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[open] you'll come back when it's over
WHO friends and family of Sina Dahlasanor
WHAT: post-mortem interactions
WHEN: the evening of 7 Haring and onward
WHERE: the infirmary and elsewhere
NOTES: CW for death and illness. Apart from the main post I will not be tagging in. This thread is for wake/funeral/burial arrangements and anything else you guys want to play out pertaining to Sina's death, so feel free to make top levels or do whatever else!
WHAT: post-mortem interactions
WHEN: the evening of 7 Haring and onward
WHERE: the infirmary and elsewhere
NOTES: CW for death and illness. Apart from the main post I will not be tagging in. This thread is for wake/funeral/burial arrangements and anything else you guys want to play out pertaining to Sina's death, so feel free to make top levels or do whatever else!
It was the evening of the sixth when Galadriel paid her visit to Sina, after which the girl became mostly unresponsive. Still breathing, she slept through the night and day, waking up in the late afternoon just long enough to reach for Nari's hand and whisper something to her before falling away again. The candles grew dim and the shadows long before she stirred again, pulling in a last rasping breath, her lips moving soundlessly to form two unknown words as she exhaled and fell still.
It was hardly ten minutes later when, witnessed by friends and clan, the glowing green patch of magic that had plagued them all for the last couple years simply... vanished from the elf's sternum, as though it had never been there. Lying small and wasted away, destroyed from the inside out, anyone who looked at Sina for the first time would not understand what had killed her.
The room was then vacated by all but Keeper Thalia and Sina's parents, a balding large-eyed man with a quivering chin and a plain, sandy-haired woman, neither appearing all that much more vital than their late daughter. It was they who prepared the body for the resulting rites, silent and weary, their miracle baby laid to an untimely rest.
Out in the hall, Nari found herself surrounded in a collective embrace by a sea of russet-haired Dalish, her family. Even in a time like this, being with their daughter and sister brought comfort, and they hoped she might find some as well.
Sedi and Nymii stood as sentries on either side of the door, permitting only mourners and scowling down otherwise unrelated onlookers.
At last, at long last, it was over.
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Perhaps it's due to Asher's similarly long death that Korrin manages to keep it together for most of the evening. Perhaps she feels it less her place when Sina is surrounded by her clan, those who had known her all their lives. Whatever the reason, the large Vashoth woman remains, grieving but quiet and composed until the green glow in Sina's chest vanishes. Her composure vanishes along with it, and she promptly departs the room; she doesn't make it far, sliding down against the wall of the hallway just outside. Her body trembles with the force of those sobs she was holding back all this time. The shard was gone; Sina was free of it, but far too late.
II)
When her immediate grief is spent and the room is off-limits, Korrin (tear-stained and with bloodshot eyes) searches for Nari. It's not difficult to find her, of course, in the middle of all those other Dalish. Their visible show of support is heartwarming and she's reluctant to intrude, but nor does she feel right about leaving her friend's side in this hour. Only when the sea of Dalish thins out does she step forward and draw the slighter woman into a gentle but supportive embrace. Words of comfort come to mind, but they don't get past the lump in her throat, so hugs will have to do.
i;
"Sirena?" Her voice is thick with tears still when she spots Korrin on her loop back around, eyes stinging and the word tastes of salt and sickness on the back of her tongue. "I'm sorry--"
Sorry she disappeared. Sorry Korrin saw that again after Asher's bedside. Sorry that Araceli won't have anything to help try to soothe the way she did last time either as her legs give out from under her. With her head on Korrin's shoulder, she doesn't have to look at anything at all as her vision blurs again (who knows what happened when she ran, when she raced out of that room as if every rift opened at once with all the demons spilling out behind her, she doesn't remember seeing anyone or anything).
"I won't see her again." And it's as if that's just dawned on her. Maybe it has. Castileos is rarely violent, she's never watched the life slip out of a body and her sleeve is tugged down over her left hand the way it used to be when she was still afraid.
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When she's able to speak, her voice is rough, uneven. Tear-filled and liable to choke off at any time. "...the green patch on her chest...it just faded into nothing, like it was never there...I hated it so much and now it's just...gone." Tears stream down her cheeks, into Araceli's curls. "...anyone who just saw her now would never know what made her suffer, what killed her...."
