Reading Chryseis's words had a way of making Rom deeply uncomfortable, even if what she said had nothing to do with him.
Maybe it was made worse because he'd insisted on writing the letter to her himself, the one asking for her aid in their efforts against Marcus Alesius, and securing a way into Minrathous for the Inquisition. Her reply was little more than a confirmation that she would indeed help them as she had promised to do so in the letter that had officially released the slave Romulus from her service. She made no demands in exchange for her aid, only inquired after the health and condition of her father, who was still a prisoner of theirs.
The end was what made his skin crawl, where she stated she "looked forward to working with him again." Harmless words from anyone else, but naturally Rom was inclined to read too much into them. He'd have to reply back, let her know how her father was doing, as she had a right to know. But he couldn't help but wish that Rilien hadn't seen fit to share the letter with him at all.
Setting it aside on his desk, he decided he needed to work. Something physical to put his mind elsewhere. Yesterday's storm had passed, leaving him with a clear and bright morning immediately following to do with as he pleased. He settled on starting through his personal routines, flexibility and strength work. He removed his shirt and got to it.
The stretching went as usual, leaving him limber and loose, but he paused before starting his pull-up sets. His eyes settled on his alchemy station, the small vial he'd left there for himself the night before. He'd almost felt the need to take something before sleeping, but had resisted. It left him rolling in bed most of the night, and tired come the morning. He'd already taken one draught immediately after waking, and now he felt the need to take another. Boost his stamina.
He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. It was getting worse. The reactions to it were getting stronger. He'd always been playing with concoctions he barely understood, but before the Inquisition he rarely needed to take them so frequently. Threats in Minrathous were lethal, but they weren't what the Inquisition faced. He didn't have the same investment then that he had now. A nearly all-consuming desire to be at his best for what he'd come to care so much about. The people, the cause, the place to belong to. All of it.
He tried to get through his reps without it. It started out well enough, but over the course of the hour he started to hit his limits far sooner than he was comfortable with. Beads of sweat rolled down his back and chest, his breathing came heavily, and he was forced to stop each time he began to feel sick, taking a moment to stop and drink. After the third time of this, he remained in the chair by the "mouth" at the edge of the room, letting the air cool him. Khari would probably arrive for practice soon enough. He wasn't sure he'd even be able to finish before she did.
It wasn't more than a couple of minutes before he heard her approaching, probably sooner than usual, since she seemed to be speaking. Khari talked to herself on occasion, to be sure, but her tone this time definitely suggested an audience of some kind, which was confirmed when they came into earshot. “—can't believe you've never actually been down this way, but yeah. He's right here. Hey Rom, we're coming in!"
The door was open, but Khari pushed it a bit wider before stepping inside, Leon of all people in tow. The commander ducked slightly under the doorway; it was only barely taller than he was. Likely they'd just finished some kind of tactics lesson. Khari's fingers were never covered in ink except when Leon made her draw out maps and diagrams and models for planning strategy. They were now, though, and a few drops had spattered her bare forearms, too, where she'd rolled up her sleeves to the elbows. She caught sight of him in the chair and did a slight double-take, clearly expecting him to still be at his sets.
“Am I late? Or did you finish early today?"
"No, you're, uh... yeah. Finished early." He almost wished he were flustered for what had become the usual reason, but here he hadn't been quite quick enough to come up with an excuse. Maybe it was the appearance of Leon this time that threw him off, or maybe he just wasn't thinking as fast as normal. Likely some combination of it all. He wiped his face with a towel, hoping he didn't look quite as bad as he felt. "Something you need me for, Leon?" They didn't really have conversations here, as Khari had indirectly pointed out on her way in, so he had to assume Leon had a purpose in coming.
Leon, perhaps not surprisingly a rather observant man, seemed to have noticed the stumble, but he didn't seem inclined to press on it. Instead, he offered a slight smile. "Well, I confess to some interest in the training you two get up to, but I don't mean to intrude." He glanced once at Khari, clearly trying to decide if whatever he meant to say next should be said in her company or not. In the end, though, he went ahead.
