faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Apparently, they did. At least, that's what Magister Lucius claims.

Athessa had been outside, as had Colin, while Gaius Lucius spoke with Colin's parents inside their house. They saw Colin just long enough to recognize him before the Magister escorted the family back inside to discuss business. When he came out, he sighed, kneeled in front of Colin, and smiled. They'd given their assent, and Colin would be returning to Tevinter with his new mentor. In no time at all, they were on the boat to cross the Waking Sea.

There's something that Athessa can't quite shake, though. She's sitting next to Colin and stealing glances at him out of the corner of her eye as if she might find confirmation of her suspicion written on his face.

She'd heard raised voices in the house after Lucius closed the door. Distant enough, deep enough in the house that only her ears would be able to hear. Not the sign of a deal going smoothly. And later, when Lucius stepped out of the door, there was a familiar set of consternation in his brow, like he was trying to solve a problem in his head.

"Hey," she says quietly to him, nudging his shoulder with her own, gently. "It's gonna be ok." She hopes it will be.

By this point, Colin is exhausted. He sways with the nudge, then his body softens against hers, head resting on her shoulder.

"Are you his slave?" he asks her quietly. He's heard of those, of course, but hasn't met one.

She tenses, not because of the question, but because of the ease with which he leans against her. She's not used to people showing any kind of affection or softness towards her, and with that inexperience comes unease and perhaps just a little panic. When will the niceness be replaced with cruelty?

But this is just a boy, as out of his element as she was when she was bagged, tagged, and sold. So she tries to force herself to relax, or at least sound relaxed, when she answers.

"Yep. But don't worry, you'll be his apprentice. He's gonna teach you how to use magic and probably how to be a magister and stuff. I just help out, like an assistant."

He is just a boy, but he has eyes and ears. He knows what he saw when her master threw her to the floor, and what she just said about being a slave being a worrisome and unfortunate thing. And with all the things they say about Tevinter--blood magic, sacrifice, slavery, depravity--there are threats more insidious than physical harm.

"But you are his slave," he circles back. He raises his head and peers at her. "I don't want him to make me cruel to you. Would you tell me, if something I did would be cruel?"

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, and considers the question for a moment before smiling at him.

"Tell ya what. I might be his slave, but I don't have to be yours. We can be friends. No orders, no cruelty..." She raises a hand for a shake. "Friends."

"Friends." Colin shakes her hand, looking genuinely comforted for the first time. He might be ripped from his old life, but he doesn't have to lose himself.

As the years pass, Colin holds to his word never to give her an order or be cruel to her, but straight away, it becomes difficult for him to be her friend. His new master quickly noticed his connection to his slave and kept him busy until he could grow wise to this new world. He is tasked with one thing: rise in knowledge and power. Then, it is made clear to him how very difficult such a task is.

He is, in Tevinter, an indentured servant, technically. This is a requirement before he can be made a citizen. Until he is a citizen, he cannot join a Circle, and he will not be a citizen until he has served out his ten-year indenture. When the concept of the indenture is explained to him, Colin clings to the desire not to lose himself. It is a comfort, in many ways, that he has no status yet and is technically only better than a slave because this has an end to it. But once he is a citizen, he will only be Laetan, because he is not descended from the Dreamers of old. There have been Laetan Archons, but it was not easy for them and it will not be easy for Colin.

There is no understanding of the true danger to him until after he arrives. His master makes it clear that in a Circle, he will be considered easy pickings. To survive, he must be clever and determined. Lucius is immediately frustrated by his new pupil's inherent lack of ambition and makes up for it by making the boy afraid for his life. The less he shows the desired personality traits, the more his master frightens him. He tells him he will die. He tells him he'll be eaten alive by more determined mages. He tells him it was a waste to save him and bring him to Tevinter.

There are nights when Colin wakes in a cold sweat from dreams of demons. They lure him with promises of becoming powerful enough that he will never fear for his life again. He thinks about it.

