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

Teren OTA

[doneisdone]

Teren does not appear at the ceremony: she didn't make it that far, because taking a moment to sit down while they waited for the ferry turned into her falling dead asleep, the journey's rigors finally catching up with her once and for all. She did it so unobtrusively that likely nobody even noticed she wasn't with them until they had reached the other shore, and of course she was none the wiser.

It's some time later that she can be found sitting on a bench on the other side of the ferry, looking thin and disheveled, asleep with her head on one hand, elbow propped improbably on her spindly knee. It's fortunate she lost everything in their travels, or she'd have done so to urchins now.

[gentlecountry]

And here, while she's waiting for her own private boat, comes along someone quite new to the city; a dwarf, dressed in warden armor and travel gear. He is, himself, waiting for the ferry. He glances at Teren, the sad evidence of the state of things, truly. Even here, where it's so open and dangerous, the homeless of Kirkwall try to shelter and— he gives her a second, sharper glance.

Now, wait just a minute. This isn't just some random wastrel...

"Ma'am," He says, eventually, and prepares a gentle nudge for if this isn't enough incentive to wake, "Begging your pardons, but you ought to wake up, now. Ma'am."

[doneisdone]

It's the second 'Ma'am' that gets her, and Teren straightens with a lurch. She still looks half-dead, strands of hair sticking out of her long braid which no longer has any hope whatsoever of remaining in a bun; her clothes are tattered and filthy, and anyone who doesn't know her by sight would think she's just someone's confused great aunt who put on rags and got lost.

She blinks exhaustedly, and this turns into a judgmental squint at the dwarf who awakened her as she waits for him to explain why. The Warden regalia strikes her as odd, but she's too out of it to make any meaningful connections at the moment.

[gentlecountry]

And Barty, as fluent in punch-drunk as anyone can be, gives her a minute to wince up at him. He blinks back, frowns, and then looks out at the water.

"Boats nearly here," He says, belatedly, because by now it's true; the boatman, still chuckling to himself is only a dozen yards out, and making his slow, steady progress, "You are headings 'cross the ways? This ain't no bedsroom, if you don't minds me pointing out the obvious."

[circleprodigy]

And then, from a short distance away, is the sound of exciting whining and the quick tread of mabari paws. Garahel rushes over to Teren and Barty, barking and wiggling as though he's a puppy all over again, only his training ensuring that Teren isn't squashed underneath his bulk. But he's hardly quiet or unobtrusive, being the lovable wall of muscle that he is.

Soft footsteps follow in his wake, pace quickening and then coming to an abrupt halt. Despite the fact that Inessa was now aware that certain deaths had been declared premature, she still found herself staring in shock. She had been the only Grey Warden left...and now she had them back again, and more.

[doneisdone]

Teren's response to Garahel is little more than a plaintive grunt-- Maker, not the dog, not now-- and she leans away from him with one hand firmly on his head, both giving him a pat and preventing him from licking her face.
"Who're you," she mutters to Barty, moving as though to stand, but the wiggling mabari hinders her balance and she plops back down again.

[gentlecountry]

"Don'ts you just worry abouts that," Barty replies, soothingly, and gives Inessa a nod as he offers Teren a hand back up onto her feet, "I'm not here to cause any troubles."

And then he gives her a longer stare. Young, despite the hair, very pretty, elven...Griffon? His eyebrows are a thunderstorm, gathering on the horizon; he opens his mouth to comment, then seems to think better of it. Then he thinks of some better comment to say...and discards it. What is happening in this city?

"Miss. Woulds this be a friend of yours?"

[circleprodigy]

"Teren!" Barty's presence is registered with a small nod, but Inessa is focused on the woman she'd not seen in some time and thought dead for a good portion of it. Shushing Garahel (who still wags his tail excitedly at everyone while managing to wiggle a bit less), she closes in and looks over Teren, both relieved and yet concerned as to her state.

"Oh, thank the Maker, we'd thought--it doesn't matter." Instantly, she looks Teren over; if she has signs of injury anywhere (beyond exhaustion), Inessa won't hesitate to cast Heal. "Garahel, I know you're happy, but let her have a little space. Let me see her, okay?" The mabari whines a little, but he does as told.

[doneisdone]

Barty's hand gets an odd look as Teren stubbornly resists accepting it, but rises to her feet once allowed by Garahel and looks between the other two.
"You're a Warden," she observes to Barty, holding still while Inessa does her once-over: there are cuts and bruises here and there, but Anders being around meant there's nothing worse that needs tending.

