Plot Summary: Solas and Raven have lived lifetimes together, enveloped in each other's arms. But Raven is mortal, and Solas cannot keep her forever.
Author's Note: Thank you but damn you (lovingly), my darling angst-purveyors. This one is for you, @gladeflare, @commandersnips2001, and @fenrelmercar. 🖤
Or, read it on Ao3
❗Dead Dove❗
DD Tags: spousal death (peaceful), mortal x immortal, main character death, hurt no comfort
"Vhenan." His grip tightened around her; his heart, his world, his wife and soulmate-bonded for far more years than a mortal should ever have been allowed. But what was he meant to do? Gracefully let her slip away? After the anguish and hardship they had suffered to live peacefully? No, he had clung to her, harder each day—kisses lingering until the taste of her carried on his tongue for hours, imprints of his fingerprints in the wrinkled slack of her aging skin, and glowing smiles amidst the strain of a body far too old, yet still so young within.
She was ready. He was not.
Would he ever be? 'No,' he thought, pulling the blanket tighter around them both as the world eased into violets and blues—a perfect compliment to his eyes, she always said. 'To be ready to lose her is a feat greater than any man could bear, let alone one as selfish as I.' And yet, he knew the inevitable. He had seen it at work in the ages that had stretched before his ancient eyes. It was a snake, slithering in the high grass; known yet unseen until the moment it struck, and then—
"I can feel your mind racing, ma lath," she huffed, a rasping chuckle following the sound.
"I know not what you mean, ean'sulahn," he murmured, not ready yet to voice his fears, his lips gracing the silk of her silvery hair; committing the texture once more to memory, as if it were not so wholly ingrained in his being that it accompanied his every word and whisper.
"Solas." His name came with a gentle warning; an expectation of honesty from a woman who'd long since deserved much more. "I know you are afraid." Void, how could this woman always so easily cut to the heart of him? And how was he meant to live without her? To return to the agony of solitude after so long in blissful co-partnership? What spirit in the Fade would not warp and twist into Despair at his mere presence without her by his side? How cruel this fate!
She turned in his arms, brittle bones creaking and paper-thin skin tugging in his grasp, and pressed a shaking kiss to the underside of his jaw. And all at once, his composure was lost, like the wind whisking a leaf from the safety of its branch and tossing it into the abyss. His body shuddered deeply and jerked as sobs poured from his mouth like cries for help, his wails dispelling the wildlife that lingered around their shared home. The weak press of her body against his strengthened, just enough to remind him that she had not gone yet, and he turned his head down to capture her chapped lips with his own, anchoring himself to her and whatever time she had left. Tears slicked the skin between them and it was only then that he realized she was crying too.
“Ma vhenan, ma venemah’na in ga sulahn et bartuasha. Banal’halam, ma lath. Na’ma bell’anar’is.” The words were pressed against her skin, as so many had been before them. All promises. All kept. All to carry forward.
She nuzzled close, her breath more staggered than he had ever heard it before as he clutched her to his chest. “Ma bell’anar’is eal’na. Ma vhenan eal’na. Ma sal’shiral eal’mar. Bell’ana. Ar lath ma.”
In the dimming light of dusk, his love’s spirit journeyed to the Fade in his absence for the first time in nearly two centuries, and he curled around the cooling warmth she’d left behind, weeping into the silken strands of her soft, silvery hair.
~
fin
Elvhen Translations:
- Ma vhenan, ma venemah’na in ga sulahn et bartuasha. Banal’halam, ma lath. Na’ma bell’anar’is = My heart, I will find you in every song and bud/new growth. Your soul, essence, and memory will live in me, my love. You are my eternity.
- Ma bell’anar’is eal’na. Ma vhenan eal’na. Ma sal’shiral eal’mar. Bell’ana. Ar lath ma = My eternity is you. My heart is you. My life is yours. Forever. I love you.
