[SE] the more enlightened

DEIMOS

After several weeks and no answer from Ru, that cold, unsettling dread crept down his spine. No matter how many times he’d read the letter, or waited for a response, the apprehension never lessened, contorting in its own web of gnarled knots and roots, taking a firm hold in his ribcage. Foreboding always had a home there; nested and broken. He’d had aspirations and ambitions alongside her own; that she’d be fine amidst King’s End, that she’d grow and prosper, that there would be the promise laden between her thoughts of the Flood and all they could conquer. And despite every single one of his doubts, and their arguments, off she’d gone – and here they were once more. Wading around, catching a spiral of tethers and lines, with the Sword trying to chase down paths and clues.

For his part, he wondered if she’d been purposefully avoiding him. Granting a notice of life, then nothing more. And that was an irritating combination that nagged and nestled too, so as he took to Torchline, presuming she’d met up with Flora, it began a restless arch in the back of his mind. He knew better though. If she didn’t want to be found, she seemed to know the exact way to evade.

Going through the marketplace had strung together a few glimpses here and there, so by midafternoon he’d settled beside the Miana Pool, ignoring the beckoning, clouding skies overhead, not entirely impressed with the promise of screams once more. Head down, he sat upon one of the larger stones, rustling through his parchment and crossing off portions and places already visited. Permitting himself to add what little notes he could, he sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck where the frustration and trepidation were beginning to seethe.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

The saying that implores not to assume malice where incompetence can explain isn’t far off from what causes Hotaru’s unintentional silence. Though it’s less idiocy and more self-absorption. Most days she is simply trying to keep her head above water, make heads and tails of her emotions and all that has caused them. Days slip away from her - distracted by yet more of them with unexpected visits from Noah, spending time with her children, trying to figure out where she fits in Torchline.

But in truth, yes. Part of her dreads seeing Deimos. Knows he will struggle between comfort and unsurprised judgment - something she can’t fault him for, but which will sting like salt in wounds that are so deep they haven’t even begun to clot yet.

So of course fate decides to deliver her to him without any preparation.

It’s Andraste’s fault - Ru doesn’t let herself muse over how all of this is - given he attracts her attention as one of the only souls near the Pool. Hotaru follows her at a slow pace, wandering up and down the coastline and all its familiar avenues. “Don’t bother people, Andraste,” she calls primly, voice subdued but still capable of carrying clearly down the beach. Andraste turns her luminescent gaze toward the Valkyrie, gliding back toward her. But as Ru moves to apologize briefly and continue on, her eyes settle on Deimos and she knows instantly who he is. Her heart jumps swiftly into her throat - instinct dictating an emotional response that contextual dread could never hope to stifle.

“Dei,” she chokes, already running, needing to close the distance now that he’s actually here and not just a memory in her fogged head.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all

DEIMOS

Unfortunately, Deimos was probably much more used to malice than incompetence; and often the combination struck out at him, wounds festering whether it’d been implied or driven. Perhaps he’d grown weary of the silence, left to fill his head with all sorts of notions and stories that depicted worse, barbaric things than anyone should have to behold or concoct. Then the worry and apprehension increased, and between searching for her amidst two seasons, tending to his family and the region, there was only so much to be done when the effort was one-sided. Hence the thought of simply walking around, doing his best to gather information. If he turned one more corner, or sought one more notation, maybe she’d been seen, spotted, out in the wild.

He had no expectations of today, regardless of those sentiments. The Sword had grown used to disappointment and confusion amongst the turmoil. They went hand in hand sometimes, a lock-step stride full of endeavors and nothingness.

So he thought naught of the words echoing across dunes and tides, jotting along another line of dictation, before the recognition of the voice, not the sentiments, caused his head to jerk upwards. And there, just like she’d been meant to flicker around the currents, was Ru – and a dragon overhead.

Blinking, he sat there muted for an instant; idly wondering if he’d lost enough sleep to be hallucinating. But when the creature called and beckoned from above, he arched his brow, placing the notebook upon a rock as the Valkyrie came running towards him. Out of habit, familiarity, all the relief beginning to rattle around his chest, he opened his arms, let her come flying into them as she’d done many times before. “Hey,” he offered in a low rumble, letting her be surrounded by his presence if she needed, wanted, it. “I kept trying to find you.”

