Character Narrative: Bonds of Blood Who: Viara Tremaine, Alerrin Abelan (her future first mate, NPC) Where: The Denerim Alienage, and then a seedy Denerim tavern When: 9:40 Dragon, 15 Vermensis Summary: Viara meets a man who has nothing to lose, but still gives her what he has left. In return, she gives him a reason. Rating: V for Violence, A for Angst, S for sadness (overall rating: T)
He was home, and there was blood on his hands.
His blood, the blood of others; it mingled and ran together, crusted under his fingernails, stained the worn grooves that indented his palm. All of it was red, the deep dark red of life. Human, elf, it didn't matter. When it came to blood, everyone was the same. Everyone died the same, everyone cried out.
They'd driven him too far.
Alerrin's eyes closed, the visual of the human girl's face ripping through his vision, tattooed to the inside of his eyelashes like a dream. He'd held her, his hands around her slim neck, while they took their turns with her. While they laughed, and told him to have a go; they said it'd be revenge and let the shem know our pain. It didn't matter that he'd had a wife, a daughter. They'd have killed him if he didn't. He did it. He plunged in hate, and killed her in shame.
How had it come to this?
His bloodied hands covered his face, ripped back through his mousy brown hair.
His wife and daughter were asleep, and his shadow loomed over them; the insubstantial outline some kind of hapless metaphor of what he'd become in this place. It was all that was left of his presence in his own home; just a blocky shape, a trace of the man he'd been. He felt like a stranger on the floorboards he'd repaired, an illicit lover the few times he was able to go to his wife's arms without hating her, or hating himself. He leaned over her, noticing how her curls were paling from their once-fiery hue, her cheek whiter than the stained pillow where she rested. Their daughter had her hair, her beautiful red hair. And his eyes, his mild, blue eyes. He reached out his hand, the backs of his fingers curling an inch from that soft skin peeking over the threadbare coverlet.
There was blood on his nails, small rivers worn into the creases of his skin. Her cheek was white, so pure, a crescent moonglow in the night.
He stilled and slowly straightened. To touch her would be to stain fresh-fallen snow; to cross the barrier and give her some of his pain would be to ruin her. He remembered her as she'd been when he'd married her. When she'd held their daughter to nurse. When she'd run those fingers through his thin hair, laughed at his jokes, smiled into his eyes. When she'd complained of getting older but settled into her maturity with a rare, quiet grace. When she told him she'd never, ever leave.
He left.
He stalked out of that house that he no longer belonged in. It was too warm, too inviting, too good for the likes of him. A decision had been made years ago; that man was dying, and his ghost watched the women in his life grow and blossom while he withered. It was fitting.
The alienage was deep in shadows; it was the early hours of the morning, when the world was hushed - and the elf found himself needing a drink. He needed many drinks, actually. He wanted to pass out, to forget, drink himself stupid. Drink until his brain was underwater and he didn't know himself or anyone else. It was easy enough to skirt out of the alienage if one knew the proper routes, and he did. He knew the right taverns, where they didn't look at his ears if they were shoved under a hat or a long mop of hair, where at least his coin was good, even if his presence was merely tolerated. Down by the docks, he could drown in drink, he could drown in noise...he could drown in the ocean if he wanted.
All he wanted to do was drown out one loud, keening scream.
~*~
The Horn of Plenty was as seedy as a tavern got without collapsing around the ears of its patrons. There were women looser than a bucket of fishing worms, cheap ale, and a blessedly loud din that made it difficult to think, nevermind speak. Alerrin sat near the back, emptying his mugs nearly as fast as they came, keeping himself to himself and hoping that the next drink would be the one to make him pitch over.
Her hair was black, her eyes were blue, her neck was white...white with red, a blossoming rose of blood
He growled, gripping his hands around the edge of the table, wishing he could snap off a piece of the wood. They'd been unsatisfied that he'd hesitated; how was he supposed to be an assassin if he couldn't even kill a helpless girl? The sneers of his compatriots lingered around the blurry vision of the young human. You're too old, you're no good. A run-down old thief. He hadn't even been a very good thief; he'd been quick with a blade, and they'd tried to make use of him. His only use was in death.
He'd killed men; in defense, in hot blood.
Not cold blood. Cold blood is still hot. Bubbling and boiling, out of a swan's neck...
