The silence was deafening.
It was one of those things that one couldn't really appreciate the full weight of it until it was gone. And Vesryn had done plenty of appreciating before this. He wondered if this wasn't similar to how Cyrus felt, when his magic had been taken from him. Perhaps the two weren't so different. He reached inside, for that part of himself that had been there for so long it had become essential to him, part of who he was, and he found... nothing. Silence and emptiness.
Was this how everyone else felt, all the time? He must have forgotten what it was like, back when he lived in Denerim. He'd come to regard that person as someone separate from who he was today. But now he was that boy again, feeling clueless and lost and unsure of his every motion. Like the great stone bridge into Skyhold had been replaced with a rickety one made of wood planks.
They rode back west at a slow pace, with no need to rush anymore. Any pain left in Vesryn was simply that of soreness from the journey. Physically he actually felt wonderful, but perhaps that was just a relative thing. He would have to look forward to training again. He expected he'd never be Khari's superior in skill again. Somehow that didn't bother him as much as he thought it would.
The giant they'd felled and disposed of as best they could. Powerful as it was, it had been nearing the end of its days, lacking any exposure to the red lyrium it needed to survive. The remaining lyrium that had grown on it posed a threat still, but with luck its power would fade and diminish without doing any further harm. Stel would report it to Leon, and he'd send a team back to investigate and properly deal with it if needed. They'd done their job, and put the poor beast to rest.
Astraia had handled herself well. She'd taken to riding in the front, her impressive halla effortlessly carrying her forward. The confidence she'd gained here was warming to see, not to mention the physical and magical strides she'd made with the help of her teachers. She'd fought admirably against the giant, though it had been Harellan and Khari together that struck the killing blow. All of them were in need of a good rest by now, but if they kept their pace they could reach Skyhold by the day's end.
Vesryn was content to sit in the saddle, and observe the silence. He had only his own thoughts to interact with now, and it was aggravating to find how quickly they turned on one another.
Cyrus, riding considerably further back, had looked distracted for much of the trek so far, as though his attention were pulled elsewhere. By this point, it wasn't too difficult to tell that something had happened to him after he'd taken in the Well, though its exact nature remained unspoken. It seemed to take him some effort to focus on his more immediate surroundings, but he adjusted the trajectory of his horse slightly to move her up alongside Vesryn's.
“Are you...?" He trailed off, perhaps deciding that the question wasn't quite right. “Stop me if this is insensitive, but can I ask you a question? About what just happened?"
The first question indeed wasn't right, and not one he knew how to begin answering. The second one... "I would think you had a better view of everything that happened than I did." His tone didn't come out the right way. It was a little harsh, even. It was... strange. The feeling of loss, being on the other side of it. What had he ever really lost before this? His parents were alive and well, his friends had managed to survive one horror after another. He had no practice at dealing with any of this. And Saraya had been so, so distant from her loss... the pain she felt towards was never this sharp, this biting. It was a deep ache, like an old wound that hadn't begun to heal properly.
"I'm sorry," he said. "What would you like to ask?"
Cyrus didn't seem to take the waspishness personally, though he did look to be reconsidering his question. “Not all of it, actually. I—you were dead, Vesryn. I realize that is probably far from the most important part of all this as far as you're concerned, but... was there... anything?" He frowned, looking dissatisfied by something. “I've been close more than once myself, and I suppose I—" he shook his head. “Never mind. My thoughts have been strange lately, I'm sorry."
He wasn't used to filtering his thoughts quite like this. Not sifting through Saraya's feelings alongside his own, but instead stopping himself from saying a hundred things that would feel better in an instant, and then lead to regret. "It's easy to forget that I'm not the only one going through something right now. I've... admittedly sort of blocked out the rest for a while now, seeing as I didn't think I'd still be alive right now." He liked to think he was good at setting aside his own pain to put others first, but the past few weeks had been more than even he could handle.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you what you want to hear. I don't remember dying, or being dead. There was just... nothing." He glanced sideways at him, the first time he'd turned his gaze from the path for a while. "Unless that was what you wanted to hear."
Cyrus let out a soft huff at the last part, shaking his head slightly. “Not especially. But—the people who've thought about this sort of thing, they tend to think that when someone dies, they... return to the fade. The ancients did, in uthenera. Returned from whence they came." He furrowed his brows; clearly he was working around to something in particular, but it was as if his thoughts meandered as well, always something else on the tip of his tongue and half of them bitten back. “What I mean to say is... you might meet her again someday. In a dream. And it might be that the her you see is every bit as real as the one you felt."
