OPEN | Looking Down on Empty Streets

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lexie, Evie, Loki, Thor, Fifi, Gwen, anyone else who wants to deal with this actual mess of a woman (special shout out to anyone who has a four letter (nick)name apparently)
WHAT: Late nights, early mornings, a bunch of processing the horrible things that happened!
WHEN: Post return from Tevinter (so... mid-month?)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: cw: a nice violent nightmare, general mental trauma. hmu if you want something special, will do brackets or prose as desired.

I. The Apartments (Day)

When Alexandrie is home, much of her time is spent laying on the chaise out on the balcony staring into nothing and hardly seeming to care about the oppressive heat that so irked her the month before. Her hair, if it is styled at all, is woven into a simple braid and pinned up, a far cry from the way she used to wear it. Sometimes she is a fury of diplomatic paperwork, sometimes she is repetitively and grimly throwing a knife into a target that is a new fixture in the area. Sometimes she will, all of a sudden, snap into the light and cheerful woman she was, although her laughter is harder to come by. Whichever it is, she is still welcoming of callers.


II. Hightown (Night)

She haunts the streets like a ghost; all loose hair and pale wan skin and simple white dress, dressing gown layered over it against the slight chill that still manages to cover Kirkwall by second or third bell despite the heat of the day. Often, she is in the memorial garden, sitting and watching the fountain or pacing the paths repetitively. Sometimes she makes her way to wherever the sea can be best seen. Like a spectre, too, she is gone by the time the sky begins to lighten.

Anyone else out and about in the dark hours?


III. Loki/Evie:

Smell. Noise. There's so much of it. The screams of panic, the mortal ones unlike any other, some far too high to have issued from fully grown throats. The ozone of magic ripping the air mixing with the choking char of burning stalls, the metallic smell of blood. Blood. Far too much of it. How can there be so much. The visceral nigh-unbelievable revulsion at how thickly it drips. It clings to her hands, sliding, sticking. The wink of sunlight on silver. The noise he makes around it is so desperately wrong: liquid, bubbling. The same thing, then, on a far slenderer throat. Sudden. Silver again, but streaked with red. Silver where it doesn't belong. Cannot belong. Disbelief. Overwhelming horror that grips so hard she is frozen and the sound, the sound that comes from them.

She never quite screams. While there is noise that accompanies Alexandrie's gasping terrified surges to consciousness, the shriek in her throat never truly makes it past the hands that fly reflexively to cover her mouth to fiercely stifle it as her knees shoot to her chest, her heart pounding like something is trying to fight its way outside of her. Sometimes they are clapped flat against her face; sometimes it's the side of her hand between her teeth, her jaw clenching hard enough to bruise, even to draw blood, although that is more rare. Always it is a desperate bid to prevent her horrified shuddering panic from waking her bedmate.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not.


IV. Thor/Fifi:

There is a small disturbance in the kitchens. The pour of water, the clink of metal, of china, rummaging through dry goods. Investigating will reveal Alexandrie, wrapped in a white silk dressing gown, her hair finger-combed and tied around itself in a simple knot, quietly looking through the selection of tea as the glyphs on the kettle do their work of setting the water to boil.

She looks tired and subdued—she often looks so, recently—but she manages a small smile all the same.

“Pardonnez-moi. Did I wake you?”


V. Gwenaëlle:

[ she has come looking for Gwenaëlle for a reason she can't really fathom. Perhaps it is because there is precious little in Kirkwall that is familiar and they had walked the same streets and halls, seen much of the same art, known many of the same faces, have the same mother tongue. Perhaps it is because Gwen too had been abruptly thrown from that world into one that so immediately included brutal violence and death that stood close enough to feel the hot splatter of it. Perhaps it is both things.

Whatever the reason, Alexandrie is knocking now on the door to the Provost's rooms in hopes of finding the small, concentrated, dark-haired woman, wearing a simple summer dress with her hair pinned up just as simply, the neck of a bottle containing something substantially stronger than the wine she'd offered at the Tourney in her fist. ]

Comments

1

[notacrow]

[ Myira is tired. Very tired. She had ridden to Tevinter and back and had to deal with Lakshmi and Kitty acting like a pair of angry cats shoved into a bag together and also mind the damn refugees. Then there had been the flurry of worried activity around Kirkwall in preparation for escapees and she still wasn't really sure what's been going on around here. She needs to clear her head.

So she does what she always does, fly away and try not to worry about it. She wheels over Kirkwall in the warm air that rises from below her, occasionally flapping against a gust of wind from off the sea. Finally, after a couple of hours just riding the wind she begins to lazily circle down and down and down and finally settles on a familiar balcony. Without waiting for even a 'hello' she changes her shape and flops over onto the chaise with a tired groan. Her hair is... not as much a mess as it has been. At least today she seems to have combed and brushed it. She's still favoring simple clothing--today a tunic and breeches to try and ward off the summer's heat. ]

Wotcher, Lexie?

[ She speaks with a muffled voice, face buried in a cushion. ]

IV

[thorndergod]

He's supposed to be standing vigil. Has been, even. But Thor cannot summon the energy to care if someone spreads word that he left his mother's side long enough to take a desperately needed break. He can't even care if Loki sees him and snipes at him, he doesn't think, though the presence of someone else in the kitchens startles him enough he takes a step back. It's just Lexie, it turns out, and Thor gives her an exhausted shake of his head.

