There was a lot of work to do in the aftermath of the Arbor Wilds.
Estella knew this. She was in fact trying very hard to do some of it, because it wasn't fair to Romulus to make him shoulder the burden alone. But for the past week, she'd barely been able to do anything. Even now, her eyes lost focus on the parchment in front of her, the words blurring into meaningless, indistinct shapes that swam in front of her. She pulled in a slow breath, holding it in her lungs until it burned, then releasing it slowly through her nose. She refused to cry. Not anymore.
From the office just below their bedroom, any such thing would be audible. And even if Ves was delirious sometimes and sleeping at others, she couldn't take the risk that he would hear. What he was dealing with was pain enough—she'd not be responsible for compounding it, and her tears were useless.
Everything was useless.
She swallowed thickly, past the lump that seemed permanently lodged in her throat, and pushed the paper away with a soft noise of distress. She wasn't in any shape to be doing it. Not when it was taking everything she had just to... not actively make things worse. Shoving her chair back from the desk, Estella dragged her hands down her face, clenching her fists in her lap and squeezing until her nails dug furrows in the still-soft skin of her palms. She'd never acquired quite so many calluses as some of the others, maybe because of her preference for gloves. But there were none there now, and the pain was sharp, centering. Forcing her breath through a slow-cycle pattern Rilien had taught her seemed to help, at least a little.
She'd had a grip on herself and her emotions for so long. No doubt it was a sign of just how much Ves meant to her that she couldn't maintain it now. Even though it would be so much better if she could.
But trying to do this work while he was dying in the next room up was just as useless as anything else, and she didn't want it anyway, so for once she shut off the part of her brain that cared at all for the inconvenience to other people and stood, abandoning her work in favor of making tea. The motions were familiar and did not require thought, and so for a while she shut that off, too. Estella put the lightest snacks she had on the tray, in hopes of enticing him to eat something, even while knowing she was probably going to be the only one either eating or drinking.
Balancing the tray on one hand, she climbed the stairs to their bedroom, knocking softly more to alert him to her presence than to ask permission. That, at least, she knew she did not need. She took a moment to make sure her face was composed, closing her expression down tightly against the omnipresent worry and the panic that gripped her guts and squeezed. Once she was sure she had it under control, she opened the door and slipped in quietly.
It was quiet, at least. No rolling in the bed, no groaning, no gagging up whatever pitiful amounts he attempted to eat. But not too quiet. She could hear Ves's breathing, in and out, a little too clipped and short to be relaxed, but better than usual. She found him resting on his back. Not sleeping, as his eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling rather blankly. Real sleep only came to him in brief periods that often brought him little rest, given how intense his dreams had become. The sheets he'd pulled away from his upper body, which was covered by nothing at all. Scars lined his torso here and there, little reminders of old battle wounds. None seemingly as severe as the steadily growing collection Estella was accumulating.
He was diminished, physically. Whatever was tearing at his mind was seemingly eating at his body, too, though the lack of proper nourishment couldn't have been helping. He looked almost thin, at least compared to the shape she'd come to know. He'd told her that he still wasn't half as skinny as when he and Saraya first met.
"Good timing," he said, voice hoarse from lack of proper use. He cleared it. "I've been given... something of a reprieve. Relatively speaking." Hiking his arms up, he struggled to move himself into a seated position in the bed.
Estella hastened her steps, setting the tea tray down on the bedside table and moving to make it easier, shifting around pillows and blankets until he was seated about as comfortably as he could be. She picked up a strand of hair from beside his face and smoothed it back along the crown of his head, indulging herself by pressing her lips to his brow briefly before she withdrew to give him space, pulling one of the chairs against the wall back up to the bedside.
"I'm glad," she replied, the relief genuine even if tempered by her knowledge of how little a relative reprieve really was. "There's tea if you'd like it." She'd already doctored one of the cups the way she knew he took it—when he did—but done it in something less delicate and easier to grip than her own.
She took a sip, which ended up being more of a gulp than anything, trying not to wince when it proved still slightly too hot and burned on the way down. Her nerves were frayed to threads these days; they might have been even had he not been in this particular condition. There was no mistaking that what was happening to him was one of several urgent situations the Inquisition was dealing with now, as the final confrontation with Corypheus approached.
