#emmrich volkarin angst

[caffeinatedmunchkin]

Nourishment, Beyond the Physical

Emmrich Volkarin x Fem!Rook ✦ Rating: M (MDNI!) ✦ 11.7k words

He almost didn't recognize the sound that came from him as his own; a whimpering, pathetic noise. Sick. The closest comparison to the feverish hue that rushed his clammy skin. The most apt identifier to the brutal, qualmish onset. He was a lot for her to take, though she'd have it no other way. The first time she laid with Emmrich he left her ruined, and never before had she submit to ruination with such abandon. He had the tendency of holding her needs paramount to his own. Now given the chance to return the favor, she offered herself to his exigency, unconditional and absolute. If he lost himself in her, so be it. She'd light the way back, like a beacon to ships in the night. And she'd piece him back together again. Such messy business - love.

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Crossposted to AO3!

I had an out of state wedding, a death in the family, and double-shifts at work all week long, but none of that could STOP me from finally finishing whatever the hell this is. Inspired by the beautiful and wonderful Cole’s post here, this was one of the realest things I’ve ever read everyone say thank you Cole for being correct and being vocal about it !!

I honestly have nothing to say for myself, other than this was supposed to be no more than a quick and dirty drabble with a double shot of angst at best. Before I knew it, this thing grew legs and booked it. I hope you're as exhausted by the end of reading it, as I am now having finished writing it. I've been working on this one for a minute.

I love you all so much, and I pray to whoevers listening that you like it !!

The last gasp of winter stained his high cheeks, and nipped his nose. Blistering gusts whistling past his ears, the frigidity cut through the wool of his coat with icy talons; swiping at any and all that strode along in it's wake. Spurred by desperation it to cling to it's dwindling reign, as it slipped from it's clutches a little more with each day.

An early evening that marked the start of Wintersend, the suns retreat came later and later, yet the chill in the air refused its dismissal.

Emmrich was but one casualty of few who walked the thawing domain this time of night, having traced this exact path through Nevarra's streets many times.

An ordinary stroll home, after an unassuming day back within his classroom. During the middle of a week that was decidedly without note.

No stranger to the Necropolis's unforgiving temperatures, the elements outside it's walls throbbed bone deep. The bitterness raw, whereas the former was tempered.

A flush of nostalgia was quick to warm him, as he passed the storefront of the florist he had seen prior to his escapades with the Veilguard, Safeia.

She was delicate and attentive with their romance; he felt tended to, like one of her prized blooms. While their affair was as lovely, it wasn't meant to last. Just as the crisp of spring wilted to summers swelter, the annual that was their courtship neared it's end.

They wanted different things out of life, out of their partners. Gentle as she was considerate, their release of one another saw her wistful, but to the same end of her understanding. Their parting amicable, they sometimes bumped into one another around the city. Only ever having gratefulness to offer, in their exchanged nods, and kind smiles.

It allowed him to appreciate the flower shop every time he passed it by, more anxious than ever for the approach of springtime. To see budding greenery overflow through doors she liked to prop open, inviting the mellow sweetness of the air, and prospective patrons alike. His memory of her, just as the woman herself, was always perfumed by fresh soil, and Freesia.

A pleasant smell for a pleasant recollection, Emmrich held nothing but fondness as he thought back to his time with her, however brief.

Spring his favorite season, no one's anticipation for its arrival was greater. Though winters stubbornness held firm, he had his own, personal little slice of spring every day. Waiting for him back home, to where he was en route.

Yet as he strode past, the gentle smile that crept across his face was not for the florist.

Nor was the accompanying tightness in his chest for the anticipation of her floral arrangements that would soon line the windows.

It was for his destination, and his newfound eagerness to reach it. Eagerness that quickened his gait along the paved walk.

All for the woman who awaited him there. Milk and honey in her kiss. Petal curved, and satin soft.

The one who gave him reason to return at the end of each day, instead of idling at one shop or the next, stalling the loneliness that used to receive him.

The one he wanted to be back to, even more than he wanted to stop and admire Safeia's blossoms.

The one who made his house a home.

It was their first of this holiday spent together, and as a couple proper. Far away from the horrors of the blight, and genocidal elven gods that sought the worlds destruction. Though it was a morbid little thought, he couldn't help but pay due credit to those horrors. Stowing aside that guilt and selfishness, it was what brought he and Ariadne together, after all.

Without that interference - be it fate or coincidence or dumb luck - he may have spent the rest of his days without ever knowing the resplendence of her affection. Fierce and unbridled, just like the young necromancer was herself.

Many months had passed since then. Returned to Nevarra, he brought Ariadne back home with him, and brought her back for good.

After the expected reluctance, and no small sum of bluster, the order had agreed to reopen the case of her transgressions. All at his insistence, of course.

Insistence that expressed in no uncertain terms the thorn he'd pose in the sides of not only his colleagues, but the nobility whose favorable relations they prioritized, in the event it fell on sudden deaf ears.

It was almost comical, the utterance of Watcher Ingellvar shifted from the air of an ill-favored black sheep, to one of high esteem in but a blink.

With impressive restraint, Ariadne waited until she was given a formal pardon - as well as an invitation to return to their fold - before taunting with flippant indecision. Exaggerated hemming and hawing, as to whether or not she'd deign to grace their ranks with her presence once more. All through a cloying simper.

Emmrich expected no less.

Prior to his sabbatical, the right of Emmrich's predominant dwelling belonged to the Upper Mortuary, though he owned more than one property.

The Volkarin Estate in the heart of the Nevarran countryside made for an exceptional holiday retreat, and little else. It's distance from the obligations and responsibilities of his day to day made for an impractical primary residence.

It only made sense to whisk her away to his town home, tucked within the city walls on the upper-east side.

Accessible to both the Necropolis, and the tamer portions of the city he frequented, his private niche sat adjacent a sprawling botanical garden. A regular haunt of his, he now had a beautiful young blonde to steal away with amongst the orchids and delphiniums upon their return.

The space of this lodging was always meant for more than just one. Three spacious stories that boasted multiples rooms, each spanned a near obscene amount of square footage, when compared to its occupant; a single, lone necromancer.

So she came to live with him. No theatrics, or pondering. Just emphatic agreement, in the form of the arms she threw around his neck and wound tighter than a copper coil.

All that remained was for them to begin again, anew. To lay the foundation for the life they'd share; and theirs was a quiet one. Their mutual appreciation for that stillness the axis on which they thrived.

Ordinary strolls home, after unassuming days, and weeks without note.

Taking full advantage of her new status, she'd slink through the Necropolis' halls whenever the mood struck, otherwise her appearances were to surprise him. Luring him to the memorial gardens to share the lunch she'd prepared.

True to her reputation, she caused quite the stir amongst his pupils, much to the chagrin of their fellow superiors.

Legs folded beneath her in the grass while her lap cradled his head, his lank stretched along the ground beneath him in comfort. Rattling off the adjustments to his syllabus he was entertaining for the next semester. Or reading aloud to her the poetry of the late Nadia Ulpius, his possession of such rarity all thanks to their dear Neve.

During which she'd hum, and comb her nails through his hair, mindful to go with it's styled pattern, so as to not muss a single strand. Halting his prattling only to lift a strawberry, or wedge of clementine, to his lips for a bite.

Believing themselves to have ample privacy situated behind their preferred tomb, he had made the mistake - for the first and last time - to suck the juice from her finger-tips. Damning impropriety for long enough to indulge a throaty rumble, his tongue lapped the pads of her fingers and lacquered nails in suggestion.

Only to bolt upright once the giggles from some of his first year students burned his ears, rigid with mortification. Clustered and whispering to one other with fervency a little ways off, their distance suggested a discretion that didn't match their prying eyes, and craned necks.

From then on their lunch dates never went behind the walls of his classroom. Door shut and the shades drawn.

Of course it didn't deter Ariadne from trying her best to persuade him back. His romantic involvement with her was every bit as tantalizing as one would expect, and she delighted in the scandal of it all, the wretched little vixen that she was.

It had been only a few days since her last drop-in, but already he'd been spoiled by her presence there, natural as it was familiar. Though she had dashed any hope of the sort for that day, with the litany of errands she recited over breakfast, it didn't prevent his longing for her little figure to saunter through his door all the same.

Before he knew it he was rounding the corner of his block, spotting the lit candles that dressed the south facing windows of their home; the glow combating the dreariness with soft glints through the glass. Beckoning him back to her, like a beacon to ships in the night.

As Emmrich approached their front door, the steady thrum in his chest then soured, no longer weightless with his reminiscing. A once placid heartbeat, it jerked with every step he took that closed the distance.

No warning, no immediate trigger made obvious, as he thought of his little Watcher, and their home together.

They were now on the other side of the insurmountable odds they bested. Together at long last, and happy. The sap in him liked to attribute such things to fate, their story mirroring that of the fairy-tales Bellara had introduced to their book club.

He got the girl in the end. Even though she wasn't promised to him.

Nothing of their future was.

But if his experience with fate taught Emmrich one thing, it was that she was nothing if not a cruel mistress.

Simple, unadorned contentedness appealed to him more and more in his later years. He appreciated the little things; the magic in the mundane. Now having achieved such fortune, it only increased his anxiety that he would lose it.

Just as his fear of death had slithered it's way in when he was at his most unsuspecting, this startling new and very unwelcome loathing had roused when he lost her to the Fade, all those months ago. Her return should have seen it snuffed, but it continued to flicker, faint yet undying.

While he couldn't deny the predictability of such a turn, that was a beast he kept caged in the dark.

He tried to quell it by the way he hugged her a little tighter than he did before, and for longer than either of their full schedules would permit.

He thought to soothe it by staying up later than her, if only to watch her eyes twitch, and her lashes flutter in dreams. Tracing her clavicle, before resting his palm above her heart, stilling himself to it's mesmeric beating.

Able to take a breath in their bed; knowing that the heart that pulsed against his touch was indeed right there alongside him, to be cherished. To be held.

Foolish habits of a foolish man.

He blew in through the front door with an energetic burst of the cold, it's final stab at domination. Pulling the knob with a firm hand, he shut it out, denying it further infestation.

"Emmrich?"

