Darkest Timeline AU Flashback Meme

[faderifting]

DARKEST TIMELINE AU FLASHBACK MEME
Did you work out something for your character's darkest timeline AU that you love so much it would be an absolute crime not to be able to write it out for real? WHAT LUCK! This meme is here for all your flashback-from-the-future needs. It's also the place to display sad single-character vignettes, letters that were never sent to dead friends, and anything else your dastardly little heart desires. Go forth and suffer.

The contents of this meme do not count for AC. For AC, you must participate in the real logs for the event, which will take place in Cloudreach 9:48, or else continue your normal non-event RP in the present (Guardian 9:43). However, you can count log threads in this meme toward your rewards points for the month.

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[onlyhymns]

Cade is good at staying in the background of people's lives. If he were the kind of person who tells other people his problems without prompting, perhaps he'd be in a better place; but he isn't, and he's not.
Ever since he began ingesting the red lyrium-- being force-fed it, having it shot into his veins against his will, burning, chapping his throat, making his vision red-- he has felt a new degree of helplessness. It was only recently that he's been released back to Beleth, to protect her, and he hasn't said a word of it to her. How, when he takes a break, he'll be compelled to report back to the ones holding his leash and succumb again to his addiction.
And in exchange, he must tell them everything Beleth has done today, everything she's said to him, everything she's written.

He cried the first few times, begging to be killed rather than forced to live this heresy and betrayal. Beleth saved his life, and now he sells hers out on a daily basis. On a deep internal level, he knows that this is the best chance she has; that if it were someone else in charge of her, they might be more actively cruel, might take advantage of her, torture her, any number of things that can befall a small woman imprisoned by men in armor. So he keeps himself alive that she might live another day, and one as peaceful as possible.

He can feel the wrongness in his body, growing larger every day, overtaking his thoughts with a song not unlike the one he used to hear, but more ....aggressive. There's never a quiet moment anymore, even when nothing around him is making noise.
When Beleth smiles at him, Cade tries to smile back. He used to be better at it--trying, that is-- and now he tends to just look at her, his eyes tired and worried and red with sleeplessness and the insidious, creeping magic. On some level, he's glad she's glad to see him. She is the least painful element in his life.

[arlathvhen]

Beleth is a lot of things. Traitor, harellan, hypocrite, and more. But she's not stupid. And it would take someone of magnificent stupidity to miss that something was wrong with Cade. She can puzzle out that it probably has to do with the red lyrium, though she can't imagine--and who of those who've never tasted it could?--the full extent of the trouble. And she doesn't know what she can do about it.

"Want to know something really exciting? I've been reading these notes, and a few of them--" Here, she shuffles some papers around, and pulls out one. Not that it'll do Cade much good, written in Elvhen. "--and they talk about Fen'Harel's sanctuary. Probably a temple. I've never heard of a temple to Fen'Harel, he's not exactly...a god you want to invoke, usually." She hums herself, excitement palpable. "In fact, I get the feeling that the writer was being purposely vague. But if I could figure it out...a completely untouched temple." She looks up at Cade, grinning.

This is all that she can do. Smile at him, reach up to gently cup his face. Share with him her excitement, her passion, and hope that some of it reaches him. "If I find it, I bet they'd let us be a part of the excavation. Would you like that?" Maybe that would help, too. Get him out of the city, into sunlight and fresh air. A change of scenery could perk him up, a little.

And at times like this, when they're so close, when she just wants to pass a little bit of happiness to Cade, sometimes she wishes that she could just lean up and--

But she can't.

But that's alright. Just being like this is enough. She has Cade, and she has her research, and that's all that she needs.

[onlyhymns]

Cade looks at the papers and, as Beleth predicted, has no idea what to make of them. But she seems excited, so he pays attention at least, and mirrors her grin with a small smile of his own. He closes his eyes when the elf cups his face, enjoying the light touch, the brief support it offers him when he constantly feels as though his head is too heavy.
But... go to an excavation? Away from Kirkwall?

"...maybe," he concedes, in Cade-speak for no, I'm afraid. One never knows who might be out there, waiting to close in. The life he knows is frightening enough without having to think about unseen factors.

[arlathvhen]

Beleth has had enough experience in Cade-speak to let her expression slip to one of disappointment. "Cade, I'm sure they'd bring other people. Enough to secure the site. They wouldn't want...anyone else to get to it." The Inquisition, Beleth doesn't add. She avoided ever directly mentioning them when she could. It was easier that way.

"Besides," She continues, thumb rubbing against his cheek. "If anything bad happens, I'll protect you, okay?" While it's said in a joking tone, voice light, and lips turned up in a smile, she knows that she's telling the truth. Even if she can't protect him...well, anymore, she'd protect him to the fullest extent of her abilities, even so.