[sandbox] out of the abyss

[bringspeopletogether]

It starts as a shimmer out by the lake. Look at the water from the right angle, and the light glinting off it looks a bit...green. Sickly.

(Familiar, if you're from a certain time and place in Thedas.)

Look up some minutes later, and you can pinpoint the source: a thin, glowing ribbon uncoiling in the sky. It emerges slowly, but the more light it casts, the more momentum it gains, until it explodes outward with an enormous crack like lightning splintering the ground.

A much quieter thump follows as something hits the dirt.

Someone.

The glow vanishes; the person doesn't move for a long beat. (Get up, he's telling himself, get up -- ) He manages to drag his hands level with his shoulders, press down to bear himself upward an inch, look up at where he's landed.

Get. Up.

Another shove, and Alistair lurches to his feet, sword hauled from its scabbard and shield at the ready. His breath rattles, harsh against his throat, as he stares wild-eyed around the grounds.

Comments

[howtoactfereldan]

"If this were the Fade, you could see the Black City." Steady. "From wherever you stand. But it's not there at all. This isn't the Fade. It's Milliways."

[bringspeopletogether]

You're lying.

He doesn't have any proof, not beyond gut instinct and the old truism: demons lie. The skies are clear, and blue, and no distant cities loom on the horizon. The creature still isn't attacking him.

But even if it's not attacking, the demon -- for whatever reason -- has chosen to focus on him. And so long as he keeps its attention, that means one less demon standing between Hawke, the Inquisitor, and their path out of the Fade. Some sacrifices don't have to end in death.

(Maker. He's so damned tired. The moment he stopped moving, Alistair became acutely aware of every ache in his body, every muscle strained past its limit. He's not even sure he could hold his own if it tried to run him through with that longsword.)

Slowly, he lowers his weapons. It doesn't look like a wholly controlled movement -- more like the weight has dragged his arms down.

[howtoactfereldan]

And just as slowly, never breaking eye contact --

Cullen sheathes his sword.

"How long has it been?" Alistair looks awful; Cullen's impressed the man hasn't collapsed right there. "I mean -- if you can... tell. In the Fade. What do you need?"

[bringspeopletogether]

"You'd know better than I would."

He's too weary to put any heat into the words. Alistair closes his eyes; rouses himself back to attention a second later, once he realizes what he's done.

In peace, vigilance.

"There's nothing I want."

[howtoactfereldan]

Cullen rubs the back of his neck -- an absent movement.

"I know what I'd suggest." Reserved. "We get you a room with a bed and a hot bath. I'll stand guard, if that would help."

He drops his hand with a huff of joyless laughter. "I'd even fetch you a cheese plate."

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair doesn't so much as crack a smile.

"I'm fine." Flat. He casts the briefest glance toward the familiar tavern, then, with effort, makes a halfhearted gesture toward it with his sword. "Walk ahead of me."

He doesn't know its game. (Complacency, maybe? Wait until Alistair's secure in bed, or a bath, before attacking?) Until he does, the best he can do is watch his own back.

[howtoactfereldan]

Cullen's mouth tightens.

He'll -- send a message to Ysalwen and Cassandra from upstairs. So someone knows where he's gone. Just in case.

"I haven't hurt you, Alistair." He doesn't raise his voice. "And I won't."

Would that be enough to ward off an attack from the rear? Cullen doesn't know, but one thing he does: he would have died in Kinloch Hold if Alistair and his colleagues hadn't shown up.

So he turns and walks, steady. The bar isn't crowded. He already has a key to a room in his pocket.

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair follows. A few steps in, he realizes he won't be able to carry his sword the whole way; behind Cullen, there's the metallic noise of a sword being sheathed, a quieter wooden thump as he slings his shield across his back.

He's pretty sure he still has a dagger on him somewhere. That'll have to suffice, if things go south.




"Why aren't you?" he asks, eventually.

Usually, once you see through a demon's ruse, it tries to destroy you. This one hasn't. It hasn't even dropped the illusion yet.

(Desire demon, he's thinking: playing off his need for rest, food, freedom, safety.)

[howtoactfereldan]

That's... surprisingly easier to answer than Cullen expected, given what he suspects Alistair must have been through, given Alistair's obvious mistrust.

He never stops walking, though he turns his head to say over his shoulder, "Because you're my friend."

Up the stairs. "Because I thought you were dead."

Key in the lock. "Because I'm very glad to find that you're not."

(Nobody tell Cullen that that's a possibility in Milliways.)

He steps into the room and goes straight for the window on the far side, hands going to the buckle of his sword belt. "I'm going to rest my sword against this wall, and then I'll turn around."

It's -- difficult. To do this calmly. But given Alistair's flatness and exhaustion...

Well. It's a good thing Cullen was never one for melodramatic reunion scenes.

[bringspeopletogether]

No, he wants to snap. Don't tell me what he would say, tell me why you aren't --

It wouldn't give him a straight answer anyway. There's no point to asking again.

He hovers near the entranceway -- aside from the window, it's the only point of egress -- and rests one hand on the pommel of his own sword. Guarded: "All right."

[howtoactfereldan]

Sword goes against the wall, in the corner.

Cullen steps as far away from it as he can, without moving closer to Alistair. There'd be time for Alistair to gut him, if he wanted, if he moved quickly, before Cullen could pick up his weapon again.

True to his word, he turns around.

(Alistair's got to be -- what, disconnected from reality? Still believing he's in the Fade? Which would make Cullen a demon. Right?

How do you prove to someone that you're not a demon?)

