if you love me let me go (OPEN)

[trudge]

Who: Rowan Cousland and all the unfortunate souls he might run into
Broadcast: Text
Action: The Bishop, The Iskaulit, Probably everywhere else he's allowed.
When: Anytime after 11/23



It's been a little over a week since they returned to Orbit, and apparently that is too long for Rowan Cousland to be sober and left to his own devices. Zevran is around, and there are a few others who 'visit' his blanket-fort bedroom for idle romps. But none of them keep the nagging voice in the back of his head at bay. No amount of mind-blowing sex or company of any sort keeps him from thinking of everything that's happened. It was easier on the planet to forget, to not think about anything because there were cannibals to kill and people to protect. No time to think. No time to remember. No time to regret.

He had time now, though. Too much. Back home he never regretted anything he did, not even dying, but that had been easier when death was the last and final thing that came. Now, he was alive again, with the knowledge that his brother was alive and left alone. Once he had been the last Cousland. Now it was Fergus, and it was his fault. And Zevran —

No. He needed to forget. He needed a distraction. He needed alcohol.

Soooo much alcohol.


GUESS WHO'S DRUNK? I guess Rowan.

He starts off at The Space Bar simply because it had the word 'bar' in it. He's there every night for at least a week, for hours on end taking shot after shot and mug after mug of whatever he can shove down his throat. He doesn't have a lot of money on hand, but he has a silver tongue, crafty hands, and enough charisma to charm the fuck out of some other patrons if necessary.

He flirts with everyone of legal age and the more he drinks the more ridiculous he becomes. Which is saying a lot, because he's ridiculous to begin with.

If he recognizes someone, they're approached almost immediately by a likely inebriated Rowan — a drink in his hand and the most fake smile you've ever seen in your life. He pulls it off though, somehow. Years of practice? Definitely. He unceremoniously slams his drink on the table, sloshing whatever liquid is inside around onto the wood.

"Fancy meeting you here." He says with all the eloquence of a completely shitfaced sailor. "Buy a girl a drink?" But he already has a drink, you say? Rowan downs the remainder of his alcohol in one long swig, shaking his head afterwards as the fire hits his throat. Anyway, buy a girl a drink?

Alternatively, for those he doesn't recognize so easily — no, nevermind, there's no alternatively. He's doing the same thing.


He eventually migrates to Malum at some point, already drunk and probably kicked out for a) starting (finishing) a fight, b) hitting on the waitstaff, c) peeing in a corner, or d) all of the above. The neon lights are pretty and distracting; just what he needs during this long bender he's secretly hoping might end with him in a coma.

He tries to behave a little better despite his absolutely piss poor state of being, but it's all for not when he spots the beautiful shiny pole on the dancefloor. After asking around a bit on the true purpose of the pole, Rowan decides he's going to use it for its intended purpose. He shoves some broody nerd leaning against it - trying to chat up some uninterested woman. have some class - and promptly sheds his shirt, garnering the attention of everyone nearby. Disgusted? Intrigued? Slightly aroused? All solid responses to an inebriated man shimmying up an down the pole. He's not a great poledancer, but he's flexible and nice to look at?


THE BISHOP
Most of the time Rowan passes out in someone else's room, or in the hallway on some ship (the Bishop, the Iskaulit, somewhere else??), and it's only if he's really lucky that he ends up back in his own room. Even through a haze of alcohol the sight of the blanket fort still, for whatever reason, always seems to upset him. He remembers him and Zevran excitedly building it together, he remembers telling him that he and Fergus used to do this, and then he remembers the knowledge that set all of this off in the first place.

He should be happy. And he is! He's fucking ecstatic to hear that his brother is alive. But Rowan isn't. Rowan pissed his potential future away when he decided to be a hero. He throws the small bottle in his hand clear across the room, shattering it and letting the remaining contents trickle down the wall. It looks like blood - red, seeping blood that reminds him of home in the worst possible way.

He should be happy, but he isn't. Second chances don't matter if you piss them away, too. Lying and faking your way through them like you did the first time. He's pathetic.


TEXT
ANYONE DTF? ??? ?????? ?????? [ That's it. ]


( OOC: feel free to decide how drunk you want rowan to be when you meet him/when during his bender it is. or just wing it. if you want a specific scenario hmu @ winemom and we can discuss something! C: also you can switch to brackets if you want. )

Comments

[trudge]

Rowan laughs so hard he actually starts coughing. "In the morning? Maker, you have high hopes for me. I plan to be drunk long into the afternoon... three days from now." But for whatever it's worth, he'll drink the water that comes — and then promptly stop the barmaid along the way to make sure she gets him something with booze to counter it.

Profit? No way.

