#.ripples against the glass lake ( WEPTFREEDOM | alanari )

[extravagantliar]

"so if I were to leave you a strongly worded note - would you stop chasing him?" it's a seemingly earnest question, though Alanari won't look at Varric til they've said their piece. "if only for your own sake?"

Well.

He's not sure whose sake this is actually for.

It was for his once upon a time - ugh, what a cliche, scratch that, start again, one more time.

So, the knife twists.

"Well, Ripples," It starts out slow; his voice is softer now, or maybe it's just age or this place. "We're both bad at endings." It twists - just a little. Then it twists a bit more, pressure falls and the darkness creeps in. It shines, sliding him, blinding them.

There is the answer that Alanari wants; it is one that Varric cannot give. He smiles as he does, pushing hair out of their face; it instead smears blood, painting them both red.

"I think...we're both past - for my sake."

Time and memories ripple, and he is but a dream.

All they wanted was to try and save one more person.

One last time.

Pressure drops and drops, and he is gone.

[extravagantliar]

"So...Bianca." Alanari can't profess to understand the intricacies of whatever lies between them, nor will they try. All that's on offer is a listening ear. "You want to talk about it?"

No, he doesn't.

He's been...avoiding it for fifteen years.

Well, maybe not fifteen years - ten, maybe?

It didn't start and end in the same breath; Like most things, it cried and lived for a while. It flailed before failing and falling around him. Well, everything cried, lied, and then died—that was humanity; after all, that was life.

He doesn't want to talk about it.

About how she took up a forge in Lowtown, how she was his first stop when his hands first landed on fourteen, before she had a name. Before, he had a brand on his chest, while he was just some random, beardless dwarf strutting through Lowtown, two bracers, no tattoos, no ties on his clothes, and he had been strutting - to be fair, if he had been Bianca, he would have ignored him as well, maybe even called for someone, maybe shot at him. She never shot at him, rather grabbed him by the collar and threw him.

She had a bow as tall as she was and a knife as long as his forearm; well, he did always like a woman that could kill him - well, that followed him long after this. No, he, had been on his back, staring up at her, a smirk ever present on his features. She had snarled at him like he was the cause of all the problems, well - if he was honest, and he rarely was, especially at this time of his life, he would have agreed that he was the rabble, the trouble that haunted her first forge, the reason he got the apartment in Lowtown to begin with.

He doesn't remember if she ever visited; he knows he kissed her, at least once. She punched him for it; she called him an idiot, a fool, a rake, and he agreed to every title smittenly, laughing as she layered on each one.

It didn't matter how he laughed, how she did the same, how they raced the rain, how they raced more than that and ended up betting on losing dogs.

Life doesn't care about trite things like love, like loss, like promises made in the dark, like promises made by a forge as Bianca confessed her marriage was arranged, how it had hit the floor like glass - shattering across the forge, how his words had been a foolish proposal, no ring, nothing - just a way out and a man that didn't even mean the words he said ( he had meant them in the moment, he had meant them in that instant, but she hadn't said a thing ). Then, two broken engagements, three weddings, one she actually made; it was lovely - all Dwarven weddings are, loud and colourful and bright; he was nursing a stab wound and a headache, broken pride and a busted back.

And a cypher he knew by heart, letting him know she still cared.

There was a time even when he would have pressed those letters flat, but now, somewhere between forty and fifty years old, the cypher is something from memory, and the letters are burned after. 

“Well.” Well? Get on with it. “Well…it’s complicated.” He doesn’t ask if Alanari has ever put anything down; people of all kinds rarely do. They just - linger in it, the great thing that all do - regardless of colour, creed, right of birth, or existence. They all live, they linger, they die. Well, they should, at least. He realises that life is increasingly more complicated, with spirits, admissions of life after death, the fade, false starts, and broken bones that heal in incredible ways. 

Get on with it, Varric. 

We don’t have all day. 

“Well.” The pen is put down, and once again, the narrator is begging the subject to get on with it - much like how he begs his own work to agree with him. “The short answer is no.” And it always will be. He doesn’t want to talk about it; he fears he will never stop, like something will uncork in him and spill out - staining white carpets red, staining his own tongue with words he never meant to say. The longer answer is more complicated; the long answer absolves not only him of a world of pain, but also her of someone’s ire. 

He was twenty-five, for the ancestors’s sake, stupid, bold and brash - at least he had grown out of the stupid part. 

For the most part. 

The long part comes next, not spilling, rather - he wrestles it out of his body. “Do you really want to listen to me talk about Kirkwall? Kirkwall from fifteen years ago?” That all but earns him furrowed brows and a displeased look, granted he typically earns that, and he rolls a shoulder at it. Pen ends up back in his inkwell, and he thinks, summoning some memory, not the one that he should be. Rather, he summons one of him in a square, pushing past people with fourteen in hand, like she was on fire or he had stolen her ( he had ). 

