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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And join him she does, ducking out of her small tent with a long tall stretch and a deep breath full of the familiar scents of home. It is, that. Home. Even the birds sing it. Elated to be in the forest again she whistles back their calls and curls her toes into the soil... then tucking her chin in brief self-consciousness when she remembers she's not alone.

"Have you had a chance to be much in the Planasene?" she asks, dropping to sit crosslegged by the fire, pulling her well-loved (but long unused) hunting knife from its sheathe to check its edge.

Looking up when he hears a voice, Cade offers a small smile of greeting and shakes his head. "It's rare that I come this far west," he admits, "I'd... mostly end up around Sundermount and the Wounded Coast, if ever I left Kirkwall." And then there was northern Ferelden down to the Hinterlands, but that's hardly relevant. Or especially nice to talk about.
"You're familiar with it?"

"You could say that," replies Nari, her voice full of amusement. "It's rare that I came this far east, but I spent near my entire life in these woods." Until

the crackling noise of the rift, the high surprised wordless exclamation turning scream turning wheeze turning

She sucks in a breath and leans back on her hands, looking purposefully up at the bare branching tops of the trees, their few early courageous buds, the stands of pine that kept watch over the others during the cold months. "You should see it in summer. It's so... green. So many different greens and browns." She blends right in. "Living. Small streams coming down from the mountains in a hundred places, soft moss, birds chattering at each other; it breathes with the wind. Even in the heart of it the sun slants through, even alone you're not alone." The woodworker's smile has turned more fond than amused now. She tilts her head to gesture at the arrows he's working with her nose.

"I wouldn't have marked you for an archer. Part of your training?"

(She should probably check her own quiver, but the fire was nice.)

Edited 2018-02-25 17:17 (UTC)

Though Cade recognizes that kind of faltering breath, the abrupt ending of a sentence, he doesn't know what it's about. Prying won't help, however, so he just nods and looks away until Nari speaks again.

"I trained to be one at the abbey," he replies, looking down at his bow, "...there wasn't much use for it in Kirkwall, but I kept it up because I always thought I was better at it." Swords and shields are well and good if you have the arm strength, and are also more or less all you need when dealing with a rogue mage exploding with demons in a harrowing chamber.

"Are you ready?"

Nari nods, pushing herself to her feet with a whuff of air and moving to put out the campfire with the water she'd collected the previous evening before checking and strapping on her own gear, leaving her bow unstrung for the moment, and finally--ruefully--pulling a pair of boots on. "I've gotten soft," she mourns quietly, but when she turns back to him it's with a small smile.

"Much for tracking, or shall I take point? Unless I've gotten very soft, there are a couple of stands of white oak a few miles to the west where I've had luck before."

"Your feet will thank you," Cade says with a sheepish smirk, glancing at her boots. He doesn't understand this element of elf culture, but Beleth was his first exposure to it and he knows better than to ask.

"Right-- go ahead," he says with a nod. He's a decent enough tracker, for someone who does it maybe once or twice a year. It's hardly been a way of life for him at any point.

Nari taps her toes back and forth in way of response, then rolls her eyes, shakes her head at herself and turns to lead their way.

The still-wintering forest is quiet apart from the sound of the creek that fades as they leave it behind, the few intrepid birds calling to each other, and their own footsteps. For whatever reason--being withdrawn, some affinity for nature, or simply preferring quiet--Cade was a non-presence in a way few humans were, which was nice. Because of this, it only takes a mile or so of walking before Nahariel has settled into herself, her steps lighter and springier than they had been for months. Remembering the trepidation he'd expressed at climbing not so long ago, she finds the flattest ways whenever possible, stopping to offer a hand in some treacherous places if it does become necessary to take a rockier path for a brief while. While a out of shape herself, this place is hers.

If every activity could be done in silence, Cade wouldn't complain. He's more than content to trail along behind Nari, enjoying the fresh air, squinting his clear eyes against a sparkling patch of sunlight on snow, tilting his head to the sound of rustling branches.

His attention to the environment is how he notices when the birds stop singing. The sound dwindles and stops, a collectively held breath amid the avian chorus, and Cade stops walking to look uneasily around.

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.

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

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