#I have been haunted by the idea of all my DA protags gorging on Italian food since rereading TN and seeing Illario talk about cacio e pepe

[nerdanel01]

From This Day Forward

Emmrich/F!Rook *Emmrich POV 1.5k+ wc Summary: With the Veilguard's task nearly complete, Rook and Emmrich are left to wonder what will come next.

9:53 Dragon If Solas was to be believed—and, in Emmrich’s opinion, the doubt contained within that ‘if’ was significant—the Veilguard’s final confrontation with Elgar’nan was close at hand. In anticipation, a tense atmosphere had descended over the Lighthouse. No one had forgotten the effort it had taken to subdue Ghilan'nain…and all the ancient lore they had unearthed, combined with Solas’ insight, pointed to the fact that defeating Elgar'nan would be much, much more difficult. 

Emmrich had started putting valerian in the evening tea to try and curb the worry and the sleeplessness that had inevitably followed. 

Thus far, it had not helped one bit. 

Tonight, Agnes hadn’t even touched the tea. Her mug sat on the large circular table, already growing cold. Instead, when Emmrich had settled himself with his own cup on the far side of the tufted green sofa, she had laid herself down upon it, kicking her feet over the edge of the opposite armrest and resting her head in Emmrich’s lap. Carefully, Emmrich had pulled out the pins that held her hair up above her neck, letting the full silver-and-obsidian curtain of it cascade across his thighs. Whatever lay ahead of them, the silence between them was comfortable, thoughtful. 

Agnes was not looking at him, her gaze far away and distant. It was not hard to imagine what was on her mind: Blighted gods. The weakened veil. The certainty that if the Veilguard failed to defeat or contain Elgar’nan, the havoc he would wreak on Thedas would be tenfold the chaos Fen’Harel had already caused himself. Emmrich began to comb his fingers through Agnes’ hair, glad for the distraction of it slipping through his fingers, hoping it would soothe her. 

“What do you think you will do?” she asked him at last, when he had finished his first cup of tea and already poured himself a second from the pot. “After all of this is over.”

Her eyes were still locked on something far away—perhaps some future in her mind that he could not see. Emmrich tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“After we defeat Elgar’nan. Will you return to the Mourn Watch?”

Ah. That question implied rather strongly that he would survive whatever came next. Perhaps that was entirely the point: an exercise in hopefulness when the outcome of all their efforts was so uncertain. 

“Would you return to the Mourn Watch?” Emmrich asked her, parrying her question with one of his own. It was difficult to imagine her wanting to return to the Grand Necropolis, and yet…. “Would you ever even consider going back to Nevarra to begin with?”

At last Agnes looked up at him, the faintest hint of exasperation in her eyes. 

“That isn’t what I asked. We’re not talking about me—I asked about you. Your plans.”

But that wasn’t quite right, was it? ‘You’ and ‘me;’ it had been that way before, before the Veilguard. Now that they had been reunited (now that, at last, they had given themselves permission to love each other freely, as they had both separately dreamed of and desired for so long) Emmrich had begun to think of himself and Agnes not as ‘you’ and ‘me,’ but as a ‘we.’ He did not want the disbanding of the Veilguard to change that. 

Not that he had ever discussed that properly with Agnes. Now she was asking, and there was no time like the present to come clean about it. 

Strangely, the prospect made him more nervous than their looming confrontation with the Evanuris. 

“Well,” Emmrich began, his fingers combing through her hair from scalp to the ends of the strands, “those answers are inextricably tied.” He tried not to avoid her eyes, the warmth and curiosity in them as she looked up into his face. Tried to be brave. But before the words were even out of his mouth, he felt the heat rising in his face, coloring his cheeks, the tops of his ears. “When all of this is over… I intend, at last, to take a wife. And if I succeed in that endeavor, I would not simply go anywhere—not unless Lady Agnes Volkarin agreed to go with me.” Added, hastily, “If she will have me, that is.”

Her eyes were so wide that Emmrich could see a full ring of white around her pupils. His hand froze in her hair, struck still in this moment of suspense. The room felt much too warm. 

