because it doesn't make sense for me to cry out in my own defense

[keenly]

WHO: Colin, Alexandrie, Anders, Loki, Kostos, Myrobalan
WHAT: Colin gives up.
WHEN: The evening after the news of the new Divine reaches Kirkwall.
WHERE: Alexandrie de la Fontaine's apartments.
NOTES: CW: Suicide attempt. Physical violence will ensue. Mentions of past sexual violence.

Hearing her name doesn't change anything. He doesn't think he even feels anything at that point--wouldn't know for sure, though, because he doesn't bother to ask himself. He just floats. Quietly closes the apothecary early for the day and posts a sign. Stares down the hallway. Stands still for so long that someone bumps into him on their way. The walls are narrow and cold, still with remnants of the old history in their stains and accents. You can see the marks where there were slave reliefs taken down. And in the old days, at the end of the hall, there would be a door locked and barred.

He drifts down the hallway, stopping to look closely at all the evidence of those who died here, slaves and mages alike. Flattens a palm against the stone as if, across the mirror of the Veil, someone from long ago is touching that same stone. It used to be too much to think about, but it doesn't hurt him now. Not as long as he makes it down the hallway before they lock the door.

The ferry skims over the water streaked pale gold by the late afternoon light. Smoke from the foundry district blows over it as Colin passes through like a ghost, looking back at the Gallows and wondering how many people are there whom he should speak to. He didn't pass any of them on the way to the ferry, so it must not be meant to be. If they can't catch him as he flits away like a moth, he isn't capable of turning around to give them another chance, or seek them out. This hallway is too narrow for him to travel in any direction but one.

The apartment is familiar and lovely, spotless and comfortable. It still feels like the last place he belongs, but he has never belonged anywhere except the place he was taken from too long ago to belong there again. He goes to the little trinket box on a side table and opens it, taking out the cool, smooth contents.

The flask is altogether unremarkable, but his spirit balks at the sight of it because of the color of saffron, the taste of smoke, the dappled pattern of the sun through trees, the gleam of laughter in a friend's eyes. He doesn't have to do this. He can toss it out a window. But his spirit balks at the thought of that, because he remembers climbing into a wall, and being flung against one. He remembers the shreds of an apprentice's robe hanging on the body of an abomination. He remembers frightened Templars shutting and barring the great doors. He remembers the taste of Ser Lutair's spit and seed both, and how to make sure to cover his knees from the cold stone as he got down on them. He remembers ghosting through hallways just like he did today, and for four years, no one stopping him to talk to him. No one asking if something was wrong, or looking closely enough to see it for themselves. No one coming to help, no rescue, only a threat that if he didn't shape up, he would end up Tranquil. Which didn't turn out to be such a bad suggestion. So since there was no escaping his torturer, and showing any signs of being tortured would have earned punishment, he turned himself Tranquil. He spent years as a corpse walking down that empty hallway, unseen and unloved.

He won't go back to it, and he won't shiver through a year or two of war knowing what's coming will be even worse for him. He has always been his only source of mercy, and this is his call. This will be the last time he dies.

Comments

I. Arrival

[keenly]

There is no answer from Colin when Alexandrie enters the apartment. His door is shut, and the servants will say he burst in about two hours ago and shut himself in his room. About a half-hour ago, he came out again to select a bottle of wine and go back in. Perhaps he had a bad day and needed a drink, but he has been terribly quiet.

The door to his room is not locked. Inside, the first thing out of place she might see through the crack of the door as it opens is an empty goblet on its side on the floor. And opening further, by the window, is Colin.

It isn't right. He is positioned like he might be sleeping, head resting lightly against the window, but his face is a poor color. His lips are blue, and there is no rise and fall to indicate breath. On a little table by his left hand is the opened bottle of wine and an empty vial marked with three letters.

[OOC: Lexie first. One reaction tag from everyone who desires in any order, then it will be Lexie, Anders, and Loki only.]

[coquettish_trees]

This was not her night to be home, but there had been a piece of correspondence left on her desk there that she had found herself in need of. A silly little letter from one Guieffroy Loupe that had in fact been so silly that instead of paraphrasing it to her lover, she had insisted upon going to get it to read it to him verbatim.

(It is still in her hand. It crumples when her fingers close around it with the cold strength of terror. It folds tighter against the crystal when she takes that up too.)

She stops at Colin’s room only to say a brief hello and kiss the top of his head before sweeping back to the Asgard estate. Briefly she thinks him drunk, and laughter at the oddity of that is bubbling in her chest when she notices the too-still way he lays, his face, his lips, the vial. Time turns to glass and shatters.

