That encounter feels like it happened a long time ago, and it did. Abby has been here for two years and a lot has changed. She sighs, rubbing her neck. Where her hand cups her skin is not too far from the jagged scar on her shoulder where Ellie stabbed her in the lowtown marketplace. "But... now I'm glad she's here. It means I didn't dream it."
Her life before this one was real, it happened. Ellie witnessed it. "You guys are all great. But you don't know what it was like to come here from that. She does." That means something. At first Abby didn't care, aggressively, but she holds onto that strange point of familiarity now. She thinks that she might even need it.
"I can understand that." He imagines it must be a different order of magnitude, for rifters. But he remembers the strange comfort of finding Benevenuta here, when he first joined, the strange reassurance of someone who had known what his life looked like years before the war. (Wars.) "I imagine the little glimpse many of us got did not really ... living there must be an entirely different thing. Even the Fereldens who saw the Fifth Blight, it was a year or two only. I would think coming here would have been. An adjustment."
He looks briefly sheepish, then, hearing his own words and feeling their insufficiency. He wants to extend empathy, but he's not sure he hasn't overstepped. She can almost see him resisting the knee-jerk impulse to apologize.
Yeah, and it makes her smile a little bit. "Sorta," isn't her way of helping him out of what he just said. "Sounds crazy to put it like this, considering everything, but it's a lot safer here, so it hasn't all been terrible. But it has been hard to adjust.
"Where are you from?" She doesn't actually know this about Vanya, and a flash of embarrassment makes her voice a bit softer, almost hesitant.
He doesn't seem even slightly offended. "Nevarra City, originally. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I suppose the place you're a child always leaves a mark on you. I don't think I left the country at all until ... maybe 12 years ago?" It feels longer, but it isn't, or not by much.
It seems like he might stop there, but after a moment, he adds: "You know, it's ... I didn't think about how different Nevarra's culture can be until I left it. I mean, it's nothing as different as rifters have to navigate, but there is still a lot that feels strange here in the Marches. Or in Ferelden or Orlais." He's learned to roll with a lot of it, but it doesn't mean it feels instinctive yet. Possibly ever.
"Where is that in relation to Cumberland?" She has a vague sense of where Nevarra is on a map: to the west of here and slightly north. She frowns, remembering. Going to the College of Magi was not a long trip from Kirkwall, but the atmosphere was entirely different. Its city must be the capital, right?
"Did you come here alone?"
She hasn't thought to ask these questions of the locals before.
"More or less due north from Cumberland. I spent more time in Cumberland overall, probably, I was stationed there starting when I was fairly young. But Nevarra City wasn't so far I never went back. My parents are still there." A brief stab of guilt at how long it's been since they heard from him, but set aside for now.
"I did come to Kirkwall alone, yes. But I'd been part of the Inquisition before, back at Skyhold, so I knew some of the people here by reputation or in passing." A pause. She didn't ask, but he feels compelled to add: "I wanted to help stop Corypheus. I thought I could do more good here."
Oh, well. That's far more noble than falling out of a rift, catching a bad case of shard in the palm and having to stick around or die painfully, huh. Abby feels abruptly humbled by this. She says, "We're lucky to have you." It strikes her that she's never asked the others their motivations for being here, had been assuming that, like any war, people were just doing as they were told, waiting for it to all be over.
May as well voice that.
"I was with the Washington Liberation Front back home," she explains, "We were at war with this... weird cult group that wanted control of the same area as we did, so we hunted them down and killed a lot of them. They did the same to us. It wasn't about doing good."
Abby doesn't know when this became embarrassing and hard to talk about. She pauses.
"I didn't give a shit at the time. I didn't care, I was just doing a job. And I thought I was using them for information, it was so stupid."
He's not entirely sure, if the organization were to be polled, "lucky to have him" would be a universal feeling (beyond the overall sense that there are too few members to willingly wish one away). But it feels rude to dispute an observation that's kindly meant, so he lets it pass.
Instead, a bit softer, he says, "I don't know how much you know about the Mage-Templar War, but I can understand that. I mean." He exhales. "It's complicated, I don't have to get into it, but I just mean to say that ... I was in a war I wasn't proud of, before this one. Risking my life to save the world from an actual monster isn't easier, but it's certainly more straightforward."
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That encounter feels like it happened a long time ago, and it did. Abby has been here for two years and a lot has changed. She sighs, rubbing her neck. Where her hand cups her skin is not too far from the jagged scar on her shoulder where Ellie stabbed her in the lowtown marketplace. "But... now I'm glad she's here. It means I didn't dream it."
Her life before this one was real, it happened. Ellie witnessed it. "You guys are all great. But you don't know what it was like to come here from that. She does." That means something. At first Abby didn't care, aggressively, but she holds onto that strange point of familiarity now. She thinks that she might even need it.
no subject
He looks briefly sheepish, then, hearing his own words and feeling their insufficiency. He wants to extend empathy, but he's not sure he hasn't overstepped. She can almost see him resisting the knee-jerk impulse to apologize.
no subject
"Where are you from?" She doesn't actually know this about Vanya, and a flash of embarrassment makes her voice a bit softer, almost hesitant.
no subject
It seems like he might stop there, but after a moment, he adds: "You know, it's ... I didn't think about how different Nevarra's culture can be until I left it. I mean, it's nothing as different as rifters have to navigate, but there is still a lot that feels strange here in the Marches. Or in Ferelden or Orlais." He's learned to roll with a lot of it, but it doesn't mean it feels instinctive yet. Possibly ever.
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"Did you come here alone?"
She hasn't thought to ask these questions of the locals before.
no subject
"I did come to Kirkwall alone, yes. But I'd been part of the Inquisition before, back at Skyhold, so I knew some of the people here by reputation or in passing." A pause. She didn't ask, but he feels compelled to add: "I wanted to help stop Corypheus. I thought I could do more good here."
no subject
May as well voice that.
"I was with the Washington Liberation Front back home," she explains, "We were at war with this... weird cult group that wanted control of the same area as we did, so we hunted them down and killed a lot of them. They did the same to us. It wasn't about doing good."
Abby doesn't know when this became embarrassing and hard to talk about. She pauses.
"I didn't give a shit at the time. I didn't care, I was just doing a job. And I thought I was using them for information, it was so stupid."
no subject
Instead, a bit softer, he says, "I don't know how much you know about the Mage-Templar War, but I can understand that. I mean." He exhales. "It's complicated, I don't have to get into it, but I just mean to say that ... I was in a war I wasn't proud of, before this one. Risking my life to save the world from an actual monster isn't easier, but it's certainly more straightforward."