He paused, dropping his eyes to his hands. “I hope that's true. In general, but also just... for you."
"I..." He wasn't immediately sure how to respond. Apparently he'd been just as surprised to hear that sort of thing from Cyrus as Cyrus was to give it. "Thank you. I hope you're right." He hoped he would see her. Though of all the dreams he'd had... how would he ever know she was real? That what he was seeing wasn't just the creation of his own mind, or spirits in the Fade playing to his expectations, conjuring what he wanted to see? He didn't even know what she looked like.
"And I hope that if she's with her people again, that they forgive her, and accept her." His eyes fell as well, but only for a moment. "Listen, I don't think I ever thanked you, for being here. It meant a lot. To both of us. If there's ever anything I can do to help with what you're going through... I'm here. For the foreseeable future, it would seem."
“I'm glad to hear it." Cyrus's tone warmed slightly and he nodded, though for some reason he also winced. “And thank you. I'll be... all right. The Well is just—the information's going to take some time to settle, is all." With a slightly strained smile, he dropped back a bit, perhaps to deal with whatever part of it was bothering him at the moment.
It was about another half-hour before he found himself within quiet speaking distance of Stel. Nox was not a halla, but the warhorse seemed to require little to no direction from his rider even so. She was slumped a little forward against his thick neck, her cheek pressed to the roots of his sleek mane. She'd been somewhat out of it for most of the ride, dozing on and off in the saddle, but she was awake when he drifted nearer and offered him a smile, pushing back into a more normal seated position.
"Hey, you," she said softly, pushing a few loose hairs away from her face where they'd come loose. "How are you feeling?"
"About half as much as I was when we came out here." There was little humor in the way he said it. "But considering that most of what I felt was pain... perhaps that's for the best. And Saraya, I hope, is no longer in any pain at all." He knew she was more than capable of weathering it, and had done so well before he had ever come along into her life, but still... the idea of not being able to share in that, the bad as well as the good. It still seemed so foreign to him. So strange.
"I'm sorry I put you through that." It had taken him some time to really understand what they'd told him, that he'd been dead for a moment, and that Stel had restarted his heart. He hadn't even known that sort of thing was possible. Even spirit healers couldn't bring people back from the dead, not without letting a spirit into the body, and that sort of possession had a way of turning out far, far worse in the long run, if it didn't happen immediately. And as far as he knew, he had no new entity in his body, replacing the familiar one. "Saraya told me the separation would give me a chance at living. I guess... I should've been more clear about the danger. I didn't mean for any of it to happen this way."
That seemed to surprise her, but the expression was no more than a flicker over her face before it disappeared again. "No," she said immediately. "It's all right. I panicked, as I'm sure you can imagine. But if I'd been thinking about that possibility the whole time... I don't know how well the rest would have gone." She expelled a breath, more a sigh than anything. "I tried for a really long time to... accept what was probably going to happen. I honestly don't think I ever succeeded. Much better to go through this than the alternative."
She paused, clearly considering what she'd just said, then backtracked. "Ah—for me, that is. Not to suggest that..." She sighed again, more obviously. "You know what I mean."
He thought she'd have been able to do it, but that was really an irrelevant discussion at this point, anyway. It happened the way it did, and he'd survived by her skill and her ability to push through. As for everything that came before it, what she said... he felt like she'd had the more difficult job of the two of them. Watching him die, rather than being the one dying. To know that she was going to have to go on, and face all of the problems that remained for her, and do it without him. While for him there simply weren't going to be anymore problems once it was done. Even the briefest moment of thought about how that would feel if their positions were reversed was more than he was willing to contemplate.
"I'd like to think I don't scare easily, but..." he expelled an uneasy breath, shifting in his saddle. "I can't help but be afraid for the future. I'm not sure what I am without her, or what I'm capable of. If I'll still be the same person. In fact I already know that I'm not." He felt lesser, weaker, smaller. He wouldn't forget all the things she'd taught him, at least he thought he wouldn't forget, but how could be certain that who he'd become wouldn't just fade away? Who could say, with a situation as unique as his, what the effects would be now that she was gone?
