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

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?"

[justice_is_blond]

"Absolutely not. I..." Anders trails off. Colin doesn't need him listing all he could have done better, laying out his failures plain as day. That would be selfish and self-indulgent. He shakes his head.

"Never mind that. If you're not, you're not upset with me for not being there, then there isn't a point in borrowing strife." While he's not about to let himself off the hook, he won't force Colin to dwell on things. This is about moving forward.

Anders comes the rest of the way into the room and closes the door behind him. "Drink, please. A lack of water in the system isn't good."

[keenly]

He finally reaches out for the waterskin, still looking perplexed.

"I'm not just not-upset. I'm in disagreement with you. Though it's sort of upsetting to hear you blaming yourself. It wasn't anyone's fault."

He sips, because last time he drank water, he did it too quickly and threw it back up.

[justice_is_blond]

Maybe he needs to explain after all. Anders takes a breath and a seat, letting Colin drink for now.

"I've lost people to despair before. I know the signs. I saw them, and I could have pushed further. I could have stalked you, essentially, checked on you to the point you were sick of me, been constantly, consistently present. I could have fought for your life when you were done doing so. And I did not."

He'd been so preoccupied with his empty apartment that he'd failed.

"I let my own tiredness stand in the way of protecting my apprentice." The closest thing he has left to family here, the closest thing to a son he'll ever have. It had been so incredibly stupid and shortsighted.

[keenly]

There's something truly awful about the scenario Anders paints, and he doesn't even know it. How unbearable it would be for them both, to be dogged and to dog someone. The loss of agency. That sense of your friends being your enemies. He couldn't bear that with Anders.

"You did fight for my life," he says quietly. "You're not...going to do any of that now, are you?"

[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."

[coquettish_trees]

"Do you still feel so alone?" she asks sadly, thumbing his cheek, "That you saw no other way to escape that fate? That there are not those of us who love you who would do anything to prevent that from coming to pass?" Alexandrie looks down and lets her hands drift to his shoulders, his upper arms before they drop to fold in her lap. "I do not know how to make you feel safe," she says quietly.

And maybe she can't. Maybe he will always have the boy in the wall living inside him. Maybe she could not pull him from that cold lonely place as she had been pulled from hers. Maybe it isn't her after all, who will mean that to him.

It hurts, but she is resigned to it. So do many things.

[keenly]

Colin shakes his head as tears appear in his eyes.

"I thought...I thought of just the people I'd be with in the Circle, not the people I'm with now. Because when that day comes, it's the last time we'll ever see each other. I didn't, I didn't know that when I retreated into that darkness in my head again, you would follow me. I didn't know people did that."

Reaching out has felt impossible for Colin for most of his life. Asking for help when he has no voice. But that didn't stop Lexie from saving him from a place even more treacherous than that wall. Next time he goes there, he knows to go to her.

[coquettish_trees]

“You belong with the Inquisition now, they would not be let to take you away. Not until we are victorious. If then they try, I would take the White Spire apart brick by brick with my bare hands before I let them have you.” Alexandrie is fierce and bright when she looks up again and takes his hands, the surety with which she speaks allowing no room for doubt, as if life itself were something she could grip and twist to her formidable will.

“And if nothing else, you will come with me.” She has not spoken to Colin of her plans after the war, not yet. Truly, she has not spoken overmuch to Loki of this. “To Marnas Pell, or Vyrantium. To Minrathous, to aid with reconstruction.” To Tevinter.

“They will not have you again, cher. Never again. You are free.”

[keenly]

All Colin has wanted since Uldred's massacre is to be rescued. Now that someone is offering at long last, something about it feels hollow. It's ornament, purely an expression of her friendship and not at all what he has longed for. What he has longed for doesn't really exist, and even if she could protect him from going to the Circle, that's...great? But there's a different problem at hand, and it's hard to articulate.

He reaches out to squeeze her hand, and keeps hold of it.

"I...yes. If that's what it takes." Leaving everything and everyone he knows behind to live in a country that may or may not exist once the Divine has Exalted Marched all over it. It has to be better than the Circle. But.

"I, I bought the poison to keep for the day they took me away. I wasn't intending to use it before then. Then the news came, and for some reason, I couldn't bear the way I felt. And nothing had particularly changed. I had this sense as though I was finally starting to feel happy, and this ruined it, so I had to get away from how I was feeling. I thought I would feel that way for a year, two years, however long it takes for the war to end. I couldn't let that happen. So it...wasn't really a reaction to the news. Or it was, but the news was just a tipping point. The whole of the problem existed long before. Why I tried to kill myself, the answer starts half a lifetime ago. It's not that I don't trust you. It's that...I don't know what it is. But nothing happened out of any deficiency from you, real or perceived. I didn't try to kill myself because you didn't give me enough reasons to stay. It has nothing to do with anything like that."

[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.

[exequy]

"I'll wait."

[keenly]

A sigh and a pointed sulk. Colin reluctantly rolls out of bed and slinks off to the bathroom.

When he returns, he is definitely clean. His hair is washed, but he hasn't shaved, leaving his facial hair scruffy and undefined. He gives Kostos a sullen look. Happy now?

[exequy]

The look Colin receives in answer isn't happy. It's a little bored, a little impatient, a little unimpressed with his scraggle—but nothing personal, really. Kostos can only be happy for two hours a day, as a matter of principle, and he's saving them for later. But he's satisfied enough to be done waiting, and he holds an arm out to beckon Colin ahead of him and herd him out the door into the sunlit street, where they then walk.

In silence.

For like ten minutes.

But, after ten minutes, when they're able to see the sea through gaps between buildings and walls, Kostos says, "What the fuck was all of that about?"

[keenly]

"I was dirty," Colin sasses him, "and I had to wash up."

He knows what he means.