Not all of her dreams were nightmares.
Like anyone, Saraya had known love. Hers was lucky enough to endure through immortal ages, decades beyond counting, in times that were both peaceful and prosperous for her. Her feelings for her husband and the son she had with him were complicated, no doubt a result of the way their relationship must have evolved after what she did. But what she did had originated from a place of love. It was among other things, but Vesryn knew that love was the strongest of them.
There was one dream she came back to often, one that was particularly hard for Vesryn to figure out. Most were memories, clear cut and static, unchanging. This one, though...
Exhaustion. Peace.
Those were what he felt, more than anything. The sun was warm, shining through a break in the forest's canopy overhead, a bright and clear day beyond the trees. He lay at the side of a pool, clear water lapping and licking gently at his fingertips. There was a waterfall just barely in sight. Impressive in height but lacking in strength, it rained more than fell, its waters even turning to mist by the time they could descend to the pool.
He felt as though he could lay there forever, and indeed he planned to. His arms and legs refused any order he gave them to move. He felt only the rise and fall of his chest, once breathless but finally starting to still as a deep calm settled in. He lay there until it felt like the soft, wet ground itself would swallow him whole.
An elf's face appeared above him. Dashingly handsome. He'd always been weak to those eyes. To his dark curls, his full head of them. They smiled in the same moment, happy to see each other. It felt like it had been some time. He lowered himself, and their lips pressed together, the elf's weight a comfortable and familiar feeling atop his body. Vesryn's arms moved, hands finding the elf's shoulders, his neck.
And then he was gone. But not far. He heard the elf sloshing around in the pool, let his head loll to the side and saw him there, standing under the waterfall, mist raining down on him. He beckoned Vesryn. Come closer.
His legs were unsteady, wobbly, weak for some reason. He couldn't be bothered to figure out why. The only thing that mattered was getting them under him, and making his way to the waterfall.
Little beads of water formed from the mist in his hair, on his forehead, rolling down his cheek, down his neck. Dripping from his fingertips. The ground under his feet, the base of that pool, was mostly rock, slick in spots from mossy growth. He almost fell, but his balance, honed over years immeasurable, held.
He reached, trying to grasp the elf's extended hand...
And then Vesryn woke, and the world returned to him in a cold, painful rush.
It was early, dark still. Stel lay asleep at his side. Sometimes when his dreams were most intense he would accidentally wake her, but this one was thankfully calm. It always ended there, with the reach, but sometimes the details were different. Sometimes he sat at the pool's edge instead of laying flat on his back. Sometimes he slipped on his way in and had to put a hand down. Sometimes Saraya's husband was... less clothed.
It felt like an intrusion on her privacy, these dreams, so he tried not to linger on them. Saraya always withdrew as best she could when he and Stel were more intimate. It was the least he could do not to pry into memories that were long past, as painful as they were beautiful.
He knew he wouldn't get back to sleep. Not today. Silently he slipped out from under the covers, sitting at the edge of the bed and watching Stel for a moment. He didn't linger long, soon fully clothing himself and sneaking away. He needed to be outside, needed to surround himself with something other than the stone walls of Skyhold's interiors.
The day proceeded much as normal, once it came around. Those who left to help Leon had returned victorious. They didn't take the most obvious trophy from their kill, that of course being the head, but from what Vesryn had heard the man who located it was quite fond of it. Probably wouldn't have sat too well with him. They did bring other parts, useful parts. Proof of their triumph, not that they needed any.
In the afternoon he was due to practice with Khari. He began to gear up as usual, debating with himself. He'd donned his greaves and his boots before he made up his mind, and couldn't be bothered to remove them again. Carrying the rest on his back, he made his way to the Spymaster's tower. He found his sparring partner already inside.
"So," he said, offering a smile as he set down his gear. "I heard you struck the killing blow. Khari, the Dragonslayer."
“That's me." She grinned back at him, eyes lighting at what must have been the memory. “Had to take like... three baths before all the blood would come off." She'd already set her sword to the side, on one of the racks along the edge of the floor, and was testing the weight and heft of various practice blades. No doubt Leon's continued confinement in the infirmary was on her mind, but she seemed to be otherwise proceeding quite as usual.
“Now normally I'd never believe you were jealous of me, but this time, I could kind of see it being a possibility." She arched an eyebrow as if to ask him, giving another blade a few experimental swings.
