She’d lost her arm.
That was something… quite astonishing to him.
She’d left; a war in a land unknown to him, soldiers passing through a mirror,
elven artifacts scattered about these lands that hummed with magic in a way that made his pulse erratic, his jaw clench and his entire being stand on edge. He hadn’t found her– though qunari, after qunari, but then it’d ended, and there was a dragon… freed, from what he’d gathered from the whispering among him.
And they’d all returned, soldiers and spies alike, the inquisitors party– somewhere, to save Josephine from what seemed like social literal suicide.
And the inquisitor… armless.
He’d remembered his panic at the time, how he’d cracked the wood of the table before him in his fight not to run and take her into his arms, how he’d listened to the power in her voice as she’d made her decision– as she tore down those god forsaken nobles, and wanted to strangle them all with his bare hands when they snapped back at her like vipers.
Anyone near him had slipped away, leaving him a space to himself– he looked ready to kill, he was ready to kill. One wrong move and he may have done just so, started a murder spree in that wretched court room, tunnel-vision stuck on his wife and her missing fucking arm, did anyone notice this?
Did anyone care what she’d sacrificed?
And weeks later, he was still furious. She was broken– she spoke briefly of what happened and even he knew barely more than what she’d written ( a shaking hand, near illegible scrawl ) in reports, and she never seemed to look at him. Gaze through him, perhaps, the only time he saw a genuine smile was when that maker-damned puppy pissed on his leg, but even that died in seconds.
He wanted to beat the whole world in, everything that’d caused her to lose that spark in her eye, wanted to hit it like a hammer against a nail– hitting these people enough times would soothe her hurt, right? They deserved this– they deserved what they’d done to her, a torment he had been well aware of years ago, a mental exhaustion that had cost her nearly everything, and him, the health of the love of his life.
He had decided, earlier, that if he so had the chance, he would set the whole of Orlais on fire– and Ferelden, for that matter.
But for now, that would do nothing.
For now, he would sit gingerly near the elf– who had made some noise of distress earlier (acting now like she hadn’t) the stub of her arm hanging uselessly, bandage coming undone (it was almost healed but not quite there, and they couldn’t risk infection). From the way she was grabbing her waist he assumed she had tried to tie it up again herself, a book laying open, pages flitting in the candlelight beside her, and he was hesitant to touch her.
She looked, acted, perhaps was; at this moment, akin to a deer caught in a trap, unpredictable, and he didn’t want to upset her.
“…My love,” a soft voice, he sits and turns to her, rough, calloused hands half-held out near her bandaged arm, “do you want me to fix that?”
annaxmalina
2087
izzy806
