Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Those who oppose thee shall know the wrath of heaven. Field and forest shall rise and devour them, the wind shall tear their nations from the face of the earth, lightning shall rain down from the sky. They shall cry out to their false gods and find silence. —Canticle of Andraste 7:19

cassandra

The elven woman infuriates her.

Cassandra, some time from now, will come to regret her initial thoughts about the woman who would become their Herald, their Inquisitor. Will apologize, stilted, regretful, but honest. Will receive an apology in turn. But as it is, she is grieving, grappling with losses and catastrophe unimaginable after years piled on years of unrest, and though she is capable of kindness, she hurts. She lashes out at the nearest and most conspicuous target.

The elf does not take her ire without complaint. She never does, not now, and not in the future, when they are something approaching friends. She snaps back, fire blazing behind her eyes.

The elf wakes, dazed, hours after the Breach rips apart the sky. The Mark on her hand flickers and grows with each pulse of the Breach, green light like the tear into the Fade, like the bottleglass green of her eyes, and the words which spill from her lips at Cassandra’s demands and Leliana’s sharp questions are in a language neither of them know. The tone sounds panicked.

“Even the Dalish know Trade,” Leliana says, expression cold. “This will gain you no time, here.”

The elf blinks up at them. Looks down at the Mark on her hand, which flares and cracks like a wildfire through dried grasses.

“I do not know what happened,” she finally responds. Her accent is heavy, and unfamiliar to Cassandra—though Leliana is correct in that the tattoos across her face mark her as one of the Dalish, and Cassandra has not met many of the Dalish to be familiar with their manner of speech.

Leliana tells her she must be taken to the Breach. The elf does not protest, and Cassandra, none-too-gentle, hauls her to her feet and marches her out of the cells beneath the Chantry and into the blinding sun. The elf squints, at the sky, the glare off the snow-covered mountains. The Breach flares in the sky. So, too, does the Mark, and she goes to her knees.

She doesn’t cry out. Cassandra, reluctantly, respects that.

“This is killing you,” she says, kneeling and cutting the ropes from the elf’s wrists. The elf pulls back the moment she can, wary. Not a word of thanks. “It grows with the Breach, with each passing hour, and if we do not stop it, surely all will be lost.”

The wariness shifts, fades. Cassandra looks at a woman who has weathered hardship and come out the other side, for better or worse. 

“So I have no choice,” she says, and the calmness does not hide how it feels like an accusation.

“None of us have a choice,” Cassandra answers, and yanks her to her feet again.

She is a mage, though the soldiers had found no staff with her, only a pair of well-used daggers, small and sharp, and Leliana could find no reports of a Dalish elf with mages or templars. Cassandra, then, does not know the elf is a mage until she grabs a staff from a shattered crate and immolates a shade to ash and vapor.

“Drop your weapon,” she demands, and the elf looks back, stalwart, unyielding.

“I do not need it to cast.”

Of course not. And carrying a staff at the Conclave would have made her that much harder to ignore.

Reluctant, Cassandra lets her keep the staff, and they push forward—to Solas, who had offered his help in the immediate aftermath; to Varric, who had not offered any help without a great deal of persuasion, but is still here anyway.

The elf studies her hand, which glows and flashes still, more now that she has closed one of the small tears in the Fade. The first, of countless. Maker only knows what they will do about the rest—one person cannot be expected to heal all the holes in the sky, in the Veil itself.

And yet. One person is all they have.

Varric introduces himself, verbosely, as the dwarf is prone to doing. Cassandra, impatient, clears her throat: they have no time for this.

The elf looks away from her hand at last to speak. “...Varric,” she repeats. “Solas. Pride.”

Solas looks surprised for a moment. “That would be a translation, yes.”

“Mm.” She nods. Takes a slow breath in, and lets it out. “I am Revas Lavellan.”

“Freedom,” Solas answers.

“That would be a translation, yes,” Lavellan replies, and Solas seems amused, and Cassandra continues to be impatient even as she realizes she hadn’t known Lavellan’s name, and Lavellan doesn’t know hers. No matter—there are more important things.

Lavellan looks up to the sky, then, and though she cannot hear Cassandra’s thoughts, she seems to reach the same conclusion. “We must hurry.”

Though the Mark must be causing her pain, Lavellan does not let it show. She lets nothing show, after her initial panic and collapse in Haven. Her expression is difficult to read, her voice is firm, her mannerisms blunt; she fights with that same bluntness, her spells leaning towards brute force than any subtlety, than the barriers and boosts of speed which Solas provides.  She continues to demonstrate that bluntness upon meeting Chancellor Roderick, who demands her reimprisonment so that she can be taken to Val Royeaux for execution.

Cassandra is not entirely opposed to that judgment, but it is… impractical. Lavellan can close the rifts. Lavellan can potentially close the rift, the Breach, the nightmare in the sky. And, he does not offer a trial.

Lavellan says nothing as Roderick ends his tirade. Then, she laughs. It is tinged with hysteria, and yet, it is genuine.

“You are a very ironic man, shemlen,” she says, and laughs some more, and says something else in that language of hers. Roderick turns the same red as his robes, and Leliana interjects before anyone can say anything else. Cassandra swallows back a disgusted noise. The disrespect, the irreverence. 

But Lavellan can close the rifts, and they must bring her forward to the Breach. Cassandra catches her when she stumbles, each time the Breach expands, and Lavellan grits her teeth and makes no sound of pain, offers no word of thanks. She marches on, and she does not let the demons or the rifts or the snow or the long climb stop her. 

Irreverent, but determined. 

She slows when they reach the Temple of Sacred Ashes—what remains of it. The stench in the air is awful, charcoal, burning, something metallic. Cassandra does not avert her gaze from the bodies, frozen in their last, awful moments. She owes them that much.

“This was… the, the ashes, were brought here? By Havard?” Lavellan speaks, stiltedly, her voice muffled by the cloth she holds to cover her mouth and nose. 

“They were,” Cassandra answers. She wants to ask—why does one of the Dalish know of Chantry history? But there is no time, and she cannot think of a way to ask it without it sounding wrong, which makes her think perhaps she shouldn’t ask it at all. The Breach looms. Varric, foolish dwarf, suggests a ladder.

“This place was large,” Lavellan whispers. “I remember that. Massive.”

The rock and earth has melted into glass, shot through with veins of eerie green. Rocks spiral upwards toward the rip in the sky, defying gravity and nature itself; pieces of the Temple are visible in the rubble, drifting through the air like clouds instead of so many tons of stone and mortar. There, parts of the columns which had lined the grand sanctuary. There, a piece of the doors that had opened into the atrium. There, Andraste, the base of the statue fixed to the ground, pieces of her torso, her crowned head, adrift. The ground steams, and she can feel the heat of it through the soles of her boots. Circling around through the rubble, trying to find the clearest path to the central rift, the green is joined by red, and the lyrium causes the air to hum and buzz in a way that makes her skin crawl.

She would be anywhere else, anywhere but here, where so many have died, so many she knew personally and knew well—friends, friends so dear they could have been family—Most Holy—

She would have died here, but because she was not here, she did not. Now, it remains to her to pick up the pieces. To Seek out the truth, to bring order to the chaos. Bringing Lavellan here is little more than desperate hope, but hope has carried many through their darkest days, and it will carry them here.

Lavellan is no longer stopping to stare. She looks at the red lyrium as they pass it, looks at the statues and the corpses and the ruins, but her pace does not once falter as she marches on. Not even as the Fade distorts, echoes, spits words back at them. Cassandra demands answers. Lavellan, over and over, repeats: I don’t know. I don’t remember. 

Bring forth the sacrifice.

Andraste, save me!

Get away from her!

“You said a woman was behind me?” Lavellan asks. The archers are taking up position around them to provide covering fire. She dares not open the rift, she says, until they do, for none of them know what might come out on the other side. “When I fell from this rift?”

“No one knows who she was,” Cassandra tells her with a nod. “I suppose you do not remember this, either?”

Lavellan fixes her with a stony expression. 

“I was wondering if it could have been your Divine.”

Cassandra does not have time to consider this, either, does not have time for further questions, because Leliana gives the signal that her people are in position, along with some of Cullen’s troops. Lavellan lifts her hand. The rift cracks and rips. A Pride demon claws its way out from the other side, with shades and wisps and terrors, and they fight, and Lavellan stays on her feet even as the Breach above them continues to grow.

When it closes is when she collapses, and she does not rise. Solas rushes to her side, rolls her carefully onto her back. Her hand, limp and still on the ground, glows faintly.

Above them, the clouded sky twists and roils, and the rocks above them remain suspended and circling, but the strange and flickering shadows are gone. The daylight looks like daylight again. The hell which opened above them is not gone, but it is held at bay.

“She lives,” Solas calls, “but she needs a more skilled healer than I! Quickly, we must get her back to Haven.”

Cassandra sheaths her sword and signals for two of the soldiers to carry her. Foolish woman, she has only needed to make this trek twice in the day, here and back. The other times, she has the fortune of being unconscious.

When she wakes, there will be more questions, and hopefully more answers—what she was doing at the Conclave, what the last thing she remembers is, where she came from. But for now.

For now, Cassandra breathes, ash coating her throat, and looks up at the broken and fragmented statue that towers above her. 

“Andraste, have mercy on us all.”

Chapter Text

You have grieved as I have. You, who made worlds out of nothing. We are alike in sorrow, sculptor and clay, comforting each other in our art. —Canticle of Trials, 1:8

varric

Varric isn’t sure how to describe their Herald. He’s thinking a lot about it, of course; even if he never publishes any of it, he’s writing all of this down for posterity, one voice of many telling his account of whatever the hell is going on these days.

It almost feels like home. Not enough city—Haven is half quaint village and half hastily-built military base—but the number of demons is about the same.

He can describe Lavellan well enough, if it’s just the facts, what few he knows. Red-brown hair, always in a braid. Eyes like green glass. Tanned and freckled skin. Pale, yellow-gold vallaslin. Falon’Din, he thinks. Daisy explained it all to him, what her tattoos meant, and what the others he had seen meant. Falon’Din—the elven god of the dead.  

He can make a good metaphor out of that. Her name means freedom, Solas had mentioned on the trek up the mountain—freedom in death, freedom from death, something, something, walked from the Fade unharmed and alive. It’s a start, if nothing else.

But Varric knows very little about her, all said and done. She tries to keep to herself, but isn’t given much of a choice. She butts heads with Cassandra constantly. She disparages the Chantry just as often, and she laughs when people call her Andraste’s Herald. She wanders the woods, gathering herbs. She walks through Haven, ignoring the stares directed her way as though she’s used to it all, or just very good at putting on a face of indifference. She listens.

For all her dislike of the Chantry, during the first several days of her time in Haven, she sits inside of it as unobtrusively as possible and listens. The few who recognize her and are brave enough to question—or, like with Varric, the few who are nosy enough to pry—are told that while the Dalish tell stories of Andraste, who fought with Shartan and freed the elven slaves from much of Tevinter, they do not worship her, and that Lavellan would like to know what human stories they tell firsthand.

The Chantry sisters are scandalized when Lavellan mentions Shartan. Varric would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for the following argument when they tried to say his story was Dissonant—he caught only the tail end of it, echoing through the closed doors, and saw Lavellan storming out in a righteous fury a moment later. After that, she avoids the Chantry and the sisters more often.

She doesn’t wear shoes, but carefully wraps her feet in warm cloth, and does the same to her wrists and the palms of her hands. She finds the blacksmith the moment she hears there is one and gets him to forge a blade nearly half the length of the staff she carries, and then she gets him to attach it to the end of said staff. It’s almost comical, the way that she carries it around, for it’s taller than she is now, but Varric knows she knows how to use it and that takes the humor right out.

She thanks him, and the quartermaster, and the apothecary, all for the work that they’ve done. Then she finds Varric and thanks him, too. 

“Whatever for, my lady Herald?” he asks her. Her relatively pleasant expression—by which Varric means, her usual stonewall—curdles.

“Not a Herald.”

“I’m afraid correcting people on that won’t get you far. Once you get a title, that thing takes on a life of its own.”

She laughs, a sharp and bitter thing. “You are right, in that. But you’re not people. If I may call you Varric, and not Master Tethras, you may call me anything else.”

Please call me literally anything else is left unspoken but heavily implied. 

Varric nods, conceding the point. “Well, I’ll have to come up with a good nickname, then. We’ve got our Lady Seeker, and Chuckles… Ruffles, Curly, Nightingale… any input, or do I have free reign?”

She looks startled, then, like she hadn’t expected him to agree. 

“I…"

“I’ll let you know when I come up with something, how’s that?”

She hates it when people treat her as something more than she is, which means she’s often in a foul mood. Despite that, she has moments of what Varric hesitates to call softness, because she isn’t soft or tender or anything like that, it’s just… She’s as blunt as ever, and yet, she thanks him for fighting at her side. She thanks the servants, the workers, the passing soldiers and guards and scouts.

Kindness. That’s the word. Not a gentle kindness, but kindness all the same.

She doesn’t ask for anything she doesn’t need. The blade on her staff has a practical use. The fur-lined cloak she requests from the quartermaster is for warmth. Varric overhears a conversation between her and Ruffles about appearances and almost gives himself away laughing, as Lavellan responds:

“Why do I need to look like anything? I am to travel and close rifts and be covered in blood and demon goop. I will be fighting. I will not look nice.”

She has a point. Maker knows how many perfectly good jackets he ruined because of Hawke’s insistence on going into caves to fight giant spiders. 

She’s a set of contradictions, and Varric isn’t entirely sure what to make of her yet. But he knows what it does to a person when they start to lose themselves in a name too big for them, and so he keeps an eye out for her. Maybe she isn’t someone he’ll grow to like—though how she makes the Seeker fume and fuss puts her in his good books—but he worries all the same.

“So, Harold,” he says to her once, unprompted. “Are you ready to see Val Royeaux?”

“Orlais is a shiny shithole built on the backs of my people,” she answers promptly with venom and vitriol—which, fair, he did ask—and then stops in her tracks. “...Harold?”

“You weren’t fond of Herald, so I thought I’d switch a few letters around. I can switch a few more, if you like.”

There’s a pause. Then, she laughs, in the same way she laughs when she overhears a Chantry sister preaching of Andraste, sacred and sanctified.

“Harold,” she says. “Harold! I love it. Only call me that, now, please.”

“Your wish is my command, my Lady Harold.”

Her laughter echoes up the path that leads away from Haven as they set out.

#

Val Royeaux is a shiny shithole, and this is coming from Varric, who likes the finer and fancier things in life. Their visit isn’t entirely a waste, at least; they recruit a Jenny, and they gain the alliance of the First Enchantress to the Imperial Court, and they are given a message by Fiona of the mage rebellion. They also see the Lord Seeker march his Templars out of the city and bludgeon a Revered Mother over the head. So, not entirely a good time, either.

Shiny shithole.

But now they only wait for Cassandra and Solas to finish up a bit of individual business they each had, standing to one side of the Summer Bazaar, all bright colors, pennants and banners waving in a cool breeze, chattering voices and merchants selling their wares. Almost reminds him of Hightown, in a way—Hightown was a shiny shithole, too, but it was his shiny shithole.

“Varric?” Lavellan asks, interrupting his musings, and her voice is unusually quiet. 

“What can I do for you, Harold?” he asks. It brings the ghost of a smile to her lips, so things can’t be too bad. 

“I have a… favor. A request. Please.”

He straightens up. She sounds like she isn’t sure how to ask, or she isn’t sure he’d say yes, or both. But, she isn’t acting the way his friends did when their favor was something more like, “hey, Varric, could you come to the Bone Pit with me again? I promise there won’t be any more dragons,” despite there always being more dragons in the Bone Pit. 

In fact, she doesn’t ask anyone for favors that he's noticed. So Varric, recognizing the moment for what it is, pays attention.

“Your wish is but my command.”

“Would you go into that shop, the… the one down the street, on the other side from us." She points. "And could you ask how much the scarf in the window is? Just, just to ask, that’s all.”

They’re garnering odd looks, a dwarf and a Dalish elf standing so brazenly in the marketplace, dressed for travel—and not in the Orlesian style. Varric doesn’t care, never has, and as far as he’s been able to tell Lavellan deems it all beneath her notice. 

He was wrong, so it seems.

“Sure thing,” Varric says, careful to sound just as casual as he had before. Nothing out of the ordinary. No calling attention to this any more than Lavellan already has by asking. “You sure you just want me to ask?”

“Just ask,” she says, quick, sharp. “I doubt any of us can afford any of the overpriced nonsense and excess in this place.”

A few of the nobles in earshot raise their fans to their masked faces, scandalized, Varric notes with amusement. 

He finds the place she was talking about, some place that is, indeed, well out of their price range for casual spending, clothes of fine fabrics and etched beads made of precious stones and gems. Prissy Orlesian styles. The usual. Though, not as ridiculous as some of their fashions.

Still, as Varric approaches the shopkeep, he crunches numbers in the back of his mind—prices have been all out of sorts since the Blight, rampant inflation and deflation in different markets, all in flux, all always changing. The value of the sovereign is exponentially smaller than what it once was. But he’s got fingers in all kinds of pots. One thing loses value, another thing gains it. He arranged for contacts with the Merchants’ Guild to start funneling some of that gold of his towards the fledgling Inquisition the moment he found out about it. 

Lavellan doesn’t ask for favors. Doesn’t let on that anything is bothering her. It reminds him all too much of Hawke, in the last few years, but here they're only just getting started. Maker knows what the future has in store.

So Varric greets the man who approaches him with an easygoing smile, clasps his hands together in a way that flashes the many fancy rings on his fingers, and asks:

“How much for that lovely scarf in the window? I know a young woman who’s had her eye on it, and I was thinking I might surprise her.”

The others have joined Lavellan by the time he finishes haggling, and he doesn’t have time to hand the wrapped package over as Cassandra immediately begins to harass him for being late, as though he wasn’t the one waiting on her. He deflects and dodges, which only annoys her more, and Lavellan starts to snicker as they walk back down the Avenue leaving the city which makes things worse. Only when they’re in their carriage which will take them to the harbor does he take it from his jacket and hand it over. Solas is sitting up with the driver, fond of the sunlight and open air, and Cassandra is riding separately on horseback, so it’s only the two of them inside.

Lavellan blinks. She looks at the scented paper which the shop had wrapped his purchase in, the fine ribbon it’s tied with.

“A gift,” he says, prompting. “For you. Go on, open it.”

She does. She goes very still.

“I did not-” she starts.

“A gift,” Varric repeats. “They had it up in the window because it was on discount, if that makes you feel any better. Besides, with the Lady Seeker putting up our room and board, and all meals provided free of charge, it’s not like I’ve been spending much lately.”

It had not been on discount. It had been more expensive than a simple, unadorned scarf had any right to be—but, the shopkeep had said, that was all the rage! Minimalism, or something like that. Less is more. His lady friend had good taste, didn’t he know!

Lavellan is staring at him, and her mask is gone, and she looks tired and stunned and deeply touched all at once. If Varric was the cuddly type—if he thought she would let him—he would give her a hug. As it is, he nudges her knee with the toe of his boot. 

“You deserve nice things, in the middle of all this mess, you know.”

She clears her throat and looks away. With something like reverence, she runs her fingers across the fabric, a fine silk weave dyed a pale golden-yellow. 

“I… had one, this color. A long time ago. I think it... burned...? I… hm. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Varric answers gently, and turns to find the passing scenery outside the window the most interesting thing in the whole damn world to give her a few minutes to compose herself.

#

Lavellan rides into the Hinterlands like a battering ram and makes herself the biggest problem around. All the other problems now need to deal with her.

Maker’s breath, he misses Hawke so much it hurts. 

They gather herbs. They hunt rams. They deal with wolves, and mark locations for watchtowers, and clear out some of the more radical groups of mages and rogue Templars who won’t listen to reason. A surprising number of them realize they’re willing to surrender when they see the elven woman charging them with a staff and blade even taller than she is, the wrath of heaven blazing at her fingertips.

Oh, that’s a good line. Varric pauses to scribble it down in a notebook he keeps in his pocket for this very purpose, and ignores Cassandra’s disapproving glare. 

Horsemaster Dennett returns to Haven. The Crossroads see more and more refugees coming in now that the paths to get there are safe. Most of the rifts are closed. Lavellan, jaw set, continues forward without faltering. 

Varric follows in her footsteps, crossbow loaded. Right now, that’s all he can do.

They’ve paused to rest, just but a moment. There had been a bear. None of them wanted to walk far after fighting the bear. 

Down the road—or what passed for a road, at least, in the middle of these bloody hills, is one of the monuments to Tyrdda Bright-Axe they had passed before on their journey to find the horsemaster. Here, in the small glade where Varric tries to figure out how he could fix the teeth marks in his crossbow, surrounded by crumbling stone and overgrown brush and briar, another statue: Maferath Repentant. His face is hidden, as though he’s weeping.

“It’s strange,” Cassandra says to no one in particular. She’s resting, which is a testament to how much the fight had taken out of them all. Varric never thought he’d see the day when Cassandra was resting. “How no one knew that Tyrrda was a mage. It seems so… obvious, knowing, and reading those inscriptions.”

Varric hums a moment in thought. They’ve been in the Hinterlands for close to two weeks, running themselves ragged, more than enough time for Nightingale’s scouts, with the monuments as a guide, to track down the famous Avvar’s final resting place—and the staff she was buried with. He starts to say something about how stories are often misleading, and how tales are butchered in their constant retellings, and how no one giving an account can be perfectly unbiased. It’s why he never needed to do much work with the rumors, back in Kirkwall. The things had minds of their own, and after a point, Hawke’s adventures became so improbable even he wouldn’t believe the stories, had he not been there himself.

Then he considers who he’d be saying that to, and says nothing at all.

Lavellan is sitting at the base of the statue, back resting against the mossy stone, head tilted back to gaze at the hands which cover Maferath’s face. Her staff is sideways across her lap. 

“Many things are lost to time,” she says. “More than we would like. More than we ever dreamed could vanish. There is likely much, much more still that we do not even know is missing.”

“That is… I suppose, that you would know,” Cassandra answers, and Varric actually thinks she means it to be comforting, or sympathetic. But it comes out terse, and she and Lavellan haven’t managed a polite conversation since their trip to Val Royeaux, where Lavellan had taken one look at the statues which lined the Avenue of Her Reflective Thought and promptly burst into peals of laughter. At the Seeker’s tone, Lavellan takes offense and sits all the way up, and Varric is so invested in the new petty drama he nearly misses the look Solas gives, as though he’s just seeing Lavellan for the first time.

Chapter Text

All things in this world are finite. What one man gains, another has lost. —Canticle of Transfigurations, 1:5 

vivienne

Haven is quaint. Bitterly cold. Filled with people who are running to and fro without direction. Maker’s breath, but this will hardly last long, if this is how they all conduct themselves. The only exceptions are like a breath of fresh air—Ambassador Montilyet, who understands the importance of a good cup of tea, of keeping up appearances—Sister Nightingale, whose days as a bard are long behind her in practice, but who remembers the dance of the Game as though she never left it behind. Though, in truth, no one ever does.

And then there is Revas Lavellan, Herald of Andraste.

She has no care for politics or subtlety—in that regard, she’s something like a battering ram, and Vivienne is already preparing for the visit to the Winter Palace, though it’s months and months down the road. If Lavellan can’t learn, Vivienne will be doing damage control.

She’s also adamant in seeking out each one of the people she recruits to the fledgling Inquisition and talking to them, even if it winds up in an argument, raised tempers and sharp words. Vivienne has seen the aftermath of it in Cassandra, in Sera, the latter of whom had taken out her frustrations by trying to leave buckets of water above the door to Vivienne’s bedchambers. In that Tevinter mage, who has opinions about his homeland and their practices which Lavellan disagrees with. Vivienne is only waiting for her turn, so to speak.

Well. Vivienne isn’t one to seek out others—let them come to her. But she likes to keep people on their toes, and she sees an opportunity one evening in the Chantry. Lavellan is so rarely in the building, unless she’s being forced to meet there, and so Vivienne does not see her often. That she’s here at all, looking up at the statue of Andraste which stands opposite a statue of Havard, is a rarity, and Vivienne crosses the sanctuary from her own alcove to stand beside her.

Lavellan is wearing a scarf from Val Royeaux like a hooded cowl, pale golden-yellow. Large enough to be worn more like a shawl, if she so chooses. Her hair is braided to one side, the reddish curls resting over her left shoulder. Vivienne takes note; everything else the Herald wears is well-made and well-kept, but very much well-used, and she hadn’t taken the elven woman as one to spend money on personal indulgences. Utility and longevity, over appearance. The scarf is an oddity.

“Herald,” she greets. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here.”

“Revas. Or Lavellan, if you must,” Lavellan corrects. “I am no Herald. Truthfully.”

“Lady Lavellan,” Vivienne amends gracefully. “Might I ask what brings you here?”

Lavellan glances to Vivienne, then back to the statue. 

“She would be armored,” she says at last. “Andraste. She led an army to Tevinter, and she fought, so says your Chant. There are few who would go into battle wearing no armor, but the way she is shown…”

“Ascended to the Maker’s side, most artists depict Andraste with the serenity befitting a goddess,” Vivienne answers, though there was no question asked. Lavellan is leading to something, though Vivienne isn’t sure what. She’s curious. “Anything else makes her human.”

“She was mortal, though. Isn’t that the point? That a mortal could plead on behalf of her fellows for their Creator to return?”

“You’re remarkably well-versed in the Chant, my dear.”

“Because I am Dalish?” Lavellan bites out. There are her teeth, there is her temper. Just a warning, though. Vivienne doesn’t think that anyone has seen Lavellan truly angry, yet.

“Because most who attend Chantry services are there to listen, and all they do is listen,” she counters smoothly. “They do not discuss or debate it. To do so is practically heresy.”

“That seems a poor way to run a religion,” Lavellan says, dry as the desert, and the flash of temper fades away. “What about you? Do you discuss, as well as listen?”

“Frequently! Tell me, my dear, you intend to ally with the mages in rebellion, and you make your distaste for the Chantry’s treatment of magic very well known. You have vocal opinions about their freedom and the current state of things. What would you do differently?”

Lavellan turns away from the statue to fully face her, and she leans back against the pedestal like it’s a bench and not supporting the likeness of the Prophet herself. “You think I will have the authority to change things?”

“I think you very well could. Your name is on the lips of countless across Thedas.”

“Should any one person have that power?”

“Perhaps not, but that does not stop a person from obtaining it.”

Lavellan considers this for a moment.

“I think that when people say, magic exists to serve man, they forget the rest of… What you call the Chant, it is the records of her teachings, her words. And people say part, and do not say anything else. Cruel and wicked are the ones who turn the gifts they are given against their fellows,” she paraphrases. “Those who do so without provocation are corrupt. How the Chantry has treated mages is wrong, and it is based in wrongness, and it must be changed. There are other ways, Lady Vivienne. The Dalish do not need Circles or Templars, and Templars have only existed in the modern ages. There are ways to teach and train without putting an entire group of people at the mercies—if there are any mercies to be found—of another.”

“Would the Dalish take in all our mages, now that the Circles are dissolved in function and in name?” Vivienne questions. “I cannot see that going well... or at all.”

Lavellan scoffs and folds her arms across her chest. “Hardly, though the Chantry does not help the relations between the people and the humans. I suppose what I am saying is the Chantry itself must change, and must change radically, if it is to remain.”

“That is a bold claim, my dear. What would you propose?”

“Mages. In positions of authority. As you yourself did, though you are an exception to the rule.”

An exception. Why, Vivienne would see that as an insult disguised as flattery, if she thought Lavellan was capable of the subtlety—and she does not mean that as an insult, either. A statement of fact, in the same way Lavellan intended it.

“An exception?” she prods. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You keep mages in Circle towers. You, meaning humans, that is. Make them Tranquil in whatever is deemed an extenuating circumstance. They are not allowed to leave. Correct?"

“Any mage is allowed to leave with dispensation from the First Enchanter.”

“So which is it?” Lavellan asks, and Vivienne raises an eyebrow. “Mages can leave the Circle with dispensation, but mages know nothing of the world but for the Circles and the Templars. How achievable would it be, for another to do what you did?”

Ah. She knows how to listen, and she remembers, repeating almost verbatim what Vivienne had said in an earlier discussion about the Circles, on the ship back from Val Royeaux.

“It depended on the individual, and on the Circle. As I said, if you recall, there is no singular, universal experience to be had.”

Lavellan looks unimpressed. It’s as refreshing as it is irritating. Vivienne is quite enjoying this verbal tete-a-tete. 

“But, you are correct. It takes connections and influence to achieve such a position, and while being a public face for my fellows can bring about a change in attitude, progress is as always slow. Mages do need to be protected. From themselves, and from others.” Lavellan makes a noise that indicates she doesn’t entirely agree. Vivienne ignores it. Others may say what they will—the world is too untrusting of magic for a mage to be without defenses. “In what other authority would you see mages have influence, then?”

“I understand that in Val Royeaux, the Sunburst Throne remains empty.” 

Lavellan pushes off from the statue, and Vivienne, for the first time in quite a long time, is caught so off-guard that she needs a noticeable moment to formulate a response. Lavellan takes that moment to continue.

“Do you know who doesn’t wear armor into a battle, Lady Vivienne?” she asks. 

It’s a leading question, rather insulting in its simplicity. She schools her expression into something distinctly unimpressed; the easiest masks are the ones that are truthful. But, she knows the answer. And she has found where Lavellan intended to lead this conversation to.

“An incredibly foolish soldier,” she says. “Or, an incredibly skilled mage.”

“Indeed,” Lavellan agrees, and spares one more look for the statue behind her before taking her leave. “Good evening, Lady Vivienne.”

“Lady Lavellan,” Vivienne answers, and regards the statue in silence for some time afterward.

It is borderline heresy to speak such things, or even to imply them—even to suggest a mage should be allowed free leave of their Circle tower is enough for condemnation. The Imperial Chantry in Tevinter preaches that Andraste was a mage, which only makes it more taboo. Lavellan, as a Dalish mage, would be thrown on the pyre herself for voicing such thoughts in earshot of the wrong person, and she would keep none of the reverence Andraste held.

Much to think about.

Chapter Text

Those who had sought to claim Heaven by violence destroyed it. What was golden and pure turned black. Those who had once been mage-lords, the brightest of their age, were no longer men, but monsters. —Canticle of Threnodies, 12:1

dorian

The blur of magic is disorienting, nauseating, exhilarating. It’s everything Dorian believed to be impossible and everything he had ever hoped to avoid.

Andraste’s Herald pressing the too-sharp blade of her staff against his throat is something he hasn’t consciously hoped to avoid, but now that it’s happening to him, he would rather prefer it wasn’t. He’s too pretty to die like this, out of time in a dungeon full of red lyrium and stagnant water.

