Vandelin Emith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
misdirection_hex) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2018-01-08 04:54 pm
misdirection_hex) wrote in faderift2018-01-08 04:54 pm
Entry tags:
even your own eyes don't know you
WHO: Vandelin and Myr
WHAT: Stress and cabin fever lead to foolish impulses.
WHEN: Early Wintermarch.
WHERE: The Gallows courtyard.
NOTES: None in particular.
WHAT: Stress and cabin fever lead to foolish impulses.
WHEN: Early Wintermarch.
WHERE: The Gallows courtyard.
NOTES: None in particular.
It still hurts to step out onto ice or packed snow, like feet held to flames to extract a confession. It is not, as he'd fervently hoped, something he can train his damaged nerves out of with exposure. But he can brave the trip to the general store now, for as many pairs of thick socks as he can carry and a set of human-sized boots to stuff them into, and this small victory is humiliating in the fact that it is one.
His cousin, no less delicate a desert flower than Vandelin ever was, merrily traipses his way through the snowy city blindfolded on a daily basis, and Vandelin quails at the thought of going as far as Lowtown even when it's warm. Not a single other mage on the invite list to Anders' gathering would have thought for a second to worry about its location. What kind of helpless, shivering invalid has Kirkwall turned him into, and why?
Quiet, stewing in the potent juice of self-loathing, he makes his way back across the frozen courtyard. Not even his prodigious eyes are quick enough to catch the prankster just behind him, offended by his too-solemn look and thinking it would be best wiped off his face with a merry dunk in a snowbank--a rough grab to his collar, a laugh that rings mocking and cruel, a shove that lifts his powerlessly slight frame off its feet and sends him face-first into a drift nearly taller than he is.
Everything white in his vision turns red. The prankster is headed off on his cheerful way before Vandelin can struggle out of the wet and dirty snow--but it doesn't matter which one of the surrounding passersby did it; he doesn't need to have seen a face. He can paralyze a crowd.
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But they couldn't gainsay him either for wanting to cling to the last stable thing in his life; Hasmal's templars took their duties seriously as any sons of the Order but they weren't cruel. That's why there's even a breach of protocol in the first place; that's why Ser Jarom stands with him, one ice-cold hand folded firm and restraining around his, down the hall away from the door so there'll be no overhearing while he waits to see Van again. To hear whether the worst had happened--
(It's only years later he realizes if the worst had, Van wouldn't've come back.)
"Van!" The first cry's glad as he spots his cousin's dark head and turns back to beg his way free of Ser Jarom.
He doesn't see Hofstadt shove Vandelin. But he does hear the insult, face twisting with adolescent fury as he rounds to go chasing after the bully. He might be half a shem's size but he's not lacking in courage--and Van's there to back him up with a spell--
With a spell.
Even a nine-year-old knows consequences, remembers the poor hollow-eyed people with the Chantry's sun riding on their brows, remembers threats of canings or worse for a misuse of magic that got someone really hurt. Acting on pure desperate impulse, Myr lunges for Vandelin, wrapping arms around his cousin and holding on for dear life. "Don't, Van, please, don't!"
"It's what the Maker put me here for."
In other circumstances there'd be a lightness about the words, a gentle joke at his own pious expense. Not now. Not with his heart in his throat and his breath coming ragged, every muscle in his body tight with the threat of disaster. He can't joke; he can't manage a smile to say well, that was close, but let's not dwell on it; but he can reach out, groping only a little, to take Vandelin by the arm or the shoulder or whatever his questing fingers encounter first.
"To keep you safe, same as you've always looked after me." But for three years--
That don't bear dwelling on. Van's soaked to the skin and it's freezing out, and Myr knows from bitter recent experience how much that hurts. "C'mon. Let's get to your quarters before you freeze solid and I've got to push you up the stairs."
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The Maker doesn't need to interfere in my life by dropping you on top of me every time you think I can't handle my own business.
He knows what would have happened if Myr hadn't been fortuitously nearby. He knows, in the way that makes him want to jerk his arm from Myr's helpless grasp and push away, that he would be on his way to a cell already were it not for his cousin's shepherding--and what would that do for his much-vaunted promise never to abandon him again? He'd be a hypocrite on top of a disgraced prisoner, insult to insufferable injury.
