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caffeinatedmunchkin · 11 days ago
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Nourishment, Beyond the Physical
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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.
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."
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Tagging as per request: @pinkuranium @goddessnyx216
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timethehobo · 15 days ago
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“Immortality isn’t living. Immortality is everybody else dying.”
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incoherentchanting · 9 days ago
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this shit is so funny
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askfordoodles · 1 month ago
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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
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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)
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tekstelart · 6 months ago
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Emmrich listening to her heartbeat has been requested
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floral-and-fine · 1 month ago
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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.
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“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.
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hawkinshorror94 · 15 days ago
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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.
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reeseykins · 18 days ago
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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.
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beetlethebug · 1 month ago
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consider,,,a lucanis who is in love with emmrich, a spite who is in love with rook, a rook in love with emmrich, and emmrich who is in love with all three but wants lucanis, spite, and rook to get together because he feels he is not the type of man any of them deserve...
bonus points for spite being the one to realize just what sort of love quadrilateral is going on and is the one to get them all together.
#the angst potential alone#if i can convince my brain to write something other than smut i will in fact consider writing this#JUST. THEM BEING SO MESSY.#SPITE REALIZING THAT EMMRICH IS GETTING CLOSER TO LUCANIS TO TRY AND SWAY ROOK INTO FALLING FOR THEM#LUCANIS REALIZING THAT EMMRICH IS IN LOVE WITH ROOK AND DECIDING EMMRICH'S HAPPINESS IS MORE IMPORTANT#SO HE CONSIGNS HIMSELF TO HIS UNHAPPINESS#Rook could also be in love with all three in this scenario but i think it'd be SO FASCINATING for it to be Emmrich!!#Emmrich lamenting that he found the people he loves at a time he believes to be too late#consigning himself to a bachelor's life. he has his studies he has manfred he's content#and then he meets lucanis who is EXACTLY the type of man he fancied as a young man#Someone with so much heart but some rougish charm. appearing cold but so fucking warm under the surface. misunderstood perhaps#the same way he and death are#and so he is smitten. taken by this man and his watchful eye and his steady hands. fascinated by the demon living inside him#the demon who is so curious about this world. who craves to live and understand and emmrich who at his core wants nothing more than to TEAC#and rook. gods emmrich not having the same instant attraction as he did to lucanis but it all hitting him in the chest one night#reckless rook who takes blows they could have dodged to protect him. who always treats his necromancy with respect and curiosity#rook who always reaches out to touch him but stops their hand just shy of making contact. rook who is uncertain but willing to try#rook who is YOUNG and full of possibility and deserves more than whatever shell emmrich believes himself to be#i am just!!!!!!! do you see my VISION#something can happen here!! i'm fucking telling ya'll!!!!!#emmrich volkarin#lucanis dellamorte#dragon age rook#dragon age veilguard#lucanis x emmrich#lucanis x rook#spite x rook#emmrich x rook#emmrich x lucanis#emmrich x rook x lucanis
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heylittleriotact · 2 months ago
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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?
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spiocean · 16 days ago
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Angst idea #13548:
A romance between Emmrich and the highly depressed and suicidal Rook.
A person who has a deep fear of death & a person who's deeply craving it.
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writingjourney · 7 days ago
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ahh man, lich emmrich romance to me is the tragic ending that never really ends, the non-acceptance of what he was supposed to accept, the price of immortality suddenly a new lurking terror, a miscalculation in the plan, thinking he could accept, memorize, immortalize his love for rook. realizing he can't, that memories aren't enough. thinking he could face his fear of death but instead it tranformed, shifted, a love so vast he understimated his control on it. affection turned to obsession. it's the race to finding a way not to lose them, not in this or any other world, limited time, the blink of an eye. working against what he achieved, against the nature he acquired, against what lichdom means at its very core. how can he accept their death now that he knows it's not the only way? he has new powers, why are they not enough to save them? lost manfred, faced his own death only to come back, not wrong but changed, short-tempered, powerful, reckless, full of potential, but instead of inner peace he gained an even deeper fear of loss. someone outside of himself. a mourning that never ends, pre-mature grief that drives him away from the scraps of his humanity he somehow clung to. his father's knife, organs in an urn, butchered like the animals he wouldn't eat, and he loses himself. there is rook and he needs to protect them, needs to keep them safe until he finds a way to make it last. suddenly their days are numbered in a different unit, not his age but rook's, borrowed time, counting down to the beginning of a new eternity. eternity without them, eternity by himself, the hourglass filled with his grief and endless regrets. how short a human life is, how fragile. and how does it hurt rook, when he tries to preserve them, when he loses the warmth he carried, manipulating, bending reality to his will? will the others force him away once they notice? how many exceptions to tyranny? so much pain, so much longing, so much sadness.