“Now, there’s really no call for that,” he says, keeping very, very still.

Lavellan is glaring at him, wild-eyed and pale in the eerie lighting. Her hands are white-knuckled around her staff, but her grip is steady. Dorian does not think she would hesitate to kill him, if it came to it.

“What have you done, Tevinter,” she bites out, and it is a demand, not a question. Calling him just by his home nation, too—she would be infuriated if he called her ‘Dalish,’ no doubt, and yet. 

“I? I have done nothing. Alexius, it seems, has displaced us both in location and time.”

“And you, by your own admission, helped him make that magic. So how do I know this wasn’t part of his trap? Explain. I am not feeling patient.”

“Yes, I can see that."

Nearly waist-deep in the small pool that’s formed in the middle of the room, he gives as brief a summary as he can manage of how the magic which he and Alexius had been trying to create would have worked, and how this attempt might have been disrupted, sending them here. He stresses that if they find the amulet, he can figure out a way to get them back, which is what finally makes her lower her weapon.

Kaffas. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and where she stands, on the edge of the pool above him, flanked on either side by statues of Andraste and Maferath, with red lyrium growing from the stone the fires which had consumed the Prophet herself, does nothing to make him feel any less intimidated. 

But, she’s not actively trying to kill him! That’s a start, at least. She won’t stab him in the back so long as he’s her ticket out of here.

They find scraps of paper, mildewing diaries and journals and months-old orders. They find what remains of the former Grand Enchanter, fused to the red lyrium growing from the walls like blighted tumors, and while Dorian is staring in horrified fascination, Lavellan steps forward to speak in a low tone. Fiona is too weak to do anything but nod, and Dorian swears her expression is relieved.

Lavellan carefully steps around the growths of glowing red, takes a small dagger from her belt, and plunges it through the base of Fiona’s skull. The blood that coats the metal is dark and viscous and almost luminescent. 

They’ve been gone a year. How can so much have gone wrong in a year?

Varric and Solas are better, in some relative sense of the term. They can walk of their own accord. Lavellan breaks the locks on their cells with a concentrated burst of force magic and looks at them with pained resignation, and she hands Solas a staff she pulled off a Venatori mage, and Varric a longbow taken from a Venatori archer.

Then there isn’t much left to do but fight their way to Alexius, and so, they fight.

Varric hums something odd and dissonant with the buzzing of lyrium in the air. Cassandra does not so much as hum as she does whisper, fragments of the Chant, Andraste have mercy on your souls. No one else will. Solas says nothing at all, and Lavellan marches on in silence, determined and deadly.

She flinches, though, when Dorian uses fire.

Her own spells are beautiful, and she’s clearly a master of the primal school, freezing puddles around the feet of their Venatori opponents, calling lightning out of thin air. She summons a lightning bolt directly into the pool through which half a dozen soldiers are charging through, swords drawn, towards her. His hair stands on end, the air smells sharp of ozone, and between the damp conditions and their metal armor, what’s left behind is half a dozen charred corpses in chainmail so hot that it spits and steams as they collapse into the water. The smell of burnt meat joins all the other awful smells in this place. Lavellan is unbothered.

But Dorian, Dorian flings out a fireball to dissuade a man carrying a war-hammer as thick around as his torso from getting too close, and the man goes up in a column of fire and smoke and screaming, and Lavellan looks as though she may be ill. Is what he does really so horrifying, compared to her? Maker’s breath, the hypocrisy of it reeks almost as bad as the stagnant water.

They keep moving. They find Leliana, and fragmented shards of red lyrium to shape into a key. Varric carries them, says the stuff is already growing out of his skin, so it can’t hurt him, really.

His voice echoes over itself with the same buzzing hum that rings from the walls, and yet it is discomfitingly flat. 

In one corridor, making their way back to the main hall, Dorian finds himself at the head of the group, and he doesn’t realize that he’s alone there until he hears Leliana snap:

“What are you staring at? We have no time to waste.”

Dorian turns. Lavellan is several paces behind their group, looking at the wall, at the artwork there. Dorian, for the life of him, can’t understand what’s so interesting about a painting now of all times.

“That is Shartan,” she finally answers. “At Minrathous.”

Yes, he recognizes the piece, hanging crooked on the stone. It’s damp and crumbling and badly damaged by the water and the air, but there are very few images of Shartan the Liberator, both in Tevinter and in the South, although for different reasons. His home isn’t fond of any artwork that glorifies the leader of a slave rebellion, and the Orlesian Chantry had all images of him burned after the Exalted March against the Dales. Can’t have people know an elf was friends with Andraste, oh, no, that wouldn’t do at all.

“The Chantry destroyed all art of him,” Lavellan says, voicing a few of Dorian’s thoughts. There’s something strange and shaky about her voice as she looks up, the first time he’s heard her truly waver since they got to this hellscape. “Why is it… here?”

“It’s a Tevinter piece, so I imagine Alexius brought it with him for the rest of his horrid redecorating.” Maybe if he answers, they can move on more quickly from here. “If I recall, it was rather controversial at the time—the artist titled it The Folly of the Elves, and his competitors claimed that his framing of the subject actually meant to put Shartan in a positive light, and Tevinter in a negative light, and the title was all just pretense… not that it stopped prints and reproductions, as you can see.”

He’s the center of the piece, heroic mid-leap, sword and shield raised high. Arrows fly from the walls of Minrathous. The skies behind him are dark with thunderclouds and lightning and the wrath of heaven. Behind him, a yellow cape billows dramatically in the wind.

All artistic license, of course.

“Thank you for the history lesson,” Leliana says. “Are we done here?”

Much later, he will realize just how much Leliana is capable of changing, when he is able to sit with her and discuss and debate, when he sees her smile and joke and tell stories, when he hears of the news of her various reforms on the Sunburst Throne as he makes his own changes in Minrathous. But now she is twisted and bitter and wrecked by this nightmarish future, and she has no time for tales. 

Lavellan breaks away from the painting, continues with him. She never lets him walk behind her. She barely trusts him to complete the ritual which will send them back to their original time, and when they reappear in front of a still-living Alexius and Felix, she takes six measured steps away from Dorian and folds her arms across her chest.

Dorian really isn’t sure what her problem with him is. Problems with Tevinter, he can understand—he also has problems with Tevinter, albeit of a more nuanced nature than most of the south seems to hold. Him, personally? He’s never met the Herald before this, and she has no reason to distrust him. In fact, he would say that coming out of that nightmare was an excellent bonding experience.

Instead, in the aftermath, she looks to Fiona and says, “We will discuss your alliance with the Inquisition at a later hour,” and she looks at the guards in the throne room of Redcliffe Castle and says, “Lock Alexius up,” and she looks at her compatriots and says, “Just… Come. Let us leave.”

She ignores Dorian completely until he starts to follow, and then she takes another measured step away from him and regards him with an expression which may as well have been carved from stone, unyielding as any statue.

“You have important information about Alexius’ research, and can verify the things he tells us. You may accompany the Inquisition back to Haven, Tevinter, but kindly keep your distance from me.”

Dorian gives her a practiced smile so fake and bright it almost hurts. “Of course, my Lady Herald.”

So much for bonding experiences. He shouldn’t be surprised. This is the south, after all, and they haven’t been fond of Tevinter in ages.

Chapter Text

Those who bear false witness and work to deceive others, know this: there is but one Truth. —Canticle of Transfigurations, 1:4

the iron bull

If he hadn’t seen her fight, the Iron Bull would be concerned of even breathing too heavily near Lavellan out of fear that she would break apart. She’s a tiny bas, even shorter than Dalish.

But, he has seen her fight, both at range and in close quarters; the spells she casts seem to come to her with ease, and when her casting begins to slow or their opponents get too close, she spins the staff in her hand around and fights with muscle and blade. Maybe once they get to know each other better, he’ll ask her to spar—she’s a damned good fighter. It’s impressive, not that he says as much in the reports he sends back homeward. 

The Herald of Andraste is a Dalish elf, from Clan Lavellan, up in the Free Marches near Wycome. The Herald of Andraste is bas saarebas. Leans towards elemental magic (Dalish would tell him there’s specific schools of magic, and would know which one Lavellan specializes in. Not that Dalish is a mage, or anything.), particularly lightning and frost. Travels with a small contingent of others from the Inquisition, usually another mage and a pair of melee fighters.

He’s not supposed to be impressed by her skill. So. Officially, he isn’t. 

He’s also not supposed to be impressed by her as a person, but. The Iron Bull can tell, just from their brief introduction on the Storm Coast and the following few days, that she’s a capable leader, that she can make the hard decisions without faltering. And he can tell that while her blunt attitude isn’t a front, it’s a little bit of a mask. When she doesn’t think anyone’s looking, some of it eases, and she looks all of a sudden exhausted.

Well.

Leading will do that to a person.

She doesn’t trust him. The Iron Bull gets that—she shouldn’t, not in everything. But she does need to trust him enough to watch her back, given that’s what he signed on to do, and there’s no better way to do that than fighting together in battle. 

The Iron Bull does so enjoy killing ‘Vints. So does Lavellan. Maybe it can be a bonding experience.

#

Her mask breaks just a few times that the Iron Bull has seen. Once, in those early days on the Storm Coast, fighting the Venatori and dealing with the Blades of Hessarian—and the Blades make her quiet in a way he hasn’t observed enough to parse out, but her expression in dealing with them stays much the same. No particularly strong feelings save for blunt determination in finding their leader, challenging him, and making him answer for the death of Inquisition scouts. No particularly strong feelings about the surviving Blades swear their allegiance to her in the aftermath save for a short burst of laughter as they leave the stronghold. The others she’s traveling with—the dwarf Varric, and the hedge mage Solas—share a brief glance, one that speaks to this kind of reaction being normal, but no less confusing for how familiar it is.

Now there’s a couple of bruisers and a spellbinder back behind them, and the Iron Bull is trying to bludgeon past their guard to take out the mage before he can cause any trouble. Lavellan is dealing with a rogue that managed to slip past his defenses, but she’s just as capable in melee as she is at range, and he’s more concerned with keeping the rest off her. Solas freezes one of the bruisers solid so that the Iron Bull can shatter him like glass. Varric picks off the rogue near Lavellan with a crossbow bolt to the neck. Blood splatters. The Iron Bull raises his greataxe and charges towards the last man between him and the mage.

The ground beneath his feet begins to glow red. He snarls a curse and manages to get out of the way—he really, really doesn’t like that kind of magic. Difficult to catch it happening until it’s too late. It bursts into flames a moment later. Behind him, there’s a shriek, and the roar of fire, and he can’t turn to look—one hit, and the man’s helmet crumples like paper, and the spellbinder doesn’t have any armor to speak of that will keep him safe.

Done. His greataxe drips blood. He turns, assessing. 

Lavellan is unharmed, but one of the glyphs had been cast underneath her as well, and in her panic she’s frozen half a foot of solid ice across the ground at her feet, trapping her in place. It’s worked, at least, disrupting the fire that would have burst around her, but now she’s caught and there’s a second rogue jumping out of the shadows with bloodied knives raised.

There’s nothing but wild fear in Lavellan’s eyes, and the Iron Bull swears and lunges after the rogue, but he’s too far away—

—Lavellan twists the staff in her hands. It’s sloppy, panicked. It works all the same, the single Venatori moving too quickly to stop, and the blade protrudes from his back, dripping red as he stills. The clearing, then, is otherwise quiet.

“...You need some help, boss?” he asks carefully, when Lavellan only stands there and stares at the body. Her gaze snaps to him. It takes a moment for him to see any recognition there.

It’s like watching a wall built up in the space of a few seconds, brick by brick. She tilts her chin up. “No. It’s… fine. I can just.”  

She lets the body drop to the ground and casts a Dispel. The ice cracks. She casts a second time, and it shatters, and she carefully steps out around the shards and the pooling blood.

“That’s one way to deal with fire, Harold,” Varric says with a laugh that’s only a little bit forced, and Lavellan answers bluntly, "Yes," and no one says anything more of it

The second time is after Haven.

It’s a clusterfuck from start to finish, although he gets the Chargers all out safe, and most of the townspeople manage to escape through the tunnels underneath the Chantry well before the avalanche is triggered.

The Iron Bull isn’t fighting with Lavellan for most of it. He isn’t there when she rescues some of the townsfolk and fails to rescue others, isn’t there as she defends the trebuchets. He and his Chargers are battering red Templars away from the walls, and all the while he hopes with a fevered desperation that none of the lyrium which juts from their enemies in jagged shards splinters off to infect them.

The Iron Bull isn’t there, either, when Lavellan volunteers to go alone to the only trebuchet still loaded and intact and trigger an avalanche. He isn’t there to see her stare down Corypheus and hurl ancient curses at him, isn’t there as the magister picks her up and throws her like a rag doll, blighted dragon breathing hot, rank air that steams in the cold night. No one but Corypheus is there to see her rise, teeth gritted in pain but no noise escaping her, and stare down the magister with the fires of Haven reflected in her eyes.

“I have fought your kind before, Tevinter,” she says, “and I have brought greater men than you to their knees. This is no victory for you.”

She fires the trebuchet. No one sees her run, and run, and fall. No one sees her stagger alone into the blizzard which comes on the heels of the fleeing Inquisition, and no one sees her in the long, long hours which follow until a scout reports footprints, and another finds her too-cold body half buried in a drift.

The Iron Bull sees the aftermath.   

There is certainty in the Qun. The religions of the south are messy and violent things, driving them all to fight with one another, for each one is certain they are in the right, in their own individual way. It’s unnecessarily complicated. But it does have a benefit, the Iron Bull has seen—with a cause to believe in, a person can fight long after the battle has been lost. It’s a strong motivator.

These people have seen the one they call Andraste’s Herald walk out of the damned Fade, seen her leave to stand alone against an army, seen her come out of an avalanche alive. She is the cause in which they believe, and in the aftermath of catastrophe…

They sing. Some old Chantry hymn, the Iron Bull isn’t familiar with the words. Many of them bow or take a knee.

Lavellan is silent. As those around her stare at their feet in reverence and awe, the Iron Bull sees her mask break again, and she is exhausted and frightened and deeply, deeply sad.

She closes her eyes. It does little to hide the pain.

She turns without a word and vanishes into the shadows as best she can. The Iron Bull watches her go and does not follow. He makes sure the Chargers are settled in for the night and tries for some shut-eye.

The third time is at Skyhold.

It’s a fortress, and a damn fine one. Makes him uneasy, the way that they’re saying magic is built into the foundations—this high in the mountains, with winter fast approaching, and there’s no snow on the rooftops, or in the courtyard, and the air inside the shelter of the walls is crisp instead of so cold it hurts.

But, it’s safe. And for all of the Iron Bull’s unease, none of the mages Lavellan allied with in Redcliffe have gone batshit and summoned demons or anything. They’ve just been helpful.

Cullen’s troops get the survivors into some type of organization down near the river while any able-bodied workers set to clearing out the rubble of the fortress, making parts of it habitable again. The Iron Bull goes up with the Chargers to assist. When the courtyard is clear, the injured are brought up, sheltered from the wind and weather. He sees Lavellan running around out of the corner of his eye, wearing herself ragged despite the efforts of those around her—she is, technically, one of the injured herself.

Surviving the avalanche did not mean surviving it unscathed, and cold is just as deadly a killer as any blade.

But they’re here. They’re alive, most of them, a trail of funeral pyres dotting the weeks-long march through the Frostbacks from Haven to Skyhold. And there’s something building, from day to day, until in a moment that feels spontaneous—which the Iron Bull knows to mean that it was very carefully planned out—a crowd begins to gather, in ones and twos until they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder in the courtyard, gathered around the base of the stairs leading up to the fortress’ great hall.

Leliana is there, and Ambassador Josephine. Cassandra leads Lavellan to them.

The Iron Bull can’t hear what they’re saying, the back and forth. Leliana carries a sword, the symbol of the Inquisition stamped into the pommel. Lavellan makes a slight gesture towards the staff that she carries, and Cassandra shakes her head as she answers, and Leliana lowers her head as she extends the blade in her hands.

Lavellan takes it.

“History will remember this day!” she declares in a bold voice, one that carries above the gathered crowds, across the courtyard, echoing from the stone walls. The Iron Bull, in that rare moment, is surprised, because Lavellan so rarely speaks to inspire. “Our victory is not yet here, but we have survived, and we will survive to see that victory waiting! As fear runs rampant, see a mage standing for what is right, as equals to you all, for we do not stand alone in this! We stand together, unified.”

She raises the sword high, to raucous cheers and shouts. The Iron Bull watches as someone takes up a hymn from the Chant, joined quickly by others, and he watches as Lavellan closes her eyes. She lowers the sword. She shakes her head, and says nothing, and turns to continue up the rest of the stairs, motioning for her advisors to follow.

The next time the Iron Bull sees her, he makes some small talk, asks her how she’s doing. She smiles and it doesn’t reach her eyes at all.

Lavellan’s got a lot riding on her shoulders, and the Iron Bull has watched her these past several weeks. He doesn’t think she has anyone she trusts enough to lean on, and that, in the end, is what’s going to break her like her mask.

Chapter Text

Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. —Canticle of Benedictions, 4:10

sera

Lavellan is… too elfy. But, not. Too mage-y, too, except she’s… 

Complicated. Lavellan is complicated, and Sera doesn’t like complicated, not like this. She likes the world all put in order, where she knows what to expect of it all. Rich tits spitting down on everyone else? Awful, but expected, and then she has an excuse to stick some arrows in some faces, leave some bees in some chandeliers, make a new Friend.

Holes in the sky? A frigging archdemon? Once in a lifetime was enough, thanks.

Impossible things aren’t surprises. 

Sera makes herself a nest in the top of the tavern, big windows to look out at the world, plenty of places to stash her things, just enough gaps in the floorboards that she can lie down on the rugs she’s laid out and eavesdrop on what everyone is saying down below. She fills it up with all the things that make her happy, all the colors and textures that make her mind calm down when the world is too much—and fuck all of it, everything happening like this is too much. 

Nothing is normal, and everything is a lot, and everything is complicated. She can’t stick arrows in the Breach, she’s tried, but she can make a little space where something makes sense.

She leaves the door open, most of the time. Better to hear things, better for shouting out comments to conversations no one expects her to be a part of. She sees Lavellan come into the tavern regularly, usually to talk with Bull and the Chargers.

The people in the tavern talk, seeing that. Lavellan is supposed to be all high and mighty and holy, not sitting and drinking with some company of mercs. Sera laughs to hear it; Lavellan doesn’t like fitting in to people’s expectations.

...It’s less funny when she keeps refusing to fit in to Sera’s expectations. Sometimes she makes sense, acting like the rest of them elf-y folks do, something, something, culture and history and on and on and on. Sometimes she argues with Sera about it, and Sera knows what to do when people argue with her or don’t understand, that’s normal!

Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, Lavellan drops by to check in on her, and she’s nice about it, and it always leaves Sera waiting for the other shoe to drop. Can’t do the courtesy of acting the way big people like her are supposed to act, once they get to be big people.

Though, that’s not all bad. Confusing, and weird, but it’s not bad.  If she went and acted the way Sera keeps thinking she’s going to, she wouldn’t have gone and marched some of the men through Verchiel.

Lavellan always comes in through the third floor. Once Sera notices, she notices, right? And she’s a lady of the people, or whatever, doesn’t say no to sitting around and spending time with friends and folks, but that’s weird. Why not use the front door? Sera walks up through the third floor herself one time, and out the door at the top, and out onto the ramparts, and there’s way too many steps between there and anywhere else to make it a normal-people way of getting to the tavern.

It’s weird. So, of course, she asks about it, hearing footsteps coming down instead of up and springing to her feet, rushing out the door. Lavellan stops short across the room.

“Hey, your graciousness,” Sera greets her with a grin. Lavellan looks like she might smile for a moment—but, no, gone, dammit. She’s going to find a way to get Lavellan to laugh one day. Weird, too, that she’s never smiling except for when nothing’s funny. “Got a moment?”

Lavellan turns from the stairs after a moment and comes to sit at the table nearest to Sera’s door, resting her hands on the table. She’s wearing that scarf still, the pretty yellow one, even though it’s starting to fray at the edges, and there’s a faded stain at one corner like it fell into a dish of food. Sera hops up to sit on the railing and swings her legs back and forth.

“Why don’t you come in through the front door? Y’know, like everyone else does?”

“I like to talk to Cole,” Lavellan answers, shrugging one shoulder. Sera makes a face, because, no thank you, she doesn’t like to be reminded that a demon is her upstairs neighbor! “He is kind to me.”

“Yeah, but he’s not always up there, and you don’t always stop. Like, now? Door opens, and pitter patter you come walking.”

Lavellan sighs. She glances down past Sera to the tavern below them. Cabot is at the bar, pouring out drinks for Krem to take back to the group, and there’s a handful of folks at the tables, and a handful of others dancing to Maryden’s music.

“You said that Corypheus upset you because, him truly being a magister meant that other things also had to be true. The Black City, the Golden City.” She looks solemn. Sera makes another face—she wasn’t expecting something serious, but Lavellan keeps on going. Serious it is, then, ugh. “I know that we disagree on many things, and I do not mean to argue that with you.” 

Didn’t she? Never had a problem with it before.

“They call this place the Herald’s Rest. Have you seen the sign by the door, outside? Andraste herself, all robed in white, carrying a figure whose hand glows green.” She looks down at her own hands. The Mark makes Sera ill to look at for too long, makes the world feel all funny like when she stares into the sky for too long. Can’t imagine walking around with it stuck to her like that. Gives her the heebie-jeebies. “There was no one there for me at the Conclave, or at Haven. It was only me , my fight, my trials. Nothing holy about it, and certainly nothing of a religion I have never followed. So—maybe it is petty of me. But I do not like that sign, so I avoid it.”

That’s… well, Sera can’t judge for being petty. Seems a weird thing to do though, going up and down all those stairs when she could just close her eyes going through the front, right? 

“I could dump some more paint on it, if you like?” she suggests, unsure why. 

Lavellan… well, she’s an okay sort, sort of. Too elfy, too mage-y. But she looks out for the little people. Sera might not like her much, but, hesitantly, reluctantly, she respects her. She gets too big for herself, well. Sera knows how to deal with that just fine.

“No. Faith is… I am no Herald. But faith is important. They need something to give them hope, do they not?”

Too serious. Too serious, nope, not doing it. Lavellan looks all sad and droopy, and she’s talking an awful lot like she’s giving up on something, even if Sera isn’t sure what, and that won’t do at all. Not at all!

She isn’t good with words and all that, though. She throws a pillow. Lavellan catches it after it smacks her in the face and looks deeply confused, which is loads better than looking sad. 

“You’re not a something, ” Sera tells her, “don’t be stupid. You’re a someone. And someone can give someone else hope or, or some shite, and—oh, fuck, Andraste’s tits, don’t cry—”

Lavellan musters up a watery kind of smile as Sera panics, which, rude, smiling at her while she’s freaked out. But, smiling isn’t crying! That’s a win. Or, something.

Before she can remember she’d been sad and serious, Sera loops an arm through Lavellan’s and all but pulls her from the loft and down the stairs. Now she’s too startled to be sad, ha!

That she’s the one to be cheering people up also isn’t normal, and Lavellan is awful and not acting the way Sera expects her to. Not. Normal. But, Sera knows how to have fun, and how to find people who know how to have fun, and those people are right downstairs.

“Oi, Bull, you save us any seats?” she calls out, already throwing herself onto the bench between the Iron Bull and Krem and pointing at an empty chair across the table for Lavellan to sit at. 

“Not that it would matter if we had,” Bull answers with a pointed look, but he’s smiling, so it’s fine. “But yeah, there’s always room for you—and for the Inquisitor. Worried you were late, boss!”

“I was… sidetracked,” Lavellan answers, slowly. “But glad to be here. Stitches, Skinner, Dalish.”

“Cheers,” Dalish answers, raising her ale in a toast.

They get roped into a few games of cards, and finally manage to talk Lavellan into joining—she never does, Bull says to Sera in a low tone, claims she’s not very good at bluffing. As Sera finds out, Lavellan is plenty good at bluffing, she just has shit luck at cards, and most of her sovereigns are scattered around the table by the end of the night.

End of the night. Sera’s tipsy, her feet in Krem’s lap as she attempts to explain to Bull how Dagna is trying to enchant her jars of bees. But she’s got an eye on Lavellan as she does, and she gets to see Lavellan crack a smile a couple of times—so she does have it in her! And more than a little tipsy herself, Sera also sees her start to hum along to Maryden’s playing as she sways back and forth in time with the rhythm.

“An’ that’s, that’s…” Her train of thought lost to the wind, Sera tilts her head allll the way back to look at Bull upside down. He’s got a funny looking chin, at this angle. She laughs. “That’s… mission accomplished, that is.”

“Mission accomplished,” Bull repeats, and maybe he’s just indulging her, but Sera thinks he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

Chapter Text

Many are those who wander in sin, despairing that they are lost forever, but the one who repents, who has faith unshaken by the darkness of the world, and boasts not, nor gloats over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight in the Maker’s law and creations, he shall know the peace of the Maker’s benediction. —Canticle of Transfigurations, 10:1 

blackwall

Inquisitor Lavellan is… well, Blackwall isn’t sure if he’s more wary of the Inquisitor, or of her spymaster. Sister Nightingale is who he should be frightened of, but as much as he respects them both, there’s something about the Inquisitor that sets him on edge.

It isn’t even that he doesn’t trust her—she’s a good soul, a strong woman. She embodies the Inquisition in that she inspires him to be better, to do better.

But he’s seen her charge at an angry bear in the Hinterlands armed with only her staff and her robes for armor, and he really doesn’t want to get on her bad side. 

It’s a cool day in Skyhold. Most days are cool, and colder at night, but there’s something about this place and it’s strange magic that keeps it from becoming too cold to inhabit. Blackwall steps away from a conversation with Master Dennett, heading inside the shadowed interior of the barn to where he keeps his woodworking tools.

Most of the Inquisition mounts are down in the valley, with the bulk of the troops; the fortress is massive, but for a time it was unsafe, and even now with much of it repaired, it isn’t large enough to fit everyone inside. There also isn’t much room for the horses to go to pasture, inside a fortress made of stone, so Blackwall doesn’t mind living above the barn. It’s not too crowded, and even if it smells like manure closer to the occupied stalls, most of the time, its quiet.

Less so, now. Blackwall turns a corner to hear voices, small and young, and gentle laughter, and the scene before him is unusual enough that he stops to watch instead of backing away and leaving them to their time.

There’s nearly a dozen children all crowded around the Inquisitor’s feet in the shade, some of them elven, some of them human. Blackwall recognizes a few, the kids of servants or soldiers who work in the fortress. Others are dressed in clothes far more patched and mended—little ones who came with the refugees that never stop streaming in. The oldest is twelve or thirteen, and the youngest is a babe just old enough to crawl, and each to a one of them is enthralled.

Lavellan is smiling, something rare and soft, and she gestures expansively, telling a story, sitting cross-legged on the packed-earth floor. Her coat, some finely-tailored thing of Orlesian silks, with the Inquisition's symbol embroidered on the sleeve, is stained with dirt and dust. She doesn't seem to care.

“...Avvar chieftain, strong her tribe with dwarven trade, battles brought to men and demons, won with wisdom, fire, and blade!” The children aren’t too close to her; there is space at her feet, and Blackwall sees why, for wisps of dust stir up in a breeze he cannot feel, small and shadowy figures. Two of them bow to one another. “Then did Tyrdda look to Hendir, dwarf-prince friend, children giver, took her freedom—Hendir, glad, wished her what he could not give her…” 

It doesn’t sound like what he’d expect of a Dalish tale, and the cadence of it isn’t anything he’s familiar with. A story, but a poem? The children all clap and cheer as the figures of dust act out the end of the tale, Lavellan’s fingertips glowing with a faint light. 

“Another?” one of them cries out, a little boy with pointed ears and curly hair. “Will you tell another, hahren?"

“Hahren,” Lavellan repeats, pressing one hand against her chest. “Are you calling me old, da’len?”

The boy in question blinks, wide-eyed, unsure how to answer. Lavellan laughs and brushes a lock of hair from his face.

“I only tease, child. But we have more company! Hello, Warden. Do you have stories of your own to share?”

“Ah…” Blackwall startles, not noticing her noticing, and he isn’t sure what to do with the strange openness in her expression, the kindness in her gaze. “My stories aren’t… suitable for children, mostly.”

That only seems to excite the little rascals, the idea of being told something they’re not supposed to know. Lavellan gets them all to settle with a few sharp words, however, and starts off into another story, this of two elven gods, twin brothers who were so close they might have been of one spirit. The dust at her feet dances and shifts, two men, two ravens.

Eventually she shoos them all back to their parents, or their older siblings, or to go mind themselves in the case of the older few. Then she stands, stretches, and takes up her staff from where it had been placed unobtrusively in a corner—or as unobtrusively as what might as well be a polearm can be placed. It isn't the same as the one she had carried when he first met her, near the Crossroads of the Hinterlands; that had been lost, somewhere between her bringing down the avalanche on Haven and reappearing in the aftermath, in that period of time she still largely refuses to speak of. This one is a similar design, though she says it's better balanced, and lighter to carry, and there are runes embedded into the silverite blade affixed to the end.

Blackwall’s seen her fight with that thing. There’s no ignoring it when a battle starts up.

“You’re good with them,” he says gruffly. "The kids." His thoughts are suddenly on his little sister, no older than any of those children had been last time he saw her all those decades ago. “Do you have siblings, Inquisitor? Children?”

Lavellan smiles again. It’s a little more sad this time, a little less fond. Blackwall could kick himself—if she has children, she’s never said, and if she had children, past-tense… 

“No children,” she answers. At least he hasn’t gone and shoved his boot in his mouth. “I had a sister, but she was taken before I was born.”

“Taken?” Blackwall repeats, surprised.

“My mother lived in the alienage in Ostwick. My sister had magic. The Templars found out, and they found out that my mother was trying to hide her from them.” She sighs heavily, shakes her head. “They took her, and then they came back, to deal with the woman who had been, in their words, harboring an apostate. My mother ran. All the way to the Dalish, to Clan Lavellan, who took her in.”

“That’s…”

Blackwall shakes his head, unsure of what to say. He had known, abstractly, of what abuses mages suffered at the hands of Templars, and yet every time he hears a story from a mage about their past, he finds himself surprised. He should know enough by now not to be.

“She told me stories of the city. I do not think she ever truly felt like she belonged with the clan, but they treated her as she had always been there, and they treated me no different for being born to her. But. I am talking too much, Warden, my apologies.”

