Chapter Text
He knows it is over. The moment he hears her footsteps on the cold prison floor, before he hears her speaking his name, that name.
Whatever this was, this... glimpse into another man’s life, one that slipped from between his fingers, long ago. Gone, burned to ashes and scattered in the winds.
He can’t look her in the eye, not this time. Keeps his head down, as he tells the whole, sorry, sordid tale. Of the man who let greed fill his heart, and made the worst mistake of his life. The mistake no time can erase, and no amount of good works and kind words can undo.
I’m sorry, Evelyn. I’m sorry I can’t be the man you thought I was. The man you deserve.
She doesn’t say much. Nodding, affirming, her voice quiet, soft. Her hands, those long fingers that once traced their way down his face, his back, now curled into fists in her lap. Her face, once so full of life, now still, fixed, a mask he cannot read.
He doesn’t know what scares him more. What if he breaks her heart, hurts the one person he would give anything to shield from harm? How could he bear to watch the truth burning her?
But what if he doesn’t? What if, after all they shared, she sees him as a diversion and nothing more? Another footnote in Evelyn Trevelyan’s adventure. A man she once knew.
He hates himself for the thought, the anger and self-loathing adding to the flames burning through his veins.
Forgive me, my lady. I would have protected you from anything. I failed to protect you from myself.
I failed.
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He turns away as she leaves, her footsteps echoing down the stairs, filling the room with her deafening absence. He closes his eyes, trying to blot out the memories struggling to be heard, filling his mind like a swarm of bees.
Her voice calling his- the name, the day they met. The sun twisting and turning in her yellow hair, looking for all the world like Andraste in her glass windows. The Herald in all her glory. How she’d accepted him, as he was. Just a Warden, a man, nothing more.
The first time her hands found his, the day that Red Templar monster had nearly felled him. Her hands, tracing his body, keeping the pressure on the wound in his chest as Sera poured the tiny potion down his throat. How he’d had to catch himself just in time, before reaching out his hands to the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. How Sera had yelled at them to Just bloody kiss already will ya, I’m not hanging round here forever! And how, with the crimson flooding across Evelyn’s face, he’d started to let himself believe.
And how she’d kissed him, that night in the barn. Let him take her into his arms, casting aside all else. Just a man, and a woman. The feel of her lips on his skin, her breath on his neck....
It would have been so easy to stay. He was falling for her; except falling was never the word. He could be the better man for her, the man she deserved. He could raise himself up for her.
But he couldn’t drag her down with him.
He could still hear her voice, carrying down the stairs. Whatever words were there, lost to the stone; just the rise and fall, the melodies he would never hear again.
Another voice too, this one lower. A man’s. He’d heard Commander Cullen’s barked orders to his men often enough to pick them out. Softer than he’d ever heard them. Soothing.
That’s quite enough, you smooth bastard.
That monster again, burning within him. The millstone round his neck, dragging him back into the depths.
This is what you wanted, don’t you remember? Her freedom, bought with your fall.
************
That night, the first spirit comes.