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"I never asked what happened with Martel's." Sabine and Merrill are long away on assignments, the ones who were there to see him but she should have asked. Now she should have. Breath shuddering out of her and left hand going numb beneath her backside, it takes too long for her to keep going. "Would she have wanted that? You're meant to- it's meant to look peaceful at the end. She's Sina now. Like she always was." Like she always should have been.
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Mention of Martel has Korrin giving Araceli a gentle squeeze, knowing what he meant to her. She takes a moment to try and steady her breath enough to talk, though it's still touch and go. "...Maker, she was just so small, so worn out. It took everything from her...." She chokes up, shaking anew. "...she's free of it now, but I can't stop, it doesn't hurt any less."
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If her wording has changed now, it can't be helped. Talking with Thranduil about things she hadn't had a way to articulate for so long had turned things over and what else is it in them? An anchor to bind them. To hold them fast. There are few letters left beneath their floorboards now.
"Let it hurt. You're here. Alive. When you fall and it hurts it's a good thing because- because then you know it's not worse. You can limp. Drag yourself up and on." Why is her voice so far away now, why is there a roaring in her ears as she clutches tight to Korrin to keep herself from floundering. "If you feel nothing then it's worse, you might not feel anything again, you might be broken forever, might be hurt worse. I'd rather be alive and aching than that."
If that's the bravest sentiment from her mouth two years into a war, here, alone in this corridor then she can live with that because Korrin needs it. Araceli can numb herself for moments later before she goes to deal with the stitches.
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She tries to focus on Araceli's words while fighting that tide wave of grief and guilt, though tears still keep forming. If she were in a calmer frame of mind, she would absolutely agree with Araceli, all the way. "And when it hurts so badly that you think you might break apart for it? What then? I don't want to feel nothing, but...this pain is enough to drown in, many times over."
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Didn't you tell her she should be Inquisition, that we stop being what we were? Do you think they would have helped her sooner if she'd done that? Or do you think that to comfort yourself? A mind is a poisonous thing when it wants nothing more than to eat itself the way hers does when she has too many things spread before her to look at this way and that.
It's ugly that some part of her is spoiling for a fight, but that's being alive too when she chokes out a ragged laugh through the tears even as it burns the whole way. "Then you drown and come up gasping - there's nothing the ocean hasn't seen, and your tears are the salt that belongs to it. Do you want to feel nothing? You won't feel anything at all, there's not some middle ground here. Numb or everything. This ache, a hand in yours, a warm bed you won't sleep in, food you don't want but still need or nothing." There's a bitter sullen note to it but she's not going to take it back (she can't) and she's lived two years grieving as is with her heart still open as she was given it.
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"'Numb or everything'. Heh, you know I'm an all-or-nothing person anyway. It figures that trait would come to bite me in the ass." Her laugh is hollow and soon chokes off. "...I don't want numb, but right now everything hurts too much. I close my eyes, and I see her still form on the bed. I remember that night at the shindig in Skyhold, when twirled her around because she couldn't dance. She's really gone...." Her tears, never really dried, flow anew.
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"Parts of her are still here. Nari. The garden," the thrice-damned garden that might have sped up her decline, "the people she touched and loved. I can't remember what she told me about where the Dalish go just now."
Maybe because Sina hadn't seemed so sure. Araceli knows she goes to the sea, her body into a hundred other things, the other part to a place beyond that but Sina hadn't seemed sure at all about it. It's just that this is the speech she thought she might give to Fern and not someone who already watched a death occupy a space in a bed as long as it did.
"Remember that then. Remember the better times if it's what gets you through it. When she couldn't even stomach honeyed wine." Why is it that that sends Araceli off the way it does, hiccuping hard enough it hurts, bends her double at the waist.
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She doesn't want to think about that garden either, not now and not for the foreseeable future. Maybe at some point, it will be the reminder Araceli mentions but for now it's just one more reason to avoid Hightown. However, Nari's an entirely different matter and the thought of their grieving friend has her voice thick with pain. "We'll find Nari when we can manage it, let her know she still has us." At least she's in the arms of her clanmates now, and they'll take good care of her. Still, the three of them spent so much time together by Sina's bedside, that it only seems right to see her once more together.
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Her stomach aches from it when she can finally get a hold of herself, tucked so close to Korrin, clutching at her tight until she's able to speak again. Tear-stained - worse, most likely worse - her mouth is by Korrin's shoulder when she does. "Give her time with her clan first, I think we need a night just...in our bed. With Lux. Even lying awake. Nari's with everyone that loved them both too." Beleth and Sorrel probably if she thinks about it.
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