faderift | [open] peel the scars from off my back

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[open] peel the scars from off my back

WHO: Cade and you!
WHAT: Just hangin' around, livin' life, bein' weird
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: The Gallows and Lowtown, mostly
NOTES: All the usual warnings that come with Cade. If you'd like a specific prompt, hit me up or just throw one in the comments.

I. Out and about in the Gallows (recommended for our new Templar friends)

Cade has not been to collect his lyrium dosage since before all the Templars were ravaged by their mysterious illness, but he still arrives every morning looking fit as a fiddle (comparatively) to start his workday with Enchanter Shivana. Being that he's a reclusive and fairly off-putting person by virtue of his... well, him-ness, Cade has never been part of any group that hasn't had its share of rumors about what he's about. But lately he's become more of a cautionary tale, a there-but-by-the-grace-of-the-Maker-go-I when he slinks by any on-duty Templar and avoids their gaze.
Despite being kicked out of the Templars, and not collecting his lyrium, he's not having withdrawals. He also works under at least one elf (two if Beleth counts), practices archery on the regular, and almost, if you squint, seems to be starting to live a normal life.
That bastard's hiding something.

II. Lowtown

Now that the weather has gotten warmer, Cade stays out later in his little hiding places where he reads or writes or just watches the sea. He can often be found in the evening with his back to a wall and his gaze beyond the people walking by, finding solitude where there's really none to be found.

Periodically someone tries to mug him and comes away disappointed, or gets a coin or two. It's an occupational hazard of living by the docks.

III. The Chantry Garden

Regardless of weather, every day at dawn Cade can be found at the newly-carved Andraste shine in the center of what remains of the forest, saying his morning prayers before he continues uptown to the Gallows. It's not nice to disturb him, but inevitably someone does on occasion.

IV. Misc!

Choose Your Own Adventure

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Similarly palpitating-- she's horrifyingly sure it must be audible-- and suddenly dry mouthed, Nari holds the crystal like it might bite her.

Is he actually...

He sounds terrible, though, and it cuts through her sudden attack of nerves cleanly enough that her voice is steady, if a bit hesitant, when she responds. "Do you-- did you want... to come over?"

Her eyes flick of their own accord to the space beneath her bed to where she'd slid That Box and Its Contents, the which she'd not known (even as she'd taken it from the Orlesian merchant who'd looked at her knowingly enough that she'd wanted to slap the expression from his face) whether or not she'd ever have cause to use, and finds she's holding her breath.

He does. He just has to admit it, to her and to himself. He's so close, and... well, something needs to happen. It's a demonstration of good faith that he hasn't snuck off to the usual shed to just do it.

"..um... sure," comes his hesitant reply.

The breath she'd been holding comes out unevenly, her free hand rising quickly to try and muffle it.

Okay.

"I'm... on the third floor of the mage tower. It's got a glyph on the door; one of Myr's."

Cade nods silently, not that she can hear it, but something gives him pause: "Myr?" Will he be there? Perhaps this is a mistake.

“He’s ...out.” Oh. Oh no. She’s never lied to Cade, not once, but Myr and Simon were still so worried, and they’d trusted her, she can’t tell him either. Her mind whirrs furiously. “I can come to you, if that would worry you less,” Nari says, trying to dodge the issue entirely. “Or there are unused rooms here still.” Several of them were locked, but some weren’t, and the ones that were she could pick into with the barest of effort.

So he's... not out. Or... it's not entirely clear to Cade, but he realizes he doesn't want Nari traversing the streets of Lowtown alone, self-sufficient or not, and he definitely doesn't want to be seen meeting her in a back alley. People already talk enough as it is.

"I'll... I'll go there," he decides, "a spare room. ...see you soon."

Nari makes what she hopes is an affirmative and encouraging noise and then, once the crystal’s off, slides down in her chair and lets out a half relieved half aggrieved one, hand sliding through her hair shakily.

Then she’s up and moving, throwing a cloth over the spilt ink to absorb what it can—she’ll scrub it later—and snatching her belt (with its pick set, flint, tinder) and an awkward armful of firewood to go make one of the still abandoned rooms vaguely comfortable. One of the ones that doesn’t have neighbors.

