genessia | There is literally no song that fits this theme okay

Entry tags:

There is literally no song that fits this theme okay

Who; Dorian Pavus and Alleyana Lavellan
What; Just home things
Where; Casa Inquisition a.k.a. Skyhold II
When; May 22nd? Afternoon? Sure...
Warnings; Possible (read probable) discussions of abuse, injury, and maybe other things. I'll update if I need to.

Troubling as it was, knowing what was transpiring if not exactly when, having a bit of time away from work to enjoy their new estate was nice. He'd taken the previous day to stock their wine cellar (or at least a random room on the basement he's now dubbed their wine cellar) and he's now reclining in a very comfortable recliner in the main room on the main floor, enjoying the natural light from the large front windows, sipping a bold yet gentle red from somewhere called "Italy", and reading a bit of classic literature from the same world. Thus far, "Great Expectations" was proving a great disappointment, but he was going to let the book run it's course and see where it left him. Maybe the importance of the holidays played a larger role than he was prepared for.

Ah, well. It was a refreshing perspective, at least. Thedas wasn't known for it's first person narrative. Maybe he'd pass the idea long to Varric, if he remembered anything from this place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And here, at some point, came Alleyana. Still as armored as always, big fuck-off shield on her back and big, gryphon-winged mace at her hip.

Her scalp was starting to itch... in the places it didn't simply ache from the constant pull of braiding not undone since before arriving back onto this world. It was annoying. She'd been especially harsh to her students today, letting Jethro chase the screaming little monsters around the field at the school. Nothing got the blood pumping like a very fast, very horrifying bog mummy with a sword through its face.

She grunted a greeting at Dorian as she passed, heading for the stairs -- god damned stairs she was so tired of stairs -- up.

He raised a hand in greeting as she passed, but it just so happened she passed close enough for him to smell her and he systematically slid a bookmark between the pages of his book, folding it closed as he stood, clearing his throat.

"Alleyana. A word?"

Excuse you Dorian she didn't reek or anything. The Inquisitor shuffled to a stop and turned back to eye the mage. "...Yeah?"

No, Alley, you don't, but you do smell...like the outside. It's enough to get him to stop you, alright?

"There really isn't any pleasant way to say this, is there?" He crosses his arms and steps closer to the stairs. "Would you care for some assistance with your hair?"

"Assistance?" Alley raised her singular, armored hand to pat at the top of her braids. The only reason she didn't wince was she was way too used to the discomfort. Same, when some of those articulated plates caught at several of the wispy bits of hair sticking out of the neglected braiding.

Pulled them right out when she lowered her hand. One could almost hear the snapping.

Cole had helped her with it, previously on this world and in the Inquisition. Sometimes Josephine, before Cole had become a member of their merry band of ass-kickers. Someone in the Clan, before that. Her father or her cousins before that. Even with two hands, she hadn't been able to braid it up, not after they'd been ruined.

And with one hand...

"Yes. With your braid." He was patient with his dearest friend, his tone gentle and prodding rather than his usual casual mocking.

"When I was younger, my mother often allowed me to braid hers, and I'd be happy to help." He cast his gaze toward her, well, what used to be her now missing hand before returning to her eyes, questioning.

Like most physically disabled people, Alleyana liked asking for help only a little less than she liked accepting offered help from a new source. Too many people meant well, but started to treat it like a burden. And that always stung, way too much.

Even though she'd known Dorian for years, now. Trusted him at her back, flinging fire past her ears in a fight.

Even though.

So there was a few moments where she said nothing and just stared, with her usual hawkish intensity. Head slightly tipped forward, even more slightly to one side, gaze as hard and as armored up as her back with her shield on it. It wasn't an unusual look, not at all. Disconcerting at first, but he'd had years to get used to it, hadn't he?

It was the look of an Alleyana in thought, paying close attention, or both.

Ah, he knows that look well, and instead of being ruffled by it, he simply closes the gap between the two of them, placing a hand on her heavily armor shoulder and smiling sweetly.

"I know, Alleyana. I am, indeed quite the view, but now simply isn't the time. I'll answer for you." He waves a hand toward the stairs. "Up you go, I'll be right behind."

The stare didn't let up, of course. Her face really didn't help the unsettling nature of the look. Battered and scarred, with a nose that had clearly been snapped and not set correctly at least a half a dozen times.

But, time created familiarity even with the harshest of looks.

And everyone knew how to herd their boss around, to one degree or another. The Inquisition had been no exception. "...Fine," she sighed, and turned away to head for the stairs again, "just don't change your mind while it's still down. Gets in my way."

It was long. If she'd been a mage, she could have gotten away with a ponytail, perhaps, with the occasional burned bit. A warrior, though? Especially a Champion? Less so.

