open: lol never mind.

[cozen]

WHO: Open!
WHAT: A memorial that doesn’t go as planned.
WHEN: Justinian 1
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nah.

The ceremony takes place in one of the side courtyards that’s been converted into a garden, where the oppressive architecture is offset with flowers and trees. There’s a small pyre, for those whose traditions call for pyres, but no bodies to burn. Instead there are tokens, flowers, favorite foods, treasured possessions—not yet lit.

(For the others, the Dalish and Nevarrans and anyone else with a different wish, their friends and family will have made different arrangements alongside the pyre, probably, if they aren’t universally reviled.)

Anyone who wants to speak, whether it’s a prepared speech or a single spontaneous sentence, can do so. The tone is respectful but only so solemn. It’s been more than a week. For many, the worst of the shock has passed, and the sun has continued to rise and set, and there’s room between bouts of misery for fond memories and occasionally laughter. The memorial is a door that’s closing—slowly, kindly—and tomorrow, on the other side of it, the war will continue.

Today, on this side, the only people judging anyone else for crying are the assholes.

***

Across the harbor, more than a dozen filthy and tired people come to a stop on the docks, and the loitering ferryman pauses to take stock of them, then starts laughing. There isn’t even any local mythology about ferrymen and the dead. It’s just that funny to him on its own, that he’s been rowing miserable people around all week, and here’s the source of all that misery, dirty and tired but significantly less dead than believed.

When he stops laughing, he offers to dunk everyone in the harbor before rowing them over. For the smell, you know. No one is going to be happy to see them if their eyes are watering too much to actually see them. Then he laughs some more at his hilarious joke.

But he does eventually load up his boat—and maybe there isn’t room for everyone all at once, maybe some dramatic reunions will be delayed, maybe some people will be even more fashionably late to their funeral than the others—and carries everyone across the bay, still chuckling intermittently.

***

In the courtyard, the speeches and anecdotes (and singing, perhaps) wind down to long silences peppered with murmurs or sniffling. Someone is preparing to light the pyre. And then the gate creaks open.

Comments

[writteninblood]

"The worst," Sorrel agrees, but somehow he doesn't seem to feel it; for all his complaints, he can't be unhappy to have come back. But it's hard to keep up the joke under that bruising pressure, and so Sorrel only says, helplessly, "'Dasse. I'm so sorry."

As well as he can, he turns his own face into Adasse's hair and lets himself be crushed up and into his lover's arms. That he had been frightened was clear; the grief itself was a little frightening in its intensity, now that he was really faced with it. It was all Sorrel could do to just stroke at his back and let it pass through.

"I got back as soon as I could. I'm so, so sorry."

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

"Maker's Balls, Creator's Tits, like any of this was your fault?" Adasse is crying now, angrily crying, and holding onto the other man as tightly as he could.

"I - I found your ring. Everything else was ash and bone but there was your ring and I knew you wouldn't taken it off on your own ..."

[writteninblood]

He hasn't the words to respond to that, if any such words exist. The pressure is almost too much now, and Sorrel pushes gently, or a little less gently, asking for the room to pull back, to breathe, and see Adasse properly.

"Easy love, easy... Look at me. look. I'm here. I'm alright, I—" He stops, and then actually hears what Adasse was saying, "My ring? You have it? I thought they must've..."

They're both crying, a pair of soggy elves, clinging to one another in the middle of the milling, exuberant, noisy crowd. Sorrel couldn't have cared if the Gallows itself came down around their ears, for all it mattered.

"...I thought it was lost for good!"

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

Adasse leans back, sucking in deep hard breaths. Trying to get himself under control and he knows he's just making a mess of himself and ruining his reputation as a notable bad arse -- but he just doesn't care.

Sorrel is not dead.

"No, no, I've got it ... I grabbed it off the pile ... " He wiped at his face and pulled the ring out from under his shirt, where it had been resting against his chest. He broke the leather strap and slipped it immediately unto Sorrel's finger. "...there, back home. Where it belongs."

Then bugger the crowd for a lark, he's just going to kiss this elf right now.

[writteninblood]

Sorrel laughs against Adasse's mouth as he's pulled in, and loses the next minute or so in the sudden distraction of being firmly, desperately kissed. It was the kind of touch that went a little too hard, and held on just the wrong side of too long, pressed deeper than comfort for the sake of a desperate desire to prove that the horror was over. A thank the creators, you're alive kind of kiss, and Sorrel is nothing loathe.

He hadn't thought Adasse was dead, of course, but just the same.

