Nostariel straightened, wiping the thin sheen of sweat from her brow as the last of the hurlocks fell beneath Lucien's axe. She didn't know where he'd acquired the weapon, but it seemed to be serving him well, and for now at least, herself by mere extension. Releasing the spell that kept the edge of it aflame, she sighed wearily and walked a few more steps, turning from the encampment and climbing a nearby rise, to look out over the area and check for any more. The Wounded Coast really was beautiful; it was such a shame that it seemed perpetually infested with criminals and occasionally Darkspawn. Currently, she looked out from the peninsula and over the Waking Sea, across which she knew lay Ferelden, Ashton's homeland and one of many places she'd never been.
Giving into her weariness for the moment, she planted herself on a log and lay her staff across her knees, looking back over her shoulder to the mercenary. "You can return, if you like. I'm just going to rest a bit." She wasn't too tired to keep moving, but moments of respite were few and far between these days. Her life had gained a considerable amount of activity since she'd come to Kirkwall, and though she didn't resent it, all the adventures her new companions dragged her on combined with her duties as a Warden left her with less time to just relax than she'd grown accustomed to.
Nostariel turned back out to the sea, inhaling the salt air with a pensive look on her face. When she'd asked Lucien to help her with this particular nest of Darkspawn, she'd known he wouldn't refuse. She wasn't sure he even knew how to say no, how to stop helping people. It was as though the limits that kept ordinary people from spending all their energy on others just didn't exist for him. For the past year and a half, he'd spent countless nights sitting across from her in the Hanged Man, listening to her mope and complain and despair when any sane person would have either left or at least told her to get a grip. He probably should have, but she hadn't been ready to hear it, and it wasn't until, somewhere between Ashton and Ithilian, she'd managed to at least find a handle on her misery, that she'd realized Lucien had just as much to do with it.
She honestly kind of felt like she was taking advantage of his kindness, leeching from that implacable kindness and giving nothing in return, which was why she still felt vaguely guilty about asking him to be here. And yet, when she'd heard the nature of the task, he was the first person she'd thought to ask. Several people had become so ingrained in her life that she thought of them often and fondly, but he had done so quietly, so quietly in fact that she hadn't even noticed it until now. It was strange, and she thought it faintly perturbing. The Warden sighed again. She owed him, more than she cared to contemplate, and she couldn't decide whether it relieved her or scared her that she knew he'd never even think to collect.
Lucien ignored the implications that he was free to head back, seeing no particular hurry to do so, and paused for a moment to shake the worst of the dark blood off his axe, though there wasn't much that hadn't been burned away by Nostariel's fire. None of the Darkspawn were moving any longer, and he suspected that she would know much better than he if they were dead anyway, so he turned from the carnage and followed her up the hill. The view was a good one, and such vistas were common on the Coast. The sea lay spread before them like so much reflective silk, or so it seemed from a distance. Up close, it could be quite a bit more rough and dangerous than that, but then wasn't that true of most things he'd ever encountered?
With a short movement, he plunged the spear-tip of the axehead into the sand and tipped the whole thing just a bit so that it balanced on one side, firmly entrenched in the sand, then took a spot on the log beside Nostariel, reaching with a hand to his belt and removing the hip flask there. Silently, he handed it to her, still staring out at the ocean. It wasn't something he was doing in an attempt to enable her former habits or anything; quite the contrary, he only offered because he felt she was actually in a position to decline if that was best. It seemed to him that there had been a change in his friend, one for the better, and that was good. Sometimes, such simple positive things were the ones most worth lingering over for a while. "How have you been, Nostariel?" he asked at last, glancing over from the corner of his good eye.
She took the flask with a smile, unscrewing the cap and tipping it back, blinking in surprise when the taste was smooth and warm on her tongue, with a firey kick that she hadn't expected. Brandy, and the very, very good kind if her taste buds were telling her the truth. "Do you often need to take the edge off after helping people with their inane little worries?" she asked, her tone light. For all that, though, the question was a genuine one. She wondered if he was like her; if he grew weary of always doing the right thing the hard way, in the way that only those who'd been doing it for years could even understand. The Chantry could tell you that a good deed was never a burden, but those people lived in an idealized world where good deeds were alms for the poor and telling the truth instead of lies. Nostariel didn't live in that world, and neither did Lucien. His reply was nothing more than a smile and shake of his head.
