[open] molten eyes and a smile made for war; any

[Rhonen]

rhonen

molten eyes and a smile made for war

It hadn’t been supposed to be anything.
A dalliance. A flirt. A rebound. Perhaps revenge. Nihlus may have not chosen him – Nihlus may have chosen the other boy, the sweeter boy with the smile that wasn’t full of sharp edges and broken pieces – but that didn’t mean there was something wrong with him. She had certainly not thought there was anything wrong with him. She was all fire and fury one moment, sweet like the boy Nihlus had chosen over him the next, and very attractive. She didn’t hold his attention the way Nihlus had, but he wasn’t blind to the fact that she was classically pretty.

One would have thought he’d have learned his lesson, after he met Kolera, the daughter his last dalliance had never bothered to introduce him to. One would think Rhonen would have learned that actions of this sort have consequences, but when he and Kellyn had parted ways after a few weeks of mutually enjoyable time-wasting, he’d assumed that was the end of it. He wasn’t looking for anything long-term, and neither was she. Besides, in between moments of passion she’d demonstrated her powers for him, and she scared him. He fiercely guarded a power he was terrified of, a power he has always been sure would destroy things, and the little pink mare played with hers like it meant nothing more than the grass crushed under her hooves with every step. And she dropped names, too, telling him casually of not one but two grandfathers wielding powers Rhonen could hardly dream of.

No, he hadn’t been sad when she took her leave of him. Lonely, again, but it was better than the tempting of fate that had been twoing with mercurial little Kellyn.

Everything had changed when she reappeared in his life, dragging the filly behind her. The girl looked like her dam, for the most part, down to the bright green eyes. And the wings certainly weren’t something she’d gotten from him, or his side of the family. But that slight shimmer to her coat, even now as a baby – that was all Rhonen’s. Or, rather, his father’s. There’d been no denying his daughter, even if they hadn’t spent every moment together throughout the entirety of the last fall.

Kellyn hadn’t even named the girl. She left that, and the raising, of the filly to Rhonen. He doesn’t know how to raise a child – but he loves her anyway. He names her after his mother’s family, because if there was ever anything pure it was the Queen line of the Dazzling Waterfalls. He should have been the line’s first King, his mother had always wished he would grow up to be that, but like his great-great-great-grandfather, he had fallen short of that, and then the Waterfalls had been no more. He has no tumbling waterfall under which to raise his daughter, nor any home at all, and so he stumbles along, just trying to keep from fucking it up like he has everything else.

“Noah,” he rumbles now, voice unhelpfully brusque as he lifts his brown eyes and shifts, watching her scamper just a little too far away. His heart starts to race in a way that he refuses to acknowledge as fear (it only makes sense that he’d want her to stay closer – his last sight of his twin had been something terribly similar). “Come back over here.”

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

Years have passed since he provided comfort in the dark. He had been a bright light in a time that refused such things—a moment of quiet when the rest of her world had been collapsing around her. They had never spent a terribly long time together, but it had been enough. He had given her respite: comfort without expectations, companionship without pain. So she remembers him fondly. Remembers the way that they had found shelter from the rain and the warmth from their breath blooming in front of them.

Remembers the way he let the silences stretch long and yet comfortable, giving her time to gather her thoughts, to shield her heart. He does not know how much she has clung to that memory, to that peace.

So, perhaps, he will not remember her—will not understand the joy that blossoms in her now when she sees the copper of his hide. She doesn't move quickly, but neither does she waste time. Instead, she picks her way through the meadow, the shadows long on the curve of her dappled back. Her wings fold in close to her, curving the edges of her barrel, and she finds her way through the grass and the flowers.

Until she is before him, exhaling and then inhaling the familiar scent of him.

“Rhonen,” his name comes back quickly to her, warming her chest with the memories. “It is so good to see you again.” But her eyes are quickly drawn away to the child near him, and her lip curves with pleasure at the sight of it. It was good to think of him happy—to think of him with a family. After everything he had told her, it is the least that he deserved. “And who is this?”

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

[Rhonen]

rhonen

molten eyes and a smile made for war

She remembers a night when somehow, despite his terrible awkwardness and overall discomfort, he had been something she needed. In shelter of a big tree, the storm raging around them, somehow the boy with the sharp edges and the terrible manners had brought her peace. As she crosses the meadow, she thinks he might not remember her. And in truth, perhaps neither of them should remember so clearly; it had been naught but a stolen few hours after all, strangers finding mutual shelter and exchanging pleasantries. In the general course of things, it should have been forgettable.

