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

Entry tags:

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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.]

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.

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.

“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.”

"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?

"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.

Great. He might wind up with two patients instead of just one. It's not the fairest thought that's ever passed through his mind, he knows it, and he also doesn't much care. Cold judgement is much easier than feeling anything right now, something he'd long ago learned from his former guest.

Anders barges into the infirmary in a hurry, almost running over Myr in the process and blinking at the elf before recognizing him.

"Sorry," he mutters and is already on the move to his desk, gathering herbs hastily. "Poisoning. Busy." There might not be much time, another thought he's aware of but keeping at arm's length.

It's just Myr's luck he hadn't even been waiting that long when Anders nearly bowls him over getting back into the infirmary. Startled as he is, he's about to say something smart and a little barbed about it--

But poisoning cuts him off short. He blinks back at at the healer, wheels turning, before he volunteers, "Tell me what to bring and where then get to it, man." If it's that much of an emergency they probably need Anders sooner, to his reasoning.

It takes him a second to process what Myr's said before he's nodding and taking a step back, gesturing at his own desk. Anders quickly rattles off a list of herbs, the building blocks of most healing potions and a few more known for helping with various poisons and then he starts heading for the doors. It's not too long of a list and mages have to memorize any number of things with spellcasting. Myr should be able to manage it.

Anders is headed back out the door then, rushing toward Lexie's apartment, only pausing long enough at the threshold to give quick directions in case Myr's not familiar. Loki... he doesn't know what Loki can do, but he's rather certain the Tevene mage isn't a spirit healer and Lexie certainly isn't so haste is fairly important. Or so he justifies his rush. Even spirit healing can't counter poisons, though. Yet another thought he's stashing far, far away until later.

Loki listens to her and, with a rough sound not unlike a groan or a growl, casts the majority of the vials aside. Half of them end up on his desk and the other half scattered over the floor. He ends with three and tucks them into the breast pocket of his robes. He brushes past Kostos to pluck up his crystal and loops the cord around his neck before he makes a flying leap out the window. It would have been terribly dramatic but he changed into a raven far too early for the fall to take him.

The distance from his office to the De La Fontaine apartments is not great, not as the raven flies, and he makes the distance quickly. He has no idea where they are, inside the house, but the first open window presents itself and he swoops through it without reservation. Were this a trap he would be immediately ensnared as a punishment for his haste but, fortunately, it is not. He has luck on his side, apparently, because he finds himself in the same room as Alexandrie and her unconscious friend--his transformation back is without fanfare and he lands heavily on the carpeted floor.

"Stop ingesting more! Compress his chest instead for gods' sakes!"

"No!" It's loud and fast through the crystal. "Don't compress his chest! You'll break ribs for nothing! Breathe for him, she's doing the right thing!"

Alexandrie looks up and over her shoulder at the muffled impact behind her. Her face is ghostly pale and tight with panic, although the wash of relief and gratitude across it at seeing Loki there loosens it slightly.

She nods, and is positioning herself to act as heartbeat as well when Anders yells through both crystals and she hesitates, her eyes flickering quickly back and forth between her beloved and the blue shine of her crystal. Her hands hold, folded, on Colin's chest, but she doesn't start to press. Let it be on Anders' say-so. It can be her fault and his if they are unsuccessful (they cannot be, they cannot be, Colin will live and she will kiss him without the bitter taste and shriek at him and break every glass in the house and cry), she will not let the death of another cherished person fall at Loki's feet.

"But surely, the poison," she says to the crystal, "it will stop his heart along with his breath if I— ribs can be healed, but—" fragments, all fragments, "tell me you have brought something," she interrupts herself to beg of Loki.

Loki rushes to the fallen boy's side and lifts up his head. His examination is not particularly kind, but he is not indelicate with him. His lips are turning blue but they are not blackened, his eyes are not sunken, his skin is not mottled, there is no smell of burning, nor of acid. This was not mixed with anything exceptionally nasty or rare.

If it was the normal fare the Crows used, then it was venom mixed with deathroot. Bitter and biting and requiring a very specific antivenom--it was either snake or spider. Fortunate then, that his lady love could identify it. Loki had brought both bottles.

