WHO: Athessa, Madi, Lucien, Skull, and YOU!! WHAT: catch-all WHEN: mostly Satinalia and later WHERE: Kirkwall and The Gallows NOTES: post-murderhaus h/c is gonna go here
For a time, it's absolutely perfect. Comfortable. Calm. Safe.
But then Athessa's eyes start to close, lids heavy and every fiber of her being utterly exhausted. She was already sleep-deprived before everything at the Silver Lamp. And now, almost drifting off, she sees a flash of dead eyes again and she forces her eyes back open, blinking rapidly and breathing just a bit shallower.
It's not fair.
"Do elves bury their dead on Rune?" She whispers, when she thinks she'll be able to speak without sobbing. That familiar tightness in her throat makes it hard to speak, hard to keep her expression from flickering with the threat of tears, but she doesn't want to cry any more. Just furrowing her brow rekindles the headache from earlier, and she endures the pain of moving her arm to reach up and try and forcibly smooth it all away.
"Andrastians burn their dead," she goes on, "a-and Nevarrans mummify theirs. Invite spirits to use them as hosts."
Vanadi is in no danger of falling asleep. He never is, really. He's never needed much sleep to be functional, and it's been a long time since he was able to fall asleep in anyone else's presence regardless. So he's merely resting his eyes, tracking the rise and fall of Athessa's ribs against his side. The tiny flinch in her stands out like an alarm, and he can guess what it means. He recognizes it from many of his own nights.
"My city did," he says, quick with an answer regardless of the seeming randomness of the topic. His hand rises to stroke through her hair, and he hopes it's some kind of reassurance that she's not alone. "The drow elves, I think not." He considers this for a moment, and adds, "Do Nevarrans see many spirit-controlled mummies? That seems a bit grim."
"You'd have to ask a Nevarran," she says, staring past Vanadi's shoulder to the fireplace and watching the flames dance and sway. A wry look twists her mouth briefly. "More now than before, I bet."
Oh, but he wasn't here then, was he? Lifting a hand up through the water, she flattens her fingers out against his sternum, feeling his heart.
"Last year we spent Satinalia in Nevarra City because the Venatori had infiltrated the Mortalitasi, trying to get into the Necropolis. They infused the mummies with red lyrium and used them to overrun the city. And the dragon that attacked the city was mummified, too."
He quirks a brow at nothing in particular, and the fingers running through her hair keeps up for a few seconds as he considers that. Finally, "I followed very little of that. Satinalia, dragon, that was about the full of it. City, I suppose."
"The city fell to an army of walking dead, so they see more mummies up and about lately than before. A bad joke. I don't know how it normally works there."
That sounds... pretty intense? Pretty intense. Probably a bit more than a handful of elves falling prey to a terrible fate, though of course that one had been very, very personal.
"I can expect a lot of this sort of thing around here, then?"
Hard to say if that's agreement, or a weighing mm. This year in particular has been rough, at least for her. But last year wasn't so bad, leaving off the blood magic and the dead overtaking Nevarra City, and the spirit-induced nightmares in Firstfall.
"Good to know," he murmurs, and resigns himself to it. If he still has the kind of lifespan he used to be able to expect, maybe he'll see his way out of war eventually. And until then, that appears to be life now.
He shifts under her, stirs a little more heat into the water, and says thoughtfully, "It's still worth it, easily. For the people I've met."
There are times late at night when Athessa feels particularly low and she wonders, would I give it up to go back to the way things were? Times when fighting in a war feels less worth it than otherwise. When she thinks, I used to be happy.
"I think so, too."
Of course it's all bullshit. She didn't used to be happy, she was on the run from herself and pretending everything was fine. And she wouldn't give up the people she's met, even with the promise of not knowing better. There'd be a disappointed version of her somewhere that knew who she gave up.
He lets that trail into a few long moments of silence, and listens to the crackle of the fire, the gentle lapping of water as he strokes Athessa's hair. It's peaceful, but sadness still hangs as thick as a woolen blanket around the tub, and he feel powerless to tear it down. Would anyone be able to? Maybe, but anyone isn't here. Just him.
"I want to know more about you, Athessa," he says quietly. "Is it a bad night for it?"
Ask me...when we can talk without acting like we're afraid to know each other, Derrica's voice echoes from many months ago, dredged up by Vanadi being so willing to ask to know more, to say the things he said.
Athessa considers saying yes, it is a bad night for it, but she can't bring herself to do it. She's not afraid of being known.
