faderift | [closed] it's not the long walk home that will change this heart

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[closed] it's not the long walk home that will change this heart

WHO: Cade, Nari, a healer at the end (Sam?)
WHAT: a camping trip turned awkward family reunion
WHEN: sometime in Guardian w/e
WHERE: the easternmost edge of the Planasene forest
NOTES: warning for violence, discussion of self-harm and sexual abuse of a child

Between the flu, the fire, and Kit's passing, things have been rough lately. One of the few boons of Cade's excommunication from the Templars has been an abundance of freedom, with which, until recently, he had no idea what to do.
But sometimes one just needs to get out of the city. Not on a special mission or anything serious, just a little hunting trip, a pocket of time spent in the quiet isolation of nature. It's the one thing he missed from his time in the Hinterlands, and perhaps it's time to do it again.

Nari is invited, for her particular losses, and for her help throughout the flu. She looked out for him, and he's worried what she might do if left alone in the wake of her grief. Perhaps it's best if they both remove themselves for a while.

In separate tents, of course.

It's on the edge of the Planasene where they finally make a less temporary camp, setting up to stay for a few days by a small creek in a grove well-insulated from the still sharp winter winds. It's early morning, and the horses are lazing tethered to a tree, content to spend the day eating grass and rolling in whatever dust is nearby.
Cade is preparing for the day, sitting by the fire and sharpening his arrows, waiting for Nari to join him so they can cast out.

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Nari’s pace slows, then stops—she’s noticed it too. No. They hadn’t come that far west, she’d been careful. It was an eagle, a hawk. Her eyes flick upwards to scan the branches, search the sky for it, but she sees nothing. There’s no cry, but there is a soft sound of amusement carried on the breeze, a brief flicker of gold in the spreading branches of a nearby pine. She whips around to stare at Cade, and then back toward the pines, the world slowing.

“Sedi, no!” she shouts, her pupils dilating with sudden panic.

But it’s too late for that.

Edited 2018-02-26 21:57 (UTC)

Sedi yes.

Cade is in the process of reaching for an arrow, and barely gets it out of the quiver before it explodes out of his hand, splintered in half by another. He gives a yelp of surprise, turning to see what happened-- the head is of black polished bone, the shaft sliced into neat barbs-- when a second arrow vaults into the back of his right shoulder. How does she draw so fast--
A third sinks into the back of his left thigh, and with a delayed cry of anguish, Cade sinks to his knees and tries to turn.

The assailant has yet to show herself, but anyone from Clan Dahlasanor knows these arrows well, and how little anyone wants to be on the business end of one.

Nari's head is turning back again to look even as she's moving to position herself defensively. Where, though, the hunter could be anywhere, look at the angle, it didn't matter, but Sedi hadn't meant to kill, or he'd already be--but she did play with her prey; Nari had seen it, had scouted for it, but never had she had a moment of fear for any of the dozens of men Mirsedis had mercilessly dropped with as much emotion as she might display for any other animal. Less even.

She was scared now.

She's praying to Andruil that her attempt to interpose herself means anything when a voice issues in a breezy drawl from the low branches of a nearby tree.

“Oh Nahariel,” it says, as if addressing a small child. There is a tiny thud as a discarded fruit pit hits the ground beneath the pine. “You’ve been gone far too long. We don't defend shem. Shem aren’t friends.”

Noiselessly, a lithe blonde elf drops from the branches, her eyes as cold as her lazy smile is warm. “Shem,” she continues slowly, with exaggerated patience, “are land-grabbing murderers and treacherous thieves. They kill us, rape us, enslave us, and glory in our subjugation. They set our homes on fire, and throw decadent balls in the ashes. They don’t even have the decency to admit their monstrous natures. They call it holy. They exalt in it. Their Divine pointed and they fell all over each other with glee at the chance to bathe in the blood of our men, women, and children. They cut us down like dogs, drove us from even the pitiful lands they'd 'granted' us, and then made it anathema to speak the name of the elf their goddess called champion. And they’d do it again.”

Nymii's eyebrows arch elegantly and she pitches her voice towards Cade without looking at him, her gaze sharp on her clansister. “You look like a nice faithful boy, a good soldier,” she says, the words an insult in her mouth. “Look at her. Look her in those big, green, oh-so-worried eyes and tell her what you’d do if your precious Chantry pointed now.”

It was smart of Sedi to get Cade in the leg, because otherwise, being who he is, there's a good chance he'd have lashed out at Nymii by now. Not that she would've suffered for it; he'd be dead faster.
Trying not to whimper with each breath, he keeps shifting position, unable to find a way to both stay aware of the situation and relieve some of the pain. Resting his weight on his right side aggravates the shoulder, and the left side, the leg; Sedi knows what she's doing.