“No, no, it’s…” Just because he doesn’t know what to say doesn’t mean he wants her to feel like she can’t talk about anything. Maybe it would be better, if she was talking to someone who isn’t him, but all the same… “It isn’t a problem, Inquisitor. Not a problem at all. D’you miss them, then? Your clan?”

She looks, for a moment, startled, like she wasn’t expecting the question. Then a moment longer, like she isn’t sure how to answer, like no one has bothered to ask her yet.

“I… miss home. Very much. And I know it will not be the same when I return to it.” She leans against her staff, her expression distant, her mind somewhere else. “I miss the people. I did not have friends, precisely, but I had community.”

“Once this is all over,” Blackwall says, and he knows even before he finishes the sentence that not a one of them knows it when over will be, if it ever comes at all, “you can go back to them. Hell, you could invite some of them here, if you thought they’d be willing.”

She shakes her head. “There is something happening in the alienage in Wycome, and my clan tries to give aid to the elves of the city when they are able. Maybe it would be safer here, but I do not think any would be willing to split apart from the rest. Maybe… maybe later. Maybe soon.”

He nods, and Lavellan takes her leave after a few minutes more of idle conversation. Not that she goes far; Blackwall can hear her voice, faint, as she speaks in her native tongue to the hart which resides a few rows away. A proud, noble creature, though Maker help the poor stable hand who tries to saddle it, for it doesn’t seem to like anyone but Lavellan.

...There’s a thought. He isn’t familiar enough with the halla to carve one, but the hart is right there for him to sketch and observe, and he needs smaller projects to whittle away the hours. Gives his hands something to do.

It occurs to him, much later, as he watches her delight over the small wooden figurine, turning it around in her hands to examine all the details, that he’s seen her smile all of twice—with the children, that first time, and again as she is given a gift, a small and simple thing.

She thanks him, and hums under her breath as she walks away.

Chapter Text

World fell away then, misty in mem’ry, ‘cross Veil and into the valley of dreams a vision of all worlds, waking and slumb’ring, spirit and mortal to me appeared. —Canticle of Andraste, 1:10 

solas

He is as of yet uncertain what to make of Lavellan.

She does not know what to make of him, either, but this does not bring him any comfort. If she trusted him at all, she may be more amenable to his questions about the Anchor and how it affects her. But she does not; she is wary, and cautious, and though she does for him as she does for all the rest of her compatriots and makes the time to come and see him, she does not hesitate to tell him her thoughts on his opinions. Loudly. In great detail.

He is uncertain what to make of her. He definitely shouldn’t like her. And yet.

Because it must be the Anchor, mustn’t it? That which has set her apart from every other he has met in this strange and muted world. He can feel the way that the Veil shifts around her, the strange and unique hum of her magic, different from the bright bursts of Dorian’s spellcasting, the sharp, precise staccato of Vivienne’s—it is the Anchor’s influence, surely? 

If she would only speak to him.

Sometimes she will, for despite disagreements she makes the effort to talk with the ones around her from day to day, and sometimes even their conversations are engaging, intriguing. Just that, sometimes, too, they go from discussion to heated debate and even he isn’t entirely sure how they got there.

When he cannot gain answers from her or from the many books he has been able to procure through the Inquisition’s reach, he turns as always to the Fade, and walking its endless expanse is like walking through Skyhold, like walking through home. He takes his leisure, crossing a field of tall grasses and flowers, the noontime sun bright above him, uncertain of where he is but letting his intent guide his footsteps. The flowers range from white to softer shades of pink, smaller stalks branching out from the stem until they burst into tiny blossoms, fragrant and sweet, and the tallest ones are nearly the same height as he is.

Underneath his feet, the ground ripples like water.

Solas adjusts his path accordingly and continues.

There is a spirit of faith, old, and she tells him stories of battles won and lost in the name of belief. Solas gifts her a small bunch of flowers he had plucked from their stem, and she tucks them behind where her ear would be and drifts away. 

The ground ripples, and warps, and he smells smoke in the air. The long grasses have withered under the scorching sun, been trampled underfoot—he walks, and walks, and the ground beneath him turns to mud, and the stench of the dead is thick in the ash-filled air, and he can hear a distant wailing on the wind, calling out for an answer that will never come. 

The magic tugs at his skin. The Anchor. He can feel how it pulls on the Fade around him, how its magic draws back to his mana, for they are one and the same, and a few more pieces slide into place.

This was not the intent, and yet. There—a glimpse of red, and yellow, and flickering green as the Inquisitor stumbles forward, onward, endlessly. There, too—fear, though he does not feel frightened himself. This is not his dream nor his mind, but the air always feels colder in the vicinity of a nightmare, and despite the distant smoldering fires he catches glimpses of through the smoke, the air is cold across his skin. 

This was not the intent, but this is dangerous. The Anchor will draw the curious towards it, and a mage must always be wary of the curious in dreams. He draws closer, calls out:

“Inquisitor!”

The distant figure stops; so, too, does the mournful echoing cry, leaving behind a resonant hum in the silence.

“It is Solas,” he says to her. “You are dreaming, Inquisitor.”

Eventually he is close enough to see her face, and to see the Anchor, hissing and spitting in a way it does not in the waking world—does it react, then, every time she dreams? Is a part of that key here, behind the Veil, and a part of it in the physical realm?

What does that do to her, if that is the case, part of her here and part there? 

She rarely answers his questions when she is in a good mood. He doubts she will deign to answer him now.

Closer still, and there are bones crunching underneath his feet, and underneath the bones and the crushed grass are clusters of those tiny white flowers, the petals split and browning and bloody. Lavellan is nearly grey with—fright?—an expression so out of place with what he knows of her that he at last stops, but by then he is close enough to see her expression change to recognition, and then suspicion.  

“Tell me, do you make a habit of entering other people’s dreams?” she asks him, and her voice is high and thin. Her staff is absent, her scarf singed at the edges, her feet bloodied. Through the smoke and the ash that clouds the air, he can see strange spires stretching up, like the tall buildings of a city, but they are never clear enough for him to guess where they might be, if they are anywhere at all.

Is this a dream of memory? Or is this Lavellan and her fears of what rests on her shoulders, the Inquisition, of what could happen if she gives the wrong order? The right order?

She would likely not appreciate that question, either. She certainly would not answer him truthfully.

“I usually do not without permission.”

He keeps his distance, now, and the ash eddies between them.

“I felt the Fade begin to twist, and in concern I went to see what could have been the source of the disruption. When I realized it was you here, I grew worried.”

“There was no need.”

Lavellan folds her arms across her chest in a gesture Solas has come to recognize as defensive, both a way of protecting herself and a way of shoring herself up, and she looks at him, and then at the ground, the bones, the flowers. She breathes, a visible effort at reclaiming her calm, and so too does the dream begin to settle around him. When he next looks up, the sky is visible through the smoke, and the towering spires are gone from the horizon.

“I have dealt with dreams and with nightmares. I have dealt with this one. I will deal with it again, I am sure.”

Solas inclines his head, accepting the deflection for what it is. When he shifts on his feet, there is only grass beneath them, and the smoke is but morning fog, and in the distance there are tall and spindling pines standing watch at the edge of the plains.

“All the same, Inquisitor, I am glad to see you well.”

“Well!” 

She laughs sharply—another characteristic he has found in her, her penchant for laughter, when there is no humor to be found. He still isn’t sure if she delights in the ironic or if it is a method of coping, or something of both.

“Well, yes!” she exclaims, and her voice is as sharp as her laugh, edged with slight hysteria, “I am as well as I will ever be, one of the People, surrounded by Chantry zealots.”

“Inquisitor—” he begins, and stops. Hesitates.

She holds no particular fondness for him, and they both know it—though he does not doubt she will fight for him as she would for any others in her inner circle. Her personal dislike of an individual has never once extended beyond personal . Even Dorian’s information she takes at face value and brings to the war table.

She holds no particular fondness for him (though a lack of fondness does not translate to immediate dislike, he knows this too) and so Solas knows that he has no reason to like her—admire her skill, her wit, her determination. And yet.

“Inquisitor, if you prefer,” he offers, “I can ensure your sleep remains unbroken through the night until the morning.”

For a moment, he thinks she will not accept.

But she has never been one to turn down an offer of aid, and after a long moment of silence broken only by the whisper of a sourceless breeze, she sighs, and she nods.

“That would be… welcome.”

“It is no trouble,” he answers.

#

In the afternoon, as he is drafting a new section of the fresco in his study, he hears footsteps coming down from the library. The steady, quiet tread marches down the stairs, and across the stone floor, and pauses just beneath the ladder he’s standing on, and Lavellan speaks:

“I’ve’an’viralan. You are a Dreamer.”

Solas sets down his brush across the palette, the gray-shadowed form of Corypheus staring at him from out the ashes of Haven and the wet plaster.

“I thought you were aware of that from our previous conversations.”

“I knew that you dreamed, not that you Dreamed. ” 

He can picture her, looking up at him with her typical grace and solidity, arms folded. He instead looks at the canvas—he must be quick, lest the plaster dries and he must start over again, but he can work and speak simultaneously.

“The skill is nearly lost among the People. I also did not know that you could enter the dreams of another.”

There is an edge to her voice. Solas considers this, and considers the colors on his palette, crimson red and golden-orange.

“I did not intend to overstep.”

“I meant what I said, that your aid was welcome. But. Please do not do it again.”

Understandable. “As you wish, Inquisitor.”

He resumes his work. Corypheus takes shape, tall and looming, the weave of the Veil behind him, and beneath him, the fire, the ash. Intent and focused, it takes Solas some time, then, to realize that he has not heard footsteps leading away. He glances down. Lavellan, sitting at his desk, turns a page in her book, absorbed in the text.

“Do not take this as a complaint, Inquisitor, but I am surprised you would come here for company.”

“I have questions,” she replies, “but you are working, and the quiet is nice.”

She turns another page. The light around her hand flickers dim even through her glove. Solas hums and returns to the paint. This section will be finished, soon enough, and then there will be time for questions, and perhaps questions of his own.

Chapter Text

Then the Voice of the Maker rang out, the first Word, and His Word became all that might be: dream and idea, hope and fear, endless possibilities. And from it, made his firstborn. —Canticle of Threnodies, 5:1

cole

She burns bright, brighter than the Fade that flickers by her fingertips, and Cole is enthralled by it.

There is so much hurt in this place, but Skyhold is serene, for all its motion, movement. He does what he can to help, to heal, and he sits at the railing at the top of the tavern and listens to the music making merry. And he goes to find the Inquisitor, the Herald heralding herself, to listen to the humming of her hand.

She’s like him, and not. It’s curious, and he is not Curiosity or Knowledge or Wisdom, but he still wants to know things.

When she finds him, he asks her.

“I’m a spirit,” he says to her, sitting on the edge of the ramparts, feet dangling above the drop. She sits next to him without fear, her legs crossed. “I didn’t know. I thought I was a ghost, until I learned. I’m mostly a spirit, mostly me. You’re mostly you, but more. It’s strange. Do you know why?”

Cold stone, and blood, and cold beyond the stone, dying, desperate, praying. The light around her is green.

“You can—you know? You can tell?” 

Surprise, shock, sharp relief. Cole looks at her.

“Lots of people should be able to see it. You look like yourself.”

She laughs. It isn’t a happy laugh. Cole is never sure what to do when people laugh, but are unhappy. It doesn’t mix right.

“I don’t know who that is, Cole.”

Uncertain, unknowing, holes like the holes in the sky, do the holes in her mind come from there? Memories, missing, mother. Her mother. What was her name? 

She’s forgotten. 

Cole tells her.

She stares at him. Cole doesn’t know what to do when people stare. Has he said it wrong? Should he start over? No, no, she’s been kind to him, she understands him, as much as she understands anything, as much as he understands himself. Forgetting is another hole. She won’t know. Cole will.

She’s still staring.

“Your father’s name was—”

“I know their names. I forgot them, but I know them, and—and I—” 

Cole reaches out and takes her hand. Most of the time, he doesn’t. Turnips on the windowsill, the hummed notes of an old lullaby, knives in a bucket. Touching, tentative, twisting away? No. She holds tight to him. Resting at his side, looking up at the stars. The easy contact in the clan, sitting in the grass, feet in her lap, fingers braiding flowers into crowns.

She’s missed this.

“I do not know what I am, but people want me to be more anyway. I do not know who I am, and they make me an idol.”

“You’re as much as you are.”

Her shoulders slump. She’s certain and uncertain all at once, does not believe that she has the luxury of doubt, but how can she not, when she sees how her words warp and waver, time washing so much away?

Cole doesn’t know how to fix that hurt yet. It’s too large. 

“What if I—I remember, some things, and I have forgotten many more things, and I—I walked into the Fade, and fell out again, and I don’t—am I mad? Have I gone mad, Cole? I get so lost in my thoughts I—what if—”

He squeezes her hand. She squeezes back, tight.

“It’s harder to hear you,” Cole tells her, “like counting birds against the sun. The Mark, it’s brighter than you. But you are… you’re you. And all of you is real. Even the parts that don’t make sense.” Her hand tightens around his. He catches a stray thought, a worry he can soothe more easily than most.

“I won’t tell anyone, if you don’t want me to. It could help you, if you did, but it would hurt you, too. So I won’t.”

“Sometimes,” she says, soft, sad. “Sometimes the things that help us hurt us as well. But I cannot tell them. They cannot know. You won’t tell them, you promise?”

They could help her. Testing, untrusting, but there’s only so long a person can fight side by side with another without trust. She’s scared to trust them, can’t let it happen again, they’ll turn on me again—but they could help her. A little bit of time. That’s all. 

“Promise,” Cole agrees. The wisp of worry washes away.

“Thank you.”

They stay at the edge of the ramparts in silence, and she holds fast to him, and he hums a harmony with the murmuring of her magic. The breeze catches the notes and carries them away.

Later, Cole has the realization that this is when the two of them became friends. It’s been a long time since he had friends.

It’s nice.

#

“They’re not patronizing you. They think you’re important.”

“They think I am important because of this—” She holds up her hand, and the Fade flashes across the tavern walls in flickering green. “—and because they are told I am important.”

Her voice is flat, and the humming around her in contrast is clashing, discordant, dissonant. She doesn’t like having to meet with the nobles who come to Skyhold, and that is all she has done today, and even now as she tries to relax in the tavern there are too many whispers and stares. Cole says hello when she comes in, and feels the crawl under her skin like ants across his after she goes downstairs, and later she comes up to join him with a half-eaten plate of food.

It’s simple, hearty fare. Ferelden. She misses food from home.

“If I was just another elf, they would not think the same. They do not think the same.”

She feels wrong in her own skin, sometimes. Cole wants to help her. He doesn’t know how. He thinks, maybe, that just being her friend is all he can do, and that will be enough.

“It upsets you.”

She looks at him from out the corners of her eyes and scoffs.

“Yes,” she says.

He thinks, waits, wonders. She tells him not to make people forget, that choices matter, even the ones no one knows about. He doesn’t want to make her forget. It means he has to think about what to say, careful, cautious, wanting to get it right the first time, and—well, the silence isn’t a bad thing. She likes the quiet. Sometimes she hums with him. She remembers that she likes to do that.

“I’m alive,” he tells her. “All spirits are. But spirits don’t die the same. I’ll remember how this was. And the Fade remembers, too.”

She carefully sets down the bread in her hand, on the edge of the plate, Mark flaring thoughts flashing— 

She smiles. Sad, slight, but still a smile.

“I am glad that someone will.”

“It won’t just be me. Probably. Quill quick across the parchment, ink-stained fingers, not that word, not that word, going to get it eventually… Varric’s writing it down. He doesn’t have a title yet.”

Twisting, turning—not quite happy, but fond. “I thought he was going to call it, This Shit Is Weird.”

“He says that publishers don’t like profanity in the title.”

She laughs at the irony. “That will be the least scandalous thing by the time he has finished.”

Cole sits with her in relative quiet until she finishes eating.

#

“Why do you do it?” he asks her one day.

She looks up from her desk. They have given her a room, at the top of a high tower, and they have given her finely tailored clothes and furniture gifted from nobles and books and braided rugs and many other things of luxury. Josephine asked for stained glass to be put in the last time she was away, and she came back to find windows of green like sunlight through leaves, but it isn’t the same. It’s all very nice, but she doesn’t like it. It’s too much. The silks alone could be traded for supplies for a month for her clan, but they are gifts to her? It’s too much. 

Her desk is in the corner, bracketed by bookshelves and stone-brick walls, and all the heat in the room leeches out the glass windows to the mountains’ cold but she still won’t light a fire in the hearth. Scattered across the surface there are papers and maps and ink and frustration.

“Why do I do what?” she asks him in return.

Cole sits at the very edge of her bed. The blankets are soft. Softer are the gathered furs and blankets and bedroll she keeps in a smaller room meant for storage, with a couple candles for light and the books she has been reading when she has the energy to understand the words, the history, the twisting. He bounces his legs, toe against the heel, reverse, repeat.

At her desk is where she keeps the things she does even though she doesn’t want to, letters and words and decisions, so many decisions. Cole hadn’t realized a decision could be turned into paper and ink like that. 

They’re asking her about the peace talks in Halamshiral, and all she feels she can do is laugh in hysterics. That is her decision, too? The fate of nations? She never wanted that kind of power.

“You’re helping, even though you don’t want to. Cassandra, keeping calm, can’t afford to argue, but… you don’t like her. But you’re putting pins in the map for her.”

She looks down at the papers, shuffles them into smaller piles. Her shoulders slump in a sigh.

“She is… too much like me. I think that is why we argue. But I am their Inquisitor, am I not? They follow me.”

Hating, hesitant, terrified that time will twist again, and not knowing what the present will hold—she’s still talking. Cole tries to listen. The things she’s saying are just as important as the things she won’t.

“If I could, I would not speak with many of them. But I have to. If they are to follow, they must… I must be someone they can respect.” She presses another pin into the map. “So if Cassandra asks me to help her find certain individuals the Seekers of Truth intended to find themselves, before their disappearance, I will help her. When she asks for aid in tracking down the missing Seekers, I will see to it she has that aid. When Tevinter…”

She pauses. Her lips twist. Cole tastes bitter herbs and oil slick on the back of his tongue. It’s not Dorian’s fault, she knows that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

“When Lord Pavus provides information on the locations of Venatori camps as a gesture of good faith, I will use that information. When Lady Vivienne requests I return certain tomes that were stolen from Circle towers, I will bring her any I find, not because I agree with her or because I have fondness for the Circles, but because I do not want to see more history lost. Does that… make sense?”

“You help them because it’s right to help them,” he says, but the phrase still isn’t right. Questions are harder here, trying to find the right words that mean the same thing to everyone who hears them. “But you don’t want to? It’s…”

She puts the pins aside and comes to sit next to him. 

“I am as much as I am.” She echoes his words back to him. “But it has been… Once I was me, for me, and that was all. Now I am me, for many many others, and I do not think there is any returning from it.”

“I don’t know if I can fix that,” he tells her, and she laughs, and it’s still a sad laugh. She should laugh when she’s happy, but even when she laughs at something she thinks is funny, it’s not-right. 

“Sometimes,” she says, “there is no difference between little hurts and big hurts. Either one can break a person, if there is enough of the other. You do not need to try and fix this for me, Cole. It is enough to just… talk.”

Talking is harder than helping sometimes. Words are weird. But if talking is helping, he can try to understand it more.

So they talk. And later… 

There is a small shelf in the room where she sleeps. Next to the books she reads, and the candles: five rings, found on corpses killed without reason, caught in the crossfire of all this chaos; a golden horn, found in the wreckage of a merchant caravan, hanal’ghilan, killed without reason, tearful rage as she cradles it near to her chest; a small set of prayer stones, purchased at Haven; a blood-soaked toy, carefully cleaned and cared for; a wood carving of a hart, patterns etched into the antlers; a yellow shawl, carefully folded and set aside when she isn’t wearing it.

Cole has money. When he travels with her, she insists any coin they find or are given be split evenly, with a portion returned first to anyone in the area who would need it, and what is left returned to the Inquisition, and some is given to them later as payment. He doesn’t need the gold, but he keeps it in his space above the tavern, next to the bucket of knives and the mint for the cats.

He slides past the notice of soldiers and scouts and refugees until he finds the merchant stall in Skyhold that sells fancy things for too much coin. The man has many scarves and hats and masks, and there are many people who think they are rich and important who come to visit Skyhold and then come to buy from him. Cole makes himself be noticed, and points to a statuette.

It still isn’t quite right. The halla are not viewed the same by people outside the Dalish. But he thinks that she will appreciate it more than someone who wants it because they think it will make them important and give them something to talk about.

He leaves the halla figurine on her desk, next to the map of pins and the papers she doesn’t care for. Maybe it will make her smile.

Chapter Text

“Look to My work,” said the Voice of Creation. “See what My children in arrogance wrought.” —Canticle of Andraste, 1:10 

skyhold // the imperial highway // halamshiral

“Doing all right, Harold?”

“Hhg.”

Blackwall nods to Varric as he sits down, across from him and next to Lavellan, who is slumped over with her forehead pressed against the table in what he can best describe as abject frustration. Were it anyone else, he would say despair or defeat, except he hasn’t known Lavellan to stay knocked down for anything yet and he doubts that she’s about to start now.

They’re in one of the smaller dining rooms at Skyhold, a place where the so-called inner circle can take their meals with a bit of privacy, but providing a change of scenery from being cooped up in one’s own quarters. Varric himself is avoiding Cassandra, whom he suspects is beginning to suspect something; his letter to Hawke received a response, just the other day. His oldest friend is coming to Skyhold.

But that’s a catastrophe for another time. Right now, there’s more interesting things at hand.

“Hero,” Varric greets, and Blackwall rolls his eyes but otherwise doesn’t protest the nickname. As it should be. Varric gives great nicknames. “Keeping our Inquisitor company, then?”

“Commiseration over drinks,” the Warden answers, raising his tankard. “Have you ever been to Orlais, Varric? Outside of the Inquisition’s travels, that is.”

“Once or twice,” he says, and launches into an only somewhat embellished recounting of Hawke’s adventures with Tabris at the Comte’s estate. Blackwall is hiding a smile behind his drink and his beard by the time he’s finished, and Lavellan has propped herself up enough so that he can see her face. She doesn’t look quite so miserable. Varric calls that for a win.

“Sometimes I think that Tale of the Champion is mostly fiction, and then you come out with stories like that,” Blackwall tells him.

“Who says that also wasn’t fiction?” Varric counters. “No, but in all seriousness, Hawke got up to some shit. The parts I changed were to make it more believable.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction?” Lavellan suggests wryly.

“Precisely that, Inquisitor. Got any strange truths of your own?”

She stifles a laugh. Varric isn’t sure what’s so funny, but Lavellan’s sense of humor is a strange one that seems to be centered around criticism of the Chantry and inside jokes no one else is privy to, so.

“Make some up for me, Varric. It cannot be stranger than all the other things people are saying.”

“Is that a challenge I hear, your Inquisitorialness?”

Aha! She smiles, very slightly, very briefly, a real smile. His plot has been successful.

It’s funny, because, plot like scheme but also like narrative… 

Ah, the joke’s no good when he has to explain it even to himself.

Regardless, by the time Lavellan leaves, there’s a lightness to her step, and he and Blackwall share a nod in the following quiet.

Ranking just below the Chantry—both Imperial and Orlesian—on the list of things Lavellan hates are the countries themselves. Tevinter, and Orlais. And in a too-brief period of time, the Inquisition is to be riding straight to the Orlesian Chantry’s seat of power, nestled in the ancient bones of Arlathan, to make nice with the nobles and stop a plot against Empress Celene. Plenty of potential for a clusterfuck in the making, too many ways for too many things to go wrong, and if that wasn’t enough… 

Well.

Varric worries for his friends. That includes Lavellan, now.

#

“This wasn’t the kind of emergency I thought you meant,” Vivienne says with disdain and disgust. “But it is, all the same, an emergency.”

Skyhold has been all a bustle the closer the date of the peace talks draws. Vivienne has observed the Inquisition slowly piece itself together, building and consolidating its power—and, too, has she observed the Inquisitor, the image the elven woman has crafted for herself.

It’s hardly poise or elegance. No, Lavellan is much more like a battering ram. But she is firm and unyielding and skilled in battle, and Vivienne will even admit to being impressed at the other woman’s studies in the way of the Knight-Enchanter. Some might say that it’s a bit much, to learn such magics, when one already has a sword affixed to the end of one’s staff, but Lavellan has something of a natural affinity for the art. Coupled with her drive to take control of a battle by any means, she is certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Occasionally, Lavellan comes to the balcony where Vivienne spends most of her time, and they discuss magic, and debate the role of the Circles, and sometimes simply sit in quiet company. It makes her think fondly of when she was a youth, the library at Montsimmard, the towering shelves of books, the scratching of quills on parchment, the turning of pages, the murmur of conversations. A moment of normalcy in a world that will never be normal again. Or, will never be what it was before.

But one day this changes.

Lavellan sends for her, and Vivienne makes the trek to the Inquisitor’s private rooms for the first time. This, too, reminds her of her youth, and how the other apprentices had complained of any formal events being held in the banquet hall on the top floor of the tower. There are several flights of stairs, and with no one present to see, she takes a moment to catch her breath before knocking.

“Come in,” Lavellan calls, muffled through the wood, and Vivienne steps inside.

It is quite the grand set of rooms, significantly larger even than Vivienne’s veranda and balcony, with tall glass windows and doors, twin balconies overlooking the Frostback range and Skyhold’s courtyard far below. The furnishings, in contrast, are plain and rather simple, a wooden dresser, a four-poster bed with rich blue coverings, a desk covered in papers and books, a modest hearth, unlit despite the chill in the air. The concessions to her status are found in the room’s location—and that she has not protested it—and in the stained glass and the banner tapestries, the green of the Exalted Plains.

Or, Vivienne supposes, the Dalish would have a different name for it. She thinks she might have read it in a book somewhere, but she can’t recall the word.

Lavellan stands at the foot of her bed, her arms folded, and Vivienne crosses the room to her side, and the two of them stare at the reason for Lavellan’s summons in silence. A moment passes, two. Vivienne speaks. Lavellan does not laugh, but her lips twitch in a slight smile.

“I am to have final approval on Inquisition uniforms for the peace talks and celebrations at the Winter Palace,” she tells Vivienne, and gestures at the uniform laid out before them. “This, I am told, is the best they can do on short notice.”

“Whoever they are, my dear, fire them immediately.”

Vivienne is as unimpressed as Lavellan appears, and truly, the ‘outfit’ before them is such a travesty it’s nearly not worth the output of emotion. The design is well enough, in broad strokes, the style akin to a military uniform, certain elements borrowed from Orlais, and others from Ferelden, and others still from other nations. No clear allegiance to any one. But the colors, Maker above—one does not create solely from a palette of saturated primaries, and this uniform is nothing but.

“The template itself is not so bad,” she allows. “The colors, on the other hand.”

“My art is more music than style, but even I could tell that,” Lavellan says dryly. “And I certainly wasn’t going to ask the Tevinter for advice.”

“One of you would set the thing on fire, at least, and that would solve some of our problems quite nicely.” She swallows down a disgusted noise—she is hardly so crass. “I have some ideas, though even I cannot work miracles. Might you have any paper?”

#

Cassandra and Lavellan ride in silence, for the most part. The Inquisition moves in a slow caravan, with much of their number riding in carriages, but Lavellan prefers to travel with her hart, and no one else would dare to argue with either. The pride of Arlatha n, Cassandra has heard Dennett call the creature, and indeed it is as noble and strong-willed as the woman who tends to it.

Not only is the weather pleasant—a welcome luxury, whenever she travels—but they are traveling along the Imperial Highway instead of through the backwoods of the Hinterlands. They are traveling on roads, on the road, that marvel of Tevinter architecture that has stood for all the modern ages and more.

It is, to be blunt, a welcome change of pace. Not that Lavellan thinks so, going by her expression.

“Has the sky done something to offend, Inquisitor?”

“Aside from the Breach?” Lavellan responds. “No.”

She does not elaborate further. Cassandra, now unsure what Lavellan had been staring so crossly at, or if she had imagined the whole thing, does not ask, and the brief conversation is put entirely out of mind until late that evening, as she sits through the evening’s watch. The spirit-boy Lavellan is so fond of appears near the fire, his too-wide eyes focused on something distant.

“The stones remember,” he says. 

“That is very unnerving,” Cassandra tells him. It doesn’t make him go away. It never does.

“The merchants, the traders, rattling wagon-wheels, warm-damp, packed in too tightly, too many.” He pauses for long enough that Cassandra thinks he might be done speaking, but: “They stole many, many people down this road.”

#

Someone is going to be dead by the end of the night. Vivienne does not mean this in regards to what the Inquisition is here to stop—the assassination of Her Majesty, Empress Celene. No, she is referring to Lavellan, whose expression appears to be turning to stone as the night goes on. The only sign that something is amiss is the way the elegant sconces affixed to the marble walls seem to flicker as she walks by, subtle enough that only a well-trained mage would notice it.

Someone is going to be dead by the end of the night, because Inquisitor Revas Lavellan is either going to duel the entirety of Halamshiral’s elite or raze the Winter Palace to the ground.

Vivienne sips at her wine and carefully glances about the ballroom. She hasn’t seen Lavellan in the last several minutes, which might mean that their Inquisitor is simply in the vestibule or the gardens. It might also mean that their Inquisitor is diving headfirst into an uncovered plot, hopefully without getting too much blood on her uniform. Vivienne put too much effort into making a presentable design for the tailor's work to be ruined like that.

“Enjoying the celebrations, Madame Vivienne?”

Dorian sweeps to her side, interrupting her musings, a wineglass in one hand, a smile across his face. He’s remarkably skilled at ignoring the whispers that follow him about the ballroom, from what Vivienne can see, and just as skilled at returning the polite barbs with pointed words of his own, and he leans against the banister near to where Vivienne is standing with a practiced ease.

All in all, he’s doing quite well in the Game. Vivienne smiles back, effortless.

“Oh, Skyhold is impressive, and an architectural marvel, to be sure! But I must admit, I have missed Orlais.”

“A perfectly complementary answer to all parties that didn’t actually answer my question,” Dorian says. Vivienne raises her glass to him in acknowledgment. “Marvelous! But another question, if I might—have you, by any chance, seen the Inquisitor recently?”

He speaks in the same casual, easy tone of voice, which Vivienne appreciates. If they are to keep from attracting attention, they must do everything but whisper in secret. Vivienne answers in kind, scanning the ballroom under the pretense of flagging down a servant. They are drawing attention—as they should—but no one seems to be intent on eavesdropping.   

“Not recently, no. Why do you ask?”

“Well, she hardly keeps me updated on her whereabouts.”

