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It had not been a subtle transition. After he left his dark and dreamless sleep, he felt that rather than leave the fade, he had simply transitioned into a nightmare. Nothing was right. The colors were dull, the smell in the air was wrong. He rubbed his eyes in order to shake the thought of how incomplete everything was. How could it have gone so terribly wrong?
He wondered, following Corypheus across Thedas. It was such a short time, that fast year. Nothing solid or stable, and yet he felt an ebbing impatience. There was nothing of value here. People were petty, they harbored others lives like they were nothing more than a commodity. He would not miss this world. Corypheus only needs to open the orb, and die. Then he will finally truly wake up.
But something unexpected happened(why did it always happen?). Corephus lived, and worse, he was not close enough to reach the orb first. By chance, he glanced a young Dalish elf's face before she was pulled into a rift. A chilling terror wailed through him. He had allowed himself to stay in the fade for too long--even if it was just two minutes, it was still too long. His dreams of freeing his people would never come to pass. No matter how desperate he was to feel solid ground under him again. He was a wisp, disconnected, and terribly exhausted.
He did everything he could to seal the breach, sending common and his own unique magic into the fade. He had managed to create a simple seal, like a boy putting his finger into a wall to stop a flood. It would be useless, and the breach would cause chaos again.
When she fell from the fade, his mind grew curious. The elf had walked the from the fade as easily as he use to. His heart beat raw in his chest when he offered his services to the Seeker to help her. This frail and endlessly young elf girl could potentially help him save his people.
He pulled some of his old magic from her, reveling in the sensations. The ground under him feeling less brittle and fragile. The air smelling of a proper ozone. He even found himself looking at her much to his surprise, though it was nothing but a fleeting curiosity. Finally, his assistance was requested to help placate some demons on the mountain. He felt that the alchemist's skills could treat her more common ailments, and he knew what he had done would hold for a few hours on its own. He could leave her side. For now.
When he saw her next, she was blinding flash of fire and fury. It instantly felt familiar, old, unchanged, and true. Could it be possible that he was not simply swept up in his own magic, and had also absorbed some of hers? Curious again. When they had subdued the demons with fire and fade, he grabbed her wrist, "Quickly, before more come out," It was a hopeful thought, that she could actually will the mark to her wishes--- but it happened. It closed. Sealed with a gesture. With the sealing of the tear in the veil, his hopes were restored and this simple Thedas pulsed with color, if only for a moment. She took it further, temporarily sealing the breach. Her strength was unfailing, and he was overwhelmed with curiosity. How would she lead forward?
His seed of curiosity soon bloomed into a rich untamed garden. She freed the mages, helped the refugees, and took every spare moment of her time to allow the dull and silent world to blossom around her. She was magnetic. Magnetic enough to draw new allies. The small halls in Haven slowly filled and became both a current for information about their situation... and her.
But more surprising than anything, was her patience, and eagerness to learn more. As he spoke to her about the fade, its truer colors began to cross over into the present world. He found himself smiling slightly as his thoughts led him wistfully into both the fade and the present. She seemed to choose him as a traveling companion over the magi, despite the fact that one was refined, trained in the greatest circles (cages) that this world had to offer. She chose him over the other mage that made her laugh endlessly, who understood the constructs of magic with a similarity to those he once knew. She chose the elvhen apostate. But why?
Worse yet, when she bantered with him, playfully, he could not help but play back. He couldn't help but smile when he made her fluster. And his chest warmed when she flustered him in turn. It was harmless, was it not? Later, he made note of how the sun cast soft blue and violet shadows in the snow.
Then she made her true attempt to permanently seal the breach. It was surprisingly successful. He was concerned when she fell to the ground in anguish, but he knew she would be alright in the arms of the Seeker and reserved to steel himself against these shallow, bubbling feelings that were forming in him. She was becoming more than a curiosity to him. He resolved to stand in the shadows while Haven celebrated their victory. Too quickly, terror struck like a knock on the door.
It was unexpected, and the rap was a fast paced panic. She managed to save all of the townspeople from the attack, lifting rubble and killing the Red Templars. She was deft and enigmatic. He stood near her while her advisors offered her suggestions of how to handle the dragons arrival. Without a second of hesitation, she offered herself to save them all. His heart raged at the thought of losing his chance to save his people (And maybe, at the thought of losing her). She would leave with her unusual team. She, very uniquely, had trusted a spirit, and now chose to fight with him at her side. The song of the sleeping world played in pianississimo to the backdrop of her smile. When Corypheus showed up, it took all of him to abandon her. It only took a moment for him to spot his orb already decaying and blighted by the Magisters hands. But they left her to handle him alone, as they had agreed. When he entered the chantry and began his walk with the humans, he felt himself bothered by the weather around him. Or maybe his blood was cold in his abandonment of her. Regardless, he was chilled and somber. He took to walking away from the group.
