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Entry tags:
[open] you told them all I was crazy
WHO: Cade, Simon, and anyone brave enough to visit them
WHAT: Blue Flu Boogaloo: Two Dudes Askew, Hijinks Ensue
WHEN: Phase II
WHERE: Simon's room, now with more Cade
NOTES: Ultra mega content warning for a variety of topics that might come up in flashbacks, most notably childhood sexual abuse, graphic violence, and possibly more which will be added as necessary.
WHAT: Blue Flu Boogaloo: Two Dudes Askew, Hijinks Ensue
WHEN: Phase II
WHERE: Simon's room, now with more Cade
NOTES: Ultra mega content warning for a variety of topics that might come up in flashbacks, most notably childhood sexual abuse, graphic violence, and possibly more which will be added as necessary.
I. Visit Both!
During the day, when they're both awake, the room is just a regular disaster zone. Simon's tools are laid out with no rhyme or reason, anything that could have at any point been tidy is in total disarray, and the room contains a frightening sense of lost control.
For more specifics, see their individual prompts:
II. Just Cade
Being easily worked up at the best of times, the lyrium problem has Cade nearly out of his mind and dissociating for what began as small spurts and has expanded to nearly all of his waking hours. It can be difficult to tell, being that it most often manifests as reclusiveness, with the thirty-something man sitting with his knees curled to his chest at the far end of his bed, his demeanor that of an eight-year-old with a monster in the closet. When it looks different, it's endless pacing, agitation, frantic muttering, the telltale signs of someone in danger of hurting himself.
Sometimes Simon or visitors can bring him out of it; sometimes he doesn't know who they are, or where he is. Dosing him with more lyrium results in pockets of lucidity, which rapidly turn despairing as he realizes he's losing it again, and they often aren't worth the trouble.
III. Just Simon
Anyone entering the room could be forgiven for not immediately realizing that Simon is there, when he is. It may be the first time in his entire life that he hasn't been the most immediately noticeable person in a given space. His bed is strewn with tools and books, the blankets pulled over his head to dampen whatever noise Cade makes, and beneath the covers, he shivers faintly.
He doesn't sleep, though, when he can help it--not here. Never here. He fights sleep now as hard as he's ever done, and if it means hauling himself out of bed inch by freezing, head-pounding, light-sensitive inch to go seek pharmaceutical help for it, he does as often as he can manage. His ability to manage grows increasingly less frequent by the day. He's promised himself to the researchers as a test subject, all but flinging himself at them in his desperation to find something that will help, magic or otherwise, but his memory of that commitment fades in and out and gradually dissolves altogether unless he's reminded of it.
He knows how this goes. It isn't the first time he's found himself in this lyrium-deprived boat with no memory of how he got there. The powerlessness is the point.
no subject
Simon had looked absolutely awful when he'd stopped her in the library to ask her to look in on Cade. Unshaven, hair in disarray, face pinched with pain that dipped briefly into agony with any noise louder than the persistent turning of pages. He'd forgotten what he was trying to ask her twice while doing it, all the while the pale blue pallor making him look eerily like he'd frozen to death some days ago.
She'd only nodded in return, her throat clenching around the thought of Cade the same way.
“Simon sent me," she manages, hoping a friend's name would help, and then "I’m coming in now." A moment later her face appears, eyes quickly scanning the disorder of the room for the man she’d come to see.
no subject
He's not quite visible when she comes in, and seems to be willing himself less so.
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"I brought some of the sleeping draughts. They've been working well."
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Wait--
His brain supplies it, even if everything doesn't add up. "Is Mama sick too?" he asks quietly, of the servant, who has no doubt come because no one else was available. But that's unusual. "Is she all right?"
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The plaintive question made Nari pause for a moment in her advance. The fever they'd been talking about. Hallucinations. He didn't know her.
Well, no. He didn't know her, but he did know her. And apparently trusted her, at least enough to think she knew how his mother was doing. At least she was no interloper. Nahariel wondered where he was. When he was.
He was young, that much she was sure of. Young enough to let himself be cared for, maybe. That was something.
"She's fine," Nari says quietly, resuming her walk towards him and setting the small bundle she'd brought on the bed, opening it to retrieve one of the sleeping potions, "She's sleeping now, but she was worried about you." He'd sounded concerned... Nari hoped that meant they'd had a good relationship, or her next bid wouldn't work.