“That, my dear, might have something to do with how you continuously place your foot into your mouth when conversing with her.”

Dorian hides his grimace by taking a sip of his wine. “I spoke from a place of ignorance, I recognize that now—though she was ever so fond of me before that. No, just that I haven’t seen her in the past half hour, since the garden. She asked me to create a distraction and didn’t elaborate, and frankly, I’m not sure if she’s investigating something or if she just wanted to get away from the crowds.”

Vivienne hums, and sips at her own drink, and takes her time in thinking this new information over.

Knowing their Inquisitor, truthfully, it could be either.

“I have not,” she finally says, mild. “A distraction, dear?”

“Yes, well, I’m very good at party tricks.”

#

Lavellan is snooping around, he knows; Solas has not seen her in quite some time, though no one else has noticed just yet. The Winter Palace is large, and there are many places to mingle, and many more places to hide. 

He, for his part, is wine-drunk and content. There are too many humans around for him to be comfortable, but in many ways he is reminded of the home he has left behind.

There is a breath of movement next to him, with the same subtlety as the servants who keep refilling his glass, with far more of a presence than anyone save Lavellan has in this place. He smiles. “Hello, Cole.”

Cole fidgets, for want of a better word. At some point in the night, he’s gotten rid of his gloves. “It’s built on bones,” he says.

Solas nods, slow. He has seen the fall of Halamshiral in a thousand different dreams. Even in this palace, Orlesian architecture, imported marble, there are bits of Arlathan cannibalized, spat out again.

“This city was once a part of something grand,” he agrees—or, he thinks that he is agreeing, but Cole only shakes his head.

“No. I mean, yes, it was, but no. Not here. She hates it. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

So few things are.

Solas hums in thought. Does he mean the Empress? Briala? Any one of the nobility? There’s little way of knowing. He turns to ask, for he has always enjoyed his conversations with the spirit, but Cole is no longer there.

#

“D’you know what Her Most Royal Heraldliness wants with those statue-things?” 

Sera is sitting—or, ‘sitting,’ which is to say, squatting, feet planted squarely on the gold-embroidered cushions—on a chair next to Bull and keeping a tally of how many of these noble twits she can stick her tongue out at without them noticing. So far: seven. 

Lavellan’s been rushing around all over the place, doing something or another, probably important. All the details about whatever’s going down don’t matter to Sera, because it’s all the same, isn’t it? Rich twits punching down on everyone else. It helps that Lavellan doesn’t seem to like them much, either. She stopped by quick, a little bit ago, asking if Sera has any Friends around her (what kind of a question, even? ‘course she does!) and for her to keep an eye out for any halla statues.

She doesn’t much know what a bunch of people like this want to do with halla statues. They sure as fuck don’t like the Dalish, or the regular elves—all the same, to them. But, Sera’s snooped through enough fancy houses to know that sometimes they like to collect things that are different, make themselves feel important. That could be it? 

Bull shrugs. He looks funny in a shirt. Not as funny as Solas does in his hat, and not as funny as he would’ve if Lavellan hadn’t nixed the original uniform designs when they were presented to her, but it’s still pretty funny.

“Nope,” he says. “But, I did pass the information along to Krem, and he found a couple for me to pass on to the boss. Haven’t seen her since.”

There’s a man in some truly awful striped breeches, and a striped jacket, but all the stripes are going in different directions. Also, feathers? What, even. Sera sticks her tongue out as he turns his back, and he doesn’t notice—bring it to eight, now, ha!

Past him, she sees Blackwall looking uncomfortable as three other nobles are standing around having some kind of conversation. Probably a boring one. And he doesn’t like fancy parties like this any more than she does, but he’s too polite to go disrupting a conversation. Ugh. Stupid, nice Blackwall.

“Hey, Bull,” she says, and elbows him in the side. It feels like elbowing a brick wall. “Inquisition’s gotta plan a rescue.”

“Hm? Oh.” He follows her gaze, laughs under his breath. “No bees, though. The boss wouldn’t appreciate that.”

“Her Ladyship would think the bees were hilarious, don’t even start!”

#

The Inquisitor helps her to her feet, and it’s more nerve-wracking than pouring tea for the Empress. The Inquisitor. But she’s—gentle, even as she turns a sharp green gaze onto her, intent, and asks questions one after another.

She answers. Of course she answers. It’s the Inquisitor. And if Briala has failed her, maybe the Inquisitor— 

“...and I knew her, before. She wants to play revolution now, but I remember. She was sleeping with the empress who purged our alienage.”

She swallows, suddenly nervous. One of the torches on the wall sputters, flickers out, even though the breeze from the shattered window isn’t that strong. The Inquisitor speaks, calm and quiet.

“The alienage here? In Halamshiral?”

Some days, she can still smell the smoke.

“Burned down entire blocks just to prove she wasn’t going soft.”

#

“Tevinter,” Lavellan says, not breaking stride as she walks past Dorian. “A moment of your time.”

Dorian keeps a pleasant smile on his face, doesn’t startle, thanks to years of practice. Doesn’t let the concern show on his face.

He’s moved inside, out of the gardens, to check in with a few other members of the Inquisition. No one had seen the Inquisitor until now, in long enough that it was starting to be a cause for concern, and now that Dorian has seen her, well. The sconce on the wall nearest to him sputters and dims out to little but embers, and past the smells of food and wine and too many different types of perfume, he catches the faintest hint of ozone.

In other words, Lavellan has found something, and she’s distinctly unhappy about it.

He starts to follow, and Madame Vivienne falls into step alongside him within a few strides.

“She find you, as well?” he asks her.

“She did,” is all Vivienne says. “Slow your pace, just a touch. We’re not trying to cause a scene yet.”

Not that it matters. Lavellan, it seems, has gathered everyone she’s been able to find, and she stands like a pillar of marble at the center of them all. It’s attracting attention, the known associates of the Inquisitor gathering like this; nothing is visibly wrong, but that it’s happening at all must mean something, and the nobles of Orlais begin circling the rumors like wolves on the hunt. 

Lavellan looks at them all, arms folded across her chest. Some of her hair has come out of its pins, and there’s a spot of blood on her sleeve.

“I rescued one of Briala’s agents,” she says in a low, calm, gentle tone, once everyone is close enough to hear. The nearest sconce is wavering in a nonexistent breeze. Dorian eyes it, wary. Notices the other two mages in their group doing the same. “She said that the Empress burned down much of Halamshiral’s alienage. Which, if I might remind you, is most of the city.”

“You didn’t know,” Cole says, statement of fact rather than question. Dorian hears Bull, a quiet, well, shit. Varric sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth.

“I was not told,” Lavellan agrees, still so very, very calm.

Dorian recognizes something in that moment.

Lavellan doesn’t like him, he knows that, has known it for weeks. He sees no reason to try and change that. But all the same, he respects her. And looking at the others, those he’s come to tolerate, those he cannot stand, those he would count among his rare few friends—he sees a group of people who are entirely willing to go to war for the sake of one woman with power she’s never seemed to want.

How strange it is, to find a cause to believe in this strongly. How strange, to find a person to believe in.

Sera suggests leaving Orlais to Corypheus, and Varric almost looks inclined to agree with her—Blackwall and Bull, half-focused on the conversation, half-focused on their surroundings, a wall between their group and the crowds—Vivienne, the lady of iron, who much like Dorian has found respect for their Inquisitor despite their differences—Solas, too, waiting only for her word, and then he will carry it out with the others. All Lavellan must do is speak it.   

“What do you wish for us to do, Inquisitor?” Cassandra asks, and she too is someone Lavellan rarely gets along with, but she is also a terrible liar. Dorian looks at her and sees only determination and a willingness to help.

Something cracks for just a moment in Lavellan’s stony expression. A moment of surprise, or shock, there and then gone again in a moment.

“I have had enough of this place and its lies and its trickery,” she answers at last. “Florianne is our assassin. Keep an eye on her, and the Empress. Someone find the advisors to the Inquisition and inform them I will wish to speak with them when all this posturing has finished.”

“And you?” Vivienne asks as Lavellan begins to turn.

“They are squabbling like children over an empire of lives they care nothing about.” Lavellan looks across the ballroom. There, Florianne and her brother, the Grand Duke Gaspard. There, Empress Celene. “So, as children, I am going to scold them until they agree to play nice. Excuse me.”

And she turns and walks away, the torches flickering silently in her wake.

Chapter Text

the winter palace

Sera doesn’t mean to overhear it, is the thing.

She means to overhear a lot of things, sure; she’s got loads of blackmail on the rich nobs who’d come to these celebrations, even some pieces that Lady Nightingale hadn’t heard. Sera had told her about most of them, but not all, cause what’s the point of blackmail if loads of people know about it? Sure, Leliana’s all spooky with her ravens and all, but Sera can do some good with that information, too—or, a Friend of hers can.

It’s late. Real late. A lot of the Inquisition has gone off to bed, all drunk and stumbling, but if there’s one thing Orlesian nobles can do sort-of okay, it’s throw a party, and this party is still going strong. Sera laughs and drinks with them all, because, free wine for some common street rat like her, in a place like this? Hell friggin yes she’s taking it. She tips a servant, finds a cache, leaves a surprise in some lady’s skirts, catches a bee from the gardens to let it loose inside.

It’s far less than any of them deserve. Sera would gladly burn this place down, if she had the methods and the means. But she can't right now, so she settles for petty annoyances to take some of the fun out of their so-called victory. Not like the war meant anything to them but in the abstract.

She ducks away when her little surprise gift makes itself known, cackling as she goes, and zips down one corridor after another towards what she thinks is an empty balcony. And it looks like an empty balcony, all the way up until she’s practically through the door, and then she sees the Inquisitor and her demon sitting off in one corner, backs to the wall, and she backpedals so quickly she nearly falls square on her ass. Doesn’t, though. Perks of being a rogue, that, she’s graceful even when she’s sloshed. Neither of them notice her.

“—hate it, Cole.”

“It isn’t your fault,” the demon says. Spirit. Same difference, to Sera.

“How is it not?” Lavellan answers, and the grief Sera hears makes her go silent and still.

No one knows, so far as Sera can tell, what Lavellan said to the Empress and the Grand Duke. She’d gathered them all, stone-cold, furious, had explained what had been withheld from her and from them, that the Empress had purged the alienage of Halamshiral to prove a point… and oh, Sera was furious about that too, in her own way, because she hated the alienage in Denerim, hated the people there, the stupid vhena-whatsit tree, but— 

But these were some of her little people, too. Victims of idiots in power who played with lives like they were gambling away coin but too rich to care.

And then Lavellan had left their group, and marched to where the Empress and the Grand Duke and Duchess were. Had exposed the Duchess’ plot, an elf in a room full of rich fucks like this, and she commanded their attention like it was easy. Had drawn the Empress and the Grand Duke away, and when all was said and done, the Empress declared peace. The war was over.

And then she’d vanished. It’s a big place, Sera had just assumed that Lavellan was celebrating elsewhere, but—she’s just here, alone, and Sera can’t see her face but if it were anyone else speaking with that voice she’d assume they were crying.

Not Lavellan, though. Lavellan is all sharp words and too-loud laughter at inappropriate times. Except. Not right now.

Ugh. Always making things more complicated than Sera wants them to be.

“What will they say about this in a hundred years? Not even a hundred years—in fifty, in fifteen, in five? A knife-ear playing at court? With the audacity to try and—” She spits out words, some of them liquid like water and music, others clipped, angular. Sera doesn’t recognize any of them. She sounds angry, now, angry and hurt all at once. “I cannot control it. I cannot control what they are going to say. I cannot even keep anyone at a distance. It is going to happen again, it, it, it.”

Sera doesn’t mean to overhear it. But now that she has, she can’t unhear it, can’t make the words go away. So she takes one step back as the demon starts to answer, and then another, and then another, until she’s too far away to hear any more.

#

The next day is bright and sunny and every other person Sera sees is hungover, which would be funnier if Sera also wasn’t a little bit hungover. Doesn’t matter, though. She’s got a job to do, and that’s to find where Blackwall is.

The Empress granted them rooms in the Winter Palace, as thanks for helping end the war. Sera’s carved at least one dick on every piece of furniture in her chambers, and she plans to carve even more when she gets the chance, but for now, she drops the location of the cache to the man who brings her breakfast on a shiny tray, pockets the silverware and several pieces of bacon, and sets off. Blackwall, turns out, isn’t hungover. Lucky him. Sera finds him in his rooms, and he yells, startled, spilling half his coffee down his front.

Sera laughs at him and eats a strip of bacon.

“That door was locked,” he says.

“It was!” Sera answers. “Now it isn’t.”

Blackwall sighs and pours himself another cup of coffee from a fancy polished kettle into a fancy polished cup.

“Assume you’ve got a reason for picking the locks to my rooms?”

Sera sits down on the chair opposite him, pulls her knees up to her chest, fiddles with her fingers. “Her Ladyship. She seem okay to you?”

Blackwall pauses, takes a long drink from his cup.

“I think she’s lonely,” he finally answers. Sera likes that about Blackwall—he gets it, when she asks questions, doesn’t need to ask a bunch of stupid questions in return and demand Sera make her words make more sense. “I also think she hates it here, and things will be better once we’re back at Skyhold. Why? Something happen after I left?”

Sera chews on her lower lip in thought. She hadn’t meant to overhear. And like blackmail, secrets don’t stay secret when you tell them to others. 

“Sorta. Can’t say much. I’m just.”

“It’s easy to forget she’s someone anyone needs to be worried about,” he says quietly. “But she’s a person, same as the rest of us. I wouldn’t say I’m close with her, really, but I’ll keep an eye out for her as we’re riding back.”

Sera thinks of the hurting-grieving-anger from before, the way Lavellan’s voice had cracked as she spoke, I cannot even keep anyone at a distance, it is going to happen again— 

“Yeah. And, dunno how much say you have in this, ‘cause I don’t usually go with her places, right? But you should try to go with her, next place she goes. Or, get Varric to go. Or that—Cole. Since she likes it, or whatever.”

Blackwall nods, serious. There’s worry creasing the corners of his eyes now, a frown at the corners of his lips—though that’s mostly hidden by the beard. Sera hates these kinds of conversations, but. But, sometimes, they’re needed.

“Usually one of us goes with her, but I’ll see what I can do. Can I bring this up? To them?”

“Sure, whatever. Long as someone’s got her back while I keep her from getting too big for her boots.”

Thing is, Sera doesn’t think that’s going to be as much a problem as she had before.

Chapter Text

Bitter is sorrow, ate raw and often, poison that weakens and does not kill. —Canticle of Andraste 1:2 

the champion of kirkwall

Skyhold is… something.

Hawke would like to say she’s neutral about the whole thing, except she can’t even finish the thought without hearing her friends’ loud and vehement denials of the fact in the back of her mind. They’d be right, of course. Hawke has never been neutral about anything in her entire life, and she isn’t about to start now.

It’s… pretty? Lots of people. Organized.

The heraldry draped from the battlements is a rich emerald green, embroidered in gold, in patterns that are distinctly more Dalish than anything else. But beyond that, everywhere she turns, she sees the Inquisition’s symbol: the sunburst of the Chantry that marks the head of every Tranquil, the downturned sword of so-called mercy emblazoned across the armor of every Templar, the wide-open eye, all seeing and ever present.

It makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

But for all that, getting inside isn’t difficult . Her bags are searched, and she’s asked for a name and purpose for arrival. Marian she says, on pilgrimage. And in she goes. She reads the letter in her pocket again, though she’s read it so many times by now that she has it memorized and the ink is starting to fade, parchment ripping at the creases of the folds.

Left from the courtyard, up the stairs, but be quick about it since Curly’s office is nearby. Left again on the ramparts, to the northwest corner of the fortress. There’s merchants to the right of her as she goes, and on her left, she passes by a makeshift clinic, and a pang strikes through her heart as she thinks of Anders— 

Oh, Anders.

There are the stairs, then, and though she looks around she doesn’t see a blond-haired man in silver plate nearby, so up she goes, one after another. Inside the fortress walls are strangely warm, though it had been cold as all hell to get here; even on the ramparts, as the breeze catches her hair and blows it into her eyes, it’s not cold. She leans against the stone wall for a moment, and that is neither warm nor cold, despite the temperature of the air outside, despite the sun which shines brightly down.

Huh. It doesn’t feel like magic, here, but maybe she just hasn’t been looking at it the right way.

But that’s for another time.

Up the stairs, quick to avoid the possibility of Cullen, and left on the ramparts. The snow-capped mountains are nearly blinding, but in all her family’s travels—all their running from the Templars—she’s never been this close to the Frostbacks, and she’s never had cause to travel through them. Being surrounded by nothing but crisp air and jagged, rocky peaks is an experience unlike any other, and Hawke barely pays it half a thought as she sees a wide square section of the ramparts, the northwest corner, a stout figure with a crossbow on his back.

“When you get to the highest point in Kirkwall, the only thing of note to see is the Gallows. This is much nicer, Varric.”

Varric spins around, and Hawke musters up a smile, because for her first friend in Kirkwall she’d do almost anything.  

“Hawke,” he says, and grins in dizzied relief and hugs her tight around the waist. Hawke drops to her knees, throws her arms around him, buries her face in his shoulder, because here away from prying eyes and crowds she can do that, can let herself be Marian Hawke instead of Hawke, the Champion. 

Just a moment. She can give herself just a moment.

“Sure, it’s pretty here, but it’s no Hanged Man,” Varric answers.

“There can only be one Hanged Man. Any more would be too much for the world to handle. Did you know you have ink on your collar?”

She can hear his answering laugh like a rumble in his chest. 

“Her Inquisitorialness gets up to some crazy shit, Waffles. Someone has to stick around and write it all out.”

Maker’s breath, she’s missed him so much it hurts. For his own safety, as much as he’d hate it, she doesn’t know where Carver is—Aveline and Merrill are still in Kirkwall, holding it together through sheer force of will—Isabella, on the high seas, causing her own bit of trouble for Starkhaven—Fenris, alive, ripping up the Tevinter slave trade one chain link at a time—Anders, Anders… 

But Varric is here. Fuck. She isn’t going to cry. She won’t. She plasters on another smile when she pulls away, taking in all the details of his face, all the little things she’d forgotten. The way his eyes crinkle when he smiles. The crooked bridge of his nose. The little scar on his chin.

“Speaking of the Inquisitor, you tell anyone I’m here yet?”

“Just her.” Varric glances down, nervous for but a moment. Hawke frowns. He doesn’t get nervous. “Figure she can be a little extra barrier for later.”

“Barrier for what?” Hawke asks, folds her arms across her chest, musters up her best impression of Mother’s I’m-waiting-for-an-answer. She can do that, now. Can think about her mother without wanting to scream for the pain of it. Of course, she probably doesn’t cut an impressive figure, still kneeling on the stone next to her friend, but. 

“They wanted you for this, you know.” He’s still looking at the ground. “Wanted you to lead. I didn’t tell them where you were, of course. You were still running with Blondie and Broody, I figured you already had enough on your plate.”

“Varric…”

“I’d lie again about it in a heartbeat, if I had to.” He looks up, meets her gaze squarely, and for a rare moment drops all humor from his voice. “I didn’t want you to have to come here.”

“Oh, Varric.” She shakes her head sadly. “There are more important things at stake.”

There are always more important things at stake.

She sighs, gets to her feet, knees and hips cracking in protest. Varric sighs, too, and for a moment they’re both just old and tired friends. Then they’re friends, and they do not have the luxury of age or exhaustion; Varric moves to look down from the ramparts to the courtyard below.

“I only told the Inquisitor. She’ll probably be here soon, I asked her to meet me after lunch. Figured if you weren’t here yet, I could explain, and if you were, I could explain faster. There she is, now, in the yellow scarf.”

Hawke leans over his shoulder, sees a figure crossing to the stairs she had climbed and a splash of yellow color. “Well, here goes.”

The figure climbs, and turns, and slows a little bit as she approaches, seeing another person there with Varric. Hawke leans back against the stone; Varric puts on his best showman’s voice.

“Hawke, this is the Inquisitor. Inquisitor Lavellan, Hawke—the Champion of Kirkwall.”

The Inquisitor is a small woman, shorter than even Merrill, and she carries herself with a steadiness Hawke would be envious of, if she couldn’t tell it was the same steadiness Hawke carries herself with. Which is to say: if you pretend you know what you’re doing, people believe it, and while it won’t keep you from panicking it’ll keep everyone else from it. She wears a pair of moccasins as concession to the mountain’s cold, a yellow scarf like a shawl around her shoulders, and carries a rune-enchanted staff with a blade half her height at one end, and her expression gives nothing away as she looks between Hawke and Varric. The wind whistles, and the Inquisitor pushes a lock of red hair behind one ear. It immediately blows out of place.

Hawke dredges up another smile and a laugh. There are more important things at stake. There are always more important things at stake.

“Well, this is a nice change of pace!” she exclaims. “Been a while since I was nervous to meet someone. Usually it’s the other way around, though I’m not too sure why.”

Inquisitor Lavellan looks at her impassively. “I make you nervous?”

“The man I love blew up a Chantry and helped get the ball rolling on the mage rebellion, and I support him wholeheartedly, and I really don’t want to have to fight you over that.”

From somewhere behind her, Hawke can hear Varric slowly dying. It sounds like him pinching the bridge of his nose and muttering, ‘Andraste’s tits, Hawke, please.’ In front of her, the Inquisitor’s expression doesn’t change, even as she takes a deliberate step forward, tilting her chin up to meet Hawke’s steady gaze.

“Champion,” she says, low and serious, “understand me when I say this—and I truly cannot stress this enough—fuck the Chantry.”

Varric mutters more intently.

Hawke thinks about the green and gold banners and the trees of the Dales in the middle of this all, the sunburst, the sword, the ever-watching eye, and laughs. This time, she feels a little bit more like she means it. 

“I think you and I are going to get along just fine, Inquisitor. Drinks on me later?”

The Inquisitor blinks up at her with that same blank expression—and then it cracks, and there isn’t quite humor there, but there’s something bright in her brief smile.

“Only if you do not call me Inquisitor.”

“Only if you don’t call me Champion, Lavellan.”

“Very well, Hawke.” 

“Okay,” Varric interjects, “okay, I feel like I should have known you two would get along like a house on… well, should’ve known you two would get along.”

“You’re invited, too, Varric,” Hawke tells him. “I assume there’s a tavern here?”

“We do not need to go to the tavern,” the Inquisitor—Lavellan says. “I have a wine cellar. But, that is later. Hawke, Varric tells me you know about Corypheus.” 

Hawke does indeed know about Corypheus. Her smile fades—and she begins to speak.

Chapter Text

Lady of Perpetual Victory, your praises I sing! Gladly do I accept the gift invaluable of your glory! Let me be the vessel which bears the Light of your promise to the world expectant. —Canticle of Exaltations, 1:1

cassandra

After the events at the Winter Palace—which, Cassandra is more than glad to be away from all the scheming and the politics, gladder still to be away from a place which put their Inquisitor in such a foul mood—things continue on as they have for months. Closing rifts, bringing aid to where it is needed, establishing further outposts and working to uproot Corypheus’ plans… 

There are, of course, disruptions. Lavellan will start arguing with the clergy if left to her own devices, for one—more importantly, for another, the more they work to undo what Corypheus has put into motion, the more things come to light, searched for or not.

Go digging, she supposes, and you will unearth whatever there is to find.

Cassandra asks if some of the Inquisition’s resources can be put to finding the remaining Seekers of Truth. Lavellan says it will be done. Upon returning from Halamshiral she finds that the last known location of the Seekers they managed to track down is Caer Oswin, an old fortress in Ferelden, and she means to set out right away, but things are… waylaid.

(By her, she thinks, though she does not want to admit it. But Varric, damnable dwarf, he knew where Hawke was, he knew—)

They get there, in the end.

And what they find… 

“We harbored secrets and let them fester. We acted to survive, but not to serve. That is not the Maker’s work…” Cassandra swallows back an upset noise, but it is difficult, to keep her anger and her revulsion from getting the better of her. It always has been. She acts on feeling, first. “We cast aside ideals in favor of expedience and tell ourselves it was all necessary. For the people. Will that happen to us, Inquisitor? Will we repeat history?”

Lavellan pulls the book across the table, flips through some of its pages. Within are pages upon pages of notes, words lost to time, and old rituals Cassandra cannot understand the specifics of—but she does not need to understand the specifics to understand the purpose. 

The rite of Tranquility. Its reversal.

“I sincerely hope not,” she finally answers. “But we cannot control that. We can only ensure that what is here and now is as permanent as we can make it, and… and when we find something like this, decide how to go about revealing it. Make it permanent, too. Make it so it cannot be forgotten.”

Lavellan sounds tired. Cassandra hesitates.

“This is… this is what you do,” she says, slow. They so easily talk around each other, mistake one another’s words, and that is not what she wants to do here, now. Lavellan frowns slightly and glances up. “Every day. These kinds of decisions. I don’t know how you manage it.”

Lavellan blinks once. Her expression cracks; her smile is rueful. “Who says I am managing? This weighs on me daily, Cassandra.”

“You? But—” Lavellan’s expression shutters at the surprise in her tone, and Cassandra scrambles to correct. “I mean. Inquisitor. I envy you that. You seem so unaffected by it all. I could… I speak and act first, and think later. I could not be so rational, for so long.”

The silence stretches, taut. Lavellan sighs, and shuts the book, and traces her fingers across the eye of the Seekers stamped into the leather binding.

“Cassandra,” she says at last, very very softly. “I feel so deeply that I think I could drown in it.”

And Cassandra stares, not sure how to process—this, this, the Inquisitor, their Inquisitor, letting her guard down in such a way, letting her mortality be shown to Cassandra, of all people? And at the same time, all of a sudden, many more things make sense.

“I cannot let them see that. I cannot let anyone see anything, because everything I do reflects on me, and on all of you, and on every elf in Thedas, Dalish or not. And I do make an effort, not to act on impulse, because if I am wrong, then the consequences are. Well.”

“You said to me, when we first… met.” 

That isn’t the right word, too benign for Lavellan waking up alone and frightened beneath the Chantry at Haven, their forced march into the Valley of Sacred Ashes, hell raining down from above. But Cassandra has never been good with words. She presses on, tries to make up for it with intent. 

“You said to me, you did not have a choice, and I was angry with you, then. I thought you were complaining, and I couldn’t understand how you would when there was so much more at stake. But. There has always been more at stake, even beyond all of this.”

Lavellan nods. The shutters fall away again, just a little bit, but for the first time in all the months they have known each other, the little smile she offers Cassandra looks almost genuine. Not quite happy, not with this conversation, not with the weight of the legacy that sits on the table in between them, but genuine all the same.

“This,” Lavellan says, and splays her fingers across the surface of the book. “We will make sure this is remembered. Talk with the Chantry mothers who are willing to talk to us, and Fiona, and Lady Vivienne, and do whatever we must.”

“Whatever we must,” Cassandra agrees.

#

It’s possibly this conversation, Cassandra thinks later, that draws Lavellan to take her to the Exalted Plains.

In the aftermath of the War of the Lions, there are still areas where the fighting has continued—such is the way, with war. The Exalted Plains has not seen further active conflict, for both sides had agreed to a temporary ceasefire waiting to hear on the peace talks in Val Royeaux, but since the retreat there has been no further word from either Celene or Gaspard’s men. Inquisition scouts report a ravaged landscape and hordes of undead, as well as several rifts.

So, off they go.

And maybe Cassandra is seeing things where there is nothing to be seen, but now she knows what Lavellan looks like when she’s putting up a front, and she can see it here, now, along the Imperial Highway to the Plains and into the Inquisition outpost on the outskirts of the battlefields.

It helps, that she is not alone in her concern. Blackwall is frowning in Lavellan’s direction, trying not to be obvious about it and only partially succeeding; Cole hovers and frets. And Lavellan glares at the statues which line the ravine away from the camp and into the open plains, and Cassandra thinks that everyone has been a little bit worried for their Inquisitor since the Winter Palace, and if their odd group has nothing in common they at least have that.

Scout Harding provides her report when they arrive, though little has changed since the last missives sent out— 

“Dirthavaren,” Lavellan interrupts. There’s a pause. Everyone looks to her. “It is called Dirthavaren.”

“...That’s the elven name for it, right?” Harding asks, tentative. “Could you repeat it? So I could—I don’t want to say it wrong.” 

Lavellan’s expression is as stony as the statues around them. Then it softens, just a little.

“Dirthavaren,” she says again. “The promise. Where the second Exalted March ended, and the People scattered.”

After Harding finishes her report, and their small party takes a moment to restock their supplies, Blackwall catches her eye and offers a small nod. Cassandra nods back.

She has always admired the stories of the Exalted Plains, the history, the battles. When she was younger, when she only knew them as stories and tales of victory. Now, though, she can recognize the pain here, and she can recognize the tightness in Lavellan’s shoulders as they set out.

This is not going to be an easy time, but at least Lavellan will not be alone in it.

Chapter Text

cole

She doesn’t like it here.

Cole can’t blame her, can’t criticize; the air itself hums, hollow, open and abandoned though not by choice. Mournful. It’s sad, but she says to him, sometimes there is no difference between big hurts and little hurts, and the sorrow of broken promises is too big a hurt to truly fix. So, he follows her, instead, like a shadow, because she is his friend and he can help her.

And he’s not alone in helping her.

Halamshiral, she hates Halamshiral, hates the Empress and Gaspard and the masks and the lies and the gold gilt bones it’s built above. She left Briala with more power than anyone seems to realize, and it makes a little curl of satisfaction inside of her, a stubborn bitter herb struggling to grow—and then she left, and Cole had found her trying to remember how to breathe.

Time, twisting, turning, will they forget again? Will it be the same?

Except, the others all care about her, in the same way that Cole cares about her, and she cares about them and she’s letting them in, letting them closer, a little bit at a time.

Caring comes easily to her. She’s scared—but happier, just a little, letting herself remember how. 

Varric isn’t here—wanted to be, but she had told him, no, because Hawke is here, hurting, too, and Varric should stay with her instead. Varric asks Cole, will you go with her, except Blackwall has already asked the same thing, worried, wondering, Sera at his side. Not just them, too, it’s everyone, in their own way. They care with her, for her. 

It’s good.

Because, she doesn’t like it here, tension taught across her shoulders, twisting tighter the more they travel, promises broken, how much more will they take? How much, how much, how much? The divide between here and Beyond is thin, tattered, shattered—all the fighting, fighting now, fighting before, it takes its toll. Cole follows her, and Blackwall, and Cassandra, across the green grasses and burned-out houses. They clear the ramparts, torch the bodies, light the signal fires. They find soldiers in Fort Revasan, and she laughs as she leaves, leaning briefly on the stone for balance.

