Chapter Text
Not even the black eye he sported when he made it back to the others could dampen his mood. One of the larger pieces of the rock wraith's body had struck him fairly hard, no doubt there were a few places with equally dark bruises across his body. Mitos hardly felt them. He was too full, too spiritually bloated, to think of anything other than the delightfully satiated feeling. It was like a starving man had been led straight into the most decadent buffet. He hadn't really fed on anyone or anything since Ostagar. He didn't even want to count the years since he'd dragged Carver out of that clusterfuck. Suffice it to say, he was in a chipper mood when he returned. So chipper in fact that he swept Bethany off her feet and spun her around, and chased down Varric until he could pluck him up a few feet off the ground. Fenris he knew better than to test.
"You find something down that way?" Varric asked once his boots hit solid ground again.
"I found something wonderful. I'm not completely domesticated! All this time, I-" He had been making himself small. He had been denying the spirit puppeteering this body, thinking it could only be Mitos or Eren Hawke. That there could be no harmony as long as one exerted will over the other. But that wasn't true. He was both. The boy who died to protect his sister, and the spirit far too large for a mortal body. This place had wreaked such havoc on him because he had, without thinking, split his essence apart. Now he was whole. The encounter with the wraith had told his this, in such blisteringly certain terms he could not pretend he did not see it.
He wanted to say all this. He wanted to say more. He wanted to sweep Bethany up in a hug again and pour out all the secrets. He wanted so badly to tell her how he had bested the ancient wraith and torn the soul out of it, whilst remaining firmly in the body that was his. He'd won, and every disparate piece of his puzzle had begun to slide back into place because of it.
Bethany looked up at him with confusion written across her features. That look did not lessen when he took her by the shoulders and spoke words he had never uttered since he came to the mortal world.
"I'm sorry."
Her eyes grew large and round. "What?"
"For how I've acted. I've been foolish, selfish even. I've been acting out of hurt." Mitos drew a deep breath. "I've been a fool a long time. And I promise, once we're out of here, I'll explain it all."
He'd come to that decision on the trek back. It might end up a costly one, true. But it did him no good to deny his true self, just as it had done him no good to deny the humanity that had grown in him. It was all so clear now, he felt an idiot to not see it before. The solution had always been so simple. The hardest part would be making the others understand. He swept a glance at Fenris, a preemptive prick of heartache in his ribs. He was the one Mitos was mostly likely to lose. The moody elf barely suffered Anders, would not suffer him at all were it not for Hawke’s cause drawing them into unlikely acquaintance.
But when he looked down at Bethany, he could feel no fear. She would understand. She deserved a chance to understand. He cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips to her sweaty brow, a gesture that felt entirely foreign. It was, he'd never gotten so close before. Mitos couldn't explain why he did it. An odd impulse, an apology perhaps. She could puzzle out its meaning no better from the looks of it, the way she tensed and blinked in perplex. Then he took her hand and started for the halls.
"There's a path," he said, tugging her along, "I think it leads to the surface. I don't know how long it'll take, but we're not dying down here."
Her fingers squeezed his a little tighter. "What happened out there?"
"A revelation," he replied breathlessly. "You'll have to forgive me, I can say no more until I'm in front of everyone. I fear I won't have the strength to confess it twice. Courage only serves pride when there's something to be gained. Maker knows I will lose more than I gain at the end of this. But you'll understand. Gamlen, Mother, Carver, Anders and the others, I know you'll understand."
"Stone madness," Varric grumbled to Fenris in a stage whisper, "I was waiting for it to hit one of us. Should've known he'd go first."
Mitos merely grinned a wolfish grin back at the dwarf. The wraith was not the only thing he found in the forgotten corners of this ancient thaig. When they made their way back to the scene of the battle, little more than a tumble of rocks and shadows darting about the margins of the cave now, he led them straight to the trove hidden in the nest of Hunger demons. Jewels, relics, weapons, armor in a style that had not been forged in hundreds of years, mountains of gold, gemstones winking in every sweep of a torch. The room practically blazed with wealth. It had been a tertiary prize in Mitos’ eyes, far behind the prize of understanding. Varric was another story.
“Stone mad or no, you’re one hell of a booty hunter, Hawke,” he praised breathlessly, “This is… Maker, this is enough to fund the expedition ten times over.”
The glimmer of sapphires reflected in Bethany’s dark eyes as she took in the scene. “This could get us back the house in Hightown. Pay off our debts, everything.”
