Archive of Our Own ^beta

Melara only knows she's been at this for hours because the light beneath the tent opening bleeds orange. Before her, one of the mage volunteers writhes and groans in pain.

Her skin is angry, red, burnt. Melara can tell with just one look at her face that she's young — round-faced and doe-eyed, seeking assurances like a child or young teenager would.

This is a familiar routine. Her mother always told her that her gift was a precious one. Melara spent more time around gaping wounds and infections than most children probably would. She'd go as far as to say she's probably spent more time around them than most Circle Mages, too.

You've a rare gift, da'len, and her mother would wipe the blood from her hands, press a kiss to her forehead. And you have a rare heart to go with it.

It was one of the things Melara was proudest of. Now, she's not so sure if she's doing enough.

The mages of Redcliffe are not all necessarily the battle-hardened "apostates" that the people of Haven were wary of when Melara decided to seek them out. Many are children, or scholars, or some other profession that was more focused on the upkeep of their "circle towers." The ones who are fighters, who test the limits of their magical abilities, are the ones she tends to now. The shortage of skilled healers is a loud, yawning vacancy Melara has been stretching herself thin to fill.

The Chantry sisters are limited in their capabilities out here, where the usual plants and supplies they would depend on to make salves and other forms of medicine are not easily accessible. They're either buried in the snow, or not native to this part of the Frostbacks.

But there are still scared, wounded people among them who need rest and time for their bodies to heal— so the able-bodied among Haven's refugees have all put themselves to work in some capacity to try and survive. There's a place for them, Melara believes Solas when he tells her as much. So it's a matter of carrying these people through until then. She and Assana have spent their whole lives living off the land, and yet Melara still feels like she is barely keeping her chin above a violent current.

Sometimes Assana takes hunting parties deep into the woods, and sometimes Commander Rutherford joins her. They usually return with something, even if they have to ration out whatever deer or bear they've slain. When Melara can get away with it, she spends her time in the tents tending to the wounded just like this — alone, in the quiet.

She tells anyone who asks that it's because her work is dangerous, even if she doesn't necessarily believe that herself. They believe her without giving it much thought.

"Herald," the girl whimpers, desperate, squirmy.

"Please, call me Melara," she offers in reply, sweeping blonde hair from the girl's forehead in an effort to soothe her. Still, even as the girl seeks out Melara's hand, pressing her forehead to it like a child, she murmurs for her Herald. Melara takes a deep breath, magic crackling in her fingertips.

If she were stronger, she could call upon a spirit of serenity, channel its power through her hands and soothe this girl better, more efficiently. But all Melara can do now is provide words of comfort as her own magic works to mend the blistered skin. She gets tired sooner, not yet fully-healed from her stand-off against Corypheus. She had almost collapsed the other day and Mother Giselle scolded her lightly for it, urging her to rest.

Her aching, still-healing ribs might've agreed with the Chantry Mother, but Melara herself was still frustrated by it.

The mark has changed — she's changed — and it's been affecting her magic. Sometimes she's awoken by a sharp pain flaring up in her arm as her palm crackles and glows like an unruly campfire. Assana tries to hold her through it, and when it doesn't settle on its own they have to go to Solas to quiet it with some strange old magic, powerful in a way that's hard to forget.

She wishes, not for the first time, that the mark had never come to her at all.

What they called a sign from the Maker only limited her. She was stronger before. More capable. It felt like the Fade itself would sing for her, letting her act as the conduit for any spirit which wanted to help her, befriend her.

Now, it feels like they're waiting at a door Melara has lost the key to. Tearing and sealing rifts in the Veil is more powerful than touching a spirit with her own magic but twice as costly. It's like sharing her body with a parasite that is making a point to take whatever it can from her.

Be it through the siphoning of her mana or by drawing a threat to her that she couldn't stop, displacing and killing dozens in the process.

She doesn't know if the girl on the cot has passed out from pain, or just exhaustion. Either way, she has fallen still now. It makes Melara's job a little easier, at the very least, the quiet hum of her healing echoing through the space.

Melara can sense him before she sees him; she doesn't even need to turn around. By now, the feeling of Solas' magic is familiar, their proximity makes it so easy to identify she could confuse it for her own if it weren't so distinct.

"Deshanna always told me it was rude to stare," Melara speaks into the air, and the mage she's tending to does not stir. "Is that universal, or simply a Dalish custom?"

She can hear the soft chuckle behind her, feel the cold air ripple up her tunic.

"Forgive me, I did not wish to disturb you."