In their world, doing the good deed often meant getting your hands dirty, staining your clothes and soul with blood. The ones on the clothes usually came out, but not so much with the others. You just sort of... learned to live with them, was all. But she was sure she hadn't been made for that. She'd probably have been better off in her Circle, reading her books and practicing her magic and doing her tiny good deeds without ever thinking to do otherwise. They would not have made her so tired, sometimes.
"I've been... okay," she said pensively, staring out over the sea and taking another sip of the brandy before she passed the flask back to him. There was a likely-looking pile of wood nearby on the sand, and she shrugged to herself and set it alight with a short spell, figuring she might as well expound on the warmth theme that the alcohol had started. "Which as I'm sure you know is quite surprising. I think... I'm almost ready to let him go. Not quite, but... almost, and it feels... nice, I guess." It occurred to her once more that when they were together, they only ever spoke of her, really, and that was a terrible and persistent oversight of hers. "How about you, Lucien?"
That was quite the development, though one that had been in the making for some time now. Still, the fact that he had expected it made it no less pleasant or momentous, and it was good to know. The return volley of the question actually surprised him somewhat, but he supposed it probably should not have. Generally, he was accustomed to giving off the impression, however true or false it may be, that he had no definitive crises remaining to him, that everything in his life was more or less settled and would remain as it was for the foreseeable future. It wasn't that he couldn't adapt, merely that he rarely saw the need, and had had the youthful hubris and dramatics excised from his demeanor some time ago, and that had perhaps been the worst of the growing he'd needed to do.
"I am... the same as always, more or less," he replied honestly. There was... something getting at him, gnawing like persistent hunger at the pit of one's stomach, but that was usually there, and felt acutely enough to bother with only sometimes. Perhaps though, if anyone could understand it, Nostariel would. "I am occasionally troubled, I think. I find that, despite having come to this place to begin anew, much of what I was lingers, and some of it I should rather be without." His persistent reservedness and formality came to mind; he was never unguarded, never open, except perhaps with Rilien. But then, the Bard was from the life he'd left, in a way, and maybe that just made understanding simpler. Maybe it was the knowledge that the Tranquil would never part with his secrets, as he'd never have a reason.
"It is difficult to trust, past a certain point, is it not? Perhaps my father has grown too strong in me, but though I feel comfortable enough with others relying upon me, I do not think it quite the same thing to allow them into my affairs." It was a problem rather universal with him; he'd never trusted the Red Iron, and though he did place his confidence in Nostariel and Sophia both to a point, it was not the point that perhaps one friend should really expect of another. Part of him still waited for the other shoe to fall, the knife in his back, even if he knew it would never appear.
Nostariel pondered this for a moment, looking out over the reflective waters with a pensive frown. In truth, she didn't really understand, at least not very well. Trust had never been the thing she couldn't give. In fact, she trusted and grew attached to people perhaps too quickly, and it was this arguably naive part of her nature that had allowed her to talk to a Templar in the first place, much less fall in love with him. But then, she could see in Lucien what he was confessing to know about himself, and maybe, to someone who'd lived a life like his (whatever that had been), it was the most natural course to take. "My teacher said once that the two most difficult things in life to say are 'I'm sorry' and 'please help me,'" she replied slowly. "I think she said that because those are two very different ways of humbling ourselves before others, of exposing our weakness and our fallability to them. I don't think you have a problem with apologizing; it seems to me like you're the kind of person who might do it too much, if you thought you'd made a mistake." At that, she smiled. It would certainly fit with his tendency towards extreme modesty. He couldn't disagree; his father and his aunt had both accused him of the same.