(A precise two handed twist. “On. Alexandrie. Loki. Anders.”)

She is pressing fingers to his throat to find a pulse, and swearing, and whipping off her glove to press again. She is scenting the vial and knowing it, recalling from a lazy afternoon spent in academic recitation for her own amusement and the bright shine of Loki’s approval. Poison, identifiers, usage, effect, remedy. There is the slightest bitterness, the slightest tingle on her lips when she yanks him to the ground to lay him flat and breathe for him. In for her. Out for her, in for him. Out for him.

(Her speech is crystalline, with an edge to it so sharp and fine that only those well versed in either Alexandrie herself or in the vast calmness that borders hysteria might recognize immediately that something is very wrong.

She says where she is. They will know what it is when she lists the things she needs, but who will remain a mystery until--)

--she keeps speaking, having forgotten to turn the crystal off again.

“Stay. Stay here, mon chou. You cannot leave me. You promised that I should always have the little pastries." It's low, and pleading, and simple. A pause, a breath. "Cher. Caro. Who will wear that fine green shirt? You promised.”

Ah. It’s Colin.

[justice_is_blond]

He's newly home and letting his cats tangle his bootlaces in knots before he attempts to actually loosen them when his crystal activates. Lexi's voice, a swearword and the sound of someone breathing for another, have him out of his chair and grabbing his bag as he heads for the infirmary.

The where, though. It awakens a small voice in the back of his head that only gets louder as she lists what she needs - herbs that combine to be used against poisons. That's the way an apothecary would go. The way a cook would. He'd known something was wrong. Offered help. And then... let it be. Hadn't followed up. Hadn't wanted to pressure. But maybe he's wrong. Maybe it's someone else. A servant. Someone found in the street. Her voice is cold enough that anything is possible and he wraps himself in that fragile hope like armor.

It doesn't stand up to the task as she continues to speak. Instead, it shatters.

"I'm on my way," he says in a hard voice. He'd failed his apprentice already, but he doesn't have to fail him absolutely. Not yet.

"Keep him warm. If he starts to vomit, get him on his side." Maker, let Colin start to vomit. Start to get any of whatever it is they're countering out of his system. "Is he... Is he breathing on his own yet?" The impartial tone slips and returns just as quickly. If he starts getting emotional just yet he's gonna lose it, and there's still a chance of saving his apprentice if Anders keeps it together. Even if there's not a chance, there is one. He's cured the Taint, he's not going to lose Colin to despair and herbs.

[coquettish_trees]

“No.” It's short, tight with fear. “He has used a paralytic favored by the Crows.” Then, self-recriminating, “I do not have what I need here. It is all—” A pause, a breath. “—but you have them, mon coeur, do you not?”

Then hushed and pleading, obviously meant for Loki, forgetting she has them both, “Just tell me you are coming, I cannot be alone here. Not with this.”

[hwaaaitsme]

"I do," Loki answers without much fanfare.

He had not expected a call, not with the meetings he had scheduled for the day, but that did not mean he was terribly surprised to hear Alexandrie's voice. The timbre of it, however, the fine razor's edge to it, that was worthy of alarm and his discussion with Kostos was abandoned immediately as she began to speak. The man, himself, was ignored promptly after as Loki bolted up from his desk and moved to one of the small, decorative chests that periodically dotted his bookshelves.

It was upended and the trinkets inside it scattered to the floor. They were just decorative baubles, meant to look interesting and valuable. The real contents were accessible through the bottom of the box and he withdrew them immediately, without overmuch concern for the man witnessing this. If Kostos didn't already suspect him of this sort of thing he'd be both terribly surprised and a little offended.

"Which is it?" he asks, perhaps more loudly than necessary, toward the crystal still sitting on his desk. The number of little vials in his hands are unwieldy--if he can narrow it down it will be easier to carry.

Ah, Gods' damn it, would she know all the Crows' poisons that well? He is proud of her, truly, that she knew the mixture well enough to assess it, but if it is a combination?

"Is it bitter or sweet? Does is smell of almond? Is his mouth blackened?"

Why were the Crows at her apartments?

[coquettish_trees]

"Bitter." She'd tasted it on him, mixed with the wine. (Does so again when she pushes her breath into him.) She can feel, just slightly, the beginnings of it. "His lips are blue, and he cannot breathe alone. He has taken near the full vial—enough that it begins to make me tired."

His reckless Alexandrie, with her mouth fastened over Colin's tightly enough to allow the force of her breath to get into paralyzed lungs, is slowly poisoning herself.

II. Kostos, Myr, Colin

[keenly]

Colin feels light. He drifts and, for once, carries nothing with him. Not a care in all the universe can follow him where he's going. Is he passing through the Fade? What does the world like when it's shut behind him?