He would have thought she’d express more awe, even excitement. Yet he found none in her features. Just a sort of odd quiet. As he looked at her from the corner of his eyes, he thought he saw the piles of gold twinkling against tears gathering along her lashes. Something coiled tight in his gut.
“Leandra will be pleased,” he hazarded, feeling as if he stood suddenly on unsure footing. The prior elation dimmed. Why? What was this tense thread of discontent wending between them? She should have been happy. Why did she look so pensive? She wound her arm through his and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. A scene flashed through Mitos’ mind of Lothering, the two of them walking down the sun baked path from their home, and her laughing at some observation he had not meant as a joke. She’d taken hold of him like this to keep herself standing and looked up at him. The first time he recalled her looking at him without old grief coloring her features. He hadn’t thought of it in years. Likely not since it happened. Now it came to him in a stark sort of parody. To look at her now, he would never have thought it was the same girl. Her features were sallow, the cast of her eyes terrible and sad, with shadows gathered in the hollows of her cheeks that had never been there before. Smudged and diminished, she looked…
Like Malcolm.
No- like Wesley.
=X=
They carted all they could carry with them deeper into the tunnels, packs laden with riches beyond anything any of them had known. Mitos carried a heavier weight than that. It pressed down, insistent and demanding against his shoulders. He told himself he was imagining things. It was a trick of the light, some mortal anxiety that had wedged itself in his chest and made his breath come up short. Surely the universe- the Maker, the Paragons, whoever shaped this fucking useless dimension of death and sickness and decay- would not be so cruel. Not when he’d decided to tell them all the truth.
Now there was only one truth he could hold in his mind. The senselessness of the Blight. That stupid, slavering animal that did not care who or what it took. Only that it took.
When Bethany stumbled on the path, Mitos was already there, gathering her up in his arms. Less like he’d expected it to happen and more like he had lived it before. She clung to him with pale hands laced through with withered black veins. Her right arm, where the useless bandage hugged her bicep, practically throbbed with the infection. Varric stopped at the head of the procession, turning back.
“You alright, Sunshine? You sick?” He called back.
“Something’s wrong,” she exhaled shakily into Mitos’ chest.
“Probably those deep mushrooms. We should make camp, the surface is only a few-“
She shook her head. Mitos’ fingers dug into flesh where he held her arms, keeping her on her feet. No, no, no. The word clanged through his head until there was no room for any other thought. No, no, no, no, no. Her lips moved. There was no sound. Just the rush of blood in his stolen body, no longer his own for a few moments. The others were speaking, the speech rendered to nothing but senseless noise, unable to penetrate the heartbeat pounding in his ears or the din of no, no, no, no, no no no no no nononononono.
“-like that Templar,” she rasped, her throat nearly too tight for words now. Mitos pressed his hand flat against her back, like he could crush her against his body hard enough to take the Blight from her blood into his own. There was no telling how it would affect him. Maybe it did nothing to an abomination and would simply dissolve in his bloodstream, unable to take root. He took her face in his other hand and tilted her head up to the light. Black veins crawled like tangling vines up her throat, over the edge of her jaw. Silver discs shone in the center of her eyes, the red webs of delicate veins in her eyes also gone putrid and grey. A breath, a sound, a whimper he could not swallow eked out of his lips as his grip tightened on her.
“We can… we… the surface is only a day away,” he sputtered lamely. His mind scrambled for sense, to grasp anything he possibly could to make this not be.
“I won’t make it to the surface,” she whispered, “I can feel it inside me. Eren, it’s like-like thi-things under my skin, crawling in my blood. It’s so loud in my skull I can barely hear myself think.”
Varric cursed softly behind them, damning his brother for the hundredth time since they had been locked away. Fenris’ eyes bore in their backs, a physical weight against his neck. Despite the roof of the cavern hanging high above, the place felt suffocating and small, the walls pressed in, the floor rose up as if to crush them between the molars of the Deep Roads itself. Mitos knew with terrible certainty what came next, even as the knowledge tore at his insides. There was no cure for the Blight. None that they had access to anyway, and he could not imagine damning Bethany to the life of a Grey Warden for his own mistake. A thousand differing pasts raced through his mind, all the things he could have done to avoid this one, inevitable future he hurtled towards. When at last she stared up at him, beseeching, he knew there was nothing to do. Nothing to beg or barter or fight against or overcome. He could not stand to see her suffering. He thought of the soldiers at Ostagar, writhing in their death throes, crying out for mothers, for comfort, for an end. The boy he had brought a gentle death to, even if he’d done it unintentionally. He’d died peacefully with visions of a lost love and a stolen night in his mind. That was something he could give to her. It was the only thing he had left to give her.
“Give us a moment,” he told the others, though his words were hardly audible. Nevertheless they seemed to fill the space, cramped and still as it had become. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Fenris and Varric as they moved to quietly retreat back down the passageway. Varric touched Bethany’s hand with surprising tenderness.
“I’m so sorry, Sunshine,” he said, and pressed the back of her hand to his brow. For a man who always had the right soliloquy, the simplicity of the words hurt all the more. Fenris’ stony silence expressed the depths of this loss in its own way, heavier than usual as he passed behind her and briefly, haltingly, brought a hand to touch her shoulder. Then they were gone, leaving the Hawkes to endure what was to come alone.
Mitos helped lower Bethany to the cool stone floor, patchy stonework whose patterning had been worn away by time. Sweat stuck dark curls of hair to her forehead- he brushed them back with the tips of his fingers. He’d touched her more in these past few hours than he had in the two decades he’d inhabited her brother’s body. It wasn’t enough. Would never be enough now. Her thin hands wrapped around his wrist and she closed her eyes, her head bowed as if in prayer. Mitos had never thought much of what became of mortals when they died. The Chantry had their vision of an afterlife, and some people believed the spirits of the Fade might have once been the living. But he had never seen much evidence of that. If Beckon or any of the other members of his court were once mortal, those memories were long gone. A death in its own right if they had once been something else. Little difference it made in the long run.
“Is it cruel of me to say I’m glad it comes to you?” Bethany murmured into the space between them. Her thumb traced the line of a tendon in his wrist. “I don’t think Carver could have brought himself to do it.”
A little boy wept beside a grave small enough to house a cat. Wept for the unfairness of death. Not the Maker’s cat. Mine.
“No,” Mitos agreed, “I don’t imagine he could have. You were always his better half.”
She shook her head. “You know, I never thought that. I always felt like you were better for him than I was.”
Such an absurd sentiment, Mitos could not help a snort of laughter. “Me? I’ve only over made him cruel and angry.”
“You gave him something to fight for. He would have died to protect me, but you. He made himself better for you. Even if it was to be better than you, he made himself brave to impress you. He loves me. But he never really respected me.” A shudder rippled across her sallow skin and she breathed shakily, leaning in to lay her head against his clavicle. “It’s coming on faster.”
He stroked a hand over her crown, his cheek against her temple. His body practically folded over her. Images flashed- Aveline with her dagger buried between the plates of Wesley’s armor, piercing his heart. His pale, limp body, limbs arranged in a useless imitation of peaceful sleep. Left behind while Lothering burned. Malcolm, his gaunt corpse laid on a funeral pyre laden with spring flowers. Sparks rose in the cool air of dusk and floated up like earthbound stars into the gathering dark. The boy in Ostagar, wrapped in a shroud, laid in a row of other linen bound corpses. Black bile had stained the sheet where the vague shape of his mouth tented the fabric. There was no Lothering sky in this place. No spring flowers, no funeral shrouds. Only the darkness of a forgotten place.
A silly, petty grief welled in him suddenly and he choked out, “Who’s going to braid my hair?”
She sobbed a sound like a laugh against his chest. “I’ve told you a thousand times to cut that ridiculous mop,” she replied, pulling back enough to look up into his face. She drew the long tail of his flaming red hair over his shoulder and examined it. Like it mattered. Like any of this mattered. She smiled a little. “You’ll be useless without me, hm?”
He wanted to laugh. It rung too true to be funny. Bethany was the touchstone that brought him into this world he had come to love. The one who held his humanity inside herself. Once, such a concept would have been borderline offensive. Now he understood, even if that understanding came far too late. He’d finally found his footing. Only now was it pulled out from underneath him. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, staring down at the top of her head.
“Take care of mother. And Carver. Even Gamlen. I think he’s lonely without us. He loves us in his own way. Merrill, too, make sure she’s safe in the city. And tell Anders and Aveline to take a break. They’re both going to burn themselves out if someone doesn’t mother them a little.” She turned over his hand to follow the lines of his palm. She couldn’t bring her gaze to meet his as she plowed ahead, speaking a bit faster as her breath came shorter, “And keep Isabela out of trouble. The really bad kind of trouble, at least. And tell Varric none of this is his fault. And Fenris… he has a good heart, somewhere deep down. Maybe you can help soften him up a bit.” She chuckled to herself. “Maker, all these people we’ve collected. I never thought we’d have so many people to look after.”
