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The Other One
IX.
Later that night, he thinks about leaving.
He's in the library when the thought crosses his mind. He's already halfway through the strongest Antivan whiskey he could find in his sister's collection, a bottle so dusty he'd left fingerprints on the neck when he picked it up. Now, the cut crystal is smeared with grime from his rough handling, and though he knows he should stop before he does something he'll regret, he's intent on seeing the world from bottom of the bottle before the night is over.
He should not be here. They are both in danger.
He does not know what has come over him – but like the ghost of a memory of a terrible fevered dream, it is hauntingly familiar. He is well-acquainted with the unrest his sister stirs within him, the way his blood rises, the way his heart pounds like a drum marching off to war. Everything about her has always antagonized him, and he does not know why he thought this would be any different.
But this –
This is new, and it is strange and sickening; it is the strongest pull he has ever known. He cannot for the life of him wrap his head around it, so afraid is he of what he will discover if he tries to pin down his thoughts to find the truth among the fear and the lies, and so he drinks with the hope that he'll soon forget about it altogether.
It could be the taint, he thinks, grasping at straws like a man drowning. It could be that monstrous evil inside him that he tries in vain to ignore, the horror and misery that comes to him only when he sleeps, to whisper to him of dark and vile things.
Yet, as he stares into the flames, bottle in hand and glass long abandoned, he knows that he is playing a cruel game of fault and blame, and the responsibility of what burns within him lies solely with himself. He is the cause and he is the consequence, and if he is not careful, every broken heart and every empty promise that has ever passed restlessly between them will fall at his feet, and there will be no one to blame but himself.
These years apart have changed everything.
Once, he had known where he stood. The middle child, the only son, overlooked and underwhelming. His father had placed a blade in his hands before he was old enough to know what it was he was fighting for. He protected his sisters from forces beyond their control, first Marian and then poor sweet Bethany, never knowing that one day, the danger he might have to protect them from was their very selves.
Because of them, he grew up strong, while because of him, they grew up smart. He grew up watching the shadows, while they grew up seeking the light.
"You grow to love that which you protect," his father had said, looking down at his son with a heavy hand on his shoulder. "One day, you'll understand."
And like a wide-eyed child, Carver had believed.
They were three parts of a whole, Carver and his dark-haired sisters, inseparability everlasting. There were times when their mother had looked at them, huddled close to the fire, heads together, fretting over whether they were ready for the world outside the safety of their small house, whilst their father had smiled in that easy way he had, and consoled her, wondering aloud if it was the world that wasn't ready for them.
Carver smiles at the memory of the five of them, and the way things used to be.
He takes another long drink from the bottle, grimacing at the burn sliding down his throat and coiling in his belly, where it sits warm and heavy, sullen as a snake. All around him, the house is quiet. He does not know how a house so large can be so still; it reminds him of the Deep Roads in a way, dark and foreboding, a mausoleum to ages past. This is the glory his sister reclaimed in his absence. This is the legacy she will leave; a silent house full of empty rooms, dusty memories and a bloody history. It is fitting, he thinks, his sister doomed to suffer alone for all those she could not save.
If he is meant to feel remorse, the whiskey has washed it from him. He feels nothing but loathing, for this house, and himself, and for her, his sister, his blood, the millstone around his neck.
The fire has burned to embers and ashes by the time he makes his way to bed. The long shadows on the wall follow him as he mounts the stairs, feeling his way along gloomy corridors. Time spent in the Deep Roads has taught him a thing or two about navigating in the dark, and he finds his room without trouble. The door is ajar and the lamps beside his bed are lit; the bed is turned down, and the room is warm and welcoming, but he does not want to be there. He thinks of leaving, of disappearing into the night. He thinks of returning to Marian, to make demands she cannot possibly meet, questions she cannot readily answer, love she cannot willingly give. But a spirit-fueled guilt comes over him at the thought of waking her, and so he sits heavily on the edge of the bed, and tries to force thoughts of her from his mind.
A forlorn hope if ever there was one.
Sleep eludes him, even as exhaustion plagues him, turning his thoughts to nonsense. He thinks, perhaps, that he can hear the house breathing like some great living thing, just as one fancies they can hear the beating of their own heart when all the world is quiet and still, that hollow rhythm that chases the silence with its song. He has long since decided that he does not particularly like this cavernous house, he who has sworn to delve into the depths of the earth to walk along roads of stone carved by its very children. It is not its unwelcoming corridors, its high, forbidding windows, or its stonework like a shadow of old Tevinter looming over his head. No, this is something older, something deeper, something that speaks to his blood, his very bones. He should not be here, and neither should she, shame that they are, stain upon the lineage of a great house gone to ruin. The Warden and the mage, blind and foolish children, ever grasping at the leavings of their betters. The house will consume them, the pretenders, deceivers, they who are not worthy.
