WHO: Drenzoh Focra (NPC - Thanks, Stevie!! ♥), Cassandra de Rolo, Verin Thelyss WHAT: Verin gets to catch up with his best friend, Dren, and appreciates the opportunity for Cass to meet him, too. WHEN: April 16, 2022; Early Morning (Backdated) WHERE: A tavern in dream!Whitestone WARNINGS: None! ART CREDIT:1, 2, 3
“And then I told them what was in the stew and you should have seen their faces,” Verin said, laughing so hard that tears began to wet the corners of his eyes. His fingers slipped around the cold mug of ale and he lifted it to take a quick swig of it. The ale was good but unfamiliar and as he swallowed it back, his consciousness finally caught up to himself. He was sitting in a tavern he was sure he’d never been in before surrounded by townsfolk dressed very differently than he remembered from Vallo or even Bazzoxan. A hearty fire crackled nearby, but Verin noted that his vision seemed tinged at the edges with something other than firelight. Like a dream. Was this a dream?
He glanced over at his companions and if he had not already guessed that this was no ordinary memory he was living through, the sight of them would have given it away. It had been a longing of his for some time now that there could be some way his path could cross with Cassandra’s back home. They both existed back in Exandria, after all, and not in terribly different times. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility even if his heart knew that what they shared between them would likely always be unique to Vallo.
But despite the improbability of his two worlds colliding, here he was in a tavern he didn’t recognize, sandwiched between two of the most important people in his life. Cassandra and his best friend, the person who’d been with him through most of his formative years and was by his side still as they worked tirelessly to keep Bazzoxan safe from the dangers that threatened it. Under normal circumstances, he might even question how his current situation was possible but he found himself quietly acknowledging that, right now, anything was on the table.
So he took another drink and slapped a friendly hand on his best friend’s shoulder and continued, “Needless to say, that was the last time they let me make stew for them again.”
Drenzoh Focra—Dren to his friends, and most definitely to Verin—sighed and shook his head. A dark-elf, and first of three of his family, Dren was built the way an ancient oak would be. He looked military, and certainly played the part, with his deep brow and sharp features. His voice was rough like untumbled stones, from a battle injury that nearly cost him his life and left a jagged scar on his throat. But for all the brutish exterior, Dren was soft and gentle with the most surprising things, and his fervor for duty and honor was unsurpassed. As a war cleric, it helped that he had some bedside manner and a steady presence.
Not when he was embarrassing Verin in front of his lady friend, but when he was bringing up the stew story again, Dren was not about to go easy.
"You're never going to let us live it down, are you? I told him—" Dren picked up his own mug of ale, to take a deep pull, before pointing at Cassandra. "—that he has to bide his time. The more he tells it, the more revenge is going to come back and get him. I've been plotting for years, years. Comeuppance, Verin. Just you wait."
Dren was happy to see Verin in such high spirits. Not that his best friend wasn't often happy, but with Cassandra, it was different in ways Dren couldn't recall before. He nudged her with his elbow. "If you have any embarrassing stories of Verin, I am all ears. Anything I can use for the future."
Was there anything better than having the chance to show the person that you loved--and their delightfully boisterous best friend--the city that you had helped shape? The Whitestone that was bustling outside of the tavern was so different than the one that had been a source of mental torment for Cassandra for too many years. The Briarwoods were gone, Cassandra and the rest of the council were doing all they could to make the city a better, more peaceful place. Somewhere, in the castle that could be seen in the distance, her brother was there with his small, but inevitably expanding, family. There were no Briarwoods, no dragons, no potentially world ending threats.
It was good, it was home, and it felt even moreso with Verin there. Cassandra knew that the possibility of having this happen, despite that he was only a continent away, was as unlikely as it could be. But, that was all right. If there was one thing that Cassandra had learned, it was to appreciate what she had while she had it.
Cassandra flashed a coy smile at Dren before turning her gaze onto Verin, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Hmm," she teased, tipping her head to the side in mock innocence. "There's so many to choose from. Where should I even start?"
“You know, you keep saying that, but I have yet to see any vengeance,” Verin replied, laughing in the sort of way that felt almost freeing. Like he hadn’t done it in far too long. “There was that one time you three almost had me convinced that my bedroom was haunted. It might have worked, too, if I hadn’t been able to hear Chadra laughing uncontrollably in the crates between hauntings.” The number of times he and his friends had passed the days with harmless pranks and constant jokes made for the best of memories. He missed his friends more than he’d realized he ever would, Dren especially, but he had so many fond memories of them that brought a smile to his face that missing them didn’t hurt as much as maybe it could have.