Her call to him echoed the latch as it tumbled with a click. Surmising her to be in the kitchen, if the sugared aroma that tickled his nose upon entry was any indication, it returned his smile.

As did his fears subside. A flaming torch thrust into the snarling face of the beast, banishing it back into the fetid depths from whence it dragged itself. Back behind lock and key.

He was home.

"-Only me, darling." He called back, dropping his shoulder to let the strap of his satchel fall down the length of his arm. Beginning to shrug out of his coat, light foot falls pranced the distance of the hall runner behind him before he pulled out of the first sleeve.

"I missed you today." Ariadne then at his side, she pinched his coat sleeve to help it the rest of the way off.

"And I you." The elf poised on the very tips of her toes in a wordless request for a peck, one that Emmrich was already stooping down to steal. "How did your day treat you? Did those errands keep you very busy?"

"It was all wonderfully dull, thank you for asking." She beamed, relishing mundanity's pace. "What about yours?" Grasping his coat collar, she shimmied it from around his shoulders. "All went well?"

"Very well indeed. My junior apprentices have made remarkable progress, and their aptitude for psychometry continues to astound." He watched as she collected his jacket and bag, and left him for only as long as it took her to hang them up for the next morning.

His look of pride then struggled. "Though, while the subject presents, some have developed a worrisome habit of... oh, how shall I phrase this... enquiring on matters most private. In regards to myself, and my amorous displays with a certain elven Watcher."

Ariadne's lips pulled into a grin, and though her back was to him, he could hear it hugging her words. "Sounds like their fantasies have been piqued."

Back on him twice as fast, she knotted her fingers into the ends of his scarf to coax him back down to her. And he allowed himself to be, her fiendish simper spreading. "Surely you, least of all, are no stranger to some smitten pupils."

His grimace taut, it strained his usual velvet timbre to loose gravel. "They look at me as though I'm some roguish heartthrob straight from a pulpy Minrathous serial."

"Well, I can hardly blame them," she sighed with a bat of her long lashes, chest pressed to his abdomen as she continued to sag against him. "You really are quite dreamy."

"I've no doubt that my stunt in the gardens will shadow my academic career to an indefinite end."

She leaned back for a better view of the grave face angled down at her, one that didn't crick her neck so. For all his lamentation, his eyes sparkled.

"My perfect gentleman, assuming all the credit?" Her tease curled through a wicked pout, the saccharine purr of 'my perfect gentleman' dripping from the tip of her tongue like caramelized sugar, sticky on his teeth and heavy in his stomach. "I played a hand in that one myself, need I remind you."

"Your culpability needs no reminding, my dear." Rocking back to her toes, he seized the opportunity to snake an arm around her waist, sweeping her back into him with a wickedness all his own. "Nor does your insatiability."

A spot of flour dusting her nose caught his eye, it's placement looking purposeful. Spidery digits cupping a rosy cheekbone, he reached forward to brush it away with his thumb, though not before she squeaked from his frozen touch.

"You're as cold as death." She tsked, a flurry of fingers reached up to swipe across his cheeks and temple. He couldn't fight his smile if he wanted to. Emmrich leaned into her, savoring the infectious spread of her body-heat. Her nose crinkled in just the way he adored, murmuring as she fussed. "I'll go run you a hot bath."

"Lovely of you to offer, my darling, though unnecessary. I'll warm up before long." Without breaking their gaze, he turned to lay a kiss into her palm, as it continued to rub the chill from his blushed skin. "That aside, I'm much too interested in that exquisite scent wafting from the kitchen."

"Hmm? Scent?" Expert coyness he was now practiced to poke straight through, her efforts were all for naught, betrayed by the creep of her own sly grin. "What scent?"

Contentedness weighing as heavy on his lips as in his eyelids, he hummed in thought. "What ever are you up to?"

She wrinkled her nose; believable offense feigned, her grin persisted. "Do you always believe me to be up to something?"

Voice kicked into his chest, the abrupt lower in octave had her sway in his hold. "Not at all, my love. Only when you look as though you're up to nothing, is when I begin to suspect you're up to something."

"Wouldn't Neve be proud." Tittering as she slipped from his grasp, she gathered one hand in both of hers, toes planted behind her heel. "Come with me then, and close your eyes."

"Such secrecy." He mused, allowing her to disappear from sight as his eyes fell shut.

Spinning around, Ariadne began to coax him forward with a bounce to her bare step. Flitting a glance over her shoulder to make certain he followed instruction, her timing was precise enough to find his left eye slitting for a peek, only when he knew he'd get caught.

"Ah-!" She chided through a cheeky smirk. "Absolutely not, young man."

Emmrich did as he was told, though not before barking a deep chuckle.

Eyes shut, no so much as twitching to sneak a peep, he allowed his tiny elf to lead him by the hand from the foyer and down the main hall, into the kitchen that they shared. The fragrance strengthened the nearer they drew; something sweet, and still warm from the oven. He could lift the aroma of toasted hazelnut through a haze of fresh sugar paste.

It ghosted across his lungs in bittersweet familiarity, before it spread throughout the breadth of his chest at an alarming pace. Pooling around his heart, it roused an old, dull ache to spasm throughout the muscle. One he knew well, he hadn't felt it in quite some time.

Emmrich didn't need to open his eyes to know what it was.

A chair positioned for him at the table, she guided his tall frame down to take a seat. Traipsing to stand behind him, he felt her breasts against his back, as she gathered his tapered upper body into her arms. Linking them around his neck with fingers dangling against his buttons, her cheek came to rest at his temple.

"Alright." She cleared her throat, the words cracking under her anxiousness. "Now you may look."

The sight of a dessert came into view. A cake, propped up square in his field of view. But not just any cake, if his nose was to be believed.

His mother's hazelnut torte.

It's presentation was pristine. Centered on a black crystal server, the sides were smooth with the whipped silk frosting, though pebbled with crushed hazelnut, just how he liked. Swirled peaks dotted the circumference of the top, dusted with cardamom, and flecks of what appeared to be orange zest.

Both assembled and decorated with a diligent hand, Emmrich could scarcely believe it was crafted by the same one that blurred in a lackadaisical whirl when extending a whisk. Whose 'pinch's and 'dash's were more akin to 'handful's.

Baking was a precise art, and Ariadne, by her own admission, was an imprecise woman.

Mother Volkarin's Nevarran Hazelnut Torte was every bit the labor of love she feared, one that consumed the lion's share of her day.

The hands that brought one of her gods to his knees before her, were the same that shook as she folded the egg whites into the batter. Emmrichs written instruction to 'do so gently' so heavy in it's emphasis, she could hear the ink admonish her from the page.

The cakes almost cracked during the transfer from pan to cooling rack. She drizzled the espresso into the icing before it was whipped, curdling the chocolate in the process, so she had to make it twice.

An adept cook, that skill was much looser with the rules. It allowed for improvisation, and fudging. She could afford to be distracted, and make substitutions without worry.

They often alternated the role of cook, unless it was a shared evening off, in which case they did it together. A testament to their complimentary opposition, seamless cohesion while preparing a meal was not a feat just any couple could boast. But they could.

Baking allowed no room for error, and would punish even minor offenses without discrimination. So much as one under performing ingredient would see the whole suffer. Baking would sooner bite the hand of the uninitiated than show it grace. Not dissimilar to how a beast snaps at one unfamiliar, one that approached with unease.

It required focus. Dedication. Her full, undivided attention.

Judging by it's looks, she had done just that. Having gone through the endeavor for no other reason than to surprise him. To do something special for his favorite time of year. To let him know her adoration of him was boundless, and what she was willing to give went without limit.

Even if it meant baking from scratch.

The length of ring adorned fingers closed around her wrist almost twice over. He stroked the knob of bone there with brisk thumb strokes, as if to quell her doubts through touch, while he was too overcome that moment to speak.

"I know you're not one to spoil your dinner, but your secret'll be safe with me." She pulled away, lips curling to a kiss against his forehead. Tugging the scarf from his shoulders to fold in half, she peered at him sheepish and sidelong. Unwilling to rush him, but anxious for his validation in the same breath.

Those bright eyes of hers boring into him in impatient wait, Emmrich shook himself free of the beginnings of his spiral only as her gaze began to burn.

Finally inclined to speak, the words snagged against his throat, strangling his inflection with what what of his voice managed to escape.

"Forgive me my discourtesy, dearest, I'm... at a loss for the proper words."

Draping his scarf over the back of an empty chair, she came to his side again. "How about your improper words, then?" Taming her nerves, Emmrich clasped her hand and lifted it to his lips.

A soft snicker misted into her skin, before molding his pout to the valleys of her knuckles. Spine then erected, he intoned through an easy smile. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather get on with spoiling my dinner."

She left him sitting there, alone with the torte, to fetch a plate and utensils. Shifting in his seat, Emmrich arranged himself over the side of it, one long leg crossed over the knee of the other. Turned away from the table to instead face her, she returned as if she had never stepped away.

He then eyed her as she placed the setting before him. Counting one plate between the two of them with a knit brow.

"Won't you join me?"

"I'll sneak a bite of yours." She teased, sinking the knife down in two clean, angled lines. Forming a neat triangle, she divulged where her motivations for such an act of service stemmed as she did.

"Lucanis told me when you gave him the recipe. I've been holding onto it for so long, I'd almost forgotten he'd given it to me." Lifting the wedge free, she plated it for him with ease. "It's only taken me so long to get around to because I saw you specified that your mother made it for you every Wintersend, and I wanted to do this properly."

Satisfied with the slice, she then passed it to him, trying to mask her shyness by babbling over it.

"I'm sure you could just make it for yourself perfectly well, but it's... different, I think, when it comes from someone else. Made for you, by someone who loves you." She continued to explain, and he continued his stunned silence. Willing himself to nod when appropriate, all else he could do was swallow hard against the cold lump in his throat.

A heaviness settled around him, but one that posed a comfort. Shielding. A hearty glass of mulled port on a frigid, lonesome night. That warded against the chill, and wrapped the heady spice of cinnamon and anise around his weariness, until it all melted away. An embrace of care. Of affection, and devotion.

For him, by one who loved him.

