log; kallian & alistair WHO: Kallian & Alistair WHEN: February 1st, 201 WHERE: The Rose WHAT: Kallian inhales the black pixie dust and thinks Alistair is a ghoul. This is the short, sweet aftermath once she's back to normal. WARNING(S): The log starts after they fight. Alistair's not looking too hot.
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They had looked so real. They had felt real - the dust that caused the hallucinations fooled her Warden sense just as well as it fooled her eyes and ears. She had been surrounded by Darkspawn on every side, she had seen Alistair all gray and hollow right in front of her eyes and had to fight him off through the tears that wouldn’t stop coming at the sight of him so completely lost to her. She had been thrown in the flesh-covered cave of a broodmother, trapped without her weapons, fighting with a door she couldn’t unlock, certain to die.
And then it was gone.
She wasn’t in a cave. The hanging sacks of flesh and writhing tentacles were gone. The air was no longer damp and sickening. There were no darkspawn around, not a single one. She didn’t see them, didn’t sense them. Whatever she had seen and heard, it was all gone now. There was nothing but this back room of the brewery, the smell of yeast, and on the other side of the door, the faint pull of another Grey Warden’s blood calling to her.
Oh, Maker. She’d gone just as mad as they said she was. It seemed so clear now, but at the time...and Alistair--
“Alistair? Alistair!” She scrambled quickly to the door, pushing up against it as if she could just reach through and find him. “Alistair, are you there? Can you hear me?”
Alistair really should've left Kallian with Bethany and gone to see a doctor, but… well.
No.
He'd tried to wipe the blood from his face (and from his nose, which may not have actually be broken; it didn't feel too crooked when he prodded it) and had stayed leaning against the door as much to support himself as try to keep her inside.
"Kallian?" Alistair perked up when he actually heard his name instead of the scratching of her attempts to escape. "Are you well now? If I let you out, will you try to kill me?"
“No, no, I won’t try to kill you,” Kallian said quickly, urgency all over her voice. Maker, she had tried to kill him, or close enough to it. She had thought he was a ghoul, his mind taken by the darkspawn taint.
“I’m so sorry, love,” she said, and found that tears were welling up in her eyes once more. Heroes weren’t supposed to cry, she knew, but heroes also weren’t supposed to go insane and try to kill the people they loved most in the world. “I...I’m all right now, I think. I don’t see the cave. I don’t sense the darkspawn--just you.”
Alistair fumbled with the door one-handed, his other arm still in a sling from fighting the dragon. He wished now that he'd had the chance to wash his face before letting her out; it looked worse than it was (probably), and they both certainly looked like they'd been through a fight.
Without waiting, Alistair pulled her into a hug, bracing a steady hand on the back of her neck to bring her in. "Scared the life out of me."
Kallian had been terrified, too, in a rather different way. She hugged Alistair tightly, allowing herself a moment to be relieved that they were both here and alive and that there was not a massive darkspawn invasion happening. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I was working, I was fine, and then it was just...I was so sure I could sense the darkspawn everywhere, and then I was seeing them, and I thought you were a ghoul, and I--oh Maker, Alistair, I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t know how she was ever going to say sorry enough times for this one. She pulled back to look at him, finally registered the blood and swelling on his face, and promptly became still more horrified. “Oh my sweet Maker, your face!”
"It's fine," Alistair insisted, briefly touching his nose and wincing. "Might not even be broken. I think you're getting a little rusty, actually. Look, it's not even bleeding anymore."
This wasn't the first time something false had been put into their heads. Alistair had heard the false calling, so far away from his brothers and sisters in the Wardens. For a while he thought he would die alone there, falling apart without having made the right plans for the future. The throne probably would have gone to the Couslands at Highever, but nothing was certain when it came to that. This was, at least, short-lived.
“If I’m getting rusty, I thank Andraste for it,” Kallian replied, in no mood for Alistair’s jokes at the moment. Maybe she was out of practice, maybe all the confusing messages in her mind had thrown her off, maybe Alistair was better at fighting for his life than he gave himself credit for, but either way, Kallian was glad for it. She had genuinely believed that the Taint had taken Alistair, and she had been ready to kill him to put him out of his misery. If she hadn’t been so completely out of her head, she could have--
No, no good was going to come of thinking about that. Kallian shook her head and took Alistair’s hand. “Come on, we need to get you to Medical and get Hawke or someone to look at you. And get one of their mental health people to figure out what in the Void happened to me and how to make sure it doesn’t again.”
"We'll be fine," he promised. "You'll be fine." He wasn't entirely sure he believed it, but he wanted to.
Alistair brought her hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles, leaving a swipe of blood on her skin.