"But... and I don't know you so well that I could say for sure, but it seems like I've never heard you ask for anyone's help with anything. You're more likely to try and give it at first sign of need, regardless of the consequences to yourself." She thought of the Tal-Vashoth in the caves, and then of the dragon, which he'd charged without a single moment's hesitation. "I think I've only ever seen you accept help from Rilien, and even then, it was more an exchange than anything else." The Warden's eyebrows furrowed together, and she shook her head briefly. "Maybe I'm not helping very much, but at least, that's what I've seen. I guess maybe the difficulty you feel is partly because you're so used to being the person that others rely on, and for that, it makes little sense to expose your own vulnerability. I guess that might be my fault, in some part, and for that, I really am sorry. You were more patient with me than I rightly deserved, I think, but I am grateful. Most people would probably have stopped coming to see me, but I'm much better off now because you weren't one of them."
She was right, of course, but it left him with no more idea what to do about it than before. Perhaps he need not do anything. He could assist people without trusting them, anyway. It was simply... he missed the cameraderie he'd known in his Academie years, and then in the first few of his knighthood. Having people he could trust, fully and completely, to watch his back, to understand why he was as he was, and simply accept it for what it was. To understand that he never intended to require the same of them, that he was content to allow them to be as they were because they extended him the same courtesy. He wasn't the archetypal knight in shining armor; he really wasn't. He was human and flawed, and sometimes, he made awful mistakes, and... well, he paid the price for them. That was as it should be, but all the same, he wondered if maybe he was at fault for deceiving people into believing otherwise of him. He couldn't stop acting as he did, though; his conscience would not allow it, and maybe that was part of the conundrum.
His fellow Chevalier had grown up with him, and understood his faults, often more acutely than he did. What he was now could only be considered the product of those foibles, and yet he felt strangely alienated from them now, as though they were all the product of another life. Rolling his eye at himself, he took another swig from the flask and decided that he wouldn't be solving all of his problems today, anyway, and he might as well enjoy himself while he had pleasant company to do so in.
"Not at all," he replied to Nostariel, wondering if her words perhaps confirmed his hypothesis about how others percieved him. "You're a good person, Nostariel, and you deserved whatever small assistance I could offer you and more than that. Don't trouble yourself about it." He passed the brandy back over to her and relaxed, resolving to think about it some other day.
Nostariel hummed a note of conciliation. She had a feeling there was something there that she didn't quite understand, but he seemed inclined to leave it, and she wouldn't pry. "Thank you," she said quietly, and afterwards they lapsed into comfortable silence, neither feeling pressured to speak. It was a rare occurrence with her, and she took it for all it was worth. He was still giving her this particular gift, and she wasn't sure he knew just what a boon it was.
Giving into her weariness for the moment, she planted herself on a log and lay her staff across her knees, looking back over her shoulder to the mercenary. "You can return, if you like. I'm just going to rest a bit." She wasn't too tired to keep moving, but moments of respite were few and far between these days. Her life had gained a considerable amount of activity since she'd come to Kirkwall, and though she didn't resent it, all the adventures her new companions dragged her on combined with her duties as a Warden left her with less time to just relax than she'd grown accustomed to.
Nostariel turned back out to the sea, inhaling the salt air with a pensive look on her face. When she'd asked Lucien to help her with this particular nest of Darkspawn, she'd known he wouldn't refuse. She wasn't sure he even knew how to say no, how to stop helping people. It was as though the limits that kept ordinary people from spending all their energy on others just didn't exist for him. For the past year and a half, he'd spent countless nights sitting across from her in the Hanged Man, listening to her mope and complain and despair when any sane person would have either left or at least told her to get a grip. He probably should have, but she hadn't been ready to hear it, and it wasn't until, somewhere between Ashton and Ithilian, she'd managed to at least find a handle on her misery, that she'd realized Lucien had just as much to do with it.
She honestly kind of felt like she was taking advantage of his kindness, leeching from that implacable kindness and giving nothing in return, which was why she still felt vaguely guilty about asking him to be here. And yet, when she'd heard the nature of the task, he was the first person she'd thought to ask. Several people had become so ingrained in her life that she thought of them often and fondly, but he had done so quietly, so quietly in fact that she hadn't even noticed it until now. It was strange, and she thought it faintly perturbing. The Warden sighed again. She owed him, more than she cared to contemplate, and she couldn't decide whether it relieved her or scared her that she knew he'd never even think to collect.