"I'm... ironically, I'm actually here to inquire after your health. I noticed you weren't quite... as alert as I'd have expected, at certain points during the Halamshiral events. I'd understand if it was merely the setting, of course, but... it seemed only right that I ask." Rom had made a rather similar query at one point, after all, and received rather more dire news in response than anticipated.
“Wait, really?" Khari had obviously not noticed anything of the sort, and was quite surprised to hear that Leon had. Her interest in the answer was immediately obvious, however. Her brows knit together, and she shot Rom a look of clear concern. Her hands, comfortably settled at her hips, dropped and hung there, as though she weren't quite sure what to do with them.
Rom knew what points Leon was talking about without needing to ask. He'd been a bit lost in the fight in that hedge maze, with Gaspard's Fereldan mercenaries. Right after he'd taken quite the strong dose. Honestly, it had been quite a bit worse than he expected, but he probably took it too soon after the last one. The strain of everything that had happened before no doubt contributed to that; Halamshiral had been stressful from start to finish. When not in a fight it gave him focus, clarity, quicker thinking, but during the fight it had a way of dulling things. Pain was among them, but the adrenaline must have been interacting with something else.
"I'm fine, uh... I was just out of it." It was a weak excuse and he knew it. He reached for his shirt, barely in arm's reach where he'd dropped it on the floor, and pulled it over his head. To give him something to do with himself for a few seconds, and to hide his face for that period.
When the seconds were done and he could see them again, Khari was wearing a very different expression, much more skeptical, and her hands were back on her hips. Her lips thinned. “'Out of it?' She echoed the words with a tone that suggested disbelief, glancing once at Leon and then back to him. “Out of it how, Rom? You're usually about the most focused person I know. Hell, you do pretty much all of your training by yourself—" She paused; he could almost see the realization click into place.
“You didn't finish early today, did you?" She looked around the room, eyes flickering over the various pieces of equipment, almost as if trying to figure out if they'd all been recently used and wiped down or not. “What's—what's really going on?" Probably the fact that he'd tried to brush past the topic had done more to convince her that it mattered than just about anything else could have.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly. There wasn't any getting out of this, but it had already brought him a headache. "It's the potions, the tonics," he said, gesturing haphazardly towards where one of them still sat on the alchemy table, the little vial still stoppered by the cork. "I've had to take them more and more recently." It was difficult to admit, honestly. That he had to take them. Or that he felt that way, at least. As far as anyone else had known it was entirely his choice to take them, that he wasn't their prisoner in any way.
"And I've had to make them stronger," he continued. "I know I was going to have to tell someone eventually, I just... Halamshiral was too important. It wasn't the right time to try to figure something else out." He wanted to stand, as he felt almost like he was being interrogated sitting in front of them, but at the same time, he wondered if it might make him feel too sick. This was embarrassing enough already. "I tried to go without it today, but... I don't think I can." Exhaling heavily, his eyes sought the potion again. "Can you hand me that, Khari?"
Her eyes fell to it, too. She reached over, taking the vial in her hand and staring at it for several long seconds. For once, her face was unreadable. “Can I ask a stupid question first?" Not that there was really much choice; she was the one holding the potion, and she seemed to realize that a moment after she spoke. “Is it... is this a choice you're making? Is it something you want, or something you... need?" She didn't quite sound sure that need was the right contrast word, but no better ones came to mind. At least none that she replaced it with.
He held out his hand when she picked it up, but when it became clear she wouldn't immediately hand it over, he let the hand fall to rest on his leg. His fingers were shaking slightly, but he curled them into a fist to make it stop. "It was never a choice," he admitted readily. "Chryseis had me take them. She taught me to make more. And I've always had reasons to need them." Reasons involving survival. The first time he'd ever really spoken to Khari, back in the Hinterlands in what seemed like another life, he'd taken a resistance tonic that let him walk right through a mage's fireball. He probably would've died several times over if not for them. "I don't know what will happen to me if I stop. This isn't... this isn't well documented alchemy I've been practicing." Again he held his hand palm up.
