[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 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."

[bringspeopletogether]

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.

[howtoactfereldan]

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.)

[bringspeopletogether]

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?"

[howtoactfereldan]

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."

[bringspeopletogether]

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."

[howtoactfereldan]

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.)

[bringspeopletogether]

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?"

[howtoactfereldan]

Without turning around:

"If you'll allow me to be happy about your return."

[bringspeopletogether]

He blinks.

"Of course you're allowed to be happy about that."

Is that what -- ? Maker. Maybe he really should sleep, if that's how jumbled everything's gotten.

[howtoactfereldan]

"Because," he says, as though Alistair hasn't spoken, "if you think about it -- the people around me tend to have hard fates. There were our people at Kinloch. Everything in Kirkwall. Our forces at Haven. Our forces at Adamant. What's left of the Order -- including some of my former recruits, including at least one survivor from Kinloch -- they've taken the red stuff and they're sworn to Corypheus."

Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,
I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.

He breathes, running through the Chant in his mind.



His voice breaks.

"You came back."

[bringspeopletogether]

Well.

Alistair suddenly feels rather more awake now.

A quiet scrape: his chair moving a foot away from the table. A few unsteady footsteps. (Alert, yes, but still shaky; nothing will fix that except the sleep he doesn't want.) He joins Cullen at the window, shoulder against the wall, studying the other man.

At last:

"Yes." Gently. Alistair reaches out, puts a hand on Cullen's shoulder. "I did."

[howtoactfereldan]

Cullen turns, then, and draws Alistair into a tight, desperate hug -- the kind driven from fright, from fear of loss, from a sudden improbable reversal of fortune that might reverse itself again at any moment. It's important to be sure.

"You came back," he says again, muffled into Alistair's shoulder.

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair emits a muted noise of surprise, like you'd let out if someone snuck up behind you; an instant later, his other arm finds Cullen's shoulders, and he's hugging him back just as tightly.

"I did." More small details a demon would never think to add: the texture of Cullen's clothes, a single curl of hair over his ear that doesn't want to behave as well as the rest, the sheer ferocity of the hug. (The first thing Alistair thinks when he thinks of Cullen has never been demonstrative. Or fierce hugs.) "I'm back. I'm alive."

His voice thickens, and takes on that wondering tone of before.

"I made it out."

[howtoactfereldan]

When your best plan for you and all the people you're responsible for is if we can't win, we die trying, and we die as spitefully as possible --

When there's a decent chance the world will end, the fabric of reality unraveled and burnt to ashes --

It changes you. That's all.

One hand fists tight in Alistair's shirt. "You're safe. You're safe. Do you hear me?"

[bringspeopletogether]

"Yes." Yeah, there's no way to disguise how waterlogged his voice has gotten. Alistair's not really trying, anyway. "I'm here. I'm safe."

If he goes back to the Fade, it will only be in dreams. Dreams can -- they'll be awful. He already knows. But they're only dreams in the end.

Escaping a dream is as easy as waking.

"I'm not going anywhere."

[howtoactfereldan]

"You better not," he mutters, truculent. "You only just got here."

A choked laugh. "And you're much less of a brat now than you were in training. Fit for decent conversation."

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair huffs out a laugh of his own. "When I'm not slamming doors for no reason. Or forgetting what I said five minutes ago."

It is, if nothing else, a bit more Alistair-ish than the halting apologies he made earlier.

[howtoactfereldan]

"Mitigating circumstances," says Cullen, and pulls back just enough to get a good look at Alistair.

Somewhere between the neighborhoods of helpless and gleeful: "You look awful, Theirin."

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair groans. "Must you call me that?"

He's smiling.

"I only look this awful so you look good by comparison, Rutherford."

[howtoactfereldan]

"So that explains your face." Grinning, now. "For the last however many years."

[bringspeopletogether]

"It's a lesser-known part of the Warden oath." Solemn. "In looking terrible, make the rest of Thedas look decent. Especially that man Cullen over there."

Truly, Alistair's sacrifice should be sung to the mountaintops.

[howtoactfereldan]

One thing Cullen isn't going to joke about for a long time -- and maybe never again -- is sacrifice.

He pulls away, looking at Alistair's armor strewn all over the floor. "Ought to change the colors, then. -- Maker's breath, I spend too much time with Leliana and Josephine." Pinching the bridge of his nose. The next words are filled with self-loathing: "Change them to something that clashes."

[bringspeopletogether]

Alistair's mouth twitches. He presses his knuckles to his mouth.

So far, it has taken very little to push him into a blind panic, into nearly as blind a rage, and into tears. Naturally, it only follows that those three words be what tips him into...well. Yes. Let's be honest.

It's giggling.

Hysterical, not quite controlled giggling that, after a few moments, sends Alistair stumbling to the bed so he can sit down rather than fight gravity and the laughter.

[howtoactfereldan]

Yes, well.

Cullen snorts, and bends to pick up the mail from the floor, very carefully draping it over the chair. Deadpan: "See how much you're laughing when you're wearing spring colors in the depths of winter. Horrors."