"I would never." Dorian may have been many things; a braggart (justifiably so), vain, a preening peacock, and a drunkard with absolutely no taste in booze, but there was one thing he most certainly was not, and that was a liar.

He moved back to his recliner to retrieve his things and headed upstairs himself, wondering if it would be pushing his luck to offer assistance in stripping from her armor. He knew she rarely removed it all, but he'd never hazarded saying anything before.

He took his things to his room before he moved across the upper landing to her room and rapped gently at her door.

The Inquisitor was still struggling with her gauntlet when the knock came, so the grunt she gave to grant access was a muffled one.

Her teeth were full of leather strap, after all. Pulling until the buckle released and then having to gently coax it back through while trying to keep the tongue of the buckle from catching on another hole...

He entered at her grunt, having heard it countless times before, and quickly did his best to rid his face of the look of sympathy he felt form there immediately. Alleyana was not a woman to be pitied, no matter the situation. She was, well, rather like a force of nature, really.

He moved to her side without saying a word, taking hold of the leather strap with one hand, the gauntlet with the other.

"I happen to know a thing or two about buckles, too."

Alley let go of the strap with her teeth, leaving fresh indentations in the leather where plenty of older indentations had formed from the same maneuvering. No saliva, at least, she'd been doing this with her teeth bared like the war hound she was often compared to.

A sigh.

"Yeah, well, I didn't take you for a personal assistant, Pavus."

He unfastened the gauntlet and slid the heavy bit of armor loose. Maker, how did she fight wearing these things? He'd never get through a proper flourish with them. It? Yes, it.

He fixed her with an admonishing expression, with just the hint of mischief glittering in his eyes.

"I most certainly am not, and you willl treat this as the honor and privilege it clearly is."

To be fair, it had been 'them', before. All through the Inquisition, all through... well, everything Dorian remembered before this world. The time gap between their recollections wasn't very wide, but it was just enough to include losing a limb.

Alley helped shake her hand free of the armored gauntlet, dragonhide sleeve and the ever-present soft leather glove beneath the articulated plates of dragonbone.

A noncommittal grunt was all his playful comment got out of her; she hadn't asked for help with any of it.

She walked over to one of the armchairs that had come with the room before twisting the Inquistion-emblazoned clasps to either side of her breastplate, releasing the very heavy, very pointy slab of metal to fall onto the seat. No second hand to catch it with, after all. She made do.

At least they seemed to be on the same page that she was going to take a bloody shower with her hair down, if it was going to get re-braided. It was easier to braid tightly while wet, anyway.

He realized as he watched her he'd never actually watched a warrior disrobe before. Maker, he thought his battle gear had too many layers. Bull didn't count, as he had a moral and practical opposition to shirts (not that Dorian took issue with that, at least silently), and he really had no interest in watching Blackwall undress.

He moved behind her to unfasten the leather thong holding her hair at bay and looked appreciatively the waves as he made quick work of loosening them. "Really, we've all seen and done worse with one another than the simple helping with armor..." he trailed off as his eyes wandered to her side, her good side, or what he'd always assumed was her good side, and the damaged mess that apparently served as her right hand, but he quickly shook away the look of shock, at least he hoped so, and continued, "...yes, the simple helping with armor and a bit of hair."

He shouldn't say anything, should he? He realized, looking back, she'd never been without a glove, even about Skyhold, even when relaxing, even...but why had she hidden it? It looked painful, it was true, but...oh, to hell with it. "Alleyana...what happened?"

About half of that hair was a dark, steel grey that mixed in seamlessly with the original dark brown. And the more of it was unbraided, the more apparent it would be that there was a lot of it. It was very compacted, very contained, when braided up against her head in that usual bun of hers.

Loose, it may very well reach her knees if the huge spiked slab of a shield wasn't in the way.

Alleyana eyed Dorian sidelong, gloved hand unconsciously moving to be a little harder to look at. Easy enough, really, she just worked on un-cinching the leather from around the base of the bar of her left arm, then started unscrewing it from the bone.

The shape of that hand... it wasn't right, even through the leather. The plates of her armor over that usually hid that little fact, but the soft leather was there to protect even more than it was there to conceal. The shape wasn't right.

"What happened?" she repeated, raising a scar-crossed brow.

Yes, working around that shield needed stop, and he moved his hands from her hair to the edges of the great thing, mindful of the spikes, and lifted...or he tried to. He cleared his throat, attention constantly drawn between the shield and her hand, or apparently what was left of it.

"Er, yes. I've been awfully curious for some time now, but I-" he grunted with the effort of lifting that shield. "Would you mind stopping for a moment and helping me with this thing? Honestly, how is this of any use to you? How do you lift it?"

