[ OPEN ] I Still Feel Alive

[sulahnan]

WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: Catch-all
WHEN: Drakonis (but other times welcome)
WHERE: Around
NOTES: Should be pretty tame, mention of trauma will ofc be labeled with CW. Starters in the comments.

Well then.

The month of Guardian came and went like a beating: brutal and cruel and over faster than the lasting pain it inflicted. Now, it's Drakonis, and the goal is a return to something resembling normalcy.

Athessa can be found studying and taking lessons with Ser Marcus in the library or in Enchanter Julius' office, snooping around Kirkwall, and trying her best to stay out of trouble around the Gallows. Her late night hypothetical musing via crystal has all but ceased, and gone are the days of icing the floor to skate on socks.

Maybe she could do with some cheering up, or a good tussle.

Comments

[sulahnan]

Her shoulders hunch with instinctive panic as soon as his hands are on her, heart leaping into her throat and choking her breaths into shallow gasps and she breaks the kiss as suddenly as she started. Her hands have relinquished their holds on hair and leather, having moved to stop his touch without her bidding them.

"I--" Was it a mistake, to think she'd find comfort here? She swallows thickly, trying to loosen her heart's grip at the same time she's letting go of his hands. His touch isn't the one she's afraid of, the one she loathes to remember. Athessa rests her forehead against Deimos' and squeezes her eyes shut. Breathe. Stop crying. There's safety here.

Is there safety here? This isn't what they do.

"I'm sorry," she starts to step away, brows knit in consternation.

[hemitheoi]

Something is wrong - something is very wrong. If he had never seen her other expression before, that smile, that beaming light from her eyes, this was brand new as well. When she pulls away, he watches her face like he watches a target. Learning every crevice of that scrunched up expression like it might reveal this problem to him.

Because he knows pain, he knows sadness, he has caused it in others often. But...

They're out in the open here, and he trusts that even less. Now isn't the place to ask, or at least, he would hate to be seen like this by anyone. So he does the next best thing he thinks matter, and would prefer to be given. He curls an arm under her legs, one around her back and lifts her. "Don't talk if it's not what you want."

[sulahnan]

Athessa struggles uselessly for half a second until her rational mind takes over for the animal instinct again and her body stills. It's not quite relaxed, still wound tight as a spring, but not resisting.

And she's trying really really hard to be okay with this new situation but--

"Deimos, please put me down."

[hemitheoi]

He comes to a halted stop. His feet landing evenly as he looks down to where she is tucking into his bare chest. Frowning at her.

"But you can barely hold yourself up."

This was how it worked, between them. It always had been. They fill whatever the other one is not quite capable of. He gives her pain, she gives him control. They fit, perhaps not like puzzle pieces, but shards of glass from a once whole mirror, but they fit, and largely, it is unspoken.

Why is she speaking of it now?

[sulahnan]

He's right. She doesn't want him to be right, but he is. Purely by being who he is, Deimos is the antithesis of Devigny, and by instinct alone is preventing her from shattering. If he put her down, she would have to walk, and if she walked, she'd want to run, and if she ran from him, that would be wrong. It would feel too much like being hunted, and he has never hunted her. He never has to.

Athessa looks at his face with wide eyes, seeing him, fixating on that face, and letting everything else dull. She loosens ever so slightly.

"Tell me I'm safe." It's as much a plea as it is a command, and acquiescence.

[hemitheoi]

He knows this place.

This cold and cruel place. Where there is no safety, where there is no forgiveness. There is not even good and bad, light and dark, dawn and dusk.

There is only fear. There is only the fear that is coming. That rises up like a wave against the black, it swallows you, makes your skin heavy and your bones brittle. Where you cannot know who and what you are anymore except that fear. A horrified slugged feeling of mire and muck.

He leans forward, his forehead to hers. He cannot tell her safe. He does not know safe. What he does know - is the one thing he is.

"You have better than safe. You have me."

[sulahnan]

That's better than safe.

Athessa closes her eyes and lets her forehead rest against his for a moment as that sinks in: she has him. Then, she throws her arms around his neck and holds herself to him, no longer fighting his grip or uncomfortable in it. She's uncomfortable in her own skin, but not against him.

She tries to say something, maybe a thank you, but mostly it just comes out as a whimper.

[hemitheoi]

He stiffens. But it is not because she is a threat to him, as he usually is with so many touching him. No, that... she is... glad for him. His violence. Not the way that Chrysis had raised him up, glorying in his violence as proof of her teachings under the Qun. But that in being so, he offered her some relief he did not... quite understand.

"Bed. Then you will tell me what caused this."

[sulahnan]

She can't force the words out, no yes, Deimos, not even an okay. She just nods and trusts as much as she is able.

Which bed he deposits her in doesn't really matter, be it hers or his. Athessa doesn't want to let go of him--or let him go?--when he stoops to set her down, but she relents without any further complaint than a lingering touch. She curls in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest and taking up even less room on the bed than ever. No lounging, no sexy posing, not even the casual cross-legged seat that she takes when talking to him casually. She's holding herself together, tightly and still just barely.

"We saved a girl from--" Grits her teeth. How is she supposed to talk about this? With Deimos? It's not the same as Colin knowing by witnessing it in her nightmare, or whatever she said to Byerly. She can't even remember how she told the latter, she was in such a state at the time. "--this fucking bastard, Devigny. Tonight. He was gonna--she was drugged, locked away at his place..."

Athessa covers her face with her hands, fingers curled against her skin as if she'd like to tear it off if she could.

[hemitheoi]

He sets her down, laying her against the pillows and blankets, that no - are not soft, are not delicate and light, like any good Qunari, there is nothing but simple utility. But it is sturdy, and there is enough to settle her.

"Devigny. What is he?"

cw: rape mention

[sulahnan]

What is he?

"He's a monster. A man. A cruel bas with enough money that he thinks he can own people," A fresh well of tears pools in her vision, blurring everything. Her breath hitches, voice cracks, lip quivers. But it isn't sorrow. Safe with Deimos it isn't even fear, not at the surface. It's rage.

"He's... He raped me. I was fifteen and he had his servant steal me off the street and drugged me, poured wine down my throat, and then he--"

She catches the awful sob wrenched from her throat with a shaking hand over her mouth, and it takes a moment before she can speak again through clenched teeth.

"I couldn't let him do it to anyone else. I couldn't let that girl go through that."