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timethehobo · 1 month ago
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A missed apology.
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goonchef · 25 days ago
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love how romancing emmrich on different factions gives you a slightly different flavour of him but nothing for me quiiiiite beats the implication of grey warden x emmrich
emmrich whose entire life long fear of his own mortality goes back to his childhood trauma and and the decision of mortality/love or immortality/power and then also ending up with Thorne who is part of an order in which most of their culture and oath is about making a sacrifice of one's death and having to reconcile with their own very early expiry date is actually insane and i was so happy with what i got but i wish they had more dialogue options and acknowledged this more in the game. the Potential is Crazy.
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serbarris · 25 days ago
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I'll Crawl Home to Her 
Dragon Age: the Veilguard, some spoilers for plot, spoilers for Emmrichs romance  Pairing: F!Rook (Mourn Watch) x Emmrich Volkarin  Rating: M   Summary: Eight significant times Emmrich Volkarin called Rook by her real name. 
Length: ~2500 words
Read on ao3 here! 
Emmrich Volkarin first called Calliope ‘Rook’ Ingellvar by her name before she went by Rook. 
“Miss Calliope,” Emmrich called over the heads of the handful of students leaving his classroom. At the sound of her name coming from her favourite professor, Calliope instantly flushed and motioned to some companions that they should go ahead without her. “A word if you don’t mind.”  
“Yes, Professor?”  She asked biting her lip. Professor Volkarin was her favourite, not just for his fantastic necromancy skills, or how eloquently he explained such fantastic concepts, but he was also very attractive. At age 35 his hair was greying at the temples, lending him to look even more distinguished than his carefully put-together clothing suggested.  
“I’ve heard from others about your certain... proclivity, to have some ‘adventures’ outside of the Necropolis,” Emmrich began, shifting her paper to the top of the pile, noticeable stains and grease marks littering the off-white sheets. A disapproving frown crossed his face. “I will ask that your future work be submitted with less detritus than the most recent assignment.”   
Calliope looked at her paper and a brighter red coloured her cheeks and chest, “Of course Professor, I’m so sorry. I swear I don’t usually do work outside of the library, but something happened with –.”  
Emmrich held up his hand to stop the ramble from leaving Calliope’s mouth. A soft smile graced his lips, “Not to worry, my dear, but your work is excellent and you should take pride in it. Now please, I have taken up so much of your time already, run along and join your friends.”
 
The second time Emmrich says her name it’s when they meet again, 15 years later. 
Rook had yet to admit to Bellara, or Myrna and Vorgoth, that she did indeed know Professor Emmrich Volkarin, and of his work. Luckily her time away from the Watchers had helped steel her emotions, calm her once easy-to-flush cheeks, and made lies flow smoothly, but she had been anxious all week in the lead-up to their Necropolis visit. Bellara even commented on her makeup that morning, making Rook flush and attempt to wipe some away with the back of her gloved hand.  
-  
“Rook! Lovely to meet a fellow Watcher,” Emmrich exclaimed as he gripped her hand, shaking it politely. “I must confess I apologise if I have you confused, but Myrna had mentioned a ‘Calliope’ to me?”    
Calliope’s face dropped from her measured welcoming smile to a startled expression. Letting go of Emmrich’s hand, she attempted to speak voice unsteady, cheeks flushed. “Uh, yes Professor, Calliope Ingellvar. My friends call me Rook. It uh, caught on in the year since I left the Necropolis.”  