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

She falls into him as she has many times before, engulfed by his arms as they come to hold her, connecting her to the world where moments before she’d been adrift. His scent is as familiar to her as her children’s, one she could place even blind and deaf. She clings to him with hands that go white with how they press into his back.

Andraste lands lightly behind her, uncertain but inquisitive - though she gives them space aplenty. Ru pulls back with a shaking gasp, needing to see Deimos’ face more than hiding in his chest. “I’m sorry,” she firmly asserts first and foremost, the sincerity of it bleeding through the bond - which she keeps otherwise half-muted, so he won’t have to feel the weight of her pain. “No excuse is good enough. Flora said you looked for me - and I know the letter wasn’t enough.” Her heart aches with a love that hurts as much as it comforts. Of course he had looked. Hotaru would have bet her life on the notion. Still, it hurts to know - or, more fairly, to assume - that he’d done more than Sunjata had.

Turning slightly over her shoulder to look at Andraste, the Valkyrie bites her lip and beckons her closer with a tilt of her chin. Looking back at Deimos from under golden lashes, she worries at her trapped lip until it stings and threatens blood. “This is Andraste. She’s my companion - and why I disappeared. Well…died, to be frank.” Something she still hasn’t properly processed.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all

DEIMOS

It was a familiar pattern, regardless of time and distance. He surrounded her and she tucked herself away; but she was alive, if not whole, and for now that would be enough to sate all the worries, all the trepidation, all the what-ifs his brain continued to occupy.

When she pulled away he didn’t expect the apology, head tilting as he went from studying her, to the dragon, back and forth until his attention could render on the Valkyrie. The veracity didn’t sting so much as remind; those blunt little objects against his ribs. “I was concerned when -,” well, the note of ‘death’ had earned a very stark semblance of dread. He swallowed that bite down, along with the explanation of Sunjata’s inquiry before LongNight. Perhaps it didn’t need to be said. They had a sequence of loss between the pair of them as well – and maybe he’d never thought she’d step into that threshold, no matter how many times it’d snagged and pried apart on of her own.

Even those horrific thoughts churned when she casually mentioned it – his eyes narrowing at her, then the dragon companion, uncertain where to go on those fronts – simpler, better to ask, than drive away at his presumptions once more. “What happened?”

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

Concerned is his way of imparting a greater emotion, one she deeply regrets ever causing him to feel. Even speaking the word 'death' feels taboo. Once upon a time she had been the one left in his wake. The memory will never leave her. Gratitude is not a strong enough word for the immortality Frey graced her with, and the fact it had saved her; brought her back to him, to everyone.

"I know," she murmurs. That's all that needs to be said. She knows - intimately - how he must have felt, the memories both her disappearance and her wording in her letter must have brought up. Discussing it further may do the same unfortunately. Still, he asks, and she will not withhold that information out of some noble, presumptuous desire to spare him from any degree of discomfort.

"It's bitterly simple. After Enzo returned, I traveled a lot between King's End and Torchline. I flew shifted often, because skyships weren't always frequent enough for my desires." Not when she would wake up in a cold sweat some nights, terrified Enzo's resurrection was merely a dream, and gripped with the need to see him against all logical thought. "Demigod stamina can do a lot, but it isn't a bottomless well - so I stopped on a cliffside of the Draig, far on the border since I was flying around and not over." Ironically for safety, for all it had been worth in the end. Hotaru has long respected the Draig's impassable legacy, all the more after Deimos had returned from its peak after the war.

At her ankle, Andraste curls like a sinuous cat between her legs, uncertain. Guilt is an emotion she is still learning in her youth, but the faint vestiges of it echo into their shared bond. "I startled her with my shift back. She was in a destroyed nest, alone. It was instinct, really; she knew she had one shot at defense with her age and abilities." Forgiveness is easier to give with the passage of time and the deepening of their bond. Its presence settles Andraste, who coils around one of Ru's ankles in an immovable circlet of scales. "She went for my neck immediately - and she succeeded. But I got her just as badly; when I went down, she did too, right on top of me." The Valkyrie's hand rises to touch her unblemished throat in an idle, thoughtless motion. Realizing her eyes had drifted off somewhere, she returns them to Deimos.

