twoforsurprise | One Short Day In Antiva City

One Short Day In Antiva City

Davrin might have forgotten Lucanis' offer about the tailor, but he had not. Not all of their excursions were for fighting demons or cultists or darkspawn, and eventually Rook was going treasure hunting on the Rivani coast with Taash and Harding. And just them. Quite adamant that only Taash and Harding were needed, in fact.

Andraste preserve them, Rook was apparently becoming interested in matchmaking.

It worked out, though. The timing. Lucanis ever so casually mentions that Davrin promised to assist him in some errands in Antiva and Rook is just so happy they're not at each other's throats that they're told to not take however long they need. Lucanis makes a mental note to pick up something nice for Rook when they're in Antiva City.

Ah, Antiva City. A less beautiful Treviso, Lucanis used to say. That was before the Ossuary, before the occupation, before the blight. Now it's hard to not see everything that's been lost. He doesn't insult Davrin by assuming the man can't keep up with the Crow routes along the rooftops and across ziplines, so much faster than the weaving crowded streets up the hill the city is built on overlooking the harbor the few times they need to duck down to street level.

"Should be right around - ah, there it is," Lucanis declares once they're half way up the hill, the financial district of the city settled between the Palace at the top and the harbor and all the wealth the shipping industry brings. This time when he drops down to the street level it is where they'll stay for the time being, heading to an understated store front with a simple hanging sign that looks like an embroidered rose carved into the wood of it.

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"I'll give you the leather for it!" Teia says with a grin. Lucanis rolls his eyes. Clearly any protest would be found as an excuse to push more, so-

"As long as it's black."

That gets a laugh from Teia that has the edge of one that was desperately needed. She pats Lucanis on the shoulder and gives him a gentle shove towards Davrin and the direction of the Eluvian.

"Get some rest! I better not see you for at least a few days!"

Lucanis gave a wave, and much like with Davrin, did not make any promises. When the two were halfway back to the Eluvian though, he spoke up - quiet, to just be the two of them. Well, and Assan.

"It was just you and Assan," he says. No Rook. No other backup.

"I was the one that lost you."

It wasn't exactly true. Davrin was more than happy to confirm that all of Lucanis' choices were fully his own. He didn't feel guilty about their argument, wasn't going to blame himself if Lucanis got killed and pretend it was because of something he said. He was a grown assassin that had survived more than most people could dream of, Davrin wouldn't do the disservice of acting like he wasn't capable of making up his own damned mind.

But that didn't mean he really wanted to tell Rook the two of them had argued like stubborn asses and he'd said nothing as Lucanis marched off into the Blight alone. That was just between them.

"And I told you I'd come looking. But, if you've got a preferred rescue party, I'll take it into account next time."

Because, clearly, there was going to be a next time. Regardless of threats of black leather collars.

"If you need the back up, I would not deny you that."

... He actually kind of preferred that it wasn't this big deal. That it had just been Davrin and he didn't need to explain himself to Rook who would surely treat this as more of a Thing than it was, and probably would be concerned any time he tried to leave on his own in the future. Letting it stay just between him and Davrin (and Assan, and Teia) was ... better.

There was always the chance Teia would say something to Rook, but he'd burn that bridge when he got to it.

"I am not a pet, I did not wander off and get 'lost'."

They were at the mouth of the Eluvian, just a short walk away from the Crossroads and the Fade, and Davrin paused there. It was a conversation about Lucanis, it should be up to him if it happened here or where the other members of their little group might pop in and interrupt at any moment. 'Mind your own business' was not a Lighthouse motto.

"You'd make a gods awful pet. But what do you call Spite ripping through Treviso? Looked pretty lost to me."

He didn't mean for it, but there's an edge of judgement there. Lucanis was too smart to be this stupid. He knew emotion, about Treviso, Spite, the past year, his past life, was messing with him. The same Davrin's own unsorted business with his family, the griffons, and the wardens messed with him from time to time, but to a larger degree given the sheer weight of what had become of Treviso. Understandable wasn't the same as acceptable, however. He'd laid his fingers over the wound that could have ended the man himself. Nothing about that was acceptable.

Nobody in the Lighthouse minded their own business. It was even happening right now.

Lucanis can muster the energy for a glare at the judgement in that tone. It's his city that got blighted, his city that he failed by letting it happen in the first place. His mess to clean up. If they knew exactly where those missing griffons where, Lucanis did not think Davrin would be keeping such a cool head. If it was his home that had been taken over by this crawling rot, his own family in danger even if he'd had to walk away from them.

"I survived," Lucanis says. Only with Davrin and Assan's rescue, but - "I knew what I was doing."