She bit her lip, something tightening around her eyes to lend her a look of discomfort. But she did hand it to him; ink-blue fingertips lingered against the roughened skin of his hand for a heartbeat too long, but then she dragged them away. “Do you want to stop?" It was an unusually-gentle tone, for her, one that hearkened back to the basement at Haven, when she'd been struggling to understand his attitudes towards the pieces of his life that were nothing like any piece of hers.
It took a significant amount of self control not to snatch it from her hand as soon as it was in reach. With as steady a motion as he could manage, he removed the cork and downed it. Instantly it hit, flooding his limbs with energy, his breathing made easy as if the room suddenly had twice the air in it from before. He shuddered slightly, exhaling a rush of breath in a mix of relief, and quite honestly pleasure. It wasn't the best taste, but the sensation was euphoric. He wiped the last of the sweat from his forehead with a towel, and could feel that no more would be needed.
"I do," he said softly. "I want to stop. But, uh... I don't want to die. Obviously." He couldn't imagine a way of doing this that wouldn't be dangerous. There were no easy cures or magic for this sort of thing. "And I want to be at my best. Physically. For the Inquisition, I need to be."
Leon, arms crossed, reentered the conversation at that point. "I know a few things about substance dependence, but I couldn't possibly have a particular recommendation for your case. I think, though, that if you brought what you know of your tonics to Rilien and told him you wanted to safely stop using them, he might well have a better answer than you'd get anywhere else." The suggestion almost came across like an apology, from his intonation. Possibly for bringing the matter up with an audience. He clearly hadn't expected the answer Rom had ended up giving.
"Of course, that's entirely up to you. I could hardly fault you for deciding against it, given... well, given everything. But if you've got a chance to live free of this—" he cut himself off, smiling sympathetically. "Well, you don't need my advice. If there's any way I can help, though, just say the word."
Khari nodded, though she still looked troubled by something. “Wish you'd mentioned it before." The words were mostly murmured, but she was close enough for him to catch them anyway. Clearing her throat, she quite visibly forced her expression to brighten. “But Leon's right. We're here for you if you want our help with anything. Which you probably knew already." Her smile was lopsided as usual, but also a little awkward. She wasn't much good at concealing anything.
"There's a lot that I'm not proud of," he said, almost before he'd realized it. After that, it was too late to take it back. "Things that I wanted to leave behind, in Minrathous. If I'd known this was going to start hounding me like this... well, guess it doesn't matter now." He hadn't told her, or anyone, until pressed about it, and that was that. He hadn't even told Zee about it, and she was learning alchemy from him. He truly hadn't known how difficult the dependence would become, and how quickly, but then again, the unpredictable tended to happen when demons were thrown into the mix. Rare ingredients in his old life, but in the Inquisition they were never in short supply.
"I'll ask Rilien if he has any advice. Need to write a letter anyway. Might as well ask my teacher for help, too." He wasn't sure what Chryseis would think about him trying to stop, but she likely knew more than anyone on this particular subject. It was worth a try, at least. He got to his feet, meeting Khari's eyes, a bit awkward himself. "Think we can call off practice today?"
She nodded slightly, waving a hand. “Sure." A short pause. “Uh... you mind if I still hang around, or d'you want me to, you know." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder towards the door.
"No, stay. If you want." He made his way up to the desk, rearranging a few candles to provide better light to write by. "You can help me write this. You're very tactful, after all." Tactful enough to break a chevalier's nose. He grinned a little at her.
That got a laugh out of her—a short bark of one, but a laugh all the same. “They should just give me Marcy's job, I know. What d'you think Leon? Promotion in my future?"
"Well, you did get an apology out of the Lord-General. I'll think about it and get back to you." Leon shook his head. "Sorry to intrude, Romulus. Best of luck with the letters." He inclined his head, and showed himself out.