"Since I wasn't dismembered, I just had to wait for my immortality to bring me back. Frey kept me hidden and protected in a leaf-pod of sorts - and bonded us at the same time. Something I think they knew I needed even when I thought I wasn't ready." Not after Atlas. Not after the companion she'd lost in Helovia, either. Still, time had clearly tempered both wounds, or she would have never bonded to Atlas either. "I've gotten brief explanations from Sunjata and Flora about Frey confirming I was alive but nothing more when Flora channeled them. That would be why - I could never be truly dead even if I was dismembered." Not unless Flora or Enzo specifically held the knife that did the deed.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all

DEIMOS

Bindings of lifetimes had those keen and stark clarities – that he’d done the same to her, once, bones riddled away in caves of icy convictions no longer there or anywhere but here. It didn’t make it any easier or any better, save for the promise of Caido with its immortal tetherings strung together on woe and uncertainty. No one had searched for him though; his death had been clear, distinct. Hers had been an enigmatic push and pull, a long, drawn-out measure in between the unknown that crushed and volleyed on the weight of too many tangibilities amidst a calculating mind. Left alone to brood and think too long on the possibilities of fallen friends was an unfortunate side effect of his tenures on many earths – he’d seen what happened, what occurred, what could scrape and slash and tear into a thousand cuts. A rendering of loss in all assortments.

He stilled at her murmur, took a long, deep breath and took the thorns out of his chest. The knowing. The waiting. The presumption of things that were enough. His jaw feathered out of habit, clenching downward on teeth and enamel so he didn’t flicker and distort in the present. He remained silent; listened, head tilting about Enzo, about simple rancor, of stopping within the Draig. Half-hesitant to say something, anything, but keeping it locked and tightened away – of knowing better than to launch oneself into the Cordillera.

Then an accidental plunge, between dragons and death. His gaze went towards the companion, eyes narrowing. In a different world, himself or Ru would never have hesitated in avenging; a culling, rather than knotting to one’s soul. Here and now though, it scarcely seemed to matter; people altered and changed, immortal stirrings bringing forth far more forgiveness, at least on the Valkyrie’s part. He couldn’t help his stone countenance towards the creature, despite knowing there’d only been self-defense and fear. How many others had committed the same, trying to save and salvage themselves?

His arms wove their way back around her shoulders instead, pulling her back into his chest, uncertain if it was relief, confusion, or the conflicted turning points of so many others gathered and rooted in him. “Quite a journey,” he began finally, swallowing down bile and looking across the vast, open sea, shaking his head where she couldn’t see. “Are you…,” better now, he wanted to ask, as if it was an easy thing to fix, when he knew it wasn’t. Instead, he tried for a different approach. “Settled?” Back into King's End and the life she'd chosen there.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

He wouldn't be the first - or the last - to have thoughts and feelings on how all of this came to pass. Details and explanations often only mattered to the person who experienced them; she is already jaded enough to expect it. At least it will happen mostly behind her back, given how few people remain in her life. Fewer now than before she vanished. Is that something she should be grateful for?

Andraste stares back, expression (or as much as a dragon can have) unflinching but otherwise enigmatic. Hotaru, meanwhile, has a moue of understanding. Even now she struggles to accept Andraste's presence in her life, her soul. All she can do is have faith in Frey's decision and try to adapt. It's not like they could reverse it at this point.

When he brings her back to his chest she sinks into it, fine tremors dancing down her shoulders and into her hands. It's as close to forgiveness as she could expect and she thanks every god and herald for it. Ru can't stand to lose much more.