Lucien ignored the implications that he was free to head back, seeing no particular hurry to do so, and paused for a moment to shake the worst of the dark blood off his axe, though there wasn't much that hadn't been burned away by Nostariel's fire. None of the Darkspawn were moving any longer, and he suspected that she would know much better than he if they were dead anyway, so he turned from the carnage and followed her up the hill. The view was a good one, and such vistas were common on the Coast. The sea lay spread before them like so much reflective silk, or so it seemed from a distance. Up close, it could be quite a bit more rough and dangerous than that, but then wasn't that true of most things he'd ever encountered?
With a short movement, he plunged the spear-tip of the axehead into the sand and tipped the whole thing just a bit so that it balanced on one side, firmly entrenched in the sand, then took a spot on the log beside Nostariel, reaching with a hand to his belt and removing the hip flask there. Silently, he handed it to her, still staring out at the ocean. It wasn't something he was doing in an attempt to enable her former habits or anything; quite the contrary, he only offered because he felt she was actually in a position to decline if that was best. It seemed to him that there had been a change in his friend, one for the better, and that was good. Sometimes, such simple positive things were the ones most worth lingering over for a while. "How have you been, Nostariel?" he asked at last, glancing over from the corner of his good eye.
She took the flask with a smile, unscrewing the cap and tipping it back, blinking in surprise when the taste was smooth and warm on her tongue, with a firey kick that she hadn't expected. Brandy, and the very, very good kind if her taste buds were telling her the truth. "Do you often need to take the edge off after helping people with their inane little worries?" she asked, her tone light. For all that, though, the question was a genuine one. She wondered if he was like her; if he grew weary of always doing the right thing the hard way, in the way that only those who'd been doing it for years could even understand. The Chantry could tell you that a good deed was never a burden, but those people lived in an idealized world where good deeds were alms for the poor and telling the truth instead of lies. Nostariel didn't live in that world, and neither did Lucien. His reply was nothing more than a smile and shake of his head.
In their world, doing the good deed often meant getting your hands dirty, staining your clothes and soul with blood. The ones on the clothes usually came out, but not so much with the others. You just sort of... learned to live with them, was all. But she was sure she hadn't been made for that. She'd probably have been better off in her Circle, reading her books and practicing her magic and doing her tiny good deeds without ever thinking to do otherwise. They would not have made her so tired, sometimes.
"I've been... okay," she said pensively, staring out over the sea and taking another sip of the brandy before she passed the flask back to him. There was a likely-looking pile of wood nearby on the sand, and she shrugged to herself and set it alight with a short spell, figuring she might as well expound on the warmth theme that the alcohol had started. "Which as I'm sure you know is quite surprising. I think... I'm almost ready to let him go. Not quite, but... almost, and it feels... nice, I guess." It occurred to her once more that when they were together, they only ever spoke of her, really, and that was a terrible and persistent oversight of hers. "How about you, Lucien?"
That was quite the development, though one that had been in the making for some time now. Still, the fact that he had expected it made it no less pleasant or momentous, and it was good to know. The return volley of the question actually surprised him somewhat, but he supposed it probably should not have. Generally, he was accustomed to giving off the impression, however true or false it may be, that he had no definitive crises remaining to him, that everything in his life was more or less settled and would remain as it was for the foreseeable future. It wasn't that he couldn't adapt, merely that he rarely saw the need, and had had the youthful hubris and dramatics excised from his demeanor some time ago, and that had perhaps been the worst of the growing he'd needed to do.
"I am... the same as always, more or less," he replied honestly. There was... something getting at him, gnawing like persistent hunger at the pit of one's stomach, but that was usually there, and felt acutely enough to bother with only sometimes. Perhaps though, if anyone could understand it, Nostariel would. "I am occasionally troubled, I think. I find that, despite having come to this place to begin anew, much of what I was lingers, and some of it I should rather be without." His persistent reservedness and formality came to mind; he was never unguarded, never open, except perhaps with Rilien. But then, the Bard was from the life he'd left, in a way, and maybe that just made understanding simpler. Maybe it was the knowledge that the Tranquil would never part with his secrets, as he'd never have a reason.
