An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Davrin/Rook (Dragon Age)
Characters: Davrin (Dragon Age), Rook (Dragon Age)
Additional Tags: Davrin is sacrificed at Tearstone Island, Davrin is the only one Rook sees in the Fade Prison, Varric is alive and I'm in denial, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Some comfort but it's shortlived, Romanced Davrin
Summary:
When Rook gets stuck in the Fade prison, their love Davrin is the one who accompanies them through it all.
The vicegrip in your chest amplified the overwhelm that radiated around you. Everywhere you turned, the room closed in on you; tighter and tighter, you were beginning to feel squeezed shut by your environment. Your hands covered your face, tears brimming at your eyes - you wanted to cry, but your lungs couldn't spare the heave of that release, so you instead slammed your eyes shut and froze.
Wordlessly, a pair of arms lifted up your frame. A hand came under your knees, the other, resting your head against a large pectoral. You gained enough clarity to look up, Yunobo's brow tilted upward in concern. Though you tried to form words, the lump that sat in your throat hindered you. The hand at the back of your head pressed you gently back against his chest. Softly he spoke, tone firm, but reassuring.
"...It's okay. Just rest, goro."
He laid you down on the bed, shuffling just behind you to lay in it with you. Your frame was crowded in the Goron's gentle hold. A level of safety and security irreplaceably shrouding you. The warmth of him brought you some calm, the knot in your chest beginning to finally loosen. His fingers rubbed your back gently, still anchoring you to him as he does so. You focused on breathing, inhaling slowly and exhaling the same. As the tension in your limbs slowly subsided with each round of breaths, exhaustion began to take over. Snuggling in his arms a little further, you let sleep take you, hearing the last few words of Yunobo's tender voice speak into your hair,
"It's gonna be okay...I love you."
He was finally out. Out of that nightmarish place, stumbling along the last portion of obsidian and blackstone, with Techno right beside him.
He was too weak to walk by himself. But in just a few seconds he would reconnect with this server! He would feel whole again!
He stepped on to the grass and reached out.
Nothing.
No connection.
No comforting words carried with the wind.
Just a robotic voice in his mind ‘Administrator status changed successfully. Admin: Awesamdude’.
He screams.
Techno scrambles backward, and if the server didn’t—wasn’t—it’s not here. If Dream wasn’t screaming, he’d have noticed how Techno’s arms wrapped around him and how he was hauling him toward the portal.
If he was looking more closely, he’d have seen the other DSMP members watching them. Sapnap is in front, and his face is entirely white and his weapon shakes in his hand.
But Dream doesn’t look, doesn’t stare. He keeps screaming and he almost doesn’t hear Techno apologizing before his world goes black.
***
When Dream wakes up, he’s in a bed wrapped in bandages and Techno’s at his side. The world feels gray, and muted as he stares.
“Hey Dream,” Techno says, quietly. “How are you feeling?”
Dream reaches for the server again, trying to find it and there’s nothing. He’s alone.
Again.
Alone, alone, alone.
“Dream?” Techno says, and then offers him water. “Do you think you can eat anything?”
Dream doesn’t reply. He stares at the ceiling, and then—he doesn’t cry.
Why doesn’t he cry?
***
Niki visits. She stands tall, her armor gleaming. She gives him a plate of cookies and then watches as he doesn’t eat them.
“Okay,” Niki says. “Let’s get right to it. I don’t forgive you.”
And Dream expected nothing less from her.
“I don’t forgive you. I think it’ll be a long time before I do. But I do know that you didn’t deserve that.”
Dream sets the plate besides him, and Niki sighs. “Techno trusts that you won’t betray us. But if you do,” and here her eyes gleam, and Dream’s breath catches in his throat.
“I don’t know what I’d do.”
***
Ranboo visits him, when he’s sleeping. He sits on the corner of the bed, rambling and swearing up down and sideways that Michael really did ask for his godfather.
He doesn’t have to do it. Dream knows he felt the connection sever, the thread gone. But Ranboo smiles at him.
“You’re my Admin,” he says. “And the world knows it too. It just can’t… get back. Sam and Quackity did something and it just messed the entire thing up. And unless Sam transfers it back to you, the world really can’t do anything.”
