Several days after his encounter with Aurelie, Rilien was left to conclude that he really did need to set in order his affairs in Kirkwall. He was moving quickly through the paperwork required to officially give the shop to Sandal and Bodahn, and heād additionally informed his various friends, acquaintances, and business partners of his impending departure. He could not, of course, place an exact date on it; much would depend on Lucien, and the speed of Orlesian politics. That said, it was better to be prepared sooner than necessary than to be caught off-guard when a swift regress should be necessary.
That left, as it happened, one final loose end.
Which was how he found himself standing outside one of the many ramshackle homes of the Alienage, a place he never really went. The door was solid, he noted, with a decent lock on it. It also appeared to have been recently painted, something he noticed was true of most of the entryways in the area. It didnāt concern him and so he chose not to speculate upon it, instead raising a hand to knock. Heād already passed Amalia, and so he knew for a fact that Sparrow, and only Sparrow, was currently present in the lodging. Which was perhaps how it should be, for this discussion.
It was expected. Eventually, Sparrow's welcome would run its course and Amalia would gently guide her to the door with the expectation that she'd use her coltish legs to wander back home and tidy up her affairs like they'd previously discussed. In theory, it was easy. Maybe, shewould seek him out and settle things once in for all. Maybe, she would listen to him. Maybe, she would run away. None of these occurred. Not yet. No matter how many times she fantasized and planned and thought about itāshe ended up in the same place: back in their old Darktown hovel. Where it all began. If she had any sense of romanticism, she may have thought it was poetic.
She stood in the dark, weighing her options: wondering whether or not she should just go to him. Should things end there, should things not go as she planned... it would mean an end to something precious. Something she wished to keep here. With her. Someone. She exhaled softly and plopped down on one of the wooden chairs. She did not like endings. They felt like sickly, damning losses. Going to him now would mean facing her greatest fears. Everything would change. She leaned over the table and snapped her fingers above one of the old copper lanterns. Its wick ignited and cast dancing shadows across the walls, scattering an ember glow across her drumming fingertips. She would never be ready. Even so...
There was a knock at the door.
Before she had enough sense to stop herself, Sparrow wandered towards the doorway and settled her hand across the new latch. Perhaps, this was for the best. For who? Him, her, them. She doubted it. She'd long since given up making assumptions when both parties were concerned. Settling on the wind like nomads, traveling far away from one another felt backwards. Unfair. Finally, she unlocked the door and pulled it wide open, only briefly flicking her eyes to meet his. Of course, she'd known he would come. She stepped away and back towards the slip of candlelight. Sparrow occupied the same space she'd sat before. Volumes, spoken between the lines, as per usual. She patted the table and waited.
Rilien entered the unfamiliar home, tracking Sparrowās movement as she took a seat at the table. For a moment, he studied their surroundings. Amaliaās presence was in evidence here, as was that of one or two people he did not know. Curiously, Sparrow did not seem to have spilled out into every room of this place the way she had in their previous Darktown residence, one he still technically owned, if never used. There was little need to pick his way around anything here, as it was quite tidy, but still he moved carefully, almost as one who does not wish to startle a deer or a rabbitā¦ or a small bird, he supposed.
With customary grace, he took the chair across the table from her, studying her fingers as they tapped out some frenetic rhythm or another, then raised his eyes to hers, folding his own hands together at the edge of the wooden slab. He knew she would not speak first. That task was hisāto be expected, since he was the one that had come here, and not the other way around.
It was a difficult thing to explain, largely because, unlike the rest of the things he chose to speak on, Rilien wasnāt entirely sure he had a full understanding of it. Emotions were, for obvious reasons, not his area of expertise. Still, heād resolved to offer the best explanation he could, and so here he was.
āHad you said what you did to me three or four years ago, I would have reacted differently.ā It was, perhaps, an odd way to start talking about the present, but he believed that she probably needed to hear all of it. āWhen I had my emotions back, in that cave with the Horrorā¦ I thought of you, and I felt.ā He gave the word a delicate emphasis, the break in his monotone reinforcement of the statement itself. āI believed, then, that I must love you, for I had not felt anything of its kind before. I remember that I was almost dizzy with it, like a drunk.ā
Rilien seemed taken with the memory for a moment, but then he blinked, and his eyes cleared. āPerhaps, in a way, I did. Perhaps I do. But whatever it is, whatever that feeling was or whatever of it remainsā¦ is insufficient.ā It was perhaps a strange coincidence, verging on the ironic, that the reason he knew it to be so was because he now had an understanding of what love, in its proper form, actually was like. Ashton was in love, Lucien was in love, and as illogical as Rilien found it all, there was some reason to it. They had built those connections on something meaningful, something shared and mutual. They were, in some sense, partnerships as well as mere romances. And that made the affection itself something different, or so it seemed to him. It was also something he knew he did not have, had never had.
For a moment, Rilienās facial expression shifted, just a fraction, but there was something apologetic in the downturn of his mouth, because he knew what he said next was going to be unkind. But it was also going to be the truth. āFor some time, now, I have known that I would eventually return to Orlais. And never once did I contemplate bringing you along. It would be foolish, and dangerous, and a risk, not one I am willing to take.ā He glanced down at this hands, still unmovingāeven when discussing such matters, it would seem he was betrayed by no nervous gesture, no particular feeling of discomfort, though he almost wanted to be. How much sense did it make that while he should inflict harm of this kind, he should receive none in turn?