Solaced by such painful truths, Carver falls into a light, uneasy sleep – at least, he knows he must have, because he wakes with a start. He sits up, looking around for what awakened him, his mind full of cobwebs and unfledged dreams. It takes a moment for his bleary eyes to adjust to the dim light, but when they do, it's because they come to rest upon Marian, standing in the doorway like a ghost, white nightgown flowing down to her toes, dark hair spilling loose over her shoulders like descending midnight.
"What's the matter?" he asks, more roughly than he means to, slumber still caught in his throat like thistledown.
She doesn't answer him, only enters his room as if invited, closing the door behind her. The sound of the lock sliding into place is as loud as thunder. She pads across the room in her bare feet, childlike, reminding him so starkly of days gone by that he has to blink his eyes, and remind himself that he's not dreaming, that he's there, and she's there, alone behind a locked door, alone in a world that was never ready for them.
She sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, hands restless in her lap. The way she twists her fingers into knots reminds him of Mother, and he has to look away, up at her face, her eyes dark chips of stone glimmering in the firelight, her lips parted and full and frowning.
"I couldn't sleep," she says after a time, mistaking his bemusement as patience. She looks down at her fretful hands. "I saw your light on, and thought you were still awake. I didn't mean to wake you."
He knows the lie for what it is the moment it falls from her lips. Yes, she had meant to wake him. She is restive and frightened and lonely, he can see it in her eyes, her mouth, her hands. It crosses his mind to send her away, for both their sakes, but he can't make himself do it. He's still lost in the reverie of the past, little girls and littler boys, dark nights and darker dreams, white nightgown and warm arms, a dusty loft and the comfort of her embrace.
Now, the table has turned, and she is the one who is afraid. Afraid of the dark, afraid of the daylight, afraid of her demons, afraid of what she's done.
And so he moves over on the bed, opening his arms to her, and in that moment, though he does not know it then, he has damned them both because he cannot turn her away. He is her protector, come home at last, and though the time will be fleeting, and he does not know what will happen, he cannot deny her. He can blame the taint, or the whiskey, or the bloody Maker himself, but when he folds her trembling body into his arms and sits back against the headboard, his hand flat on her stomach and his lips in her hair, he feels a sense of peace settle down over him, as if he's where he's supposed to be, there at her side, and her at his. For a little while at least, there is no force in the world that will tear them asunder, for this time it was the breaking of the world itself that brought them back together again.
It is a rightness that is not made to last, this truce between them that is as fragile and fading as winter's palest dawn. But for now, it is enough, and wrapped up in each other, they sleep.
–
Carver wakes to a stiff neck and an aching back, to the chill of morning and the hazy gloom of a dawn that is not far off, gray light filtering in beneath draperies that are not quite closed. He wakes to an absence of warmth, and he is without the comfortable weight that had curled against him, the hand that had rested on his chest and played with the edge of his shirt, fingers that had dared to graze his skin of his collarbone, scared to venture beyond such inviolable ground.
He reaches out blindly, and he finds her; she's there after all, sitting next to him, about to disappear like the dream she isn't. She's flesh and blood, and he held her in his arms as they slept, felt her heart beat and her breath flutter against his neck. She is no dream.
"Carver," she says softly.
He shushes her. He knows. She cannot stay, cannot be found missing from her bed, cannot be found sneaking from his room like a thief in the night, or a lover at dawn. He flushes at the thought, but wraps his fingers around her arm all the same and pulls her back toward him. She comes willingly. From this moment on, she will always come willingly.
She touches her fingers to his jaw tentatively; he wishes that he could see her face, but the lamps have burned themselves out after a night of watching the sinners sleep, and the fire is naught but coals now, lending no light, no warmth, no comfort. It's in this darkness that she leans forward to kiss him, pressing gentle, doubtful lips to his. Chaste and imperfect, he could have left it at that, but that pull inside surges with want and with panic and with pain, and his hand is in her hair before he can think of what he's doing, of why it's so wrong, and the kiss he returns to her is demanding and fierce and entirely without honour or mercy.
He expects – he does not know what he expects in that moment, because he cannot rightly think, for to think would be to know, and to know would be to act, to stop himself, to save them both, but what is done cannot be undone, and there is no turning back. Not from her, and not from this, not when she softens against him, accepting and then giving in kind, her arms twined around his neck, her tongue against his, her mouth hot and open. It is a desire that drips like candle wax, brittle and burning, and there is no escape from the mess of its spill.
When she pulls back – because she is the one that pulls back and breaks the spell – it's with a mumble and a gasp, and for a moment her fingernails dig deep into the back of his neck, as if she's searching for purchase before she falls. And then –
And then she pushes him away, pushes herself away, so suddenly and forcefully that she slides off his lap to the side of the bed, and for all the darkness, he's glad they can't see each other's faces, because he knows the disgrace would be too much a burden to bear.
Without a word, she leaves, all but stumbling off the bed and across the carpet. He does not call after her. He does not know what he would say. All he knows is that when she slams the door, the sound reverberates through him, knocking what little sense he has firmly back into place.
At least, that is what he tells himself. That is what he vainly hopes.
And it's with this false hope that he comes to face the dawn.
