#terenti

His exclamation made Ilena lose her concentration and the spoon dropped back into her bowl with a clatter. She glared at him and smacked him with the malformed magic. “I am trying to practice fine motor control, you idiot.”

“Maybe now you’ll do the sensible thing and stay in the black line with me instead of running stupidly into the thick of battle,” Terenti said. He leaned back in his chair until only two legs were on the floor. Despite his casual tone and dismissive attitude, he kept his ankle touching her knee, still unable to break contact.

“Shut up. I’m not going to be the one that embarrasses us at those stupid Tevinter parties,” Ilena snapped, picking up the spoon again.

The chair gave out underneath Terenti and he hit the ground with the crash. “Tevinter?! You’re going to Tevinter?” He stood, righted his chair and sat down again. “With Pavus, I suppose, to help with his poli-”

“Don’t propose a third time. The first two were bad enough. I got the idea and agreed already.”

First, elation. Then… confusion. “A… third time?”

Ilena dropped the spoon again and let the magic of her arm dissipate. Her glared was annoyed and bordering on angry. And not in the fun way. “Yes, a third time. You muddled your way through it twice, no reason to… Do you really not remember?”

Terenti knew he was treading dangerous water, but he wasn’t sure how to get out. His mind had been muddled ever since the ritual to make the cameo failed. “Of course I remember. You laughed at me.”

She didn’t buy it. “You don’t remember.” Then louder. “You don’t remember? How could you-” Ilena froze, her eyes on his except not on his. They were on the magical growths around his eyes. “What did you trade?”

Terenti pushed his chair back from the table. “I don’t know what you’re-”

Ilena grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in. “What did you give Fear for that magic?”

“The only thing I had left, since you took everything else!” Terenti hissed.

“The only thing- How much did you forget? What did it take?” Ilena tried to shake him, but couldn’t get proper leverage with only one hand. “Answer me!”

“I didn’t exactly need memories of you if you were dead, did I?” Terenti shouted.

Ilena shook her head and released him. She swiped at her face and looked offended to find tears on her cheeks. She shook her head again. With a sniff, she turned her back on him. “I need… To be alone. For a little while.” She paused and even if Terenti could see her face, he could hear the tears in her voice. “Don’t go anywhere. Don’t you fucking dare.”

Terenti didn’t follow her out of the room.

He hoped he wouldn’t regret it.

---

The chasm in his chest had reopened. Maybe he was dependent on Ilena. Maybe he didn’t fucking care. No matter how stupid he kept telling himself he was, he didn’t care that he didn’t remember her. He’d loved her once and he was never wrong. Except about his mother, but that was different. She’d been evil. Ilena was too dumb to be that evil. Whatever they’d had had been real or it wouldn’t have blown up so dramatically in their faces.

At least, that’s what Terenti told himself as he laid alone in their bed that night. The magic on his face felt wrong. Maybe Fear didn’t like the new developments, didn’t like how Terenti was no longer on the verge of full capitulation. Probably. Either way, his face itched and burned in turns and he wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if he could normally. He hadn’t had the courage to watch the stables and make sure she hadn’t lied and was leaving.

He hadn’t even had the energy to pretend it was because he trusted her. He was afraid, terrified, that the few days they’d spent together since the last of her memories came back would be the last he had with her. As the night passed with no sign of her, he fought the urge to dig through his bags for the last few traces of her blood that he had. He should have made the cameo while she was recovering, should have made a stupid Southern phylactery or something to give him peace of mind.

Dread began to settle over his mind as dawn’s light first started creeping in the tower windows. It wouldn’t be dawn on the ground for some time, but the light felt like it was renewing a curse. It stung his eyes and- Actually, no, it was- Terenti screamed as the magical augmentations on his face burned and flared into pain far greater than their creation had held. He clawed at his face and his hands came away bloody, but Fear didn’t answer his calls. He fell unconscious before he knew what was happening.

---

Sa’alle’s voice was just as insufferable as ever. Terenti could only make out every other word at first, not that it mattered. He was scolding someone in that ridiculous way healers always thought would make people stop doing things that injured them. Tentatively, Terenti reached up and touched around his right eye. It was still smooth and cold. He pulled on the Fade and everything turned wispy and blurry but translucent, so he released the magic and blinked. His vision took longer to return to normal, so he whined loudly in his head.

No response.

With a frown, he rolled onto his side and watch Sa’alle get on with his scolding. Relief flooded him with annoyance in equal measure when he realized that Sa’alle was complaining at Ilena. Terenti grabbed a bowl next to his bed and threw it at the back of his head. He missed and hit him square in the back, but it got his attention well-enough. “Leave her alone, Sa’alle. She’s mine.”

Sa’alle made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat and threw his hands in the air dramatically before leaving.

Terenti frowned at Ilena once he left. She looked as guilty as she was smug. “What did you do this time? Piss off Fear?”

“I,” Ilena started, though even the simple word came out as a croak. She coughed several times. “I did not piss off Fear. I killed Fear.”

Mouth open to disagree, Terenti froze before the first word could escape him. Not because she looked weak and tired from whatever it was she had done, no, it was because she could very well be telling the truth. He scanned back through his memories and… They were all there. A little jumbled and exaggerated, but it was all back. Every shared glance, hair tuck, soft touch, rough touch…

“...Just like that.”

“I’m the Inquisitor. I do whatever the fuck I want.”

But one memory of her Fear had left was her sending him away. Her deception, the first knife in his head, the wound that still bled. She had sent him away and she was wrong and he hated her more than he loved her and he’d be even more damned if he did what she wanted now. Instead, Terenti spent his days sitting next to her as she read and made notes on Maker only knew what, but he certainly didn’t care. He let no one approach her.

