Open RP Post

[ombranera]

I am good for: OUs AUs Gen Smut WHATEVER GIMME

Comments

[onlyhymns]

Everything has pretty much blown over, and for the most part, everyone has forgotten what happened in Emprise. Even Beleth has been overly forgiving, moreso than Cade can comprehend, and with the Inquisition moving on, he has more or less slipped through the cracks once again.
Now he doesn't even have drills and patrols to occupy his time, still forbidden from carrying weapons or going into any kind of combat scenario. He works for the Seeker during the day, and spends his idle evenings either wandering the battlements (not patrolling, just walking, he tells himself) and occasionally sequestering himself in one of the empty towers with a candle and a book, passing the time in total solitude and without the judging eyes of those around him.

Apart from Aleron, there isn't a soul he talks to. It's better this way, withdrawn from the people who were beginning to know him, avoiding contact with those he wronged and from those he might wrong in the future.
It's either this or walk off into the mountains, or step off the edge of a tower, just disappear without causing any more fuss. Sometimes he longs for that, but the Maker frowns on those who waste themselves.

At present he is curled up in one of the aforementioned towers, a wool blanket over his shoulders and some stupid book in his hands, a thing for which he has no interest but which is here to pass the time until it's time to go to sleep.

[ombranera]

Walking the battlements does much to clear the mind. Checking points of infiltration isn't exactly his job but it does ease the tension in his shoulders to be certain that getting in and out is not something quite so easily done. Finding every nook, every cranny to be certain there are no caches of tools that ought not be there, no stockpiles of poison or food or weapons helps him sleep, as much as he bothers to do so.

Tonight it is the towers. Normally empty and thing quickly done, he pokes his head inside for his usual cursory check only to blink at the man curled in the corner. Cade. The templar that struck Beleth, that was struck by Merrick.

He doesn't know much of the man other than he seems on edge and off center- even now this? Does not speak well of a mind settled. "Not the most comfortable place to study, I should think."

Zevran keeps his voice light, easy. Without weight as he slips inside and closes the door behind him.

[onlyhymns]

Cade almost resembles a frightened dog when the door makes a sound, on the verge of scrambling out of sight and out of mind, but he's already been seen. He breathes out through his nose, blinking rapidly, trying to remember that other people come through here, other people in Skyhold who have no business with him at all.

"Um..." he murmurs, hoping this will be enough to end the exchange, "it's. Fine, actually."

[ombranera]

"Private, though, if you remember to lock the door." There's a small click of the lock falling into place behind him- for however this conversation goes? Zevran prefers not to be interrupted. The man doesn't look terribly vicious- the description of Beleth's attacker sits poorly against the image of the man huddled under his blanket.

"You are Cade Harimann, yes? The Templar?" As though he isn't certain.

[onlyhymns]

The click of the lock is a deafening sound to one so constantly on-edge as Cade, and he immediately glances toward the door on the opposite side of the tower, and then to the crumbling stairs, as though they would offer any escape. Heart suddenly hammering in his chest, he slowly stands, back to the wall, blanket still around his shoulders, cringing preemptively as he awaits the attack.

"...yes," he says faintly, watching Zevran's hands and giving an involuntary wince. The elf is considerably smaller than he is, but he knows better than to think that will matter.

[ombranera]

"I think we ought to have some words, you and I." Something so friendly, said with a smile, probably shouldn't have quite so much weight to it. Zevran walks across to the second door slowly, if he gets there before the man bolts? It too shall be locked. "Or rather I have a few questions I do not think you will mind answering."

[onlyhymns]

Cade's feet are like lead, and on a deep and primal level, he already knows that bolting for the door would be futile. He's stuck here, until he is allowed to leave, when he will pretend nothing happened and go back to his life, another piece of him missing.

He feels the bile rising as he watches Zevran traverse the room, barely hearing what the man is saying, the sudden onslaught of horror and disgust and shame overtaking all his thoughts. He looks at the floor, blanket wrapped tightly around him, his knuckles white where he grips it. And he waits.

[ombranera]

This-

This is not the reaction of a man with a temper. A man that lashes out at provocation. This is not the face of a man ready to snap at someone that looks at him oddly. A man resigned is not a man on the edge. More pieces to the puzzle but he's not entirely certain they even go in the same box. Not anymore.