A song had broken out over the camp, of a dawn fresh and new in the air. He could not understand their celebration until he noticed to whom they were singing. She stood, slightly shaken from the high praise, and he couldn't help but be both relieved and pleased. "A word," he pierced her eyes with a curious intensity. A regality that she could not refuse, blanketed in the option of it being a request.
He praised her openly, almost seeing her truly for the first time. The way she hung on his words was like a slow poison that heated his veins. It was agreed that she would act as this infamous "Herald of Andraste" regardless of how she felt about the shemlen Maker. He started to hear the subtle sounds of the birds singing around him when he looked at her.
He made an honest vow to help her find a fortress worthy of her ascension, and he followed through when they reached Skyhold, abandoning the thoughts and feelings of Haven. He placed himself in a rotunda, strategically making sure he would always be allowed to be seen. Someone who had nothing to hide, no reason to deceive the others around him. Then she found him. She looked at him as if she truly saw him. She asked him more questions about the fade, and he couldn't help but feel the floor under him solidify to something he could actually solidly stand on. It made him long for a safer place, somewhere he could feel everything alive again, in the way he was beginning to see himself in her eyes.
"You continue to surprise me. All right, let us talk... preferably somewhere more interesting than this,"
The fade surrounding him sang loud and clear, the trees were his whim, the ground beneath him was strong, the magic was real. He guided her around an untouched Haven. In hidden confessions he admitted how increasingly important she was becoming to him.
"And right then, I felt the whole world change," he praised, unable to hide the glimmer of hope in his eyes. The subtlety of his smile. Her next actions were unexpected.
"Felt the whole world change?" the music of her voice was lit with a softness that declared her reciprocation of his slowly burgeoning feelings.
He had to look down. It was all too much, too real now, "A figure of speech," he evaded, peaking back up through his eyelashes only to be overwhelmed with the intensity of her gaze.
She moved forward, closing his carefully calculated distance, "I'm aware of the metaphor... I'm more interested in 'felt'," a soft, sweet, and real smile formed on her face. Her eyes looked into his with such conviction that the air left his lungs and his stomach flipped as if he was weightless.
"You change... Everything," and with his acceptance of how she made him feel, his cultivated mask was shattered in that instant. His eyes glittered and his face fully stretched to show how enchanted he was. His chest swelled with the air her glance had stolen from him. He had to break the eye contact, because it was all too genuine. He would fail his duty and and fall for h--.
Her gentle hand invited his face to hers and she leaned into him. She placed a honeyed kiss on his lips and the world vibrated into Fortissimo around him. She broke away much too soon, and without thought he brought her back to him. Pressing their hips together squarely, he banished the air between their bodies.
His fingers became entangled in her hair, pulling her as close to him as he could. His heart beat existed only to be wound into her reality. Within the second contact he more eagerly indulged in her soft, sweet lips. With an eagerness he begged them to open. He felt the rush of hunger overwhelm him and his hand wondered onto her posterior to shift her body and pull her onto his leg. His breath was laden with the heat of the moment and he looked at her again. Searching across her face, diving into the pools of her eyes, and for only a moment he is reminded of his duties. He sees her vallaslin and he has to shake his head.
But the want is too strong in him to resist a second invasion and he pours himself into her, shattering her faded body with his mana, pouring and pulsing into her. He looks into her eyes only to be betrayed again by his loyalty to his people.
"We shouldn't. It isn't right. Not even here," his body roared at him with an upheaval of resistance. His mask began to resettle, fractured, but still there. With a slow step he pulled himself away from her.
The euphoria on her face contorted to a soft confusion, "What do you mean, 'even here?'" And it dawned on her, "This isn't real," her gaze settled around and away from him. It was enough for him to calm himself and resettle into his skin again.
"That's a matter of debate..." He continued to step away from her, allowing the distance to over take him, "Probably best discussed after you wake up," he smiled.
When he awoke in his room, he could not subdue the warmth that covered his body, the soft smile that graced his face. He could feel everything. The stiffness of his shoulders, the weight of the cloth draped on his body. The floor under his feet. The sky was a more genuine blue than he had seen since he woke over a year ago. He had to clench his jaw in protest, for in that moment, it was all undeniably real.