He opens his eyes, and he is in his own bed, in his own room, and he is not dead at all.

Cheated is less a word that comes to mind and more the brand of anger that comes to him immediately. Words are far from him. This is a primal state of mind, older than words and beyond the reach of them. And he has magic.

A wave of telekinetic energy ripples out from him, a blast to cause stumbling or staggering in the two people in the room with him--Myr and Kostos. Then he flings himself from the bed and makes a break for the kitchen.

[exequy]

The initial signs that Colin is stirring are a relief, for more than one reason. Good that he might be waking up, obviously. That he’s still alive. The larger share of Kostos’ relief is for him.

But a smaller share of it is gratitude that something is finally happening. Sitting quietly for long stretches of time isn’t something Kostos is actually good at. He has to work at it, hard, and when Colin seems to be waking up Kostos springs up from his spot against the wall with the same relief as a weightlifter dropping a dumbbell.

Which means he’s perfectly primed to be knocked back into that wall when Colin bursts out of bed in a blur of force.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and while he’s still in the process of righting himself, he’s also pulling a wisp into his palm and waving it ahead to follow Colin, and maybe Myrobalan as well, with silently communicated orders.

[faithlikeaseed]

Myr's no stranger to sitting vigil. There are methods to it, ways to focus and silence an unquiet mind on the watch. Prayer's one of them--prayer seemed the most appropriate way to pass the time at Colin's bedside over the last few hours, a silent entreaty to the Maker and His Bride sent up with every breath. Not for the soul of one departed or soon to be, Myr reminds himself; Colin's breathing yet, untroubled and alive, and Anders had ventured hope--

Yet there was no telling how or if a would-be suicide might come back to himself. These things weren't ever certain, for all the hope in the world. So Myr prays, eyes open but not seeing, waiting for some sign the Maker (or nature) has intervened.

As signs go, getting thrown sideways off the chair he'd been perched on is a little more forceful than Myr'd been expecting.

"Fuck--" He's up and moving before he's even really oriented himself, attention fixed on Colin's fleeing back. Fast for a dead man, and Myr doesn't think the fade step all the way through--

It doesn't end in disaster but he's also close enough to the doorframe he flinches back by pure instinct, losing precious seconds as Colin makes the hallway. Then he's after the younger mage at a flat sprint.

[keenly]

He's back in the nightmare, chased and running for a place to hide. Only there's just the one place he can hide now, and it's on the other side of the Fade. He's half-blind and feeling desperately sick, and in his haste his toe catches on a rug and he lands flat on the floor with the kitchen only feet away. Tunnel vision points him at a drawer. It flies open by magic. A sharp knife comes soaring toward him handle-first. He grips it in one hand and brings it against his carotid artery--only to find it skims just over his skin when he draws it across.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

[faithlikeaseed]

There's the flash of the knife as Myr charges into the kitchen and for a long heart-crushing instant he's sure they've already failed.

But that glint of light off steel--draw of a blade across a vulnerable throat--isn't followed by blood and the thrill of a miracle witnessed banishes despair. Myr lunges for Colin, intent on disarming the other mage before anything else; it's only at the last second he thinks to invoke a barrier of his own.

Pray the Maker he doesn't need it.

[exequy]

Down the hall, Kostos feels the wisp—die isn’t the right word. But it’s there, and then it isn’t, dissipating painlessly into a barrier against injury and force, and Kostos stumbles to a stop in time to see Myrobalan diving toward Colin and the flash of his knife.

Kostos doesn’t join him. He learned four things, in the war, and the third was to never wrestle with someone who already had a blade out. Maybe other people can manage it, but it’s never ended well for him.

Instead he resumes his dash and skirts around them, fairly nimbly, hooking a hand to half-swing around the door frame and avoid stepping on them on his way to the open drawer. He slams it shut. Holds it there. He’s scanning the countertops for anything else he should be worried about, not looking at the floor, but he says, “Colin.”

His tone adds, Cut it the fuck out.

III. Tell me what you've come for

[keenly]

After his escapade with the knife, Colin fell asleep while dry-heaving into a pot. Another hour and a half later, he's awake, although not at all hungry. It's like having the world's worst hangover, with both nausea and a raging headache. Obviously that is not the worst part about all of this.

He's still in a sort of shock. As often as the thought had crossed his mind, now and in the past, he'd never acted on the urge to end his own life. It's at once fathomable and alien, now that he feels awakened from that urge and is grateful to be alive, albeit not exactly over the moon. There is a great deal of uncertainty in the future still, especially now that he knows he is capable of this. Otherwise, he's not especially sure how he feels. He doesn't feel much of anything at all, for now.

