Disclaimer - I don't own the Inheritance Cycle. Obviously.
A Dream in the Night
A knock sounded on the entrance of Eragon's tent.
He glanced up, reaching out to Saphira to ask who it was calling so late, but then remembered she had gone hunting. At this, he felt a vague unease – he would have to face the visitor alone. "Enter," he called, his voice slightly hoarse. The entrance flap moved, and the autumnal gust of wind blowing through carried to Eragon the scent of pine needles. A warning.
Arya stepped inside and, without once glancing at Eragon, made her way over to the solitary chair by the writing table.
Eragon was so surprised at her abrupt entrance that it was several moments before he noticed that neither had spoken since her arrival. Hurriedly, he began, "Atra esterni—"
"Please, Eragon," she murmured. "No formalities, not today."
It was when he heard her voice that he knew, without a doubt, that something was terribly wrong. She had been acting oddly enough until now, true, but the pain in her voice now was something he had never thought to hear from her before.
She finally looked up at him and his breath caught as he caught sight of her haunted expression. The impassive mask that was the only expression he had seen on her since Gil'ead had been crushed into a million tiny pieces under her… grief? No, that wasn't quite the right word. Her eyes, as expressive as ever, revealed emotions he had rarely seen in her – anger, sadness and other, more subtle ones.
Then she dropped her eyes as if his gaze had burned her.
"I – I came to tell you something," she murmured softly, still keeping her eyes trained on the dirt floor as the shadows danced and flickered around her in the light of the single, lonely candle.
The candle, he thought, was just like Arya – passionate, aloof, and burning those who got too close.
It was for this reason that he, getting more bewildered by the second, kept his mouth shut and waited for her to speak.
Arya, meanwhile, seemed to be locked in some painful internal struggle. Then, without warning, her head jerked up as she locked eyes with him again. "Do you remember what I said to you at the Agaetí Blödhren?"
Eragon, in a word, was flabbergasted. Of all the topics she could have brought up, he had thought – known – this would be her least favorite. Then the hurt began to creep in. Her blunt question had sent a thousand sharp jagged daggers through the carefully constructed barriers he had erected to keep the pain of her rejection as deeply buried as possible – the barriers that, even after all this time, still slipped every time she acted warmly towards him.
And now, she had the audacity to ask if he remembered the most painful night of his life.
He took a deep breath. His anger would get him nowhere.
"Yes."
She flinched as if his cold tone had burned her, but ploughed on nonetheless. "Then you remember the reasons I gave you why we could – would – not be."
Eragon was getting more and more bewildered, not to mention angered, by the second. Arya had never acted like this before. And he had certainly never seen her flinch.
Mechanically: "Yes."
"They were perfectly sound and valid reasons. But, as you had implied that night, they were flimsy, with no real depth. The closest I got to telling you why I rejected you was that night in the Empire, by the campfire."
Eragon's mind reeled from the successive blows he was receiving. Was she talking about Fäolin?
Arya glanced stonily at the shortening candle and then back at Eragon, and abruptly changed the topic. "I know my true name."
Eragon stared back at her, this time in confusion. All elves knew their true names. Why was she telling him this?
She spoke more slowly now. "That means, of course, that I know the basic traits that make me what I am."
She paused, as if unsure whether or not to continue. Gathering her thoughts, she spoke again, her voice so soft it came out in no more than a whisper, "My predominant traits are duty and loyalty, Eragon.
"It was my duty towards my people that made me take the yawë, the highest sign of dedication to my people. It was my duty that made me join the Varden even when it meant I would be disowned by my only family. It was my duty that enabled me to live amongst complete strangers far from home for nigh on seventy years. It was my loyalty that let me defy Durza even when I knew my task had failed, my love had passed, and I would join him soon."
Eragon's hitherto-frozen mind burst into furious activity as he tried to process her words. Much as he tried, he could not deny the existence of the hot, bubbling anger that rose in him at her last words.
Her love, she had said.
The fragile walls he had so painstakingly built over the course of so many months came crashing down with no more resistance than an ant could offer against an avalanche. He moaned softly, pouring all of his love and grief and hurt in that one sound that escaped his lips. Arya really had outdone herself this time, he thought hazily. She had gone out of her way to reject him.
Arya looked stricken at his reaction, but went on, if possible, with even more determination than before. "And it is my loyalty to the memory of my dead mate that prevents me from moving on, from accepting love again so soon after his death. An elf's concept of time is much different from a human's. I see now, one hundred years too late, that my loyalty and duty" – she spat the words out – "will destroy any chance for love and happiness I might be offered in my life."
She got up abruptly, and walked over to Eragon. He watched her approach, surprise at the suddenness of her actions temporarily replacing the pain in his eyes.
And then she kissed him.
The kiss was not very long or overly passionate – it went much deeper, a promise of the things to come, and the future that could be. It was an act that reached far beyond its physical significance, giving them hope that their love was not impossible, the odds not beyond their power to overcome.
She broke away first, keeping her arms wrapped around him, and looked at him, vulnerable and determined as only she could be."You won't give up on me. Promise me that."
The love that shone in his eyes drove away the shadows of her insecurities as easily and naturally as a child being comforted by its mother in the dead of the night. "I promise."
The smile that broke out across her face at his words was more beautiful than any he could ever have imagined as the weariness of a century slipped from her, letting the unfettered joy shine through and light her wholly, if only for a brief moment.
A moment that Eragon would gladly wait an eternity for to see again.
Still smiling, she broke away from him, and slipped away into the night, leaving them both to wonder if what had happened had ever been more than a dream in the night.
AN – This story sort of wrote itself. I was originally going to make it a heartrending tale of unrequited love and sob-worthy stuff like that, but couldn't bear the thought of a depressing ending... and so this came along.
Tell me what you think!
AN2 (Apr. 2014) – So… I cringe every time I read the last few paragraphs.
Every time. If I ever feel I'm getting too confident about my writing, I'll come back and read this. It has its good points though; it'll stay up.