Chapter Text
Introduction
Something Hollywood or Poor Jonathan
Bus rides can be quite soothing if one allows them to be. Long moments of tuning in and out of daydreams filled with odd notions of what may be and what can be divide the time between stops. Daydreams sent from experiences drummed out from the goodness of what life can deliver are occasionally pleasant. Who in their right mind would willingly subject themselves to more-than-enough waking nightmares. Though who knows when it comes to these matters. The sounds of the bus and the overhead luggage rattling with every bump and the engine tirelessly moving along open miles of road would cater to the soothing environment needed for quiet contemplation and fade to a lull.
The capacity of the Greyhound bus was meagre, only three of five of the passengers stretched their legs out making themselves comfortable for the long ride to the small town of Honnleath, their marked destination. Each passenger held their own stories as to why they had found themselves partaking in this particular journey.
Today, Alistair Therin is one of these passengers, stretched out lazily and with his own tale. Though if you were to ask him for it, he would change the subject to something more akin to what he ate for breakfast that day. For now, he is humming at the very back of the bus after trying (and failing) to jovially start a conversation with the man two rows across with a tired look and a beanie drawn close to his ears.
“What-ho, fellow adventurer!”, The lively greeting that Alistair presented was immediately met with a gruff non-committal response and the elder gentleman noisily shuffling around and pulling earbuds from his carry-on.
Alistair took it in stride and with his ever present shrug, a radiant smile still plastered on his face, pulled out his own pair and went to war on his phone playing a puzzle game by the name of Dragonzalamoo. It was a game that he wished he hadn’t paid for (but did).
After a few hours of this, his eyes tiring, he’d tucked his phone away and submitted himself to daydreams. He’s fixed his eyes on the landscape, or lack thereof as quaint sceneries of farmland and fields drifted passed.
These daydreams were concealed with longing and a yearning for something more beyond what he had left behind at Redcliffe. There is doubt there, though folded with a strong sense of hopefulness as he took a precarious stab at what those movies called “new beginnings”. There was so much out there, so much unknowables that he knew seeped worry into his idealistic futures.
Tired of this own mind’s wanderings on these future realities, he put effort into guiding his thoughts to drift towards what it would be like if he were a master cheese artist.
Now, isn’t that a pleasure to dream? What would that entail? Would he have followers? Would it be almost cult-like in its appeal? Some several million Instagram followers? Would he be considered perhaps a cheese guru? Oh, if he could start the first ever cheese cult, what would that be like? He fancied himself a genius and outwardly tittered.
Something that unnerved the man with the beanie who shook it off as best as a man stuck in a bus with another passenger showing signs of oddness.
Undaunted or used to such Common reactions of the sort at his mere presence, Alistair continued down his mental path of world domination by means of appetite.
Why, the unwashed masses could pay homage to Alistair, their cheese messiah! Why didn’t he think of that in the first place? His cheese cult would have cheese sacrifices, the finest cheeses brought to him as he sat atop his throne of Brie cheese laid beautifully on a marbled granite cheese plate slab. They would fashion statues and Massive Alistair-shaped idols of cheese made in his glorious image and all his enemies would rue the day they set their eyes upon Alistair: The Cheese Prophet. The intricacies of the details needed further planning and thus, Alistair Therin’s thoughts were thoroughly satisfied and satiated on their way towards more Positive paths.
The look on his eyes conveyed these thoughts, which now at present steered towards Alistair proclaiming himself more than just a prophet,——because by the Maker why aim low when you can aim beyond reckoning,—for he was meant to be the one true cheese god! He would be worshipped all throughout Thedas and the known world. All will now under his mighty cheddar heeled boot!
Maniacal brown eyes glittered, as the man in the beanie slipped further and further down his seat and hopefully out of view as he heard what could be considered the most quiet maniacal Disney villain laugh at the back of a Greyhound bus.
