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Diptych on Aging

Summary:

When your candle is no longer burning from both ends, even weakness becomes a blessing.

A matched set of meditations on surviving to a certain age under the Grey Wardens' cure.

Chapter Text

The first time it happens, she’s just finished sparring with one of the recruits (young, energetic, supremely talented, can’t tell if that cockiness is going to get him killed at the Joining or if it’s masking something deeper—it’s funny how they all run together now).  They make their way to the well in the Vigil’s courtyard, and she’s drawing the bucket up when it hits her, like a fire bomb igniting in the pit of her stomach, spreading quickly, too quickly, through her limbs and her lungs, and suddenly there isn’t enough air in the sky above her…

Creators, is this what it feels like, catching a fever?  It’s been so long since she’s caught ill, she doesn’t remember.  Grey Wardens don’t get sick, after all… but she isn’t a Grey Warden anymore.

She sets the bucket down, and empties a ladleful over her head, but it feels as if her skin’s just burning it off.  What’s wrong with her?

“Commander?” the recruit says.

“Don’t mind me,” she gasps, giving him what she hopes is a wry smile.  “They say the hair’s the first thing to go,” which doesn’t even make sense in this context, but she’s been living with Alistair far too long to care about that.  She lets the recruit wash up before getting a second ladle—she’s going to have to sip at it, she can tell, and she isn’t one to make the young suffer while she takes her time.

She’s crying.  She can’t breathe, and she’s crying, and she’s burning, and she has no clue what’s going on.

She wants to laugh.

She dismisses the recruit, and she’s halfway to the infirmary when the burning slows, settles… and then stops.

And that’s when it dawns on her.

Hurrying to her study, she checks the silvered glass in the room and bursts into laughter when she sees the tips of her ears are still red.  Mythal, she must have looked a wreck, as rosy cheeked as Alistair in a brothel.  Part of her wishes he could have seen it, if only for the sheer novelty; the rest of her is mortified.

Which is silly; he’s bound to catch her like this at some point, now, and it’s hardly anything to be embarrassed about.  If anything, it’s a medal of honor.  So she laughs, and throws herself back onto the bed, turning her tears from shame to relief.

Hot flashes.  She never thought she’d live long enough to have them.