WHAT: Bonding and death threats in the Sphere WHERE: The Happy Fun Ball WHEN: Day 9 of the Sphere (approx. Feb 25) WARNINGS: Death threats? Language, references to past drug use STATUS: Complete
Max Trevelyan, who had been a hero to many in Thedas (and a stubborn annoyance to everyone else), did not like dark, enclosed spaces. It had been this way ever since he was a child, but it had been worsened by time spent locked in a closet at the Circle, and Corypheus damn-near crushing him in the caverns beneath Haven years ago hadn’t helped much either. He was tired. He wanted to go home to his loving husband. Despite being well-versed in working easily with others, he was exhausted of socializing and helping and exploring and staying alive.
So when they arrived in some dark, cavernous place, and he couldn’t see anything, and it became apparent that he was blindfolded and there wasn’t a way to remove that blindfold… well. Max did something he very rarely did: he took Andraste’s name in vain.
“Andraste’s crispy arse, what exactly is going on here!”
The puzzle itself was easily solvable, once you started flailing about, and all of them had done exactly that. Shattering the orb wound up being something of a team effort, and upon the blindfold lifting from his face Max immediately summoned some magelights to keep the place from being so damn eerie as they hunted for supplies within the cupboards that were now visible in the gloom.
“Did you find anything?” he asked Katou, distracted, his dislike of their surroundings somewhat mitigated by once again being able to see.
Katou would never admit how relieved he’d been to see Max when he’d woken up in their original room after spending the previous two days with Moraine and Jake. These last two days had been spent worrying more often than not about what had happened to his teammates: the fae too, but especially Max. El, for one, would probably kill him if he let something happen to the mage, even if it hadn’t been his fault they’d been separated in the first place.
But also, he’d grown to almost, sort of like him. Katou’d never had much cause to trust adults. Certainly not human adults. There’d been three adults, total, that had proven themselves to Katou: one had been an archangel, and the other two Greek gods. He sure as hell didn’t trust a couple of old dudes who invited teenage girls to come live with them in their weird-ass castle in the middle of the forest. But he’d spent the last week testing Max, and… well, he could maybe admit that Max didn’t seem like a bad guy. Maybe El wasn’t a terrible judge of character after all.
Katou hadn’t been prone to sharing much of his spoils that he’d found in the other rooms. Nothing sweet anyway. He didn’t actually need to eat, and he wasn’t enough of an asshole to hoard good food from the others when the rations that came in their room were barely enough to sustain them and, apparently, tasteless to boot. The meat and breads he’d left with the rest of their rations, but candies and desserts he’d kept for himself. He was just contemplating a small sweetroll in the cupboard he was digging through when Max asked his question.
Katou frowned, rubbed the side of his head, and then grabbed the sweetroll as he turned toward him. “Depends how you feel about cake, I guess.”
“I’m a fan, ordinarily. Unless it has that fussy marzipan stuff that’s just… sad almond,” Max clarified, dreaming briefly of a world where he could lay in bed and eat cake and admire Richie’s arse. Alas, that wasn’t to be. With a glance at Katou - and reading his body language, something Max was pretty good at with all the people-ing he had been forced to do in Thedas - he waved the dessert off. “You keep it, if you’d like. I noticed you didn’t take any of the meat we found earlier.”
Not knowing where they’d get their food - or when - was a real concern. Max hadn’t spent days on the road in years, but he hadn’t missed the uncertainty of it all. How much longer would this last? They’d been lucky so far in terms of injuries, but how much longer would that luck hold?
“Take the damned cake,” Katou snarled, thrusting it at him. “I don’t need to eat.” And besides, he was trying to make nice. He’d been worried when he’d woken up and realized that he’d lost the rest of the party – especially Max. Worried enough that he’d held a sword to Jake’s throat demanding answers, and had needed Morraine to talk him down before he’d killed him. “El would probably complain if she found out I’d hoarded all the sweets for myself anyway.”
Max’s eyebrows raised, but he did as instructed, always keen to deescalate a situation. He gave it a quick glance - yup, looked like something you’d get at a bakery and possibly dip in coffee. Coffee made him think of home, and while he probably should take that thought and stuff it in a drawer in his head, neatly folded, he instead indulged it. “I can’t wait to see El again,” he said with a sigh, leaning against the wall as he held the cake in his prosthetic. Not eating it yet - Max was the sort who had to see if anyone else needed something before he’d take it himself. “And my husband. It feels like this bout is lasting as long - longer - than anything we’ve had before.”