It patched another of his holes, one leftover from the accident. Another one of his empty gaps tailor-made for her shape, greedy to receive her. Left cold and open until she came along and filled it. No longer having a mother's doting, having been deprived of it at the tender age of old enough to suffer it's absence with appreciation.

Ariadne propped her hip against the edge of the table alongside where he sat. Arms folded, they then fell to twist her fingers at her naval.

Severing a piece with his fork that was both modest yet polite, Emmrich slid it between his teeth. Woefully heedless.

Until the taste settled.

Her fidgeting next balled fists at her hips, before dropping to hug herself around the middle.

Whipped frosting dissolved against the grooves of his tongue, and the airiness of the confection yielded to his thoughtful chewing in a slurry of rich mocha, coffee, and cream. All culminated with the barest hint of a crunch from pulverized hazelnut. With the first bite swallowed, he stilled.

Fingers knotted to keep still, she gnawed at her lower lip. Brows furrowed with an intensity that contrasted against her inhibition.

His stoic features twitched with pain, one that he fought to keep quiet.

Searching him for any signs of encouragement, he stared either directly into her - or through her - she wasn't certain. But it made little difference.

He didn't see her, or whatever it was he zeroed in on. Ever alert and keenly observant, Emmrich's look of foggy displeasure sank her heart to the pit of her stomach.

"That bad?" She offered in hesitation, as she steeled herself. Working her inflection gentle and light, he flinched against her words, as if her doubt struck him across the face. Her panic spiked.

Shutting his eyes, a harsh exhale flared his nostrils. And then nothing. Wound so tight and rocked stiff, not even his broad chest rose and fell with the rhythm of breaths.

She had tempered expectations.

Of course it would pale in comparison to his mother's, but surely her efforts would be appreciated, no matter how amateurish her attempt.

However he remained tensed, and aloof.

It bubbled resignation up her throat to spill between them, like a pot boiled over. Rushing to distance herself from the flicker of hope that she succeeded, only to retreat to forgone failure. Much more familiar to her, she burrowed in that experience, and sought it's shelter. "I know its not quite the same, but I did tr-,"

Breaking himself out of the reticence that held him captive, without addressing her - or even glancing back her way - he turned in his chair to face the slice head on, before he mauled it.

Wolfing it down like a man starved, he hunched over in his seat, no different from how a hound seeks to hide their bone from prying eyes before they gnaw it to shreds and marrow.

Ricocheting the fork back and forth between his mouth and the plate, not a hint of deviation, or break, in his ferine.

His heart throbbed by a chest that squeezed against it, intent to cave in. He didn't come up for air, not that his lungs would be able to suck it in against his body's constricting. Every part of him felt heavy and tender; the sore fatigue of succumbing to grief, after ignoring it for longer than it would tolerate.

The clinking of metal against the china was all the noise between them.

"Oh-," squeaked from her. One so quiet, he recognized it wasn't meant to be playful. He had startled her, just as he had himself.

Emmrich felt himself surrounded by her intent gaze, swelling with his every hurried inhale. Little muted whines were shook loose, before they were able to be strangled by his rabid mastication. With every one that groaned from the cavernous need he rushed to fill with her, the wider her eyes grew.

And the hotter her cheeks.

She couldn't fight the allure of when he presented so unrefined. To witness such vulnerability meant that she, and she alone, withheld the privilege of the one who he lowered his walls for. Ariadne offered to him her heart for his consumption, and he accepted. Selfish and with voracity, he took all she had to give, and it worsened his body's demand for more. It pulsed and twitched around a hollow hunger. One that would never be satiated, so long as she was near.

His teeth ground through her meaning behind the torte, as though the more earnest he was in savoring it, the closer he'd bind himself to her. The stronger the hit would be. The more potent the sense memory would cement itself, should he never get the chance for it again.

Should he ever lose her again.

A fool he was, to believe he reconciled the pain of being made to go without her.

Throbbing low and dull, it shared the space with his heart, and presented like an old scar. His body's hasty work to patch it saw it numbed and gnarled, stitched closed with a ragged touch before he bled out on the spot.

Unbothered to make it clean, or pretty. To lay nice beneath the skin so he wouldn't feel it there. To eventually fade away with time, like all the rest.

This picked it back open. Confronting him with the blood, and the mess. The beast found a weak spot in the cage.

And Emmrich kept eating.

His throat felt thick, and his molars buzzed. Head clotted and hazy from the rush of sugar, it wasn't enough discomfort to keep him from going in for more.

Until every crumb was devoured. Until his fork scratched empty plate. Only to then use the flat of it to scrape the smears of leftover frosting, he sucked it clean from the tines.

He didn't indulge in sweets often, not in a long while. And never like this.

It was like just his mother's, and it wasn't.

So different from how he remembered, yet it warmed him from the inside out, just as it did when he was a boy.

He detected her use of both rum and coffee in the icing, in place of the orange liqueur. A personal preference of his mother's in which her faithfulness was strict.

It tasted like Ariadne. Her bite. How she burned down his throat and boiled in his stomach. An addictive delight, tinged with the inescapable aftertaste of regret that plagued a treat. Something that tasted too good to resist, though he knew better.

Her heavy-hand, and decadence.

Her affection for him, overwhelming as it was unapologetic.

He didn't need his mother's torte. He needed hers. And now that he got a taste, he was ravenous.

It awakened something so deep-seeded within him he didn't recognize it at first. He didn't know how to appease it. Dredged from his depths, it ordered his acknowledgment with the same loud insistence that begged her consolation.

All he could do was reach for her.

He clawed at her hips with too much strength behind his nails, and yanked her into him. Blossoming a squeal that reached his ears, but went no further.

All but snatching her off her feet, Emmrich closed in to curl around her like a sniveling child. Burying his face in her abdomen, he wrapped himself around her in a plea for security only she could give.

He was the small and frightened boy, and the man he worked so hard to become in order to leave him behind, all at once.

Too tall and long-limbed to hide himself in her, it didn't stop him from trying.

The precious trivialities on which they'd built a life upon teased behind his squeezed lids.

Her call of his name through the door when he got in. How she hung herself from his neck, and gazed up at him with those soft brown eyes, like there existed an additional lifetime just for them to admire one another.

How he'd come into their bedroom from his morning bath, to her choice of his cuff links, or ascot for the day, laid out and ready for him. How serious she contemplated his wardrobe whenever he desired her input. A regular occurrence, as he delighted in the perk of her pointy ears when deep in consideration.

Cooking together. Wine blushing her cheeks and loosening her grin. Throaty giggles echoed into her glass at some-off hand remark of his that wasn't meant for laughs, but adoring it had done so.

Eating their meal in silence shared, for even their lack of conversation was a comfort.

Her nimble fingers gliding over the curve of his rump in a playful, yet possessive squeeze as she slipped past to goose him. Her preferred method of getting his attention.

How effortless she could communicate to him, the very same sentiment she spoke aloud just as often.

I love you.

The beast was loose, and it lunged straight for his weakness, snapping at the vestiges of his composure with it's slobbering maw. No longer would it be ignored.

Vision speckled and swimming, Emmrich blinked against it in hopes that would return his acuity, while his fingers curled their way around the waistband of her pants. A thin, clinging material, they goaded his ferocious weakness for the curvature of her hips and thighs. Soft, supple, full. Fecund. What of his faculties persisted, it was not near enough to stop him from yanking them down her legs.

Needing no further clarification of his needs, one of her hands hand grabbed for the meat of his broad shoulder to steady herself. Helping him pull her leggings the rest of the way in hurried accommodation, before kicking the pooled material from her feet.

Having forgone her underthings, a keening whine rattled his teeth at the discovery. Had it been any other time, he would have better expressed his appreciation for such boldness. Her womanhood bared to him, pink and puffy, he gazed at her and began to salivate, sugar still coating the inside of his cheeks.

Another time. When he didn't feel like he might have been ill if he didn't push himself inside her that very moment.

Naked from the waste down, he knocked the chair out from under him with a squawk of its feet skidding across tile. Clutching at the little elf, he sank to the floor, and dragged her down with him.

Scrambling to mount her, he insisted she lay down and open herself up to him; beyond mere words, but begged by way of how he pushed and pulled her.

Emmrich had weathered many romances and heart break, all of which conditioned his hands with an expertise that now failed him. Gifted with unspeakable adroitness with the body of a lover, those hands now shook and misfired, and with his own trousers, no less.

Directionless, he pawed her with brutish fumbling, grabbing at her everywhere and touching her nowhere. Breaths too tattered for blush-worthy adulation. Trembling with such force he was unable to free himself as quick as he needed, much less still himself long enough for a kiss, even one chaste.

Embarrassment had set for a myriad of reasons, though the feud with his clasps whipped him back to his first time - that sweet classmate of his, all those years ago - flushed and inexperienced.

A gangling lad on the edge of seventeen, not yet acquainted with his new height fresh off a growth spurt. Navigating his hormones and fledgling manhood with tragic ineptitude, that was, until Julian.

A strapping young man with the vibrancy of a midday sky in the blue of his eyes. The same height as Emmrich, he carried it so much better, having hit his metamorphosis much earlier. He moved with confidence, an attribute that both attracted Emmrich, and made him green with envy.

Julian kissed him sweeter than his perpetual mischievousness hinted. A biting wit softened to moaned praise. Assertive hands with an exploratory touch over Emmrich's wiry, virgin body. It was romantic in the way that young, puppy love often was; affection warm and dewy as early morning grass in mid summer, their romance carried through that season to the following.

Their end reached it's natural conclusion. He missed his companionship as he did the intimacy. But more seasons came and went, missing him a little less with each one. Dulling the sharp edges of his longing to rosy remembrance, like sand and waves to fragments of glass.

In that light, he held no pain, or grudges. How could he, when he had been left with something so beautiful from his first love? A memento forever treasured.

One shaking hand pulled himself through his slacks, having at last slipped the buttons free after much fervent appeal. Unable to take the time to fold the flaps out of the way, let alone remove his clothes, for his flaring need forbade any further delay.