āI do not want you to misunderstand. I care about you. I want you to be happy and well and free to live as you see fit. I would like to see you again someday in the future, if it were possible. If there were anything you would ask of me that I could give, I would give it without hesitation. You matter, and you always will.ā Left unsaid was the obvious: but that is all.
āI amā¦ sorry.ā It seemed like he only ever apologized to her.
This time, Rilien did not trail in with quick words or instructions. No future missions, or awry adventures involving wayward mages and the like. Nothing would be as it was. She supposed she should have already knownāwhat this entailed, exactly. Even still, Sparrow half expected him to puzzle over someone else's problems, as he always did. There was a thin line of familiarity and a much larger boundary of changes she disliked. Nothing to be done, this time. With these new changes came a finality that rattled her core, she'd felt it as soon as she'd opened the door to him. Maybe, this was punishment for what she'd done to Amalia. For anyone else unfortunate enough to befriend her, only for her to fly away. No. She didn't believe in fate.
As much as she wished to delay the inevitable, there was nothing she could do. It would come, whether she wanted to hear it or not. Whatever preparations she'd made with Amalia concerning what she would say when the time came seemed to flit away with the drumming of her fingertips. What could she say now? It was written all over his face. He had already made his decision, and nothing she could say could sway him. It took her a moment to finally raise her own eyes; murky, dark as they were. Even if she followed him to Orlais... what would change? She was a taciturn tornado waiting to be let in and he was the window, finally shuttering closed.
Sparrow's fingers stopped tapping their jarring tune, and she crooked her head: listening for once, in silence. If she were dramatic and poetic, she might have imagined the world falling away and draining of colourābut she was only one of those things, and she could see him clearly. She watched his mouth and the words they formed. So, she'd been too late to find him, after all. She supposed she'd torture herself with those thoughts later: what might have been, how things could have gone differently. She drew her splayed hand back across the wooden table and settled it atop her knee, crooking her fingers towards her palm. Too late, the fault was hers, then.
There was much she wanted to say in returnāpartly to keep the onslaught at bay, construed of all the things she knew and understood and never, ever wanted to hear, but she found herself speechless. Sparrow gripped her knees, and focused on her fingertips. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't bring herself to interrupt. She wanted to mean something to him, wanted to be something more than what they were, what they'd been before all this... but it was insufficient and he was composed and collected and would not walk through any wind tunnels with her. Surrounded as she was with companions in love, and working relationships, she only managed a lukewarm vision of what love was. It made no sense. She was an ill-fitting frame that did not fit onto any of his walls.
They weren't the same, she and Rilien. She was feral and wild and fickle and sometimes, so unbelievably ugly. He held a goodness he was not aware he harbored and she hungered after it. After him, she supposed. Her hands clenched in her lap; angry fists, solemn fists. She noted his shifts, his expressions deviating like stiff clockwork. Fractions of a fraction: just there, in a brief flicker. Even though she'd known this, that he would not have taken her to Orlais all alongāsettled like a cancer in the back of her mind, it was worse hearing it spoken aloud. It made it real. She exhaled softly through grit teeth and slowly stood in front her seat, settling her hands palms down across the table. He'd said his piece. Everything that needed saying at least.
What she wanted? He could not give. He'd said it clear enough.
A creaky, strange laugh chortled from her throat. Alien to her own ears, though she swore that she couldn't grasp all of what she felt. Not in this moment. There was too much information, filtering in from all angles. āAh, I see,ā she faltered momentarily before scratching the back of her neck, much too hard, and dropped it back down to her side. Meticulous even when explaining difficult circumstances, Rilien hadn't left room for any countermeasures. She shouldn't have been surprised, but her eyebrows still drew together: defeated. She'd lost him. And with him: her home. āYou said I was unfair once. Y'know, you're much worse.ā
There was nothing else she could ask for. Nothing else she wanted besides what she'd already asked of him. An impossible request. She rounded the table, slow and measured in her steps. Fingertips skating across the wooden knots, trailing as she walked. How many times had she heard him apologize, as she took and took from him. What had she offered? Strange, the things she thought of now. She leaned forward and crooked one hand around his back, slipping the other beneath his jawline and shifted his chin towards hers. A first and last kiss: another thing she'd take.
And he parted with it willingly. It was not, after all, so much to ask. One of his hands found the nape of her neck, fingers curling softly into her hair, and this, at least, was something Rilien knew he knew how to do. Even when they parted, he kept his palm there, pressing the center of his brow to hers, so that they were close enough that their eyelashes might almost have brushed. That close, he could see the possibility, and understood in full what he was relinquishing. His fingers fell away, brushing softly over her jawline as though loath to be parted from her skin.
"May you flourish.ā It was nothing more than a murmur, but the feeling in it was almost what anyone else might convey in the same situationāladen, heavy, inseparable from the words themselves. Sentiment, in full.
The difference was that it fled as soon as it had appeared, and his expression smoothed out even as he stood, pushing his chair in as a good guest should, and then departing without a further word.
āMay we meet again,ā whispered just as softly when they parted and finally drew away from each other. She meant it. Because of him, her world had changed. It was a simple, pathetic wish, drumming above the din of her dismal heartbeat.
Sparrow stepped aside, allowing him to pass and slipped back into her previous perch. Steepling her fingers in a tight, tangled weave, she focused her murky eyes on the candle to keep herself from watching him leave.