"I just... hope I can be enough to help, somewhere, somehow."
Estella leaned to the side, far enough to reach forward and pick up his hand, tangling her fingers through his and then sitting back, drawing their joined hands into the space between where their horses walked. A habit of hers, to turn to touch by way of expressing the important things, or even the mundane ones. Not a general tendency, but one she had with those closest to her.
"Now you listen to me, Vesryn Cormyth," she said, voice dropped low enough that no one would hear but him. "Things are going to change, that's true. And I don't doubt that it's going to be hard, to learn how to live by yourself again. Some things will be more difficult, and take more work, and come more slowly. But you have always, always been enough to help, all by yourself." She paused a moment, brows knitting, then a smile bloomed over her face, slow and sweet.
"How did it go? You were when I first met you, you are in this very moment, and the person you're becoming will be too. Extraordinary as she was, it has nothing to do with Saraya, or the things she lent you. These are things that have happened to you, but they're not what defines you. And they're not the reason we need you." The smile slipped away, until only earnestness remained. "Not the reason I need you."
He ran his thumb along the side of her hand, releasing a breath. It was calmer already, eased out by her words. Even if some of them were his, thrown back in his face when he needed them most. It was so tempting to allow himself to see this like Cyrus's loss: a part of who he was taken away from him, making him no longer the whole person he once was. Cyrus had regained that part of himself, but Vesryn never could. His better half, he'd often called her when he was younger. That was before he'd met Estella Avenarius, of course.
"It's a good thing I'm not going anywhere, then. I've got plenty of work to do, to be where I want to be." And he'd never truly get there, he knew. In pursuit of it though, with the people he cared for at his side, he could end up somewhere he was satisfied with. "And she gave me the chance. To say nothing of your efforts. I suppose it would be remiss of me to let the opportunity pass by."
"Mountain path's just ahead!" Astraia called back. "What do you say we pick up the pace?"
Vesryn exhaled again, recentering himself, and offering Stel a tentative grin. "Home sounds wonderful right about now, doesn't it?"
"Like the very best of ideas." Estella released his hand, urging Nox forward with her knees. "Think you can beat me there?"
He spurred his horse on after her. "I look forward to finding out."
It was one of those things that one couldn't really appreciate the full weight of it until it was gone. And Vesryn had done plenty of appreciating before this. He wondered if this wasn't similar to how Cyrus felt, when his magic had been taken from him. Perhaps the two weren't so different. He reached inside, for that part of himself that had been there for so long it had become essential to him, part of who he was, and he found... nothing. Silence and emptiness.
Was this how everyone else felt, all the time? He must have forgotten what it was like, back when he lived in Denerim. He'd come to regard that person as someone separate from who he was today. But now he was that boy again, feeling clueless and lost and unsure of his every motion. Like the great stone bridge into Skyhold had been replaced with a rickety one made of wood planks.
They rode back west at a slow pace, with no need to rush anymore. Any pain left in Vesryn was simply that of soreness from the journey. Physically he actually felt wonderful, but perhaps that was just a relative thing. He would have to look forward to training again. He expected he'd never be Khari's superior in skill again. Somehow that didn't bother him as much as he thought it would.
The giant they'd felled and disposed of as best they could. Powerful as it was, it had been nearing the end of its days, lacking any exposure to the red lyrium it needed to survive. The remaining lyrium that had grown on it posed a threat still, but with luck its power would fade and diminish without doing any further harm. Stel would report it to Leon, and he'd send a team back to investigate and properly deal with it if needed. They'd done their job, and put the poor beast to rest.
Astraia had handled herself well. She'd taken to riding in the front, her impressive halla effortlessly carrying her forward. The confidence she'd gained here was warming to see, not to mention the physical and magical strides she'd made with the help of her teachers. She'd fought admirably against the giant, though it had been Harellan and Khari together that struck the killing blow. All of them were in need of a good rest by now, but if they kept their pace they could reach Skyhold by the day's end.
Vesryn was content to sit in the saddle, and observe the silence. He had only his own thoughts to interact with now, and it was aggravating to find how quickly they turned on one another.
Cyrus, riding considerably further back, had looked distracted for much of the trek so far, as though his attention were pulled elsewhere. By this point, it wasn't too difficult to tell that something had happened to him after he'd taken in the Well, though its exact nature remained unspoken. It seemed to take him some effort to focus on his more immediate surroundings, but he adjusted the trajectory of his horse slightly to move her up alongside Vesryn's.