For her part, she's still in the trees, slowly creeping into view with all the deadly confidence of a rare cat, her yellow-green eyes feral and distant, her face half-covered in ink the color of blood. She seems to take a predatory interest in her writhing prey, crouching in the brush behind Nymii and barely paying Nahariel any heed.

"Pretty white boots," she says, her voice deceptively thin and girlish, eyes roving over Cade like a pig hanging in a butcher's shop, "for Halesta's baby."

Without a single clue what's going on, the awkwardly crouched Cade looks wild-eyed at Nari. He's not known for keeping his head in situations like these.

Edited 2018-02-26 22:42 (UTC)

Despite Nymii's exhortation to turn and look at Cade, Nahariel does no such thing. Looking away from the pair means not knowing where they are, and they're both too fast to allow that. Sina grew plants. Nari carves. Sedi and Nymii kill.

Nahariel, normally kind, quiet, gentle, is not what comes to mind when thinking of the Dalish. Now, however... "Back off," she spits with more cold and steel than Cade's ever heard from her as she moves like a predator herself to obscure Sedi's shot. "You're outside the border, he's Inquisition. Chantry. Fen'Harel shit on what you think, the People can't afford another March because Sedi wants a pair of boots. And they would, you know they would, you said it yourself." Whether or not that's what she actually thinks is irrelevant, as long as it wards them off.

All of this displeases Nymii, whose eyes flash glacially over a sneer.

“The People, you say? Because you obviously have our best interests in mind. Siuona would be so proud if she could see you now, spitting at your own family over some human.” The blonde bares her teeth in a parody of a grin and mimics Nari's low tone, "A Chantry human."

This is all a lot of talking and posturing, and Sedi isn't about it. As though to punctuate Nymii's last observation, she looses another arrow, but this one just shoots into the ground in front of Cade, making him yelp. At least he knows better than to plead for his life; Sedi wouldn't be able to resist that.

"Shem'len get skinned," she replies flatly, with a hint of disgust, as if she can't believe Nari forgot that. After a pause, "...you wanna do it?"
Wordlessly, Cade looks up at Nari again. Wait, shit--

Nymii invoking Sina's name hits Nari like a full slap in the face, but the hiss of another arrow passing a hairsbreadth from her leg to bury itself in the soil behind her snaps her back. She's got nothing. Sedi could not give less of a shit about another war--the hunter would probably welcome the target rich environment. Trying to appeal to Nymii would only last until Sedi reached her patience threshold and killed Cade anyway (for which Nymii would immediately forgive her), but there was no other option.

Save for turning to kill him herself, which was no option at all. So she looked at the forest, thought of the plains, took a deep breath, and threw her life away.

"Nymii, please," she said, quieter now. "It doesn't have to be like—"

“Like what?” interrupted Nymii, her voice dripping black with scorn. “Dirthara ma, Nahariel, I didn't think you were so forgetful. Didn't think Dhavihal and three quarters of Dahlasanor died screaming so you could run off and play flat-ear." She draws a knife languidly, tests it on her finger, and glances at Sedi with the warmth reserved only for her partner, "You can have him, emma lath. I think I'll gut her here while she can still die Dalish--it's better that way." She shrugs and looks back at Nari. "We can tell the Halaani he killed her."

And that was that. Try for Nymii, and leave yourself open to Sedi's arrows. Try to close with Sedi and find yourself hamstrung from behind. She'd seen it too many times.

Cade was downed, an easy target. She was far from her peak, with an unstrung bow and a hunting knife.

They were going to die.

"I'm sorry," she says to the man behind her, her voice oddly quiet and even. She pulls the blade anyway and shifts to the balls of her feet as Nymii's foot digs dirt, launching the hunter towards them.

As quickly as the hunters arrived, so the tide turns. There are more than just the two of them, after all; there are those who know a familiar voice when they hear it, and one such person's fiery red hair flashes into view as he dives into Nymii, slamming her to the ground before she can strike.

A birdlike whistle, and just like that, both of the blonde Dalish have arrows pointed at them from all sides. Ilriane, the source of the sound, drops down from a branch as Isen begins to pick himself up from tackling Nymii.
"Nahariel," says the eldest Halaan, in her measured way, "what is this?"

Huddled over a pool of his own blood, Cade struggles to stay awake and breathe evenly.

Nahariel sags in relief as her family appears around them, the knife dropping from her suddenly nerveless grip.

