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Birds were beginning to sing outside Mira’s window and she was still going over fucking paperwork about Adamant. She needed to sign reports and retellings to make sure every detail was accurate and honest, she had to make sure that nothing was left out. Rose had fallen asleep waiting for her to read to her, and it made her stomach twist into knots. Nothing was right anymore, everything was exhausting. She was so tired.
Her hands shook as she signed papers, and her eyes were beginning to unfocus. She kept looking between the door to Rose’s part of their quarters and the page on the desk in front of her, panic and anger bubbling up from her chest in the form of a shuddering breath. The air felt too thick, she couldn’t get a breath in.
Tremors wracked her hands as she undid the locks high on the balcony doors: a precaution against Rose getting out on her own that was now keeping her from her fresh air and slowly making her descend into panic. When she was finally able to get the fucking doors open, they flung wide and the glass rattled. Mira ignored it.
The cold air around her dried her throat and nose but it was all she could do to be able to breathe. Gulps of air barely helped and her head was spinning, the world around her too unstable to stay in one place. Her knuckles were practically white as she gripped the railing as if it were the only thing keeping her from plummeting into the snow and rock below. Too much, too much, too much.
Mira didn’t realize she was crying until the cold breeze turned the water on her cheeks frigid. The world around her was blurred and unfocused from the tears in her eyes, and fucking Creators this was stupid. It was just paperwork. It was in the past. She was fine now.
Two, three, four sharp spines plunging into her skin and the copper smell of her own blood around her. Garrett’s scream as they pushed through the rift, and the way Cullen looked at her as if his world was ending. It wasn’t even Corypheus. It wasn’t even the dragon she promised Rose she would fight. It was just a demon and it almost killed her. She still had so much to fucking do. There were so many more horrible situations she knew she was going to throw herself into. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to look death in the face every fucking day of her life and she didn’t want hundreds of people looking to her like she had answers. She didn’t have answers. She had scars from when a stupid fucking demon almost fucking killed her and she was having a panic attack over fucking paperwork.
She didn’t want to die. And she felt like the air wasn’t getting to her body fast enough, and it was too thin and too thick at the same time so she just fell to the balcony floor and hugged her knees to her chest, so desperately trying to stay quiet enough that Rose wouldn’t wake.
She wanted to go home. She wanted to see the woods again and she wanted to dig her feet into the dirt and moss of the Marches and never come back to civilization. That would be a fair trade. She could stay hidden in the trees and no one would ever salute to her again.
She didn’t want to die.
Mira didn’t remember when she found the last of the Dalish whisky from her clan. She didn’t remember finishing the bottle and she didn’t remember curling up into her bed with her clothes still on. Bile was slowly rising in the back of her throat, heartburn in retaliation to her outburst. When she saw the empty bottle on her desk, she cried. That was the last of what she had from home, and now it was gone. It was gone. The only thing she had left from the Lavellan clan was her vallaslin and the burden of leadership.
She should never have agreed to go to the fucking conclave. They should have sent Nellas or one of the other hunters, why the fuck would you send your First away like that? Why would you send a twentysomething that barely wants to be Keeper into the world of warring shems and expect that to have a good outcome?
The bottle shattered as she threw it to the stone wall across from her.