Category: Uncategorized

jawsandbones:

“For what it’s worth,” he says,
“I am sorry, Inquisitor.” So, it’s already begun. Solas does not speak his
name. He understands. To fight, he must strip away the friendship. To erase
him, he must pretend he isn’t real. His hand slips from his, and Solas takes
the anchor with him. A deep inhale, gone on the exhale. A veil, being pulled
from his body. It strips his veins, sears at his flesh, takes the marrow from
his bones. When Solas goes, he leaves Mahanon empty. Through clouded vision, he
watches him walk through the eluvian. The next they met, he knows it would not
be as equals.

Mahanon slumps back, lies on
cool cobble, blades of grass. Beneath him, he feels the world turning. Above
him, he sees it in the clouds, the sway of long forgotten ruins. His broken arm
seizes, and Mahanon screams out his pain. Rolling over, clamping his hand
against a bloodied and shaking wrist. No matter how desperately he wants it to,
it doesn’t stop. A mess of blood, a lump of flesh, and the fading green at the
edges. His back arches as he writhes, eyes squeezed shut.

Hair strays across a sweat
soaked forehead, tendrils that curl beneath him. Clenched teeth and he forces
himself to look in the direction of the only other eluvian. Down the hill,
across the plain. Such a distance. Dorian.
His arm is a poison now, possibly more than it was before. He knows this. Dorian. He’s still anchored by it, a
weight of a different kind, and he knows that if he stays here, he will die. Dorian. Crawling towards the nearest
broken wall, a stained trail that follows him. He pulls himself up, gasps on
unsteady feet. Dorian.

His mind is blessedly empty as
he makes his way forward. Step by halting step, and the blood slips between his
fingers, drips onto the grass. Staining the flowers that grow between cracked
stone, burning the petals it falls upon. He can feel it, in him. The burning.
Whatever the anchor might have held back, it swims through him, now. Dorian. He has to make it back. Without
him, they won’t know what’s coming. The Inquisition must be ready. The world
must be ready. Without him – he falls forward, and reaches forward to catch
himself. He crumples screaming on an arm that isn’t an arm anymore, to his
knees, forehead pressed against the cobble.

Tears fall hot and angry from
eyelashes, twist down his nose. Teeth gritted, some angry sob trapped behind
it. Two years. Two years of letters, of promises – this one last rift. This one
last meeting. This one last council. Two years of being without him, of being
alone, of having an empty bed and empty arms and Mahanon just wants to see him
one last time. Dorian. As though this
one sight of him will make up for all of it. He rises to his feet, breathes
heavy. Feeling his heart beat in every bit of him, a pounding drum against his
skull. His arm still shakes. Blood still falls. Mahanon keeps walking. Dorian.

It shimmers before him. Yellow
flowers sway at the feet of the mirror, vines draped about it, framed by rock.
With each step, it seems farther away. A maddening distance, a shimmering view
of what’s on the other side of it. Night, not day. No crumbling ruins, but a
fortress. Not him, alone, but. Dorian.
Reaching forward with his hand, and the eluvian ripples at his touch. A groan
as he half falls through it, the name still on his lips. “Dorian,” he says, as
he stumbles.

“Amatus,” catching him completely, and Dorian holds Mahanon in his
arms, “I have you.”