Maybe it was made worse because he'd insisted on writing the letter to her himself, the one asking for her aid in their efforts against Marcus Alesius, and securing a way into Minrathous for the Inquisition. Her reply was little more than a confirmation that she would indeed help them as she had promised to do so in the letter that had officially released the slave Romulus from her service. She made no demands in exchange for her aid, only inquired after the health and condition of her father, who was still a prisoner of theirs.
The end was what made his skin crawl, where she stated she "looked forward to working with him again." Harmless words from anyone else, but naturally Rom was inclined to read too much into them. He'd have to reply back, let her know how her father was doing, as she had a right to know. But he couldn't help but wish that Rilien hadn't seen fit to share the letter with him at all.
Setting it aside on his desk, he decided he needed to work. Something physical to put his mind elsewhere. Yesterday's storm had passed, leaving him with a clear and bright morning immediately following to do with as he pleased. He settled on starting through his personal routines, flexibility and strength work. He removed his shirt and got to it.
The stretching went as usual, leaving him limber and loose, but he paused before starting his pull-up sets. His eyes settled on his alchemy station, the small vial he'd left there for himself the night before. He'd almost felt the need to take something before sleeping, but had resisted. It left him rolling in bed most of the night, and tired come the morning. He'd already taken one draught immediately after waking, and now he felt the need to take another. Boost his stamina.
He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. It was getting worse. The reactions to it were getting stronger. He'd always been playing with concoctions he barely understood, but before the Inquisition he rarely needed to take them so frequently. Threats in Minrathous were lethal, but they weren't what the Inquisition faced. He didn't have the same investment then that he had now. A nearly all-consuming desire to be at his best for what he'd come to care so much about. The people, the cause, the place to belong to. All of it.
He tried to get through his reps without it. It started out well enough, but over the course of the hour he started to hit his limits far sooner than he was comfortable with. Beads of sweat rolled down his back and chest, his breathing came heavily, and he was forced to stop each time he began to feel sick, taking a moment to stop and drink. After the third time of this, he remained in the chair by the "mouth" at the edge of the room, letting the air cool him. Khari would probably arrive for practice soon enough. He wasn't sure he'd even be able to finish before she did.
It wasn't more than a couple of minutes before he heard her approaching, probably sooner than usual, since she seemed to be speaking. Khari talked to herself on occasion, to be sure, but her tone this time definitely suggested an audience of some kind, which was confirmed when they came into earshot. “—can't believe you've never actually been down this way, but yeah. He's right here. Hey Rom, we're coming in!"
The door was open, but Khari pushed it a bit wider before stepping inside, Leon of all people in tow. The commander ducked slightly under the doorway; it was only barely taller than he was. Likely they'd just finished some kind of tactics lesson. Khari's fingers were never covered in ink except when Leon made her draw out maps and diagrams and models for planning strategy. They were now, though, and a few drops had spattered her bare forearms, too, where she'd rolled up her sleeves to the elbows. She caught sight of him in the chair and did a slight double-take, clearly expecting him to still be at his sets.
“Am I late? Or did you finish early today?"
"No, you're, uh... yeah. Finished early." He almost wished he were flustered for what had become the usual reason, but here he hadn't been quite quick enough to come up with an excuse. Maybe it was the appearance of Leon this time that threw him off, or maybe he just wasn't thinking as fast as normal. Likely some combination of it all. He wiped his face with a towel, hoping he didn't look quite as bad as he felt. "Something you need me for, Leon?" They didn't really have conversations here, as Khari had indirectly pointed out on her way in, so he had to assume Leon had a purpose in coming.
Leon, perhaps not surprisingly a rather observant man, seemed to have noticed the stumble, but he didn't seem inclined to press on it. Instead, he offered a slight smile. "Well, I confess to some interest in the training you two get up to, but I don't mean to intrude." He glanced once at Khari, clearly trying to decide if whatever he meant to say next should be said in her company or not. In the end, though, he went ahead.