It's gracious of her; he'd not have begrudged a decline tonight.
"Everything," he says to the ceiling, where his eyes follow paths in the stonework. "Eventually. But I know that's a tall order. I would settle for ... for where you came from, and why you're here, and who has made you into the woman here before me."
"I was born about a day's ride from Kirkwall, where the Planasene Forest meets the Vimmark Mountains. My clan lived in an area they called Sulahn'an. It means land of song. Songs were how we passed down our history."
And as he's already guessed, she uses past tense when speaking of them.
"I still don't know what happened to them, not really. I was on a hunt when they disappeared."
Oh. Disappeared. He winces. Is that better, he wonders, or worse than some bloody catastrophe? It's out of his depth to try and imagine it to judge, and so he only continues to stroke her hair.
"How many were they?" he asks, to wonder at logistics, and to wonder at the more personal angle, "And how old were you?"
She frowns, briefly, trying to remember if she had already turned thirteen at the time, or if she was actually twelve and turned thirteen in Kirkwall. It doesn't really matter either way, she supposes.
"One of the hunters, Enallas, was teaching me how to track, but the storms had eroded the cliff face, made it unstable. He fell out of sight and I couldn't get to him, so I tried to find my way back on my own. By the time I got to camp, everyone was gone, only their stuff left behind," Some of which remained for years, as she discovered when she returned just last month.
"I waited under the aravel for three days, hoping they'd come back. When they didn't, I wandered out of the woods and onto the streets of Kirkwall."
His heart clenches at the thought of a child of thirteen, utterly alone, waiting for no one. It is worse than a bloody catastrophe, isn't it? He lets out a slow breath, and wonders if he has any right to ask more.
She's spent a lot of time wondering, over the years. Running various what if scenarios through her mind and being subjected to the cruel insinuations of others. Being abandoned by choice. Being the reason Enallas is dead. Giving up on searching for them too soon, not doing enough to save or find any of them, and so on, and so forth.
None of it ever changed the simple fact that they're gone.
"No. I figured... if Enallas survived, he would've gone back to the camp, or known to go to Kirkwall if necessary, since that's where a lot of my family traded for things. But I never heard talk of anyone like him around. Maybe he got picked up by sailors, or pirates, or fishermen, I dunno. But... Last month I went back to where the camp was and said the rites for everyone, planted trees and charms for each. The aravel was still there, and the camp looked like it hadn't been touched. Not even by looters, because my nan's staff was still there."
This, at least, is a wound old enough that she doesn't feel too fragile to talk about.
"I've had to come to terms with never knowing for certain. What happened, what might've been. I'll never know what vallaslin I might've earned, what my role would've been in the clan, what more I might've learned about my heritage. Just like I'll never know what it's like to grow up in an Alienage."
He listens silently, suddenly grateful that he'd gotten the small primer from Byerly that he had. That he'd never stumbled blindly into any of these subjects, maybe pricked some kind of fresh pain. That he'd never asked, so, why don't you have one of those forehead-things?
"I think I can see," he finally says instead, "Why you and Mhavos might be such good friends."
He'd gotten this talk, the one about city elves, and Dalish elves, and the elves that belong to neither, and remembers it well.
Athessa lets out a soft little ha, not quite a laugh but close enough. Just like her face shifts into not quite a smile, but something fond all the same.
"Yeah, I guess we have complementary experiences with being outsiders. I wish I'd met him sooner."
"No," she answers on the exhale of a deep breath. "Not really, anyway. When I got nabbed by the guards, when I got this—" The scar she showed him on the beach, a memory of a guard dog nearly taking her arm off. "—the guards tried to dump me off at the Alienage, tried to find someone to hold responsible. The hahren — the elder — told them straight away, she's not one of ours. Not that I blame her; they would've made every elf in the Alienage suffer for me, if they'd taken me in."
And then Devigny happened, and Ciara. Does she tell him about that? Tell him about the first person she loved who then broke her heart and made her believe she was unlovable? Athessa shifts, relieving the pressure on her hip slightly and adjusting the lay of her arms.
"You don't...really want to hear about this, do you? I don't mind you knowing it all but I just...those years aren't happy ones." Surely he'd rather hear about the time she spent as a dancer with a traveling show in Rivain, or about literally anything else.
