For @lkblackham and their Rook, Atash Laidir 💜 I LOVE how much backstory and personality you put into Atash!
My darling Atash—
I am writing this from a Mourn Watch outpost that smells like mildew and dead things, which is unsurprising, as it is quite literally full of mildew and dead things. No one has slept in this bed in years. I know this because it tried to kill me the moment I lay down.
All this to say: I miss you. And I am miserable. And I have no one to blame but myself.
They needed someone. I said yes. I told myself it would be quick. Efficient. Painless. (Please feel free to laugh—I deserve it.) But every hour I spend here is an hour I’m not beside you, and that is beginning to feel like a cosmic error. I keep reaching out for you in the dark and finding only books and regret.
I should be there. With you. Especially now.
You’re doing everything on your own again—shouldering the missions, the planning, the terrifying miracle currently growing inside you—and I am here, reclassifying ancient bones and shouting at junior wardens for improperly labeling grave goods. It’s disgraceful. I’m disgraceful. I am, by all accounts, a terrible fiancé, a terrible father-to-be, and a passable necromancer only because I have not yet raised the wrong corpse by mistake.
I know you’ll say I’m being dramatic. I also know you’ll mean it lovingly, which is why I adore you. But Atash, I’m not there to rub your back when it aches, or hold your hand when the storms roll in, or tuck you into an actual bed when you fall asleep on a pile of sacks like some kind of feral Qunari nesting bird. (Taash told me. There was a sketch. I will never recover.)
I want to be the one who listens when it’s too much. Who sees past the smile and the good cheer and the heroic willingness to carry every burden just so no one else has to. Because I know what it costs you. I know you don’t sleep well when I’m gone. I know you haven’t told me that, because you don’t want me to worry.
Too bad. I worry constantly. I lie awake thinking of you curled up in some too-small chair with a book clutched to your chest and your shoulders all tense from pretending you’re fine. You’re not. Neither am I. And Maker help me, if I don’t get to come home soon and bury my face in your neck and tell you all this out loud, I will hex the next man who knocks on this door and blame it on the Fade.
You are the bravest person I know. Not for what you fight, but for how you love. For how freely you give it, how fiercely you protect it, how hard you work to make everyone feel like they matter—like they’re seen. You did that for me when no one else ever has. You took one look at my death magic, my family history, my overdeveloped sense of doom, and said, “Yes. This one. I’ll keep him.”
And now there’s a little life coming. One we didn’t expect, but somehow already love beyond reason. I want to be there for every moment. For the first kick. The way your voice changes when you speak to them. The way you’ll absolutely cry when they hiccup, and then pretend you’re just allergic to joy. I want to hold your hand in that awful Nevarran Chantry and shout my vows so loud the priest drops his book.
I love you. I love our future. I love that you never made me earn your gentleness—I only had to meet it with mine.
Tell our child I’m coming home. Tell them their father is an emotional wreck who ruined three shirts this week trying not to cry in public. Tell them it was worth it. That you are worth everything.
Yours, always, Emmrich