I’ll have one less. The thought carried with it the acrid taste of vomit. Mitos swallowed hard enough his throat audibly clicked. “I probably would have driven them all away if you weren’t standing behind me.”
“I’m not so sure. You have a talent for drawing people to you. I always envied it. I always envied you, really. You never cared what anyone thought of you. You were just… yourself. And hang anyone who wanted you to change. You never made yourself small for the sake of being likable. I think… if I had one regret, it would be that. Always making myself small. Always afraid. Afraid of Templars, afraid of people, afraid of being too loud or too… too myself, I suppose.” Her lashes fluttered as her lids lowered over cataracted eyes. “I should have told that boy in Lothering I liked him.”
“Far too provincial,” Mitos replied, “You could have aimed a bit higher than a stable boy, surely.”
“I never wanted status. I could have been happy in a sleepy little hamlet with a simple life. Just so long as I got to live. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Mitos drew the curtain of hair away from the back of her neck, wincing at the tainted roots crawling up her skin there. For a moment they sat like that, the silence of the old stone maw their only company. He wanted to cast this moment in amber, capture this memory of her so he never forgot her voice, the shape of her neck, the color of her hair. But always the Blight interceded. He couldn’t hold the color of her eyes in his mind through the haze of silver. Already he could not remember the cast of her skin before this pale death came about. He took her in his arms and pressed her to him all the tighter, face buried in her hair. Heat pressed against his eyes and soaked in her already sweat damp locks.
“I’m ready,” she said. But he was not. Even as he brought the dagger to the soft spot under her sternum, to the yielding, unprotected skin that parted like petals around steel. Even as her heart split. Even as she died. He was not ready.
=X=X=
The sun was a bright dollop of butter in a vast blue sky. Andraste’s Grace bloomed all about the verdant field, and a cool breeze carried their scent. The grass enveloped her body in a lush bed of green, tickling her cheek and arms as she lay on her back to stare up at the endless ocean above. She took a deep breath and it felt like her chest was twice its size to hold all the world had to offer.
“Bethany!” Leandra called from across the dale, “Come inside for lunch!”
The house stood at the bottom of the dale, a dusty pathway of stone cut across the clutching grass and bluebell. Smoke billowed from the chimney in soft gray clouds. She couldn't recall the last time she'd seen so many colors. Red brick, blue sky, green grass, yellows and reds and purples dotted throughout it all, like a painter carefully setting down brush strokes at just the right intervals that set the other colors alight. The smell of sun-baked clay rose underfoot as she ran down towards home. Ran only for the simple want of moving. When was the last time she was allowed that luxury? She tapped dust off the soles of her shoes before she entered. The house swirled with the smell of baking bread, rich stew bubbling in a big black pot over the fire, tea stewing beside it. Carver and Eren sat on either side of their father at the dinner table.
"Sister Leliana was looking at me during the Chant this morning," Carver insisted.
Eren rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Mmm, nope! I think not, little brother. Those eyes were for me alone."
"You think every girl who glances past you is in love!"
He opened his hands, palms up, lips curling in a smirk. "It only takes a glance."
Malcolm laughed and shoved both of their shoulders. "Alright, that's enough. Who raised you to be such dogs? Surely not your mother and I."
Bethany took her place at the circular dinner table, finding a smile on her lips as well. Eren propped his chin up on a fist, watching her while their mother set a bowl of stew before them all. "And just what were you up to?"
"I think I was sleeping in the grass," she replied, "The sun felt so nice. I must have dozed off."
"You'll be red as a rose by tonight," chuckled Malcolm.
Carver gesticulated widely with his spoon as he piped up, "Right! The summer dance! Maker, I forgot all about it. Peaches is going to flay me."
"Funny you assume she spares you a single thought when you're apart." Eren had hardly got the words out before the two brothers were a tangle of flailing limbs on the floor.
Bethany stared past them to the field swaying outside the window. Had Theo asked her out to the dance? She couldn't recall. Her limbs still felt heavy with sleep, her mind made fuzzy by the wash of warm summer sun. She could sleep to the lullaby of her brothers bickering. Her father's laugh. Her mother's scolding. She closed her eyes, lips curled as she soaked them in. All of it. Her family, the heady smell of stew, the familiarity of home. Something happens to this place. But she can't remember. It hasn't happened. It will never happen again.
