Pinned
"You’re a taker, Rook.
You would take everything I have to give and then smile, like that made it alright.”
“Davrin,” Rook’s voice was weak. He wanted to look around, to find a way out of this conversation but he was frozen. The edges of the fork had become blades, eating into his skin and his stomach twisted. “You’re a warden. If I could have taken the shot, I would have,” he bartered, knowing it wasn’t good enough.
“That would be a great comfort to Assan, I’m sure. To Eldrin, too.” Davrin’s knife went back to work, this time preceded by a violent, wet squelching. Whatever was on his plate twisted, decisive movement, no longer excused by shadows. A thick tentacle lulled onto the table and Rook finally recognized that it was blight. Nausea and dread seized in Rook’s stomach, clamoring up his throat, a sloshing liquid panic that clogged his lungs. “Maybe you could carve that into my headstone.” Davrin continued, driving his fork through the tentacle, a spray of blood surging from the penetration as he dragged it back to the plate.
Rook could see now that his knuckles were grey, ashen, and black veins climbed the back of his hands and wrists, like the veil jumpers in D’Meta’s Crossing. Davrin followed his gaze and a smile quirked the edge of his bloody mouth.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To let the blight consume me, so it doesn’t consume the world?”
“No, of course that’s not what I wanted,” Rook was pleading now, oily excuses sliding from his tongue. “If I could have - if there had been any other option.”
“There’s always another option. You sent me to die. How much blood will be on your hands before this is over?”
The words were literal now. Desperate and shaking, when he looked down, blood spilled through his clenched fingers and onto his own writhing plate. He was still rigid, unable to move and his startled cry fractured the air as his blood fed the mass. It pulsed like a heartbeat, squirming veins climbing the the fork up to his fingers. The dining hall began to shake around them, a familiar sensation and though he still couldn’t turn to look, he felt the ground split. The shrieks of wardens, real and dying followed, a gruesome echo of Weisshaupt. The grinning visage of Davrin shifted, able to turn towards what he couldn’t. The smile fell away and he was abruptly just Davrin, his face determined.
“Rook,” he said, sparing an earnest glance as he stood from the table, sword in hand, vision turned memory. “Give Assan a hug for me.”
“I’m sorry, Davrin, please,” Rook begged and he meant it, willing himself to move, to break free of whatever bound him as the great head of the archdemon crashed through the wall. It was dazed and Rook remembered that moment so sharply. Exhausted, desperate, powerless in the face of impossible odds he had done exactly what Davrin accused him of. The words were thick with emotion, pitiful comfort in the face of what was about to be lost.
Falling Fearless | EmmRook, M/M, Eventual E
**Omg, I'm sorry. I posted the first part of this last night as a little clip, because I like this scene...but it's pretty long. I didn't realize I hadn't shared any of the parts that made it obvious this was a NIGHTMARE, not real. Davrin is a sweet man! A good friend! A proud warden! He wouldn't be so needlessly nasty, Rook is just having Big Emotions about Weisshaupt.
Love you 😘. Thanks. Bye.
