He had the strangest sense that he was walking.
But he must be sleeping.
There was a haze over his mind, a deliriously comfortable fog that he’d welcomed eagerly. He didn’t have to think, didn’t have to worry. All the pain and stress couldn’t reach him here. He could see his own heartache as though peering into someone else. He could see her face, every last strand of deep auburn hair, every glimmer of sorrow he’d put in those beautiful eyes. Every kiss he’d trailed along her mahogany skin as he held her in the darkness of his home. Every last terrible mistake was there, every last wonderful thing he’d screwed up.
He could see it all, but he didn’t have to feel it.
The movement lulled and rocked him. His own movement, his own legs. But he couldn’t find the desire to care or understand what this was. It was nice in here. Quiet, peaceful. He didn’t have to think. He could just watch memories play like silent films, watch the love and the tragedies without having to feel them. Watch her expression as he stared into her eyes, her black hair framing her dark face, that look of uncertain adoration staring back at him. Beautifully confused, perfectly nervous.
Leliana.. he heard himself whisper under his breath. He frowned. That wasn’t her name. The sound and the confusion were enough to gently jar him from the stupor, and he realized as everything slowly came into focus that his eyes were open. He blinked, watched the brown of her skin -brown again- blend and become the earth, her upright ears shifted into trees standing tall. The breeze toying with her black hair -black again- was the shadowed draft through the branches of the forest. The forest? Dizzy?
He blinked again, seeing a number of purpled bodies in his eyes like spots of sunlight, seeing Ashley’s too, and Sabrael, and others. Ischia. He’d been in Ischia. There was an invasion. He was waiting... for answers, waiting for the magician to explain what was going on, to command his weapon of blood and bone. He turned his head slowly, studying this place. Not Ischia. The forest. He realized he was standing. Not sleeping. How..? Ashley? Had he teleported him here? Wasn’t he far more useful in Ischia with him?
His head turned more, took in more, and landed on a slender figure as black and dangerous as demons. Not Dizzy. He tried to blink her away too, but unlike Leliana, unlike Diz, her image did not morph and fade into the surroundings. She looked particularly amused with something, staring back at him with a gleam in her eyes. Perhaps not Ashley’s doing, after all.
Hello, he said dimly, testing the reality of this waking dream, his rich and smooth voice contrasting with the sharp edges and chiseled angles of his sunken body and plates of bone. A weapon, he was a weapon. Was she a threat?
As though a powerful painkiller was wearing off, he felt something in his mind recede and all the agony of his transgressions flowed back into his awareness. All the heartache he’d caused, all the heartache he felt, all the death and destruction he left in his wake everywhere he went. And, oh, what timing. As he swallowed that pain down, the physical pain surfaced. His bones rumbled deep in his body, shifted and pressed outward, split his skin with a sharp hitch in his breath. Fresh blood joined the crusted edges around his armor as the plates grew a little more. Not enough to see visibly, but enough to sure as hell feel. So much pain.
Had the numbness been her doing? Had she brought him here somehow through that wonderful fog that shut off all the heartache? And could it shut off the physical attacks on him too? The only evidence of his excruciating suffering was a bead of sweat on his brow as he fought it down, fought to ignore it, forced himself to breathe evenly through it as the magician had taught him. It wouldn't last all that long, but it sure as hell felt like an eternity until it would end.
He stole a glance around them again, then locked back to her eyes again. She’d done something, he hadn’t come here on his own, but what?
Do it again, he challenged evenly, testing her.
Begging her. Stop the pain.
I'm a wanted man, I got blood on my hands
Do you understand? I'm a wanted man
@[Cassi]
