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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
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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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"...Just say it."
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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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."
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"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.
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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.
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But Nari is here, and she needs him, and he loves her, so he holds on as tightly to her as she does to him. Halesta wipes her eyes and looks up at the pair with a sad, weary smile. Perhaps, someday, they'll be what her brother wants. Perhaps not, because nothing can be predicted anymore.
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"You got stronger without me around pulling all the weight," says Nari, the jest watery and hoarse, partially muffled in his chest. She turns her face outward toward Halesta, and sits up most of the way, leaving her shoulder still tucked under Isen's arm. She scrubs at her eyes with the back of a hand, managing a smile.
"Tell me something good. About the baby. About the mysterious fellow who helped out with it," Nari says, her faltering smile widening cheekily for a moment. "About a rock you found that looked like Keeper Thalia. Anything. Anything good."
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"It happened so quickly, I wasn't even quite ready," Halesta continues with a laugh, "but he's a good man, I've been healthy, and I think having a babe to spoil will bring back some smiles." She rests her hand on her bump, regarding it fondly. "It seems life goes on whether or not we're prepared. I think our clan is overdue for some joy."
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There've certainly been precious few recently.