Work Text:
He's been in the fade for a while. Ever so tired, yet to afraid to sleep. What happens to a soul in the fade, when they sleep? Had it not been for greed, he wouldn't even be wondering. It's worn him down though, all of the nasty damp stones, all the swirling clouds of choking green mists. Even now, as he trembles at the thought, he decides to go through with it. Just this once.
He ends up being forced into his own memories, terrifying morphs of what he thought of as the better days of his life, less memories and more nightmares. The most horrible of thoughts he's ever had, all turned into scenes he has no choice but to play out, until he can find a way to snap his mind out of it. He's watching everyone he loves die. Over and over again, and he can't do anything to stop it. All he wants is to save them but each time, the arrow misses, the dagger was too fast to catch, his hand slipped, and he can't manage to stop it no matter how much he cries or screams or runs or anything at all.
And only now does he realize that the minutes have felt like hours. Hours, like days. Days like years themselves.
Only now, when he notices Vitis standing there, looking on in awe, does he notice, and only now, he breaks. He can't play the role of a strong, stoic man anymore, not when he's suddenly looking at the only person who he's felt close to in years, the only person he could open up to without fearing they're going to use it against him or leave him for it. He can't take it and he's suddenly found him self drowning in everything he's held back all these years. Quite literally.
The water crashes over him so quickly, he doesn't have the chance to react until it's filled his lungs with everything he's wanted to say. All the fears and terrors he's been holding inside, for whatever reasons he'd told himself to justify the pain he put himself through. He chokes, and suddenly he's back in the river, his so called friends, the shems he'd been so foolish to trust, laughing above him as he tries to pull himself back up, hands bound behind his back and feet tangled in the weeds below the murky, slowly clouding water.
The river whispers to him, screams at him, twisting his desires into disturbing stories of hatred and death, screeching his insecurities at him deafeningly. Whenever whatever demon doing this stops, he can feel the horrible grin it would have cracked, if he could see it. The moment of uneasy calm is over, and he can feel the painful need for air burning his lungs once again.
The waters are telling him now, describing the awful ways Vitis might die, reminding him that it's his fault, he let it come to this.
"Useless. That's all you are. He's going to die, just like everyone else, and now you can't even try to save him."
Then it's speaking in his voice, laughing at him throwing mocking words and hurtful taunts at him like a shem throwing pebbles at a dog. Disgusting. Weak. Emotionless, knife-eared wreck. Just another god damned failure here to make everyone's life miserable. And he accepts them, defeated. He stops struggling and waits for whatever may come. The water stings in his eyes, and burns in his lungs, but he can't bring himself to care any more. Not when it's like this. Not when his lover is the one doing it, no matter how fake he may want to think it is.
He knows it's over. He smiles as he feels a smaller hand on his wrist. At least he can pretend, imagine that the smaller elf would be there, trying to save him, and reminding him that he isn't alone. But then he's pulled from the water, and suddenly it's not a dream.
Suddenly he knows, Vitis is dead. The Inquisition failed. They failed.
And under the overflowing love and joy he feels, being able to hold Vitis in his arms once again, a dread fills him, leaking through the cracks. There he was, the biggest thing in his life.
Just another failure.