#breathandshadow

Keep You Safe Starters || Accepting || @breathandshadow

"But--But he's gone," Orana cannot remember the last time she cried in the open like this. The great heaving sobs that leave her head spinning and her fingers tingling, as she clutches at the bloodied coat, "Th-They can't both be gone."

She had thought that--She had met Rook and they spoke of Varric as if--

But all that's here is Bianca shattered to pieces, the Inquisition's writ, and his coat. She could clean it, she knows how to clean blood from clothing. She'll need lemons and white vinegar but then it won't smell like him anymore. She holds tighter, as if it might disappear otherwise, as if it will be taken from her. Aftershave and ink and the good whiskey he always kept hidden on the highest shelf in Hawke's larder because Hawke and Isabela never expected a dwarf to hide something somewhere tall.

He won't be coming back to loudly lament his retirement as Viscount while Bran grumbles and Orana hides giggles behind her hand. Won't tell her that he's proud when she plays something she learned at the fancy Orlesian music college he paid for her to study at. He won't be there to squeeze her hand softly as Orana sips Hawke's terrible whiskey on the anniversary of when they lost her even though it makes her cough and gag because the stuff smells like Hawke.

Orana is just barely thirty and she has lost her papa, has lost her mama, has lost another father figure, yet another jagged piece of their broken little family ashes on the wind. Every year less of them linger, drifting further from each other without Hawke here to moor them. It hurts, it hurts so much and Orana thinks her chest will cave in with the ache of it. What will she do? How can she face the others when just the thought of it has her breaking down so strongly.

Asharen's eyes move from her own notebook, taking a second before lifting her eyes from her own writing. Laying the quill horizontally, holding it between both of her hands, she considers the other. On the late night as they prepared to leave the Lighthouse to go to Minrathous, he wore his human face, expectantly looking at her. Even thinking about him in that way made her stomach turn.

Closing her notebook, she is thankful at least that they are both alone and that Valeria is likely getting ready alongside her remaining companions. Selfishly, she was glad to have that question asked, a question strong enough to pull her from her fears of what they would find in Minrathous and what she would do. Solas was once more here, and now they knew for certain where. She felt sick just thinking about it, especially after what he had done to Valeria, what he had nearly cost them all.

The Inquisitor knew next to nothing about Lichdoom, only that it had come at a great price.

   "Can I..." she starts, placing her flesh hand atop her notebook. Her prosthetic was neatly tucked in her robes', hidden beneath the table where she was sitting. Asharen takes a deep breath, bracing herself "Can I see what you truly look like? Please."

The visage that she is met with feels like it would require a louder entrance. Horns and strings and a roaring of veil fire. It is subtler, calmer. It is shocking but it is not the shock that lingers over the elven woman's face once it is done. She doesn't know who she is looking at, and perhaps that is a cruel thing to say. He felt calmer, more secure and yet she still looked up to him in silence. Her light eyes filled with a sadness that admits clearly at the lack of an appropriate way of expressing it.

   "I see fear, Emmrich." she pauses, attempting to separate herself from the pain she knew that Valeria felt. There was nothing for her to hold onto, not beyond a tinge of disappointment and sadness that someone so wise would have sacrificed so much to get... power? Life eternal? And for what? The only shadow of relief she could feel was to know he, unlike his fellows, was there... helping them "And I see loss."

Placing her notebook on the same pocket as her prosthetic, she gets up from where she sat, slowly walking side him. Her hand touches his arm.

   "I..." she pulls her head up to face him. Squeezing her warm hand against his cold arm "I'm so deeply sorry about Manfred."

Dorian could snort. So, because he could, he goes and does precisely that! By the dismissive pitch alone, it's obvious the young Pavus doesn't quite buy it.

"Maybe it doesn't if you're the average result of an ordinary breeding," he starts around a clementine, "but as I'm obviously not, I find it very much does."

What is he getting at? Dorian doesn't much like it, that knowing gleam in those eyes too disastrously aware. He's stirred another fight, alas, and the edges of his robes stir with its tells half-singed in the draft. It's no secret he's a menace, a rouser of rabble and a demon by half, but the problems he's corking tightly in his throat?

EMMRICH GREATLY APPROVES