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Emmrich measured time by the count of Rook’s breaths — deep, slow, and, by seemingly the Maker’s grace alone, steady. But beyond that, nothing else.
The sun returned to its place in the sky — by his guess — hours ago, after Elgar’nan’s defeat, now setting low on the horizon. The two of them were alone in the room they were given at the Chantry — small and private, a single window on the far wall bathing the room in the last light of the day, a tiny hearth burning low in the corner, though Emmrich could scarcely feel its warmth.
All that could be afforded for their hero with Minrathous still in tatters, but he was grateful for the privacy all the same. A blessing that no one witness the way he clung to her like a child, his fingers intertwined with her limp ones, breath ghosting over her knuckles, wishing, praying for her to wake.
He was never a particularly religious man — no more than any other common Andrastian. He knew the chant well enough, heard it countless times in his duties at the Necropolis. Prayers for the despairing, hymns for the dead — it echoed now as Imperial Chantry brothers blessed those that passed during the fight, his fellow Watchers who’d joined their cause ready and willing to help them prepare the bodies for the pyre, as distasteful as cremation was to Nevarran sensibilities.
Fear struck beneath his breast — Maker, do not take her from him so soon. Do not let those hymns be for her.
Rook had unexpectedly collapsed after they had all climbed down from the Archon’s Palace, muscles sore, armor soaked through with blood, but somehow miraculously alive. She’d even turned to them after, smile crooked and weary but still so very lovely, and joked not to wake her up for at least a whole moon, dead tired but still on her feet.
But then she was on the ground, and Emmrich’s heart leapt to his throat, the world rushing around them in a blur of alarmed shouts and panicky movement. He called to his magic, but the fight had drained even his reserves, and it sputtered between his fingers, useless. What happened next, he could not recall so clearly, only that she had eventually been seen to, what elfroot potions they could find between her lips, wounds bandaged neatly, before she was laid in the place where they were now.
The wavering light from the window painted shadows through the room, as restless as he felt, as though the sun itself watched in agony with him as she breathed and slept.
There was little he could do now, he knew that, besides waiting. No fever, no signs of infection. It was in his Rook’s hands, if she would pull through or—
No, he perished the thought before he could complete it.
But Emmrich’s fingers trembled even as he held hers, his breaths slowing to match the rise and fall of her chest in a vain attempt to calm his poor heart, fighting the depths of the growing despair lodging itself in his stomach and up his throat. His vision blurred as he studied her face, beautiful in her rest, even when her skin had taken on a pallid, almost sickly hue that did not abate no matter how much he tried, his magic returning in drips only to be pressed into her form, nothing left for himself. He did not acknowledge the wetness from his eyes that steadily dripped onto the bed, the thin sheet like a funeral shroud over her body.
The sob escaped him before he could stop it, a wracking thing that shook his whole body, his whole soul. He bowed over the bed, Rook's cold fingers pressed to his forehead — an inadequate comfort, but a comfort nonetheless — and cried.
An ugly thing.
The weight of everything that had happened — too much, too sudden, heavy, catastrophic in the way only a fight against gods could be — unravelling all at once at the bedside of the one he loved most.
Bedside, he reminded himself, though something sinister whispered to him that it was a deathbed — skin cold as ice, Rook refusing to wake ever again. Familiar, primal fear only made the tears fall harder and his throat hoarse from sobbing.
When it finally subsided, Emmrich kept his eyes closed, spent and weighed down — but only for a second, he thought, a single moment to drag air into his body, lungs pained from how it had forgotten the taste of breath in that long moment made of only salty tears and cold hands.
The room descended into silence like a wound, and he did not notice when sleep finally came for him, nor when he surrendered to it. It did not come gently, only pulled him under, lungs filling with liquid grief before the world dimmed without his say so.
And it was a brush — more of a twitch, really, the barest hint of it — of skin against his cheek that jolted him from the Fade, stealing his breath. A trick of his imagination, perhaps, still in that in-between place of waking and dreaming, hope against hope, squeezing his eyes shut, afraid to break his own heart again with his wishful thinking.
Then her breathing changed — a stuttering thing, strained, faltering unevenly in her throat — and her finger twitched again, and it broke through his grief like sunlight through clouds.
Emmrich's eyes snapped open, and he leaned over her, his grip around her fingers tightening.
“Darling?” His voice came out no more than a whisper. The answering groan nearly had him jump on top of her and smother her in kisses, but he tempered his reaction to a soft, “Oh, my darling. You worried me so.”
Rook’s head turned toward him, following the sound of his voice, but it was a sluggish thing, as if the movement pained her. A heavy, stuttering exhale left her lungs, as if she were steeling herself, eyelids finally fluttering open to squint at him in the darkness, night having truly settled when he had inadvertently fallen asleep. She tried to raise her head higher, perhaps even tried to sit up, Emmrich wasn’t so sure, but Rook was nothing if not prone to inadvisable action. But then she groaned once, and the back of her head thumped against the pillow, eyes closed again. A sigh of annoyance.
“You’re still injured, my love. Best not to move right now.” Emmrich fussed at her, rearranging the blanket over her body just so, then smoothing the hair from her face before taking her hand in his again, raising it to his lips. “We hadn’t noticed it until after the battle, but you had a rather large wound on your side, tore right through your armor, hidden under all the blood.” And more than one broken rib, only luck or the Maker having it miss her lungs entirely, and even luckier still that the wound had not festered at all.
Their entire group had a host of injuries, unsurprising, but Rook had taken the brunt of Elgar’nan’s power. Emmrich had cursed himself for not checking on her injuries as soon as the fight was over, the shock and joy of their victory still coursing through him.
“I feel like I got run over by a herd of druffalo,” Rook muttered, voice thin. “Twice.”
After a moment, they broke into incredulous laughter, no doubt painful for Rook, but she didn’t seem to care, relief too palpable in them both.
At the sound of her voice, finally, finally, fear gave way to fragile, shaking hope.