BioWare owns all but what I made up. : )
WARNING! This is a super angsty chapter and it deals with issues of attempted suicide. Please, if this is a sensitive topic for you, you may want to avoid it. I just wanted to warn you my fans, I care for you all.
Shout outs go to shenzi123, Siha Shap, Zeeji, and Levi Madden for putting this story on alerts, favs, and me on author alerts. I can't thank you enough! Alerts always make my heart go pitter pat! : )
Shout outs to my betas and wonderful friends, Night Hunter MGS, my dear friend, who uses his size 9's (or whatever size shoe he does actually wear) to kick me in the fanny when needed and who comes up with wonderful ideas. Shout out to Ladyamesindy who helps improve my phrasing and keeps me from peppering my favorite word in the English language (had) all over the story for no good reason. My love to Violet Theirin, who makes me laugh, funny girl, and is my Goldilocks and makes sure everything is just right! And last, but not least by any stretch of the imagination, my love and gratitude to my grammar beta Janni! Who finished catching up with Soulmates and, surprisingly enough, wasn't sent round the bend. So she has agreed to beta this story as well. She is Super Woman, I tells ya! : ) MUAHs to you all, my keepers, what would I do without you?
And my love and appreciation to you all my lurkers, readers, and reviewers. I know I write for me, but it makes the task more fun to write for you all as well. It gives me an added thrill to please you all! Thanks for letting me know what you think and for reading at all. THANK YOU!
: )
Blessings!
They traveled for a week, maybe more, stopping only when darkness fell and hitting the road again by first light. And quite frankly, Kai couldn't have cared less if it had rained or snowed or fire had fallen from the sky. She was numb during the day. Walking such long distances helped with that. Putting one foot in front of the other took on monumental importance. It was easy to concentrate on nothing else and keep her mind blank.
But after a few days when the walking became easier as her body had gotten used to it, the physical exhaustion that had allowed her a dreamless sleep was no longer there. Then, the dreams began in earnest. Being chased through Highever in her shift and no weapons, and forgetting she knew how to fight was the mildest. Her brain rarely gave her the "nice one" as she had come to call it. Instead it seemed intent on tormenting her. There were the dreams where she was forced to relive that night in gruesome detail or the dream where her brain made up what happened to her parents (soldiers holding her mother down while her father had to watch) or Howe's men hacking Gilly into pieces. They were all horrid and woke her from sleep without question. The one that was the worst started off as lovely. She would be in Highever castle, and her mind would make her believe that she really had dreamed all the horrors of that night, that she was really home and everyone was safe and alive. The dream would lure her into a sense of joy and relief. She would be so happy...until Oren's sweet little boy voice would pop up from behind telling her he had an "owie" and asking would his auntie fix it for him. And without fail she would turn to find her nephew with pale skin, hollows where his eyes should have been, sunken cheeks and a huge spot of black blood on his front. He would tilt that skeletal head on his emaciated neck and beg her with blue lips to fix it. She would back away and start running with him following after her begging. Then the others would join in – Mother, Father, Oriana, Dairren, Lady Landra, Gilly. All dead and with no eyes, all begging her to fix it until she ran to the kitchens. And there Nan would be, same as the rest, a walking corpse, but she wouldn't ask Kai to fix it, she would just point and ask if Kai remembered the tale of Hohaku. And that dream wouldn't let her wake until she got to Nan. She had to go through the whole scenario over and over again.
That particular nocturnal specter came to be the one that haunted her the most. No sooner would she close her eyes than it would start. And the feelings of guilt would linger long after she awoke. She would lie down wrapped in her blanket and pretend to sleep. She would try and stay awake for as long as she could, but that only lasted so long before her eyelids drooped and she found herself in that cruel mockery of home. It was no more than she deserved she supposed. She hadn't protected her sister-in-law or her nephew, and she wouldn't blame Fergus if he never forgave her. She hadn't saved Dairren or his mother. She hadn't saved Gilly or her parents; instead, she left them all to save herself. She cursed herself for promising her father that she would live. And the more she thought about it, the more angered she was that Duncan had blackmailed her father into making her a Grey Warden. She would have Joined, but to hold a supposed friend's fear for the safety of his wife and child as incentive? That thought kept wiggling in her head like a worm in a rotten apple.