(He'd have no ammunition left the next time Myr took it into his head to endanger himself, and no chance to deploy it if he did.)
Same as you've always looked after me, and he'd dismissed that in his anger as a useless platitude, even when it's just borne itself out the other way in a conversation so fresh it still floods him with a painful little jolt of adrenaline to think of it.
"I think I can manage," he says, halfway to being able to modulate his tone again as if none of this has just happened. Right now, it's flat. But he makes for his quarters, and lets Myr follow. His movements are too cautious to be solely the fault of his wet robes, his gait too close to limping for him to be able to conceal it anymore.
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He's wise enough to keep his tongue to himself about it. Whatever his own anxieties, Van won't appreciate him fretting-- Though he can't stay silent as he notes how his cousin's steps drag, betraying physical injury on top of emotional distress.
"Did that fucker hurt you?" Later--not even much later--he might regret the uncharity of the words, the wintery quality of his tone, the implied threat behind it. If he did, I'll kill him. Right now, he needs to be sure his family is safe.
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You would think I was weak enough to be injured by that; you've always taken those shem-size muscles for granted and all the adulation they got you besides, always thought you had to swoop in like the knight in templar armor you wanted to be and save me from anything that tried to touch me because Maker knows I couldn't do it myself, and now you don't know the half of it--
He tries now to power through the pain on principle, tries to even out his steps and walk faster, but it only pushes that ache deeper and deeper into his marrow with every footfall until he can't do anything but pause and white-knuckle the handrail and try his best to let it subside, holding his breath as quietly as he can because his instinct is to gasp.
"Don't flatter him. This is nothing to do with that."
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But this is an old, old pattern and one he doesn't have so much difficulty slipping back into after all--once he's taken a breath (how convenient the pause) and reminded himself this is part and worrying parcel of the Vandelin he'd missed. Patience, then, and he'll keep his worry further from the surface as he affects to lean against the wall and listen to the nearest of his marker glyphs. Van's room is a whole floor above them, but his double is on this one...
"Then I won't, but you ought to let me have a look at you anyhow," metaphorically, "when we get to my quarters." With that he pushes off the wall, murmuring the words for an aura--it's a far cry from healing, but the bolstering effect's often sufficient to put even the worst pain at a remove. Hopefully it's enough to get them up to the landing and down to Myr's room.
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(A hint of sour grapes, perhaps, telling himself Myr can't help him when he knows damn well otherwise, and that Myr still blessedly somehow wants to, besides. He can tell himself that this is an instance where he can get through it on his own, this is a do-over to make up for having had to slink into the infirmary with a festering wound and let Anders carve him up like a turkey as penalty for his own idiocy in waiting so long--but it's not, and he can't, and the only thing he's sure of is that he can never let his cousin know about that.)
I don't need to stop at your quarters, he wants to snap, but for all the stamina boost the aura gives him, all the speed and energy and determination to get up these stairs, all the temporary pain relief, he's tired. Anger and jealousy indulged performatively are fleeting pleasures, and the satisfaction never lasts.
"I can't stay long," he says, as if he's the one who'd suggested it, as if he's just coming over for a pleasant cup of tea. "I have a kitten to feed."
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Myr smiles faintly to hear it. “Why don’t you go take a seat with the Comtesse,” on the other bed, “and get your boots off. She’ll be glad of the attention. Light?”
He thinks it’s late enough in the day that might be warranted; the sunlight coming in the window is too weak for him to feel as he strips off coat and gloves to put away in their proper places. Ritual soothes as always, even this small one—as he stokes the fire glyphs in the brazier back to life—taking the last edge off his irritation at Vandelin’s razor edges, leaving only creeping worry behind.
This is only the third time this has happened—though thinking of the dates they were due for it, for Van’s imperturbable façade to crumble to deadly anger. Last time Myr had never gathered to full picture of it, only that awful stress and something with Van’s Harrowing had touched it off; the time before—
He doesn’t like to think of the letter that began it (even though he’d brought it from Hasmal, and there it sits yellowing in a small bundle of his other mail on the desk, in the spot set aside for it). “I’ve tea, too. Cold now, but I’ll give you a glyph for the mug if you like.”