Place of freedom, how many dead, how much more will they take? 

They make camp that night along the river. Cole keeps watch—he doesn’t really need to sleep. So he hears her get up, and walk quietly to the riverbank, and stand for nearly an hour looking up at the stars, same-and-different.

And in the morning, they get up, they eat their rations, and follow the river upstream to where the western ramparts lay.

There’s more bodies, clawing up from the earth, restless, writhing, raging, terrors and fears and a Horror looming over them all. Cole wipes his daggers down with venom, and falls in beside Blackwall. 

She’s fighting in the middle of it all, but the ground is gouged through with trenches, narrow, lined with spike and rough-hewn wood, and it’s too narrow to move. The Horror grabs her away from the corpses, staff wrenched from her grip, caught on the wooden beams, falling useless to the packed earth. Cole steps around a lifeless body for three more to stagger into his path, so he can only watch as Blackwall redoubles his efforts, and Cassandra shouts though they all have seen:

“To the Inquisitor, quickly!”

She takes a dagger from her belt and stabs it. Brave, burning bright, an unstoppable force against every object, Cole knows this, just as he knows that a Horror will beat out a blade, be it but one or a bucket, every time.

Slash, blade through bone, sinew, tendon, one undead down. Slash, chin to chest. Slash-stab, hip to shoulder, in and twist. Cole rushes forward and sinks his daggers into the corpses that box in Cassandra, giving her enough room to break away and charge down the trench to engage the Horror, and Blackwall can soon follow, and— 

The fight doesn’t last long, then. Silence reigns over the ramparts. 

She wobbles on her feet like an unsteady tower in the moment before its collapse, and then her knees give. Down she goes, like so many stones. Cole catches her. Her head lolls against his shoulder, thoughts fuzzy, vision fuzzy, fingers fumbling for purchase around his wrist.

“M’fine,” she slurs. She’s lying. Bitter herbs, dark rooms, bloody, bleeding. “Just a… crash.”

“Yeah, you’re crashing all right,” Blackwall says grimly. “Cassandra, do you have any potions left? Poultices?”

Cole lowers her to the ground, careful, cautious, finds her hand with his and presses both to the gash in her side. She groans with the pain of it, staring up at the blue.

“No,” Cassandra says. “How far are we from camp? If we light the signal fire…”

“None of our scouts have orders to come to us when we do, and it’s going to take hours for the Orlesians to get here.”

Cassandra swears. Cole presses down. Blackwall finds bandages, begins unwinding them.

She tries to sit up, just once, doesn’t get very far before the pain blanks out her thoughts and she can only grasp at Cole’s sleeves. He tries to pick out what he can from the haze. 

“...Need to burn them,” he says. “Hate the smell. Hate the smoke. She thinks she’s fine to walk—you’re not, don’t do that, please.”

“I will take care of the corpse pit.” Expression shadowed, Cassandra gets to her feet. “And I will light the signal fire. The river curves past the ramparts, doesn’t it? If we can move her there, it would be a good place to rest.”

Cassandra—doesn’t know the why of it, doesn’t understand, and Cole promised not to say—Cassandra knows that fire and smoke carry a heavier weight, and the ramparts reek of death and ash. The wind is blowing south, and the smell grows stronger as smoke rises up into the air.

Blackwall helps. She’s still pale, when Cassandra comes back, leaning against Cole’s side, breathing heavy, body bloodied, but she’s sitting. The smoke further clouds her thoughts. 

“Do you think you can walk?” Blackwall asks.

She forces her feet to hold her weight. Blackwall stands at her side, helps her a step at a time, and Cassandra carves the way forward, away from the burning bodies and the ghosts to running water and clearer air. The view will be clear; they’ll be able to see another ambush, Veil pressing thin, but there’s no grove, no betrayer in their midst. Cole picks elfroot and flowers as they walk, twisting the stems together, sweet-smelling, will it remind her of home?

The river stretches out before them, and the green of broken promises, and she stares at it with a glassy-eyed gaze, dizzy from the pain. Blackwall helps her to sit, begins setting up a temporary camp with Cassandra.

Cole ties the last of the flowers together and offers her a crown. She stares past him for a beat, two, then blinks and comes back to herself.

“Min’as’sal’in,” she says under her breath. “What is this...?”

“I couldn’t find any yellow ones. It won’t match. But it smells nice, I think.”

She lets him put it on her head, so light and gentle it hardly feels as anything is there, and lets him sit down next to her. She sighs and leans her head on his shoulder.

Keep watch, waiting, restless, it isn’t that none of them have been hurt before, it’s that she isn’t supposed to. Bleeding, hurting, like anybody else, like everybody else, but nobody else seems to see her that way.

Once, I was me for me, and that was all. Now I am me, for many others, and I do not think there is any returning from it.

They rest for hours. She dozes, leaning against Cole, careful not to crush the crown of flowers. In the distance, horns blow, the soldiers returning to the ramparts, and the sun arcs across the sky. When she has the energy, she takes up her staff, heals herself enough to move without being slowed, and stands, careful, cautious. Freezes, staring down the river, following the blue curve of the water through the valley to where the red sails of a caravan of aravels wave gentle in the breeze.

Then she looks back the way they had come from, to the ramparts, the deep gouges through the earth, the bodies. The chevaliers, the soldiers.

“Follow me,” she says, and begins to walk.

Chapter Text

blackwall

Lavellan keeps them at a distance as she approaches the Dalish camp, cords tying their blades to the sheaths. Frankly, Blackwall thinks she might have told them to wait while she went ahead were it not for how she has to pause every so often to catch her breath, hand pressed against her side where the bandages are. Healing magic and elfroot only ever go so far.

He regrets that their swords are tied down when two scouts appear from nowhere, except—the scouts look at the three humans, and to their blades, and then to Lavellan with a little less wariness than they had begun with. Lavellan stops; Blackwall and Cassandra and Cole stop behind her, and the scouts regard them all for a moment, two. They’re close, and in the flat, grassy plains it makes him uneasy how close they were able to get without being seen. One is a man maybe Cassandra’s age or a few years older; the other a young girl who looks no older than Sera, thick brown hair tied back into a braid. Both have bows, arrows resting against the string but not drawn. Both watch their group warily.

“On dhea’him, ithelan.” Lavellan inclines her head in a nod to each.

“Savhalla, alin,” says the man. He looks between Lavellan, the three of them behind her. “I do not imagine you are with the shem soldiers.”

“Not the Orlesians, no. I am Revas, of Clan Lavellan, with the Inquisition. I would speak with your Keeper if it is permitted.”

“So it’s true?” the young scout blurts. The man looks at her sharply, eyes narrowed, but she doesn’t notice as she stares at Lavellan. “There’s really one of the People leading the Chantry?”

Lavellan makes a noise that Blackwall has come to recognize as her swallowing back a burst of laughter, for she seems to find quite a few things funny that no one else does.

“I do not lead the Chantry. But I do lead the Inquisition.”

The young scout looks like she might say more, but the man says tersely, “Adhlea,” and she presses her lips together and falls quiet. Then he says, “If your companions mind themselves, I will allow them with you to our camp.”

“They will,” Lavellan says. “I know you have no cause to trust us.”

Something flickers over the man’s face that might be approval. Too quick to tell. He motions for them to follow, and Lavellan follows, and they follow Lavellan. The young scout keeps looking at her with wide eyes then quickly looking away when she realizes she’s been noticed; the man does not look at them at all, but Blackwall has the impression that he’s well aware of his surroundings.

There are half a dozen aravels around the curve of the riverbend, the sails on some rolled up, left down on others to offer shade; one that Blackwall can see is raised on some kind of scaffolding, one of the wheels removed or missing. Several more scouts are watching them as they approach, armed similarly to the two who had come to speak with them; nearly a dozen others, men and women both, are going about their work for the day and paying them no attention at all.

Except... that’s not quite right. Blackwall carefully scans the clearing again as Lavellan steps forward to speak with an older elven man. The conversation Lavellan is holding, and where Blackwall stands with Cassandra and Cole, are both being given a wide berth. The two scouts, Adhlea and the man who had not given his name, have not left and have not put away their bows. And there are a few places where it looks like someone had been, where someone should be, left empty. The clearing stretches out, slopes down, to a cavern out of sight.

Not nearly enough people for the size of the aravels. Something twists in Blackwall’s chest, a feeling he doesn’t have the time to put a name to.

“Ma serannas, amelan,” Lavellan is saying. “I know I do not need to warn you of the Orlesian presence here. The Inquisition is looking to formalize a ceasefire, however, and are establishing our own presence. If there is any aid you require, or reparations for damages done, I would offer it to you.”

The older man—the leader? Dalish have a word for the one who leads their clans, Blackwall thinks, but he doesn’t know it—smiles, the expression a little bit rueful, a little bit lopsided.

“Ma serannas, Inquisitor,” he says, echoing Lavellan’s phrase. “If you succeed in bringing peace between the Orlesian factions, that alone will be a blessing. Their fighting has brought even more destruction to this place—they do not even leave the roads intact for safe passage.”

“Any aid you require,” Lavellan repeats. 

His smile fades—the clan elder frowns, and regards Lavellan with a level of scrutiny that sets Blackwall ill at ease. 

“Is’an vasa na? Na ethas?”

The wind blows, the grass rustles. The clan members in earshot seem to still a moment to listen.

But Lavellan only shakes her head. “Ar unelithan. Thuast ame sasha... ar nuvenan halani.”

His frown deepens. Blackwall forces himself not to tense, to reach for his sword. There are empty aravels. Their group is being kept on the far side of camp from where the ground slopes out of sight. There are no children to be seen. They are not trusted, and he has no idea how quickly the situation can turn, but he will not be the cause of it—let their Inquisitor take the lead, as she had demanded they do.

“There is a graveyard,” the clan leader says, dropping back into Trade. “The unrest has thinned the Veil even further, and spirits and demons walk the grove, and we cannot even bury our dead. You have fought demons, and closed the rifts? If you would help us with this, you would have our gratitude.”

And Lavellan nods, inclining her head almost to the point of a shallow bow. “As you ask, amelan.”

“I will send Adhlea with you, as a guide—but you may rest a while longer, da’len, if you are weary.”

“Your offer is kind, but my companions make you uneasy. I would not impose—”

“We would depart at a distance,” Cassandra says abruptly, and all eyes turn to her, “if it would put you more at ease. If you wished to stay a time, Inquisitor.”

The clan leader looks surprised. Lavellan’s eyes widen but a moment. Blackwall nods his agreement, and—Cole is no longer next to him, anyway. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a wide-brimmed hat past the edge of the camp, near the riverbank. 

“We have rested much already,” Lavellan says, quiet. “If we make for Val Bellanaris, we can clear the demons by nightfall.” 

The young elven scout departs with them, Cole stepping back into place just before the red sails of the aravels disappear from sight. Blackwall thinks again of their Inquisitor, sitting in the dirt of the barn floor in Skyhold, telling stories to the children there. He wonders how it felt, walking into what would have been a familiar sight and knowing the children were hiding for their own safety.

Worse than he felt, likely, realizing the same. Far worse.

#

It goes—better than expected. They get sidetracked, but, Blackwall knows, traveling with their Inquisitor, they nearly always get sidetracked. Always someone to help, someone to thank, and despsite the fact that she’s running on healing magic and cracked ribs, Lavellan is determined to aid the Dalish clan traveling the Exalted Plains.

Lavellan instructs them not to disturb the graves, and to take note of any that are potentially damaged by the fighting, so that they can later be repaired and tended to. Blackwall finds it unnerving, burying one’s dead instead of burning them, but—that’s an Andrastian tradition, to burn the bodies as Andraste was burned on the pyre. There’s no reason for the Dalish to follow it.

Adhlea leads the way to what Lavellan called Var Bellanaris, what the clan leader had described as a grove. The rough translation, in Trade, is Our Eternity, and that name seems more fitting than—carved out of the white granite so common to the Plains—no, to Dirthavaren, she had insisted they call it Dirthavaren—there are two massive hart statues that flank either side of a long wall which stands with no ceiling left to support. Or—perhaps there never was one? There are countless trees and saplings, and old stones covered in moss, and old trees that tower far above his head. 

Hadn’t he heard something about that, once? That the Dalish bury their dead, and plant trees above the graves?

There are also demons. Because of course there are demons. Adhlea has hardly stepped foot across the threshold, explaining, “I really hope that they’re not coming from Unadin, that’s meant to stay undisturbed, and Keeper Hawen would need to discuss if we’d even be allowed to open it—” when they hear the first shriek of a Terror pierce the air.

The young scout goes still a moment, then reaches for her bow.

Lavellan tilts her head to one side as though in thought. 

“I cannot feel a rift nearby, so I do not think that Unadin Grotto is the cause of this. The dead will be left to their rest.”

Another shriek, then another, joins the cacophany. Blackwall draws his sword, now unbound from its sheath, and Cassandra readies her shield. Cole shuffles from foot to foot, says quietly, “It’s built on bones,” and puts absolutely nobody at ease.

“You do not have to join us,” Lavellan says to the scout. “But I think you are going to insist.”

“Of course I am, hahren!” Adhlea exclaims, and then looks embarrassed. Lavellan, despite the long, long day they’ve all had, looks amused.

“Do you think I am old? If you had to guess my age, you would be wrong.”

The ground is uneven as they enter, flat stone tiles the size of dinner platters at odd angles, dislodged by the web of roots that covers the mossy floor; small wolf statues keep watch from distant corners, and at the far end of the graveyard, two stone-carved ravens nearly double his height stand guard on either side of a shadowed door—Unadin Grotto, perhaps.

Even as he fights, Blackwall can appreciate the grandeur of it.

From there, it should only be a matter of returning to where the clan is staying at the riverbend, except as they go, there’s word from the Orlesians and an Inquisition scout that there’s more demons near the western ramparts, and it’s pushing into late afternoon, near to early evening, and Blackwall is exhausted, and Lavellan still presses a hand against her side as she walks and shows absolutely no sign of stopping.

He shares a look with Cassandra, who wipes sweat from her forehead and shrugs. 

“We cannot continue when it gets dark,” she says in a low voice, “unless our Inquisitor intends to use the Anchor as a torch.”

Blackwall nearly laughs aloud. “Was that a joke, Lady Seeker?”

“Knowing her? Not so much.” Which, Blackwall concedes, is a fair point. “I only mean to say, that we can make sure she rests soon, and rests properly.”

So they go, and they fight, and Blackwall squints into the light of the setting sun to try and make a headcount, everyone still standing—Lavellan, Cole, Cassandra, Adhlea—and an ear-splitting crrraaaack-BOOM rips through the air, a flash of light and a sound not all too dissimilar from hail as chunks of stone and rubble fly through the air to impact the ground.

Lavellan looks with a typically bland expression towards what remains of the monument to Sister Amity, nothing more than shattered rock and smoke. The air smells of ozone.

“Oh no,” Lavellan says, her tone as blank and bland as her countenance. “How tragic. This monument that has stood for centuries, destroyed in the fighting of a pointless civil war. What a pity. Truly. A shame.”

In the distance, but still within eyesight, another lightning bolt manifests from thin air. The resulting thunderclap echoes back to them a handful of seconds later. The second monument, marking the defeat of Lindiranae, is obliterated.

Cassandra says absolutely nothing, caught in some internal conflict. Adhlea has no such restraint and doubles over in hysterics.

“Such a shame,” Lavellan repeats. “Just awful.”

“Should—should we—should—” Adhlea manages to pull herself together enough to get her sentence out with only a few giggles in between. “Should we check the—the third one? To make sure it is intact?”

Lavellan looks down the rolling hills towards the third and distant statue. She points with the blade of her staff. Another lightning bolt strikes on a clear and cloudless day.

“That one?” she asks. Adhlea laughs, and laughs, and laughs. Lavellan’s expression splits into a smile of its own, for just a moment.

#

They do get Lavellan to rest, eventually. Adhlea returns to her camp, with Lavellan’s assurances that if any of the chevaliers should give the clan trouble, to send word to the Inquisition, and the matter should be sorted. Cassandra keeps any opinions she might have about the destruction of Chantry monuments to herself, clearly thinking it over, and Blackwall sits down near the fire at their own campsite with some effort. Maker, but this many battles in one day is exhausting.

Cole places a braided wreath of flowers into his lap. Blackwall looks at it, then up at the young man.

“I’m not going to wear that.”

“It’s a gift. You don’t have to do anything with it.”

Which—it’s a true statement, he shouldn’t be feeling guilty over not wanting to wear a flower crown—

Blackwall puts on the flower crown. Lavellan grins when she sees it.

...If it makes their Inquisitor smile, he supposes he can bear it.

Chapter Text

A learned child is a blessing unto his parents and unto the Maker.

dorian

Dorian knows full well that he and Lavellan are likely never going to be friends. That’s fine. That they’re associates capable of working civilly with one another is more than enough, given the circumstances of how they first met and the way most of their conversations afterward tend to go.

That said, it’s still a surprise when one day, middle of the afternoon, Lavellan appears in his corner of the library like an omen to take his attention from his books and his wine. He would say that she’s giving him an unimpressed look, but it’s the same look she gives everybody.

Which might just mean she’s unimpressed with everybody. Entirely possible.

Regardless, Dorian offers her a smile, bright and charming as ever. “Inquisitor,” he says. “What can I do for you on this cold, dreary day?”

Lavellan—hesitates.

“Your father,” she says after a pause, “has been in contact with Mother Giselle and wants me to take you to a retainer, employed by your family, at the Gull and Lantern Tavern in Redcliffe.”

Dorian had wondered what could make Lavellan slow to speak on a topic, but of all the things—of all the things that could—

“...Pardon?” is his eloquent reply, all thoughts gone in a rush.

Lavellan holds out a piece of paper, which he takes more out of impulse as one does when handed something, rather than by any conscious thought, because he has no thoughts to speak of, everything a peculiar blank. The words swim across the page as he skims it over. Letters and phrases, all of it nonsense.

“I’m sorry, could… would you repeat that for me? Because it sounded like you said my father—”

“—wrote to Mother Giselle. I did say that.” She folds her arms across her chest, a frown sitting heavy on her face, and Dorian realizes abruptly that for once her glower isn’t directed at him.

“She wanted me to lie to you and get you to Redcliffe, as your father seems to believe that surprise was the only way you would go,” Lavellan continues. “You are smarter than that. I have no business to take care of in Redcliffe important enough to make you come with me.”

Well, she isn’t suddenly being nice to him, at least. The world is already gone mad, no need to add any more chaos to the mix.

Then she says, “I will go, and you with me, if you wish to. Or, burn the letter and forget about it. Your decision.”

He’s holding the paper so tightly that it’s ripped, but he can’t quite make his fingers unclench. The nerve—the audacity—what was that retainer going to do, bludgeon him over the head once he got there and cart him off to Minrathous? Shock gives way to anger, and that, at least, is familiar.

“I thought you didn’t have business in Redcliffe?”

“No business important enough to convince you to come with me in a lie,” she replies. “There are still rifts to close, and highwaymen looking for stragglers near the Crossroads. We may leave tomorrow if you like.”

Maybe she is being nice to him. Dorian hasn’t the faintest idea what to make of that.

“If you have no objections, Inquisitor, then—yes, I would quite like to have a word with this… family retainer.”

And that’s that. She leaves him alone with his letters and with his thoughts, making no further comment. Dorian pretends not to notice the other patrons of the library relaxing some in their relief as the two of them part without another argument.

#

“Tired, twisting, damn them all, but beating hearts still bleed… Varric, how come being kind can hurt?”

Lavellan has chosen to bring Varric and Cole for this trip, and Dorian isn’t certain if it’s because they’re part of the few in her inner circle who actually seem to like him, or because Varric is good at defusing tensions and she’s happier when she’s around Cole.

Maybe, both? Either way, the two are something of a buffer, and Dorian chatters to fill the silence with anything at all and hopes that he doesn’t say something to set Lavellan off. He’s wound tight like a spring, holding on to just enough foresight to recognize that any argument they wander into is going to explode.

Cole’s non-sequitur comes when they’re making camp for the evening. Lavellan is just returned, a ram slung across the back of the hart plodding alongside her. Dorian glances up at her arrival, and then over to Cole. Varric takes a moment to consider the question.

“Remember, kid, we’ve talked about asking permission before spilling someone’s thoughts out,” is what he finally answers. Then: “It’s… complicated. People are complicated.”

“Sometimes,” Lavellan tells him, “one can show kindness to an enemy. Or to a person who is not your enemy, but who has done terrible things. Or, a person can be hurt and angry themself, and they do not want to be kind. Varric is right. People are complicated. Someone help me carry this, please.”

And the conversation is effectively over as they set about preparing dinner. Dorian volunteers to collect more firewood—skinning and butchering is far too messy for his tastes, thank you.

Still, he wonders, which of his traveling companions Cole had been speaking of, if it had been either of them at all.

#

“Ah, Redcliffe.” Varric looks around appreciatively as they make their way down the winding path from the gates to the village proper. “Are we just here to restock, Harold, or do we have business here, too?”

They’ve been traveling for the better part of a week. Dorian stares at him, and then at Lavellan.

“You didn’t tell them?”

“I think Cole knows, but this is your business, not ours. Not mine,” she replies.

“Too much pride,” is Cole’s commentary on the matter.

Varric looks at them all, bemused, and Dorian indulges himself in a heavy sigh before explaining, briefly, what’s going on. By the time he finishes, they’re in what passes for the town square, with its proud griffon statue and a bustle of people who give them a wide, awed berth as soon as they recognize Lavellan in their midst.

He can see the tavern, just up the hill, and all of his nerves come rushing back at once.

“Ah, family,” is all Varric says, taking it in stride. “What to do with them, right? We could take a turn about the market, if you want more time, or…”

“No, best just get it over with. I want this done and gone.”

But Dorian cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong, a feeling that only intensifies when they step into a tavern as still and empty as a tomb—no patrons, no staff, not a soul.

And then—and then his father is there, his father is here, his father, acting as though he has any right to anything that Dorian is after—after what he tried to do, what he was planning…! Dorian has some inkling of how much blood a ritual like the kind his father had intended would require. Lives, sacrificed, for what? For a more malleable heir? At the risk of losing him entirely?

And he apologizes to Lavellan, speaks to Lavellan as if Dorian isn’t even in the room, like he’s an unruly child and not a goddamned adult, and—

“You tried to change me!” Dorian says, and he’s angry, he’s furious, but past all of that he still cannot believe that his father would have ever even thought of such a thing, and it hurts now as much as it hurt then. His voice breaks somewhere in the middle.

The sconces on the wall flicker, flare, dim.

Lavellan is staring at Dorian’s father with an expression he has only seen in a few situations. Halamshiral, and realizing that Empress Celene’s purge of the alienage had been kept from her. When she and Dorian had strayed into the topic of slavery in Tevinter.

The air smells of charcoal and ash and ozone.

“The only thing more dangerous than a man who hurts those who are weaker than him,” the Inquisitor says, and her voice is that same, terrible quiet he remembers from before, too-calm, placid, gentle, and none of those things at all, “is a man who does so because he believes himself to be in the right. You, Tevinter, have shown your son no kindness in your actions.”

Dorian stares at her. Surely she isn’t—

His father tries to speak, and one of the sconces on the wall explodes, embers scattering across the floor.

“Legacy,” she says. “Legacy, you proud and narrow-minded man, is nothing, means nothing, for you will never get to see it. You do not get to control it. It will fall from your grasp like sand. You only have your actions, in the present, and how you deal with the consequences which rise to meet you. You have made your choice—this is the consequence. Do you want to speak with him further, Pavus? We will leave you to it, if yes, but otherwise I think we should go.”

She’s still glaring down his father as she speaks. It takes Dorian longer than it should to realize that Pavus means him. There’s a beat of silence, two. He struggles to shake himself from his stupor.

“I—me?”

“Yes, who else?”

For so long, he’s wanted to demand answers from his father, desperate for an explanation, for some kind of understanding. He wants to know what could drive a man to go against his own principles and spill blood for the so-called ‘good’ of his son.

And… he doesn’t. Isn’t sure he’d even be able to understand, even with answers, because if he can understand, if he can follow that twisted logic, then what does that say about him?

Arguing, questioning, none of it will bring him any closure. As he learns, in the weeks and months to come, closure is slow to arrive, and healing does not happen all at once. But both begin here, with this brief realization, and the decision to turn and leave the tavern—and his father—behind him.

It’s only been a handful of minutes. The townsfolk are going about their business, blissfully unaware, and the midday sun is still bright above them, and the scene is no different than it had been when they stepped inside.

Strange, then, how Dorian feels suddenly adrift, like everything has changed all at once.

Lavellan pushes past him, and Varric, and Cole, and walks briskly down the stone steps in the direction of the docks. She is their Inquisitor. Dorian is hardly her friend, but he respects her, has chosen to follow her. He follows her now, if only because to follow her is normal and ordinary, and he clings to that normalcy like a drowning man in a storm.

He can hear Varric and Cole following with him. Maker’s breath, they had all… all of them had seen that. Dorian’s usual cheer and deflection feels very far out of his reach.

Lavellan stands at the edge of the dock. Dorian slows, stops a short distance away from her. Cole hops up onto a barrel and crouches on top of it, and he takes and unwraps a stale loaf of bread from his pocket to start tossing crumbs into the water. Underneath the flashes of sunlight across the rippling surface of the lake, Dorian sees fish swimming up to eat the bread not moments later.

“If I had known that… that he was going to be there himself, I…”

Is he apologizing? Trying to explain? Fuck, he doesn’t even known.

Varric is standing next to him. The dwarf leans sideways, just enough to nudge him with his shoulder, a gesture of solidarity.

“We’ve all got family issues, Sparkler,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry we were there for it, if only because you should’ve had the option to have that talk alone. But also, for what it’s worth… I’m glad you didn’t have to.”

“Praying, prideful, want to survive this place, painful pressure, how can I live a lie?” Cole tosses more bread into the water. A few ducks have come over to investigate as well. “You don’t have to lie to us, Dorian. Would you like to feed the fish with me?”

He is not going to cry. He is not going to cry. He is not going to cry.

The sun off the water is bright. Makes his eyes tear up.

“Thanks,” he says hoarsely, and accepts the offered hunk of bread. Coughs, clears his throat. “He is… my father is a man of principle. A good man. Blood magic is the last resort of a weak mind… he taught me that. Taught me many things. I… I can’t ever forgive him. I won’t.”

He tosses a piece of bread. A pair of ducks squabble over it, so he throws another piece, and then another. Most of the fishermen are out on the lake itself, and most of the townsfolk are behind them near the village market, and so here, it’s quiet. Water lapping up against the sun-warmed wood of the docks, birds somewhere in the trees, a cool wind coming in off the water. Quaint. Peaceful.

Dorian’s father is less than a minute’s walk away from him.

“He tried to change you with blood magic?” Varric asks quietly, and Dorian knows if he says to drop the subject, no one here is going to press him on it. Lavellan doesn’t even seem to be listening to them.

“Desperation,” Dorian answers. He laughs, a bitter thing. “I wouldn’t put on a show, marry the girl, keep everything unsavory out of sight and locked away. When I found out what he was planning, I left. Selfish of me, right? To not want to spend my entire life screaming on the inside?”

“No.”

Oh. She is listening. She turns back to look at him, a furrow between her brows, expression set.

“You are infuriating,” she tells him, which is normal, “and I hold no love for Tevinter,” also normal, “but I meant what I said in there. Every word of it.”

Some of what she says comes echoing back to him. Dorian snorts. “That I was weaker than him?”

She spits out a curse; he does not speak her language, but he knows by the tone.

“No! He is your father. You are his son. You were living by his rules, under his authority. He abused that authority. What he said to you was wrong. How he treated you was wrong. What he intended to do to you was wrong.”

Not—not normal. Her expression does not waver, and she does not rise to the bait of his taunt. Dorian suddenly cannot hold her gaze, looking down at his hands, blinking rapidly.

Cole presses another piece of bread into his hands without a word.

“Careful, Inquisitor,” Dorian says, when he trusts himself enough to speak. “You’re almost being nice to me.”

“I will try not to make a habit of it,” Lavellan replies, and immediately contradicts herself. “Are you all right?”

“...Not particularly.”

“Mm.”

They’ve gathered quite a collection of waterfowl, several ducks of different colors all milling around in the water below them. Cole passes the last piece of bread he has to Varric, who shrugs and sits down at the edge of the dock. Lavellan joins them. After a pause, Dorian does, too.

The sun drifts across the sky, midday to afternoon. The Inquisitor, a disgraced Tevinter Altus, a dwarven author, and a spirit sit and feed the ducks on Lake Calenhad. It isn’t normal at all, but… it’s good.

Chapter Text

sera // the verchiel march

“Wait, what?”

Lavellan looks calmly back at her like she’s saying words that make sense, which she isn’t, Sera knows she isn’t, because she’s hearing the words coming out of Lavellan’s mouth and they don’t make sense.

“You were right to kill him,” Lavellan repeats. “And even if you were not, I would not judge you for it. He is responsible for the deaths of many innocents, including your friend, and the refugees will be safer now that he is… gone.”

Sera sits down, heavy, on the window seat of her loft.

It rained most of the journey back to Skyhold from where they’d traveled near Verchiel—the bad kind of rain, cold and stinging and gross, and that doesn’t make it easy for conversation, Sera supposes. Hadn’t been much to talk about, neither. Inquisition had moved some people through, scared the big people who thought they could scare the little people, and then it went all tits up.

She wasn’t expecting Lavellan to come and talk to her about it now that they’re back, to make the trek across the ramparts through the rain and sleet that’s followed them even here and drop in to Sera’s loft.

And now Lavellan is—is making no sense. And sitting there, looking all reasonable about it.

“Okay, but—but—” She stammers over her words, and she hates it. “What do you mean, cause I’m not really used to that whole—acceptance—thing you’re doing there.”

Lavellan frowns. Takes a moment to think. Sera frowns right back at her and tries not to fidget, and when Lavellan speaks next, it’s all slow, careful with the way she puts things. Even though she’s getting too-serious, she doesn’t hold herself like it’s a serious talk, just stays curled up in the other corner of the loft, rain spattering on the windows, scarf laid out to dry over the back of a nearby chair.

“I—my—my mother grew up in an alienage. The Templars came for my sister, and then came back again, off-duty. Clan Lavellan took her in. I never knew a city like you did, like you do. But I know the people you mean to help, and I know the people you mean to work against. You were right, to kill that man.”

Sera doesn’t much know what to make of that conversation while it’s happening—it takes her days, afterward, to get it all sorted. Then it takes even longer, to figure out what she’s gonna do about it. She’s got the time, at least. Lavellan goes off to Redcliffe with Varric, and the demon-boy in the attic, and Dorian, and it’s near a week there and back again, never mind whatever she’s actually got to take care of while she’s away.