Ilena was his. Her Inquisition had let the cultists at Caer Cyfartha kill her. That meant he was the only one left who deserved her. She slept on a cot in his room, refusing a room of her own or even a proper bed as unnecessary. Terenti spent every night awake staring at her and feeling what shards were left of his heart freeze at every uneven breath. Fear tormented him waking and sleeping, but at least rewarded with him not being as tired.

It liked how he suffered to see her.

It liked less Seeker Pentaghast’s progress. Terenti watched the reversal process three times before he agreed. Even the White Divine didn’t question his right to decline on Ilena’s behalf, perhaps out of guilt for having failed so horrifically as a spymaster, but the reason mattered not.

The spirit of Compassion that agreed to assist irritated Fear on a level that gave Terenti a spark of visceral hope. Perhaps it could truly work. The theory was simple, derived from what the Nightmare had said in the Fade. Compassion could take memories just as easily as Fear, but Compassion would not keep them. As Ilena became more accustomed to her emotions, her memories would return. Perhaps not in any order that made sense, spirits being what they were, but they would return and, in time, Ilena would be close to what she once was.

Terenti missed her every night she slept back up in her tower room, with little in her mind but her name and forests. During the day, she clung to him and sobbed at every strong memory that pressed against her raw emotions. His heart bled for her, for her pain, for how he was a stranger to her, at least it was alive to bleed. Alive and in his arms and wetting his shoulder. When she sat silently, trying to process the memories, he would grow vines and make flowers bloom for her. Tiny, delicate things. He had little talent for his grandmother’s elvhen magic, but it never failed to make her smile and that was pain he needed to resist Fear’s whispering.

When he wasn’t spinning nature magic for her, Terenti kept himself under the effects of a weak magebane solution. Fear had more than a foothold in him, he knew. If anything else went wrong with Ilena… It didn’t matter that he didn’t remember why he cared for her, she was his. Vas understood, in his letters, but had no advice.

Though he was bad at it, Ilena allowed Terenti to braid her hair. With only one arm, she couldn’t do it herself and her grasp on magic waxed and waned as her memories returned. She was a mixed bag of emotions, but she had enough pride to allow few besides him to see her so poorly. He imagined that should have made him feel better, but with Fear’s cold claws always on his mind, it was difficult to find anything but cold anticipation of loss in it. She’d find a new, equally stupid, reason to send him away once all of her memories were back.

He wasn’t sure if he would go, then. He would make the cameo, certainly, because not knowing had been a trip to the Void itself, but beyond that, he was unsure. His feelings for her were so fragile and hollow without any good memories, even if he struggled to see how avenging the slaughter of her clan could be a good memory.

But while he remained, he held close and dried her tears and told her nothing would change the fact that she belonged to him.

---

“I hate you.”

Terenti looked up from Vas’ letter. Even though the Tranquility was gone, the sunburst brand remained on her forehead. Even though he hadn’t been raised with the fear of it, it still hurt Terenti to see it. The anger and emotion in her eyes soothed the ache in his chest somewhat.

“You came back. I told you to go to Tevinter.” There were tears in her eyes. “I told you to leave. Why did you come back?”

Heart in his throat, dropped the letter, stood and yanked Ilena into his arms. She gave a cry like a wounded animal and clutched him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. Terenti held her and fought to the wail in his chest. He pressed his forehead against her crown and squeezed. “You’re back. You’re back.”

Ilena sobbed and just repeated, “I told you to leave.”

“A hundred and twenty days… Four months. You sent me away two years ago. Why? Why would you?” His voice nearly broke, not that she could laugh derisively at him anymore.

“I was possessed by a spirit. I thought it would be easier if I sent you away than if you found out and left me.” She paused. “The spirit is gone now.”

Terenti leapt to his feet and nearly threw the knife into the fire. “A spirit? All of my suffering over a fucking spirit? My brother has been near-possessed by a hunger demon for fifteen some years.” He jabbed himself nearly in the eye when he gestured to the purple crystal lining his eyes. “And Fear’s had a good run with my head and you think I would have fucking cared?”

“It was not a logical decision,” Ilena said. In another world, she might have shrugged, but there was no self-deprecation in the words. Just… Just factual recitation. “I believed my feelings for you were not genuine, with the spirit’s influence.”

Terenti howled at the night sky like some of kind dog and then sat down again, panting. This was so much worse than he’d imagined. He’d dreading to find her shacked up with some proper Dalish elf with a brat on the way, but this, this was such a worse betrayal. The confirmation that she’d felt the same, but let her stupid thoughts ruin everything was… It felt like blood was spurting out of the gaping hole in his chest.

The Tranquil didn’t react to his actions. She didn’t move or speak independently until curling up on her bedroll without a word. Soon, she slept, breathing quieter and more even than it had been before. There was no sound Terenti knew better than her proper breathing at night. Even in sleep, her face seemed glued into that empty, valid expression. He regretted attempting to make the cameo. He regretted coming south to retrieve a token. He regretted meeting her, doubly so, since he couldn’t even remember it.

Their meeting and… And most of it. He couldn’t - and would never - remember most of it. Yes, Fear could see through the augmentation on his face, but that wasn’t enough. The demon had taken every good memory of Ilena in exchange for the ability to find her. It had been such an easy trade at the time. She was dead; he’d never be happy again. What did he need happy memories for? Hopeless tears escaped him, even as Fear laughed in the back of his head. Surely the demon had already known the truth. Probably had even planned for Terenti to bring the fortress down on his belovèd only to reveal the truth once it was too late.