"Wait a moment," he urges her and tilts back Colin's head as he reaches into his breast pocket and withdraws them. They are small but the contents are vile and they will make him ill. But ill is superior to dead in this instance.

"Fetch water and wash your mouth, I do not have enough antivenom to share it between you," Loki commands Lexie, and it is a command. "I will breathe for him once he has swallowed."

Once Loki has made him swallow.

This command she will follow, although she is hesitant to give up her place even for a moment. She will be of much less help if she is rendered not fully alert, and that hastens her rise, although she will not go far. The washbasin and its pitcher, faithfully kept full, are close enough that she can do as Loki bade her without leaving the room. After one rinse, the spit of it into the basin, she turns to fling the door wide.

The servants, naturally, have clustered around the commotion. Alexandrie doesn't even have to raise her voice.

"Marceau, open the front door. A healer comes. You will show him here immediately and grant his every request as you would my own."

She returns, then, to her rinsing. Once, twice more. But she will be kneeling on Colin's other side soon enough, her hands hard clasped around one of his, fingers searching his wrist. She trusts unreservedly in Loki's ability to slow this, to preserve him long enough for the spirit-bolstered cavalry to come, but she has to feel it for herself, the faint beat of life beneath her fingertips.

They're listening. That means he can simply focus on getting there. Which he doesn't, he's still listening to every word as if he can heal through the crystal somehow. That's the improvement they should have been working on. Magic through them.

Kirkwall rarely seems particularly large, but right now it's massive. As soon as he can he's rushing through and nodding to the person who must be Marceau on the way in.

"I'm followed. Mage, elf, robes, has herbs. Send him in once he's here too."

The scene that greets his eyes as he follows a servant up is better than it could have been and yet terrifying. Colin's terribly pale, with Loki breathing for him. Anders dumps out his bag. Fuck tidy.

"What's he been given?" He starts to cast, sending a little healing into Colin as he waits for the answer. Even before everything's counteracted he can at least get to work.

"Antivenin of the Antivan asp and the black wolf spider," Loki says as he draws back. He can taste both on his tongue and he dislikes them, they're bitter and acrid and they burn. His lips are numb already, but he has long cultivated an immunity to the more dire effects of the venom and its cure. Colin, he suspects, has not and Alexandrie certainly hasn't.

It is his immunity that inspires him to remain near. Unless Anders is about to cast some impressive magic to breathe for the boy, Loki is the only one around who will not begin to asphyxiate.

"There was no time or sample to determine which was in the poison," Loki adds just as he seals his lips over Colin's and then breathes into him again.

There is nothing for her to do now, and it makes the whole of her back itch. Loki is here, Anders is here, they had answered her call and the two men are both far more qualified than she to do anything directly. All Alexandrie can do is continue to clutch at Colin's hand and pray it stays warm and stare, intent and hungry, her eyes searching out any movement. Any flicker of eyelash, any pinch of brow, relaxation of muscle, cough, anything. Anything that would say definitively that he was still here.

How long. How long had he lay there before she'd found him. Too long? She should have gone to him first. How many precious seconds had been lost? She had been giggling to herself and whisked past his door to find a silly bit of diversion and behind it he had been dying and she should have gone to him first.

"Tell me," she says hoarsely, unable to feel the flow of magic or breath for herself, "Tell me he will live."

Both. It's not the end of the world, but when they save Colin it will make Colin's recovery that much longer and miserable. There's frustration in Anders' eyes for a moment before he forces himself to remember it's not like they had a lot of time and it's also not like Colin was kind enough to write down what he'd taken for them. It had to be done.

He doesn't have to like it, but it had to be done.

"He will," Anders says, low and angry. "If I have to drag him screaming from the Maker's side myself he's going to make it." There's still life there. He can feel it. He glances at Lexie before nodding to the contents of his bag.