Lavellan’s still all complicated, yeah? Should be too big for her boots, except she isn’t—shouldn’t be as nice as she is, for being a mage, for being an elf. Shouldn’t be someone that Sera feels like she can understand. But she’s all of those things, and a bunch of other messy things besides, and Sera thinks that they might actually be—friends?

She has a Friend in the guards, who lets her know when the report comes in that the Inquisitor and her entourage is returning back from Redcliffe Village , and she gets to work.

After a week-and-a-bit, Lavellan makes the trip to the tavern by way of the ramparts and the attic stairs—Sera had dumped paint over the sign out front, ‘cept it keeps being repainted—talking to the demon-spirit-whatever in the attic before stopping in her loft.

“Got a moment?” Sera asks her.

Lavellan shakes her head, no , steps into the loft, and actually follows her right out the window without questioning it. Sera has all of this set up just right, and the weather’s even cooperating this time, sunny today instead of sleet. The cookies are in a basket, probably a little bit stale by now, but being in the sun, it’ll kinda be like they just came out of the oven, yeah?

She sits down, dangling her legs off the side of the roof, sets the basket of cookies down in between them, and holds one out to Lavellan with a grin.

Inquisitor Revas Lavellan, Herald of Andraste, and all that other shite, takes the cookie.

She even eats it! Sera can’t stand the taste of ‘em, raisins, and the texture’s all wrong even before they got stale, but Lavellan snaps it in half and eats it a bite at a time, occasionally glancing over the edge of the roof at the people below. No one’s bothering to look up.

“We are eating on a roof,” is what Lavellan finally says, and she smiles a not-quite smile, and takes another bite. “Is there a special occasion?”

Right. The trickiest bit, this part. But Lavellan’s the sort who’s good at listening, and Sera jumps right into it—Lady Emmald, and the baker, and Emmald’s pride.

“You said your mam grew up in an alienage? So you know what it’s like, then, kinda. Well, I got caught stealing, when I was little...”

Lavellan’s good at listening. Lavellan listens. Lavellan knows that Sera isn’t one for touch, so when all’s said and done, she just knocks her foot against Sera’s, once, and takes another cookie from the basket.

“It’s not stupid,” she says.

“It’s kinda stupid,” Sera argues. “And the cookies are shite. Figured—if we were up here, no one’s around to laugh. And we could throw things, extra points for bouncing ‘em off people’s helmets!”

Instead of trying to argue back, Lavellan shrugs and throws the half-eaten cookie in her hand. It arcs through the air, thrown with more dexterity than Sera expected from their Inquisitor, flying with more dexterity than Sera expected from a baked good, and lands in an empty barrel across the way.

Sera stares at her. Lavellan takes another cookie from the basket. Crazy person, their Inquisitor.

“These are not so bad, though—there is—room for improvement.”

“Not so bad isn’t good, Inky, and ‘sides! You say what you mean, I like that about you. You can say they’re awful.” Sera reaches out to shove her shoulder—lightly, cause, rooftop, and she’s sure as hell not going to be the one who gets blamed for ending the world because she pushed the lady who could close rifts off the top of a tavern by mistake.

“I do say what I mean. Mm. Ten points, for the well.”

She points. Sera laughs, and takes a cookie, and takes aim.

It kinda smells like damp and bird poop, but they wind up sitting out there in the sun for way longer than either of them mean to, losing track of time, going mostly unnoticed—scrambling back towards the open window when one of them misses a shot, and one of those poor confused folks below makes to look up.

“Hey boss. Bumblebee.”

Bull is good at noticing what’s not supposed to be noticed. Sera and Lavellan both lean forward just enough to peer over the edge of the rooftop, where he stands below them, the tips of his horns just a few feet below their shoes.

“The Iron Bull,” says Lavellan, and glances to one side, to the basket. “We are out of cookies, or I would offer you one.”

He smiles, not-right. Sera knows how he laughs, and this isn’t right.

“Don’t have the time for it now, boss. When you’ve got a moment—there’s a missive from the Ben-Hassrath that I think you’ll want to hear about. I’d like to talk it over with you.”

Chapter Text

krem // the demands of the qun

It’s a hell of a fight.

Krem can’t even be optimistic and say it’s a victory, all said and done—they’re alive, but not unscathed, and the dreadnought is in flames, twisted, smoking shrapnel scattered across the rocky coast, hissing in contact with the cold and drizzling rain.

Least there’s not much in the way of bodies. Better that no one has to see whatever would be left, after an explosion that big, and Bull’s told them about how the Qunari don’t bury their dead, anyhow. Once the soul is gone, they believe, the thing left behind isn’t really important anymore.

It’s not his to worry about, really—he and the Chargers go where Bull points them, and they take care of the littler things. The Inquisitor and her advisors take care of the big things, and this alliance is one of the big things, and the order was given to retreat so they retreated. Maybe that will mean problems, for agreements between the Qunari and the Inquisition, maybe it won’t. It’s not his to worry about it.

(He worries, a little bit, because he knows how on edge the Chief’s been through all this. He hides it well, ‘course he does, but Krem’s known him for years now. Knows his tells.)

The more immediate worry is his people. They’re alive, sure. They’re hurt. Stitches is all but carrying Skinner up the rocky incline. Dalish’s—bow—is splintered nearly in two, and she’s going to be livid about it as soon as she has the energy to, Krem is certain. Just that getting hit with Dispels too many times in a row fucks with the head a bit, so mages claim, not that she is one. And Krem can already feel the bruises starting to form across his torso, and the blood stings his eyes, dripping down his face from a gash across his head.

He gets to the top of the ridge first, and helps Stitches and Skinner up after him. Does a headcount. Everyone he’d left with, he came back with, and there are other members of the company trailing back in their own smaller clusters—injured, but alive. All of them alive.

Inquisition soldiers rush to meet them, helping the wounded. Krem looks for the Chief and—doesn’t find him. Doesn’t find any of the Qunari who’d been here, like they’d cleared away quick as ghosts. He thinks for a moment, sluggish, that he and the Inquisitor and the Qunari are talking things over, and he wipes more of the blood from his face, and when he can see properly again the Inquisitor is standing in front of him.

He jumps. Exhausted, but still high-strung, the way it often is after battles, he doesn’t realize he’d reached for his sword until he lowers his arm back to his side.

They don’t talk too much, him and the Inquisitor. Bull seems to like her, and she joins them all for drinks in the tavern when she has the time, but even then she isn’t much for conversation. But—she’s here, and Bull’s not, and she’s talking to him.

So, something’s not right.

(He worries.)

“You need to talk to Iron Bull,” she says.

Stitches has carried Skinner away with the help of one of the Inquisition’s folk, Dalish stumbling after them. Grim, though he cradles a broken arm near to his chest, slows enough to listen to what the Inquisitor has to say.

“What happened?” Krem asks. “Where is he?"

She points, the rain turning to mist before it touches the Anchor in her hand—and there’s worry, in her expression. The Inquisitor doesn’t worry, not where anyone can see it.

Krem—worries.

“He signaled the retreat,” she says, quick, almost urgent. Beneath the worry, there’s something else, something raw, something that Krem can’t parse and doesn’t have time to consider. “He chose you. You should talk to him—go.”

And she reaches up and touches her fingers to his brow, and they come away dripping red even as he feels a wash of magic over him and the pain recedes.

#

Later—a while later. Back-at-Skyhold, later. Once they’ve made the long march back, and once the Qunari have informed the Inquisition, in no uncertain terms, that there is to be no alliance, and once they’ve rallied around the chief, doing what they can to support him.

Krem thinks it’d be presumptuous of him, to seek out the Inquisitor in her private spaces. Hell, he doesn’t even know where her rooms are, except that he’s heard her grumble in a rare relaxed moment about how many stairs she has to climb to get to them. Too, she’s a busy woman, only looking more exhausted by the day. He’s never sure what the right moment is to try and speak with her. But he needs to.

Later, a while later, Krem is sitting on his chair at the tavern at just the right angle, to catch just for a moment, a glimpse of yellow a story up. The Inquisitor doesn’t make an appearance downstairs, so just as like she’s talking with Sera or Cole up above—the Chargers are laughing and drinking, and Bull is sparring outside with Cassandra, and no one will notice if he steps away for a moment.

He needs to speak with her.

Up the stairs, but Sera’s loft is empty. Up the stairs again, and Cole’s space in the tavern’s loft does not have Cole in it today, but it does have Lavellan, tucked into a corner and listening to the music and conversation drift up from the ground floor. Krem hesitates—just a moment. He needs to speak with her.

“Don’t mean to interrupt, ma’am, I—”

With a hand trailing greenish light like an echo, Lavellan pats the floor next to her. Krem considers, and sits.

“Wanted to thank you, s’pose. For the healing, back on the Storm Coast,” he begins. “But also—for the chief.”

“Why thank me?” Lavellan asks.

“He didn’t say it, not in so many words, but—he’d do anything for us. He has. But I think—that you, being there, made that choice easier for him.”

“He did not hesitate.” Lavellan has been looking up at the ceiling, not at Krem, but she looks at him now, and her expression may as well be carved from marble compared to whatever he’d caught a glimpse of all those weeks ago. “He saw the Venatori, and he asked for the signal horn.”

Bull hadn’t said anything about that. Krem considers, reconsiders.

“Still. You were there for him, and there’s not a lot of folks who’ve done that. The Chargers know that. I know it. Wanted to say thanks.”

He wants to ask about the look in her eyes. He wants to ask who’s there for her—she hasn’t been coming down to their tables as often, in the evenings. He wants to ask how she handles it all, this Inquisition business, and being someone like a friend, both at once.

Lavellan hums, in the way she used to, listening to Maryden’s songs. She doesn’t seem to realize she’s doing it, and it isn’t a melody he’s ever heard, and he doesn’t point in out for fear that she might stop.

“He is a good man,” is what she finally says. “He—reminds me of others. I am glad to know him. I am glad he has you.”

“I think he’ll be joining the rest of us inside, soon, if you wanted to come down?” Krem asks. There are many things he wants to ask. He doesn’t.

Lavellan hums. Eventually, she nods. She gets to her feet, and helps Krem to his, even though it should really be the other way around. She joins him and the Chargers in their corner of the tavern, and Bull smiles to see them all and smiles a little wider to see that Lavellan has joined them.

It’s not quite the same. It will never be exactly the same, no matter how much time goes on, no matter how much later it gets. But for the moment, it’s good enough.

The day winds on. Krem cannot recall the way that Lavellan’s melody sounded. He catches himself humming fragments of an old, quiet song he’s never heard in full before.

Chapter Text

And in that baleful eye I saw the Lady of Sorrow, armored in Light, holding in her left hand the scepter of Redemption. —Canticle of Exaltations 1:3

thom rainier

Inquisitor Lavellan passes judgment with reluctance.

Alexius works in a room under guard, researching the magic of the Breach, with occasional input from Solas and Dorian. Lavellan has not spoken to him since—has only spoken, in hushed whispers, to Fiona, with an old and knowing gaze and apologies on her lips.

Gregory Dedwick, Mayor of Crestwood, who drowned half the town and its refugees to keep the rest safe—Lavellan sends him back to Denerim, for his crimes were in Ferelden, against her people, and it is the Crown’s jurisdiction, not the Inquisitor’s. Mistress Poulin of Sahrnia, who sold the people of her town to a fate worse than death to keep the remainder safe—Lavellan sends her back to the Emprise du Lion, to rebuild. The Duchess Florianne de Chalons, for crimes against Orlais and the Empress Herself—sent to work.

She had spoken to him about it, once, sitting on the floor of the barn and whittling away at a block of wood he had offered her, as he had painted toys for the children.

Why should I be the one to decide? How can I be the one to decide, what is right, what is just?

He is not painting anymore, and he has given all the toys away, and the floor is cold, damp stone instead of packed earth and straw. Lavellan sits all the same, uncaring of the wet and the filth, directly in front of the bars to his cell and waits for him to look at her.

He can meet her gaze for all of a moment, and then he has to turn away.

“I didn’t take Blackwall’s life,” he says, because if he’s speaking then he won’t have to hear her voice, her questions, her condemnation. “I traded his death. He wanted me for the Wardens. There was an ambush—darkspawn. He was killed. I took his name to stop the world from losing a good man, but—a good man, the man that he was, he wouldn’t have let another die in his place.”

There is silence but for the drip drip of water from cracks in the stone.

A puff of air. The not-quite laugh Lavellan often laughs, dry and humorless.

“And so you did not let him die for you.”

“I killed innocent people!” He cannot look at her, will not look at her, because worse than condemnation is the possibility that she will look at him with nothing but forgiveness, and that is far beyond what he deserves. “I destroyed Mornay’s life, the lives of others just like him, one action cannot make up for—”

He cuts himself off. Sucks in a sharp breath. Neither of them speak, and—he cannot look—he looks anyway.

Lavellan isn’t watching him at all. Her head is tilted down, at her hands. She holds a wooden carving of a hart, elaborate patterns etched into the antlers, and she turns it over, and over, and over, running her fingers across the smooth wood. It’s like a knife to the chest. He looks away again.

“Why are you here?”

“Because I am not going to let you die here.”

She says it simply, statement of fact, and though Blackwall has never known her to lie, he finds in that moment he cannot believe her.

“I betrayed the Empire for gold,” he says, almost shouting, as though volume might convince her where the words themselves failed.

(When Lavellan sets her mind to something, he has yet to see her change it.)

“I arranged the assassination of a general—I lied to my men about what they were doing—and I let them take the fall for it, while I was off pretending to be a good man, in another’s name. I didn’t know he was traveling with his family, but I didn’t change our plans when I found out, and my men did as they were told without question. They trusted me without question.”

Over, and over, and over turns the hart. He is holding the bars to his cell in a white-knuckled grip, and Lavellan sits unflinching before him. All the fight drains out of him in a rush. He’s tired. He’s—settled.

“I failed my men, Inquisitor, and I failed you. Let me do this, for them. Let me do this right.”

#

He thinks that’s the end of it. He thinks that’s the end of it as they leave him in the dark, wonders if they’re going to leave him to rot, if it will be the hangman’s noose, the executioner’s axe. He thinks that’s the end of it when the guards at last come to his cell, after long, hungry days and nights, and he thinks that’s the end of it up until the moment where the Orlesians pass him, bound and chained, to a retinue of Inquisition soldiers bearing banners of green and gold.

He isn’t sure what strings that Lavellan’s managed to pull, doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to be angry about it, but anger is easier to sit with than trying to unpack the complicated mass in his chest he feels as the Frostback Mountains grow larger on the horizon.

Anger is it, then, and how dare she? She’s supposed to be better than this, the Inquisition is supposed to be better than this, better than whatever underhanded, backroom deals were made to get a murderer and a traitor to his country out of jail. It has to be to buy him time—because I am not going to let you die here—unless she means to have him killed in Skyhold? A show to prove the Inquisition does not take kindly to liars in their ranks, except he’s shared enough drinks with the Chargers at the tavern to learn from Iron Bull what hissrad means.

It’s the kind of pragmatism he might expect from Lavellan, if he had not fought so often at her side.

They waste no time upon their arrival. Leliana’s scouts have sent word ahead of them—he’s pulled from the back of the cart, all but dragged through the courtyard past wide-eyed stares, the whispers too soft to get the words of but loud enough to hear, like the rustling of wind through leaves. Up the stairs, through the open double doors of Skyhold’s great hall, which is packed full to bursting, and the whispers are louder, echoing back off the stone—they want a show—they want blood.

At the far end of the hall sits Lavellan, rust-red and yellow-gold, silhouetted by the afternoon sun through the stained glass behind her, the chair she occupies a relatively simple thing compared to the rest of the finery present. It had been more ostentatious, once, tall-backed with the Inquisition’s seal emblazoned across it. A battle she had chosen not to fight, though her dislike of the thing had only grown once its position had been likened to that of a throne. Then an Orlesian noblewoman had gifted to her, through Josephine, an elaborate work of polished metal, gold and silver plating, Andraste’s likeness serene and wreathed in fire, and Lavellan had refused to so much as set foot in the hall until it was replaced with a seat of her choosing.

Josephine is here—of course she is, of course. He cannot look at her, cannot bear to see the expression on her face, if he has caused her grief, if he hasn’t.

“For judgment this day, Inquisitor, I present Captain Thom Rainier, formerly known to us as Warden Blackwall. His crimes—well. You are aware of his crimes.”

He looks at Lavellan, their Inquisitor. She regards him as she has regarded all others, on those rare occasions she is called to pass judgment, as she is called to now.

What does it say about him, that he is one of the few for whom she has done so?

“What did you do to bring me here, Inquisitor?”

“I asked the Empress.” Lavellan tilts her head slightly to one side, amends: “Josephine asked the Empress.”

“So the Inquisition leverages the crown to do as it sees fit? Would you undermine all of Lady Montilyet’s work in asking that of her?”

Lavellan’s expression doesn’t change. “Josephine was the one who suggested it.”

He quiets.

She stands up, then, and walks the distance between where he is still held, pushed to his knees, guards on either side of him. The green glow of the Anchor on her hand is visible even through her gloves.

“The Grey Wardens,” she says, and her voice carries above the whispers that echo down across the stone, “recruited you because they believed you a worthy addition to their ranks. You spent the following years acting out these duties, though you had not been formally inducted and were not bound to do so. You will do more good in life than could ever be done in death.”

The whispers grow louder. He still cannot believe what she is saying, even as she says it.

“You have your freedom. It is yours to do with as you wish.”

Louder, and louder still.

Rainier takes a shaky breath in, lets it out. There are many options, but all of them only ever go forward, not back. So it is here. Inquisitor Lavellan passes judgment with reluctance—how can I be the one to choose—and she has spoken his sentence.

It is his to do with it as he wishes.

His future is his.

“I do not offer you benediction, Thom,” Lavellan says to him, and she holds his gaze with eyes the same color as the Breach, and he cannot look away from it, from her—and it will not be until much later, beyond the siege of Adamant Fortress and well beyond the aftermath, where he truly understands the heaviness he sees there, and the full depth of her words. “I cannot. But I can ask you, if you will fight with us. If you will lend us your sword and your strength.”

“I will,” he says, and he does, and they march.

Chapter Text

the march to the western approach

Corypheus and the Grey Wardens gather a full nation—almost half a continent—away. The Inquisition marches to meet them.

But armies move slowly. Armies move slowly, with an inexorable weight, and so, as Morrigan understands it, the preparations for this advance have been falling into place for quite some time and require even more time to finish. She understands the careful, patient planning of it all—admires it, even.

For all the drawbacks, though, there is something to be said of the ease and quickness of movement which two Wardens, a dog, and an apostate had in traveling about. She almost—almost—misses it.

Morrigan will not be traveling with the bulk of the forces, not this time. No, her work lies here, with the eluvians, with deciphering the means by which Corypheus intends to use them. Her duty lies here, in protecting her son—who has just returned from the gardens, now, looking up at her with a lopsided smile that so very much resembles his father’s.

“I spoke to a boy named Cole,” Kieran says, coming to sit down near her. “He was with the Inquisitor. Her head hurt. I don’t know why she looks like she does, do you?”

Her son oft makes comments such as these. Morrigan has learned with time not to treat them as odd, no matter how it can unsettle her.

“She is elvhen, Kieran—I hope you were not rude in asking her why.”

But her son only shakes his head. “That’s different. I don’t know why they want to look like they do. But I don’t know why she looks like she does. ...I hope her head hurts less.”

And that, it seems, is the end of that, as he begins talking happily and at great length about a litter of mabari pups in the stables, and Morrigan is left to consider what he might have meant. It isn’t the first time he has made a comment about the Dalish, and she wonders what of their history they have yet to uncover that would explain what Kieran means. So much of it lost, between the Imperium, the Exalted Marches, the gradual turn of time.

But there is no way of learning, if not by research, and research is what Morrigan intends to do—later. Her work is here, in Skyhold. Her duty is here, to her son. Her son wants someone to listen to him in his excitement, and Morrigan does.

#

The Dales are verdant green and battle scarred. The monuments of the Second Exalted March have yet to be replaced, however—there are more important things happening—and Lavellan’s mood is slightly improved for it.

She sits by the campfire, sewing a tear in her scarf. It’s a practical mend; the scarf itself is a single piece of Orlesian silk, soft and fine, and the stitching is with a plain thread closer to orange than gold, pulling and bunching at the fabric. It gets the job done. Lavellan weaves the loose ends back through the stitches, and nods in apparent satisfaction, humming under her breath all the while.

“What song is that?” Cassandra asks.

Lavellan doesn’t answer until Varric nudges her with the toe of his boot, and Cassandra does her best to hide her frown. Their Inquisitor has been—drifting, some days, that is the best word she can think of to describe it. With a task at hand she is as driven as ever, but in the quieter moments, as the Inquisition grows and the trials continue, she gets like this.

Cassandra is not the only one who has noticed, either. She’s talked about it with the others, the rare few moments where there is no one present to overhear.

“What song is that?” she repeats, as though nothing is amiss. Lavellan blinks at her, gaze focusing. “I don’t recognize the melody.”

“I—did not realize it was aloud,” Lavellan answers. “It is—a dirge. Of my people. Ar’an erir, ar’an melinir, sule’gar athdhea.”

That is a grimmer response than Cassandra expects.

“Hopefully we won’t have need for dirges,” Dorian says lightly. Lavellan doesn’t snap at him like she would have, once; it is not just Cassandra who has been working to cross the ravines between them.

The ghost of a smile crosses Lavellan’s face, a bit of her incomprehensible humor, a joke that no one else is privy to. As usual, she does not elaborate.

“Hopefully not,” she agrees, and wraps the scarf around her shoulders.

#

“So,” says Alistair.

“So,” says Hawke, drawing out the word.

“Do you miss Ferelden?” he asks her.

They haven’t had much chance to actually talk in person, him and Hawke. A lot of it was through letters, delivered by proxies, and it’s been too dangerous until recently to stay in one place for long, the occasions they’d had to meet face to face. And, he supposes, it’s a rather heavy question to ask, coming from someone like him to someone like her, but—she answers.

“Been ten years since I’ve been back, I hardly even know if I’d recognize it some days.” She sighs, looking up at the stars; the Inquisition banners wave slightly in the breeze, though the further west they go, the hotter and drier it gets, the wind blowing fainter and fainter each day. “Then again, it’s Ferelden. Not much can change. Still muddy?”

“So much mud,” he laughs. “That’s how you know you’re home, when you can’t see the leather of your boots anymore, eh?”

“As opposed to this shitty Orlesian dirt.” Hawke scuffs at the ground with the heel of her boot and cracks a grin. “Can only hope to dream of being as good as some proper Ferelden mud.”

“The true hero of the war against occupation—”

“—was the mud.”

There’s a distant, muffled bit of laughter that sounds like one of the Inquisitor’s friends, the elven girl who lives above the tavern. Alistair chooses to ignore it. Hawke glances briefly in that direction, before evidently deciding the same.

“Good to have someone else who gets it,” he sighs.

“...Do you miss your friends?” Hawke asks. The good humor dissipates on the gentle breeze; her voice is quiet.

“D’you?” Alistair asks.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

He’d love to see Surana again—she’d probably be able to fix this all with sheer stubborn-headedness. She’s an unstoppable force, and Alistair loves her for it. But if she was here, she’d see what’s become of the Grey, and even if the price of him taking that burden is their separation... well.

“I’m glad Carver is far away from all of this,” Hawke says. “I could hardly blame you for feeling the same."

#

Time twists, turning round and round again on top of itself, patchwork quilt torn and seams sewn back together at the wrong edges.

Cole follows her like a shadow. She marches, at the head of armies, old songs and stories on her lips and stave in her hand, trusted companions at her sides—oh, it makes her head ache, and he can be a friend, Compassion, compassionate, but he cannot fix this.

(He could try to make her forget. He has never asked. She would not accept it.)

She isn’t talking much; Cole tries to listen to the things that she doesn’t say, but her thoughts are like time, like the scarf, he doesn’t know—she doesn’t know, doesn’t know—he sits at the fire, next to the Iron Bull, and the Iron Bull doesn’t flinch anymore at his sudden appearance.

“You and Krem say words that hurt, but they aren’t real.”

The Iron Bull glances to the few of the Chargers who march with them. He smiles, fond, my boys, mine, theirs, us.

“We give each other grief,” rib ‘em about the little things to let them know we don’t care, “it’s a soldier thing. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means friendship,” Cole agrees. “And that you’re soldiers. Krem likes it, it makes him proud.”

Varric is on the other side of the fire, with Hawke, thoughts rose-bright and bittersweet, and Cassandra is asking him questions about a book; and Sera sits next to Rainier for the first time in weeks and elbows him between the ribs; and Dorian sits next to their Inquisitor, and they speak of the things they both miss from home. She asks him if he misses having someone to peel grapes for him—he grins, no, but I do miss having someone brush a thousand strokes of my hair in the mornings.

Slight curve of the lips, there and gone, she smiles less and less the further they march.

Cole cannot fix. He can help—and so can they.

#

Adamant Fortress looms on the horizon. The Inquisition lifts their banners high and goes to war.

Chapter Text

And as the black clouds came upon them, they looked on what pride had wrought, and despaired. —Canticle of Threnodies, 7:10

adamant fortress // the raw fade

It’s been nearly five hours since Hawke fell into the Fade, and all of five minutes since she fell back out.

Varric doesn’t know the details, and for once in his life, he doesn’t care, doesn’t give a damn because nothing matters other than the fact that Hawke is here and alive and he’s standing next to her. In a world where everything has gone so thoroughly to shit, as he stands in a fortress of horrors in the aftermath of siege and battle, that alone is blessedly normal. He clings to it like a lifeline, like he clings to the last shreds of his sanity.

The battle ended, more or less, after the defeat of Corypheus’ dragon. Warden-Commander Clarel had struck the killing blow; the bridge collapsed; the Inquisitor and her party fell with the rubble and vanished into a rift that rent the air. The Inquisition spent the intervening hours clearing Adamant and driving out the last of the demons and enthralled Wardens. Varric, shaking, bloodied and exhausted, sat on a chunk of stone from a collapsed wall and stared out at the empty space where Hawke had been and started to clean his crossbow. Some time passed. He didn’t know how much. Cole sat down next to him. Then Sera. Bull didn’t stop, overseeing the Chargers, but when he passed by he paused for a moment in silence with them before moving on.

Blood and bodies everywhere, fighting still breaking out in clusters as the Inquisition sweeps through the fortress, one corridor at a time. Smoke and dust in the air. It feels like Kirkwall, the ash of the Chantry settling across the city like finely powdered snow.

It’s been all of five minutes since Hawke fell out of the Fade. The rift in the courtyard through which the Wardens had intended to summon a demon army, dormant but not fully sealed, for they had no one who could seal it anymore, flares a bright green. The soldiers, still in the process of securing the fortress, shout in alarm and go for their weapons, and Varric curses and staggers to his feet, and Sera reaches for an arrow only to find her quiver empty.

Only Cole doesn’t move as the rift grows brighter, reflecting green in his wide stare.

“They know,” he says, and the rift warps, pulses, and Warden Alistair stumbles out onto the bloodied stone. Cassandra, next—Blackwall—Vivienne—Hawke, pale, bloody, cradling one arm to her chest but alive, and Varric runs to her without thinking, only distantly registers Lavellan and Dorian stepping out of the rift before it closes for good as he reaches out, and Hawke sees him and reaches back.

“We must find Leliana and Cullen,” he hears Cassandra say.

“Let’s not be hasty—” Vivienne starts, and then, uncharacteristically, hesitates. “Dorian, did—the Inquisitor?”

“Came through with me,” the Tevinter mage replies, and he sounds exhausted, and Varric thinks there’s something more going on here than he realizes, but it still doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because Hawke is here. Her hands card through his hair, shaking. “And then she went off to do Inquisitorial… things.”

“You let her—”

Cassandra’s… angry? That never bodes well.

“Not out here,” is what Vivienne says, and then Hawke is clinging to him as the group begins to move, and only Alistair splits away to deal with the remaining Wardens. Or, Varric assumes that’s where he goes, because when they arrive at the command tent, Alistair’s not with them. Cassandra paces, expression twisted in—anger? But, he’s seen her furious, he knows what that looks like, and this isn’t it, this is something deeper.

“Hawke,” he murmurs. “What…?”

Hawke’s fingers curl into his shoulder, almost bruisingly tight. She doesn’t say anything.

“What happened?” Cullen demands, sweeping into the tent, Leliana on his heels. “The Inquisitor came back with you, I heard her giving orders—”

“The Inquisitor,” Cassandra interrupts, and her voice is shaking, and that more than anything else makes Varric go still. He reaches up to put his hand over Hawke’s. She’s still cradling one arm against her chest, why are they all here, and not being swept off to the healers?

What happened as the bridge collapsed?

“What we saw in the Fade,” Cassandra begins, and stops, and takes a shaking breath.

“Maybe we should find—the Inquisitor,” Blackwall says.

“If she wanted to be here, she would be,” Vivienne counters, and the tension grows, and Hawke’s grip tightens.

“The Inquisitor opened a rift, and you fell into the Fade,” Leliana prompts, cutting over them all. “Start from the beginning. What happened?”

#

They fall without impact. The ground beneath them is wet, water flowing and pooling from nowhere. Great rocky crags hang in the sky, amidst drifting pieces of tower and rubble from fortresses long since lost to time.

No one wants to be here, except maybe Dorian, who is distracted enough by what should be a magical impossibility to stave off some of the building terror. But all of them are frightened, for this is the Fade, and they are here bodily, and they have no way of knowing if they can get out again. Hawke, seen so much, survived even more, but Maker, Maker, what will be left of her when all is done—Cassandra, stalwart, stubborn, stunned and uncertain, sword at the ready—Blackwall, shield in hand, shoulders squared, no choice but to go forward—Alistair, thinking back to years long gone, near-death and horror and somehow, still, moments of laughter—the Inquisitor.

She holds her staff in her hands, the blade flickering with arcane energy. Her hands flicker, too, the Anchor hissing and sparking, the air twisting around it. She reaches out as if to open a rift, and the very air heats to something unbearable.

She lowers her arm and does not try again.

“There,” she says instead, and points with her blade. In the distance, there is a shifting mass, a shadowy bulk that twitches in an unnatural manner, yet is somehow, horrifyingly, unmistakably, alive. Past it, the green and the mist is thinner, brighter. “We need to go there.”

And she sets forward, marching like she was made for it, like the only thing that matters is the shortest path between here and the Nightmare which looms above them, and she does not falter, and she does not stop. Only when the Black City drifts into view past the fog and rock and water, does she look up from time to time, and stare.

Nothing here is as it should be, not the water, not the ground beneath their feet, if it can even be called ground. Not their spells, for the mages in the party—even those are more vibrant, more potent, harder to guide and control.

Not their Inquisitor—she is different, too. She leads, and so of course they follow, but as they follow they notice. An overlay, an overlap. She marches, and the Anchor glows and trails sinewy green behind her. She marches, and behind her trails an echo of herself like vapor and mist, half a second out of sync.

She leads, they follow. They argue even though there is no time for it, and the Nightmare taunts and laughs and looms. She cuts across its words with biting words of her own, and cuts a path through the Fade, and does not slow—

—until she stops.

Stares.

A figure stands before them, an elf, like her, fuzzy around the edges in the way that not-real things sometimes are. He has no vallaslin. His hair is dark brown and cut close, close to the scalp, uneven and patchy, like he did so himself without the aid of a mirror. A greatsword rests at his back. He smiles, sad.

“Hello, lethallin,” he says.

The Inquisitor is frozen in place, wide-eyed.

“We can’t trust it,” says Alistair; and, “We want nothing to do with your kind, demon,” says Vivienne; and, “Be careful, Inquisitor,” says Dorian.

And, “I know that voice,” says the Inquisitor. Her voice cracks with a level of emotion few have ever heard her allow. She steps forward, ignores their protests, reaches out with her Fade-touched hand and stops just short of him. “I know that voice, why…?”

“I would know your voice out of thousands,” the figure says. “But the Nightmare took much from you, lethallin.”

“Are you a spirit, then? It will do you no good to take his face, I do not—I do not.” She closes her eyes for but a moment. “I know that voice, but that face is taken from me.”

“Maybe I am a spirit,” says the figure. The Inquisitor’s staff angles toward the ground, away, and so behind her, her friends and companions ready themselves to attack at a moment’s notice. “But, I remember being him. And I remember after, keeping watch with the others. So I think that I am him, as much as I ever have been, for he is what I remember, what I know.”

“Inquisitor—” Vivienne repeats, and the Inquisitor steps forward, wraps her arms around the spirit, buries her face in the crook of his neck.

“I remember your voice,” she tells him, “I would know it out of thousands. You know the Nightmare, lethallin? It guards our way, but can you help us get to it?”

“Inquisitor,” Cassandra says.

“Maybe we shouldn’t—” Dorian tries.

“Are you sure—” Hawke starts.

“I can,” the spirit says. “It guards a point in the Fade. It meant to climb through, when it was strong enough, and the barrier weak enough, and it is going to try and kill you should you try to leave the same way. But there are paths, if you are quick, and quiet. It knows you are here, but it does not yet need to know where.”

She chooses to follow the spirit, and they follow her, because she is their Inquisitor.

Through the water, the pools, the ponds, the lakes. Through the shadows of spires floating high above. Through the shades, the demons. And all the while, Nightmare taunts, twists, takes, though it does not take to ease the hurt. It feeds the fear instead, feeds off the fear, bloating, biding its time, looming tall above and around them, and past it, the City, always drifting.

You think they will revere you when they know the truth?

“You think I want to be revered?” she answers, and her voice echoes and hums and sings. “You are wrong.”

They called you mad, once, for all your dreams. You remember that. But if it is madness, do you even know that it was real?

You were so certain, spear-maid, and for your certainty you paid the price. Are you certain now?

“You know!” Alistair speaks up, as though he could dream to speak louder than the echo that wraps and warps around them all. His voice is brittle with forced levity, his grip white-knuckled around the hilt of his sword. “I’ve found it’s best to ignore the weird voices in the Fade. Last time I was here, I got stuck at a family dinner and couldn’t leave.”

“...Seriously?” Hawke asks.

“Seriously. Listen, I’ve read The Tale of the Champion, and your friend does excellent work, really, but the things that Surana got up to? Even crazier.”

“Crazier than Kirkwall? Now that’s a bold claim.”

The air rumbles, and reeks of sulfur and ash, and their levity shatters as the Nightmare presses down with all its focus and intensity.

“Nightmare took much from you,” the spirit says again, still nameless, for he has not offered a name nor has he been given one. The Inquisitor cuts down the fearlings that skitter from the shadows at the Nightmare’s commands. Her pace does not falter. She marches, and the spirit guides her steps. “When you ran, it fought to keep you here, and now it is stronger than before.”

“Then we will fight our way past. It is stronger, but I am not alone.”

The spirit’s smile is still sad.

“You are not,” he says, and the Nightmare looms, and the air itself rumbles and shakes. More fearlings crawl out of the shadows, and they are almost there, they are nearly there, nearly out, but so was the Nightmare before the Wardens’ ritual was interrupted. The Nightmare stands before them now, too many eyes, too many mouths, too many limbs, defying comprehension even to look at.

None are alone in my domain, it says, and it laughs, and it laughs, and the noise is like no horror they have ever heard. They grit their teeth, and the Inquisitor marches, and they follow her, because she is their Inquisitor. You have forgotten, spear-maid of Alamarr. You have forgotten so very, very much.

“That’s a big spider,” Hawke says faintly. “Big, big spider…”

“In case we get squished into paste in the next few seconds, does anybody know why it’s talking about the Alamarri?” Dorian tries for humor, for lightness, falls far short. “I prefer—prefer not to die confused, you see.”

“It is a perversion of the Chant of Light.” Cassandra’s voice shakes even as she lifts her sword, as the legion swarms to where they stand. “When the Maker heard Andraste’s prayers for her people, the first words he spoke were those of comfort. This—this demon would make it a taunt, for her Herald.”

None are alone, the Nightmare laughs, and laughs, and laughs. None are alone here.

And then there is nothing left but to fight, and to lose.

The Nightmare shifts, peers down, and the Inquisitor struggles to stand even as her limbs refuse to hold her. The spirit has vanished from her side. Cassandra staggers, bloody; Hawke is thrown to the ground and does not rise; the fearlings swarm, unceasing.

You have forgotten, it says a third time. But I know compassion.

There is a pause, a moment of time no longer than the space between one heartbeat and the next. All the mouths of the Nightmare smile at the Inquisitor, forced to kneeling prone before it, and in the space of that moment, a lifetime of memories comes pouring out.

Chapter Text

memory

The back of the cart is covered, and cramped, and smelly, and there are fewer of them now than there were at the start, and still it is nearly too hot to breathe. The straw underfoot is days old, filthy. Outside, the sun beats down, and there is no cool wind to bring relief.

She curls her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. She presses one eye against a crack in the wooden boards, looking at the unfamiliar city outside. Her stomach twists with hunger, and her dress is ripped and dirty, and her hair is a messy, sweaty tangle around her ears, and she cannot remember the journey to get here—she just knows that she’s very very far from home. There had been a cart like this, down the Imperial Highway, and it had been packed full with others taken from her village. Then there had been a boat across the open sea, and now, this cart, here, and she is surrounded by people she doesn’t know.

They have to be stopping soon, she thinks. The heat will kill her if it doesn’t. Her chest hurts—her chest always hurts, has since her sister—but the heat and the smell make it worse, so much worse. But, stopping means that they’re going to take her from the cart like they’ve taken everyone else, and that—

She squeezes her eyes shut and hums, very soft, under her breath, even though it hurts to breathe. Mamae’s lullaby. She misses her mamae, and—and she’s all alone now, Mamae, because when the slavers tried to take her, her babae had fought and then he was lying on the ground, and he wasn’t moving, and she is only twelve but she knows that that’s bad, and—

#

—and she is twelve years old, and Mamae holds her close as Keeper Deshanna goes to speak with the Templars who have come to their camp. She isn’t scared, because their Keeper is nice and smart and strong and she’s not going to let any Templars come in like they have the right to, even if the Templars think they can. Mamae is scared, though. Mamae is very scared.

“They won’t take you,” her mamae whispers, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. Through the thin wood of the aravel, she can hear the Keeper talking, and then the Templars, and then the Keeper again. “They won’t.”

She’d had a big sister. The Templars took her, and Mamae had come to Clan Lavellan to get away from them.

She wriggles around in her mamae’s arms, to put her own arms around Mamae’s waist and hold her tight.

“They won’t take me,” she says, “m’not a mage.”

Mamae just holds her tighter and starts to sing, quiet—

#

—quiet, as she sweeps in the main hall of the magister’s estate. He can make her call him master, and he can tell her what to wear, and where to go, and what to do, and he can hurt her if she steps out of line, but he cannot own her and he cannot own her voice and he cannot own her magic. She won’t let him.

She doesn’t speak the words that the master speaks, not to start—though the master knows the common tongue, he does not deign to use it. She learns, though. She’s a quick learner. And the others in the house teach her how to gauge the master’s tempers, and how to keep her head down when his temper flares, and how to clean and how to cook, and a little bit at a time they teach her the words used in Tevinter.

She learns, too, that the master is a kind one, compared to many. But that means little in the end.

She was not born into this. She was taken. And she is going to see home again, she knows it, she believes in it with all her heart and the certainty of that faith settles around her and never leaves. She prays to the Lady of the Skies each night, for moonlight when she finally runs; she prays to the Mountain-Father for safe passage through the hills and for secret places to hide away; she prays to the Mother of the Woods for healthy plants and clear streams and protection from the beasts which roam.

And she sings, very soft, her little act of rebellion—

#

—and she is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and she is twenty, and her little acts of rebellion become conversations late in the night, a wisp of flame cupped in her hands to see by, talking to the woman she shares a corner of the room with. Lustina was born into this, has never known anything but this, but she will. They both will.

She is going to see home again, she knows it, she believes it with all her heart, and her magic will rise to meet her when she calls—

#

—and she summons fire to her fingertips, and it answers, and in the darkened halls of the master’s estate, she and Lustina stare at the flickering shadows across the face of the man who tends the magister’s books—

#

—the smoke rising high into the air, and Babae laughs, the firelight deepening the shadows of his face, and all around them the Arlathvhen is filled with music and stories, and she is not the best of singers but she sings, too—

#

The magister likes the man who tends to the books.

Born into this, like Lustina was, like the woman who makes breakfast each morning, like the man she sees on occasion through the windows, tending the gardens outside under the hot Tevinter sun. A smart boy, the magister has always said, a good worker, loyal. The magister teaches him to read and to write and trusts him to keep the books, the numbers, the accounts.

She’s seen him before, an elven boy, like her, and her age, in nicer clothes than the magister allots to most his slaves. They don’t interact with each other. The boy attends to the magister, and she cleans the house. The boy becomes a man. Loyal, trusted—the magister says he might free him, one day, for has he not earned it? But, oh, what would he do without him?

She summons fire to her hands, and the man does not step back but he does flinch, slightly. She has kept her magic well hidden—he will not take it and he will not take my voice—it is mine this is mine it is—

“You will,” she says, and her voice shakes, and the flames waver—and still she speaks, and still the flames burn. Lustina clutches tightly to her arm. “You will let us go.”

The man tends to the books, the ledgers. There are numbers across the pages, on the same rows as dozens after dozens of names, numbers that say this is the worth of a person as if such a thing can ever be counted in gold. A name crossed out from the list, a familiar face, a not-quite friend gone from the magister’s halls.

He looks at the ledger in his hands, and takes one single step back.

Trusted, the magister always says, to the slaves in the estate, to guests and visitors, a smile, a sweeping gesture. Loyal, the magister always says.

“I never saw you here,” says the man, low and quiet in the midnight shadows of the hall. He takes another step back, and another.

She and Lustina do not waste time, and they turn and flee into the warmth of a Tevinter summer night—

#

—sweat-soaked and triumphant, she returns from the hunt, bloody daggers at her side and a wild boar on the sledge behind her. The summer sun has set; it is dusk, though the heat of the day still lingers, and she has passed this test, this final rite before she takes her vallaslin.

Aeno sees her first, the hunt-master of the Clan, who she has been training under for years, now, and he does not smile—he does not smile at anything, really—but his eyes crinkle at the corners. She does not smile much, either, but she smiles at him then anyway. A few of the other apprentices see her next, run off to tell the others of her return. Mahanon, Keeper Deshanna’s First, gives her a warm nod of approval.

But the only people she wants to see are her Babae and Mamae, smiling fit to burst, proud, overjoyed—

#

—singing, hair windswept and curly about her head, for she has not bothered to braid it. Lustina stares out in awe at the Waking Sea; she has never been this far south, and the wind blows cool off the waters. The gods have brought them safe passage from cruel Tevinter, and she is home again, as she knew she always would be.

Or, nearly home. Her gods have brought her across the continent, the waves, the mountains. But they must carry her over this hill, and her voice falters abruptly as she and Lustina get to the top and see the city before them. The fishing boats are in the water. There are workers tending to distant fields. Wagons and slow-plodding oxen rattling up and down the dirt roads. One passes by them, full of crops from the harvest, and the driver looks down at them with only kindness.

(They are not the first runaways which Daenirim has taken in, taken back.)

So she walks the streets of her village for the first time in years, Lustina at her side, hay sticking to the fabric of her skirts like burrs, until she reaches the house she used to live in, and it has not changed and it has changed so much—

—and Mamae is there, and Babae, badly scarred but alive, and her mother sinks to her knees at weeps from joy—

#

Her husband has children. They are not her children, she did not birth them, but they are hers enough to love, and she spends many days sitting with them, spinning tales, little flickers of force magic and light to make figures dance across the ground as she narrates. She holds the youngest child in her arms, just a babe, wrapped in her mother’s old yellow shawl, and speaks in low tones so as not to wake him.

In the bed next to her, pale and drawn and dying, Gillivhan musters a smile, though she still cannot speak louder than a whisper.

“You’ll take care of them, won’t you?”

“Of course I would take care of them,” she replies, “and so would Lustina, and your parents, and our vhenan’s parents. But you do not need to speak like we must. You are still with us, yet.”

“It felt different than with the other two,” Gillivhan answers. “I gave my little boy all of me, this time, and soon I will go to the Lady of the Skies. But knowing that you will take care of my children… I am glad.”

The baby coos. She hums as she rocks him, back and forth, back and forth, and smiles at the not-quite-point of his half-elven ears.

“You have been dreaming more,” Gillivhan says.

She hums again, nods. Rocks the babe, back and forth, back and forth.

“The Alamarri are strong, and Tevinter weakens, and still they come for us. I dream, and I pray.”

“And what do you hear?”

Back and forth, back and forth.

“I sing, and there is a voice from Beyond that sings back to me the songs of Creation. It is…”

She blinks, unfocused, and the whispers rise up around her, and past them, the resonance of bells. Blinks again, and Gillivhan is only waiting for her to come back to herself.

“It is amazing,” she finally says, “that we create just as our gods do, and did. New life, such a precious thing—but our art, our songs, our music, too.”

“More precious to me than anything,” Gillivhan answers, and she drifts into slumber.

She sings, as the sun begins to set—for the child’s sake, and for the sake of his mother, her friend. She waves her hand, and the fire grows warmer in the hearth, and she rocks, back and forth, back and forth.

These days, her hair is long. The magister had liked her to cut it short. Easier to manage, and it had already been sheared away for risk of lice. She often walks barefoot in the sun, just because she can, and because the warmth of it is sometimes just enough to chase away the cramped and crowded heat of a cart full of bodies.

More precious than anything, yes, and precious is this baby boy, and precious are his two brothers, still young and rosy-cheeked, and it would be so, so easy for them to vanish, and it would cost her everything.

#

“You are sure?” her husband asks her—

#

“You are sure?” her Keeper asks her—

#

“Yes,” she says.

#

So she marches.

Chapter Text

memory

The boat is crowded, and cramped, and smelly, and she is occasionally spat on where she tries to sleep. But she manages.

She has no interest in the Chantry. She has seen too many Templars coming where they are not wanted to bear them any fondness, and the knowledge that an entire lifetime with an older sister was taken from her before she could ever know it burns angry-hot in her mind. But Justinia’s peace meetings are going to affect everyone in Thedas, failure or success, and it may not reach Clan Lavellan immediately but it will reach them. Her daggers are tucked into her boots and her sleeves, and she keeps herself out of sight, too, as best she can.

There are no mountains near Wycome. So when she arrives at Jader and begins to make her way south along the Frostbacks, she spends longer than she should, perhaps, to marvel, for she has never seen anything quite like it, has never seen anything quite like the Imperial Highway as it stands in Ferelden—

#

—and the Imperial Highway stretches out behind her as she rides. Her staff is at her back, resting across her mother’s shawl. Her mother’s sword is at her side, though she is scarcely strong enough to lift it these days.

She wields her blade of light and mana. Blades of steel are not for her, so much, were not even when she was younger; now her braided hair is streaked through with grey, like her mother’s had been, and her age is catching up to her. But she is not so old that she cannot fight, cannot march, cannot lead.

Her husband rides a horse alongside her. To her other side, Lustina, who had swept and dusted and cleaned with her, who had run from slavery with her. To her husband’s side, his aegis, his second in command. Behind them all, the armies of Alamarr, shield-brothers and spear-sisters, their voices raised in song. She joins them, lifts her voice to the heavens—

#

—battlefield, strewn with bodies, but all of them are Tevinter swordsmen, Tevinter mages. An entire platoon, wiped out. Ambushed?

She and her husband are equals in strategy, and neither of them are certain as to how such a thing could happen.

But then again, they are not the only ones who march on the Imperium, and their numbers swell as the slaves begin to rise up ahead of them.

They have made camp on a hill, and it is evening, and campfires dot the ground as far as the eye can see. So, she sees Havard approaching from a great distance, a smaller figure at his side, though she does not recognize the second man until they are both nearly before her, shadowed as it is—

#

There, in the heart of them, sang a Lady radiant and clad in armor of bright steel. She paused her song to look upon Shartan, and said to him:

#

“Can it be?”

She steps away from her husband, disregards her husband’s second, and smiles a rare, bright smile. She does not know the man, at first, until she does—for though the years have aged them both, and it has been many, many years, she knows the young man from the magister’s estate. The man who had let her flee.

He does not know her, either, not at first. And then, he does, and his expression turns to disbelief.

“So it is true,” he says. “You mean to free the slaves and march on Tevinter.”

“We do,” says her husband. “For the Alamarri have suffered too long underneath its tyranny.”

“Not alone, though. Was it you who ambushed those soldiers?”

“Not alone,” he echoes. “But I cannot tell you of how, while my compatriots wait in fear.”

“Then bring them to us, and sit by our fire—”

#

And the People came, all astonished to stand among Andraste’s followers, and she gave them food and drink and bade them sit while Shartan gave her the tale of their uprising and flight from Vol Dorma. When the tale was finished, Andraste said to Shartan:

#

“Fight with us,” she urges. “Tevinter will shatter beneath the might of the Alamarri and the People, and more rise up to join us with each passing day. We make for Minrathous, and we will see it as ours.”

Shartan smiles, sharp, and he reaches out to take the hand she offers.

“I should have guessed it was you,” he says to her, later. “I can think of no other who would lead an army with song into the heartlands of Tevinter.”

“That is what you remember of me?”

“You were always singing in the great hall. I would know your voice out of thousands.”

#

Valerian flowers are white. The field before her is littered with corpses, and it is the green-brown of trampled grasses, and the red-brown of old blood, and the tall stalks and their white petaled flowers are crushed and bloodied and browning. They have lost much, to get this far, and they will lose more, and…

This was a victory. This was a victory. This was a victory.

Shartan sits beside her. He carries her mother’s sword, as she carries her mother’s scarf. He has named it glandivalis, belief.

“This was a victory,” he says to her, and his voice is quiet.

“This was a victory,” she repeats, and she tries to believe it, but oh, she is frightened. She does not have the luxury of doubt. She has lost much to get here—her daughters, more precious than anything, friends, family—and she will lose more, and.

And.

“Our people will be free.”

“Never again will we submit.”

#

From the Imperial Highway, she walks on foot up the paths into the mountains, and Haven is pleasant, quaint, filled to bursting. She walks past Haven, further still, and the Temple of Sacred Ashes stands nearly high enough to blot out the sun—

#

—Minrathous, looming tall and dark on the horizon.

They have marched, and fires burn in their wake, and they turn steel and all the magic at their disposal against the mage-lords of Tevinter, and blaze a path from the southern reaches of Thedas to the northern coasts. Her knees ache, the helm she wears hurts for how little she removes it, she rarely sleeps, and when she sleeps she Dreams and the voices and the songs and the bells are near to overwhelming. Her husband watches her with shadowed eyes. Lustina tries to get her to eat. Shartan sits beside her and tells stories, the years in the magister’s estate after she fled, and all the years past it.

(Trusted, the magister always liked to say. Loyal. He ferried fellows out one at a time in the cover of the shadows, and the magister would turn to him and say, do you know how they’re getting out? Have you heard anything? And he would answer, no, and he was believed.)

“Ashandruast.”

Her husband puts a hand on her shoulder, the weight heavy, his palm warm. She reaches up to cover it with her own.

“Some of our scouts have found a place near here. They say the Beyond presses thin. I thought it might ease your thoughts, if we went.”

“Is it a long walk?”

Her knees ache, she rarely sleeps. The heat of Tevinter’s summer burns in her scarred lungs with every breath, and she is so tired, but she cannot stop now.

(She misses her children. Her husband’s sons, and her daughters. Was it truly a better time, when they were still small enough for her to hold, or was it merely simpler?)

“I hate to see you like this—you know I would take some of your burdens, if I could. The journey isn’t far, though it is uphill.”

She squeezes his hand briefly and pushes herself to her feet. Outside, in the camp, she passes where Lustina sits, surrounded by a few others, teaching them to write one letter at a time. Further along, she sees Shartan with a number of soldiers, swapping stories. Her mother’s shawl is draped over his shoulders. She offers a smile as she passes by, and he glances up for a moment to returns, quietly says:

“Travel safely, lethallin.”

Havard joins them as they walk, and the three break from the main camp into the hills. Her husband spoke truly, and it is not far, but it is not the easiest of paths, and she leans against him to catch her breath as they stop beside a small pond. The grove is shaded, quiet. Bells toll, distant, in her ears.

Her husband passes her a waterskin, and she steadies herself enough to walk forward as she drinks.

She stumbles.

“What have you—” she starts, and the fear has not hit her yet, only confusion and magebane, bitter, clogging her throat. She reaches for her staff as soldiers in Tevinter garb step from the shadows, and at one she throws a weak burst of fire, and at the next, too close to her they are moving too quickly—spins her staff and runs him through with the long blade at the end—

—her husband draws his sword and strikes it from her grip.

Three of the soldiers run Havard through, her husband’s dearest friend, and he collapses to the ground, bleeding, dying, breath a shallow gurgling gasp. She is on her knees. She cannot breathe—she is too stunned, too frightened to cry—now the fear—and then, past the dizziness, she is hurting, she is furious.

“What have you done?” she demands, cold and quiet and raging. “Maevarith, what have you done?”

Her husband cannot meet her eyes as the soldiers of Tevinter hold her down, as he ties her hands with a length of rope, and then her feet.

“You think that we can hold a siege against Minrathous?” he asks her, and his voice is desperate, as though he means to convince himself as much as her. “I am saving our people. I am saving them.”

#

It is dark, and then it is bright.

Atop the walls of Minrathous, the guards stand, and beat the war drums, and their doom-doom-doom echoes heavy across the plains of Tevinter. She can hear the reverb in the stone as they drag her, heels scraping bloody across the floors—she is bound and gagged, ruddy-red hair matted with blood, tied so tightly she can hardly move. She is taken, from cells deep below the city, up into the dim light of morning, but in a drugged haze even that makes it hard to see.

But she is lucid enough to know what is happening, aware enough for terror to flood through her like ice. One of the mage-lords stands beside a tall pole, around which kindling has been piled high, and she struggles though it will do her no good. They bind her again to the pyre.

She is screaming—screaming, muffled, and she is too proud of a woman to beg but she is terrified—the armies, gathered at the city gates, leaderless, two lost to the betrayal of another—she weeps.

The guards throw buckets of oil. She can small it, taste it with the bitter herbs on the back of her tongue, choking her, stinging her eyes as it splashes against her face and hair, smearing her vision to streaks of color—

—not enough that she does not see part of the armies break away. Is she imagining that familiar hue, that old and faded yellow? It is too far to see, but not so far that she cannot hear the order for the bowmen to launch a volley, not so far that she cannot watch the armies of Alamarr break upon the walls of Minrathous and shatter—

#

Bring forth the sacrifice.

#

Fire has always been as water, to her. It answers her as easily as song to her lips.

The Archon lights the pyre with a wave of his hand, and she burns, all the same.

#

Bring forth the sacrifice.

Andraste, save me!

Get away from her!

#

Whispers, and shadows, and the servants tell her that there are people here who should not be here, and the mercenaries hired to guard the doors have been passing messages—the Divine, Most Holy, has not returned to her chambers yet.

She finds a brazier knocked over, ash across the floor. Scuffed footprints in the dust of hallways supposed to be empty. Cries for help. She cannot hesitate, she runs, she throws open the door and sees—the Wardens pause, and the man-who-is-not-a-man, warped and twisted and red, he turns to face her—and in the moment of distraction, the Divine, Most Holy, stretches her bindings just enough to knock the focus from his grip.

She reaches down to catch it as it rolls across the floor.

There is light, and pain, and green—

#

—and green, and time, and she remembers some things, and she has forgotten many more. She might be spirit, but she remembers being someone, once, so perhaps she is someone still. If she remembers being, that means she was, she is, doesn’t it? Must she only be one—could she be both? Is and was, both at once? She lingers, because she thinks she knows this place, but the spirit-souls who have the faces of those she loved once are beyond her.

And something else is moving closer.

She has faced down worse than the nightmarish thing that settles in like a leech to gorge, and just because she did not keep her head down, years and centuries and a lifetime ago, does not mean she cannot. She does. She is quiet, and she is unnoticed.

Something rips. Something falls. Blood, and fear, and the Nightmare begins to stir.

She is quiet, and unnoticed, and quick—

#

—and she runs, because she does not have a choice, keep your head down quick quiet quick. Pain, shooting up from her hand, the strange glow of magic where before there had been none. There had been light. An explosion. She stumbles to her feet surrounded by corpses, twisted armor emblazoned with griffons, robes of heavy velvet and golden embroidery, white and red and drip dripping red, she runs—

Falon’Din, guide them. And Maker guide you, Divine.

—and there are things crawling from the green and from the shadows, so she runs, and when she can no longer run, she stands her ground and fights, and when she cannot fight, she falls, and she fears, and she prays—

#

—and she finds a woman lying on the ground, of the People, her hair a ruddy-red, her skin tanned and freckled and bearing the markings of Falon’Din, her eyes green like bottleglass. She has fought bravely, valiantly. Lost, all the same.

The Nightmare turns.

The woman’s name means freedom in the old tongue, and freedom is something that has always called to her. Once she thinks she prayed and dreamed, and from the Beyond a voice at long last answered. She remembers it happening, so it must have happened to her, yes?

Revas Lavellan is dead, her heart stopped, her breath gone, her prayers silent. Her hand is outstretched, still-glowing, still of movement.

She reaches out—

#

She is—someone. She is. She is.

The thing that gorges turns to chase her—she runs, she runs—it takes and rips and tears, and her head is full to bursting as it claws through her mind, leaving gaps and holes and hollows, bleeding thought into absence—but she runs, for she has never met an object that will not move before her, and she reaches out—

falls—

#

The Nightmare laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and the Inquisitor lies curled up unmoving on the ground as her compatriots reel from the onslaught of memory and magic.

It rises, the great mass of its body blocking out the green of the sky, the distant ever-present silhouette of the Black City drifting, and each step it takes shakes the ground beneath it, cracking under its weight. One leg, thick around as a tree trunk, lands nearly close enough to crush her—does not, not quite, as though it means to draw out the fear of dying, but the shattering of staff and blade is audible even as its laughter continues to fill their ears.

What say you, spear-maid? Where is your voice? Where is your song?

The Inquisitor says nothing.

Blackwall lifts his shield, just enough in time to catch a fearling that leaps up to overbalance him, many-limbed and many-mouthed and shrieking loud enough to deafen—Dorian summons a wall of fire between himself and the things that crawl, and crawl they do, burning as they drag themselves forward, slowed but not stopped. Vivienne’s barrier shatters—she throws up a second one, flickering wildly, unstable, holding for all of a moment. Alistair keeps to his feet, only just, though he too has lost his sword, and his shield is cracked down the center.

The Nightmare looms.

Something flickers in the shadow of its bulk.

A flash of light, a shift of movement, and a fearling strikes to Blackwall’s unprotected flank; a spirit takes the impact, ghostly hands gripping sword and shield. A volley of arrows come down from behind Dorian, and the things that crawl go still. Two figures, there-and-not, fall into line beside Cassandra—three more around Vivienne—three more to Alistair, and three to Hawke—and two, three, four, a dozen, more, swarming the Nightmare, driving the shadows back with their presence, inch by inch by inch.

The spirit who had guided them here—Shartan, the Liberator, looking as he did in memory, rushes to the Inquisitor’s side, hauls her to her feet—the Nightmare’s laughter turns to horrible, screeching wrath. He turns to block one of its strikes, and a second spirit shifts to his side, arm around the Inquisitor’s waist, continues to pull her from danger.

Still stunned, reeling from before, she collapses half-standing against a jagged shard of rock—stares, dazed, and reaches out to touch the spirit’s armor, furs and steel and leather and bone. The visage of Maferath says nothing; seeing that she can stand on her own, he returns to the fight.

She staggers forward as though to keep him from leaving, Anchored hand outstretched. Dorian grabs her arm, pulls her back, tries to find words and fails.

Cassandra and Alistair rush past the Nightmare, distracted in its rage, towards where the light is thinner, brighter—Blackwall and Vivienne, working together for once, on either side of Hawke, staggering forward—the Inquisitor strains, reaches. She cries out, tear-streaked face, desperate. Dorian has never seen her so much as smile and fully mean it, and this—

“We have to go,” he says. “They’re buying us time.”

It feels like Redcliffe, crumbling stone, a great beast bearing down upon them, water underfoot, the sky a nightmare of green. And Dorian, holding the Inquisitor back, the path home just steps away behind them.

“I cannot watch him die again for me, I cannot, I cannot, please…”

More and more spirits swarm from the shadows, driving the fearlings back, driving the Nightmare to greater rage. It sweeps out with one massive leg, shattering a pillar of stone as tall and broad as Skyhold’s ramparts, and a whole legion disappears beneath the rock and rubble. For every one spirit that flickers and fades, two more take their place.

Some are familiar, faces of memory. The Inquisitor reaches, hand outstretched.

“Then do not look back,” Dorian says, and still holding to her, begins to back away.

She follows.

Falling backwards through a rift is nauseating, disorienting, but surprisingly painless—stone underfoot, blood and ichor and the smell of ash, the night sky above them, the familiar stars.