“Ah, no worries, my friend. I shall follow suit.” Emmrich turned with a flourish, leading Bellara and Calliope to the Belfry. Calliope internally kicking herself over the interaction.  
The third time Emmrich said her name was after they shared tea in the Memorial Gardens. 
“Speaking of home, have we really never met around the Necropolis before? Even in passing?” Emmrich’s eyebrows raised as he asked the question. Rook’s eyes widened feeling like a halla in the lamplight. An uncomfortable feeling churned in her stomach as she debated how much of her past to reveal. Especially, how enamoured she was with Emmrich as a young adult.  
“Oh um, I don’t remember everything from my scholar days. I only took a few advanced classes. Got too... busy.” Rook’s mouth dried at the admission. It was a half truth, she remembered nearly every moment of her schooling, growing up with the senior Watchers as guardians, and more books for company than friends, she was in advanced classes at a younger age than many of the other Watchers her age. 
“You know, I’d heard we had a young Watcher getting into scrapes on the streets of Nevarra around then...” Emmrich mused, Rook could almost see the cogs whir in Emmrich’s brain as he searched his memories for a young Rook.  
“They weren’t scrapes! They were... extracurricular learning opportunities.”  
“Aha! That's it! Calliope, you were in my Advanced Fade Studies and Etheric Flows class!”  
Hearing her name from Emmrich’s mouth took her breath away. She had rather hoped he wouldn’t remember her from her scholar years. Calliope couldn’t deny the butterflies fluttering in her body as he remembered her, almost regressing to her 16 year old self, and she endeavoured to change the topic from herself as quickly as possible.  
“Yes, I... your class was most enlightening Emmrich, but I couldn’t help but hear you mention homesickness?”  
The Fourth time Emmrich says her name, it’s a revelation. 
Fighting on the beaches of Rivain always pissed Rook off. It was always too hot, and too sandy. She hated the sand in Rivain, it felt... so coarse compared to the finely milled sand that tracked through the Necropolis. Of course, the scenery of Rivain was stunning and the smell of the ocean air was refreshing, as long as the Antaam weren’t burning gaatlok in her general direction.   
Rook dove for the gaatlok-armed Antaam, pushing her body to flip and attack the hulking Qunari with her imbued daggers. Necromancy pulsing from her hands as she struck true. Pulling her weapons free she could hear Emmrich and Taash finish off the last of the Antaam soldiers who had ambushed them.   
“They just seem to be around every bloody corner here, don’t they?” she exclaimed, wiping her daggers on her bloodstained clothing.   
“Until we can get to the Dragon King,” Taash remarked. The team had tried to track down the Dragon King to no avail, however his poorly planned traps had to lead somewhere.   
“We’ll get to him soon enough Taash, then you can set him straight on Dragons having queens!” Rook stretched to pat Taash on their shoulder in consolidation. Suddenly a loud explosion pierced Rook’s ears, throwing her to the ground some distance away from where she stood. “Calliope!” Emmrich shouted over the ringing in her ears, she felt sand being kicked near her face as Emmrich’s familiar boots came into frame, and a distant squelching noise of an axe being buried into a body barely registered. “My darling are you alright?” Emmrich asked, sending his warming magic over her body to check for internal injuries.  
“I think I’m okay, can you help me up?” Emmrich slowly manoeuvred her to sit, taking stock further before helping Calliope to her feet. He gripped her waist tightly to keep her steady as she threatened to sway, waiting for Taash to make their way over. 
“Hey, Emmrich.”  
“Yes, Taash?” Emmrich was exasperated, whatever could Taash want at a time like this?  
“Why did you call Rook ‘Calliope’? She’s called Rook?”  
The Fifth and Sixth time Emmrich called her Calliope, she had a cold. 
Emmrich looked up from his desk to the sound of Manfred hissing and raising his tray, proud of his assortment of tea, soup and some bread. “Ah Manfred, have you prepared this for dear Rook?” A pleased hiss resonated through Manfred's skull, Emmrich straightened the papers on the desk and rose from his chair, peering through the windows above to where the sun was coming through the windows. “It is about time to give her another tonic. Thank you, Manfred, I can take this next door.”  