Even so, he was happy for this opportunity to see Dren, again. He was happy for the chance to show Cassandra a glimpse of who he’d been before Vallo.
Speaking of Cassandra, Verin feigned a look of shocked betrayal as he turned his eyes upon her. “I can’t believe it! Potentially betrayed by my own girlfriend?” He placed a hand over his heart. “I may never recover.”
Dren slung an arm around Cassandra, and pulled her close. "See, I like you. How did you get stuck with this guy?" Dren asked, giving a punch to Verin's arm. He passed off a secret look, the kind of non-verbal communication they had used while stationed that had clearly become a second language that only they shared. This look said good one, don't mess it up.
"Chadra is not allowed in on pranks again. Ruined the whole thing. I thought for sure we were going to catch you cowering in the corner. But we did, we did, manage to convince one of the new recruits the ghost of former greenies were lurking inside, and Verin only sleeps in there because he is the only one who can handle their constant hauntings. Somehow, Verin keeps looking better, and we look like fools who can't handle a few spectors." Dren laughed, shaking his head as he released Cassandra, and leaned back in his chair.
"So tell me how you two met again? Verin seems to be keeping quite tight-lipped about the whole endeavor, but that just means you're important, and he knows he did something incredibly embarrassing that he doesn't want me to know." Again, Dren was teasing, knowing that he had told Verin an unending number of secrets about who he loved, in all its messy, uncommon, and complicated glory. Dren would never spill if Verin didn't want him to.
"Or he's more of a romantic than he led most of us to believe."
"Oh, he's a romantic," Cassandra said, more than happy to expose that secret of Verin's with a smile. "The first word he ever taught me in Undercommon was the word for beautiful, after all."
That hadn't occurred the first time that they had met, though, which was also a story that she liked to tell. "He had only been in Vallo for a handful of days and decided to go to a ball that one of the other Outlanders was hosting. I happened to also be there, we struck up a conversation and pretty quickly figured out that we were both from Exandria, we danced -- " Cassandra waved a hand through the air, her fingers twirling in a little circle, as though demonstrating the dance. "When we talked again afterward, I was impressed that he'd remembered that I'd said that I'd been from Whitestone and history was made."
Of course, it hadn't been as simple as that. Cassandra had been skittish as she realized her feelings and it had taken some encouragement and lessons in eyeliner from Gilmore and Vex'ahlia before she put herself out there. She was very glad that she had. "A year and a half and bit more later and here we are."
“That’s my play,” Verin replied in response to Dren’s earlier words. “I wait for the opportunity to appear as though I am entirely competent and then I seize it. Fake haunted lodgings? I’m your guy.” He grinned, lifting a shoulder as if to say what can you do? and then blushed ever-so-slightly as Cassandra regaled them both with the beginnings of their relationship.
“I’ve always been a romantic,” he said with a pointed look at Dren, “but I never got a chance to show that back home because I was too busy babysitting your ass all the time.” He was also clearly teasing. Dren knew as well as he did that it hadn’t been a lack of opportunity that had lead Verin to not bring anyone home to meet the family. It had been the fact that maybe Verin had been too much of a romantic to do so. He had been too picky, maybe, or too determined to find the person he could grow old with through this life and the next one. He’d wanted that person he would also go to the ends of the earth to find again.
And then he’d found that person and that person had been human. Unconsecuted. It was different than what he’d thought he’d find, but he had no regrets. How could he ever regret loving this beautiful woman beside him?
He smiled to force back the thoughts that could too easily spiral. He was in a tavern drinking with his favorite people. This was no time for sadness.
Verin leaned over and pressed a small kiss to Cassandra’s temple, looking down at her fondly. “If we were back home, I definitely would have brought her to meet you all. She would kick all of your asses in cards and look gorgeous as hell doing it.”
While his question might have been just gentle egging on, Dren was legitimately pleased listening to the two of them recount their meeting. There was no memory that Dren possessed of history that recounted a place called Vallo or Outlanders, and when he tried to reach for information, his mind seemed to make it fuzzy, unable to grasp. Dren didn't know that he was a dream, a figment of magic imagination, but even still, he could be happy for Verin, and happy for love. And wasn't that something worth fighting for?
Dren might have been a hopeless romantic too, but it wasn't like he was going to admit that.
He nodded along, approvingly—making sure to elbow Verin in the side at the fact he taught Cassandra the word beautiful in Undercommon, smooth—and made sure to kick him a bit under the table when he saw the almost-spiral in his friend's eye. There were enough of those dark looks to last them both a lifetime, he didn't think Verin needed it now in front of someone he clearly cared about deeply.
