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

[onlyhymns]

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.

Comments

[nadasharillen]

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."

[onlyhymns]

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.

[nadasharillen]

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."

[onlyhymns]

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.

[nadasharillen]

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.

[onlyhymns]

Isen is quick to catch her, and he holds Nari tightly, his own eyes watering and perhaps even spilling over. It's been impossibly hard on all of them; Sina was something of a little sister to him as well, and though they've been feeling her loss since she and Nari first set out for Skyhold, everything has been bleaker since then.
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.

[nadasharillen]

It's good and right, being here. Isen's embrace is like a set of old leathers, well-worn and comfortable, the way it fits remembered immediately. It takes time, enough that someone needs to feed the fire again, but eventually her shaking slows and stops, her fingers loosening the extremity of their grip.

"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."

[onlyhymns]

"Radavur," Halesta replies, a bit of a blush coming to her fair, freckled cheeks, her eyes still red from the tears. "I met him at the bonding. He's one of Ashara's traders, working often with shem'len." She and Isen exchange a look, not entirely friendly, suggesting that there have been Words on this matter-- but Isen is in no mood to continue any arguments, his mouth resting on the top of Nari's head, his eyes downcast in thought.

"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."

[nadasharillen]

Feeling where Isen's face rests against her hair as she nods at Halesta, Nari bumps him playfully with her head before settling down again. A lump rises in her throat as she thinks about why they're overdue for some joy, but she's determined to be done crying for now and she swallows it. "It's nice to know there're good surprises left out there."

There've certainly been precious few recently.