"Jealous?" he scoffed at her, somewhat theatrically. "What a ridiculous idea." He had his own matters on his mind, and he didn't doubt they were showing visibly, but then again, Khari wasn't typically the sort to pick up on those things. Unless she'd been paying closer attention to him than he gave her credit for.
He took a seat on the bench at the practice ring's side. "I may have never killed a dragon, but I'm fairly certain Saraya did at some point, so..." he shrugged, as though to say it was the same thing.
He was going to miss this, honestly. Before the Inquisition he'd never had anyone he could call a rival. It was... an invigorating experience, especially once it became a friendly one. "Listen," he said, shifting tones quickly, "I'm not going to be training today. I wanted to ask you about something instead, if you don't mind."
She might not have picked up on his preoccupation right away, but the news that he wouldn't be stepping into the ring to spar her certainly jarred something loose in her head. All at once, her eyes were fixed on him, the practice blade held loosely in her hand and forgotten. She cocked her head to the side, obviously deciding it was something serious, and stowed the sword before joining him on the bench instead.
Pulling her legs up underneath her, she crossed them, draping her arms over her knees and slouching forward slightly. One arm came up to brace her cheek on a closed fist, making it easier for her to look at him partway over her shoulder. “'Course I don't mind. Shoot."
"Do you have a plan?" he asked, though he felt like it wasn't the right way to do so. "Or... a next step in mind, anyway. For when we're done here, with Corypheus." He was mostly curious about how she'd be continuing with her personal goals, how she'd continue trying to help their people, but of course she had other things in her life to take into consideration.
They all did, by now. "Lately I've found that I'm without much of a plan at all."
She considered this for some time, knuckles migrating until they half-covered her mouth. A furrow appeared between her brows, but she didn't look all that uncertain. Perhaps she simply needed to figure out how to put the words together. “I'm not sure exactly." The admission came easily, accompanied by a slight shrug. “I guess a lot of that depends on how things look when the dust settles. For the Inquisition. But... I'm not a chevalier yet. So I guess I'm just going to find some way to keep trying for it. Might ask Lucien what he thinks."
A short pause, and then: “If we're still here, though, then this is where I'll be, too. At least most of the time. It's where all the most important people in my life are, after all."
It occurred to Vesryn that good things simply took too much time. At least, it felt that way right now. What could he hope to do or accomplish in... six months time? Would he even have that long? What could any of them hope to do? These things couldn't be forced. If they could, certainly someone like Khari would have found a way to force them further by now. She certainly seemed to be trying it anyway.
"Here is... good, yeah. Can't think of anywhere better at the moment." He was acting strangely, he knew. Then again, he didn't really plan on getting through the day keeping it hidden from everyone. It was just harder this time than the last. This time... there really wasn't any escape, was there?
Khari narrowed her eyes at him, something akin to realization dawning over her a moment later. “You're... not letting yourself make plans, are you? Is it back? The stuff from before?" She straightened in her seat, pursing her lips. Whatever else she might have said was clearly bitten back—no doubt she wanted confirmation before she said anything else.
"As of when I woke up this morning, yes." It made the exit from the dream particularly painful. "I... haven't told anyone yet."
She hadn't expected that. Her expression contorted—eyes rounding, lips parting slightly—before she got it back under control. “Wait... no one?" The implication was obvious, but curiously for Khari, she skipped over spelling it out and moved to the next thing in sequence instead. “What do we do about it this time? Don't suppose the same thing from last time will work again?" The technical details were lost on her by her own admission, but she seemed to understand that much at least.
"Sadly, that's not something we can repeat." They'd known going in that it would only buy them time. Vesryn had been hoping for a great deal more of it before needing to confront this, but sadly they weren't that lucky. Or maybe they were. It could've only bought him a few days, after all. They were dealing with things that no living person was familiar with. Fumbling blindly in the dark.
"Cyrus or Harellan might be able to come up with something. They've been working on it already. I expect there will be more urgency once I let them know." His eyes settled somewhere in the pit, where they'd spent so many hours training together. "I need to tell Stel, too, I just... couldn't. I feel like she was just starting to get used to this. Not having this hang over us."
