009 // i carry your bones in my heart

[serpentis]

Who: Dorian and YOU
Broadcast: Fleet-Wide
Action: On the Three Twins!
When: 8/11, Midnight.

[It's rare in Drift Fleet to see Dorian as The Necromancer. He plays with people, he flirts with them. Occasionally his humor is morbid. But that's just him.

But tonight is different.

The broadcast is from a darkened cargo bay of the SS Three Twins.

Dorian is wearing black robes with a pointed hood, and as the broadcast starts, he gestures with a skull-topped staff, seeming to almost do it for show. There's a whispering of something circling him, a spirit, perhaps, and candles illuminate around him as it vanishes.]

I do hope you're having a good night. I had nearly lost track of the date, what with the odd stars, but I'm quite certain that it is the beginning of the eighth month, Matrinalis. Which means, for those of you unaccustomed to Thedosian holidays, it is All Soul's Day. Or close enough. ...regardless...

[He conjures a small flicker of fire in his hand, the light casting shadows on his face, the glowing purple lines of necromantic sigils and runes seemingly etched into his hands and arms.]

It is the day we Thedosians remember our dead. As a necromancer, I daresay I am qualified to lead the celebrations, if you will.

You are welcome to come and extinguish a candle for those you've lost.

((OOC: A combination network post and mingle log! Start up an action thread if you'd like, thread with other folks, just leave a comment in the subject if your character is looking to chat with Dorian.))

Comments

[wolfuncaged]

[Fenris chuckles, low and gravelly. He knows what Dorian means by that, in his own way. It's a comfort, funnily enough. ]

I'm sure you could if you tried.

[He nods at the candles. ]

I presume you have one for Felix.

[serpentis]

[Dorian waves a hand and the flames flicker and extinguish. For anyone else, it would have been a show, but with Fenris he keeps it as to the point as he can, flames vanishing and chasing toward three candles that remain lit, the only light in the cargo hold.]

I do.

[Felix, for many years, his only friend. More like a brother than a friend, really, the closest thing he had to one. Felix was dead and gone now, Dorian unable to say a proper goodbye both times.

And that was precisely why he did this on All Soul's Night, a way to gain closure and say goodbye.]

He was a far better man than many, better than I could hope to be. There was something odd about him that way, he was entirely selfless and I'm certain that, though we were never anything but close friends, we loved each other as siblings must.

[Three candles were still lit, and one flickered, the light extinguishing.]

I suppose he must be in a better place now, free from the pain of the blight in his veins. I should have been there...but I wasn't, and I suppose I will always live with that regret. But I know that Felix would simply tell me the same thing a Chantry mother would.

[He gestures, vaguely, to the two remaining candles.]

No matter what we've lost, some light remains.

[wolfuncaged]

He was a good man, and I am sorry to not have the chance to know him back in Thedas.

[Whenever he inevitably returns and everything that happened here, and in Exsilium, will just be another lost memory to add to his pile. He is quiet and still for a moment, before getting up and blowing out one of the candles. He stares at the smoke of the dying flame as it swirls upwards, before moving to sit beside Dorian again. ]

Leandra. Hawke's mother. She was a wonderful woman, who clucked around us all as if we were her own.

[The corner of one of his lips tugs upwards, briefly. ]

She kept telling me that I needed to eat more. She- [the smile vanishes, the frown is back] she did not deserve that death.

[serpentis]

[That made sense. Hawke seemed entirely similar to Dorian in that they both smiled and laughed and put on enough bluster to pretend that everything was okay. That their hearts weren't bleeding.

Dorian is silent for a few minutes, watching Fenris, and then he takes his hand again.

So much goes unsaid between them. In some cases, it's because they don't need to speak on things. They have an odd sort of understanding. And yet, there are things that Dorian will never understand. He lets so much go unsaid between them for fear of driving Fenris away, out of desperation that one day Fenris will wake up and realize that this- that Dorian- is all a mistake. That Dorian doesn't deserve kindness, doesn't deserve love. If not because he's an aberration, then because he is an Altus.