The elf gritted his teeth until his jaw hurt, slammed his hands into the table until splinters dug beneath his blood-crusted nails. They'd chased him off, unsatisfied, told him not to return. You're out, you're out, you're no good to anyone. She'd died for no reason, but his shame, his cowardice. His fear at losing provisions to his family, with his horrible job, his horrible conscience. So young. Alerrin felt eyes on him through his drunken haze; he feared they'd track him down, dispatch of him, make sure he never told of their stupid, small secrets; of the meaningless lies from their stupid, small thieves' carta in the big, sucking wasteland of Denerim. He stood, not even realizing he was tipping to one side. Someone was looking, someone saw him and he needed to move, he needed to go somewhere, anywhere before he fell down.
Out of nowhere, panic gripped. The room was a mess of bodies and smoke, flickering light and shuddering, crowing laughter. Did they find him? Was he to die, here, in this muck? He was filth, but some kind of obscene pride gripped at Alerrin. I want to die, but please don't kill me.
He started to shuffle towards the back door, which led to an alley, he knew. Whatever it was, whoever it was, they were close. One of them? Two? More? He couldn't see, he couldn't think. He needed to go home, he needed to go away, leave the city, yes...I could take them away, go away, run run run.
Obscene hope gripped his heart just as a hand gripped his upper arm. They had him, they'd found him. His free hand was on his dagger before he could think - reaction, seizing panic trying to snuff out his hope. He heard his growl only after he'd turned and struck; after he heard the soft, sucking sound of metal seeping deep into exposed flesh.
Her hair was faded red; her eyes were bright and amber gold. He'd left her sleeping.
Her eyes had never looked so beautiful as they did the moment he killed her. Wide, and golden, and full of fear and hope and pain. Those eyes had danced once, when he'd said that he'd loved her. They were like firelight, and he'd loved them.
The front of her white shift was blooming with a deep red where his hand had buried the dagger to the hilt. Darker than rubies, darker red than her hair had ever been, her life unwinding before him like a wet silk ribbon down the front of her nightgown.
She didn't cry, she didn't scream. Her breath gurgled, and she stared at him with her lovely, horrible eyes. She'd just thrown on a jacket and not bothered to change; she must have run here, searched through every tavern, trying to find the husband she'd lost years ago. That man was dead; his replacement ended her quiet torment.
Alerrin stared, and watched his wife die.
It was quick. The slow deterioration of his soul as she collapsed while the tavern at large remained oblivious - the death of his heart, the blankness of his mind - he knew that would be eternal. At some point he pulled out the dagger and dropped it. He didn't hear it hit the ground; he only heard the sound of his heart falling out of his chest.
The body of his wife slumped into Alerrin's arms. They were quaking; when had that happened? Everything was in a dream - slow and fast, black and white. In fact...he was shaking entirely, his vision blurred, his breath caught up somewhere inside of his throat, stuck to his voice. He couldn't speak, he couldn't breathe. He thought he couldn't move, but somehow he was. He was backing up towards the door, hefting her corpse in a lover's embrace, with a trail of blood the only evidence in the loud, dirty, dingy tavern that anything had at all occurred. He was in the alley behind the building before he realized it, and he dropped her unceremoniously. Her eyes were no longer amber firelight, twisting and dancing, but instead were two shards of pale yellow - like stained glass without the sun behind to light them.
His wife was dead, gone.
He was dead, gone.
There was just his own body to dispose of. Alerrin sat on the ground of the alley, a few feet away from the door. He pulled her into his lap, stroking his fingers through her hair; faded fire, but still so soft. Just like he remembered it.
"My wife." His voice was the croak of a corpse.
There was discarded glass just under his fingers - green, some bottle or another. One man's loss, another man's gain. It sat right right behind her pale, beautiful, dead face. It would serve.
~*~
Viara was in trouble. Well, worse, actually. She was drunk and in trouble, and the men had been able to follow her as she tried to lose herself in the back alleys behind the docks.
Why had she tried to cut their purses? She'd never been good at it. It hadn't even been a dare; it had been a whim, a stupid whim. Her mind was quick and sharp for all of her 21 years, but her hands had never been quite so clever, and of course she had made her marks the biggest, strongest men she'd seen - her pride would demand no less, and her cockiness assured her that she'd make it through unscathed. She could raid ships, broker backroom deals, and save lives - she should have been able to cut a purse and run with the best of the sewer rats that crawled over Denerim.
But no, no. Some things even the Captain couldn't do right. She muttered oaths under her breath as she skated from one alley to another, although her heart plummeted when she realized she was coming up to yet another dead end. She didn't know the shadowy places of Denerim well at all. Should she should turn around or perhaps make for the rooftops - perhaps cut through the tavern nearby? Her mind was moving slower than her stumbling feet, and she felt her eyelids peeling back from her eyes as panic welled in her throat. They were close - they'd be on her in less than a minute.