"It is difficult to trust, past a certain point, is it not? Perhaps my father has grown too strong in me, but though I feel comfortable enough with others relying upon me, I do not think it quite the same thing to allow them into my affairs." It was a problem rather universal with him; he'd never trusted the Red Iron, and though he did place his confidence in Nostariel and Sophia both to a point, it was not the point that perhaps one friend should really expect of another. Part of him still waited for the other shoe to fall, the knife in his back, even if he knew it would never appear.
Nostariel pondered this for a moment, looking out over the reflective waters with a pensive frown. In truth, she didn't really understand, at least not very well. Trust had never been the thing she couldn't give. In fact, she trusted and grew attached to people perhaps too quickly, and it was this arguably naive part of her nature that had allowed her to talk to a Templar in the first place, much less fall in love with him. But then, she could see in Lucien what he was confessing to know about himself, and maybe, to someone who'd lived a life like his (whatever that had been), it was the most natural course to take. "My teacher said once that the two most difficult things in life to say are 'I'm sorry' and 'please help me,'" she replied slowly. "I think she said that because those are two very different ways of humbling ourselves before others, of exposing our weakness and our fallability to them. I don't think you have a problem with apologizing; it seems to me like you're the kind of person who might do it too much, if you thought you'd made a mistake." At that, she smiled. It would certainly fit with his tendency towards extreme modesty. He couldn't disagree; his father and his aunt had both accused him of the same.
"But... and I don't know you so well that I could say for sure, but it seems like I've never heard you ask for anyone's help with anything. You're more likely to try and give it at first sign of need, regardless of the consequences to yourself." She thought of the Tal-Vashoth in the caves, and then of the dragon, which he'd charged without a single moment's hesitation. "I think I've only ever seen you accept help from Rilien, and even then, it was more an exchange than anything else." The Warden's eyebrows furrowed together, and she shook her head briefly. "Maybe I'm not helping very much, but at least, that's what I've seen. I guess maybe the difficulty you feel is partly because you're so used to being the person that others rely on, and for that, it makes little sense to expose your own vulnerability. I guess that might be my fault, in some part, and for that, I really am sorry. You were more patient with me than I rightly deserved, I think, but I am grateful. Most people would probably have stopped coming to see me, but I'm much better off now because you weren't one of them."
She was right, of course, but it left him with no more idea what to do about it than before. Perhaps he need not do anything. He could assist people without trusting them, anyway. It was simply... he missed the cameraderie he'd known in his Academie years, and then in the first few of his knighthood. Having people he could trust, fully and completely, to watch his back, to understand why he was as he was, and simply accept it for what it was. To understand that he never intended to require the same of them, that he was content to allow them to be as they were because they extended him the same courtesy. He wasn't the archetypal knight in shining armor; he really wasn't. He was human and flawed, and sometimes, he made awful mistakes, and... well, he paid the price for them. That was as it should be, but all the same, he wondered if maybe he was at fault for deceiving people into believing otherwise of him. He couldn't stop acting as he did, though; his conscience would not allow it, and maybe that was part of the conundrum.
His fellow Chevalier had grown up with him, and understood his faults, often more acutely than he did. What he was now could only be considered the product of those foibles, and yet he felt strangely alienated from them now, as though they were all the product of another life. Rolling his eye at himself, he took another swig from the flask and decided that he wouldn't be solving all of his problems today, anyway, and he might as well enjoy himself while he had pleasant company to do so in.
"Not at all," he replied to Nostariel, wondering if her words perhaps confirmed his hypothesis about how others percieved him. "You're a good person, Nostariel, and you deserved whatever small assistance I could offer you and more than that. Don't trouble yourself about it." He passed the brandy back over to her and relaxed, resolving to think about it some other day.
Nostariel hummed a note of conciliation. She had a feeling there was something there that she didn't quite understand, but he seemed inclined to leave it, and she wouldn't pry. "Thank you," she said quietly, and afterwards they lapsed into comfortable silence, neither feeling pressured to speak. It was a rare occurrence with her, and she took it for all it was worth. He was still giving her this particular gift, and she wasn't sure he knew just what a boon it was.