"Vhenan," He says, only weakly, when he finally has the breath to do so. Sorrel doesn't want to pull away, he wants to keep being held and to put his forehead against Adasse's. He wants a bath and a meal and a nap, but mostly just this, "Emma'nehn. Oh, I missed you."

Kostos, look away. Your sweet, innocent eyes can't handle all this emotional nakedness.

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

Adasse lets Sorrel lean back, get his breath back, but still holds him by the arms so neither one of them is letting go any time soon. He just wants to make sure the other elf knows that he is hardly going to let him go any time soon.

Certainly not without a fight.

"I missed you. Creators, I thought you were gone. I thought you were dead - and I was never going to see you again - " He let out a soft sob, tears still coming down his dark eyes. "I love you, I love you so much. I was going to kill my way through Tevinter ... where were you?"

[writteninblood]

Sorrel makes a soft, wordless sound of distress and, because Adasse seems to have the clutching part all well in hand, reaches up to cup his face and wipe away some of the tears. They come back immediately, but the sensation is so comforting that he does it again, just for the sake of the thing.

"Tevinter," He replies, helpless to do more than spill out the truth, "After we got away, we couldn't get past the border with so many, so the wardens took us down through the Deep Roads. It was awful."

If Sorrel never sees the Deep Roads again, it'll still be to soon.

"That fucking Baron, Deshaies if that's is actual name, sold us out. Creators, I—" His voice cracks and Sorrel just shakes his head, breathes a moment and continues, "We woke up in the back of a slaver's cart. It was really scary. I don't know if we would have gotten free if not for Merril. And we definitely wouldn't have gotten through the Deep Roads without Warden Teren."

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

He sniffled deeply, nodding his head before he made a face and shuddered at the very thought of darkspawn. Especially darkspawn in that number. His face shifted, though, to fiercely angry when Sorrel spoke of the Baron.

"I knew it - I Knew It. I knew that shem was a fucking liar ... " He shook his head once more, "I'll kill that bastard with my bare fucking hands."

[writteninblood]

"I think there's a line for it, and a lot of scary people in that line," Sorrel replies, honestly, and strokes his thumb across the angry wrinkles Adasse is making, "Can he wait, though? I'd like a bath, and I'm in no mood to have you any farther away than this."

It ought to have been innuendo, but Sorrel is appalled to hear it come out more like begging. He tries again, or means to; he's missed too many meals, lately, to make a joke out of hunger.

"Bath with dinner?" The wet faces and continual leaking tears don't do the humor any favors, neither. Sorrel gives up and only asks, honestly, "I think I'd kill for a bite of venison just now. I could eat a bear."

He has certainly lost weight. They all have.

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

Adasse let out a long and harsh breath, before he nodded and pressed a kiss to Sorrel's forehead. "Yes - yes. Of course. Come on, let's ... let's get you something from the kitchen before this horde descends on it, and then bath. Then you and I are going to be locked in the room for at least a day while I hug the daylights out of you."

He leaned back, but kept hold of Sorrel's hand, tight as he dared.

[writteninblood]

"Alright, but only if you promise to do more than just hug me," not contend to simply hold hands, Sorrel wound their arms together for more contact; the time for any amount of hiding their mutual claim was gone, "And since you're dying to just pick me up..."

Don't lie, he knows you.

"...You should know, I'm bloody exhausted and much too sore to go up all those stairs to our room. So you won't even have to wait that long, if you don't like."

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

"I promise, you'll get more than hugs. Kisses. Canoodling. Whatever you want - because honestly I'd be your own carpet right now love." Adasse grinned wildly, before he turned around and crouched slightly.

"Come on then. I'm going to give you the halla-ride you so need right now."

[writteninblood]

He ought to have known it would be a Halla-ride. But still, because the way he grumbles and pretends to mind is at least half the point of it, Sorrel sighs heavily to express a vague sense of unearned dignity, then drapes himself across Adasse's shoulders, wrapping his legs around in the indicated manner.

Actually, it's quite nice. Like this, he has to put his arms around Adasse's neck and shoulders, and it takes the pressure off his knees, which is nice. And then there's the warm, welcome way it lets him put his face right up next to Adasse's hair, and cuddle close. Quite nice indeed.

"Onward, faithful Halla," He says, deadpan and teasing, "To the kitchens!"

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

"... I have no idea what noise a halla makes so you're on your own there, love." Adasse answered back, equally straight-faced, before he 'galloped' away from the memorial-turned-party, towards the kitchens as fast as he could with a Sorrel curled up behind him. Not that it matted, he hugged the other man's legs far too tightly, just to know he was really there.