"Maybe I should fight!" Vi skidded to a halt, her drunken mind reminding her at just that moment that she did have her sword on her, and she spoke out loud in triumph to no one in particular. Her hands groped at her left hip and found the handle of the blade - when had it gotten so heavy? And off-balance? She tipped a little bit to the side as she tried to draw it out, but it was stuck.
She grumbled, fumbled, twirling around as she argued with her sword, and then fell.
She didn't hit the ground, but rather something soft, and squishy. And wet.
Vi blinked as she righted herself, curling backwards and hauling to her feet as if she were a cat that had inadvertently stepped in a puddle. Something rolled out from underneath her. She saw, belatedly, that it was a person - had she knocked someone to the ground?
No...two someones, she corrected herself as she regained her footing. There was a man, and a woman. Well... two elves, not that it mattered much to the Captain. The woman was...sick or...hurt? That was blood on her shift and she was sprawled out awkwardly on the pavement, and the man was staring at Viara as if she'd knocked over the body of Andraste herself. Hatred and remorse flooded the blue of his vision, though somehow he looked right through her. He was judging and terrifying but somehow also weak, and Vi found herself staring right back, already having forgotten about the men on her tail - the weight of the man's obvious sorrow drowning out much other thought. The man's eyes shifted; looking over her hair, the red mass that she was sure was a mess, and perused her face again as if he were seeing a ghost.
His lips opened, and he made a strangled sound of pain.
There was glass in his hand. He was holding it to his wrist.
"Hey...!" Vi's lips opened before she could stop herself, and her voice was loud and rough and stupid. "What? Don't...do...I knocked her over?" Alcohol had deadened her tongue, brought out the worst of her personality - she was usually cavalier and loud when full of drink, as well as opinionated and short-tempered. He said nothing but kept looking, and Vi felt her face pucker in disbelief and annoyance - it didn't matter that there was a body on the ground, he hadn't answered her. " 'M sorry. I wasn'...are you mute or somethin'?" She swayed in front of the elf, who looked down at the body and then up at the woman in front of him as though in utter disbelief. Mute and soft in the head? The Captain found herself growling. "Mate, 's not worth killin' yerself, whatever 't is ya did." She pointed with her sword at the glass in the man's hand, shaking her head towards him as if scolding a child. "I dun...I don't know whatc...what you did. But I've...done worse. An' I happen to think... that life 's always worth...more 'n...death." She looked down at the woman's body and then back at the man.
Something in her mind put two and two together - had he killed the woman? Perhaps someone else had killed her? Revenge seemed a much better option to the Captain than suicide.
Due her most excellent instruction of the value of life, Viara had failed to hear the two men that were chasing her start to run up behind her in the dead-end alley, brandishing daggers at her back. It was too late once she did become awares, and her eyes flew open as her brain told her in no uncertain that she was probably going to die while lecturing another about how he should be alive. A fitting irony, perhaps. But she didn't want to die. Panic and shock made her immobile. Too late, she was going to be too late.
Her eyes fixated stupidly on the suicidal man in front of her, who looked over her hair at the approaching men and then back at her face. His lips thinned, and with surprising agility, he jumped.
Strong, dirty hands grabbed Viara around the shoulders before she could react - in fact, she dropped her sword in the shock of the maneuver, staring in disbelief. He looked dead into her eyes, this sad, suicidal, stupid man, and he turned. Now it was his back towards the alley, his body in the way of oncoming knives.
Viara heard the dull impact of blades hitting biting through his flesh before she fully realized what was going on, and her incredible disbelief shocked her out of some of her drunken stupor.
He was taking her blows.
She heard four of them hit before the long second was over. He didn't yell or scream, but merely grunted, his strong back becoming the target board for the chasers' frustration with Viara. Her sudden savior never stopped looking at her, and Viara kept looking right back, feeling helpless, numb, and mute.
"Sod off, old geezer!" One of the attackers yelled, seeming simply annoyed that the man had gotten in the way, and Viara felt a sudden fire flow through her veins - a hatred and a single-mindedness of purpose that she hadn't felt since the day that her brother sneered at her, and disowned her as his kin. This man - this man who didn't even know her, or know anything about her, had taken killing blows for her, dead into the back. Why? The word, along with guilt and sorrow and rage, flooded her mind and she screamed, loud and long and raw. Her hands clutched at the elf - he was slowly closing his eyes, his body slumping away from her.