That earned a sharp snort of amusement, and Alleyana tossed the bar onto the chair too before reaching back with that misshapen hand to grab the top edge of the shield in that practiced way of hers, and lift.

Like it was nothing.

It slid free of the bracket on the back of her armor that it hooked into, just like it always did. Just like the start of every fight, though now the handles inside the shield had been removed in favor of two thick bolts, spaced the same as the holes in the bar that stood in for her left forearm. Two huge wingnuts sat at the ends of the bolts, ready to be popped free and then put back on and cinched down once it was on the bar.

A little more prep time to get going for a fight, but the end result was the same.

Alleyana just set the shield down to rest against the side of the chair, lyrium glow pulsing faintly in the design in its center.

"You'll have to be more specific."

Not about the shield, obviously.

Nonplussed by her display of strength, nonetheless, he watched the display. They all certainly had their strengths, didn't they? No, Alleyana, he's never going to try to move that shield again, anymore than he'd ever try to lift Bull's warhammer.

"You aren't going to make this simple, are you?" He was quiet for a moment, looking thoughtful. "...but I've always wondered. Your...scars and your, well, your voice...what happened?"

"Ah."

That's all he got, for a while, while Alleyana went back to managing the outer layers of her armor. The knot of her sash was next; the leather and maile coat was trapped by it. So, she picked at the huge knot while she considered what to say.

"A lot of things, over a long period of time." Alley was no spring chicken, if all the grey in her hair wasn't an indicator. Elven as she was, there were no wrinkles on that scarred face yet, but she was up there in the now-mortal lifespan of her people.

"Been fighting since I was a kid." Lots of time to accumulate lots of scarring. And nose-breaks. "As for the voice, I inhaled hot ash."

That couldn't be all of it.

But none of it was a lie, either.

"Ah." He doesn't say anything for a moment, clearing his throat self-consciously, which was a strange sound, even to his own ears. "Hot ash, yes."

"I'll...leave you to your modesty, then. Give a shout when you're ready for me again, yes?"

He may have been more accustomed to a life of privilege, but he'd spent more than two years on his own now. He could give a hand and not whine about it, and this was the best apology for his obvious transgression he could offer. Still...he had one more question before he left her to her bath.

"Though...since I've already made a terrible mess of a perfectly fine friendship...how long? Has your...have you been limited in the function of your hands?"

"You haven't made a mess of anything," Alleyana stated with a roll of her eyes. Sash freed, she draped it over the back of the chair and then shrugged out of her armored coat.

And seemed to shrink to half her size in the process, down to her boots and the famous (yet, rarely-seen) 'Skyhold pajamas'. And that glove, of course.

"I... have to think about that for a moment," she answered, lest Dorian's nerves get the better of him while she tried to calculate how long ago--

She'd still had her brother, had been trying to do things better so that he wouldn't lose her like she'd lost...

"About thirty years. Thirty one. Thirty two... thirty three. Around there."

She'd been around twenty. Nineteen? Eighteen?

Fifty one years old now, it was hard to remember what it'd been like to have fully-functional hands.

He nodded, waiting through her calculations, though he was beginning to believe he'd overstepped his bounds again before she responded.

Thirty-three years...why, she'd been restricted as long as he'd been alive. That was...awful.

"I...see." He had more questions, of course, but they could wait. "I'll...I've kept you from your bath long enough. Enjoy it. I'll return shortly."

And, with that, he left her to her bathing and he'd wait until she called on him for the rest.

Alley went about her business.

When the Inquisitor emerged from the bathroom attached to her room it was in a cloud of steam. She was dressed down, of course, not willing to struggle back into her usual gear with her hair down and in the way and with her skin damp. No, instead she was in a blue tanktop with the words 'shit happens' on it and a pair of bright red cotton pajama pants.

Her hair was still down, of course, with a towel draped over her shoulders and down her back attempting to keep the long mass of brown and grey from soaking her anew from behind. It was a lot longer than it looked like it ought to be when it was all braided and bound up, and having it down softened some of the hardness of her appearance, even soaked as it was.

The stump of her left arm was exposed, the skin around the socket for the bar was gnarled and scarred, with traces of those scars going up and over her elbow and bicep like lightning bolts captured in flesh.

And that hand, somehow, remained covered. Now sporting a fuzzy, soft, cheap and stretchy glove she'd gotten somewhere for absurdly cheap. Something that could be pulled on with her teeth despite the damp skin, and something with a texture that didn't drive her too crazy...

Okay, it itched and was uncomfortable as hell but, like hell could she pull the soft leather back on before her skin was truly dry. Especially with only her teeth to work on it.

She opened the door to her room and peered out, wondering if Dorian was lurking on the upper floor or not.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

DO YOU EVEN LIFT, DORIAN

NO AND I DON'T EVEN CARE

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject