Panting, Amaryllis fell to one knee, held up by the iron grip she had on the staff in her hands. She saw Emil swing his sword into the side of a Shade, watched him grit his teeth, his arms shaking with exertion, and used her last bit of energy to throw up a barrier. It quivered around him, thin and weak, and fell the moment the Shade touched it. Thankfully, it was enough - the Shade knocked back as the barrier shattered and Emil took his chance, slamming his sword through the creature for the last time. It began to fade, and soon was nothing but dust.
Emil took to his knee as well, his sword clattering to the stone beside him, and wheezed yet another, "thank ye." Amaryllis shook her head, unable to answer through her gasping breaths, and finally decided to pop open a lyrium potion, taking a small sip. She stood and wobbled towards her new friend, and motioned for him to take the bottle from her.
When he finished he handed the bottle back and grimaced. "Ne'er liked the taste. Like a rusty blade."
"You've licked a rusty blade?" she asked, genuinely curious.
He chuckled, "Ye know what I mean."
Amaryllis wanted to smile back but instead turned away, taking in the scene around them. There had been casualties this time, though most of the bodies strewn across their battlefield had already been there when they arrived. She walked towards the closest fallen soldier, and began to check for a pulse. None. And though she knew this person wasn't Dalish, and most definitely didn't believe in the Creators, she still felt as if they deserved a send off, in whatever fashion it could be given.
"Falon'Din, Lethanavir, enasal enaste," she began. "Ghi'la is'el shosaan, sule i've'an raja ish…"
Emil soon followed, running a weary hand over his face. His black hair was flat against his head from being pressed down by his helmet. The bags under his eyes were a deep, bruising purple. "Ye speak Dalish?"
"Elvhen," she corrected. "And yes, a bit."
"Where'd ye learn that?"
Amaryllis gazed up at him and wondered if it would be wise to tell him the truth. Though he had been kind so far, who knew how far that kindness would extend. Their trip to Jader was still fresh on her mind.
It was already bad enough that she was a mage, and he a templar. The fact that he had trusted her, allowed her help him, was nothing short of a miracle. Add her strange story into the mix…
I'm proud of who I am, she reassured herself. I'm proud of my family, where I've come from. They're the reason I'm here. I've no reason to hide.
Still, Amaryllis stayed silent, taking the soldier's gauntleted hands and crossing them together, over their chest. Emil opened his mouth to ask again, but she quickly stood and walked away.
Out of all of the places Amaryllis had expected her staff to be, this was not it.
If she were to be completely honest, she hadn't expected to see it at all. With everything that had happened, she had assumed that this was her fate: to consistently lose the things that meant most to her. But of all the places for it to be…
She leaned over, looking down to the bottom of the ravine where it lay, still in the hands of the mage who had taken it. For a moment she stood, quiet, preparing to say a prayer for yet another fallen soldier, when he twitched violently and began to scream.
Amaryllis didn't hesitate to run down the steep, rocky side of the chasm, struggling not to trip. She took a knee beside the man and lifted her borrowed staff above him. The orb at the top began to glow blue. Its' light spread down the pole and across to her left hand, which she then used to run over his torso, closing her eyes. She could see through him - through his skin and muscle - similar to what she remembered an x-ray to be. His ribs were shattered, his lungs punctured by the shards of his own bones. His right leg was twisted behind him, looking like the root of a tree.
Amaryllis' chest ached, knowing how much pain the man had to be in.
A voice yelled out from above, and Emil came racing down the side of the ravine, his armor clanking together loudly. He came to a stop beside her, his landing far more graceful than hers had been. "What are ye doing?"
"He's hurt," she said, opening her eyes to look up at her companion.
"I can see that," Emil grimaced at the sight of the man's leg. "I meant, why?"
"He's hurt," Amaryllis reiterated. "He needs help. That's what I'm here for, isn't it?"
Emil crouched beside her and watched until the cerulean glow encasing her hand receded, flowing back up and into the orb where it quickly vanished. When she turned to speak to him, she saw fear in his gaze.
Her heart fell into the pit of her stomach. "It's not dangerous, Emil; it doesn't hurt him. It's like a window - helps me see inside."
He cleared his throat, then spoke with a voice thick with an emotion Amaryllis couldn't read. "I don't doubt ye, miss, really. I saw ye helpin' others."
Still a mage, she thought. Still a templar.
"But ye can't help him," he finished. The fallen mage was taking short, rasping breaths; his eyes quaked behind his eyelids. "No elfroot left. And even if he could drink it, he couldn't walk. What if one of them demons came? Took control?" Emil shook his head. "No, better to end it here."
"That's-" she bit at her lip, hesitating in her protest. He wasn't wrong. Though Amaryllis could heal, it took too much out of her. Minor injuries were a cinch, but they were easily taken care of by a sip of a potion, or a few days rest. Grievous injuries such as this? She had only tried that once, years before, and she remembered all too clearly how that had gone. "I-"
Without waiting for her to finish, Emil pulled a dagger from his side and before Amaryllis could react, stabbed the man through the heart. The mage's last breath wheezed out through his chapped, pale lips, and his broken chest rose no more.
"May the Maker guide ye," Emil said, bowing his head in prayer. Amaryllis wondered how his hand stayed steady as he sheathed his dagger. "Ye shall not be left to wander the driftin' roads of the Beyond. For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light, and nothin' that He has wrought shall be lost."
He took a moment to gaze down at the fallen, his expression unreadable, and quickly stood. Amaryllis clutched at the front of her robes, feeling her own chest rise and fall rapidly, and couldn't look away from the mage - from the way he still gripped her staff tightly as if it were a friend. A comfort. Even in death.
"C'mon," her new friend spoke from above. "The Commander will be lookin' for us."
Her legs shook, and she teetered where she was crouched beside the mage. "I-" she still struggled to speak, swallowing thickly past an emotion that rose up through her, threatening to spill forth in what would be a flood of tears.
Emil misunderstood her hesitation, and spoke again, his tone soothing this time. "Don't be this way, miss. Ye couldn't've healed him, no, but we helped him. His sufferin' ended. He would've thanked us for it, I'm sure."
Amaryllis bit into her lip, hard, wishing the sharp sting of it would be enough of a punishment for the way she yearned to take her staff back, for the way she ached to feel the soft divots in its shaft where her fingers had always held it tight. "It's not that, Emil, it's…" she met his gaze for a moment, saw his curiosity, but quickly looked back to her staff. Her hand twitched at her side. She could feel the strange weight of her borrowed staff in her other hand and remembered how it had caused her to stumble. "I'm terrible. I shouldn't want this."
His brows furrowed, and his expression shifted to one of great confusion. "What do ye mean?"
"He's got my staff," she murmured. Her chin trembled and she grit her teeth against the tears that threatened to spill. They filled her gaze, caused the image of her staff to blur. She tried to blink them away, but they were too much. Her cheeks were wet, now.
Emil's armor clanked as he shrugged. Amaryllis hadn't expected him to smile so. "So take it. Not like he has a use for it, now, does he?"
The tears came faster. The colossal weight of her guilt weighed down inside her, feeling as if she were stuck under a boulder so inordinate that it could never be lifted, and she struggled to breathe past the pain it caused. "It's not right, Emil, it's not - don't you see? It gave him peace in his passing, it was a friend when he had none, and I- Creators, I can't just take it from him. It isn't right."
"To the Void with what's right," he answered, surprising her with his passion. "It's obviously got to mean somethin' to ye, if yer blubberin' about it so. Even if it was what ye said it was to him, so what? He's gone, and he won't need it where he is now. Be grateful that it served him well, and be thankful to him that he protected it while he could, and take it. It's yours."
Amaryllis stared down at the crimson cloth wrapped tightly around the staff's middle, and remembered nights spent under the stars, no longer uncomfortable sleeping on furs upon the ground. Feeling warmth surrounding her - Ellana to one side, and Mihris to the other - all three cuddled together beneath a red blanket. And though it had been thin, ripped at the sides, a hole or two around Babae's feet, it had been perfectly warm.
She remembered after his death, when the blanket had finally become too worn to use any longer, how she and Ellana had torn pieces from it. Together, they adorned their staffs with a reminder of the love they had all shared. A reminder of long nights, tickle fights, and Babae huffing out an exasperated "hush now, ma da'eanen." And when Amaryllis would glance up at him, an apology on her lips, she would see him in the moonlight, and the way his mouth curved into such joy, and her heart would soar.
So Amaryllis bent down, pried her staff from the man's cold grasp, and replaced it with the staff she had borrowed. Guilt ate at her still, pulling at the frayed seams of her heart, and though it felt incredibly silly in the moment, something about the image of the borrowed staff in his hands, and the familiar weight of her own in hers, made her feel light.
Emil smiled at her when she stood, and they made their way back up the steep sides of the ravine.
When they arrived at the top, with Amaryllis offering a hand to her friend, who was struggling to climb in his heavy armor, she saw that the Commander had finished checking over his troops, and stood at the side of the ravine, a few feet away from where they had emerged. Amaryllis ran hand over her braid, a nervous habit. Emil motioned for them to join the others and she nodded. As she passed Cullen she tried not to look at him, stared firmly ahead in an attempt to do anything but, but her gaze felt drawn to his own, as if magnetized.
Though his expression was impassive, his eyes were a storm. Goosebumps pricked against the back of her neck, stinging down her arms, for in his eyes she could see that he looked at her as if she were a threat.
A/N: I had art done of Amaryllis, which you can find on this story on archiveofourown - "and it slips through loose fingers" by ar_lath_ma