“Well, there I was…”

“No.” 

“What do you mean?”

“You’re just going to lie.”

“Well, there I was.” He recants, changing tone, not tense. “It was Lowtown, as well; most of the things that happen to me happen around Lowtown - and she commanded more than a forge, more than a room.” 

“That’s it? That’s the big secret?” 

“I’m setting the stage.”

“You’re saying words, Varric.” 

Their hand comes flat against the table, making him sit straight, reconsider his words, and reconsider his stance on running around the fifteen years, running around the words. “What else would you like me to say?” That he was a fool? He knew, as well as anyone else, that all things end. He could have ended it at any time, well - maybe he was holding his breath. Holding his breath, waiting for something that may never come. It bites, his words, cold around the rim, colder in the centre, “Do you want me to admit that I knew, shit - maybe, but are we digging around here, hoping I say something else foolish?” Rather, it begins; it tumbles out of him like a storm, breaking fresh over the plains and pouring and drenching the land. It turns to mud and loam, rolling with the thunderous waters, churning now. 

“Varric.” 

“No, shit. Here it is; I chased something for fifteen years; I don’t put things down, a pen, a story, central themes in storytelling, Kirkwall, fucking name it. So being a twenty-five-year-old - asshat, I chased something that didn’t need chasing.” Now, it’s chasing you back, just bled red and singing a song he once pulled himself out of - he so thought. He runs a hand down his face. 

“I asked if you wanted to talk about it. Not yell at me.” That statement is true; the anger is unneeded, and he forgets himself. He doesn’t need to strike like some wounded thing, like some caged animal needing to bite, needing to sink his teeth into something, someone, a time he cannot get back to. 

“Shit, sorry, I know. It’s not easy - but you don’t deserve my vitriol.” He backtracks his hand now on the back of his neck. 

“Thank you. And?”

“I - ” Alanari gives him pause,  and what? And indeed? What next, Varric? Spin it away? Explain it away with how Orlais isn’t his favourite place. No, instead, it’s just a muted ending, like everything else in his life - his brother, his mother, his father, Orzammar, his companies, his city, his health, his head, his heart, like everything that beats against the path and every wingbeat that he ignores. “Nothing. And, nothing, Ripples. You don’t always get the ending you deserve or want, even if you want to write things the way you want to.” Sometimes, things slip through, slipping through the pages, and even your intended words get flipped, and the stone cracks under your feet, and you fall through it. 

“So you care for her?” Alanari’s elbow is on his desk at this point, chin in the palm of their hand, eyes boring into his, ripping his words from his mind, and he wants to cast them into the fire; he wants to follow them into the flames as he is pulled apart and examined.

“No.” 

“Var - ”

“Let me finish.” Shit, no one likes a good dramatic pause around here. “I did at one point; some people would chalk that up to a different four-letter - now it’s more of something I’m working on, like a fire going out, it’s slow and dramatic, sometimes an ember pops back to life, sometimes things just stop, but it’s still warm - fond even.” 

If there are words that Alanari has for him, they stay put, and he has earned a look, one he cannot really place; he can’t tell if they’re sizing up a question or him up. Either is fine; maybe they can feed him to the wolves that prowl after the sun dips low. “Anything else, or will we ask another life-altering question?”

“I’m considering it.” 

“You just like to see me sweat, Ripples.” He states, he’s half settled again, half waiting for the other part of the question, the other half of it all. So he waits, pulling a book into his hand, finger running down the spine to give him something to do. 

“Are you alright?” They ask.

The million gold question. 

Is anyone? He nearly says it. Are you? It’s on his tongue as well. 

He doesn’t; rather, he laughs. 

He laughs, he laughs, and he lies. “Yeah, I’ll be just fine.”

[extravagantliar]

approval + reads an unauthorized "sequel" to Hard in Hightown in full view of, well, everyone / alanari

Send [ APPROVAL ] + (a decision that your muse is making) || accepting

It's not by Worthy, it's fine.

Well, until Ripples starts in on it right in front of Bran, Avaline, some guy from Wycome, some Knight from Ansburg, and someone from Tevinter ( Anita? Diane? maybe Nick? )

It's great, no, it's everything he's ever wanted and more - like maybe someone coming and putting him out of his misery. That would be great, stop butchering his name, it wasn't that great to begin with.

varric strangely approves? ( lana you troll )

[extravagantliar]

be honest, you enjoy the Deep Roads, and caves, the outdoors, slopes, uneven ground, the dark, quiet, most kinds of smells, rain, Orlesians, Fereldans, Nevarrans, mages, Templars, the entire Merchants Guild, and nugs, don't you?

