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PARISA

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[volkarin]

[ He knows. Of course he knows, when she looks at him the way she does, with stars hung in her eyes; when her girlishness spools out like a ribbon, cherry-bright and charming, colors he's never used to paint in his own life; when she holds onto him like this at the prospect of his death. And yet, to hear the words spoken aloud sends an arrow singing into his heart, blossoming into wave after wave of giddy warmth as it finds its mark. It hadn't escaped his notice that his I love yous have been met with words molded into different shapes, but it hadn't mattered, not really.

And yet. And yet, and yet, and yet.

His arms encircle her, holding her close, his gaze cataloging her as she is in this moment, not because he fears he'll never see her again but because she only grows more beautiful with each breath. My beacon, he thinks. The light that will pull him back to shore and safety. ]

You say that as though to devote my afterlife to the care of your hats would be anything but a privilege, [ he says, though he falls a little short of matching her tone, humor undercut by their context, by the very distinct and earnest thought that to serve as her skeletal footman wouldn't be the worst fate. So he gives it up before speaking next, his voice a hush between them. ] I'll come back, my love.

[ And then, silence, as their lips meet. His hand curls around one of her knees, more than broad enough to cover the whole of it; the other drifts gently down the length of her arm. ]

Tonight. [ He'd dallied too long, last month. He won't make the same mistake again. ] When I return ... [ No, not quite. He starts over. ] Depending on the manner in which I return, Dorian and Solas will be able to assist, if needed.

[ When he looks back on this, he'll think of it as a selfish death. It doesn't matter that he does it for what he perceives to be the greater good — it matters that he asks it of her. Because, this, whispered into that same, tiny sliver of space— ]

Would you stay with me?

[ —is selfish, too. ]

🎀

[multiverse]

( maybe it goes without saying that parisa likes a bit of selfishness, particularly when it comes from emmrich, quietly requested. particularly when it isn't selfish at all, when he doesn't need to ask, because it's already true. she leans back on his shoulder, staring at him, a huff that otherwise would be a laugh whistling out of her chest. )

Where else would I be? ( if there's a space beside emmrich, she'll fill it. like water in a glass, no gaps. ) Foolish necromancer.

( silence settles over them like the setting sun, drawing light from the room as it slips to full night. parisa occupies her time memorizing emmrich, watching him watch her, running her fingers up and down the length of his chest. she always imagined these sorts of dangerous experiments were for ambitious men — she thinks of nico, knowledge-hungry and starved for old, rich texts full of the secrets of immortality, of staying awake, or keeping predators out, and is fairly sure he'd kill himself for an answer if it was promised to him. in the end, libby made that choice for him — dead now, parisa imagines he knows little of anything. emmrich, on the other hand? profoundly lacking in ambition. maybe it's harsh to say — but his own lychdom is more of an academic pursuit, the graduation cap on his head, than any hunger for power as it would be for parisa. even this death isn't in search of the strange, various ailments of leftover decay — he's dying, it seems, in apology. in an effort to aid people.

she's dating jesus christ, dying on a cross for the sins of everyone on board this mean, cruel ship.

eventually, emmrich has to prompt her. she's sat in his lap for an hour probably, just cataloguing him and thinking, memorizing how high his chest lifts when he breathes, how it changes the closer she cuddles into him. parisa, he says, and she springs up, giving him a first by tidying the room she destroyed, pushing drawers back in their places, setting her shoes in a tidy line beside his. at the dresser, she asks herself the question what should emmrich die in? before deciding on a cashmere pajama set she likes but doesn't love, in dark burgundy. there are clothes here for her, but parisa stays in her dress, bullying him into bed and laying herself beside him, touching from head to toe. )

Don't worry, ( she promises, kissing him. ) you'll wake up dead.

( emmrich is a creature of habit even in his dreams. parisa is there, observing them, letting him take her on a green garden stroll through the grand necropolis, a splatter of red against the otherwise sickly lighting the mourn watch seems to prefer. she doesn't control the dream, and so it stutters and skips and blends nonsensically the way dreams do — when emmrich's unconscious mind dreams of something to show her they're suddenly there, in the middle of a conversation, following the logic that all dreams do: they're real, until you realize they aren't.

most of her is there in the dream, soaking in what she can of emmrich's remaining time. but her split mind is still awake beside him, and the technical aspects of her move as she will, getting up from bed and moving effortlessly on top of him, hands around his neck. she's aware of herself doing it, but she's not really present — she's with emmrich, kissing him in the memorial gardens, teasing him about his room, testing his knowledge of bone bits she selects at random. femur, scaphoid, clavicle. distracting. monitoring his pain. the body underneath hers doesn't thrash as she cuts off air supply, because it doesn't know it's suffocating. there's just the dream, slowly growing dimmer. dream emmrich's confused face, and with the split second of his remaining life comes understanding, which fills parisa with panic. it's time? he doesn't have the time to wake up luckily, because he's already dead. parisa's consciousness returns to her, coming to with her hands around emmrich's purple neck, letting him go with a watery gasp.

she sprawls backwards, sat at the foot of his bed, watching him. since no one is around to observe it, she cries. she isn't like embry or charles, hungry to clutch at dead bodies in denial — she knows emmrich is dead, because she did it, because his mind isn't there with hers, blending together the space between them. when she reaches out to touch his cheek, he's just a corpse, already going cold without regulation. his chest doesn't lift. he doesn't lean into the kiss she presses on his mouth. he's just dead. right.

inexplicably, she thinks about naseer, her fated husband. dead, too. she never got to say to him — never really got to tell him how badly she despised him, how unfair he was to her, how cruel he never understood that he was the way men never understand the depths of their own societal cruelties. she thought if i told him, it would be easier. if he knew, then she wouldn't have to mourn him. she wouldn't have to feel sorry, or bad, or ever think about him again, actually. he could just be dead, and she could live her life free of regrets, and that could be the end of things.

well — it was a mistake. honesty doesn't make anything feel better. she told emmrich i've fallen in love with you, and he's still dead, still in bed where she left, in pajamas she dressed him in, gone. parisa sits in the armchair he occupied earlier, watching him until sunrise. eventually the maids show up and take his body away, making no comments about the purple bruising around his throat. parisa searches through his dresser for what to bury him in. the green, maybe? the purple? he has a bottle of the red wine she likes at the bottom drawer of his desk, and she drinks it, warm, from the neck of the bottle. the room feels dead, too. )