"Mythal enaste..." she whispers, looking helplessly around at each of them. Then as quick as the relief had flooded her, shame followed as her eldest sister asks what had happened. "I... It..." She was so stupid. How could she have been so fucking stupid. Staying in Kirkwall after Sina's death, carving Andraste, listening to the Chant? Nymii was right. She'd gone flat-ear, and for--

Nari's eyes snap wide, and she whirls around, the abandoned knife pulled from the earth as she whips off her scarf and slashes it, bites the short edge and rips the now long cloth down the middle into two pieces, one of which she quickly sets to tying around Cade's thigh above the arrow with vicious tightness.

"Ilriane, ir abelas, I'll come back right away. I will. I'll explain--" her voice breaks on the plea, so different than earlier, unable to meet anyone's eyes, "--I'll explain everything, just... I need to get him back to camp. Now."

Though visibly confused and perhaps unimpressed, Ilriane has never been cruel. "He won't make it," she observes, "best to end it quickly."
"Bring him back to ours," comes a melodic voice from behind Nari, and Halesta steps forward, smiling sympathetically and visibly with child. When Isen turns to angrily object, she holds up her hand with a flash of a glare-- patience, little brother.
"...the hunting camp," she clarifies, "Nari wouldn't keep company with anyone who'd hurt us. Look at him, he can't even stand."

Ilriane looks at her, exasperated; Halesta has gone soft since taking up with the Ashara boy, and yet... what was it all for, will Siuona have died for nothing if they won't move forward?
She casts her gaze to Nahariel, awaiting confirmation.

Sedi stands back a ways, an arrow still nocked though her bow is at rest, a look of abject disgust on her hollow face.

"Halesta..."

It had always been Halesta. Ilriane had been distant but caring in her own way, Lethanavir kind but every bit as much a caretaker as Ilriane. Isen she'd always been thick as thieves with (and hearing his brief wordless noise of objection hurts), Ghestlin energetic and always up for whatever mischief she and Isen were getting up to, but Halesta was the heart of the family.

To the hunting camp? Was it so close? Had things been so lean this winter?

Had she left her clan a hunter short to rebuild houses for the people who had let Sina's forest burn? It fills her throat to choking, but Cade is still bleeding, so she angrily dashes the tears from her eyes and continues to lay her crimes as bare as her face feels right now.

"...Please."

Nari closes her eyes again as she hears Nymii laughing hoarsely from the ground.

Edited 2018-02-27 02:00 (UTC)

Halesta has the distinction of having been old enough to almost understand what happened to their people on the day of their reckoning, yet young enough that it wasn't able to turn her heart. Ilriane and Leth, contemporaries of Keeper Thalia, both witnessed and fought and lost. This is the first human they've seen since Siuona's wedding, and even then it was just the one, with her weapons sheathed and her strange kossith associate.

"I don't think--" begins Lethanavir, and then several things happen at once. Isen jerks toward Nymii again at the sound of her laughter, his temper flashing; Sedi goes for him, her hunting knife glinting in the sunlight before, unexpectedly to all, it catches on Halesta's tunic as the middleborn Halaan lunges forward to shield her brother.
A female yip of pain, and then deathly silence. They stare at each other, Sedi and Halesta, one with a brilliant red scratch blooming across her now-exposed pregnant midsection, the other holding the blood-tipped knife and, to her credit, looking quite shocked.

Edited 2018-02-27 07:54 (UTC)

Bizarrely, the fact that Nahariel is already in shock makes her the quickest responder. With a light squeeze to Cade’s uninjured shoulder (I’m not leaving), she’s on her feet and already wrapping the second half of her scarf around Halesta as a makeshift bandage. The cut hadn’t looked deep, thank the Creators, but she wasn’t about to let her sister bleed.

For once, Sedi looked at a loss. Nymii, taking advantage of Isen’s new sight lines, rolls silently to her feet and comes around behind her, running a soothing hand down the arm that holds the now bloodied knife and relieving her of it, the blade disappearing somewhere on Nymii’s person. The two had lost not just their advantage but their even footing now and she knew it.

“Enough,” says the blonde conciliatorily, her arms gently folding around her partner’s thin shoulders. “We go to the hunting camp. If the shem does something, let it fall on Nahariel, but that scratch needs tending. No more of our blood needs shedding.”

Despite Nymii’s placating tone, her eyes glint at Nari when she says ‘our blood’, making it clear that as far as she was concerned, Cade’s was still on the table. Nari stares back, her hand touching Halesta’s shoulder, before returning to lift Cade’s chin to see if his eyes focus. “Can you stand, if I help you?” she asks with quiet intensity.