"If you stop letting the cold air in I might consider it." She hears the rustle of the tent flap, and then the quiet footsteps as he moves into the small space. By the time he steps into view, the worst of the blistering has been soothed by her magic. It's as much as she can do without overextending herself. Melara looks at him and smiles. "You're forgiven."

There's a slight flush to Solas' skin from the frigid air— a swath of red against pale and freckled skin.

"How very kind of you," he remarks, although his eyes seem transfixed on her hands. Melara curls them into small fists, and once he realizes he's been caught staring, he looks back up at her.

"And kind of Mother Giselle to send a familiar face to check on me."

"I would hardly consider myself sent," Solas counters with a slight tilt of his head. "My visiting is entirely voluntary."

"To look at the mark."

"If that is how you choose to see it then I suppose I can't convince you otherwise."

Everything Solas does and says is specific— words carefully chosen, forever conscious of the volume and weight of them. She supposes she's being a little unfair. It had been Cassandra's desperate faith that kept her alive to this point, but it had been Solas' belief in her capabilities that made her feel steady, like she could actually do something with the strange magic that crackled in her left palm.

It was belief not rooted in heraldry but rather one built upon with time — perhaps it had solidified with her recent proof of survival, even if she has Assana to thank for it, for carrying her through the storm as she always had. Literally and metaphorically.

Melara feels heat creep up her neck, hot shame needling beneath her skin, and her smile falters. She dares to press her hand against one of his arms to squeeze, and he looks at her curiously.

"Ir abelas, Solas. That was a rude assumption." The words are a bit garbled in her mouth, but he understands, reaching for her hand to squeeze back.

"If you come with me then I might forgive it," Solas counters, and her lips tug into a deeper frown, lips parting in protest before he cuts her off. "It smells in here, Melara."

Melara can't help the surprised laugh that bubbles from her throat at the complaint.

"Does it?"

"Time spent in the Fade has made me more sensitive to shifts of this variety in the environment."

"A sensitivity to odors?" She's grinning now, and Solas gives her an exasperated look. "Well no wonder you've made yourself scarce around the stables. I didn't realize that's what she meant when my Keeper told me magic was a give and take."

Solas mutters something she doesn't quite catch, tugging at her arm with a quiet, coaxing insistence. Melara lets him live in his lie for as long as it takes to get her past the tent flap and into the bitter cold. He tugs her behind the tents as opposed to through the camp itself — less moving bodies, she immediately notices — and she's silently grateful for the unspoken understanding between them.

If one more person cries out for their Herald today, she might take off into the woods and never return.

They don't wander far. Solas lets go of her hand to wipe the powder off of a rock with the bottom half of his staff, and there's enough room for two of them, their presence slightly obscured by skinny, naked trees. Melara crawls onto the stone and pats the space beside her. He stretches out his legs, she pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them.

Solas runs warm. She can feel the heat radiating off of him, and that combined with the magic that sings from his being gives rise to a strange form of comfort she doesn't have the words to name, so she doesn't.

Melara stares off at the bustling encampment and breathes for the first time — a slow, long, deep breath. Cold air pierces her nose, makes it ache in a way she isn't exactly used to. For the first time today, her heartbeat slows into something much steadier, and she shuts her eyes to feel the wind bite at her cheeks.

Silence with Solas is easy. She doesn't feel the need to fill the space with something of merit, like when they're talking at the war table and eyes flit to hers when she's been quiet. Words tend to come easier, too, but since he is often beside her these days, guiding her towards this promised shelter he'd discovered once, there are no anecdotes for her to share.

"Does it trouble you?" His question cuts through their comfortable silence. Melara almost laughs as she opens her eyes, remembering when Cassandra had asked her something similar at the beginning of all this— but something in the furrow of his brow tells her he isn't referring to the mark.

Still she has to ask.

"The mark?"

"Melara." She gives him a pointed look, scrunching her brows at the tone he takes. Solas turns sheepish for half a second, looking away from her like he had when he'd pushed too hard on his issues with the Dalish and she pushed back at him for it. When he makes eye contact with her again, the concern in his eyes is more apparent — a willing departure from that pensive mask he wears.

It's the honesty there that has her looking away from him, now. Even in his own vulnerability he has a stare that makes Melara feel transparent in ways she didn't know she could be. She's not a liar, but something about it makes her feel as though he's perceiving truths she didn't know she possessed.