Khari grimaced, leaning all the way back against the bench with a huff. “Fuck. I hadn't even thought of it like that." One by one, she used the thumb of her left hand to crack all of the fingers on the same side. “You gotta do it though, Ves. You can't keep it from her. That's not fair." She chewed her lip; no doubt she knew that any solution to his problem would be well beyond her ken, unless it came down to needing to muscle their way in someplace they weren't supposed to be. Or killing something big and nasty like a dragon, as it turned out. Still it seemed that she must be scraping her thoughts together anyway, turning them over in a way that was clearly causing her some distress, from the pinched expression and the tension she held even against the back of the bench.
“I fucking swear, you know? Just when one of you's out of the woods it's something else. Someone else. I fucking hate this."
"On that, we can all agree." Maybe it was fitting that Saraya, who had built him from what he saw as nothing, would be the eventual end of him. Or maybe it was just fucked up. Vesryn figured Khari would describe it closer to that way.
"I do need to tell her," he agreed. He couldn't keep it from her. He'd have to keep himself from her, because she would know soon enough otherwise. "I think I just needed to tell someone else first." He stood, picking up his gear again. He honestly wasn't sure why he'd brought it. Maybe because taking it back would've taken him back to Stel too soon.
"I don't intend to stop fighting this time, but our training will have to be put on hold. To be safe." They wouldn't want a repeat of how this had happened last time, after all. "Saraya's perfect record against you will have to remain intact."
Khari snorted. “I guess I can suck it up and deal with that." She stood, too, stretching her legs back down to the ground and flowing back to her feet with hard-earned grace. For a moment, she frowned, shifting her weight. But a soft “fuck it" followed, and then she stepped into his space, heedless of his gear, and slid her arms under his for a brief, quite armored hug.
“The minute there's anything I can do, you let me know, Ves. I'm here for you." She squeezed briefly, then released him, flashing a smile that looked a little less easy than the one she'd worn before the conversation took its solemn turn.
Saraya could read her every move in combat, but that surprised her as well as Vesryn. He didn't even react in time to hug her back before it was over, but he smiled instead. It wasn't unwelcome, after all. "Thanks, Khari." He decided it was best to leave while he still had the courage. And before he did anything else too friendly.
It didn't take long to get anywhere in Skyhold, so it didn't take long to make it back to the main keep. Stel, not surprisingly, was still hard at work. There was still time before she was supposed to practice with the rest of them, and she never wasted a moment. "Sorry I disappeared this morning," he said, setting down his gear. "Just needed to be outside, and I didn't want to disturb you."
Though she'd kept writing as he entered, she looked up as soon as he'd spoken. It seemed as though she'd been halfway to a smile, but something made it falter instead of reaching fullness, and she set her quill back in its native inkwell. "That's all right," she replied, pursing her lips. "Any particular reason you needed to be out, or was it just the fine weather?" Her tone suggested that she doubted the latter.
"I might've just looked out a window if it were winter still." His smile also stopped halfway, and then disappeared. He didn't feel like dancing around it. Already it was heavy, like a steel cloak around his shoulders, dragging down his posture, putting an ache in his back.
"It's... back. The pains, the deterioration. It started this morning."
Stel accepted this with silence first. The placidity of her expression was not intentional, he knew. Neither was it reflective of her true feelings. But whenever she was confronted with something she wasn't sure what to do with, that happened first: she hid her deliberations behind tranquility nearly as convincing as her mentor's. Her eyes fell to the surface of the desk, and then she swallowed, the sound audible in what had otherwise become complete silence. The fingers of one hand curled around the edge of her desk, her knuckles paling until they were white.
"I told myself I was going to take this on the chin," she whispered, her voice cracking softly. "I convinced myself that I had to, because me going to pieces wasn't going to help anything, and my focus should be on helping but I—" He could see the shudder move through her, deep like it was trying to shake her apart. Maybe it did—when she looked back up to him, her eyes were bright with tears. One blink, and she was shedding them.
"I'm sorry—I'm sorry. I don't think I can—" She raised her free hand to her mouth, not quite soon enough to stifle the first quiet sob.
For a moment he froze, her sob lancing him like an arrow. He felt stunned by it because he didn't immediately know what to say, what would make this better. If he'd had any skill in subtlety he'd have considered hiding it from her for this very reason, unfair and wrong though it would've been. They risked their lives so often, nearly died so often, but this one thing hanging over him felt so... inevitable, compared to the rest. Inescapable. Impossible to fight against. Red lyrium dragons and red templar behemoths were easier to confront.
