[open] where I go
WHO: Knight-Lieutenant Cade Harimann and you
WHAT: A jumpy templar is out of the dungeon and getting his bearings on Skyhold. What horrors will he face? (by horrors I mean other people)
WHEN: Early Haring
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES:If your character met him during speed dating, feel free to assume that conversation happened IC (except Nerva) and that they're already acquainted.
WHAT: A jumpy templar is out of the dungeon and getting his bearings on Skyhold. What horrors will he face? (by horrors I mean other people)
WHEN: Early Haring
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES:If your character met him during speed dating, feel free to assume that conversation happened IC (except Nerva) and that they're already acquainted.
Finally unleashed upon his new home, and wearing his traveling leathers with the unmistakeable flaming Templar sword emblazoned on the chest, Cade made his way around Skyhold with the intention of finding a purpose for himself.
1. The battlements. Cade was unnerved by crowds and limited sightlines, so he had taken to spending a good chunk of time up in the battlements. It gave him an opportunity to watch, listen, and grow accustomed to life below, which was so very different than how he'd come to understand the world.
2. The training grounds. Although he had first been seen in his heavy Templar plate, wielding a sword, left to his own devices Cade was more likely to use the archery range. He was an exceptionally good shot, and spent hours shooting targets with the single-minded concentration of one who was trying not to think about anything at all.
3. The chapel. He could often be found alone in the small chamber just off the cloistered garden, on his knees and with his head bowed to the altar of Andraste.
4. Anywhere! Give me a place and I'll find a reason that he'd be there.
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"Um... battlements," he said, and shook his head irritably, realizing that wasn't a sentence. "Do you want to--??" He gestured vaguely at the battlements, realized he still hadn't conveyed his question, and sighed, pushing his hair back out of his face in a gesture of resignation. "...I'm going for a walk." Please come with me, was implied, if he could figure out how to form sentences again.
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Cade being odd isn't that strange, though, in the scheme of things.
"Sorry," he adds, just in case. "You must have lost friends during the rebellion. I shouldn't have joked about it."
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"It's fine. That's what you do. You joke about things." That, at least, seemed as though it had always been the case.
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He follows; at some point it might turn into leading, because that's--well. That's not what he does, usually. But it's what he did relative to Cade, anyway, back when they were sort of friends, arguably, in a way. (They were friends. But it's been minimized and recategorized, now.)
"But you probably don't want to talk about it."
There's the barest questioning lilt; it's more of an offer not to talk about it than an invitation to do so.
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He seems to ignore Alistair's observation, or offer, keeping his gaze angled away as they ascend and then continue forward to look out over the sprawling vista of endless mountains. For a while, the only sounds are the soft tread of their boots, the muffled activity of the keep below, and the twittering of the birds who were brave enough to make their homes here.
After an almost unbearably long silence, Cade, whose mind has been roiling with questions, shutdowns for the questions, and wards against things to say about himself, finally comes up with something to talk about.
"Did you ever see the Arl again?" He glances sidelong at Alistair, hoping the question isn't too invasive. He remembers there being quite a bit of drama surrounding that situation, and also remembers hoping they'd patch things up.
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And directly after it, long enough for Eamon to be the one to deliver the news that Alistair wasn't being thrown out of the country, no, of course not, but it might be better if he left for a while. But Alistair doesn't sound sad or bitter; he mostly sounds relieved. He hates long silences, unless he's using them to sulk, and doubly so now that long silences are in fact long uninterrupted stretches of the Calling.
"Eamon isn't an Arl now," Alistair says, for the sake of making conversation about something less touchy than informal exile. "He's in Denerim, advising the Queen. It keeps him busy. But his brother, Teagan, has the arling now. We write sometimes." He pauses to peer over the edge of the wall, not at anything in particular. Heights never stop being a little impressive to stare down no matter how familiar the landscape is. "Do you talk to your family at all?"
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He pauses when Alistair does, following his gaze and then anxiously diverting his own. It would be too easy to just... fall. He tempts fate by being up here all the time.
Alistair's question merits an awkward laugh, followed by, "no." Cade is smiling a little, but in a frenzied trying-not-to-talk-about-it way rather than from actual happiness. "I believe they're doing just fine."
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They weren't really friends at the end, and there was the Blight thing, then Orlais, and Cade off in Kirkwall. Of all places.
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He's joking. No literal elbow in the ribs to try to make Cade cheer up, but the verbal equivalent, with a smirk that's meant to include him in the joke instead of make him the butt of it. Effective? Maybe not. But he's trying.
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"I suppose you're here with the other wardens," he asks, finding, to his dismay, that he has no idea what to say to someone with whom he was fairly close at a pivotal time in his life.
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Mouth full, he only nods at first, then rears back and throws the bone and remaining gristle over the wall and down the mountain.
"We're fugitives, actually," he says, sounding nearly cheerful about it, "because everyone else has gone mad. We'll probably be here for a while." On the plus side, that gives him more time to try to crack Cade's sad-eyed shell. "How are you at drinking?"
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Alistair, obliviously, squints at Cade like something must be wrong with him.
"I'm pretty sure that's bad for your health."
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"...I suppose I... could," he says weakly, if only to make Alistair stop staring at him.
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"I don't have that many friends," he says. It's only a token protest. Not personal, all right. Cade has just become weirder. "How about you practice your archery, and I'll come drink and heckle you." You know. "In a nice way."
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