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

[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.