He takes a heavy breath as that finality settles in, and he remembers, vaguely as much as he can, one drunken night in a casino, and it brings a bitter smile to his face. They wanted this, wanted each other, needed this as much as air in their own ways. Fenris needed someone to call his, and Dorian needed someone to call him his.

He remembers that drunken night, and it brings with it the sadness that certainly this too will end. They will leave this place, return to Thedas. Dorian will forget Fenris, will forget all of this...or Fenris will be stolen from him without so much as a goodbye.

Perhaps that's what's driven this from the start- a desperate yearning for something familiar and yet entirely alien, for the both of them. And what they have is love, in a way that only the Tevene can love- fierce and hot, like a heated blade. They love with nails and teeth breaking skin, with angry words as Fenris pushes him, again, to realize that there were so many things he was wrong about. They love like two animals licking their wounds to make them heal, ripping open old scars and letting them bleed.

Their love isn't the comfortable familiarity of a happy marriage. It's not the years of being friends and then lovers. It's a constant fight, a constant struggle to push the other to be better, to be more.

To be, in their own way, complete. To have something they needed, desperately, and now they swallow it down like a drowning man might air.

He gently squeezes his hand, and touches Fenris's face.]

We have each other for now, amatus.

[And then he kisses him, and it's not a kind one. It's a challenge, it's passion, and it's filled with that same wanting, to push Fenris to retaliate and leave a mark on him, a memento that Dorian can look at and remember that he's not alone. That would ache in a way that reminds him of how heavy and full his heart is.]

[wolfuncaged]

[Fenris hadn't been expecting the kiss. He'd turned his thoughts inward, on how often he'd seen people vanish, without a trace. Worse, how often they arrived again with no memory of what happened. That, he decided, hurt the most. To remember when someone you cared about knew nothing. When you were nothing more than a stranger to them.

It's why he's avoided familiar faces from Exsilium. He is so used to being the one who remembers nothing, he never realised being the one who remembers everything is so, so much worse.

He absolutely dreads it happening to him and Dorian. Yet, he's seen it happen to so many others, the fatalistic part of him knows it is but an inevitability. A part of him will die that day, and he doubts he will be the same ever again.

He starts, at the kiss, shocked out of his thoughts, but soon moves to meet it. His hands grasp and claw at Dorian's robes (his stupid, black robes, like he's trying to make out his as dark as they are) pushing closer.

He returns the kiss with a dangerous, biting fierceness. Possessive and terrified of loss at the same time. As if letting him go would mean he'd vanish into the ether. ]

[serpentis]

[Dorian was like a summer storm off the coast- tempestuous and hot, thundering and all flash. Fenris was much like the lyrium etched into his skin- like a clawing yearning, something that races white-hot through Dorian's veins.

This kiss is like the others. Every other kiss is a silent goodbye, a fatalistic realizing that one day they will forget each other, that this meant so much right now and yet will ultimately mean nothing. Dorian wishes, he hopes it isn't true, but at the same time, he cannot fight against what has been observed.

He can wish all he wants, but that will not replace the fact that life will go on. And perhaps that makes this feel all the more intense. Where love might normally be a small candle, theirs is a funeral pyre, a blaze against the night that marks an ending. It is fearful, and it is defiant, and it is everything that they need.

Because somehow, in this odd space between worlds, the necromancer finally feels alive.

Their love was doomed from the start to be a passing, fleeting thing, and that made them all the more passionate, because they knew with certainty that every touch, every kiss, was stolen from their borrowed time.

When he kisses him, it's with heat, with fierceness that matches Fenris's, pulling him close as if silently praying that somehow this will be more than fleeting.]

[wolfuncaged]

[Fenris makes a noise against Dorian's lips, part-growl, part-sigh. He allows himself to be pulled close, half sliding on the man's lap, one hand sliding up the back of his neck to tangle roughly in the hair there.

This was what he always needed. Life made so m=by touch and breath. With fierce, teeth-clashing kisses, where pausing for breath happened rarely, and the breathes brought up were gasping and shuddering. Not just from the lack of air, but from the sheer force of the raw passion being released, unfettered.

It makes this real. Make shim beleive it can be anchored when in reality it can drift away at any moment. ]