faderift | (closed) don't you put me on the backburner

Entry tags:

{ adalia },
{ six }

(closed) don't you put me on the backburner

WHO: Six and Adalia
WHAT: Revelations™, Relations™, etc
WHEN: After the Deep Roads expedition!
WHERE: Adalia's rooms
NOTES: N/A

Sometimes, the obvious is in front of you and there is nothing you can do but attempt to accept it.

Six had arrived in Thedas and met Adalia incredibly soon, but she had denied any chance that this girl might be the sister that her step-mother had taken away so many years before. How long had it been, now? She had been barely five when Adalia had been stolen from them - a good thing, in the end - so it was close to seventeen years. Could seventeen years have gone by with no sign of her younger sibling only for the two of them to meet here, in the middle of a world away from her own?

It seems too coincidental to be true, but there are more and more signs that were making Six... Curious. Questioning. Uncertain. There were similarities, there was no denying that, and it had been pointed out once or twice, but she had never dared to believe it. The truth was that Six had abandoned her family when she had left Halyon and their village, so to find a connection here, in the middle of nowhere when she had spent the last seven years making her own path and finding her own future... It was difficult to accept and more difficult to face head on.

It is a good thing she had always been encouraged to be brave.

She makes her way to Adalia's room, hesitating outside the door. Her sword is strapped to her back, her pack with her, with the hilt wrapped in the cloak as it always is. She feels safer with it at her side, and she lifts her head to breathe, in and then out, before she knocks on the door.

Whatever happens, at least she has investigated. She has done her part and Six thinks that will be enough. She is just tired.

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Ever since they met for the first time Adalia has been one of the few people that has reached out to touch her without pausing to consider the nature of what she is doing. Six is still startled by it, even if she's beginning to expect it, and she's not sure what to do with herself. Her hand stays in Adalia's all the same, even if the awkwardness painted on her features will never quite disappear.

It's only going to get more difficult, it seems. Adalia has no knowledge of the one thing that might link them together and it makes Six pause to consider... Has she been wrong in her assumptions? The idea that they might be related is so far-fetched that it's baffling, but with the shape of their faces, the way they look...

It cannot be coincidence. Surely.

"Halyon was - is - my father." Her tone is low, frustrated, a touch bitter, coloured with a deep held anger that has never come close to fading away. "When I was five years old he and the woman he loved found one another. She gave birth to a child." It's such a nice story when she leaves out the hurt and the pain and the bruises on her skin. "Their daughter was named Adalia."

Was and then is — the distance of planes between them easier to parse if she thinks him dead, or something else? Something to ponder later, when Six doesn't need all Adalia's attention — she listens quietly as Six explains her family situation, a bit at a loss for how it involves her, until —

"Ada — oh."

A moment to pause, blinking as she takes that in, and then, a bit more wary than she had been —

"What happened to this woman? And the child?"

Perhaps Six feels attached because of the name? Because the mother and child died?

It's difficult for Six to rationalise this for herself and, so, she gives Adalia all the time she needs for the words to sink in. She's not entirely comfortable admitting that they might be related, if only because she had been so content to ignore any relation she had to her father for the past seven years of her life. It isn't fair, she thinks, that this girl has to suffer learning of the sins of their parent from someone who loathes him so intensely.

Drawing her hand away, Six frowns, turning her head to look elsewhere, unable to look Adalia in the eyes for fear of admitting the harder truth.

"She left when her daughter was a baby. I do not know what happened to her after that, only that she was gone. I was still a child."

It didn't make sense to her then, for the woman she saw as a mother to just leave her, especially when her world was so dark and cruel and sad. She had been angry for so long, a volatile and violent teenager, soothed only by the gentle hand of love and worship.

"... I do not know if you are what I thought you to be," Six shakes her head. "But I could not deny you the chance to discover it, if it was true."

It takes a full minute for Adalia to truly grapple with what Six is trying to not-say, so outlandish and bizarre an idea it is. She'd accepted that being dumped in Thedas meant she would never find her family, and had attempted to make peace with that idea. Now... this? The coincidence alone is staggering. Of all people, the two of them would find their way through the rifts? At the same time?

"You think I'm... your sister?"

Even the words sound foreign coming from her lips. How could that ever be? How could she ever have a family, when half her identity is being the beleaguered orphan?

Adalia can't think about that. She latches instead onto the very next thing she thinks of —

"The woman left you behind? I'm sorry."

It is farfetched and she knows that. There's a small part of her that feels ashamed, trying to bring an innocent woman into the fold of something as tragic as the story of her family, her life, but with the chance being there... She wishes, desperately, that she could pray and be heard, that she could be given some sign that she was doing this right.

Six feels like she is playing the part of the fool, the hilt of a greatsword heavy on her back. Her eyes close and she breathes in, once, gentle and sure, before she sighs.

"I thought it possible. There are some similarities between you and what I remember of her, and between you and me. If there was a chance... It would be cruel to take that choice from your hands."

The conversation turns somewhere she doesn't want it to, though, and Six's skin goes pale, her eyes darting away all over again.

"It was not your doing."

To press at Six's clear discomfort, or to deal with her own. To accept that this may be true, and invite Six even further into her heart and into her life, or to close herself off from the very possibility and call this all a foolish mistake, an uncanny coincidence.

There are a lot of choices Adalia is now faced with, and she doesn't like any of them. It takes a long moment for her to scoot closer to Six, reaching out to take her hand again. Her touch is gentle, light, and Six could pull away if she wanted to. Adalia really hopes she doesn't.

