Chapter Text
They are on their backs in the green green grass, hands entwined, heads just barely touching. A breeze that smells of the first cut of spring, still tinged with frost and dusted with daffodils, brushes over his face and ruffles his hair. The sky is blue and endless, but also somehow close, like a bubble with a curve he can't see.
Cullen runs his thumb over hers and feels her breathing next to him. "Four months," he says, tilting his head, nose in her hair. She feels as real as a human but still has never visited him outside of the Fade since that first night. It feels like it has been longer than four months; it feels like it has been four years, four decades.
"Is that how long it's been?"
"Exactly."
She sighs. "I lose track of time."
"How goes the hunt?"
She rolls over so that she is half on top of him and he draws his arm around her, her chin propped on his chest. "He's searching for any ancient temples that still stand," she says. "Many don't. He's been traveling to places where he hopes the temples are, but finding only forest or dust." She grins, wickedly. "He's pissed."
"Any idea why?"
She shrugs. "Power, I think. Artifacts. Things to hoard, to keep himself alive when he… does whatever he's going to do. It's taking him longer than he wanted. Plans and schemes." She huffs, blowing a strand of white hair away from her face. "The ass."
He laughs a little and pulls her up for a kiss. "You'll hear no disagreement from me."
She kisses him again, then combs her fingers through his hair. "And you?"
"The pitying looks have calmed a bit, but I found two women and a man naked in my quarters today, already… well, it doesn't matter. I had to pay them to leave. They were quite insistent."
She giggles so hard that she snorts. "So who do you think, Bull or Dorian?"
"My money is on Zevran, actually. Last week it was Dorian. I came upstairs and the room was filled with the strangest... you know what, we won't talk about it."
She laughs again, louder. "You're all red! I'll have to invade Dorian's dreams and tell him to knock it off. He at least should know better. He knows I'm not really gone."
"He's just doing it to get a rise out of me."
"Double entendre."
"I—"
"You're red again."
"Oh, just shut up and kiss me."
She complies, tugging lightly at his hair as he bends his head down to hers. He meets her mouth eagerly, as if by kissing her hard enough he can pour out all of his frustrations: the never-ending ache of not truly having her by his side, of having to pretend to be bereft, the forever whispers by Cassandra and others of "are you okay?", the not knowing if this in-between situation will ever change, if she will ever return to him whole in the real world, if he will ever hold her outside of the Fade under the real sun…
His tongue is in her mouth, his arms crushing her to his chest, and she is whimpering needfully, legs tangled up in his, and even like this, fake and Fade and spirit, he loves her more than he has ever loved anything.
The breeze picks up, so softly at first that he barely notices it. Then the blue sky darkens, like night come too soon, with clouds that swirl overhead in a great funnel. The wind strengthens, gushing across his skin like water, and she pushes away to gawk upwards.
It would be full dark now except for the sick, swirling green. It peels at the edges of the sky, flaking and breaking away.
"Maker's breath, what is that?" he breathes, sitting up.
"It looks like… like the Breach," she says shakily. She suddenly seems less real, more like a ghost he can touch. "Only smaller. I— ah!" She grips his hand, hard. "Can you feel it?"
"Feel what?" Above them, it is spinning faster and tighter, a cyclone of raw smoke and energy.
"It's pulling!" she cries, grabbing onto his shirt, and he feels her start to lift off of the ground. "It's— no!" Her feet fly up to the sky and he grabs her forearms, holding her steady. "Don't let me go!"
"I won't!" he shouts, the noise of the thing a yawning moan, the trees bending in its wake, though he remains untouched. "What's happening?"
"It's trying to send me back!" she howls, and he's never seen her more afraid. Her white hair is a halo around her head, her eyes huge and neck bared like a wild mare. "It's not possible, I should be dead there! Please, please don't let go!"
"I won't!" he yells again, even as he feels his fingers slipping, the Breach a howling, sucking maw. "It won't take you!"
His hands slide from her forearms to her wrists. "Cullen, please!"
"Errol!" he screams, trying to grip her more tightly and failing. The wind is too strong; she is nearly perpendicular now, her feet slipping into the vortex.
"I'll find a way back!" she promises, her voice clogged with tears. "Somehow! I promise! I'll find a way back to you! No matter what!"
He's now gripping just her fingers. "Errol, don't leave me!" he begs. "Just hold on a little longer!"
"Cullen, I love—"
She screams, and he screams too, and with a clap like thunder she is wrenched from him, and he is left grasping at nothing as she spirals into the Breach, and when it has eaten her up it seals itself like it never was and Cullen wakes gasping and alone and knows, in his bones, that she is truly gone.