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He had meant to tell Myr about the kitten before now, mostly to solicit name input, but when faced with the prospect of explaining how he obtained the little guy, it had seemed easier simply to...not. He will insist to the ends of the earth that the aversion was about nothing but convenience, but he can't pretend, down in the very depths of his self-awareness, that he hasn't been concerned about disappointing his cousin with the details.
"Anders had an orphaned litter that all needed homes," he says, as matter-of-factly as if answering the question of whether he wants tea, "and he thought I'd suit. I've been reading up on how to look after them." And asking Anders, more often than usual. That part, too, gets elided. Vandelin sits down beside the Comtesse and very gingerly removes his boots, slow and cautious, wincing again at the pain and carefully flexing to restore circulation.
"He still needs a name. Something to do with oranges, maybe; he's a little marmalade one. And yes, tea would be nice."
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The question is mild, as Myr preoccupies himself with brightening the glyphs on the ceiling (however did they get there) to something nearer daylight, with glyphing the inside of the mug before pouring out a careful measure of cold tea. There is a measure of confidence to his step as he brings it over to where Vandelin's sitting and offers it out with both hands; this is his space and memory serves him in place of sight.
"That's kind of him. He'd told me liked you, when last I spoke to him. Suppose that gets you kittens, when he finds them." If there's any disappointment in him (a seed of it, small, and not unmixed with it's good he's found his people and of course,), it doesn't show through in his tone. "What's he like--the kitten, I mean." He knows Anders fairly well by now. Much to his occasional dismay. "I'd suggest Marigold or Purslane if he were a she, but I don't think he'd appreciate either of those names."
The Comtesse waits for Van to appear properly settled before standing up, stretching hind and fore before stepping delicately off her cushion and investigate the possibility of a lap. She's getting a little large now for it to be precisely comfortable, but when has inconveniencing someone else ever stopped an Orlesian from doing what she wants?
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"I think he'd offer kittens to anyone he thought could be trusted with them," he says mildly, setting his teacup aside on the desk and petting the Comtesse gently to keep her at arm's length. A cold and wet lap is no comfort to either of them, and he would hate to make a poor host. Bad enough that he's already getting the blankets a bit damp, though if they aren't Myr's, it doesn't matter.
There was a time once when he wouldn't have hesitated to strip his wet robes off in front of Myr. That time had been about twenty years ago, and the willingness had withered on the vine as soon as Myr had developed muscles enough to start fighting Van's battles for him. The instinct is not easily shaken off even now, when Myr can't see it--when it doesn't matter how much wiry muscle of his own Vandelin has now; Myr won't ever notice or pass judgment on it again, if he ever had in the first place.
"Maybe a manlier-sounding kind of orange flower," he muses, subdued in his effort to derail that last train of thought. "Embrium, maybe. Do you...have anything dry I could borrow?"
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Rebuffed, the Comtesse sits on her haunches and gives an irritated snort. Give her a moment and she'll try again-- "You're not going to like it," Myr rebukes her over his shoulder, from where he's preparing his own mug of tea. "While he's still all wet that way. Bathrobe over on top of the chest; go ahead and take it. Damn sight warmer than the stuff we brought out of Hasmal."
And therefore much better for a wet, damp cousin than any of his other robes. (He's preoccupied enough with worry--and his tea--he doesn't spare a thought for why he'd left it out in easy reach, beyond it made a nice addition to the blankets of nights.)
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He peels his wet robes off and leaves them in a pile; they're due for a washing. The robe on offer is enviably soft and warm, and just the thought of putting it on is a melting relief, but as he shrugs it on, the scent lingering in the cloth wafts directly into his face, unmistakably familiar (icy, impassive, unearthly, trodden into the Knight-Commander's carpet and filtered through the weave of the burlap) and triggering a low but visceral fight response.
He wouldn't. Would he?
...of course he would.
"Why," he asks, "does your bathrobe smell like templar?"
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Tea fixed to his liking, he moves to find his chair, thinking to drag it over by the other bed so they can talk more comfortably--
...Oh.
Oh, shit.
