@summermagus
Why give up, why give in? It’s not enough, it never is So I will go on until the end
The Anchor explodes with light, the group is scattered, and Oleander screams. For a moment, he just stays on the ground, even as he can hear the others getting back up.
“Inquisitor?” Cassandra presses gently.
“Still with us, Foxtrot?” Varric wonders, though the merriment in his voice is strained.
Gently, Henrik runs a hand over Oleander’s hair and gives his ponytail an affection tug, and finally, Oleander pushes himself up to his knees. He can almost feel the collective sigh of relief, and Henrik’s hand slides down from his hair to curl around the back of his neck.
Oleander picks up his sickle. He tries to pick up his hook blade, but he can’t get the fingers of his left hand to curl around it. A noise distressingly close to a whine builds in his throat, but he bites it back, and instead what comes out is, “Can one of you put that back in its sheath, please?”
“...Sure thing.” Varric steps closer, and the weight of the lone blade settles oddly on Oleander’s back, its mismatched mate still clutched in his good hand. Slowly, he gets to his feet.
“Olly?” Henrik questions, fingers closing around Oleander’s wrist.
“I’m alright.” He is not.
“You aren’t,” Henrik corrects, shrill and worried.
“No,” Oleander agrees, and Henrik threads their fingers together around the sickle’s handle. “But I haven’t got much of a choice right now.” He tugs Henrik closer by their joined hands and kisses his forehead, and reluctantly their hands disentangle.
Slowly, they carry on, and when qunari surround them and he feels pain burning through his arm like nails being driven through his bones, he curls his right hand around his left wrist and lifts the Anchor so at least he can direct the blaze. He drops to a knee, blood dripping from his glove and seeping through his sleeve, but the others are fine behind him, and with that knowledge, he picks himself back up and keeps walking.
--
There are three sets of footsteps behind him, and relief hits him like a fist unclenching around his throat. Two sets stop a ways off, but the third carries on, sprinting towards him.
Henrik crashes to his knees at Oleander’s side, murmuring to himself, “Oh thank the Maker,” or at least Oleander’s pretty sure that’s what it is, but the words are quiet and fuzzy.
He's staring vaguely into the middle distance, though he looks up slowly, meeting Henrik’s wide eyes. He dredges up a weak, quavering smile, and both of them do their best to avoid looking at the shriveled, smoking thing that used to be his arm, now desiccated to near unrecognizability from just below the elbow down.
“Solas is gone,” Oleander eventually manages. His jaw is clenched so tightly his head starts to hurt, and he stubbornly ignores the way his vision is blurring. “Henrik, he wants to kill us all.” His voice cracks, and his eyes drop to the ground, and he realizes too late that it’s a bad idea. He stares at his hand, the withered fingers still twitching periodically and it hurts, and for a moment all he can think is ‘get this thing off of me,’ but his sickle is abandoned a few feet away.
His tenuously calm expression crumbles, and the first sob sounds as if it’s being ripped out of his chest by claws. He doubles over at the same moment as Henrik yanks him forward, so he winds up with his face buried in the mages lap. Henrik leans over him, as if to shield him from anything else that might decide to happen, hands stroking through his hair as Oleander clutches at Henrik’s coat with his good hand.
Oleander can vaguely hear Henrik mumbling above him, a senseless stream of soothing white noise. He stops paying too much attention after that.