genessia | [ action | closed ] my head is haunting me and my heart feels like a ghost

Entry tags:

[ action | closed ] my head is haunting me and my heart feels like a ghost

Who: Cole, Alleyana Lavellan
What: Gardening and grooming. No, really... Cole's hair is terrifying under that hat, okay? Someone has to do something about it, and Dorian isn't here.
Where: Genessia City - Riverplace Square - Apartment 109
Warnings: Nah

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Alleyana was in her room, pouring potting soil into one of the eight large gardening pots she'd purchased in Attleton. Her room had two windows, so she'd lined the pots up four to a window. Each was broad enough to stand in, and so there were no gaps between them.

Hopefully, the seeds she'd carried with her would get enough light to grow... she figured they would; the courtyard in Skyhold had often been heavily shadowed by the tall walls around it. Still, it was a concern.

She lifted another full bag of soil with a soft grunt, her stumpy left arm under the bag while her right hand controlled the pour. Alley had taken her gauntlet off, leaving only the soft leather glove beneath it; the better to not punch holes in the bags of dirt.

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As he was accustomed to doing, Cole was suddenly there in the doorway. As a rogue and a spirit, it was hard to tell if he had walked over quietly or used some spirit power to manifest nearby. Either way, Alley could use some help, so he was there.

"Plants...? For potions." The reason clicked as he was asking.

"Yeah," Alley lifted the bag a bit higher as the soil pouring out started to slow to a trickle. "I came with a ton of plants, of course," she was always picking them on Thedas, especially elfroot. "...But I don't like not having a renewable supply. Thankfully, some of those plants had seeds."

Cole kneeled next to her and helped steady the bag. He distinctly remembered the obsession she'd had with collecting plants. It was a good thing to have, with how many potions and tonics they went through while battling two-thirds of Thedas. It was closer to three-fourths once the Qunari got involved.

"It will be good to have them here. It's familiar. Especially the elfroot." If there was any plant any member of the Inquisition was familiar with, it was elfroot.

"Yes," the Inquisitor agreed, "especially the elfroot."

That pot was full of enough soil and she eased the opening up to stop the flow of dirt.

"I may need your help mixing the potions, my hand... it's still not very good for small things. But I want us to have a good, renewable source of potions and tonics."

Being prepared was something she'd always believed in. This world had been easy fights and boring days, so far, but that could change.

"It still shakes and struggles to hold things like it should. I can help with the potions, yes. Potions, poisons, we shouldn't need poison here." Cole took the bag once she was finished pouring and set it aside. Helping her move things was about as much as he knew to do, gardening was not a skill he'd yet picked up. He picked through memories of gardeners at skyhold.

"Compost and wet earth, the smell is bad but good. It's familiar. One, two, three- only three leaves off this vine worth using. Talk to Joris in the morning about the mites. Can't cure a wet cough with three leaves. Shame." Cole stuck his fingers into the soil Alley had just poured. It felt cool and oddly soft. But not the same soft as mud.

Alleyana listened to Cole go, glad to have her hearing back. She was probably one of the only people in the Inquisition -- besides perhaps Solas when he'd been around -- who didn't mind Cole's... chatter. The silence when her ears had stopped working had been unnerving.

"Yes," she said of her hand, flexing it a bit. It was protected by soft leather. "The tendons are still... too tight in some spots, not tight enough in others. And the nerves are... well, what they are." And it wasn't as though the bones were perfect now, either. Just a lot less bad after a solid night of breaking and setting and healing.

She honestly could barely remember having fully-functional hands anymore. Working clay without pain and frustration was a distant memory, as distant as learning her first sword-strokes. Or the first time her nose had snapped, while her brother was carted off...

Okay, maybe that one was less distant. Alley frowned at her hand, and then went to fetch the thin pieces of wood and roll of twine she'd gotten. It was stacked by some of the pots; she'd known Cole would show up to help.

She arranged the wood on the floor to form several supports for vines, and then held out the ball of twine for the rogue. "Can you tie them where the wood crosses?" That was pretty much beyond her. Little twine, little knots...

Cole had recited one of those memories before and spared her this time. It was old pain he wanted to right, but now it was fleeting and he had gardening to help with. He shook some of the dirt off his hands and took the twine. He felt warm and happy knowing she'd known he'd come to help. Of course he would, he always would, as long as he was able. Still, it was good that she knew that.

He shuffled over to the supports on his knees to start tying them in place.

"You should work with clay again," he said absently as he looped twine around the wood of the first support. "It hurts... but you like it. I could help. To make it hurt less, maybe."

"With one hand?" Alley asked, lifting the bag of soil again, this time to start filling another pot. "I don't know if the work we did on it would make it easier, or if it being by itself would make it harder. You remember how long it took to make that little statuette, and I still wasn't happy with it."