But he was at her side as soon as he could get his legs to move, kneeling, prying her hand from the desk so he could take it in his. "I don't know what's going to happen," he said, his voice uncomfortably thick. "I refuse to think of anything as inevitable. Not when minds like your brother's and Harellan's are helping us. All I know is..." He swallowed, looking down at her hand a moment. "I'm going to keep doing what I do best. I'm going to keep fighting, keep doing what's right. And I'm going to keep loving you. No force in this world or the next is going to stop that."
"I know," she murmured between her fingers, leaning forward and down to press her brow into his shoulder. "And I know n-nothing's inevitable, but— Drawing her hand away from her lips, she slid it around to the back of his neck instead, tangling her fingers in the hair at his nape. Her breathing still shook, but she seemed to be going to great effort not to dissolve any further than she already had.
"It's going to hurt you again. And there's not—not going to be anything I can do. I just—I—" Another irregular breath washed over his collarbone when she exhaled.
She was right about that. If this was anything like last time, it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. If it ever did get better. He believed that it could—he wasn't about to throw away all hope—but he wasn't about to think that it was likely.
"Now you're just being silly," he said, forcing a smile as he curled his other hand around her back. "If you think there's nothing you can do. I need you as much as I need anyone, if I'm going to fight this. For far more than just your magic." She was his other half as much as Saraya was. He felt what she felt almost as strongly. They had come to share pain, but the opposite was also true. He drew strength from her, just as he tried to lend her his. And he had a feeling he was going to need all of it this time.
Stel lifted her head away from his shoulder, meeting his eyes with bleary focus. Retracting her hand, too, she smeared the tears away from her cheeks, and dried her fingers on the hem of her tunic, visibly attempting to compose herself. Gradually her breathing steadied, and she nodded slightly. "I'm doing an awful job at any of the rest of it right now, I'm sorry." Clearing her throat softly, she shook her head as if to chase away some unwelcome thought.
"I—yes. Of course. I'll be here. Always. Whatever you need." There was a delicate tremor in her hand when she brought it to rest against the side of his face, but she managed a wobbly smile, too. "Thank you, for telling me. I was dreading it, but... I'd rather know. So we can face it together."
"I can't imagine a world otherwise anymore. I suppose that's what love does to a man."
Like anyone, Saraya had known love. Hers was lucky enough to endure through immortal ages, decades beyond counting, in times that were both peaceful and prosperous for her. Her feelings for her husband and the son she had with him were complicated, no doubt a result of the way their relationship must have evolved after what she did. But what she did had originated from a place of love. It was among other things, but Vesryn knew that love was the strongest of them.
There was one dream she came back to often, one that was particularly hard for Vesryn to figure out. Most were memories, clear cut and static, unchanging. This one, though...
Exhaustion. Peace.
Those were what he felt, more than anything. The sun was warm, shining through a break in the forest's canopy overhead, a bright and clear day beyond the trees. He lay at the side of a pool, clear water lapping and licking gently at his fingertips. There was a waterfall just barely in sight. Impressive in height but lacking in strength, it rained more than fell, its waters even turning to mist by the time they could descend to the pool.
He felt as though he could lay there forever, and indeed he planned to. His arms and legs refused any order he gave them to move. He felt only the rise and fall of his chest, once breathless but finally starting to still as a deep calm settled in. He lay there until it felt like the soft, wet ground itself would swallow him whole.
An elf's face appeared above him. Dashingly handsome. He'd always been weak to those eyes. To his dark curls, his full head of them. They smiled in the same moment, happy to see each other. It felt like it had been some time. He lowered himself, and their lips pressed together, the elf's weight a comfortable and familiar feeling atop his body. Vesryn's arms moved, hands finding the elf's shoulders, his neck.
And then he was gone. But not far. He heard the elf sloshing around in the pool, let his head loll to the side and saw him there, standing under the waterfall, mist raining down on him. He beckoned Vesryn. Come closer.
His legs were unsteady, wobbly, weak for some reason. He couldn't be bothered to figure out why. The only thing that mattered was getting them under him, and making his way to the waterfall.
Little beads of water formed from the mist in his hair, on his forehead, rolling down his cheek, down his neck. Dripping from his fingertips. The ground under his feet, the base of that pool, was mostly rock, slick in spots from mossy growth. He almost fell, but his balance, honed over years immeasurable, held.
He reached, trying to grasp the elf's extended hand...