Her breaths were just as uneven as his own. Hazelnut eyes full of assurance, and all for him, the sight had him twitch with a vengeance against the crease of his palm. Buried beneath his furious desideratum, he was almost appalled to feel himself erect with such ferocity. The sensitive flesh hot and angry grasped within his ringed fingers.

He shifted himself further up her body, seeking to align their sexes. Taking care not to rest too much of his weight atop her, the first nudge of his swollen crown to her folds saw him hiss at the sensation. She was ready for him. Despite the absence of proper foreplay, rubbing his length at the apex of her thighs, it came away puckered raspberry and drooling.

He found his little elf always seemed to be just a little primed for him, an affect of his presence he hoped would never calm with complacency.

A reality he accepted with shame, he could spare her no further attention, or prelude, driven mad with the urgency to be inside her.

His bruised head resting heavy at her entrance, he dropped himself between her spread thighs, and crammed himself in with a stuttered cant. A choked gasp ripped from him while he ripped his way through her, wet and guttural. Shuddering against her frantic contractions to his abrupt intrusion.

Ariadne arched up off the ground as far as the cage of his body allowed. A harsh yelp shot through her lips. The ringing in his ears deadened the blow, as it did the breathless cry of his name that followed, fragile and tumbling. Fingers grabbing at his drawn shoulders, she twisted the cotton of his shirt to anchor herself.

Time was on pause. A hush fell over them as he stalled on top of her, his thumping heartbeat nipping the heels of her own. Only once her dainty hands swept up and down his back, a pressure deliberate to stroke him still, did he realize he was trembling.

He almost didn't recognize the sound that came from him as his own; a whimpering, pathetic noise. Sick. The closest comparison to the feverish hue that rushed his clammy skin. The most apt identifier to the brutal, qualmish onset.

He was a lot for her to take, though she'd have it no other way. The sweet sting of his brunt hilted inside her was ecstasy unlike any she had ever tasted. The first time she laid with Emmrich he left her ruined, and never before had she submit to ruination with such abandon.

He had the tendency of holding her needs paramount to his own. Now given the chance to return the favor, she offered herself to his exigency, unconditional and absolute. Thrust as deep as her body's accommodation could withstand, with widened thighs and a nurturing caress, she welcomed his struggles as she did his prowess.

If he lost himself in her, so be it. She'd light the way back, like a beacon to ships in the night. And she'd piece him back together again.

Such messy business - love.

A quavering sigh seethed through grit teeth, her flutters were almost too tight to be comfortable. Emmrich began to rock himself in and out to stretch her to better fit his girth. Beginning slow and shallow, his thrusts were stilted, unwilling to peel himself away from her embrace long enough for proper gyration.

Their mismatched heights made for an already awkward coupling on the floor even more difficult. Her face tucked into his chest, the top of her head bumped into his chin with her every jostle forward. Steadied by forearms planted along either side of her, he shifted his weight to his lower body, throwing as much into the momentum of his frenzied canting as possible.

The otherwise respectable kitchen now invaded by obscenity, the slap of flesh drowned only by the cacophony of their sighs, and the shrill clatter of his grave gold against both itself, and the tile.

It wasn't romantic, or impassioned. It was distressed, and sloppy. A fast-spreading sickness of which this crude joining was medicinal. Her honey, her heat; the strength and tightness of muscle, that ushered him inside her plush depths. Seeking to knead him to better health.

All of his finesse - his artistry - when it came to making love abandoned him. Exiled to flounder in a shallow pool of desperation. An aspect of all his relationships of which his confidence was unshakable, he then felt like he was laying with someone he was unfit to touch.

Beautiful, dexterous fingers clawed at the floor in front of him until the tips blotched white from the pressure. Afraid to sink them into her, he knew the scratches left behind would taunt him for as long as they'd last.

Locking her ankles at the small of his back, she wrapped her arms around his back to hold him. Her furrowed brow twitching above eyes screwed shut, as he chafed her backside against the edge of tile bared from uneven grout.

"It's okay-, it's alright-," lilting in breathlessness, she fought his attempts to steal them with every snap of penetration. "Y-you're okay."

He hadn't felt such helplessness since his Orlesian artist, Anastriana. Lissome and mystifying, she was the first woman he'd ever seduced that made him feel as though he had to prove himself in order to keep her. Or rather, she was the first woman who'd seduced him.

She liked to claim conquests instead of lovers, and he managed to hold on to her for longer then she planned to string him along. Endearing her with his eagerness to please, his devotion to her needs.

Emmrich would have pried himself open with nothing but blunt finger tips in servitude, all to pluck a rib from its cage, if it might have won her approval. But her approval wasn't equal to her love.

He proved himself a dutiful marionette, one too amusing to put back in the cupboard.

Until the next came along, and he was no longer a befitting muse.

More a heinous co-dependency than it was a relationship. To think he'd been such a willful accomplice of his own heartbreak, when he disregarded the obvious, and asked for her hand. A request denied, and none too gently.

It ripped him apart. Leaving him bitter with wounded pride, and sullied by wild jealousy. Yet, even with how thorough his dismantling by her fickle whims, he remained the same. That pain, visceral as it was, fizzled and faded. Swept away by time, the sting a distant memory.

He had gained better sense alongside self-respect as he matured. Far more guarded with his partners thereafter, Emmrich offered them a scrupulous love. He didn't know any other way to be. If what he had to give wasn't enough, then it simply wasn't meant.

"E-Emmrich-," Her moans brought him back, puffed against his collar bone as she squeezed her thighs against his hips. Her pelvis pinned under his, it wriggled in attempt to match his rhythm, but she couldn't follow a lead he didn't provide.

Withdrawn fully into himself, huffing and grunting as he rut her into their kitchen floor, still she sang for him, as if he were worshiping her the way he should. "F-feels so nice-," she sobbed, perhaps just as far gone herself. Toes curling and heels dug into his low back, her whimpers broke against his ear, finding him through the thundering of his blood, and the roar of his heart. "You're perfect - so perfect-,"

The haughty, bejeweled visage of Anastriana was exiled back to the cobwebbed annexes of his psyche where she belonged. A ghost of his past that deserved internment for what of his mind she saw fit to besiege.

He no longer looked to dissect himself, and discard the more unsavory bits. He'd never again rearrange his parts for a lovers favor.

But for Ariadne?

She'd sooner clap him against the cheek for daring to suggest such a thing, though his inescapable truth remained. The deeper in love he fell, the more certain he was of his unworthiness to have her.

Not with all his flaws. The very same unsavory bits he had been so self-righteous of before her.

Be it by shame, or neediness, he wanted to hide. Sheathed inside her as he was, the urge was demanding.

He couldn't bury himself at her neck in their current position. Stopping just long enough to shift to his knees, the joints bruised and aching from the press of the tile, she stuck to him like a leech. Refusing to detach for even that terse beat of readjustment, claws sunk and legs like a vice.

The first time he glimpsed her face since before they began, her eyes watered above cheeks smeared rogue. Loosened tendrils of silvery blonde clung to her forehead and wrapped around the front of her throat, she mewled up at him like a submissive kitten. The luster of her sex drunk haze heightened by how her pupils spilled across the irises.

Hoisting her up with him to keep her hips flush in his lap, his palms slid up along her back to grip her by her traps. Hunched over, he retreated within the crook of her neck, before rolling his hips in earnest.

His pants huffed against her throbbing pulse, the fingers he had been so worried about hurting her with prior, now bit down into her shoulders to hold her still. To keep her steady as he overwhelmed her with his gluttony.

Messy and without coordination, his heft pushed at the velvet confines of her channel, the ridges clenched tight around his every spear.

Wetness then leaked against the spot on her where he nuzzled. The gallop of her heart was all that protected it from breaking.

Though it was he who helmed this onslaught, Emmrich twisted himself around her with staggering necessity. A needful, clinging tender spot, and no more. Afraid the moment he eased up, she'd fade to nothingness beneath him. Ripped from a dream, the most beautiful he'd ever known.

"Darling, please-," He rasped into her skin, slick with perspiration and stray tears. "Don't- don't leave me."

His inner torment had been plain, but to hear it thicken his tone; so small and despondent, alarm sheared through her like cold wind.

"W-what?" Battling her own disorientation, bleary eyes blinked up at the ceiling, her grasp on him curled tighter. "What are you-t-talking about?"

Ariadne didn't make his townhouse their home. She was home. His home. A home that was taken from him long ago.

One he didn't have the stomach to lose. Not again. Never again.

And he almost had.

But not that dread. That only metastasized.

The sour taste at the back of his throat. Shaking and sweat-dampened in the middle of the night, pawing at her side of the bed to make sure she was still there.

The very thing he wanted most of all had been snatched away from him the moment he received it, and all before he could even recognize it for what it was. Their last argument echoing inside his head without end, his weaknesses and insecurities blinded him from what had been waiting there for him all along. Yet there he was, trying to reject what he had craved all his life. Perhaps the beast had been there from the start.

He could have drowned in that thought if he stayed in it any longer.

Grief was funny that way.

Unpredictable as it was unavoidable. The first week she was gone, Emmrich remained strong. Focused on what he needed to do in order to get her back, he busied himself with optimism, however contrived.

Neve began to visit him those nights in the beginning, when sleep refused them both, and cast each away.

She touched his shoulder as if the company was for his sake, but the bags beneath her eyes conveyed her struggles equaled his own. Telling him that burden was one shared.

"How are you holding up?"

"About as well as your estimations, if the look on your face is to give you away. Though truth be told, I fear I'm faring not even half as well." He attempted a chuckle, but the mirth that would have lent to it's credibility refused to surface with it, rending it a scratchy, parched wheeze. One he hadn't the bandwidth to smooth over, or excuse by that time of the night. "I'm... well."

Whether he said it to convince her, or himself, neither were sold.

The ice mage peered up at him with a tilt of her head. An invitation for him to unload. "And you know it's alright... not to be?"

"Of course..." He declined her lifeline with a tired smile, the sheen of his gaze intensified as it unfocused. "Though it would be of use to no one should I pander to such selfishness, to waste precious time wallowing. Least of all to... her." His throat closed around the acknowledgment, as if speaking about her would jinx her return.

Neve uttered a small noise of agreement from the back of her throat, before gesturing towards the spiral staircase. "Shall we, then?"