“But time’s funny in Vallo,” he added. “I wouldn’t be surprised if barely any time at all’s passed once we’re home, however that happens. Are you sure you don’t need to eat? I believe you; I just want to make sure everyone’s getting what they need to keep going.”
“It’ll be nice to go home,” Katou allowed. He wouldn’t admit that he missed people. He didn’t, not really, but it would be nice to see El, and Persephone, and Hades, and the dogs. “I talked to El a couple days ago. Through the journals.” He wouldn’t mention that he’d convinced her to go buy him cigarettes to send through the cabinet. He didn’t know what Max’s feelings on kids buying smokes were, but that Diego asshole hadn’t seemed keen on the idea and Katou didn’t want to get into it. “But you’re right, time’s going slower back home.”
How much slower, Katou didn’t know and didn’t especially care. There was nothing he could really do about it one way or another, and the whole time-passing-differently thing seemed more complicated than Katou cared to think about. Like how time had stopped on Earth, but had kept going on in Heaven and Hell, maybe. Thinking too hard about it did nothing but make him irritated.
“And I mean, I ain’t a hundred percent on that. But I’m dead, and my body’s made of plants so…” He shrugged. If he did need to eat, he didn’t need to eat as much as other people, at least. He’d never really tested the whole going-for-a-long-time-without-food thing. He liked chocolate, and candy, and if he was being honest with himself, eating made him feel like he was still human. Holding onto his humanity seemed important now, after he’d already given it up once. But given the fact that most of the food here tasted like ass, and everyone else in his group seemed like they actually did need to eat, and there was barely enough food to go around if they didn’t find any, it made more sense to sit it out.
There were about one-hundred questions Max might have to that but he politely asked none of them. One of the side-effects of having a glowing arm that closed rifts was that he had been on the receiving end of rude but well-intentioned questions, and consequently had learned never to press people on their past, despite his nosy tendencies.
But really? Plants?
Max held strong. “You know your limits best,” he said in his patented calm, kind, give-me-a-side-quest voice. “But if you ever feel like you need more of what we’ve collected, I hope you’ll feel comfortable advocating for yourself. Or, you know.” He grinned. “Grabbing it and telling us to stuff it.”
He stretched, something in his back popping. He was sore, tired, and sorely in need of a bath. But Max wasn’t about to say any of these things. “Is this your first big Vallo excursion?”
“Yeah, I’m really more of a ‘grab it for myself and all of you can blow me’ kinda guy,” Katou said, shooting him a bit of a half-grin. Despite what Katou said, he’d spent the last week-and-a-half finding things, and, for the most part, doling them out for everyone else. If anyone ever pointed that out to him though, he’d call them a liar, or tell them how it had really all been for his benefit anyway.
“I ended up in that weird-ass Winter Wonderland Rom Com World,” Katou said, snorting. “This is the first time I’m still me though.What about you? This sorta thing happen to you lots?”
Max gave him a knowing little grin but didn’t press it. Some people functioned best when they were playing a role of themselves, particularly under stress. Maker knew he did it - if he was helpful, positive, and laidback, he couldn’t be the anxious, second-guessing person who stayed up too late worrying over things he couldn’t possibly control, right?
“Richie went there,” Max told him, making a face. “I spent the entire time he was gone watching the show and decorating Skyhold. And you’ve seen Skyhold; there is a lot to decorate. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.”
“No shit? Must’ve sucked if he’d ended up with some gross sugary romance of his own.” He knew he might not have though; Katou himself hadn’t ended up in a romance. Looking back, he was pretty sure he’d ended up just a supporting character in a couple of other people’s movies. But he was fine with that; better than him falling in love with someone and having it broadcast to every person in Vallo.
“You didn’t decorate the whole damn castle though, right?”
“I made a valiant effort.” Max grinned, looking a little embarrassed. “I have a tendency to just--- go all at it when I’m not sure what else I can do. I throw myself into things. There’s no halfway! And no, thank goodness; Richie thankfully functioned as a… what’s the phrase?”
