faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

The door to the sitting room bursts open and the instant it does, a cage of force is erected around Devigny. Colin yanks it backward, pulling him away from Athessa, then runs to her. The cage will gradually shrink, and it's still too good a fate for that monster.

"Athessa?" Colin breathes as he reaches her side. He doesn't touch her. Least of all now.

Ok, so maybe this time will be different after all.

Her fingers are curled tightly against the cushion of the chaise, and when Devigny is suddenly no longer pressed against her, she freezes, not sure if this is some sick trick or if she's being granted a reprieve for once.

Her name breaks her free of the ice and she turns to see Colin standing there, and Devigny struggling futilely against magical bonds. Back to Colin, like she doesn't believe he's real.

"Colin. You... h-he..." She covers her mouth with her hand and sinks to the floor, doing a poor job of stifling her sobs.

Colin turns to look Devigny in the eye. It's not really him, obviously. Whatever demon it is isn't even particularly powerful. It doesn't change form to defend itself even now, even to him. He clenches a fist at his side, and the prison begins to shrink faster.

Kneeling before Athessa, he offers her a hand. Not to help her stand up, but just in case she does want contact.

"Do you remember how you got here?" he asks gently. "Here, to this house in Kirkwall, from wherever you lived before."

She clutches at his hand, flooded with relief that yes, he's here, and yes, he's real. His question takes a moment to sink in, and she frowns, trying to focus enough to answer.

"Before?" How did she get here? All she has is the vague understanding that this is where she was taken that night, and where she remained when money changed hands. "I... I don't..."

"Think carefully. And think about why I know your name when you didn't tell it to me the other night. Where else do you know me from?"

Colin gives her a little time to think on it. Enough time for Devigny to unceremoniously pop like a grape a few feet away.

The pop gets a flinch from her, and more confused frowning, particularly when she looks at the floor beneath where he was, and the blood isn't staining the carpet. Not the way it would in real life, anyway. It's sitting on top of the fibers like the floor is made of glass.

"This...isn't real," she ventures, and when she looks back at Colin, she doesn't see the teenage boy that fled the Circle. He's the apothecary, the friend, and she's not 19. And Devigny's not dead.

Athessa's eyes snap open and she sits upright, breathing as hard as she would had she been running. Cold sweat makes her hair stick to her face and neck, and she can't stand it. She hastily pushes her hair away from her face, off her neck, and fumbles around in the dark for something with which to tie back the mane of curls. This is the second time--or is it the third? She groans and scrubs her face, sick of these fucked up dreams regardless of how many times she's had to relive what Devigny did to her.

Just like the night she shared a nightmare with Laura, she rummages through her pack for a joint--blessedly already rolled, thanks past-Athessa--and sets off on a walk. As an afterthought, she paces back to snatch up her crystal, and sets off again.

She has a suspicion that someone will want to talk.

Colin gasps as he wakes in a cold sweat, shivering. He tangles with the covers for a minute before managing to get out of bed. A touch of his finger warms the water in a nearby basin, and he splashes his face with it. He'll need to bathe before going in, or he'll have this dream all over him all day.

His hand reaches for his crystal. A twist, a name spoken, and he is in contact with Athessa.

"Are you all right?" he gasps.

"Not really," she sniffs. The cold air is making her nose run more than crying ever does, but it's worth the minor discomfort of snot to feel the air on her face. "But thanks for asking."

As she usually does, thanks to the scarcity of matches, she lights her joint on a torch as she passes through the courtyard. She doesn't have a set destination, she just needs to move. Expend some of the residual urge to run away so she can...well. She's probably not going to try sleeping again tonight.

"Why is this happening?"

“Neither am I.” He’s shaking. He feels ill.

“I don’t know. I’ll-I’ll be over as soon as I’m ready. Where are you going to be in about an hour?”

"I dunno, probably on the roof. Maybe in the garden. Where do you want me to be?"

"The garden. I promise I'll be there, no later than an hour."

True to his word, he's there about forty-five minutes later. His hair is still wet from washing the sweat out of it, but he is clean and dressed. That's the important thing. When he sees her, he stretches out his hands.

"Hug?"

By the time he gets there, she's stopped needing to move so much, the adrenaline all but gone. Her hair is messily piled atop her head, she's wearing the same loose fitting clothes and jumper that she slept in, and she's almost through with the gently smoldering herb.

Seeing him makes her eyes well up again, but she offers as much of a smile as she can muster before running to him and throwing her arms around his shoulders. He's like a lifeline that she clings to, balling her fists in the fabric of his shirt and letting out a shaky breath as if she can only just now breathe fully.

Colin squeezes her tightly, his cheek pressed to her hair, hand rubbing up and down her back. "Just breathe. That was a lot."

