╰┈➤ˎˊ˗ @bardicchord's alistair and cailan, via a dialogue prompt: "i don't want you to think all i ever went through was misery."
they were supposed to be collecting downed wood for the fire. somehow, in the midst of hauling pieces into their arms, the pair of brothers had settled on a discussion neither of them had really expected. one topic led to another, a backhanded comment about alistair's time in redcliffe that gave cailan pause. the king had asked for clarification because perhaps, maybe, he hadn't heard him right.
but, no. cailan had heard him rightly.
between then and now, they'd found a rotting log to perch on, one running parallel to a stream, rushing clear and cold with melted frostback snow. the chunks of wood, what little they could find that were dry enough and hadn't turned to pulp in the frigid wet winter-turned-spring, have been piled up neatly. and there those twin piles sit, untouched for the duration of their conversation, side by side.
i don't want you to think all i ever went through was misery. the uncomfortable knot that has settled low in the pit of cailan's stomach lessens so very little.
the statement would be innocuous for most others. perhaps, most might have even believed it. that maybe, the life of the bastard son of the king of ferelden wasn't all bad — how bad could it have been, really? besides the forced distance between alistair and the court, and besides the glaring absence in the wake of his submission into the monastery, he'd lived in redcliffe castle as the nephew of an arl. perhaps, maybe, others might even assume he'd a warm bed and ate at the same table, the same meals as his guardian, their uncle, did. all assumptions, sure, but understanding ones, well-meaning ones. the same ones that cailan himself had made a long time ago.
but most others did not know eamon. and apparently, neither did cailan.
far be it from him to be surprised, really, that his brother might be capable of seeing the bright side in most situations. even further, still, that alistair might attempt to comfort him in such an admission. and he'd been so brave about it, even as he course corrected and lessened the blow. yet cailan cannot help but stare into the rushing water some meters away, brows knit, unmoving, and wonder why his brother even felt the need.
why must alistair spare him, of all people? or is he sparing himself the realization that cailan had been quickly coming to terms with himself: that he'd been willfully neglected by the man he'd been entrusted to as an infant? for the sake of an image still so fragile, something so fresh in the face of a recovered ferelden? for what else, beyond the honor of his mother?
was that what his mother would have wanted? a child, innocent in the makings of his own birth, sent out to live with the dogs in her honor?
cailan straightens. ❛ alistair. ❜ if the disquiet in his tone comes off as a reprimand, an admonishment, he does not mean for it to. much to his credit, at least, cailan realizes it quickly, and the hush of apologetic shame befalls him for a few contemplative moments further. choosing his words carefully, correcting his tone would do them both well. it is hardly alistair's fault. he had been a child born — literally and figuratively — into a set of circumstances he would have never asked for himself.
but there is hardly a thing they can do about it now, is there, besides acknowledging it? treating him like a still-swaddled, naive little boy would do his brother so little justice in the end. alistair is a grown man, and his own man. a warden, to boot. he deserved to be treated as such.
❛ even if it wasn't all misery, you need not soften it for my sake. ❜ if he wasn't, well, he prayed to the prophet andraste or the maker himself, whoever was listening, that his younger brother would forgive him his self-important assumptions. ❛ you slept in the kennels. eamon treated you like a mutt dog. he shipped you off to the chantry to sever any ounce of legitimacy you had to your name like a mutt dog. and father, he … he let him. ❜
and cailan himself did not go without fault. he barely saw past his own nose to notice the criminal shortcomings afforded his brother in the first place. the thought makes him sick to his stomach, sick enough to purse his lips with a stiff shake of his head. the sole of his boot scuffs in the mud as he straightens his leg and bends it again at the knee, fist clenched atop it. movement, something, anything to break the band of vulnerability stretched tight between them. ❛ unruly child or otherwise, no soul deserves that. ❜
@bardicchord sent
“It was done wrong, but it's done. So be it.” / eden hawke
Guilty minds do little else but wonder.
Sitting upon the roof of Skyhold with a pipe firmly balanced in his good hand, the Inquisitor seems far smaller a presence than he had while addressing the crowds. Not a leader, or a soldier, or even really the warrior he is in battle: Lavellan is just a young man, a little over twenty-three. Tired, guilty, and working on introducing a new elfroot-flavoured variety of cloud into the sky above the Inquisition’s fortress.
“Easy thing to say when it wasn’t your mistake,” he says sourly, a little kick to his words he’s had to bite back around those looking to him as their savour. Hardly a full tantrum, but the moodiness has been simmering.