[bryces_pup]

Riona knocks back the rest of her wine before setting it aside. Yeah, she needs to be dead sober for what's about to happen, she reckons.

"Perpetually drunk. That's quite a feat there." Personally she's never done it herself. She remembers Fergus once telling her he was drunk for three days straight in Antiva. She also remembers how stupidly sick he said he got afterwards. "So, what's the occasion for wanting to be permanently drunk?"

As the tender takes away her wine glass and asks if she wants more, Riona declines, instead asking for two glasses of water.

[trudge]

"Do you think there's a record for it? I bet I can beat it." Is he serious? Probably. It's not exactly his end goal but if he ends up breaking the universal record for longest bender without dying then hey, bonus points for him right?

That is a very up front question. One Rowan doesn't particularly feel like answering but, it's your lucky day Riona because his mouth works faster than his brain when he's drunk off his ass. "Did you ever love someone you couldn't have?" What The Fuck.

[bryces_pup]

Remember that look Eleanor had, that stern, motherly, "did you really just say that I didn't raise you like this" look she had that could stop a man cold in his tracks? Yeah, Riona's sort of inherited it. Granted, it's not quite to the efficacy that Eleanor had, but it's there, and she's giving it to Rowan right now. "How about you don't?" she says as the drinks arrive. She pushes the water towards him.

But oh boy, does that question catch her off guard. She blinks stupidly a moment, almost answering "No". Which, it's true, she really hasn't ever known that, but that's not what he needs to hear. "Probably one of the most heartbreaking situations there is. Who can't you have?"

[trudge]

She looks so much like her mother — their mother — in that moment that Rowan almost sobers up for a second. The resemblance is uncanny, so reminiscent of the expression Eleanor wore a thousand times when looking upon her youngest son. He misses being scolded almost as much as he misses his mother smiling at him, telling him how proud she was even if he was absolutely ridiculous at times.

"No one. Don't worry about it." He mutters, taking the water and pouring it down his throat purely as an excuse to not talk.

[bryces_pup]

Well, at least he's drinking the water, even if it's for the wrong reasons.

Riona's expression softens, watching him intently as he chugs down that water. She almost wants to laugh at his words. Really? You drop a question like that and then try to backpedal? Buddy, come on now.

"Worrywart here. I'm going to worry no matter what." She scoots towards him, leaning on her elbows on the bartop. "I don't think someone drinks themselves into such a stupor and then asks that question if it wasn't related." But who could he mean? He hasn't been in the fleet long enough to fall in love with someone here, quite frankly. Unless it's someone from back home...

"...Zevran?"

[trudge]

FIRST OF ALL he's drunk so cut him some slack. Second of all shut up.

Rowan trained as a bard under Leliana's tutelage. And even before that he mastered the art of faking it until he made it. Everyone believed what he wanted them to believe — and what he sometimes believed himself: that he was content with his lot in life, no matter how shitty it was, and that even when the odds were stacked against him he was still happy with what little he had. No one could read him so easily.

But in this moment, he falters. Were he not drunk, perhaps he could have worked through it, but the emotion is written all over his face now. It's obvious she's right.

"How the fuck did you guess that?"

[bryces_pup]

Oh thank the Maker she was right because it was a bit of a wild guess. She knows that Zevran knows Rowan; the familiarity between the two of them and him addressing him as "my Warden" made that pretty clear.
Her second guess was that he was in love with Alistair which, the only reason she'd consider that was because she's married to him, ergo Rowan can't have him. But she's gonna just keep that to herself for now. Best not to give him something to latch onto and avoid the issue at hand.

"Because this is more or less what I would do if I were faced with something - or someone - I didn't know what to do with but couldn't entirely avoid, and that was eating me up so much inside that I'd rather get myself drunk beyond comprehension than face it." Hey, it's not just you Rowan. "I know Zevran knows you. You haven't been here long enough to have fallen for someone else, so it's someone you already knew. And given that he's here and as are you, right after you, well..." Died. "Coming here, seeing him, after everything that just happened... It must be a lot."

[trudge]

Well, he's not in love with Alistair, but he certainly wouldn't deny having a crush on the guy. But that's beside the point.

It's almost weirdly comforting to know that, if put in a similar situation, Riona would do the same thing he's doing now. Like he can somehow justify his shitty emotional response to having feelings and caring about people.

"We had an agreement." He says after a long pause, taking in everything she's said. "It was just supposed to be sex. But I feel things, Riona. And they're fucking terrifying." There's clearly no point in beating around the bush here, because she's already figured it out and she has the advantage of being sober — easier to think without alcohol clouding your mind. "Being dead was so much easier. I wouldn't have to be reminded of all the people I left behind. I didn't want to know how much they hurt. I didn't think — " He rests his head in his arms, clutching his empty glass tightly. He didn't think, that's what the real problem was.

[bryces_pup]

Sometimes she wonders still if she had done the right thing, taking up Morrigan's offer. If it had somehow made her a coward for doing so or if she had really done Alistair and herself any favors by agreeing. But seeing Rowan like this, with all his regrets and his pain, she knows now more than ever she made the right call, no matter what the price was.

While she tries to find the words, she puts an arm around him, her hand squeezing his shoulder in an attempt to comfort, if only a bit. There's not much fixing what happened back home with him. It's done. He can't come back. But here he's alive, even though it means facing what he did, and now can't have, back in Thedas. "That people care about you? And that you were able to fall in love with someone in the tumultuous point in your life?" It was for her, and even though it was the last stretch of his, she imagines it's the same. "Why does it scare you so much?"

[trudge]

"Yeah." he says in response to both suggestions. He knew people cared about him, but he didn't think it was a deep enough bond that when he died they'd actually be upset about it for longer than a week or two. His duty was to end the Blight, avenge his family, and then ... then what? Then nothing, he had thought. He was done, everything was done. But he was wrong.

And don't even get him started on the love thing. Love was hard for him. All of his love had been given to his family and when it was ripped from him he just... he couldn't bring himself to express it again. But he felt it still, despite all the attempts to hide it, and he hated it. He hated that he felt it now of all times, when so little could be done about it.

Rowan leans into her, welcoming the embrace because fuck he needs all the human contact he can get right now. "Because I don't want to lose anyone again." He laughs, mirthless. "But I guess I did that anyway, without even telling them how much I actually cared. I suck."

[bryces_pup]

Riona's been mostly taking educated guesses up until now, but when he says he doesn't want to lose anyone again, she knows exactly what - who - he's talking about. It's an older ache for her now, distant and somewhat healed. But to him, it's still rather fresh. That horrible night in Highever, when they had lost everything they had ever had.

"You can't bottle up your heart. There's always going to be pain, and always going to be loss. But those risks are worth the joy." Easier said than done, she knows. But it's strange how differently they reacted to their loss. Rowan tried to distance himself and guard his heart, whereas Riona reached out and clung to those she could find. Those like Alistair, Leliana and Wynne who, in their own strange ways, filled in the missing pieces in her heart, or as much as anyone could. There was no replacing her parents, or Oriana or Oren, or even the beloved servants, but they had helped ease the losses. "Even if you never told them as much, some part of them knew. You don't spend a year together and not get to know each other somewhat well. You gave them all a chance, didn't you? Let them be part of something beyond themselves, when you hardly knew who they were." If he met them in the same ways she had, at least.

"You don't suck. You made a decision based on what you thought you knew at the time. You still stopped the Blight and saved Ferelden."

i remember why i didnt reply to this for so long now

[trudge]

Even if he had survived, he doubts that wound would ever truly heal. Would years make it hurt less? He would never know. Now, though, the pain of that loss still held like a vice over his heart, squeezing every so often to remind him that they were truly gone and he — well, he just had to live with it.

His instinctive reaction to 'you can't bottle up your heart' is a solid 'watch me' that he has to will himself not to say aloud. He's been doing it for years! He can keep doing it! Probably. Maybe. And he doesn't want his friends to know that he loved them deep deep down. That means they'll remember, and they'll suffer longer than they should for someone like him. "I did. But I never said they had to do the same for me." He admits, scoffing at the idea.

Rowan sighs, propping his chin on her shoulder. Was this hug going to end? Only if she stopped it first, honestly. "Sometimes I wonder if I should have taken Morrigan up on that offer. You seem to be ... well off."

womp

[bryces_pup]

Probably a good thing he didn't say it out loud, because it likely would have earned him a smack over the head.

She's content to let the hug linger for now, especially since he doesn't seem eager for it to end. There's just so much sadness in him, and she wishes she could banish it. "I think they already did. Come on now, you know how they are. If Wynne or Shale or Sten or most of the others really didn't believe in you, they would have left." Some more easily than others, but everyone has their breaking point.

Finally she pulls back, though she keeps her hands on his shoulders. She gives them a squeeze. "For the most part, yes. But... well, the Calling's still hanging over my head like an executioner's axe, with no way of knowing when it'll come swinging down." Rowan will be spared that, at least. "Taking Morrigan's offer wasn't easy. In hindsight, sure, I know it was the right choice for us, but it was a huge leap of faith. And pitching it to Alistair was..." Hard. So very hard. And then sitting and waiting for it to be over, agonizing over her decision and wondering if she didn't just make an enormous mistake. "I had to ask the man I love to father a bastard. You know how sore of a subject that is for him."