“I am sorry,” Emmrich offered hastily, already backpedaling. “I should not have—”

Before he could get out another word, he felt Agnes’ fingers winding into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him in for a kiss as she surged upwards from his lap to meet his mouth with her own. 

…It was not the way she normally kissed him, sensual and languid and open-mouthed, savoring. Her fist tangled in his hair almost too tightly; she kissed him tight-lipped, clenched, like she was trying to hold him here, with her; hold fast to this moment. 

“Don’t be sorry,” she said at last, whispering between them, her lips brushing his as she spoke. “I was only surprised. I never thought, never allowed myself to…” 

Emmrich knew what she was thinking without having to hear her finish the thought. For so long, they had both treated this love between them like an impossible dream, refusing it, or trying to sublimate it. But,

“Yes,” she said, brushing her fingertips over his cheek. “Yes, Emmrich, of course I will have you. I would like nothing more.”

And with just that— yes—all the anticipation and dread for what was yet to come fell away. Didn’t stand a chance against the swell of hope and promise and love in Emmrich’s chest. When had he last felt like this? Had he ever? He could not be sure. With Agnes breathing softly into the space between them, her breath warming his face, her hand on his cheek, he could not imagine anything else he would rather feel than this boundless affection, anywhere else he would rather be than at her side. 

If it did not feel so blasphemous, he would almost call himself grateful—for Fen’Harel’s folly, for Elgar’nan’s escape from the prison that had bound him, for all the chaos after—solely because it had brought Agnes back to him. Brought the two of them together, to this moment, this commitment. 

“May I?” he asked, taking her hand in his. Agnes nodded. Her hands were smaller, her fingers less wide. But when he pulled a small gold ring off of his pinky and slid it onto her ring finger, down to the knuckle, the fit was almost perfect. 

“So where would you like to go?” Emmrich asked her again, when she had resettled her head down against his thigh. “When we have seen this through, when all of this is at an end.”

Her answer is immediate, so predictable he should have guessed it himself. She grins wide, a glimmer in her grey eyes like sunlight in the rain. “Back to Antiva.”

Foolish of him to have even asked. Emmrich chuckled. “Of course.”

“Take long walks around Treviso,” Agnes continued, a dreamy tone in her voice as she described the fantasy.  “Really look at all those fountains, all that architecture—stop and enjoy everything we didn’t have the time to when we were helping Lucanis and Illario.”

“Eat more cacio e pepe,” Emmrich teased, remembering all too well how much Agnes had enjoyed it on their last visit. 

The groan she made in response bordered on sexual. Agnes closed her eyes in reverie. “Eat so much Antivan food I can hardly walk back to our lodgings. Sample the fizzante…”

“… visit the opera house,” Emmrich offered. And the gleam in Agnes’ eyes turned wicked, the ends of her grin curling mischievous and wanton. They both knew without needing to say it out loud what Emmrich really meant by that suggestion. 

But then her gaze fell. She lifted her hands to admire the ring on her finger, tracing the band of it reverently with her opposite hand. A trace of nervousness in her voice when she confessed:

“But I… I’m never going back to the Mourn Watch, Emmrich. Not after all this.”

That crushed him, a little bit, although Emmrich had never really believed that outcome was likely. “I would not ask that of you.” 

“And I would not ask you to leave the Mourn Watch—not if you wanted to return.” Her gaze is grateful, understanding, ready to compromise. “But do you remember Lord Henrik? How he kept his own apartments outside the Necropolis? Perhaps we could do that. Find a place of our own in Nevarra City, where you could come home to me.”

The picture fills his head as if summoned, not merely imagined: an apartment on the third or fourth floor, filled with windows, always full of daylight. Sheer curtains. The sun blushing pink across Agnes’ face every morning as they slowly wake together in bed. Perfumed smell of gardenia and alyssum wafting through the place, emanating from boxes hanging out of every window—boxes full of flowers Agnes would plant and nurture herself. 

He could not imagine anything more shockingly different from what their life has been like in the Necropolis… nor could he imagine anything else he desired more. 

The dream was so precious, it felt like if he spoke of it too loudly he would break it. So Emmrich whispered the words to Agnes:

“That sounds perfect.”