He didn't push Davrin's hand away.

"And what was that? Single handedly ending the blight?"

They were back where this started, pushing and prodding at an argument neither one was going to give any ground in. And had he learned from yesterday? Grown stronger, wiser, found how to take the higher road since he'd snipped with Lucanis before?

Hell no.

Davrin was ready and willing to dig his heels in harder, deeper, and with greater enthusiasm. Because he couldn't make Lucanis see how getting himself killed was a problem- not just for Treviso, or for Rook. But for Davrin. And the fact it was a problem was more annoying than any argument Lucanis could possibly offer. Annoying enough that, without adding any pressure with his hand still light over Lucanis' wound, Davrin straightened his shoulders and step a few inches closer. Leaning into yet another failed routine of trying to intimidate his point across.

Lucanis tilted his chin up, looking up to Davrin who was making use of every extra inch he had. He wondered if that often worked on people, or if he did it specifically for Lucanis. He could not recall Davrin trying to intimidate any of the others that way.

"Making sure a few more Fledglings got back safely, even if I failed to save them all."

Surely Davrin could understand the worthiness of that, wasn't that what Wardens did? So why was he being so damn obstinate about this? Was it that hard for him to imagine that a damn Crow did something other than indiscriminate murder?

He was a man that has had conversations with Rook with a giant axe in hand to underline a point. If he had that option available, he'd have gone with it. As it was, his inches would have to do.

"You're not in this alone."

This being...everything. Treviso. The Lighthouse missions. Spite. Probably more, he wasn't going to take the time to list it all out even to himself. Bellara had taken a team to save Veil Jumpers, he'd taken one to find rogue wardens. Lucanis took only Spite and his self-righteous suicidal tendencies.

"If you keep acting like it, you're not the only one that's going to get hurt. Because we'll come after you. Me, Rook, your Crows."

There's be no presumed dead again. Not from this team. Even if they found his corpse, Davrin would need to have Emmrich confirm it was really him first.

"So just take us."

Lucanis' jaw tightened, eyes hard as he considered Davrin's words, was clearly trying to come up with some counter to them that would be believed, be listened to. This was Crow business. This was family business. He had compromised with bringing Rook sometimes because Rook had helped him out of prison and was the one holding the last contract Caterina ever made for him.

And Davrin was a Grey fucking Warden, and this was, if anything, extremely his job. Asking for help for this - asking for it from him - it rubbed Lucanis the wrong way. Felt like weakness. Maybe it was all their pushing back and forth. Davrin challenged him the way few did that Lucanis put up with. Worse still, he kept being fucking right.

He hated it. Hated that he needed another person, that he had to rely on anyone except himself.

"Fine. Teia has already told me I need a handler and designated that your job. Try to keep up."

If Davrin was going to demand to come with, the heavy-armored warrior was going to have to learn to keep up with Lucanis' speed.

"You're-"

Davrin had started without thinking, ready for another round when-

Huh. He paused, cleared his throat and nodded. Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe he'd actually gotten through. Maybe Lucanis just listened to female Crows that didn't take his back talk. He may never know why, but at least they were getting somewhere.

"I'll try. But you try, too. Teia sounded serious about that collar."

It was possible they could meet somewhere in the middle- if they survived each other long enough to figure out where that was.

Now, the argument at least on the back burner, he was very much away he was still touching the other man- why had he done that to start with? It'd seemed important at the time. And it felt notable when he let his hand fall, ending the contact.

Teia had invoked the name of Caterina to get her way - one of the few people who could and not have the opposite effect, and even then she needed to tread carefully on how much it was used. For now it got the results she wanted. Lucanis privately suspected she might have the wrong idea about his and Davrin's relationship, but he'd let Davrin deal with that one if he was going to insist on following Lucanis when he needed to help Treviso.

As annoyed as he was with Davrin, he felt more displeased when he dropped his hand and broke the contact. No good, he needed to clear his head, and of course Spite was not giving him a moment's peace.

"She jokes with a straight face, it's better to assume she means what she says."

"She's a high ranking assassin. Trust me, I'm taking her seriously."

He didn't know her story, if she was another born and raised in the role or someone that had clawed her way to the top. Either option made for a highly dangerous individual. One Lucanis seemed to trust, but Davrin wasn't willing to extend the same grace Lucanis had earned to every Crow around. He'd watch his (and everyone else in the Lighthouse's) back around Teia.

He gestured to the Eluvian, stepping to the side slightly to make sure Lucanis went in first. He didn't expect the assassin to try to break their agreement already, but...well. He'd feel better seeing the man walk out of Treviso with his own eyes.

"C'mon. You need to rest."

The drugged and under watch seemed implied. Yesterday, Davrin would've said that was off the table for a spell. But injured and with Spite already primed? Maybe, if he didn't directly say it and just herded Lucanis along that path, it could work. It was harder to have an argument about something never said out loud.

Teia would surely be pleased to find out a Grey Warden found her intimidating enough to take very seriously, even if Lucanis suspected it was mostly Davrin's thing against Crows.

He rolled his eyes at Davrin ushering him forward, but stepped through with a "Yes, sir." that dripped with sarcasm.

Traveling through the Eluvians was such a strange sensation, like walking through a sheet of ice water that none the less left one completely dry. He stepped aside, waiting for Davrin and Assan under that strange sky where nothing felt 'real' and the black citadel hovered ominously in the distance.

"I need coffee," Lucanis corrected once Davrin was through as well. Because of course he was going to make it a fight.

So much for grace and tact. He let Assan start bounding up the stairs first, following after at a much more reasonable pace than the collection of feathers and endless energy.

"Coffee doesn't have any healing properties."

Said with the authority of a life long tea drinker. But after the state he'd found the man in, Lucanis would be insane to think Davrin isn't going to keep pushing.

Grace and tact were for people who would not be tying him up and drugging him. In a better state of mind Lucanis would even agree to the necessity of it, but, well. In a better state of mind he wouldn't have ended up here in the first place. So a fight it was, and this time there was not Teia to invoke Caterina's name in Davrin's corner.

"Disagree, it helps with headaches," Lucanis pointed out. His headaches anyway. Sometimes the headaches had a name. "Besides, I need to see if Assan likes the food. And make sure the kitchen didn't end up in a state overnight."

"Assan will eat anything. Except what I make him."

Unless it was gingerwort anything, but that was a whole different story. At this point it seemed more a game between them than anything...though maybe Lucanis was right about the yams. It could be mostly a yam based argument between them. Still, that didn't mean the man had to start his gourmet griffon cooking today.

"And we're covered in Blight. Neither of us are touching the kitchen until after a wash and a rest."

If he kept saying the second part maybe he'd just wear the man down. Unlikely, but he they could at least be equally stubborn.

"A wash I will agree with," Lucanis said. There, look, he was compromising. He doubted that would make Davrin inclined to do the same. The man was stubborn as a boulder and about as worthwhile to try to reason with. Up the stairs after Assan and through the second Eluvian, back to - well, still the Fade, but a part of it he had grown accustomed to, even if his eyes needed a moment to adjust to the dimness of the cellar-like room the eluvian in the light house was in as opposed to out under what passed for a sky in the crossroads.

The battle lay ahead, but a skirmish won was a skirmish won. Davrin would take his wins where he could.

Happy and pleased with himself as a griffon could be after fulfilling his calling of slaughtering darkspawn, Assan trotted off in search of Rook or some other pleading heart to pamper and praise him- and hopefully let them know they were back and there wasn't going to need to be an emergency search for the Warden and Crow.

Davrin doesn't hesitate a moment, following half a step behind Lucanis towards the communal bathhouse. Another good thing about the Fade that was starting to spoil him: endless clean water. No worries about poisoning the local water supply every time he had to clean the Blight off.

"If I go get medical supplies, are you going to vanish?"

It was a strange kind of respect between the two of them, that Davrin fully expected Lucanis to honestly answer 'yes' if that were his plan.

A strange sort of respect indeed. Lucanis considered it. Much as he would normally content himself with a bucket and a rag behind the kitchen, that would require going into it to fetch and as Davrin had said: blight. Besides, between wound care and fittings, there was so little of Lucanis that Davrin hadn't already seen it felt pointless to play coy about the rest.

And getting off his feet and into warm water sounded nice, if dangerously relaxing.

"No, but I will not wait up if you take too long," Lucanis said honestly.

"I can manage that."

Considering their lifestyle, there wasn't a time his kit wasn't assembled and ready. After the last time Lucanis helped him patch up, he'd even taken to leaving the kit in a fairly visible place near his books and carving materials. Just in case someone else needed to help without time to explain where everything was across his room.

He does take a moment to shuck off his armor, though, placing it on the designated 'infected by Blight' stand in the back corner of the room to clean and polish and return to the 'battle ready' area later. The shirt and boots meet the same fate, Davrin opting to just go in his trousers and bare feet, kit tucked under one arm, rather than track more Blight than he has to around the Lighthouse.

Then it's time to see if Lucanis had managed to do a two minute speed run of a rinse off. Or fall asleep in the hot water.

There was a moment when Lucanis actually felt bad that it might look like he'd decided to lie to Davrin after all. The robe he'd left stashed next to the baths was not where he left it, but a little searching merely found it to have been moved and Lucanis did not need to go fetch another. The caretaker or someone else? Hard to say. Paranoia had him doing a thorough check, and by the third pass he had to admit to himself that paranoia was all it was.

Well. No one else had witnessed it. So it didn't count.

It meant that he had only just stripped, gave his clothing a thorough soak to get the worst off for a better cleaning later, and had them spread out to dry when Davrin was done with his errand. He was just slipping into the perpetually warm water when the other man arrived.

"Did you stop to chat with someone?" He teased. And since Davrin was already mostly undressed, let himself look the other man over for injuries too. Two could play at that game.

Bruised? Yes. Especially along the sides of his ribs, the hips, places where small gaps in the armor needed for movement allowed for harder hits. But not so much bloodied. The benefit of plate armor. But carrying that weight had its own costs, leaving him sore and worn in muscles he hadn't known existed before he started wearing heavy armor. He was looking forward to the warm water.

So it's an unceremonious affair as he places the medical kit next to the edge of the pool, then slips off the trousers and smalls and lowers himself into the water. Scars congregated in the same areas as the bruises, particularly along his knees and where thigh met groin. The tiny gaps where darkspawn seemed to just love to dive in and try to bite and claw at, trying to pull their quarry down into the muck with them. The greater damage was usually hidden underneath, bones broken and healed and rebroken over the course of duty, but luckily there'd been nothing so much as fractured today.

He goes full in, head dunked under the water, before resurfacing with a small sigh. Lucanis' mocking ignored for the moment.

Once when Lucanis was probably sixteen or seventeen, it had been a miserably sweltering summer in Treviso. The canals had been low that year too, which meant any cool air off the water was minimal at best. Lucanis had been watching some of the others training. Viago was practicing with a rapier. He'd taken his shirt off for it. He was hardly the only one, but as he worked up and down the marked line, focused on the movement of his blade, Lucanis couldn't look away from a bead of sweat that was working itself down his chest and Lucanis felt hot all over in a way that had nothing to do with the summer.

He tried to not think about it, but that memory returned to him sometimes, vividly clear in some ways and faded in others. Usually when he slept, so another bonus to simply not sleeping anymore.

There was little similar between Viago and Davrin, yet the memory came back then as he looked the other man up and down to check for injuries. The hot air, the smell of too many bodies in too small a space, the bead of sweat trailing down sun-kissed skin–

Davrin ducked under the water and Lucanis forced himself to look away, forced the memory back into the dark corners of his mind where it belonged. An unnecessary thing. He busied himself with combing fingers through his own hair to make sure nothing was caught in it.

If Davrin noticed the look, he didn't show it. Instead, he had the limited restraint to give Lucanis a moment to fuss with his hair, just letting muscles melt in the warm water in the process. He'd never had long hair himself, but from all appearances it looked like a headache. Particularly when getting blood and viscera splashed all over the place was a daily occurrence. Though, watching Lucanis' fingers slip through the strands, he can remember the soft feeling himself, unconsciously touching thumb to forefinger out of the water in memory. So. It had some selling points.

But after a bit of watching and unwinding, he finally sat fully up and gestured for Lucanis to either come closer or at least get his chest out of the water.

"Let's have a look."

It was the longest Lucanis' hair had been since he was a youth. It was already overdue for a cut when he took the Minrathos job that had been the trap, then a year imprisoned... and it just hadn't been a priority to do anything with since getting out. He thought he should ask Neve about how to tie it back in a way that wouldn't make it worse when he was out and about. Sure she was a mage, but who else would he ask, Harding? Even a disaster like Lucanis could recognize 'Ferelden farm girl braids' were unlikely to be flattering.

But he had managed to get out anything that was trapped in the hair or the beard, and had a moment to relax himself before Davrin decided to be a nanny about it again.

"Mierda, again with the mother henning," said the man who was constantly complaining about everyone's diet. "The potion took care of it, I'm fine."

But he still stood and moved closer so Davrin could check as much as he wished. The skin was still terribly bruised and tender, the stage of healing where it would take little to break it back open again, with other smaller hurts scattered around.

cannot wait for Live Warden Reaction for Caterina still being alive.

is it against the code to shake an old woman if she's an assassin queen

I think the code has exceptions for that reason but also look out she will stab you

she can get in line

davrin pick less battles, put some of them down

never. he has a griffon to help carry them all

assan's gonna pull a muscle being that much of a carry, sir!

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Now wondering about the wash room situation in the lighthouse

bioware didn't provide. want to go classic anime hot springs episode style?

ALWAYS.

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