So, she pushed down all her anger and her fear, her pain and her grief, and she locked it all away in a box and threw it into the inner recesses of the well of her soul. The guilt was the only thing she couldn't seem to shove away. And it kept getting worse, so much so that her days were becoming haunted too. She kept hearing the little voice in her head that told her she should have stayed, should have told Duncan to sod off. The voice loved to tell her in sly little whispers that she should have fought alongside her mother until the end. She would be free and in the Fade with all of them if she had. The nasty little imp in her head giggled and laughed and told her it was too late; Fergus was probably dead too. Howe must have sent someone to get him and now she was going to have to live with it. The little sing song murmur kept telling her that she was all alone now. Alone, alone, alone it repeated with each footstep and continued until she couldn't sleep for hearing nothing but the echo bouncing around in her head. She was tormented when she was awake and when she was asleep. Damned if she did, and damned if she didn't. It didn't seem to matter.
When Duncan had them stopping at an inn in the Bannorn of Rainesfere, Kai was more than happy to stop walking and hoped that sleeping in a bed would make the nightmares stop, if only for a night. Andraste's holy knickers, what she wouldn't do for one night of dreamless sleep. Maybe then the little voice would, Maker's blood, also shut up. Duncan had insisted that they walk around Lake Calenhad to the western bannorn of Bann Teagan as they both knew that Teagan was loyal to Cailan and an honest man. They would book passage on a boat across the lake to Redcliffe, and then they could continue to the Hinterlands and to Ostagar. This small bit of information was the most they had conversed since leaving Highever. Other than informing her of his reasons for taking the longer route, Duncan seemed content to leave her be.
The dry Fereldan summer had given way to unseasonable rains turning the roads to small rivers filled with boot-sucking mud. They checked into an Inn near Lake Calenhad called the Hunter's Horn. Kai, in her mentally and physically exhausted state, had a moment to wonder which horn on the hunter they meant. She stifled the urge to giggle hysterically. Duncan turned to look at her. Well, maybe she hadn't restrained it enough. She thought she might be losing her mind; she figured it for a short trip if she was. She stifled another bit of laughter bubbling in her throat. Her physical and mental fatigue gave the world a surreal quality. She had a wild thought, Can I die from suppressing grief? She supposed if one could, then she was well on her way. Again she swallowed her mirth biting her lower lip so hard it drew blood; she could taste a sudden spurt of salt.
Both she and Duncan had taken what could loosely be called a bath in the River Dane and then dressed in the civilian clothes from their packs. Kai had been right about the clothing of her father and her brother. Duncan was broader in the shoulders like Fergus, but the same height as her father. 'Had been', her father 'had been' the same height as Duncan, she had to keep reminding herself. So Duncan dressed in her father's pants and Fergus's shirts. She didn't know how hard it would be to see him in their clothes or how painful washing all the blood off would be after realizing she had mixed the blood of her loved ones with the blood of the scum sucking bottom dwellers that had killed them. Funny how it felt as though she could still feel Dairren's blood on her feet and hands, and her father's too. It would never come out, not even the blood of those she hadn't touched, like Oriana or Oren or her mother. She was marked with it, branded with it.
Kai was grateful that she and Duncan had managed to bathe and change, as the inn was a clean and well run establishment. She wondered if they might have been asked to leave if they had come in sweaty, bloody and in armor. The place, despite its name's double entendre, appeared to be the 'wholesome' type of abode rather than, say, a place like The Pearl in The Pearl, however, this inn seemed to cater to all whether human, elven or dwarven. With the proximity of Rainesfere to the Frostback Mountains, there were quite a few dwarven merchants in the common room.
Kai and Argus waited while Duncan spoke to the barkeep, a tall beanstalk of a man with a thin mustache, receding hairline and a square jaw, who nodded and went to the kitchens. He returned with a red faced, frizzy, brown haired slip of a woman with a sharp face and a sharp tongue, if the barkeep's red face and scowl were anything to go by. Kai watched Duncan speak with her, even turning to point out Kai and her Mabari. The innkeeper's eyes flickered to the well-behaved Argus for a brief moment before she held up two fingers and tilting her head in their direction. Kai also watched as Duncan spoke for a brief moment more and the woman waved her hands in the direction of Lake Calenhad, nodding. Duncan smiled, gave her a bow and handed out two sovereigns and a few silver. She nodded to the barkeep who reached under the counter and placed two big black keys on its surface.
