WHO: Felix, assorted Grey Wardens, and some concerned friends. WHAT: Felix Alexius is too cute to die. WHEN: Nowish. WHERE: Felix's room and the hallway outside it. NOTES: Broken into pieces, with starters in the comments.
This isn't an impulse decision. Or: some of it is impulse. Yesterday they still weren't certain whether or not to go through with it. There's rarely a good time to become a Grey Warden, by any objective standard, but surely this is among the worst, and even at the best times it isn't meant to be a kindness. It's not mercy or charity. But whatever is happening in the west is going to keep happening, it seems, while they stand by and wait—and in the meantime, here's someone they can save.
He comes alone. Five Wardens descending on a dying man will make people talk; better make sure it's not for nothing.
Directed to the right door by a servant, he opens it without knocking, but doesn't look surprised to find more than one person inside. Adelaide gets a glance, Dorian a tight and minimal smile, and Alistair inclines his head toward the sleeping figure in the bed without moving inside from the doorway.
Hand clasped in Felix's as has been her custom since he was first ordered to remain in bed and rest for the remainder- Adelaide's perched on the bed next to him. A concession to his desires for her comfort, sitting and holding and waiting for the last threads of him to wind out into the Fade.
She's done this before with others she didn't like near as much- it is never an easy thing but this? Cuts at her enough without Dorian's presence- and without being asked to leave.
"I beg your pardon?" She'd be this calm, this cold were it anyone speaking- but Alistair earns the barest spark of genuine irritation.
With the more obvious bedside territory taken, hands that are likely better at this healing compassion business than his -- the seemingly endless fount of electricity he can produce is not helpful to anyone at the moment -- he doesn't completely know what to do with himself, and so he is seated at the other side, elbows to knees and a book in hand, pages gently turned. He'd read a little poetry, prior, to fill the room with something, but has since been quiet, reading so as not to stare.
But he is very ready -- to fetch things, as needed, or to listen. So when the door opens, the stare that Alistair is fixed with is almost disarmingly focused. He shuts the book closed, glancing at Adelaide, a little surprised. Do they not like each other? Was Dorian aware of this?
"He said he wants to talk to him alone," he reiterates, helpfully. Then, to Alistair, less snappish but with a little pushback; "Badly timed, I should think."
Alistair's opened his mouth to sass Adelaide before Dorian beats him to it, and his irritation—with none of the usual playfulness, not right now, with a grim task ahead and bodies burning hundreds of miles away and the blighted song in his head always a little louder than it was the day before—hasn't faded when Dorian draws his attention instead.
"Right," he says, "I'll come back next week."
Nearly as soon as he's said it he drops his gaze and winces at himself, eyes shut for a moment, head turned aside, don't be an ass, Alistair, etc., and when he opens his eyes he looks kinder, if not quite apologetic. He doesn't step further out of the room than he already is, but his posture shifts back before he tries beckoning them closer: he isn't going to force them out (yet), but he doesn't want to wake Felix (again, yet).
As added incentive, he says—hushed, politely—"We can cure him." Sort of. Maybe.
No, they do not like each other, no Dorian is not aware as it hasn't been relevant until this fool in all his bumbling, fidgeting, sassing glory chooses to make it relevant. Bad enough that he is here, worse still that he is flippant- her temper holds by the barest of threads when it comes to the care and comfort of her patients-
When the patient is a friend? The thread is a touch more bare.
"Bullshit." Snapped and sharp and angry. "If you had a cure you would have given it to him months ago. How dare you come here when he is like this and say such things."
Dorian is already on his feet after Alistair's sass, which is less like he is in fact about to vacate the room and more like a blade being slowly unsheathed. He, unlike Adelaide, likes the man just fine, but not enough that he can get away with inserting himself into this situation and being clever. But then that attempt at added incentive stalls Dorian, a look of shock settling in his expression before that ices up as well.
He's heard that before. He's heard it from Gereon, countless times, for years.