If he’s coming from Lowtown, she’ll have time for a few more trips.

That is, if she can manage to light a void-cursed fire with her hands shaking like this.

It takes him a little over half an hour to arrive, with a small sack slung over his shoulder and a grim look on his face as he taps politely at the door.

More than enough time for an elf full of nervous energy to move what she wanted. When she answers the tap at the door to admit him there’s a respectable fire going. The last vestiges of chill still cling to the stone walls, to the floor at the other end of the room, but it’s warm enough on this side. She’s got a basin of water warming on the hearth as well.

Closing the door behind him, Nari crosses the room to sit on the edge of the couch she’d pulled over, and looks up at him seriously to follow Cyril’s advice.

“I need to know a couple of things,” she says, “before...”

Cade is a bit surprised at what he sees, and pauses in the doorway to look around at how nicely the room has been put together. Did he... misunderstand what this is about? But Nari wants to talk first, and he feels like he's about to crawl out of his own skin, so he obliges. Taking a hesitant seat after her, he sets his bag down on the floor beside him and folds his hands in his lap with a nod to prompt her onward.

Centering herself with the memory of talking to Cyril, Nari turns herself to face Cade, resting her back on the arm of the seat and regarding him seriously.

“When you do this yourself, you can feel it. You’re in control of it and you know when you’re done,” she says. “I can’t feel it and I won’t know. I’m going to need you to tell me, and I need you to promise me—“ she weights the words both in voice and with a slight forward movement of her head, “that you will. If you don’t feel like you can do that for yourself, that you somehow don’t deserve my stopping, I...” Nari trails off briefly, running her hand through her hair with a mournful look, “I understand that. But in that case, I need you to stop me for my sake. Because if I hurt you, I mean really hurt you...”

Her face softens slightly, and she reaches out as she had in the Grove, her fingertips just barely touching his cheek. “I will be absolutely devastated.”

Even in his current state, his mind clouded by the darkness of self-disgust and misery, Cade can't help but blush when he thinks about what's set to happen. He looks at the floor while Nari talks, wringing his hands and wanting to disappear, hoping in no small way that she can help him do so. Even for a little bit.

He considers her words for a moment, turns them over in his mind, trying to find fault in them. It's hard not to be frustrated, that he can't be beaten within an inch of his life, hurt until he passes out, something he's never been able to achieve for himself but that he always wants. Her request isn't unreasonable, even if it is, in its way, unfair.

Brought out of his thoughts by the fingertips on his cheek, Cade looks up, meets Nari's eyes briefly, then averts his own again. "I've... never done this before," he admits, "..or... or anything like it. With anyone." Which is to say, he doesn't know what will be too much for her.

A small half-smile ghosts onto Nari’s lips, and she looks down, lifting her shoulders in a helpless shrug.

"...Neither have I," she says. Nari thins her lips in thought, looks back up at him. She’d wanted so much to be able to somehow navigate this well from the start, even though all previous experience with learning something new gave that hope the lie. It’s just that normally new materials didn’t look at you and make your breath catch. What kind of person could start smithing with a rank novice’s hand if they cared this much about the metal?

It was different than all of that though. She’d practiced once she’d had it, on a pillow as suggested. Knew the weight, the balance, how far to stand. She’d even stood in her room stripped to the waist to feel the stinging thud of it for herself, so she’d know. This part, though, this talking, there was no practicing for. At a loss for where to go, she thinks back. Cade had always responded best to the precise things she thought she shouldn’t say. Nari blows a breath through her nose and sits in the discomfort of it.

"I think I started wrong," she says finally, pulling her legs up, "which is what I was afraid of. That I don’t know what I’m doing, but only have one chance to get it right or—" or what? She didn’t actually know what the nameless fear in the pit of her stomach was. "—or you won’t—" Nari gestures helplessly, "—trust me? ...anymore?" a brief pause, as her eyes lower to where apparently she'd been twisting her hands together slowly. "...if you do?"

He looks up uncertainly when Nari speaks again, pursing his lips and listening carefully. When she makes her concerns clear, it occurs to Cade that can actually do something about it.
"...I do," he admits, "and I... I'm not..." He's not good with words, and it frustrates him now more than ever. "I promise, if... if it goes wrong, I won't blame you."