"I'm... ironically, I'm actually here to inquire after your health. I noticed you weren't quite... as alert as I'd have expected, at certain points during the Halamshiral events. I'd understand if it was merely the setting, of course, but... it seemed only right that I ask." Rom had made a rather similar query at one point, after all, and received rather more dire news in response than anticipated.
“Wait, really?" Khari had obviously not noticed anything of the sort, and was quite surprised to hear that Leon had. Her interest in the answer was immediately obvious, however. Her brows knit together, and she shot Rom a look of clear concern. Her hands, comfortably settled at her hips, dropped and hung there, as though she weren't quite sure what to do with them.
Rom knew what points Leon was talking about without needing to ask. He'd been a bit lost in the fight in that hedge maze, with Gaspard's Fereldan mercenaries. Right after he'd taken quite the strong dose. Honestly, it had been quite a bit worse than he expected, but he probably took it too soon after the last one. The strain of everything that had happened before no doubt contributed to that; Halamshiral had been stressful from start to finish. When not in a fight it gave him focus, clarity, quicker thinking, but during the fight it had a way of dulling things. Pain was among them, but the adrenaline must have been interacting with something else.
"I'm fine, uh... I was just out of it." It was a weak excuse and he knew it. He reached for his shirt, barely in arm's reach where he'd dropped it on the floor, and pulled it over his head. To give him something to do with himself for a few seconds, and to hide his face for that period.
When the seconds were done and he could see them again, Khari was wearing a very different expression, much more skeptical, and her hands were back on her hips. Her lips thinned. “'Out of it?' She echoed the words with a tone that suggested disbelief, glancing once at Leon and then back to him. “Out of it how, Rom? You're usually about the most focused person I know. Hell, you do pretty much all of your training by yourself—" She paused; he could almost see the realization click into place.
“You didn't finish early today, did you?" She looked around the room, eyes flickering over the various pieces of equipment, almost as if trying to figure out if they'd all been recently used and wiped down or not. “What's—what's really going on?" Probably the fact that he'd tried to brush past the topic had done more to convince her that it mattered than just about anything else could have.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly. There wasn't any getting out of this, but it had already brought him a headache. "It's the potions, the tonics," he said, gesturing haphazardly towards where one of them still sat on the alchemy table, the little vial still stoppered by the cork. "I've had to take them more and more recently." It was difficult to admit, honestly. That he had to take them. Or that he felt that way, at least. As far as anyone else had known it was entirely his choice to take them, that he wasn't their prisoner in any way.
"And I've had to make them stronger," he continued. "I know I was going to have to tell someone eventually, I just... Halamshiral was too important. It wasn't the right time to try to figure something else out." He wanted to stand, as he felt almost like he was being interrogated sitting in front of them, but at the same time, he wondered if it might make him feel too sick. This was embarrassing enough already. "I tried to go without it today, but... I don't think I can." Exhaling heavily, his eyes sought the potion again. "Can you hand me that, Khari?"
Her eyes fell to it, too. She reached over, taking the vial in her hand and staring at it for several long seconds. For once, her face was unreadable. “Can I ask a stupid question first?" Not that there was really much choice; she was the one holding the potion, and she seemed to realize that a moment after she spoke. “Is it... is this a choice you're making? Is it something you want, or something you... need?" She didn't quite sound sure that need was the right contrast word, but no better ones came to mind. At least none that she replaced it with.
He held out his hand when she picked it up, but when it became clear she wouldn't immediately hand it over, he let the hand fall to rest on his leg. His fingers were shaking slightly, but he curled them into a fist to make it stop. "It was never a choice," he admitted readily. "Chryseis had me take them. She taught me to make more. And I've always had reasons to need them." Reasons involving survival. The first time he'd ever really spoken to Khari, back in the Hinterlands in what seemed like another life, he'd taken a resistance tonic that let him walk right through a mage's fireball. He probably would've died several times over if not for them. "I don't know what will happen to me if I stop. This isn't... this isn't well documented alchemy I've been practicing." Again he held his hand palm up.
