow in them and the crow is very dark, it comes out of the shadows itself, lands on important things or flies where she should be going. Aura believes, she's a spirit warrior now? If she says it's him then I'm not going to argue, s'not like dwarves dreams." Until now that wasn't something that had bothered Yngvi even in the context of Asher no matter the letters he and Aura exchanged on the subject but today it does chafe, settling under his skin to itch just the wrong way.

Christine is used to keeping her failing Andrastian faith to herself -- or to Church, who won't judge her for it. But when someone comes along who thinks it's all a pack of lies, she tends to sit up and listen.

"My father," she begins, not expecting to get into this but here she is, "died in the civil war. They burned his body on a pyre with the rest of the dead. I cannot visit a tree, or look to the sky and see the birds who carried his soul. There is... nothing left but the ring he wore." Some might say the memories remain, but she barely has any memories of him. She was hoping to form new ones. "It is hard to say goodbye when there is nothing to say goodbye to."

So Aura has become a spirit warrior. Yngvi has spoken of this before, and Christine was confident then that Gjurd would set her down the right path. It sounds like Asher flies over her and his soul guides her now.

"Maybe he will visit me in dreams," she says, though after the words leave her lips, she doubts he will. Instead she focuses on the crow before them now, looking for a sign in its eyes.

"See," and this is territory that's nebulous (another of those words Yngvi wouldn't claim to know, he's just a dwarf from the gutters serah what's a word like that tripping out of his mouth?) but Asher cared about her and Christine has been decent - has been better to Yngvi than several others - so with Asher's ghost laid out between them he can offer her this. Asher was generous wasn't he? Even on his deathbed he tried to keep up his act, keep the face on.

He tries again with a dry throat but the mead isn't for him, that's an offering he can manage. "Right, way I see it is, maybe your old man if you care and there is some place they go 'cause I dunno 'bout all that stuff but say there is, then he'd know? Because there-" and he nods, the crows come down, the first one comes right up to tear a bloody strip off the meat Yngvi took from his lady's kitchen with coin left in its place. What he means is things maybe Asher told her or she might know: Andraste was what the Avvar were before they were Avvar and the Lady of the Skies is the wind and the birds, so all things get carried off and borne aloft in the end. Perhaps not what she wanted but this is life and we seldom get what we want so we make do with what we have.

It's a sight she won't soon forget. Ever since leaving the Circle, Christine has been drawn to birds flying free over her head, never caged like she had been. She's loved watching them, and it's become a well-known fact about her. But right here at this moment, she's seeing these crows with different eyes. She's seeing Asher and her father approaching her -- two important men in her life that had died around the same time. Christine decides that Asher is the one who took the meat because he was never a man to shy away from what he wanted. From her mother's accounts, her father was selfless and sacrificing. He would be a bird to hang back and wait. She feels drawn to one and she stares at it longingly, wanting to say so much, but holding her tongue. There will be another time for that. Her nose burns with unshed tears and she nods subtly, so as not to scare the crows away.

"Thank you, Yngvi. I see him now."

How do you respond to people saying that when you haven't done anything, when there isn't an edge to it, isn't some sort of bite or sarcasm or just something that can trip you up? A bubble of panic threatens to burst but the crow hops over again (Asher, it's Asher, you know it's Asher and Aura will write because Aura will know; Yngvi knows that in the marrow of his bones same as he still has the stone sense Orzammar swears he's lost for his forebears leaving it and him being born to the light and the sky) with more meat in its beak.

Go out in the wild and wild things sit about on you, he's not some ranger but watches were passed that he got used to them and the nugs are bolder than any nug has a right to be, pet or not.

"Don't need to thank me." He's uncomfortable with it because how often do those words come. Instead he strokes the soft feathers of the crow as it digs sharp nails into his thigh. "See? You're well-remembered, sorry it couldn't be at the Blooming Rose but even I can't swing that with my connections you'd need to shit on Melisende and Liadan's heads for that so y'know, they're off westwards if you're spreadin' the word. Didn't know if any of this'd work but reckon this would've been approved by you either way, seems like your sort of thing right?" That's not just to Asher, Christine has an interest he saw her sloping off and she asked after Gjurd he remembers that much too.

Christine watches in silence because she needs a moment to collect herself. Having someone present that you can actually talk to about your grief feels like a gift, and there's plenty she should say to Asher, yet the words don't leave her mouth. This was Yngvi's plan and she just stumbled into it all.

"Would you like me to leave you two alone?" she asks, and again there is not an edge to her voice. So often this sentence is said mockingly, but she means it. Maybe he has things to tell Asher that he doesn't think she should hear.

"I know it works now."

Cobbled together from watching what happened and Asher's explanations of sky burials and it all worked so he can do this again if he ever needs to. Not enough to be a habit but it'd be good, he thinks, to know that if he really wants to he could just lay out the meat, sit and talk.

"Think that's what I needed most, that this at least would work," he adds quietly as he gets the bird to hop into his hand because small boys in Kirkwall had some time to cultivate to doing weird things and then time as a lookout you just sit and learn to deal with birds. He offers it out to her if she wants, ignores the nails drawing blood because well his hands are always going to be a disgrace and that's just Asher's way.

What he needed most. She looks over at Yngvi and the subdued nature he's exhibiting today. While she'd prefer it if he was subdued more often, not if this was the cause of it.

The offer to have the bird switch over to her is worth a try, so she slowly extends her arm towards it. She wears long sleeves and offers her forearm, the way falconers do. Hopefully the claws won't dig through as painfully there.

"Asher," she greets quietly, waiting to see what he'll do.

When you're at war with yourself you don't get to have any measure of peace because who teaches a surface dwarf carta child a thing about ceasefire?

The bird - Asher - moves but being that it is who it is, it doesn't want the forearm because excuse you, who do you think this crow is and also who do you think you are Christine Delacroix?

Forearm?

Asher Hardie?

No.

Not that shit, fuck that noise. Shoulder or bust. Hey. Hey girl. Hey.

When he doesn't move over to her, Christine lowers her arm, letting out a sigh of exasperation. Even in bird form, Asher has to be difficult.

"Oh, fine. Be that way. See if I bring you any food next time." Ungrateful beady eyed asshole. She's Christine Delacroix. Do you think she puts up with your attitude, Asher? No, she does not. This is the woman who happily tied a gag around your mouth, and don't you ever forget it.

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Nothing to eat but fears in the back seat

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