Max looked skyward for a moment, trying to remember the proper words to describe his husband’s role in Serendipity Hills. “A side character? He gave a lot of clever advice to the others. I watched the whole time. I wasn’t worried about him falling in love with someone else, not really - especially after Mei made it clear that that whatever happened over there was at least somewhat hoped for, at least subconsciously.” Max trusted Richie completely… and well, Richie loved a good nosy matchmaking time. Those cheesy holiday movies were loads of fun.
“Yeah, I was too,” Katou said, shrugging .He didn’t mind too much. He wasn’t leading man material, he knew that much at least. “I never really understood the point of decorating for the holidays though.” He fished his pack of cigarettes out from his pocket, and speaking around it as he lit it, he asked, “I mean, why bother when it ain’t gonna last and you’re just making more work for yourself later?”
Max perked, sensing a topic of conversation he actually cared about. “That’s sort of the point, though,” he said, drawing his knee up to get more comfortable. “That it doesn’t last. Nothing lasts. That’s why marking the time in special ways helps establish meaning and memory. Sure, there’s nothing useful about how during the winter season, I’d walk into Skyhold and smell oranges and cinnamon, and despite frigid snow I’d wade through outside, there’d be greenery hanging over the roaring fireplace. All of that is decorative, not useful. But in terms of rallying cheer, in terms of making myself feel better that when Richie came home he’d be delighted in how Skyhold looked… that was valuable beyond measure.”
Call him sentimental. He didn’t care. It was true.
Katou frowned, thinking about that. There had been nothing like that in his life. No marking of special occasions, no little celebrations, no scents of spices and oranges or greenery hanging anywhere in the little room he’d often slept in; the hideout buried under a pile of rubble in Tokyo that Kira had found, that Kira would let him live in if he wasn’t bringing a girl back. His life had been one dreary day after another, blurred together by drinking and drug use, and then he’d died forgotten, buried in a shallow grave behind his high school. Maybe, if he was lucky, his sister might have mourned him a little and remembered her shitty little brother. He wondered if she had any good memories of him at all.
His afterlife had been more meaningful, even if it had involved a lot more killing and watching his friends die or get maimed up until the moment he’d been brought here and had been taken in by Pesephone and Hades.
But the idea of doing something just because it made memories, or rallied cheer. It was still pretty foreign to him. It sounded nice though.
“If you ever try to hurt El, I’ll kill you, if she don’t manage it first,” Katou said with a chipper smile that didn’t quite match his words. It wasn’t an empty threat He didn’t think that El would though. She was naive enough that she’d probably be hurt if someone she cared about betrayed her, instead of just expecting it as par the course. He took a drag from his cigarette and his smile softened a little at the edges, looked almost genuine. “But you don’t seem so bad. I mean, making yourself a whole lotta extra work because you wanna ‘rally cheer,’” finger quotes, “sounds dumb as hell. But it’s… You know.”
He shrugged. It was kinda sweet. Like something Setsuna would do.
Max blinked rapidly at the thread - or, well, it probably wasn’t a threat so much as a promise coming from Katou, but still! He wasn’t offended, however, or even that worried. Max adored El - the thought of harming her almost made him recoil. “Absolutely not. I promise, she’ll only receive kindness from me - although you’re not wrong, I think she’d explode my head before you could finish me off.” He shrugged, unbothered.
“But I’m very glad she has friends like you to watch out for her. She’s had a rough time. She needs honest people in her life willing to help her out. So you can think me dumb as hell all you want, as long as you keep looking out for her.” He smiled, a peace offering. “What do you say we go find the others and rally some cheer? I’ll do the pep talk. You can glower, if you’d prefer. That way will play to both of our strengths.”
Katou snorted. “Dunno ‘bout honest, but she could probably use some scumbags in her life looking out for her too.” Earnest hero types were all well and good, but sometimes someone had to do what needed to be done, and Katou was fine enough getting his hands dirty. It wasn’t like they were going to be clean any time soon; besides, he was technically made of plants, so dirt was probably where he belonged.
“I dunno what kinda pep talk you got in mind that’s enforced by glowering, but hey, I can hold up my end on that,” he said cheerily. “Lead the way, O Peppy One.”