At last, his tenth year comes and he is a citizen. By this point, he and Athessa have drifted somewhat apart thanks to their master's maneuverings. Colin joins a Circle and finds that he has more talent for schmoozing than climbing. He doesn't need to be a powerful man to survive if he can accomplish the same by attaching himself to a more powerful mage. He takes some solace in the healing arts, which lend well to his gentler nature, but telekinesis is what is encouraged of him. Healers are soft, but if you can tear a man in two without even having him touched, that strikes fear into your enemies. Colin didn't know he had enemies.

By the time he is twenty-five and Athessa twenty-seven, they almost never speak, both being busy trying to survive. Colin is studying and practicing constantly, having learned how to amplify his power with his own blood. Which isn't blood magic, his mentor explained, because blood magic involves sacrifice and that is why it is evil. Unfortunately it makes healing very difficult and sometimes impossible, so the one aspect of magic he truly loved is lost to him. And that's not the only thing.

He comes home late one night as Athessa is putting out the lights in the house, glassy-eyed and covered in blood, hands shaking.

"Help me," he begs. He may have lost a great deal of himself, but at least this is a plea and not a command.

The sight of him loosens her grip on the long-handled snuffer, which falls with a clatter to the marble floor and she rushes to his side. Never at ease with initiating contact, for a moment she falters, hands hovering like she doesn't know what to do with them before one alights upon his cheek to make him look at her and the other grips his hand, heedless of the blood.

"Are you hurt?" She looks him over, trying to see any obvious injury, then turns to one of the other house slaves. Without needing to say anything, they hurry off, presumably to get help or to fetch whatever is necessary to clean up the blood. "Colin, Colin what happened?"

He shakes his head, gripping her hand hard.

"They made me hold him," he says faintly.

"What? Hold who?"

One of the other slaves beckons Athessa towards a servants' passage, and she guides Colin by the hand until they reach the kitchen.

"Here, sit down," she motions to a bench at the old table. The other slave, a younger elf called Ciaran, hurries off to finish putting out the lights and clean up whatever blood trail they've left in their wake while Athessa tends to Colin, wiping at his face with a hot towel. "Who made you--? I don't understand."

Colin swallows, the heat and damp from the towel wiping away sweat and blood to reveal how very pale he is.

"I need to get clean," he says. He can't stand being covered in someone else's blood any longer. Crossing the kitchen to a basin, he pours water over his hands and starts soaping all the way up to his elbows.

She huffs with irritation, frowning and tossing the damp, bloody towel back into the water. With an obstinate set to her jaw, she rummages around for some kind of clothing for him to change into, and sets the bundle next to the washbasin before planting her hand on it so that if he tries, he can't take it without first addressing her.

"If you want my help, you need to tell me what's going on!" She demands, fixing him with the same serious look that she used on him as a kid. He's not Dominus Lucius, he doesn't get to leave her out of the loop or ignore her like this. He's supposed to be her friend.

The world is wrong, wrong, wrong. This is wrong. It's incorrect, and it's morally repugnant. Isn't it? Did everything he learned as a child change, or was he misled from the start? No. He disagrees with the Chantry on many fronts, but it was right about Tevinter. His breath rushes in his ears. Suddenly, he's on the floor, covered in blood and water and soap and very, very close to losing consciousness from hyperventilating.

Athessa drops to the floor beside him. He's not hurt, it's not his blood, then why--?

She cups his face in her hands, making him look at her. "Colin, Colin listen to me, you need to calm down. Breathe deep, okay?" She inhales deeply for a four-count, and lets the breath go, to show him how. "Breathe in slowly, let it out. Focus on me, okay? Focus."

Her thumb brushes over his cheekbone as she searches his eyes for any sign that she's getting through to him, still trying to get his breathing under control.

Trying to get his breathing under control feels like smothering at first, but he focuses on her voice. Her touch. The sound of the whispers pressing on the edges of his mind begins to recede. There's no way for her to know she nearly became the second person he killed tonight.