She bit her lip, something tightening around her eyes to lend her a look of discomfort. But she did hand it to him; ink-blue fingertips lingered against the roughened skin of his hand for a heartbeat too long, but then she dragged them away. “Do you want to stop?" It was an unusually-gentle tone, for her, one that hearkened back to the basement at Haven, when she'd been struggling to understand his attitudes towards the pieces of his life that were nothing like any piece of hers.
It took a significant amount of self control not to snatch it from her hand as soon as it was in reach. With as steady a motion as he could manage, he removed the cork and downed it. Instantly it hit, flooding his limbs with energy, his breathing made easy as if the room suddenly had twice the air in it from before. He shuddered slightly, exhaling a rush of breath in a mix of relief, and quite honestly pleasure. It wasn't the best taste, but the sensation was euphoric. He wiped the last of the sweat from his forehead with a towel, and could feel that no more would be needed.
"I do," he said softly. "I want to stop. But, uh... I don't want to die. Obviously." He couldn't imagine a way of doing this that wouldn't be dangerous. There were no easy cures or magic for this sort of thing. "And I want to be at my best. Physically. For the Inquisition, I need to be."
Leon, arms crossed, reentered the conversation at that point. "I know a few things about substance dependence, but I couldn't possibly have a particular recommendation for your case. I think, though, that if you brought what you know of your tonics to Rilien and told him you wanted to safely stop using them, he might well have a better answer than you'd get anywhere else." The suggestion almost came across like an apology, from his intonation. Possibly for bringing the matter up with an audience. He clearly hadn't expected the answer Rom had ended up giving.
"Of course, that's entirely up to you. I could hardly fault you for deciding against it, given... well, given everything. But if you've got a chance to live free of this—" he cut himself off, smiling sympathetically. "Well, you don't need my advice. If there's any way I can help, though, just say the word."
Khari nodded, though she still looked troubled by something. “Wish you'd mentioned it before." The words were mostly murmured, but she was close enough for him to catch them anyway. Clearing her throat, she quite visibly forced her expression to brighten. “But Leon's right. We're here for you if you want our help with anything. Which you probably knew already." Her smile was lopsided as usual, but also a little awkward. She wasn't much good at concealing anything.
"There's a lot that I'm not proud of," he said, almost before he'd realized it. After that, it was too late to take it back. "Things that I wanted to leave behind, in Minrathous. If I'd known this was going to start hounding me like this... well, guess it doesn't matter now." He hadn't told her, or anyone, until pressed about it, and that was that. He hadn't even told Zee about it, and she was learning alchemy from him. He truly hadn't known how difficult the dependence would become, and how quickly, but then again, the unpredictable tended to happen when demons were thrown into the mix. Rare ingredients in his old life, but in the Inquisition they were never in short supply.
"I'll ask Rilien if he has any advice. Need to write a letter anyway. Might as well ask my teacher for help, too." He wasn't sure what Chryseis would think about him trying to stop, but she likely knew more than anyone on this particular subject. It was worth a try, at least. He got to his feet, meeting Khari's eyes, a bit awkward himself. "Think we can call off practice today?"
She nodded slightly, waving a hand. “Sure." A short pause. “Uh... you mind if I still hang around, or d'you want me to, you know." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder towards the door.
"No, stay. If you want." He made his way up to the desk, rearranging a few candles to provide better light to write by. "You can help me write this. You're very tactful, after all." Tactful enough to break a chevalier's nose. He grinned a little at her.
That got a laugh out of her—a short bark of one, but a laugh all the same. “They should just give me Marcy's job, I know. What d'you think Leon? Promotion in my future?"
"Well, you did get an apology out of the Lord-General. I'll think about it and get back to you." Leon shook his head. "Sorry to intrude, Romulus. Best of luck with the letters." He inclined his head, and showed himself out.