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair leans against the wall, arms folded. (He's going for casual. It doesn't look it: it's obviously nothing but a means for him to stay upright.) Several long moments pass where all he does is study Cullen.

There has to be something -- some twitch, some gap in the illusion, something --

"Why him?" When he's not trying to push the volume of his voice -- to sound authoritative, to demand an explanation, to force his words to bear himself up on his last bit of strength -- it comes out as a hoarse croak. "There's dozens of other faces you could've picked. Your friends did. Have. When they put up the pretense at all. Why Cullen this time?"

[howtoactfereldan]

A momentary, crooked smile.

"It's really me, Alistair. I wouldn't lie to you. Never have. I don't -- if there's a way to prove to you that this isn't the Fade, that it's what it appears to be, tell me, and I'll do it."

He managed it once in Kirkwall, but it involved kneeing a recruit in the balls, and Cullen isn't quite that self-sacrificing to suggest it. At least not immediately.

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair looks away.

He doesn't know that there is a way, is the thing. Demons can do whatever they damn well please once they get ahold of you. Anything it says, does, promises, shows him -- it could be another part of the illusion.

It's so committed to convincing him, though. Why? He's reformulating other possibilities: a helpful spirit, like Justinia; a fever dream cooked up by his own mind. Alistair can't bring himself to follow through to the last option: that it -- he -- is telling the truth.

Carefully, he pushes himself away from the wall. Hands at his sides, Alistair crosses the room in slow, measured steps, willing himself not to stumble. He halts two feet away from Cullen; there's another long moment of expressionless study.

Then he reaches out to give him a poke on the shoulder.

[howtoactfereldan]

Demons make promises. Present offers. Tempt. Cullen knows he can't do any of those things.

Alistair pokes him; he laughs, quietly, unable to stop himself. But that's all.

(Alistair didn't respond to the offer of cheese -- itself a temptation, he supposes -- but if he had to guess how Alistair Theirin might try to figure out whether someone in front of him was a demon... starting with a cautious poke is utterly Alistair.)

[bringspeopletogether]

One corner of Alistair's mouth twitches, a brief blink-and-you'll-miss-it motion.

He's trying to remember that other time he got stuck in the Fade, so many years back. Did he touch Goldanna? He remembers the smell of food, and seeing her smile, but...damn it, that's as much as he can grasp. It's no help at all.

"Well," still hoarse, "now I can say I poked a demon and lived. Unless you're planning to gut me now."

Or unless he's not a demon at all.

[howtoactfereldan]

"Not at all." Cullen is smiling, small. "You lived. That's the important part."

[bringspeopletogether]

You lived. The words echo in his head like a bell struck.

Alistair draws back a step, looking behind himself to gauge the distance to the bed. Only a couple more steps. Good.

Because that, of all things, is what makes his legs feel like they're finally going to give out for good, and so long as he can get to the bed in time -- which he does, dropping onto the mattress hard enough that his armor rattles -- this won't be a complete disaster.

He drags both hands down his face. Lets his arms fall across his knees. "Maker."

I'm still alive.

[howtoactfereldan]

Carefully, still telegraphing his movements, Cullen crouches down in front of Alistair.

He looks worried; he doesn't say anything, though. Because if Alistair still thinks he's a demon -- it'd be a bad time to offer anything.

[bringspeopletogether]

He's not entirely certain Cullen's a demon anymore. He's still not entirely sure Cullen is Cullen, either, but: baby steps.

Without looking up, Alistair asks, "Hawke? The Inquisitor?"

If it's a demon, he's not sure which response will hurt more -- the ugly lie that they were slaughtered before making it through the rift, or the pleasant fiction that they're alive and well. If it's a spirit genuinely trying to help him, it'll tell him the truth.

And if it's really Cullen, he'll have witnessed everything firsthand. He'll know the answer, too.

[howtoactfereldan]

"Alive. Hawke's on her way to Weisshaupt to give them a report. The Inquisitor is in the field, headed for the Sunstop Mountains to break up Venatori operations. The surviving Wardens of Orlais -- she's got them tracking darkspawn through the Gamordan Peaks, working with one of our lieutenants. I don't think you met her -- Suzanne Cloche-Sec. From Val Firmin, so she's familiar with the territory."

He's watching Alistair carefully as he talks.

"They're well, Alistair. They all made it out, every one. And the moment the Inquisitor stepped out of the Fade and closed that rift -- every demon just... hit the ground, and vanished. There will be no demon army for Corypheus."

[bringspeopletogether]

He shuts his eyes, cradling his forehead against one palm.

That's right. He can barely remember anymore, but that long string of demons -- it started with Nightmare, didn't it, because that was the one bound to Corypheus's army. That was the other reason someone had to stay behind to kill it.

Alistair nods, hand still pressed to his forehead. Eventually, he looks up.

"How long has it been?"

He's dreading the answer. It shows.

[howtoactfereldan]

"Two months," Cullen says quietly.

He told Alistair he wouldn't lie.

[bringspeopletogether]

The corners of his eyes tighten. He turns his gaze back down to his hands.

Soft, toneless: "That's not as bad as I thought."

[howtoactfereldan]

"Bad enough," says Cullen, no louder, and runs the risk of touching Alistair's hand.

Cullen's own hands are roughened, with nicks and scars silvery and pink both, and with a crooked finger or two from breaks -- what you'd expect to see on someone who's spent his life inflicting force trauma on others with both blunt and sharp objects.

Cullen knows: demons don't often get quite that clever, especially when Alistair hasn't spent that much time on the details in question.