He did go for the tea this time, sipping more carefully than Estella had. He couldn't hide the significant tremor in his hands, but it wasn't so bad that he spilled any on himself, and he successfully managed to lower the cup again. Tilting his head back against the pillow behind it, he took several deliberately long, slow breaths.
"I can feel her so strongly now." The way he said it made it seem like a positive thing, almost a pleasurable one, despite the fact that their increasing connection was what was steadily killing them. "I've been trying to focus on the good. It helps actually, with the pain. And despite appearances, there is still good to focus on." He let her take one of his hands. His were slightly damp with sweat, and a near-constant vibration of shakes worked their way through them, down to the fingertips.
Estella did what she could to ease it, massaging his hand in her own, pressing firmly but not hard on the muscles and tendons under his thumb, on his palm. A little of her magic threaded into the contact, too, lending him some of her strength, though there was little it could do for him anymore.
"What we were able to do for her, at the temple... I can't even describe what it feels like. To want something so intensely for so long, and to think it impossible for all that time. And we gave it to her. She feels..." His thumb slid over the back of her hand while he looked up, seeing something that wasn't there for her. "She's never felt so free, Stel. Maybe not even in her old life. I wish you could—agh." Sharply he withdrew his hand from hers, as it went to his head, and his entire body tensed, tightening. His legs shook even though no weight was on them, his abdominal muscles flexed as though he expected to be hit.
She bit down hard on her tongue, closing her empty hands over air again and trying not to add her distress to his own. But it was difficult, to watch him just endure this much pain. Perhaps the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do, even stacked against the impossible fights she'd won and personal obstacles she'd managed to overcome. Maybe it was because it felt like this was a fight she wouldn't ever win.
It was a long moment before it passed, and it left Ves breathless as though he'd just finished a morning run alongside her and Khari. "She only wishes this didn't have to be... to be the cost of her freedom."
Frankly, Estella wished it, too. For all the suffering the bond was causing him, she'd never wished it away—she understood just how important it was for Ves and the person he'd become with Saraya's guidance. Understood how much he cared for the woman in his head. And she cared for Saraya, too. How could she not?
But it was uncomfortable knowledge, that if only the connection wasn't there, neither of them would pay for it in so much pain. She fought to keep her words to herself for now, worried that they would come out tinged with what-ifs and other things no one needed to hear. By way of distraction, she swallowed down the rest of her tea and set the cup aside, then stood, toeing her boots off and making her way to her side of the bed, where she climbed in next to him and shifted around so they were facing each other. Her legs were crossed underneath her, her thigh pressed against his, and she took up his other hand so she could say the thing she really meant instead.
"Of course she does." Estella's index finger drew tiny circles on the skin of Vesryn's wrist. She was quite enamored of his hands, really—but then at this point she was entirely enamored with everything about him, so it was hardly a surprise. She liked the roughness of them, knowing it had come to him with difficulty, like it had come to her. Neither of them had been born to what they'd eventually earned, not really, even if they'd both had the help of extraordinary people. "But it's not her fault. It's no one's fault. Sometimes life just—" the rest of the words caught uncomfortably in her throat. They didn't matter anyway.
"I'm glad we could do that for her. Glad we could help."
He pulled her into him, until her head rested on his chest and his arm was wrapped snugly around her shoulders, and there they rested. She could hear his heartbeat, elevated almost like he was in combat, struggling far too much for someone simply sitting in bed with his beloved. That fine, constant tremor passed in waves through his chest. It wasn't quite like a shiver, but it had that same sort of unsteadiness.
A wet drop fell down into her hair. A tear, undoubtedly. "I'm not ready for this," he said, the words struggling to escape a choked throat. "I'm not ready to watch over you from the Maker's side, or wherever I'm bound for. I was never any good at watching you do things alone, anyway. It's easier when I have a shield, right at your side." Another wave of pain passed through him, though he didn't make a sound. She could feel him tense and brace for it underneath her, feel the way his arm gripped her shoulder more tightly. There was nothing to be done but wait for it to pass, wait until he relaxed, until he began preparing for the next wave.