"No," she whispers, just loud enough to be heard from his sternum. "Sunjata...he broke off the engagement. His heart that he gave me, it withered in my pocket dimension. He can't feel love for me, or anyone, anymore. So it's over - all of it." Bile rises in her throat as she shares the news, numb heart capable of little more than trepidation regarding his reaction. "I'm living at Wildering House for now. That's as settled as I can be." Everyone seemed to care about Sunjata's dead heart, but what about hers? Did it matter less because people couldn't gawk at it in person like a museum display? He is free of the entrapments of pain and grief, while she must live with it every moment hereafter. Perhaps that is his retribution.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all

DEIMOS

No matter how much Deimos might want to shield, protect, defend, and guard, sometimes, at least with Ru, it scarcely mattered. She’d always be an individual to seek out what implored and defied, even at the behest of her own predilections and assurances, wanting to prove the naysayers wrong. She’d journey to the ends of the earth on her own compass, and even if the urge to pluck her back into Halo surged, into known means and measures, into something that could persevere, she would’ve fought. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, take her from her children either, so maybe it was just another extension of Ru that could be close at hand, and vanished simultaneously, farther and farther until instances like now occurred. Infections. Death. Perhaps it depended on which ghosts one could live with, endure, and how many others could be discarded away. Wraiths lived on nearly every land for them now; in memory, in life, and there were some much harsher than the rest.

Sunjata, for example – living, breathing, but still a walking, waiting presence manifesting mistakes and discord. For as much as she might want to muffle against his chest, he still heard the words; the broken engagement, the withered heart (of which he didn’t immediately comprehend, brows furrowing while he processed), the adoration extinguished, diminished, and gone. His mouth opened and then he shut it rapidly, enough for the teeth to click against one another. He might’ve begrudgingly accepted the way she flew back to the Flood time and time again, but this juncture was a huge alteration from seasons and years before. “I do not understand – he gave you a physical heart?” He blinked once or twice, head shaking again as if that might rid him of some of the disbelief and bewilderment. Tucking her closer, he took a deep breath, withholding the multitudes of ‘I told you so’s and warnings, she’d likely had already done so to herself, trying to find the holds of what he knew. “Sunjata was the one that told me you were missing. He seemed concerned. Frantic.” At least enough to send the Sword on a wild goose chase, spinning wheels. What had changed in between? This decrepit organ?

No love, for anyone, for anything, made his eyes narrow; that, perhaps, at least he’d granted Hotaru freedom and liberation in this calamity. She probably didn’t want to hear those notions either; of either the relief she was out of his web or the perilous journey of her being severed again - a twisted bout of things that could be true all at once. That she’d found a spot within Flora’s home wasn’t a surprise – maybe the most realistic approach out of this whole mess. She hadn’t lost everything. “All right. What do you want to do now?”

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

Her appreciation for his held tongue is a visceral thing, one that permeates the bond in the way many unspoken things do; with cast-aside gazes and shared understanding of the looming presence being ignored. That she is standing here, still as yet unbroken and having not already given into the tempest of her emotions, should be proof enough of how she has grown. Or so she hopes he will interpret it. Somehow she feels both all the more broken than the first time, but also all the stronger in standing against the tide. How? It's an impossibility she doesn't have the bandwidth to remotely begin to unravel.

"Yes, as a gesture to show that regardless of our roles as Frey demigods, or our history - that it meant only I held his heart." Literally, as he could put together. It hurts to explain the why and how given what she has just shared. So much for the perseverance of that sentiment, right? "I'm tired of trying to place the pieces of who he told, what he did to try and find me, when his heart died in that timeline. I...I don't care, Dei. Clearly it doesn't matter." And the bitterness of her quiet assumptions is at least a familiar balm. A part of her that had shrunk but never vanished amidst all the maturing and open-mindedness - those things that are all well and good but no use when you want to cry and rage at the world.

Which brings her around to the 'wanting' part.

"I want to start over," slips numbly past a cottony tongue, eyes vacantly focused somewhere near Deimos' heart. "Nobody knows my name or my history these days. I realized that during all of this. And...I think I like that." Her head tilts infinitesimally, like the earliest signs of predatory instincts coming to life. "A blank slate. Figuring out what parts of me should stay gone, and what parts were tied to the life I was trying to build with one man, a plan that didn't expand much further than him." For better or worse, for Ru would always and forever love with a single-minded, obsessive intensity. Even her platonic love, as Deimos knows firsthand.

