bringspeopletogether | [sandbox] out of the abyss

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sandbox

[sandbox] out of the abyss

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.

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"I'd never spent two fucking months in the Fade before, either!"

Alistair dashes another handful of water across his face. If it gives him an excuse to put his face in his hands, so much the better.

"Two months. Andraste preserve me."

Silence from outside the room.

Cullen's internal monologue is now going something like you command one of the major armies of Thedas, created on order of Divine Justinia V, fucking well act like it.

If he twists the tap farther in one direction than the other, the temperature of the water changes. Alistair cranks it as far over to the cold side as he can stand.

(Even if the warmer water felt better than any healing poultice on his sore muscles.)

"I'm sorry. I don't -- " Defeated. "Never mind."

"You fought with the Inquisition, Alistair."

Outside the sun reflects off the lake. Cullen watches the play of light on the water.

"You're not under my command. But you were with us. I'm responsible for you. That's -- just how it works."

He's an obligation, then.

Well.

"So I'd be dead in the grass out there if I hadn't fought alongside you."

"Oh, for -- "

Armies. Commanding. Professional.

"Which is it, Alistair? Am I too self-important and ambitious to recognize and remember my mistakes? Or am I a, a mere automaton judging people by the value of their function? -- no. You know what? I'm not fighting with you. I'm not doing this."

He's advanced on the bathroom door, leaning back against it, arms still folded tight. Snapping through the wood. "I'm making sure you get the care and good treatment that you need, that you deserve, until you've decided what to do from here. And I'm not leaving until I'm satisfied that you won't hurt yourself out of exhaustion and starvation. We can just -- mutually forget the part where we've known each other going on twenty years and somehow you think it just -- didn't matter that you disappeared!"

Had this been two months prior, Cullen might have gotten an amused, faintly sardonic, I never knew you cared so much, Rutherford. Instead, he gets silence. The only proof Alistair's still upright is the continuous, subtle shift in the patter of water against metal.

(And that there hasn't been an almighty crash as he fell over. That too.)

"It mattered." Very low. "You know why I stayed."

He has to know by now. Surely the Inquisitor gave a full report when she returned.

If Cullen rolls his eyes any harder they will fly out of his head and go floating outside the Observation Window.

Punctuated with a fist on the door: "Hang the military objective. You mattered."

The water shuts off.

Unfortunately, that also means Alistair loses his cover: in the quiet that follows, Cullen can hear a few audible sniffles. It's...just the humidity from the hot water. Yes.

(In death, sacrifice. It's a very noble cause; very selfless, until you think of how selfish it might feel to those you leave behind. No wonder so many Wardens come into the fold carrying armloads of broken ties.)

When he opens the door, clad in the linen clothes, still clutching a towel in one fist. his face is dry. Maybe it took a couple extra scrubs to do it, but nobody needs to know that but Alistair.

Cullen is back by the window, his back to the rest of the room.

Next move is Alistair's. Cullen almost wishes Alistair would kick him out. It's a lot easier to work off your -- feelings -- drilling a squadron of infantry, with a hypercritical eye.

"Cullen."

His throat feels too tight. It's not panic. Or anger.

"Thank you. For...all this. I'm sorry. I'm not -- I'm grateful." One shoulder pressed to the doorframe to keep himself steady, he worries at the towel between his hands. "I'm glad to have you as a friend. And I'm sorry I wasn't there after Adamant."

His mind only seems to be working in short, blunt sentences. There's more he wants to say, but he can't think how to phrase it, and he's too tired to try.

"Don't say things because you feel you ought to." It lacks sincerity, he doesn't say.

He watches a line of ducks march across the ground below. One would think that given Skyhold's relative warmth in the Frostbacks, they'd have more birds landing in the garden. Why don't they?

"You've eaten, you've washed, and now you should rest."

"That's not why I'm saying it." Frustration tightens his voice. "I'm trying to...damn it."

Alistair presses his forearm to his eyes.

"I'd rather you keep yelling at me if that will keep me awake, to be honest."

