prompt: Bann Teagan Guerrin / desire demon - serenade
labelled: no warnings apply

He’d hugged Connor close, and Eamon too, grateful for the ones left behind in a way no man — not the Warden, not anyone — could have possibly gathered.

He’d smiled tremulously and agreed when Connor asked him — not Eamon, but him — to see him off to the Fade. The boy beat back sleep as long as he could, peppering Teagan with questions about everything — from the mundane to the fantastical — before exhaustion settled in on his eyelids and smoothed out the creases in his forehead, around his mouth. His hand tightened around Teagan’s and only loosened, involuntarily, when sleep had gained full dominion over his small form.

Teagan had stayed perched on the edge of the bed until his spine screamed for relief and his legs tingled with circulation loss.
He will be fine, of course he will be. The demon is gone. The Warden ensured to that.
The Warden ensured…

But it was not thoughts of the sombre-faced Warden, or even of Connor, that haunted Teagan as he pulled the heavy quilt over his bare, freckled shoulders and buried his head in the pillow.
He heard singing. His eyes closed. The world fell away…

Isolde glided to him, smiling lips curving around Orlesian verses, her hair loose and tumbling over bare shoulders. The song swelled in Teagan’s ears and mind and heart, and his eyes were full of her, all of her.

It was said that one has no form in the Fade. But Teagan felt the heat and pressure behind his eyes, the tears beginning to form; he felt her hands over his shoulders and arms and around his waist, the nestling of her body against his, her voice vibrating in her chest and abdomen.

“Teagan…” Her voice, a talisman; she had only to speak his name, and her will was immediately his command — right up until the very end. Had she known? Perhaps. Had she…?

Even here, in this world-between-worlds, she had only to ask, and Teagan would have granted.

But she had nothing to ask. She was no demon in Isolde’s fair form, she was merely Isolde, dream-Isolde, haunt-you-Isolde, wake-up-and-weep-Isolde.

Under cover of the night, the night that kept secrets, Teagan wept bitterly, and envied Connor his demon.