Prompt: A Prayer
In the Silent Grove comics, I wondered what Queen Elissa was feeling while he was away. This is what came of that. Angsty angst.
Disclaimer: Bioware owns Dragon Age.
Three months.
That is how long he's been gone. Three full months. Enough time for the summer to turn into autumn and the leaves to fall creating mosaic patterns of golds and reds on the courtyard grounds. Enough time for alliances to be made and broken, for laws to be contested, for wars to break out. In three months, everything can change.
Three months: that is how long Elissa's missed him.
In the early days, hiding it was easy. "A diplomatic trip," she'd say. "I am ruling in his stead." When they ask where exactly he has gone, she just waves it off with a smile and change of subject, for she can't tell the truth even if she wants to. I have no idea where he is.
And she won't tell the truth; how three months ago he'd blown off a busy day at court to spend the entire day with her, how they'd walked through the forest for hours, holding hands and laughing and talking about nothing and how he would whisper sweet nothings in her ear and then later, when he stood on the balcony in their courters staring at nothing and she'd asked him if anything was wrong and he said nothing, my love and they went to bed together. And the next morning, how she woke up and he wasn't beside her but she didn't think anything of it because he had always been an early riser except later when she still hadn't seen him and neither had Eamon or Teagan or Wynne or anyone else and it was so unlike him to not tell her where was going and then the next day he was still gone and the next and the next until finally here she is three full months later and he has still not returned. And Elissa is full of emotion.
She feels rage. Rage that he left her with an entire kingdom to run by herself, betrayed that he didn't tell her he was leaving or where he was going. Hurt that he didn't take her with him.
She's never been very good at hiding her feelings, so she just shows the right ones: anger, scorn, worry for her King. She never shows the terror that grips her at night, the fear that something awful has happened. She hates him and she loves him.
It is this fear that causes her to go to the Chantry. She's never been particularly religious, but the warm comfort of the Maker's arms is all she has left. She sits in the back, her face hidden by a shawl so no one recognizes the Queen. Three months.
She prays.