Open RP Post

[ombranera]

I am good for: OUs AUs Gen Smut WHATEVER GIMME

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[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.

[ombranera]

"Is that his excuse, or yours?" A wonderful thing to be raised up, to be favored. It is not so large a thing in the Crows when a master takes interest- Rufio had been one to teach lockpicking and pickpocketing and of course he paid Zevran mind. Of course he had been impressed, wished to teach him. Of course none of that really mattered at the end of the day. Zevran, at least, never truly bought into such things.

He had spent enough time in the brothel to know what men like that might want. Even if he had no way of knowing what it actually was beyond the abstract, nor what it might do to him after.

[onlyhymns]

The lessons weren't so bad. They did happen. It was afterward that the door would be latched and he would be told it was time for their other exercises, a mandatory ritual before he was allowed to return to the other children and his other lessons. It was confusing at first, but he became used to it. It was part of his penance, one of many ways to express his devotion to the Maker. He was a dutiful and pious boy, and Brother Flavius was charismatic, well-liked among the students and the other brothers and sisters of the Chantry.


"...mine," he decides, in the same low voice, but his look is uncertain. He draws his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them, eyes going distant. "I was a good student," he continues, another thing he's told himself for years-- that had to have been the reason he was chosen, didn't it?
"...I stood out. I was his favorite." It was the only time he'd ever been someone's favorite.

[ombranera]

"I do not doubt that you were a good student. I do not doubt that you were bright or that you were skilled. But I will never sit here and listen to someone that has endured what we have endured and listen to them take the blame. He was a man grown. He knew better, held this perversion above his duty as an instructor, and used you." An ugly thing- and not at all what he thought he'd be discussing. Keeping his voice level is-

Not so difficult a thing. He is removed from the memories of grasping hands and curt orders. Do as you are told or be punished.

Never had it seemed like an award for good behavior.

Never was it kind.

[onlyhymns]

Here Zevran has him cornered, and there's no way Cade can argue with it. A man grown, like he is now; afraid to be in the same room as a child, becoming anxious by simply seeing one, because what if...?
What if the perversion transferred through contact? Is he helplessly destined to derail a child's life and destroy his self-respect, as he himself was derailed and destroyed?

The mere thought is like a dagger in his heart. He purses his lips, a tear or two beginning to stream from his eyes. And he nods, because he has no way to talk around it.
Not that he hasn't already made a fool of himself, but he ducks his head to press his eyes against the blanket on his knees so the elf won't see him cry again.