That memory was a sour one now, too, knowing what she did now about the recipient of that statuette. How hadn't she seen it? She'd been so close to seeing it... how foolish she must have seemed to him, skating so close to the truth. So blind.

"He didn't think you were foolish," Cole said, in reply to her thoughts instead of her words. "He was frightened once. You came very close, he thought. Your eyes are always so sharp, your mind sharper. It was never foolish."

He ducked his head, looking down intently at the wooden supports. He hadn't wanted to bring up those memories. There was so much pain in so many of her thoughts and memories, it was hard not to brush up against an old wound no matter where he looked. He would help her, but it would be difficult.

Alleyana was quiet for a bit, sad but not particularly hurt by speaking of it.

"For a long time, I thought he might be a spirit made flesh, like you," she said finally, emptying the last of the soil in her current bag and then grabbing the next. Her belt knife slit the odd material open at the top, and then the knife was back at her belt and she brought the full bag up to resume pouring.

"Then, after the temple, I thought... maybe he was an ancient elf, like Abelas. They were built alike, and their interaction was... different. They fit together. It made sense. It matched his fluency in ancient Elvhen, both in the language and in his knowledge. It even matched his stories of wandering the Fade in his sleep. That's why I believed him about the vallaslin."

"You were right... Not in the way you thought, but you were right." The truth behind the elhven gods was a complicated one. "It did not bother you then that he might hide that from you?"

There was a lot he still couldn't see from the Inquisitor, a lot of things she had been too bright for him to see at the time. Now it was tangled up in everything else. Her thoughts then were twisted by the thoughts she had now.

He finished another support and set it aside.

Edited 2016-09-28 22:16 (UTC)

Alley considered the question carefully, and was thus quiet again as she thought. She knew that unlike most people, Cole would at least know why she was silent; she took his question seriously, and was searching for the truth herself. Most people thought she was blowing them off when she went quiet for too long after a question.

The Inquisitor had emptied the bag into the pot and reached for the next before she spoke again.

"...It did," she finally said, "but not that much. I thought we had... time, if neither of us died. Trust has to be earned, sometimes very slowly. It can't be demanded. It's... like these plants; it has to have room to grow.

"But I wish it had grown... faster. I wish he'd told me. I wouldn't have turned my back on him then anymore than I will now. Though if I'd known his plan... I wouldn't have let him have the orb, if it had survived. I would have stood in his way. I guess that's part of why he didn't trust me that far. In a way, he was right not to."

But she still wished he had.

Instead, he'd lifted her vallaslin and then abruptly fled, like a wolf with his tail tucked between his legs. That was a sour memory.

Cole was patient while she thought, feeling what she did as she picked over the thoughts and memories. He finished tying up the supports and set the ball of twine down.

"It would have been better if he let us help. Not to do... that. To tear the world apart. To help him not need to. He didn't want me to help either. So we're here." As much as Solas praised Cole's dedication to his purpose, the wolf rarely wanted any of that help for himself. There was little he wanted spoken aloud at all. He locked them both away so they couldn't possibly help him now.

"I do like it here. I'm glad I could be here, if you're here."

"So you agree with my theory that he sent us here?" Alleyana asked, glancing over. "We are going to get back, somehow. We're going to stop him. He forgets that I haven't lost yet."

Well, maybe he didn't forget after all, and thus this whole... sending her off to another world, nonsense. Her and Cole, the two most dedicated to stopping him without killing him, if possible.

"I can't see if he did or did not." Even if Cole hadn't become more human and lost some of what let him read others, that would be a difficult task. Solas was very far away from where they were now. This was not part of any memory Cole had seen before Solas fled the Inquisition.

"No... No we haven't lost." Cole smiled at her. A smear of dirt had appeared across his nose at some point during the conversation. "You are very sure we'll save him. I believe you. I don't want him to make another mistake. I don't want him to die, he just needs to see."

"I have to be sure," Alleyana said, looking down into the pot she was working on. It was only half full of dirt so far; she'd gotten very large containers for her wispy little plants. They'd have no shortage of space to grow. Their roots would run deep, and grow strong.

"There's no room for me to hesitate, to flinch. There... never is."

Their world rested squarely on her shoulders, just as it had against Corypheus. Only, she had a fraction of the resources she had had against the ancient darkspawn magister.

And she kept getting shuffled off to these inane, unrelated worlds. It was just like Solas, to lock them away instead of risk facing them again.

Her vhenan was a coward. She couldn't be.

"If I have to kill him to save the world, I will. But I'm going to do everything I can to avoid that. I agree with him that the current state of the world can't be allowed to continue, but there has to be a better way to fix it than burning it down and starting over. There just has to be."