This never happened.
"Bethany?"
She opened her eyes. Dancers spun all around her on a floor strewn with rushes. The Hardridge's huge barn stood all around her, the ceiling beams strung up with lamps, the space echoing with a medley of fiddles and laughter. Theo was holding out his hand while she stood there like a statue. Color crept into her cheeks and she slid her fingers into his. She couldn't recall where she'd been just then. Her mind had flown somewhere very distant. It was back now, held fast in the calloused grip of the Chantry's stable boy. He was nothing like the Templars he was forced to serve. Theo was broad shouldered and sandy haired, freckly all along his cheeks and arms from laboring in the sun all his days. One of his front teeth was chipped, which made his smile a rare and hard won thing. But he did for her. Wide and unabashed, he beamed as he took her in his arms and joined the sea of dancers moving uncoordinated about the space.
"You look lovely tonight," he murmured against her cheek. His south Ferelden accent made the word 'loov lay'. Bethany had always known a stab of envy towards the horses he tended whenever she'd caught him whispering such things to the mares. That private little thrill to hear him say 'lovely', and 'fine lass', and 'pretty girl', even if it was directed at an animal. His gentleness had undone her in those stolen glances into his life. To have it directed at her, after years of want and withholding- she could have melted.
He slid his arms around her waist and held her close. There was a chill in the air- or perhaps she had come in from outside? It was summer, she thought. She wasn't sure the cause of the chill settling into her bones, and knew only that Theo's skin chased away the cold. Bubbles spread up from her belly all through her body as he swung her and she could not help the laugh that escaped. She couldn't recall the last time she'd felt so unburdened. Like light shone through her, from the top of her head down to the tips of her fingers, out of every pore. It was the giddy high of an electricity spell without the fear. But she had no need to fear anything, did she? He knew she was a mage. She'd never told him, yet somehow, as they slowed their dance to sway to a rhythm the same cadence as their heartbeats, she knew this for a fact. He knew she was a mage, and he was unafraid. She had been unafraid to tell him. Her eyes dragged upwards to the lamp above their heads. With flick of a finger, she made it burn pink. The light cast him in a rosy glow and he held her tighter to his body.
"You can cast anything you'd like," he assured her, "Everyone knows you're a mage. None of us care."
Her brow creased. "But the Templars-"
"What Templars?" He cupped her cheek. "Haven't been any in Lothering since you Hawkes came. Go on, Bethany. You can shine as bright as you like."
An old, distant fear welled inside her then. Images that were memories that were dreams that were long forgotten nightmares tried to breach the surface of her mind, but they couldn't get through. There were no Templars in Lothering. That was a simple truth. There were no Templars anywhere. She and her father were just mages, and that was the end of things. Again she turned her face up towards the lights hung aloft on intersecting lengths of rope. The shadows beyond them, flickering with the movements of each candle, became the endless expanse of night. As if the ceiling wasn't there at all, the stars began to dot the darkness. A thousand. A million. An entire sea of twinkling stars so close she could touch them if she reached up. One shot across the mirage, then another. Soon the barn was lit not by lanterns, but by a shower of falling stars that raced across the blackness and listed lazily down from the heavens. They collected like snow on her shoulders, on Theo's head, they kicked up like silver dust under the feet of the other dancers. The stable boy reached up to pluck one out of her hair. Then he blew it from his fingers as though it were no more than dandelion fluff.
Bethany curled her fingers over his forearm to keep herself from flying off into the crowd, into the stratosphere, for she felt like enough to float up into the night sky she had summoned. His skin was hot under her touch. His thumb, roughened by hard work, brushed her bottom lip. Deep brown eyes stared down into her own. He was exactly as she remembered him. Those long months spent wondering. Wondering over something. Over him? Where he had gone? He hadn't gone anywhere, he was holding her. She frowned as she tried to parse these thoughts. She hadn't heard from him after…
After.
After.
"There's only now. Don't think too hard on before," the stable boy said in that low timbre. The sound rumbled in his chest, pooled in her belly. She took his wrist.
"I didn't dance with him. I spent the night of the summer dance with the Willows' boy. I was too nervous to ask him, and Polly had been following him around the village like a lost duckling. I liked Polly. I didn't want to crush her so… I never asked Theo to dance with me. On this or another other night."