"And trees, uneven roads, horses, and riding in general, smithies, bars that are clean and tidy, rivers and the oceans, The Wilds, woods in general, and of course, dogs too."

[extravagantliar]

I'M FUCKING GAY, I CAN'T! / alanari

He wants to say: tell me something I don't know.

He wants to say: really, me too!

He wants to say: that's not really an excuse in this political climate.

What ends up coming is something of a wash of itself.

"And?"

[extravagantliar]

"Meaning what? I'm not responsible for the mess you've made!" / hello, I'm banging on your door-

There are few that find him. There are few who know his heart still beats. There are less than that who know the strings he still pulls, the puppets he still holds.

Ripples is one of them now.

Like the tide pool their name is forged from, like the heavy stone that causes the wake, their words cast over him in a crest, drown him from his bed, his books, his work, and the letters he still has to write. That voice is a boom, not one that breaks windows or levels buildings, but it is a boom that casts an atmosphere ablaze.

It is a chain reaction in his heart rather than across a sky.

"Ripples."

"No!"

It silences him, like magic, like stones in his pocket, like a last song in a bar, like a funeral dirge; it is not wild magic but something akin to it that prickles across his body, his chest, his soul -

how many times, varric, have you ushered in the end of it all?

Too many.

He hangs his head, a mar across the landscape, diamonds of despair cast across a silver moor of his memories, a limelight of what could and could never be changed.

Alanari is right.

"No. You are not." He offers, fists curled as he is weaker than he has ever been and more driven than he ever could intend to be. A paradigm of his life - a never-ending dirge he could never finish, a world in which he was cursed to never really die.

"It is MY mistake, Lana; I get it." He sits up, further than he should - faster than intended. But love, love of all kinds, is foolish and feckless. "I can't fix this, I'm sorry." Words never spoken by any Tethras, other than him.

"Hey." He grasps, at her, at all the people he's loved before them. "Lana, Ripples. Please, live."

[extravagantliar]

approval + a short note in the margins of a page torn from The Randy Dowager left in plain view on his desk.

Varric,

I am alive.

- A

Send [ APPROVAL ] + (a decision that your muse is making) || accepting

Of course, his window is open. Of course, things are everywhere. Of course, this is his rotten lot in life, his rotten luck, with a rotten city, it could get you killed - rotten like, no, that doesn't work.

This job is killing him, not physically, but the tax of it mentally weighs on him, and his internal dialogue has turned towards his flourishing for the narrative flare; he needs a break. So he cleans the room, rights the pages - until there is one uneven scrap. A smile blooms across his features, even if that scrap ends up as ash.

They live.

Varric is not allowed to outwardly approve ( varric very much, greatly approves )

[extravagantliar]

approval + leaves Halamshiral without warning, without a goodbye / alanari

Send [ APPROVAL ] + (a decision that your muse is making) || accepting

He doesn't have to understand; at least, that is what he tells those who find him in the bar. They do find him, somewhere between a pale ale and a dark ale, somewhere between a stout and Bran's firm word.

He's fine, he swears, smiling, practised, acting.

Like everyone else in his life.

He says he doesn't need to understand; he doesn't want to.

He does.

He can't bring himself to find the words.

So he goes home without them.

Varric Greatly Disapproves.

[extravagantliar]

"Varric." The edges of his name, caught fast in their teeth, in their throat, cut Alanari more than they do him. Not more than the dagger buried in their chest.

"Is that how it happened?" Their specter chides. "Or how you wished it'd happened?"

Now, he is haunted, by this, by them, by inaction when needed and action too late. Regret pooling and skittering across a frozen lake, like him ( now petrified by time, lyrium, loss, love, regret and anything like that ).

If the places were swapped, but he cannot swap places, he cannot do anything but toil with the blood on his hands, oh there is so much of it, and he knows blood, it is his own, it is theirs, it is all of theirs. He's swimming in it, drowning in it, mourning a loss that should be his, locked in a head, a dream, a vision, something barely changeable, something that cannot be written away.

And his breath hitches, somewhere in his lungs, somewhere where he moves air, not blood, and it is a dream, it is a dream - it is a nightmare, and it is the truth. He doesn't have words for it; he can try, but they are like ash against his tongue, ash that fell in Haven, ash that now falls on him. There is the act of pushing blood-matted hair aside in that rain, to plead, but it does nothing; he is locked to this right to watch them die over and over in his arms.

It's a nightmare.

He would gladly take that place - but he can't.

Exchange is not equal.

Equal is not fair. 

Death is never fair.