call you by your ancient name

LKHGLKHGH get your stupid smirk emoji outta here loser. This one is SO long and SO sappy and I think some plot points make it illegible but DING DING DING we have a kiss folks we have A KISS!!!

@punkranger also very nicely prompted me this one, so here goes, thank you both 🫶

20. (A kiss)... on a scar.

2089. (NADEEM)

Implant off—for focus. The silence is entire at last. The light wanes, and the world, for a minute or two, for a minute and a century, in this small shadow room, is pinpricked into the relief of her dark eyebrow. Under my fingers’ work, you see, there is nothing else under my fingers but her speckled skin, as giving as cloth. The needle weaves, in and out, a careful dance, paced with my breathing.

In, and out. She–she breathes too, in and out, and doesn’t speak. I tug on the nylon thread. The smile of her cut purses its lips, and sighs close, a dark red line, neat as an inter-rib stab. I test the line with a stained thumb, and cut the thread, and put down the scissors, and then, only then, I admit back into my world the weight of her gaze, a flash of light instantly stolen away.

“Painful?” I shape out of my mouth, though I don’t hear it at all.

“Of course not,” she signs for me, even if I could have read her lips.

Of course not. Never pain, Una. Never pain but this excruciating, inaudible pain, curled in the swollen space between us.

“Good,” I wink, putting away the surplus nylon. “Wouldn’t want your ugly face to get uglier, would we?”

I get a prize for that; a crooked smile, hooked to her left dimple, almost taken away as she turns—no, don’t turn. I keep her in place, hand-snap against her jaw. Don’t turn; don’t move.

“Careful,” she shapes. “You’ll be uglier than me if I break your teeth.”

I show her my teeth, a gift horse offered, not yet denied.

“But who’ll bite your head off then?” I whisper.

For a while, she doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t look away. She’s ugly, alright. I watch her face unmoving. She’s ugly, ugly, ugly with gashes, old and new, ugly with bruising, with grime, with sweat, made uglier with the beating sun that charted on her too-pale skin the red outline of her eternal siftmask—ugly, spattered deep-fawn, burnt at the nose-bridge, ugly, my traitor, my specter, ugly as a dream, dream of her fox-eyes, edged moon-white, a flash of light—long ago—stolen away.

I remember her eyes, when the shot rang. Wide, before they dimmed. I remember her eyes, and this: still here, under her silly orange hair, at the line of the scalp, unveiled by the hand I push into her hair. Look at that. Exit wound. Head shot. Look at it, on the curve of her skull, its gentle shape now, pink with baby-skin, sweet-puckered, raised like the mouth of a kiss. Just a scar. Just a scar, though it shattered then, though it bled and bled black and bled death, pulsing with my screaming.

When I swallow, my throat is tighter than my clenched teeth. And I—

No. Her hand GRips my wrist before her meaning catches my eyes. Don’t, she enunciates. Don’t. Not a prayer: an order. Her grasp is hard, her gaze is harder. Her face gives nothing away, which gives everything away. Don’t, Nadeem. Cold as stone, clear as glass. Don’t, Nadeem.

Don’t, Nadeem.

For a moment, I’m almost tempted to yield—just so she can look away, stone unturned, glass unbroken. For a moment, I am, almost, tempted to—grant us both mercy. But I don’t. I don’t yield. I never yield, and she neither. I don’t want her to look away. I don’t want me to look away. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.

Instead—instead, I touch the scar, thumb-brushing. Her nails sink into my wrist, and spurred by forbidding I catch her gaze. The silence is entire. The silence is ours. The space between us resorbs. Thumb-brushing, skin-to-skin, and in turn my mouth, mouth-brushing, slow, and low, and pressed, and pressed again, a kiss upon the kiss of the exit wound.

No space now. Under my mouth, the glass of her mask cracks. Around my wrist, the stone of her hand trembles. A kiss, upon a kiss. No space between us, and the silence is ours. The silence… The silence. Inside of it I slide my secret, a secret pressed, and pressed again, a kiss upon a kiss upon a kiss:

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

ghilan'nain is actively in mourning. not just for andruil, but also for her fucked up little experiment of an archdemon, her most perfect creation, razikale. at the end of fire and ice, she is ready to throw herself into a fight that she might not win because she's blinded by her own grief, and she only doesn't because elgar'nan holds her hand and pulls her away. protects her. we can find notes that talk about how elgar'nan is concerned that she's not taking time to mourn properly. we know she's checked in on her first creations, the halla, despite the fact that she writes about them in this sort of detached, almost patronizing way. she calls them something she made when she was "untraveled and naive" and that she could never make them again, but she visited them just to see what they might have become in her absence. like she cares more than she wants to let herself.

and elgar'nan calls her sister, despite the fact that ghilan'nain is the youngest of them. he lets her experiment on lusacan for the express purpose of cheering her up. and when she dies he seems legitimately torn apart by it. what should be an opportunity for the first of the firstborn to finally become the sole tyrant he was practically made to be is instead him becoming completely and utterly alone, the only remaining of his kind. i don't think it's coincidence that both he and solas drift to each other as they do, even if it is as enemies. they're too alike, and they're also the only remnants of the old world, their world, that either of them have.