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Annie is on her trike on her way to school.
This van labeled HAZARDOUS MATERIALS is also on its way to school.
The van hits a patch of black ice. It goes spinning, it turns over, it slices itself open on a wrought-iron fence with spikes, and it disgorges boxes which smash open on the pavement. Some of them skitter clear into the slush.
Some of them - along with most of the van - land on Annie.
There is a whirl of bewildering pain and confusion -
- and she falls to the ground, injured and in more kinds of discomfort beyond that and moaning.
She slowly starts to heal before the eyes of her sole witness.
six artifact pileup annie in thedas
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keep_busy
keep_busy
There's a lot of things Annie could say to that - probably she should say none of them, she doesn't owe this woman anything, she doesn't -
But what comes out is a soft, "I know."
But what comes out is a soft, "I know."
She snorts derisively. "Well, why don't you get lost, then?"
keep_busy
Annie comes to her senses. She doesn't have to talk to this person. She doesn't have to have this conversation. She can just go back to her room and spend the day crying into her pillow. That sounds like a good plan.
Annie turns around and goes. Maybe the noble hunter will think Annie's getting lost.
The noble hunter doesn't pursue her, anyway. She can return to Caridin's house without anyone at all bothering her en route.
keep_busy
Hopefully Dagna will not mind waiting. Annie needs to put her face in her pillow and scream into it on the assumption that this will sufficiently quiet the noise, and sob.
keep_busy
Oh god. Ugh. No. Okay. She sits up and flees to the bathroom and washes her face and takes a lot of deep breaths.
first-and-final
He enters the house and proceeds immediately to her room.
"Annie? Are you okay?"
"Annie? Are you okay?"
first-and-final
"Kador told me he overheard someone being an asshole to you about the betrothal and I... may have lost my temper and hit my bedroom floor hard enough to crack it... but that's beside the point, I want you to be okay, how do I help?"
keep_busy
"I don't know." She shakes her head. "I'll be fine. I'm pretty good at it."
keep_busy
"I don't know. Being in the way." She sits on her bed, props her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. "You - you know you don't have to marry me, right? You don't have to do anything. You should do whatever you want."
first-and-final
...
He sits next to her and hugs her tightly.
"Please don't start thinking that marrying you isn't what I want. I want you to be safe and happy. I want you to make friends and learn runecrafting and live forever with me after we save the world. I - when you smile at me I feel like I'm saving the world already. I like you. I admire you. I care for you very much. I don't know if I can say that I love you, but the difference is starting to look pretty fucking academic from here."
He sits next to her and hugs her tightly.
"Please don't start thinking that marrying you isn't what I want. I want you to be safe and happy. I want you to make friends and learn runecrafting and live forever with me after we save the world. I - when you smile at me I feel like I'm saving the world already. I like you. I admire you. I care for you very much. I don't know if I can say that I love you, but the difference is starting to look pretty fucking academic from here."
keep_busy
"I'm such a fucking mess, I promise I'm usually really good at emotional regulation it's just now most of my emotions are imposed by fiat by some - some knick-knack that doesn't even seem to be doing me any compensatory good. I'm sorry, I love you, I love you so much -" Sniff.
first-and-final
"I'm really starting to hate this artifact of yours," he mutters, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "I - I am very confused about what I think of the fact that you love me. I do know what I think of the fact that it was imposed by fiat by some knick-knack. It's... it's why making you happy feels like righting one of the fundamental wrongs of the universe. The fundamental wrong in question is the fact that you were made to feel this way by an outside force not under your control."
keep_busy
"It's not even a coherent knick-knack, all at once I'm depressed over the aforementioned academic distinction and ecstatic that you exist and guilty over having brought to your attention the fact that I'm not one hundred percent happy because that seems to upset you - and that one recurses - and I have this delightful bottomless gratitude that you want to look after me and perpetual fretfulness over why exactly that is because it's unthinkable that I coerce you in any way except that the entire way my brain works now is made of prime uncut emotional blackmail with normal cognition sort of a garnish that I'm allowed to pay attention to when the rest of the knick-knack's impositions are in balance."
first-and-final
"I want to look after you because - because you need me to, sort of, except that's not quite it, it's back to the fundamental wrongs of the universe again, I am a solver of problems, you have a problem, I have at least a partial solution and a better one than you'll get anywhere else, so here we are. Except if that was all I wouldn't be marrying you. I think... I can't say that I do love you. But I think I can say that if I'd never been going to, I wouldn't be having such a hard time figuring it out. There's a, a space where the feeling would go. I'm sorry, I'm making a mess of this, that didn't come out anywhere near as reassuring as I meant it to."
keep_busy
She sniffs and squeezes him. "I think I sort of understood that."