She knows he means it to be comforting, but there's something heartbreaking in hearing Cade say he's willing to absolve her of that blame. Rather than as intended, it makes her want to take more responsibility; but it's a desire that's wholly hers now, rather than a worry about consequence. That would do.

"...Okay." Nari exhales, dipping her chin in a shallow nod. She worries at her lower lip. "Let's-- okay. Let me start again. Tell me what you want," she says, her gaze full of gravity. Then, more quietly, "If you're worried, I'm not-- I promise I won't be scared of it." Of you. "I'm far more frightened of not knowing."

Here Cade had hoped he would get here, toss over the whip, she'd go to town, and it would be done with. All this talking is making him anxious, like he's fooling himself somehow, lying to her, and a shameful excuse for a person in general. He goes a little red when he thinks about voicing what he wants to do, when it should be self-explanatory, is this a trick? Is he this big of an idiot?

With an awkward motion, he tugs open his bag and withdraws the homemade whip he uses, knotted ropes stained an awful brown with dried blood. He turns it around so the handle side is facing Nari, and extends it out to her, his eyes lowered and his hand shaking. This is what he wants.

For once Nari's deeply glad he's not looking, since she winces painfully at the sight of it. She can't, however, disguise the in-drawn breath that accompanies the squeeze of her heart; hopes he attributes it to her steadying herself rather than her deep dismay.

Anything made by someone's hand is art. All art speaks, and what Cade has made and carried and used all these years does so with a desolation that is almost palpable. Nari stares at the stains, wonders how many years of his blood is inside the fibers. It seems he'd not often cared for it, but no-one truly cares for tools they come to like this. She'd thrown the knife she'd used on herself into the sea.

She can't. She won't. Not with that.

But even as she reaches out to cover his shaking outstretched hand with her own to gently lower it, she's reaching her other to carefully lift the lid of the box tucked beside her and retrieve what it holds, pulling it across her lap accompanied by the soft sound of leather on cloth to where it'll be visible.

Nahariel doesn't, on the whole, care for the finer things in life. She wears simple clothing until it falls apart. Simple, too, are her food, her bedding; her few valuable possessions all gifts. Her one indulgence is her tools. It's for those that she trades and sells her boxes, her statuettes, her staves. They cost her dearly, but it's a cost she's always been more than willing to pay.

The nine flat dark braids of the cat she'd traded for lie across her thighs, their tips like tapered leaves, their leather oiled supple with care and shining dully in the firelight. Her thumb rubs nervously at the wrapped hardwood of its carefully balanced handle.

"I'm... prideful, Cade. When I work, I always use my own tools," she says, her voice low and careful, unsure again as she makes her counter-offer. "Is that... all right?"

Edited 2018-04-05 03:29 (UTC)

He looks up in surprise when Nari presses his hand downward, and Cade's eyes shift to what she withdraws instead; a shiver passes through him, not because it looks all that fearsome-- which it does-- but because... she bought something. Or... acquired it somehow, whatever the case, but she did it after they spoke, and did it... for him. That's unthinkable.
He stares at the cat for a long moment, then slowly raises his eyes to meet Nari's, bewilderment in them, and a sentiment that he can't place. He knows he can't give her an intelligent answer, so instead he nods the affirmative. It's all right, but now everything is different.

Edited 2018-04-05 03:57 (UTC)

It's Cade's bewildered look-- part of the family of expressions that always tugs at the places in her that want to care for him-- that gives Nari the solid base she needs to nod back and then rise to her feet. She takes a few steps toward the fire to look into it and draw the falls through her hand to feel the myriad small edges that braiding the leather had made-- dull as they may be, they'll sting.

For all that she was about to do this, there's still something that makes her keep her back turned to allow him the privacy to strip off his shirt alone.

"Brace on the couch with your arms out," she says as evenly as she's able. It's gentle, despite being instruction rather than suggestion. "If you don't tell me-- want me-- to stop, I need to know without question when you go down. If you're like that, I'll see it right away."