"If he thinks of another way it means so many got hurt that didn't need to," Cole replied, glum. Solas' distress over the importance of Thedas' still living occupants was potent at the time. Cole hoped it still was, it might hold him back, if he doubted.

"I can help with the soil." He moved over to help stabilize the bag she was holding. He'd offer to do the rest all together, but she wouldn't want that.

"He really is Pride," Alleyana sighed, well aware of Solas' faults. It didn't stop her feelings for him, however. Gods knew she was no example of a perfect person, not by a long shot. Cole was kindness and compassion embodied, or even the spirit wouldn't put up with her shit, she was sure.

She allowed the spirit to help with the bags, filling each pot in turn until they all stood ready for the next step. Alley had done a lot of gardening in Skyhold, at least, so she knew what she was doing. "Here, put up the supports you tied together. Just stick the long ends into the dirt until it doesn't wobble easily."

Definitely a two-handed job, that was. For her part, she dug around in the inner pockets of her leather armor until she found the pouches of seeds. Every important seed was here, and several that were less-so. They'd just plant the important ones, for now. Elfroot, of course. Rashvine... a blood lotus and a spindleweed. With eight pots, they had the space.

Edited 2016-09-29 00:20 (UTC)

Cole dutifully stuck the supports in place, getting his hands and shirt coated in dark soil in the process. He didn't mind, he was used to finding a stream to wash off the dirt or blood or whatever the demons had been spitting. The only thing he cared to keep- somewhat- clean was his shoes. Tracking dirt around buildings made their owners or servants unhappy. He was careful about that.

"She always has so many. Do they rest? Is that an elf thing. I 'eard it was an elf thing. Shush you daft man.." There were some in the inquisition that noticed the Inquisitor's odd habits, for better or for worse. "I hope they will like growing here, it's not so open as before."

Alley snorted softly, mildly amused. "I wish Sera had overheard that one," she noted, "he would have woken up covered in lizards."

The Inquisitor selected a seed carefully and put it in the middle of a pot, then pushed it down a bit and covered it in soil. This was very awkward with one hand. She held out the rest of the seeds to Cole. "I hope so too, we need them."

Cole took the offered seeds and set to imitating her with each pot. He'd seen her working in the garden before but he kept his distance there. The garden was always so busy and the chantry sisters were nervous if he was visible. He tried leaving sweet smelling flowers for them to find where they usually sat to think. It didn't help.

"I wonder if there is more like our plants and potions. There are so many more things here. I don't like the cars. They're loud and too fast." Cole would not be forgetting the incident with the rollercoaster anytime soon. Fast moving vehicles now made him nervous.

"I don't like them either," Alleyana agreed, remembering her first time going that fast -- on that bus to the arena, where she'd left puncture holes in the top of the seat in front of her. Like a scared bird.

"And there might be," she conceded, "but I dislike relying on the unfamiliar things here. Many of the people on this world are very... fickle."

The Inquisitor watched him imitate what she'd done with the seeds, and then went to fetch the watering can she'd left nearby. She started watering the buried seeds -- not too much, not too little. Just get the soil damp.

"I'm glad you're here, Cole," she'd said it before, but she'd say it again. Even the other people from Thedas she'd encountered... they weren't her people. And Cole, who saw right through her shit and didn't flinch from what lay below, was the closest to her in their entire organization. Even above Varric and Dorian, and that was impressive.

She kept things from all of them. Everyone did, of course. That was just how it was when you weren't... well, Cole.

"...How did you get so much dirt on yourself?" Alley asked, a little more amused. "I can show you how the hot water works if you want to use the tub. It's nice."

"I'm glad I'm here. Here with you. Listening and feeling. It helps to have someone to listen. It can be so lonely and the others- they're not the same. They come from where we do but not the same time or the same place. Different in ways, the same in others. I'm glad I'm here and I come from the same place." Cole couldn't comprehend the kind of trust she gave him. Few could hide things from Cole so it was hard for him to see how much she allowed. He never once thought to abuse that trust, so it worked out well. All he wanted to do was make her happy.

"Is the hot water for the plants?" From anyone else, the innocent curiosity in his voice would sound mocking.

"No, for... wait," Alley paused, and then eyed him. "You've never taken a bath, have you?"

Surely he knew what they were, at least. Enough people thought about them when they got covered in muck or cold rain or any number of things. The whole party had probably thought of them after trudging through the Fallow Mire.

...Except for Cole, it seemed.

"...No? I've helped bathe Cullen's dog." And Cole had probably seen at least half of Skyhold's forces in the bath at some point in time. Thankfully, most of them didn't remember. He was familiar with people thinking about them, either with longing or reluctance. For some it was more routine. For the dog it had been very upsetting. Both Cullen and Cole had ended up with bruises.

"Is that bad?" Why was she surprised?

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