Estella bore it without complaint. She liked to believe that having her there to hold on to might have made the pain itself a little more bearable, that the warmth and solidity of another person, someone he loved, was just a tiny bit better than those times when the waves came and went and he was alone. She slipped her arms around his back and relaxed into him.
She wasn't ready either. She didn't know if it was possible to be ready to lose someone this way. What she did know was that there was no helping the way her fingertips pressed into the skin of his back, nor her need to turn her face in to hide the fact that she'd started to cry as well, all resolutions to the contrary utterly shattered. He could probably feel the quake in her breath, not so different to the one humming over the whole of him.
"The thing is," he continued, taking a few seconds to breathe, "I don't think Saraya's ready either. After all this time, after all she's been through and seen and done. There's always more that you can do, right?" He reached up with a hand, wiping at his face. "Maybe that's a lesson. That we'll never feel finished. All we can do is use the time we have for the best. And I want you to know that I don't regret a moment of it. There's not a thing I'd do differently."
"Me either," she said immediately. She'd thought herself a little silly, before, for many reasons. Not the least of them was how long it took her to get to a point where she was ready to accept her feelings for him, and willing to trust him enough to hand him that part of her that would always be his. But... she wouldn't even change that. Because the hesitance, and learning to overcome it, had taught her so much about the both of them. About what she was capable of, and about just how patient and kind and good he really was—all insights that only made her love him more now.
And even if all that made this part all the more difficult, she couldn't regret it. Never.
"I—you—" Estella sniffed, shifting to pull her head back and meet his eyes. "I just want you to know that, no matter what, I—I love you. Always. And even this, now, it's—" Worth it. Worth feeling like someone was trying to wrench her heart out of her, because for that tiny little span of a few years, so short in the grand scheme of things, they'd had each other. And she'd rather these few years with him than a lifetime with anyone else.
He kissed her, and for a moment it felt like he was steadier than before. His hands lost their shakes, the tremor in his chest faded, the tension fleeing from his body. But it was only a moment, quick enough that she could have just imagined it, and when his lips pulled away from hers, it almost seemed worse than before.
"I know you have a lot to do," he said, little more than a whisper in her ear. "But... could you stay? Just a little while longer."
There was only one answer to that question.
"As long as you want."
Estella knew this. She was in fact trying very hard to do some of it, because it wasn't fair to Romulus to make him shoulder the burden alone. But for the past week, she'd barely been able to do anything. Even now, her eyes lost focus on the parchment in front of her, the words blurring into meaningless, indistinct shapes that swam in front of her. She pulled in a slow breath, holding it in her lungs until it burned, then releasing it slowly through her nose. She refused to cry. Not anymore.
From the office just below their bedroom, any such thing would be audible. And even if Ves was delirious sometimes and sleeping at others, she couldn't take the risk that he would hear. What he was dealing with was pain enough—she'd not be responsible for compounding it, and her tears were useless.
Everything was useless.
She swallowed thickly, past the lump that seemed permanently lodged in her throat, and pushed the paper away with a soft noise of distress. She wasn't in any shape to be doing it. Not when it was taking everything she had just to... not actively make things worse. Shoving her chair back from the desk, Estella dragged her hands down her face, clenching her fists in her lap and squeezing until her nails dug furrows in the still-soft skin of her palms. She'd never acquired quite so many calluses as some of the others, maybe because of her preference for gloves. But there were none there now, and the pain was sharp, centering. Forcing her breath through a slow-cycle pattern Rilien had taught her seemed to help, at least a little.
She'd had a grip on herself and her emotions for so long. No doubt it was a sign of just how much Ves meant to her that she couldn't maintain it now. Even though it would be so much better if she could.
But trying to do this work while he was dying in the next room up was just as useless as anything else, and she didn't want it anyway, so for once she shut off the part of her brain that cared at all for the inconvenience to other people and stood, abandoning her work in favor of making tea. The motions were familiar and did not require thought, and so for a while she shut that off, too. Estella put the lightest snacks she had on the tray, in hopes of enticing him to eat something, even while knowing she was probably going to be the only one either eating or drinking.
Balancing the tray on one hand, she climbed the stairs to their bedroom, knocking softly more to alert him to her presence than to ask permission. That, at least, she knew she did not need. She took a moment to make sure her face was composed, closing her expression down tightly against the omnipresent worry and the panic that gripped her guts and squeezed. Once she was sure she had it under control, she opened the door and slipped in quietly.