[gentlecountry]

"Yes, ma'am, guilty as charged," Barty replies, unbothered by the stinkeye from what appears to be a old homeless lady— or would, if not for the Griffon and the young Warden accompanying her with obvious familiarity, and of course... The Griffon.

He won't be getting over that, anytime soon.

"I expects we'll has to have a conversation abouts it, soon enoughs."

later

[byblow]

It's all a little chaotic, but someone does eventually confirm that Teren hadn't been dead last time they saw her, and that they'd last seen her very recently, and at that point Alistair decides to trust her to really not be dead, because she's tough as they come and probably immortal. It's a good decision. But it's easier to decide not to worry than to actually stop worrying, so when he does see her, an hour or so later, it still feels like a fist clenched lightly around his lungs has suddenly relaxed.

"Teren," he says, jogging a few steps to catch up with her, and then adds, "Teeeeeeeren," with all the obnoxiousness he can manage while being a little choked up—in a way that's more likely to turn into laughing that crying—and folds around her like a very thick cloak.

His face is in her hair. She smells terrible. He gives not a single shit.

"I thought," he says, and his voice has that tone, the one that means he thinks he's funny—"I thought I was going to have to mend my own socks."

[doneisdone]

There are two things working in Alistair's favor: one is that Teren's knives have all been stolen, which means she can't just immediately stab the person slowly enveloping her. The other is that she's exhausted, which means she can't even do it with her exceedingly pointy elbows.

This means that she just freezes there, like a wild animal who can't quite process the snare in which she's caught, her shrewd gaze flitting back towards the massive man behind her.

[byblow]

That’s fine. He can wait here all day.

—or, actually, he can’t. As the seconds tick by and the rigidity he’d assumed was surprise or get off me you oaf fussiness doesn’t melt away, and it starts to get weird, Alistair lets go. Mostly. He keeps a hand on her shoulder, to make sure she doesn’t run off or disappear, while he moves around to look at her face properly and deliver an uncertain smile.

“Teren,” he says. “Say something mean, or I’ll decide you’re sick and carry you to the infirmary.”

[doneisdone]

Teren turns wearily, looking up into his face with an inscrutable expression for several seconds. Then, clamping her hands on both sides of his face, she drags it down to where she can kiss his forehead, with all the tenderness of an angry hawk.
She releases him, but only to give him a sharp cuff upside the head half a moment later, seeming to come to life all at once. "You pull that shit on me again, boy," she barks, "leaving your mess for me to clean up! I'll have your hide!"

Then, without preamble, her head drops forward and she sags onto Alistair's chest. It's a wonder she doesn't start snoring here and now, but she's at least conscious enough to stay on her feet.

[byblow]

He smiles through the forehead kiss, then through the head cuff and the barking. There she is. But then there she goes, into his chest, and his smile fades into an expression that mixes contentment and concern in equal measure. She's all right in the bigger sense of the word, clearly, but in the smaller senses, maybe not so much.

Will she kill him if he picks her up? He thinks she might kill him if he picks her up.

"Teren?"

A stage whisper.

"Will you kill me if I pick you up?"

[doneisdone]

"Yes," comes her feeble reply, but she doesn't move or seem like she even could without great effort. It might just be a chance they both have to take, if he doesn't want her to crumple to the ground right here and now.

[byblow]

Mmm. Yep.

"Make it painless," he says, because he's ducking down crooked to sweep her legs up. No need to ask if she's seen a healer—she was with Anders—so he heads toward where she was sleeping last time he checked.

[doneisdone]

He receives protest in the form of a grumble, which, if one listens closely, turns to light snoring as Teren goes completely limp in his arms. None shall speak of this, if they value their tongues.

[byblow]

Alistair values his tongue. He also values her pride. So he gets her to her room as quickly as he can without being clumsy about it and without passing through any heavily trafficked areas, without passing through crowds and making look what I've got faces—a courtesy he wouldn't afford many other people, if they were so tough that carrying them around like sleeping children was funny—and tucks her into her bed with perfunction.

He hovers near her bedside for a few seconds after that, unsure whether she'd like him to watch her snore or not, unsure whether it's necessary when there's undoubtedly work to be done elsewhere to help everyone else resettle. He decides it's a no on both counts, and heads for the door, and is halfway there before he turns back around and ducks down to give her a pecking kiss on the hair. Is that what people do, to old part-maternal mostly-knife women who have recently come back from the dead? Whatever. Who cares. It's what he's doing.

"Thanks," he whispers, just in case she can hear, "for not being dead."

Then he goes.