His hand drifts out in a silent sort of gesture, bidding Adelaide to, well, chill. Like in a calm down sense, not in an ice queen sense. This doesn't have to get shouty yet, even if she is saying words he might have himself. "If that's what you've come to talk to him about, believe me, he's heard everything there is worth saying on the subject."
Alistair looks between the two of them—outclassed, outmanned, certainly out-iced, and, even if he weren't all those things, currently fighting with one metaphorical hand tied behind his back by probably a dozen solemn oaths he would at least like to break sparingly. But the look of resignation that settles onto his face isn't the sort of resignation that precedes giving up. It's the sort that precedes gripping the first stone on a cliff face.
"Maybe," he says, at length, to Dorian. "But if he said no, this would be a good time for him to reconsider." Perhaps he should have put on his armor. He's more impressive in his armor. He abandons his relatively polite post just outside the door to come to Felix's bedside, nearest Adelaide, and examines his pale, sunken face. He might be too far gone to survive it, but— "It's not something we give anyone. It's a sacrifice he can make. If he wants to. If you get out and let me talk to him."
Eventually, Alistair makes it back inside the room. Alone. He locks the door behind him, as if that would really stop a small collection of mages from getting inside if they decided to, and sits down on the edge of the bed. He isn't afraid of the Blight, of course, but he does hesitate for a moment. He's never seen anyone this bad. Usually they're put to a sword first.
"Felix," he says, nudging his knee through the blankets with a loose fist, and waits for a sign of consciousness to add, "Can I call you Felix?"
Felix is really too weak to do much more but smile and give out a feeble. "Of course." He does indeed look terrible, all pale and sunken in. "I'm afraid many have reason to distrust my family name these days." He had heard a bit of the commotion with Alistair and the others, but he lets Alistair explain himself now.
Alistair hums sympathetically—his problem is more that people adore his family name, which isn't even really his family name, but he does sympathize—even though that isn't why he asked. Maybe it should have been. It was his quasi-uncle that Alexius tossed out of Redcliffe.
"You don't look too good," he says. An understatement. A joke. He's only trying to set him at ease, although it doesn't look like he even has the energy required to be uneasy. Alistair rubs his mouth and cuts to the chase: "I'm Alistair. I'm a Grey Warden. We'd like to recruit you."
Felix seems to think this is some sort of joke. "Forgive me, Tevinter has... a unique relationship with the Wardens so I'm not sure what use you'd have for a corpse." In Tevinter, there are plenty of rituals that can be done with necromancy.
The first thing he's said that isn't a joke. Figures. But Alistair appreciates the humor anyway, mustering up a very small smile. "We could probably think of something," he says, "but no. We want you alive."
No good in a fight, Dorian told him, but a good man. Alistair was recruited for his character, too, and he's turned out all right, mostly.
"We're immune to the Blight." Oversimplification. There will be time for gruesome details tomorrow, maybe, if Felix isn't dead. "If you join us, you'll live." Again: oversimplification. He might die in the process. That isn't something they warn for, generally. "But you'll also be one of us. I'm not offering you charity. It's a hard life, and you can never leave it."
Felix watches Alistair for a long moment, perhaps too long considering how little time he has left. He thinks about all of the times that his father had insisted that just one more treatment, one more spell, and he'd be cured. He had made peace with his death long before they had left for Redcliffe, long before his father's desperation had turned to madness.
And now here was a figure from recent history, telling him there was one more chance. He wasn't going to last much longer. Dorian and Adelaide hadn't been here for a pleasant visit, they were his death vigil. If this was true he couldn't afford to waste time deliberating it, and yet it felt like something out of a dream.
"Do you think living with the Blight for the past few years has been easy?" he asked eventually, only really commenting on the idea of having 'a hard life.' Despite the long pause, he needs more time to really process the rest of it. Wasting time, perhaps, but it doesn't quite pierce through his skepticism just yet.
