Be the one who stays | Open

[nadasharillen]

WHO: Nahariel (sort-of), and yooooou
WHAT: Wintermarch Catch-most
WHEN: Haring (post Sina’s-death) through Wintermarch
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: CW: self-harm, intense grief, depression, dissociation, suicidal ideation; Nari is likely to snap in and out of sudden cruel rages even when interacting with people she’s close to.

There comes a point when enough is carved away from a statue that it ceases to be what it was and can’t be put back again. In the fervent desire to put it right it becomes smaller and smaller until the only choices left are to doggedly whittle the ruined work to nothing or scrap it and begin again.

So it was with Nahariel Dahlasanor.

She looked smaller. Her frame was more gaunt than slender, her shoulders hunched and curled inwards to make a hollow of her chest as if she held something at her breast to protect it from the wind. Every emerald glance, when caught at all, was dull and brief before returning to the ground or some far off point known only to her. The sleek short cut of her hair had turned to uneven shag as it grew as it would, lank and uncared for. The whole of the erstwhile kind and genial elf looked like a plant left to blight, marked heavily by the absence of the hand that had nurtured it. Like a ruin, she had housed something once... but that thing seemed to be gone, replaced only by wind.


I. The Chantry Forest

By all appearances, Nahariel had continued to live in the home she’d shared with Sina. But with a lifetime as a Dalish scout behind her, those appearances meant less than nothing. Each night found her, instead, curled tightly in a clutched blanket with her knees drawn up, a knife in her fist, her back pressed against the feet of Andraste. Each morning with the sun she uncurls, and makes her heavy way back to the docks to start again; just another grain of sand waiting to pass through the hourglass.

Last night it had been colder, she’d slept longer, and when you come upon her she hasn’t yet woken. Under a thin layer of last night’s brief snow, Nahariel looks much like the incomplete statue that supports her—stiff and still, her skin dark as the burnished wood. Only the small unconscious movement of her hand clutching the blanket tighter around herself signals that life is one of the differences.


II. The Docks

Despite the bitter wind that often blows from the expanse of water that is Kirkwall’s harbor, Nahariel can often be found sitting with her back to a stack of crates, her eyes full of the grey of the winter sky and trained on the horizon. The whittling work so often in her hands is conspicuously missing, her thin fingers dry and cracked from the salt still in the wind and holding only her knees.

She doesn’t turn at your approach.


III. Elsewhere!

She moves between the Docks and Hightown each night and morning like a silent shadow, feet dragging just a little more each day, although thus far she’s apparently been quite able to avoid being caught by the patrols.

You, on the other hand, she isn’t keeping watch for.

Comments

[nadasharillen]

She takes the step. Badly, but not as badly as she would have without warning. Only a brief stumble rather than a tumble, and sometimes that's all one can have. She shivers and sits in the boat, the rocking of the harbor waves oddly soothing. Enough that sense begins to make a return, the elf looking around and wondering at her surroundings.

"How--?"

[justice_is_blond]

"I helped you to the boat," he says gently. "How is your knee? Does it need healing?" There's no recrimination in his tone; he's lost time and been disoriented as well. Granted, most of it had been due to being possessed, but she's not showing any of those signs.

"I figured you'd be safer in the Gallows than out in the city like this."

[nadasharillen]

She looks down at her knee with some confusion, and then winces as she moves it back and forth, discovering the injury for the first time.

"I... no. I'll be fine." It's couched as a desire for him to not expend resources that might be better used elsewhere, but a second wince as she moves it again betrays some of her desire to keep the pain for other reasons. The slight reddening of her cheeks and the way her gaze quickly shifts down betrays the rest. Nahariel is lots of things, but a good liar isn't one of them.

[justice_is_blond]

The wince tells him a lot. Anders holds out a hand.

"I don't mind, I promise. It will be the work of minutes and I've nothing else to heal at the moment. May I?" There isn't reason for her to stay in pain other than pride, and pride is often an obstruction. Like now.