He knows it isn't fair to Hawke for them to receive the brunt of his frustrations. They barely know each other really, but he can't quite help himself. Some deep-rooted feeling that they know what he's going through is enough to loosen his tongue..
Glassy eyes focus only on the burning horizon. For the first time in his life, such a sunset can’t invoke any real warmth or emotion in him – just numbness, numbness ill-fitting the beauty of glowing snowcapped mountains.
How many had died? How many people had put their faith in him, and died because of it? Or… how many had died on the mountain because he hadn’t been bothered to reach Redcliffe, a result of poor oversight? That, of course, is the real reason he’s been sulking, the thing the Inquisitor just can’t seem to let go of.
Mages… or Templars, he hadn’t chosen a side, that hadn’t been his intentional at all. Because Cathal foolishly wanted both, wanted to fix the Templar’s mess before approaching any of the mages, wanted to offer them tangible proof of the Inquisition’s dedication to order, to change. The mages would be reasonable, he’d thought. And he still thinks that, truly.
But Cathal hadn’t predicted the magister. Who could?
He made the wrong decision. And every Templar leashed to his Inquisition is a reminder of that foolishness.
“How do you do it? How am I supposed to let things be when people’s lives are on the line?”
@bardicchord -> "you know i don’t deserve your friendship, right? i just hurt people. " Merrill -> Sharrah :,)
Sharrah is silent for a long moment, letting the words hang in the air. She wonders, briefly, if it was too long, the mere act of collecting her words, her thoughts, understanding the knife's twist within her chest at Merrill's claim, intermingled with the relief of her survival, the grief of losing everyone else.
( even the wound that was Tamlen found itself picked at by this. once they were three. now Sharrah is not sure if they could even count as two. )
"Why?" She could make a good guess, could assume what and why Merrill said what she said. But Sharrah wants to hear it in her own words, from her own mouth.
Just as she wants to deny every single self-accusation of her old friend's without so much as hearing them, but has long since learned this is a swift way to a quick end. "Lethallan... you are the only one left of our clan." Please, explain why you think this. Tell me why I should no longer be your kin.
She casts her gaze square upon the other, Taint-lightened green searching Merrill's face for an answer. Any answer at all.
A decade had passed between the two. Did Merrill recognize the girl in the mirror that Sharrah had lost sight of? Or were they both irreparably altered by their individual horrors?
╰┈➤ˎˊ˗ @bardicchord's kieran said to alistair, via an inbox prompt: wow, i wasn't expecting a hug, but ...
❛ your first mistake. ❜ the reverberation of the king's voice is muffled, just slightly, in the dark curls atop kieran's head. judging by the looks of passing, hurried wardens, this was not the most appropriate nor opportune time for a family reunion of sorts. but given the amount of time that had passed since he'd last heard from kieran — given the nature of their shared presence amidst the organized chaos that the fortress had become in light of everything — they can manage without the two of them, just a moment longer. his arm tightens about kieran's shoulders, holding the young man close for a breath longer. ❛ your mother will surely kill us both when she realizes just where you are. this, at least, we will both survive. ❜
╰┈➤ˎˊ˗ @bardicchord as rosemary surana, “I don’t care if they were right, they were being an ass! Punching them was practically doing them a favor…”
❛ believe you me, ❜ the first warden starts, mid-wrap of his niece's knuckles — whether he agreed with her or not (which he did), it did not change the fact that the poor girl's hand would swell sooner rather than later. this at least gave her the ability to blow off the pool of anger and swallow her bruised pride before she must inevitably march to her father's side. to not only seek healing, but deliver the explanation her warden-commander father is surely expecting by now.
the recruit she'd decked had wailed loudly enough for most in the fortress to hear it. and fact that either of her parents were not already hot on her tail was a gift horse he was sure rosie would not look in the mouth. not for the time being, at least, as her uncle adjusts the wrap of clean bandages about the bridge of her knuckles where the redness seems the worst.
❛ i agree wholeheartedly. bugger had it coming from more than just your direction. ❜ perhaps it was not the most professional, coming from the first warden himself, to encourage his teenaged niece to break out into scraps with newly joined wardens. but cailan does not think on it further as he sits back, miming an extension of his fingers for rosie to copy, to examine his handiwork. she could still move her fingers, but the wrap was tight enough to keep the swelling at bay. good. ❛ that was the cleanest right hook i've seen out of you yet, by the way. ❜
