Work Text:
He has imagined himself an ascetic man. He never envisioned his life with so much color.
He can no longer remember the world before it was tainted in sickly cerulean, a glow that hovers at the edges of his vision and settles with a metallic tang in the back of his throat. Some days it's too bright. Some days the rancid sweetness of it dries his tongue and cramps his legs, spasming his fingers, and all he wants to do is drink.
Now he craves green, too. It's a glittering spark he's continually waiting for--a glimmer in the mountains, at the gates, weaving through a crowded hall or laughing at his office door.
Some days, he would gut a man for the memory of blue arcing in his veins--for the scream of the vial.
Any day, he would gut a man who looked at her wrong. He would cross the continent to bury himself in her smile.
He has never known such vividity. He has never known so much want.
He cloaks himself in vellum and in iron.
*
The chess set is black and white; its simplicity soothes him. They play for hours beneath the rainbow leaves that weave through the latticework overhead.
"You're very good at this," he concedes; he is admiring, the third time he tips his king. "Perhaps too good. I wonder if we're all just pieces on your board."
Her lips have a curve, just at the edge, that stirs something unexpected in his chest. "You might be. Don't worry, though. I can always use a good strong knight."
*
He calls her 'Your Worship' only once; she flinches beneath his hands. It's a mistake he won't repeat.
She says, "No."
And he says, "I'm sorry," and covers it with a laugh, and the scrape of his stubble against her thighs until she squirms with forgetting and all his trespasses are forgiven.
If she didn't want someone to worship her, though--he reflected, he often reflects--she has made a foolish choice.
The jade glow spills from the crack in her palm, illuminating them both, and he imagines her lined with emeralds.
*
In the dreams, everything is edged with turquoise. The past flickers around and past him: a blade slicing flesh, a gangrenous limb, fire and brimstone and a city falling.
He remembers the face of the girl he failed to save. Each freckle is an accusation.
His Inquisitor comes with predator eyes. Her teeth are a sharp flash, and he tries to hold her, but he only ends up burrowing his fingers into the depths of her body. He wants to stop, but he peels and peels, taking strips of skin, gobbets of flesh, ripping at bone.
She laughs, and he cracks her ribs apart, and there is nothing there but yawning emptiness. Lyrium gushes from the chasm.
He is hoarse with screaming.
*
Red is for blood, of course, and the rising tide of battle. He likes swords. He does not enjoy killing, exactly; it is only that the pounding in his ears is vermillion purity, and the world snaps into perfect focus. He cannot crave blue when red is everywhere and his muscles are shrieking. The cleave of his blade is simple and true.
He doesn't get out enough.
He stands drenched, relishing each lungful of breath, his armor stained and his cloak rent. There are bodies all around him, and he will stand tall, because there are eyes watching and hands that will need him in a moment.
He sees her across the battlefield, where the air is razored with the death of some great hulk. She is a monster; she is a storm. He knows there are faces she will look for in the aftermath; his is the first. Her glance is a lightning strike and he does not stagger. She lifts her hand.
He raises a crimson blade in salute.
He stands scorched by her approval and thanks the Maker, for he is blessed.
*
She is a terrible correspondent.
The vellum is yellowed and always tightly rolled. The scouts pry messages from covetous ravens and bring them to him so he can squint in the morning light.
She writes 32 dead and supply lines to the fort re-established and find a new route; too many undead here. She adds careful details about requisitions and needed shipments. Sometimes there are tiny notes scratched along the margins, half-smudged beneath careless fingers: it's always dark here and the birds are beautiful and you would not believe the smell.
He sends back ciphered reports and neatly tallied inventories, and the newest schematics from the forge. He writes stay safe.
He is starting to understand why his sister complains.
*
Sometimes his life is the dulled orange of a dying fire, too hot, tainted with blue--everything in his life is tainted with blue--and the rage and the need twist together with the sick grey of doubt and despair and everything is mud, and he is dizzy with it, and his hair hurts. He cannot stop himself from snarling.
He wonders if she loves him or if she is just performing another miracle. It is too coincidental that she could be exactly what he needs. She is exactly what everyone needs.
There are days when the edges of his vision dim and people keep handing him papers to sign and the armor he wears is too heavy, scraping at him with every breath. The brush of fur at his collar is grating and raw. His bones vibrate.
He cannot do any of this.
*
She returns in the blackest parts of the night, without ceremony--as she prefers. Tomorrow, said the raven, and don't wait up.
He lies fitful in the dark and hears the great gates open. He tosses in scratchy blankets until her feet scrape on the ladder and green glimmers softly over the walls. She is not being stealthy. She crawls into his bed reeking of horse and sweat and three weeks of exhaustion, and maybe she hears his murmur, and maybe she's already asleep. Her hands are like ice -- the left always glittering, always sparking in the dark -- and she is loose-limbed and heavy, but her face nuzzles just under his jaw and he can breathe in the rough tickle of her hair.
He can see the stars through the hole in the roof of the crumbling tower. They are glorious.
*
He cannot break. He knows that if he shatters, it will be clear like diamond, or broken glass. He moves through the rebellion with care.
He doesn't know whether to be worried or envious that she is so much a creature of now. He walks with the shadow of a crumbling keep at his back and the screams of a burning city on his shoulders. She only moves forward, and her steps are light.
He realizes in moments that he knows nothing about her. She rattles off names if he asks, places and people she must remember, but he never sees regret in her eyes. She does not offer childhood stories. She is concerned with the dragons in front of her, the cards on the table, the construction of the tower overhead. But she asks about his family, and he takes her to the lake.
He holds himself together beneath her hands. It is enough.