The world reasserts itself.

Chapter Text

Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls. From these emerald waters doth life begin anew. Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity. —Canticle of Andraste, 14:11

adamant fortress // aftermath

It’s loud.

Hawke has not let go of his shoulder. Varric has not let go of her hand. The explanations, such as they are, piecemeal, interrupted, have devolved into disbelief and not-quite-argument—there is nothing to argue, not with so many of them having seen the same things, the same story. The Fade is mutable, malleable; if it had been false, they would remember it differently, skewed to their own perceptions. But with what had seemed certain now irrevocably knocked off-balance, the confusion finds an outlet in raised voices.

“I need a drink,” Hawke says, very quietly, mostly to herself. “Fuck, I…”

Varric shifts to take more of her weight.

“You’re bleeding, Waffles,” he tells her, because worrying about Hawke is normal, familiar, comes as easy to him as breathing. He can focus on that, and not—not everything else.

“Got squished by a spider.”

“Yeah, see, it’s... it’s supposed to be the other way around.”

He tries for a smile, can’t quite make it. Across the room, Dorian folds his arms across his chest, frowns, speaks:

“All of you were encouraging the rumors about the Inquisitor as Andraste’s chosen, despite her rather stringent protests—now that you’ve had it confirmed, you’re upset?”

“You are just pleased that your Chantry’s views on magic are correct,” Cassandra snaps at him.

“Nothing I saw in the Fade was pleasing to me in any way!"

The noise grows, and grows, and grows.

Varric sighs, and starts to say to Hawke, maybe they should just leave—let them yell, she needs a medic, and since Anders isn’t around to fuss they have to find one. Cole flickers into view before he can start.

“Busy, always busy,” he’s muttering, eyes wide and looking down at nothing in particular. “Busy, have to keep busy, can’t think, why haven’t they come for me? I can’t fight them, I love them, I loved him, I don’t understand…!”

He breathes. No one else has noticed him standing in the shadows in the corner, next to Hawke, next to Varric. Cole turns to look at them both. When he speaks again, it’s in that same distant tone as he plucks thoughts from the air.

“Should have known, should have known better, dirthavaren, it never keeps. She’s frightened. I don’t know how to help.”

“You should go t’her,” says Hawke, and Varric answers:

“C’mon, Waffles, lets get you to the medics before you collapse.”

But as he turns to leave, Hawke braced against him with every step, he catches Cole’s gaze, tries to convey both apology and suggestion, tilts his head in the direction of their friends. Cole frets, but nods, and the spirit-boy lets them leave without comment.

She’s a good one, their Inquisitor—whoever she is. Varric likes her. Varric is her friend. Varric is going to, at some point, need to get incredibly, horridly drunk to process everything tonight.

Varric is always, always, always going to choose Hawke. So he chooses, and they go.

#

Dorian storms out in a brief fit of temper.

He doesn’t think he can be faulted for that, however. Coming off the hours-long siege—the march, the fighting—how long did they spend in the Fade? Never mind what they had seen, Dorian is fairly sure he’s been awake for close to twenty-four hours without pause and the adrenaline is dangerously close to wearing out.

What they had seen isn’t helping matters.

Outside is warm, no less quiet than the tent behind him, where they still talk in circles, voices raised. Inquisition soldiers are a flurry of movement. No one has been spared from the cleanup that comes in the aftermath of battle: there are soldiers as guards, as runners; there are Wardens helping to carry the wounded and the dead. The voices get louder behind him as the tent flap opens—get softer as the flap closes shut again—Cullen pinches the bridge of his nose, straightens up to his full height, and strides into the fray, calling out orders.

Battles are not won all at once. There are still the sounds of distant skirmishes beyond the cries of the injured, the calls of those looking, hoping, to find their fellows still alive. This is the declining action, the messy aftermath. This is where they have to assess what they’re left with and continue forging a path.

There is... a lot to assess.

Kaffas.

“I don’t know how to help.”

Cole is standing next to him. Has possibly always been standing next to him. Difficult to say, with Cole.

“And you think I do? Have you always known about this?” Dorian asks.

Cole looks at him from underneath the wide brim of his hat, eyes too-wide.

“She’s frightened.”

Cole isn’t standing next to him anymore. Dorian wants nothing more than to find somewhere to lie down and pass out for a day or two, just... he’s rather had enough of the Fade for the moment. Never mind how long he’s been awake, then. Never mind the confusion he’s leaving behind him.

“Well, you could tell me where she is,” he says to nobody, and sets out.

Knowing their Inquisitor, she would have joined up with one of the groups still fighting—but she doesn’t have her staff, and he’s rarely seen her cast without one. And she isn’t the type to hide, even if she’s hiding from them, and the fortress is only barely secured... oh, she’s in the thick of things, Dorian is almost entirely certain of that. Giving orders, more likely than not.

What’s there to say? Dorian isn’t sure what he can do, here. So, you’re walking proof that history as everyone knows it is wrong, and you haven’t been able to say anything about it. Or, so many more things make sense now. Or, respectfully, Inquisitor—what?

What’s there to say? What’s anyone to say? He might be the least well equipped, given the circumstances. And yet.

And yet.

Perhaps it isn’t about being equipped, or prepared. Perhaps it is just a matter of being in a place, at a time, and dealing with the circumstances as they come.

(Blood on the stone, and green, and—)

He closes his eyes a moment, and the world continues moving around him. He opens them, and sets forward.

When Dorian finds her, she isn’t giving orders, but standing with her back to the stone of the ramparts, watching soldiers in Inquisition uniforms and Wardens in silver and blue carry the bodies away. Half in shadow, the sharp angles of her staff and blade gone and the flickering of the Anchor concealed beneath pale yellow fabric, she goes almost entirely unnoticed.

She blinks, once, and turns, and sees him, and—she’s their Inquisitor, she’s his friend , and the longer this all has gone on, the less Dorian has known her to falter, to let anyone see that she is anything less than marble—and all the fight drains out of her in an instant. When she approaches, it is unflinching, her head held high and her shoulders back, and though he has seen her face down blighted dragons and Nightmares and Corypheus he has never known her to look so defeated as she does in this moment.

“Well, Tevinter?” she says.

“Inquisitor,” he says, and then stops, because—respectfully, Inquisitor, what.

( This was a victory—the dead, the fields of crushed and bloody flowers, the scorched earth—the sand, the stone, the blood—this was a victory. )

“They don’t want that.”

Cole is standing in between them. Has possibly always been standing in between them. Difficult to say, with Cole.

“They don’t want that, and if they did, I wouldn’t let them—they’re friends. Dorian is your friend. Let us help you? Please?”

( What have you done? What have you done ? )

“You did nearly immolate my father on my behalf,” Dorian says, trying for something lighthearted and remembering only once he’s finished speaking that jokes about immolation might not be ideal, given the circumstances. “I should think that makes us friends, should it not?”

( I am saving our people. I am saving them. )

The Inquisitor looks at him. Her eyes are the same green as the shadows of the Fade, as the light that flares across her hand. She looks exhausted.

( This was a victory. )

He tries. Pauses. Tries again, one last effort, and manages:

“I don’t know about you, but I think sitting down sounds like a lovely idea right now.”

The Inquisitor closes her eyes and nods and does not speak.

So they find a section of the fortress that isn’t covered in blood or corpses or demon ichor. Dorian sits. The Inquisitor, like a marionette with all the strings cut, her head bowed at last, sits next to him. Cole, carefully, hesitantly, perches on the other side of her with his hand held out; a pause, and she takes it.

“I suspect you have questions,” she finally says.

“Shame, about the drinking song. Ferelden will be disappointed you didn’t actually have a mabari.”

And the Inquisitor laughs. It’s bitter, and hysterical in the way of a person laughing because laughter is all that stands between sanity and breakdown, but it’s a laugh all the same.

“I—she—we? I do not. I do not.”

“I suppose, then, that I don’t need to bother asking if you’re all right. But—friends, yes? Friends ask friends if they’re all right. Are you...?”

“Not particularly.”

“No, didn’t think so.”

She sighs, and lowers her head to rest on Cole’s shoulder. Dorian supposes, were he better at comforting people, or if he was someone else, or if the Inquisitor was—literally, anybody else—he might put a hand against her back in comfort. But he isn’t, and she isn’t, and he doesn’t.

I suspect you have questions—he does, oh, he does. But there’s a time and a place.

“...They stopped asking me that, eventually.” Her voice is slightly muffled. She isn’t looking at him. He listens anyway. “Asking her. Me. Asking. My friends. Lustina, Maevarith. When she—when I—was—uncharitable—I thought they did not care. But they knew I would do what must be done, if I was well or if I was not, so they stopped asking and instead did as they could to help.”

Maferath and friends do not belong in the same sentence. To hear it from her, of all people, is jarring—but she says the words with ease. The night wind of the desert whistles past them off the endless stretches of sand and rock, but on the distant horizon, the charcoal black of night is beginning to lighten, a shade at a time.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m asking. Genuinely. That was...”

“What do you think will happen?” she asks him.

“Truthfully, Inquisitor? I don’t know. But you’re going to go back to them.”

“Am I, Tevinter?”

“If you were going to run, you’d have run a long time ago.”

She sighs. Lifts her head from Cole’s shoulder. Her skin is smeared with sweat and dust and drying blood—Dorian knows he looks no better—he looks at her and sees the green of her eyes gone glassy and vacant, limbs askew and still, blood on the stone—oh, but he is glad, some days, that he had not known the Inquisition before Redcliffe, because the thought of seeing all of his friends shot through with veins of blight-red stone threatens to break something within him now.

“...The stars are wrong,” the Inquisitor said. “And I do not recognize the trees or the shape of the hills. And—I do. I remember childhood in Ostwick. And with the clan. And. I remember Minrathous. It was hot. I thought—thought then, think now—I might be mad. I think…”

(I would know your voice out of thousands.)

“I’m—sorry. Inquisitor. I’m sorry.”

He isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for—any number of things. His thoughts are buzzing like one of Sera’s jars of bees, and at the same time everything feels heavy and murky, and—he isn’t sure. He isn’t sure of anything.

“...Thank you. Dorian.”

#

His shield is somewhere in the Fade, which is a sentence that is, objectively, true, and also doesn’t make a goddamned lick of sense.

(I do not offer you benediction, Thom. I cannot.)

Everyone’s talking in circles. Not talking over each other anymore. There’s too much to do, to melt down over this—the Commander is directing the troops, and Leliana coordinating her scouts and reports—the Champion had been injured, had left sometime in the last hour—Dorian had stepped out, he hadn’t seen when—

The noise outside gets louder, and gets quieter, the tent flap being lifted and dropping down again.

The Inquisitor looks like hell. Her expression is not so much blank as it is tired.

Has she always looked this tired?

“My lady,” he says.

There’s silence. Dorian stands at the Inquisitor’s side, and Cole slightly behind them both. No one else seems to know what to say—Blackwall doesn’t—and if the Inquisitor does, she isn’t bothering to. She just... looks.

She looks so tired.

(It’s easy to forget she’s someone anyone needs to be worried about. But she’s a person, same as the rest of us.)

#

“...You did not tell us,” Cassandra says, and falters, and stops, and the silence is no less oppressive for having been broken once.

The Inquisitor tips her head to one side, regards her.

“I did not tell you,” she finally answers, “because you are looking at me like that.”

“Was what they saw true?” Leliana asks.

“If you remember something,” says the Inquisitor, “if you remember it as though you lived it—the sights and the smells and everything you felt—if you remember it, if you remember a lifetime, is it not your life?”

“That isn’t an answer,” Cullen begins, and she cuts him off. Never once does she raise her voice. She doesn’t seem to have the energy. Every word is delivered quiet and resigned, the green of her gaze never once leaving the group assembled in front of her.

“It is the only answer I can give you. I do not know, Commander. I remember a life. I remember death. I remember burning, and I have never burned. I remember bleeding out in the Fade, and I bear no scars. I remembered so very little of this until it was returned by that which ripped it from me—I do not know. I—I do not know.”

Her fingers curl tighter into her scarf, the only betrayal of her nervousness.

The Inquisitor looks to her spymaster, to the commander of her armies, to the ones she has fought for and with, has bled for and with, has finally allowed herself to call friend. She stands, one of the People, before the gaze of the Chantry, and waits for what they will do—if they will do as they always have.

Chapter Text

Though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure. —Canticle of Trials, 1:10

Fly straight and do not waver. — Vir Assan, the Way of the Arrow

skyhold // clan lavellan

Josephine is a woman used to waiting.

Leliana follows information with blades. Cullen is a man who prefers immediacy: he is a soldier, was a Templar, and he thinks as one. But Josephine, every word weighed, every action catalogued, everything meaning something and that something to be used later.

Patience, in these things.

That is part of why she did not get along with their Inquisitor, at the start. More focused on how to frame the image of a Dalish Herald than she was focused on the woman in front of her, she knows she mistepped, numerous times. Lavellan herself has never cared for pretty words, though she can craft a fine speech when she sets her mind to it, and though it isn’t that she’s heedless of what her actions will mean—it is only, that she never seemed to care. Josephine leaves her to it and quietly turns her whirlwind of action into what others will feel as a kind summer breeze.

With patience, she learns, she sees, she understands better.

She waits, patient, for answers to her letters, for reports, ledgers, numbers, all the information that crosses her desk in a day. She waits for the ravens from Adamant Fortress. She worries, at what is being said, and what isn’t being said. She waits to hear the trumpets announcing their troops’ return up the mountain pass.

She waits, standing at the steps to Skyhold’s grand hall, her thoughts turned to the letter she received not long after their Inquisitor began her march to the Western Approach—and, oh, the timing of it, that she must wait again for them all to return.

The situation in Wycome remains tense, but the council of Dalish, city elves, and the merchants now occupying the seats of power the nobility once had is firmly established. The Keeper of Clan Lavellan had sent word, informing the Inquisition that they will be sending some of their own, on the next ship out of harbor, to aid their senior hunter in her duties as the Inquisitor. Josephine pays close attention to what is being said, what isn’t being said. Senior hunter and Revas and in her duties as. She takes notes.

There have been no trumpets. But there has been word from one of their scouts, of a group of Dalish approaching.

She waits.

It’s easy to distinguish between the different groups of people who come to Skyhold, their reasons for being here. The pilgrims look about them with reverence and awe. The contractors admire, if they have not yet seen the space, but have matters to attend to. The merchants, likewise, prioritize their business above sightseeing. Those who have already seen Skyhold, those who have lived here these past several months, treat it no differently than they might treat any other village or town. Diplomatic envoys move in formation and with purpose, with variations on the above—if this is new to them, if they have traveled here before, if they are Andrastian or not, Ferelden or not, Orlesian or not.

The Dalish envoy moves in formation, and with purpose, and Josephine’s eye lands on them not long after they appear through the main gates. Three of them, with the dust of the road on their clothes and the bags they carry.

Josephine approaches.

They meet halfway, in the middle of the courtyard. The one who steps forward, and out of the group, is a man perhaps the same age as their Inquisitor, russet brown hair, and his vallaslin in the shape of a branching tree across his cheeks and forehead in green. The two behind him: an older man, staring openly, at the people, at the fluttering banners of green and gold, with dark red lines etched into his brow like a crown; and a woman—the oldest of the three, red hair turned mostly gray—who for a moment looks to have no vallaslin at all, until Josephine catches the faint golden shimmer of lines that curl across her cheeks, beneath her eyes, and no more.

“Andaran atishan,” she greets. “I am Josephine Montilyet, it is my honor to welcome you here in the Inquisitor’s absence.”

The man raises an eyebrow in faint surprise. “Andaran atishan,” he answers. “Well met. I am Mahanon, first of our clan. This is Aeno, our hunt-master—” The second man tears his gaze from the banners to offer a curt nod. “—and Elaine, one of our crafters.” The woman smiles, slightly.

“Well met, to all of you. The Inquisitor is not here—I know she is returning, but I cannot say how long is left of the journey from the Western Approach. If there is anything you need, however, during your stay, you need only ask.”

“Our thanks,” says Mahanon.

“I can have someone show you to your rooms—or, if you would like, I would be happy to escort you through Skyhold, so you can see what our Inquisitor has made of it.”

She pretends not to notice Aeno mouthing our Inquisitor to himself. She makes a note to use a different phrase.

When had it become so easy, to say, she is with us, and we are with her, and she is ours?

Josephine can talk simply to fill empty space, which is what she does for the first bit of the tour, explaining what is where, pulling up conversations from memory to tell them a comment Lavellan has made about one thing or another.

But Aeno, bright wonder in his eyes, peels away from the group upon seeing the stables and Master Dennett carefully escorting Lavellan’s hart back to its pen. A proud and majestic creature, it consents for either Lavellan or Dennett to escort it to the grasses further down the mountain pass each day to roam, and nobody else, and as Josephine understands it has been quite testy of late.

“A gift, from Clan Tarimehn,” Josephine says. “Leliana, one of our advisors, had met them along with the Hero of Ferelden during the Blight. Lady Lavellan named it Da’diam.”

Mahanon laughs.

Josephine blinks.

He says, smiling, fondly: “In Trade, that would translate to little moose.”

“...That does sound like her sense of humor.”

From the stables, she walks them along the ramparts, and down into the gardens. Mahanon slows whenever they pass by a tree in bloom to brush his fingers across the petals and the leaves. From the gardens, she leads them into the great hall, and Elaine stares openly towards the stained glass.

“I had never thought to see heraldry like that within a Chantry.”

“This isn’t a Chantry,” Josephine says.

“It is of the Chantry.”

“The Inquisition was founded on a writ from the late Divine. It has always been of the Chantry, yes.” She hesitates, considers. “The Inquisitor—Lavellan. She has always acted on her own principles, to guide this, regardless of what the Chantry may desire. She acts for the benefit of others. For the benefit of all.”

“It is a remarkable fortress,” Mahanon says, stepping in. “I thank you for showing it to us. But with the pleasantries aside, I would like to know where we might be staying, so we could unpack. And then we would speak to you of Revas.”

To the heart of it, then.

The first of Clan Lavellan asks Josephine’s opinion of the Inquisitor—asks of how she has been treated—where she stays, what she does. The hunt-master asks, is she well? And the woman, Elaine, asks:

“Are you friends with her, Miss Josephine?”

Josephine considers this. She considers how to answer. She considers and dismisses wordplay and etiquette, decides on simple honesty. It is what they deserve, and she thinks they might be offended by anything less.

“I… am not. I trust her. I believe that she trusts me. I am her advisor.”

“Does she have many she trusts?”

Josephine thinks of the Winter Palace.

“Yes,” she says.

“Good. I… we had worried.”

And there is talk, after, later, between the arrival of Clan Lavellan and the return of Inquisitor Lavellan—gossip, rumors. Josephine carefully plucks each one in the bud, before it can spread far. She listens to the similarities. She reads the missives Leliana’s scouts and ravens bring back—what is being said, and what isn’t.

Adamant Fortress, secured. The Wardens, remaining in Orlais to rebuild. Corypheus’ dragon, slain by Commander Clarel. By all accounts, a success, though not without losses.

No word, of the Inquisitor’s actions, and the role she played.

The trumpets sound. The armies of the Inquisition are marching home again.

Josephine waits, standing at the steps of Skyhold’s grand hall. The Inquisitor and her entourage are rarely the first through the gates—there is the forward guard, the scouts, runners and messengers. She sees how the movement of the crowds shift and change. When she sees the space around the gates begin to clear, she walks.

“Whatever it is, can’t it wait?”

Sera appears next to her. Josephine had not seen her or her plaidweave—but for all her noise and brashness, the girl has a knack for going unnoticed. There’s a furrow between her brows, a twist to her lips.

“Shite got—weird. Dunno if you know any more about it then I do. She’s pretending like she’s fine, but she’s not, so—can’t it wait?”

“It cannot,” Josephine says—adds, gently, when the girl puffs up in indignation: “It is not work I bring to her, but good news.”

There is a time and a place for public reunions. She can see the advantage of this one—in the open doors to the grand hall, surrounded by the faithful, light streaming through stained glass and the heraldry draped, vibrant around them. She thinks, their Inquisitor would greatly disapprove.

Leliana’s missives concern her. Sera’s request concerns her. The way the Inquisitor carries herself, careful and distant, concerns her.

“Lady Josephine,” she says, quietly.

“Inquisitor.” She smiles, hoping—but there is no smile, no softening in return. “There are guests I think you will like to see.”

“If they are dignitaries—”

“Keeper Deshanna wrote to us. Shortly after your departure. She sent three of your Clan here—though I understand there was quite a clamor as to who was allowed the honor of the journey.”

She’s twisting her fingers into the worn gold of her scarf, a nervous tic Josephine cannot recall seeing in her before.

“Who?”

Josephine tells her, careful, looking at how tired the Inquisitor seems. The dust of the road clings to her, and she does not carry her staff.

There is a beat of silence. The Inquisitor stares at Josephine, expectant. “Well? Where?”

“Ah—my office, Inquisitor, I felt it best to give you…privacy.”

She’s already moving before the sentence is complete. Josephine watches her go.

Chapter Text

the inner circle

“...What do we do?”

A rare meeting: most of the so-called inner circle of the Inquisition, sans their Inquisitor. The room is the same, the pins and markers on the war map scattered and numerous; the papers everywhere; the faintest hum of magic from the stone itself beneath their feet. Skyhold is, as ever, unchanging. Perhaps it is the people who are different.

“...That should be up to her, shouldn’t it?”

Josephine is present here, and for all her poise she cannot hide the shock from her expression. But then again, there is no one here she needs to keep a pretense for. Cullen, who had heard the initial reports—Leliana, Varric—those who had fallen into the Fade and walked back out.

The Grey keep their secrets: Warden Alistair made no comments before departing Adamant. Hawke’s words to Varric’s on the matter, before leaving to her own responsibilities, had been, “You remember how in Kirkwall, sometimes, we just kinda said, the day’s already been so goddamn weird so this might as well happen? My life has been so Maker-forsaken weird . Like. Fuck. Goddamn.”

The Inquisitor, staring them all down, weaponless, exhausted, in the face of their silence: “I am as I ever have been. Do as you will with it.”

And that revelation, hanging heavy in the air… not a one of them have dared to speak on it until now. Too many things are moving. The world is already coming apart at the seams, the Veil tearing asunder. There are only so many earth-shattering moments for a mind to take.

Vivienne folds her hands in front of her. She looks to Cassandra, who had spoken first, and then Varric, who answered. She says, “The Chantry, what remains of it, is on the verge of another schism as it is. We are heretics.”

She does not say anything further. Lets the implication hang alongside everything else.

“She left the decision to us,” Cullen starts.

“She’s terrified we’re going to put her on a pyre,” Dorian cuts him off.

“Half of Thedas is already doing that, seems like.” Blackwall is speaking more to himself than anything, but the room has gone quiet again. His voice carries. At everyone’s attention, he sighs, continues, “We’re heretics, like you said. Could take it as, they already think we’re blaspheming, might as well go the full mile. But…”

“It’s her choice,” Varric repeats.

“If we do not act…” Cassandra opens her mouth, closes it again. “Are we to keep secrets from each other? If we are to tell no one, then… Sera? Iron Bull? Solas? Our compatriots are not fools. They already know something happened.”

“It’s her choice.”

#

“If I had further details on your experiences at Adamant,” Solas says, and he isn’t precisely trying to sound testy, except he is… decidedly frustrated, “I might be able to help with whatever troubles you.”

“You have told us that there are no immediate ill effects of our journey,” Lavellan answers. “If I have not brought something worse than the Blight into Thedas, that is all I need know at the moment.”

“What a narrow way of looking at things.”

“Hm.”

She arrived while he was painting, took his seat at his desk, and began to write. Solas is unsure of her motivation, of her intent, and he does not like to be unsure.

(That he could simply slip into dreams has occurred to him. Malleable the Fade might be, but it is a reflection of the waking world, and it could grant him insight. He thinks of smoke, and distant spires, and fields of crushed blossoms. He thinks, I promised , and he does not know why that stays his hand.)

“I have been speaking with the Lady Morrigan,” Lavellan continues, after some time has passed in quiet. “Did you know she has an elven artifact of her own?”

“I did not,” Solas answers. “There is much, it seems, I do not know.”

She does not rise to the bait, of course. “It is a mirror. An eluvian, she calls it.”

The brush stills in his hand.

“It has access to a network of like mirrors, though many are… broken. Inactive. I am uncertain, as is she. That network exists in a place in-between, not in the Fade, but not fully here, and there is reason to believe Corypheus has discovered the location of another eluvian.”

“Has he.”

That is… not good. Nothing about that is—

“There is a temple, south of the Dales, in the Arbor Wilds. Dedicated to Mythal. Corypheus moves what remains of his forces there, and as some of our own return still from Adamant Fortress, I have asked Cullen to redirect their path. I intend to meet him there. I would ask you to accompany, for your expertise.”

He must think. He must—

“Of course, Inquisitor.”

Whatever he must say, to get her to leave, so that he can think .

“My thanks.”

He hears the scratching of her pen cease, hears her push the chair back, and while her footsteps are as silent as ever, he knows when she is gone. The hum of her magic vanishes from the air.

Too many things are moving, and moving all too quickly.

The fresco before him dries, incomplete.

#

Sera climbs into the seat next to Iron Bull at the tavern, crouches herself in her preferred sort of perch, and steals the mug almost from out of his hand. Immediately, she makes a face and hands it back.

“Gross.”

“Your choice, not mine, Bumblebee.”

“Meh. Look, you’re still good at figuring out secrets, yeah?”

Iron Bull downs the rest of his drink. “This about whatever happened at the siege?”

“Sure. No one’s talking about it, so it’s—like, it’s obvious, they have to know it, yeah?”

It is obvious. And he doesn’t know. If they’re talking, they’re not talking to him.

“And, she hasn’t been coming by to visit. She always came by to visit, even when I was being pissy at her. Even when she was pissy about everything else happening. But she hasn’t. Has she been here? Or, not here, but with you?”

“She’s with family.” Cole, mimicking Sera’s crouch, on the opposite side of Iron Bull. She squawks and nearly topples over, and Iron Bull manages not to flinch only because Cole is on the side with his good eye. “Lonely, longing, thinking of home. Can’t go back. Didn’t know that home could come here instead.”

“Thought you were supposed to do less of that now that you’re a real boy,” Iron Bull tells him.

“I knew before,” Cole answers. “Big hurts and little hurts, hurt the same. She talked to me.”

Sera fidgets. Blurts: “Family. So. That is her mum, yeah?”

“What,” says Iron Bull.

“Yes,” Cole answers.

“So she’s got—someone. Someones. S’good. Too elfy for me, but. Good. For her.”

“What,” Iron Bull repeats.

“Her mum? Inquisi-mum? Mum-quisitor? Nah, none of those are good, never mind, look—her people, the ones who got here before we did? One’s magic, one’s grumpy, and one’s her mum. Got the same hair.”

The three Dalish who move like an honor guard around their Inquisitor, if an honor guard stood close enough to touch—the woman, red hair going gray, little curling lines of gold beneath her eyes. Details fall into place. The tilt of her head, the shape of a Marcher accent in her words, the single time he saw her smile and was struck, unexpected, by familiarity.

“Red sails swaying in the wind,” says Cole. “Red hair in the sun. Safety. Finally, safety.”

“...Right, then.”

#

And their Inquisitor is not talking to any of them , not at length. She continues with her duties. Missives, reports, orders. Otherwise, she keeps her own counsel, and if anyone knows where she goes for those long periods of time, that is another thing left unsaid.

In a set of guest quarters, the windows turned outward towards the mountain peaks, Mahanon takes the set of earthenware that has traveled with them from the fields of the Free Marches, to the buildings of Ostwick, to the roads that lead to the harbors and to the ships which carried them across the Waking Sea, to Ferelden, and to here. He fills the pot with water to heat over flame, and sets out the cups, and the jar of honey a merchant at port had traded with him. The tea, of course, was dried and gathered for the clan’s stores, and he remembers which blends their Revas liked.

It’s relaxing, in it’s way. Ritual, methodical. He can take a certain comfort in the steps, and their familiarity, in a place where so little is familiar.

Deshanna had sent him with her blessing. Stay as long as you need. Elanna, the Clan’s second and his own apprentice, is more than capable of handling his duties in the interim.

He hadn’t known what to expect. The stories of the Inquisition are vast and varied; he cannot believe some of them to be true, even having now seen the prove with his own eyes. Others, he hopes are fabrication. But what he had feared, that Revas was held here by force, has not proven true—and what some have whispered, where they think he cannot hear, that she had betrayed the People and left them, has not proven true either.

Hearing the water begin to boil, Mahanon casts a glimmer of a barrier across his hands to take the pot and set it back on the table. In each cup, a scoop of the leaves. The smell of it reminds him of kinder times.

Stay as long as you need. He knows he and the others would stay until Revas decides to come home with them, but… something tells him she will not be leaving for a long time yet. So: he will not be leaving for a long time yet.

Revas had frozen in the door, on seeing them, the dust of the road clinging heavy to her clothes. Her hand had flared an erratic green, a glimmer of it reflected in the green of her eyes—she collapsed into tears, unable to be soothed—the magic had only subsided with the easing of her grief.

He is, for now, exactly where he needs to be.

Footsteps, voices. Revas opens the door, slips inside.

“Sit, da’len,” he says. She sits, takes the cup he offers, breathes in the steam.

After a moment: “I like this tea.”

She says it like she isn’t quite sure.

“I have other kinds, should you find a different one to your taste.”

“No,” she answers. “I like this one.”

With more confidence, the second time. Then, hesitating:

“...I cannot stay.”

He frowns.

“Too many things are moving. Our armies are redirecting—instead of their return here, they march southward, to the Arbor Wilds. I must go to meet them. To—to lead them. The threat… that which caused the Breach in the sky… We must be there, before him. We must.” She sets down her cup, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her shawl. Our armies, she says. To lead, she says.

“Please, do not ask to come with me. Please.”

“Why do you want us to stay away?”

“I—I do not—I. I am not. The same person. As when I left you.”

“That,” Mahanon says, “cannot stop our care for you. Or our concern.”

There is the taste of ozone on the back of his tongue. It overpowers the tea. Revas continues to worry her fingers together, and the light in her hand shines bright enough to be visible through her glove. She speaks different. Acts different, sometimes. She had no magic—Mahanon has known her for her entire life, he knows this.

But she is still theirs.

“Please,” Revas says. Begs. “Please. I need to know I have someone to come back to.”

Elaine does not want to leave her daughter, having only just found her—and Mahanon does not want to leave one of his charges—and Aeno does not want to leave the girl he trained through her apprenticeship. But Revas is as stubborn as the ones who raised her, grown more so in her time here.

They promise to wait. She promises to come home.