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She puts off Davrin for last.
It's stupid how she drags her feet up to his room. It's a normal post-mission check-in. It's what she does after every mission, whether she'd brought him along or not. It's what she does with everyone after every mission, whether she'd brought them along or not. It's routine. It's normal.
But none of the others had flirted with her, or fucked her, or ended whatever-they-had-going with her and avoided her for a week before they went on another mission and she promptly almost got herself killed. At which point he'd kissed her, with a sort of ardent desperation despite—or because of—the blood still streaking from her temple down to her cheek and chin.
(And—she is loathe to examine this too closely, in part or entirely because it's probably yet another thing she's made up due to her miserable inability to not get attached—an underlying sweetness, still, despite it all.)
She's put him off for last but she can't put this off forever.
Hanan stops in front of his door, knocks, waits for his soft acknowledgement before entering.
Assan comes bounding up to her at the sound of the door, tongue lolling out to one side. And she is also loathe to admit what a huge kind of relief that is; if the griffon had also withdrawn his affection for her due to everything that had and hadn't happened between her and Davrin, she's certain that particular heartbreak would've been the one to kill her for good.
Davrin is seated at his work table; upon her entrance he looks up, face softening from its furrowed scrunch, and the sight of it makes her recently-combat-rattled insides do a damnable flip.
"Han," he says, soft as sunlight, soft as rain, and it takes every ounce of strength she has not to turn on her heel and fade step a mile or ten away.
"Hey," she says, so lamely in comparison. Crackling like parched earth. "Just checking in." (And there's that furrowed brow again, pulling at his scar.) "Things got a little rough this time around, and—"
There's steel resolution in the way he puts down his tools, pushing away from the table and out of his seat. The perpetual late afternoon sunlight in this corner of the Fade slants through the open balcony, cutting diagonally down his distracting chest but leaving his face in shadow.
"Don't make light of it."
"What—"
Assan whines, then, pushing his warm, feathery head into her palm.
Davrin sighs, before he closes the distance between them, stopping barely a handsbreadth in front of her before leaning down to scritch Assan under the chin.
"Why don't you go out for a little while, boy? Let me talk with Rook alone for a bit."
Assan whines again, looking between the two of them, but ultimately obeys, turning to spread his wings before leaping off the balcony. They watch, silent, as the griffon shrinks to a distant, blurry speck streaking across the sky.
When the silence is too thick between them she breaks it clumsily, like shattering glass. "I don't think I want to have this conversation without my emotional support griffon here."
Davrin cracks a smile. "Hey, he was my emotional support griffon first."
(Except she doesn't think he's the one who'll be needing emotional support at this time, but doesn't say that out loud.)
"Are you alright?" he asks. "You say you're checking in but you're the one that nearly died, Rook."
She shrugs. "Occupational hazard. You know how it is."
"Don't," he grits out, nearly a growl. "Don't. You nearly died, Hanan."
And that was reason enough to kiss me? she thinks. It's his warm hands landing on her shoulders that stop her from saying it out loud.
But what she does end up saying isn't any better: "What do you want me to say?"
She's not proud of it, the way her voice pitches like a kettle whistling as it boils over. And she's even less thrilled at the way Davrin looks at her, the way his downcast gaze tells her that he knows exactly what frustration is behind her tone.
"Just . . . you need to be careful, Han. Please."
It's the soft Please that does it.
(Don't do this to me.)
"Well," she says, with the sting of his earlier rejection still ringing in her ears, post-near-death-kiss be damned, "thank you for your professional concern. Rest assured it has been duly noted and will be taken into account moving forward."
"Rook," he says, a warning.
"Anyway," she says, with a dismissive clap and a step backwards and away, "if there are no other concerns, it was nice checking in with you, very productive overall—"
"Rook." His hands on her elbows, pulling her back that one step and then a little more.
(Don't do this to me.)
She doesn't know what her face is doing at that moment, but it can't be anything good, or even anything neutral, because Davrin's expression melts into something melancholic, his brown eyes unspeakably sad as he looks down at her.
"Do you think that just because I'm keeping my distance I don't care about you?"
And—wasn't that the gist of all of that? He'd liked her well enough; they'd had some fun; it didn't work out, likely because she'd gotten painfully attached all too easily and he just didn't want her all that much—
One corner of his stupidly kissable mouth twitches mirthlessly up.
"The 'yes' is written all over your face, Rook."
And Dread Wolf take him to the far reaches of the Fade, she will not be mocked for a broken heart, no matter how much it's her fault.