Leliana had found peace with him, and in doing so she had listened. In the years that had passed since he was sent into Carnage's Beqanna-that-wasn't-Beqanna, she was the only one he had ever told. It had seemed too much to burden little Atrani with, no matter how close they had been, and his brief affair with Nihlus had ended before the sharing-of-deepest-darkest-secrets phase. Everyone else had been but a passing fling, acquaintances, not trusted confidantes. Rhonen had always envisioned telling someone, but that someone had always been a member of his family...the family he has never found. The family for whom he had faced down terror after terror to protect, faced death itself, and until recently the stallion had been convinced it had all been for naught.

The bay-and-red mare has almost reached him before he notices her approach, so involved is he in watching his daughter (careful that she doesn't disappear on him like the others). The crunch of leaves underfoot, a breath, and he is just beginning to turn his head to investigate when his name leaves her lips. Startled, he stiffens and takes a step away, head jerking the rest of the way around to gaze at her out of alarmed dark eyes. She shouldn't be surprised, herself; he had spent the first hour or so of their time together stubbornly holding himself as far from her as possible (he had still been in the I-might-be-contaminated phase of coming to terms with the power he'd been burdened with). He had not expected to hear his name today - or, indeed, perhaps any day. Rarely does he interact with anyone except Noah, and she doesn't used his given name.

Before he can gather words or wits about him, his daughter has come as he demanded of her and now presses herself against his side, a cat-like motion that reminds him entirely too much of her mother, and peers up at the mare, quiet and assessing in a way that seems almost too intent in a child of her age. It takes him another breath to beat his whirling thoughts back into some semblance of order, but the filly's touch is steadying. "Leliana," the first word is a murmur, as he draws her name from the depths of that memory that sounds like rain and smells like secrets. His muscles start to unknot; once, she had eased him into telling a story from his own nightmares. It seems she has at least some of that power over him still. An impatient noise from the small creature pressed to his side reminds him that she'd asked a question.

"My daughter, Noah," he answers belatedly, the words clipped off as if they pain him. But she will know differently, perhaps - she had understood, before, that sometimes his fear ate at him and the feelings were too much, and the words didn't come out the way he meant them. That had been part of what put him at ease with her - she had not recoiled too badly when he meant to speak words and threw daggers instead; he had been doing better, at that, before Nihlus. Less of his words had been weapons before he tried to give his heart away to a boy who often smelled of the rain and soothed many of Rhonen's nightmares without ever asking about their content. He had been healing, in his mind and spirit, but every wall and fortification had been erected again when he slammed the fortress doors closed behind Nihlus.

Noah had been born into the fortress, though Rhonen had kept the girl's mother strictly on the outside, retreated behind his walls at the end of every day and closing himself in alone with the memories. For Leliana, he pries open the window and peeks out, remembering that she hadn't brought harm to him before. "I mean, ah, it's good to see you again too." The copper boy tries, belatedly, to amend the way his last words had escaped him. To toss ice out of the window in wake of the burning debris he had lobbed just moments before.

[leliana]

I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

He is as she remembers him: pained and dangerous and wired entirely too taut. She can practically feel the tension in his shoulders, the white-knuckled grip that he keeps on his control, on his life. It causes her heart to tighten in her chest with worry, but such things are kept from her expression. Instead, her hazel eyes remain soft and she smiles at him, a lovely curve of lip the simple acknowledgement of him—the healer glossing over whatever bump or misunderstanding occurs during their first moments together.

“She is beautiful,” she says quietly, her own form of congratulations, before she shakes her dark head. “I’m sorry, how rude of me to act like you’re not there.” Leliana drops her head ever so slightly so that she can look the young girl in the eye, holding onto her gaze and giving her her full attention. “It is such a pleasure to meet you, Noah.” A pause, the breeze ruffling through her tangled mane.

“I met your father once a long time ago, and he was a very good friend to me when I needed one. You’re so lucky to have a father like him.” There is part of her that wishes she knew her own father well enough to say whether he was or wasn’t a man of character. But the truth is that she had never been given the chance. She did not know her father or mother well. She had been an orphan, placed into Magnus’ care and given the free space of Tephra to grow up largely left alone. What a joy to be raised by your father.

Her attention drifts back to Rhonen, the barest shadow of a frown crossing her features.

“I hope you’ve been well,” she says, although there is part of her that is certain it is not the case. He does not have the look of someone who has been well—someone who does not carry scars. There is a weight around him, a gravity, and she wishes she could smooth it away. Her gift reaches out for him, the golden light of her healing winding out and through him, connecting the two of them with a single, unwavering thread. She closes her eyes for a moment, rooting out whichever hurts and aches she can find.

They are minimal—more the everyday stress of a living being—but she does what she can, only pulling her healing powers back into her breast when she is certain that there is not more than she can do.