He's the presence of mind not to drop his tea, not to show a response to that question beyond the faintest flinch, even though his mind is racing with possible explanations. None of them truthful, none of them will do-- But he might delay long enough to put things in their proper order and not make a total fucking hash of it. "Why don't you tell me what's happened with your feet, first," he replies, struggling for his earlier mildness and not quite achieving it. They'd done so well, and of course it would be Van he screwed up around first.
"And we'll finish our tea and then I'll explain."
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Not actually, of course--no, he wants the who, and the how, and the why, more than anything. But he knows when Myr's will can be overcome with argument, and when it can't. Iron sharpens iron, Myr so often likes to say, but iron and iron are evenly matched. There's no escaping the question here without abandoning his own, no smart-assed loopholes Myr's going to accept with points for the effort. He knows how this dance goes.
"They nearly froze right off, the first time I had to contend with snow," he says. It's the simplest and most innocuous-sounding gloss he can possibly think of for the grotesque and literal actuality of it all. "Ever since then, the cold hurts them like hell. Nothing that doesn't go away after a little while--" He's still in pain on the stone floor, wishing it were possible somehow to stick his feet directly into the brazier. "But it's an inconvenience I could do without. Your turn. Who is he?" The underlying scent of pomade beneath the lyrium feels masculine.
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And a less painful one, one that didn't make his heart contract in his chest at the thought of his cousin out in the snow with feet frozen nearly off. There's no way that wasn't vastly more painful than Van makes it seem, not if he's still limping from the experience years later. He gets as far as pulling the chair around and seating himself on it before the question's put back to him.
"Ser Ashlock. Nothing's happened," except that handful of stolen moments he's not letting himself think about, the ones he's turned over to the Maker and His Bride for guidance on, the ones he hopes so keenly he can add more to--but what if the answer is no? --Don't think of it. "And nothing might.
"Let me see what I can do about the pain, will you?"
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There's no reason to think about that, though, except that it's preferable right now to the alternative. This is nothing he'd ever intended to share, not with Myr or anyone else, not with Kit when hiding the evidence under blankets was an option, not with anyone but Travis, who was there for it all, and even then, Vandelin had swiftly issued a moratorium on all discussion of the matter. But there is nothing quite so tempting right now as the promise of relief from the pain that's been clinging to him since the first frost.
"I'll be fine if you've got a little elfroot extract," he says, an obligatory last-ditch effort to distance himself from any offer of help. If elfroot worked at all, this would be a problem barely worth mentioning, and the faint unconscious note of don't pass this up yearning in his voice suggests as much.
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Especially as Vandelin had been the one to explain, in exact detail and ruthless logic, why a mage and a templar might not be free to love each other within the confines of a Circle. Outside, though...
"I've heard she drops bookshelves on elves and don't fancy being flattened, personally," he continues, keeping his tone mild and light. He may not know why his cousin's so uncomfortable about the thought of magical aid for--whatever it is that's wrong with him--but it's clear there is something wrong, as Vandelin's so-transparent request reveals. "As it happens, I've a little, but I'd need to dig out my kit for it," with an idle gesture toward his neatly stacked desk, "and I'd not like to leave you suffering a moment longer than needed."
Knowing as he does the workings of his cousin's mind, he won't call the other man on why he wasn't dosing with elfroot already if that would fix the problem. Easier to find a truthful excuse for not producing a tincture on demand. He sets his tea carefully aside and out of the way on the end table, reaching out with both hands to find Vandelin's feet. To find--
An unexpected gap beneath his questing fingers, a skip in his pulse and a chill of horror in his blood. "Van," calmly, calmly, "what's happened to your toes?"
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That forced calm shudders along his nerves like goosebumps, when he knows that tone well enough to hear the distress it belies. He should have refused. He should have taken the pain in stride and left his cousin be, rather than confirm everything now running through Myr's head and have to talk about it besides--
(But who else could help, and how could he expect his cousin who loves him to take no for an answer?)
"I thought," he says, with evenness to match, "that I already told you." A pause, because as badly as he wants it to be, he knows that isn't enough. "I don't...know if you know what happens to flesh when it freezes."