The two would set out on his balcony like weary sentinels amidst the starry night. Solemn in their silence, they were each granted a moment in the company of a friend, simply just to be. A break from having to pretend.

She'd offer her cigarette each time, and each time he abstained.

For about the first three evenings.

Catching his stolen, longing glances, and interpreting them as curiosity. An oversight she fast rescinded, for when he accepted it from her, he pulled the burn into his lungs without hesitation. His fluidity betrayed a practiced ease that hinted to an old - or secret - habit. With a taut bob of his Adams apple, he shut his eyes and tipped his head back.

Neve watched with a smirk, as Emmrich blew it back into the night a steady, flattened stream from between his lips, the smoke tugging with it a noise from him. A hum that bordered on a groan, and throaty with relief. It was one she knew well.

"I see you've met before."

"Oh yes, my dear, we're well acquainted. An admission I scorn the taste of almost as much." A hoarser edge snagging his signature silk, he rushed his next drag, and the acridity furled to mild retaliation within his rusty throat. Waving away the quick burst of a cough, he shook his head at himself with a smirk that more earnestly wanted to be a sneer. "Old friends turned adversaries, I dare say."

So became their ritual. Most nights saw them together on his balcony, passing her quellazaire back and forth about as often as their weak words of conciliatory encouragement. Whenever one would find it within themselves to proffer to the other.

Ever tactful, Neve opted to continue sharing hers, to perhaps lessen the blow of his relapse. He was as grateful for her discretion as he was her empathy.

The first week was like wading through wet cement. Every step forward a battle, he held tight to his vigilance, if only for Ariadne.

The second week was when it began to harden.

They had been moving at a break-neck pace, careening down their path quicker than they could formulate the next plan of attack. And then she was gone, and everything halted. Now idle, he had a little more time to think. To dwell.

It smothered him. Everything did. Waking, walking, breathing. A constricting pressure seeking faults so that it may get him to crack, in the form of steady, unhurried fear. The fear that no progress had been made. That she still wasn't back.

His presentation deteriorated a little more each long day that bled into the next. The circles around his eyes darkening, his stubble grown out from days unbothered to shave it. Though he held himself together with little more than threads of the hope, he held tight to them still. Regardless of how tattered.

Neve shortened the time between her visits to his balcony.

Before long, the length of those days strung him right along into the third week.

That milestone a bitter one to accept, the beast then came knocking.

Before it's arrival, he loathed being in his room at the lighthouse alone; for the whispers of their argument slithered through the air in suffocation whenever he opened himself to that vulnerability. With the beast taking that place, he would have welcomed those taunting echoes back with open arms.

It reached for him like a shadow stretching across the ground, its inevitability lurking in his periphery. In the dark corners of her quarters, when he ventured there to sit alone, and breath in her smell.

It sunk its claws into his feet and dragged him down, down, down. Into himself, into self-destruction, into agony so old and familiar it hurt just to look at it. A malignancy he believed to be bested rearing in spite.

It knew Emmrich, and knew him well. It had been a long time, but they had a history. The longer and harder Emmrich looked it in the eye, did the horrified realization dawn.

I know you. And it can't be you. It cannot be. You only come when... and she can't be...

To say he looked haggard from thereon was a kindness. Iron scruff covered his jaw, sunken in and hollow with starvation. He raked fingers through his hair over and over again, leaving it to stick up in erratic tufts that he never tamed back into place, no matter how often he threaded them through it.

By then, when Neve came calling for their regular commiseration, she discovered he'd taken to starting without her.

Perseverance no longer saw fit to bestow him it's mercy.

He turned to face her with bloodshot eyes. His tall height halved as he bent at the waist and slouched over the rail, his perfect posture disintegrated along with his nerve.

The stub of his second consecutive cigarette dangled from his shadowed frown. Without a word uttered, he snapped fingers out towards her, producing a spark between them, as a small flame appeared. Hovering above his fingertips, at the ready to light her up.

Heavy lidded eyes, they were glassy with the tears he denied himself. The top few of his buttons yanked loose, while his waist-coat hung wide open. Just so he could breath.

He had been doing so well.

Having spurned fate at numerous points throughout his life, childish as it now seemed, the frequency of the habit across all his combined years paled in comparison to those dreadful weeks.

And then, as vicious and greedy as it was; as much as it took from him, it at long last returned.

She was back.

One unassuming day. During the middle of a week that was decidedly without note.

All he could do was hold her close, and steady himself to the beat of her heart. Sighing into the top of her head how relieved he was she was back, over and over again. And he was.

They hadn't the time then for proper acknowledgment, or the right words. Already on borrowed time, and he'd squander none of it on dwelling over his anguish.

She was given back to him. And there was a god to kill.

So Emmrich laid to rest the horrifics of how he suffered in a shallow grave, one neither visited.

Why now, after all this time, after she was returned to him for a life shared, a life just beginning - why now did he see fit for its desecration?

Why couldn't it stay buried?

Somehow she managed to draw it out from him. That wound gaping once more, all either could do at that moment was let it weep. For where there was blood, coagulation would soon follow.

And then the sting would dull to an ache. An ache could be ignored, could be carried. Could be learned to live with.

That grief stripped him to his bones, weary and frail. And she cradled them. Shielding them from the hard floor, and using the heat from her own body to warm them. She looked at him no different from how she did when he was at his suavest, at his strongest. At his best.

The tragedy of his parents death shaped him, an inevitability in his story.

But those weeks where he never knew if he'd see Ariadne again, the fragmented echoes of their argument left unresolved, hers would be a loss that would define him.

And then she was back. Safe in his arms. Constant in his heart.

Emmrich spoke firmer, almost a growl. Sharpened with indignation, the words still shook with the tenuous resolve of agony just barely held at bey. "Don't ever leave me, ever again."

She laid there for him, clutching the hair of his nape her fingers thread through. Thinking to assuage him, the act of speech was was a challenging one. The mass of him stuttering into her, every time she opened her mouth, all that knocked from her were gasps.

As though she were fighting against the waves of a sea as they broke over her head, cold and unrelenting. Pushing her back, pushing her away. She hushed into the air in hopes he'd be able to hear.

"I'm-here," choked it's way out against his rutting. "I-It's alright-Emmrich- I'm here."

It wasn't enough. Unconvinced, his thrusts met her harsh and jagged. "I can't lose you, not again I-I'm not- I'm not strong enough, I-"

Far more stubborn than the two of them combined, she pulled him from his hiding place and down into a hug. Forcing him to feel her sincerity through the strength of her embrace.

Shielding him from the beast that snarled in wait.

"Not even death could keep me from you." Bruising him with the weight of dedication too heavy to hold, she begged for his trust. "I promise you, I'll never leave you again."

Usually just before release he quickened, and his movement became focused. Purposeful. This time he slowed, trying to savor her, or stall himself from too quick a release. But it was too late. Rigor had settled. He could feel the little tremors throughout his muscles as they burned. That coil seated behind the root of his cock began to un-spool with the finality of an over-tensioned wire then clipped.

"Ari-," somewhere between a hiccup and a sob, it was low and needful, and unexpected in the best of ways. If she wasn't darling, or love, or my dear - she was Ariadne. Proper, and with much reverence. He had never before called her just Ari.

Deepening the rosy hue that prickled over her every inch, it wound him tighter in her arms. To say that she knew. She understood.

As quick as it mounted, it all toppled over.

A harsh prickle behind his eyes that swept from left to right, the spasms held his lids shut. Not that he would have wanted her to look into them, even if he could fight his body to hold them open.

He emptied inside her, unable to hold it back. A sluggish release, one that seemed to worsen his inner malady as it oozed. Shaking like a wet dog and growing nauseous with the dawning of what he had just done, Emmrich didn't wait for his breath to return before falling over himself in apology.

"Oh, my darling, I-I... -forgive me, I-,"

"Don't you dare." Her tone as firm as the adoration that imbued it. "Of all the things you've sought forgiveness for, that is about the most foolish."

Emmrich felt as sensitive and needled as a nerve rubbed raw, and looked twice as battered, struggling for breath that stuck to the air too humid and thick for his lungs. He had just crashed through the final stage of grief, knotted inside her as he was. Right there, on the kitchen floor.

He thought to roll them to the opposite position, but he feared movement. He still felt everything, and entirely too much.

"Foolish habits of a foolish man." He winced upon hearing himself without the tinnitus to muffle it. Gruff beyond recognition, a raw voice belonging to someone else. In that suspension of sobriety, he very much wished he was.

"Mmm, my foolish man." Her correction loving, her arms draped lazily around his neck, peering up at him glossy eyed and meek.

Humiliation digging at his back, he peered down at her with too grim an expression for all their common vulnerability. "May I... make a confession?"

Her own face fluttered a little as it softened. "Please do."

A palm at her cheek, her crystalline gaze was alight with sincere infatuation. His tongue stalled, hesitation slithering back in. The beast heeled, but still breathing down his neck.

Would he tell her of how he couldn't eat when she disappeared? That scarcity rivaled only by his lapse in personal hygiene? Would he crush that blinding acceptance she basked him in, as he told her how often he had lost his temper with Manfred?

Or that in his withdrawal of her, he thought the dry bitterness of tobacco a worthy substitute for her sweetness? That he replaced one addiction with the other, as if his relapse reduced her to no more than a vice. One he was forced to quit, one he had to reconstitute.

No, he couldn't allow her to visualize him in such a way. Though the jaws of the beast would not unlatch until it was appeased, lest he be left with those punctures for the rest of his days, hot and festered, like wounds that wouldn't close. With a deep breath, he lowered his gaze to the space of her chest that covered her heart. Trained to it's rise and fall, instead of looking her in the eye.

"All this time I thought ill of fate; thinking it cruel to have lead me to you so much later in my life. But I was wrong. It wasn't cruel, but merciful. I've been left behind to live on in the absence of those I loved most. I could not... do that again. Not with you." His utterance just above a whisper. "Not again."

The dour severity of his words flustered her. "That's very sweet."

"Rather disconcerting of you to perceive that declaration as such." He shook, eyes wide and head hung in defeat. The ruefulness of his inflection cut through them both. "I'm a weak man, Ariadne. A coward."

