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“What are you doing, big guy?” Neve quirked up her eyebrow as she stepped out onto the roof of the Shadow Dragon hideout. The sky was dark overhead, the air charged with the scent of the oncoming storm as the Qunari stood staring out towards the docks.
“Waiting,” he simply replied in an uncharacteristically tense voice. His shoulders were set, head high as his fists clenched at his sides.
She felt a single drop of rain hit her cheek as her prosthetic clinked when she walked, her shoulder brushing his as she came to stand at his side. He softened for the barest of seconds, as if her presence called him back from the ledge he teetered precariously upon. Though he still refused to look her way as she felt the force of his magic crackling along his skin.
“You're thinking about him again, aren't you?” Neve didn't need him to answer. The last few days had been spent tiptoeing around the subject of Gladius. Riley knew she wanted to return to the Lighthouse soon, and she was aware he wasn't quite ready to face the past once more.
“I…came to tell you I'm going back tomorrow,” she sighed as she slipped her hand in her pocket. “Despite everything the world is still ending, and it's not like they can do this without me.”
That finally broke his concentration, the Qunari turning to her as his brow furrowed in deepest frown. He sucked in a ragged breath, as if there wasn't enough air for the words he needed to say. But finally, he allowed himself to speak as he quietly breathed out, “I can't let you go back there alone.”
Neve shouldn't have been shocked, but she was. And the sky seemed to mirror the tension stretching between them as a single crack of lightning split the Minrathous skyline. They had been almost inseparable since the dragon attacks, bonding over shared grief and their heartache for Gladius. And though neither had put a name to what was growing, it was obvious that it was something more.
“Riley you don't have to–” Neve began. But she was immediately silenced by the sparks that erupted along his skin as his magic swelled with his irritation.
“I don't. But I am,” he growled so deep she felt it vibrate in her own chest. He closed his eyes and inhaled, reining in his emotions before his mismatched irises met hers once more. “I can't promise to not still be angry,” he said as he stepped forward, his calloused fingers raising to brush the lace of her hat from the gentle lines of her face. “But I swear to be by your side. We are in this together, Detective Gallus. Even if it means seeing him again.”