"The red leaves in the one packet. Crumble one into a vial, then shred two of the blue-white flowers into that. Myrobalan is bringing--" Anders trails off as a servant comes up with more herbs, and nods to what's in the man's hands. "There. Several things, among those are a dried root and a dried leaf that looks like a fern." He hopes he's being descriptive enough as the names likely wouldn't mean much to her. "Add one of the roots and three of the leaves, then add the fluid he's got to the vial as well, then give it to me."

He can do the casting after it's together, and this way he doesn't need to stop casting to put the things together.

She nods and raises herself from her pool of skirts to sort through the mess on the floor that is the dumped out contents of Anders' bag. An empty vial. Red leaf, blue-white flowers. She has to peel off her other glove to shred them properly. The root Byron had brought in, the three leaves of the fern-like plant, what remains of the antidote.

The line of Loki's shoulders is taut with fury as she retrieves it.

Alexandrie sets her teeth and passes it all combined to Anders.

"I... you said to keep him warm. I will... have a fire started."

She passes off the mixture and Loki breathes into Colin again. Loki can feel the spell on Colin's skin as he breathes into the boy. It is not long before it shifts and the boy starts to fight against his breath a bit. He leaves off, then, and gives space to administer his antidote, to heal him. Colin is salvageable and Loki abruptly rises from his place on the ground.

He whirls, finally freed from the haste of a dying man, and takes a shallow step as he grips Alexandrie by the arm. He means to lead her from the room, drag her even, because he can and his anger is enough that it drives him. He can see the flush on her face and where her lips have swollen.

"We need to talk--" he seethes, lowly, and glances back at the mage on the floor beside Colin. "We will fetch blankets, or...something. Summon the servants if you require anything."

Shallow breaths can be felt from Colin's lips, but then something else. Unconscious though he is, whatever was in his stomach is coming back up--mostly wine and poison as well as the antivenom.

Colin shifts, enough to give Anders an idea as to what's about to happen and he moves to roll Colin on to his side.

"Can you not? He's about to be ill. I need a basin now, water now, towels now, help now, rather than summoned help." Maker preserve and protect him from dramatic nobles. "Please let go of her and either continue to help or get out of the way."

Loki's grip on her arm is vise-like, echoing the tightness of his anger. Alexandrie only avoids wincing because the moment he whirled towards her her face set in the familiar shape of her stubbornness. She opens her mouth to make some denial, set to struggle to stay until she knows there will be another breath, and another after that, and another after, but the sound of Colins retching and Anders’ command disjuncts whatever thought she had had, and her eyes dart away from the intent serpentstone hardness of her lover’s gaze towards the washstand she had stood at to rinse her mouth—the pitcher there still full of water, its basin, the folded towels—and she looks back at Loki with a desperate entreaty that supersedes her mulishness.

This, just this, and I will come.

Loki holds her a moment longer, his stare unyielding, but eventually acquiesces. He releases her arm and turns to look down at the healer, at the nearly dead man on the floor, and makes no further move to aid him, save perhaps to step back and make room for Alexandrie to fetch the basin and the towels and water beside it.

He would not be shocked if Colin vomited for days after this. Loki made his own antivenin, as one does, and the alchemical concoction was not designed for the weak of constitution. It was designed to be very fast acting, kindness and comfort did not factor into his work.

"Best encourage vomiting if you can. Even I could not walk away from a double dose without becoming ill."

"Yes, thank you, I'm fairly familiar with what happens after someone's been poisoned, food or otherwise." There was a time when he'd been quite fascinated with Tevinter, when he would have given much to speak with a mage from it. But this one, grabbing his partner in anger as he has, distracting from Anders' apprentice while he's still struggling to survive, has lost much of what appeal was left. The antivenom alone is the reason why the sarcasm isn't angry.

"Let's get a towel under his head to support it," he says to Alexandrie now that he's shifted Colin over. "We're going to be needing to rinse his mouth out to help make sure he doesn't choke... if you'll be staying that long. If not, hand the things over and I'll tend to him."

The cold fear has thawed a little, but the adrenaline hasn't subsided. He's tense and anxious as he keeps the healing flowing into Colin.

I. Arrival

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

they super can't not

no subject

no subject