"And I'm a horrid little woman." She all but groaned.

He drew back with a blink. A more familiar, perplexed look settled into the lines of his face, one she was ever grateful to see back on him.

She hadn't meant to snap, but it startled him out of self-loathing long enough to allow for reason. At the very least, their eyes had finally met. "While we're exchanging confessions I have something of my own, if you'll hear it."

Emmrich urged her on, wordless. The pallor in his face receding.

"If I died tomorrow, I'd haunt you for the rest of your days." The mischievous twinkle was unable to mask her honesty, one she was none too proud of. "I know I'm supposed to say that I'd want you moved on and happy, but I'm viciously jealous."

To what she offered, he scoffed, though not one of contempt, or ridicule. That candor of hers brought him solace, one he was gracious to accept. A fullness in his heart, a balm to that nagging ache that throbbed low and steady when she was gone. A piece of it missing in the shape of her, he was then strong enough in acceptance that it was back.

Steadfast, and unequivocal.

As was a different nagging he had been trouble by on and off, in the months following their homecoming. It was far less monstrous, though it frightened him much the same.

Though the way she gazed up at him with those big, brown eyes confronted him with a decision then made. That his rationale for its evasion was unfounded.

He could think of no better time than now, tangled in one another on the floor, as bared to her as he'd ever been.

True to his creed, he didn't dissect himself to rearrangement. He ripped himself open and let her see it all; the ugliness, the cowardice, the unsavory bits. The parts of him that begged recoil, the parts to be shunned. He bared it all. A soul laid naked and plain in oblation. All he had to give.

Should she accept, it would be hers. Forever and always.

And Emmrich knew better than most the rot of things left unsaid, how they lingered like a restless spirit when their time came to an abrupt end, and it was too late to voice them.

"Marry me?"

Clawing it's way through a tight throat that sought to cage it, the blurted plea left him breathless. Hanging between them, tender and exposed.

There was no grand romance. No honeyed poeticism, or candlelight dinner. Not the way Emmrich had expected it might be. Not the way he felt she deserved. It was coarse and raw, just as she made him feel.

Then again, he knew the little Watcher better than that.

She'd always prefer unrefined sincerity, to overwhelming sentimentality. Perhaps this was just as it should be.

No matter the dressing, whether there were dozens of candles - or not one - the promise was the same. The words themselves were the heavy lifting. She trembled beneath them.

"I-," her words caught, and she winced. A blush pooled outward from the bridge of her nose, and moisture webbed across her eyes that only broke over her lashes when she tried to will it away. She continued to blink, looking to hide her face as fresh tears welled to replace the old. "You want a horrid little woman for a wife?"

"Does she love the weak, cowardly man?"

"Point that man out and she'll tell you." She sniffed, allowing for silence to coalesce between them as she collected herself. Though the importance of the request was one that ordered immediate response, he felt weightless as she kept him waiting for it.

"Ariadne Volkarin." Her breath hitched at the taste of the title in full, the flutter of her heart kicked to dizzying thumps with every syllable, every press of her tongue to her teeth. Trying it on for size.

A name she'd be honored to bear.

The first name she'd been offered. And not because there was simply no one else for her to be, but because he wanted her to be no one else.

"Ariadne Volkarin." He repeated, a hoarseness to his deep inflection. "My love... I must burden you once more with a confession, one I'm far more hesitant to impart."

Eyes widened to saucers, they glistened with delicate tears she did well in blinking back. "Oh?"

"I... I don't have a ring." Brows bowed, frown sheepish, resignation muddled his cadence.

Her gaze still blown and shining, it fixed on him, unflinching.

And then she laughed. Breathy, gentle, and blessedly reassuring.

"Does that mean I can't accept your proposal?"

A pressure closed around his heart and squeezed. Unbearable, he could have lived a lifetime in that heartache all the same. "Do you?"

"Yes." Her touch light and trembling, she guided his head down to rest his forehead against hers. When next she spoke, it was no more than a whisper, and a reflection of his frailty she handled with such care. "I do."

Tagging as per request: @pinkuranium @goddessnyx216

[timethehobo]

“Immortality isn’t living. Immortality is everybody else dying.”

[incoherentchanting]

this shit is so funny

[askfordoodles]

My brain, choosing violence:

hey, don't think about how Emmrich watched Manfred die the same way his parents did, a large structure falling on them

and for a moment Emmrich regresses to the age he was when it happened, a scared helpless and lost little boy

That, right there, is little Emmrich, being brought right back to the worst moment of his life as a child, just look at that body language the devs chose for him in this moment.

Me, to my brain: hey can you maybe chill, Satan

(I know we don't know for certain if he actually witnessed the building collapse, but wouldn't it be fucked up if he did)

[tekstelart]

Emmrich listening to her heartbeat has been requested

[floral-and-fine]

Mourn You Now

Emmrich Volkarin x Mourn Watch Fem Rook (reader)

A/n and Disclaimer: I just want to say I have not finished the game or the romance, so please no spoilers. 😅 I got this idea after the little graveyard date and just had to write it! Thank you!

Thank you @ghostgum for the help ❤️

Summary: Rook is injured in battle, giving Emmrich a lot to contemplate on the matters of life and death.

“Rook’s hurt,” Davrin shouted over all the noise.

Emmrich, who was several feet away, froze mid spell, his eyes sweeping over the battlefield searching for you. Without thinking anything through, his legs started to move.

It was either by skill or incredible luck, but he managed to avoid getting hit or crushed as he rushed to your aid the very moment he saw you collapse. Panic was already settling in before he was even close enough to witness the actual damage and injuries himself.

The fighting and mayhem around him seemed to become a blur, his only objective right now was getting to you. He struggled to catch his breath as his emotion got the better of him. The sounds of the battle that surrounded were now muffled and dull to his ears, especially as the sound of his beating heart grew louder.

It was as if he was underwater, fighting against a current to reach you.

He fell to his knees, gently cupping your face as he tried to wake you, his fingers tapped against your cheek as he called your name. Ice cold fear flooded his veins when you didn’t move or react at the sound of your name or from his nudging.

His eyes widened as he noted the blood pooling beneath you. Carefully adjusting his hands he cradled your head, he could feel blood dripping down his slender fingers to his wrists.

Your shallow breaths did very little to soothe him. He didn’t know what to do, he called out for you louder out of desperation, but you remained unconscious as more blood continued to pool from various wounds.

Were you dying? The thought wormed its way into his head. You were dying, this was it… you’d be gone…

He couldn’t fathom losing you, especially when everything had just begun, this sweet precious love that was blossoming between the two of you, being untimely plucked before fruition…

He had so many things he wanted to show you, so many other little ventures the two of you could share before retiring at the Necropolis where he’d continue to teach.

A sudden longing unfolded, one that begged him to lie beside you and follow your spirit into the fade. The idea on any other day would have been more terrifying to him than all else, but today, at this very moment, it was almost comforting.

“We need to retreat,” Davrin commanded, the sound of his voice breaking through to Emmrich as clearly as a bell. The Grey Warden remained level headed, having grown accustomed to the harsh reality of battle. “Come on, we need to leave. Now.”

Davrin wasted no time, while Emmrich still processed the situation, he knelt down and grabbed your arm, placing it over his neck and his arm helped support you up.

Emmrich finally reacted as soon as he realized that he needed to help Davrin get you to safety. Quickly, he went to your other side to help carry you.

Both men then hurried to the nearest Eluvian.

Arriving back at the Lighthouse, Bellara and Harding took things from there. Bellara shiftly gathered supplies while Harding started bandaging what she could already see.

Emmrich felt so incredibly useless as he watched. Everyone else had acted sensibly and rationally, they were the reason you had a chance at survival.

…

Once Bellara and Harding were finished treating your wounds, Emmrich came into your room to stay with you, desperately hoping you’d show signs of improvement soon.

It wasn’t an easy sight, seeing you unconscious, bruised and beaten. And like a shadow looming over him, he still worried that he could lose you.

He stood awkwardly in your room, his hands fidgeting with one another as he looked around. It almost didn’t seem right for him to be in your room without you being aware of the fact, but he cared about you more than he did about some silly and old fashioned customs.

Emmrich noted some familiar looking items decorating the room, a Nevarran urn sitting on a shelf, a few trinkets you had collected recently from Rivain and Minrathous, but unfortunately the room could use far more books.

He moved a chair over, placing it close to where you were resting.

He recalled several tomes in his possession that he believed would capture your interest. He’d be more than willing to loan them to you. Emmrich would love to hear your thoughts on the rituals detailed in one of them as well as the techniques detailed for mummification in another.

He hoped that the future for you and him still held many late night discussions on all sorts of subjects.

Emmrich’s eyes felt strained as he focused solely on the rise and fall of your chest. Right now, that was the only sign that showed him you were still hanging in there.

The aches and pains of the battle were now making themselves known and his mortal body desired rest, yet his mind and spirit were still wired.

He heard Manfred’s familiar clinking as the skeleton approached with a tray, but Emmrich had no appetite, even for tea. Manfred placed the tray on the table beside the mage and tittered inquisitively.

Emmrich managed to muster a sad smile for his companion, “I believe she’ll pull through, Manfred, thank you.”

He rubbed his face, fighting off the weariness he felt in his bones as Manfred retreated out the room.

…

Your eyes slowly opened, the flickering of a few candles illuminated Emmrich’s tired face which drew your attention. The poor man looked dead tired, but soon his eyes lit up, his entire body acting alert all of a sudden, upon seeing you awake.

“Emmrich?” You whispered in a hoarse voice.

“It’s alright,” he reassured you as he promptly rushed to you and took your hand in his. “But I wouldn’t move too much or too quickly, take it slow please.”

“How bad is it?” You joked, looking at the bandages covering your arm and shoulder, but your smile soon disappeared when you saw the serious look in Emmrich’s eyes.

“Oh,” you swallowed thickly.

His hand squeezed yours reassuringly. “It was a rather close one, unfortunately.”

Silence fell between you, Emmrich’s hand remained on yours.

“Manfred brought tea, if you’re thirsty, although it’s probably gone cold by now,” he offered.