Sounds fair enough. Cade has gone a bright red by the time Nari turns around, and suddenly this is something entirely new, a ritual, not the same as kneeling on the floor with his shirt off and pummeling his own back. It's...
It brings to mind the abbey, how the other children, the ones who acted out, would get a switch to their legs; how this never happened to him, but he couldn't stop thinking about it when he saw it, wondering how it must feel. Being acted upon by someone other than oneself, someone with that power.
Save for one person, no one ever paid him that much attention. Feeling his thoughts going in a bad direction, he gives his head a little shake and carefully folds his shirt to lay it next to his old rope contraption, where they can both be recovered when this is over.
Then, shaking now and not quite sure why, he does as instructed and braces himself.

She waits, watching the edges of the fire lick out, the bright sparks that follow it sometimes to fade in the air, until the noise of cloth stops, and takes a slow breath. Turns back around.

Nari looks at him. For a moment, she sees him like sculpture: line and curve, the dancing dapple of the shadows over the pale delicacy of his skin, how the firelight turns his hair to burnished gold, and she wants to stand like this for far longer than she should. A small shake of her head and her eyes are searching across the marked plane of his back to make sure he'd not added anything new since the forest, is gratified to see nothing angry or livid. Yet. whispers a little voice, which she quashes. She wasn't here to hurt him-- or, at least, not like that.

How far had she stood? Here. Her feet, bare, make only the smallest pad of sound as she moves behind him. She'd been right about the height-- but then, she was good at that sort of estimation. Even so, she's not about to start in on him without checking. She lets the braids waterfall from her hand, lowering the whip to her side and rolling her wrist.

Another breath.

She tests in an arc, lightly, a bare brush; her eyes are trained hawkish, intent, to see where it falls between his shoulders. More right. She corrects, tests again backhanded. Better.

Last breath.

The third time, her arm's in it, and the strike lands angled across his shoulders with a thud that's both heavy impact and brighter dig of where the braids edges flare slightly.

Normally Cade hates when someone is near and he can't see them, especially when he's in any state of undress. But he's unusually focused at the moment, and every sound Nari makes behind him is amplified tenfold by the anticipation of what's to come. Footsteps, the swish of the implement that makes him flinch before it ever touches him; then it does, but it doesn't hurt, and he shivers at its contact.
It's... exhilarating in a way this could never be when he was doing it. Because he can't see it, because it's out of his control. And that's... strangely ideal.
A sharp intake of breath follows the impact-- he'd been lost in his head, and this brought him out of it.

Whatever nervous hesitance had still vibrated in Nahariel dropped away suddenly now that she'd actually struck him-- now it was craft, and she wore her worship of that gift in the graceful curving lines of the vallaslin she'd chosen all those years ago.

His quick breath, the unbidden tense of his shoulders, the way that even with that he held his place on his knees, still braced. If she'd somehow worried that this had been some long improbable game, that would have dropped away as well.

Free of all that, Nari stood a little straighter. She made her wrist loose, kept her gaze intent, swung again. Cyril had said not to cross the wounds, but she'd not made any, so she's free to alternate as she wishes.

If, for some reason, he ever looks like he's anticipating where her next blow falls then, well, she'll just change it.

The difference is striking, quite literally, between this and when he does it himself. The hits are that much harder on account of having the range of motion to make them, but that makes them all the more... satisfying?... despite the discomfort. Cade is a quiet person in every way, but even he can't stifle the occasional small gasp or whimper when Nari strikes true, and soon he finds his hands sweating and his grip on the couch slipping as a result. He readjusts, instinctively shrinking away from the beating even as he continues to let it happen, his back twisting subtly as his self-control dwindles.
It's a lot, but it's not too much. Not yet.

Nari can feel a burn slowly building in her shoulder, but she's not about to let that stop her, even if she has to compensate by twisting slightly to let her back help. He hadn't told her to stop, and despite the flinching he's still holding in place. That, and there's something about the intermittent sounds he can't stifle that makes her belly clench low and hard; makes her want to chase them.

Since she's let herself move, for this, beyond the hows and whys and shouldn'ts that make her bound to thought... she starts paying better attention to cause and effect, and does.

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cw- self harm

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here we gooo~ [/mario]

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