Cullen loses his people to the horrors of the Fade all the time. Frankly, the primordial darkspawn magister was an interesting change of pace. And after his embarrassing breakdown in front of the Inquisitor, it was very clear -- he has to keep a tight rein on the what-ifs that plague his mind if he wants to keep his mind right. Keep it functional.

It's one thing when the person walking out of the fade is the Herald of Andraste, who just... does that sort of thing. (Apparently.) It's quite another when it was someone who wasn't supposed to be in there in the first place.

"You're forgetting that I know what starvation and sleep deprivation, in conjunction with prolonged exposure to demons, do to a man."

Clinical. Dry.

"Whatever you're feeling now is going to get progressively worse until you recognize that sleep is mandatory. We can do whatever, or get whatever you need, to make it more tolerable. But you have to sleep."

A noise too harsh to be laughter. "Does that include turning me into a dwarf? Finding a way to make someone who isn't a mage Tranquil?"

He keeps his arm over his eyes.

"Cullen, I just got out, I can't go back -- "

There. That's something he can deal with.

He turns, posture relaxing, tone gentling just a little.

"So, what, you're planning never to sleep again? That's not feasible, Alistair. What would make you willing to rest?"

Alistair lowers his arm; lifts his head.

Bleak, "I don't know. I -- " Visibly, he works to think of something he can offer Cullen. "What about that, um, that one elf you've got? The creepy one, not the crazy one."

Look, Alistair's time at Skyhold didn't last long enough to form in-depth opinions about Solas and Sera.

"He's a Fade expert, isn't he? Could he find something?"

If that's Alistair's idea of something that'll work, maybe Cullen's better off just... waiting for the inevitable.

"I suspect he wouldn't take kindly to the notion that someone would want to cut themselves off." Mild. He gestures to the table. "Eat more, if you can."

Half a smile, without much humor. "Ask him how you'd connect a dwarf to the Fade, then do the exact opposite?"

Sitting seems like a really good idea, even if Alistair isn't sure he can eat more. He drops the towel onto the table, and drops into his chair soon after.

Cullen, meanwhile, stays by the window.

He doesn't say: You could become a Seeker. For one thing, it would take too long. For another, Cassandra might actually murder Cullen for suggesting it.

(Alistair, he's willing to bet, never saw someone get the brand.)

Very soft: "I just want to stay here a little longer."

He taps one finger against the table.

"That isn't too much to ask, is it?"

Cullen turns around quickly, surprised.

"Of course not. I'd -- assumed you'd rather stay here until you felt -- "

What's the word he's looking for?

"Better."

Were Alistair less tired, he would've been able to convey his thoughts clearly, and he'd be able to correctly parse Cullen's response. Cullen thinks he meant stay in the room, not stay in the real world.

But it's getting harder to think -- not that he was doing a great job of it to begin with -- and so he hears what he wants to hear: it's all right if you stay awake until your body literally gives out from exhaustion.

He closes his eyes; nods, relieved; manages to pry his eyes back open several long moments later. "All right. Thank you."

An awkward nod, and Cullen returns his attention to the window.

(He's used to people lashing out at him. It's been that way since Kirkwall. Alistair's been through something horrific; it's not a surprise that Alistair would lash out.

He can't hold his hurt against Alistair. There's no time for it. He's the Commander, then, here in Milliways and not just in the world. It's not safe to put it down. Apparently.)

Sluggishly, in silence, Alistair continues to pick his way through his thoughts. He can barely remember what he'd yelled at Cullen, or what Cullen yelled back. It's all impressionistic emotion: anger, frustration, shock, relief so profound it felt like sorrow, uncertainty.

You mattered.

But there was something Cullen said, about failures and self-importance, and with everything slightly askew and unfocused, it suddenly becomes vital to offer a rejoinder.

"There's a difference," still quiet, almost toneless, "between taking your failures into account, and...thinking that's all you are. Just a collection of failures. And if I mattered to you so much, could you trust me enough to..." He trails off, hunting for the words. "Trust you? And think you're decent?"

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