Send me a word and I will write a drabble with our characters:Wanweird - An unhappy fate.
If it weren't for the blood pushing up out of her throat, spilling from Inara's shaking lips as her mind slowly faded into the dark and cold of the rain-drenched stone, for the way her life was draining out and washing across those cobbled streets in every direction around the crack between every stone, the whole street seeming to shine red in the dim moonlight that pushed through the clouds, for the death that was creeping from her extremities and taking over the core of her body, quieting her breathing and stilling her every motion, Inara might have smiled.
The attack had been so sudden, those assumed-defeated creatures swelling up into the city like the blood that ran from her every wound. It shouldn't have been possible, all of those Darkspawn. They were supposed to be defeated, banished back into the dark and cold of the Deep Roads. This was not a Blight; everything was wrong, everyone was terrified.
The Wardens stationed in the city, however small their numbers, had rallied the guards and destroyed every single one of the creatures before the castle had fallen, saved most of the citizens by ushering them behind the prison walls, the castle gates, and the gates that protected the Arl's Estates. The elves had burned the bridge to the Alienage; between the fire and their archers, led by the Warden Tabris, they yet lived.
Every victory came at a cost, however. And this time -- finally, she might have said if she could speak, made Nathaniel's eyes narrow at her more out of concern and something almost resembling fondness than actual irritation -- among those costs were her life. She was dying.
And then he was there. He was holding her, his armor shining in the moonlight and his hair glittering gold. It had been so long since she'd seen him, he almost looked like a ghost. Or an angel; which one took your soul away when you died? She couldn't remember. She couldn't really remember anything, though, all of it draining away as she shook in the cold, held in the world for a few, shimmering moments only by the warmth of his fingers, and then, his lips as they pressed against hers.
He told her he loved her, and she saw tents and skin and moonlight and the crackle of magic, impossible and wonderful and unforgettable things. The pain disappeared, and she forgot it all, remembered only him and love and want.
"I love you, too," she said like she was speaking to the past. And, in some sense, she likely was.
Then she saw a stranger's face, a woman's face, and she saw tears.