Ranboo leans his head against Dream’s shoulder. “We’ll bring them back,” he promises.
“Just don’t do anything stupid.”
***
Phil is the only one who seems to understand. When he changes the bandages, he talks. Talks about how he’d lost his first Hardcore world; and how his second one was forcibly taken from him.
Dream wouldn’t say anything but Philza kept talking. He talked about the wife that he has, how she protects him and how the Void gifted him wings so he can see her every once in a while.
When he finishes, Phil pats Dream’s back. “I know, mate,” he says, softer than ever. “I know.”
(Dream waits until he leaves to cry.)
***
When he grows stronger, he doesn’t leave the house. There’s no point. Not when his server is gone, and he’s alone. He used to play with the dolphins before he got locked up; used to be able to create things out of thin air and would hear his server’s soft croons and wordless love.
He hears nothing. He used to be able to grow flowers from the earth, hold stars in his hands, and feel how it breathed and was alive.
He used to hear the baby birds in their nests, tweeting and the owls hooting at night; heard the cats meowing and purring while parrots chirped. He’d feel the trees just growing underneath him, and feel where wolves were.
He’s sitting in the attic’s window, Techno made it up for him when he didn’t want to sleep downstairs. He glances up at the sky, from where he’s sitting. Phantoms circle Techno, and Phil is quick to dispatch them. They say something to each other, and Phil looks up at Dream. He waves, but Dream keeps watching.
Techno squints up at him, and then leans down and picks up a cat. He shows it off to him and then nods.
“She’s yours,” he says when he dumps her onto his lap.
Dream looks at her, and she looks back. She purrs, loudly, and then curls closer into his lap.
Dream doesn’t touch her.
***
Sapnap comes, because he always does. The Syndicate stand in front of the house. Techno and Sapnap argue, but Dream’s window is shut so he can’t hear them. Just watches as Sapnap’s eyes grow redder and he almost glows, and watches Techno’s cool composure.
Sapnap screams something, and Techno snaps back, low and unafraid. And Sapnap steps back. He looks hurt. Niki steps in front of Techno, then, and takes out her weapon. She holds it to Sapnap’s throat, and orders something of him.
Sapnap walks away, but Dream locks eyes with him.
He’s suppose to kill me. Dream thinks. Let him.
***
The cat in his lap has no name. She burrows closer into his lap but Dream never pets her. She doesn’t mind, though.
Techno tells him stories, sometimes. When he can’t sleep and Techno’s nightmares are too much, he climbs the ladder and tells him Greek stories.
“Harpocrates,” Techno jokes with him. “I mean, after all that is who you are.”
I still have that chair? Dream signs, lips twitching in a smile.
“Duh,” Techno says. “You’re my left hand man.”
My chairs on the right
“The left.”
The right.
“Bruh. I go to the meetings.”
Techno picks at the floor.
“Sapnap came by,” he says quietly. “He wanted to talk with you. I didn’t let him.”
He promised to kill me, Dream says.
“I won’t let that happen.” Techno says, then. “He’s not touching you.”
Dream shrugs. Techno swallows, and then climbs back down the ladder. Dream goes back to watching the sun light up the horizon.
***
And Sam, of course, puts him back in Pandora. It’s predicable, really. He fixes up Pandora, makes it Techno-proof, and then teleport Dream back to his cell.
Sam and Quackity both look over at him, and Dream doesn’t even say anything. Sam straightens up, and says “Prisoner, as Admin I sentence you to stay in this cell until further notice.”
And the world does what it does best: it gives. There are barrier blocks all around the cell, and Dream knows without a shadow of a doubt that there will be no help coming.
Dream can’t even feel the code of the obsidian under his own feet. The Warden walks away, replacing blocks and he wipes his hands like he’s finished.
Dream doesn’t even stand up. He lays down, and watches as the obsidian drips.
He thinks he will never feel whole again.
(The world underneath him cries for its Admin, frightful of the one who holds them. He does not connect with the server, he expects things to be finished and not one thing out of place.
The New Admin demolished a mountain. The New Admin created materials and gave it out; the New Admin wants to open the End.