"And then find out where the Frey parts fit in too. Because self-exploration is vile, and purpose helps." At least until she finds a greater one. Shrugging her thin shoulders, Ru blinks and the fog clears, allowing her to find Deimos' eyes properly. "Lots of half-baked plans, career changes, mischief and chaos...I don't want to sit in the hurt for too long. I'm afraid I won't find my way out a second time if I do." Honesty that only Deimos is allowed. Vulnerability she knows she can afford without fear of harm or regret.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all

DEIMOS

Perhaps he should’ve been more surprised she’d yet to mount a league of vengeance once more; either by lacerations, demise, arson, or something greater, as they’d done in the past. Maybe she was used to the infernos of Sunjata’s fringes; had known, sooner or later, what they’d tried to carve and sculpt would whittle away – an expectation of the inevitable. Or his own projections situated heavily in the matter; Deimos would always admit to being judgmental, wary, dubious, following patterns when others showed their hand. Was Ru stronger for all of her hardships, had death turned a significant tide, or was it a combination of so many things put together all at once, from fronts to differences to growth in the face of another cracked picture?

His brows furrowed again on the depiction of said heart – and closed his mouth when it threatened to unfurl multitudes on that subject. The trust hadn’t been there regardless then – otherwise, why the need for more tangible promises? Had they known he wouldn’t be able to keep the bargain of loyalty and devotion? The Sword’s own experiences differed greatly, and he once more felt the love, benedictions, convictions he and Evie shared for one another was all-encompassing, what he’d always prefer over the high wire line of what Ru and Sunjata had tried to accomplish.

“I see,” he breathed and funneled, dropping his head on top of hers for some semblance of comfort and quiet strength. When she didn’t seem upset, just embittered, while he was still reeling through the transgressions and occurrences, he wondered if this had been an easier break than before; a fracture, a division, a culmination of inescapable means. So he just listened, to the way she churned and plotted, like so many other times before – willing to say she was known and cherished, history regardless, at least by him. “I am proud of you,” he murmured first, the low rumble in his chest calm, abiding. She was working on a resurgence and retribution by other means. “You have always been more than him.” So she’d take and snag the opportunity of freedom and liberation again, entanglements of freedom without the vivid recourse of so many times before. He tucked a smile within once she announced self-exploring was a vile situation; quiet sounds of amusement to cut through the heartache. “Have you thought about where?” A step in whatever direction.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

The weight of his head upon hers settles her immediately, like a fussing babe being bounced in their mother's arms. It keeps her anchored to the earth beneath their feet, to the warm front of his chest. She can't float off and away when he holds her like this. Can't disappear into the great nothingness that feels like it's closing in every minute of every new day. Even if she hadn't placed desperate knots throughout the strings of her existence, his quiet acceptance would have kept her from unraveling any further.

She stays for people like him. Like her children. She resists her nomadic nature, her inclination toward self-imposed exile, for these few and cherished souls who ask her to stay.

Tears prick at her lashes with savage, needling ferocity at his rumbled admission of pride and encouragement. It feels unearned. She knows she is doing better this time around than any prior moment of devastation, but it doesn't feel worthwhile. Not yet. But maybe, if Deimos is saying this, it will be.

"Thank you," croaks quietly against his shirt. Taking heart from the familiar sound of his laughter beneath her ear, the calm beating of his heart.

"There's a modest effort to build a new region in Hak Etme. Regardless of outcome, I've signed up to help with the groundbreaking and port building efforts. I think...I hope it'll be good for me, right now." Exhausted her mind by exhausting her body. Ensure dreamless sleep through endless toiling, inherent anonymity, and no room for daily ruminating with all the orders and tasks to juggle in her mind. Maybe it will become a place for her in time. If not, she only has the vague sense of building something for herself in Torchline with Flora's blessing. "I may ask Frey if I can fix Sunjata's heart for him. Try to make things right, even if it's not enough. We were never good at making amends in the past, so maybe I can try this time. It was Flora's idea." Even if Frey may deny her, if Sunjata may reject the heart, if if if. And nothing to be said of how she feels betrayed and let down of her own accord. She can't - won't - let herself think of anything more than the initial notion of the quest.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all

DEIMOS

Deimos had been a bulwark many times throughout his lives. It wasn’t an easy occupation; to be a solid and stoic rampart, a steeled fortification, while the rest of the world slammed against parapets and palisades and barricades. He didn’t ask them to stay and he didn’t beg for them to go, tethered and anchored firmly in the middle so they could remain close in his stead and protection, or fling outwards, seeking other shelter and sanctity despite the offers maintained and pledged, knowing he was still out there, somewhere, usually in a wake of snow and ice; swords drawn and shields up. So he would do the same for Ru now; a fierce and powerful thing when she required it, and capable of watching as she flickered away again.