When at last the pinpricks are over, waves of deafening quiet washing over him, he speaks.

"My cohort. We were at Festus' house. He took us to a room with glyphs drawn. Spellbooks everywhere. He rang for a slave to come in. He grabbed her and shoved her in my arms and told me to keep her still. He said this is what we have to do to become what we need to become. The only way for a Laetan to compete and not get killed by his enemies. And he pushed a knife into my hand."

She starts to withdraw, still confused, but a suspicion of what he means dawning.

"You...did you...?" If he didn't kill the slave, what are the chances they'd be here, right now, in this situation? "You killed her."

The last time he killed someone, it was an accident. This? This was murder. Sacrifice, they called it, as if she were a goat instead of a person. He curls in on himself, the tears coming. He can still feel her pulse against his fingers.

"She was screaming," he sobs. "She was begging me. Festus started hitting her because she was so loud. I moved my hand, and...and I did it. I held her as she died."

Athessa swallows her horror, knowing that her honest reaction would serve only to send him further into darkness, so she does what she has learned to do: she says what she thinks he needs to hear.

"You had no choice," she says, her voice sincere but the meaning hollow. She pulls him to her, holding him close in what she hopes is a comforting embrace. "It's not your fault."

He resists the embrace, pushing against her and pulling his shoulders away, giving her a horrified look. The voices start spinning in his head again, and he's suddenly on his feet.

"No, no, no, nonononono," he says more to the demons than to her. "This isn't me, that's not me, this place is wrong, you're wrong."

In this world, it's kill or be killed. The southern Chantry is right about Tevinter. And yet his parents sent him here, he consented to come here and learn this. This was his destination all along. The elf would have been killed by one of the others if not him, but the fact that it was him matters. He did it. If one of the others had done it, he would have allowed it to happen. Either way, the blood is on his hands because he didn't have the courage to save someone helpless.

“Then what’s right?” She too is on her feet, hands spread imploringly. She’s no threat, the posture says, no matter how insistent or argumentative her tone. With anyone else she wouldn’t dare, but Colin is her friend, isn’t he?

“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me how to help you.”

He had begun to see her as a slave. Holding to the letter of their agreement, he had nonetheless allowed her to pour his tea, serve his dinner, announce his guests. And all the years they have known each other, he or Lucius could have slit her throat to power their spells. He watches her now, fixed and focused on half a thought that becomes a whole thought.

"Help me?" That had been his plea at the beginning. That's been his problem all along, trying to help himself in the name of survival, paring bits of himself away every day instead of wondering whether he should be here at all. "No. Tell me how to help you. I won't, I won't wait around for Lucius to do that to you."

She shakes her head, frowning. Help her? There’s no way for him to help her in a way that doesn’t compromise his position, or who they are to each other.

“You can’t,” she says quietly, fear that he might still try rising. “You can’t help me, Colin.”

He glances about for any eavesdroppers before leaning in.

"We could leave. Get out of Tevinter."

“Leave? And go where?” There’s so much ground between where they are and anywhere that might treat them different. A fortnight’s travel or more to Nevarra or to the Free Marches, which means a long time trying to go unseen on the Imperial Highway or surviving in the surrounding wastes. “Go where and do what? They’ll track us wherever we go, mages are treated little better than elves in the south, and we obviously can’t go north.”

North, to Seheron? She might not be killed on sight but surely he would.

"East, to Rivain. The Chantry doesn't have much authority there except in the capitol. I could be trained there and you could live in freedom."

“Rivain,” she repeats, unsure. Something about it rings familiar in the way thinking of one’s childhood home, though she’s only heard of Rivain as a haven for pirates and smugglers in Lucius’ stories. She shakes her head again. “How would we get there? I have nothing, and if you take anything from the Dominus he’ll know. He’ll find out and he’ll kill us both!”

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject