Fawntastic. [CLOSED]

[morework]

Who: Cullen Rutherford (morework) & [CLOSED to Alistair (fatherlesskind) & Ellie (backpacking)]
Where: The Dining Hall
When: backdated to Sunday, 3/6
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I don't know about always, but since my memory began. Which, after an encounter with the fawn, is not very much to go on for Cullen.
The Story:
He doesn't wear the armor anymore. The Garden is hardly a pressing threat, even spread through the mansion as it is by now. It will recede again, with time, he is sure of it. Sure enough. The wardrobes are more than happy to provide simpler threads, in the meantime. They feel light, bizarrely so, as if his shoulders couldn't remember a day they hadn't been encased in metal. He smiles at that, a bit. Who knows, his track record is hardly the best either.

His stomach-- hurts, actually, needles that did sharper in some moments than others. Impossibly sharp once or twice, perhaps at the third time he ought to visit the clinic about it. For now he still hears a faint growl, which makes him hope that food in his stomach will quiet the worst of it. And drink. Drink, again.

In the dining hall vines are slung around many of the tables, but Cullen finds an empty seat that will suffice. Anything but venison, he thinks, and a bowl appears in front of him. Some stew that smells of fish, and a loaf of fresh bread, still warm when he breaks it apart. Holds it to his lips and-- feels apprehensive? Can't imagine why he would. If the vines grow, he can always move his seat. If the pain gets worse, there are people to speak to.

Cullen shakes his head, and digs into the stew.

Comments

[morework]

...Should he ask about that reaction? He opens his mouth tentatively, but he's not sure about the words, and then Cullen gets ahead of himself anyway; thinks of all the questions he might expect. Just one more of them, but still. Still. Questions he can't seem to answer as well as he'd like, because years and years in Wonderland blur, but they must be years and years all the same. He's never known another place, this is still his home. This is still his home, he repeats silently, and braces himself.

"All right, ask me."

[fatherlesskind]

"Was there anything-" Weird? No, that's not going to help. Maybe- "What's the first thing you remember doing in Wonderland?"

Hopefully the answer will give him enough of a hint as to what did this to Cullen so he can avoid the same fate. Unless it's something that can just randomly affect people much as the mansion itself can sometimes change around them. In which case he'd best start praying more and hope the Maker is a little more attached to Wardens than to templars.

[morework]

"The very first thing?" Cullen huffs. Still trying to trip him, then. "Obviously that would have been years ago, it was..."

He trails off. There. What he was afraid of. A simple question. And yet-- A childhood memory. A memory. Of his early childhood. In Wonderland. The old days of... nothing, where he used to nothing and nothing, with nobody, all day long. Cullen swallows. Tries, desperately, to recall any memory of his years in this world, of recent years, or even months, even weeks, only-- Only nothing.

Grimacing he wants to complain about the incessant questioning, but the words don't come. Stubbornly he wants to make up a memory just to see the man go, but the words don't come. Pleadingly he wants to beg Alistair to just leave, but the words don't come. It's only his silence, draped over a nagging hole of doubt. He does not remember Ferelden, that is out of the question. But Wonderland, the place he is supposed to call his home... why can he recall so little that would make it so?

I let you have your experiment, just leave, and the words almost come. But worse, much worse, Cullen actually has an answer to give, only not the sort he wants to hear himself speak. He hangs his head low, voice quiet to match.

"A few days ago. I must have gone into the forest, I don't remember why. I spoke to the Fawn, but I... lost track of what we talked about. Afterwards I just left..."

[fatherlesskind]

Lucky for Alistair that Wonderland isn't really dedicated to this whole 'make people think they belong here' trick or it would have given Cullen false memories to fill in the blanks. It's an oddly reassuring realisation. It has crossed his mind on the rare occasions he's thought about the strange differences in events so many of them remember, that maybe they've had their memories tampered with already. That maybe the reason they remember different people and different histories is because they've had those memories changed and there really is only one Ferelden with one way events play out.

But if Cullen has nothing, if he hasn't been given a life here in Wonderland to recall, then maybe he can finally dismiss that tiny niggling doubt instead just of pretending it doesn't exist.

More encouraging is the answer he gets, for all that the manner of its delivery tugs at him uncomfortably. However unsettled Cullen is by the admission it's only a temporary problem. This has to be fixable. Once the culprit is dead he'll go back to normal. Which is probably a good thing.

"The Fawn? As in a deer?" That's... something. Assuming this... talking deer. Is the culprit. Which. It's a talking deer. He's going to guess it's not just a harmless, possessed bystander. That's good. It's something physical. Something that can be fought. Cautiously, else he might end up wandering around claiming to belong here too, but still vulnerable.

Nodding determinedly to himself Alistair steps away from the table and turns towards the door. Almost immediately he turns back around and points at Cullen. "You should be careful. Don't- Just... try and stay out of trouble, alright?" He feels ridiculous saying it but if there could be trouble wandering around and the man doesn't remember a thing about his life he could be in danger. Although he had been managing for a few days by his own admittance. He should be fine a little longer.

[morework]

"As in deer," he confirms quietly.

Should this not be a moment of relief? Alistair turns to leave, a finality to his question at last. An end to this strangeness, an end- an end to a man who could say more about an imagined past, than Cullen could about the truth. He feels rather hollow now, for all his certainty. It will pass, he tells himself as he watches Alistair go. It will pass as things in Wonderland do, and he will be at peace in his home again.

"All right," he says too quietly to a man almost out the door, and sinks back into his seat at the table. The soup in front of him has gone cold. He takes a spoonful without great appetite.