Given that it is ill-advised to leave him alone in a room for the next few days, there are a number of things you might be doing--helping clean, sitting about reading a book, or, in a couple of days, helping him prepare a meal.

[justice_is_blond]

He clears his throat as he comes in, waterskin in hand. Even being here as a healer he still feels very much the intruder.

"I've come to check on you." Anders' voice is low, gaze downcast. There are many things in his life he feels ashamed of doing or not doing and yet it's still not easy when he has to add another to the list. "I can't really come back later as I've got to see how you're doing, else I'd offer."

[keenly]

The last sentence makes no sense in Colin's head, until it suddenly does--and not how Anders means it. He looks a bit sullenly at the waterskin and doesn't take it.

"I failed you," he says quietly.

[justice_is_blond]

"What? No. You, no." How could Colin think that? Now he looks directly at the young man, puzzlement written clearly on his face.

"You, I knew things were off, but I didn't press. I didn't follow up. I wasn't there when I should have been. I've seen the signs before and knew you weren't fine and let you wave it off. That's not what a healer should do, and it's absolutely not what... what I should have done." He'd thought of himself as Colin's mentor. He's definitely not lived up to those expectations.

[keenly]

Colin looks puzzled, though it's just a deeper version of the expression he had when Anders walked in. Well, at least Anders isn't pissed at him.

"You offered, I didn't take you up on it. There's literally nothing else you could have done. Or, um, did you have visions of tying me to a chair indefinitely?"

[coquettish_trees]

After his escapade with the knife, helping Colin prepare a meal will be distinctly limited to what can be accomplished without any sharp implements. While there will be a great deal of finger-food available to be plated, meats have been pre-sliced by the butcher and bread will need to be torn. In the entirety of the house there is absolutely nothing in the way of available edges, from the larger blades used in the kitchen to the delicate silver of the table-settings to even Alexandrie's embroidery scissors.

That moratorium on finework means that the lady of the house is reading a novel at Colin's bedside upon one awakening. Or she was, at one point. Now her head is tilted to rest against the side of the armchair, her face lax in the sleep that had finally overtaken her. The book rests open on her lap with one of her hands weighting the pages, the other maintaining a very slight hold on one of his. She stirs very slightly as he wakes, and will likely wake herself if he moves.

[keenly]

On waking, Colin senses the unusual--a hand in his. On opening his eyes, he sees Lexie's wan face and is struck by it. How frail she looks, how oddly aged with her features still pinched with worry. While drinking the poison, he hadn't expected to have to see the outcome of his actions. Fate isn't going to let him get away so easily.

He leans in to press a kiss to her forehead.

"I'm sorry."

[coquettish_trees]

She wakes with the kiss, as if some sort of fairytale, and immediately a parade of emotions pass across her face one after another like wooden ducks on a string pulled by a child. Relief, anger, joy, worry, relief again, a suffusive unsurety as if she had expected something else from him besides apology. As if she still does.

The book drops from Alexandrie's lap forgotten, its pages bending against the floor as she turns farther towards him and frames his face—living face, wan, but colored. Warm—with both hands, her eyes filling again with tears as she ventures hesitantly.

"You are not angry with me?"

[keenly]

The question is spurred by something, and it's on the surface for him to pluck. She must have found him. She definitely found him, probably less than a minute or so after he passed out. No--after he stopped breathing, because otherwise, she would just think he was asleep. He shakes his head weakly.

"With myself. It was a stupid thing to do. Now everyone's blaming themselves for something I did, and I didn't even want to die. I just couldn't face going back. I still can't."

[exequy]

Kostos has work to do—mountains of it, each treacherous—but it’s more than he can stand to sit at a desk all day, and leaving to check in on Colin is a better reason for a walk than leaving for no reason at all, or to get drunk, or.

He does care. It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It’s just that he might have exercised that care to keep his distance and leave Colin to the people who know him better and can handle him more gently, otherwise, instead of coming here and kicking the leg of his bed frame.

“Get up.”

[keenly]

Colin is still feeling rather queasy, more from the antidote than from the poison, but he still rockets upright in bed and briefly wonders if he's back in the Circle and overslept for a class. Which is ridiculous. He rubs his eyes.

"What?" he asks with a slight growl to his voice.

[exequy]

“Get up,” Kostos repeats, helpfully, without even pretending at patience. “It’s a nice day. We’re taking a walk.”

[keenly]

"I have to take a bath," Colin mutters. He hasn't left the apartment since the incident, and neither has he really taken care of himself. His hair is messy, his face is stubbly, and he smells of sweat.