The man in the beanie chanced a look behind him and saw his every fear come to life: a good looking young man in his mid-30s with tanned skin and cropped red- blonde hair staring gleefully out the window holding what appeared to be a tiny cheese knife (where did he get that?) in between his fingers cutting the air with a glazed look on his face....and that foreboding grin.
Maker, he was done for.
Jonathan Franz had heard about this. He’d watched the Dateline NBC murder mysteries as he sat on his couch in his one bedroom apartment. He knew deep inside his Maker given Soul that this man now humming away a chantry song was some kind of serial killer.
Maker preserve him, He’d lived a fine life. Though his wife had left him for his best friend. He’d had a steady job as a parking attendant for many years and was now on his way towards a fine retirement living with his sister’s family at Honnleath. How will he be able to see this through if he were to die now under the....cheese knife of this murderous fiend?
Alistair was now contemplating his palatial home, made purely of cheese of course. Unawares of poor Jonathan’s has panic. His mind busied itself with cheese Alistair unwilling to slip back into melancholic thoughts. Forcing himself to imagine his manse gardens decked with gilded fountains of fondue. The greenery replaced with breadsticks and the finest unleavened crackers for to use as dipping stock was presently being rained upon as dark clouds flitted through the sky and hovered over his ill-gotten home.
Storm clouds, complete with lightning and all too real droplets of what were encroaching shadows of his shame, guilt and a lingering pain washed away his glorious cheddar castle. Trees of Gruyere withered away under the torrent and soon all his careful imaginings had disintegrated and he was left with a figure taunting and enticing him never to forget and allowing those cloying emotions to carve their brand on his chest once again.
There had always been a way in which the darkness would seep in. His cheese palace reduced to nothingness Alistair outwardly sighs and finally (to Jonathan’s relief) puts down his cheese knife.
The bus ride consists of more escapist journeys for Alistair and frightened suspicion for Jonathan.
When the Greyhound finally parks at the depot Alistair gathers his belongings from the cargo area and makes his way to the front to hail a cab, but not before passing through the news stand to grab some Cheetos.
With fingers oranged from Cheeto dust, he raises his hand and a cabbie stops dutifully in front of him and his two duffel bags.
A ‘where to’ from the driver and he’s off to Hawke’s.
Hawke’s place is a wonderfully quaint brownstone in the centre of town. Ivy crawls it’s way in a picturesque kind of way that makes Alistair giddy with approval.
Hawke’s out, he knows so he takes the hidden key under the suspiciously heavy rock. Sweating from having to lift the ridiculously gargantuan rock (Maker, why did Hawke have to choose such a damn heavy rock?) he all but skips up the stairs to the fourth floor, humming and huffing along with a grand mix of excitement and exertion.
“Honey, I’m home!”, he shouts into the empty apartment. He scans the space, giving himself a small tour of the facilities and finds the empty bedroom wherein he drops his bags and jumps headfirst into the bed.
He’s giving it a test of course bouncing in place and finds it to be comfy as Andraste’s supposedly soft and welcoming bosoms, if the Chant of Light is correct. He stays there for a while, melting into the mattress and becoming one with it. He sighs, it’s much too quiet, as he flops on his back and stares up at the ceiling.
Those thoughts are creeping up again.
He gets a whiff of himself and cringes.
“Ugh, bus germs.”
He hastily undresses dumping the piles on the floor, wanting so much to jump into the shower and relieve himself of this awful stench of bus, but stops short of his briefs.
Finding a trickle of dried blood seeping though the front and once again, those feelings of doubt begin to crawl inside of him. They drag him to the bottom but somehow he floats incrementally as his sarcasm wins.
“Well, hello there. Fancy meeting you again. Didn’t really expect you until next week.”, he rolls his eyes at nothing. “But you know,....it’s good to be early I guess.”
He jumps into the shower and as with most new places, dowses his way into psychically knowing the workings of Hawke’s shower, much like learning a new lover.
Alistair watches as the red trickles between his legs and down his thigh and finally spins languidly around drain.
He’d hoped Hawke stocked up on some tampons.