Some Mistakes can Never be Unmade
A fic for Tamlen and Tamlen/Mahariel shippers. I've been meaning to post this for a while. There was one of those heartbreaking posts about how Tamlen remembers who Mahariel is even through the pain and confusion of being a ghoul and I had to write this....
“Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Lethallan.
I remember you.
Through the pain, through the song that consumes me, I remember you. In my memory, you do not look as you are now. You are not gaunt, or hollow, or sorry. You are you as you were before...before everything. The cave, the mirror. You told me not to touch it...that we should go back to camp. Ir abelas, Lethallan. If only I had listened. I cannot remember now why I did not...I think I believed that the Keeper might forgive me. That forgiveness was not worth this, not worth poisoning us with the corruption. This empty shadow life brings a pain that I am glad I have not the presence of mind to tell you of. A hunger that is not hunger, and a force that drives my mind and body. There is agony to it, an agony you never had to fully know.
I carried you from the cave, Lethallan. It was not right that you should die from my mistake. You were so ill...you, who had not even touched the Eluvian. I remember holding you, even though my mind was ravaged by the twisting blackness of the song then. It was a nightmare, Lethallan, but I could stand. You...you were so still and you barely breathed. I bore you from the cave. I wanted to go back to camp, but I could not remember the way. The madness twisted my gut, warped my thoughts. I feared I would hurt you, so I left you. I ran…
The part of me that was not yet lost to the darkness hoped you would survive, that the clan would find you. I am glad that even though the song has left it’s corrupt mark upon you, you live. I am glad, lethallan, that you are not like me.
The song was all I knew for a time. It was one long note of suffering and I forgot myself. I forgot the clan, I forgot even my own name. Even your’s...it is still hard to recall anything save ‘lethallan’. But I kept...pieces. The sound of a bowstring twanging, the smell of pine, the flash of your blade in the sunlight, the soft suede of your gloved hand as you drew me through the woods. I remember your breath, frosting the autumn air. I remember that you were always the quietest, the better hunter...but how you would give me the kills to hold, so that when we entered camp the clan thought it was I who was the successful one.
I remember when Hahren Paivel gave us our vallas’lin...how yours took three days and how you never cried out once. I remember asking you why you had come hunting with me that day. I remember your voice when you admitted it was because you had wanted to be with me.
I remember some things with such clarity that the song can become nothing more than a background dirge. But that is fading. I am forgetting, Lethallan. I am forgetting more and more of myself, I am forgetting these pieces. The sickness has taken my body from me...my very name until you speak it. Tamlen.
The pieces are all I have left...they are my mind, my soul. The song hurts me everytime I try to remember...I am sorry, Lethallan. I cannot last much longer, the pain and the song insists that I must hurt you. Attack you. That you are like me and yet not like me. You are looking at me now, hands raised in a gentling fashion, stepping over the dar’misu that you have dropped. Like I am a spooked halla or a wolf in need of taming. I am neither of those things. You know this. I know this. But still you approach. You say that you wish we had never entered that cave. I wish it, too.
I have always loved you, ma vhenan. Ma da'mi. In all the time we had together, I never said it. It did not need saying, I think. We both knew. How could I not love you? We were always as one, lethallan. Together as children, together as clanmates, together as hunters, together as fighters. We always said we would die together, should the shems come to kill the clan or ill befall us. We did not plan for the cave, for the mirror.
Lethallan. I am so sorry. I am so sorry to leave you again. I tried to so hard to survive for you, the Dalish endure. Suledin. We weather every storm. Vir Adahlen, together we are stronger than the one. But you...you were always the better hunter, I remember. You are strong, you will go on living.
...Ir abelas...
...Mahariel...