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

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Myr is on him, and Colin lashes out on pure instinct, and not with the knife. Another blast of force magic flings Myr upward to crash into the ceiling. There he stays while Colin scrambles to his feet. Another wave of force is sent to pin Kostos against the drawers in the kitchen. One problem: with one hand on Myr and one on Kostos, neither is free to use the knife again. Colin freezes, eyes wide and fixed on Kostos, as if surprised to hear his own name.

Because he is. Eyes open, with eyes on him, he finally touches base with reality. This isn't a fleeting spell between poison and death anymore. He's awake. People are watching him. What is he doing?

He doesn't let Myr down yet. But he hears. He's not sure if he can listen, but he can hear, and decide afterward whether he will listen.

Well.

Well fuck.

That's one way to get removed from a fight.

The ceiling's not any kinder than the floor would be at that speed; while Myr's barrier protects him from broken bones, the impact's enough to drive the air from his lungs. A strangled wheeze escapes him.

This will become a problem if Colin lets him go, he thinks dazedly, because that's no short fall and it will leave Colin free with the knife. He reaches back behind him to dig fingers in the plaster, slowly scribing paralysis blind and backward.

But not completing the glyph yet. "Colin--drop the. The knife, please. You're safe."

Colin's gaze switches from Kostos to Myr, and he's temporarily confused as to whether Myr knows the knife isn't for the two of them. Are they afraid of him? After a moment, he lowers the hand he is keeping on Myr, focusing so he can keep the man elevated anyway, and presses the edge of the knife to his throat experimentally.

It occurs to him, quite suddenly, that he doesn't want to hurt Myr. Slitting his throat now would have Myr drop to the floor with as much force as sent him to the ceiling. He watches the man with a blank, drugged gaze. Then, slowly, he begins to lower the elf to the floor. Once his feet are flat on the carpet, Colin back up against the wall, wary but not yet cutting himself.

Kostos—

Kostos shouldn't be here, honestly. He should have left when he arrived and realized Myrobalan was not, in fact, leaving, and two sets of eyes weren't going to do anything one couldn't do alone and anyway he has work to do, but at the time announcing he was leaving instead seemed so callous that even he couldn't think it was a good idea. It hadn't occurred to him that any of this would happen and that he would wind up in a position to potentially make things so incredibly worse by saying the wrong thing. He is good at a lot of things (thanks), and saying the wrong thing is the thing he's absolutely best at.

But part of what makes him so good at it is that, despite being aware of himself and the effect he has, he can't always just shut the fuck up.

So, pinned (voluntarily, for now—he's been able to do a good Dispel since he was ten) and scowling, he says, "Colin, if you make me watch you kill yourself, I am going to vomit all over your kitchen."

He's not bluffing.

Myr is braced for worse--worse, like being dropped ten feet onto an unyielding countertop and breaking his neck, and worse like watching Colin slit his own throat and then breaking his neck--so being let down is a decided relief. It takes him a moment to catch his breath properly and he watches Colin as intently as Colin's watching them.

Though he spares a glance in Kostos' direction at the threat, more sympathetic than incredulous.

"He would, too." Because not shutting the fuck up may not be Myr's besetting vice, but it's still up there. "Will you set the knife down? Please," he adds, gently. "You are safe. No one will come for you without having to go through us. You don't need to run from it this way."

Colin looks back to Kostos and his eyes widen further to hear him speak. Frightened as he is, desperate as he is, making someone watch him slit his own throat is fucked up. He looks back to Myrobalan, frozen like a deer, shaking as if balanced precariously on a razor-thin fence. And there is allure in what Myr says, because despite his determination tonight, Colin does not actually want to die.

(A voice in the back of his mind tells him these are loyalist hypocrites who would be glad to put him back in the Circle, but Myr seems to know his mind better than his mind does at the moment.)

The blade lowers. Colin flips it in his hand as he releases Kostos from his hold, holding it out handle-first to him.

"Put it away," he says, voice scratchy from the abrasiveness of the poison and its many times coming back up.

No need to ask twice. Barely a need to ask once. Kostos snatches the knife away almost before Colin is done saying anything—quick hands, the rest of him still and glaring—and returns it with a clatter to the same drawer he had been blocking from opening before.

Then he resumes blocking it. Just in case. Because what the fuck. His tone isn’t gentle, oh you poor dear you’ve had a trial, so much as it is fed up with chases and telekinesis for a few days at least, when he says, “Sit down.”

Fortunately there's enough oh you poor dear in Myr's body for two mages. Maybe three on an especially emotional day.

Content Colin's no threat to himself now, he glances toward Kostos again, then shifts to find a cup and fill it with water. This he offers to Colin. "Here. Get it down you."

Broth would likely be better after all the vomiting but there's not any to hand and he mislikes the sound of Colin's throat.

Somehow Colin winds up in a chair with a cup of water in his hand, though he doesn't remember getting there. He sips the water gingerly, no longer sure what he's supposed to think or feel now that he's alive when he knows he shouldn't be. He decides to do neither thinking nor feeling, for now.

"What are you doing here?" he asks distantly.

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

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