Nymii breaks the silence, and all eyes are on her, glinting with outrage: for the briefest moment, the clan's first baby in twenty years was under threat. Sedi, for her part, just backs up, shoulders her bow, and with a meaningful glance at only Nymii, turns to walk off into the forest.
That's a line even she can't cross, and she won't have another chance.

The Halaani, stonefaced, all focus on the remaining blonde elf, awaiting her choice.

Cade is so deeply in shock that he's nearly unconscious, but is able to blearily raise his eyes to Nari's and shake his head. At least he's pretty sure he's shaking his head.
There's a decent chance Sedi tipped her arrows with something, but it's also entirely possible he's just fading that quickly.

With a brief look of actual solemn apology, Nymii nods, and then steps backwards as well, turning to follow after Sedi. She's the more outspoken of the two, but when it comes down to it, she always follows where the other woman leads.

Nari is swearing under her breath, trying to figure out how she's going to manage to get someone half-again her size who can hardly stay conscious let alone walk anywhere. Every bump or jostle could settle the barbed shafts further into his flesh than they already were.

"How close is the camp," she asks finally, "We've one about two miles south-east, with horses. There are some supplies there. You can take the brown, the grey's skittish. If the hunting camp is closer than that... Ghestlin," he was fastest, "could you bring me what's there in the way of bandages. Salve. A potion if you have it; I'll replace it. Ilriane's right, we're not going anywhere, and Halesta needs it too."

Before the inevitable grumbling about running errands for humans, she turns back to look at them. "After Sina, I... didn't... take care of myself. Worse than that. I would have let myself freeze in the woods, he carried me out, it's owed," she says. Perhaps that would be enough. Then it's back again, kneeling this time, gritting her teeth at Cade's uneven breathing. She reaches to lift his chin again, staring into eyes gone glassy with shock and pulling from her memory.

"Hear now, Andraste, daughter of Brona, spear-maid of Alamarr, to valiant hearts sing--say it."

Edited 2018-02-27 21:29 (UTC)

The atmosphere is tainted, angry, devastated. Two of their clan are gone now, perhaps forever, and although it was their own doing, Nari bringing a human to their woods certainly didn't help.
Ilriane sighs through her nose and turns to the pair on the ground, scrutinizing them wearily. "Not far," she says without affect, "closer than yours. Leth, Ghestlin, carry him."
Isen is excluded on account of holding Halesta tightly, though he's staring at Nari like he can't quite believe what he's hearing, his expression nervous.

"..of... victory waiting," Cade breathes, and winces, giving a shudder. He wants to go to sleep.

Isen's look was... registered. Nari shoves it to the back of her mind with the rest of the reckoning she anticipates will descend on her head as soon as she's sure Cade's stable.

He wants to sleep? Too bad. Nari is insistent on the little attention he has, like a fly that refuses to leave no matter how it's swatted at. Unconscious would be fine if he wasn't in shock. That could kill, and after how absolutely and irredeemably fucked up everything had gotten, she wasn't having that. He stops talking, she prompts him. He struggles with it, it's back to the beginning. If he stops responding to that, she'll reach to tap him insistently with the palm of her hand, and if that brings nothing, she's got a full slap waiting in the wings.

So it will go until they reach the hunting camp.

Cade tries, and he actually does pretty well, though periodically he has to be startled awake by a tap. The men are able to carry him between them, and when they get back to their camp, they lie him down on a blanket by the fire for its light and capacity for cauterizing the wounds.

A short period of torn clothes, excruciating pain and screaming later, the human lies passed out and half-naked under a thick bearskin blanket, his injuries salved and healing as best they can without magic. Cade is good and done for the day, but he'll make it.

Halesta's scratch was shallow, so it's she and Isen who have taken up watch by the fire, boiling water and preparing to make food.

After a thorough (and rough enough to cause herself pain) scrubbing of her hands to get the blood off of them, Nari joins Isen and Halesta, sitting slowly with a sub-vocalized groan and staring into the bright heart of the flickering fire.

"...Just say it."

"Who is he?"
It's the question that makes the most sense, asked by Halesta with a sad, uncertain smile. Isen sits beside her, stoking the fire and looking pensive, sullen. It's been a terrible day on various levels, and it will likely only get worse.

Nari blows out a long breath and scrapes her fingers through her hair, looking entirely defeated.

"An ex-Templar. We'd vaguely met years ago, not too long after Sina and I made it to Skyhold. When the Inquisition moved to Kirkwall, there was some... friction with the townsfolk. With the Chantry. Even more after Sina grew her forest in the crater." Nari's weary delivery changes to wondering briefly, still entirely in awe of the great work their First had done, even ill as she was.

