In a moment of glorious surrender, you were broken for all the world to see...

[nadasharillen]

WHO:Nari and Sina Dahlasanor, Adelaide LeBlanc, Pel Ashara, and YOU!
WHAT: Visiting Sina in Recovery -- for whatever reason
WHEN: Beginning of Guardian, the first weeks after the Surprise Rift is closed.
WHERE: A private tent in the Skyhold garden
NOTES: Positive and negative reactions both welcome! If you're not sure what happened, check that sweet sweet 'Surprise Rift' link!



In the days following, Sina sleeps, the toll the active shard took on her thin, pale form evident in the hollows of her face; the way she'll wince and gasp, fingers grasping and twisting at the blankets. Sometimes she wakes in mumbling delirium, staring glassy-eyed at the wall. Rarely she'll open her eyes and actually see, lucid, but weak.

Always, her clansister is there. She looks like a fretful shadow of herself, wary. Her knives are sheathed but close by, lest anyone come to take issue with the small bed-ridden mage.

Wounded she might be, but she'd still opened a Rift in the heart of Skyhold.


[Adelaide.]

Nahariel is like a ghost that haunts her clansister's bedside. She talks little, sleeps less, and is only away for the briefest of reasons--one of which is to make sure Adelaide never runs out of tea when she's there. One day, as she sets down another cup, she suddenly and quietly speaks.

"I don't think I ever thanked you properly. Or your spirit."


[Pel.]

At some point during the next days Pel will look up to see the swarthy hunter often seen in Sina's company, with very little sound to accompany her appearance beside a polite throat-clear. She looks... tired.

"Pel?" She asks--mostly a formality.

"Sina was... mumbling in her sleep. She said your name once or twice, and..." she'll trail off, and run a hand through her hair with a sigh. Some of it sticks up afterwards--it doesn't look as if she's taking care of herself much.

"I know you fought not too long ago, and you were both hurt, but... would you come and see her? I think she'd like that."


[Everybody.]

[Bring flowers? Study her? Cry a bit? Be accusatory? Come on in!]

Comments

[eolasemah]

Sina nods weakly. She can, she answers in her mind; she's been in the Fade near constantly. It is a lonely place, but safe from the pain that shoots through her chest when the herbs wear off and she's fully awake.

[colecomfort]

He can't go with her, not really, but he can experience a shadow of the Fade through others' eyes. To the strands of dreams that cling after they wake.

In this moment, however, her dreams seem more defined by what they conceal.

"It's a way to escape. Fill up with fog, and the pain goes away."

It hurts just to look at that shard, as if it were stuck inside his own sternum. His hand falls away from her forehead. He doesn't know what to do.

"I wish Solas were here."

[eolasemah]

Sina's brow knits uncomfortably as she nods again. Her mouth opens long enough for her to wheeze in a sharp breath, and then she turns her head away with a wince. A few seconds go by as she waits for the pain to pass, then her head lolls back to face Cole again. 'Solas,' she mouths, questioning. She's heard his name before, but can't remember where, or why. She wonders why Cole would want him here.

[colecomfort]

By talking with her, he's keeping her here. If he left, she could slip away into the fog of her dreams...

...her dreams, where she'll be wandering. Not freely, perhaps, but in ways he can't.

"An elven mage. He was here, before the Herald died. He led us to Skyhold." Now, only the people who were around at that time remember him. Cole once took it for granted that Solas would come back on his own, in time. He's starting to have his doubts.

"He likes the Fade. I don't know where to find him in the waking world, but he'd always come back there." There's a small seed of hope in telling her. Just on the off-chance. "He's... taller than most elves. His shadow stretches longer. And he hasn't got any hair."

[eolasemah]

As she listens wearily, Sina's eyes shift in and out of focus. An elven mage. 'Like me', she mouths, to no one in particular. But he's tall, and bald. And wanders the Fade.
She finds that her eyes are closing, and she doesn't stop them. It takes so much effort to stay awake, to have a conversation, even if it's just one person talking to her. She's on the shore of that enormous ocean again, the one she nearly drowned in, but now sits safely on the beach. She looks across its vastness and sees nothing, no one. She is alone here, but that isn't a bad thing. On some level, she remains aware that Cole is nearby, and between his presence and the lapping of the waves she is able to find comfort.

Solas.

[nadasharillen]

"Sina, who are you talking--oh!"

She had heard the murmuring from outside the tent as she approached, hands full of newly washed cloth. It was the young man, the... spirit. From the fireside in the Fallow Mire camp those months ago. Nahariel had forgotten about him until now, even the outlandish floppy hat slipping into the recesses of her memory like a stone through a still pond.

What was his name?

It rose like a bubble, with the rest.

"Cole... yes?"