"For every body we burn I feel as though I've failed one of them." Melara swallows thickly, pulling her knees closer into her chest in a feeble attempt to make herself smaller, to cling to this brief moment of solitude they've found themselves in. "And I feel foolish for wanting to be seen as one of them and not…"

"Their herald." Solas only finishes the sentence after a beat of silence, once he seems to grasp that trying to admit that has her choking on the shame. Instead she nods, watching as soldiers stack firewood.

"I just don't want it to change me," she murmurs, and the words come easier this time. A solemn note settles between them, and Melara tries to focus on the point where their shoulders bump as opposed to imagining the pitiful expression on his face.

She doesn't feel small, but she does feel a little silly, saying it out loud.

One of his hands moves beneath her hair, and she feels his thumb swipe at the nape of her neck, fingers resting on the side of it over a raised scar. For a moment she thinks he's going to make some remark about how she should be wearing a scarf, but he doesn't.

"Is it so bad to be seen as something different?"

"When Cassandra looked at you as the answer to all her problems, did you take it as a compliment or did you pray her patience wouldn't wear thin?"

"Do you want a serious answer?" Melara shoves at him — there's no strength behind it — and he laughs, bright and warm like the campfire being lit before them. If she could envelope herself in the sound then she thinks it might make her forget that she was ever scared.

That thought has her flushing. Her eyes widen like he can read her thoughts, or like a spirit might have followed them out here just to whisper it in his ear. Melara fixes her gaze on the snow instead and silently thanks the Creators that he's not holding her hand anymore, because in spite of the frigid air, her palm is sweaty. There's no way to swipe it against the rock's surface without calling attention to it, so she suffers silently instead.

He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She turns and looks at him again with a grim smile. She watches his eyes flit across her face — eyes, to nose, to mouth, then following the tree branches that had been etched into her skin by her mother's careful hand. His fingers linger near the tip of her ear, and she shivers.

"I've watched kings and leaders of armies be commandeered only by their title and reputation it carried, their missteps led to the crumbling of empires and the loss of battles that should have otherwise been won," he says, curling a strand of her dark hair around his finger, then letting it fall. The smile he gives her then is softer, almost shy. "I do not think your fear is unfounded."

Melara can't fight the grimace that makes its way onto her face. She feels sick, stomach churning. His hand falls to rest behind her, warmth lingering where he's touched her. Everything about him… lingers. Sticks with her like a dream might, the memory of the sensation becoming fuzzy and blurred at the edges but the feeling it ellicits remaining vivid and defined.

She is always safe with him. Part of her thinks if she were to keel over right now he'd hold her hair back without a second thought, and that has her laughing under her breath — self-deprecating, admittedly, but Solas doesn't seem to get upset with her for her moment of doubt. Instead, he inches closer as though he were telling her a secret.

"But the title of Herald does not command you. It's yours to shape, to define as you see fit." His face scrunches up into something insistent, determined, and then it softens again. "And if you'll forgive my implicit bias, a world where you of all people allow yourself to be seduced by power in name alone is an inconceivable one."

She feels a flush creep up her neck at his sincerity.

"I do think you're a little biased, yes."

"Well I've already admitted to it, so you can't use that as a rebuttal against my greater point."

"Which is?" He squints at her, and Melara smiles a little. He shakes his head and her brain unhelpfully supplies that if she leans in a little more, the tip of his nose will brush against her own.

"It is not the name that will change you. You are going to redefine the name. And the best parts of you will not be so easily transformed regardless of how we grow around you."

Then they fall silent again — closer now than when they'd first found their perch. Melara debates it for a moment before she reaches up, a hand going to rest on the side of his face and lets her thumb sweep over the high point of his cheekbone, watching in quiet, girlish delight as his eyes widen for a moment. She can feel his skin flare up warm beneath her palm. The fragments of the Fade that bend to his will feel like they're singing in harmony with her own magic — or rather, what's left of it.

"'Ma serranas, Solas. You always know what to say." Her hand falls from his cheek and he watches it with that sharp focus again before looking at her.

"Ara melava son'ganem, Melara," he responds, and now it's her turn to flush pink, leaning back to put a bit of space between them before he can look at it too hard. There's a nagging part of her that has a feeling he's already noticed.

(In a week, when Melara raises a sword too heavy for her own arm and declares that she'll serve as Inquisitor because it's the right thing to do, he'll watch her. And when her hands are shaking among the shelves of a dusty old library that had gone centuries without use, he'll find her, sit with her, and squeeze her hand without a word.

It won't be enough to silence every doubt in her head, but it will be enough to keep her on the ground).