“Are you...?" He trailed off, perhaps deciding that the question wasn't quite right. “Stop me if this is insensitive, but can I ask you a question? About what just happened?"
The first question indeed wasn't right, and not one he knew how to begin answering. The second one... "I would think you had a better view of everything that happened than I did." His tone didn't come out the right way. It was a little harsh, even. It was... strange. The feeling of loss, being on the other side of it. What had he ever really lost before this? His parents were alive and well, his friends had managed to survive one horror after another. He had no practice at dealing with any of this. And Saraya had been so, so distant from her loss... the pain she felt towards was never this sharp, this biting. It was a deep ache, like an old wound that hadn't begun to heal properly.
"I'm sorry," he said. "What would you like to ask?"
Cyrus didn't seem to take the waspishness personally, though he did look to be reconsidering his question. “Not all of it, actually. I—you were dead, Vesryn. I realize that is probably far from the most important part of all this as far as you're concerned, but... was there... anything?" He frowned, looking dissatisfied by something. “I've been close more than once myself, and I suppose I—" he shook his head. “Never mind. My thoughts have been strange lately, I'm sorry."
He wasn't used to filtering his thoughts quite like this. Not sifting through Saraya's feelings alongside his own, but instead stopping himself from saying a hundred things that would feel better in an instant, and then lead to regret. "It's easy to forget that I'm not the only one going through something right now. I've... admittedly sort of blocked out the rest for a while now, seeing as I didn't think I'd still be alive right now." He liked to think he was good at setting aside his own pain to put others first, but the past few weeks had been more than even he could handle.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you what you want to hear. I don't remember dying, or being dead. There was just... nothing." He glanced sideways at him, the first time he'd turned his gaze from the path for a while. "Unless that was what you wanted to hear."
Cyrus let out a soft huff at the last part, shaking his head slightly. “Not especially. But—the people who've thought about this sort of thing, they tend to think that when someone dies, they... return to the fade. The ancients did, in uthenera. Returned from whence they came." He furrowed his brows; clearly he was working around to something in particular, but it was as if his thoughts meandered as well, always something else on the tip of his tongue and half of them bitten back. “What I mean to say is... you might meet her again someday. In a dream. And it might be that the her you see is every bit as real as the one you felt."
He paused, dropping his eyes to his hands. “I hope that's true. In general, but also just... for you."
"I..." He wasn't immediately sure how to respond. Apparently he'd been just as surprised to hear that sort of thing from Cyrus as Cyrus was to give it. "Thank you. I hope you're right." He hoped he would see her. Though of all the dreams he'd had... how would he ever know she was real? That what he was seeing wasn't just the creation of his own mind, or spirits in the Fade playing to his expectations, conjuring what he wanted to see? He didn't even know what she looked like.
"And I hope that if she's with her people again, that they forgive her, and accept her." His eyes fell as well, but only for a moment. "Listen, I don't think I ever thanked you, for being here. It meant a lot. To both of us. If there's ever anything I can do to help with what you're going through... I'm here. For the foreseeable future, it would seem."
“I'm glad to hear it." Cyrus's tone warmed slightly and he nodded, though for some reason he also winced. “And thank you. I'll be... all right. The Well is just—the information's going to take some time to settle, is all." With a slightly strained smile, he dropped back a bit, perhaps to deal with whatever part of it was bothering him at the moment.
It was about another half-hour before he found himself within quiet speaking distance of Stel. Nox was not a halla, but the warhorse seemed to require little to no direction from his rider even so. She was slumped a little forward against his thick neck, her cheek pressed to the roots of his sleek mane. She'd been somewhat out of it for most of the ride, dozing on and off in the saddle, but she was awake when he drifted nearer and offered him a smile, pushing back into a more normal seated position.
"Hey, you," she said softly, pushing a few loose hairs away from her face where they'd come loose. "How are you feeling?"
"About half as much as I was when we came out here." There was little humor in the way he said it. "But considering that most of what I felt was pain... perhaps that's for the best. And Saraya, I hope, is no longer in any pain at all." He knew she was more than capable of weathering it, and had done so well before he had ever come along into her life, but still... the idea of not being able to share in that, the bad as well as the good. It still seemed so foreign to him. So strange.
