mercurialmind:

For @luinquesse. I know you didn’t officially prompt me, but I registered your wish for #27 with Dorian/Shae Lavellan from this prompt list.

“Stay with me a while and pretend the world doesn’t exist.”

The tower at the battlements was dark beside the stars behind the veil of clouds floating by. The breeze was cold, and Dorian wrapped his arms around himself to be protected from it. He saw a figure sitting against the wall, arms wrapped around his body, head bent between his knees.

“Why are you here?”, he asked even though, he knew the answer before the question slipped his lips.

There was no reply, only the rising and falling motion of Shae’s back.

“Would you come to bed?” Dorian asked, even though he knew Shae would not come. He looked at the horizon far beyond the mountains. Dark clouds covered the skies where it encountered the land. He rubbed his arms and glanced at the man whose hair was fire, his eyes burning always bright.

When Shae looked at Dorian, even in the dim light, Dorian could see the dark circles around his eyes, the red around the bright green iris.

This was Shae, his companion, the one he loved. But he was not truly there. Since he had drank from the well, he had sank into the abyss of his own mind, invaded my voices of others. It was something Dorian could not understand, though he would have done anything to share the load Shae carried. He would not be able to truly comprehend how it was to be never alone.

The voices, continuous voices, whispering in his head. They would never sleep, would never silence. Sometimes, if he tried hard, few rare moments, he could tune them out to something that played on the back of his mind. But they would never truly go away. They whispered to him through the ages, kept him from sleeping, forced him to listen.

Dorian kneeled in front of him, put his arms around his slender body, brushing his cheeks against Shae’s. “Please, come with me”, he whispered gently to his ear.

“I can’t”, Shae breathed shivering.

Dorian sighed and withdrew from the embrace. He brushed the wild strand escaping from Shae’s bun of hair and pressed his forehead against his.

“Stay with me a while” Shae whispered, “ and pretend the world doesn’t exist.”

So Dorian stayed. He sat beside him, leaned against the wall, his shoulder touching Shae’s. They were silent, the wind blowing over the tower, around them.

Would it be the anchor or Mythal, the first one to claim him from this world? Whichever was his fate, he would like to know that Dorian moved on with his life, and not wither like a leaf when autumn comes, wishing the spring to arrive but facing the first breeze of winter, and to fall. Was it inevitable like the fate of that leaf? Were we all just like them, hanging from the edge of life like the leaves do from a tree, waiting something to arrive, which will never come to us, but for the ones after?

“Dorian”, his voice was small, barely a breath brushing Dorian’s cheek.

“Yes?” Dorian’s eyes were not looking at him, but Shae could see from the angle of his lips, the brows that knitted together, the eyes that looked down the floor in front of him, that he was in pain. It was the kind of, not physical one, that when it goes on long enough, too strong, it will change and become a continuous ache in your body.

Shae felt his eyes burn with tears. He wanted to fight them, he did not want to cry, did not want to give in to the despair that ate him from inside. He did not want to be weak. There were so many things needing to be done, so many people who depended on him. It was suffocating, and he was drowning, just below the surface.

He closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath, leaned against the cold stone wall. A warm hand, calloused from wielding a staff for countless of times, came upon his, holding tight.

The air smelled of rain. It would come as it always did. It would wet the ground, but the withering leaves would not rise.

They would stay till they could not anymore, and then they would fall and disappear.