It wasn't like the Joining she remembered, her own being the only one that Sabriel had attended, until now. There was no making Felix stand, weak as he was, and so with a hint of required solemnity had gathered around the bed. There were no darkspawn to kill today in order to fill the chalice, but there were words to be said before they began. Hence the solemnity.
"These words have been spoken since the first."
She glances to Felix - reassurance, apology, she isn't sure which - and then turns her gaze away, vacant, her posture as still as a statue. Maybe it will be for naught, but they will do it right.
"...Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn."
He'd overseen many Joinings in his time, but this had to rank as one of the most desperate. But Alistair had obviously seen something in this young man to make him want to suggest it, so here they were. He just hoped it worked for Alistair's sake - not only would Felix's friends be somewhat upset, but Alistair was so determined, so sure - if this failed, he hated to think of the consequences.
Felix got the feeling this wasn't exactly typical for a Joining ceremony, but he still finds himself letting those words settle over him. This isn't just a cure, it's a commitment and if it works he doesn't plan to let the Wardens down. Not if they are going to be able to save him.
"And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten," Alistair continues, subdued in a way that comes from focus as much as solemnity or concern. It will work, it will work, it will work.
He still has the chalice that Kaidan handed to him, holding an unimpressive but sufficient amount of black blood. But Sabriel is closer to Felix—literally and metaphorically—so Alistair presses the cup into her hands to give him, with the last words.
Sabriel takes the chalice, not looking overlong at its dark contents, her fingers running along the rim. It was only right she do this as the youngest, and as the one to bring this forward, and yet... here, now, moments away from the most final of things, she feared this choice.
She did not believe in any higher power, and even if she did, it would do little. All she could do was believe in the man before her; that he could take the blood and come out alive.
Sabriel swallows the last of her nerves. "And that one day, we shall join you," she says, softly, moving closer to Felix. If he can take the cup to drink from, she will steady it with a hand over his; a quiet indication that he is not alone, no matter what happens.
It's clear that Felix's time is nearly up, and though it's hard to see him this way, Ellana wants to fill his last days with as much happiness as she can. Now that he's too weak to take into the gardens, she comes by his room once a day, every day to sit and talk with him. But today as she nears his room, she sees Adelaide and Dorian outside of it, and her heart seizes in her chest, assuming the worst.
"What is it?" she says, rushing up the last few feet. "Is he-- did he--?" Is he gone?
By now, Dorian has found a place to sit, unceremonious and thus at odds with how he normally is. His resting place is on the floor, back against the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him and the other bent, braced against linked hands. At the sound of foot steps, and then Ellana's querulous question, he doesn't look up.
"Not yet."
Which might be unexpected. He looks shattered, regarding the closed door as if staring it down. Somewhere behind it, there's some unknown miracle at work. Supposedly.
Hours. Less, most likely, and they banished for the sake of an oath wrapped around some manner of Grey Warden Miracle. Bullshit.
It is all bullshit.
But it is bullshit she must endure and after her initial inelegant snapping upon being set down and locked out Adelaide reigned everything in and took vigil next to Dorian. Compared to her earlier frustration and near rage her expression is practically placid; the only sign of discomfit the rather rapid creation and reformation of figurines of ice in one palm.
A focus exercise, to take her mind off of whatever is happening in the room. "Apparently the Grey Wardens can pull miracles out of their-"
Her eyes are already filling with tears, and she tries her trick of staring up at the ceiling to keep them from sliding down her face. Felix isn't gone yet. As much as she doesn't want to lose him, she doesn't want him to suffer anymore either. Wanting him to stay for her benefit is selfish, she knows, and yet the thought that she'd arrived too late to see him one last time had nearly gutted her.
"The Wardens are in with him?" she says, pausing to sniff and get in control of herself. Ellana doesn't know Felix has the Blight; only that his illness is incurable, and so she hasn't made the connection yet between Felix and the Wardens. It just seems very strange.
