[open] molten eyes and a smile made for war; any

[Rhonen]

rhonen

molten eyes and a smile made for war

She remembers a night when somehow, despite his terrible awkwardness and overall discomfort, he had been something she needed. In shelter of a big tree, the storm raging around them, somehow the boy with the sharp edges and the terrible manners had brought her peace. As she crosses the meadow, she thinks he might not remember her. And in truth, perhaps neither of them should remember so clearly; it had been naught but a stolen few hours after all, strangers finding mutual shelter and exchanging pleasantries. In the general course of things, it should have been forgettable.

Leliana had found peace with him, and in doing so she had listened. In the years that had passed since he was sent into Carnage's Beqanna-that-wasn't-Beqanna, she was the only one he had ever told. It had seemed too much to burden little Atrani with, no matter how close they had been, and his brief affair with Nihlus had ended before the sharing-of-deepest-darkest-secrets phase. Everyone else had been but a passing fling, acquaintances, not trusted confidantes. Rhonen had always envisioned telling someone, but that someone had always been a member of his family...the family he has never found. The family for whom he had faced down terror after terror to protect, faced death itself, and until recently the stallion had been convinced it had all been for naught.

The bay-and-red mare has almost reached him before he notices her approach, so involved is he in watching his daughter (careful that she doesn't disappear on him like the others). The crunch of leaves underfoot, a breath, and he is just beginning to turn his head to investigate when his name leaves her lips. Startled, he stiffens and takes a step away, head jerking the rest of the way around to gaze at her out of alarmed dark eyes. She shouldn't be surprised, herself; he had spent the first hour or so of their time together stubbornly holding himself as far from her as possible (he had still been in the I-might-be-contaminated phase of coming to terms with the power he'd been burdened with). He had not expected to hear his name today - or, indeed, perhaps any day. Rarely does he interact with anyone except Noah, and she doesn't used his given name.

Before he can gather words or wits about him, his daughter has come as he demanded of her and now presses herself against his side, a cat-like motion that reminds him entirely too much of her mother, and peers up at the mare, quiet and assessing in a way that seems almost too intent in a child of her age. It takes him another breath to beat his whirling thoughts back into some semblance of order, but the filly's touch is steadying. "Leliana," the first word is a murmur, as he draws her name from the depths of that memory that sounds like rain and smells like secrets. His muscles start to unknot; once, she had eased him into telling a story from his own nightmares. It seems she has at least some of that power over him still. An impatient noise from the small creature pressed to his side reminds him that she'd asked a question.

"My daughter, Noah," he answers belatedly, the words clipped off as if they pain him. But she will know differently, perhaps - she had understood, before, that sometimes his fear ate at him and the feelings were too much, and the words didn't come out the way he meant them. That had been part of what put him at ease with her - she had not recoiled too badly when he meant to speak words and threw daggers instead; he had been doing better, at that, before Nihlus. Less of his words had been weapons before he tried to give his heart away to a boy who often smelled of the rain and soothed many of Rhonen's nightmares without ever asking about their content. He had been healing, in his mind and spirit, but every wall and fortification had been erected again when he slammed the fortress doors closed behind Nihlus.

Noah had been born into the fortress, though Rhonen had kept the girl's mother strictly on the outside, retreated behind his walls at the end of every day and closing himself in alone with the memories. For Leliana, he pries open the window and peeks out, remembering that she hadn't brought harm to him before. "I mean, ah, it's good to see you again too." The copper boy tries, belatedly, to amend the way his last words had escaped him. To toss ice out of the window in wake of the burning debris he had lobbed just moments before.