And then Vesryn woke, and the world returned to him in a cold, painful rush.
It was early, dark still. Stel lay asleep at his side. Sometimes when his dreams were most intense he would accidentally wake her, but this one was thankfully calm. It always ended there, with the reach, but sometimes the details were different. Sometimes he sat at the pool's edge instead of laying flat on his back. Sometimes he slipped on his way in and had to put a hand down. Sometimes Saraya's husband was... less clothed.
It felt like an intrusion on her privacy, these dreams, so he tried not to linger on them. Saraya always withdrew as best she could when he and Stel were more intimate. It was the least he could do not to pry into memories that were long past, as painful as they were beautiful.
He knew he wouldn't get back to sleep. Not today. Silently he slipped out from under the covers, sitting at the edge of the bed and watching Stel for a moment. He didn't linger long, soon fully clothing himself and sneaking away. He needed to be outside, needed to surround himself with something other than the stone walls of Skyhold's interiors.
The day proceeded much as normal, once it came around. Those who left to help Leon had returned victorious. They didn't take the most obvious trophy from their kill, that of course being the head, but from what Vesryn had heard the man who located it was quite fond of it. Probably wouldn't have sat too well with him. They did bring other parts, useful parts. Proof of their triumph, not that they needed any.
In the afternoon he was due to practice with Khari. He began to gear up as usual, debating with himself. He'd donned his greaves and his boots before he made up his mind, and couldn't be bothered to remove them again. Carrying the rest on his back, he made his way to the Spymaster's tower. He found his sparring partner already inside.
"So," he said, offering a smile as he set down his gear. "I heard you struck the killing blow. Khari, the Dragonslayer."
“That's me." She grinned back at him, eyes lighting at what must have been the memory. “Had to take like... three baths before all the blood would come off." She'd already set her sword to the side, on one of the racks along the edge of the floor, and was testing the weight and heft of various practice blades. No doubt Leon's continued confinement in the infirmary was on her mind, but she seemed to be otherwise proceeding quite as usual.
“Now normally I'd never believe you were jealous of me, but this time, I could kind of see it being a possibility." She arched an eyebrow as if to ask him, giving another blade a few experimental swings.
"Jealous?" he scoffed at her, somewhat theatrically. "What a ridiculous idea." He had his own matters on his mind, and he didn't doubt they were showing visibly, but then again, Khari wasn't typically the sort to pick up on those things. Unless she'd been paying closer attention to him than he gave her credit for.
He took a seat on the bench at the practice ring's side. "I may have never killed a dragon, but I'm fairly certain Saraya did at some point, so..." he shrugged, as though to say it was the same thing.
He was going to miss this, honestly. Before the Inquisition he'd never had anyone he could call a rival. It was... an invigorating experience, especially once it became a friendly one. "Listen," he said, shifting tones quickly, "I'm not going to be training today. I wanted to ask you about something instead, if you don't mind."
She might not have picked up on his preoccupation right away, but the news that he wouldn't be stepping into the ring to spar her certainly jarred something loose in her head. All at once, her eyes were fixed on him, the practice blade held loosely in her hand and forgotten. She cocked her head to the side, obviously deciding it was something serious, and stowed the sword before joining him on the bench instead.
Pulling her legs up underneath her, she crossed them, draping her arms over her knees and slouching forward slightly. One arm came up to brace her cheek on a closed fist, making it easier for her to look at him partway over her shoulder. “'Course I don't mind. Shoot."
"Do you have a plan?" he asked, though he felt like it wasn't the right way to do so. "Or... a next step in mind, anyway. For when we're done here, with Corypheus." He was mostly curious about how she'd be continuing with her personal goals, how she'd continue trying to help their people, but of course she had other things in her life to take into consideration.
They all did, by now. "Lately I've found that I'm without much of a plan at all."
She considered this for some time, knuckles migrating until they half-covered her mouth. A furrow appeared between her brows, but she didn't look all that uncertain. Perhaps she simply needed to figure out how to put the words together. “I'm not sure exactly." The admission came easily, accompanied by a slight shrug. “I guess a lot of that depends on how things look when the dust settles. For the Inquisition. But... I'm not a chevalier yet. So I guess I'm just going to find some way to keep trying for it. Might ask Lucien what he thinks."
A short pause, and then: “If we're still here, though, then this is where I'll be, too. At least most of the time. It's where all the most important people in my life are, after all."