She buries her face in the crook of his neck, but she does breathe. In for a count of four, and out for the same, like Ciara taught her. It works to slow her heart down a bit more, but only time--or more herb--will put an end to her shaking. She knows that from experience.

And as she breathes, she feels like she might understand something more about what Laura told her about scent. Colin smells like the soap he used, of course, and the earthy, woody ingredients that he works with, but there's also something indescribable that is just him. It's...comforting.

After what simultaneously feels like hours and like no time at all, she pulls back and uselessly brushes at his shirt where she's left fresh tears. This time, her attempt at a smile is a little more successful, despite it all. "Sorry, got your shirt all wet."

"It'll dry," Colin says with a little smile. His gaze drops for a moment. "Was, um. Did any of that really happen?"

Some dreams are oddly literal, these ones more so than most, and if any real-life event is going to cause nightmares, it's going to be sexual slavery.

She starts to nod, then seems to hedge on it.

"It...s-sort of? I...Devigny didn't...buy me," It's a hard thing to talk about, even to someone who saw something very much like what really happened. She sighs and turns, walking back to where she'd been when Colin arrived, and sitting on the ground. There's a bench, of course, but she'd rather sit in front of it, on the grass, than on something hard and unforgiving.

"I was unlucky enough to get nabbed by the wrong guards for stealing and they took me to him instead of arresting me. I only ever saw the foyer and that room, and he..." Her face reflects the disgust she feels, the churning of her stomach and she fetches up her nearly-spent joint again and takes a drag. Around a lungful of smoke, she continues: "He wanted to test out the goods first. Dumped me at The Maiden Tower after." A brothel, where she was probably meant to stay, locked up where she couldn't implicate him in anything if she had the gall to try. But she was more trouble than she was worth, and nobody would care about an elf being used and discarded when the alternative is trying a wealthy resident in Hightown.

Colin sits down beside her and reaches for the joint in her hand without asking. If permitted, he'll take a drag of his own, his hands still shaking slightly. He sputters a bit, losing about half of it to a cough, and the rest is exhaled through his nostrils. He passes the rest of it back to her.

Now he understands how his friends felt when they learned about Lutair. It's a completely different feeling that rears up when it's a friend and not yourself who was hurt. It reminds him of what happened to him, certainly, brings back those haunting memories always lurking in the back of his mind, but he also just wants to kill Devigny. More than he ever wanted to kill Lutair, even at his most desperate. It's almost understandable for someone to hurt him. Hurting a friend? That goes too far.

He rubs his hands together and rests his elbows on his knees. "Sounds like we knew the same kinds of people," he sighs.

The joint is passed without comment or protest; she's happy to share. She prefers smoking with friends than smoking alone, anyway, though there's not as much opportunity for that lately. How awful would it be for smoking with friends to become something unpleasant, associated always with coping with their pasts?

But she lets out a hollow, humorless laugh at what he says.

"Fucking assholes," she agrees, then sniffs and rubs her face with her sleeve. "Not that I ever knew more than his name and where he lived. I was just...some stupid kid living on the streets, no friends, no clan, no luck. The girls at that fucking brothel treated me more like a person than anyone else in Kirkwall ever did."

"Monsters," Colin corrects her gently. "Fucking monsters." He goes silent for the rest of what she says. At the end of it, he is left taking it all in. It's a lot to learn about someone, weighty and dark. Then he speaks again.

"You're Dalish?" he asks a little more loudly, clearly surprised.

This time when she laughs, it's genuine, surprised that he's surprised, and amused by it.

"Yeah. I mean now I've been on my own longer than I was with my clan but..." She shrugs. It's not like most people would know by looking, or would recognize her clan name. They're gone.

A small chuckle. "Same way as I'm a kid from Denerim, then." He glances at her, then reaches for whatever is left of the joint. "What happened to them?"

She lets him have the last of the herb, plenty high enough to cope now.

"Gone. Probably dead, maybe scattered and enslaved. I guess there's a chance they're fine, but I don't... wanna think about the possibility that they abandoned me willingly."

"We keep having things in common," Colin says before taking the last drag.

There's less coughing this time, but it's clear he isn't used to smoking. For situations like this, though? It's definitely better to get a little high. He drops the last bit of paper to the ground and stamps it out.

"My family died when the darkspawn invaded the city. Back during the Blight."

"You'll cough less if you breathe in through your nose while you inhale the smoke," she says, but he's already tamping out the dregs. Oh well. She'll show him how to do it better later.

"Sorry. About your family." It's hard to offer condolences that don't sound hollow, but at least they both know that the other understands uncannily well what the other feels. Has felt. All of it.

"Sorry about yours." There. Now they sound equally hollow, while still understanding. He reaches out an arm and pulls her into a half-hug. "I never met anyone else who went through that. I don't mean losing people, I mean the other thing."

That he knows of, anyway. Except for Lexie, but she doesn't remember it.

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