"They have so many secrets," she continues. Alistair has been willing to reveal a few to her, and she's curious what they could be revealing to Felix now. Could it be true? Could they really save him with a secret miracle? The optimist in her wants to grab hold of this and answer yes.
Dorian glances up towards her and sees giant glittery elf eyes and returns his focus back to the door. It's not surprising to him personally that he managed not to notice that Felix had developed even more meaningful relationships than he'd accounted for, nor is that in itself a surprise. But as a result, he doesn't quite know all that Ellana does and does not.
As he speaks, it's for both her benefit and Adelaide's. "Alistair had been asking after him," he says, quietly. "Odd questions. Like whether he was any good in a fight.
"I said no," he adds, a little dry in humour. "Save for his combat with the Blight."
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Step 1: Kick out Adelaide and Dorian
He comes alone. Five Wardens descending on a dying man will make people talk; better make sure it's not for nothing.
Directed to the right door by a servant, he opens it without knocking, but doesn't look surprised to find more than one person inside. Adelaide gets a glance, Dorian a tight and minimal smile, and Alistair inclines his head toward the sleeping figure in the bed without moving inside from the doorway.
"I need to talk to him alone."
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She's done this before with others she didn't like near as much- it is never an easy thing but this? Cuts at her enough without Dorian's presence- and without being asked to leave.
"I beg your pardon?" She'd be this calm, this cold were it anyone speaking- but Alistair earns the barest spark of genuine irritation.
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Dorian has never done this before.
With the more obvious bedside territory taken, hands that are likely better at this healing compassion business than his -- the seemingly endless fount of electricity he can produce is not helpful to anyone at the moment -- he doesn't completely know what to do with himself, and so he is seated at the other side, elbows to knees and a book in hand, pages gently turned. He'd read a little poetry, prior, to fill the room with something, but has since been quiet, reading so as not to stare.
But he is very ready -- to fetch things, as needed, or to listen. So when the door opens, the stare that Alistair is fixed with is almost disarmingly focused. He shuts the book closed, glancing at Adelaide, a little surprised. Do they not like each other? Was Dorian aware of this?
"He said he wants to talk to him alone," he reiterates, helpfully. Then, to Alistair, less snappish but with a little pushback; "Badly timed, I should think."
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"Right," he says, "I'll come back next week."
Nearly as soon as he's said it he drops his gaze and winces at himself, eyes shut for a moment, head turned aside, don't be an ass, Alistair, etc., and when he opens his eyes he looks kinder, if not quite apologetic. He doesn't step further out of the room than he already is, but his posture shifts back before he tries beckoning them closer: he isn't going to force them out (yet), but he doesn't want to wake Felix (again, yet).
As added incentive, he says—hushed, politely—"We can cure him." Sort of. Maybe.
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When the patient is a friend? The thread is a touch more bare.
"Bullshit." Snapped and sharp and angry. "If you had a cure you would have given it to him months ago. How dare you come here when he is like this and say such things."
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He's heard that before. He's heard it from Gereon, countless times, for years.
His hand drifts out in a silent sort of gesture, bidding Adelaide to, well, chill. Like in a calm down sense, not in an ice queen sense. This doesn't have to get shouty yet, even if she is saying words he might have himself. "If that's what you've come to talk to him about, believe me, he's heard everything there is worth saying on the subject."
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"Maybe," he says, at length, to Dorian. "But if he said no, this would be a good time for him to reconsider." Perhaps he should have put on his armor. He's more impressive in his armor. He abandons his relatively polite post just outside the door to come to Felix's bedside, nearest Adelaide, and examines his pale, sunken face. He might be too far gone to survive it, but— "It's not something we give anyone. It's a sacrifice he can make. If he wants to. If you get out and let me talk to him."
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Adelaide Disapproves - 15 ( Alistair ), Adelaide Disapproves - 5 ( Dorian )
Step 2: Make sure Felix wouldn't prefer to die
"Felix," he says, nudging his knee through the blankets with a loose fist, and waits for a sign of consciousness to add, "Can I call you Felix?"