It occurred to Vesryn that good things simply took too much time. At least, it felt that way right now. What could he hope to do or accomplish in... six months time? Would he even have that long? What could any of them hope to do? These things couldn't be forced. If they could, certainly someone like Khari would have found a way to force them further by now. She certainly seemed to be trying it anyway.
"Here is... good, yeah. Can't think of anywhere better at the moment." He was acting strangely, he knew. Then again, he didn't really plan on getting through the day keeping it hidden from everyone. It was just harder this time than the last. This time... there really wasn't any escape, was there?
Khari narrowed her eyes at him, something akin to realization dawning over her a moment later. “You're... not letting yourself make plans, are you? Is it back? The stuff from before?" She straightened in her seat, pursing her lips. Whatever else she might have said was clearly bitten back—no doubt she wanted confirmation before she said anything else.
"As of when I woke up this morning, yes." It made the exit from the dream particularly painful. "I... haven't told anyone yet."
She hadn't expected that. Her expression contorted—eyes rounding, lips parting slightly—before she got it back under control. “Wait... no one?" The implication was obvious, but curiously for Khari, she skipped over spelling it out and moved to the next thing in sequence instead. “What do we do about it this time? Don't suppose the same thing from last time will work again?" The technical details were lost on her by her own admission, but she seemed to understand that much at least.
"Sadly, that's not something we can repeat." They'd known going in that it would only buy them time. Vesryn had been hoping for a great deal more of it before needing to confront this, but sadly they weren't that lucky. Or maybe they were. It could've only bought him a few days, after all. They were dealing with things that no living person was familiar with. Fumbling blindly in the dark.
"Cyrus or Harellan might be able to come up with something. They've been working on it already. I expect there will be more urgency once I let them know." His eyes settled somewhere in the pit, where they'd spent so many hours training together. "I need to tell Stel, too, I just... couldn't. I feel like she was just starting to get used to this. Not having this hang over us."
Khari grimaced, leaning all the way back against the bench with a huff. “Fuck. I hadn't even thought of it like that." One by one, she used the thumb of her left hand to crack all of the fingers on the same side. “You gotta do it though, Ves. You can't keep it from her. That's not fair." She chewed her lip; no doubt she knew that any solution to his problem would be well beyond her ken, unless it came down to needing to muscle their way in someplace they weren't supposed to be. Or killing something big and nasty like a dragon, as it turned out. Still it seemed that she must be scraping her thoughts together anyway, turning them over in a way that was clearly causing her some distress, from the pinched expression and the tension she held even against the back of the bench.
“I fucking swear, you know? Just when one of you's out of the woods it's something else. Someone else. I fucking hate this."
"On that, we can all agree." Maybe it was fitting that Saraya, who had built him from what he saw as nothing, would be the eventual end of him. Or maybe it was just fucked up. Vesryn figured Khari would describe it closer to that way.
"I do need to tell her," he agreed. He couldn't keep it from her. He'd have to keep himself from her, because she would know soon enough otherwise. "I think I just needed to tell someone else first." He stood, picking up his gear again. He honestly wasn't sure why he'd brought it. Maybe because taking it back would've taken him back to Stel too soon.
"I don't intend to stop fighting this time, but our training will have to be put on hold. To be safe." They wouldn't want a repeat of how this had happened last time, after all. "Saraya's perfect record against you will have to remain intact."
Khari snorted. “I guess I can suck it up and deal with that." She stood, too, stretching her legs back down to the ground and flowing back to her feet with hard-earned grace. For a moment, she frowned, shifting her weight. But a soft “fuck it" followed, and then she stepped into his space, heedless of his gear, and slid her arms under his for a brief, quite armored hug.
“The minute there's anything I can do, you let me know, Ves. I'm here for you." She squeezed briefly, then released him, flashing a smile that looked a little less easy than the one she'd worn before the conversation took its solemn turn.
Saraya could read her every move in combat, but that surprised her as well as Vesryn. He didn't even react in time to hug her back before it was over, but he smiled instead. It wasn't unwelcome, after all. "Thanks, Khari." He decided it was best to leave while he still had the courage. And before he did anything else too friendly.
It didn't take long to get anywhere in Skyhold, so it didn't take long to make it back to the main keep. Stel, not surprisingly, was still hard at work. There was still time before she was supposed to practice with the rest of them, and she never wasted a moment. "Sorry I disappeared this morning," he said, setting down his gear. "Just needed to be outside, and I didn't want to disturb you."
