Chapter Text
He turned and strode to the threshold of Regret, resisting the pull of the raw Fade dragging at his skin. It had hardly been a single moment, and even so he felt the ache of her absence. He wanted to turn, to look, to reach out his hand to her, to plead with passioned voice, “Vhenan”. He forced himself to stand resolute- he had no right to implore her presence. It must be her choice, given freely, but he despaired. Still, he would remain, patient and penitent until she joined him or until he could resist the currents of the Fade no longer. His neck and shoulders ached from the tension of not turning towards her. Could he hear her footsteps coming closer? He strained to hear, to hope, but he could not. And yet, she had ever been quiet as she moved, and still too, she had promised him, bellanaris. He had felt the truth of it in the Veil, laced as it was with the traces of herself that she had woven into it with her mending of it with the Anchor and with its destruction at his hand. She would join him shortly. A breath, two. He had faith in her, but none in himself to hold her, surely she must have decided that her duty lay elsewhere, or that the sacrifice to join him was too great…
And then.
He knew her scent before he felt the touch of her hand; an echo of their first meeting across the battlefield where she had slipped past him in stealth before changing everything: the green herbal scents of elfroot and felandaris; the rich, vaguely narcotic blossom of the perfumed and poisoned vasanthum tree; the bitter, redolent incense of a religion not her own that had simultaneously proclaimed her a figure of faith and a heretical savage; the blend of peppercorns and orange peel she used to spice the dried meat she would leave at the altars to Fen’harel as a small act of personal rebellion against that title and the Chantry that gave it when she thought no one was watching; the sharp, animalic fragrance of the lichenous tree-moss that the Dalish used to perfume their aravels and which she still used, proudly Dalish, though she was far from her clan and the life of a simple Dalish hunter- though he doubted that she had ever been simple, with her bright and curious mind, even before she had journeyed to the Conclave. He felt her fingertips brush his shoulder. She touched him gently, softly, like she would have approached a wounded animal caught in a snare, which was.. apt.
He was rambling. He was, perhaps, somewhat overwrought. It had been a long day. He had thought first, to die alone at the end of it, then thought, at his most optimistic, to find a chance to atone, with the memory of her forgiveness and love to sustain him in his tormented eternity alone. How unexpected, then, to find salvation, entirely unearned. But then, she had always been unexpected.
He surrendered to the inevitability, and the tension left his body in a quietly shuddered exhale as he let the Fade take them both beyond the Veil.