"Well, why else would you be keeping your distance—" (She hates that she can't even call it a break up, because there was never anything to break; and she hates that she's all broken up about that fact, too.) "—if you cared?"
"I'm keeping my distance—or trying, and failing to—because I care."
"That doesn't make sense," she hisses, because it doesn't.
Because once, she'd loved Bellara for years, alone, and even then she'd not been able to stay away. The love was there, however unrequited, and it had compelled her to stay as close as she could, whenever she could, however she was allowed.
"I'll be honest," he says, swiping warm, distracting thumbs across the thin skin on the inside of her elbows, "it's making less and less sense to me right here and now, too." He smiles, then, but it doesn't reach his eyes.
"Then why?" she asks. She'd been afraid to, before—she'd thought she already knew the answer and didn't want to hear it confirmed. She tries to keep the childish quiver out of her voice and barely succeeds. "How could you do it?"
He's silent for a moment, sliding his hands from her elbows to her forearms before taking her hands in his.
Quietly, "Because I knew you wanted more."
And there it is. The confirmation she'd been dreading and had foolishly hoped, for a brief and evidently misguided moment, that perhaps she'd mistaken. Shame, bitter and heavy, crawls like bile up her throat.
Hoarsely, unconvincingly, "I didn't ask—"
"I knew you wouldn't ask," he says. "But . . . I wanted to give you more anyway. I wanted to give you—everything—"
But he didn't.
(But he won't.)
"But . . ." she says instead, "you can't."
She doesn't mean it as an accusation but perhaps that's how he takes it anyway, dropping her hands to pace an agitated back-and-forth line, frustration in every emphatic gesture.
"Because what could I give you? Ten, fifteen years with a dying man? And that's the most I could give you, not even taking into account that I could die before then—" He runs an exasperated hand over his hair. "Han, I—I want better than that for you. You deserve better than that, than a life—half a life, barely—with a Warden destined to die."
(And what was it Solas had said, at the very start of all this?)
"People are always dying," she says softly. "It's what we do."
His eyebrows droop at the corners. "Han—"
"I could die before you," she says. "Before those fifteen years are up. Shit, I could die next week, on the next mission—"
"Not on my watch."
"You don't know that." (And what, really, is she asking for, here?) "You can't know what will happen."
(When had she learned to beg?)
His hands are rough yet gentle as they cup her cheeks; his palms broad enough and warm enough that it feels her whole face is aflame as he holds it between his hands.
"I know that as long as I still breathe I'll give everything I have to make sure you do, too," he says, achingly soft. "And if worse comes to worst and you fall before me, I know I'll not be far behind."
Something that feels suspiciously like her heart catches in her throat. "Davrin—"
"I saw you fall today and my heart stopped. Damn the Calling and damn the Blight, when you didn't move, I—"
He cuts himself off, perhaps unable to say it, perhaps unwilling to dwell on the thought. He looses a shaky breath.
"Ask me for more," he says suddenly, and her breath is knocked out of her in just the same way as when she hit the ground in that last fight.
"What?"
"Ask me for more. I was . . . hoping you'd ask, before, but dreading it, too. I knew if you'd asked, I wouldn't—couldn't say no."
She swallows. "I—" Can't. "I—"
He leans forward, just the same way he does when he's going to kiss her, but instead he just leans his forehead against hers. For a wild moment she wonders if she's just imagining that it's warmer where the lines of their vallaslin touch. Sunlight catches in his eyes and burnishes them into morning gold.
"Rook—Han—" (And oh, but the way her name slips like a sigh from his mouth makes her crumble.) "Those fifteen years are yours. If you want."
She gasps, soft. Soft as the way his fingers slip behind her neck to braid themselves into her hair.
"I'm yours," he says. "If you want."
Don't do this to me.
He pulls back, and the way his brow pulls down on his scar makes her realize she'd said that out loud.
"Han—"
"I—you can't just tell me that after—after—"
"After you nearly died and I realized I'd completely wasted what might've been the last week we ever had by spending it without you?"
And Dread fucking Wolf take her foolish heart, but that really does sound a hell of a lot like more.
(Like everything.)
"You don't have to answer right now," he says, and he does kiss her then, his lips pressing sweetly against her brow before he starts to step away, giving her her space. "Just know the offer's on the table—"
She pulls him back in roughly, mouth crashing against his in a way that will probably bruise. But he comes to her willingly, and inelegantly they topple over, with the more and everything that he'd put on the table spilling instead all across the floor.