"...you are the same templar that had a violent disagreement with the elf Beleth, yes?" He is having a hard time picturing this man attempting to kill anyone, let alone his student.

[onlyhymns]

He's waiting for the hands and the hushed, sickly reassuring voice, but they never come. Squeezing his eyes closed as he endures a wave of nausea, Cade catches enough of Zevran's question to comprehend it, and he nods.

[ombranera]

"...really?" He has a difficult time wrapping his head around that. "Can you tell me why, then? She was terribly vague."

Zevran keeps to his side of the room, leaning back against the locked door. When a man finds himself cornered- you leave him his space. Simple enough. A twist of something familiar lingers in the air but it is not done with humans.

Is it?

[onlyhymns]

The two experiences are, at last, beginning to meld, but only in the sense that the long and torturous process of dealing with the assault is now creeping in with Cade's simmering terror. He would rather just be murdered, than be asked about this while feeling like this.

"I don't know," he says, his voice breaking with genuine despair. "I don't remember, I don't remember..." He buries his face in his hands, still clutching the blanket, muffling in the fabric what sounds suspiciously like quiet sobs.

It's a nightmare being asked over and over again, in different situations, by different accusers, a question that he can't answer. Here, shut in a room and cornered by a man whom Cade knows for his... proclivities, it's too much.

[ombranera]

"Well that's no good." Lost time? Even Berzerkers and Reavers could recall their moments of bloodlust. Time lost entirely? That-

Once has been enough of an answer and Zevran is of the mind to ask different questions for different answers- or at least that had been the plan until the man started weeping. Well.

This is.


Terribly awkward.

"...I. You. Cade." Slow. He makes his approach slow, hands up to show he is unarmed. "What exactly is it you think is going to happen, here?"

[onlyhymns]

It doesn't matter that Zevran is unarmed, because the fact that he's moving closer is enough. Whether Cade continues hiding his face because he's that badly off or because he's too ashamed to let someone see him cry, it's unclear, but also irrelevant. At the question, he shudders, then slowly sink to the grounds, curling into a ball and clutching at his head with both hands as he sobs. He can't answer, because that would involve admitting it, and speaking it aloud. And that would make it real, not a memory long-hidden and avoided.

[ombranera]

Half of him is certain that he ought to go. This is a mess he wants no part of- but it is a dangerous mess that, as best he can tell, no one else seems to wish to have a hand in mending. Remove a man from his weapons and he still has his fists. Anyone with holes in their memory, violence waiting under their skin like that which had been visited upon Beleth- and this reaction to being asked over it?

A larger mess than previously anticipated. It cannot be left alone.

Zevran stops well out of arm's reach kneeling as to not be above him. That tingling, sickening familiarity in the air coils again and he wonders if humans truly do suffer the same cruelties as elves in such a way. "I am not going to touch you."

It's more believable than 'not going to hurt you'. They've likely both heard that enough to know better.

[onlyhymns]

It takes Cade a little while to come down from his panic. Perhaps it's just being allowed to sit there, untouched but with someone nearby, even if that someone was just threatening him a moment ago. But eventually, he does wind down, from exhaustion if nothing else, and he slowly, abashedly lifts his head to look at Zevran. He glances away immediately, of course; there's no such thing as eye contact in these moments, rare enough as it is from him in the first place.
As the reality of what's happening sinks in, Cade's frantic terror begins to give way to his standard, much calmer and more manageable self-loathing, brought on now by the fact that he just sat on the floor and cried like a child while someone tried to ask him questions. The shame never ends.

He diverts his gaze to the floor, hoping resignedly that Zevran will give up and go away. Or kill him, that would be fine too.

[ombranera]

"...Are you going to talk or are you going to sulk? Because I literally have all night." Zevran has never been a bastion of patience- but this? This is important. And interesting. And...he gets the feeling that no one has ever sat and made the man address this- whatever it is- before. No one ever tried to address it with Zevran but he'd had crying jags and fear and most of his self loathing beaten out of him.

Cade is no Crow, but there are...signs.

Concerning ones.

"Do you often lose time?"

[onlyhymns]

The initial question pushes him down deeper, the typical unkindness he's come to expect only confirming what he already knows. Although at times crying makes a person feel better, at the moment Cade was only feeling a terrible dullness, the wound reaching too deeply to ever find relief, even after it was purged of some of its surface malignance.