"First there's balls and dancing, and then you throw the cards at me. Of course Verin would find someone who could do both," Dren said, putting a hand on top of Cassandra's. "You're going to have to watch this one. He's good people, some of the best of us. And I don't say that about anyone." Dren was directing this to Cassandra, while holding up a hand top Verin to not interrupt. "He's also the type who isn't going to hold this over my head that I said nice things about him where he can hear."
There was a burst of warmth in Cassandra's chest at Dren's words--not because she didn't know they were true through her own experiences with Verin, but because she loved that he had people who recognized that, too. Obviously they both had lives before they had met one another. They had both been on very different trajectories, Verin protecting Exandria from whatever horrors were beneath Bazzoxan and Cassandra running a citystate. They had friends and loved ones before Vallo had crashed their lives together. She had met Essek, obviously, but knowing that Verin had friends that saw him and having the opportunity to meet one of them, well. It was very good.
She looked up to Verin with a sweet smile. "He is good people," she agreed, "and deserves to have someone say nice things about him, so I'm glad you're willing to do it."
Cassandra looked back at Dren then, a glint of mischief in her eye. "Still, he deserves the teasing, too."
Verin finished off his ale and set the tankard back down on the bar. “Just wait until I tell you all about my new ability to record things and replay them at a later date. It’s like magic. I’m basically a wizard now,” he said. He didn’t pull out his phone–somehow in this dream reality, he felt like it belonged far less than the three of them did. He was tempted, though, to attempt taking a photo of the three of them together, something to remember this by when his actual reality came rushing back. “If only I were the kind of guy to hold your nice words over your head later,” he grinned.
“Tell us about how you’re doing, though,” he continued, veering the conversation away from himself for the moment. He’d been wanting to talk to Dren for so long now that he could feel the weight of how much they probably had to catch up on from all fronts. “Any chance we’re going to have to double date soon?”
"Don't you even jest, you're a wizard, bah," Dren said, waving his hand to banish the idea. It wasn't that Dren disliked wizards, it was just that he had met too many cocky ones in his life that more or less caused him a plethora of problems. Good problems and bad problems. One of his exes was a wizard—though one he was still friends with—but it stuck like a thorn in his side whenever Dren had one too many drinks in him and started blathering inanely. Verin had been a witness to many of these ramblings.
At the mention of a double-date, Dren ducked his head as a touch of red rose to his cheeks. He coughed, nonchalantly, which only further proved that he was attempting to hide his blush. "Not any that I am going to invite you on," Dren teased, pointing a finger at Verin. "Cassandra, maybe. She doesn't seem likely to start in with our barracks exploits immediately."
Dren laughed, fondly, and sat back in his chair, sobering a bit. "But I'm good. I'm—things are good. They can always be better. Seeing my family more than I do, no fighting, more coin in my pocket, a more comfortable bed that isn't a standard issue roll, but I have my health. I have my friends." This was directed at Verin, and he squeezed Verin's forearm, like a brother would—not of blood but of bond.
"And maybe, maybe, someone. You just have to stick around for a few more hours to find out."
Again, Cassandra felt herself fill with a warm happiness at the clear care that Dren had for Verin--and vice versa. There was something to be said for found family. She had seen it herself through Percy's circle of friends, some of which had become her own, and then experienced it through Allura, Kima, Gilmore, even the other Exandrians in Vallo. It did good things for her heart to see Verin's own similar connection with another right in front of her eyes.
"A few more hours?" she asked with a quirk of an eyebrow, smile evident on her face. Cassandra turned to look at Verin, head tipping toward her emptying glass of wine. "It sounds like we're going to need another round."
Aside from seeing what was outside of this tavern, the place he instinctively knew was Cassandra’s, Verin wanted nothing more than to spare another few hours to catching up with his two favorite people. He wanted enough time to find out everything that only another version of himself was privileged enough to know, but he was mollified by the fact that any version of himself got to know Dren’s life by being in it, at all. Dren was his brother, differently than Essek might be, but no less his family. In some ways, there had been a long time where Verin had considered Dren and their friends his only true family. That had been before Vallo, before the cards had all been laid on the table and he and Essek had been able to move forward and forge a new bond than the one that had broken between them in Rosohna.
There wasn’t enough time to tell Dren everything about that tonight. It was enough to reminisce and catch up, at least.
Verin clapped his palm on the counter and joyfully signaled for another round of drinks for the three of them. “All right, another round of drinks and stories,” he said, “and then we’re going to ask Cassandra to show us where the best places in Whitestone are to be drunk in public.” He grinned, letting himself be full of the contentedness that came with his companions. One night would never be enough, but this one night, at least, was good.