"She asked me to bring this medicine to you, to help you sleep as well. Then you'll be fine too."
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"Oh," he says with an absent smile, relieved but unsure, because something still feels wrong. "Thank you."
Beleth. Beleth is an elf. Beleth is... sick? Who is he worried about? Is Beleth real?
He squeezes his eyes closed and rubs at them, feeling as though everything about his existence is running full-tilt toward a cliff, and he can't feel its legs to stop it. "Is Beleth..." he begins, but trails off, unable to concentrate on the question.
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It's not a desire she lets herself have time to contemplate. Instead, she offers the small glass vial for him to take, keeps talking quietly.
"You're welcome," she says, hoping it'll make him think he asked for the bottle. "Do you need help with the cork?"
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"Can you lift it?" she asks, a reminder that he's holding it, is supposed to do something with it. And then the reminder of what he's meant to do. "It doesn't taste very good, but there isn't much."
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Already beginning to feel less wired as the potion's effects race through him, he relaxes back against the wall with a sigh, falling silent for several moments. When he speaks again, it's in that same uncertain, young-sounding way. "Can I please just stay here?" he asks, "I don't want to go back."
no subject
"Can I please just stay here?"
Nari opens her mouth and then closes it again, wanting very much to know where "here" is--where "back" is--but stopping herself from asking. It's not fair. It wouldn't be fair for her to know, not when he doesn't know who he's talking to. Not if it was something he wouldn't say to her when he was well. Her hand itches to brush the hair from where it's sticking to his brow, but that wouldn't be fair either, so instead she moves back to settle herself against the foot of the bed.
"You can stay here," she says quietly.
no subject
The covers are barely over Cade when he closes his eyes, mumbles "Al'stair should..." and is out. Still as a stone apart from his breathing, he doesn't look that miserable for once.
no subject
Slowly the deep blue of the room in the moonlight, the quiet, the slow even breaths she watched for settle into her. Time changes, on watches. It's something she's always loved. Like becoming the night and the quiet itself. Settled this way, matching breaths, Nari keeps her vigil.
an hour or so later
She remembered, all that time ago at Skyhold, the first time they'd crossed paths. Sitting in the still-unfinished Great Hall, him resting from carrying stones, hunched and furtive, her carving the balustrades for the staircase. He was a Templar, had even hurt Beleth, but still she'd wanted to make him feel safe. She'd whistled a Chantry tune for him. He'd relaxed. They hadn't spoken.
Then nothing, until Kirkwall. Until she'd wanted to give the people somewhere to pray again. Remembered what she'd heard, what she'd seen, and sought him out. He'd looked even more tired. Sad. But they'd begun the work. He read her the Chant, so she could know Andraste as she carved her. He'd smiled more. They spoke--silly things, about the forest. Quiet things, about the Maker's Bride he so revered. They had relaxed.
The following month he was carrying her, weak and frozen, wrapped in his cloak, all the way to Darktown.
And now? Now she sat and watched him while he slept, taken by this illness, and finding herself filled with a kind of quiet yearning she'd never known.
It wasn't as if she hadn't known what was happening when people paired off in the evenings, what it was the soft laughter meant, why sometimes after returning from patrol Mirsedis would actually smile when Nymii brushed her fingers across the other woman's cheek. It was just that she hadn't had any interest, or even known why one would. She'd gone once, to the shadows past the campfire's light. Whether or not it was proper, it was what nearly all the young and unbonded had done at the Arlathvhen, flush with wine and the energy of the People coming together. The hunter she'd gone with--she couldn't remember his name, but he'd shot well, had smiled and taught her some birdcalls from his home--had seemed excited enough, but his hands on her had been just ...hands. His body just ...a body. Awkward, meaningless, like he was speaking a language she didn't know. It meant something to him, but to her? She'd felt more while watching birds take wing as a halla fawn ran through the water towards them, their flight to the skies filling her heart.
But her hands tremble now, thinking of what it might be like to touch his face. To straighten one wayward curl. To be close enough to feel him breathe. And to be touched? It was too much to bear.
Like birds, she thinks, again watching him breathe in sleep. It would be like birds.