He'd already heard about the Hak Etme efforts, courtesy of Colt, and he had to half-wonder if she was drawn to the sands because of distraction, necessity, or the mere notion of another Dragon’s Throat potential in the midst. Something to sink her teeth into and gnaw on in the interim of time and choices, something to be made out of the shambles. He’d done much the same on many other occasions; couldn’t fault her for the attempts. When one’s mind was occupied by work instead of other thoughts and drawn-out filaments, it seemed to ease the pain. “Colt told me about her upcoming attempts. She might appreciate someone with experience,” he rumbled, intonations meant to be light and humorous, rather than dragging and heavy.

With the Frey semblances though, he furrowed his brows, wondering if it was crossing a line or too much or simply acknowledging broken embittered things. He understood the notions of amends, given how little it’d been extended in the past (as arson and stabbings didn’t quite qualify), but worried the lack of free will on one side might make the situation that much worse. “Would it be better if it was his choice to fix it?” he murmured; uncertain if that was the right aspect or not. “Have you asked him?” Or was that something they were no longer going to tread over?

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

Hotaru

we're not lovers, we're just strangers
with the same damn hunger

She has ever admired - and envied - his stalwart nature. Her own is volatile, fickle, meteor showers and lightning strikes. Fierce but transient. Her only roots, her only persistent loyalties, have always lied in her heart. No matter how far she may roam, how long she might chase an errant glimmer that catches her eye, she always returns to the few people who matter. Following the heartstring she'd tied around their finger like a breadcrumb trail back to their side. At least until the wind carries her away again.

Hak Etme may be that new destination. Truly, Ru isn't sure. Flora and Enzo are a safe shelter to cower beneath, a faultless cover for the truth of her wounded aimlessness. Is she strong enough to pursue such a major change so soon after the dissolution of the life she'd known? Will it fulfill her, or leave her even more hollow? Do those questions even matter if the alternative is staying where she is, adrift without purpose or distraction?

Deimos' attempt at levity inspires a quirk of her lips that doesn't travel past her cupid's bow. "I've never played advisor before, even unofficially; it will be strange, if she takes me with her in any capacity." The Valkyrie has no notions of being chosen for cabinet or council given her mental state (and her predisposition for pursuing the throne itself if the one upon it irks her one too many times). Still, it may grant her some level of pride and surety to share her experience and have it be valued sincerely.

Biting her lip dispels the tentative smile. "No. We briefly met to make a truce of sorts, but I tried not to talk too much." There had been intent, yes, but part of her reticence had been inherent to her wounded nature. Hiding away like an animal close to death, cornered in its den. No fight left, just the instinct for self-preservation. "I intend to ask Frey if I can - if I should - instead of requesting outright. I...I don't trust myself to make that sort of decision." Her eyes drop to her feet, shoulders inching toward her ears as shame roils thick in her stomach. "I don't exactly have any historical good choices to use as encouragement." Helovia had been a mixed bag, partially due to her youth, but has she made a single right choice since The Voice brought her here? The sickness in her stomach leaks into the Attuned bond, hovering around her like miasma - no direction or intent that might direct it his way, but clouding around her all the same as her walls fail to keep it contained. "It will be easier to have them guide me, if they deign to. Safer than making my own decisions," she laughs, though it comes out a touch too bitter to actually lift the mood.

Clearing her throat, her eyes flick to Deimos', and she shrugs slightly in a fashion that would normally be too inelegant for her to enact. "Aside from Hak Etme, of course. I'm sure a 'finding yourself retreat' is a safe enough course of action, right? As boring as any midlife crisis, and just as unlikely to involve other people." Andraste is a lost cause, she's along for the ride now - and really it's her own fault.

to be touched, to be loved
to feel anything at all