I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks

[Rhonen]

rhonen

molten eyes and a smile made for war

The world seems to be too still, not moving, at least for him. The filly at his side shifts, wants to step forward, but she seems to sense even at this very young age that now isn’t the time to pull away from her sire. She is his anchor in this moment, a solid weight against his side that keeps him moored to the here and now. So she simply gives the mare a shy little smile, extending her neck and nose without moving her feet. “Hello,” her eyes drift to the mare’s wings, curiosity sparking in their depths, but she just listens to the stranger speaking about her father.

Leliana is the first mare, in fact the first anyone, who Rhonen has greeted by name. Noah wants deeply to know what it is about her that is so special. But the mare’s face is back on Rhonen’s, her next question for him, and the filly merely flicks an ear towards her sire to listen. Rhonen holds himself stiffly after the question, but minute movements of muscle under his skin say he’s considering it carefully. “Sometimes I have been well,” the boy says gruffly, and he thinks back to their last meeting. They’d discussed deep things, the philosophy of feelings.

His mind drifts first to Karaugh, to the complete lack of true feelings between them, and to the hurt and fury he’d felt when he learned that she’d borne a child – his child! – and never bothered to tell him. But distance, and perhaps thinking about their long-ago conversation, let him see it from her point of view. Why would she have though Rhonen, with their brief and emotionless affair, would have cared to meet the child? She was wrong, but he could understand it.

There were bright moments with Atrani, in between, but the next part of Rhonen’s life was Nihlus. When his mind goes there, he stiffens again, turning his face away from them, but under his skin Leliana’s careful ministrations are chipping away at his stress, chinking away at the fortress walls. Momentarily, he forgets that Noah is beside him; he lifts his face back to Leliana and he could drown in her eyes, in the memories of that night and the soothing feeling she emanates now. “I fell in love,” he says quietly, as if from far away, “but he didn’t love me back.” There they are – the sharp words, knife edges dripping his own blood where he’s cut the wounds open again.

But the conversation drifts across his mind again - ‘If I did not intend to hurt someone, does it matter if they were hurt?’ He’d answered her - ‘We can only act on what we know’ and ‘Everyone must be responsible for their own feelings’. Even in this, she is healing him. It is not anyone’s  fault that Nihlus had loved another. Heartbeat by heartbeat, things inside him knit together and on the outside, he relaxes. The filly can feel it, and she glances from him to her in wonder, for it usually takes days for him to relax. “But I have Noah, now, and that is good.” They aren’t gentle words – so few of his are – but they’re almost normal.

She finally gets up the nerve and sidles away from him, coming close to the mare and watching her still, so intently, through her bright eyes. “Are you magic?” she asks the mare, voice little more than a whisper.

[leliana]

I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

He is all barbs and wire and if the conversation draws blood, she does not show it. She knows him well enough, brief as their conversation was, to recognize a defense when she sees one. She does not hold his guard against him—does not think less of him for needing it. Instead, she simply sees the hurt underneath and the worry within her grows. It is difficult to see him wrestle with demons that he will not discuss, to see him bow beneath the weight of a life that he does not share with others—bearing the yoke alone.

“Sometimes is not enough,” she says quietly, her hazel eyes intent on him, and the meaning clear.

It is not enough for him to be well only sometimes and to be in agony the rest.

It is not enough.

But she doesn’t need to dig further, because he soon coughs up the pain, placing it between them and letting it hang in the air. It sucks the air right out of her lungs, and she inhales sharply. There is not pity in her eyes, but an empathy, a shared pain. “Ah,” she finally says, her lyrical voice cut short, her own eyes bruised. “I know how that feels,” she whispers, as if speaking too loud would make the hurt come back, as if it would manifest in front of her and force her to wrestle with her ghosts in the here and now.

“It doesn’t get easier with time, but you get stronger,” she says, although she is not sure she believes it. Even now, the reminder of it, the memory of it is enough to cut her to the quick. It is enough to make her feel like she is young and in the center of the storm, her body fresh with the bruises and lacerations, her heart aching for that which could never be hers. “And you move on—eventually, in your own way.”

She thinks of Vulgaris and the smooth scales that cover his body. Of his own ghosts in his eyes, the sins that he will not tell her, of the past that he will not share. Her heart aches with want, with the need for him to share that piece of himself, with the need to share it. She always grasped for things outside of her reach. She always loved those that could not be loved—not fully, not in the light, not like she wanted.

(But, still, she loved them. In the shadows. In the quiet.)

“I would say that Noah is good,” she turns with him, allowing the conversation to pivot gracefully, knowing that eventually she would steer it back to his past so that they could take it apart together. So that she could stand beside him and let him unpack it, let him pull out the toxins. But not now. Not in front of his daughter. Not when she is bright eyed and beautiful and finally brave enough to approach.

At her question, Leliana laughs—the sound lilting and soft.

“In my own way,” she gives a conspiratorial grin to the young girl. “Would you like to see?”

I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks