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Brother ([info]bamjeldrnicd) wrote in [info]utr_logs,
@ 2011-03-14 22:07:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:brother, morrigan, zevran arainai

WHO: Brother and Morrigan
WHAT: Brother made a spirited attempt to kill Morrigan's mother. It did not take.
WHEN: Pretty much directly after this (the one-sided fight took place concurrently.)
WARNINGS: Violence and HEARTBREAK.

There was remarkably little pain, all things considered. He suspected that some of his bones were broken. He knew for a fact that he was bleeding, quite a lot. He'd tried to check where, but his body objected when he tried to move, and his eyes were swollen shut besides. There wasn't much he could do about it, anyway. Brother was, in many respects, quite intelligent. That said, whatever genius he had was limited mainly to technology. He didn't know a lot about medicine.

He did know, however, that he was dying.

Breathing took a lot of effort, but again, it didn't hurt. He didn't know that this was because the parts of his brain responsible for understanding pain were being overloaded by the signals his body were sending him. He couldn't feel the pain because everything was in pain.

Breathe, he reminded himself. There was a faint bubbling in the region of his throat as he exhaled.

Flemeth was tougher than he'd thought she would be. But what choice did he have? She would have killed Morrigan. Or worse. He tried to stand up again, the vague hope in the back of his mind that he could survive long enough to make it back to her. His leg wouldn't obey him. He wasn't aware that this was because the bone was sticking out of his leg, but even if he had been, he likely would have tried anyway.

A twinge of agony pierced through the veil when he tried to stand again, and he lay back. "Morrigan," he said, hoping the universe would will her into existence. "Morrigan... I am... sorry that I was not good enough for you."

Brother could feel his consciousness slipping away and, though it may have just been in what vestiges remained of his imagination, he could feel his heartbeat slow, then stop. The word, "Goodbye," formed unspoken on his lips.


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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-15 09:41 pm UTC (link)
"I had to. She could have hurt you. When someone you love may be hurt, you must act." The numbness of dying had been replaced with a dull ache all over his body that grew sharp when he tried to move. But at least he could move. Brother slowly climbed to his feet and shook as he tried to take a step. He nearly collapsed as he did so, grabbing onto the door frame for balance.

Standing over Morrigan, he could see that she was dressed only in a towel, now stained with his blood. He also noticed that her eyes were still watery from her tears. "You were crying," he said. Naive and optimistic though Brother may have been when it came to Morrigan, he was prepared to acknowledge that this was unusual. "You were worried about me?" he said with as much of a smile as he could manage.

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-16 03:10 am UTC (link)
Morrigan stood when he stumbled, moving to help him. She wrapped an arm around his waist so that she could help him walk. "Let's sit you down," she said, walking him slowly toward the couch and taking as much of his weight as he would let her. Aside from being pushed off to one side, the couch hadn't suffered too much during Morrigan's tantrum, and was one of the few intact pieces of furniture in the room. When they reached it, she took off her towel and draped it over the cushion for Brother to sit on.

On her way to the kitchen, Morrigan closed the front door. If anyone was watching, they had seen her bring a corpse back to life, so nudity was hardly the biggest surprise of the day. "It was.. very brave," she said from the kitchen. "No. I was worried about you, but that isn't why." She grabbed her clothes from the floor and slipped on her shirt and jeans. She returned to his side, bringing him a glass of juice and a package of string cheese. "I did an awful thing while you were gone."

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-16 06:17 am UTC (link)
When he thought of eating to restore his strength, cheese and juice did not immediately spring to mind. But Morrigan's magic was working his way through his veins, so perhaps she knew what she was talking about. He fumbled slightly as he opened the package and spilled a bit of juice down his front when he drank. His hands would be shaking for some time.

As he chewed, Brother looked around the room. Books were all over the floor, pages littered around them. Furniture was broken. A few machina he'd been fiddling with were little but scrap. She'd done an awful thing while he was gone? Evidently. "You broke my things?" he said. "That is not so awful. They are just things." He'd heard her say that before, but never in that tone. Usually she was proud: The fruit vendor shortchanged me, so I did an awful thing to her, and now everything she eats tastes like rotten fish. But the clues weren't clicking in his head. The fog of unconsciousness hadn't yet dispersed enough for him to realize the seriousness of the situation. When he looked at her and realized she was now dressed, the presence of the towel beneath him slipped his mind and he asked, "Why were you naked? And why were your clothes in the kitchen?"

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-16 06:38 am UTC (link)
Morrigan reached out to help him with the cheese. She was tired; she wasn't used to using that much magic at once out of combat, and combat was rare these days. She touched his knee, casting another small heal spell to try and help.

She shook her head. "I don't mean the things, Brother." She cleared away some shrapnel so that she could sit on the floor in front of him. She frowned when he mentioned the clothes. She had wanted to give him a chance to recover, but she certainly didn't want him to guess what had happened. If there was a delicate way to say it, Morrigan didn't know it. "I slept with Zevran." He had every right to hate her, but he was the one person that she really hoped wouldn't.

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-16 07:03 am UTC (link)
The flat felt oddly silent after she said that. The ambient sounds of London--traffic, passersby, neighbours--either quieted, or Brother just failed to hear them. Before the pain of Flemeth's counterattack had overwhelmed him to a point of numbness, he'd thought that he'd endured the most pain anyone ever could. He was wrong, because now he was feeling it.

She was in front of him. Her hand on his knee had, until a moment ago, been a comforting touch, but now, with images of her hands on Zevran's body flooding his traitorous mind, the hand was agonizing. He searched for something to say, some way of making things right and fixing it and above all, making everything not true. What he managed was, "Oh."

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-16 05:32 pm UTC (link)
Morrigan didn't know what reaction she had been expecting, but the silence was upsetting. She withdrew her hand, biting back more tears. "I'm sorry, Brother." It was likely the first time Brother had heard her say those words. She didn't take them lightly, and she had rarely felt it necessary to both admit she was wrong and to acknowledge someone else's feelings over her own. Now, though.. "I'm sorry. It was wrong."

"I'm not a good person." She'd tried to tell him before, but he couldn't see it. He was too sweet and optimistic. He looked at her through rose-colored glasses, and she hated that she was taking that away from him. "Please say something."

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-16 06:33 pm UTC (link)
"Fryd... What would you have me say?" Brother was good at falling in love. Devotion came easily to him. And there was a time when he could look at Morrigan dispassionately, as someone he occasionally had sex with who viewed him in more or less equal terms. As someone he liked, as someone he would rather have near than far, but not someone he was in love with. Then, at some point, that changed. She didn't become friendly, as such, but she was less hostile. In quiet moments, she would let her guard down, and he would meet someone soft and gentle and emotional, if only for brief periods. At night, she would curl into him and make contented sounds as she did so. He wasn't blind; he knew that she could be mean and vicious and cruel. But he didn't think of that as the real Morrigan. He thought of the real Morrigan as the one he got the rare glimpses of from time to time. And though she was mean, she never seemed to be cruel to him.

And that was the part of her he loved the most.

And now, it seemed, he was wrong. "I am sorry," he said, standing up. His strength hadn't returned, so he was still a bit unstable on his feet, but he did not want to be here. Ever again, possibly. "I thought you were... the other you. The one who curled up against me in the night and smiled at me when she thought I was not looking. The one who was soft and gentle sometimes when we... made love." His voice broke here. But it wasn't making love, was it? Not if she was doing it to Zevran. It was nothing to you, was it? When he spoke again, his voice was steady, but only just. "I loved that part of you. And I loved the strong and sharp and prickly person you are sometimes. But I thought that the real you was the other you. And I thought that she loved me." He was trying to limp to the door. The floor was strewn with debris, but his slow shuffle pushed much of it out of the way. "I was wrong. I am sorry to have wasted your time."

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-16 07:23 pm UTC (link)
"I.." She didn't know what to say. Which part was her? She certainly spent more time as the cold bitch, and that was how she primarily identified herself. She cared for Brother, though, and that was falling apart. Brother was going to walk out that door and... what? She would go back to living in the woods as though nothing had happened? She didn't know if their relationship could survive this.. Truthfully, Morrigan didn't know much about relationships at all, and fixing this was beyond her skill set.

"I don't know which one is me," she said, standing and taking a few steps toward him. "But I do love you, and.. and I like the person I am when I'm with you." It was a hard thing for her to admit, and she realized that her hands were shaking. "Or, I did. Before I broke your trust." She wasn't going to block his way, or get closer to him than he wanted her to. "Please.. I know you don't want to be around me right now, but you should rest."

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-16 07:47 pm UTC (link)
"Do not lie to me!" It wasn't a shout, but it was as forceful as he could manage given the circumstances. He spun to face her, and if there was any anger on his face, it was well hidden by the tears in his eyes. "You cannot love me. You do not do that to a person you love. You do not betray them." He tried to continue, to press his point, to make her understand just how much she had hurt him, but his knees gave out underneath him and he almost fell to the floor, catching himself at the last moment.

"I can't stay here," he said. He tried to stand, but it would take a moment before he would have the strength to do so. "I cannot be in this place, knowing what you--knowing what happened here." And even then, suspecting that he would never set foot in this place again if he could avoid it, he almost hoped Morrigan would follow him. Even though looking at her tore at him like no pain he'd ever felt, even though he felt angry and betrayed and hateful and still agonizingly in love, even though every second in her presence almost made him wish he had died at Flemeth's hand, he still hoped, in the hopeful, idealistic, romantic core of his soul, that there was some magic combination of words that could fix all this and make it right and make it so it had never happened, that he would just wake up in his flat to Morrigan's quiet snores beside him, the fading memory of a terrible nightmare having no more effect on him but to pull her closer. "I cannot be here," he repeated.

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-16 08:46 pm UTC (link)
She frowned, the tears flowing down her cheeks again. She had to keep herself from helping him stand, knowing that he wouldn't want her to. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know anything about real love. But what I feel for you is the closest thing to it I've felt, and I don't want to lose you. And I know I don't deserve a say in what happens now, but.." She shook her head. Even if she never saw him again, it was important he know she didn't want him to leave her.

"Where will you go? Can I just.. make sure you get there? I won't bother you after that." She was worried he would collapse before he got somewhere safe and end up sleeping on the street, or worse. He wasn't thinking clearly.

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-16 09:40 pm UTC (link)
When Morrigan trepidatiously moved forward, Brother didn't pull away. When she offered herself as support, he debated with himself as to whether he should take her up on it, but the reality was that he didn't have the strength to get out on his own. He was weak, still injured, and with her revelation, didn't have the drive he normally had. He reluctantly put his arm around her shoulder and felt her help him to stand. He did his best to ignore the thoughts that filled his mind right now. "I have a cot in the library," he said. "I used to stay there sometimes. Before."

They moved together in a tense silence. She wasn't looking at him, he noticed. Guilt, perhaps. If she could feel guilt. It was an angry thought, one that would be dismissed when his emotions cycled back to sadness, but he held onto it as long as he could. Rage was better than heartbreak.

Some time passed before one of them broke the silence, and it turned out to be Brother. "Why?" he asked, certain that he didn't want to know the answer. "Why did you do this to... why did you do this? Why with him?" The unasked question underneath it all: Do you love him? He didn't know what answer would hurt him more.

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-17 04:34 am UTC (link)
Morrigan welcomed the silence. It was tense, but she was emotionally drained. There was nothing she could say to make things better, and she didn't know how to explain herself. The art of diplomacy was lost on her, so completing a task without words was far preferable right now.

Then he asked her questions she didn't want to answer. "I don't know," she said softly, shaking her head. "I was scared." Zevran had seen through the rage and the anger to see she was scared underneath, and he'd refused to leave her alone. "I didn't know what to do about Flemeth and I... I just wanted a distraction." That sounded terrible, she knew, but it was the truth. She wasn't afraid now, though. She really couldn't care less about Flemeth right now.

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-17 04:48 am UTC (link)
Brother didn't know what he'd been expecting when he asked. Months ago, it might not have surprised him to think of Morrigan doing something so short-sighted and selfish. Now, it did, possibly because he thought that, even as mean a bitch as she could be, she made an exception for him. Which proved to be wrong.

There was a little spiteful part of him that was glad that she was hurting when he asked her these questions, but mostly he just felt empty. "That's it, then?" he asked, not quite managing to laugh. "You just... didn't care about me because you needed to be distracted? It could have been avoided if I had just been home at the time?" In the wide world of irony, being cheated on because he'd been out trying to save his girlfriend's life was probably near the top.

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-17 05:01 am UTC (link)
Morrigan bit her lower lip. Her natural reaction would have been to put up the walls and lash out, the way she did with everyone else. That was the last thing she could do now, though. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I wasn't thinking at all." The walk to the library seemed like a lifetime's journey. Surely she'd traveled less distance in all of Ferelden than she did here.

"I wish I could take it back. I wish I'd been with you." It was pointless, all this wishing. Her words couldn't do anything now, and she just sounded to herself like a simpering moron. She quieted, resolving to let him throw whatever he liked at her and do her best not to react.

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-17 10:46 am UTC (link)
"I wish that too." Was that better? He wasn't sure. Knowing that she'd done what she'd done not because she loved someone else but because she just flipped off her mind... it was difficult for Brother to imagine, but he desperately tried to believe it so that he could convince himself that she really hadn't been trying to hurt him, hadn't wanted to hurt him, had just been wrong and stupid and regretful. But at the same time, he suspected that a lot of it was guilt because of his current condition rather than what she'd done; it was less her betrayal than when she'd been doing it.

The question nagged at him, but he didn't ask it: what if he hadn't been fighting Flemeth? What if he'd just been working late? Or fetching dinner? Would she still feel guilty? Would he even know it had happened? Would he want to know?

They finally reached the library, which had the typical loneliness of a school at night. Corridors meant to hold thousands of young people now only had two, with footsteps in the dark echoing down long halls for what seemed like forever. Brother almost collapsed when they actually reached his cot in his office. Spartan though it was, it was the closest thing he had to home right now: he wasn't sure he would ever be able to go back there again. "Thank you," he said, despite the dark thoughts in his head. He looked Morrigan in the eye for what felt like the first time. He still couldn't bring himself to hate her.

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-18 04:34 am UTC (link)
Morrigan helped to make sure Brother made it onto the cot. For the first time, she found herself wishing that she knew more everyday magic, something that could create pillows or somehow make the cot more comfortable. Brother wouldn't complain about the conditions, but he deserved better.

She managed a thin smile when he thanked her. "Thank you. For fighting Flemeth." The words might ring a little hollow, after what she'd done. His bravery had been rewarded with a slap in the face. The words wouldn't make up for anything, but still, it needed to be said. That he would do that for her without questioning it meant a great deal to her.

She thought briefly of sitting beside the cot, but she wasn't sure how long her presence would be welcome. It wasn't like her to let someone else's desires dictate a situation, but Brother needed to be in control here. This was his home away from her. She leaned against the wall, a few paces from him. "Are you hungry? I could go get you something."

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-19 12:43 am UTC (link)
He didn't reply when she thanked him for going after her mother, and then when she offered to get him food, he considered continuing not to reply, but that seemed petty and small. "No," he replied. Then, after a moment, he added, "Thank you."

He realized he was staring at her. He wasn't used to feeling conflicted. Brother pushed hard decisions onto other people because his general approach to life was to feel one thing, feel it strongly, and let that feeling guide him. And as far as love went, there was perhaps one woman in the world that Brother would have so happily given his life for besides Morrigan. But right now he looked at her and wasn't sure he would do it again.

No, that wasn't accurate. He knew he would. It just annoyed him.

He lay back and stared up at the ceiling. "What are you going to do?" he asked. The flat was in shambles, but the real question was, You're not going with him, are you?

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-19 06:25 am UTC (link)
Her eyes were fixed on the floor near his bed. She would leave when he asked her to, she decided. She would respect his requests, but she wouldn't let a little silence drive her away.

She shrugged in response to his question, lifting her gaze to him. She'd actually been toying with a number of plans. Asking Lulu to come check on him or picking a place out of sight to camp out and keep an eye on him.. Even finding a store that sold pillows this time of night. "I thought I might go clean up." She wasn't sure when or if Brother would feel like returning there. Perhaps cleaning would involve some packing, as well. Even having a talk with Flemeth had crossed her mind, though she couldn't imagine that going well.

Morrigan frowned. "I wish there was more I could do," she said quietly. She doubted it mattered. He likely wouldn't want help from her, and she couldn't blame him.

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[info]bamjeldrnicd
2011-03-22 03:24 am UTC (link)
"I don't know." He felt like he didn't know anything. He didn't know how he felt, certainly. He didn't know what she could do, if there was anything she could do. He still didn't know why she'd done it, and he didn't know why he didn't hate her for doing it. And he didn't know if he would still love her tomorrow or next week. What he did know was that if he made a decision about anything right now, he would regret it.

So he did something astonishingly sensible for Brother. He told her.

"I need you to give me time. I do not know how I will feel tomorrow. But I need to know that I can have the time I need to make a decision. I need you to... to wait."

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[info]witchofthewilds
2011-03-22 03:39 am UTC (link)
Morrigan nodded, feeling some relief. She had worried that if he decided tonight, he would have ended it. A delay wasn't much, but it gave her some hope.

"I will wait," she promised. "As long as you need." She certainly didn't have plans to go off with Zevran or anyone else. Vanishing into the woods would have been tempting, if there were no hope. As it was, she would find something to keep her occupied, even if it meant taking up scrapbooking or joining a quilting circle.

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