He returned, "Madam Prunella has assured us two adjoining rooms, hot baths, and both supper and a full breakfast tomorrow." He nodded towards the stairs. "She has also promised that our very wet clothes will be washed and ready by morning. And Argus is allowed to stay in the inn, for a small extra amount of coin of course." He smiled at her, "I suggest we get changed into something dry and eat our supper while they heat water and fill the tubs."
Kai and Argus followed Duncan from the top of the stairs down the hallway to the two rooms tucked in the left side of 'T' intersection. She noted that the rooms were in close proximity to the back stairs probably leading to the outdoor dining area and beer garden. Duncan was a clever man, putting them close to an exit for a quick and easy escape if needs be. He handed her a heavy iron key with the number of the room engraved on it. The metal was smooth and worn, as if handled by many generations of hands. Kai took the proffered key, put it in the lock and turned it. She stepped inside with Argus and Duncan at her heels. The room was small but neat and clean. Duncan stepped over to the door on the left hand wall, shot the bolt and walked into the other bedroom.
Kai gratefully set down her packs and relieved Argus of his. Duncan smiled and closed the door after nodding toward the bags she had set down indicating she should change her clothes. Kai dug into her packs and pulled out a linen tunic and a doeskin leggings. She stripped out of her wet clothes and winced as they made a splatting noise when they hit the wooden floor. As if in response a roll of thunder rumbled through the walls of the inn, and she could hear the rain change from a soft pat-pat to a downpour so loud that a conversation would have been drowned out even if the two conversing stood directly in front of one another. She took a look around the room and was relieved to see that there were no leaks from the roof. The inn was solid and well built.
Kai didn't know what to do with her wet clothes. She couldn't hang them out the window and wring them out. And there was nothing to wring the water into inside the room save the chamber pot. So, she pulled it out from under the bed and wrung the items out as best she could. She left the sodden clothes on the floor next to the bed. She opened the window and threw the water out of the chamber pot before putting it back under the bed.
With a pat on her leg and a soft whistle, she called Argus to heel. She knocked on the door adjoining their rooms, and Duncan's voice called her to come in. When she opened the door it was to find him writing at the writing desk. He covered the letter with a clean piece of parchment and rose to greet her, smiling and offering his arm, "Shall we?". Kai took his arm more out of training as a noble than with any real thought. She was so exhausted, her brain seemed encased in ice.
The common room was noisy and filled with folks from the town and the nearby docks staying out of the storm that raged outside, along with the inn's paying guests. The air had a fine white mist of pipe smoke lingering over the heads of the patrons, and the room was bright and cheerful from firelight and the lanterns on the tables and hung around the room. Duncan found them a table in the corner, and Argus made himself comfortable in a heap between Kai's and Duncan's feet. An elven man with black hair dressed in black with a white apron covering his front came and gave them the inn's dinner selections, all one of them. Duncan ordered three bowls of the stew, one for each of them, along with a tankard of the house ale and one of hard cider.
Once the servant had left to see to their food and drink, Kai and Duncan sat in silence. She could feel Duncan watching her, so she chose to sit and watch the shadows and light cast by the large fireplace at the other end of the common room. "You know you couldn't have saved them don't you?" he said so softly she almost missed it. Kai was rescued from answering by the hot bowl of stew and mug of cider placed in front of her. Duncan sat the third bowl down on the floor under the table for Argus. The servant also placed a loaf of fresh warm bread and a cask of butter on the table before giving a smart little nod of his head and a jaunty wave then turning neatly on his heel and leaving.
She developed a sudden interest in shoveling food into her mouth hoping to encourage Duncan to do the same and keep any conversation at bay. The stew was thick with chicken and spices with chunks of apple and potato thrown in. The odors wafting up towards her face smelled heavenly and tasted even better. It was quite good, and she knew she wasn't doing it justice by wolfing it down like a half starved Mabari the way she was.