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"I thought," and here his voice grows faint, iron control wavering at last now that he's been presented with evidence of harm, of maiming, "that was figurative."
He knew about frostbite--in theory, knew it could steal limbs and even lives, but in Hasmal no one who'd ever said she was freezing off her ass or tits or fingers or toes ever meant the named body part was in actual danger. It only meant you were cold beyond reasoning, not--
Not this. A low noise starts and dies in the back of Myr's throat, a species of grief and frustration given voice. Something had hurt his cousin--except this isn't anything he could shove into a wall or a sand dune, pin down and pummel for having the audacity to touch Vandelin. (Nor would he if he could; the temptation will always be with him but he's long learned it's not what the Maker would have him do.)
But even if he can't punish the bitter Fereldan winter for what it's done, there's something yet he can do for Van--that he'd volunteered to do, that he isn't doing sitting here awash in sudden anxious concern. He shakes his head sharply to snap himself out of the funk and begins the diagnostic spell sotto voce. Such are the emotions threatening to close his throat he's got to stop once and start again from the beginning--
And only once he's turned the magic loose does he answer Van's other question. "Only--only in theory. Maker's breath--who do I have to thank that you survived?"
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He doesn't have to go into detail, he tells himself--and with anyone else in the world, he wouldn't, but Myr asks for candor and he gives it as if it's been held back by a dam.
"Her name was Sarah," he murmurs. "She fancied herself a healer, and she was the closest thing a scraggly group like us was going to find, but she'd never so much as mended a scrape before she came to us. Spirit advice or no, it wasn't...an ideal situation to learn as one goes. But she'd had plenty of practice by the time she got to me." Van's little breath of laughter here is too raw to convey the studied bitterness he means to.
"There's no curing that kind of infection once it sets in. Not with magic. But she didn't know that. Our lookouts would have their toes turning black and swelling to five times their size and she'd try the kind of spells you use for muscle strains, because it was all she had. Herbs didn't work. Their veins would turn black and they'd die of boiling fevers. I don't know how I got lucky enough that it didn't happen to me until she'd learned to amputate first and ask questions later. That much, she could mostly heal."
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Say a prayer for her, maybe, or light a candle in the Chantry, or lay flowers at Andraste's feet in silent gratitude to the deceased. Any of a number of things he can't articulate properly in the midst of his sympathetic horror at boiling fevers and blackened veins. That could have been Van--how easily that could have been Van, if Sarah hadn't learned to ply a knife to save her charges, if he'd gotten frostbitten any earlier. How little a difference in the world it would have taken, and Myr would never have learned what happened to his cousin, would have continued in heartsore ignorance while foreign winds scattered Van's ashes.
He ducks his head, drawing in a slow breath to steady himself. The calm he'd nearly forced before seems unreachable now; a good thing he's learned to exercise his meager healing skills without it. Nothing in the diagnostic spell begins to offer a clue of what the issue might be beyond here is pain, and there; nothing so simple as willing a wound closed through the Fade and coaxing new flesh to bind up the edges will mend whatever's wrong. Only--fittingly--a leaf from his cousin's own book might help: Snarl up the worldline where Vandelin isn't in pain, isn't suffering mysterious sequelae from the cold that stole his toes, and enforce it on this world with all he can muster. (Had he lyrium near to hand he'd use it; this isn't his usual kind of work, but where natural talent and practice are lacking, raw power could substitute.)
It comes on slow and subtle, less of a feeling and more the absence of a bone-deep ache. Myr's focus is all for that--for being an open channel for the light of Creation to flow through, altering the shape of reality--though it doesn't keep him from absently rubbing a thumb against the sole of Van's foot, heel to ball and back again. Where he can't find words, there is the language of touch to say you are family and you are loved, however rarely he might've made use of it inside the confines of the Circle.
Only when the magic has ebbed away, taking the worst edge of the pain with it, does he try his voice again. (There's a rough edge to it like unshed tears.) "I'm sorry. I wish to the Maker I could've thanked her in person. I wish--you'd not gone through that, that you'd not suffered this whole winter like this.
"Andraste's love, Van--I wish I could fix it." But this is the best he can do. He lets go but doesn't pull away entirely, not quite willing yet, hovering halfway toward an embrace.