Emmrich gently knocked on Rooks’s door, hearing soft snores from behind, he quietly pushed open the door and rounded the middle of the room to the table closest to the sofa. The dim light from candles and the fade fish illuminating his path. Placing the tray down, he crouched down near Rook’s face, and gently rocked her, “Rook? My darling, it’s time to wake up.”  
A grumbling “Mmph” was the reply he received. “Calliope, I brought you some soup.” He drawled elongating her name, much like himself, he knew the food would rouse her from drowsiness. She was often second to the kitchen when food was served, her childhood in the Necropolis meant she often had to go without, and why she often picked up odd jobs around Nevarra City to purchase items that weren’t second or third hand.  
Calliope’s eyes slowly opened, blinking, she noticed even with her lying down and Emmrich crouching he towered over her. As she shuffled to extricate herself from the blanket and sit up there was a thud of a book dropping to the floor. On instinct Calliope reached for it, however Emmrich’s longer reach picked it up far swifter than her lethargic body could match.  The book read ‘The Obverse of Reality: Studies of the Fade in the Waking World.’ A soft gasp left Emmrich as he noticed the book as one of his very own works, Calliope’s copy was too well-thumbed and too battered to be from his own study in the Lighthouse. Calliope noticed his recognition of the title, her face becoming hotter despite the chill that cloaked her body after removing the blanket. “You never told me you have read any of my works, my dear.”   
A shyness crept over Calliope, her eyes darting away from Emmrich’s face as she replied, the congestion in her nose lending her voice a nasal tone, “Well, I was in this class, I had to get your book, it’s even a first edition!”  
“It must have been sixteen years since I published this –” Emrich mused,” I'm sure I’ve published much more recent findings on the Fade, especially since it started to thin.”  
“I like it, I can hear your voice as I read it.” Calliope started, her voice slowly getting quieter as she admitted, “It’s um – comforting, to read a book I know so well.” Emmrich rose from his crouch, placing a gentle kiss on Calliope’s forehead and moving to sit next to her on the sofa. His earthy scent relaxed Calliope instantly. “Well, how about I read some passages aloud as you eat my dear, I also brought another tonic, it should keep your symptoms at bay and allow you to rest.” Said Emmrich, motioning to the tray on the side table.  
Emmrich’s voice was gentle as he read, often musing on additions he would make to the text, or discussing Calliope’s scrawled annotations in the margins. Making note that she used tiny skull shapes to punctuate her ‘i’s’ and exclamation marks. After Calliope ate, she leaned back against the sofa, her head resting on Emmrich’s arm as he continued reading. Emmrich turned the page to the next chapter and Calliope stiffened as she saw the doodle on the page, Emmrich let out a deep chuckle, noting the words written in a loosely drawn doodle of an anatomical heart. Calliope swore she could almost feel every blood vessel in her face expanding, a beet-red flush falling over her face as she scrambled to close the book. Emmrich moved to hold the book far out of her reach, a devious glint in his eye as he drawled “Calliope Volkarin, eh?”   
The Seventh time Emmrich said her name it was to give a gift. 
“My dear, please sit still or else I shan’t be able to give this gift properly.” Emmrich teased. Of course, he’d give her the present no matter what. But after finally acquiring a fitting token of his affection, his love, he wanted to give it to Rook exactly as he imagined.   
Stepping behind her perched on his desk, he opened the soft bag that contained her gift, he peered around to ensure her eyes were tightly shut, letting out an exhale of satisfaction Emmrich moved Rook’s hair to the side, holding it tightly in his hands he twisted her hair up and out of the way, a wry smile on his lips as he pulled lightly on the bundle. Rook let out a gentle hiss as heat pooled in between her legs. “If you could please hold your hair?”   