She let him fall limp to the ground, staring at the attackers, who sneered at the small Captain. On fire, Viara lunged. She was small and not nearly as strong as the two men, but she'd learned combat well, and fought dirty. She catapulted all of her slim weight towards the knees of the man closest to her, knocking him over cleanly. Viara rolled when she hit the cobbled pavement with a small grunt, her head already feeling dizzy from the exertion of fighting and concentrating while being three sheets to the wind. Her hand found her dropped sword; she knew she'd need to finish this quickly, or else she'd surely lose. The second attacker lunged down, his arms open and his impressive gut a wide, circular target. Viara made a sloppy but effective thrust with her rapier, blood blossoming underneath the tip of the sword as she buried the blade halfway into him. His face was a caricature of surprise and Viara let out a harsh laugh, leaving her sword in him even as the other man regained his footing.
This one, slimmer and younger, kicked towards Viara, the toe of his boot landing cleanly in the soft meat under her arm. Her nerves hummed with the deep pain, that arm feeling momentarily dead. Vi scrambled backwards, her working hand sliding over the cobblestones, searching for some kind of weapon. Her fist closed about a broken bottle - some shards of glass wormed their way into her palm, but they could be dealt with later. The young attacker pounced. "I want my money you thieving wenc-!" The epithet was cut off by the wide, swinging arc of Vi's good arm, cracking him across the side of the face, the heavy, curved weight of the glass hitting with a satisfactory dull sound against the soft skin of his temple. The slim man fell like a pile of bricks, and Vi immediately struggled to her feet.
She didn't care about their bodies, didn't care about the dead woman, didn't care about her sword.
She rushed to the side of the sad man, who was laying face-down on the pavement. Four wounds in his back spilled rivulets of blood, and she felt over him, desperately, searching for a pulse or a sign of life...
He breathed. And again. He was breathing.
A strangled sound emitted from Viara's throat, her haze abandoning her, leaving in it's wake fear and joy and hope and panic.
"Maker, old man, hold on or I will kill you myself..." She needed a bed. And a healer. And maybe even a prayer.
~*~
He was feverish for days on end, her desperate savior.
Viara held a vigil over him day and night. She'd given him her bed, and he was the guest of honor aboard The Northern Star. She ate or drank only when he did. She'd paid for the best healers to be found, but they'd only come hours after the original wounds had taken their toll. The blood was staunched and the wounds closed, but they could do little for the fever that had seeped in from the muck of Denerim; from the stink and decay of the alley where he'd lain in her arms as she'd called for help.
"Marah...Marah stay...don't...they got you, Marah...." He called for the woman that Viara could only assume had been the one he'd held in that dingy alley, his teeth gnashing, his legs working to run although he had nowhere to go. He'd been desperately lucky - the knife blows had missed his major entrails and had bitten mostly through flesh and muscle. Should he survive the infection, everything would work as it had a right to.
"I'm sorry!" He cried, he wailed in his dream-rushed sleep. His tears were endless, and she feared that he'd wither himself to a husk, and cry blood if only it meant that he could continue to mourn for the life he'd once had. It was all Viara could do to give him a cool cloth, change the sheets when they were soaked with sweat, continually call for healers and doctors. The price didn't matter. He'd meant to die for her, and what was money to life? Meaningless. She'd swim through a river of gold to save a man and not look back.
~*~
"No!"
Alerrin sat up shock-straight from his dreams. Marah, they were coming for her, they were making him kill her, and there was a dagger in his hand and her eyes, her eyes were flickering...
But...no. He was in a bed.
Not his bed. What bed was this? Where was the alley, his wife? The piece of glass? Shards of fragmented, feverish memory floated behind his eyes but made no sense. His back hurt. He pawed behind him to feel bandages mixed with his own dried sweat.
Thirsty. He was so thirsty.
He tried to move but his muscles felt stiff; his head whipped around the unfamiliar room where he was staying even as he wrestled with the hot, damp sheets that were tangled in his legs.
The blue gaze of the man finally riveted upon a petite, red-headed woman slumped in an uncomfortable-looking chair. She was sleeping, her chin tucked down to her chest as though she couldn't overcome her own exhaustion. She was pale, and small, and very young to his eyes, masses of sweat-soaked hair tumbling haphazardly over her shoulder. It was a pure red, a true copper color, sun streaked with honey and gold. Lovely hair, like his wife's hair, her faded red hair...
Her hair. This woman's hair...
He remembered her. Drunk, and stupid, with beautiful red hair. Like Marah's hair, yes, and she had knocked Marah away from him, and she had been staring at him with complete womanly disapproval, chiding him for taking his own life while barely able to stand herself. Telling him to live, of all things, live when he was already sick and dying and dead.
