Author's Notes: Just something I've been poking at on and off for a while now. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading!
By the Dread Wolf!
Mahanon Lavellan sighed for the fifth time in an hour. Or perhaps it was the sixth, maybe even the seventh. No, on second thought, he was quite sure it was just the fifth.
It only felt like more.
"Please, Lavellan," Josephine begged from across the war table. "Just tell them you are the Herald of Andraste. Nearly a sixth of southern Thedas believes you are already, and more are coming to think the same with each passing day. It would be easier to simply play along at this point."
For the past four hours, the – admittedly small – inner circle of the Inquisition had been discussing how best to meet with the clerics waiting in Val Royeaux: who to talk to, what to say, what not to say, who to compliment on their dazzling choice in red and white robes, and so forth.
Fortunately, it had only taken them an hour to realize the benefit of chairs in such a discussion. Most of their number now saw to their use, including Mahanon himself. Josephine sat opposite of him in the small, candlelit room, her writing tablet in hand, and Leliana sat beside her. Solas reclined in his own seat next to Mahanon, sipping a mug of watered wine, while Varric sat on the apostate's other side, idly turning the map markers between his fingers. Only Cullen and Cassandra stood, the former gripping the pommel of his sheathed sword with an anxious hand while the latter restlessly paced. The Seeker had invited Mother Giselle to attend as well, but she had begged off, saying she had already given what knowledge she possessed.
Mahanon found himself wishing he had had the wherewithal to do the same.
He sighed again. "I will tell them no such thing."
Cassandra clenched her hands – the urge to slam them on the table yet again blatantly apparent – but released a measured breath instead. "Why not?" she said. "It is obvious to my eyes – to everyone's eyes here – that you are the Herald. You said so yourself that a woman guided you out of the Fade, the soldiers who found you confirmed it, and you are the only one who can seal the rifts."
"That's hardly a case for proving divinity," Mahanon replied.
"Many would claim the opposite," Cassandra said. "How can you still not believe?"
Varric chuckled as he rolled a slim marker with the flaming eye of the Inquisition between his index and middle fingers. "I hate to say it, but the Seeker has a point," he said. "You've got to admit at least some of the shit that's happened to you is beyond any rational explanation."
Solas arched an eyebrow at the dwarf. "The wise do well to remember that the apparent lack of a rational explanation does not always mean one is truly absent, Master Tethras."
"Yeah, maybe," Varric replied, "but you can't deny even half of what he went through sounds too far-fetched to put in a novel."
Solas gave an amused hum. "I cannot refute that."
"I know it seems impossible," Mahanon said. "By the Creators, sometimes I still wake up thinking it must have all been a dream." He shook his head against the chill that gathered on the nape of his neck. "But I don't remember what happened in the Fade," he continued, extending his left hand, the center of which thrummed faintly with a green light, "and we still don't know what this actually is."
"It is providence," Cassandra answered immediately. Her eyes narrowed at Mahanon. "You just have not accepted it yet, that is all."
"You came to us in our hour of need," Leliana added more softly, "with a power no one else possesses, a way in which to fix the world that no one else can do. Knowing that, and knowing when you appeared, how can it be anything else?"
"But that doesn't explain the mark," Mahanon said. His lips tightened as he glanced at his hand again. "We don't even know where it came from or if your Andraste truly gave it to me."
Josephine's brow rose. "Who else do you think it could have been?"
Mahanon shook his head once more, as much to clear it as to rattle it for the thoughts fraying apart under the stress of talking politics for several hours straight. Again – uselessly – he tried to remember, but the memory crept out of reach, a dark shadow lingering at the back of his mind. He grumbled this time.
He knew faith. He knew the stories of the People – the elves – as told by his clan's Keeper, from the creation tales to the Ways of the Hunter to the proud legends of the Emerald Knights. He knew the fervent strain between lore keepers at Arlathvhen, if not personally the time he'd gone then in the stories of those who had in other years; their brows furrowed and frowns set, their voices quiet yet loud in the way only absolute self-assurance could manage, a tension that spoke deeper than just mere disagreements. Despite holding no love for their Maker, he even knew it in the hard lines Cassandra and Cullen bore in their jaws and the gentler words Josephine and Leliana offered.
Faith was many things, but this… This didn't feel right to Mahanon. Like a story only half-told, to hide something larger, more complex, and often much more frightening.
Or amazing, depending on one's perspective.
"I… I don't know," he said at last. "Perhaps the woman was a spirit? Or maybe what we saw wasn't even real, but a false memory or perception."
Cullen snorted. "You can't outright dismiss the possibility it truly was Andraste."
"I'm not dismissing it," Mahanon replied. "The fact is that we simply don't know for sure." He vaguely waved his hand – ignoring the way the mark flickered as he did – as he tried to collect his line of thought. "There's so much we still don't know about the Fade," he continued. "Whatever caused the blast may have triggered a reaction with it, or perhaps unlocked some sort of old magic, and I somehow wound up with the result. That power could have been from anything – from your Andraste, a powerful spirit, or something else. Really, for all we know, it could have been from the Dread Wolf!"
Solas choked on his drink.
All eyes shot to the elven apostate. Mahanon reached out an uncertain hand to help, but Varric beat him to it with several firm claps to the man's back. With a final, sputtering cough, Solas managed something of a return to his usual poise and nodded his thanks to the dwarf.
Mahanon watched some moments longer, hesitant. Their start had been an unsteady one, from a grudge against the Dalish he could only guess at and his own disconcertment that the highest regard the apostate could manage for the Creators – their Creators – was a skeptical sniff. And only on days when the sun was shining, the ground warm, and all of the Chanters had come down with a sore throat.
The fact that this mention – one he would have gotten a pinched ear for back with his clan – roused such a response made him wonder. And worry. Did the man care more than he let on?
"I'm sorry," Mahanon said at last. "It was an exaggeration. I meant no offense."
But Solas shook his head, an amused smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he turned to regard Mahanon. "No, there is no need to apologize," he replied. He drummed his fingertips against the wood of his armrest. "You simply have some… intriguing theories, Lavellan."