"I'm sorry I put you through that." It had taken him some time to really understand what they'd told him, that he'd been dead for a moment, and that Stel had restarted his heart. He hadn't even known that sort of thing was possible. Even spirit healers couldn't bring people back from the dead, not without letting a spirit into the body, and that sort of possession had a way of turning out far, far worse in the long run, if it didn't happen immediately. And as far as he knew, he had no new entity in his body, replacing the familiar one. "Saraya told me the separation would give me a chance at living. I guess... I should've been more clear about the danger. I didn't mean for any of it to happen this way."
That seemed to surprise her, but the expression was no more than a flicker over her face before it disappeared again. "No," she said immediately. "It's all right. I panicked, as I'm sure you can imagine. But if I'd been thinking about that possibility the whole time... I don't know how well the rest would have gone." She expelled a breath, more a sigh than anything. "I tried for a really long time to... accept what was probably going to happen. I honestly don't think I ever succeeded. Much better to go through this than the alternative."
She paused, clearly considering what she'd just said, then backtracked. "Ah—for me, that is. Not to suggest that..." She sighed again, more obviously. "You know what I mean."
He thought she'd have been able to do it, but that was really an irrelevant discussion at this point, anyway. It happened the way it did, and he'd survived by her skill and her ability to push through. As for everything that came before it, what she said... he felt like she'd had the more difficult job of the two of them. Watching him die, rather than being the one dying. To know that she was going to have to go on, and face all of the problems that remained for her, and do it without him. While for him there simply weren't going to be anymore problems once it was done. Even the briefest moment of thought about how that would feel if their positions were reversed was more than he was willing to contemplate.
"I'd like to think I don't scare easily, but..." he expelled an uneasy breath, shifting in his saddle. "I can't help but be afraid for the future. I'm not sure what I am without her, or what I'm capable of. If I'll still be the same person. In fact I already know that I'm not." He felt lesser, weaker, smaller. He wouldn't forget all the things she'd taught him, at least he thought he wouldn't forget, but how could be certain that who he'd become wouldn't just fade away? Who could say, with a situation as unique as his, what the effects would be now that she was gone?
"I just... hope I can be enough to help, somewhere, somehow."
Estella leaned to the side, far enough to reach forward and pick up his hand, tangling her fingers through his and then sitting back, drawing their joined hands into the space between where their horses walked. A habit of hers, to turn to touch by way of expressing the important things, or even the mundane ones. Not a general tendency, but one she had with those closest to her.
"Now you listen to me, Vesryn Cormyth," she said, voice dropped low enough that no one would hear but him. "Things are going to change, that's true. And I don't doubt that it's going to be hard, to learn how to live by yourself again. Some things will be more difficult, and take more work, and come more slowly. But you have always, always been enough to help, all by yourself." She paused a moment, brows knitting, then a smile bloomed over her face, slow and sweet.
"How did it go? You were when I first met you, you are in this very moment, and the person you're becoming will be too. Extraordinary as she was, it has nothing to do with Saraya, or the things she lent you. These are things that have happened to you, but they're not what defines you. And they're not the reason we need you." The smile slipped away, until only earnestness remained. "Not the reason I need you."
He ran his thumb along the side of her hand, releasing a breath. It was calmer already, eased out by her words. Even if some of them were his, thrown back in his face when he needed them most. It was so tempting to allow himself to see this like Cyrus's loss: a part of who he was taken away from him, making him no longer the whole person he once was. Cyrus had regained that part of himself, but Vesryn never could. His better half, he'd often called her when he was younger. That was before he'd met Estella Avenarius, of course.
"It's a good thing I'm not going anywhere, then. I've got plenty of work to do, to be where I want to be." And he'd never truly get there, he knew. In pursuit of it though, with the people he cared for at his side, he could end up somewhere he was satisfied with. "And she gave me the chance. To say nothing of your efforts. I suppose it would be remiss of me to let the opportunity pass by."
"Mountain path's just ahead!" Astraia called back. "What do you say we pick up the pace?"
Vesryn exhaled again, recentering himself, and offering Stel a tentative grin. "Home sounds wonderful right about now, doesn't it?"
"Like the very best of ideas." Estella released his hand, urging Nox forward with her knees. "Think you can beat me there?"
He spurred his horse on after her. "I look forward to finding out."