Though she'd kept writing as he entered, she looked up as soon as he'd spoken. It seemed as though she'd been halfway to a smile, but something made it falter instead of reaching fullness, and she set her quill back in its native inkwell. "That's all right," she replied, pursing her lips. "Any particular reason you needed to be out, or was it just the fine weather?" Her tone suggested that she doubted the latter.
"I might've just looked out a window if it were winter still." His smile also stopped halfway, and then disappeared. He didn't feel like dancing around it. Already it was heavy, like a steel cloak around his shoulders, dragging down his posture, putting an ache in his back.
"It's... back. The pains, the deterioration. It started this morning."
Stel accepted this with silence first. The placidity of her expression was not intentional, he knew. Neither was it reflective of her true feelings. But whenever she was confronted with something she wasn't sure what to do with, that happened first: she hid her deliberations behind tranquility nearly as convincing as her mentor's. Her eyes fell to the surface of the desk, and then she swallowed, the sound audible in what had otherwise become complete silence. The fingers of one hand curled around the edge of her desk, her knuckles paling until they were white.
"I told myself I was going to take this on the chin," she whispered, her voice cracking softly. "I convinced myself that I had to, because me going to pieces wasn't going to help anything, and my focus should be on helping but I—" He could see the shudder move through her, deep like it was trying to shake her apart. Maybe it did—when she looked back up to him, her eyes were bright with tears. One blink, and she was shedding them.
"I'm sorry—I'm sorry. I don't think I can—" She raised her free hand to her mouth, not quite soon enough to stifle the first quiet sob.
For a moment he froze, her sob lancing him like an arrow. He felt stunned by it because he didn't immediately know what to say, what would make this better. If he'd had any skill in subtlety he'd have considered hiding it from her for this very reason, unfair and wrong though it would've been. They risked their lives so often, nearly died so often, but this one thing hanging over him felt so... inevitable, compared to the rest. Inescapable. Impossible to fight against. Red lyrium dragons and red templar behemoths were easier to confront.
But he was at her side as soon as he could get his legs to move, kneeling, prying her hand from the desk so he could take it in his. "I don't know what's going to happen," he said, his voice uncomfortably thick. "I refuse to think of anything as inevitable. Not when minds like your brother's and Harellan's are helping us. All I know is..." He swallowed, looking down at her hand a moment. "I'm going to keep doing what I do best. I'm going to keep fighting, keep doing what's right. And I'm going to keep loving you. No force in this world or the next is going to stop that."
"I know," she murmured between her fingers, leaning forward and down to press her brow into his shoulder. "And I know n-nothing's inevitable, but— Drawing her hand away from her lips, she slid it around to the back of his neck instead, tangling her fingers in the hair at his nape. Her breathing still shook, but she seemed to be going to great effort not to dissolve any further than she already had.
"It's going to hurt you again. And there's not—not going to be anything I can do. I just—I—" Another irregular breath washed over his collarbone when she exhaled.
She was right about that. If this was anything like last time, it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. If it ever did get better. He believed that it could—he wasn't about to throw away all hope—but he wasn't about to think that it was likely.
"Now you're just being silly," he said, forcing a smile as he curled his other hand around her back. "If you think there's nothing you can do. I need you as much as I need anyone, if I'm going to fight this. For far more than just your magic." She was his other half as much as Saraya was. He felt what she felt almost as strongly. They had come to share pain, but the opposite was also true. He drew strength from her, just as he tried to lend her his. And he had a feeling he was going to need all of it this time.
Stel lifted her head away from his shoulder, meeting his eyes with bleary focus. Retracting her hand, too, she smeared the tears away from her cheeks, and dried her fingers on the hem of her tunic, visibly attempting to compose herself. Gradually her breathing steadied, and she nodded slightly. "I'm doing an awful job at any of the rest of it right now, I'm sorry." Clearing her throat softly, she shook her head as if to chase away some unwelcome thought.
"I—yes. Of course. I'll be here. Always. Whatever you need." There was a delicate tremor in her hand when she brought it to rest against the side of his face, but she managed a wobbly smile, too. "Thank you, for telling me. I was dreading it, but... I'd rather know. So we can face it together."
"I can't imagine a world otherwise anymore. I suppose that's what love does to a man."