She ...would have been magnificent. Was magnificent. Nari's heart aches in layers, but she hasn't finished.

"In an effort to help repair some of the damage, I decided to..." Fen'harel devour my soul and shit it into the void. "...carve a statue of Andraste in the woods, where the statue stood before the explosion." She gestures vaguely toward the unconscious Cade. "He was stationed in Kirkwall, is," a pained wince, as she listens to herself, "very devout, so was the person I thought to ask to help. It took a month, he read me the Chant--you know I do better work with stories--we became... friends. Or at least friendly. Then Sina died and I just lost it. Started sleeping outside. I haven't gone back to the quarters we shared I can't bear it. Got frostbite." She shivers slightly, remembering, the fire seeming farther away. "I went into Sina's forest that night to die, he brought me out. That's who he is."

Edited 2018-02-27 22:41 (UTC)

Isen's incredulity only rises as Nari talks, until he's no longer even pretending to do anything useful. "Andraste? And you brought him here?" he demands, but a sharp look from Halesta calms him slightly. "...if he saved your life, then that debt's been repaid. We can send him on his way as soon as he's well." With the unspoken implication being, and you'll come back with us, and no one will ever speak of this again.

Ghestlin, nearby, pauses sharpening his arrowheads long enough to lift his head and listen. He was the closest to Sina's age, and likely would've bonded to her if another mage hadn't come along; he feels her loss acutely, as a misplaced future, something that could have been but never will be.

A brief spark of indignation lights Nari's eyes, "I didn't bring him here, Isen. We stayed far east of where the patrols go out, I had no--" she deflates again, "I had no idea that it had been lean enough this winter that you'd have to come so far east. Ir abelas, lethallin, if I'd had my head on right I would have known. Should have known. I should have come back after Sina..." she shakes her head glumly. "But the Inquisition is doing work. Important work."

Nari looks up at the scar the Breach left in the sky, its nearly omnipresent sickly green aura fading in and out. "They're taking out rifts. Fighting the demons that come out, and these horrors that a very powerful and very twisted man is sending to ravage just... everywhere. Nothing is safe. I know it sounds like I abandoned you but I'm there with them doing this because I love you. For you. For Halesta's baby, so it has a world to grow in." She reaches to pick at her scarf, but it's gone, so she just rests her hands on her knees, speaking more quietly. "For Sina, so that what happened to her never happens to anyone else ever again."

Edited 2018-02-27 23:28 (UTC)

Isen bristles, but he can't stay mad at Nari, who's been his best friend as long as he can remember. When she slips into elvhen, his shoulders slump, and though he continues to scowl, his rage has dwindled. It's replaced by the swirling emptiness of grief, Sina's far-away death punctuated by Nari's absence. He can't argue that everything would have been fine if they'd stayed behind, but it's hard to believe this way is any better.
"Do they need you so badly?" he asks, perhaps hurtfully, but there's hurt in his tone as well. Halesta sits with her hands folded between her knees, gazing into the flames, tears in her eyes. Ghestlin has gone back to his task, but continues to listen.

The tears in Halesta’s eyes set Nari’s to watering as well, and now that the heightened frenzy of danger and rage and fear is over all it takes is that and the familiar sound of Isen’s voice in entreaty rather than anger and her chest is filled with the press of an emptiness she’d forgotten existed being filled. Suddenly she’s choking back a sob and leaning towards him, throwing her arms around him with all the strength she can muster.

It’s been a long, painful, confusing few months. Months without seeing a single other member of her family or her clan, with Pel the only other Dalish she spoke to, and that immediately before she left for Skyhold. Months full of sickness and exhaustion and grief, of sleeping back and forth on Fern’s floor, Korrin’s couch, curled in a blanket in the workshop, freezing herself on the docks, in the forest—the forest, the place she’d gone to breathe without constriction and remember Sina without being crushed, being chopped for wood like it meant nothing. Days and days of keeping what could have been a deathwatch for the man she found she’d somehow come to care for—confusing in its own right—those days only existing in her memory. The ashes of the forest, burnt to earth, Andraste’s presence, the deafening silence of the Creators. Sina, always Sina.

They’d come for quiet, a brief escape from this madness, and had been met with Sedi’s brutality, Nymii’s scorn, the continued slivering of their tiny Clan, blood—there had been so much blood—Cade’s agonized sound as they’d freed the arrows, the sudden discovery that he bore scars—such scars—from another agony altogether, and her helplessness, over and over her helplessness, to do anything about any of it.

It was too much, and she clung shaking to Isen, unable to say anything.

Edited 2018-02-28 04:18 (UTC)

[closed] it's not the long walk home that will change this heart

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