faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

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!”

"Not if we leave on a trip he sanctions. I'll ask to take a slave with me and he should leave it up to me which one, so long as it's not his body slave."

The panic is abating and his brain is working again.

"Ciaran saw me come back, and the state I was in. Can you trust him not to give us away?"

She nods stiffly. "Yes, he--he's mute."

Nevermind that it was the Dominus that ensured such a trait, which should be reason enough for her to want to leave, isn't it? Then why is she so afraid to do so?

"I'll make sure the coast is clear so you aren't seen leaving." She woodenly steps past him, heading for the door they came in.

Colin cannot use the bath. He won't swim in a pool of his victim's blood. Instead he fills a bucket with cold water and goes to his room.

A single candle is lit. He locks the door. Stained clothes are cast into the fire. He spends at least an hour scrubbing every inch of his skin. Thus reddened by that instead, he puts on a dressing gown and goes to switch the dirty water for clean to use to wash his hair. He lies in bed, but sleep doesn't come until the sky outside begins to lighten.

When he wakes, it is almost noon. He looks at himself in the mirror, and he looks like the same person. He almost feels like the same person. He just wasn't the person he thought he was. Never before could he have believed himself capable of what he did last night, but it had simply been a matter of moving his hand. The choice remained as it was before he slept: stay here and feel less pain as the deed repeated wears at the rest of his moral fiber, or flee to protect the little he can. And he's not so far gone yet that he will choose the former. If he stays, that will change. For know, there is no question in his mind that he deserves to live with what he did for the rest of his life. That is the sentence he passes for himself, as he is absent another willing to judge him.

It is a few days before they are able to leave. Lucius believes they are sailing to Vyrantium, but the papers Colin purchases by his leave say otherwise. The wait is nigh impossible, and Colin fears his nerves will give him away until the appointed day comes. He and Athessa board a ship bound for Seere, a port city on the eastern coast of Rivain. The weeks aboard are dreadfully long, and Colin is loath to let Athessa out of his sight for fear of what might be done to her.

The first time he can breathe is when they set foot ashore in Seere and lose themselves in the crowd. They must ration the money they were given by Lucius, so they venture some distance from the docks before they find cheaper lodgings. Colin hastily purchases clothing for both of them so they can blend in. They are both of complexion to do so here.

Once in their room, Colin turns away from her and quickly sheds his Tevinter robes to change into the lighter, simpler garb. Once it is affixed, he smiles gently.

"We made it."

Athessa, for her part, tries and fails to return the smile.

“I’ll believe it when I die of old age,” she says, carefully removing the large hoop from her ear. She fumbles with it for a moment, and holds it in her hands even after replacing it with a simpler cuff more in style with local fashion. In her hands is the closest thing to shackles she’s ever had to wear as Lucius’ slave. It represents her bondage and while it is easily removed, it doesn’t feel like she’ll ever be truly free of it.

The smile wanes but does not vanish. “Lucius thinks we’re in Orlais. We have time before he realizes we’re gone. Old age can wait. Right now, you’re free. What’s the first thing you want to do with that?”

Maybe she should keep it. Or maybe throw it away. It’s not like it won’t be replaced whenever they’re caught. Her ear twinges with the memory of every twist and pull it’s endured, and she sighs.

“I don’t know,” she tosses it onto the bed next to her change of clothes. “It doesn’t...feel like I thought it would. To take it off.”

Without bothering to turn or cover herself, she starts to change into the simpler Rivaini garb. Privacy is not a privilege afforded to slaves, even ones who aren’t expected to serve with their bodies, and she doesn’t think twice about Colin seeing her.

“S’pose I should figure out how to get a job, though.”

“I meant with your freedom,” Colin says gently. “But we might start with selling that thing, or melting it down somehow. But don’t worry overmuch about feeling odd about this. It’s all very new. It was like that for me when I first came to Tevinter.”

The mention garners a quick look, and a rush of something like guilt, but Athessa nods and pretends that adjusting her shirt requires her attention.

“Do what you want with it,” she says, meaning the earring, but hoping he has some suggestions about what to do with freedom, too. She swallows thickly, giving up on her useless fussing to look at Colin. “I don’t feel odd about it. I’m scared.”

"So am I." And that's when his smile vanishes. "Fucking terrified. But I'm going to protect you, whatever it takes. Like you protected me."

"Right," She breathes it out on a laugh, or some shade of depreciating scoff. "Fine job I did of that, didn't I."

That gives him pause. He turns to her, a questioning look on his face. She doesn’t still think he’s a victim in this, does she?

“Never mind, forget it,” she says, shaking her head. They may be here ultimately because she saved a kid from getting torn apart in a crowd, but by the same token if she hadn’t, he’d be dead and she’d still be with Lucius in Tevinter.

“What do we do now?”

MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

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