Satisfied, Emmrich proceeded to undo the clasp of the necklace, threading it around Rook’s neck, his fingers ghosting over her skin as he did so. After it was joined, Emmrich’s fingers lightly traced the chain over her clavicle, placing tender kisses on the back of Rook’s neck. Rook felt the cool weight of the necklace on her sternum, reaching up to feel the pendant, gasping as she raised it into her view. Finely detailed skeletal hands grasped a large garnet, it was hard to tell upside down but it almost looked like the stone was vaguely heart-shaped. “Emmrich, this is far too much! I can’t imagine what it must have cost!” Emmrich paused his careful mapping of Rook’s neck with his lips and moved closer to her ear, his light stubble scratching lightly at Rook’s skin.  
“I saw this when we were back in Nevarra and I couldn’t resist picturing how it would look around your neck, Calliope.” Added to the ministrations on her neck, he knew the reaction she had to Emmrich saying her real name, how a delicious red painted her cheeks and chest, creating the perfect trail for Emmrich’s fingers to follow. Calliope’s squirms brought herself closer to Emmrich, her back hitting his chest as he gently grasped Calliope’s neck with one hand, his other tracing the long line of her tattoo down towards her soft lower stomach. His cool rings icy against her heat.  
“Emmrich” she gasped, breath hitching, reaching for the back of his neck, bringing him closer, and kissing him deeply. Soft moans emanated from the both of them, Calliope broke away inhaling trying to extricate herself from Emmrich’s grasp, but he tugged gently, coaxing her back to her original position. “Calliope, this is about you, my love.” 
The eighth time, wasn’t really the eighth time. By then Elgar’nan had been dead for nearly a year. Emmrich and Calliope had returned to the Necropolis, Emmrich to his shaping of young minds, Calliope to the library, her younger self’s sacred sanctuary. On occasion they would jointly lecture on what they discovered during their time fighting against the Evanuris, careful to still keep some secrets. Manfred was flourishing under the tutelage of the Mourn Watch, his curiosity leading to amusing stories over dinner.  
On this particular evening, Manfred had delivered a sealed note to Calliope, asking for her to arrive in the Memorial Gardens when the dinner bell tolls. 
The flowers in the Memorial Gardens seemed to burst with fragrance as Calliope entered. A bouquet of lilacs stood on the table where Calliope and Emmrich had their first real date when they first started to truly get to know each other. A wisp danced across her vision guiding her past the ledge where a small table was set, taking Calliope back to when they first visited the Memorial Gardens together for the mourning rites, eventually the wisp paused at the steps that led towards the grave covered in snaking Shroud’s Kiss. Calliope thanked the wisp and continued up the steps, and onto the pathway which was littered in a cacophony of flower petals, lilac and yellow beckoning towards the figure at their juncture. Emmrich closed the gap, eager to reach his beloved. “Thank you for coming my darling, I admit it is poor manners on my part for such short notice,” he said entwining his hands with Calliope’s. “Emmrich this is quite the surprise, what’s the occasion?” 
“Well my love, I -.” Emmrich started, clearing his throat. “Calliope Ingellvar, my dearest Rook. Would you be so mad as to agree to a lifetime with a besotted fool of a professor, and do me the honour of becoming Calliope Volkarin?” 
And that was probably the most significant time Emmrich said Calliope’s name. 
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paperskin-writtenon · 30 days ago
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I have seen a GREVOUS lack of datv x Rook in some of our most base fanfic substanance! Please don't make me or @jamesdeniscouldnever write it, we've both got deadlines for writing already. Have mercy on the burnouts!
That being said, I'm talking that oh so delicious angst (hurt/comfort anyone!?) Or sickfics or dumb fluff! Give me datv x injured!rook! Give me what it's like when the veilgaurd all come down with colds! Give me the companions reactions to:
*SPOILER BELOW READ FURTHER AT YOUR OWN RISK!*
Gimme their reaction to Rook being taken to the shadow fade prison thing! Gimme their reactions to rook coming back (more than the tiny dialog we get in the game)!
Gimme rook gets stabbed or something and the romances lose it! Give me the romances get stabbed and rook loses it!
I NEEEEED THE TASTE OF BITTERSWEET EMOTION ON MY TONGUE! Need to be reminded I'm alive!
Hooooooo okay. Rant over.
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