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"You don't look too good," he says. An understatement. A joke. He's only trying to set him at ease, although it doesn't look like he even has the energy required to be uneasy. Alistair rubs his mouth and cuts to the chase: "I'm Alistair. I'm a Grey Warden. We'd like to recruit you."
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No good in a fight, Dorian told him, but a good man. Alistair was recruited for his character, too, and he's turned out all right, mostly.
"We're immune to the Blight." Oversimplification. There will be time for gruesome details tomorrow, maybe, if Felix isn't dead. "If you join us, you'll live." Again: oversimplification. He might die in the process. That isn't something they warn for, generally. "But you'll also be one of us. I'm not offering you charity. It's a hard life, and you can never leave it."
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And now here was a figure from recent history, telling him there was one more chance. He wasn't going to last much longer. Dorian and Adelaide hadn't been here for a pleasant visit, they were his death vigil. If this was true he couldn't afford to waste time deliberating it, and yet it felt like something out of a dream.
"Do you think living with the Blight for the past few years has been easy?" he asked eventually, only really commenting on the idea of having 'a hard life.' Despite the long pause, he needs more time to really process the rest of it. Wasting time, perhaps, but it doesn't quite pierce through his skepticism just yet.
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Step 3(A): Save him, probably...
probably?
"These words have been spoken since the first."
She glances to Felix - reassurance, apology, she isn't sure which - and then turns her gaze away, vacant, her posture as still as a statue. Maybe it will be for naught, but they will do it right.
"Join us, brothers and sisters..."
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He'd overseen many Joinings in his time, but this had to rank as one of the most desperate. But Alistair had obviously seen something in this young man to make him want to suggest it, so here they were. He just hoped it worked for Alistair's sake - not only would Felix's friends be somewhat upset, but Alistair was so determined, so sure - if this failed, he hated to think of the consequences.
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He still has the chalice that Kaidan handed to him, holding an unimpressive but sufficient amount of black blood. But Sabriel is closer to Felix—literally and metaphorically—so Alistair presses the cup into her hands to give him, with the last words.
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She did not believe in any higher power, and even if she did, it would do little. All she could do was believe in the man before her; that he could take the blood and come out alive.
Sabriel swallows the last of her nerves. "And that one day, we shall join you," she says, softly, moving closer to Felix. If he can take the cup to drink from, she will steady it with a hand over his; a quiet indication that he is not alone, no matter what happens.
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Step 3(B): ... while making everyone else wait outside, Wardens are such dicks.
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"What is it?" she says, rushing up the last few feet. "Is he-- did he--?" Is he gone?
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"Not yet."
Which might be unexpected. He looks shattered, regarding the closed door as if staring it down. Somewhere behind it, there's some unknown miracle at work. Supposedly.
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It is all bullshit.
But it is bullshit she must endure and after her initial inelegant snapping upon being set down and locked out Adelaide reigned everything in and took vigil next to Dorian. Compared to her earlier frustration and near rage her expression is practically placid; the only sign of discomfit the rather rapid creation and reformation of figurines of ice in one palm.
A focus exercise, to take her mind off of whatever is happening in the room. "Apparently the Grey Wardens can pull miracles out of their-"
A beat. Her lips twist.
"Out of nothing."
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"The Wardens are in with him?" she says, pausing to sniff and get in control of herself. Ellana doesn't know Felix has the Blight; only that his illness is incurable, and so she hasn't made the connection yet between Felix and the Wardens. It just seems very strange.
"They have so many secrets," she continues. Alistair has been willing to reveal a few to her, and she's curious what they could be revealing to Felix now. Could it be true? Could they really save him with a secret miracle? The optimist in her wants to grab hold of this and answer yes.
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As he speaks, it's for both her benefit and Adelaide's. "Alistair had been asking after him," he says, quietly. "Odd questions. Like whether he was any good in a fight.
"I said no," he adds, a little dry in humour. "Save for his combat with the Blight."
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