She shot Duncan a look out of the corner of her eye to see him watching her while eating slowly. Blast the man! He had been content to leave her be all this time now he felt the need to talk? She huffed silently to herself and continued to spoon stew into her mouth otherwise occupying her tongue. She watched his brown skinned hand grab the loaf on the table, break the end off and butter it. She flinched when he started speaking again, "They are dead, Kai, but you are alive. It is what they wanted, for you to live."
She felt heat rising in her cheeks, along with a dark rage she hadn't know was there. It bubbled up in black sticky ribbons of contempt, guilt, and disgust. All aimed at Howe, her dead beloveds, Duncan and mostly at herself because a small part of her was grateful to have made it out of Highever alive. That nasty little voice, the voice of her own inner abyss, was laughing inside her head. "And what about you? You got what you wanted didn't you, Duncan? Blackmailing my father into making me a Grey Warden!" Kai shoved her bowl away in a fury, "My father was supposed to be your friend! And yet you dangled my safety and that of my mother in front of him while his guts tangled between his fingers and he sat in a pool of his own blood!"
She stood up so fast her chair made a nasty scraping noise. The tables around them had ceased their conversations listening in and waiting to see if a fight was going to start. She suspected the barkeep of wondering that as well, as he watched them intently.
Duncan's hand shot out and gripped her wrist gently. His eyes crimped in sadness which only fueled the fire in her belly. In a soft voice, while looking her in the eyes, he sighed a sad sound, "My decision was not made lightly, and it was not without cost. But consider this well, Kaidana – the choices I made were for your benefit as well as your father's. You already wished to be a Grey Warden, against your father's wishes. You told me so yourself. By having your father agree in front of you, I freed you from the guilt you would have felt for disobeying what you would have seen as his dying wish. Your father was no fool, he was an intelligent and courageous man, loyal to his king, his family, and his duty. I freed him as well by letting him know that his other child would be safe. Your father and I were friends a long time. He knew I would have saved you regardless of his promise to let you Join the Grey. But I think he knew you best of all. He knew you would never have left if he had not made a promise to me and made you promise him. Is that not so, Kaidana?"
"Then more the fool he, more the fool you, and more the fool me most of all!" Her anger was such that the stew in her belly was sitting there in a ball. She ripped her wrist from his grip, snatched up the tankard with the cider and belted it back. It helped ease the clenching of her stomach and flushed her body with heat. She felt lighter. The feeling was better than what she had been experiencing. And the little nasty voice seemed to have been forced into a whisper. "Give Argus the rest of my stew. I am going to take a bath, get pissed faced, and pass out." With that she turned her back on him and went to the barkeep standing at his counter. She untied the coin pouch at her waist and paid for two bottles of mead. She grabbed the alcohol and made her way to the stairs. The conversations had picked back up when there was no entertainment forthcoming from their argument.
She made her way up the stairs and back to her room where she found a servant putting the last of the hot water into a big copper tub. She locked the door between her room and Duncan's and waited for the servant to finish with his buckets while she uncorked the mead and took a long swig. The servant poured in some bath salts, and set up a small table the height of the edge of the bathtub with the bath salts, a cake of soap, washcloth, and towels. The young man grinned again, bowed and closed the door behind him as he left the room.
Kai stripped down and took the bottle to the tub with her. She sat in the tub soaking up the heat and occasionally taking swigs of mead. Her limbs were tingling, and she felt the most relaxed she had felt in what seemed like an eternity. She stood up in the tub, swaying and putting her arms out to catch her balance. The water was lukewarm now so she decided to towel off and get into bed. That way she wouldn't have far to fall when she passed out.
She dried herself off as best she could. But it seemed as if her limbs were loose and the towel missed parts of her. Still, she was dry enough to get into her shift she figured. She tilted the bottle only to realize that it was empty. The mead is gone, why is the mead gone? Kai swayed and almost stumbled on her way to get the other bottle. Oh yes, that's why! She snorted, then giggled, then the giggles turned into laughter. The laughter led to guffaws and deep belly laughs that caused tears to run down her cheeks. She started to drink from the empty bottle again, until she remembered as the glass hit her laughing lips. Dead solider, Kai, this one is a dead soldier...dead, dead, dead, dead.