"Is there enough water for two cups of tea?" This is not what duty requires of him, but they are not in Tevinter and he is not actually the head of the family.

i

[rathercommon]

[ Kitty comes by a few days after the rescue. In contrast to Lexie, her demeanor is altogether unchanged by her experiences in Tevinter. Part of it is that she didn't go through what Lexie went through, certainly - only saw the aftermath - but part of it is that this is also just how Kitty operates. She refuses to dwell. She just moves on.

So she comes calling as she ever does, a tall skinny figure brimming with scarcely-restrained energy. In one hand is a bundle of plums; in the other is a bottle of lemonade. Without so much as a how d'you do, she lifts the latter and asks - ]

Where are your cups?

Spirit Healer Special (for Anders)

[coquettish_trees]

Darktown is not a place where Alexandrie would normally have even briefly considered stepping her dainty slippered foot for any reason at all. With Emile gone she still wouldn’t.

So she doesn’t. She steps Geneviève’s confident booted foot in it instead.

Despite their being identical, it is very rarely that they raid each other’s closets—especially so in this direction—but here she is in pants with a fitted shirt tucked into them and well worn and cared for leather boots to her knees, her hair pulled back in a functional tail at the nape of her neck, knife visible at her back as a deterrent. Her face is set severely, and she walks with both purpose and the aped gait of a practiced swordswoman. She hasn’t the skills to back it, but perhaps any would-be toughs won’t know.

Even so she is nervous and jumpy, and is glad when she finally reaches the clinic where she’d been told she could find the Inquisition’s most veteran healer. She could have sent by crystal, yes, but she wants to see his face when he answers her question. Has to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he believes whatever it is he says.

The door is open when she pushes it, leans through, and then walks inside to call to him softly.

“...Anders?”

III

[hwaaaitsme]

Loki has not slept well in weeks; on some nights he refrains from it actively, avoids sleep as one might avoid walking too closely to the border of darktown, and on others he attempts to succumb and finds he cannot. Tonight had been neither and, for a few hours, wrapped in the warmth of his bed and the warmth of his bedmate--ah but touch still scalds and he finds he cannot force the tension out when it is upon him--he found some measure of peace.

His dreams were black and formless, a mass of nothing wrought from a mind to exhausted to even conjure images. He rises from the depths of that blessed darkness as the bedding pulls--shears away from him at an angle--and he knows that Alexandrie has bolted upright. He does not need to ask, nor even be fully awake, to know what has awoken her so. The image is back in the forefront of his mind and his hands tense where they are fisted in his coverlet.

She is trembling, he can feel it despite how she draws away. She wants to scream and, at the same time, is desperate not to. Her silence is caustic and, tonight, it comes with the smell of blood.

He will not be able to sleep again.

"Are you alright?" He asks, knowing already that the answer is 'no'. Had he more wits about him he might have pretended that he had awoken slowly, that his ascent hadn't been abrupt and draining, but he was drawn thin. He sits, lets the blankets fall away, and turns to look at the woman beside him.

hightown

[sulena]

It is usually night when it feels safe enough to venture into Hightown without the strange or annoyed looks of its human occupants. There is little for them to worry about in their sleep, even a small elven mage visiting the sight where several elves once weaved a forest into existence with magic alone. Although she, at times, misses the forest there is solace to be found in the memorial that was built in the ashes of two tragic events.

She is often not alone in the garden, even in these early hours before the sun rises up but she does not expect to find this ghost of a woman when she enters carrying a woven crown of wildflowers. There is a moment of pause before she bows her head, a simple greeting.

"I hope I am not disturbing you."

IV again fight me

[untiltheyarent]

It's the second time in as many nights, but at least this time Fifi suspects she knows who it is. And she finds she's right, as she emerges from her room again and, this time, simply pads into the kitchen half-asleep and takes out a cup and saucer for the lady.
She sets it down in front of Alexandrie and checks the kettle, resting her cheek on her curled hand as she watches it boil, letting Lexie investigate the brews. "Something to help you sleep, Madame?" Fifi asks, her voice raspy from sleep.

v.

[elegiaque]

( it's been a hell of a month, and it's not yet over. most are returned from tevinter, but as kostos so bluntly put it to her they left people behind—mostly people gwenaëlle could easily put from her mind, but for one name. that adalia's loss would be survivable wouldn't make it less a loss, wouldn't make it acceptable. they will have to go back. there is work still to do.

yet it's a relief she wouldn't have thought, just being back in the gallows. the fucking gallows, of all the places in all of thedas, become familiar; solas's mural on the walls, her things among her husband's, hardie a welcoming weight leaned against her. home, for now. for a time.

when she comes to the door (and it is she who comes to the door) she's dressed similarly simply, exchanged her ship-clothes for a soft gown and undone, washed and combed out her salt-water plaits. traces of what happened colour her in bruises stark against soft, pale fabric; her jaw, her arms. but she's whole, and so is lexie—

who she embraces, which is a very fine greeting. she takes in the bottle when she draws back, holding a hand light underneath it, then looking up to meet her eyes, )

Come on, ( linking their arms, ) I know somewhere we won't be interrupted by anyone else's work.