It was quiet, at least. No rolling in the bed, no groaning, no gagging up whatever pitiful amounts he attempted to eat. But not too quiet. She could hear Ves's breathing, in and out, a little too clipped and short to be relaxed, but better than usual. She found him resting on his back. Not sleeping, as his eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling rather blankly. Real sleep only came to him in brief periods that often brought him little rest, given how intense his dreams had become. The sheets he'd pulled away from his upper body, which was covered by nothing at all. Scars lined his torso here and there, little reminders of old battle wounds. None seemingly as severe as the steadily growing collection Estella was accumulating.
He was diminished, physically. Whatever was tearing at his mind was seemingly eating at his body, too, though the lack of proper nourishment couldn't have been helping. He looked almost thin, at least compared to the shape she'd come to know. He'd told her that he still wasn't half as skinny as when he and Saraya first met.
"Good timing," he said, voice hoarse from lack of proper use. He cleared it. "I've been given... something of a reprieve. Relatively speaking." Hiking his arms up, he struggled to move himself into a seated position in the bed.
Estella hastened her steps, setting the tea tray down on the bedside table and moving to make it easier, shifting around pillows and blankets until he was seated about as comfortably as he could be. She picked up a strand of hair from beside his face and smoothed it back along the crown of his head, indulging herself by pressing her lips to his brow briefly before she withdrew to give him space, pulling one of the chairs against the wall back up to the bedside.
"I'm glad," she replied, the relief genuine even if tempered by her knowledge of how little a relative reprieve really was. "There's tea if you'd like it." She'd already doctored one of the cups the way she knew he took it—when he did—but done it in something less delicate and easier to grip than her own.
She took a sip, which ended up being more of a gulp than anything, trying not to wince when it proved still slightly too hot and burned on the way down. Her nerves were frayed to threads these days; they might have been even had he not been in this particular condition. There was no mistaking that what was happening to him was one of several urgent situations the Inquisition was dealing with now, as the final confrontation with Corypheus approached.
He did go for the tea this time, sipping more carefully than Estella had. He couldn't hide the significant tremor in his hands, but it wasn't so bad that he spilled any on himself, and he successfully managed to lower the cup again. Tilting his head back against the pillow behind it, he took several deliberately long, slow breaths.
"I can feel her so strongly now." The way he said it made it seem like a positive thing, almost a pleasurable one, despite the fact that their increasing connection was what was steadily killing them. "I've been trying to focus on the good. It helps actually, with the pain. And despite appearances, there is still good to focus on." He let her take one of his hands. His were slightly damp with sweat, and a near-constant vibration of shakes worked their way through them, down to the fingertips.
Estella did what she could to ease it, massaging his hand in her own, pressing firmly but not hard on the muscles and tendons under his thumb, on his palm. A little of her magic threaded into the contact, too, lending him some of her strength, though there was little it could do for him anymore.
"What we were able to do for her, at the temple... I can't even describe what it feels like. To want something so intensely for so long, and to think it impossible for all that time. And we gave it to her. She feels..." His thumb slid over the back of her hand while he looked up, seeing something that wasn't there for her. "She's never felt so free, Stel. Maybe not even in her old life. I wish you could—agh." Sharply he withdrew his hand from hers, as it went to his head, and his entire body tensed, tightening. His legs shook even though no weight was on them, his abdominal muscles flexed as though he expected to be hit.
She bit down hard on her tongue, closing her empty hands over air again and trying not to add her distress to his own. But it was difficult, to watch him just endure this much pain. Perhaps the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do, even stacked against the impossible fights she'd won and personal obstacles she'd managed to overcome. Maybe it was because it felt like this was a fight she wouldn't ever win.
It was a long moment before it passed, and it left Ves breathless as though he'd just finished a morning run alongside her and Khari. "She only wishes this didn't have to be... to be the cost of her freedom."
Frankly, Estella wished it, too. For all the suffering the bond was causing him, she'd never wished it away—she understood just how important it was for Ves and the person he'd become with Saraya's guidance. Understood how much he cared for the woman in his head. And she cared for Saraya, too. How could she not?