And just as quickly her laughter turned into an angry growl and then sobs as she threw the bottle against the hearth of the fireplace in her room. It shattered into a thousand pieces, the glass shards catching the firelight, glittering as they arced out and showered down on the wooden floor and the stone hearth. She stood there listening to her gasping breaths, the steady patter of rainfall and the crackle of the fire.
Sod it! Kai wiped at the tears across her cheeks with the sleeve of her nightshirt. She stumbled over and tried as carefully as she could in her inebriated state to kneel down and begin cleaning up the mess she had made. She reached for one of the largest slivers first, a triangular piece of brown glass that glinted amber in the light of the fireplace. Kai started to place it in the palm of her left hand to hold it and put the smaller pieces in, but she found herself grasping it in her right hand, watching the point glitter in the firelight...
"You do realize that is a really bad idea, right? And I really wish you wouldn't. Not to mention the mess it would make on the floor. Think of that poor servant! He lugs all that bath water up and down the stairs and then you would make him clean up blood too? That doesn't seem very fair."
Kai startled awake, her head snapping up and her eyes opening wide. She had been asleep and dreaming. At least the voice wasn't the nasty little dark one that had been haunting her waking hours. Nor was it any of the repertoire of the usual night haunts. This voice actually seemed friendly and funny, and it made her feel better, though she had no idea why she deserved such a voice to counter the other.
She was hearing pounding on the door between the rooms along with deep woofs. And someone was calling her name. It took her a moment to realize where she was. She felt a pain in her forearm above the wrist and looked down to see one deep cut that went about half an inch and stopped where the glass shard was still embedded the flesh. There was blood from the small cut, but the deeper puncture was not really bleeding as the shard kept it from doing so. She knew it would bleed all over when she pulled the sliver out. The hand grasping the glass was cut too and had bled down her arm and dripped onto her shift.
The pounding was in earnest now, and Duncan was calling her name. She pulled the glass out and used the cloth of her nightshirt to staunch the blood from the puncture as she stumbled to the door to unlock it and let him and Argus in. She mentally cursed herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid! If you really wanted to kill yourself you fool, you could have stuck a dagger in your own heart. It would certainly have been quicker, even drowning in the lake would have been better. Kai mentally chastised herself.
Duncan noticed her bleeding and gently lifted the cloth away from her arm, "The first cut is always deepest, isn't it, young lady?". He put the cloth back down and clamped Kai's hand back down on it while he turned back to his room. Kai heard him rummaging around, and when he came back he had the box that held health potions. She watched him lift the lid of the box and search out the vial that had been partially used right after their leaving Highever. He popped the cork out of it and held it up to her lips.
She felt the cool sensation that these potions always began with, making her feel as if she had swallowed snow. Once the potion hit her stomach, an intense warming sensation would start in the wounds that needed repair. She grimaced, they tasted bloody awful. She hated those things. Why could the mages never sodding figure out a way to make them taste good?
"That will leave a scar when it finally finishes healing. Your shift is beyond saving, I think, but it will make bandages." He took strips of cloth and gently bandaged the wound on her wrist; the bleeding had slowed considerably. Then he wrapped the hand that had held the shard. When he was finished, he rummaged in her pack for a clean nightshirt and turned his back and waited while Kai got changed.
Then they set about putting the room back in order. Duncan took the task of cleaning up the glass this time, which only heightened her embarrassment. He left with the glass shards. Really, Duncan wants me to be a Grey Warden? HAH! Bet he's rethinking that now. Kai blushed at her own thoughts while she used the bathwater and a part of the torn shift to wipe up blood. The droplets were easy, but it was the puddle, small as it was, which triggered a dam burst. Her mind kept flashing on all the puddles of blood underneath all of those she loved. All that she had buried and shoved away rose up like a tidal wave on the Waking Sea.
She heard someone sobbing in great gasping howls. She realized it was she making those whimpering and mewling noises after Duncan had returned and picked her up like a child and put her in bed, tucking her under the covers. Argus whined and jumped up to lay close to her on one side. Duncan returned with a candle which he set on the nightstand. He blew out all the lanterns, pulled off his boots and sat up against the headboard laying Kai's head on his chest while wrapping his arms around her. He simply stroked her back and hair while she wet the shirt that smelled like Fergus with her tears.