Slowly, exhaustedly, he nods to Zevran. Another question he has been asked many times. "When I fight," he rasps, his voice hoarse from the strain, "...but I don't fight anymore." So, problem solved, everyone can go home.

[ombranera]

"And how old were you when they touched you?" Vague language for a vicious problem- he doesn't expect much of an answer and offers his own instead, voice careful- not light, not easy for this is not a thing that is easily recalled or said. But. It is said with care. "I was eight. In a room much like this, though the walls were clay rather than stone, hot from the sun."

Little details that are impossible to forget.

[onlyhymns]

Cade gives a start. He's jarred right out of his slow descent, and shoots a nervous look at Zevran, as if he's not sure he heard him right. But then the elf keeps talking, and Cade feels the panic welling up again-- no, he can't talk about it-- but lesser this time. Not enough energy to have another full breakdown, not this soon.
"....I.." he stammers, glancing furtively back and forth between Zevran and the wall, "..um..." He swallows hard. Nobody can know.
He promised, before the Maker and Andraste. He promised, and a Templar's word is his honor. Not that he has much of that anymore.
Tears spring to his eyes again, but he wipes them away before any can fall. He glances again at Zevran, apologetically this time. Surely it was no small feat for him, either.

[ombranera]

"They tell you not to tell, make you swear on whatever it is that is worth swearing on, yes? Even among the Crows such a thing was not truly considered acceptable. Tampering with the goods before they could make anything of them might break us or something like that." He settles back on his heels- sits properly, voice somewhat detached from what happened. It cut, he bled, he lived, it scarred over and faded in time.

Save for when things reminded him of it but- he had his closure.

"You know, I always found it a little funny that I lived in a brothel until I was sold to the Crows and not once was I ever in any danger of such a thing there. But three weeks into my training with the new master?" He waves a hand. "I killed him later, of course. I think I was...sixteen? Seventeen? That helped."

[onlyhymns]

Cade keeps his head low and he just listens, silent and considerably calmer, despite the subject matter. It is unexpectedly comforting to hear Zevran talk about it like this, as a thing that happened and that is now over. Better yet, that he was able to find relief from it, in the form of closure.
Still red-eyed, but with curiosity and empathy having overtaken his fear, Cade shyly directs his gaze to Zevran. "I'm sorry," he whispers, as though even talking about it to someone is a shameful secret, "...that that... happened to you."

[ombranera]

"My condolences to you as well." There are worse things. Zevran knows this, has seen them, has lived a few of them- but saying as such has yet to help anyone that knows of this particular misfortune of his childhood. Those that know of the brothel make that assumption there- he corrects them. It happened, to be certain.

It simply didn't happen in the brothel. Technically, not a lie.

"You feel helpless and become angry, yes?" He has seen that, lived that, moved through it for having no other option save failure. And among the Crows? Failure was death. Not the best way to get around it, not the kindest- but he is not a terribly kind man.

[onlyhymns]

Cade offers a solemn nod, looking down once again. He doesn't have the words for it, it happened too long ago, but more than anything the situation made him afraid. Of people, of things of which the Chantry disapproved, the Chantry itself. Of himself. A dog that knows only fear is more likely to bite.
"It was my fault," he murmurs, haltingly, forcing himself to say something. "I was... different. ...am different." Inherently sinful, corrupted on a base and inextricable level. Everything that's gone wrong, he's brought on himself.

[ombranera]

"Bullshit." Immediate and firm. "You were a child."

As was he at the time and you cannot hold a child responsible for the actions of a perverse adult. "The fault lies with him."

[onlyhymns]

The harshness of the word makes Cade flinch, even if it's not meant to insult him. "No, I..." he begins, but he trails off. Deep down, he that Zevran is right; in a way he has always known, and never wanted to admit it, never had anyone there to tell him he was mistreated and not just... special. Singled out, chosen to be the private student of Brother Flavius, elevated above his classmates and, in the process, isolated from them. It was a great opportunity, one that delighted his parents back in the Free Marches.

"...he was a good teacher," Cade says feebly, "and I was... I was lucky to be chosen by him." He's said as much to himself for many years, but it never quite works.