You shook your head, “Not tea, maybe just some water.”

Immediately, Emmrich jolted up from his seat quickly fetching you a glass of water. He helped guide your hand as you took a sip, then placed the glass nearby for later.

Sitting back down, his face scrunched up in concentration.

“Something on your mind?” You asked.

“There is a great deal on my mind,” Emmrich admitted. “In fact, I haven’t stopped thinking since…well since you were injured.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Emmrich’s gaze shifted, looking slightly embarrassed. “I’d very much like to hold you, as long as you think it wouldn’t cause you any distress or discomfort, of course.”

You smiled at him, “I would like that as well.”

You winced slightly as you shuffled on the bed to make room for him, but before he had a chance to tell you that perhaps this was a bad idea, your fingers clasped around his hand and tugged him towards you.

With a content sigh, his long thin frame curled around yours, his chin buried in your hair as he clung to you. The room was quiet as you and Emmrich simply relished in being close to each other.

One of his hands rested on top of yours, his fingers lazily drew circles over your skin. “I was so afraid that I had lost you, Rook.” Emmrich closed his eyes, “In fact, I was so afraid that for the first time in my life, death didn’t seem all that terrifying.”

“Emmrich,” you murmured softly as you acknowledged the significance of what he just shared.

“Can you believe it?” He half chuckled. “I’m still processing it all to be honest.”

“But there was a moment, where I truly believed that it was over, that your life was over, and I… just wanted to follow you, to stay with you, even if that meant dying.”

You rolled onto your side as best as you could so you could face him, gazing up at him lovingly. It was his tolerance, vulnerability, and honesty that drew to him in the first place.

Just like how he opened up to you at the graves about his fear, how he constantly shared his knowledge not because it makes him feel superior but because he genuinely loves to teach, and then of course there was the connection you shared with him as a fellow Mourn Watcher.

You both could speak so freely with each other without worry. He accepted you completely. Reaching up slowly, you gently stroked his cheek.

“I can almost picture it so clearly, what that future would be like,” he shared, sounding so calm and perhaps even a little elated. “Our remains resting together in a crypt in the Necropolis, a large single headstone engraved with both our names, a sentimental epitaph that sums up our love in both life and death, and our spirits crossing over to fade together, to face whatever comes next.”

“Now that sounds like an afterlife I’d be honored to be a part of,” you smiled, finding the whole sentiment utterly sweet and romantic.

Emmrich laughed, “And eventually some curious young Mourn Watcher will come along, resurrect my skeletal remains, and have to hear all about our remarkable love story.”

He sighed, his eyes moving across your face as he took in every little detail, before pressing a quick kiss to your forehead.

“Thinking about the whole experience, thinking about you, has made me wonder if what I truly fear about death connects back to my parents…” Emmrich shook his head, not ready to delve too deep into past trauma and tragedy. “All I know for certain, is that I have a single request for you, my dear.”

“What is it?”

“Please don’t leave me behind.” His face held a pained expression, his dark eyes

“I would never…” you started, doing your best to sit up to show just how serious you were. You wanted to just grab and show him just how much he meant to you.

“Rook,” Emmrich reprimanded while carefully but firmly pushing you back down onto the bed. “You really need to be taking it easy.”

Now his body was leaning over yours, his hands planted on your shoulders. He was still cautious with you, of course, careful not to squeeze too hard, or put any extra weight on you.

He admired you, transfixed by your beauty, even in your injured state, you were still captivating. Gradually he began to lower himself closer to you, his nose lightly caressing yours before he finally went in for a kiss.

The kiss was slow and tender at first, but as soon as things heated up, when his felt your tongue graze over his bottom lip, Emmrich was quick to end it, pulling away despite your weak protests.

“You need to rest my dear,” he reminded you, getting up to adjust your pillow and fix your blanket. “Can I get you anything?”

You shook your head, “Just lay back down and rest with me.”

Emmrich smiled, slipping back into bed with you. He tucked your head under his as he securely wrapped his arms around your chest. Feeling your warmth, your breath, your beating heart, brought him such comfort that he’d never take a moment alive with you for granted.

[hawkinshorror94]

The way Emmrich sounds so irritated when Harding brings up their age difference.

I know when he got back to the Lighthouse, alone in his room the conversation bounced off the inside of his skull. The words ringing in his head like angry bees.

And at dinner he sees Rook. Really sees them, their youth. And it's crushing. And that's why he's distracted. His fear of dying is now amplified because what if he dies and leaves them behind.

What if they don't make this out on the other side together? What if they have to hold him while he dies? And it culminates in the argument before Tearstone Island. Yelling and tearing at one another right before they have to go to war against a God.

He never expects they'll be the one who is gone. He never expects to be the one who has to mourn them. His heart clenchs when he finds a shirt that they haphazardly thrown off during a midnight rendevous. It still smells like them and he collapses in his floor face buried in this shirt as he cries.

And poor Manfred doesnt understand and he would keep asking for Rook. His voice so curious as he'd say "Rook?" But then he too realizes Rook isn't coming back. And the one person that can offer the skeleton comfort is a shell of the man he once was.

[witchybitchycrybaby]

Emmrich had meant to read tonight.

He settled on the couch, a book in his hand. But still, he couldn't focus on the words, the letters blurring into an amorphous mass. So instead, he put it away as he let himself drift in the quiet of the night.

And then you found him—like you did most of the time.

He could tell you were tired and drowsy after a whole day of working, your eyes half-lidded and your movements sluggish. You deserved a good night's sleep.

So when you climbed on top of him, draping yourself over him like a weighted blanket, there was no hesitation in Emmrich's mind. He embraced you in his arms—one hand resting on the small of your back, the other gently stroking your hair.

Soon, your breathing slowed, your body relaxed, becoming putty in his hands.

You were so soft. So warm. He kept you safe, tucked against him like you belonged there—with him. Like he also belonged there with you. Always with you.

He should have followed you to the land of dreams. He knew he should rest, knew he needed to. It would be so easy, after all, to close his eyes and get lost in this warm cocoon you've created.

But Emmrich didn't want to sleep.

For if he closed his eyes, he would have to leave this moment.

And he wasn't quite ready to fall into blissful unconsciousness. He wanted to hold you, to kiss you, to whisper soft, quiet words meant only for you, even if you didn't hear them.

So he pressed a gentle kiss to your temple and whispered, "I love you so much, my darling."

He should have met you earlier.

The thought haunted him more often than not nowadays. It crept into his brain and twisted inside of him, tightening around his heart until it ached.

You were young, that's true—but not in a way that made him ever doubt your feelings or think that you don't know your heart well enough. You were young in a way that weighted on him; you had so much life to live. And he didn't.

Emmrich was always concerned with his mortality, with time passing relentlessly. But with you, his time had never felt so finite.

He should have been young when you were. Should have had the chance to love you for longer, much longer. He wanted to fall asleep and wake up with you for so many mornings that he lost count. He wanted to see you happy, hear your laugh, trace the shape of your face with his fingers until it was burned into his memory.

He wanted years. Decades. A lifetime.

Emmrich wanted more time than he had the right to ask for.

He knew he was greedy. And that was alright, because all he wanted was to be the only one to love you, to give you it all.

He knew you deserved everything, every star in the sky and every ray of sunshine. You deserved unconditional love, a bottomless well of devotion.

And now he was running out of time. He knew it.

If he focused hard enough, he could almost see it. A future, not that distant, where he no longer existed, where he was no longer a part of your world. You'd carry on, of course. You'd be alright. Strong, bright, brilliant. But without him.

Would you find love again? he wondered. Would you search for it after him?

He wanted to be selfish and think that he'd be your endgame—that he'd be the one for you, that no one else would ever love you the way he did.

But then again, he wanted nothing more than for you to be happy. Wanted for you to love and be loved.

More than anything, though, he wanted time. More of it. All the time in the world.

Emmrich's arms tightened around you. He pressed another kiss to your temple, but this time he stayed like that a little longer, breathing the sweet scent of you.

You sighed in your sleep and shifted, pressing impossibly closer to him.

And so he stayed awake. Just a minute longer. Maybe two. Just to still feel you in his arms. Just to still be with you.

[reeseykins]

Thoughts on Emmrich while Rook is trapped in the Fade

Kind of obsessed with thinking about Emmrich's deteriorating mental state while Rook was trapped in the Fade.

The first few days he's ultra focused on finding a way to get Rook back. He's a Fade expert -- this sort of problem was made for him to solve. He tells himself he WILL find a solution, because that's why he's here, right? He keeps telling himself that over and over, willing himself to solve this impossible problem.

He stays awake for 48 hours straight. Bellara and Neve are with him at first, each pouring over an arcane text he's brought with him from Nevarra, searching for the very few-and-far-between references of anyone who has physically walked in the Fade. Sometime after the sun rises, he realizes he's alone. He doesn't remember when the others left, presumably to rest.

Lucanis brings coffee. He squeezes the elder mage's shoulder and assures him -- "We'll get her back." Emmrich doesn't look up from the page. He knows that if the Crow could see his eyes, he'd see all the fear and guilt he's trying so desperately to pretend isn't slowly consuming him from within.

By day three he's coming undone. He hasn't shaved, hasn't bathed, has barely moved from his seat amongst an ever-growing stack of books, each carefully flagged or left open wherever he's found even a hint of a clue that could bring her back to him. He dozes off, face down on an open tome. Bellara sneaks in and drapes a blanket over his shoulders, careful not to wake him.

He loses his focus on the seventh day. It's been a week - an entire week - since she's been gone. He'll never see her again. He spent their last night together arguing with her. He lays down on his bed and presses the palm of his hand to the mattress where Rook had once curled beside him. It's cold; there is no scrap of her warmth left.

By day ten he's manic. His mind still replays the argument over and over and over, but the memory is quieter now, interspersed with a hundred other, brighter moments. The curve of her lips as she smiled just for him, the fall of a lock of hair across her face that he gently pushed behind her ear, the sweet sound of her sudden inhalation of breath as they made love. These memories should be a comfort, but instead they torment him with the knowledge of what he's lost. He paces back and forth along the walkway at the top of the spiral staircase in his room, praying that a solution will materialize out of the haze clouding his mind. This cannot be the end.