Should he hold out hope for some later acquaintance that became friend, or shelter? Or would Athessa have mentioned any such person in this answer? He's still wrestling with this when she speaks again, and he shifts as well. His is to sit a little higher in the tub, to tilt a glance down at her — the top of her head, the curve of cheek, whatever he can see.
"I do," he says, which is true regardless of how grim the tale is, "But I don't ... that is, this isn't a demand. I don't want anything you're not willing to give me."
She looks up at him, gauging his expression. He knows the vaguest of versions she could have offered, that she hasn't always been able to defend herself, but...knowing the details is different. Her concern isn't that he'll decide, suddenly, that she is too broken to be around, but that his only option will be to pity her.
"Alright," she says. "But — you know me here and now, okay? So you shouldn't...you shouldn't pity me. Or worry for me. I've had to survive a lot of unpleasantness to get here but I'm not...I'm not fragile."
He knows first-hand how quick she is to break a man's nose. He saw her kill Medrod.
He studies her face as she looks up at him, and wonders what she searches for. Maybe he can guess. Maybe it's the same thing that has him staring at walls and ceilings during his own confessions, too afraid of seeing the assumption that he's after some kind of sympathy, or needs to be handled more carefully.
"I couldn't think of you as fragile if I tried," he says, quite honestly. "And I won't do either. I promise it."
Before she goes on she leans up to kiss him, closing her eyes briefly. Her fingers brush his jaw. Water drips from her fingers in little rivulets down his neck. This feels more familiar than before, less like holding each other together and more like just...holding each other.
Sinking back down, she rests her head against him and sighs.
"I didn't really have anyone in Kirkwall for two years. Nobody closer than an acquaintance. Which is probably why I ended up getting grabbed. They knew nobody'd come looking for me.
"There was a noble called Devigny, used to live on an estate in Hightown. He was well known for throwing big, expensive parties where everyone'd pretend to be Orlesian, that kind of bullshit. He would pay off the city guards that patrolled around his place so none of them would get in trouble for causing too much noise or anything, and he'd pay them to look the other way when he wanted his footman to kidnap girls off the street for him.
"When he was done with them, the girls would get dumped off at a brothel he owned. No guild oversight keeping tabs on anything, so you can imagine...it wasn't a good place to be."
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But then Athessa's eyes start to close, lids heavy and every fiber of her being utterly exhausted. She was already sleep-deprived before everything at the Silver Lamp. And now, almost drifting off, she sees a flash of dead eyes again and she forces her eyes back open, blinking rapidly and breathing just a bit shallower.
It's not fair.
"Do elves bury their dead on Rune?" She whispers, when she thinks she'll be able to speak without sobbing. That familiar tightness in her throat makes it hard to speak, hard to keep her expression from flickering with the threat of tears, but she doesn't want to cry any more. Just furrowing her brow rekindles the headache from earlier, and she endures the pain of moving her arm to reach up and try and forcibly smooth it all away.
"Andrastians burn their dead," she goes on, "a-and Nevarrans mummify theirs. Invite spirits to use them as hosts."
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"My city did," he says, quick with an answer regardless of the seeming randomness of the topic. His hand rises to stroke through her hair, and he hopes it's some kind of reassurance that she's not alone. "The drow elves, I think not." He considers this for a moment, and adds, "Do Nevarrans see many spirit-controlled mummies? That seems a bit grim."
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Oh, but he wasn't here then, was he? Lifting a hand up through the water, she flattens her fingers out against his sternum, feeling his heart.
"Last year we spent Satinalia in Nevarra City because the Venatori had infiltrated the Mortalitasi, trying to get into the Necropolis. They infused the mummies with red lyrium and used them to overrun the city. And the dragon that attacked the city was mummified, too."
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"The city fell to an army of walking dead, so they see more mummies up and about lately than before. A bad joke. I don't know how it normally works there."
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That sounds... pretty intense? Pretty intense. Probably a bit more than a handful of elves falling prey to a terrible fate, though of course that one had been very, very personal.
"I can expect a lot of this sort of thing around here, then?"
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Hard to say if that's agreement, or a weighing mm. This year in particular has been rough, at least for her. But last year wasn't so bad, leaving off the blood magic and the dead overtaking Nevarra City, and the spirit-induced nightmares in Firstfall.
"Only when there's a war on."
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He shifts under her, stirs a little more heat into the water, and says thoughtfully, "It's still worth it, easily. For the people I've met."
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"I think so, too."