Theo's gaze softened with something like pity. "Don't you want to?"
She laughed. "Of course I want to. I've always wanted to. But I didn't. I never got the chance. When Lothering burned, we ran past this barn. Theo was pinned under a smoldering beam. I knew he was dead as soon as I saw him. We couldn't stop, so we didn't. We left him." Bethany turned her gaze beyond his shoulder to the blur of dancers. "And there were Templars in Lothering. A small retinue. Mother traded them eggs for flour from the Chantry's mill, and father always bid them good morning. Father-" Her brow furrowed. The fog was beginning to lift. "Father died in the spring. We burned him in that field. It never did have so many colors. There was too much sun for those kinds of delicate flowers to bloom."
Theo brushed a hand against her cheek. "You don't have to see all of that if you don't want to."
"But it happened. Even if I pretend I never saw it, all of it happened." Bethany looked up into the face of the boy she had loved, in that secret way girls her age loved, longing and far away. "This is just a dream."
"But isn't it a good dream?"
She laid her head against his chest. "Very good. But I'm dying, aren't I? Do I just dream forever? Is that what dying is?"
"I don't know," he admitted, "I'm not sure what awaits mortal spirits. If you really do become one with the Fade or if you just simply dissipate. But does that matter right now? You can stay here for a very long time, Bethany. You can live. Even if it is only a dream, wouldn't it be nice to live a life of your choosing? No wars? No Blight? No regrets?"
"The only thing humans do better than dying is regret," she replied, closing her eyes while the scene faded into immaterial watercolor. "I did live a life I chose. I had my family. My mother. My brothers. The friends we made in Kirkwall. The people we helped. If I rewrite it all, then it won't really be them, will it? It won't be my life. Living is the bad as well as the good."
Sound became muted all around, like hearing distant conversation from underwater. The body wrapping its arms around her reconfigured, muscles shifting, until the form became a familiar shape. One she did not often hold like this. She pressed her hands against Eren's back.
"You're not Eren, are you?"
Silence. Then; "No."
"He died that day. With the Templars. He died to protect me."
"He did."
"Was he… in pain?"
"He did not suffer. He died knowing you would be safe. That I would protect you. He was at peace."
"Are you a spirit? A demon?"
"I'm no longer so sure what I am. Once, I was what you would know as Pride. I was called Mitos in my court of shades."
"Mitos," she murmured, "I suppose it's nice to meet you officially, Mitos."
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For everything I've done to you. Your family. Everything I've stolen."
Bethany opened her eyes. She looked up at the shape which held her, a riot of colors and light in the shape of her brother. The Fade poured from him like water from a pot. There was no denying he was something else. She looked down at the vague shape of a hand at his side and slid her fingers into his.
"Part of me always knew."
The edge of light limning the figure dimmed, colors fading from the vibrant rainbow shimmer that made up its body. It pulled back as though to break the embrace. Bethany held him there.
"It hurt for a long time. A very long time. But you've been Eren longer than Eren was even alive. You're the only version of him I have anymore."
"You have every right to hate me."
"Yet I don't. Us mortals are contradictions. I'm sure you've picked up on that in the time you've been among us."
"That and much more." A warm pool of light in the shape of a hand cupped her cheek.
"I believe there's yet some part of him that lives on in you. Even in those moments I most suspected you were an imposter, there was always a flash of Eren in you. Perhaps he's still a seed germinating somewhere in there."
"Perhaps," Mitos agreed. Then, quieter he said, "Time moves differently here. We could stay for many years as we were, before the Blight. The outside world would hardly move."
Bethany smiled wanly at him. "Do you want to stay for my sake? Or because you don't want to let go?"
He had no answer. He wasn't entirely sure. This had initially been a peaceful dream to send Bethany away with, yet now, standing amidst a pocket of the Fade constructed with smeared, hazy recollections, he wanted to just be here. He wanted her to be here with him.
"Just a few minutes more?" he asked.
Bethany nodded. "Alright. A few minutes more."
They walked hand in hand to a bale of hay Mitos conjured to look out at the fabrication of a moonlit sky. There the siblings sat in companionable silence for much longer than a few minutes. Neither said anything about that. Bethany tilted her head so her cheek rested on Mitos' shoulder. It put him in mind of the trip to Kirkwall, both his mortal siblings sat against him. The love they had for him had never burned brighter.
"No matter what happens, however you came to be. You're still my family."
He tipped his cheek against the top of her head.
"And you are mine. Always."