faderift | I am a safe ship, harbored

WHO: Mobius, [gestures to all y'all]
WHAT: oh boy it's a catchall catchup
WHEN: post-...everything, likely just over the whole of Guardian shh
WHERE: Gallows
NOTES: Mild depictions of lyrium withdrawal and use

A word that would normally describe Mobius on a given day: chatty. The one who takes an interest in Rifters, who asks those in the library what they're looking for and then digs into why, who sees a furrowed brow or someone nodding off at a desk and offers to help.

It isn't that he's been exceptionally silent since hopping between fake worlds, or since the true and final fall of Starkhaven. But he has, for himself, been exceptionally quiet in comparison. There are days where, aside from his duties, he stays in bed or simply out of sight (and perhaps then out of mind). It hasn't felt this difficult to move forward since the Herald was declared dead.

In the days following the task to obtain fun magic rocks, he reaches a point of being miserable. Headachy, exhausted, cold, with occasional faraway looks and difficulty reaching words he is normally so careful with. Which is about when he realizes with a panic that his brain thinks he's spent entire months living and existing and surviving across worlds, worlds where he didn't have to worry about his lyrium intake. What had become finely-tuned habit, forgotten over imagined days and weeks and months that had only been hours. His damn hands shake so much when he fumbles for his philter, something that he has had to learn to be careful with since losing the feeling of his hands already, and he realizes that while this is a thing he does sequestered alone, he might...require some help this time.

That said imagined time in other worlds also included days weeks months without inflicted nightmares means sleep comes more fitfully, having gotten used to them being gone, to having restful and uninterrupted nights. Seattle might've been a bear of a time, but not because something out there forced its way into their minds and played with their fears.

And Starkhaven. He doesn't have a care who sees or hears, when he is called by name by a face in the crowd of refugees, when he stops to have a long if quiet conversation with another. There are people he knows. People he grew to know over years. He has not told people with any conviction that he had, for a time, called the ravaged city home. To help in its downfall, even if to make sure the bastards find their victory pyrrhic, pains him in a way he knows he needs to set aside. The people, as he'd told others, are the most important aspect. They succeeded in their goal. Even if it meant giving up the city itself, so long as they could save the people...

The travel, the physical toll (he'll have a new scar, now, and the scrapes and bruises will take time to dissipate), the emotional toll, sits heavy on his shoulders. It feels tangible. His meals get taken more frequently in the library, where he pours over old Research reports and notes, especially from Rifters, especially Stark's. Strange had asked him: How long, do you think, before they say Thedas starts to feel like home? All he can think of is that his own concept of home is so wildly skewed that to ask him is laughable. There's so much missing. There's so much more they could have.

His daily prayers are restless. His daily training is unfocused. There was a time he could brush an invisible hand against those around him and hear their emotions and seek to soothe, and now he can't even sort his own shit out. It means he has to push himself. He has to, to make up for all the shortcomings, to prove his own usefulness, make sure his blade never slips, make sure his faith never wanes, make sure he learns as much as he can about everything he can before he inevitably forgets everything he's ever learned so that maybe, maybe, maybe he can actually do some good and be worth Andraste's holy grace.

Maker, he should've become a chantry brother.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How was Starkhaven, and he could laugh if the effort felt worth it. "Miserable," to be perfectly honest. "Awful. Wretched. But we succeeded, in that the plan worked. Got a lot of people out that otherwise wouldn't have." A shrug. "It's not nothing."

"That isn't nothing," Barrow agrees, trying not to wince at the rest of it; Mobius hardly needs that, and it certainly doesn't help that he himself wasn't here, probably couldn't have arrived in time even if he'd ridden nonstop to the nearest eluvian.

"Looks like most of ours made it back," he observes, "and that's not nothing either."

"It's actually a lot more than nothing." He takes in a breath, holds it, lets it go. "It's a whole hell of a lot. But it feels awful."

The sight of Mobius so defeated pulls at something in Barrow, and before he can stop himself he reaches out to clap him reassuringly on the shoulder. He says nothing to supplement it; sometimes there's nothing to say.

Barrow's a man of few words. It's appreciated, honestly. Some talk all day and say nothing; some say little and speak whole poetic epics in a few syllables. While Barrow's never going to be writing any poetry (that Mobius knows of), he's a good man who speaks his mind and nothing more to it than that.

Mobius flashes a shaky smile. "Recovery process. It's a bitch. Were you...were you around in the Crossroads, too? Or did your personal stuff take you away even before that?" He doesn't remember Barrow, but there were so many people and so many worlds, some he didn't see.

"Ah... round and about," Barrow answers, a bit evasively, as is his wont; he went to a different world or two, but couldn't help being made a bit nervous by them in a way that stunted his ability to get much work done.

"Saw you there, once," he reminds Mobius, raising his eyebrows. A bear and a wolf meeting by a stream, sharing a fish.

"Did you?" He thinks back...squints a little, into the middle distance, taking Barrow in but from another angle.

And then his eyes widen again. "Wait!" Maker, but what a strange and wonderful and terrifying and amazing experience that had been. The shape of him, not necessarily physically but the inside of him, somehow, the feeling of him coming into shape. The wispy threads of familiarity.

"We weren't exactly ourselves at the time, and yet also absolutely ourselves, yeah? Great big bear. Yeah, that would be you." A little smile, genuine but also--fleeting. "Sorry if anything I...did?" Felt? Thought? Obtained from some other power that should not have been his? "Anything that might've been weird."

Barrow's smile in response is a little rueful, but he chuckles all the same, a warm sound-- great big bear, that would be him.
It was. And it was lovely.

"You ate some of my fish," he says, accusatory in a gentle, joking way; he'd shared it willingly, after all.

I am a safe ship, harbored

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