But it was uncomfortable knowledge, that if only the connection wasn't there, neither of them would pay for it in so much pain. She fought to keep her words to herself for now, worried that they would come out tinged with what-ifs and other things no one needed to hear. By way of distraction, she swallowed down the rest of her tea and set the cup aside, then stood, toeing her boots off and making her way to her side of the bed, where she climbed in next to him and shifted around so they were facing each other. Her legs were crossed underneath her, her thigh pressed against his, and she took up his other hand so she could say the thing she really meant instead.
"Of course she does." Estella's index finger drew tiny circles on the skin of Vesryn's wrist. She was quite enamored of his hands, really—but then at this point she was entirely enamored with everything about him, so it was hardly a surprise. She liked the roughness of them, knowing it had come to him with difficulty, like it had come to her. Neither of them had been born to what they'd eventually earned, not really, even if they'd both had the help of extraordinary people. "But it's not her fault. It's no one's fault. Sometimes life just—" the rest of the words caught uncomfortably in her throat. They didn't matter anyway.
"I'm glad we could do that for her. Glad we could help."
He pulled her into him, until her head rested on his chest and his arm was wrapped snugly around her shoulders, and there they rested. She could hear his heartbeat, elevated almost like he was in combat, struggling far too much for someone simply sitting in bed with his beloved. That fine, constant tremor passed in waves through his chest. It wasn't quite like a shiver, but it had that same sort of unsteadiness.
A wet drop fell down into her hair. A tear, undoubtedly. "I'm not ready for this," he said, the words struggling to escape a choked throat. "I'm not ready to watch over you from the Maker's side, or wherever I'm bound for. I was never any good at watching you do things alone, anyway. It's easier when I have a shield, right at your side." Another wave of pain passed through him, though he didn't make a sound. She could feel him tense and brace for it underneath her, feel the way his arm gripped her shoulder more tightly. There was nothing to be done but wait for it to pass, wait until he relaxed, until he began preparing for the next wave.
Estella bore it without complaint. She liked to believe that having her there to hold on to might have made the pain itself a little more bearable, that the warmth and solidity of another person, someone he loved, was just a tiny bit better than those times when the waves came and went and he was alone. She slipped her arms around his back and relaxed into him.
She wasn't ready either. She didn't know if it was possible to be ready to lose someone this way. What she did know was that there was no helping the way her fingertips pressed into the skin of his back, nor her need to turn her face in to hide the fact that she'd started to cry as well, all resolutions to the contrary utterly shattered. He could probably feel the quake in her breath, not so different to the one humming over the whole of him.
"The thing is," he continued, taking a few seconds to breathe, "I don't think Saraya's ready either. After all this time, after all she's been through and seen and done. There's always more that you can do, right?" He reached up with a hand, wiping at his face. "Maybe that's a lesson. That we'll never feel finished. All we can do is use the time we have for the best. And I want you to know that I don't regret a moment of it. There's not a thing I'd do differently."
"Me either," she said immediately. She'd thought herself a little silly, before, for many reasons. Not the least of them was how long it took her to get to a point where she was ready to accept her feelings for him, and willing to trust him enough to hand him that part of her that would always be his. But... she wouldn't even change that. Because the hesitance, and learning to overcome it, had taught her so much about the both of them. About what she was capable of, and about just how patient and kind and good he really was—all insights that only made her love him more now.
And even if all that made this part all the more difficult, she couldn't regret it. Never.
"I—you—" Estella sniffed, shifting to pull her head back and meet his eyes. "I just want you to know that, no matter what, I—I love you. Always. And even this, now, it's—" Worth it. Worth feeling like someone was trying to wrench her heart out of her, because for that tiny little span of a few years, so short in the grand scheme of things, they'd had each other. And she'd rather these few years with him than a lifetime with anyone else.
He kissed her, and for a moment it felt like he was steadier than before. His hands lost their shakes, the tremor in his chest faded, the tension fleeing from his body. But it was only a moment, quick enough that she could have just imagined it, and when his lips pulled away from hers, it almost seemed worse than before.
"I know you have a lot to do," he said, little more than a whisper in her ear. "But... could you stay? Just a little while longer."
There was only one answer to that question.
"As long as you want."