"If you're right, and we're..." She trails off, unable to complete the sentence. The words are in her throat, too desperately wanted to be put into the world, where they could be broken. "If you're right. What would you want that to mean?"

For a moment, Six is lost in her own discomfort. Nothing that had happened to her was Adalia's mother's doing, of course not, but the bitterness is still there, present on her tongue. It would be so easy to say something cruel and harsh, to damn her for leaving her behind to face the horrors of her home with no one to protect her or soothe her hurts, but... Can she truly blame her? If she had been in that position, with her own child to care for and save, would she have worried about someone else's baby?

Six knows what she would have done. Maybe things would have been different for her, then.

The touch to her hand jolts her out of her thoughts and she blinks, staring down at the ginger press of their fingers against one another. Adalia gets closer and Six swallows the strange lump in her throat, almost afraid to look up and see what the woman in front of her might be feeling. She's scared to realise that she's crossing a boundary she had never imagined, scared to accept that there might be someone tied to her by blood who is not cruel and evil and unjust.

"I had not thought that far ahead," she breathes out shakily. "I never imagined that I would meet you and I never hoped that you would come back to the place you were born." Too much suffering there to hope that her long lost sister would dare come home. It was easier to hope that she would never pick up her own train. "I... I was not certain what you would want either."

It's too much to hope that Six might want the same thing from a family that Adalia would. That her coming to Adalia with this information means that she wants them to be sisters, as much as they can be, and that she wants to deepen their relationship beyond the friendly acquaintanceship they had known before. But if she doesn't hope, if one of them doesn't say what they want, they'll never get anywhere, and they will languish in exactly the same place, only more awkwardly for this new knowledge. If they truly are siblings, if they aren't... there's no way of knowing for sure, at least not in Thedas. What, then, is it better to believe?

"I've never had a family," Adalia says, quiet. "But I've always wanted one. I would dream of it, as a child, and even now — I want somewhere to belong and people to belong to. I want context for who I am and why and... And roots. I want to matter. I want to be remembered when I'm gone."

Slowly, gingerly, Adalia leans forward, resting her forehead gently against Six's.

"I'd like to be your sister, if you want me to be."

It seems too easy, too ridiculous for it to be true, but how can she deny it? When Adalia looks the way she does and has the same name, comes from the same world, with the same features... She doesn't want to shrug it off and pretend as though this moment has not happened to them. For Six, who forsook her own name and abandoned her past, clinging to someone like this had been an impossibility. It had been a far off, childhood dream, a little girl sitting in her room hoping that when she peeked out the window her stepmother would be back to take her away.

"I left my family," Six admits it quietly. "I never wanted to have them. It was myself and my - my father, and I wanted nothing more than to pretend as though I was anyone but myself. When I left I found my own place, my own name. I made myself who I am today, and... That was without any dreams of finding you. Of discovering my sister for myself. I never considered it, until now."

There are tears in her eyes. She feels like a fool, but at least she is not alone.

"If you would have me... I would take that gift."

Well that sure opens up a whole bundle of questions. When Adalia had imagined her family, it hadn't been something that any potential sibling would want to run away from, but... Life isn't kind. She'd known that intellectually in Candlekeep, had even deluded herself into believing that she was living it, but the truth has always been that her circumstances may not have been her ideal, but they were far better than she was likely to have gotten if she'd grown up with her family. A vast library to explore, guaranteed food and shelter and clothing, intelligent if not kind company... Adalia's life was one of privilege, whether she realized it at the time or not, and though it is a saddening surprise that her sister's wasn't, it perhaps shouldn't be.

It's nothing to ask about now. Not unless Six wants to explain. Adalia holds herself exceptionally still, just taking in her words — she wants it too, she wants them to be sisters, she wants to be Adalia's family — and then she laughs, breathless and exhilarated, and throws her arms around Six's shoulders in the tightest hug she can manage.

"I've missed you so much, sister. I didn't know who it was I was missing but I missed you."

After a long, long few moments just spent with her arms wrapped tightly around Six, Adalia pulls back and grins beatifically at her.

"Tell me about your life, what did I miss? I want to know everything."

The embrace is a surprise but, perhaps, it shouldn't be. Perhaps Six ought to expect these things from Adalia now, and for the two of them to so easily accept this... He hopes that it's true. She hopes that she hasn't made a mistake, that someone else from their world won't arrive and rip it from them, that she can claim Adalia as her own blood and not have that family lost to her as well. Is it such a foolish thing, to hope that one living person in her family is worth loving and protecting? The gentle, childish part of Six thinks not.

It takes her a moment or two, but she leans into the embrace, her hand brushing over Adalia's hair with a gentleness that seems inconsistent with her stature and her strength.

It's not an exciting story to tell, as far as Six is concerned, but she tells Adalia as much as she's able. She tells her about training with the soldiers at home between jobs, their idle laughter and her she grew fond of them, as much as she dared. She told her about fleeing at fifteen, though not what she ran from, and working with mercenaries, soldiers, anyone who would take her for a few weeks or more. Six tells her about finding someone to train her as a Paladin, about how one day Sarenrae came to her and offered her an Oath and she took it.

She avoids her father. She avoids Aidan. She avoids death. It's easier that way.

When the stories come to an end she realises that she doesn't have the strength to move, not really, and she reaches, gingerly and unsure, to bring Adalia into her arms again, holding her gently. This, she thinks, quiet to herself, is something she could get used to. Something she could grow to like. Grow to love, perhaps, even if the thought scares her. Something good and worthwhile for the first time in months.

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(closed) don't you put me on the backburner

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