Darkness takes hold. He's losing himself, losing the very essence of what makes him who he is. There are whispers at the edge of his consciousness, and he knows instinctually that he's become a target of some demon or another - desire, or perhaps despair. He'll rip open the Fade, he thinks to himself. To hell with the Dread Wolf, he'll bring down the Veil if only to get her back. He'll drown the world in demons, in blood, lay waste to everything. His chest heaves, he's frantic now, running his hands through his hair and panting. There is no air in the room, in his lungs. But then he feels a familiar presence behind him. Manfred is there with tea. The madness fades, he regains himself and musters the will to banish those evil fantasies from his mind.

What good would it do to get Rook back if he destroys himself, possibly everyone and everything, in the process? He washes up, shaves for the first time in days, changes his clothes, and goes to find the rest of the team. He cannot be alone anymore with his thoughts.

And then, she is back. She doesn't see how dangerously close he came to succumbing to despair. She doesn't see him unkempt or disheveled. But she knows. He wraps his arms around her in bed that night, hooks his foot over her ankle, drawing her in tight like a choking vine, and she knows.

[coolmiaw]

Like a Rook - part 5

This... is getting out of hand

[felassanis]

HEAR ME OUT.

Imagine the morning after Emmrich and Crow!Rook sleep together. And Emmrich finally has a moment to see Rook in their naked splendor. And he sees all the evidence of their Crow training on their body. The myriad of scars.

And Rook is so nonchalant. So seemingly unaffected by their profession. That These deep, violent scars immediately take him aback. They've been through so much and yet hide it so well.

Imagine Emmrich, kind-hearted and so full of compassion, Emmrich, trailing his hand over those scars. And vowing to himself they will never endure such abuse ever again.

[heylittleriotact]

Oh no but like what if my Rook, having been abandoned in a catacomb and found by undead and raised in the necropolis as part of the Mourn Watch and then essentially indefinitely exiled from the only place she’s ever known and called home is deeply traumatized and betrayed by this and is really struggling with herself and her place in the world and really just feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere or deserve a family or love or acceptance but then EMMRICH?

[stormwifewrites]

[lkblackham]

No Time To Apologize, 4-5

I think, with the rate I'm making these pages, I'll be done with this story in... 5 years.

That's okay, it's not like I'm doing this for anyone but me. 😌

(jk I hope you're enjoying it, too.)

Previous pages:

01

2-3

For those who don't know (I just need to, like, give this comic its own page or something) this is the DA:TV EmmRook fan comic that focuses on what the team (mostly Emmrich) got up to while Rook was trapped in the Fade at the end of the game. There's probably going to be a lot of crying.

Fun!

[beaulesbian]

it was fun bringing both emmrich and davrin to the gloom howler quest, while being a grey warden and romancing emmrich

[demonsbanebard]

I have been obsessed, thinking about your LI in Dragon age The Veilguard. How they cope with Rook being gone, especially Emmrich, who is supposed to be the fade expert.

What does he do when he can’t use his knowledge to save the one he loves?

So I wrote some angst about it. With a kind ending because I’m not completely heartless!

The idea to craft another dagger is borne of pure desperation. He knows it’s unlikely to work, but he has to try something. Sitting around is out of the question. The team is desperate for any type of direction, any sort of hope, and Emmrich quickly begins handing down a list of items he needs.

He and Harding go to Isana Negat. It’s full of darkspawn and blight, but it’s the only place he knows they have a chance of finding Lyrium pure enough to begin. He can’t even touch the glowing substance directly, has to ask Harding to carry it for him, but it doesn’t matter. He knows Rook would do whatever it took to save him.

She wasn’t supposed to die before him. Not after that ridiculous fight they had. Not after everything he still wants to say, all the adventures they had yet to have. The tears are so common now he barely notices when they start and stop, only becoming frustrated when they blur his vision and smudge his frantic writing.

Everyone tiptoes around him as he works, his once immaculate study is strewn with books and scribbles of half-formed theories on parchment. Even Taash is trying their best. They know all about things unsaid. How it tears you up inside.

Manfred has discovered that he is most useful tidying up and bringing tea. The others pass the skeleton material and food to bring to the distraught necromancer. Emmrich is much less likely to snap at his beloved skeleton friend.

Less being the operative word.

Most attempts to console him stop within the first two weeks.

He’s taken to carrying a chess piece with him. Stolen —borrowed, he reminds himself— from Rook’s own set. There are indents in his palm from worrying the wooden castle and it’s not enough but it’s all he has.

He’s exhausted, his hands are burned and raw from collapsed spells and the proximity to this much pure Lyrium. Even those cut off from the fade, the dwarves and the tranquil, cannot be near this much pure Lyrium for extended periods. For a mage as studied as he is, it’s pure and focused misery to even be in the same room. Agonizing enough that he, too, wishes he could be cut from his nightmares. Sleep is fleeting, painful, and filled with images of Rook, promising to speak with him after the mission.

The physical pain ebbs once the last of the sealing spells settle and make the dagger safe to handle with bare hands. Contact with the blade still feels like electricity beneath his skin, but it’s static and not the lightning he has been battling for days now.

Lucanis brings him coffee and offers assistance, but the Crow can’t help. Not with this. The assassin gets to hold his beloved Neve close, and Emmrich feels the loss of Rook and Bellara both so keenly it’s hard to keep upright.

So when Lucanis suggests he rest. That he take a break while Rook, his Rook, is in the fade… he snaps.

The mage lights in his room flicker, letting the red of the fade bleed through. The uncontrolled magic whips the papers in his room into a frenzied whirlwind. He hasn’t lost control like this since his magic first manifested, and when Lucanis reaches for his dagger out of instinct, a dark part of him wonders how far he would have to push to get the assassin to end his suffering.

The surge of magic comes to an abrupt end when strong arms tighten around him. Like a candle blown out, the wind dies and the lights shift back to cancel out the red hue. It takes a moment for his sluggish mind to wrap around the idea that Lucanis, a notorious mage killer, and recent God-killer, is hugging him.

“Emmrich. I am sorry, but this has to stop. When Rook comes back, I am not going to get my ass handed to me for letting you work yourself to death.”

Of course. His Rook is the picture of kindness. Of caring. How many times has he received a gentle chiding to let things lie until the morning? If his love knew how he was pushing himself…

And the picture in his mind is so wildly clear, of Rook dealing out a tongue lashing so severe as to make a man who killed a God cower, that he breaks in two.

Emmrich’s composure crumbles and he sobs as Lucanis holds him. All of the emotions he’s been holding back from pure exhaustion, using work to push everything else back… it all comes out and the Crow before him understands what it’s like.

They stay there for a while, until the older man stops shaking. Emmrich goes to wipe his tears and finds more beard growth than he has ever allowed in his adult life. How long has he been here, agonizing? Surely it has only been days and not weeks.

Lucanis’s voice is rough as he speaks. “Go and lay down, my friend.” The assassin clears his throat and the guilt in his eyes is as impossible to miss as the redness of held back tears. He clasps Emmrich on the shoulder. “Neve has an idea about the enchantments on the dagger, now that it’s safe to handle. I’ll have a cup of coffee and food ready when you wake up. Then you can shave that thing off of your face so Rook can actually recognize you when we save her.“

“Lucanis… thank you. I apologize for my outburst earlier.”

“Don’t thank me, I just drew the short straw. I can not prove it, but I’m sure Taash cheated,” he says with a small amount of forced levity. Lucanis moves to leave and then pauses, sighing deeply to add, “And… It could have been Neve. Rook saved her. Maker forgive me for being grateful, but I owe Rook too many debts not to save her now.”

The air is lighter than it has been in days as the dagger leaves his room. Emmrich does, indeed, go to lay down. Thankfully he only feels the crushing weight of guilt for this break for a single moment before his exhausted mind shuts down.

As always, his dreams are harried. Visions of Rook running, shattered statues of Bellara and Davrin swirling around her as she climbs an endless spiral staircase.

When he wakes, it’s impossible to tell how much time has passed, but it’s too long. Lucanis keeps his word, and there is food and coffee waiting for him. He doesn’t taste it, only eats so that his magic is at full capacity.

His appearance in the mirror is worse than he feared. Haggard and dingy. There’s a moment where he considers using magic to clean up his beard, but remembers how he lectured Rook on the importance of rituals, and so he retrieves his brush and razor.

He’s halfway through his bath when he catches the thread of an idea. It unspools beautifully, and he’s barely able to wrap a towel around his waist before he has a quill in his hand, still dripping water across the floor. If he could… yes!

A wild idea, but he has to try. His usually immaculate handwriting is long gone, and he manages to dress as the idea finishes coalescing. He grabs the parchment, ink barely dry, and runs into the library, calling for the remnants of the Veilguard.

They look at him with confusion as he explains, but he’s not sure if the explanation is beyond their depth or if he’s raving like a madman, but they gear up to support him anyway.

Lucanis gently points out that his shirt isn’t buttoned correctly, and Taash suggests that he doesn’t smell as he usually does, and that perhaps his cologne might help Rook find him.

He very nearly launches into an explanation of fade physics and the chemical composition of scent and its inability to travel through a non physical space, but thankfully realizes the comment for the sentiment it was meant to carry.

The chess piece sits on his desk as they set out to find their Rook.

When her hand clasps his arm through the fade tear, when she tumbles on top of him and knocks the air from his lungs, he swears to never let her go again.

Emmrich has never considered himself a selfish man, but he keeps a hand on Rook. On his Rook as she reorients herself. As she recounts how she escaped a prison built for Gods.

He knows he should let her rest. Knows she needs time to recover, but he takes her to the necropolis anyway. He recognizes her indomitable spirit, has acquainted himself with the differences between those living and otherwise, but he has to be certain that this Rook is the one he fell in love with and not some spirit that has taken her form.

And once he is, he pulls her close, apologizing profusely, through tears at times, for how long it took to find her. And she forgives him, because of course she does. And he kisses her as though it is the first and last time.

Thankfully, she seems just as desperate to assure herself that he’s here as well. Through the heat and sweat of mortal embrace, they pass what could possibly be their last night alive in the comfort of each other’s arms.