He had grabbed her, and turned her, and there...there had been men, yes, and they were going to kill her, and they couldn't kill her, not when she had Marah's red hair. She was the same age as his daughter, and he had wanted no more blood on his hands that night. Blood from his back, sure, drain the blood from the veins of a dead man - he didn't care, he hadn't cared, better to die saving a drunken woman than for no reason at all, it'd be quicker, he wouldn't even have had to work at it.
But here he was, and here she was, and...had she taken him somewhere?
"Hey!"
His voice was rough from near-on a week of not being used, and she didn't stir.
"Hey, you!...Woman!"
She snorted and lifted her head. Looking around wildly before her eyes riveted on him. She looked exhausted, as if she were the one that had taken knives to the back. And despite her size, she was a shem.
"Tell me where I am and then..." He frowned, what did he want? Home? Find his daughter..."And then let me go." He could feel his face drawing to a deep frown.
The woman blinked, just once, and then laughed. Great peals of laughter, and he had no idea what she found so damnably amusing. Her eyes were closed and her head tipped back as the belly laughs rolled through her. His mouth drew into a straight line; he could feel the wrinkles of his forehead furrow as he let her ride out the fit. Fine and good, laugh at the dead man.
"Let you go?" She choked out through laughing fits, wiping tears from her eyes as she tried to get her voice under control. "Oh aye, you're my prisoner, sleeping in my bed, and those are my bandages on your back, ser. Maker, I didn't know you'd be such a riot."
His frown deepened. This woman was obviously an insensitive idiot.
~*~
The man was obviously stupid.
Vi couldn't help her laughter; she was exhausted and apparently slap-happy. He woke up and demanded to leave, as if he couldn't just walk out on his own two legs whenever he pleased. For some reason the thought was more amusing than anything had been in a very long time, and the Captain shook her head.
"Tell me your name at least, mate, if you're no longer to be my guest."
"Alerrin." His retort was quick and emotionless. The man crossed his arms atop his bare chest, regarding Viara as if she were a misbehaving child. He had an extremely inexpressive face when he was angry.
"Well Alerrin, I am Captain Vi, and you are on board The Northern Star. Been tending you, seeing as how you took some knives that weren't meant for you." She ticked up a brow, but she felt her face keep a mostly-serious expression. The question of why had been bothering her ever since this man had saved her life. He had obviously been very down on his luck, but it was a rare thing to meet a suicidal man with enough nobility to waste his life on another person. It seemed backwards - Viara considered suicide the ultimate aim of selfishness - and selfish people weren't like to sacrifice themselves for drunken idiot pirates.
"Wish you hadn't." That same frowning face caused Viara's smile to turn around; the corners of her mouth pulled downwards to a mirroring frown.
"Wanted to die with nobility, did you?"
"I just wanted to die." His straightforwardness slayed her, and Viara felt her heart drop, all traces of amusement banishing themselves from her mind.
"Do you still want to die?"
"Yes."
She snorted. "Stupid man."
His face stilled, and before Viara could summon a reaction, the wounded man lept out of her bed and advanced upon her. Alerrin's eyes glowed with rage and sadness, and he knocked her chair out from under her, his chest heaving with emotion. Viara fell inelegantly from the seat, her head hitting the floor with a dull thud that echoed around inside her skull.
"Stupid woman. What do you know?" He spat down at her, and Vi blinked, anger seething as she awkwardly tried to right herself. He stood over her as she got to her feet, some echo of male pride and stubbornness in the tightening of his frame, and Viara felt her hands ball into fists at her sides. She'd mended him and his reaction was to attack her?
"I've killed men for less."
"...I wish you would."
Something in his blue eyes flashed as his chest heaved - the world felt suddenly heavy and thick with his sorrow. He was shaking suddenly with emotion and desperation, and Viara's heart dropped, pity and empathy investing her. Alerrin might not have been a slave, but he was bound, just the same as any of them. To his grief, and his shame. She felt her face soften, and something wordless passed between them, right there in the middle of the night. His hands flexed at his sides and he made a choking sound before he could find words, his head dropping to look at the floor.
"Kill me. Please."
Viara felt her lips thin. She'd never cared for a person so quickly, nor felt such a need to help. She doubted she ever would again. He was pathetic and noble, weak and determined, and he was meant to live. Without details, she knew that she would love him. Whoever he was, whatever he did - she owed him her life, and he'd earned her sudden respect.
She stared at Alerrin as time stretched - seconds turned to minutes - before Viara took one step to close the gap between them. She wrapped her arms around the middle of this stranger, to whom she felt closer in that moment than any living thing in all of Thedas.
"...I think I'll save you, instead."
He cried, wept into her shoulder. It was the last time he would shed tears, or smile, or laugh, and also the last time he would speak of leaving The Northern Star.