Of course it's all bullshit. She didn't used to be happy, she was on the run from herself and pretending everything was fine. And she wouldn't give up the people she's met, even with the promise of not knowing better. There'd be a disappointed version of her somewhere that knew who she gave up.
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"I want to know more about you, Athessa," he says quietly. "Is it a bad night for it?"
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Athessa considers saying yes, it is a bad night for it, but she can't bring herself to do it. She's not afraid of being known.
"What do you want to know?"
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"Everything," he says to the ceiling, where his eyes follow paths in the stonework. "Eventually. But I know that's a tall order. I would settle for ... for where you came from, and why you're here, and who has made you into the woman here before me."
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And as he's already guessed, she uses past tense when speaking of them.
"I still don't know what happened to them, not really. I was on a hunt when they disappeared."
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"How many were they?" he asks, to wonder at logistics, and to wonder at the more personal angle, "And how old were you?"
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She frowns, briefly, trying to remember if she had already turned thirteen at the time, or if she was actually twelve and turned thirteen in Kirkwall. It doesn't really matter either way, she supposes.
"One of the hunters, Enallas, was teaching me how to track, but the storms had eroded the cliff face, made it unstable. He fell out of sight and I couldn't get to him, so I tried to find my way back on my own. By the time I got to camp, everyone was gone, only their stuff left behind," Some of which remained for years, as she discovered when she returned just last month.
"I waited under the aravel for three days, hoping they'd come back. When they didn't, I wandered out of the woods and onto the streets of Kirkwall."
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He does, though.
"Did you ever find out what happened to...?"
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None of it ever changed the simple fact that they're gone.
"No. I figured... if Enallas survived, he would've gone back to the camp, or known to go to Kirkwall if necessary, since that's where a lot of my family traded for things. But I never heard talk of anyone like him around. Maybe he got picked up by sailors, or pirates, or fishermen, I dunno. But... Last month I went back to where the camp was and said the rites for everyone, planted trees and charms for each. The aravel was still there, and the camp looked like it hadn't been touched. Not even by looters, because my nan's staff was still there."
This, at least, is a wound old enough that she doesn't feel too fragile to talk about.
"I've had to come to terms with never knowing for certain. What happened, what might've been. I'll never know what vallaslin I might've earned, what my role would've been in the clan, what more I might've learned about my heritage. Just like I'll never know what it's like to grow up in an Alienage."
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"I think I can see," he finally says instead, "Why you and Mhavos might be such good friends."
He'd gotten this talk, the one about city elves, and Dalish elves, and the elves that belong to neither, and remembers it well.
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"Yeah, I guess we have complementary experiences with being outsiders. I wish I'd met him sooner."
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He's almost afraid to ask it, what if she says no? But that would be impossible, a vivacious and caring woman like her, wouldn't it?
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And then Devigny happened, and Ciara. Does she tell him about that? Tell him about the first person she loved who then broke her heart and made her believe she was unlovable? Athessa shifts, relieving the pressure on her hip slightly and adjusting the lay of her arms.
"You don't...really want to hear about this, do you? I don't mind you knowing it all but I just...those years aren't happy ones." Surely he'd rather hear about the time she spent as a dancer with a traveling show in Rivain, or about literally anything else.
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"I do," he says, which is true regardless of how grim the tale is, "But I don't ... that is, this isn't a demand. I don't want anything you're not willing to give me."
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"Alright," she says. "But — you know me here and now, okay? So you shouldn't...you shouldn't pity me. Or worry for me. I've had to survive a lot of unpleasantness to get here but I'm not...I'm not fragile."
He knows first-hand how quick she is to break a man's nose. He saw her kill Medrod.
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"I couldn't think of you as fragile if I tried," he says, quite honestly. "And I won't do either. I promise it."
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Sinking back down, she rests her head against him and sighs.
"I didn't really have anyone in Kirkwall for two years. Nobody closer than an acquaintance. Which is probably why I ended up getting grabbed. They knew nobody'd come looking for me.
"There was a noble called Devigny, used to live on an estate in Hightown. He was well known for throwing big, expensive parties where everyone'd pretend to be Orlesian, that kind of bullshit. He would pay off the city guards that patrolled around his place so none of them would get in trouble for causing too much noise or anything, and he'd pay them to look the other way when he wanted his footman to kidnap girls off the street for him.
"When he was done with them, the girls would get dumped off at a brothel he owned. No guild oversight keeping tabs on anything, so you can imagine...it wasn't a good place to be."
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